The Grand Melee - Announcement and Discussion

Some time ago, the secretive Order of the Sheep teased us The Grand Melee, an Age of Empires II: DE happening in Hannover at the DreamHack LAN event, from the 15th to the 17th of December.

We are now happy to deliver the full message to you.

Settings specifics
The whole event will be played using the DWL game mode, also known as 9 villagers start game mode. It will allow for quicker action, while keeping the openness and strategic diversity of the standard RM mode.

Main event
The Grand Melee main event will consist of a single elimination bracket, featuring a total of 8 players.
15th of December
Quarter finals best of 5
16th of December
Semi finals best of 7
17th of December
Third place match best of 7 and Grand final best of 9

Participation
Firstly, as per their performance in the RedBull Wololo: Legacy tournament, Liereyy and TaToH has been granted an invitation to the main event.

Secondly, the other 6 participants will have to come on top of the entirely open qualifiers happening on the 3rd and 4th of December. The registration is already open and you can sign up here on start.gg

Prize money reward
The monetary reward will amount to a whopping $100,000 split between the 8 main event players as followed:

1st place: $40,000
2nd place: $20,000
3rd place: $14,000
4th place: $10,000
5th to 8th: $4,000

Where to watch?
The whole event will be streamed on Twitch at: https://www.twitch.tv/theorderofthesheep

On top of that, the qualifiers will be completely open to broadcast, so you can catch them live at your favourite streamer’s channel on the 3rd and 4th of December!

Details for the broadcasting policy of the main event will be announced soon. Stay tuned...

Join the Discord server now!
Chat with us and get all the latest updates regarding The Grand Melee at https://discord.gg/vT9NWJJtp5

You can also use this announcement thread to discuss about the tournament and to send your questions and feedback.

See you soon!

 

So we have another guy who is considered as "bad" because he was following rules 11

sure rules are rules

but people are not bots who execute fixated rules

fan of yo's upload of yo's stream that day:

有狗_哔哩哔哩_bilibili

有狗是【帝国时代2猜火车】20221203 翻译官出战乱斗杯资格赛的第5集视频，该合集共计8集，视频收藏或关注UP主，及时了解更多相关视频内容。

www.bilibili.com

people who understands mandarin can get to know from conversation between yo and lyx and judge my translation, im picking few important ones to translate:

yo: he didnt even message me on discord and only left few words on the website then took the aw?
lyx: wtf im also waiting the whole time *curses*

yo: he waited for exactly 15 minutes and wouldnt allow 1 min extra?
timestamp of yo's pc shows 0:15 midnight (gmt+8)
(tourney admin and mr fire can check on this part and tell their side of story if its untrue)

lyx: *sign/dry laugh* well whatever if rules says so then let it be (then muted on vc)

yo to viewers: this kind of format (quali with website and discord) has been ran for many times and i've been handling all chinese players' communication all along, everyone in the scene knows it, including fire himself, but this never happened with anyone before;
(checking discord and prob saw fire's message in tourney dc) he even went to check lyx's stream and seeing him casting games but he just don't bother sending me a message and took the aw by himself

;
nobody does that especially among pros when we are familiar with each other

then they moved on onto playing/casting

what's has been brought up in this thread such as: their need of not putting all work on yo alone, lyx getting someone reliable etc was dicussed in their chat that day already
and to answer questions such as why lyx cant SIMPLY use some translate software, he can and he does if necessary, its discord and the website that are in full english that they can't handle, because of the existence of firewall, what you get to use as an average joe is completely different from whats outside of it so you have to relearn a lot, plus you need to be somewhat good at computers or even a bit tech savvy to deal with vpns for chinese firewall, if thats not very easy to understand, imagine you as a foreigner going to the douyu streaming website and try to figure out all the settings and functions etc by yourself, thats what they have to deal with if they are going to do it own their own, with not so great education received in their life

yes rule was broken, but its not like its something unforgivable and no workaround can be done

yo was in his own tourney game, fire can pm yo on discord, can nudge him on steam, can directly pm lyx through the tg2k group easily, he did none of that, he went to type few words on start.gg that has no notification, showed his legitimacy of taking the aw, then, took it

i think fire could have easily done sth much better than this, am i asking too much?

also on his stream (i linked with my prev post) he hinted that lyx sent people to threaten him and hack his youtube instagram etc, if some stupid fans did harass him, first, sorry to hear that on my behalf and we have no control over this, but lyx wouldn't do such a thing
if lyx really knows people who are good at hacking ****, why would he be this bad at computers to not be able to use discord and the website? lol

i am all up to hear his pov and make things clear, but apparently

1st and last time I will talk about it

 

Alright, I went through the discomfort of rewatching the rec and it starts at 26:50. Transcript:

• Survivalist: Daniel is playing insane right now..
• Ellie4k: Ooh my gosh.. you know what? It's the mYinsanity. They just give him the insane skills, apparently! You know?!
• Survivalist: Maybe? I mean he's on a smurf account so is this really Daniel I don't know.
• Ellie4k: Oooooh yeaah we don't have any of the player cams, we don't know.

