We played vs BBB last night and lost pretty badly last night. We had a very hard time fielding a team (Chad's connection was busy etc.. When i agreed on i game i was sure we had atleast 5 players avail, but turned out we only had 3 and had to call in torre) ,Should have called the game off a lot sooner, so you guys could sleep. Sorry

However i was thinking more like zaq during the hour long prewar, "Lets just play". But still I can understand Sassa's point here. Maybe not that teams should be kicked/banned etc..

But if i was representing a team that have been found cheating (breaking the rules) I would have cleared our specs from the server and sent them to qtv. Also i would right away given the voicecom-server-ip to admin (unless it was a public mm3-server).

If I was in a clan that had been found cheating I would have stopped playing in that clan.
To ghost is fucking a slap in the face to the admins and your co-players. You are all ILF's all of you in BBB.

Regarding the game, it has nothing to do with my post, I was an ashol during the game because Im an ashol and thats it

Good that you share your thougts, well written.
But i won't say i agree to some of the shit you wrote above.

My advice to you; Start your EQL, make your own decisions.
Kick clans, ban clans.. ban players, your "own" rules.

And leave our decisions to us.

Of course, I will simply take this sassa-blog the way it is always meant: A big joke.
What we decide is final, you cannot change it however silly you choose to portray yourself with stupid blog-entries.
Thanks bye!

What is really funny that even if phrenic said it's well written, and I actually agree on this (not the usual plain hate with sarcasm) you just seem to ignore the contents and say it's shit. I totally disagree: The blog has a bit offensive tone, however it points out few things that could probably be different.

And how long are you going to be on a personal vandetta against Sassa, calling him an idiot, his blogs "a big joke" or "stupid" and so on? It's bad when admins lose their objectivity you know...

Edit: I didn't know this "article" was a reply to an official NQR statement, therefore I was missing the context completely. Article has no argumentation in it, completely useless.

Edited by JohnNy_cz on 07 Mar 08 @ 21:13CET

Why write a lengthy reply to such a crappy blog entry? Half of the entry consists of useless nostalgia, the final quarter consists of some QTV-talk, and somewhere squished in between is a heap of bottomless, unsupported personal thoughts. He takes his personal opinion (that 3B cheated) and just bluntly sells it as fact, which is the last thing one should do if the plan is to be taken seriously. It's not how constructive criticism works, and the blog is neither well written, nor does it bring up any good points or raise interesting questions. By now I'm actually wondering why Sassa is still allowed to post anything on QuakeWorld.nu at all when it's actually quite obvious that his contributions just decrease the overall quality of this portal's content.

you cant WRITE on the site that the team MIGHT have cheated and they reduce their points by 7 for something almost all clans violate and even put online a demo from their game.
so what kind of signal does that give out?
#1 they cheated but we dont got enough proof
#2 but we want you all to know that they ghosted
#3 our way of giving them some kind of punishment is to bust them for another rule-violation

Dont come here and say that Im just blabling since you put it upfront and I just say how it is.

IF they didnt cheated and you wanna take that road, then take away the demo, take away their lost points and let them win vs BB.
+ take away all the nonsense about ppl thinking they have ghosted!

This post was mainly of two subjects.

#1 The verdict from the admins
#2 The solution

As I put it forward for you guys, there is no better way than QTV and disable spectators of joining. What kind of signal do you want to give the players in NQR11 when playing vs BBB after such a news post?

Dont come flaming me of how I interpret your news, I believe many others thought the same way.

and I told you all before, this has nothing to do with EQL vs NQR or what ever, I know u all do your own thing but I gotta give you bad critic and hope that it will come in positive use.

That's what the blogs are intended for on the QW.NU. They are personal just thoughts and we've discussed about this already with the administrator staff (Zalon, Ake, Johnny) and have decided to allow it, like we will allow blogs for everyone in the future. Seeing that you are listed in the project admins category you should be well aware of this.



He does NOT write for Quakeworld.nu. He is NOT listed as a staff member either. He writes as a normal user here, and what he writes on his blogs is up to him. What he writes on the forum, is up to admins if they want to allow it or not.

I'll be damned if I have to explain this yet again on another place. Hopefully it's clear now how things go regarding these blogs.

on another important note, who was the guy faking?
Isnt that more important than giving a link of a demo not having any part of the point reductions?

