I believe I have said something like this before, but could we at least like have a thread where the defendant could state their case instead of having a middleman like MissingNo. I know the users don't really have control over the website and it all comes down to what the committee/creators says is what happens, but I really think this could improve certain situations. Since, I joined this website, Time and Stars have appeared to be pretty solid users that I looked up to as veterans, and they are taking this punishment honorably. It wouldn't really be a flight risk to let them have a post or 2 at least explaining themselves.


Also, a minor suggestion. I don't want to sound xenophobic or anything, but perhaps we could have a representative for each active-ish region in a sub committee or something ? It could help with having all sides represented in things like this, having a third viewpoint from someone trusted who participated in these tournaments.


For the actual case: While it was a rather stupid decision, I don't think there was anything really malicious behind it. It's not like there was lots of money at stake or anything besides digital prizes and the occasional prize which takes more than a couple wins from shady matches to get. I agree they should be punished for openly encouraging that kind of sportsmanship, however.


Lastly, I want to thank the committee for making this thread, instead of just shadow banning them and keeping it under the rug. Keeping everything open is good for the community.


EDIT: One more thing. I have competed in different types of competitions from sports, to TCG. If someone leaves mid-game/tournament, that counts as wins for all the people that were supposed play against them. We need solid rules on how these situations should be handled, if not the way I described.

---

Signature credit to Leet.o

Spoiler (Click to View)

Threads you should read:

Pony King ? God, can't believe I typed this. I have to put my keyboard in the dishwasher now...

dude are you a gangster

LOL did you asked Midnight to take that pic?

When a monochrome picture is posted on WBO, it doesn't mean that it's always from Midnight.

I wouldn't trust someone with that many Cancer faces.

Well damn.

@[The Supreme One] Soul Baez V145AS

There's nothing else really to do or say except wait for the Superbowl, but I'm only here so I don't get fined.



Time. *gets up and leaves*

We won't have tournaments in the winter. Cause we are not one of those Canadian people where they just go outside like nothing happened to their hands.

i like my coffee like i like my men B)



i don't like coffee

I never have.

*Ginga*.. you're drunk bro... go home.. : )

Tbh SGMS & BDMS are kinda worthless.
MSUV is a far better spent investment; DGMF is even better IMO.

Um what? You're just saying that because you're a dragoon fanboy...

Why would I be suspended????

HMS summarised:




Anything not Tornado Type S:  Wolborg will leave you #rekt




Otherwise:  Go crazy with Ultimate Grip Flat 




For something less cookie-cutter:  Jiraiya sure is sexy

Is Wolborg 2 useless for competitive play?

Extremely useless. 
Now, if you come upon one I'll just PM you my address so you can throw it away. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I wasn't looking for Beyblade Underwear, I swear

Another message from Time :

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10X_z...fDZSZOS7AY

I didn't give him the ability to post and then take it back; it was a bug. He's suspended, so he obviously shouldn't be able to post. I also saw this message last night and before removing it, immediately messaged him saying we would email him an answer, which he certainly saw. I am not sure what the purpose of reposting this is.

The incident Time is speaking about here is one that we're already aware of, involving a different user entirely. We didn't act on this because we didn't feel it was necessary, and we didn't even mention it to Time, so I am not sure why he's bringing it up now. We explicitly asked him questions about RazSharpie and Stars Dad. (And we asked a lot of questions; both Yami and Time received many messages from the WBO team, each with multiple questions and details that we asked them to confirm.)

I want to re-summarize what's happened here:

Time allowed Yami's parents to enter his tournaments and then forfeit an unlimited number of matches, making their participation totally voluntarily, despite counting and submitting every single match as an actual loss. This happened across multiple events. When we confronted Time about this, he tried to hide this issue in the language of "conscious forfeits" — since they're physically present, it doesn't matter if they forfeit their matches. This investigation was started when someone said their battle record from Time's tournaments showed them playing matches they didn't play, which means that not every attendee was aware of what was going on.

Yami explicitly encouraged this among organizers, and we received reports from two other organizers where Yami encouraged them to use their accounts even though they weren't there. Thankfully Time has never done this (at least not to our knowledge), but it makes it clear that these accounts were always used as a fallback in situations where they could be used to hit the minimum number of participants, and were often used to simply inflate numbers.