I was wrong in stating that only Ellie4k was being disrespectful. Both casters were disrespectful.

When a player works his ass off for years and gets to the most important tournament of his career, and is close to upsetting a higher seeded player, you'd expect the official casters to say something meaningful - about the gameplay, about the player - other than puns about his clan ID and insinuating that he's not playing himself.

This is just one thing on a list of inappropriate moments from a caster. But for one of these two casters, that list is getting pretty long.

It was a rather awkward remark I agree, and I tried to play it off by making a joke that we didn't have the player cams on the b stream like we did in the main stream. I also don't think suggesting he practiced with mYi teammates to sharpen his skills is any way taking away from Daniel's ability. Obviously he is a strong player and I've casted many of his ladder games where he absolutely crushes top 10 players. My apologies to Daniel if he felt disrespected by my comments.

As for my casting of the Wololo B stream and GM qualifiers, I'm just a huge fan of the game doing this casting for free for the community. I'm sorry your casters of choice were on vacation, unavailable, or unwilling to cast. But for someone to dedicate her weekends to this game and tournaments for free, please lower your expectations.

 

sure rules are rules

but people are not bots who execute fixated rules

fan of yo's upload of yo's stream that day:

有狗_哔哩哔哩_bilibili

有狗是【帝国时代2猜火车】20221203 翻译官出战乱斗杯资格赛的第5集视频，该合集共计8集，视频收藏或关注UP主，及时了解更多相关视频内容。

www.bilibili.com

people who understands mandarin can get to know from conversation between yo and lyx and judge my translation, im picking few important ones to translate:

yo: he didnt even message me on discord and only left few words on the website then took the aw?
lyx: wtf im also waiting the whole time *curses*

yo: he waited for exactly 15 minutes and wouldnt allow 1 min extra?
timestamp of yo's pc shows 0:15 midnight (gmt+8)
(tourney admin and mr fire can check on this part and tell their side of story if its untrue)

lyx: *sign/dry laugh* well whatever if rules says so then let it be (then muted on vc)

yo to viewers: this kind of format (quali with website and discord) has been ran for many times and i've been handling all chinese players' communication all along, everyone in the scene knows it, including fire himself, but this never happened with anyone before;
(checking discord and prob saw fire's message in tourney dc) he even went to check lyx's stream and seeing him casting games but he just don't bother sending me a message and took the aw by himself

;
nobody does that especially among pros when we are familiar with each other

then they moved on onto playing/casting

what's has been brought up in this thread such as: their need of not putting all work on yo alone, lyx getting someone reliable etc was dicussed in their chat that day already
and to answer questions such as why lyx cant SIMPLY use some translate software, he can and he does if necessary, its discord and the website that are in full english that they can't handle, because of the existence of firewall, what you get to use as an average joe is completely different from whats outside of it so you have to relearn a lot, plus you need to be somewhat good at computers or even a bit tech savvy to deal with vpns for chinese firewall, if thats not very easy to understand, imagine you as a foreigner going to the douyu streaming website and try to figure out all the settings and functions etc by yourself, thats what they have to deal with if they are going to do it own their own, with not so great education received in their life

yes rule was broken, but its not like its something unforgivable and no workaround can be done

yo was in his own tourney game, fire can pm yo on discord, can nudge him on steam, can directly pm lyx through the tg2k group easily, he did none of that, he went to type few words on start.gg that has no notification, showed his legitimacy of taking the aw, then, took it

View attachment 204541

i think fire could have easily done sth much better than this, am i asking too much?

also on his stream (i linked with my prev post) he hinted that lyx sent people to threaten him and hack his youtube instagram etc, if some stupid fans did harass him, first, sorry to hear that on my behalf and we have no control over this, but lyx wouldn't do such a thing
if lyx really knows people who are good at hacking ****, why would he be this bad at computers to not be able to use discord and the website? lol

i am all up to hear his pov and make things clear, but apparently

you should ask the admin of the tourney for more info @siestes, but i can tell you that you are wrong. also i didnt hint anything. you should know better and look for more info before assume things.

