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United States97276 Posts
UPDATE Statement from the SC2 Product Manager at DreamHack Heyoka: https://np.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/7osd95/what_on_earth_is_going_on_in_wcs/dsc2fed/
Hi all, I’m the SC2 Product Manager at DreamHack and want to touch on what happened here and where we’re at.
First, this is our mistake on the DreamHack side and I apologize for that. We messed up and it’s caused a lot of grief to players and fans who are affected by it. We had a bracket up all day on Sunday for the Europe qualifiers that was not correct and we didn’t properly catch and act on it until far too late. Our typical process for making and communicating these brackets involves a step where people double check them, because it’s a complex system that isn’t done easily or quickly (we rank players by WCS points separately for those who are 1st and 2nd place finishers in their groups, and then swap matchups to avoid anyone facing someone from their group immediately in the bracket). This is why we didn’t show the Ro16 bracket immediately on the Day 2 broadcast of the events last year for instance, or why those at the event are used to repeatedly asking the admins if the brackets are done yet.
Unfortunately that system failed this time and the bracket had not been gone through with a fine tooth comb as usual last night. To compound it, our admins weren’t available to answer questions on the bracket before play started so people went ahead and played. These are both serious mistakes on our part.
We were able to take a look at it today but not until people were already competing, which means when it was fixed people had new opponents though they may have been mid-match. 'm sorry for that, it disrupts everyone’s flow for who they prepare for and plan their event and the competitors deserve more than what we gave them tonight. I’ll be checking to make sure we have the proper redundancies for communication and bracket seeding in the future so situations like this aren’t possible.
Thanks [16thSq]Kuro for posting on page 2
The bracket stage of WCS Regional Challengers for Leipzig were supposed to begin today at 19:00 CET.
Games were underway at the appropriate start time with several players already concluding their first games. However, it was brought to attention that the seeding for the bracket stage was actually incorrect.
*original incorrectly seeded bracket
*ShoWTimE noticing possible incorrect seeding in the group stage as well
There were no admins available to check on the bracket seeding at the start of the competition, which led to players beginning matches for which they had spent the night preparing. An admin finally confirmed that the matches were incorrectly seeded about 30 minutes after the start time of the event.
One player, Serral, had already won his match and qualified based on the incorrect bracket
It was ruled that the completed matches would be voided and the bracket would be correctly reseeded to the intended matches. There was a 2 hour delay issued for the event with the reasoning of giving players time to prepare for their new match ups.
The correct bracket has
 Elazer vs Bly
 uThermal vs Stephano
Serral vs  Harstem
The Snute vs Nerchio match has been left unchanged.
It is believed that the NA Challengers bracket may also have similar seeding issues, but no changes have been made at this time.
The NA Challengers bracket appears to be correct from the start. No changes will be needed
This is not the first issue with WCS this season, as in the NA Challenger events, Scarlett and Hunta restarted a match after playing most of it with skins active (skins must be turned off during WCS events).
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This whole thing is pretty sad to be honest.
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Maybe hire some more people, Blizz or DH. Then at least some jobs will have been created from this screwup.
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I've seen people say that the NA Challenger brackets are wrong, but they seem completely correct to me... Could someone enlighten me?
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Incompetency at Blizzard? I'm SHOCKED.
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Incredible that after all these years these things keep happening. Is WCS circuit cursed or is it really that hard to find decent admins? Or is it that the organizers don’t provide them with the necessary resources? (Rules, updated player info, etc)
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United States97276 Posts
On January 08 2018 05:15 ZigguratOfUr wrote:
I've seen people say that the NA Challenger brackets are wrong, but they seem completely correct to me... Could someone enlighten me?
I have read that players from the same group are not meant to meet before the final. Neeb and JonSnow are on the same half of the bracket and are both from group A meaning they could meet in the semifinals. This is also true with Scarlett and puCK
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United States97276 Posts
On January 08 2018 05:25 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2018 05:20 Shellshock wrote:On January 08 2018 05:15 ZigguratOfUr wrote:
I've seen people say that the NA Challenger brackets are wrong, but they seem completely correct to me... Could someone enlighten me? I have read that players from the same group are not meant to meet before the final. Neeb and JonSnow are on the same half of the bracket and are both from group A meaning they could meet in the semifinals. This is also true with Scarlett and puCK That's not in the rules: https://wcs.dreamhack.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/StarCraft-II-WCS-Challenger-Pre-season-Tournament-Ruleset.pdf.
ah ok so it's just WCS points. then NA is prob fine and people are just confused in general now with EU being adjusted
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it doesnt display the pictures for me. Why is that?
