Rejected Add binding "weeks not played" to SPL / SCL signups

[UT]

It is not uncommon to have one or more player post in the commencement thread before the tour starts "hey I want to play, but I am maybe unavailable the first X weeks" and then suddenly be available week one / two. This opens the doors for accusations of price fixing, potentially forcing the hosts to make subjective calls about "well they did say maybe" and whether or not the player should be allowed to slot week one. Without naming names, this has been an issue in the past and did happen again in SPL XVI.

My proposal is to add a binding "weeks not played" into signup posts and treat any announcements / communications to managers about playing availability that is not in the sign up post as attempted price fixing. The field will be checkbox based, without room for free response, and any weeks checked the player will be inelligable to start or sub in. This allows players to communicate legitimate restrictions such as vacations, travel, exams, etc in a clear and direct way without subjectivity.

General disclaimers:

• The main intent of this is to remove subjective calls from the tournament itself.
  • Yes, this does open the door for more discussion about price fixing pre-draft, but those are easier to resolve since there is no wronged party yet, and at worst managers know what the enforcable information is.
• Yes, life happens; if something unexpected comes up and you suddenly cannot play week five, we are not going to infract you for not being able to play week five.
  • This is meant to address known pre-draft availability only.
• We can figure out the exact formatting so it's clear (maybe include date ranges too, ie the check box is: Week 1 - April 14th - 21st)
• This is meant to be playing availability only; I do not see a clean, subjective way to extend this non-playing activity (ie I can't play, but I can be active in team chat vs I can't play and cannot be active in team chat).

Questions / comments / concerns?

 

[Éric]

I dont have an opinion on this but i think this case is very much relevant to the post and also recent enough.
The TL;DR is that a player said he couldnt play and then he played, and Finchinator intervened saying he shouldn't play, to which random idiots attacked him for no reason (this is unrelated but i just wanna make sure everybody knows theyre idiots whoever they were) saying that this was their tour, their rules or whatever (i dont even think it was their tour, they seemed randoms to me).
If a case like this happened in a random DOU teamtour which isn't even DPL, surely it can/will/has happened already in (artificially) higher stakes tournaments, so make with this information as you will

 

[Vulpix03]

The issue with this proposal is that it allows people to price fix / cement themselves to the bench for 9 weeks and then free themselves in playoffs. Kinda defeats the purpose of the recent playoff tier lock rules.

 

[UT]

The issue with this proposal is that it allows people to price fix / cement themselves to the bench for 9 weeks and then free themselves in playoffs.

This could be fixed with a minimum activity expectation. If someone cannot play the entire tour save playoffs, they should not be able to sign up.

 

[blank]

Thanks for bringing this up, as this was a very frustrating issue to navigate as a manager this year, and my opinion on it more or less 180'd based on that experience.

While I think this proposal is not the worst and would help the issue more than harm it, I think the better solution is to simply not allow any of this whatsoever. If you cannot commit to the 9 week regular season + playoffs, you should simply not sign up for SPL.

It is a long tour, I get it. People have legitimate reasons to not be able to play - life comes up, it happens, and those things should not be penalized. I also don't think someone being unavailable for 1 week due to a vacation is that big of a deal - when it starts becoming two weeks or more then it's ridiculous.

If you know you have some sort of foreseeable commitment that removes you from the tournament for more than a week, you really just shouldn't sign up, and people who indicate such a situation in the commencement thread should have their signups deleted by the hosts.

Again just to stress this - if it's just one week, I don't think it is an issue and doesn't need a rule or any sort of punishment involved.

With regard to the ruling proposed, I think it can get messy. One thing that isn't factored in her is how this deals with retains. If McMeghan signs up but locks himself out of 4 weeks of the tournament, his price is gonna be way cheaper, and given the guy has been on Smogon for 2000 years, you can kinda safely assume he will be there for next SPL, where you can suddenly retain him for a crazy price. I think if proposed ruling is what you guys go with, players who lock themselves out of more than 1 week (yes, this strict) should not be allowed to be retained in future years. I also think this should retroactively be applied for the cases this year. I don't think this year's cases were ill-intentioned by the managers or the players, but the rules were clearly not made with such constraints in mind yet, so allowing crazy value retains seems ridiculous.

