Aftermath takes issue with Tournament Rule Enforcement (-$300) | MembTV's BOA3

[MuscleChamp]

A centralized regulating body for the certification of events, organizers and players is becoming necessary. The skeleton of one exists with tournaments now acting as feeder-qualifiers for RBW5, it would be nice to see that expanded further as it would end up covering cases like this.

I remember nili talking about that.

Would be a great idea imo, so you would just have to clarify that you use standard ruleset (+/- some special rules) and it would be less work for everyone (except the inital work to create)

 

[Rayne]

View attachment 201957

Doesn't this basically give the Admins carte blanche to do whatever they like?

For the record, I'm pretty sure every tournament in the last 10 years (probably much longer) has had rules such as these.

That’s as I understood it in Myth’s spoilers too.

10.2 makes sense to be there, but 10.1 doesn’t seem right somewhere since it is at any time. Unless the admin team is known to be trustworthy and fair. Almost feels like there’s no real rules that way if any one of them can be bent or broken.

I thought rules should be finalized (as in can’t be altered) after signups are done, work them all out beforehand. Keep 10.2 though, makes sense for special cases. Perhaps that’s just me though.

 

[Orisseus]

That’s as I understood it in Myth’s spoilers too.

10.2 makes sense to be there, but 10.1 doesn’t seem right somewhere since it is at any time. Unless the admin team is known to be trustworthy and fair. Almost feels like there’s no real rules that way if any one of them can be bent or broken.

I thought rules should be finalized (as in can’t be altered) after signups are done, work them all out beforehand. Keep 10.2 though, makes sense for special cases. Perhaps that’s just me though.

I don't think you're wrong at all. By my reading, 10.1 gives organizers the right to change the rules going forward from a specific point, but not the ability to amend rules and apply the new rule retroactively.

At my corporate job, when our handbooks are amended we have to review the changes and sign that we have been made aware of the changes and how it will apply to us.

 

[Nicov]

Personally I believe it was a serious mistake by both ends. But the poor communication by the admins certainly was a trigger for all the "drama" because we didn't know there was going to be a penalty when we were in the voice chat with the admins after the match had finished. If we were told that mbl leaving would cause us to lose $300, mbl would have stayed (or we'd force him to). This was quite an unfortunate surprise as we understood that either heart or me filling the spot with the webcam would be fine.

Now, speaking about myself: had I known the team was going to be punished anyway, I would have never bothered showing up as the third player in the interview in front of thousands of viewers after not playing a single game. It was very akward and I resent that a bit because I got quite a lot of **** from many viewers. And my team still got punished after that.

The fine was 3% of the prize, which in theory is not "a lot". But it needs to be stated better in the rules otherwise it becomes super arbitrary, unfair, and gives way too much power to the admins (they could simply decide to take 50% of the prize if they wanted). And again, let us know at the very moment and not when we are getting ready to fill the invoices.

I still appreciate all the hard work done by every admin in boa3 (a tourney I personally love). Let's not let this kind of unpleasant experience happen again, because there is also a lot of hard work done by top players in every tournament that people have the tendency to minimize by saying that we just sit and play a videogame for money.

 

[paradox303]

A centralized regulating body for the certification of events, organizers and players is becoming necessary. The skeleton of one exists with tournaments now acting as feeder-qualifiers for RBW5, it would be nice to see that expanded further as it would end up covering cases like this.

Agree. It's in the works! I believe you're in the discord (AOE Tournaments) and been added to that section. Would be great for another tournament organiser to contribute like yourself. Adico is in the process of making a document that will standardise a lot of things.

There are a lot of issues potentially from a TO standpoint that could easily be cleared up and also TOs need to communicate with each other so they are aware of best practice, and potential problems that can come up.

 

[Chrazini]

Allow me to chime in with some facts in this sea of speculation. This case, in particular, is relatively simple but is still lacking some nuance that MbL did not provide.

MbL said he had to go immediately after the games. I firmly told him that was not a possibility and that he had to stay to be interviewed - we are talking an additional five minutes here. Once the series had concluded, he left immediately, however, with no chance for further discussion and leaving us with no third player and no respect for what I told him.

