HWBOT Team Cup 2017 Discussion

[Leeghoofd]

Well I had a lot of time to reflect on the way back from the Gaming Conference. I was not sure if I would write this or not.

 

Madshrimps never expected to win, All I hoped for was top three. Me and Oldscarface lost quite e subtantial amount of hardware ( 2 awesome cpus, motherboards and a few memory kits over the last month. Hardware that we cherished and that can't be replaced by a memory kit or PSU.

 

There is no special treatment involved as some think. However if plain logic can't prevail in this expensive hobby we have a big issue. Anyway I asked Websmile to pull my 4800+ Cinebench scores saturday nite and even asked him to pull the reported 06 score by Mickulty. This to silence the drama queens and get on with life.

 

For the rig pictures we interpreted it indeed as someone pointed out before as a polite request. Compare the "Plz post a picture of your rig" with the rules laid down for the current ASUS ROG showdown2. I hope one can understand the differences in meaning. The latter imposes exactly what has to be displayed in the screenshot and detailed specs of the required setup picture. Well some might insinuate we used it as a loophole, well I can tell you none of the old nor new OCers of Madshrimps is like that. We posted similar "rig" setups for the last competitions, nobody made any remarks. Till now...

 

 

 

Big question is how can we avoid a drama of this level without cutting back on prizes?

 

 

Well I took the decision to no longer take part in any competiton due to being a staff member of HWBOT. This will have a huge impact on my team as I'm the central figure for organizing stuff. So be it. Thus no more special treatment for Leeghoofd. In fact what annoys me the most is that I honestly thought I earned more respect over the years than the drama and accusations that have been pointed at me or my team in the last 24hours. Seems I'm a selfish old fart that manipulates competitions and moderators for my own well being.

 

At this moment I'm still completely gutted by the current ongoing act and I can only refer to it as immature behavior of some I considered as being one of our respected community members. In fact this act was one of them stigmas HWBOT tried so hard to get rid off during competitions. Greed is a vicious monster. Outcome will be that there will be an internal debate for upcoming competitions, the imposed rules and prizes. A charade of this magnitude has to be avoided at all cost.

 

Isn't it insane how a few persons can disrupt a fun compo and turn it into a nitemare for myself and Websmile, one of our most devoted HWBOT moderators. A huge thumbs up to Michael who spends hours and hours trying to keep it all together.

 

For your info moderating is insanely time consuming, add the usual drama and the icing on the cake is our super responsive E-sports page. I think you get the picture that we loose several hours daily.

 

I have nothing more to add that I'm pretty dissapointed in quite a few people. They prolly don't give a damn about it, but I do care about our community. Believe it or not.

 

Greetz Alby

[Dead Things]

It's a laptop. Lotsa laptops have 1280*720 or 1366*768 resolutions that make it impossible to leave the render completely uncovered in a screenie. Websmile was very helpful to me earlier in the comp in learning how to deal with such issues. Let's all take a breather, okay? No reason for inflammatory posts.

[Samsarulz]

It's a laptop. Lotsa laptops have 1280*720 or 1366*768 resolutions that make it impossible to leave the render completely uncovered in a screenie. Websmile was very helpful to me earlier in the comp in learning how to deal with such issues. Let's all take a breather, okay? No reason for inflammatory posts.

You can always connect a laptop to an external monitor unless ultra vintage notebook

 

Enviado desde mi A0001 mediante Tapatalk

[Mr.Scott]

Well I had a lot of time to reflect on the way back from the Gaming Conference. I was not sure if I would write this or not.

 

Madshrimps never expected to win, All I hoped for was top three. Me and Oldscarface lost quite e subtantial amount of hardware ( 2 awesome cpus, motherboards and a few memory kits over the last month. Hardware that we cherished and that can't be replaced by a memory kit or PSU.

 

There is no special treatment involved as some think. However if plain logic can't prevail in this expensive hobby we have a big issue. Anyway I asked Websmile to pull my 4800+ Cinebench scores saturday nite and even asked him to pull the reported 06 score by Mickulty. This to silence the drama queens and get on with life.

