Interview done by stewie on Radio iTG show Luger Frag. Download it here
Typed on the fly so allow for inaccuracies.
Who are you & what do you do at CB?
I’m Adacore, I’m 21 I live in England and I’m currently working as the EuroCup supervisor for ET.
You now represent the entire ET CB staff…
Yeah
Do you still think what CB does is worth it?
When it works out it’s a great job, fulfilling and fun. But with the pressure & general atmosphere of fear around at the moment it’s changed, still rewarding but more difficult.
Why is there no double elimination in this EuroCup?
There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary one is the time scale. The deadline I was given didn’t allow for the double elimination format. With 5 teams in each group it added two weeks to the schedule.
Next season if we get another EC I’ll try & make sure we get it right.
When looking at this OC, the admins don’t really do their job. You have 50 admins signed up, yet maybe 25 of those will only do 1 match all season.
I agree with that – it’s worst than it has been in the past. We’ve been very lucky in the past having lots of good admins. This is the exam season so some admins can’t devote their full time to it.
Why don’t you kick them?
Move have been active in the past so we keep them, it’d be pointless removing them.
Why do they sign up at all then?
10 admins doing 1 match is better than 0 admins doing 0 matches.
We see lots of admins filling in the score and then typing “Match report tomorrow” – this is the only thing they have to do. Why is CB not pushing to improve this?
I agree, I will try and push it.
Has this not been discussed within the admin group?
We’ve talked about it in the past, not so much recently. We’ve tried various strategies – what’s basically needed is just more motivation. More contact between the supervisors and the admins.
Why not just kick those admins?
I’m a believer in second chance, if they don’t write stuff for a while then sure kick them. But if we kick everyone then we’ll be left with no admins.
Sure, but it looks weird – doesn’t look tidy & neat. It’s not CB worthy. Anyway…
Deej wrote a column a while ago about reviving the CB Ladder system, have the admins discussed ways of making the ladder active again, making it valuable and prestigious?
Yeah, it’s something I’m trying to do. I’m aiming to make the EC invitation system slightly more transparent, the ladder will be more involved. But sponsorship isn’t realistic for the ladder.
You could give the top 4 in the ladder EuroCup invites?
With the system this season for the selecting of EC clans we focussed more on the ladder than we have before. And I intend on stepping that up more than before.
People are suggesting that there’s just 1 ET admin stopping the mortar being removed? What are your feelings on this?
Personally there are good arguments in both directions. I’m just on the side of removing it at the moment. A couple of months ago if you’d have asked me I’d have been in favour of keeping it. It’s not true that there’s just 1 admin against it. Lots of admins have reservations about removing it, actually removing anything from the game.
Why not then change the damage given?
That would require etpro to change it.
Will you talk to them?
We’ll look into it next year.
Are you looking at changing the maxpackets & net settings?
We’ve already in the last couple of configs made the changes in that direction with the net settings. We could well make further changes.
When will the next config be?
Next season, for the start of OpenCup.
Will there be a Summercup?
Given that it’s late June I doubt it. If we started a Summercup now it probably wouldn’t end till mid-November – early-December.
It was suggested you should assign the admins to certain divisions. Do you think that could work?
It’s an interesting suggestion. But it just wouldn’t be allowed within CB, it’s not feasible.
But admins pick and chose the matches the admin, often cherry picking those in higher divisions. Do you agree?
Yes, and in some cases it’s the clans in the lowest divisions that need the admins most.
Regarding the DoneX situation, why is that CB never seems consistent?
I have a statement from DoneX regarding that. He explains that he was sent a screenshot of the GUIDS and couldn’t find any player faking. In the next game however he found that 2 illegal players where fielded.
But these kind of issues have to be pointed out before the match?
I’m not entirely certain of the facts here.
The rules state that match disputes much be sorted before the match, I have them here. But CB contradicted themselves. Do you think it should be reversed?
No, using a fake is a bad move & something that should be punished.
Admins shouldn’t do what they think is right, but what the rules state.
I want to start with the Torspo issue. What intrigues me about CB is that they’re not open. They don’t really give clear statements to the community. About Torspo, one of the comments was from you “the issue is under investigation”. I assume you investigated it & there was conclusion. Why did you not disclose this?
Urm I guess I could’ve added a news post.
Not even a news post, a journal would do.
I actually informed Tosspot that he could edit the newspost with the findings.
I hope in the future you’ll be more open.
Do you think CB should hire staff to hunt down the cheaters?
I don’t think we could bring in extra people just for cheats. It’s not really our role.
Sure, it’s PBs role. But is it not yours to keep EC & OC clean of cheaters?
The onus is on the player, the clean & respectable player to send us the evidence of the cheats.