No, a team cannot simply pick whomever they want to be interviewed. It does not take much more than common sense to realise that post-game interviews are with the players that actually participated in the games. This is not explicitly said in the handbook, but the players were aware of this, as they were told so in voice chat.

Another point I want to cover is that they got no warning - this is true. First of all, as he left immediately, there was no time to discuss this with him, and secondly, we do not know the exact penalties for every misconduct as it is happening live. These things are assessed with the rest of the team, after the fact. I should not have to threaten players with penalties to have them perform the bare necessities.

And as a last point - a similar incident happened earlier in the event with the same player, leaving the webcam in the middle of an interview, showing a lack of respect. These two incidents together are how we landed on the conclusion of a 3% reduction.

I think it would be valuable to have more clear guidelines on penalties, and it's something we want to work towards. However, there are always going to be nuances and aspects that will deviate from any predefined list. Some have mentioned poor communication - I have taken this to heart, and it is something I will work on.

 

[oozkan]

Now, speaking about myself: had I known the team was going to be punished anyway, I would have never bothered showing up as the third player in the interview in front of thousands of viewers after not playing a single game. It was very akward and I resent that a bit because I got quite a lot of **** from many viewers. And my team still got punished after that.

And as a last point - a similar incident happened earlier in the event with the same player, leaving the webcam in the middle of an interview, showing a lack of respect. These two incidents together are how we landed on the conclusion of a 3% reduction.

I wasn't aware this repetitive behaviour of MBL, believing it is true, then well after reading above 2 comments, it feels like entire AM punished by MBL's behaviour. Well, you win as a team, lose as a team. It is a bit unfortunate situation.

 

[9mil]

Mbl aka Marshawn B Lynch

Marshawn Lynch SuperBowl Media day 2015 (Full Interview) Im just here so I wont get fined

Marshawn Lynch Interview SuperBowl Media day 2015 (Full Interview) Im just here so I wont get fined check out the website for exclusive material like game p...

youtu.be

 

[Hearttt]

MbL said he had to go immediately after the games. I firmly told him that was not a possibility and that he had to stay to be interviewed - we are talking an additional five minutes here. Once the series had concluded, he left immediately, however, with no chance for further discussion and leaving us with no third player and no respect for what I told him.

This is a lie that we already have discussed in private, I can't believe you go on to spread it here. All 5 aM players were there to hear mbl, AFTER THE GAME, telling you that he could not stay. Yes, you insisted that he stayed, but considering that every other interview in this tournament we had done as 5 players even if not all of them played, it was ridiculous that in this specific case when you were fully aware that he was on a timer to insist that he stayed. Afterwards, you asked for Nicov to fill his spot, which he did. Interview went smoothly and aside from people memeing about him being there instead of Mbl nothing else happened. Why would you ask Nicov to replace him if you were still going to punish us with a 3% prize reduction with absolutely ZERO warning about it? We literally did not even get a notificaton when asked for a bank account to receive our prize, we just got straight up told that our first place prize was $9700 instead of $10000.

No, a team cannot simply pick whomever they want to be interviewed. It does not take much more than common sense to realise that post-game interviews are with the players that actually participated in the games. This is not explicitly said in the handbook, but the players were aware of this, as they were told so in voice chat.

I'm not going to go into a you said or didn't say this or that scenario, but please stop making things up about what happened during a voice communication that you didn't even bother to record. At no point during the tournament were we told this. We are a 5 man team in a 3 man tournament, and for interviews we used every player that was available at the time. Some sets I didn't play and I still took part. You were there in our voice comms before, during and after every game, so you more than anybody knows that even though the games are played by just 3 players, there is still quite a bit that the other 2 players are doing behind the scenes. I would like to hear from other fellow teams that participated if they were in fact told anything of the sort anyway.