We can obviously do more to document how to handle forfeits, and we will. But it's unreasonable to expect us, a small, fan-run organization to have completely-thorough rules that protect us against our own organizers, nor a fully functional legal system to handle incidents (even legit sporting organizations don't do this); we certainly didn't spend a ton of time thinking about how organizers might abuse our very simple policies. We also don't agree with Yami, who told us it was our fault for not having a rule against fake accounts:

Apparently I checked the rule book and term of condition, I have noticed NOTHING related to "Fake Accounts" in organized tournaments.

If, you implemented that rule all the sudden then this is unfair to the punishment system. Why was this not addressed sooner?

Obviously, we think the word "fake" — not real, not valid, not acceptable — is enough to make it clear that this isn't OK. We feel that we acted appropriately considering the level of collusion among organizers involved and the huge timeline over which this took place. We asked both Time and Yami plenty of questions about what happened at these events and decided how to react based on their own answers. Again, all of the information here was confirmed by the organizers involved themselves.

The attempt to totally discredit us rather than take responsibility is disappointing, along with the attempt to frame it in nationalistic terms. The country of each staff member's origin doesn't affect what they're responsible for, and most of us have our own areas of focus that are role-related, not country-related. Every staff member has the right to participate in any staff conversation, and I am not sure why Time would think only Americans are fit to hold him accountable. This decision was made by consensus, meaning we negotiated until everyone on the team found the outcome acceptable. It's worth remembering that we're an international organization run by a small team. The last conversation I remember that even involves a specific geography was when we adjusted the prices for Indian players.

"Canada-centric?" We know a lot of people feel that way. The truth is that Beyblade has always had a strong presence in Canada, and many of the founding members are from Canada. We have a very strong, longtime relationship with a Canadian convention. We recognize that there's a tilt towards Canada in terms of activity and staff composition, but we don't expect it to stay that way once Burst rulls out internationally. I also don't think it affects things much.

Committee members aren't intended to be national representatives; organizers are representatives of their local communities, but we don't plan things based on country. We hope the changes we're making in the organizers' circle, which will now be used to communicate with organizers directly, will make it easier for organizers to work with us directly without need for a "representative".

We were really not happy to suspend two organizers, but this situation is obviously not acceptable. But since then, one organizer has chastised us for not making it clear enough that fake accounts are against the rules; the other has threatened us with the disintegration of their local community and changed the subject to an unrelated incident we never even mentioned in order to make us seem less reasonable. I think it's clear why we couldn't trust them to host tournaments in the future.

I think Stars and Time's arguments that try to act like the committee is a problem. Blaming the committee for your faults is wrong in so many ways, I hope they don't actually think they were wrongly accused.

Also, a minor suggestion. I don't want to sound xenophobic or anything, but perhaps we could have a representative for each active-ish region in a sub committee or something ? It could help with having all sides represented in things like this, having a third viewpoint from someone trusted who participated in these tournaments.

For the actual case: While it was a rather stupid decision, I don't think there was anything really malicious behind it. It's not like there was lots of money at stake or anything besides digital prizes and the occasional prize which takes more than a couple wins from shady matches to get. I agree they should be punished for openly encouraging that kind of sportsmanship, however.

It's funny you bring up a "third party who attended" because I know of a few Maryland players who were asked about this subject.

Making up fake members for the last 2 years is cool to you? How well does that reflect the community?

The committee took action and served justice, it's nice to know the committee will take initiative and brings punishments.

So while I've wanted to reply to this, I've only had time to lurk over the past few days. Although, I was able to see people's firsthand reactions to this, so it did give me some time to reflect on the situation, and decide whether I was really reacting to the ban itself, or just other people's opinion of the ban. Either way, this is a great opportunity to bring up some deeper-rooted issues in the community.

Firstly, this decision, like many of the other decisions the Committee has recently made, was highly polarizing to the Beyblade community. There always seems to be a group who agrees with the Committee without question, and a group who always disagrees, and these two factions usually consist of the same groups of users. Admittedly, while I try to remain neutral, for the most part I find myself falling on the "disagree" side more. Many of the first reactions to the ban that I saw were other users blindly supporting the Committee's decision and spewing hate speech about Time and Yami without knowing both sides of the story, and for the most part, these users were people who either had no prior knowledge of the situation or who had formerly been on friendly terms with Time and Yami (or had no relationship with them at all). Quite frankly, I find this false sense of moral superiority absolutely abhorrent, and I can't help but recognize some parallels this incident has with the Kaneki incident that happened about two years ago. Yes, what Kaneki did was wrong, and his original punishment (I forget whether it was a temporary ban or just a big warning) was fitting, but due to the whole mob mentality of the WBO, it turned into a vigilante-led witch hunt that blew the situation out of proportion and provoked a far worse outcome than it probably would have had otherwise.