 

you should ask the admin of the tourney for more info @siestes, but i can tell you that you are wrong. also i didnt hint anything. you should know better and look for more info before assume things.

if you can tell me that im wrong, tell me what it is then? lol
the european admin is prob asleep atm
i would like to hear your story so why not?

well you didnt "hint" yes, u literally said lyx without saying his name but i was the one assuming lol

Twitch

Twitch is the world's leading video platform and community for gamers.

www.twitch.tv

"people who cant travel and still play the qualifier still show up late and then accuse you and do whatever and threaten u its f'ed up"
am i understanding your sentence wrong?
maybe you shouldn't assume whether people can travel or not? why are you the one who decides whether people can travel or not? thats much bigger of an assumption isnt it?

 

@Ellie4K just wanted to say, while your casting might still be bit rough on the edges, I think you are doing a fantastic work overall, and it really is visible that you are trying your hardest. I'm very happy that after years of constantly the same casters being picked for important events someone like you got a chance to do it. I hope you keep improving and we get to see more of you ^_^

 

This whole thing where Yo acts as the translator for like 4 different people at once, while simultaneously is playing his OWN difficult games, really needs to stop. It's not fair to Yo (I understand he does this voluntarily, but still) and it isn't healthy for the Chinese scene in general, which is one of the largest and richest in the community in terms of the talent pool.

I don't really know what the solution is to be honest, it sounds harsh to just tell lyx and vivi and them to "just learn english, or else you can't play". Google translate isn't perfect, but it should be able to reasonably translate things like "are you there" or "i can play in 20 minutes" for example. Idk, it's up to them what they want to do at the end of the day. Just saying its no surprise stuff like this happens when one guy who is playing his own games, is translating for 3 other people at the same time.

 

It was a rather awkward remark I agree, and I tried to play it off by making a joke that we didn't have the player cams on the b stream like we did in the main stream. I also don't think suggesting he practiced with mYi teammates to sharpen his skills is any way taking away from Daniel's ability. Obviously he is a strong player and I've casted many of his ladder games where he absolutely crushes top 10 players. My apologies to Daniel if he felt disrespected by my comments.

As for my casting of the Wololo B stream and GM qualifiers, I'm just a huge fan of the game doing this casting for free for the community. I'm sorry your casters of choice were on vacation, unavailable, or unwilling to cast. But for someone to dedicate her weekends to this game and tournaments for free, please lower your expectations.

While its true Ellie's game knowledge may not be par with the big 3's. But I loved this breath of fresh air. I want Ellie to cast more S tier in the future maybe with cocaster. There is no need to inflate the EGO of MembChild. Sorry Memb.

 

It was an obvious mistake intended for picking Bohemians.

Different category of issue in some sense, but both are instances of lack of sportsmanship.

I insisted that we follow the rules as written

 

sure rules are rules

but people are not bots who execute fixated rules

fan of yo's upload of yo's stream that day:

有狗_哔哩哔哩_bilibili

有狗是【帝国时代2猜火车】20221203 翻译官出战乱斗杯资格赛的第5集视频，该合集共计8集，视频收藏或关注UP主，及时了解更多相关视频内容。

www.bilibili.com

people who understands mandarin can get to know from conversation between yo and lyx and judge my translation, im picking few important ones to translate:

yo: he didnt even message me on discord and only left few words on the website then took the aw?
lyx: wtf im also waiting the whole time *curses*

yo: he waited for exactly 15 minutes and wouldnt allow 1 min extra?
timestamp of yo's pc shows 0:15 midnight (gmt+8)
(tourney admin and mr fire can check on this part and tell their side of story if its untrue)

lyx: *sign/dry laugh* well whatever if rules says so then let it be (then muted on vc)

yo to viewers: this kind of format (quali with website and discord) has been ran for many times and i've been handling all chinese players' communication all along, everyone in the scene knows it, including fire himself, but this never happened with anyone before;
(checking discord and prob saw fire's message in tourney dc) he even went to check lyx's stream and seeing him casting games but he just don't bother sending me a message and took the aw by himself

