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What Actually Happened to last winter's PvP Tournament of DOOM
guriphu
Member Posts: 494 Arc User
This comes up now and again and has surfaced recently, so I figured I would make a post and try to explain this, since the only attempt at journalism on the subject - a STOked episode - did not cover it very well. It feels kind of silly to be trying to do "serious journalism" about a flamewar in a video game, but since a person's reputation is on the line I feel it's important.
If you don't know what I'm referring to, that's fine. All you missed is a flamewar and a bunch of hurt feelings.
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That episode of STOked was a report based on incomplete information from a single, non-impartial source. It does not represent an accurate account of the events. The reason the PvP tournament exploded has very little to do with pascalb1, and goes roughly like this, to the best of my knowledge.
Rules were established according to a process that, at the time, was believed appropriate by everyone involved in the tournament. The process for changing the rules after the fact in response to changing knowledge of pvp was not very clear, though. When he became aware of techniques that he thought would not make for a good tournament, Pascalb1 went to experts and did testing to make sure, and if it seemed accurate, he would run the change past Brandon and add it to the thread. This went fine for a while.
Later, a group of players that entered the tournament late in the process questioned the fairness of the rules and the process by which the rules were made. This group proposed a change in the rules and started to seek support for their proposed change from other fleets.
One of the fleets that they reached out to felt like they were being bullied and that the group was trying to change the rules unfairly. This fleet and others who felt the same made comments to that effect on the forums. The other group pushed back, and a flame-war ignited.
Part-way through the flamewar, it was decided that a new rules committee would be set up and the rules would be adjusted. But, before this could happen, things got out of control.
A lot of things were said, and some rules were broken. Brandon got fed up, closed the thread, and removed Cryptic's support. End of story.
Pascalb1 made mistakes in how the tournament was set up. The flame-out could have been avoided if Pascalb1 had made the rules entirely himself, or if he had written a set of clear guidelines for exactly how the rules would be made and altered, and then stuck to those guidelines exactly, so that everybody could know what they could do if they don't like how the rules came out. With 20/20 hindsight, that is obvious to everyone. But the majority of the pvp community was also involved in setting up that same tournament, and we all made those same mistakes. Ironically, for all the mistakes that were made, trying to control PvP wasn't one of them. If Pascalb1 had written out a bunch of rules and said, "these are the rules, play with them or gtfo" there would have been no controversy. The mistake that pascalb1 made - and that fleet leaders from many of the pvp fleets in this game made right alongside him - was the combination of these two factors:
1: Establishing the rules by a democratic process. This prompted people to discuss and debate the rules, because that's what a democratic process is. Naturally, some debates were more heated than others.
2: Not establishing and publishing a clear, concrete, and immutable structure by which those rules would be made and altered. As a result of this, when things got heated and people were unable to agree, there weren't a clear, mutually-accepted set of rules for how to decide who would get there way, and disagreements that couldn't be resolved by discussion turned into arguments and fights.
But wait! Where is pascalb1's moustache twirling villainy? Where is the evil laughter? Where's the staggering incompetence by which he singlehandedly doomed us all? The diabolical plots to RULE PVP WITH AN IRON FIST FROM THE MOON FORTRESS OF DOOM?
Sorry, folks. You won't find any of those in this episode. Just a group of normal people making normal mistakes with unexpected consequences.
If you don't know what I'm referring to, that's fine. All you missed is a flamewar and a bunch of hurt feelings.
---
Hey pascalb1 haven you cause enough damage to pvp with your attempt running a pvp tournament. please all feel free to listen go to the 28 min http://www.livestream.com/stokedradio/video?clipId=flv_04be6602-dd9f-44dd-80dd-4e8fcafac917&utm_source=lslibrary&utm_medium=ui-thumb
The problem is it the same 4 to 5 guys who want to run the pvp community. All with fail policies. I love pvp. I supported that major tournament. but you TRIBBLE it up
That episode of STOked was a report based on incomplete information from a single, non-impartial source. It does not represent an accurate account of the events. The reason the PvP tournament exploded has very little to do with pascalb1, and goes roughly like this, to the best of my knowledge.
Rules were established according to a process that, at the time, was believed appropriate by everyone involved in the tournament. The process for changing the rules after the fact in response to changing knowledge of pvp was not very clear, though. When he became aware of techniques that he thought would not make for a good tournament, Pascalb1 went to experts and did testing to make sure, and if it seemed accurate, he would run the change past Brandon and add it to the thread. This went fine for a while.
Later, a group of players that entered the tournament late in the process questioned the fairness of the rules and the process by which the rules were made. This group proposed a change in the rules and started to seek support for their proposed change from other fleets.
One of the fleets that they reached out to felt like they were being bullied and that the group was trying to change the rules unfairly. This fleet and others who felt the same made comments to that effect on the forums. The other group pushed back, and a flame-war ignited.
Part-way through the flamewar, it was decided that a new rules committee would be set up and the rules would be adjusted. But, before this could happen, things got out of control.
A lot of things were said, and some rules were broken. Brandon got fed up, closed the thread, and removed Cryptic's support. End of story.
Pascalb1 made mistakes in how the tournament was set up. The flame-out could have been avoided if Pascalb1 had made the rules entirely himself, or if he had written a set of clear guidelines for exactly how the rules would be made and altered, and then stuck to those guidelines exactly, so that everybody could know what they could do if they don't like how the rules came out. With 20/20 hindsight, that is obvious to everyone. But the majority of the pvp community was also involved in setting up that same tournament, and we all made those same mistakes. Ironically, for all the mistakes that were made, trying to control PvP wasn't one of them. If Pascalb1 had written out a bunch of rules and said, "these are the rules, play with them or gtfo" there would have been no controversy. The mistake that pascalb1 made - and that fleet leaders from many of the pvp fleets in this game made right alongside him - was the combination of these two factors:
1: Establishing the rules by a democratic process. This prompted people to discuss and debate the rules, because that's what a democratic process is. Naturally, some debates were more heated than others.
2: Not establishing and publishing a clear, concrete, and immutable structure by which those rules would be made and altered. As a result of this, when things got heated and people were unable to agree, there weren't a clear, mutually-accepted set of rules for how to decide who would get there way, and disagreements that couldn't be resolved by discussion turned into arguments and fights.
But wait! Where is pascalb1's moustache twirling villainy? Where is the evil laughter? Where's the staggering incompetence by which he singlehandedly doomed us all? The diabolical plots to RULE PVP WITH AN IRON FIST FROM THE MOON FORTRESS OF DOOM?
Sorry, folks. You won't find any of those in this episode. Just a group of normal people making normal mistakes with unexpected consequences.
Post edited by Unknown User on
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A lot of positive things have happened since then so ...........
I think she is refering to a post from a guy who didn't know the truth on my thread.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=636101
- Nova Aurora Polaris -
@pascalb1
---post above is pascalb1's--
EDIT: I don't see this thread ending well, and it definitely is old news. Let it remain dead in the past. Thanks! -Brandon
- Nova Aurora Polaris -
@pascalb1