Now, what happened was not done in bad faith by Mbl and while I agree that ideally he would have been there for the interview, we did as much as we could to cover for him. The fact that we still get a surprise prize reduction penalty for it is crazy, especially when we had to deal with things during the tournament such as being promised that it was against the rules for casters to come into our voice channel and stream our voice chat, yet it still happened once, to which we were told it would not happen again, and yet it did happen again. What are the punishments for these actions? Or is it only the players who are punished for whatever mistakes they make?

The handbook literally has ZERO protection for the players. I have no law education, but to me it's ridiculous that things like these can get through. You basically give yourself all the protection possible, ability to make up rules on the spot and have 0 liability for anything. There's not even penalty scenarios to judge prize reductions off. This time around we got an ARBITRARY 3% penalty. As it seems, it could have been the whole $10000 if the admins wanted it to be, which is just insane.

On top of that, you have a rule which has already been quoted on this thread (7.2 if I remember correctly) which Memb used to threaten us about going public with this issue. Yes, you heard it right, the winners of BoA might lose more than just $300 because we decided to complain to the only place we can do so about what we thought was already an unfair arbitrary punishment. So much for doing tournaments " fOr thE lOvE oF tHe gAmE", taking close to 2 months worth of minimum wage in the countries of half our team sure is great for it!

 

[LowEloNobody]

What happened to the $300 @Chrazini?
Did it remain in the prizepool, to then be distributed to other teams?

 

[IYIyTh]

What happened to the $300 @Chrazini?
Did it remain in the prizepool, to then be distributed to other teams?

Does it matter?

If it were sent to a church somewhere in Iberia to pay for the rehabilitation of autistic, misgendered turtles, what exactly is changed vis lighting it on fire and performing a rain dance around it?

 

[Hearttt]

Does it matter?

If it were sent to a church somewhere in Iberia to pay for the rehabilitation of autistic, misgendered turtles, what exactly is changed vis lighting it on fire and performing a rain dance around it?

How does it not matter? A group of people that are handed money by Microsoft and are allowed to punish players for whatever they want and for however much they want should surely be held accountable for what happens to that money which was initially destined for players. If noone was held acountable for it then one could think of malicious ways to abuse that system. I, too, am interested in where those 300$ go and what happened to previous penalties.

 

[IYIyTh]

The handbook literally has ZERO protection for the players. I have no law education, but to me it's ridiculous that things like these can get through. You basically give yourself all the protection possible, ability to make up rules on the spot and have 0 liability for anything. There's not even penalty scenarios to judge prize reductions off. This time around we got an ARBITRARY 3% penalty. As it seems, it could have been the whole $10000 if the admins wanted it to be, which is just insane.

I think the only protections are to not sign up, host one's own tournaments, or get enough players together to justify percentage decrements and/or minimum fines for rules violations in the Q&A stage. Typically from my experience pro (and lesser than pro,) players tend to protest the rules only after they have been posted and given an opportunity to discuss them (ie: only when they run afoul of the rules is there a problem.) So it might take more proactivity.

I think the players might want to reconsider such an idea (minimum fines and/or percentage fines) -- because it might take away some of the flexibility that admins do exercise from time to time (we only hear about the events folks contest, not the one-off times an additional day of scheduling is granted, etc.) Examples like this are prime in demonstrating players can't be held accountable without certain minimum structures -- and if measures were taken to weaken the potential for ramifications of not following the rulebook -- soon may judge that it would be worth it to skip out on an interview and just take the fine, etc -- lowering production quality and organization immensely. (IE: you may no longer have to worry about the $300 fine, but cumulatively due to production/organizational inefficiencies donors provide less and less support and now for the same finish one receives a significantly reduced prize.)

There is a reasonable discussion to be had in how much influence and/or power players should hold in the events. In academic shitposting I've seen on aoezone I think certain pro players overstate their significance (just playing is not enough, the bravado/show/interviews are equally if not more important,) to the production value that is what ultimately drives the large prize pools. I believe their time is better spent managing their own streaming platforms than investing it in hosting tournaments more sympathetic to their ideal(s) [way more trouble than it's worth.]

