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Awaclus and the Finnish Championship

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theory:
I received the following email from a participant in the Finnish mafia championship.  I am withholding judgment until I get sense from you all as to how you feel about the issue and what, if anything, should be done.


--- Quote ---Hello,

Sorry for the possible inconvenience and thanks in advance. I don't represent the Finnish mafia forum Kylä but I would like to bring into your attention that the f.ds representative Awaclus cheated and intentionally outed from the Finnish Championship game on D2 to manipulate the game in scum teams favor. I participated in the game and I played town. He was assigned to team scum and he had chosen a strategy where he claimed to be town and referenced to game logs in this forum where had actually played town. This ruse is totally viable scum strategy in my opinion, but it didn't work and generally other players were suspicious about his alignment during his stay in the game. The game had 13 players and 3 of them were scum. Out of three scum players we were able to lynch one on d1. D2 masons claimed themselves which gave us two confirmed players on town side.

At this point Awaclus' disrespectful attitude and arrogant communication had cause a lot of uncivil behavior towards him, myself included. This is of course totally viable strategy as scum but not really respectful and doesn't represent good sportsmanship. I snapped at him and several other players also descended to his level and some players received warnings due their behavior. At the same time Awaclus chose to out from the game and admins started looking for a replacement. At this point many players were worried if Awaclus had dropped out from the game due other players being rude to him. I take responsibility for my own behavior because Awaclus was able to get under my skin. I genuinely felt bad about me losing my composure and I apologized during the game and personally to Awa after the game.

At the end of D2 we were able to lynch second scum from the game, only leaving the scum in Awaclus' slot. At the start of D3, the roleblocker claimed themself and told who they had targeted during N2. Because the night killed player wasn't one of the two confirmed masons, there was only one scum left in the game and we knew roleblocker is alive, it was a hard confirm for roleblocker and the player they had targeted. This gave us four (masons, roleblocker, roleblocker's target 1) confirmed players out of 9 alive players and only one scum to be searched for. At this point roleblocker said they will announce which player they will target N3 so we will have one more confirmed player at D4 if someone is killed next night. If roleblocker would've been night killed on N4 we'd still have 4 confirmed players out of 7. At this point I'm sure you realise that it was mathematically impossible for scum to win the game so Awaclus' replacement player conceded.

After the victory celebrations, scumchat was posted to the topic and from there we discovered that Awaclus made a 100% conscious decision to out from the game so he could manipulate in scum's favor. His team mates were also aware of his reasons to out from the game. In the post-game discussion he has again confirmed this choice and game mods have confirmed to Awaclus this behavior is not acceptable and he would've been penalized with a temporary participation ban if this came to game mods attention during the game. If scum team would've won because of Awaclus manipulated the game by outing, I'm sure no player would've acknowledged the win.

Now Awaclus has defended his decision to out from the game and said it's totally acceptable to intentionally collect a participation ban if it would help his team win the game. As he was just a guest player in Kylä, this doesn't bother him at all since he probably wouldn't have participated in a another game in the future. I want to press that this was done as an official ambassador of f.ds in a Championship Game.

Your mafia rules and civility pledge clearly state in two different sections that players should not officially out from the game for manipulation reasons.

"Please do not use this (outing) as a manipulation technique."

"-- Every game requires participation. Do not sign up for games that you are unwilling to play. /Outing has become increasingly problematic lately. It's an action that should be highly, highly frowned upon--an exception, rather than something that happens at least twice in every game. Finding replacements is tough on the mods, the other players, and the replacements themselves."

At the Kylä Forum, Awaclus is saying that these rules only prohibit officially outing from the game. I would like to have your opinion on this.
--- End quote ---

And this subsequent email:


--- Quote ---Hello, Kylä's adminstrator Jitachi here.

First of all, I'm terribly sorry about the ruckus in finnish championship have spread in your forum too due message of Keturin. It is true Awaclus caused a lot of trouble in the championship with his playstyle and been juggling in grey area of rules, but honestly speaking I was wishing that would be kept inside our own forum without spreading further. However, due Awaclus have provoked Keturin, Keturin sent the messages and even asked testimony about game event from me I felt like I need to tell my own side. Like Awaclus said, he didn't send his /out request directly to me, but instead to GM of the game, Cameron: the reason I'm aware of content of the dropout message is she forwarded it to me for other reason. His full reason in pm to drop out was Awaclus lacked motivation to play in game; the game have caused sleeping problems and it was taking a lot of more time than he have wanted. In addition first day was so hard he felt like he was unable to give his best performance in game. It is true in Kylä you have right to give in any time you want, no matter the reason but because that was championship game that also meant his action made him disqualified because he didn't play game until the end. Ergo, in that regard he have been already punished about his actions because he is unable to win championship or give out victory points to other players which is the main idea of whole championship. Was his trick bit dirty? Definitely. But was it forbidden? Technically no, because no one in whole adminstration didn't realize the possibility of someone sacrificing his own chances to win championship to try help his team to win one game of mafia in hopeless setup which was basically unfair for bad guys with Masoner, roleblocker and town cop. Only thing I'm mad at him in role of game mod was not being truthful about reason to drop. Strategic reason is frowned and bit cheap, but because I had no idea he was planning it, I had no chances to discuss about it with him. I also hope Keturin and Awaclus stop discussing it outside official channels: what happened in Kylä doesn't involve in my opinion Dominion Strategy forums at all and Keturin's continued chase of Awaclus back in his own home forum is plainly unjustified.

