The Asterisk Game

[Sweetwater]

To the Head Office: EAT ALL THE DICKS.

The Marshals/Blues game was simmed at 5:04 PM PST and it was discovered immediately that the game didn't save.  An announcement of the ruling (again, for a precedent that had ALREADY been set) didn't come down until 7:21 PST...TWO HOURS AND 17 MINUTES LATER.  During that time, there were ZERO posts by HO members in the DSFL discord.  Do me a favor, imagine this happening to an NSFL game and waiting that long with NOTHING in between.  You can't, can you?

Once the ruling was announced, THEN HO popped in to tell us how fucking disappointed you were with our behavior and how we should have reached out to you on the site.  Tough shit.  When YOU stop doing your job, you don't get to bitch about how others did it in your place. 

Speaking of reaching out on the site, I tagged @7hawk77 with a rules question that affected EVERY DSFL team on 3 November regarding inactive OL.  He didn't respond until 6 November.  The justification for this, according to Sweetwater, was that he "wanted to check with the rest of the HO first to make sure he told [me] the right rule."  I call bullshit.

First off, Hawk does NOT have a record of making sure he understands something before posting it (see: Legion salary/bet announcement).  Second, if that's the case, respond and say "I'll get back to you, need to check."  I'm not surprised that he wouldn't do this, as Hawk has demonstrated that he cares more about being seen as an authority than actually being of service to the people (again, see the Legion thread where he says he refuses to discuss a ruling that EVERY commenter present felt was too harsh). 

Here's the really fucked up part, though.  The OL announcement was made on 23 October.  I asked a clarification question on 3 November.  That's a week and a half after everything had been sorted out enough to announce it, and that still hadn't been figured out?  And it took 3 fucking days? 

So, Hawk is slow to respond in forums, not a presence in discord, out of touch with the league, and not service-focused.  AND HE GETS PAID.  Head Office, keep an eye on this shit.  However, only Dermot has been significantly better in terms of working with the DSFL to get processes and rulings official in a prompt, helpful manner.

Kolbe, I generally like you, and we have solid chemistry in our podcasts and live commentary. So please understand that what follows comes not from anger or spite. It is simply relaying information to you. It seems like you've been having a really fucking rough week, so I'll try not to add to that. Also the majority of this will be things I know concretely, and will let you know speculation.

First, while discord is a fast and effective way to communicate, it's kind of a double edged sword. I am in 12 different discord groups. I get tagged CONSTANTLY, and frequently the Admin or HO tag is used jokingly throughout the discord channels. But it means that I have trained myself to put off notifications until I have a chance to sit down and address all of them. Also, my computer is almost always on, as is my cell phone, so it will appear as though I'm always online in discord, which I am not. So why am I saying all this? Because I can't be everywhere all the time, nor can my HO colleagues. I won't lie, last night during the DSFL games, I was playing Destiny 2 with some friends from back home. We play every Tuesday night, and it's my only chance to catch up with some people I haven't seen in almost a year. But more to the point, there were no admin tags until 6:58 pst in the DSFL chat. Followed by a group HO chat that started at 7:00 Pst. Upon seeing it was more than just a sim bug we made sure we knew everything before issuing a ruling. I'd like to think that just over 15 minutes to go from knowing nothing to issuing a ruling isnt too terrible.

I'm going to assume the 'disappointed' was about my post? At no point did I say I was disappointed.

@everyone since this seems to be a common thing. Believe it or not, the HO is also a part of the league and would like to make it as great as possible. We can't do that without your input. If you have a problem with the HO, PLEASE PM US. We keep saying over and over we want to hear from you if you have comments/concerns/suggestions/issues. Instead of saying we don't care about the league, tell us why you think that. We're pretty friendly and are trying to be more transparent, but that's a 2 way street. We'll tell you exactly why we have ruled the way we have, just please tell us what you think we could be doing better.

I saw tons of posts saying the HO doesn't care about the NSFL and that we never help out and we do nothing. So I BEGGED for you guys to contact us more reliably than just a tag in a long and fast moving chat. At the end of the day, the HO wants you guys to be happy and we need your input. I even said if you PM me on discord I promised I would get back to you as soon as I could. Then Ballerstorm hopped on to reiterate what he's said multiple times: The discord is not an official part of the forums. It is a bit unreasonable to ask us to read through every discord chatroom at all times. When you PM us on the forums you guarantee we see it.

That brings us to your asking about a rule from hawk. You PMd him, and only him, on a Friday, and he responded on a Monday. Here's where the speculation comes in. Hawk may have been busy or out of town and unable to get back to you. In any case you could have PMd any of the 4 other HO members either at the same time, or after not having heard for a longer amount of time than you expected.

To your call of bullshit on hawk asking for HO input on announcements. EVERY announcement is posted and critiqued in the HO forums before going public. I can't say the same for additional comments, but all announcements are made with much consideration.

Finally, on your question. It had already been figured out. From what I understand it was a misinterpretation on your part that had been addressed in the OL announcement. It didn't take 3 days to debate. Hawk posted on the 6th and got an almost immediate response from ballerstorm, which I'm assuming he relayed to you, though I can't be sure.

Hawk is a valuable member of the HO and has put many hours above and beyond what you see on the outside. He gets paid for this effort. Obviously the HO isn't perfect, but we are actively working to become better. Remember, we're humans too with lives outside of the league and can't devote all of our time to every individual's problems.


I'll say one more thing just to blow everyone's nips off. If you don't know, because of the (in my opinion, ridiculous) accusations of Er rigging the sim. I watch EVERY NSFL sim before you see it. It requires a decent amount of extra work and time commitment from myself and Er, but I do it because I don't want anyone thinking there's any corruption going on in the Sims. Believe it or not, the resim has happened a few times. You just don't hear about it because we follow the same protocol set fourth in the original resim and have it dealt with before it goes live. Unfortunately, this time, we had a relatively new simmer assistant who was not aware of this protocol, and as such aired a game before confirming a result. In the sim you are able to sim the results and then go back and watch the video, or just watch the video and it saves the result at the end. Traditionally, the first method is the most effective as we can quickly resim in the event of the error and then show the video of the resim. It wasn't done this way from what I can tell, leading to an issue.


Like I said man, I'm not mad, I'm not trying to be a dick, I know you have legitimate gripes with the league and have had a horseshit week so far. I just wanted to address some of your concerns and straighten a few things out.

If you have any questions or just want to tell me I'm a shithead, please PM me in whatever way is most convenient for you. But let's work this out one on one and see what kind of progress we can make.