Regarding fragadelphia

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Hey guys,

Rippin this off on my phone so sorry if I miss some shit or something. TLDR at bottom, gonna be long gonna cover all my thoughts before i drink myself stupid tn

Just gonna provide my/our side (i think brax is posting a twitlonger at some point as well if you wanna read what someone good at the game has to say) on the fragadelphia shit with brax's headphones, the pistol drop thing that was irrelevant in the grand scheme (Steve agreed
W us on this, will elaborate more later.) and the event as a whole which simply did not feel like the Fragadelphia I knew, especially not in the context of a $30000 local LAN which I know is a huge milestone for Steve, Ed, Wob, and the rest of the N3rdSt crew after all of the hard work and long hours theyve put into this over years. The idea of a consistent Philly LAN was so enticing for so long for me as a Philly native, hence the consistent support I try to give them locally & on twitter, as well as the effort to reach out to my pro colleagues to freeze their asses off with me over some good ole CS ('pretty loose definition of pro whiffmer h4h4')

I digress for a moment.

Regarding the brax headphone situation, the issue was presented to brax 3 rounds in, and he handled it promptly and we played and won the last two maps. The noise cancelling headset fraga provided had a magnetic mic which was beyond finicky, not to mention brax had to borrow inears that were uncomfortable and were hurting his ears. This caused him to keep having to adjust his headset, and wear it at an angle. Sitting next to him, even with a beanie on, I'm still almost positive they were actually covering his ears.

The sound was so bad regardless, and frankly
If anyone wanted to really hear the casters, all they would have to do is hit their mic key because the casters all of five feet away. the reason there was even any question about brax in this situation was because we had to wear like 8 layers of hats and shit (im sure you peeped my handwarmers-under-the-headphones swag shoutout klaudia) to deal with the fucking cold. Our second group started at 4PMand we didnt get finished our THREE matches that day til 4AM. There were two heaters in the mainstage area, both of which were either shut off or stopped working right when the match in question happened. it was 14 degrees (according to my snapchat that night) inside of the lan center, sheila brax and derrick literally felt like death afterwards. The playing conditions in combination with the design of the arena created way too many avenues for potential disputes that have nothing to do with the players initially. I truly believe this is on the staff to handle better, as in 2017 this shouldnt even be a question given the current landscape of pro CS, even for a homegrown local LAN.

after the match, char and his squad (who i truly got love for, just was caught off guard and said some dumbshit on twitter when I was exhausted cold and hungry from sitting in unncessary freezetimes for a cumulative 2 hours this weekend due to the lack of an admin on site to) make a tweet implying brax used that to cheat and they wouldve won otherwise, and i cant help but think if it was any other team, more precisely any other player than brax, it wouldnt even be an issue because he legitimately was playing fairly. I guess its easy to kick a dog while hes down though, easy target. Just wish that couldve been handled in person, not on twitter five minutes after you just clapped us up and small talked with us like nothing was wrong.

Regarding the pistol smoke thing, theres truly no excuse and I take full responsibility. It was 2am and it wasnt malicious, steve, the admins and even the other team agreed w us that we were just being stupid and it ended up being irrelevant considering we got owned on train but still, it was the exact opposite of professional and if I'm going to be holding fraga to a high standard in that context, i shouldve acted accorsingly as well. In my defense, the warmod was fucking up that whole event (caused as a 20mdelay at half and they just disabeld it for the bo3 and did things manually). Four if not five of us left the server cause kyle made sure our updaterate was set and you have to leave to reset it. I was under the impression it'd be restarted again when our whole team left the servee, and my dumbass joke wouldnt look like some big malicious economy exploit. regardless, it was on us to have it restarted and I guess it was the cold and just wanting to play and go home cause it started at 1:45AM and we didnt want any more delays, but still, on a morality level i dropped the ball here and i take full responsibility for being a moron. Thankfully steve let me know it was more of just a bad look then an actual issue, he seemed more concerned with the headphone thing which I guess makes more sense because we lost train anyway and the kit was never used in that pistol.

Heres where I'm really disappointed by the way frag handled this, and I get we werent in a position to say shit given the circumstances but logically I believe we were fucked. We show up to the venue at 12 dead tired because we didnt get back to the bnb til 6, and sheila didnt get any sleep at all because she was so upset about this whole situation getting blown up. Anyways steve goes okay we need to talk, sits us down, tells us we have to replay a map and was doing us a favor by not just snap DQing us (EVEN THOUGH BRAX DIDNT DO SHIT MIND YOU THE BOY WAS FREEZING). And i appreciate that motive, but we were forced to play mirage, a map we auto banned after seeing a lot of issues on it, and also the first map we banned in our veto against them.

How is it fair that a team can pick any map they want in a bo1 decider after losing in a best of three fair and square? If anything, we should replay the map disputed which was dust2, or the last map that wasnt picked in the original veto process which was overpass. They knew since we banned mirage itd essentially be a free win for them, and I cant help but feel this decision was emotionally biased to help out a team that was acting on the premise of brax cheating, even though theres no hard proof and he legitimately didnt (despite voice comms being monitored regardless so obviously if he was cheating staff could just go back and see)

From our perspective, we had a pug of friends come together to play in the worst LAN conditions I have ever played on in my career. The delays were unbearable in the cold, the pauses and the incongruities in format that felt like it was being made on the fly, and the outrageous amount of flak my squad caught given what we know to be true is simply stunning. Not going to drop any names (although one made his opinion LOUDLY clear) but there were at least 4 admins that came up to me or kyle or derrick individually expressing their discontent for the way our situation was handled and are done w frag;because they were the only people on site - right behind us in that cold monitoring us mind you - they knew we got fucked over but I know Im not the most liked guy right now so choose what you want to believe I guess.

The people at the event for the most part were amazing, met a lot of awesome fans and players, and talked a lot of CS w people that seemed to genuinely love the game like I do. I mean no disrespect to the Fragadelphia guys, everytime I come through I try to help out w LAN stuff (moving pcs, helping setup, whatever). I consider all of those guys family, so it really sucks I wont be attending any more events there because this just left such a bad taste in my mouth.

I apologize for the length of this, just wanted to give my perspective on this because I know theres two sides to every story and even though you guys are a lil mean online sometimes, I'm a fuckup myself and frankly we're all here to play some CS.

Take care guys, brax will give his side when hes home I think.

TL;DR braxheadphone thing is explainable and he didnt cheat, im a dumbass what else is new,
Josh stop looking at the floor in person, theres nothing there.

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