As for the argument of not allowing Time and Yami to defend themselves, I think that it has less to do with the matter of defending themselves rather than how the Committee chose to act on their responses.

By the way, yes the perpetrator's version is good to have, but I do investigations for a living myself, and when you have so much proof from different sources before even reaching out to them, whatever the person would say does not change the weight of everything else, because of course they would always defend themselves and try to make you see that they are not responsible for what they did, or that it was not that bad. This is a trend in everyone, I see that in people every month when I interrogate them.

You made a thread to discuss it, so I'm here to discuss it. If the only reply that will make you happy is "OK, we'll ban it!" then it's not going to be much of a discussion.

While banning a part and banning a user are two different scenarios, the logic behind this statement remains the same: If the Committee would not accept any answer other than a confession of guilt, then what was the point of interrogating them in the first place? If someone is accused of something they will defend themselves regardless of whether they are guilty or innocent. When I first viewed this thread after seeing Time and Yami's surprised reactions I was under the impression that the "cooperation" stated in the OP was fabricated, especially given that one of the sources in question (who also happens to be part of the group that almost always agrees with the Committee's decisions) testified against Time and Yami despite having no firsthand experience with any of the suspect events, or nearly any Maryland events in general. I now know that there was some communication between the two parties, but I still think it seems rather one-sided. My problem is not so much the ban, but the methods that were used to get to that point (for lack of a better expression), which brings us to the next issue:

Transparency has been a recurrent issue with the Committee for at least five years, so I think that some change in policy needs to be implemented. I agree that having a public thread for the community as a whole to decide the case won't help - people will just whip themselves into a frenzy on the WBO rather than on the off-site chat rooms (it seems that some of the inciteful speech leaked onto this thread as well. I would encourage others not to take the bait). While I understand the Committee's obligation to respect the privacy of other users, I think some compromise could be reached. I haven't had the time to think over what the best solution might be, but as of right now I would suggest some sort of disclaimer that accompanies certain private posts stating that a user's reply may be publicized at some point. Another previously suggested idea (though I forget where and by whom) was that there should be a list of issues the Committee is actively discussing and how close they are to making a decision about each one. Maybe this should be a public thread where some user input is allowed as well.

This last paragraph is totally coming from my perspective. The lack of knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes can be frustrating to people who want to make some kind of change, whether it is to the metagame, ruleset, or site policy - when all of the arguments that can be made about an issue are made, the thread dies down in activity with no information on whether anything will ever come of it. Honestly, this gives people the impression that "if we ignore it long enough, it goes away". It also gives the crowd who generally disagrees with the Committee the impression that their opinions are not being respected or acknowledged, especially when they are lost in the replies of the "echo chamber". This makes them think that the Committee has an illusion of open-mindedness by only taking into account feedback that agrees with them. The people who disagree with the Committee are not trying to be antagonistic. They want to fix the WBO too, and are just suggesting improvements or things that could be changed to reach that goal.

TBH I don't feel we need to hear their side. We know what they did. No matter what their reasoning it was still wrong and based on what they said to the committee they clearly don't feel any remorse. As for the transparency issue that pops up every so often I don't really see how a matter like this could be done out in the open without going badly.

I would like to echo some of Wombat's thoughts, particularly on the matter of transparency. To be fully honest, I feel as though our competitive community is on the verge of a split due to the fact that several members, as Wombat has mentioned, feel as though their voices aren't being heard in every instance in which the WBO committee asks for feedback. While I am excited about many of the new initiatives that the WBO will be putting forth in the coming year and believe that the committee itself should have some degree of absolute autonomy, in situations like this, I feel that the community should be alerted prior to a decision being made.

While I agree that asking for opinions or a popular vote in a public forum would quickly dissolve to chaos, there are a few solutions that might serve as a halfway point between those who are satisfied with the running of the community as it is, and those who would like more of a say considering how much they put in. Given the recent switch from a public Organizer's Forum to a private one, I think that now is as good a time as ever to consider basing decisions in organizer-related cases off of the opinions of fellow hosts. This would give the community some degree of influence, while also ensuring that such cases remain closed to the general public before a formal decision has been made.

