War #8 - General Discussion

[ARTHANASIOS]

I agree with bripod.

+1
I also agree with 10men. He is harsh but his points are some of the rightest ones.
There is no witch-hunting or whatever. Before Higs' reply, I was 50% about her being innocent or guilty and 10% about she purposely cheating. After her reply, I am 100% she is guilty and 60% there was cheating intention from her. I may say 90% of what she says is "hard-countered" by reality and common sense but I would like to avoid saying more because this is really sad...

WARNING: Possible Accusation for Cheating against a community member within the spoiler below. Those of weak heart do not read. The rest, read before the mods remove it...
 

Spoiler for Hig's reply:

I did work out a Dune deck with mass CC for one three-pronged reason: I've faced Spike several times and always tended to use Fractal decks. The times he's been close to beating me have been with Dune decks with RT for CC, but it's only been close. He's a smart guy, so I reasoned he'd realize he needed to pack a third component to be able to beat a Fractal deck. I reasoned it would either be QC or mass CC, but when I took a look at CP Dune builds I noticed he could use both. I wasn't sure if he'd use BE and RT or Pande at first, but with extensive testing only Pande tipped it over the edge to win. There were still tweaks I wanted to make, but I ran out of time.

Problem is, you tell us that you were 100% sure Spike would bring Dunes and drop RTs, which is total crap in terms of pure mindgating. What about the possibility of Spike dropping Dunes as a whole? What about Ghostmare which is an iffy yet reasonable Fractal counter? You thought about QC or mass CC, but not Momentum for Dunes or any form of PC? Problem is not the deck you used; I could possibly had used a similar deck assuming Spike has played 30-card rushes during the previous 3 rounds in spite of being very risky. Problem is the excuse you used for your mindgating, an excuse any experienced PvPer can tell you is crap because things just don't work that way!

 Moreover, the phrase "there were still tweaks I wanted to make, but I ran out of time." shows you were deckbuilding till the last min, which is very suspicious for 2 reasons:
 1st: You were submiting your decks AFTER the decks of your opponents and you were always active during the last minutes of deck submitting.
 2nd: You claim you made mindgating at work during the whole week (it is later within this quote) but still you were out of time while deckbuilding. The only way for a deckbuilder of your skill and experience to run out of time while deckbuilding is having less than an hour to deckbuild or something. Since there were possible deck-changes from other teams half an hour or something before the deadline, you had to rush to playtest proper counters against those changes and that's why you ran out of time...


There were many decks I'd tweak if I had the time, but I only had the last day and a half of the rounds to deckbuild. I did, however, have the week to theorycraft since I could do that much at work at least (I work out in the field all day). In round 2 I built a few decks, but only 1 of them worked as intended; the devtal. The RoL/Hope against Cal was a failure on my part. Some of the MA's were shots in the dark, and I wasn't confident about the one vs Life since a stallier Adrenastaff could've won, but with Life's tendency to pack only one of each shield I took the risk. The only one that was really predictable was Gravy's zap-proof Dishole since it's always a priority choice if it's alive. Grabbows against Darkness and Light were also shots in the dark, which was initially true for all Darkness and Death matchups; they remain trickier to predict. Round 3 and 4, especially 3, could've easily been 4-2's, or a repeat of round 2 with bad RNG.

If you had almost 2 days of deckbuilding, according to your deckbuilding/mindgating experience, there was ABSOLUTELY no way you would ran out of time and deckbuild till the last min prior to the deadline. Rounds 1 and 2 don't count. Moreover, I don't know about the rest of the elements, but as a hardcore Life player, I have to say the "I wasn't confident about the one vs Life since a stallier Adrenastaff could've won, but with Life's tendency to pack only one of each shield I took the risk." thing is pure crap! A stallier Adrenastaff could have won is just so wrong as a point; Lobotomizers ruin ANY adrenastaff without PC or CC-protection and the stalling capability of adrenastaves or the deck's size don't matter since Regeneration is removed in the first place. The "with Life's tendency to pack only one of each shield I took the risk" thing is pure crap once again for 2 reasons:
 1st: We've used both shields (Thorn Carapace & Jade Shield) and a total of 5 shields during Round 1 against your RoL/Hope and won.
 2nd: Even 6 Spine Carapaces would be extremely reliable against PU-Recluse tactics but NOT RELIABLE AT ALL against Recluse-Fractal due to the great amount of Phase Recluses and the great amount of damage they deal before going down. A ThornStall would need a serious healing to survive that. Once again, instead of using this totally reasonable argument to support your deck choice, you say a thing about Life's shields that doesn't really make a lot of sense, if any sense at all.
Another thing is, we posted our AdrenaMomentumStaves decks just a few mins prior to the deadline; you wouldn't had time to create a better counter anyway...