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This is a simple administrative error, and one that could have easily been avoided. A timely correction might have turned this issue into a minor hiccup but the admins failed to do even that much.
Disappointing.
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What a mess, pretty bad that the players had to point out the mistake, they would not have noticed it otherwise.
Personally I am happy, since I wasn't at home until just now and will be able to watch the games live and there are less ZvZs.
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Lol wow. Who is supposed to be running WCS qualifiers?
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On January 08 2018 05:15 ZigguratOfUr wrote:
I've seen people say that the NA Challenger brackets are wrong, but they seem completely correct to me... Could someone enlighten me?
The rule book states the Ro16 groups are seeded "based on 2017 WCS Point rankings." If it's tier 1 rank1-4, tier2 rank5-8, tier3 rank9-12, tier4 rank13-16, then it's correct. The Ro8 is also correct.
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Okay I wasn't going to say anything but after seeing the headline a second time I can't help but laugh at this, again, and shake my head, again. At least the players are looking things over and pointing out the issues.
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On January 08 2018 05:52 argonautdice wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2018 05:15 ZigguratOfUr wrote:
I've seen people say that the NA Challenger brackets are wrong, but they seem completely correct to me... Could someone enlighten me? The rule book states the Ro16 groups are seeded "based on 2017 WCS Point rankings." If it's tier 1 rank1-4, tier2 rank5-8, tier3 rank9-12, tier4 rank13-16, then it's correct. The Ro8 is also correct.
For EU the Ro16 groups should be correct with the same type of seeding I mentioned above.
Old Ro8 bracket was wrong because elazer can only face bly/harstem not stephano and uthermal can only face snute/stephano not harstem. New bracket is correct.
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Serral 6-0ed to qualify :D
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How hard could it be to double check? This is just sad, for every body.
Congrats serral anyways 
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On January 08 2018 05:09 Elentos wrote:
This whole thing is pretty sad to be honest.
Yeah SC2 is really turning into a joke. It hurts
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What's even sadder is that it was noticed yesterday (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-tournaments/529877-wcs-2018-leipzig-europe-challenger-league?page=4#78) and nothing was made...
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This feeling must really suck. Preparing for an opponent, bein up 1-0 and then this happens and it's all for nothing.
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Weren't the playoff brackets wrong at one or more offline WCS event last year? I remember SpeCial saying something about it at one of the events. (I think the bracket gave him an early match with Neeb rather than being on the other side of the bracket)
In that case, the general consensus was that it was likely an attempt to rig the brackets to prevent a ZvZ final.
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On January 08 2018 07:48 Boggyb wrote:
Weren't the playoff brackets wrong at one or more offline WCS event last year? I remember SpeCial saying something about it at one of the events. (I think the bracket gave him an early match with Neeb rather than being on the other side of the bracket)
In that case, the general consensus was that it was likely an attempt to rig the brackets to prevent a ZvZ final.
WCS Valencia brackets were bizarre (and didn't get corrected) iirc. The regular crowd who claimed that the brackets were rigged to prevent ZvZ were just being retarded as usual though.
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From the point of view of a SC2 web tv manager, there are several things that seem to be going in the wrong direction and not being talked about enough.
Firstly it would be necessary to stop playing all the games together, even for a WCS qualifier, it is a major competition and we can not highlight the players if we can follow only 3 games out of the 12 that will be played in the evening.
Moreover, the games have become so fast since the arrival of the 12 collectors that we will systematically have qualifier that lasts 2h30. It's not enough to do a good job, I could have understood if the game was still in 6 collectors, but it is 2 elements that drastically reduce the show. It's too much.
Balancing is also a problem, I respect the new team and I want to give their time, but the people who look at the E-sport are there to have a good time now, not tomorrow, not when the patch will come. If at one time the hydras win systematically without upgrade, people get tired of always seeing the same game of 12 min, with always the same opening, it's not fun, and it's not the Starcraft 2 that has made so many people dream.