;
nobody does that especially among pros when we are familiar with each other

then they moved on onto playing/casting

what's has been brought up in this thread such as: their need of not putting all work on yo alone, lyx getting someone reliable etc was dicussed in their chat that day already
and to answer questions such as why lyx cant SIMPLY use some translate software, he can and he does if necessary, its discord and the website that are in full english that they can't handle, because of the existence of firewall, what you get to use as an average joe is completely different from whats outside of it so you have to relearn a lot, plus you need to be somewhat good at computers or even a bit tech savvy to deal with vpns for chinese firewall, if thats not very easy to understand, imagine you as a foreigner going to the douyu streaming website and try to figure out all the settings and functions etc by yourself, thats what they have to deal with if they are going to do it own their own, with not so great education received in their life

yes rule was broken, but its not like its something unforgivable and no workaround can be done

yo was in his own tourney game, fire can pm yo on discord, can nudge him on steam, can directly pm lyx through the tg2k group easily, he did none of that, he went to type few words on start.gg that has no notification, showed his legitimacy of taking the aw, then, took it

View attachment 204541

i think fire could have easily done sth much better than this, am i asking too much?

also on his stream (i linked with my prev post) he hinted that lyx sent people to threaten him and hack his youtube instagram etc, if some stupid fans did harass him, first, sorry to hear that on my behalf and we have no control over this, but lyx wouldn't do such a thing
if lyx really knows people who are good at hacking ****, why would he be this bad at computers to not be able to use discord and the website? lol

i am all up to hear his pov and make things clear, but apparently

Now this will be the last message regarding this topic in this thread. I asked you all to move on. Everything after this post on that topic will be deleted.

Note: As per tournament rules, sharing a private conversation made in the frame of the event between 2 players or players and admin is supposed to be forbidden. By showing that lyx shared this conv publicly, you actually making him disservice.

 

In Warlord Qualifier, Bad Koala was supposed to be the translator. He had some incidents and couldnt play. He messaged vivi but vivi was sleeping and missed the check-in. Fans who keep an eye on the matches from 8pm to 3am? People have their own stuff to do.

Oh yeah, forgot timezones existed, my excuses. Still, certainly there will be some people still on and going, I've played games up to 3 AM with streamers before, and I pride myself on a not entirely ****ed sleep scedule. Relying on people you might not know is a bit iffy though.

Anyways, Bad Koala not being able to translate due to last minute accidents does explain a whole lot, thanks to your explanation.

 

Now this will be the last message regarding this topic in this thread. I asked you all to move on. Everything after this post on that topic will be deleted.

Note: As per tournament rules, sharing a private conversation made in the frame of the event between 2 players or players and admin is strictly forbidden. By showing that lyx shared this conv publicly, you actually making him disservice.

this is mr yo's vod and his discord is always on 2nd monitor, what do u mean by "lyx shared this conv publicly"? but ok if both u and fire would give 0 info, thanks

 

I insisted that we follow the rules as written

The Cabal strikes again...

 

It was a rather awkward remark I agree, and I tried to play it off by making a joke that we didn't have the player cams on the b stream like we did in the main stream. I also don't think suggesting he practiced with mYi teammates to sharpen his skills is any way taking away from Daniel's ability. Obviously he is a strong player and I've casted many of his ladder games where he absolutely crushes top 10 players. My apologies to Daniel if he felt disrespected by my comments.

As for my casting of the Wololo B stream and GM qualifiers, I'm just a huge fan of the game doing this casting for free for the community. I'm sorry your casters of choice were on vacation, unavailable, or unwilling to cast. But for someone to dedicate her weekends to this game and tournaments for free, please lower your expectations.

Everyone with half a brain knew it was a joke, and that neither you or Survivalist were actually accusing Daniel of account sharing

 

You mean Baidu translate

Is deepl.com allowed in china?

 

whose job is it to translate rule book? player's? admin? I know for sure it s not Yo's
some food for thoughts on this whole episode maybe tournament admin can budget for translations or have some volunteers on the day of checkin so that there is no confusion.

 

Now this will be the last message regarding this topic in this thread. I asked you all to move on. Everything after this post on that topic will be deleted.

Note: As per tournament rules, sharing a private conversation made in the frame of the event between 2 players or players and admin is supposed to be forbidden. By showing that lyx shared this conv publicly, you actually making him disservice.

hmmm censoring things, you don't like? You are not person to decide if people move on or not.

