Lycan 🇺🇸 · @Lycan
4th Apr 2017 from TwitLonger
(RT plz) Why we looked so unorganized and what we went through.
This is intended to be an explanation of why we couldn't meet expectations. Yes a lot of it will sound like excuses, some are...but there is no other way to explain what happened. I'm going to use player names but I'm not going to give specific ESL admin names but they will be named ESL(1,2 &3)
The story starts Feb 13th when ESL(1) begins a conversation with me to invite Onslaught to Y2S1. The question is asked if we have 3/5 from season 3 still on our roster. I answer yes Talon, Myself and Nineline. ESL(1) then send me an email telling me to put that in an email to make it official then we will receive an automatic bid to due our finish from Y1S3. Notice that at this point I have never mentioned fpsZED. Shortly after that Zed left rainbow 6 for personal issues and we decided to start P3NG1N. Zed then returned but we told him he would only have a sub role because we had decided on P3NG1N and he decides to leave the team. Now its Qualifier announcement day Feb 14th and I send another message to ESL(1) asking if we sign up for the qualifier or not and he tells me not to because we have already been invited to Y2S1, because of this we don't do the qualifiers. (this whole time we are practicing with Sov, Talon, Justyn, P3NG1N and myself)
The qualifiers blow by, we see articles that say we are invited for Y2S1 nobody from ESL talks to us until the day before Closed Qualifiers. ESL(2) tweets that another team has received our spot for Y2S1, confused I message back and he informs me without ZED on our team we don't meet the 3/5 rule. This is March 4th and the first time 18 days we have been questioned about our roster. At this time the rules in the ESL rulebook read that a player to count as an original member for your team must be an "active participant" which Nineline played in 1 game Y1S3 and practiced and strated all the time, to me he qualifies as an active participant which is why I told ESL(1) Yes we had 3/5 and nineline was one of them. I'm then told a player must play 60% of the games (which you cant find anywhere in the rulebook) and if we couldn't roster 3/5 we would be kicked from PL (with the open qualifiers already completed, which we were told we couldn't participate in). In a desperate attempt to save our season we ask Zed to come back and play our first game, which would set our roster, and he agrees. ESL(2) agrees that we meet the requirements NOW and gives us our 4th seed back.
March 12. Zed tweets that hes looking for a team. Zed leaves the team. I now get messages from ESL(1) saying that we don't meet 3/5 when he was fine with our 3/5 before (in Feb). Zed wont come back and I attempt showing screen shots of their approval and fight with them...if they would have denied us from the beginning we would have just qualified and no budge on their rules from ESL. A last ditch effort I ask Xclusive from our Y1S3 team to come back to the team to play our first game for us to protect us from losing our spot. He agrees. ESL(1) agrees that this fills our 3/5 as long as he plays our first match. The rules at the time read once the team is invited and the league is formed that you create a new 'original 5' which means that technically Xclusive shouldn't even have to play 1 game, just be on the roster. He doesn't agree with me and says that if Talon, Xclusive and myself don't play the first match we will 100% be DQ'd (march 14th). March 15, ESL(1) now informs we that people above him have talked and decided that Xclusive must stay on the roster for the entire season and is required to play the majority of the games. This rule comes out of no where and makes absolutely no sense and doesn't follow their rulebook so I inform him of this. In turn he informs me that they will be creating a new one that day...New rule book comes out and we are required now to play with 3/5 for 2 matches. Xclusive is very generous to protect us from getting kicked but he retired from R6, he streams frequently and he has no intention of maintaining a PL schedule (which is understandable). At this point we have to vote to bench one of our teammates. P3NG1N is selected since I played his role the season before so it was the easiest swap.
So we begin to practice with our normal roster some nights, random some nights and subs some nights. Nothing is ever consistent. The only thing that IS consistent is ESLs force on us about this rule and the threat of being DQ'd.
First week goes through (we have bye). One team doesn't play with 3/5 and I notify admins of this with the hopes that in turn we are okay to play without 3/5 as well. Instead they decide that this team is in fault of the rule and that they will make a ruling (this ruling still hasn't come). We play week 1 and get destroyed. Ominous is a good team. Most of the time I'm trying to explain what Xclusives role is what I need him to do where to go and call to make team the plan for the round. I'm constantly clogging up coms and mistake were made everywhere. That's on me for not being prepared to deal with the situation.
After the game, Sov decides that if we go 2 in out that P3NG1N never gets to play so he steps down after week 1. (new team to practice with. Roles get swapped). Now information comes out of two players that have been banned by Ubi for Toxic behavior and an investigation is formed to decide their fate. Quickly everyone figured out who it was and it turns out to be two players that we are suppose to be playing. We plan for them to play until otherwise noted but it was definitely a distraction for us. We do assume if Ubi bans someone so would ESL in turn, since we are suppose to set an example as professionals. However ESL takes it easy on the two players are they are allowed to still play.
One thing that isn't in timeline order because I wanted to put these two pieces together. During the closed qualifiers there was a player that is now in proleague that had racist remarks in his MOSS files from his discord messages that ESL decided also to give a warning to. This player has already received a suspension for racism from Y1S2. ESL has come out many times that they have a Zero Tolerance policy.
3 rules that were ignored 3/5 from another PL team, toxic behavior/conduct unbecoming and racism were all okay. BUT we were forced to play without our full roster.
The day of playday 2 (2hours before our match) after the announcement that the two toxic players have been cleared. I lose my understanding of the situation and tell ESL(3) that I don't get why we are being targeted and everyone is getting breaks. We are allowing racist and toxic players to play but our roster cant play? Finally ESL(3) decides what has happened to us is uncalled for and gives us the green light to play full roster. Sovsov has no clue that he can play today and we cant reach him. So we scramble to play with Nineline and then play with Sovsov, getting destroyed once again.
Almost everyday since March 4th for our team to prove that we had what it takes to make it to lan. Everyday was a new challenge to figure out someone to let us just play together. 2 hours before our last match was what it took. I tried everything I could think of just to get someone to listen and nothing worked for 30 days.
I'm sorry for the fans we let down. I want to let you know that we tried so hard to make it work. When you are constantly changing entry fraggers and droners. The responsibilities get very confusing and we just couldn't compete.
Sadly I understand by posting this I could be banned from ESL play. Which is unfortunate because I have tried to boost this game since closed Beta. I have always been in the community and tried to help where I could. I even started streaming even though I'm very introverted just because I want this game to succeed.
I wish the rest of the teams in this season the best.
PS - sorry for errors in writing, I'm not looking over this a second time. Any questions I'm willing to answer. Any doubts (from people in power) I have screen shots to back up everything I have stated.
PSS - Thank you to Onslaught for giving us a chance and sorry we let you guys down. Also to our fans, thank you for being there and rooting for us. <3