If I had wanted to cheat, I naturally wouldn't do it through board access changes since they log in the admin log, and if I would've had to, I would've purged the admin log. I would've used a VPN or proxy when logging on to a different account to access boards, and it wouldn't be The Oracle since Admins have the password to that (which is why I used it to see what boards it had gained access to). Thirdly I would've made sure we had done well in round 2 as well (at least 4-2) since this bug occurred before round 2, and I would've changed several decks if I had prior knowledge (Guardtal to Vamptal due to no RoF, changes to RoL/Hopes, Psiontal vs Earth, rushier Grabbows, Chargetal vs Light, bigger Sancstall and so on). And lastly I wouldn't repeatedly go for 6-0 since it's suspicious.

Why to go the hard way when you can normally use the Oracle account and the excuse if repairing a War bug or whatever? You needed to go for 6-0 because of the very bad Round 2 and you also had a few iffy matchups you won because RNG helped a little, so you were NOT going for a pure 6-0 in the 1st place; your aim was more like 6-0 if RNG is with you team and 5-0 or 4-0 if RNG isn't with you.

 Moreover:
* Guardtal is 4 damage for 2 while Vamptal is 4 damage for 5 ; you need a strong rush to defeat Fire and Vamptal would be both unreliable and more suspicious than a Guardtal.
* Most of your RoL/Hopes were during Round 1 and 2. The one used during later round were perfect counters.
* Psiontal versus Earth? In what round? Psiontal in Round 4 would be useless since Earth had no Diamond Shield and you could be overrushed. Actually, since you find Psiontal so awesome against Earth, why didn't you took the risk during Round 4? Hmm...
* Rushier Grabbows? You didn't need rushier Grabbows! See below about Chargetal where I explain why...
* Chargetal may fail against mass BBlooding and/or Sundials and you may deck out before breaking the deck. Your PU Grabbow with Momentum is the PERFECT rush against it. Burrowed Graboids can't be BBed and Shrieker with Momentum and lots of PUs deals such an amount of damage in a single turn that it can't be countered. See, that Grabbow has more OTK characteristics than stallbreaker or rusher characteristics, that's why it was so awesome against Light's stall.
* Sancstall is where you failed. You wanted to make it bigger in order to look less suspicious but alas, you run out of time...

Regardless, I've changed the password of The Oracle account and the bug should not occur again. If the community no longer trusts me, I will resign since the Admin position is one of service to the users.

You should had thought about this earler, Higs. You are an Admin here for many years, this thing is too serious to be just a mistake...

[Vangelios]

Athanasios discussion on decks is silly, nobody would prove nothing if depended on it, and the fact Higurashi have good predictions in pvp is true.

What proves so convincing, is the fact of  always send yours decks after opponents and the method of antiavirage overseeing their actions as in CuCN report

Something that Higurashi could argue about the relics, once sees opponents deck she could do with fewer ups and get extra relics, things she did not do, however if you can see opponents decks extra relics are insignificant.

How about we revisit this situation when War is over?

majofa is a wise advice, especially because many members likes of Higurashi, but the shock is strong and sad to be archived.

[Higurashi]

- When the bug was noticed by Higs, why did she not contact another Admin to take care of the issue?
- Why did Higs not inform the WM's of the bug and the need to have it fixed?
- Why were Aether's sections not entered during the bug fix?
- Why were Aether's deck choices entered individually after an opponents decks posted?
- Why would Aether choose some of those decks as there are better options than some posted?

Not much time, but I can give you some quick replies.