As I remember it back in the days when riker faked for another clan the clan got kicked out and riker aswell. thats how NQR used to be.
Why I didnt blast up the QTV part bigger is because molgrum will always come up with "not everyone use's ezQuake" they will then not be able to spec the games, those 5% that still use mqwcl + fte.

offtopic:
isnt fuhquake with qtv access coming soon johnny? or was it something I heard out of the blue?

"Dont come flaming me of how I interpret your news, I believe many others thought the same way."

That is exactly the problem: You should not interpret our news, you should simply READ them. Given the evidence, it is a possibilty that 3b were ghosting, BUT THAT'S NOT THE SAME AS SOMETHING BEING A FACT. You are claiming that 3b cheated when neither we, nor you have/had 100% undeniable proof. You are basing your entire judgement and opinion on "3b = cheaters", which may be true, but it may as well not be. What is it about this that doesn't fit into that head of yours?

"IF they didnt cheated and you wanna take that road, then take away the demo, take away their lost points and let them win vs BB."

Again, I am puzzled by your borderless incapability to comprehend statements in written form. None of the admins ever claimed that 3b were innocent. What we have always said and continue to say, is that we simply don't know and possibly never will know for sure whether or not they cheated. And we are not going to ban a clan based on an assumption.

The above mentioned "signals" we apparently "gave out" are also just your personal interpretations and not FACTS. We wrote a news reply explaining why 3b vs BAD was voided, while reminding clans that playing with mm3 without notifying the admins is a violation of the rules and pointing out that ghosting could be an issue.

And now I actually did write a lengthy reply even though nothing you wrote deserved my attention or time. Couldn't help myself, I guess.

and then take away 7 points is just harsh for something all clans do!
You take away those 7 points because you believe they cheated but cant ban them, this is the only thing you can do and therefor they cheated in your eyes!
Its that simple.
or else 95% of the clans should have gotten the same verdict (atleast those clans that use mm3)
So soma thats about BBB
and about Bad, who is the player? does he play in another NQR team?
If BBB didnt cheat then the faker in BAD is the bigger news and his nick should be written.

I hope you understand me, I understand you but still think its wrong of you guys to take 7 points from BBB when not charging them of ghosting, its just PLAIN stupidity.

as far as i know it has not been established who faked as record. only that it in fact was not record playing... they said something about "hans" but atleast i have never seen that player before

"and about Bad, who is the player? does he play in another NQR team?"

He does not. The reason he was faking was not because he was in another team, but because BAD had already made 2 in-season player additions.

As for the rest, I give up on trying to make my point clear to you.

Tired to read this lengthy mind crap What's all this fuzz about? All russians are ilf's and ban 3b from NQR? I bet you didn't even started this, if 3b not doing that good in Silver. You can say main reason of their sucess is ghosting, so why the hell they raped your team +160 without any 3b specs/ghoster's involved?

xpr, this has nothing to do from last nights game, u played better u won, congratz.

read it and you will understand

xpr is not in 3b though?

Please... I just watched the demo, and it took me about 30seconds before i had an idea about what was happening. And after that it was just proof after proof. Yeah, I call if fucking proof here. The reasons are simple: he only specs bad's rls. When 3b has quad, he specs bad's rls. When 3b has pent, he specs bad's rl/ring. He specs unnamed(xn) from 3b until he gets quad, and THEN he changes pov to bad's rl. It's so obvious.

"it is a possibilty that 3b were ghosting, BUT THAT'S NOT THE SAME AS SOMETHING BEING A FACT"

in that case you reduced their points without knowing all the facts or eveidence and ar incosistent in that way. theres no way to say they are 40% guilty. so either no punishment or a punishment that are in proportion to the crime.

And the news will be interpret. by ppl, thats how news works. so if sassa and probably many more thought this as a clan cheating and geting a poor punishment for it, thats not his fault but the one that posted the articles fault.

And if you guys want to look serious please write something that does not include "big joke" or similar.

I'm observing the demo right now in windowed mode while I'm typing this and I have to say there is really a pattern that interceptor described. You wouldn't normally use that kind of speccing, would you?

no and the admins just dont get it but try to go another way around it and say "hey we dont have proof so lets let them play more and just tweek their cheat abit more and just reduce their points"

So basically, you can cheat until u get caught and then 7p will be reduced.

