Why don't you pause the game when a player disconnects during the match?

It could be abused. Example: in a 1on1 you might to interrupt your opponent when he's on a run and frags you several times in a row. If we gave the opportunity to halt the game by disconnecting, this would create a strong incentive to do so whenever you seem out of luck. We believe that something only the disconnecting party is accountable for should not be of any disadvantage for the opponent.

 

Why do some spectators get kicked/banned during the games?

Usually we don't kick/ban spectators. This is, however, only true if the spectators are friendly and don't do anything that disturbs the games. If spectators e.g. change names without a proper reason but rather to circumvent that they are muted during the games, we kick/ban those spectators.  Another reason might be that the server is full, but Players need to be able to get on it.

 

Why are only few decisions decided by the community (i.e.. by polls, etc)?

There are several reasons. If everything we'd have to do would have to be clarified by a poll, this would mean even more time and would take one of the few things from us that means some fun: shaping this contest. The outcome would often be far from ideal, too. Majority decisions always have the disadvantage that the decision is only as smart/wise/foreseeing as the average is. It also does not take much too see that the rules on how to compete should not be determined by the competitors themselves (as you can tell from the financial market in real life these days). This does not mean that we don't want to know what players think about solving issues. But it often means that we can't offer more participation than listening to the player's ideas and arguments and then decide in a way that is s neutral as possible.

 

Why don't you  offer more modes and/or play on several servers simultaneously?

One limit is that we we only have the time and want the PSL to be on sundays only and only twice a month. Unlike some, us Refs tend to go out on Fridays/Saturdays (in our RL) and don't want PSL to bar us from doing so. The only option would thus be simultaneous games. Believe it or not, but we need at least two Refs to watch any game to make sure everything is alright in terms of cheating, teams, substitutions, flag-score-bug, taking screenshots, updating the homepage, etc. As one out of us three usually can't make it to the games, there would be noone to ref simultaneous games. Another problem would be that many players want to take part in all modes, which they could not if we staged games on two or more servers simultaneously.

 

Is there any limit for the ping/pj to take part in PSL?

Yes, but there is no definite value. What we can say is that you need to have a "ping" (time in milliseconds a packet takes between server and client) below 500 and a pretty stable "pj" (time in milliseconds between the packets that are sent to the server) below 60. The rest depends. We will exclude you as soon as WE believe it distracts your opponent. The reason is: the ping does not say much about how distracting yo appear to others, it's more about how stable and much less important how low your pj is. We've had players with a ping of 400 and a pj of stable 40 who could play without a problem but we also had players with a ping of 130 and a very unstable pj who we could not allow to play.

 

Why don't you host a server in the US or Australia so players from there can participate in PSL with better ping/pj?

Maybe the biggest problem is our high standard of trust that we require among us Refs when it comes to our server-mod. Even if all other problems were solved we would want to rent and pay for the server ourselves which is quite hard if you are not from that country and don't have a bank account there, etc. Besides, we haven't had serious offers from highly reliable persons we know well and who we fully trust and who are also willing to stop playing in PSL coming from the US/Australia. It would also make organizing the PSL much more time-intesive. That's time we currently just don't have.

 

WHAT HAPPENS IF THERE IS A DRAW AT THE END OF THE TIME? OR In the all-vs-all: What if the 4th and 5th have the same amount of frags?

There is no draw anymore. In all games without flags (ie: all all-vs-all games and ffa insta and capture quick games and title matches): If the amount of frags is equal, the time gets extended for a minute. If its still/again a draw it gets extended for another minute as often as necessary until finally someone has won. In all modes with flags (i.e CTF and insta CTF title matches and quick 5 minute games), the next score wins.

 

Why is the IRC channel on Quakenet and not on Gamesure like all the other clan channels?

Three reasons: #PSL was already taken on Gamesurge, Gamesurge refuses if you attemt to conect more than 10 channles at the same time (which will be annoying for everyone with more than 10 channels and autojoin on startup), and we want to be close to #sauerbraten ;-).

 

Why do I have to sign up via email, what if I forgot?

Because we still do most things manually for some reasons. One of them is that it simply makes it easier for us and shows us, that you take this contest serious enough. As you can imagine, it is quite some work to manage a server with 60 people on it and 10 teams wanting to participate. Even if we know all teams/participants beforehand, it's still complicated because many people disconnect, change names, forget the client, etc. If you forget to sign up, chances are low that we will let you participate. You can try via IRC, but it really all depends on how much stuff we've got to do, if we feel like it and/or if we blieve it won't be much of a problem. It is likely that all you will get is a brief "no" as a reply (if any at all). If you or your team has forgotten to use the right client during the past games or showed up too late it is very likely that we won't take you. And: we NEVER accept any sign-ups less than an hour before the respective sceduled time, i.e. if you want to sign up for instagib while ffa is already running, save your energy and time.

Why do you sometimes decide against / in favour of something during the games although there is no rule for/against it?

Well, there can't be a rule for everything. If there is no rule, but we have to decide to let the games go on, we just do it. And like all decisions, those are final, unless WE reconsider them afterwards, because we believe our decision to be indefensible (rarely the case :-P). After the games we usually talk about it and consider to make a rule for the future games. Sometimes this is a solution, sometimes it is not. An example: A signed team shows up late, a teammember lacks the right client, does not respond immediately nor changes the client. We then often decide to go on without that team as soon as we believe it really requires too much patience from the opponents. But there is no meaningful rule we could make, except for: "Don't bug everyone / Don't do stuff that costs too much of our or other people's time"...

 

I AM A PARTICIPANT / MY TEAM PARTICIPATES. WHAT CAN WE DO TO HELP THE GAMES TO START EARLY?

Easy: Do everything that can be done beforehand (especially: setting up mumble, getting all clanmates to use it) Then: Get the right client (right) BEFORE you show up, and then show up in time (5 Minutes early are enough). After that you are free to play to kill time, BUT PLEASE: STAY CONNECTED. Nothing eats more time than participants who connect/disconnect all the time. And: watch out for what the Referees say. If it is a qualification game for a team mode: be ready to tell us who plays for your team.

 

Is there any way I could contribute?

Yeah: If you create (neutral) videos from PSL games we will post the links. If you are a native english speaker you might be the right one to become a PSL live reporter. For the details see this page here.

 

WHY DON'T YOU DO BETTER?

Many people come up with good ideas about changing PSL. In general, that's a good thing and we even sometimes need your smart ideas to sort out issues. The only thing that sometimes makes enjoying these ideas a bit hard is the attitude the ones with the ideas come to us with. They act as if they seriously seem to believe that we are a company and try to serve our paying customers. Truth is: we are not a company and we don't get paid for it at all. We do all our work not because we love coding, updating webpages, creating anti-cheat-clients and the like so much but because we want this game to have a little something that holds it together and gives a little platform to compete. Keeping this in mind will help you understand that most of the times it's not the ideas we lack, it's the time and will to turn all nice ideas into reality. All Referees are employed in real life which does not leave much time for PSL stuff. As you can see from our profiles we're doing the relevant stuff in our professional life too, which makes it in ways easy for us to do a relatively good job for PSL, but also hard sometimes: If your job makes you sit in front of a PC all day and code stuff its sometimes hard to go on when the job is over and create something for PSL. Believe us, we take PSL seriously nevertheless - but don't be too hard on us. Sorry for pointing this out so directly, but lack of friendliness, respect and appreciation from people who sometimes do nothing else than play and criticize is something that is unfortunately hindering (psychologically). This is not only true for the PSL stuff here, but for many people and projects in the Sauerbraten community as well, especially the game development, quadropolis, the various server mods and tools.