There seems to be a lot of strong feelings surrounding Riskys participation in DH Masters Oceania. Can someone explain to me, why his situation is any different from let s say Kelazhur? No one seems to be upset about him choosing LatAm over NA or EU
Edit 1: I personally think, it s absolutly fine in both cases to play there, becasue they have the passports of those regions. I don t know what I think about the suggestions changing the rules to be only based on residency. It would defnatly be fair for Koreans, if foreigners actually had to choose between their DH Master and GSL and couldn t just compete in both. But that would also mean, than LatAm would be striped of their 2 most prominent players, as they couldn t compete there anymore.
I get it, that some people got upset about the server rules, though. We had the same discussion here regarding TSL qualifier server rules and that seems to be a hot topic every single time cross server play is an issue. Nevertheless Singapure still counts as an Oceania server, no?
On June 29 2020 20:37 RiSkysc2 wrote: A few things i want to clear up:
I did express to the admins that i thought seithers "lul" was bad mannered and unsportsmanlike when they brought it up in our group chat (they didn't seem to be quite clear on whether it was BM or not) but i wouldn't say i "complained to them", i didn't go out of my way to get seither "punished" or anything like that.
i didn't "force" singapore, they never asked to play any other servers / i made sure they were okay with playing singapore.
they never played on 300-400 ping to singapore, if they did get a bad singapore server they immediately rehosted and the ping returned to the normal 50-110ms range.
I played on a consistent 180-210 ping throughout the tournament.
As to whether it's fair that they only get a 100-150 ping advantage, that's down to personal opinion. I believe it's absolutely correct that i should get some disadvantage for playing in a region that i don't reside in, that makes sense. As to how much of a disadvantage? not sure, if australia was the only server i could play on that would be a 350-400 ping to 0 disadvantage. is that fair? i don't know, it's up to ESL to decide.
I also would like to comment on "contributing to the scene":
I tried to contribute to the ANZ scene. I played in some leagues and a teamleague for the region and spent quite a bit of my own money to travel to the offline finals of that team league and an offline tournament. At this tournament i was told straight to my face that they hated me. To be clear, some people were nice, and i appreciate those people for being welcoming (they know who they are), but the majority obviously didn't want me there, and didn't make much effort to hide it.
After the offline tournament, they said that i just came to the event to "steal more of their money" even though the event most likely was going to be a loss for me financially. Going into the event i was expecting to lose money on it, i went anyway because i wanted to reach out and try and be part of the scene i was competing in.
They have never asked me for practice, i even extended an offer to them for practice but of course, they never contacted me. Whenever anyone in the scene has messaged me asking for advice i have always given them as much as i could.
So what am i meant to do? i've made the effort and it's been rejected, why i would i want to contribute and be part of a scene that spits in my face?
On June 29 2020 20:37 RiSkysc2 wrote: i didn't "force" singapore, they never asked to play any other servers / i made sure they were okay with playing singapore.
By choosing SWA as your "out of region" sub-region, you are ONLY playing SG server, with no exceptions or server swapping.
The whole "sub-region" rulings are nuts for a region as diverse and large as SEA (RiSky situation notwithstanding), with rules that can be abused in other situations to disadvantage the regional players.
I ve put both sides in the OP and will stop doing so, if there is further discussion in this thread, unless there are major new insight into the matter.
Edit 7(05.08.20) : Teebul and Razerblader also choose to play in the RoA/ Oceania Part of DH for the Fall Tournament
Edit 8: To me it at this point it looks like, that many of the Australian players see the Oceania/ rest of Asia Cup soley as an Australian Cup. When some of them don t even realise, that Singapure is actualy part of their region and they don t play on a non region server there, it s no wonder, they are so upset about it:
Edit 9 (15.08.): Riskys final saying in the matter:
Edit 10 (17.08.): Diskussion on the Pylon Show with Wardi, Maynarde, ZombieGrub and Catz:
Kelazhur is (or at the very least was) part of the Latam community even though he lives in the Netherlands now. Which means he isn't seen in the same light as Risky who has New Zealand citizenship but really doesn't have any ties to the Oceania Starcraft community. Risky is just seen as a European player who's using dual citizenship to farm a weaker region.