1. The bug, as I said, assigns access seemingly randomly and several groups had, visibly speaking, access to several private boards including TO and the Admin board. The latter was the most alarming of course, since the code generator is there. I didn't know how long access had been open or if was just a visual bug, which is why I had to fix it ASAP and verify that it was fixed.
2. Here I've failed in transparency. When an employer settles into their habit, they stop bothering their boss with every single problem, and since I've solved this bug before I simply solved it again.
3. Here I toggled several more boards than just War boards, but the changes that did go through were confusing. Again the visual problem with toggling boards not corresponding to the same boards actually being opened was an issue. This is why I had to verify what boards were visible and not.
4. This one isn't quite accurate. I would always have time to deckbuild on the Saturday (about 7 hours due to sleep), and sometimes on late Fridays (about 4 hours), and normally I'd enter in several decks at once after a long series of tests. Sometimes I'd enter in one at a time since it was practical to get the vault ready. The more unpredictable ones always take more time, and I often struggled for longer with some elements (mainly Darkness and Death). Some predictions took a lot more testing to find a reliable answer to, such as the CP Dune deck (was initially going to run Grabbow to save time).
5. In round 3, my options in some matchups were strained due to a big vault hit. When I'm up against the wall, I take risks and would rather try to counter than send a generally strong deck. As it was, I still managed to make the decks generally strong for the most part, just a little bit lacking here and there. In round 4 I believe I had 5 hours to spend on testing due to work.

[RavingRabbid]

Well, apart from my personal views and conclusions on the matter, this is getting more and more the like of a witch-hunt, in all respects. Take a moment to have a thought about that.

[theelkspeaks]

It seems to me that many of the opinions expressed (with the notable exception of Spike) appear to agree with the users' previous opinion of Higurashi.  Those who have disagreed with her previously, such as itr and bripod, have been among those calling for her removal, while those who have supported her adminship previously likewise advocate for her to keep the position.  This is a very serious matter, and while I understand that personal perspectives can't be avoided, this discussion seems to be being shaped by them rather than by the issues at hand.

Or perhaps it's the case that the evidence is both strong and weak enough for each user to agree with their previous opinion of Higurashi - the evidence certainly fits into many narratives in different ways.  I just think that a lot of the users on both sides are being swayed by confirmation bias - or at least opinion inertia.  While I hate to see the drama drag out longer and longer, revisiting it after cooler heads prevail might allow for reactions other than individuals' gut reactions to surface.

[Acsabi44]

It seems to me that many of the opinions expressed (with the notable exception of Spike) appear to agree with the users' previous opinion of Higurashi.  Those who have disagreed with her previously, such as itr and bripod, have been among those calling for her removal, while those who have supported her adminship previously likewise advocate for her to keep the position.  This is a very serious matter, and while I understand that personal perspectives can't be avoided, this discussion seems to be being shaped by them rather than by the issues at hand.

Or perhaps it's the case that the evidence is both strong and weak enough for each user to agree with their previous opinion of Higurashi - the evidence certainly fits into many narratives in different ways.  I just think that a lot of the users on both sides are being swayed by confirmation bias - or at least opinion inertia.  While I hate to see the drama drag out longer and longer, revisiting it after cooler heads prevail might allow for reactions other than individuals' gut reactions to surface.

I think it is the latter. For me, at least it it.
I feel the evidence is inadequate to clearly judge one way or either, so in the end it comes down to what the ppl think about Higs.

[dragonsdemesne]

http://elementscommunity.org/forum/round-3-248/dm1321-(subnub)-(aether-sd-)-3-0-dragonsdemesne-(gravity-sd-)/

I don't really know enough about this situation to comment on guilt or innocence, but for the match I played against aether, I was extremely surprised that they had brought the deck they did against us, because dimshields are typically pretty bad against gravity, and the six dims/two fractal two psion thing only makes sense if you are predicting that the dims will provide absolute protection (no pc, momentum etc)  Accusations of cheating did not even cross my mind at the time of the match, nor did they after aether's good showings in other matches, though I will admit I have not given more than a cursory glance to the matches of nongravity teams.  I assumed that it was simply a good or lucky deck choice at the time, and chalked it up to the fact that gravity's vault sucks.  I'm not going to take any sides on the matter, because I can't directly examine the forum logs etc, and because I simply don't have enough vested interest to care even if something inappropriate happened.  I hope that nothing inappropriate happened, but I'm going to stay out of it except for this comment.