At the very least, I firmly believe that the accused should have the option of putting forth a formal statement posted by the committee as opposed to having to do so through a middleman, which only serves to heighten tensions between the committee and the "disagree" side Wombat described. While not everyone will always agree with the decisions that the committee makes, it's important for many of us to feel as though our voices are heard, acknowledged, and respected, and that especially in situations in which a member is accused of a severe crime, they have the opportunity to tell their point of view, even if the verdict as already been made.

---

Beyblade Nation Discord Server | Meta Madness Beyblade Podcast
Combos I've developed:

Spoiler (Click to View)

Alter Chronos .8C.Ds (BST)
Genbull Genbull 90WD (STD)
Death Cancer E230RDF (STD)
Burn Aquario 90MF (LTD)
Lightning L Drago F: D (LTD)
Phantom Cancer ED145WD (LTD)
Burn Cancer B: D (LTD)
Saramanda Goreim LW160GF (Zero-G Sway)

Sorry for this semi irrelevant post, but this made me think of something. Would a whole thread dedicated to banned users and their reason for being banned likely become a thing?

---

In memory of Daniel Fitzpatrick

LONG SNAPPER no, since we wish to ban as few people as possible, ideally none...

I am just at a loss with what input people would have wanted to have in this particular issue months ago and why. And when exactly could we have publicised anything without ruining the ongoing investigation? Making things like this public from the beginning also completely goes against the principle of assumed innocence.

I think Stars and Time's arguments that try to act like the committee is a problem. Blaming the committee for your faults is wrong in so many ways, I hope they don't actually think they were wrongly accused.

Also, a minor suggestion. I don't want to sound xenophobic or anything, but perhaps we could have a representative for each active-ish region in a sub committee or something ? It could help with having all sides represented in things like this, having a third viewpoint from someone trusted who participated in these tournaments.

For the actual case: While it was a rather stupid decision, I don't think there was anything really malicious behind it. It's not like there was lots of money at stake or anything besides digital prizes and the occasional prize which takes more than a couple wins from shady matches to get. I agree they should be punished for openly encouraging that kind of sportsmanship, however.

It's funny you bring up a "third party who attended" because I know of a few Maryland players who were asked about this subject.

Making up fake members for the last 2 years is cool to you? How well does that reflect the community?

The committee took action and served justice, it's nice to know the committee will take initiative and brings punishments.

Calm down bud. I never said it was cool.


Which Maryland bladers? Like you said, it went on for 2 years, why didn't these players ever say anything?

They were making up accounts for 2 years? From what I just read, it seems that only 2 accounts were made. Perhaps you can give us some insight, differing viewpoints are welcome, its a discussion.


EDIT: Let me try to explain what im saying. Perhaps nobody reported it or even said anything about it, because they didn't see it as a malicious act. I am not saying what they did is OK, but it seems like people are over dramatising the case a bit. The punishment seems to be fair but still, like a couple people mentioned already, transparency is key.

---

Signature credit to Leet.o

Spoiler (Click to View)

Threads you should read:

Pony King ? God, can't believe I typed this. I have to put my keyboard in the dishwasher now...

dude are you a gangster

LOL did you asked Midnight to take that pic?

When a monochrome picture is posted on WBO, it doesn't mean that it's always from Midnight.

I wouldn't trust someone with that many Cancer faces.

Well damn.

@[The Supreme One] Soul Baez V145AS

There's nothing else really to do or say except wait for the Superbowl, but I'm only here so I don't get fined.



Time. *gets up and leaves*

We won't have tournaments in the winter. Cause we are not one of those Canadian people where they just go outside like nothing happened to their hands.

i like my coffee like i like my men B)



i don't like coffee

I never have.

*Ginga*.. you're drunk bro... go home.. : )

Tbh SGMS & BDMS are kinda worthless.
MSUV is a far better spent investment; DGMF is even better IMO.

Um what? You're just saying that because you're a dragoon fanboy...

Why would I be suspended????

HMS summarised:




Anything not Tornado Type S:  Wolborg will leave you #rekt




Otherwise:  Go crazy with Ultimate Grip Flat 




For something less cookie-cutter:  Jiraiya sure is sexy

Is Wolborg 2 useless for competitive play?

Extremely useless. 
Now, if you come upon one I'll just PM you my address so you can throw it away. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

I wasn't looking for Beyblade Underwear, I swear

I wouldn't call the questioning we did with Time and Yami an interrogation. Here’s excerpts from three different messages I sent Time, just to show the kinds of questions we asked:

Hi Time,

I’m messaging you regarding some concerns about tournament results you have submitted past. Specifically, these issues surround the users Stars Dad and RazSharpie's presence at certain events.