And he's also dominating the SEA/OCE players. There might be grumbling about Ryu the Italian/Peruvian player, but he's less successful so it's not to the same degree.
The core point of contention is that RiSKy is a dual British/New Zealand citizen, and has opted to use his NZ citizenship to compete in the OCE region due to it being much less competitive than Europe. Nationality/permanent residence visas have been the requirement for eligibility since WCS 2015, when the "hard" region-lock was introduced. (There are also some minor complaints about the EPT rules for server selection in cross-region matches, but that's the gist of it)
The WCS rules allowed for several different kinds of cross-regional play, such as SpeCIal living in Korea and playing in LATAM, TRUE and Polt moving to the USA to compete in WCS America, or players like Winter and ButAlways playing in the regions where they were studying abroad (I won't get into the minutae about the rules). However, I don't recall there being a player in RiSKy's specific situation, of using dual citizenship to compete in a region where they did not reside, and being good enough to immediately become the #1 player of that region.
On June 29 2020 15:05 Waxangel wrote: The core point of contention is that RiSKy is a dual British/New Zealand citizen, and has opted to use his NZ citizenship to compete in the OCE region due to it being much less competitive than Europe. Nationality/permanent residence visas have been the requirement for eligibility since WCS 2015, when the "hard" region-lock was introduced. (There are also some minor complaints about the EPT rules for server selection in cross-region matches, but that's the gist of it)
Do we know on what server this was played? He should have been at a disadvantage lag-wise right? Seems fair to me
EDIT: On what server do ppl form Australia / New Zealand normally play? Do they even have own Oceania servers?
There is no controversy as far as I am concerned. Risky isn't breaking any rules or laws by opting to compete in a weaker region, he's realistic about his almost non-existant chance of having a good result in EU and he's doing what's best for him.
Stephano regularly uses his dual French-Tunisian citizenship to play in some African qualifiers, I don't recall people making a fuss about it.
Outside of esport, it's quite common for athletes with dual citizenship to elect to play for their "lesser" national team if they know they have no chance of being selected to the better one. Again, who could blame them?
You could argue that people having access to dual citizenship do benefit from some unfair advantages, but I don't see how you can put the blame on the people lawfully benefiting from it.
Indeed, the only argument that can be made at this point is that there needs to be rule-changes for upcoming events. Risky did nothing wrong, he benefited from the current situation. And i'm not even sure what rules could be made that bar Risky from AU, but allow Special and Khelazur to compete in Latin-american region.
The problem here is not that Risky is playing in OCE as he is just doing what any player in a similar situation would do. As a pro you always seek to gain an advantage over your opponents and that's what Risky is doing.
The problem is that the organization allows him to do it in the first place since he doesn't live in NZ nor contribute to growing the OCE scene. For a lot of people this feels a lot like when the Korean went to EU and NA before the regionlock.
On June 29 2020 15:05 Waxangel wrote: However, I don't recall there being a player in RiSKy's specific situation, of using dual citizenship to compete in a region where they did not reside, and being good enough to immediately become the #1 player of that region.
There was such case with Stephano using his tunisian citizenship to qualify for WESG but that's a bit different I think
On June 29 2020 15:05 Waxangel wrote: The core point of contention is that RiSKy is a dual British/New Zealand citizen, and has opted to use his NZ citizenship to compete in the OCE region due to it being much less competitive than Europe. Nationality/permanent residence visas have been the requirement for eligibility since WCS 2015, when the "hard" region-lock was introduced. (There are also some minor complaints about the EPT rules for server selection in cross-region matches, but that's the gist of it)
Do we know on what server this was played? He should have been at a disadvantage lag-wise right? Seems fair to me
EDIT: On what server do ppl form Australia / New Zealand normally play? Do they even have own Oceania servers?