Kind regards,
Johanna T./Jitachi
Mafia game forum Kylä

--- End quote ---

Awaclus:
I'm pretty sure that e-mail is from another player, not from the organizer, and he has somewhat misrepresented the situation there.

1) I did not cheat in the game, I followed all of the rules in the game and on their forum in general.

2) It is true that I did /out from the game on purpose, since it looked like that could give our team a significantly better chance of winning. This does not appear to be against any rules on their site, although they discourage people from /outing in general, with no mention as to what reasons for /outing are allowed and what aren't. My scumbuddy was an admin on the site, and I discussed the plan with him in the scum daychat before doing it, and although he did mention that it's not "good sportsmanship", he agreed that it would be beneficial for our team and did not attempt to stop me.

3) It is true that a mod of the game posted after the game to point out that my behavior was not acceptable. I could not have been reasonably expected to know that during the game, since it was not in the rules, and obviously if it had been in the rules, or the mods (who, to be fair, did not have access to the scum daychat) or my scumbuddy had informed me that quitting for strategic reasons is not acceptable on the forum, I would not have done it. In my message to the mods where I requested to /out, I did not claim to have any other motive for /outing besides the fact that I wasn't playing well enough. Apparently the mods assumed that it had something to do with people criticizing my playstyle, and subsequently sent out warnings to at least the person I believe this e-mail is from, but they made that assumption completely on their own and I most certainly did not try to mislead them into doing that.

4) It is not true that I would have been penalized with a temporary participation ban. In fact, I have not been penalized with a temporary participation ban as far as I can tell.

5) "Please do not use this (outing) as a manipulation technique" is obviously not a direct quote from any of our rules. He is referring to rule 3.9, and I have always understood the "this" in that rule to specifically refer to /outing in the main game thread, because that is what the entire rule is talking about. Whether or not we should reword that rule to make its intent more clear is up for debate.

keturin:

--- Quote from: Awaclus on October 18, 2018, 11:55:48 am ---
4) It is not true that I would have been penalized with a temporary participation ban. In fact, I have not been penalized with a temporary participation ban as far as I can tell.


--- End quote ---

Jitachi clearly stated that if mods would've been aware at the time that you're outing intentionally, you would've been most likely penalized. He clearly stated that if admins are suspecting that a player is trying to /out to gain favor, they will be penalized. I really wrinkles my brain how you can think, that actions that are punishable with penalties would've be acceptable player actions. 

Asper:

--- Quote ---I want to press that this was done as an official ambassador of f.ds in a Championship Game.

--- End quote ---

#notmyambassador

Awaclus:

--- Quote from: keturin on October 18, 2018, 12:20:32 pm ---
--- Quote from: Awaclus on October 18, 2018, 11:55:48 am ---
4) It is not true that I would have been penalized with a temporary participation ban. In fact, I have not been penalized with a temporary participation ban as far as I can tell.


--- End quote ---

Jitachi clearly stated that if mods would've been aware at the time that you're outing intentionally, you would've been most likely penalized. He clearly stated that if admins are suspecting that a player is trying to /out to gain favor, they will be penalized.

--- End quote ---

It continues to be the case that I have not been penalized with a temporary participation ban or any other penalty as far as I can tell. Based on what Jitachi said, it sounds like they didn't know that I flat out admitted in my /outing request that the reason was that my performance wasn't good enough, since I sent that PM to a different mod.


--- Quote from: keturin on October 18, 2018, 12:20:32 pm ---I really wrinkles my brain how you can think, that actions that are punishable with penalties would've be acceptable player actions.
--- End quote ---

In general, if there is a clearly defined penalty for an action in the rules and the penalty isn't harsh enough to hurt my alignment more than whatever benefit we get, then it's simply worth it. On f.ds, that never happens because having your entire team disqualified is a possible penalty (specifically to address this), and in this particular case, I was not aware that my actions were punishable with penalties, and I have not been punished with any penalties, so that doesn't really apply.

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