 

For the rig pictures we interpreted it indeed as someone pointed out before as a polite request. Compare the "Plz post a picture of your rig" with the rules laid down for the current ASUS ROG showdown2. I hope one can understand the differences in meaning. The latter imposes exactly what has to be displayed in the screenshot and detailed specs of the required setup picture. Well some might insinuate we used it as a loophole, well I can tell you none of the old nor new OCers of Madshrimps is like that. We posted similar "rig" setups for the last competitions, nobody made any remarks. Till now...

 

 

 

Big question is how can we avoid a drama of this level without cutting back on prizes?

 

 

Well I took the decision to no longer take part in any competiton due to being a staff member of HWBOT. This will have a huge impact on my team as I'm the central figure for organizing stuff. So be it. Thus no more special treatment for Leeghoofd. In fact what annoys me the most is that I honestly thought I earned more respect over the years than the drama and accusations that have been pointed at me or my team in the last 24hours. Seems I'm a selfish old fart that manipulates competitions and moderators for my own well being.

 

At this moment I'm still completely gutted by the current ongoing act and I can only refer to it as immature behavior of some I considered as being one of our respected community members. In fact this act was one of them stigmas HWBOT tried so hard to get rid off during competitions. Greed is a vicious monster. Outcome will be that there will be an internal debate for upcoming competitions, the imposed rules and prizes. A charade of this magnitude has to be avoided at all cost.

 

Isn't it insane how a few persons can disrupt a fun compo and turn it into a nitemare for myself and Websmile, one of our most devoted HWBOT moderators. A huge thumbs up to Michael who spends hours and hours trying to keep it all together.

 

For your info moderating is insanely time consuming, add the usual drama and the icing on the cake is our super responsive E-sports page. I think you get the picture that we loose several hours daily.

 

I have nothing more to add that I'm pretty dissapointed in quite a few people. They prolly don't give a damn about it, but I do care about our community. Believe it or not.

 

Greetz Alby

 

Alby, if I may call you by your name, I find it a shame that you think you have to quit supporting your team in order to fulfill your thankless voluntary job here at HWB.

Personally, I would quit the staff first just to have fun with my hobby and enjoy my teams company, and other teams members company for that matter.

You should reconsider. Neither you nor Michael should have to fall on the sword for other peoples actions or opinions.

Just my 2 cents.....FWIW.

 

~Scotty

Edited October 1, 2017 by Mr.Scott

[WhiteWulfe]

It's a laptop. Lotsa laptops have 1280*720 or 1366*768 resolutions that make it impossible to leave the render completely uncovered in a screenie. Websmile was very helpful to me earlier in the comp in learning how to deal with such issues. Let's all take a breather, okay? No reason for inflammatory posts.

 

Hmmm.... Didn't notice that first, but at the same time... Weren't those CPU's put into mainly the higher end laptops? Hubby's G74SX has that same processor in it, and was available with either a 1600x900 or 1920x1080p screen, with most of the i7 variants having the 1080p screens.

 

Sub was also done with a pre-KabyLake CPU on Windows 10.

[websmile]

Let´s face it, it is either cinebench dead or fully rendered image. I liked the old way more as well, it was easier for all including moderators, but we have no choice. It might mean some have to use external monitor, but we cannot change it. If it is considered too much of a fuss we can retire cinebenches (no threat - it is the alternative we have, the only one because Maxon did not offer any fix when Ney contacted them) or we live with the constant annoyance.

 

P.S. I always try to precheck comps, the screenshot I added is of a result I blocked at 17th of august to give bencher the chance to rebench and not end pointless at team cup, but I cannot always check each week and I can´t send you a monitor^^ btw, awesome how he thanked me by now exhumating this and putting my data online

Edited October 1, 2017 by websmile

[Bones]

Would be sad to retire it.

 

Just this morning I dug out a really old 21' CRT to solve my prob with not having enough resolution to fully display the box unobscured. Didn't know if it could do it but did so with ease as it turns out.

As long as it works I'll be using it period - Looks like I've got Texas sitting on my bench but with all that space taken up it had better have the resolution.

 

Websmile, you and the rest have done a great job and it's more than just appreciated. Undoubtedly it takes time away from the more personal aspects of your life so doesn't need to be wasted on such meaningless crap like this. The fact you guys do it at all speaks well of your dedication to the site and what we do overall.

