Rapture Gaming has responded to criticism from the DotA community that was sparked off by the recent disqualification of team BRTS* during the Intel Gaming Cup 2007 Open Category tournament.
On Sunday, 15 April 2007, BRTS* was disqualified in their match against oRz. According to observers, BRTS* held the upper hand and had about a 70% chance to win. However, BRTS*’s Sniper took the Aegis which the team’s Warlock had transported back to back after killing Roshan, prompting the marshals to disqualify BRTS* for flouting item pooling rules.
The DotA community has been quick to criticize the disqualification. Veteran competitive player Anthony “Ant” from Team Zenith commented that disqualifying a team for an action that does not affect the final outcome of the game was “stupid beyond measure”.
Ant wrote in the Asterisk* and zEn|th blog, “I [realized] that I didn’t even question the circumstances and accepted without question that the [marshals] actually WILL DO those things without question since they have done it so often, and that’s when I figured that something was definitely wrong.”
DotaSG community member t1gger, who was also the Sniper in question, was quick to point out that the game rules regarding item pooling rules only apply to “items bought with a player’s own money”, whereas Aegis was an item dropped by Roshan. He went on to claim that the marshal was negligent as they were discussing about whether or not to pass the Aegis. t1gger claimed that the marshal said, “Oh i was looking at other games.”
In response to the criticism, Rapture Gaming Event Manager Lim Kuan Hoe felt that the head marshal, who made the final decision, was not in the wrong. According to Mr Lim, it did not matter whether the item was bought or picked up. He elaborated, “For example lets say if he picked up an enemy item drop from the kill of an enemy’s chicken, our stand is also the [first] person who picks it up cannot transfer it.”
Mr Lim also said that the rules will be changed to cover all items, regardless of whether it is “a drop, consumable, free, drop or even a gift from the opponent”. The marshals will not be making “any exceptions” to prevent confusion for both players and officials.
When asked if this was being a little strict, he went on to say, “[L]ook on the bright side, we’ve never had any hero restrictions, item duplicate restrictions. We don’t even have backdoor restrictions.”
Conceding that there might be some merit to the criticism raised by the community, Mr Lim said, “I feel that the comments from the [DotA] community have got some points where we might look onto. But look at it this way, no one praised the marshals when they were lenient on teams that did something wrong.”
Mr Lim pointed out that almost 20% of teams across all tournaments, not just IGC 2007, failed to adhere to the rules related to the dress code and hero drafting.
“We still get competitors coming in slippers even when the rule [disallowing it] was made since last [year]. Last time we fixed 45 [seconds] for drafting one hero but some teams still take their own sweet time to draft,” Mr Lim said. “[A]nd when the marshals wanna get strict, they scold the marshals.”
Pointing out that the hero drafting restrictions was one way that officials had been flexible in applying the rules, Mr Lim said, “[Previously] we fixed the timing [because DotA] matches were very long, average [one hour plus]. Now we are more lenient on the hero drafting time [because] match average timing[s have been] reduced to 50 [plus minutes] for the latest versions.”
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