While we’re aware that these accounts actually belong to Yami’s parents, we’ve received multiple reports from attendees that results were submitted showing them as having played against RazSharpie or Stars Dad at events where they were not present. This includes at least one event that you have hosted.

Do you know what might have sparked these reports? […]

The players these accounts belong to were present at all events you submitted spreadsheets for that included them, even if they weren’t initially listed as participants? Have you ever heard of these accounts or other accounts being submitted in tournament results for events? […]

Did you ever let anyone on the committee know that portions of the matches you were submitting actually constituted matches that weren't played? Meaning that players accrued wins and BeyPoints for these matches that they didn't have to play? And is this something that happened with frequency over the past years?

The goal of asking was not to prove anyone innocent or guilty, but simply to establish what happened. We never told Time, “you are being charged with match fraud” or anything like that, but we were extremely clear about the incidents we were asking about and why we were asking, as you can see above.

The details in the opening post of this thread represent facts that were confirmed directly to us by the organizers involved during questioning. We applied a punishment based on what they confirmed to us. It’s inevitable they would act surprised when publicly fighting against those decisions.

---

I want to talk about transparency more generally as well.

I do think there is an opportunity to invite wider groups of the community into the decision-making process. This is one of the reasons we’ve made the organizers’ circle private; so we can communicate in confidence with organizers about decisions that affect them, and involve them in the process of making those decisions. While this isn’t public, I think it’s transparent in that it involves the people that need to be involved.

The same thing with the experimental format; we are trying to get through testing pretty much every suggestion that’s been made in that thread. I know there is a lot of disagreement over what the ideal outcome of that situation is (for me, I don’t really care as long as players agree it’s fun and strategic), but I don’t think it would be fair to argue we haven’t been open about it.

We’re also currently working on a new document covering what kinds of punishments can be received for different kinds of violations; this document was originally intended for staff members to use when applying warnings and suspensions, but we will also share it here once it’s finalized.

I would like to embrace these kinds of opportunities wherever possible, and I’m really committed to doing so! But there are also situations where we obviously want to keep conversations closer to ourselves, whether it be about projects we’re uncertain about, long-term planning and administrative work or, yes, investigating allegations against players or hosts. In this instance, I think we addressed this issue without about as much transparency as possible without dumping the entire contents of our conversations here, a standard which pretty much no organization would ever meet.

If there are specific suggestions on how we can be more transparent in ways that would benefit the community at large, we’re open to hearing them and acting on them. I definitely don’t think this is an “illusion” of open-mindedness, either; we really do want to hear these things, and I think if you look at our track record over the past year or so, we’ve been pretty good at involving the community in decisions we make and we hope to keep opening things up even more.

If a thread about an issue dies down and we failed to act on it, bump it up or message us. We obviously let some things slip through the cracks, but are happy to correct course. (We started using a project management system over the summer so stuff like this happens less.)

We don’t tend to get much direct, specific feedback, even when we ask for it. We know you want more transparency, so what would that look like? What specifically can we do to address concerns? And how we can we better incorporate the feedback we are already receiving?

We definitely sense that there are some who aren’t really happy with how we do things, but we are seriously always interested in improving and maxing the maximum number of people happy — that’s why we volunteer for the WBO.

With regards to transparency, something along the lines of a development roadmap would be fantastic. My main concern with the existing system of communication between the Committee and everyone else is that the rest of us have no idea what's being worked on or considered behind the scenes. Discretion is obviously important in some cases - either ones like this where releasing the information before a verdict was reached would just cause chaos; or in cases where the project is intended as a surprise, like unveiling new additions to the rewards program or other special events. Letting the community know what sort of changes to game rules, tournament formats, site features, and other key items are in the works would help ease tension immensely. Right now, the protocol for rules alterations and other big decisions is [ make a thread >> debate >> reach a consensus >> wait for the Committee to respond ]. The problem is that anyone who doesn't have a view into Committee communications has no way of knowing whether a proposition is being ignored, forgotten, under review, or is to be implemented in the next news post. Without some kind of frequently updated, readily available information on what's happening on Mount Olympus, all us mortals just have to cross our fingers and wait for the next news post, whenever that may be.