 

Thank you.

[mickulty]

@Leeghoofd FWIW from my perspective - as one of the people otherwise "complaining" - there's nothing wrong with you competing. I'd just like it if you guys uploaded screenshots that weren't so awful, or even better just didn't sandbag so it wasn't even an issue. It's more fun for everyone when people don't sandbag, I really don't think it gives a competitive advantage, and that way the scores could have been caught in websmile's early sweep.

 

As far as consistency my issue was that when two different teams made scores with crap screenshots halfway through the competition, and one submitted right away while the other held onto it on the last day, it seems the former was more likely to be removed for similar issues as there's a natural inclination to think "well it's fine, he can rebench" rather than "well I don't want to screw him out of a score, it's a silly error and the score still seems legit". In general this is reasonable, but I just feel that people who have chosen to sit on scores for months shouldn't benefit from that courtesy.

 

The scores I pointed out are gone, so as far as I'm concerned it's fine. I'm happy firstly because consistency has been applied, and secondly because it looks like it won't really affect ranking which is good because that would be a shit way to win. I'd hate to benefit from something like that (tbh... there are other scores with screenshot gore as well but I don't wanna push the matter for that reason).

 

Regarding cinebench... a lot of benchmarks come with an inconvenience. Time spy requires Dx12. XTU requires a recent Intel processor. Heaven requires an audio device. GPUPI on GPU requires FP64 support. Cinebench 11.5/15 requires 1680x1050 or better resolution. It's annoying but it's for a good reason and not enough reason to lose an otherwise nice benchmark. Hopefully when madshrimps kick our ass again next year they can bring bigger monitors to the bench meet

 

Hopefully the guys from XO Italy will calm down when it sinks in that third is a damn good place to end up. Getting knocked down by sandbagged scores obviously leaves a bit of a bitter taste in people's mouths, from /r/overclocking's perspective we're actually quite happy now the dust has settled as we were expecting to drop more places than we did.

[Vinster]

Next year it should be a blind submission challenge.. everyone subs. but nobody can see results until the end... then there's no sandbag as the entire comp is...

 

then only people who are legitimately benching last minute would be submitting not killing the server for the last 2 days of a comp.

 

Vin

[ozzie]

Next year it should be a blind submission challenge.. everyone subs. but nobody can see results until the end... then there's no sandbag as the entire comp is...

 

then only people who are legitimately benching last minute would be submitting not killing the server for the last 2 days of a comp.

 

Vin

 

interesting idea vinnie, that would fix that problem right up, and would make it so much more interesting for people and to wonder what the others have got

[Guest]

@Leeghoofd snip * It's more fun for everyone when people don't sandbag * snip

 

First off congrats to Madshrimps team

 

Pages of whining & complaining over several days does not help anyone involved here.

Yes screenshots are bad, covered with cpu-z tabs. Madshrimps lead is so big in fact, removing some subs will make little impact on results.

_________

 

My personal writing here. What is the competitive spirit?

 

Do we load up on the sandbags .. then unleash on competition end. Sure you can win that way if there's no time for the other TEAMS to challenge your score.

 

Not really inspiring for me .. another word unsportsmanlike manner

 

Happy to hit a big score myself & post it straight up on HWbot ie proud of that achievement.

That's why we do it right? Measure our ability against one & another, man & machine pushed to the limits as I always say.

 

Really hope things can get back to a fairer & honest approach in here with regards to submissions & Competitions.

Chase down that competitors score & maybe improve on it.

That's what it's about.

 

Edit is formatting......

Edited October 2, 2017 by Guest

[ozzie]

ive never been 1 for sandbagging, my scores have what i get at the time, and if someone beats it then so be it, you just try harder then, as far as im concerned sandbagging scores till the end should be banned , its complicated, makes the mods work harder to check all these sandbagged scores submitted in quick time, and as weve seen from this, it causes BIG mistakes and a whole lot of bull....shit with it

[Guest]

That's another extreme though ozz, like Vin is opposite to your idea.

