I was playing as a marine with Diamond Gamers during that match. I’m not here to argue about the decision. It’s final and I accept that. I do have some concerns, questions, and opinions though.
1) What is this relocation argument? How does that affect whether a glitch should merit a game restart or not? I would think that if a glitch occurs, and at least one team contests it, a restart should be considered. The decision for a restart should not be based on whether a team can recover from said glitch, or not. It should be based on whether the glitch did occur and whether it did in fact have an impact on the game, regardless of it being a positive or negative impact.
As an alternate example using this logic, let me offer a reproducible glitch: let’s say we were playing veil and hid an arc behind the West Junction/Nano-Grid wall. Yes, exploits where you place structures out of bounds are directly prohibited, but bear with me. We then proceeded to kill a harvester in Nano-Grid with this invulnerable arc. At this time the opposing team drops a harvester across the map. Maybe it’s to counter their dying Nano harvester, or maybe it’s part of a different strategy. The purpose and act seems irrelevant to me. Is it fair to say that the glitch isn’t game changing because the other team can just rebuild that harvester in a different location? Is it fair to say that the team should be able to recover from that, whether they actually can or not? Is it fair to say that it isn’t game changing because the arcing team promises not to do it again, whether intentionally or not? The glitch still has a very real impact on the game, whether it directly causes end-game or not.
I believe that getting trapped under the command chair is 100% accidental, and I’d expect that skulk to continue biting rather than taking it upon herself/himself to console kill. The skulk would likely have no idea whether they are (mostly) invulnerable or not. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s valid gameplay.
2) Some people have told us we should have paused the game to make our argument. My opinion, for future occurrences, is that if a team contests an action for whatever reason, the referee be the one to pause the game, not the players. I know that teams can request game pauses, up to two per match, but my impression was that it is only valid for when players disconnect from a game.
From the Rules:
“8. Match Procedures
(i) Pause Function
(iii) Pauses are only to be used to enable a player who has an unexpected connection issue to reconnect to the server.”
I assume many people think a pause would be unnecessary; that the ref can make his decision and play should resume uninterrupted; that it should be discussed after the game. In hindsight, I would probably agree. Maybe this is how it is supposed to be executed, but I can’t seem to find the procedure for disputes during games. The fact that a game is live until the winning/losing banner displays probably covers it. This was Diamond Gamers very first official match, and obviously we all have much to learn.
3) The referee made a call, which is fine. That’s his job; however, he in fact gave us poor information before the match started. When the referee came to check if we were ready, he mentioned some basics like no exploiting. He mentioned a scenario such as shifting in whips on infestation that has crept through walls. At that time I asked him directly about this exact command chair glitch. He told us that if it happened, as it happened to us before during a friendly scrimmage, it would be grounds for a reset. As I see it, it happened and he did not reset as he indicated he would. That’s his decision, but myself, and I assume the rest of my team, did not receive any type of explanation for this. Maybe he did not understand our original question, but that was not indicated to me.
From what I have read, many of you have not experienced this command chair glitch. The ref had told us he never saw the glitch occur before either. I have experienced this glitch before in a scrimmage match against LF. After a quick dispute, we ultimately reset with input from a 3rd party spectator. In this instance, I was the marine running around the chair looking for the skulk who was hidden under the flap. I realized he was under the flap and began searching for the skulk’s hit box to lay on some damage. I kept shooting directly at little pieces of his character model that would pop-out as his animation cycled through bites. The hit box was ridiculously small. Does it exist? Yes, you can damage the skulk. Consistently? Maybe not. Maybe it flashes above and below the command chair. I can’t say for sure how the glitch works, but as I shot the damage indicators would popup inconsistently. (Friendly fire was turned off during this scrimmage, so I did not need to worry about damaging my own chair.) The very nature of the glitch is an unsteady game phenomena. The skulk’s relative hit box size and location is disputable. In the Shewolves vs. Diamond Gamers match, there was a point when a marine damaged the skulk in question, but it may not be definitive proof that the hit box was able to be obtained by the marines at all times. A game reset should be considered if at any time the skulk can cause damage while marines cannot, regardless of their angle.
In the screen shots posted on this thread, we can see that a marine was able to cause damage from a wide outside angle (coming from Computer Labs to Sub Sector). However, if we rule that this glitch is allowable, you should consider all maps and scenarios. When I experienced the glitch against LF, it was not on the Summit map. It was veil. There is no wide angle to be had if this occurs in Control on the Veil map. The marines are left simply with the option of spraying their command chair hoping to kill the skulk before they kill their own chair. This scenario is not by design.
4) Conduct. I don’t think we handled the situation in the best possible fashion. As I said before, this was our very first official match. Many of us love NS2. We’re obsessed and passionate. It can be confusing and overwhelming for us. We’re a new competitive team, but we’ve all been playing Natural Selection for many years. It’s a bit of a different world regarding casual and competitive play. In time we will learn, lesson by lesson. We may be Div. 4, but we have all the heart and ambitions of a Premiere Div. team. And who doesn’t like a bit of drama from a spectators point of view? Haha :D
But seriously, I expect our team to improve in both skills and semantics.
Thanks for reading and thanks for watching.