TLDR: Don't blame Ixian, he made the best of a bad situation. The ref responsibility was Knox's. The map and merc selection processes should always be recorded. The rules need to be updated if you want people to take them seriously.
I think this problem could have been avoided, or at least made less contentious, if the match had been confirmed and announced ahead of time.
The official record is the match page (
http://www.ensl.org/matches/6377), where Infamous says the match is later that day. The late post, and phone's response ("wgahaterver") could be construed as proper confirmation. It could also support phone's narrative that he was pressured into keeping the game running. More of this communication should have been recorded, and it should have happened earlier. It is the admins' job to facilitate this.
Because of the late notice, there was nobody available to ref. Ixian was casting, but it's not fair to force the caster to assume ref duties, even if he is a ref. It's very hard to ref and cast at the same time, especially on a high-profile stream and a potentially drama-filled match. Ixian tried to find a ref, but failed, and so reluctantly stepped up. If he had not stepped into the ref position, the game would have been postponed.
Ixian did not set the server configs correctly. Although technically his responsibility as ref, I think we should instead be decrying the situation that forced him to ref and cast at the same time. It is easy to overlook things like this when you are managing a stream.
Ixian went through the map selection process, giving the players the map list as written in the rules. The admins had previously removed mesh from the season, but it was unclear to Ixian whether that meant it was removed from the finals also. Obviously the rule document itself is not updated as much as it should be, which only the admins are able to do. Ixian made the decision to follow the letter of the document, which I think was an understandable decision.
(Personally I don't think it makes sense, during the match or in this discussion, to blindly follow the rules line-by-line, since they are crazy outdated in places. It's impossible to know, just by reading the document, which parts are updated and which parts remain by accident. We must rely on other knowledge, namely our previous experience playing league matches, and our ideas on how league matches should be played. Or, failing that, the admins' fiat. But the document itself is currently not enough.)
I'm unclear on the timeline. But it seems that after map selection, the merc selection began. Sadly, we have no material evidence of how this conversation went. Phone says he rejected Hera; Knox says he didn't. (Unfortunately, because of the config blunder, phone was denied the ability to withold "mercsok".) Phone says he was pressured into keeping the game running smoothly; while believable, we don't know the extent.
I don't know when Knox became part of the process. Possibly he eventually responded to Ixian's call for refs. In any case, it appears that Knox was present for merc selection. At that point, he should have officially relieved Ixian of ref duties and assumed them himself.
Knox says
3) I joined the s&d Teamspeak channel multiple times before the playoffs started to check on things. IE sorting out map rotations and the ability for teams to field 6 players (with 1 merc each).
a. I was asked to leave s&d channel. Ixian was handling the referee work.
b. Ixian is an official referee.
c. I received no complaints about the way Ixian was handling any of it.
According to Ixian, he did not consider himself ref once Knox showed up. So I'm concerned about what I quoted from Knox above. It seems he still considered Ixian the official ref, and considered himself just smoothing the process along. If this is the case, it is even more understandable that his only goal was to get a match played, and it is believeable that he would suppress phone's objections to do so. (Without material proof, this is just speculation.)
If you believe the letter of the rule document, teams themselves have no power over accepting mercs. In practice, I think most people would disagree with this idea. In either case, it is the responsibility of the ref, and ultimately the admins, to determine whether a merc, a forfeit, or a delay is fairer for all parties. In this game, that determination was up to Knox.
For me, there is enough circumstantial evidence to conclude that the admins really wanted this match played quickly. This allows me to take phone seriously when he claims he tried to deny Hera but was overruled. Even if the other admins agree that Knox's decision was justified by the rules, it's clear that many people disagree with the competitive spirit that those rules express. They feel that the final game does not fit their idea of a fair, competitive NS2 game.
