Profile of CieZ

I don't understand, was he playing with some shared accounts with a known cheater?

His uncle has 3 VAC bans across multiple steam accounts, and is suspected of hacking in coh2. He admitted to playing on/boosting his uncle's account.

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. I will admit that I have not gone through all of the evidence so I don't want to give an official opinion on guilt or innocence, I'm merely commenting on the publicly presented evidence from A_E's youtube video. 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? In general no, but if I had been accused publicly and people were LOOKING for evidence, it could be. Particularly if my camera happens to pan onto a squad while looking into the base.

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 to be 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.

For what it’s worth, having talked to both of them, I don’t think they’re the same person.

Hard to say for sure with Kimbo’s propensity for trolling though.

Maybe because the whole idea is that T-70 last till late game, same as 222 or any other light vehicle.

The t70 is more useful late game than any other light vehicle except perhaps the AEC, because of the absurd amount of vision it provides the Soviet player with, as well as the ability to threaten fast squad wipes on any squad brave enough to try and cap the sides of the map.

Also, Vasa, re-read DevM’s post. He says you’re not FORCED to get the Puma, but why would you choose to give up so much map control when you could just get the puma? Which is pretty much what I said, I just phrased it as camping with the AT gun on your side of the map. The puma let’s you keep up the pressure, which is what you want to be doing. You have a solid early game and a great mid game with the FHT/222s, if you can go into the late game with a decent lead you can fight off the t34/85s etc. but if you give Sov enough breathing room their late game will punish t3 play.

Ost is suffering because they’re basically pigeonholed into getting a puma to counter the t70, otherwise the t70 runs rampant because 3 AT gun shots to kill it is never happening, and the vet 2/3 sight is essentially map hacks. This means Ost usually gets stuck on t3, which is completely dominated by t34/85s, su85s, Mark, and kv1s.

OKW can LUL in a command panther even after going luchs/puma (if needed). Plus OKW early game is a lot stronger.

UKF lacks basic tools, no way around it. They need a snare, they need a way to contest houses and some mobile indirect fire wouldn’t hurt.

USF is mainly good because of the Pershing in my opinion. Sov late game is much stronger in general but being able to LUL out a Pershing is so punishing to Ost because zooks/Pershing totally dominate Ost t3.

That’s the way I see things at least.