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As you all may know, in Leftiez's game vs Sabella last week, Leftiez's timer ran to 0 and he was given the loss. Leftiez described what happened on his end as the following: https://pastebin.com/xZHu9Qtu
At first, we thought this was caused due to a connection issue on Leftiez's end, and thus did not bitch about the loss. Yet, the situation felt very odd, given that Leftiez's internet connection seemed to be fine (good enough that Leftiez was comfortable playing with the timer on). In the past few days it has come to our attention that the PS server itself is experiencing several issues, which I will describe in detail below. We believe Leftiez was affected by these issues and deserves a rematch (or at worst, the game is discarded). I am posting about this issue publicly because the TD team simply failed to respond to us or take any action after our discussions in private and have given a highly unsatisfactory response after several days of silence. While our immediate goal is to ensure the right call is made in this situation, other similar issues arose in the past week (such as Snou vs Azogue) and can arise in the future. We hope our post can be met with healthy discussion and eventual positive changes to both the decisions of the TD team and our overall timer policy/functionality.
Issues:
1) Server Freezing/Lagging
2) Timer Functionality
1) Perhaps the most prominent issue is the lagging/freezing that is occurring for chrome users (Leftiez confirmed he was using chrome before we knew the issue was chrome specific: https://puu.sh/ztzXi/8825c208a0.png. I'm sure most everyone is aware that Zarel has updated a quick patch for this issue till chrome is updated and many people have experienced this issue or heard about it to some degree, but here is some more video evidence of this issue occuring: https://streamable.com/rcm22, https://streamable.com/c6466. Based on Leftiez's description of what happened, we believe this freezing issue is the primary issue that caused him to be unable to select his move and have it register, and consequently time out.
2) To a lesser extent, we also noted some timer abnormalities. This was first noticed in Trosko vs Axel, where Axel was playing from 15-10 seconds left for several turns without regaining time by playing quickly, and at one point, we saw a message saying he had 10, then 15, then 10 seconds left. As a side tangent, this calls for the importance of clearly understanding how the timer functions (even ABR, a TD, thought it added 15 seconds after every move, but later independent testing seemed to show the time added is variable, but frequently 10 seconds). More importantly, however, it raises the likelyhood that the timer was malfunctioning in every game. Further investigation of that specific instance showed raises the possibility that this was simply the result of a display error, as described by our tournament host OP here: [https://pastebin.com/8uiXDmaa]. Operating under the assumptions made in this conclusion, I investigated a live recording of my game vs BlackOblivion (in which both of us felt the timer was acting abnormally). I found [https://pastebin.com/PXZLtk76], furthermore, the replay shows the exact same timer messages as the live recording. So regardless of whether we accept OPs argument and assumptions or not, we conclude there is some server-related timer issue.
Before I continue, I'd like to say OP has done an excellent job hosting the tournament so far. While I will take his name in order to communicate the unsatisfactory and frankly ridiculous reasons we have been given so far as to why nothing has happened yet, we see this more as a reflection of our overall TD policy and not on any individual. OP has already accepted the existence of the issues I highlighted earlier (moreso the first, he hasn't responded at all to my evidence regarding the existence of the second). OP has given us two main responses thus far:
A) We cannot prove beyond doubt that PS-related issues caused Leftiez to time out.
B) PS-related issues affected every single game of this week, and the result of every game cannot be discarded.
While both statements are true, they are incredibly weak arguments (if you can even consider the second statement an actual argument at all) and also contradictory (if you accept B, then A is loosely proven). Our responses:
A) We argue the burden of proof falls on the TDs to show server-related issues did not affect leftiez's game. We have already accepted the truth that everyone using Chrome experienced some degree of server freezing, and furthermore, I have also shown much more rigorously the existence of server-based timer malfunctioning than the TDs have shown it was purely visual. Given the acceptance of widespread server-based issue, the only logical assumption is that it would manifest itself in every game (which is, interestingly enough, the same logic that OP's point B relies on).