Personally -- $300 is a lot in some places, but since the argument starts only partially contesting wrongdoing (it's fairly obvious that a player missed the interview and it damaged the production value that AM implicitly agreed to uphold via its participation,) it's hard to conflate the issue of the fine in this instance as if the "catch-all," rule was implemented and $10k was forfeited, etc. Obviously it sucks from your perspective being effected, and I am no one to begrudge some good old fashioned salt posting -- I just can't see folks having the same sympathy as if you had 5k stripped away and were told tough, etc.

I personally can't speak to the valuation and/or if there was one, but I can imagine a world where missing an interview of the final could be considered a higher $ fine than perhaps other breaches since it does/did inherently impact production value -- so I don't think it's fair to say that if a fine is going to be issued from prize distribution that $300 is an excessive amount.

For me it's as if someone was caught speeding -- and even though they didn't know the speed limit it was clearly posted in the legally required places. Instead of paying the ticket they have decided to get on radio and suggest that they should have just received a warning, or that speeding should not be a fineable offense, while throwing some shade at the cop who was ultimately just doing their job.

How does it not matter? A group of people that are handed money by Microsoft and are allowed to punish players for whatever they want and for however much they want should surely be held accountable for what happens to that money which was initially destined for players. If noone was held acountable for it then one could think of malicious ways to abuse that system.

Hadn't thought about it like that. Most likely I'm sure the caster/admin is given freedom to do whatever is necessary with the funds and I doubt they'd be on the hook to return unused/forfeiture funds, but probably would depend on whatever private agreement the tournament organizer and donor have agreed to. I'm not sure there's enough public pressure that Memb would bother responding, since technically that is a private matter, but I guess we may find out!

I still think a quick vid of Memb lighting 300$ dollar by dollar alternating saying "unbelievable!" "Disaster!" and other various catch phrases could be f potential opportunity. The autistic, misgendered turtle donation is a close second though.

 

[LowEloNobody]

Does it matter?

If it were sent to a church somewhere in Iberia to pay for the rehabilitation of autistic, misgendered turtles, what exactly is changed vis lighting it on fire and performing a rain dance around it?

Yeah, I think it matters for a lot of reasons.
1. MS sponsored the tourney prizepool (or at least some amount of it) and probably had some conditions for its use. I.e. (not Memb) but a tourney organizer could get 10k or MS money, and then "fine" players for rules, leaving the prize pool less than what MS agreed to
2. Tournament tier level is partly determined by prize pool. If you are on the borderline for S-tier ($10k, with less competitive settings etc.) then a large number of fines that don't go back into the prize pool could knock you out of your respective tier

If the penalties are going back into the overall prize pool, then I don't really see the problem tbh

 

[felix.feroc]

Yeah, I think it matters for a lot of reasons.
1. MS sponsored the tourney prizepool (or at least some amount of it) and probably had some conditions for its use. I.e. (not Memb) but a tourney organizer could get 10k or MS money, and then "fine" players for rules, leaving the prize pool less than what MS agreed to
2. Tournament tier level is partly determined by prize pool. If you are on the borderline for S-tier ($10k, with less competitive settings etc.) then a large number of fines that don't go back into the prize pool could knock you out of your respective tier

If the penalties are going back into the overall prize pool, then I don't really see the problem tbh

I would also like to add that a lot of the moral outrage in the original clip is based on the $300 going into Memb's pocket; and when complaining about the lack of protection players have against arbitrary withholding of prize winnings by Hearttt, clearly knowing whether admins have any incentive to do so is important.

I have been looking at tournament rules, and in DMWC 5, they are quite explicit that fines levied against players go directly into the prize pool for distribution to the other winners: "Any prize money that is forfeited will be distributed proportionally among the other players." An assurance from Chrazini that this is what happens to such fines would take a lot of the sting out of the AM players' critique.

 

[_MbL_]

Behind the scenes were being lied to, threatened and there is a lot of things being said by admins that makes you wonder why they even are admins at all. Even the host for that matter…

I shouldn’t have brought this topic up on stream, I just have no filter in the heat of the moment and thats an issue ive been struggling with over the years. The problem is I cant share everything private on stream and of course it looks bad to only display 30% of the facts and not publishing all the shady things going on.

