Double Use of a Regional Bye

I disagree with that.

7 Likes

That’s fair, I’m not 100% confident in that assertion. My instinct is just that this thread won’t change anyone’s opinion though. There are those who think that the first Bye use was cheating, and those who think it was ok. Neither party is likely to move very far from that position no matter what argument the other employs.

2 Likes

As do I. Like Games Workshop before them, they simply don’t care for improving their tournament experience.

I do agree that we should address this with FFG directly. What’s the best way to contact FFG in regards to matters like this?

His cheating did more harm than my talking about his cheating.

EDIT: Regardless of whether or not you believe the first incident to be cheating, the second incident is damn sure cheating… And you expect me to just stop talking about that?

I don’t think this is the correct way. I feel FFG doesn’t really care what’s happening with the competitive scene. Tournament kits are products to sell anyway. This example and discussion is more helpful for other TOs to encouraging them to act by DQing a player if they see something shady.

4 Likes

Somewhere on the internet, there’s a couple of MTG players who are laughing at us.
@mtgred botched hard, he already have the suspicion of the TOs and a bad-rep for his action, no need to take our torchs and pitchforks and burn him for what he did.

So much for our reputation of being a nice, grown-up and forgiving community :confused:

6 Likes

Well, have @SneakySly lock the thread, then.

I just think it’s bizarre that a player of his caliber would even try it. Why not admit wrongdoing? Did I miss something? Was the TO going to give him a match loss for being late, or a DQ? I can understand not wanting to be DQ’d for being late, and I think that’s a dumb rule of FFG’s. However, he won prizes, and could’ve won a bye. Then what?

3 Likes

Exactly. As long as stores keep buying the kits, they could care less about what actually goes on at the events.

This should be a wake-up call to all TOs to avopid doing anything that provides even the appearance of impropriety.

@spags: He said that the TO at the first event gave him a loss for his first round for showing up late and didn’t want the same thing to happen again. Ergo, the use of the Bye card in the second event.

1 Like

Bingo. Why do you think we started the ANRPC? We pretty much realized at Worlds 2014 that FFG was not going to support a competitive scene. Someone brought up to me that perhaps they are even trying to dilute that further by offering prizes that have lesser and lesser after-market value (see: ProCon, CT, Reina, IDs as participation prizes for any major tourney, more mats, etc.).

We are pretty much a self-governing body. I’m glad this is made aware, but, I for one am not for pillorying @mtgred. He has done a lot for the game with jinteki.net, and has made amends.

4 Likes

Keep the armchair service in your head plz. Unless you’ve got some sort of personal seat on FFGs board of Tournament Support you’re just talking out of your ass.

@mtgred

Do better. I can move on now. Public Shaming; It happens.

2 Likes

maybe this is the wrong place to post this, but do we really all agree that this is a worthy goal? What does “taken seriously” even mean? If it means cash prizes and professional players, then no thank you, I quit MtG for a reason, as did a whole lot of other netrunners and probably a lot of future netrunners. Other than that, not sure what the uproar is about.

Ok, he cheated (once, not twice, not that it matters. and not in an actual game or in a way that affects his bye status in any future tournament). I’d be ok with him getting DQ’d for the rest of the season - it’s a pretty flagrant rules violation, so he’d deserve it. But also if he doesn’t, then, well, it just doesn’t matter. Like, at all.

No one is losing sponsorships over this game, or paying rent with their winnings. No one outside of that one tournament is harmed or even negatively impacted in any way by this. Yeah, we don’t want this kind of behavior to become the standard, but better TO procedures is what will actually prevent future occurrences; punishing mtgred, while possibly deserved, doesn’t actually accomplish anything for the rest of us.

3 Likes

We have a whole thread for this! No one is asking you to stop talking about this incident, but some of us have objected to the way you jumped all over @Calimsha for disagreeing with you about the legality of the first event, and personally I think that in general a lot more smoke than light is being added to this discussion by the 2 minute hate. Cheating is serious and it compromises faith in the tournament system. None of us go to play in tournaments not caring about the integrity of the outcomes, so cheating should upset us all. However, the rage machine that seems to have kicked into gear seems to do more to help people feel self-righteous than it does to encourage discussion about how to keep our community healthy and what rules/consequences to have in place. Please, by all means continue to discuss this, though.