More on this below as I now have to expand there

 

Next year it should be a blind submission challenge.. everyone subs. but nobody can see results until the end... then there's no sandbag as the entire comp is...

 

then only people who are legitimately benching last minute would be submitting not killing the server for the last 2 days of a comp.

 

Vin

 

LoL call it Warp9 discussion thread. But we are trying to get to the heart of the issue.

It's about all of us here. All the competitors, not singling out any team this time.

 

If we are viewing competitors scores going up all the time, we are still benching right?

That idea keep us involved to try & improve scores.

 

There is a middle ground here ..... that individual who want's self improvement.

Trying harder all the time. That's a better competition, more submissions & interest is

increased on a whole new level.

 

Late submissions does nothing to create interest. Sandbags have no merit other than WiN.

__________

 

So as a spectator looking to join in the fun ..... you cannot see big scores held back.

Appears all big teams are asleep under the benching tables for months @ a time OR

drunk for most of it * Jokes *

 

Make it real chaps ..... let others get after your scores, improve participation.

That's a bigger community of overclockers getting involved chasing more sub'd scores

[ozzie]

sandbagging subs is a weak arsed attempt to sub as far as im concerned, its never been a fan of mine, basically its the people that sandbag that are scared to get beat and they sandbag so as to give others no time to set up other platforms or whatever to be able to beat their score, to me basically its a form of cheating in the aspect of people just not having enough time to compete against coz they have another platform on for a different section in the comp, so how the hell are they gunna have time to do it ?, and no my thoughts, idea arent different to vinnies suggestion i think, vinnies suggestion has big merit i think and would overcome a lot of the now issues very easily, it would mean you sub what you get at that time, then others try to or beat it, pretty simple, you cant see it, only the mods can to adjudicate whether its a legit sub or not and take the appropriate action on it if it isnt, os as scotty said, the mods inform the team captains of it to have it adjusted , rerun or be deleted, and all you do is do your best and same for the others, to me that is FAIR as you can get for all involved

[Samsarulz]

Im not against sandbagging, it makes things more interesting (but I dont like to do it). All of us know how hard is submitting the last day since HWBot normally has some lag hahaha.

 

Considering the amount of time needed in organization for a whole Team to do almost 100% sandbags...I can only get my hat off. Very well shrimps, your "Blitzkrieg" strategy killed us all . They won last year and were the favorites, cant say I was happy, but is part of competition.

 

Maybe prizes are part of the "culprit" here. Maybe next time no prizes and less/no drama.

 

Regards

[Guest]

sandbagging subs is a weak arsed attempt to sub as far as im concerned, its never been a fan of mine, basically its the people that sandbag that are scared to get beat and they sandbag so as to give others no time to set up other platforms or whatever to be able to beat their score, to me basically its a form of cheating in the aspect of people just not having enough time to compete against coz they have another platform on for a different section in the comp, so how the hell are they gunna have time to do it ?, and no my thoughts, idea arent different to vinnies suggestion i think, vinnies suggestion has big merit i think and would overcome a lot of the now issues very easily, it would mean you sub what you get at that time, then others try to or beat it, pretty simple, you cant see it, only the mods can to adjudicate whether its a legit sub or not and take the appropriate action on it if it isnt, os as scotty said, the mods inform the team captains of it to have it adjusted , rerun or be deleted, and all you do is do your best and same for the others, to me that is FAIR as you can get for all involved

 

Valid points ozzie & sure plenty don't like the sandbag bombs raining in @ the END

 

Held back scores " hurt " participation

Vin's idea blind submission challenge may " hurt " participation

______

 

So for me it's the lack of " what to look @ all the time "

 

Example 1. Score goes up " 1000 points " & I have hardware, challenge to beat it.

Example 2. No score goes up..... where is my motivation to bench my hardware?

Example 3. Sand bag score held to last days of comp.

 

Well what can you do there? Too good a score OR too late to compete competently.

______

 

At least with example 1 you have the interest there to give it a go. Even if it is a

downright tease & a better score is held back. Your giving it a go, that's all that matters

 

Participation = We all win

[WhiteWulfe]

I absolutely LOVE the sound of the whole blind submission part, provided a few things were still possible...