So you don’t think there should be a cheat police within the CB staff?
Well to some extent we already have the cheating & abuse section.
There’s been several journals of people saying they went with proof of cheats to the CB admins, but to quote overdrive “they don’t give a fucking shit”. You can say ‘give those demos to CB’, are you 100% sure all those demos are looked through.
As far as I know everything sent to CB is looked at. It definitely is for me.
You’ve read that email about TWF, are you going to take any steps against him? Even mrozu says wall hack for sure. Why is he not banned?
I’m not sure, I’ll need to talk to mrozu about that.
There’s a lot of etpro GUID spoofers out there that aren’t hard to get. You can change the GUID, even enter what GUID you want. Then open ET and the GUID is changed to what you just put in. This basically means that players that are banned from CB can create a new email & register again at CB. Are you aware of this?
I am aware of this. But I’m not really sure what we could do.
Are you going to include the PB GUID in a players CB profile alongside the current etpro GUID?
It’s something we could do. But it wouldn’t prevent what you just mentioned. The situation this would prevent someone fake nicking with someone else’s etpro GUID.
Because it’s so easy to change your GUID & play at CB again, you might say there’s nothing you can do but surely it’s something you’ve got to look into. What you could do is to make people register their town & ISP.
With lots of people on dynamic ips these days I’m not sure how good that would be.
They can only fake a limited amount of people
We’re only talking about a very small amount of people here. We’d be inconveniencing everyone at CB to implement that. As we did with the etpro GUID when it was first used.
I don’t personally believe there are many banned people registering again with CB.
Are there any topics right now in the CB admin group that are really alive, such as reviving the ladder system or preventing cheating. Is there lots of talk or are you just 1 admin & another admin. Basically the only admins I see on xfire are you & angrykid.
DoneX & mrozu certainly read & post on Crossfire. But Crossfire isn’t really the measure of admin activity.
[There was recently a column about DoneX] When you take the issue of DoneX, as far as I know he didn’t reply to it.
To be fair to DoneX he did. But whilst he was formatting the column was deleted by a Crossfire admin.
Maybe Crossfire doesn’t measure the activity of a CB admin, but it does represent the competitive community of ET.
Obviously it is a priority to be seen as involved with the community.
What about new maps next season?
Next season we’ll probably continue with what we did last season with Adlernest & Frostbite and introduce 2 new maps. If you’ve got any suggestions share them with us.
Typed on the fly so allow for inaccuracies.
----------------------------
Who are you & what do you do at CB?
I’m Adacore, I’m 21 I live in England and I’m currently working as the EuroCup supervisor for ET.
You now represent the entire ET CB staff…
Yeah
Do you still think what CB does is worth it?
When it works out it’s a great job, fulfilling and fun. But with the pressure & general atmosphere of fear around at the moment it’s changed, still rewarding but more difficult.
Why is there no double elimination in this EuroCup?
There are a number of reasons for this, but the primary one is the time scale. The deadline I was given didn’t allow for the double elimination format. With 5 teams in each group it added two weeks to the schedule.
Next season if we get another EC I’ll try & make sure we get it right.
When looking at this OC, the admins don’t really do their job. You have 50 admins signed up, yet maybe 25 of those will only do 1 match all season.
I agree with that – it’s worst than it has been in the past. We’ve been very lucky in the past having lots of good admins. This is the exam season so some admins can’t devote their full time to it.
Why don’t you kick them?
Move have been active in the past so we keep them, it’d be pointless removing them.
Why do they sign up at all then?
10 admins doing 1 match is better than 0 admins doing 0 matches.
We see lots of admins filling in the score and then typing “Match report tomorrow” – this is the only thing they have to do. Why is CB not pushing to improve this?
I agree, I will try and push it.
Has this not been discussed within the admin group?
We’ve talked about it in the past, not so much recently. We’ve tried various strategies – what’s basically needed is just more motivation. More contact between the supervisors and the admins.
Why not just kick those admins?
I’m a believer in second chance, if they don’t write stuff for a while then sure kick them. But if we kick everyone then we’ll be left with no admins.
Sure, but it looks weird – doesn’t look tidy & neat. It’s not CB worthy. Anyway…
Deej wrote a column a while ago about reviving the CB Ladder system, have the admins discussed ways of making the ladder active again, making it valuable and prestigious?
Yeah, it’s something I’m trying to do. I’m aiming to make the EC invitation system slightly more transparent, the ladder will be more involved. But sponsorship isn’t realistic for the ladder.
You could give the top 4 in the ladder EuroCup invites?
With the system this season for the selecting of EC clans we focussed more on the ladder than we have before. And I intend on stepping that up more than before.
People are suggesting that there’s just 1 ET admin stopping the mortar being removed? What are your feelings on this?
