Rules question

[King]

And if it's Lem vs Dregnor in the finals it's obviously going to be points for Beat Down either way.

Not really, considering Degnor isn't in Hydra. I'd have the robot forfeit, so as not to accidentally beat Lem and win. But I have a hard time seeing how that's different than a regular duel. Its even more points on the line, actually.

My bad. I keep forgetting Dregnor isn't apart of the team this season like King lol.

[DUEL Goblin]

As well as how to spell Degnor.

[Candy Hart]

Maybe it's DREGNOR that doesn't know how to spell his name!

[King]

Dregnor is the new Degnor! Sorry lol.

[Kalamere]

As for alts in regular duels. The basic guideline should be: Please avoid fighting members of the team you have an alternate character on.

For some of the alts I know, from people who have outted themselves, I have made a change to the backend stuff so that these duels will automatically not be counted. For example: Apple has made no secret of playing Spell. So, in Apple's listing I have placed an alt team tag of GOS and on Spell's listing I have placed an alt tag listing of TBD. She can now fight as either against people from either team and the backend will know not to count the duel. For Jacen I put in the alt team tag of DRT, but not the reciprocal since I don't know which character is.

If you want to be in that category, tell me. If you do not, that's fine. But then either avoid being in the situation or let Sylus or me know privately that a given duel should be struck from the record.

[Candy Hart]

To further complicate things... but now I am wondering this...

Team A:

Character X
Character Y
Character Z

Team B:

Character Q (X Alt)
Character R
Character S

Obviously Characters R & S cannot duel Character X for points.

But is it also not allowed for Character X to duel Non-Hydra alt characters of Players R & S for points?

[DUEL Goblin]

Its the way I interpreted it. Players Y,Z,R,S are not allowed to duel Player X and any alts of X for Hydra. It makes sense, doesn't it? Whether it in practice it will work (I doubt it) is a different matter.

[PrlUnicorn]

(( This response is OOC .. the thread is not marked as such, but we're now talking alts.. so probably it should be. ))

To avoid confusion, rules should always be discussed OOC because a player generally has one opinion on any given rule and their characters might have varying ones.

The reason why, is because while you and others believe each other to be doing it honorably, you can damn sure bet that there are those out there who are likely saying behind the scenes that something might be shady.

The reason to not award points for it would be to remove all arguing against the potential of foul play. If there's nothing to be gained from it, the naysayers can't point fingers and say "That duel is Suspicious!"

Better to err on the side of caution.

While I don't agree with not being allowed to duel the alts of one's teammates, I understand that Sylus wants to avoid even the appearance of impropriety, the headache of finger pointing, and he said she said. I seem to remember that's how the rule got added in the first place. Last year, someone happen to notice that someone was dueling a teammate's alt and assumed something improper was going on.

To further complicate things... but now I am wondering this...

Team A:

Character X
Character Y
Character Z

Team B:

Character Q (X Alt)
Character R
Character S

Obviously Characters R & S cannot duel Character X for points.

But is it also not allowed for Character X to duel Non-Hydra alt characters of Players R & S for points?

That would be a common sense thing, but common sense isn't all that common anymore.


As far as Jacen's Tower Challenge goes, I think what we have there is someone that looked at things from the IC standpoint only and wanted to challenge the person that defeated her friend. Now, if one wanted to take a somewhat cynical view point that could be taken as a purposeful OOC attempt to keep Forces of Nature from gaining Hydra points. Interesting strategy if you think about it.

[Noctis Caelum]

To further complicate things... but now I am wondering this...

Team A:

Character X
Character Y
Character Z

Team B:

Character Q (X Alt)
Character R
Character S

Obviously Characters R & S cannot duel Character X for points.

But is it also not allowed for Character X to duel Non-Hydra alt characters of Players R & S for points?

I'd like to know that as well, and due to me having an alt on a team.

As far as Jacen's Tower Challenge goes, I think what we have there is someone that looked at things from the IC standpoint only and wanted to challenge the person that defeated her friend. Now, if one wanted to take a somewhat cynical view point that could be taken as a purposeful OOC attempt to keep Forces of Nature from gaining Hydra points. Interesting strategy if you think about it.

