CAL playoffs resumed.

GG, GL, any predictions??

I predict that no one will give a fuck now.

So why dont we all just throw up our hands and quti DM and go play CSS instead...heh.

Paradox wrote:


So why dont we all just throw up our hands and quti DM and go play CSS instead...heh.

word.

{EE} Uncle Rico wrote:I predict that no one will give a fuck now.

Yeah there was alot of blunders but it looks like Nutri-Grain isn't banned yet, maybe he won't be at all...Which would mean a still very interesting CAL playoff season, but yeah it's not like I'm not mad about how this was played out.

kudos to fearsome for getting playoffs going again.

Let's get it on.

hl2dm can only be killed by hl2dm.(ewR pending approval)

Paradox wrote:


So why dont we all just throw up our hands and quti DM and go play CSS instead...heh.

agreed.

Paradox wrote:


So why dont we all just throw up our hands and quti DM and go play CSS instead...heh.

almost there

Yeah well you guys can all go cry about it in CSS, meanwhile the rest of us will play DM, thanks.

Paradox wrote:Yeah well you guys can all go cry about it in CSS, meanwhile the rest of us will play DM, thanks.

already have

Zman42 wrote:kudos to fearsome for getting playoffs going again.

good joke

Paradox wrote:Yeah well you guys can all go cry about it in CSS, meanwhile the rest of us will play DM, thanks.

maybe if you're a good girl this year.

LOL like cal means something now. Cal admins have shown that they are biased and incapable of leadership.

All it took to stop the whole league was for some random highschool kid who isnt a cal admin (Seagull) to make some wild accusations.

His teammate Fearsome would rather put the whole league on hold than admit that they lost fair and square.

You guys are pathetic.

The opportunity for ewr to beat SW is still there. Yes the playoffs were put on hold and yes this whole situation could have been handled better. There were some alternative actions that could have been taken, but in that case the team in question would have been without the player in the playoffs until this was resolved. If the accusation was unfounded, then the player would have missed out on playing in the playoffs. If the player had been found to be cheating, all of the games that the team played with that player would have to be overturned which would change the outcome of the season, and possibly not allowed that player in the playoffs. Neither alternative (postpone the playoffs or allow them to go on without that player) is a great solution. I personally would rather the playoffs be postponed so that if the player is shown to be clean he can play.

I still feel that if there is a possibility that someone is cheating in this game, no matter who it is or who is bringing it up for examination, it is the obligation of the admins to look into it if there is any hint of credibility to it. Yes I know that being accused has a stigma to it and brings unwanted attention to that player and the team, but people have been accused in the past and many of those people and teams still play. Some of them are highly respected members of this community and at least one is an advisor here at the DMU. The point is they survived and so did their teams.

I think that when this comes up in the future, there should be a time frame where a determination should be made. My suggestion would be that once the CAL demos are submitted to a non affiliated CAL official, the CAL admins have 1 week to make a determination. If there is no determination or agreement among the reviewers of the demos then the playoffs should be allowed to continue. If after that, the player or team is determined to have cheating going on, then their results are removed and the standings revised. I still am not happy with this solution in its entirety but I think it may be a better way to handle it in the future.

I'll just leave this here...

Prediction = FAIL

CAL is biased because the people running it are playing too.

If you want to have a judgment you must be in a party, but if your in a party you can't have a judgment.

In other words they can act emotionally to their own advantage.

snipeIT wrote:In other words they can act emotionally to their own advantage.

True, but that doesn't mean they will.

snipeIT wrote:CAL is biased because the people running it are playing too.

If you want to have a judgment you must be in a party, but if your in a party you can't have a judgment.

In other words they can act emotionally to their own advantage.

It would be ideal to find a head GM for CAL that does not have a team directly contending for CAL supremacy, a person and preferably player who understands all the dynamics while being detached. Unfortunately some of the hardest working and intelligent administrators like Fearsome and ninoj will inevitably be challenged with conflicts of interest and devious judgements that may unintentionally or intentionally benefit their own clans being. A work in progress....

why so serious?

well, personally i think CAL should have board, every clan that has had atleast 3-4 seasons of experience should have one member on a board of directors. sort of like a players union. that way you get an objective view from many ppl, not just 2 or 3. keep your top admins, but then have an advisory board.

example would be a BOD made up of one member from:

FLaS
$W
EE
Fusion
911
XS
V
etc.

I'd say only about three of those clans have 3-4 seasons experience.

The 4 main admins are members of 4 different teams. If an issue comes up that may be a potential conflict of interest for an admin because it involves his or her team, the other admins have a responsibility for that issue. We and the GM have admins above us who are not affliiated with a team in the league and are easily accessible to us. We discuss the particular issue with them so it is not the game admins and GM working alone here. They also ensure that there is no bias occurring and often the outcome is their decision, not that of the lower level admins.

I honestly don't think you could get someone who does not play the game to be a lower level admin and also I think that having an interest and love for the game is motivation for the admin to devote the time and effort to do the work. It isn't glamarous by any means and it is sometimes frustrating.