I think it’s especially interesting to me that this is almost exactly what was predicted when FFG announced that byes wouldn’t stack. If @mtgred had won multiple store champs and the rules were like last season, this wouldn’t even be an issue. He’s certainly a good enough player to have earned a 1st round bye at this regional, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that played into his own internal discussion about whether or not to cheat here. Most people who cheat have a sense that it’s ok because they don’t -need- to do it; it’s just a convenience. This isn’t to excuse it, but it’s an interesting side effect of FFG’s own policy. I was previously in the camp of feeling that 1 bye was enough for anyone, but maybe that’s not so true at the high competitive level? Are rules like this and the rule against ID (which I also am inclined to support) creating an environment that tempts Spikes to compromise their morals?

2 Likes

I never understood the rule change. If you’re adding MORE Regionals, but limiting the byes one can get, it really dissuades attending multiple SCs. I believe FFG would rather have horizontal prize support instead of vertical. The ‘YOU get a bye, and YOU get a bye’, Oprah-esque mentality affirms this, in my mind.

1 Like

A wich hunt ??? Where where where ?

So, speaking as a less competitive player in a very competitive meta (yours, specifically :wink: Playing in Wisconsin is tough) the idea of having the same amazing players go from Store Championship to Store Championship sweeping up the regional byes is a little discouraging. For me, it’s balanced by the fun of the more tough tournament its self, but part of me likes the idea that someone else gets to have a chance at a strong regionals shot if the Usual Suspects have already gotten their golden tickets.

I’m not passionately for or against the rule change, but if it makes super competitive players feel like they’re put in a position where they’re torn about cheating, I’d say let them sweep the byes. I wasn’t gonna hit top 4 anyway, though it’s worth a dream :smiley:

6 Likes

This is my main problem with the old system… all the best players simply gobble up the byes just to reduce the competition. I like that the new system gives more people a shot at byes and ranking higher in Regionals.

2 Likes

You guys are all misleading here. Only responsible for this mess is brussels TO, by not asking minh s bye. Forgot your bye ? Well, guess you will have to use it at another regional.

Minh abused the system here, but he was permitted to do so. Be straight as TO, and no such things will happen in the future.

Same thing can be say about rollbacks during tourneys. If you re the nice guy that always permit rollback but suddenly you face someone that forbids this to you, dont be mad about your loss. (I m a «no roll back ever» kind of guy)

It’s true that the TO’s job is to enforce the rules, but I don’t think anyone here really wants Netrunner to become a game where we need TOs to be watching everyone for infractions. If we can’t trust our players to self-enforce, then we’re going to have to play a much more regulated, formal and less interesting game. Minh’s responsible for his own actions and you could only argue that the TO is solely responsible if you feel like players should be expected to cheat if given the chance.

10 Likes

For what its worth I just emailed FFG’s organized play about this, asking if they could weigh in. Hopefully they can flag him as ineligible. “Honest mistake” or not, it still should have consequences.

I am not sure if this is a joke but you should understand how difficult it is to be a TO in these kind of situations. There are zero guidelines for this kind of behavior and nothing for judging the games either. As TO you usually just want to be friendly person and everyone having fun in your event. Being a “dick” and DQing or giving a game loss is very big barrier for TO/judge in Netrunner tournaments.

I think you should understand how difficult hosting the tournaments are for TO. For example I have to buy all the kits with my own money, find/rent a venue, collect entry fee and organize the whole event. I would be quite angry if I would be blamed for slacking because I made cheating possible by not collecting BYE in this situation explained. Cheating can always happen if a player wants to cheat in some way.

10 Likes

As someone who won 3 store champs this year I skipped a late store champ and dropped from the last one because of this rule. If I could deny people byes I would cause I don’t like going up against people with byes in the standings , I think the byes are much too powerful especially when you have a large percentage of the tournament using them , if we are going to have tons of people use byes we should tack on an additional round or something, that would seem fair to me.

Back on topic , this thread is going downhill, I don’t feel I’m in position to give mtgred a sentence , hopefully Ffg doesn’t permanently ban him cause I think he is a good player and had done stuff for the games, I do think mtgred should transfer his prizes to 9th place, that would be a nice gesture. I don’t want Ffg to ignore this either though.

Hope this gets settled in a good way, please someone go post an awesome regionals report about how they had a blast or something all I’ve read lately is bad stuff about ids and illegitimate byes and shady tos and crappy tournament software :slight_smile: id write one but my memory of what occurred in games is fairly terrible and biased

Side note : let’s not blame the to please, I don’t think they are at fault here.

6 Likes