I'm not even asking for something with specific dates or daily updates or anything; just a list of items categorized by approximately how close they are to completion, i.e. "Completed", "Current Focus", "Near Future", "Long Term", "Maybe". Having a visible, centralized list of what's being actively worked on, finished, or planned makes it much easier for members to learn where they can help (Like our "Project of the Moment" threads, I believe they are called) and also informing everyone of any suggestions that are actively being considered, discussed, and approved. Sure, users can bump or message Committee members, but at the moment, forgetfulness and hard work from the Committee are indistinguishable until results appear, often months later. The Committee is dedicated to improving the community, but it is a group of volunteers, and everyone is only human. Having a timeline keeps everyone informed and accountable, both Committee and regular members, and gives a reassuring glimpse of what's ahead. It seems you've already got a similar system in place with the project managing system - all I'm asking for is that the rest of us can see it too on occasion. It doesn't have to be detailed, and there are indeed some things that should be kept out of the public eye, but in general, just knowing that the Committee is actually doing something and paying attention would go a long way to ease people's fears.

Prime example of something which fell through the cracks at some point

---

Threads and combos!

Spoiler (Click to View)

[LTD] MF Jade Horogium 85RSF
[LTD] RB / RSF Attack
[LTD] Ronin Genbull (Crystal Up) 85RF
MF-H Phantom (Attack) Cancer 85RB
MSF-H Wyvang Ifraid GB145RF {Alternative to Wyvang^2 with more Upper Attack}
MSF-H Genbull Genbull 85RSF {Improved version of the above Phantom combo}
Balro Begirados 100RF {LTAC with both Upper Smash and regular Smash}
[LTD] MF-H Lightning L-Drago 85RB {more controllable Lightning LTAC}
[LTD] Burn Orion 105SF {Destabilizer}

This last paragraph is totally coming from my perspective. The lack of knowledge of what goes on behind the scenes can be frustrating to people who want to make some kind of change, whether it is to the metagame, ruleset, or site policy - when all of the arguments that can be made about an issue are made, the thread dies down in activity with no information on whether anything will ever come of it. Honestly, this gives people the impression that "if we ignore it long enough, it goes away". It also gives the crowd who generally disagrees with the Committee the impression that their opinions are not being respected or acknowledged, especially when they are lost in the replies of the "echo chamber". This makes them think that the Committee has an illusion of open-mindedness by only taking into account feedback that agrees with them. The people who disagree with the Committee are not trying to be antagonistic. They want to fix the WBO too, and are just suggesting improvements or things that could be changed to reach that goal.

I'm not sure about site policy, but as far as metagame/ruleset go I don't think it can really be a matter of the Committee only taking into account the feedback that agrees with them. The reason I feel this way is because the different members of the Committee often express different, even opposing feelings on things regarding the meta. The example that comes to mind the fastest is in the Ban Odin thread. I remember Kai-V being super for it, Kei being opposed to it, and Brad trying to encourage a discussion as to why the part should or shouldn't be banned. They weren't even a unified front on the same side of the argument for it to be possible for them to only take into consideration the people on the side that agreed with them.

I do think whoever it was that made the comment about killing the Maryland community was being a bit antagonistic.

I liked your post a lot. It was impressively objective.

---

Credit for the avatar and sig go to Nic. THANK YOU!

START LIVING BEFORE YOU START DYING

OK so basically what I get from Cake's post is that we should have a second Trello with whatever we have the impression we can reveal without ruining many upcoming surprises hah. @[Bey Brad] And we were just waiting on someone, I cannot remember if it was Angry Face, to actually test the problematic Screw Zeus setups because he had tried some and at first it seemed to fit, so we needed to go to the full extent of the issue to know how to word the rule. However, clearly Plastic tournament are very rare and it has not even been an issue since we forgot to finalise the ruling...


Still, how does all of this even relate to the topic at hand? It looks like you guys are expressing deep concerns, which we absolutely want because that is how we can work on flaws, but ultimately aren't we very off-topic right now? The only latest suggestion that has a link to this topic is that the banned Members should be able to provide a formal last letter, which we can try doing in the future if the person cooperates. However, at the same time, these two hosts are just suspended; they can return after their suspension to deliver that message as well.

Thanks for the great reply, @[Cake]. This part in particular confirmed something I’ve suspected for a while:

Sure, users can bump or message Committee members, but at the moment, forgetfulness and hard work from the Committee are indistinguishable until results appear, often months later.