There are two servers in the region SEA/OCE region, the Australian server and the Singapore server. It looks like games between Risky and Australian players were all played on the Singapore server which should (assuming no ISP related problems) give something like a 50 ping advantage to the Australian.
On June 29 2020 15:39 fastr wrote: There is no controversy as far as I am concerned. Risky isn't breaking any rules or laws by opting to compete in a weaker region, he's realistic about his almost non-existant chance of having a good result in EU and he's doing what's best for him.
Stephano regularly uses his dual French-Tunisian citizenship to play in some African qualifiers, I don't recall people making a fuss about it.
Outside of esport, it's quite common for athletes with dual citizenship to elect to play for their "lesser" national team if they know they have no chance of being selected to the better one. Again, who could blame them?
You could argue that people having access to dual citizenship do benefit from some unfair advantages, but I don't see how you can put the blame on the people lawfully benefiting from it.
There was some fuss over Stephano's Tunisian citizenship though not as much considering the African SCII scene is nearly non-existent. And some fuss over similar issues like Heromarine taking an Italian spot at WESG and so on. Some people in Oceania are more vocal about this that's all. And the fact that Risky isn't breaking any rules doesn't mean there's no controversy or that rules couldn't be changed. I'm sure some Australians would like ESL to change the rules to have some sort of residency requirement.
As an Australian let me try and explain the situation.
So yeah, we feel like RiSky is kind of exploiting us for his own gain, but that's fine. That's competition and those are the rules, it's intelligent to do what benefits him. Don't hate the player, hate the game, etc.
What the actual problem is, is the server rules. Currently due to the rules, when an Australian player (such as Probe or Seither) plays RiSky, they are FORCED by the rules to play on the Singapore server, which is what the Australian players is mad about. RiSky gets about 200 ping to Singapore as stated by him on Twitter. That's about what most Australian players get (myself included), but the Singapore server is notorious for being spiky and shitty. 200 is the norm, but depending on the day it is known to go up to 300 or even 400 ping for Australian players. People are furious that RiSky is getting a perceived advantage despite the fact that he's playing in OUR tournament. If he wants to take the easy money and play in a different region he should have to play on our terms. There is a lot of bitterness towards him, exacerbated by the camp that feels he shouldn't be able to play in our region at all.
Lots of concerned Australian players talked to the admins about the servers before the qualifiers began, but due to the high volume of players from countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, etc, the default server for these qualifiers is the Singapore server, rather than the Australian server.
We've had players like TargA and KingKong from overseas play in Australian tournaments before, but unlike RiSky, those two were living in Australia, participating in all our LANs and local events, similarly to how in 2013 the Koreans who moved to Europe for WCS EU were actually playing on EU ladder and helping grow the scene, while RiSky just signs up for the WCS events, wins (or comes 2nd or 3rd or whatever) and then leaves until the next one.
This lead to an amusing situation in the end of the qualifier, Seither beat RiSky in their series in the winner's bracket, and said "lul" in chat when he was about to win, basically an offensive GG. RiSky was upset about this and complained to the admins. Seither and RiSky ended up playing again in the loser's finals and this time RiSky won the series and said "lul?" in chat, because like, of course he did. Why would he not do that? Some people (who already don't like RiSky) said this was hypocritical of him to do if he complained about it being done to him, but I totally disagree. This was payback, rather than unprovoked. Also note that instead of taking it in stride, Seither got Actually Mad and said something like "ur so good a moving zerg while I lag my ass off".
Speaking of people living here and playing in the ANZ tournaments... what happened to ButAlways? He dominated the scene for that brief period of six months where he was here studying then just disappeared?
On June 29 2020 16:48 RPR_Tempest wrote:People are furious that RiSky is getting a perceived advantage despite the fact that he's playing in OUR tournament. If he wants to take the easy money and play in a different region he should have to play on our terms. There is a lot of bitterness towards him, exacerbated by the camp that feels he shouldn't be able to play in our region at all.