Furthermore, I'd like to appeal to a more general ideal: the function of the timer, and the purpose of Tournament Directors when it comes to making timer-related decisions. The timer has one fundamental purpose: To place a limit on a resource that is an integral aspect of this game - thinking time. However, when our game is played online, external factors can artificially limit thinking time or pre-emptively terminate a game. This is why we have DC rules and recreations. However, the TDs also need to ensure that players do not cheat by faking DCs and gaining more time. This is where a great deal of gray area lies. In our most recent years, our TDs have taken the approach of glorifying objectivity and developing as strict and exact rules as we can. But if this is what we want, why have TDs at all? Why not just appoint robots that follow the guidelines we set exactly? The reason we have humans is so they can make hard, subjective decisions that improve the quality of our tournaments. This is a responsibility the TDs have been skimping away from, perhaps in fear of backlash from our highly toxic community. In our case, demanding proof while knowingly aware we cannot provide hard proof (doing so would require we live record every game in anticipation of such an issue, and we can't go back in time to do that) is simply unethical and not how the TD team should be acting. Yet, it is happening under the guise of "objectivity" and "being fair." This is simply wrong and cowardly.
Note that even if you don't accept this point, our initial argument still stands and is sufficient to warrant a rematch.
B) Regarding the statement in general, it is important to qualify that the extent to which a game may have been affected by PS-related issues is vastly different from game to game. Many players not on chrome didn't experience freezing, and the timer issue is so small it would likely only have an affect in the few cases where players may have gotten low on timer. Furthermore, there is a world of difference from being slightly more pressured to think during an already high-pressure game due to server abnormalities (not to say this is necessarily insignificant, but in most cases it is) and simply having the game snatched from you by an external force totally out of your control. Furthermore, if you consider the "argument" in this statement, it's essentially saying "we can't fix everything, so we're not gonna fix anything." It doesn't take a genius to figure out that's just plain stupid. The TDs should be doing all they can do to heighten the quality of a tournament, and right now they are simply running away from their responsibilities.
We simply ask that a wrong be righted, that a mistake be accepted and corrected. It is not too late to take action (in fact, I confirmed with OP that something can still be done after last week ended: https://pastebin.com/P8SZ4kkW). This isn't just a matter concerning a long-time player and his team that is currently eliminated from the tournament due to this egregious error; this is about our tournament community as a whole. This is the first step to healing the divide between authority and the bourgeoisie. This is the first step towards ridding toxicity and rebuilding trust in our community. Let us hold hands and speak together. #FreeLeftiez.
It is not my place to decide whether or not the timeout that Leftiez experienced should stay as a win for Sabella or be overturned, as I am obviously a party with a vested interest in the status quo being upheld. Nevertheless I'd like to respond to the points raised.
1. Chrome does indeed have an issue with animated .gifs on SmogTours at the moment. However, this was already known at the time that the tournament directors made their original call. The fact that Zarel has publicly acknowledged this does not change this.
2. The message that has been left on SmogTours, as seen here, specifies that "only some people have the problem". I personally didn't experience any freezes occuring during any point until this Tuesday, as my Google Chrome hadn't been updated to the latest version at the time yet. The Chrome team also mentioned on their blog that the version would be rolled out "over the coming days/weeks". It is thus not by any means a given that, as FV's post indicates, everyone using Google Chrome version 64 would suffer from the issues.
3. The timer was absolutely malfunctioning visually in the game between Axel and Trosko. However, there's no reliable evidence towards the timer misbehaving in other games. The example given between BlackOblivion and FV doesn't relate to the issues Axel and Trosko experienced, and furthermore can be quite easily explained by BO simply pressing a move for a few seconds before cancelling his choice and reselecting. There's also no similar issues reported between Leftiez and Sabella. I agree that the timer should be always be accurate and if misbehaving then actions should be taken, but I do not see any clear indication that the timer was acting in a way it was not intended to do in any games outside of Axel and Trosko.
4. Placing the burden of proof on TD's to prove server-related issues wasn't affecting Leftiez's game sounds not only like a bad practice in general, as it should be up to the party asking for an overturned decision to argue their side, but also strictly impossible even in theory. How would one go about acquiring proof that another user was _not_ the victim of server-related issues that do not affect everybody equally? As exemplified by the videos linked, it can be demonstrated that individual users can show that they are not at fault for server issues. Requiring the opposite however is not even theoretically possible to the best of my knowledge and I would be happy to be shown the opposite being true.
If there is a decision made to overturn the previous call from the Tournament Directors, I would like to know what changed.
my therapist told me to say eggplant instead of saying mean or caustic things so now i'm just like eggplant eggplant eggplant eggplant eggplant EGGPLANT
let it be known at this point in time that the Ever Grande BIGs are 2-2 against their Week 7 opponents, the Scooters, with a season record of 2-2-2, BD (-2)
Won vs Alexander in 2 ggs. Time to thank Beds for his support - I should've written this every week, so I saved it for my most important victory coming against the monster I have created!
