Ladle 57

[Mecca]

scroll up to Word's post and take a look at LucK's post on the page before.

Until now, I haven't posted in this topic

I meant in the topic that Phytotron linked.

[Hoax]

Flattered & disappointed

[1200]

Just to clarify, I'm not making these comments to condemn Team Baylife. It's just that what transpired in Ladle 57 brought an attention to the lack of rule in Ladle that will allow what happened in Ladle 57 or Ladle 36 to happen over and over again.

Too many restrictions on the Challenge Board might hurt too. I would hate to see Ladle victories decided not on skill, but because all six players showed up. I can imagine teams that are perpetually short one or two players, always losing because of it, then giving up on Fortress. Substitutes are a necessity for any team, but no one likes to sit on the sidelines. Not allowing extra players to fill-in is not very fun at all. We want everyone to play. That should be the most important part of Ladle -- getting everyone on the grid.

I've had my share of organizing teams as well and sometimes people flake out or can not turn up due to legitimate reasons. So in those situations yea it's nice to be able to find a last minute sub but but if I had to choose between allowing for some crafty substitutions (which I don't consider cheating if it's within the rules) or not allowing subs that are already signed up, I would choose the latter. I just don't think a situation that allows crafty substitution is good for the integrity and fairness of the tournament. I am down for allowing any subs that are not signed up.
I don't think getting everyone on the grid is the most part about the ladle. I think it's more important to keep everyone that's already involved happy by having some of these rules in place so we don't keep having these issues and these long threads full of complaints, bitching etc. In this instance more rules = more fun!

We can toss around a few ideas though. You never know when a potential improvement is just below the surface. Maybe we can restrict the number of players the Board to 7 (6+1 sub)? If all 6 players show up, the seventh can only substitute for a declared "open team?" This kind of micromanagement seems unnecessary and there is probably a way around it using aliases, which is what we saw last weekend.

And maybe it's a good idea to limit the number of sign ups per team. Big clans that can enlist perhaps 6 US and 6 Euros have an advantage over teams that can't because they'd be able to change the roster according to the server they play. (I'm less concerned of this than the first issue though.)

It's a pity voting has been suspended I don't know by who or for what (I'm too lazy to read the long thread) but it would be nice to have it back. I think in a competition run by the community, the community doesn't have a voice if there isn't one.

[ElmosWorld]

Just make each player sign up with a valid @forums account. Then check all accounts and confront any duplicate IP's. Then when people want to swtich, their name and global ID can be moved to another team on the challenge board.

[Tank Program]

Just make each player sign up with a valid @forums account. Then check all accounts and confront any duplicate IP's.

Ahaha, no. It doesn't work like that. It could, I suppose, but it won't. @forums is really so that forum users can be recognized on the grid. It's not meant to serve as an authority only. If the plan is to get that technical with authority stuff that you need to do IP checking that's going to need to happen some place else.

[sinewav]

So, does anyone have any suggestions how to move forward?

We can tighten up the Challenge Board and restrict teams to 6 players only. We can remove substitutes. This basically means you need to commit to a team. If you don't show up, the team suffers.

We can't solve the alias problem because there is no solution. We can, however, make the risks of doing what Baylife did much greater by not allowing more than six players to sign up without subs, as 1200 suggested above. This way no one feels cheated when players from one team magically appear on another.

Does this sound severe? Is Fortress really such srs-biz that we have to adopt this kind of framework to keep people honest? Well, it certainly looks like it. If players are willing to deliberately deceive others and even lie to their own teams, then yes, we have reached that point. And considering the lack of a sincere apology anywhere, let alone a single admission of wrong-doing, I don't think we have a choice but to make changes to the rules.

So that's my proposal. Team sign-ups are restricted to 6 players max, and no more subs in the Ladle.

[Venijn]

So, does anyone have any suggestions how to move forward?

We can tighten up the Challenge Board and restrict teams to 6 players only. We can remove substitutes. This basically means you need to commit to a team. If you don't show up, the team suffers.

We can't solve the alias problem because there is no solution. We can, however, make the risks of doing what Baylife did much greater by not allowing more than six players to sign up without subs, as 1200 suggested above. This way no one feels cheated when players from one team magically appear on another.

Does this sound severe? Is Fortress really such srs-biz that we have to adopt this kind of framework to keep people honest? Well, it certainly looks like it. If players are willing to deliberately deceive others and even lie to their own teams, then yes, we have reached that point. And considering the lack of a sincere apology anywhere, let alone a single admission of wrong-doing, I don't think we have a choice but to make changes to the rules.

So that's my proposal. Team sign-ups are restricted to 6 players max, and no more subs in the Ladle.

You can't punish a whole community for the actions of a few. This proposal will not work, and will only reduce the participation and enjoyment of Ladle. It also goes some way to preventing newer players from getting involved.

[sinewav]

You can't punish a whole community for the actions of a few.

It's not punishing the honest, committed players (who won't have any problem coming up with six to kick-ass with). I'm not sure it reduces the access to Ladle either, and might actually increase the number of teams. The biggest hurdle any new team faces is commitment, so unless you have that, it doesn't matter if there are 20 people on your roster. I guess we can restrict the sign-up to 7 so each team has a sub for themselves, but the sub should be committed to that team only.

