Byte — Yesterday was a highly anticipated match between 
Crack Clan and 
Vinland. Both casting stations, VanillaTV & TF.TV organised quite a bit to deliver this premiership game. For those not in the loop of what happened last night, the game came to an abrupt end, after only 4 rounds of the entire match being played, due to a dispute between the veteran Darn and 
ipz / Crack Clan, over allowing the FOV (field of view) extended from the maximum default. There was no obligation for Crack Clan in accordance with ETF2L rules to allow this feature. While it was not defined in ETF2L’s rule page, it was mentioned in one of their news post (27th of April 2013) as an update with the following:
“Using a server that allows higher FOV values is allowed if, and only if both teams agree. The hosting team must inform the visiting team about the increased FOV before the match starts.”
To be fair it’s clear as night and day, it should be agreed before hand & agreed by both teams into using it. Clearly it wasn’t, so it was decided in the match. Could this have been avoided before the match? Looking at irc, one of the leaders from Vinland, Rake, stated:
[Rake:] emb, imho it either has to be straight out banned or allowed
[Rake:] but this compromise just means that people cant actually use it
I personally agree with things being dealt by the league more so than the players, as it will cause delays and problems in the long run if dealt by the teams. For example as we saw last night, seems no one thought of asking the other team if they’re okay with using an extended fov a bit more in advance.
Similarly ETF2L have the same rule for mercs, must be agreed with the opposition and preferably stated on the match page, so that admins don’t apply a penalty. However with so many rules in the league one can only sympathesize with teams not knowing them all 100%, so the best solution would surely be making a cut off point for specific rules. The FOV setting being clearly one of those, however not all rules should have a clear cut decision.
So reading up on the ETF2L forums about this, obviously someone had to vent their frustration and disgust at this whole matter. The thread can be found here. Darn himself has made his own comment about his actions stating:
Dont blame the team. I did say them to get a merc or something. I have no interest to play without the fov anymore, you can talk all you want about being ‘professional’ and what not in this very ‘professional’ game. For me, to be able to play proper and have _fun_ with the game I need the higher fov. This season, these points mean very little to me if I have to grind thru the games. Saying that if the rest of the teams dont want me to use the fov im done. Sorry for all the people who tuned in to see a game.
While I can understand his point, in that he’s been there and done that a million times in TF2, along with achieved so much in his previous years with 4kings/Dignitas, coming back to the game for darn has been a ballache and very difficult for him to reignite that initial passion and flare in Team Fortress 2. Having said that, TF2 has moved a long way from those days and is a different scene and how certain things work is nothing like it used to be, so one has to accept and continue or leave peacefully, without ruining the fun for those joining the game or are in progress of learning/moving up the skill ranks.
Our intrepid reporter 
Arie had a chat with a member of both teams, first up Ipz, from Crack Clan:
VanillaTF2: The day after, are you surprised about the reactions? Especially people defending
Ipz: aslong as the right people get my point, i cant talk sense into everyone, if i try i end up really disappointed. In the end we did it cause we thought they might take rounds of usVanillaTF2: can we quote you on that?
Ipz: lol ye they took rounds of epsi and of bffVanillaTF2: If you’re not worried about maps, but rounds, why bother?
Ipz: numlocked talked to me on his stream the night before saying that they could suprise us, so im not giving out any advantages, which a higher fov is / to my enemy if my team cant utilize on it cause they arent used to it, hence would not increase their fov. I just dont want to drop rounds against anyone, the 2 rounds that we lost vs bff each map hurt already tbf
we want to lose rounds when it comes to broder and epsi, but not beforeVanillaTF2: People might consider you default hunters for such behaviour.
Ipz: How could people consider that default hunting? I dont think there is a single person out there, even the onces that know rauli, that predicted him to ragequit. This guy comes to our server, being unbelievably disrespectful before even a single word is exchanged in English. The first sentence in finish calling us all kids and since james is gone this team is full of shit, then he wants to force me to disadvantage myself for him? We just got a bunch of racial slurs and some finnish bullshit that noone understands, but still people go on forums claiming we baited him?VanillaTF2: Do you feel ETF2L should make a statement/rule to prevent events like last night?
Ipz: I don´t really care for now how ETF2L is gonna handle the fov case in the future and how they will punish the ragequit. All i care about at the moment is that Darn is getting called out for beeing a racist fuckVanillaTF2: You’re quite pissed about it still
Ipz: ofc i am, we are working quite hard without any financial benefit for some month to push the quality of tf2 in Europe abit so everytime this stuff happens im super pissed about it cause it throws me back another 3 months.
We also talked to Rake of Vinland:
VanillaTF2.org: Hey Rake, is Vinland going to keep playing, and if so, how will you deal with opponents not allowing wider fov?
Rake: Well we hope to keep on playing, however after last nights “match” it’s obvious that not a single team is going to allow a higher FoV anymore, and as such we’re looking into our options.VanillaTF2: Ipz went on record to say, more or less: “We didn’t want to lose rounds to this team, the dropped rounds against bff already hurt. numlocked warned us beforehand we might get surprised, so we didn’t want to give them any advantage”
Rake: Well wellVanillaTF2: Are you surprised cc turned out to be a little bit afraid of you guys, even if it was just a fear of losing rounds, not maps?
Rake: I hardly see it as a reason to deny higher FoV. I wasn’t expecting them or broder to do it, more so the teams that we’re actually competing with (solar, rlm, lms). And we’ve been having fairly good results at fairly random intervals, I guess they assumed we might pull something out of the hat last night.
However it would’ve been a lot better, everything considered to just play with the higher FoV cap, especially after seeing Darn’s reaction, and noticing that he’s not even trying to play
Skidmark Central playing their second official in as many days. Tonight they take on 
BFF/Nerd Party/Skidmark Central/WhateverTheirNameMayBeTonight face off against 
Daleth and 
kiler4fun and 
AnimaL and 
Warden!) If you feel like you fit the criteria, either 
Galant —
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