Atleast some people have the guts to say the correct thing here and not try to go around the truth with a rule that almost all clans break.

This column is not about 3B cheating or not, but if admins decision is consistent.


But on that topic. Inter has spoken... It's like asking pele about football.

Zaq: Similar to Sassa, you unfortunately fail to comprehend a statement in written form. 3b violated the rules regardless of whether or not they ghosted, and that's a fact, hence the point reduction. For the future, I can only recommend to both you and Sassa, that you only involve in a discussion if you have both read and understood the actual news post.

What sassa wrote somewhere in here is that points where removed for something that many clans violate, but not get penalized for. But when there is not 100% proof a team is ghosting, you decide to penalize them with this rule that many other teams have broken.

In fact this is how the legal system works in many countries and i dont see that you made the wrong decision. But in a perfect world, Sassa has a point here.

what I thought NQR admins did was to give them an "under the table" punishment for the ghosting since they didnt have 100% proof, hence the -7 point reduction. But that was not the case and Im sorry for writing that!

NQR admins gave 3b -7p reduction due to not giving admins notice that they used mm3 and had a spec on the server, something that 95% of the clans do, and thats bad IMO!

They have two choices, ban 3b due to ghosting OR give them the points back.

Thats where I stand, sry for the missunderstanding soma but I believe we cleared it out now.

on the other hand we could just play some quake and drink some beer? how about that?

I like beer!

sorry about the off topic. i'm taking a break from studying...
someone open up a quotes.qw.nu site and add willgurht's: "Inter has spoken... It's like asking pele about football." LOL!

on topic, I haven't seen the demo and I'm not very involved in the NQR scene. However, I used to admin a few TF tourneys and the problem of cheating, and how to deduce whether someone was cheating or not was brought up countless times. Ban? Don't ban? Do we have enough proof? We usually answered these questions by first asking ourselves, "how much proof would we REASONABLY need (i.e. give a few scenarios) in order to say with high probability that a person was cheating?". Then, we compared these similar scenarios to our demo. Also, I agree that a point-deduction system is unfair for two reasons:

1) Like it was pointed out, you could gain many points with a cheater, be on top, get caught, and lose 7 points and still be on top (I don't know the point distributions, but this is theoretically possible). Is this fair? No.

2) A clan may (incorrectly) be judged to have been cheating. The issue is not pursued AS in-depth because the punishment is a slap on the wrist (only a 7point deduction). If the punishment was "death" (banning from the league), the issue would warrant closer criticism and therefore the question of whether the clan was cheating or not would be answered more definitively.

So what does warrant a ban? How much proof would you need? This is what must be agreed on first before examining any demos. You'll never watch a demo and have a big banner in ezq "THIS PERSON IS CHEATING" or "THIS PERSON IS LEGIT". You have to make the judgement, yes or no. If he cheated, take action. If you are unsure, then don't take action, because this leads to the possible case of the innocent getting punished.

sigh I didn't expect to post so much.

Edited by Up2nOgOoD[ROCK] on 07 Mar 08 @ 09:21CET

ok so now ive decided to watch the demo myself and its ofcourse clear that the speccing behaviour is very strange and if some clan would use ghosting it would probably look like that.
BUT...i didnt really see some reactions by the 3B players of the possible informations the ghost couldve given.actually in some situations they act 100% normal.(not shooting enemy ring although he was specced , getting totally owned at quad by rl enemy from ya-quad although observed before etc.etc.).there are a few more situations where ghost info couldve been used but wasnt imo.
so this either means:
a) they are VERY bad at using ghosting to their advantage
b) they didnt use ghosting at all
c) they dont want to make their ghosting too obvious and act normally on purpose in some situations

so how i understand it now , the admins didnt punish them for ghosting but for not telling them that they use mm3.
in a different league with more "proffesional standards" the fact that they didnt tell the admins about mm3-usage combined with that strange speccing-behaviour is enough to be proven guilty and eventually get them banned even tho its not 100% proven.
but given the fact that its only a fun qw league , i can understand the admins decision to give them an "advanced warning".
the problem is everyone thats gonna play 3B (or any other mm3 clan? now that the topic has come up...) in the future will have that bad feeling in the back of their minds.
"am i just getting owned because they are ghosting or are they just better?"
and to the people who are like "its just qw , fun , etc ... lets get over it!":
imo , you cant enjoy qw as much when you think you getting cheated and it destroys the whole experience of competitive games.
im actually surprised it took the community so long to come up with a mm3-ghosting drama

Sassa, you're such a fucking joke and hypocrite. You somehow manage to mention Oblivion in the same sentence as ILF, but magically forget mention your own clan SD being banned for fakenicking at the time you were playing with them. So, by all means, write your little 'cheater lists', but please do add your own clans to them as well.