Lots of concerned Australian players talked to the admins about the servers before the qualifiers began, but due to the high volume of players from countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, etc, the default server for these qualifiers is the Singapore server, rather than the Australian server.
I suppose that begs the question, what makes Australians believe that this is 'their' tournament?
On June 29 2020 16:52 GTR wrote: Speaking of people living here and playing in the ANZ tournaments... what happened to ButAlways? He dominated the scene for that brief period of six months where he was here studying then just disappeared?
It happened before with Pigeon, a Chinese player literally nobody had ever heard of who did really well in an ACL, vanished for a year, came to another ACL, won it, then disappeared again.
On June 29 2020 16:48 RPR_Tempest wrote:People are furious that RiSky is getting a perceived advantage despite the fact that he's playing in OUR tournament. If he wants to take the easy money and play in a different region he should have to play on our terms. There is a lot of bitterness towards him, exacerbated by the camp that feels he shouldn't be able to play in our region at all.
Lots of concerned Australian players talked to the admins about the servers before the qualifiers began, but due to the high volume of players from countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, etc, the default server for these qualifiers is the Singapore server, rather than the Australian server.
I suppose that begs the question, what makes Australians believe that this is 'their' tournament?
Because the top level of the scene has historically been 95% ANZ players, then EnDerr, meomaika and maybe Blysk or something. Times change though, and lots of our best ANZ players have quit, so now the top level of the scene is only about 50% ANZ. A truly pitiful state of affairs for us.
But anyway, as RiSky is playing as a New Zealander, a match between an Australian and a Kiwi should obviously taking place on the Australian server. RiSky is the only person in all of the EPT who gets to circumvent the rules. Even if an Australian plays someone from Singapore, the games will go SG/AU/SG, whereas for RiSky it's SG/SG/SG. This is because rather than NZ, RiSky is considered as, iirc "South-West Asia" which is the only sub-region in our qualifier to be able to force SG for every game in the series. If RiSky is representing New Zealand he should be playing under the ruleset considering him as such.
On June 29 2020 17:04 RPR_Tempest wrote: RiSky is considered as, iirc "South-West Asia" which is the only sub-region in our qualifier to be able to force SG for every game in the series. If RiSky is representing New Zealand he should be playing under the ruleset considering him as such.
Can you link the part where there is a "South-West Asia"? This is my first time hearing of such a place. I'm unable to find it mentioned on liquipedia
On June 29 2020 17:04 RPR_Tempest wrote: RiSky is considered as, iirc "South-West Asia" which is the only sub-region in our qualifier to be able to force SG for every game in the series. If RiSky is representing New Zealand he should be playing under the ruleset considering him as such.
Can you link the part where there is a "South-West Asia"? This is my first time hearing of such a place. I'm unable to find it mentioned on liquipedia
On June 29 2020 17:04 RPR_Tempest wrote: RiSky is considered as, iirc "South-West Asia" which is the only sub-region in our qualifier to be able to force SG for every game in the series. If RiSky is representing New Zealand he should be playing under the ruleset considering him as such.
Can you link the part where there is a "South-West Asia"? This is my first time hearing of such a place. I'm unable to find it mentioned on liquipedia
On June 29 2020 16:48 RPR_Tempest wrote:People are furious that RiSky is getting a perceived advantage despite the fact that he's playing in OUR tournament. If he wants to take the easy money and play in a different region he should have to play on our terms. There is a lot of bitterness towards him, exacerbated by the camp that feels he shouldn't be able to play in our region at all.
Lots of concerned Australian players talked to the admins about the servers before the qualifiers began, but due to the high volume of players from countries like Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, etc, the default server for these qualifiers is the Singapore server, rather than the Australian server.
I suppose that begs the question, what makes Australians believe that this is 'their' tournament?
Because the top level of the scene has historically been 95% ANZ players, then EnDerr, meomaika and maybe Blysk or something. Times change though, and lots of our best ANZ players have quit, so now the top level of the scene is only about 50% ANZ. A truly pitiful state of affairs for us.