Actually. This has nothing to do with Hydra from the OOC stand point, nor does it have anything to do with Claire's player wanting to get Jacen at back for beating Rena for the Tower of Fire. It's simply her wanting to challenge for the tower and nothing more.

[PrlUnicorn]

As far as Jacen's Tower Challenge goes, I think what we have there is someone that looked at things from the IC standpoint only and wanted to challenge the person that defeated her friend. Now, if one wanted to take a somewhat cynical view point that could be taken as a purposeful OOC attempt to keep Forces of Nature from gaining Hydra points. Interesting strategy if you think about it.

Actually. This has nothing to do with Hydra from the OOC stand point, nor does it have anything to do with Claire's player wanting to get Jacen at back for beating Rena for the Tower of Fire. It's simply her wanting to challenge for the tower and nothing more.

I offered an opinion not facts. I did not presume to speak for Jacen's player nor Claire's in this regard. It's been my experience, over the years, that speaking for someone else, publicly or privately, tends to come back to bite one in the ass.

[Joku Shoyia]

As someone who got a dozen duels in this weekend and saw a lot of previously unknown commoners suddenly appear in the rings, I can say I noticed about all of them spread themselves out pretty equally among those available with nothing that seemed suspicious. I am sure if someone went through all the duel results and took a look a the names not previously listed on the standings before the first week of Hydra I would be surprised to see a case where one commoner happen to duel big lossess to one team exclusively. I know some of my CoM teammates dueled some of the same duelers I did, but I again also think that number could be found to be on par average of other teams.

[Harris]

The rule is in place as a failsafe to close a potential loophole. Would you rather be talking about how inconvenient this rule is, or talking about "suspicious" duels between players that are teammates? Or, conversely, be accused of participating in a "suspicious" duel? To clarify, this rule was not put into place because any impropriety was assumed last season. As Sylus stated, it's simply the attempt to close an exploit the best way possible. If anyone else has a better way to do this I'm certain Sylus will open up a thread for suggestions after this season ends.

In my opinion the alt rule is in place because it's *incredibly* easy to create a new character and send them out to duel. Much moreso than TDL or any of the other leagues. Your team is down a handful of points in the final stretch? Create an alt, get beat around a few times to help close the gap. ANYONE can do this. It's not limited to players with current alts, literally anyone can do this. The cusp of the rule being in place is for the sake of enforcement if something like that were to occur. That way nobody can argue it wasn't in the rules. It is in the rules. And if if occurs, knowingly or unknowingly, it won't count. If it's an issue, tell your captain or your teammates who you play so it doesn't.

It's not something you want to do and the rule is meant to make that perfectly clear and discourage it. There are plenty of people not participating in Hydra that are still monitoring it, and if Kalamere doesn't catch it, someone probably will and the points will be scrubbed accordingly.

[Winter Pearl]

I would like to address something in the rules:

Fighters earn points for their team by dueling on regular dueling nights at least four times a week, entering Sanctioned Tournaments, and challenging or defending titles.

Emphasis mine. That appears in the Hydra Rules thread in this forum. However, no point amount is addressed.

While all other extra points mentioned in the initial set of rules appear on duelingzone site, that one is not mentioned in the updated rules. Was that purposefully eliminated or oversight?

[Kalamere]

A little bit of both.

Last year you got 2 points for entering a tourney and another 2 for each round advanced, then +50 for winning I think. Sylus and I had a bit of miscommunication when getting moving this year. In the rules post he had stated a tourney win would be worth 15 without mention of the previous year's bonuses, so that's what I wrote up on DZ without thinking about it or questioning him.

Eventually we did talk about it and it was an oversight on his part. At that point though we'd already a tournament come and go (I think it was the Panther Claw) and scored it in line with the rules on DZ. Figuring it was too late in game to change that, he made specific mention of the round advancement points in the Hydra tournament but decided to leave the others as written, to be review again and possibly adjusted back for next year.

~Kal