The Worst Event hosted by OCG Asia

The Worst Event hosted by OCG Asia Article

1 year ago by

Therarely

162 0 10 Min Read Article

Introduction1

I absolutely hate making derogatory articles like these. I love the game, I love what OCG Asia has provided us over the course of my entire playing career, and I appreciate everything about this game that I am allowed to play with my friends. So why am I writing this? I want to document what I, and many, believe to be the worst event ever handled by a certain management team. I want to record this down, and ponder, discuss how exactly, did this event go so, so wrong.

Yugioh OCG may seem like a bed of roses from the other side, but occasionally there are major frustrations too. This is possibly a biased documentary of what we currently believe to top all of those annoyance. This article will be about the third Remote Duel Battle Royale event hosted from 15th - 23rd January of 2022.

As a disclaimer, I do not intend to slander any parties, and as mentioned, my intention is merely to document the events that occurred across this particular week. If you find this article offensive, or wish to learn more, please reach out to my Twitter in my bio, where I am more honest with my opinions.

Note: on the 23th of January, management has wiped all traces of this event ever occurring. Thus, I may not be able to provide relevant pictures at certain time points.

What is Remote Duel Battle Royale?

Remote Duel Battle Royale is an ambitious event hosted on Discord for the citizens of OCG Asia to participate in. Open to Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines, duelists from these six select countries may queue on the server's ladder to compete against each other. Duelists would be rewarded upon completing three games for a sleeve, or a playmat upon winning five times. Either way, there was great incentive for participating regardless. While the nature of Remote Dueling was subjective in itself, the inability to host YOTs and ACQs (events similar to YCSes) has allowed an event of this nature to arise.

This would not be the first time OCG Asia would attempt an event like this. Previously, there were two other similar events, which ended in resounding satisfaction. You can even read about my first experience here! As an experienced veteran at this point, naturally I would expect an exciting time yet again this week! But there are no guarantees in this game, and everything would begin to surpass our expectations.

Remote Duel Battle Royale 1 & 2

If you click on the hyperlink above or here, I have written about how this event is run, and experienced by a player. The second event would happen the same way, except with an additional rule. Players were only allowed to submit match results after 15 minutes. This rule was implemented to combat "Sleeverunners," a term used to describe players attempting to conclude 3 games as soon as possible. These events however, ran extremely smoothly, and were generally well received by the community otherwise.

If you are still unaware of how Remote Duel Battle Royale is ran, I absolutely insist that you read my past article. Context is very relevant for the upcoming words I have written.

Sleeverunners

Since completing three games regardless of outcome would redeem you one pack of sleeves, players figured it was easier to speedrun games by throwing them, and redeem sleeves, rather then compete for 5 exhausting victories to claim a playmat. This tactic was not shunned by the player community, as it meant that the other player could clock one victory to their accounts with ease. Providing a win-win scenario, this trick successfully bankrupted the total allocation of sleeves available to claim within 6 days of the given 2 weeks of the event. Even as management noticed this problematic behavior, establishing a "15 minute" rule only meant that sleeverunners would be forced to clock 15x3 minutes to redeem one pack of sleeves. This trick would leave the server almost empty for the rest of the event, with remaining duelists hoping to score playmats through 5 successful wins.

The result was many players complaining that they were not able to redeem sleeves in time as they were only able to play on weekends. Some would feel frustrated as they wanted to play an honest game of Yu-Gi-Oh, and could not find any willing opponents in the sea of sleeverunners.

*A valiant effort to weed out sleeverunners*

Armed with the knowledge of such potential issues, management would put their heads together, and attempt to combat this issue. So, OCG Asia would proudly declare the start of a new Remote Duel Battle Royale, having learnt from their mistakes.

Remember this! Since the ultimate goal of these players are to quickly accomplish 3 games, while the management has to deal with presenting a fair experience to all players. This is a story about the actions taken by both player and management.