Personally there are good arguments in both directions. I’m just on the side of removing it at the moment. A couple of months ago if you’d have asked me I’d have been in favour of keeping it. It’s not true that there’s just 1 admin against it. Lots of admins have reservations about removing it, actually removing anything from the game.
Why not then change the damage given?
That would require etpro to change it.
Will you talk to them?
We’ll look into it next year.
Are you looking at changing the maxpackets & net settings?
We’ve already in the last couple of configs made the changes in that direction with the net settings. We could well make further changes.
When will the next config be?
Next season, for the start of OpenCup.
Will there be a Summercup?
Given that it’s late June I doubt it. If we started a Summercup now it probably wouldn’t end till mid-November – early-December.
It was suggested you should assign the admins to certain divisions. Do you think that could work?
It’s an interesting suggestion. But it just wouldn’t be allowed within CB, it’s not feasible.
But admins pick and chose the matches the admin, often cherry picking those in higher divisions. Do you agree?
Yes, and in some cases it’s the clans in the lowest divisions that need the admins most.
Regarding the DoneX situation, why is that CB never seems consistent?
I have a statement from DoneX regarding that. He explains that he was sent a screenshot of the GUIDS and couldn’t find any player faking. In the next game however he found that 2 illegal players where fielded.
But these kind of issues have to be pointed out before the match?
I’m not entirely certain of the facts here.
The rules state that match disputes much be sorted before the match, I have them here. But CB contradicted themselves. Do you think it should be reversed?
No, using a fake is a bad move & something that should be punished.
Admins shouldn’t do what they think is right, but what the rules state.
I want to start with the Torspo issue. What intrigues me about CB is that they’re not open. They don’t really give clear statements to the community. About Torspo, one of the comments was from you “the issue is under investigation”. I assume you investigated it & there was conclusion. Why did you not disclose this?
Urm I guess I could’ve added a news post.
Not even a news post, a journal would do.
I actually informed Tosspot that he could edit the newspost with the findings.
I hope in the future you’ll be more open.
Do you think CB should hire staff to hunt down the cheaters?
I don’t think we could bring in extra people just for cheats. It’s not really our role.
Sure, it’s PBs role. But is it not yours to keep EC & OC clean of cheaters?
The onus is on the player, the clean & respectable player to send us the evidence of the cheats.
So you don’t think there should be a cheat police within the CB staff?
Well to some extent we already have the cheating & abuse section.
There’s been several journals of people saying they went with proof of cheats to the CB admins, but to quote overdrive “they don’t give a fucking shit”. You can say ‘give those demos to CB’, are you 100% sure all those demos are looked through.
As far as I know everything sent to CB is looked at. It definitely is for me.
You’ve read that email about TWF, are you going to take any steps against him? Even mrozu says wall hack for sure. Why is he not banned?
I’m not sure, I’ll need to talk to mrozu about that.
There’s a lot of etpro GUID spoofers out there that aren’t hard to get. You can change the GUID, even enter what GUID you want. Then open ET and the GUID is changed to what you just put in. This basically means that players that are banned from CB can create a new email & register again at CB. Are you aware of this?
I am aware of this. But I’m not really sure what we could do.
Are you going to include the PB GUID in a players CB profile alongside the current etpro GUID?
It’s something we could do. But it wouldn’t prevent what you just mentioned. The situation this would prevent someone fake nicking with someone else’s etpro GUID.
Because it’s so easy to change your GUID & play at CB again, you might say there’s nothing you can do but surely it’s something you’ve got to look into. What you could do is to make people register their town & ISP.
With lots of people on dynamic ips these days I’m not sure how good that would be.
They can only fake a limited amount of people
We’re only talking about a very small amount of people here. We’d be inconveniencing everyone at CB to implement that. As we did with the etpro GUID when it was first used.
I don’t personally believe there are many banned people registering again with CB.
Are there any topics right now in the CB admin group that are really alive, such as reviving the ladder system or preventing cheating. Is there lots of talk or are you just 1 admin & another admin. Basically the only admins I see on xfire are you & angrykid.
DoneX & mrozu certainly read & post on Crossfire. But Crossfire isn’t really the measure of admin activity.
[There was recently a column about DoneX] When you take the issue of DoneX, as far as I know he didn’t reply to it.
To be fair to DoneX he did. But whilst he was formatting the column was deleted by a Crossfire admin.
Maybe Crossfire doesn’t measure the activity of a CB admin, but it does represent the competitive community of ET.
Obviously it is a priority to be seen as involved with the community.
What about new maps next season?
Next season we’ll probably continue with what we did last season with Adlernest & Frostbite and introduce 2 new maps. If you’ve got any suggestions share them with us.