Also you write:
"I know that the big admins Apollyon, Link, Gaz and Vert will all at some point see this and think "omfg what a poor judgment"."

OMFG. That must be the single most stupid fucking assumption I've ever fucking heard. Since you and (NQR) admins practically never agree on anything, I have a hard time seeing them agree with you on this matter. Go ahead and express your own silly opinions, but don't insinuate you have people agreeing with you. They seldom do.

Do us all (and yourself!!) a favor and shut your big mouth and end this silly blog before you embarrass yourself further.

well writen up2nogood. also spooink. however its not about them cheating right now but about how actions will be taken against future "cheating" clans, and what signals that are sent.

Disclaimer upfront. In my view sassa talks and posts a lot of bullshit that's beside the point and takes straight jabs at people for reaction and I'm assuming his own amusement.

That said this whole discussion seems to be clouded by the fact that it's sassa who's bringing it up. Sure, the blog post contains a lot of nostalgia, not that pertinent to the actual point being made, but it serves as setting a certain tone and as this is his blog I appreciate him telling it how he feels and views it.

There is an actual point here which many less hated players have brought up in these comments and I really hoped that the admins of NQR would have had the professionalism of not getting caught in sassa's flaming and dissing war and simply stuck the actual issue, because it really needs to be talked about. But to my dissapointment that was not the case and flaming + hating sassa post after post about his style of writing and issues that everyone know but that are totally beside the point really made the admins look bad, as admins. Everyone has a right to post their personal oppinions and eventhough I generally don't flame or hate on anyone, I see it as a natural thing in forums, comments and life in general. But when you're an admin commenting on hot issues concerning the league you are running at the very moment, being professional, taking a bit more time to process your thoughts and replying only to clarify points you feel you have made is very important. Because especially in a scene like this, your comments will be read by most everyone who is involved and it can greatly effect the stance the general qw public has concerning the league and its admins.

I won't go further into the actual issue as I'm quite content with the comments made by many less hate blinded and flamy posters like up2nogood.

niomic:

At first, I of course thought this was another big joke by sassa, an old habit that I now see was wrong.
But! I would have reacted like this no matter who wrote this. Why?
1. Blog is introduced as being flame.
2. Making a few statements about how the older admins were better at "getting things done". Okay he is disappointed with us somehow, let's see what he has to say.
3. Making a claim that 3B were ghosting. Something that we NQR-admins never said. This is fine if it is his own opinion, but wait!
4. He claims that WE POINTED 3B OUT AS GHOSTERS. This is where it gets ugly, and frankly disgusting as he aggressively tries to impose this lie to everyone around him. Why on earth should I filter this out "because it is Sassa"? I don't get the point, it is a lie if it is a lie, period. And that sets a special class on the blog in question, no matter who wrote it.
5. Brings in Bad Boys into this as well, what is the actual topic? I'm clueless. Let's ignore this and guess that the topic is mostly about BBB.
6. More flaming about how NQR is shit, directly quoted. Nice foundation for a sensible discussion? No. While it's ok to be angry at us, you have to keep that away from the post if you want to be taken seriously, at least by me.
7. More claims that we somehow "overlooked that 3B was ghosting". Getting fed up with this lie by now and see no interesting points being done here at all.
8. Arrogance. I can live with being mocked though, this is fine. What I have a problem with is when someone is talking like "he is the boss".
9. Some flaming about QTV and me. I overlook this as it is off topic and can take that discussion elsewhere.

Overall, it seems this guy has serious problems in creating good discussions even if you overlook all his random flames and off topic statements. He constantly changes his mind too, as I believe the topic now changed from "NQR admins let 3B get away as being ghosters!" -> "NQR admins punished 3B for something 95% clans do!".