But anyway, as RiSky is playing as a New Zealander, a match between an Australian and a Kiwi should obviously taking place on the Australian server. RiSky is the only person in all of the EPT who gets to circumvent the rules. Even if an Australian plays someone from Singapore, the games will go SG/AU/SG, whereas for RiSky it's SG/SG/SG. This is because rather than NZ, RiSky is considered as, iirc "South-West Asia" which is the only sub-region in our qualifier to be able to force SG for every game in the series. If RiSky is representing New Zealand he should be playing under the ruleset considering him as such.
So you (or parts of the Australian community) think the Server should be based on passport instead of residency, but the eligebillaty to play should be based the other way around? That would produce a shitton of incosistencys and unfair server ruling all over the competition. Risky wasn t treated as an EUW player, but as what is nearest to his current residency, what is appearently SWA. Seems absolutly fine to me. If the SP server is shitty and spikes a lot, that s obviously another story entirely
On June 29 2020 15:39 fastr wrote: There is no controversy as far as I am concerned. Risky isn't breaking any rules or laws by opting to compete in a weaker region, he's realistic about his almost non-existant chance of having a good result in EU and he's doing what's best for him.
Stephano regularly uses his dual French-Tunisian citizenship to play in some African qualifiers, I don't recall people making a fuss about it.
Outside of esport, it's quite common for athletes with dual citizenship to elect to play for their "lesser" national team if they know they have no chance of being selected to the better one. Again, who could blame them?
You could argue that people having access to dual citizenship do benefit from some unfair advantages, but I don't see how you can put the blame on the people lawfully benefiting from it.
Looking on the amount of very different replies here, there defnatly is some kind of controversy. I just was honestly courious, what it s all about, because I see it someway the same as you do, but realised, that others don t. Just wanted to know, why.
I'm confused at South West Asia being a place and thus asking for clarification.
There is no such region of "South West Asia". Such a place is as real as Atlantis. Unless you consider the tiny islands between Australia and Madagascar to be that.
Imo, there needs to be more clarity with future DH events that involves the SEA/Oceanic region.
On June 29 2020 17:53 LennX wrote: I'm confused at South West Asia being a place and thus asking for clarification.
There is no such region of "South West Asia". Such a place is as real as Atlantis. Unless you consider the tiny islands between Australia and Madagascar to be that.
Imo, there needs to be more clarity with future DH events that involves the SEA/Oceanic region.
It's pretty clearly laid out in the rulebook, where they've sub-divided the various world regions for the sake of server selection. The rules are actually QUITE clear. What the vocal group of Australian nationals are saying is that they think the rules are bad https://eslgfx.net/media/lo/ESL_Pro_Tour_SC2-Structure_Regulations.pdf
• OC (Oceania): Australia, New Zealand and Oceania • CN (China): Mainland China • NEA (North-East Asia): Japan, Korea, Mongolia • SWA (South-West Asia): All Asian countries that extend further west than the western-most part of India • SEA (South-East Asia): Rest of Asia (including India) • EUE (Europe East): All European countries that do not extend further west than the western-most part of Poland • EUW (Europe West): Rest of Europe • AF (Africa): All African countries • LA: All American countries except USA and Canada • NAC (North America Central): Manitoba, Ontario, Saskatchewan (Canada) & Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas, Wisconsin (USA) • NAE (North America East): East of those • NAW (North America West): West of those
I based my earlier post on the wrong assumption that Risky was playing his matchs on the AU server. While I maintain that it's wrong to blame anyone for benefiting from the advantages of dual citizenship, I agree that we can and should examine the current rules and make necessary changes if the situation seems unfair.
In that case I do empathize with AU players having to play on a shitty server because of one particular and complex case.
If it were up to me, Risky would have to play on AU since he voluntarily decided to play on this region despite the distance, but I understand that it could create a dangerous precedent in different circumstances.
EPT
