Profile of Syraw

Jump back to quoted post13 Mar 2021, 14:52 PMCieZ

My two cents as some one who hasn't played the game for a while and has been out of the community for a while (meaning I have absolutely no dog in the fight).

First of all, unless there was a lot of private discussion between A_E, Seeking, other top players/respected community members, I do not think that this situation was handled correctly at all. Now that the accusations are public, Seeking's reputation is tarnished regardless of the outcome he has been found guilty in the court of public opinion. *IF* he is not guilty, this is a major problem. *IF* he is guilty, the evidence could be made public after the fact. Either way, calling him out publicly is the tie-lose scenario because regardless of guilt or innocence his reputation is stained.

As for the evidence presented in A_E's initial video... in my opinion it is exceedingly weak. Some community members messaged me some other clips that were slightly more convincing but personally I am not convinced that there was foul play. The only clip that was even remotely suspicious in my opinion in A_E's initial video was when Seeking chased an AT gun to the corner of a map and from A_E's interview with Seeking, Seeking said that he had seen the AT gun prior to the clip itself. I have not verified this claim, but if true, even that clip isn't worthwhile.

The Brumb attack ground is mildly suspicious at best, however ordering an attack ground into a bottleneck when you know or suspect a push is coming isn't exactly mind-blowing. And I believe the AT guns had been shooting at his brumb when he ordered the second attack ground - although this was difficult to discern from A_E's youtube clip.

Looking at the edge of the fog of war isn't really suspicious in my opinion, especially early game if you're anticipating that a squad could show up, or trying to listen for some sort of vehicle. Everyone in this community listens into the fog for engine sounds/repair sounds or checks spawn locations in the case of team games to look at the base footprints. In 99-100% of my team games, I've looked into the fog to determine spawn locations, would that be evidence of maphacking?

To be clear, I have no dog in the fight. I understand that A_E is trying to do what is best for his tournament, and that is his prerogative. It's his personal tournament, as far as I'm concerned he could ban or allow anyone to compete based on his opinion or mood at the time. Would it make for an optimal tournament? Of course not, but I'd still argue that as it is his tournament, he has the right to do so.

However, I did feel like addressing the way that the entire situation was handled in hopes of encouraging similar situations from being handled differently in the future. The initial evidence showed little to no hard evidence of maphacking, and I believe that many of the clips that followed were simply confirmation bias. People started actively looking for suspicious moments, so of course they found them. If we went through dozens of DevM/Luvnest/Asha/Isi replays with a fine tooth comb and analyzed every little camera movement, or look into the fog, or look at the edge of the fog... how many suspicious moments would we find? I guarantee that plenty of players "look" into the fog to listen for something, or to order a unit to move into cover at a particular location. Common sense says that, if this happens enough, and if we look at enough examples, eventually we are going to find instances of "looking" through the fog and units being present at that location. If we're going into these replays with the bias that the player is maphacking, we're going to cite that as evidence when in reality the player was "looking" there for a reason other than maphacking.

At the end of the day, I guess what I'm trying to say is that we need to be careful of our mindset when investigating something like this. If Seeking is publicly accused (he was), then people are going to start going through every example that they can in at attempt to try and find suspicious moments and there will be at least some suspicious moments regardless of foul play, especially given how many games Seeking was playing each day. Calling him out publicly makes him guilty in the court of public opinion and also tends to push people's bias into finding suspicious moments rather than watching the replays from a more objective mindset.

Jump back to quoted post10 Mar 2021, 23:43 PMGbpirate

In this it's impossible to know because fog of war is off here, but you can see in the top left of the screen that one of the rifleman models is very close to the MG near the edge of the hedge.

Jump back to quoted post10 Mar 2021, 23:25 PMGbpirate

What do you think of the example in the Google Doc between the live & the replay? I know a corrupt replay will have all sorts of things off, like wrong units, random retreating units, and subsequently incorrect data on kills, and captures, but I don't think any of these replays show a corrupt replay file like that. So, if units are the correct ones and in the proper positions, the fog of war ought to be accurate?

In some clips (like Seeking vs Noggano in ML4) the MG is packing up before the enemy squad is in view and before the visual ping on the minimap. Do you think we can only definitively say that FoW is identical between live and replay if we have livestream or live recording from the player?