Smogon Premier League - Week 3

[Eternal]

If you're seriously going to add this rule, then at least add it after Week 3 is completed. Adding a new rule in the middle of a tournament is... what the 10 people commented...

Also, if you're going to call it "mid-week" substitution, then any manager could just substitute someone else in that match up if they don't like the match up. While anyone can just place one, two, even three "weak" battlers in DP OU and see how the match ups come out, then make substitutions. This can be used as an unfair strategy. Obviously, any manager could use this strategy to obtain some sort of advantage.

In my opinion, the whole substitution method seems flawed.

 

[Shiv]

Let me clarify quite a few things:

Firstly, the rule was not "applied now", it was always in effect. I've been saying "why don't you sub ____" to people when they talk about their guys being inactive right from the start, only now did I realize that it wasn't clear what I meant.

The entire idea of forcing two subs was so that this can be avoided.

Moving on, if you're talking about bias, I'd assure you that I have none. I decided to go and clarify this rule in the thread once Sonuis messaged me about Chomper being inactive. He seemed to know that this would be possible, I can't figure out why the other managers didn't.

Again, addressing the claims of bias, we make sure that I have no say in activity calls in my teams matches and LN has no say in activity calls in his team's matches.

So next time, before you decide to whine for the sake of whining, look at the situation before you.

Also, if you're going to call it "mid-week" substitution, then any manager could just substitute someone else in that match up if they don't like the match up. While anyone can just place one, two, even three "weak" battlers in DP OU and see how the match ups come out, then make substitutions. This can be used as an unfair strategy. Obviously, any manager could use this strategy to obtain some sort of advantage.

Just to clarify because a lot of managers were unsure on this:

You are allowed to sub people out midweek and bring in someone from your bench. This can only be used in case of inactivity. In addition, someone who was subbed out cant be subbed back in the same week. Lastly and most importantly, it is possible a team put in 3 weak players as their DP OU roster and then sub the good ones in by seeing how they match up vs the other team, that stuff won't be allowed at all. We'll be making a call on that if we see it happen, so don't try that stuff.

Did you even read it before deciding to just jump on the bandwagon and whining?

Frankly speaking, the attitude of a lot of the players involved in the tournament is getting frustrating. We're trying to run this tournament in an unbiased manner. I've personally run as big if not bigger tournaments before (World Cup) and I haven't had such an issue with people questioning every decision. This is the first installment, there are bound to be problems. We'd expect you people to have enough faith in us to fix it for the future. And if you come out and say "The World Cup didn't have as many issues as the SPL" then you should also realize that this tournament is much more complicated. In addition, we faced issues in the earlier installments of the World Cup too.

In my opinion, people whine so much because they feel that "they'll get their way" because that has been partly true in the past. So just for clarification, from here on out, I won't take such negative responses which disrespect the amount of work that has been put into this tournament. If you have any problems, message me, we'll see if we can do something about it, if not, deal with it.

All I can guarantee to you is that by next year, there will be no flaws in the format at all. It will be perfect.

 

[Gouki]

i thought i played about as well as i could, but lucks not with me often

gg krack

 

[Krack]

I won against Gouki, gg.

 

[Pirotechnix]

Shiv, the rule was not clearly outlined, as evidenced by everyone's confusion. I do not believe ths it was written anywhere that subbing was allowed; word of mouth is not a rule in this type of scenario, it needed to be written down and clearly explained, which it was not.

You are adopting a stand-offish attitude towards this, when some people ( I will not say all ) are being rational in their arguments, stating the facts that are true whether bias is existent or not,

 

[Bluewind]

If the rule wasn't clear then mods should have specified its terms in week 1, because I remember that not only in SPL chat there was a lot of discussion going on that never got to any point regarding that matter; but also I'm sure the fact no one tried to sub out their inactive players on week 1 and 2 should be enough evidence that no one even knew this was allowed. If you want to make it a rule from now on at least there should be some justice and week 3 should proceed as it was supposed to, without subbing.

 

[Shiv]

Shiv, the rule was not clearly outlined, as evidenced by everyone's confusion. I do not believe ths it was written anywhere that subbing was allowed; word of mouth is not a rule in this type of scenario, it needed to be written down and clearly explained, which it was not.

