Personal/Custom Avatars

@ftxcommando

You said

Money is transferable to avatars now and that needs to get explained.

It's not. Money is not transferable to avatars. Avatars are an alternative, not an equivalent or a product bought for money.

This is a sentence, yes. Now read it in the context of

“then there needs to be rules ironed out about how much money equates to an avatar and whether only FAF official prize money is capable of being spent on said good”

Avatars being a prize substitute equates to avatars being bought with money. You’re just deciding what money is allowed to be considered. The Board and tournament team already took the plunge into making it viable to buy personal avatars with this policy, this is about the details.

@ftxcommando

Avatars being a prize substitute equates to avatars being bought with money.
making it viable to buy personal avatars with this policy

This is exactly what I'm saying is a leap of logic beyond the reasonable.
No avatars were sold. No avatars were bought. No one has even hinted at the posibility of buying avatars with money. One thing replacing another does not equate being able to buy that one thing with the other.

They were bought as Pepsi was compensated for the loss of his prize money through the avatar. For this to be reasonable, rules need to exist on what an avatar is worth, because if it’s worth any amount then any russian getting 16th place in LotS could potentially get a unique avatar. If it’s too high, only 1 russian a year is going to be getting one, if that.

Avatars are given a market value for fair compensation, it’s a price. It’s a price that can be paid. It’s a question of what the market structure is.

And frankly, I think it’s pretty ridiculous and inane to only apply to Russians in a situation outside of their control. It’s not fair to either them nor everybody else. The rule should be uniform if this is seen as legitimate enough to be a solution to this issue.

@ftxcommando You're stretching the meaning of the word 'bought' to mean things that it doesn't. You can stretch your logic in whatever shape of argument you want, but fact remains that avatars cannot be bought, and that offering them as a replacement for a financial prize does not mean that they suddenly can.

The above notwithstanding: as you say, guidelines need to be established for the avatars and when someone should get one. I'm sure those kind of decisions would have been made properly, if it wasn't for the weird situation that resulted in (what I understand to be) one NOC handing out an avatar without further really discussing it.

No I’m not. You don’t understand what a substitute good is and that for it to work, it still requires a price. If money is the substitute good, it’s bought. That’s what it is. Are you describing the avatar Pepsi got as a gift unrelated to the prize money? If not, the two are obviously related, nobody is even denying it.

If avatars can’t be bought, the situation above is arbitrary and shouldn’t have happened. Because it’s really just NOC deciding based on his personal vibes that day what is worth a personal avatar. Coherent principles aka a price needs to be established for transparency and fairness. You can argue about who is allowed to buy it or what money is allowed to be used, but it’s still a good with a price.

@indexlibrorum

Then you will forgive me for the fact that 95% of other gaming communities continue to pay Russians even large gaming corporations continue to pay Russians despite sanctions (especially those in Europe) and yet here we are.

Because heaven forbid if they paid Turbo2 Pepsi's winnings he "could" find a way to send them to Pepsi.

What have FAForever to do with financial actions of person they paid? This is not FAForever money any more so the Turbo2 can do whatever he want with them

It would not be hard to establish the causal link that makes FAF complicit in that. The better question is why anybody would care about it to go through the motions of getting it proven in court.

@noc said in Personal/Custom Avatars:

@indexlibrorum

Then you will forgive me for the fact that 95% of other gaming communities continue to pay Russians even large gaming corporations continue to pay Russians despite sanctions (especially those in Europe) and yet here we are.

Source?
A quick look says the opposite with major companies no longer providing prize winnings to Russian residing players.

Eg:

https://www.fortnite.com/competitive/news/fortnite-competitive-update-russia

All the major esports leagues I researched have banned Russian teams from competing and cancelled any events held in Russia.

https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2022/03/esports-leagues-bar-russian-owned-teams-cancel-regional-events/

The closest we get is Team Spirit which was Russian but is now Serbian based.

This is all ignoring the fact that transferring funds to a Russian bank from our Danish one is nearly impossible due to EU's SWIFT ban on Russian banks. Are we forgetting the pain we had (have?) with not being able to access our account in the past? Do we want a repeat of that happening? Even if its only a small chance of happening its not worth risking.

@ftxcommando said in Personal/Custom Avatars:

the situation above is arbitrary and shouldn’t have happened. Because it’s really just NOC deciding based on his personal vibes that day what is worth a personal avatar.

That's a pretty good description of what happened.

There is a thread in the promo-public channel on discord now that discusses avatar rules. All input is welcome.

Given there's someone clearly motivated to seeing FAF fail presumably at cost to themselves (the ongoing DDOS attacks), I don't believe the proposition that that FAF could get away with breaching the law because no-one will care.

@maudlin27 Explain how is it a breach of law? Any law that states that you can't send money to turbo2? This is the presumption of guilty not of the innocence

I’m not saying FAF should work to breach the law, my solution was still to reserve the funds while providing in kind services as options for people that don’t feel like waiting.

Though I also feel like the “waiting” isn’t really a necessary condition and the transfer of FAF money for a service should be viable for anyone that wins FAF money.

@lunyshko It's been made clear in previous iterations of this discussion that several people were intending to forward the money to Russian members who otherwise would not be able to receive prize money.