- Everyone could at least see who is competing, and how they're looking for submission COMPLETION... Aka your Team A has 3/3 subs posted for a stage, Team B has 2/3, etc

- I'd love to have the ability to see what members of my team have submitted... Provided it wouldn't provide a coding nightmare (most teams have their own forums with private sections and/or chats, so logging of scores can always be done here)

- There's preferably some sort of penalty to reduce sandbagging... But instead of penalizing submissions that are put in in the last twelve hours (because such would be a coding nightmare, not to mention putting a huge burden on the moderation staff to determine what submission was a sandbag, and which one was because the bencher was paid that day (Friday, like this year's event, was arguably the "last" day) and went and did another round to try and improve their own scores. In essence, some sort of "stage within a stage" kind of idea, where a portion of the final score teams get is based upon where they sit, say the first and second thirds of the competition (end of first month, end of second month)... In order to encourage not only regular participation, but also earlier submissions of results. But I'd then say don't show standings until the very end, have the points be "silently logged behind the scenes" or something to that effect.

 

Say, have a 15/25/60 kind of weighting to it, where 15% of a team's final score would be from their standing in the first month, 25% from where they were in the second month, and 60% from the final month's standings... Y'know, kind of like how things work out in the long run for leagues in regular sporting events. I wanted to say 20/30/50, but feel the 15/25/60 would be better received due to having more of a focus on how things are in the end. Such could also be used to drum up more support from sponsors due to there being more activity with the benching, and people rallying for their teams in a (potentially) stronger manner. ;;;

 

Will that last one reduce sandbagging? Nope, but it would also help alleviate concerns that some would have about a totally blind system, AND would also at least reduce some of the sandbagging because if you banked on sandbagging the lack of results in the first and second third could very well backfire.

 

It also has the side effect of causing some of the smaller teams (or even the larger ones that focus on very specific areas) some chaos in the beginning stretch due to lack of hardware, but on the flipside... It reduces the focus on sandbagging. However, on the flipside, if we have that nice distribution of hardware like we did this year (and not the absolute chaos that was last year with the whole sodimm in dimm converter that didn't work very well for a lot of people, and completely archaic hardware) the chaos could at least be limited in it's nature.

[ozzie]

Im not against sandbagging, it makes things more interesting (but I dont like to do it). All of us know how hard is submitting the last day since HWBot normally has some lag hahaha.

 

Considering the amount of time needed in organization for a whole Team to do almost 100% sandbags...I can only get my hat off. Very well shrimps, your "Blitzkrieg" strategy killed us all . They won last year and were the favorites, cant say I was happy, but is part of competition.

 

Maybe prizes are part of the "culprit" here. Maybe next time no prizes and less/no drama.

 

Regards

 

its not interesting, its a pain in the arse Sam, look what it does and has done, conflict, aggression, illegitimate subs, name it, its there ? and does it every year, people cant even submit cos the site is so choked up with sandbagged subs and the site and the mods are trying their arses out to get thru it all and be fair with it, isnt this telling everyone something ??????, it needs banning and to sub when you do the sub, and the timestamp will tell that when it was done, thats my take on it to make it easier for all and stop all this garbage carry on

[Guest]

Such could also be used to drum up more support from sponsors due to there being more activity with the benching, and people rallying for their teams in a (potentially) stronger manner. ;;;

 

* snip *

 

Will that last one reduce sandbagging? Nope, but it would also help alleviate concerns that some would have about a totally blind system, AND would also at least reduce some of the sandbagging because if you banked on sandbagging the lack of results in the first and second third could very well backfire.

 

You are onto something there, balance of the scales. Participation / subbing sooner = reward

[Bones]

Guys, we need to find an alternative to the current comp format.

 

Something that could be done in stages BUT not with all of it at the same time with each stage only lasting for a short amount of time.

 

This way you'd have far less sandbagging and less of the site getting slammed at the end (Or so we'd hope). Also make the stages as elimination rounds allowing only those teams that make the cut proceeding ot the second/next stage of the comp itself, so on and so on.

 

This year we had what I would call 4 stages, namely SC1 through SC4 with an assortment of benchies within each.