 

When insults and personal attacks are flying and nothing constructive is coming off the discussion, it should indeed be everyone's job to notice it's time to move on, not just mine

(You can also see that calm messages just above yours discussing about how to provide translation to Chinese players didn't get deleted)

 

Alright, I went through the discomfort of rewatching the rec and it starts at 26:50. Transcript:

• Survivalist: Daniel is playing insane right now..
• Ellie4k: Ooh my gosh.. you know what? It's the mYinsanity, y'know? They just give him the insane skills, apparently, you know?
• Survivalist: Maybe? I mean he's on a smurf account so is this really Daniel I don't know.
• Ellie4k: Oooooh yeaah we don't have any of the player cams, we don't know.
• Survivalist: Yeah exactly.
• Ellie4k: We don't know.

I was wrong in stating that only Ellie4k was being disrespectful. Both casters were disrespectful.

When a player works his ass off for years and gets to the most important tournament of his career, and is close to upsetting a higher seeded player, you'd expect the official casters to say something meaningful - about the gameplay, about the player - other than puns about his clan ID and insinuations that he's not playing himself.

This is just one thing on a list of inappropriate/dumb remarks from a caster. But for one of these two casters, that list is getting pretty long.

All of the casters do that, it's an inside joke; when Daut micros, Memb says it's viper on his account, it's just a joke

 

People are complaining about jokes between casters now? ‍

 

I insisted that we follow the rules as written

Sure, wasn't my point though

 

whose job is it to translate rule book? player's? admin? I know for sure it s not Yo's
some food for thoughts on this whole episode maybe tournament admin can budget for translations or have some volunteers on the day of checkin so that there is no confusion.

Seems a little unreasonable to pin it on admin's to translate the rulebook into every language spoken by a player participating in a qualifier. There would need to be at least 5-10 versions provided, and then the admin is responsible for the wording in a language they don't understand in each one.
It seems a bit more reasonable (but still inconvenient for the players of course) that they need to source translation services to understand the rulebook of whichever tournament they are participating in.
I have not seen multiple language rulebooks from other major esports, even when the events are dominated by non-english speakers (I'm looking at you SC2)

 

hmmm censoring things, you don't like? You are not person to decide if people move on or not.

it's not because he don't like. because in this scenario, as a tournament admin/organizer, he also has part of responsebility.

I am sure if this tournament is admin/organized by Dave or T90 or Memb, they will not only just talk in group chat, they will also try to reach Lyx personally.

"by the rule"just the way try to dodge the responsebility.

​

 

@siestes is trying to censor discussion by repeatedly pretending this is a witchhunt on a player, F1re, when in practice it's mainly the responsibility of the tournament admin - who happens to be @siestes - to publicly explain how and why he arrived at an AW/AL decision in a tournament. And this is an appropriate thread for that discussion.

Now I understand we should give admins time and leeway when they're in the middle of a tournament. But he clearly has had time to post 3 times in this thread telling other people to shut up. Maybe that time could have been used to provide a time stamp of what happened.

I'm also going to note the irony of him of accusing people of "personal attacks and insults". The very first time I or others heard of this controversy was when F1re publicly posted on a social media account that he was "intimidated by a Chinese player", then made the same insinuation on stream. That is a serious accusation. (F1re then deleted that tweet after people, including Nili, asked him what happened. Bizarre behavior for someone claiming to be a victim.)

If F1re has evidence of intimidation from another player, he should post proof of it, and the other player should be held accountable. If the allegation is made up, F1re should be held accountable for defaming another player. One of these two is true, and perhaps an admin should help uncover the truth. It's absurd to suggest that the "personal attacks" rested with viewers asking what happened on aoezone.

 

Google translate isn't perfect, but it should be able to reasonably translate things like "are you there" or "i can play in 20 minutes" for example. Idk, it's up to them what they want to do at the end of the day. Just saying its no surprise stuff like this happens when one guy who is playing his own games, is translating for 3 other people at the same time.

whose job is it to translate rule book?

Language barrier is part of it but not the most of it. It is just the way they have been living. Rest assure that even if the handbook and the websites are translated, they won't find it that useful. They will feel it is overflown with useless information. They might consult keen fans who read the books in details, and care mostly about whether laming is allowed, etc. To use a new website/software pose a greater challenge than communicating with translation software. They just don't like details or exploring. Even an experienced player like MrYo don't know about tech trees, which is translated (well Hera also pauses and reads tech tree during finals).

I'm not saying to criticise certain players or ignoring their shortcomings. But at least despite these flaws, the community, both Chinese and international has tolerated it. As a result, no competition is sabotaged while viewers enjoy the participation and diversity. At the end of day, a rule should be respected but the rule or a law should be conveyed and not be dogmatic.

 

When are the replacement qualifiers being played?