Yesterday's Alliance Tournament Finals were marred slightly by some disconnection issues. This is probably well known at this point. It was unfortunate, no one can argue that. It is always a bummer when issues outside of the normal framework sink into and effect a fight in Eve. Any fight in Eve. Not to mention the finals of the entire AT. Damn that sucks.
Late last night I wander over to one of my many Slack channels to see what the chatter is and discover some lingering anger about it. This is a good eight hours or so after the match. I won't mention names, it doesn't matter. And although I was treated rather poorly and insultingly for parachuting into the conversation, I tried to maintain some level-headed points. All of which were discounted. Anger. Makes people dumb.
I know it is frustrating. During one of our matches one of the other team's pilots DC'd during the match and his ship was exploded. That isn't fair. I wish the world didn't work that way, but it does. Those are the rules. And those rules exist because there is literally nothing else that can be done about it. Nothing. Tough shit. HTFU. You can't re-do the match or magically freeze the match, because people can't be re-done or frozen. Suddenly everyone has more knowledge and time to act on that knowledge creates un-fair advantages. A huge part of each match is the speed, uncertainty and chaos of each match. Just look at boundary violations, something a few teams really seem to struggle with, those are caused by the speed, uncertainty and chaos of the matches as well. Should we change that rule?
DCs are no fun in the Alliance Tournament OR on Tranquility. I can't begin to tell you how many situations I wish I could have back from the last eight years that caused me to lose a ship or a pod due to disconnection issues. Tons. Just as I can't begin to re-count the number of times the server code let me down, modules refused to work, my ship got stuck on an asteroid, or things just didn't work the way they are intended to work. It happens. I believe it happens a lot more than most people realize. But it has always been a part of the Eve experience. If you believe it was wrong petition it. Nine times out of ten the logs will show nothing.
PL may indeed have lost a single match yesterday to disconnection issues. But they certainly didn't lose the AT because of them. They lost because they got out-played. In several instances they shot themselves in the foot. Heck, my Wife believes PL threw the AT because they bet against themselves on the last weekend of AT betting, which is why EveBet was down. Personally I find that much more likely than CCP ever changing the rule about DCs. My Wife is usually right about these things by the way.
The salty tears about losing are to be expected. Most people in Eve cry like babies when they lose. In my experience the winners rarely complain. A few times I've disconnected and still managed to win the fight. I didn't petition those fights. (I don't petition fights by the way, I don't believe in it. My last petition was over five years ago when I lived in Syndicate. It was an undocking error and I won that petition.)
Complain enough and maybe CCP will just decide to stop having Alliance Tournaments.
I wouldn't blame them.
Its Eve. HTFU.
NOTE: Since some people seem challenged here, let me be clear. I do not like DCs and I wish they did not happen. Especially in the AT during a finals match. That sucks and it really is a serious bummer. But that is the reason the finals is a best of five series.