You can argue that such actions fall beyond what the board should be concerned about, but the worry remains that FAF remained possibly liable for such actions nonetheless. Legal advise was sought, but no definitive answer obtained. As such, the board has chosen to err on the side of caution, as it is most important to not jeopardize the FAF project, even if this meant that a handful of Russian players were unable to receive any financial prizes. I'm sure you'll be able to understand that the (perceived) risk involved here does not outweigh the rewards (pun not intended).

This sucks for those players and it's not their fault, but such are the consequences of living in a warmongering state.

Again, all of this has previously been discussed to death, and the conclusions that were reached by the board are unlikely to change. It's time to stop this discussion, if only so that we can return to the issue at hand:

We were discussing on how to deal with avatars, both in the global sense of needing proper guidelines to handle future assignments, as well as the specific sense of how to deal with the custom avatar given out by NOC as a replacement for the tournament prize.

There are efforts made to work out a good set of guidelines, mostly based on the earlier framework by FTX and some current revisions by Fichom. Further input on this is very welcome, please see the relevant discord channel.

Yes, lets risk the entire FAF project for a few measly bucks. Great idea lads.

@blackyps said in Personal/Custom Avatars:

@ftxcommando said in Personal/Custom Avatars:

the situation above is arbitrary and shouldn’t have happened. Because it’s really just NOC deciding based on his personal vibes that day what is worth a personal avatar.

That's a pretty good description of what happened.

There is a thread in the promo-public channel on discord now that discusses avatar rules. All input is welcome.

I don’t think so. I put equivalent if not more fault on the Board for making a terrible ruling to save themselves a little bit of duress which in turn put NOC in a totally losing situation where he tried to give some sort of compensation. Only problem on NOC’s end was not working out the details.

Little bit of a false dichotomy going on with this “net good vs net evil” when the whole situation exists because a ledger of reserved, illiquid funds is too much work for those few players. It’s really more like the needs of those few players isn’t worth a single hour a week of time of like 1 of 7 different Board members, which is a big deal for NOC’s position.

The total unpaid tournament winnings are $150 to ZLO, $75 to Espi and Lunyshko, $30 to Robogear? Or who else did not get money?

malding so hard rn, i want pixels next to my name too

With the help of Spikey I have compiled a table of all 201 current avatars. The categories are my personal best guess and aren't meant to be taken as fact, since they aren't formally categorized in any way.

Post cut in half because of character limit

	Tournament	Contributor	Personal	Other
1	TMM Gold Champion 1	FAF Donator	Looking Down	ACU sniper
2	TMM Gold Champion 2	Moderator	Pizza !	Seraphim
3	TMM Silver Champion 1	I'm a FAF caster	Sin..	Cybran
4	TMM Silver Champion 2	Mod Author	Grrrrr !	Aeon
5	IMBA Cup Champion	Map Author	Voodoo personal avatar	UEF
6	IMBA Cup Finalist	Tournament Director	Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Unive	Brackman
7	King of Open Palms	Galactic War Donator	The Boot	Cool Princess
8	Prince Of Open Palms	Personal Trainer	Masters Of The Universe	Liberate !
9	Tournament winner	Theme Creator	I'm watching you!	Cleanse !
10	King of Seraphim	FAF Wiki Editor	The Voice of Reason	Unite !
11	Blitz Champion	I'm a FAF streamer	Fluffy Tails	Destroy !
12	2vs2 Tournament Champion	Stack Wizard	speed2's avatar	Strategic Genius
13	King of UEF	Trainer Team Lead	LTT	Son of Shagrat
14	Tournament Champion	Balance Team Lead	Phoenix	President Riley
15	King of Cybran	Game Team Lead	Espiranto Personal Compensation	Cool Seth-Iavow
16	LABwars Champion	Creative Team Lead		Cool Brackman
17	King of Setons Clutch	Moderation Team Lead		Cool Clarke
18	Tournament Participant	Community Manager		Son of Shagrat xmas
19	Winner of Hearts	Promotions Team Lead		Happy Holidays !
20	King of Aeon	DevOps Team Lead		Princess Rhianne Burke
21	Nomads Tournament Champion	Game Code Tester		Core for ever!
22	Clan War Challenger	FAF Moderator		Cool Riley
23	Clan War Champion	FAF Developer		Dostya
24	The Galaxy Cup Champion	ICE Tester		Rhiza
25	2V2 WWPC U3400 Champion	M like moderator		Zan-Aishahesh
26	Prime Commander Finalist	FAF Discord Administrator		Seth-Iavow
27	Survival Champion	Grand Sculptor		Ladder Warrior
28	Average Joes Champion	Tournament Donator		Kael
29	Prince of Aeon	Patreon Donator		Ultimate Assimilator
30	Prince of Cybran	Content Creator		I'm a special snowflake!
31	Holy Trinity Winner	Patreon T3		I'm special
32	Prince of Seraphim	Patreon T4		Nomads
33	Eco Emperor	Campaign Team Lead		Vendetta
34	3v3 Spring Champion	Moderator (2023)		Galactic Conqueror
35	Minons and Legends winner	Moderator (2023) red		Puppetmaster
36	2v2 Fixed In Equilibrium	FAF Live Team		Nomads
37	3v3 Summer Champion	BalanceTeam		ARM
38	3v3 Trident Of Power	CreativeTeam		CORE
39	LotS Qualifier Champion	GameDevTeam		Ladder Knight
40	Heart of Black Champion	DevOpsTeam		Warrior of TMM