My reasons for becoming an admin are because I love this game and this community and I wanted to contribute.

badinfluence wrote:I'd say only about three of those clans have 3-4 seasons experience.

ya lolol this is our 2nd season

I agree to chemicals idea, that is probably the best way to eliminate the monopoly that (a) certain clan(s) have/has in CAL.

First of all I am not even sure this is allowed under CAL rules.
Second monopoly? You must mean regarding maps etc. If we were to put it to a vote do you really think anyone would vote out Lockdown or Lostvillage? Especially out of the playoffs? Fat chance. So where is the monopoly?

Just a question mind you, not meant as a flame.

Most seasons there are multiple teams represented by CAL admins so no one has a "monopoly" in fact about the closest there ever was to a monopoly was the first season of CAL where Rhideon, nino and defme were all admins and the other 2 were myself and dag. But are you seeing a pattern? Good teams usually end up with an admin because good teams are active and invest time in the game. And as paradox said who the heck wants to admin some game they don't even participate in and if they do how are they going to be a good admin when they are bad at the game. This was the problem we had in early STA, CAL before any of you existed and FIOS. People who knew next to nothing about the game were running the show and nearly nothing about the process worked well for the game. The rules and maps and policies were terrible.

So we have this issue where people who play also admin. And as is the case of history the team that tends to win has the head admin. WRW, CYN, $W. So one cannot help but feel there is bias. But on the other hand it is true that at any of those times the top team was also most active. When they lost activity their admin quti and passed it on to the next person usually very active and a member of a top team. And in defense of $W they are one of if not the only clans in the game who have shown through history that they can win in any league even when the admins are from another top team including titles in STA, and CAL as well as FIOS when I was not the admin. The reality is there has so far in CAL since I have been GM never been a practice or policy that prevented the best team from overtaking the team who has an admin on it, everyone knew all the maps at the start of the season so they could practice them. And I can never think of a time a team which probably would have beat mine had a playoff match overturned. There has never been one rule or call or ploy that ever did that to my knowledge. The only semi believable argument is that the map choices favored one team. From the outside I know many people believe that. From the inside it could not be further from the truth. My team did not even like the maps I picked, I had harsh criticism with lock down revised and TLC still whines about Amplitude and no one had anything much to say about Zeta. The only real supporter from the start was moose but thats cause he likes all maps, he doesn't care. But I could see potential in these maps and I knew that pushing would make me unpopular for a while but once people became accustomed to them opinions would change. My clan was forced to play them for testing and eventually grew fond of most of them even lockdown revised. And as a whole I think the community now leans toward Lockdown Revised which is an amazing feat if you know anything about people cause they really don't like to change and they always gravitate toward the things they already know in general. I know realistically no one will believe it but its true. The haters will always hate and no one ever wants to believe they just got beat or they made the wrong choices in how to handle the situation thats another thing about human nature.

All through this I have known this to be an issue and went out of my way many times to try to limit the effect it had. Many times when we were short on admins I did not let members of my own team become admins cause I wanted to keep it at just myself as the only $W admin as long as I could the only exception was Luke was brought in to do anti cheat work. But does not run any of the leagues. This has been tough since finding good admins is not easy. But as much as I could I always tried to make sure that someone from another clan was actually running the divisions.

As for the maps, as long as I am GM I will keep pushing maps forward, that is my focus. I map, I like art, and I am really into tactics and how the geometry and layout of everything in a map effects game play, I like HL2DM and this is my legacy to improve the quality and diversity of maps the competitive players use. I expect high quality out of every aspect of a map and would be thrilled if every map in CAL just kept getting better. But even with that I still always allow some maps that I think are just terrible because they are popular with the community such as lost village and aim arena. In fact the main reason I became admin was because I was tired of the (IMO) terrible maps that were being used in leagues. Most had some bad reason for being there, many were terrible HL1 ports or showed up at the start of the game. And I wanted to change that to get people playing the game at a higher level. Hey every admin picks maps that suit their taste. A former admin had a crappy computer so its no surprise lots of crappy hl1 maps were picked which would run with good fps on that computer. Then people got used to those maps and learned to like them. I know I came into power late when people were already addicted to the maps so it would be incredibly unpopular to try to change them. But we can't sit around and just accept always has been as good enough IMO. So there you have it my only true bias, I like maps I consider good. But you were going to get that with any admin at all you put in. But believe me it’s not me picking them so my clan wins. Cause most of the time they don’t even like them. But one thing is they are a good clan and they know to get good on the maps that are played in competition. If more people just got in and learned the new maps well instead of going back to play lostvillage after complaining about the loss they probably would have done better.

Strange wrote:why so serious?

Seriously. Lets just go ahead and continue to play the game we all fucking play.

Paradox wrote:The 4 main admins are members of 4 different teams. If an issue comes up that may be a potential conflict of interest for an admin because it involves his or her team, the other admins have a responsibility for that issue. We and the GM have admins above us who are not affliiated with a team in the league and are easily accessible to us. We discuss the particular issue with them so it is not the game admins and GM working alone here. They also ensure that there is no bias occurring and often the outcome is their decision, not that of the lower level admins.