After 7 years you have to be honest, either the game is moving in the right direction, or people are getting tired. Even with a free-to-play game and special beginner programs (the Creamery on OGSC2) we can not get people to play because the game has become too demanding. Most of us do not see it because we played so much at WOL / HOTS that we had time to understand the units, shortcuts and mechanics of the game.
Now players have to understand everything with an ultra fast game that does not allow to do simple things. The 6 pool was simple, now all builds minimum requests to know all keyboard shortcuts, which is not normal. It's a long time ago when we could see a pro player won as a DRG with an 8 pool, which anyone could try after 3 hours of play.
So we end up with a game centered on the pros players, which themselves is limited in builds order compared to HOTS while we have more unit now. We could say that the players are more dreamy than before because the game is harder but the opposite has happened: the game is too hard, so more people do not dream of being strong at SC2, because it takes too much time for the pleasure it brings.
So, i can understand what's happened tonight, it happens sometimes, the problem is when you add up all the problems around the game, you realize that without good choice on the part of Blizzard, it will be difficult for the community to continue to maintain this game at the top of the bill.
We need you Blizzard, please, if people are not competent change the post, but move SC2 in the right direction, because after 7 years of passion, it becomes complicated to ignore all these problems.
Best Regards
Anoss
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On January 08 2018 05:17 Silvana wrote:
Incredible that after all these years these things keep happening. Is WCS circuit cursed or is it really that hard to find decent admins? Or is it that the organizers don’t provide them with the necessary resources? (Rules, updated player info, etc)
This situation is so serious that it caused Silvana to actually post. Somebody, do something now!
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Here's a question: why didn't they delay the ro8 for 24 hours instead of 2 hours to give players time to prepare once they figured out the brackets were wrong? Sure mistakes happen, but in my opinion the real mess-up was not giving the players enough time to prepare for their new opponents/process the abrupt change.
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On January 08 2018 10:08 argonautdice wrote:
Here's a question: why didn't they delay the ro8 for 24 hours instead of 2 hours to give players time to prepare once they figured out the brackets were wrong? Sure mistakes happen, but in my opinion the real mess-up was not giving the players enough time to prepare for their new opponents/process the abrupt change.
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On January 08 2018 10:11 [16thSq] Kuro wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2018 10:08 argonautdice wrote:
Here's a question: why didn't they delay the ro8 for 24 hours instead of 2 hours to give players time to prepare once they figured out the brackets were wrong? Sure mistakes happen, but in my opinion the real mess-up was not giving the players enough time to prepare for their new opponents/process the abrupt change. https://twitter.com/HarstemSc2/status/950106327942074369
"We don't want to pay our admin for an extra day"
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The players whose race matchups changed were worst impacted. Practicing for a PvT then getting 2 hours notice it is actually a PvZ is a lot worse than ZvZ and only the opponent changing.
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This is a sad read. Condolences to the players who got royally shafted in all this. Are DH not going to do something for them? Can we get His Royal Highness filthyrake to do another tourney? I can't afford it but I'd be damned not to put my money where my mouth and StarCraft passion is and pledge £100 if he does get one together.
Also, had no idea Heyoka worked for DH.
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No wonder. It got worse and worse. In my eyes it's unacceptable especially to Harstem. Shitty apologies (as usual) and that's all? What's next? If you wanna play, you should pay to them?
btw where is TB's reaction?
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Everyone can make mistakes. It's okay. But it is not normal, that the players have to pay for them. Why couldn't DH reschedule the tournament for some time and give players the possibility to prepare?
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Finland960 Posts
Really though spot for the players.
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unfortunate, and i feel bad for the players who must be frustrated. but if blizzard/DH/whomever is ultimately responsible can't manage to find the money and the personnel to run these things properly, well, that speaks for itself in a way. people love to witch hunt, but i'd rather be grateful the SC2 scene exists at all than shit on what's left of it for not being run properly
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I'm not trying to fuel the flames, I think you are dealing with this situation as professionally as you can. But...How is bracketing a 'complex' process? It's extremely simple. You make it sound like it's a complicated art form that most wouldn't understand making a seeded bracket. That's ridiculous.
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Acknowledge the mistake and move on.. It's not worth dwelling on and railing the tournament... We dont need witch hunts to drive people and organizations... Learn from the mistake and move on.
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On January 08 2018 05:15 Solar424 wrote:
Incompetency at Blizzard? I'm SHOCKED.
Feel free to create a game company and show us how it's done.
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EPT
