The Real Rank OPL Story

Hey all,

So it has been over two weeks since I needed to drop Rankonious from the TeamDownTV casting team for Smite. I normally ignore a lot of the public backlash from making hard choices, however after two weeks there is still posts or references every few days regarding the decisions I have made. I still see a number of posts on Twitter and now reddit saying we are cancerous, based on the information provided to them by Rankonious. The team in fact over the OPL spent a good 50 plus hours collectively delivering 4 match ups each week

If you have not read his long Twitter I encourage you to do this at http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1snbdh6



Many times during the OPL I think all casters at some point looking at being dropped for various reasons in which all of them were spoken to about this. Once they were informed of what needed to be changed, they all made instant changes and worked very hard to show us improvement.

If there is any doubt in what is said above, please go back watch the last two weeks of the OPL and compare it to the first two weeks.



Before I go in to the REAL reason why Rank was dropped I will add clarification to the reasons he has put forward.

“From day one he has hated the spectator of Smite and the game in general. “ – Rank



100% correct I do not like the spectator of Smite. The reason being doing live games we get stasis mode all the time, meaning we can’t stream games live. For the upcoming Challenger cup this increases our work load a tremendous amount just so the community can see their teams play. I would personally be shocked for anyone to come out and state “I love stasis mode”



As far as liking or not liking the game this has no bearing on me promoting the game, streaming the game or doing what I can to push the game forward. Other games I don’t like as a player include CSGO, CoD4, BO1, HearthStone, LoL (for a long time anyway). All of these games I have put in collectively hundreds of hours, promoted them and encouraged people to play the game to grow the scene. I will also open up any Aus eSports stream just to support the scene.



“Now when spectating with steve as the host the casters always had to handle the replay client skipping and backtracking a whole bunch……….Suggestions of a myriad of ways to deal with this (video delaying to better sync with casters, turning down the bitrate to the stream etc) were always met with him not wanting to do it.” – Rank



We did try a game where Rank hosted the skype call, being one of his suggestions, this made no difference. Dropping bitrate not an option, and spending time to attempt to delay the video / audio by in often cases of less than a second was not worth the risk of it being further out. This issue has since been resolved through testing other methods. Again this is an inherent flaw from watching replays and being synced up with other people. In the beginning of the OPL you would have seen the camera work go all over the place, so we changed this again for the community could have a decent steady stream, and at times yes the casters would go out of sync still. Again this has been corrected. I have streamed thousands of hours of Aus eSports, I will always take suggestions, but not everything is practical to try. What is your streaming experience?



“Including his refusal to put the VOD of AV v Chiefs on the youtube because he had personal beef with them.... Well.... yea I ain't all that interested in working with it.” – Rank



This has been proven to be incorrect the video is available https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rf0G2pZkSCQ and the upload date is the 26th august, two days before these claims were even made. Game two was never available due to the twitch stream server crashing making the VoD unusable. Any game which we were able to stream has all made it to YouTube. I have had a long GOOD history with all of Avant Management, Sandman is Avant management along with TDTV Co Founder. I even have the Avant emote on my channel.



“Some of the further conversations in that skype group with Steve were rather toxic” – Rank



95% of gamers whilst in private chat would have “toxic” conversations. I won’t even hide the fact I have on a number of times raged over some of the frustrations dealing with updates during OPL times, replays being bugged and not working. I have spent 25/26 hours a week doing OPL and when you have errors / bugs whatever you want to call it, I have 100% vented in a private skype chat. Most people would. Nothing I have done in public reflect what I have said in private chat. I have always done what I can to ensure games are streamed, VoDs are up, and content is produced.



Now for the actual reason Rankonious was benched.



The last few weeks Rank was casting he made some HUGE mistakes. The picks and bans and the process is clearly defined. You go in, you start with bans, then you move onto the picks. A number of games Rank went into picks and bans and went right to the 3rd , 4th , 5th pick out of the gate. After talking to him about this one two occasions, the third instance we chatted a little more about this. While some people might say well this isn’t a big deal, everyone else got it, and Rank is alleged to be a seasoned caster. We had a chat in TeamSpeak after week 5 I think it was, and he made some comments about (This is from memory and not 100% exact), that he has been casting too much, getting confused with everything he has to do etc. Sleep may have also been a part.



I also want to clarify it was a number of days after this that we had issues pop up with private information being leaked, and in turn has prevented Rank from coming back due to privacy reasons.



On the 26th of August I had a chat with Rank in in skype which I said the following

“I wanted to give you the heads up with the plans for the last two weeks for the OPL. Not sure what the go is, but touching on last Saturday with the pick and ban issues, and with the upcoming challenger stuff you should be doing. We wont need you for the next two weeks. Take some time, get your casting back up. You did mention on Saturday you are struggling atm due to all the casting you have been doing.

After this OPL I legit have no idea what TDTV will be doing regarding Smite in OCE

And if we will even continue.

PLus nothing is even officially planned until at least next year, so who knows”

The screenshot of this is provided as Evidence.

https://gyazo.com/4a739688c3de4fcb25c5af3d7a4fe97e



Ranks response was

“my depression has literally been ripping the floor from under me and I need the time and space, so maybe this is a good thing for all of us”

This screenshot provides evidence of his response. The reason it’s the format it is, I needed to use SkypeLogViews to get the history. Again, Rank should have the original he is welcome to share.

https://gyazo.com/3c991502784173d01f17a6f4058a77f6



Knowing Rank has depression and what not, it was my thoughts between his recent performance, and his comments he should take a few weeks to refuel.

So that’s why Rank was removed. Not in his normal fine form, and after chatting with him I only had his personal welfare as a concern. Because of this some members of the community and Rank him self have tried to discredit, and insult TeamDownTV.



On top of this the the OPL is now over, so no one is casting it….



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