I honestly don't think you could get someone who does not play the game to be a lower level admin and also I think that having an interest and love for the game is motivation for the admin to devote the time and effort to do the work. It isn't glamarous by any means and it is sometimes frustrating.

My reasons for becoming an admin are because I love this game and this community and I wanted to contribute.

QFT

I personally think we have a great set of admins. You people who think otherwise have no clue whats going on, nor the amount of time involved to make all this happen. When I was admining I remember several occasions when there was a dispute involving SW and fearsome would pass it to me and ask me to handle it without giving me any input what so ever, it was totally up to me to decide what was right and what was wrong when it involved his team, so I have no doubts that he showed no bias in this last incident. Yeah the way things took longer than expected was a bummer but was only done in order to be fair to all involved.

I also want to say that weather or not you like what Seagull did in pointing out something that looked very suspicious, he has every right to do it just as anyone else would who is in the league, and when it comes to credibility and knowing this game inside and out I really don't think there is many if anyone at his level. When someone with his experience comes forward to a admin and presents suspicious demos or video clips it should be taken seriously as it would if anyone else came forward.

It's now time to move on and quti crying about it, if you don't like the way CAL is run you don't have to participate as it will go on with out you.

In response to Fearsome:

I completely believe that you are dedicated in making this game better for the numerous reasons that you stated. You have clearly shown to me (and probably many others) that you are committed to what you do, and I have no question to it. But, as critical thinkers we are, it will not remove the bias that exists. The only thing this bias is doing is creating more problems. For instance who is stopping you from creating a poll in some private forum asking your clan members what map should be used next?

You get the flow. Although I personally don't care in general, because I don't compete in CAL or any other league. All I am doing is giving my opinion from a critical point of view.

The intention of these posts is not to flame anyone.

Thank You L2K

There is no bias. Get over it already.

If he was picking maps that his clan liked, there would be no Amplitude in CAL, and very probably there would be no Lost Village either.
We also know they dont play as well as others on Caverns so, that map would probably be gone too. They have played together longer than almost any other clan around, they are all highly skilled at the game, they know the maps as well as anyone and they have a solid strat for each. So because they tend to win more than most, OMG the maps are biased toward SW!

Critical thinking is one thing and yes people should question, but come on. If we put it to a vote, Lockdown, LV, Caverns, Zeta all of the maps would still be in CAL. Do you seriously think it would completely change the map line up? Not likely. But this gives me an idea.

then put map selections to a vote, that way it eliminates at least some bias.

There is no reason as to why the admins should be able to pick all the maps. If you have a site like this, with at least 90% of the majority of current CAL players registered, then making a poll as to what maps they would want to play sounds VERY FEASIBLE.

I would love to see a counter argument to this.

And paradox, bias always exists (we can only lower it). It's sorta like the same concept that efficiency can never equal 100%.

ewR won all the matches they played so I suppose the maps are biased toward them? Several of the maps have been CAL maps before Fearsome was GM but because his team wins on them the maps are biased.

The apparent bias is lowered if not even eliminated by the fact that we have 4 admins representing 4 teams. We all have input into the maps not just any one of us. Its not like we all get together and say "lets use this map cause this team plays good on it." That's rediculous.

I posted a call for input on CAL maps in another thread, and that will lead to a vote of maps for each division. I am predicting that most of the current CAL maps will not only be posted for inclusion, but they will also be the top maps in those votes.

I havent seen an evidence of admin bias towards their own clan. I think the Ace thing could have used more admin involved and it was handled poorly. But that is all.
I don't know what happened in the Nutri case and don't care as long as it was handled properly. If Nutri has been exonerated, i would like to see a public apology from the accuser, ahem.

65 Impala SS wrote:If Nutri has been exonerated, i would like to see a public apology from the accuser, ahem.

The accuser may still feel that he is guilty, weather there was enough evidence to get him suspended from CAL is another story. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for that apology, everyone is entitled to have their own opinion.

snipeIT wrote:then put map selections to a vote, that way it eliminates at least some bias.

There is no reason as to why the admins should be able to pick all the maps. If you have a site like this, with at least 90% of the majority of current CAL players registered, then making a poll as to what maps they would want to play sounds VERY FEASIBLE.

I would love to see a counter argument to this.

Well as you stated you do not participate in CAL or any other league so therefore you aren't aware of the map suggestion thread on the CAL website.

And seriously people...just play the game. Learn new maps, learn new strats, learn to not play and want the same maps over and over and over and over and over again.

For just being a game people go to some extreme lengths.

variety is always good when ever i do my weekly almost daily 2v2's with the old clannies we always switch it up from r3, zeta, amp, aval, to caverns and ect...

one of the last 2v2's we had lasted about 4 hours straight, like back in the old 911 days when me, invx, ace and vals used to 2v2 for hours every day, but yea whats wrong with lostvillage shits tight yo.

Blasphemy wrote:whats wrong with lostvillage shits tight yo.

indeed

All maps own. End of story.

dingle- wrote:All maps own. End of story.

QFT IMO

dingle- wrote:All maps own. End of story.

a stunning point

dingle- wrote:All maps own. End of story.

I own all maps own. End of story.*

fixed