That aside, it's not like we try to silence anyone who is criticising us or the decisions made in an appropriate matter and tone. Criticism and discussion is healthy to any league. The person that noticed 3b were playing with a spectator on the server and recorded the demo approached us silently by messaging an admin and pointing him to the game. In turn, WE decided that the situation was not acceptable and thus decided to make a public announcement, knowing it would bring up a discussion, and like with any discussion, that it would lead some people to criticising us and the decisions made. We could have just as well acted silently and approached nobody but the clan in question, which would have spared us a lot of discussing, writing, accusations, and so on - but we didn't. Up2nogood and Spoink somewhat criticise our decision too, but they do it in an appropriate tone and more importantly: they try to stick to the facts. Sassa did no such thing in his original post, which is obviously very aggravating for us. He didnt't write that he thinks 3b cheated, and that we, although we were not totally sure that they cheated, should have banned them. He wrote that we knew they cheated, but decided to let them off the hook anyway, which is simply a false statement; And the latter is nothing but a neutral observation, regardless of whether it comes from Sassa or not.

So give me one reason why this should be overlooked as "oh but it's just Sassa, give him a break!" when it is obviously an arrogant, blurry, unnecessarily dramatising troll-blog?
What the punishment was about: 3b had a member spectating the game while they used voice, but didn't inform an admin.
Who this rule applies to: EVERYONE. If you are using voice comms and want a member to spectate the game, you have to inform us or face a similar penalty. It was the perfect occasion to both remind clans of sticking to the rules as well as to remind them about the possible danger of ghosting.
Did 3b actually ghost? Who knows, we went the safe road and decided that the evidence was lacking.
It is that simple, discussion over.

http://nqr.nu/nqr11/screens/928.jpg here we see a team having a spectator on server. And if i recall correctly This team is using Voicecoms. Did they notify admins before this game.
Can we see a log of osams notifying an admin?

This, molgrum, was more of what I expected by just scanning through, will get back later

Ventrilo servers seems to log shit by default, I don't know if they used Ventrilo but still, you can always ask the logs from the voice server provider.

Two guys connecting to the voice at the same time. Pretty easy to check if you start seeing many IDs or IPs.

Willgurht: Please stick to the discussion at nqr.nu (below the news post). Aside from the topic of the blog having changed drasticly, it also sucks to have discussions at several places as it leads to having to write the same thing over and over again. So please, please post any further criticsm or questions over at NQR.

No, Osams didn't notify an admin. And if they really did use mm3, then yes, they should have notified us. However, we're not gonna run after clans after every game to check if they were using mm3 or have recently changed to mm3 and check if they had players spectating the game. Also, we're not gonna look through every demo to check if a team-spectator popped up during the 40+ minutes of the game, just like we can't acitvely spec every game either. And while you're making accusations and expect justifications, you could also underline our inconsistency by mentioning that we don't join servers before every matchstart to perform f_client and f_modified to check for violations there. We may also have failed by not nagging server admins to get logs for every server that NQR games have been played on so we could check for the IPs and compare them to our database, just to minimise the chance of fakenicking. I guess you see where I'm heading here, but still, allow me be more clear on this:
With a fairly long list of rules as well as possible violations to rules, plus all the other work that awaits an admin, some responsabilities simply need to be left to the clans and players participating. We can't be everywhere and observe everything. In fact, I believe that vast, vast majority of rule-violations totally slip by us since hardly anyone ever even bothers doing the f_* checks at all, even though the rules say that it needs to be done. The rules are there for everyone to read, and we actually even made a news post on the front page shortly before the start of the league, reminding players to read through the rules. It is up to YOU (clans and players) to report rule violations concerning clients, checking server settings, reporting odd behaviour by the opponent, keeping track of who views the game and notifying us about mm3. If clans and players are too lazy to read rules, do f_checks, and so on, don't come crying to us and retrospectively expect us to do inquiries, download demos, punish clans, etc..
So yeah, please take some responsability yourselves instead of trying to pin inconsistency on us. If Osams didn't report to us and neither Oblivion, nor any other spectators or people that saw the game in the server browser notifies us, there is not much we can or will do.
So yeah, the rules apply to everyone, and us expecting you guys to read through them and take some responsability is not a lot to ask for, in my opinion. If theres really that many clans out there violating the rules, then it's not only our job to punish them, but also YOUR job to report them. If you are unwilling to do so, please don't complain.