 

[oozkan]

Wow this thread escalated so quickly, my previous post is completely invalid now.

On the other hand it is good that people started to follow 300 dollars of MS, next time you won't ignore when someone put 100K to his pocket.

 

[Liamsmalley7]

For what it's worth, I think it's important that this kind of stuff be brought up in the "public" light. As far as I'm aware, aoezone is the only place where admins, hosts, players and viewers are all actively communicating with each other. Ultimately the only way improvement can be achieved is by discussing/debating points of contention and attempting to reach a solution.

Obviously I wasn't there, and it's a month ago now, but it seems like there is a huge miscommunication between the admins and the players and there is a lot of contradictory information being asserted at the moment.

I think the "threat" (if you want to use that word) of prize pool reduction needs to be made at the time of the incident, if that is the decision admins are choosing (they are within their rights to choose that, but it must be communicated better). Otherwise, players do not get the chance to make an informed decision. Ideally, this is something that should've been sorted out on the day in question, not a month later.

 

[komtan]

thx AoEZONE.
boring drama is growing into good drama.
we love this place.

 

[IYIyTh]

Behind the scenes were being lied to, threatened and there is a lot of things being said by admins that makes you wonder why they even are admins at all. Even the host for that matter…

I shouldn’t have brought this topic up on stream, I just have no filter in the heat of the moment and thats an issue ive been struggling with over the years. The problem is I cant share everything private on stream and of course it looks bad to only display 30% of the facts and not publishing all the shady things going on.

I guess frustration is understandable, but why bring up all of the shady things now? Is it only related to the enforcement of the fine, or are there other things? If other, probably best to bring them into the open -- only question would be why bring them up only now?

 

[Tendo]

but why bring up all of the shady things now? Is it only related to the enforcement of the fine, or are there other things?

I guess it's to get the moral high ground.
Like technically the question is only whether the punishment for aM is justified or not which has nothing rly to do with AM Players being all present in previous interviews, or with the question like where the money went or whether/how Hosts should be punished for breaking rules like the voice-chat-thingy (althought those are also interesting questions, it is purely mentioned for making the other party look bad).

In the end it's a -3% Prizemoney-Punishment, I think that was also issued in some past Tournaments for picking wrong Colors in a game, no? So it sounds more then reasonable as Punishment for leaving before an Interview, even being told that he could not.

 

[doacid]

being promised that it was against the rules for casters to come into our voice channel and stream our voice chat, yet it still happened once, to which we were told it would not happen again, and yet it did happen again. What are the punishments for these actions?

You can choose to not participate in tournaments hosted by Memb or admined by Chrazini. That is the main way to punish them.

Alternatively you (pro players) can host and admin tournaments yourselves and do it better. Of course when you are in their shoes you might have to take similar decisions yourselves.
I really doubt hosts/admins enjoy disqualifying players or taking money off the prize. I'm pretty sure that's the last thing they want to do, among other reasons it hurts their relationship with players.

Personally, and for your own good, I think you guys are overstepping. Feel free to wage war, but I think this is a clear lose-lose, it's hurting literally everyone.

I guess frustration is understandable, but why bring up all of the shady things now?

To be fair he said something like "this isn't over"... so he kept true to his word. I tried to quote it but I think the message was deleted.

 

[SuperskinnyBLS]

PogChamp it's getting spicy

 

[King_Marv]

Why are it always AM players who are involved into drama?

 

[Chrazini]

What happened to the $300 @Chrazini?
Did it remain in the prizepool, to then be distributed to other teams?

The idea was to simply use the money for future events. Though, I must admit that I wish we'd redistributed it now to avoid that part of the controversy. I'll be honest; it is not something we spend days contemplating about, as we did not expect to be accused of embezzlement.
The best thing we can do is correct this going forward and make it clear what money goes where in case of penalties.

We do not personally benefit from penalising players. That would, indeed, be extremely corrupt.