The only thing we can do is try new systems. We don't 'punish' people here. Besides, this is just a proposal and it would need a lot of support to enact it.

[Concord]

it just seems like that would be doing easy thing instead of the right thing. it's easy to add new rules, new procedures, restrictions, but what good are they if we refuse to enforce the ones we have?

It may be hard to come together as a community, and complete the due process and penalize people for breaking rules. It may be painful to penalize popular players.
It is also the right thing to do.

The community can continue down a road to more rules and regulations, or we can engage and hold each other to high standards of integrity. The Ladle used to be based on some concept of honor. There were no rules at all. Teams chose their first round opponents. We've moved further and further away from communal and individual responsibility. Now, we place responsibility on the rules. Like it was the rules's fault. When there's a problem, we fix the rules. Make the rules better. I would suggest that we cannot expect rules to shoulder all the burden of the community's problems. We must carry them ourselves. Set higher standards for ourselves. Hold ourselves responsible.

[sinewav]

But no rules were broken that I can see. It looks like they successfully navigated a loophole of sorts. And when you think about it, what kind of punishment could be given other than public admonishment? Suspend a player? What is to stop suspended players from playing under alias from a different location?

This unsportsmanlike conduct comes down to abusing the policy on substitutes. If we remove inter-team and outside substitutions and keep only intra-team subs, we won't have this specific problem again. Then we can keep the unlimited team sign-ups.

[ElmosWorld]

Sine, your proposal will just cause more smurfing and rule avoiding.

Say you can only sign a team of 6 up. People are going to sign up teams of Player 1, Player 2, ... , Player 6. And then have whoever plays for them take one of those names...

If you force a team to only use 6 players and someone has to leave and they are not allowed to have any subs, this will cause more smurfing and less rule following.

[Concord]

Elmo makes good points. We can't add more rules unless we can enforce the ones we have. Otherwise we just set the community up for its authority to be further undermined.

when you reduce the community to rules and following them, you get rules and rule followers. We used expect more from people than just following the rule. Once upon a time, the Ladle functioned because people knew there was something more important than winning. Your place in this community is more than the sum of your Ladle wins. Instead of writing rules and saying, "As long as you follow these, you can do whatever you want to win, and hey, even if you break them, if you win, we'll let it slide," we should uphold some real standards.

Maybe we can't prove that Baylife signed up with the intention to deceive people, but it is our place and our responsibility to decide for ourselves. As far as I know, each member of Baylife lied to other members of the community about his participation in the Ladle. The team captain signed them up without any effort to resolve the double sign ups on the Challenge Board. This is pretty compelling evidence that the deception was intentional, and that Baylife knowingly, intentionally, and unapologetically violated a standard of behavior. I still don't understand the gymnastics you're going through to clear of them of what seems like pretty clear violations of the rules, but even if they didn't break any of them, it doesn't mean they didn't do something wrong. They sent the message that they care more about winning than treating the rest of the community with respect, and the Ladle simply cannot function if players have this mentality.

[Eckz]

And considering the lack of a sincere apology anywhere, let alone a single admission of wrong-doing, I don't think we have a choice but to make changes to the rules.

I apologize if I offended anyone by my involvement. I realize it wasn't the best way to do things, more so the easiest. It's either a) tell my team I'm playing with someone else with the probability of them being upset set pretty high or b) say I can't make it and have some personal enjoyment doing something I wouldn't normally do without causing drama with those people (on the basis that they don't find out). I'll admit it's a bit selfish and it was us taking the risk, but I know that I had fun in the end of it. I realize it was at the cost of others and that's where I'm sorry.

I posted this before the fireworks.

[sinewav]

I posted this before the fireworks.

Oh. Sorry. I guess I didn't see it as an apology because you said it was selfish but you still had fun.

Ok, I don't have any suggestions on how to deal with this. Take away a seed that probably won't be used? Leave it up to the captains of the individual teams to decide if Baylife's players should be allowed to play next Ladle? Outside of the community rising up and giving selected players poor ratings on the Fortress Player Rater, I don't know what else to do.

[FoFo]

For my defense and for people who thinks i "cheated" or anything like that, i joined sp 3 years ago, started playing for SP on ladle 27 or smthg like that, won 6 ladles playing in SP, i took the lead last year and spent lot of time trying to make teams/tactics better, i keep doing that now, im always trying to bring new things up like everyone does in SP, we are all improving as a team and thats what i like...

Anyways what im trying to explain you is that playing 1 time for an other team wont change what i think about SP, i feel good there, like the clan, the members, the atmosphere so i dont consider my self cheating on SP at all, it was just for 1 ladle... We all thought it would be fun to play in an "all star team" and made it to try 1 ladle... well we shouldnt have lied or use aliases, that was kind of stupid i guess but we didnt break any rules and didnt cheat ingame so what is involving our clans is kind of "personnal" i think...Anyways what is done is done lets go ahead and stop all the useless drama/argument on this...