I think I’ve written here before that we’re currently entangled in a mess of interdependent projects, in various states of completion, and there are also elements in there that we want to keep a surprise. It’s also a lot of work that will enable us to build new things and, consequently, communicate what we’re building. But right now it’s a lot of infrastructure work. This is a uniquely difficult situation for us, but I would expect things to look much more like you describe pretty soon. A change-log and roadmap are definitely things you can expect to see too.

Obviously this shouldn’t affect things like ruling discussions, which we should be able to address immediately. I really like your idea of tagging those conversations so that it’s clear where they are in the decision-making pipeline. Just yesterday I was talking to Thunder Dome about his Deathscyther ban topic; it’s not totally clear what the next step is, so a better process would go a long way. The Screw Zeus conversation you linked is another good example. While also thinking about how we can make those decisions faster (and what the criteria for making them is), I’ll also think of how this could be better integrated into the site.

We also recognize that the way news posts are handled right now is not ideal, and there is a really huge gap between each announcement. We’re going to break up the pattern of monthly (or bi-monthly) 1,500 word posts and instead push out news in smaller chunks, a few times a month, with each subject getting its own dedicated post. Some improvements we’re making to the site will also help us with better handling news. And because we’ll be pushing out news more frequently, we can communicate with more confidence when things are finalized.

I know that sometimes there can be more waiting than is desirable, especially right now, and all I can say is that I’m sorry. We are trying to make huge leaps of progress regarding transparency and processes, while at the same time managing our most ambitious project-load ever in preparation for Burst’s international launch, which is really soon ahhhhh. We are also beginning to loop organizers into more of the decision-making process with the organizers’ circle changes, and certainly what we learn there will be applied to our broader efforts.

I hope these conversations make it at least clear that we are serious about taking feedback and acting on it, even if I don’t have all of the answers just yet.

I don't have a blader passport, so I have no opinion on the ban. But I will say this:

3 to 6 player, full deck-rotation tournaments will completely solve the ongoing participation issues in Australia (too few on hiatus, too many during boom) and I suspect you'll never see the issues discussed in this thread ever again if such a format is approved. Is there any genuine mathematical reason why this wouldn't work? Similarly, is there any genuine moral reprehense in multiple-tournament days? Should not the purpose of the WBO be to encourage as many actual games of Beyblade as possible? And if so, should not the size of a tournament be secondary to actual participation by individuals in games?

Sure Beyblade traditionally relies on the "tournament" idea, but I think it's pretty clear the egg comes before the chicken here. Tournaments are made up of individual games - not the other way round. I would encourage smaller tournaments in preference of requiring greater popularity for a game which is undeniably niche.

---

I don't have a blader passport, so I have no opinion on the ban. But I will say this:

3 to 6 player, full deck-rotation tournaments will completely solve the ongoing participation issues in Australia (too few on hiatus, too many during boom) and I suspect you'll never see the issues discussed in this thread ever again if such a format is approved. Is there any genuine mathematical reason why this wouldn't work? Similarly, is there any genuine moral reprehense in multiple-tournament days? Should not the purpose of the WBO be to encourage as many actual games of Beyblade as possible? And if so, should not the size of a tournament be secondary to actual participation by individuals in games?

Sure Beyblade traditionally relies on the "tournament" idea, but I think it's pretty clear the egg comes before the chicken here. Tournaments are made up of individual games - not the other way round. I would encourage smaller tournaments in preference of requiring greater popularity for a game which is undeniably niche.

Cool, some real suggestions to avoid this problem in the future hah.

Oddly, Deck Rotation with first-to-five-points does make a lot of sense hahah... It produces more battles, for sure.

Our concern is that, to be accurate and significant in the least, you need eight people or more to be able to give Faces and other rewards to the full top three. We have always wanted to avoid a situation where you have one chance on two of being in the finals just by entering the tournament, because there are too few players. Keeping that in mind, what rewards could be given and to how many people, consequently?

And the issue with multiple tournaments per day is that sometimes, a few players abuse the system and clearly dominate in their region, so one event, two events, three events: the result is highly predictable each time. It would not be that much of a problem if getting too many Credits by "farming" did not involve taking away prizes for other people who play tournaments at a reasonable and realistic rythm in comparison.

^ Exactly. It's more about the rankings and rewards than anything else. If you'd be willing to forego ranked battles and prize reimbursement in exchange for other kinds of rewards (like entry in giveaways, face boosters), then we would have a lot more flexibility.

