Ernie's Suspension

[Drakona]

[PFunk]

Thank you for the write-up.

I'm a Sloth, and I pretty much take forever in a game to do anything. I think I can do a 60 minute killbox match I move so slowly! So don't think I'm slowing the game down on purpose.... it's just the way I fly..... slow!

[Sirius]

Sadly, your kind of slow is not going to earn you endurance medals... you will just wish it did.

[PFunk]

Anyone that plays me should get an endurance level. I remember Cyrus and Morfod chanting "JUST MAKE IT END!!!!" numerous times after the hour mark! hahahaha

[Jediluke]

I thought our match in NYSA went relatively quickly.

[Drakona]

As an addendum! Just want to make something clear.

Are you going to get randomly suspended for a month if you go on tilt in a game and it gets misinterpreted? No. That's actually happened before, and what we try to do is have the pilots involved work it out. Usually that involves replaying the match legitimately, or replaying it from the last point you can agree was legit, and then that's the end of it. If we can right the situation somehow, we always prefer to do that.

If someone does this in a game with you? The nice thing is to stop the game, get them to cool off, and then figure out how to finish it. Or call it off entirely if need be. We'd always prefer to help people than punish them, and we hope everyone feels that way. People do get frustrated and the best thing is always to try to help them overcome it.

Since this game went to the end . . . and then Ernie retired . . . we did need to suspend him until we could follow up, and when enough time had passed, the "make it right" option isn't really on the table. And then the timing of it made it hard for us to talk with him about it . . . this happened. We did a bad job here and I feel very bad about that.

On paper, this is a pretty serious offense, it's kind of like a rage quit, and being in a challenge match makes it worse, and you can expect to be suspended for the season. And if you do it more than once in a blue moon, that's what will happen. In practice, if we can work with you to set it right, we'd much prefer to do that. But if you drop off the grid or we can't work with you for some reason . . . it is a pretty big deal to not show up for a game. We'd suspend you for all the same reasons a sports league would. Really, seriously, don't do this. I don't want it on the ladder. Hope that makes sense.

[LotharBot]

To expand this just a little bit:

everybody has bad games. Everybody has times when they lose focus, or they give up hope, or they try riskier and riskier things and nothing seems to work. A lot of people have lost their cool and gone on tilt for like 5 kills at the end of a match. Sometimes people play drunk or high or tired and make inappropriate comments. It happens.

We don't hand out suspensions for that sort of thing. We usually try to have people work it out between themselves, and only involve the admins if they can't work it out or if they need us to do something technical (like remove a match that they're going to replay.) 99% of the time the solution is either "I deserve the bad score because the mental part of the game matters" or "this game was clean up until 14-10, let's replay it from there" or "I'm sorry for being a jerk".

The situation with Ernie was kind of a perfect storm. It went on for basically the whole match, and got worse and worse and worse, to the point that I was saying "are you kidding me?" like 5 kills in, and then started to add more punctuation (?!??!!!) as the game went on. It was completely egregious, in a way that no other match I've ever witnessed has been. It was in a challenge match, which is a circumstance where we expect pilots to go above and beyond in trying to prove themselves. He disappeared immediately after the fact, and I wasn't able to locate him on mumble to try to work out a solution.

I expect pilots to play for real every game. Not necessarily to always bring your "A game", but to put in a reasonable effort. And I expect pilots who, for whatever reason, can't put in a reasonable effort for the majority of a game to call for a timeout and work with their opponent to find a better time to play it out for real. If you can't give your opponent a worthy effort right now, talk to them and come to an agreement about how you can give them a worthy effort in the future instead of wasting their time. And if you do completely lose your cool, take some time to calm down, but come back and work it out as soon as you're able.

[Drakona]

Also, Jediluke was treated as a "pilot involved" not an "admin" for the purposes of figuring this out. Which is why he couldn't help deal with it, which definitely contributed to it taking so long to resolve.

[Jediluke]

Thanks for pointing that out. Ernie did not come across as mad in the game vs me. He came across as someone on a mission to prove some sort of point. I didn't know what it was about but I was recording the demo and allowed it to play to it's conclusion.

This wasn't a regular pick up match, this was the match for my official challenge I had issued to him.

I do not have a personal issue with Ernie and we have since spoken about it and are on good terms. I 'do' have an issue with blatant disregard for the spirit of this ladder and was concerned that if he was willing to do something like that to me during an official challenge then how many other people might he be throwing games to and affecting skill ratings.

Concerning skill ratings and that match: Due to the way Platinum players are treated in the skill ratings the best score the skill ratings will give me is a (20-5 match) So the 20 - -10 was treated as 20-5 and thus skill ratings were virtually unaffected.

[LotharBot]