Agneya Koushik · @officialmarzil
24th Feb 2021 from TwitLonger
Banned from ESL India? ESL India and Nodwin strikes yet again!
ESL India and Nodwin strikes yet again!
This time handing us a "red card" for missing two matches.
Allow me to explain why this is the most colossal mess of a tournament from start to finish with all its flaws and bullshit.
1) ESL India does not allow players/teams to schedule matches. At all. It's just "hey we give date we give time show up or you get forefit loss". Now you may think that sure if they give notice sometime prior to the game being scheduled, we can do something and adjust the timings to play. But nooo, the notice period for giving the schedule is in their words "24-48 hours" before the game. Most of the time it isn't even a weekend. But we HAVE to show up or we get a "RED CARD". There is no mention, or even a notification given for when they update the times. We have to constantly check every single day.
2) ESL India does not allow players to reschedule matches on player requests BUT will reschedule if it's convenient for THEM. Their employees including the likes of Mr. Sandeep Goden will ghost you constantly when you try and ask them for any help or any information and will message you only when they need something done such as "Hey can you shoot this video for us to help us get more registrations?". According to these chaps, emergencies - prior commitments and holidays simply do not exist. All must be canceled in 24-48 hours of them saying so.
3) They are not the only tournament for CS in India. As much as people like to claim "oMg InDiA cS dEaD bRo", it is very much alive with tournaments happening almost every other weekend as well as the most recent ASUS ROG tryouts. They have to respect the fact that sometimes schedules clash. Every other tournament organizer is so much more willing to listen to players and have rescheduling happen for matches. But ESL India? Oh, no-no-no. They claim to be sophisticated and follow rules to the T but whenever there are literal hours worth of delays for games on their end and 0 communication about informing the schedule you have to ask how 'professional they really are'
As for the 2 matches that we have missed, one of them was due to ASUS ROG Tryouts that I had to attend and help select the players. The schedule for the tryouts was informed weeks prior to the event. This was also mentioned by me to the staff in ESL India (even though I had a gut feeling they wouldn't comply)to not hold matches during that weekend.
This not only involved me but other players in the ROG Tryouts who were fortunate enough that the tryouts weren't as retardedly hell-bent on making the players suffer.
The second game was a two-parter,
-> we had 2 TEC games prior to the game at 6pm i.e 4pm and 5pm. We were playing the 5pm game vs FFE which got pulled further due to delays and being a very close game. This pulled it longer than it should've been. Once again ESL has no respect for other tournaments and couldn't be patient with the games being completed before joining the veto for theirs - even though it is entirely possible as evident from their horrible production and the number of technical pauses THEY take to fix their issues. But when a team cannot make it for legitimate reasons - no forgiveness.
-> During the TEC game, SoStronk ( the application that hosts the servers and aids the vetos) bugged out. I could not get notifications of the games veto as the app was bugged on the loading screen. The easiest fix is a restart of the application but since I was already ingame and there was no more allowance of tech timeouts, I could not exit the game, restart sostronk and do the veto. More importantly, it's always important to focus on the game at hand - not for a player to be worrying about all of this. I mentioned this to ESL but again - GHOSTED - WHILE THE ISSUE WAS HAPPENING. They did not even try to contact me for the veto or to help sort any issues. Just a straight disqualification. I recieved information about this not from ESL, but from a sostronk admin on the TEC server.
While I do believe that we are at some fault for not being able to make it to the games - it's also important to understand that this is not mine or everybody's full-time job.
Even jobs offer holidays and breaks. Jobs often come with a calendar for working days. ESL India however decides to keep this a secret until 24 hours before the game.
The best part being they scheduled the games for the weekend of 13th and 14th February and gave the timings and dates on 12th of February. I do not have to explain what the dates infer.
The icing on the cake is their "RED CARD" for their incompetence in talking to teams and players to schedule games even though they have all the power to do so.
With 0 transparency and a team of dedicated dimwits, they have managed to create the worst tournament bracket/system in existence and also the worst punishments for missing matches.
I could rant on about all the wrongdoings and my opinion about them in general but I want this post mainly to be focused on how the parent company Nodwin and ESL India treats their players.
I'm sure if you ask any player in the masters about how satisfied they are with the tournament proceedings and handling they will all have something negative to say.
Good job ESL India
Good job Nodwin
You're really helping 'elevate' eSports in India.
Can't wait for ESL India guys to 'get in touch' with me and I start ghosting them.
A shoutout to the guys at The Esports Club (TEC) for their tournaments. Their staff is always willing and helpful to adjust timings and schedules so every team can play.
This post may not go much the way of getting us unbanned or whatever, but I hope at least it creates enough of a ruckus to help the players of the future - whatever game it may be - that Nodwin will put their dirty hands into.
TLDR - ESL India does not listen to teams/players for scheduling games. Their punishments in accordance are garbage. Their staff do nothing to help. They are incompetent to host tournaments.