The start of Remote Duel Battle Royale 3

Attractive prizes, easy movements, any sleeverunner would be ecstatic at the announcement of another event they could exploit and profit from. This event promoted the release of Dimension Force, the game's latest main set. Along with purchasing a minimum of 10 booster packs for one qualifying code, one could get a Red Packet depicting an embossed golden Dewloren, representing the Chinese New Year of the Tiger. This event already felt amazing.

*An array of attractive prizes - Sleeve designs on the left, Playmats on the right.*

And thus, the event would begin on their Discord server, an experience several of us were used to. Except that there were new rules in place.

Time Slot for Sleeves

Possibly to combat the possibility of sleeves running out before the week starts, sleeves were announced to be distributed in Time Slots. If specific number of sleeves were allocated to particular sections for the day, players could be assured that they would have a chance to redeem sleeves no matter which day they participated in.

HOWEVER, an additional rule was added. If you started your games at a specific time slot (eg. 2pm of a Tuesday), and did not manage to complete 3 games, your code would NOT be qualified for sleeve redemption. Meaning if you were too slow, your code would be less valuable already.

paragraph

Day 1 - 15 January

Server Crash

Day 1. This was also a Saturday, meaning more players were liberated from life responsibilities for the weekend. Right on time, when the server officially opened at 10 AM sharp, players immediately flooded the chat with ".duel", a command to trigger the bot to place people in the queue to duel. The event was off to a roaring start, since players, sleeverunners and casuals alike were determined to clock their games and earn their prizes.

Almost immediately, the server started crashing around 11 AM. Management was forced to place the event on a halt, as they frantically scrambled to figure out a solution to combat these overly euthanistic players. This effectively ate into precious dueling time, as codes could potentially expire if the "3 game" conditions were not met within this time period.

The solution? The bot would place a slowmode on EVERY single chatroom.

This slowmode setting would only allow players to continue typing every 10 minutes, regardless if you were chatting in General, asking the judges for Rulings, and especially the bot channel. Did this help? Only to fuel the frustrations of many players. Sleeverunners would now have only one chance to key in their ".duel", otherwise risk a potential 10 minute delay, but it was merely a risk and nothing more.

After "maintenance" concluded at 2PM, players were quick to resume their sleeverunning activities.
Day 1's total sleeve allocation would faithfully run out at 2.47PM, and 5.48PM.

Day 2 - 16 January

Some day I wanna lay down, like God did, on Sunday - Kanye West

Almost everyone has free time on a Sunday. For majority of the

Day 3 - 17 January

As the weekend ends, naturally one would expect that others would be too busy with real life commitments to be playing a children's card game. But so did everyone else! Monday's 2PM slot was cleared around 2:48PM by devoted sleeverunners. And so did 7PM's slot, fully redeemed around 7.47PM. It was only three days into the event, and this strategy was proving to be quite the pattern. And of course, there were complaints from several other players.

Note: A huge majority of Asian OCG players reside in Chinese speaking countries, so while I have provided machine translations on the side, please expect to see this kind of photos more into this article.

Players were frustrated. Codes for the event were not cheap, and already rationed out by many shops. Imagine purchasing product to participate in this event, only for the organizers to tell you that you could not redeem anything, simply because you were too slow.

The organizers would rack their brains - how can they stop players from exploiting their system? And after careful deliberation, they would implement the most controversial rule yet.

40 Minute Duel

In order to ration the number of sleeves given out to players, management introduced the 40 minute rule. This meant that the conclusion of games could only be reported after 40 minutes. This was a far cry from the first 15 minute rule.

Day 4 - 18 January

Day 5 - 19 January

Day 6 - 20 January

Things would only get worse

Day 7 - 21 January

Day 8 - 22 January

0 reactions

Introduction1

What is Remote Duel Battle Royale?

Remote Duel Battle Royale 1 & 2

Sleeverunners

The start of Remote Duel Battle Royale 3

Time Slot for Sleeves

Day 1 - 15 January

Server Crash

Day 2 - 16 January

Day 3 - 17 January

40 Minute Duel

Day 4 - 18 January

Day 5 - 19 January

Day 6 - 20 January

Day 7 - 21 January

Day 8 - 22 January

More Articles

Comments