EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

from http://poeticstanziel.blogspot.ca/2012/05/alliance-tournament-x-hydra-rule.html

Last year was my first alliance tournament. Not as a competitor. Obviously. As a spectator. I was super excited about watching it. And barring the final match (more on that in a smidgen), the tournament exceeded all of my expectations. Mainly because of CCP. Damn, they put on a great show. I've never watched video game tournaments before, and did not quite realize how sporting event-like they could be. It was like watching a compressed version of the Final Four Tournament (a big American college basketball tournament, which I don't actually watch, because basketball is hell of boring, but if you live in North America you can't help but know something about it.)

Alliance Tournament IX was quite exciting. I especially enjoyed all the in-match commentating by actual players, flown out to Iceland for the job. The inter-match banter and analysis was even more fantastic. Damn, if CCP Soundwave isn't the funniest person living in the middle of the North Atlantic. CCP put on an excellent show that flaunted their game most spectacularly.

Some of the shine to all this CCP and competitive excellence was taken off the event with the shenanigans of the final match. One alliance, Hydra Reloaded, decided to form another alliance, Outbreak, so that they could field two teams. Both teams made it to the final match. Hell, some of the same people were probably on both teams -- play a Hydra match, then jump onto an alt to play the Outbreak match. (There's nothing to confirm this, but certainly not out of the realm of possibility.)

So come the final match, Outbreak throws the match for Hydra Reloaded. It was a complete farce. Their apology afterwards? They were sorry they couldn't have faked their fight more convincingly. Like, what the hell? Fake is fake, convincing or not. That **** would have got out no matter, no way to keep that secret. People in EVE can't keep their mouths shut if they think they've pulled one over. (Considering the possibility that some of the same people played on both teams, it would help to explain their inability to stage a convincing fight against each other.)

So the rule for the upcoming Alliance Tournament X, that there will be no pre-tournament collusion, consider it the Hydra Reloaded rule. They won last year's tournament, so they get the infamy of the new rule named after them.

So, this year, so far, three alliances have been banned from Alliance Tournament X. Hydra Reloaded and Outbreak. Because they figured they could do as they did last year, two teams from, effectively, one alliance. As well, Your Votes Don't Count has been banned, apparently Pandemic Legion's version of Outbreak.

The new rule against pre-tournament collusion, it's good. We wouldn't be particularly enthused if the University of Indiana were fielding two teams in the Final Four tournament. Even worse if the University of Indiana created the University of Central Indiana, which doesn't normally have any students except during March when suddenly basketball players, and those basketball players are students at the University of Indiana the rest of the year.

So kudos to CCP Sreegs for coming down hard on folks trying to game the pre-tournament entry process. One alliance, one team.

I do wonder a tad about the recent bannings. Hydra Reloaded and Outbreak are banned for colluding with each other, for Outbreak basically being Hydra Reloaded. How come Pandemic Legion was not banned along with Your Votes Don't Count? Seems curious. The situation is similar (if not identical) to Hydra/Outbreak, no?

It's special because you can point to it as a deus ex machina wildcard to do whatever under an ambiguous rule. It happened and nobody denies it. It doesn't even matter that it happened a month before the tournament and on the test server of all places. That's why it is so special. You can simply overwhelm potential competitors with your poor ruling and thus cast a shadow of poop over the rest of the tournament.

And CCP has not played this well regardless of the intent of Hydra/Outbreak to collude and regardless of the correspondence between them and CCP. You know, warnings are a good thing to use before such drastic action - "It has come to our attention you formed a single corp on SiSi but entered two teams into the draw, we feel this violates rule #whatever, cease this in 24h or there will be consequences". Instead.. welp.

One thing has occurred to me ... CCP has this rule in place, that you cannot have joined the alliance you wish to compete as a member for after May 05 2012.

If Hydra and Outbreak were practicing in one corporation, and since a corporation can only belong to a single alliance ... then one half of that training team (probably the Outbreak half, since they apparently suckle at Hydra's teet) would be ineligible to participate in ATX. So, why the ban? They screwed themselves, did they not?

Same difference. Two alliances, one team.

One alliance, Hydra Reloaded, decided to form another alliance, Outbreak, so that they could field two teams.

Whole 1st page full of locked threads, tons of characters banned. Good stuff.

And yes, OB is a very old alliance with years of history, older than Hydra and no they are not consisted of alt characters of Hydra guys, even CCP knows this.

Yet another topic locked. And the last post by Sreegs has him ignoring my questions yet again only to respond with "wow": https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1369261#post1369261

Excellent work, Sreegs - thanks for answering the questions I gave you when you quoted my posts.

Same difference. Two alliances, one team.

The whole thing is a slippery slope. You can't ban both Hydra and Outbreak, choose one in the name of fairness.

You banned Sniggwaffe for being a training corp. So let's follow that decision making process. You can now start removing access for every 'pet' alliance in the game. En Garde is out due to being affiliated with -A- to the point where main -A- corps have "academy" corporations in En Garde. FA/TNT/FCON are all closely affiliated with Goons, will they also be removed? How far will this be taken?

It's fine you want to create a precedent that allows small alliances a shot as well, but at least make your decisions from a position where you can reasonably defend it without making selective choices based on your own opinions. The cooperation between Hydra and Outbreak is fairly obvious and I can see why one of them could reasonably be removed. Especially following all the talk there was that they were working together last year and the stuff this year on the test server. But pick and choose and engage in dialogue with those groups before setting it in stone.

The fact that you have not included other alliance's "training alliances" in this whole thing just proves the hypocracy. If you want to enforce something, do it properly and not half-assed to get back at whomever you don't like

The problem isn't your rules pr say, it's that you don't enforce them outside of your own constructed realities.