Well fact of the matter is, word of mouth has been enough to negate rules which were clearly outlined in the past. If you want examples I can find a couple of things where people said "but LN said otherwise" even though it was clearly different in the information thread. I'm not saying it was the right way to proceed but that was accepted by all the manager's as the way to proceed.

 

[Kevin Garrett]

Glad to see the game between Pride and Atticus didn't matter too much now.

 

[jumpluff]

I remember the rule being discussed in #stark; LN said he'd talk to you about it. I never heard about the outcome of it. Sucks that there was a miscommunication, but I'm sure you guys can get the kinks in what is otherwise a good tournament ironed out for next year. In future though, rule changes should be announced, please. ^^; It's very easy to miss conversations.

 

[Shiv]

Yes, it is, which was what I'd been saying for a long time now.

 

[Pirotechnix]

Well fact of the matter is, word of mouth has been enough to negate rules which were clearly outlined in the past. If you want examples I can find a couple of things where people said "but LN said otherwise" even though it was clearly different in the information thread. I'm not saying it was the right way to proceed but that was accepted by all the manager's as the way to proceed.

You as the host needed to take the lead and recognize this, and stand firm then. I will stop arguing though, thank you for trying to be civil in the midst of a variety of attacks on your conduct as host of this tournament, and I apologize if at any point I went beyond civil discourse myself. As jumpluff said, we will have this straightened out for future SPLs, so it is a good thing we are discovering these kinks so early. :)

 

[Loki]

myself and several others distinctly remember LN saying that there would be no midweek subbing. in fact here it is courtesy of whistle's logging service:

May 12 01:58:07<+Scofield> are we ever allowed to sub someone if one of our players disappear ln?
May 12 01:58:25<&LonelyNess> If one of your players you slotted for the week doesn't show then that's just "too bad"
May 12 01:58:36<&LonelyNess> you shoud have slotted a more active player

I want to make it clear that I'm not accusing anyone of bias but there are clearly mixed messages here and the timing of this was poor to say the least. People are not whining or having an attitude just to get their way...it's because of miscommunications like this.

 

[Shiv]

I'm looking into it, give me a bit.

Till then, if Taylor and SBK find each other, please battle so that this whole thing isn't even in question.

 

[Shiv]

Okay so, here are the final decisions:

a) Since LN supposedly said that, this will be in effect from next week, so Kinneas vs SBK and FM's battle don't count. (Activity wins will still happen here as would have).

b) What I said before still stands, the "whining" was not this issue alone but has been going on for nearly every small thing. If you have issues, PM me, do not whine over here.

c) Lastly, yes, the mis-communication has been frustrating for me as well, and its going to be sorted now, don't expect to see any more of those.

 

[Scofield]

excellent, i'm always happy to play a hand in averting controversies

 

[Delta 2777]

Lost to Blue Kirby in a close match.

 

[Blue Kirby]

Confirming, good game Delta.

 

[LonelyNess]

Alright i'm going to address each complaint separately, I suppose.

"You guys are only implementing this rule because it stands to aid your team. You're being biased hosts."

Just to clear this up, I was the one who went to Shiv with the idea for midweek substitutes. I did this AFTER all of my team's battles for the week were done, precisely so that people DIDN'T think that we were only allowing midweek subs so that our teams could finish their matches. So the thought that, as hosts, we would change the rules just so that we could benefit in a tournament, is really disrespectful. I am not one to abuse my power as host, and I'd prefer if you didn't claim Shiv was one either.

"We didn't even know about this rule, and you guys are miscommunicating and telling us two different things."

Wrong, there is no miscommunication about this rule. As evidenced by this post:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2714244&postcount=157

followed by this post:

http://www.smogon.com/forums/showpost.php?p=2714276&postcount=158

We are obviously both on the same page in regards to this rule. Whatever was said on May 12th, is completely irrelevant. The rule is set in post 157, and then confirmed by me as a real rule in post 158. That's all that you guys need to see, and that's all there is to it. And if you want to whine and complain that "well we didn't see it" well that's too damn bad. We have a thread for a reason, so that you guys can read it and get rule updates.

Which brings me to the last bit of bitching we're receiving.

