Sammy · @SammyboyGG
22nd Jan 2021 from TwitLonger
The Arkosh Issue and Solutions
The Arkosh Issue and Solutions
Hi, been a while...
Please give this post a full read before commenting, I think it’s important the public seriously understands this issue and since I found myself in the middle of it I would like to be fully transparent. Hopefully after this post we can move forward and Arkosh can succeed in bringing some much needed attention to NADota.
Part 1: The Issues
Anonymity in E-Sports is a slippery slope and most cases of it would result in an immediate ban.
I will start by clarifying that Slacks has been in communication with Valve in regards to Arkosh, its players, etc. To the people posting that Slacks could be swapping players mid tourney this will not be the case. I have had conversations with the people involved confirming this. Let’s stick to facts and not witch hunt please.
Despite this, the fact that Arkosh has a hidden roster is still a massive issue. I will give a couple examples here.
1: When I am playing vs Arkosh I can not find the competitive history of Team Arkoshs players. This becomes an issue because ana could theoretically join Arkosh and nobody would know. It basically deletes the competitive history of the player. Imagine how many times Lukiluki would get to play Pangolier on Arkosh Gaming. If that’s not a competitive advantage what is. People argue that all pros smurf but this simply isn’t true. All competitive matches are logged publicly. Even if I changed my name people would still be able to go back and find Sammyboys or Noblewingz (see I already tried it) competitive match history.
2: It basically deletes the history of the team. In 1 year from now Arkosh could swap players and if they used the same account that means that all the competitive Arkosh data from the past year is invalidated. Imagine Arkosh changes 5 players and I go to prepare vs them. I will use the data from the past year of Arkosh yet I am playing vs 5 different players.
3: They play under different rules. Every other team needs their full name on DPC websites while Arkosh does not. The team existing in itself is likely some favoritism from Valve. I'm sure many more issues could arise as well due to the nature of the team.
Part 2: Solutions
Arkosh was a new venture and the first of its kind. Slacks had not considered a lot of this when he created Arkosh and a lot of mistakes were made along the way. With this in mind and after conversations with Slacks + Slacks conversations with others (Organizers etc) here are some solutions that will be applied moving forward.
1: To fix situation 1 all teams competing against Arkosh will be informed of the roster and who the players on the roster were before becoming members of Arkosh. This has been applied for all NADPC games and will be applied to all Arkosh games moving forward to my knowledge. Certainly a step in the right direction.
2: Arkosh player names will be tied to the account holder. Meaning if the player who uses the GOAT account leaves the team then GOAT will also leave the team and Arkosh will have a new name for their new player. This is important so that the history of Arkoshes matches can be legitimate.
3: This part of it may bother some people but has no answer, it’s true Arkosh would be banned by nearly every other esport. That said, I believe Slacks has good intentions in mind and I hope people will give Arkosh a chance moving forward. Continuing to address issues that arise with Arkosh and issues will likely arise due to the nature of the team.
Part 3: The Ugly
Unfortunately these solutions are only being used now people in the past have competed in situations that were by nature unfair. Arkosh did have a competitive advantage over other teams.
In Open Qualifiers 1-2 for NADPC Arkosh played with its original roster. In Open Qualifier 3 they played with a new player but using the same account names.
The morality of playing open qualifiers will continue to be a struggle for Arkosh. Firstly, if you told every Open Qualifier team who was on the roster that would defeat the purpose. Unfortunately that may have to be part of the solution but hopefully they don’t have to play Open Qualifiers anytime soon. The players in these open qualifiers already were at an unfair disadvantage.
Irrelevant of if Arkosh would’ve won the Qualifiers anyway the fact that open qualifier teams did not know who they were playing against is Unfair
Secondly, swapping players and not swapping account names between open qualifiers created an unfair advantage for Arkosh. People took the matchdata from previous open qualifiers 1/2 and previous Arkosh matches and applied that to the Arkosh that played Open Qualifier 3 despite that team using different players. This is also Unfair.
I believe Slacks had no ill intent but created an unfair advantage for his team (unknowingly). Since brought to his attention he has done his best to address these issues (See part 2) and moving forward I know he will do his best to continue addressing them. Despite this, what occurred was unfair and I believe an apology is owed to all teams who competed in Open Qualifiers vs Arkosh or competed against them with no knowledge of the roster. I know that this happened because many of my friends spoke to me privately of it happening to them. They are owed sympathy in this situation, not memes.
Thanks for reading, I am not trying to stir drama but educate hopefully the dota 2 viewerbase on what has been going on behind the scenes as well as the moral issues that Arkosh creates. Hopefully that msg is conveyed, excited to watch their matches in division 2 of NADPC!