I'd say the top 20 goes on from the first stage, then the top 10 for the third and the top 3 teams for the final round. Most would think top 2 but having a third team there would spice things up a bit.

The benchies in each stage isn't announced until it opens, this way (Hopefully) no one gets the jump on others.... Keeping stages unknown until it's time has been an issue in the past I know, that would need addressing if it hasn't been already.

Each stage could only be for about a week so there woudn't be too much sandbagging, you'd still have it of course but not as bad as before.

 

Something along these lines would cut down on the excessive sandbagging since you really can't hold them for long anyway AND you'd have a limited amount of time to make them count, not to mention it would probrably be easier on the server too, esp after the first stage is done.

 

Just an idea to be considered.

I believe something like this has been done before but the way the Team Cup is now it's been alot of trouble and headache to deal with.

If we need to start another thread that woudn't be a bad idea for discussion.

 

What do you guys think?

Ideas?

Let's hear 'em. :celebration:

[Guest]

Hehe classic. But result may be many good benchers sitting on the sidelines " looking on, what can they do? "

Then there's teams with small amounts of hardware.

 

This type of format. ie elimination rounds. Pool/ tennis competitions. May have a chance to live again.

 

Draw from a Hat. Team vs team match ups.

Draw from a Hat. Team vs team to what benchmark.

 

Draw from a Hat. A single team, no combatant. Live to go into next round.

[ozzie]

i think theres a lot of good suggestions in this thread and they need to be carefully read , listened too and examined, because whats been happeining the last years just has to stop , its bloody well ridiculous

[Guest]

Too true ozz.....many smart members & good input. May well be an idea there......

 

More benching > less butt hurt

[yosarianilives]

Guys, we need to find an alternative to the current comp format.

 

Something that could be done in stages BUT not with all of it at the same time with each stage only lasting for a short amount of time.

 

This way you'd have far less sandbagging and less of the site getting slammed at the end (Or so we'd hope). Also make the stages as elimination rounds allowing only those teams that make the cut proceeding ot the second/next stage of the comp itself, so on and so on.

 

This year we had what I would call 4 stages, namely SC1 through SC4 with an assortment of benchies within each.

I'd say the top 20 goes on from the first stage, then the top 10 for the third and the top 3 teams for the final round. Most would think top 2 but having a third team there would spice things up a bit.

The benchies in each stage isn't announced until it opens, this way (Hopefully) no one gets the jump on others.... Keeping stages unknown until it's time has been an issue in the past I know, that would need addressing if it hasn't been already.

Each stage could only be for about a week so there woudn't be too much sandbagging, you'd still have it of course but not as bad as before.

 

Something along these lines would cut down on the excessive sandbagging since you really can't hold them for long anyway AND you'd have a limited amount of time to make them count, not to mention it would probrably be easier on the server too, esp after the first stage is done.

 

Just an idea to be considered.

I believe something like this has been done before but the way the Team Cup is now it's been alot of trouble and headache to deal with.

If we need to start another thread that woudn't be a bad idea for discussion.

 

What do you guys think?

Ideas?

Let's hear 'em. :celebration:

 

Bones, I do like your idea but I think it would hurt a lot of the busier benchers. For example I didn't get my Superpi 32m score in until 10 minutes before the end of the comp because I didn't get to running it until 15 minutes before the end of the comp. I think that something I've heard before that might not be impossible is something like releasing a new cpuz version every week and requiring that your submission date matches the cpuz version or something similar to that. It would require minimal change to the current competition style while also making sandbagging like the kind we've seen, ie. gaining over 500 points the last 24 hours, significantly harder. At that point if a team managed such a sandbag it would be an accomplishment more than anything. Just my $.02 as someone who was legitimately benching to the wire.

[ozzie]

ive said my piece and how i feel about it all, its now up to bot staff, coz im sure they dont want this garbage, and if they dont do something positive about it as it has been said in previous years and nothing has been done about its its gunna happen again for em to deal with, its that bloody well simple, bot has to own up to their own incompetence with it here, its been there for years...fix it properly, clear rules posted in every comp, regulations posted in every comp, does 2 + 2 make 4 or 9 ?? and the problem no longer exists does it ???!!!!!