"This is stupid why are we implementing this in the middle of a week? You didn't implement the Latias ban in the middle of last week"

Simply put, banning or not banning latias has nothing to do with the logistics of running the tournament. We revised and made this rule because we saw a distinct problem with how the tournament was turning out. We are deciding too many matches a week based on activity. Already it's week 3, and a potential 5/15 matchups are going to be decided on activity wins (meaning that points were / will be gained or lost solely on how we determine who was more active). We don't want to have to do this anymore. We want 40 matches to take place during a week taking whatever means we have to to get there.

Why, if we have a solution to the problem (allowing midweek substitutions that are reviewed by Shiv and myself to eliminate gaming of the system), would we wait until next week to implement it when doing so means that during Week 3 we have to make MORE activity calls that determine the outcome of an entire week's worth of matchups? That's just plain stupid. We implemented it midweek because that was when it made the most sense to do it, so that we can hopefully "save" this week.

As of now, so that I can speak with Shiv, Kinneas v. SBK, and Umby v. FM (the substitute matches) are in "limbo." They may or may not be accepted (my personal inclination is to just say they are, but because Shiv says in the thread they aren't, it needs to be clarified between the two of us.)

 

[reyscarface]

Why, if we have a solution to the problem (allowing midweek substitutions that are reviewed by Shiv and myself to eliminate gaming of the system), would we wait until next week to implement it when doing so means that during Week 3 we have to make MORE activity calls that determine the outcome of an entire week's worth of matchups?

Fine, then how about you let Jibaku, Maniac and Panamaxis get subs in from the DQs that happened week 1, because all those 3 affected their teams, and I didnt see you so "mad" about inactivity then. Adding the rule just now is completely unfair for the teams of those 3 players.

 

[Kinneas]

I'm staying out of the whole subbing issue. I came on at about 10pm, was asked to play the match and I did.
Just wanted to say thanks to Blue Kirby for staying strong and winning for the Cryonicles right through to the end.

 

[Pirotechnix]

LonelyNess, I had been in a car with my phone as my only access to the forums today, and was only informed of the substitution rule through Umby over MSN when he played his match against FM. I complained about the issue far before Kinneas and sbk was even considered.

Shiv's solution is fair, and there was absolutely no reason you needed to start somethig that had already been satisfactorily settled for the time being.

 

[LonelyNess]

Fine, then how about you let Jibaku, Maniac and Panamaxis get subs in from the DQs that happened week 1, because all those 3 affected their teams, and I didnt see you so "mad" about inactivity then. Adding the rule just now is completely unfair for the teams of those 3 players.

Those weeks have already been decided. Had we thought of the rule during week 2, we would have implemented it during week 2.

We saw an opportunity to "save" the results for week 3, and we took said opportunity. That's why we aren't retroactively going back and changing the rules for weeks 1 and 2, because they're already done. Week 3 isn't over yet (won't be for another 3 hours), so why would we NOT try and make it so that 40 battles take place?

 

[Synre]

Posting in general agreement with the sentiment that while this is definitely a good rule change, whether or not you are intending to bias certain teams or not(and it's pretty ridiculous to imply that you guys are) it is more advantageous to some teams than others when you apply it midweek like this. I'm glad you're changing this, but changing the rules in the middle of a week is inevitably going to help some teams and hurt others so I wish you'd wait till week 4 on this.

 

[Jackal]

I was perfectly happy with how Shiv handled it.

As a general rule, you never make a change to a tournament in the middle of the tournament. If you remember smogon tournament 6, we wanted to implement a bo3 format at the start of round 4, but people complained (as they should) that it is not fair to change the rules in the middle of a tournament. So that was ditched.

Now it is fair to say that this is a very nonstandard tournament, and I think this rule will improve it for the future, so I think most people will agree that from week 4 and onward, it is a good rule to have and should be used. However to implement the rule in the middle of a ROUND on the day of the deadline is just completely unnacceptable as every manager has been under the impression that it is important who you slot in as they must be sure that player will be active enough to get the battle done.

There is no argument here. Implement it starting week 4.

 

[FM]

yo what the fuck i've been waiting all of 2 weeks to do my battle and when these slackers finally show up my win doesn't count? what is this shit