^ Exactly. It's more about the rankings and rewards than anything else. If you'd be willing to forego ranked battles and prize reimbursement in exchange for other kinds of rewards (like entry in giveaways, face boosters), then we would have a lot more flexibility.

I mean that seems entirely reasonable for smaller events. Is this something people have been against in the past?

Valid. I'm not super familiar with the WBO economy but I do actually think a lot of people in less-active regions would willingly forego certain incentives and reimbursements if they were allowed basic access to the ranking system in the first place.

In Australia, at least, we have not had access to ranks for years, due to numbers. That means no prizes of any other description either. We meet just because we want to and we play totally appart from the WBO system just because we have to. It's nobody's fault. But we do want to be a part of the WBO and we only can't because of a... Well... Basically a technical issue.

Since the Deck Rotation proposal, we've had access to the tools by which to rectify this issue forever. Deck is the answer. If the problem beyond this is an economic one, then the answer should be regulatory: tournaments under 7 players are deck-only and receive no prizes other than rank. No credits. No faces. Maybe call it "Hardcore" format, or something suitably spartan. Because that's what it should be.

I'd buy that for a dollar.


EDIT: pretty sure voqics just beat me to the point in only two sentences. Well played, sir.

---

EDIT: pretty sure voqics just beat me to the point in only two sentences. Well played, sir.

Maybe but your post is much more detailed, and you've got experience to back it up. Glad we agree though.

Well, Beylon says he'd want access to the rankings, which I said in my post might not be possible for groups that small (for reasons Kai-V outlined in her post).

Yes. But I don't actually understand why rankings should be impacted negatively by small numbers. Aren't the results drawn on a per-battle basis anyway? Is there somewhere I can read up on this before I go on embarrassing myself?

In the mean time, I know this comes up every time "small tournaments" are mentioned but... Why should a one-on-one battle result be any less indicative than a one-on-one result from a 7+ tourney? Is there a mathmatical reason why one or the other is any more or less accurate or significant? Or is this kind of a general 'vibe' thing?

---

Do you mean that any one-on-one battle should be submitted and processed in the Beypoint System? If so, we wish, but we tried that way at the beginning of the Beypoint System and even if we audited a few, people clearly abused that system and reported fake matches or grinded against some Bladers. This is both why we stopped accepting individual, home battles, and why we established an entry fee for tournaments: while it helped cover expenses for the site greatly, it also helps ensure that people are really there in person each time. Obviously we are not completely free of that as this topic's subject demonstrates, but increasing the cost just would not help anybody. We have to assume that nobody would go to the length of constantly paying for fake Bladers' entry fees.

Also a valid point. But what I really meant was that members currently earn BeyPoints on a per-match basis, right? Not a per-tounament basis. Even if matches are only accepted from official tournaments, points are earned per-match.

So in a small tournament of 3 to 6 players, you wouldn't gain any advantage even if you played multiple small tournaments in a day. Particularly playing Deck. Remember also that even small tournaments would still have to be proposed and signed-off etcetera - so it's not like anyone would be free to just spam 1000 tournaments in one day. With this being the case, surely the rankings are in fact the only thing which would fit a small tournament setting...? I personally have no problem with one player dominating a local setting because ranks are worldwide and adjusted to prevent strong players farming weaker players for points... No?

A lot of the BeyPoint and rank info on this site is very old now, so please correct me if the situation has changed.


Edit: also, I totally support entry fees for tournaments and I suspect I always will.

---

Worth noting that if battles played in small events of six players or less were allowed to be ranked, all players participating would be at a severe disadvantage in the long term because of the size multiplier in the equation that is applied to the winners of every battle in our ranking system. The multiplier increases or decreases slightly depending on the number of participants in any given event; this is because doing well in a large tournament is understandably a more difficult task given their more chaotic nature and greater chance of going up against unknown players, which makes it harder to scout all of your opponents reliably, predict what they will use, and ultimately choose the right combo.

Our current minimum of seven participants already pushes the limits in terms of it being fair to participants of all BeyRanks low and high. For example, with my 1,688 BP in Metal Format currently, I would have to go undefeated to come out ahead most likely in a seven player event. The effects of this can typically only be seen among highly ranked players, but this is already arguably discouraging and unreasonable because perfection in Beyblade is unreasonable no matter how good of a player you are.

Lowering the minimum amount of participants below seven while also allowing for the battles to be ranked would be an unwise decision in my opinion because of this.

---