Soma: I do agree concerning the responsibility part to a degree. But isn't it at least reasonable to assume that you look at the screenshots when you confirm a game and one might argue that it's also reasonable that as active members of the scene you would know many clans that use mm3 With that said, I think it is good that his had been brought up and urge you to make a new news post soon concerning all this discussion. I also don't see any point in going after clans so long after the fact, just make it clear where the actual responsibility lies and what the consequences are.

Molgrum: not just because it's sassa, but who ever. I'm simply expecting you as the admins to stick to the facts and to not get mixed up in a flame war which makes you look worse because of your position as admins concerning the issue.

I appreciate the candidness and openness of the current administration and honestly believe that this conversation has been good for the scene, even if as just a reminder.

I guess the only question left is: what kind of proof is required for a clan to get kicked out for ghosting? No doubt a difficult question barring absolute proof and one that I personally hope never needs to be discovered.

Sorry Soma.
I have just beem trying to score some easy points in these threads. Will stop doing that.

What I hope for in the long run is that ktx will have a matchmode that disables spectators . Spectators could still be allowed on the server, but should be stuck in some far corner of the map with any console-text but mm1 disabled.

There is no way I could give you any IP-logs of any player that might have played on my server, as it is illegal to do so.

You are too late. Read the news.

if it's a competition!
From nqr page.

IT IS ON.

willgurht - 213.114.133.143 080305 @ 10:59:24


spectatorlock and pause/timeout option incase someone drops.

Oh I thought we had a competition of who first could come up with the best technical sollution for the problem.

But GJ on already implementing it already. Perhaps players should be able to toggle allowpause when there is different number of players in the teams.

You can thank Ivanhoe - The Mighty Legend for adding the feature.

However, I have mixed feelings about pausing a game during match. I'll discuss about it with few clowns and see what they think.

Hehe Willgurth! Without actually having my own opinion about this, I kinda think it's funny you keep on asking for that pause function. This must be the 20th time at least that I see you mentioning or requesting it. Now that's what I call stamina.

Niomic: Yeah, I can see why/that you think it's bad for admins to involve, participate or even react to flame, and I actually agree - in theory. However, it's pretty frustrating to be flamed, insulted, accused of things that didn't happen, but not be allowed to react the way you'd wish to react "because you're an admin". I don't know if you've ever been in the situation, but when people attack you (or something you've invested a shitload of time into) publically, moreover even including absolutely false information, it's pretty hard to react "professionally", even tough this would probably be better.
Anyway, with some people not replying anymore, this discussion has reached a far better tone and actually got to a point where the content is interesting. However, I can't deny that it still bugs me that this blog is still on top of the "latest blogs" list, with a growing number of replies, as the first entry is still filled with false information and is thus misleading, yet it is the first (and possibly only) thing people will read when clicking on the link. Maybe we can move somewhere else, like the NQR Forum section or the actual NQR page.

i became bored of reading this silly stuff at about half the page down. anyway

"I call if fucking proof here. The reasons are simple: he only specs bad's rls. When 3b has quad, he specs bad's rls. When 3b has pent, he specs bad's rl/ring. He specs unnamed(xn) from 3b until he gets quad, and THEN he changes pov to bad's rl. It's so obvious."

i haven't checked the demo but described as that, it most surely is not a proof. everytime i've specced my team or demos of our team playing, i always spec the oppositions pov to see how our gaming looks from their eyes and how do we react to stuff and so on. and weak rl's are fun to watch since they have neat action with a lot of running and chasing included, not everyone prefer watching quad runners fragging spawns when speccing.

some good points by mipa there

mipa, sure, if you think so and if you were an admin then you wouldnt take 7 points away from 3b, right?
The fact is that they got -7 points due to something that all clans do!
Thats the issue right now

Now i haven't read all thats been written here.. but what i recall, Sassa,. you said you would kick them directly! no questions asked. What happend to that statement?
Would you kick out everyclan in your tournament ( "due to something that all clans do!" )

lol phrenic, I would kick them out because of ghosting, nothing more nothing less!!!

I believe interceptor among others agree with me