[Blacksmith]

It seems to me that many of the opinions expressed (with the notable exception of Spike) appear to agree with the users' previous opinion of Higurashi.  Those who have disagreed with her previously, such as itr and bripod, have been among those calling for her removal, while those who have supported her adminship previously likewise advocate for her to keep the position.  This is a very serious matter, and while I understand that personal perspectives can't be avoided, this discussion seems to be being shaped by them rather than by the issues at hand.

Or perhaps it's the case that the evidence is both strong and weak enough for each user to agree with their previous opinion of Higurashi - the evidence certainly fits into many narratives in different ways.  I just think that a lot of the users on both sides are being swayed by confirmation bias - or at least opinion inertia.  While I hate to see the drama drag out longer and longer, revisiting it after cooler heads prevail might allow for reactions other than individuals' gut reactions to surface.

I think it is the latter. For me, at least it it.
I feel the evidence is inadequate to clearly judge one way or either, so in the end it comes down to what the ppl think about Higs.

I believe that the ones who post are the ones who has strongest feelings about this and the ones who are least confused. And it's only logical that the ones who cares the most either are strongly for or against.

I myself won't say my opinion until I've spoken to enough people and considered it from many different perspectives. All I'll say atm is that I can see one reasons why Higu would do this, however I would have rejected that possibility directly, if the evidence hadn't been this strong.

[ARTHANASIOS]

Athanasios discussion on decks is silly, nobody would prove nothing if depended on it, and the fact Higurashi have good predictions in pvp is true.

What proves so convincing, is the fact of  always send yours decks after opponents and the method of antiavirage overseeing their actions as in CuCN report

Something that Higurashi could argue about the relics, once sees opponents deck she could do with fewer ups and get extra relics, things she did not do, however if you can see opponents decks extra relics are insignificant.

How about we revisit this situation when War is over?

majofa is a wise advice, especially because many members likes of Higurashi, but the shock is strong and sad to be archived.

It is not silly, it is a very serious topic and I never doubted about Hig's deckbuilding and mindgating in general. Though I admit I used inapropriate words like "crap" and I was more offensive towards Higs than I should, some of the deck choices seem too well-guessed and overall suspicious. In spite of that, I am going to give a chance to Higs to explain herself. More accurately, I am asking for the following:

I wasn't confident about the one vs Life since a stallier Adrenastaff could've won, but with Life's tendency to pack only one of each shield I took the risk.

1st: What exactly do you mean with stallier Adrenastaff? Can you give any examples?
2nd: What exactly do you mean with Life's tendency to only one of each shield? Can you give any examples?

 The fact you've cheated is without a doubt, because breaking the Warblind ward for any reason is a cheat, even for fixing a bug, and if your Admin duties contradict with your duties as a War player you should had been responsible enough to not join War at all or, at the very least, leave the deckbuilding solely to your teammates.

 Thing is, did you cheated unintentionally in order to fix the bug or it was an excuse to gain access to restricted areas? I personally want to believe it is the first one and no harm was intended.

 However, the way things have turned out, you dealt a great amount of damage to your own team and you should either stop being an admin and a staff member in general or become banned from competitive forum events (especially War). The last one is irrelevant to your innocente or your guilt...

[Hyroen]

Realistically, witch hunt or not, this thread is just becoming a broken record of opinions we've heard once and again.

Whatever happened, people will have some opinion and those with differing opinions will have kindle.

Let's not fall into the trap of self-justification nor forget the thread's purpose.

[majofa]

Realistically, witch hunt or not, this thread is just becoming a broken record of opinions we've heard once and again.

Whatever happened, people will have some opinion and those with differing opinions will have kindle.

Let's not fall into the trap of self-justification nor forget the thread's purpose.

^I couldn't agree more.

[Submachine]

Realistically, witch hunt or not, this thread is just becoming a broken record of opinions we've heard once and again.

Whatever happened, people will have some opinion and those with differing opinions will have kindle.

Let's not fall into the trap of self-justification nor forget the thread's purpose.

^I couldn't agree more.

WMs, please lock this topic.