Again, this isn't meant to put anyone on blast for being busy, and I think the people who were wrongfully complaining about people legitimately being busy were not helping the situation at all lol. The TDs/hosts did a good job handling it given the circumstances, but the current proposal is far from perfect. I'd much rather have people simply sit out than become random playoff value picks that managers can gamble on or powerful retains for the next year.

 

[D4 Repertoire]

This exact proposal has been discussed before and was not met with a good reception. It was eventually rejected + archived in November. (Maybe this SPL changed enough people's minds though??-- I imagine that's why you think this makes sense to reopen discussion for.)

So I'd recommend going ahead and explicitly addressing (in this thread) the concerns raised in Excal's post from that thread, rather than waiting for someone to repost the same objections here (or worse yet no one bothers to do so despite still holding the same concerns). (Point #1 or something very similar has been covered here so far already to some extent.)

I won't comment further with my own perspective for now at least. Will think on it though.

Thread 'Weeks not available':
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/weeks-not-available.3717182/

 

[UT]

we shouldn't enable/encourage someone to not play multiple weeks

We do already allow this, or at least passively tolerate it, with people posting in the commencement thread or just telling managers directly. This is just taking the existing practice and codifying it. Additionally, we could include a minimum activity standard, ie if you are unavailable more than (arbitrary number) of weeks, you are not eligible to sign up.

starry's suggestion of simply not allowing signups with less than full activity (or more than one week of inactivity) would also address this, but then we are restricting who can sign up more than we are currently. Which is fine if that is the preferred outcome by the playerbase.

this doesn't stop someone from not filling the field out and leaving ambiguity about their availability nonetheless

If someone does not fill out the field, managers can assume they're able to start all nine / eleven weeks. If players try to communicate availability without using the official channels to do so, we can direct them to the sign up (or in more extreme cases, treat as price fixing).

Retains are another legitimate issue I had not thought of; I cannot think of a fair way to handle that other than players with "significant" (however many weeks we want to define that as) unavailability being ineligible for retains. It is, however, already an issue with the current system, as someone can currently post in commencement with sharply reduced availability and still reap the benefit of a reduced retain price next year.

Ultimately I am trying to square the circle of people can have legitimate availability concerns, but we currently have no clear, objective way of communicating / enforcing them and the system is open to price fixing / manipulation. The signup form is not a perfect solution, and I am certainly open to other ideas, but our current system of allow for inactivity that does not have a clear communication channel is ripe for miscommunication at best and manipulation at worst.

 

[Excal]

I am against this proposal, although not strongly. The best example of what this is trying to address is Luthier's post in commencement, which clearly stated he couldn't play for the first 4 weeks. A post like this is sufficient grounds to bar himself from playing without needing it codified in his signup. One reason why posts like this don't happen often is because it's either a hassle to have to publicly state your availability with detail or, if you try to introduce ambiguity, it attracts attention and makes it clear that you are trying to skirt the line/are disingenuous with your availability. The latter has risk/consequences associated with it, like introducing undesirable volatility to your auction price if you're prominent enough, or you might get yourself into trouble/burn bridges if you go against your word.

The status quo allows for people to communicate their availability in commencement if needed while strongly implying to those signing up that this tournament is a 9+ week commitment. As long as there are 9 weeks in regular season, you should be expected to play all of them unless you have extenuating circumstances. I don't see anything inherently wrong with the way Luthier communicated his availability clearly and, due to that clarity, locked himself out of playing for 4 weeks.

This proposal going through would certainly result in an increased number of players not signing up for all 9 weeks of the tournament. It is significantly more convenient for someone to lock themselves out of a couple of weeks in a signup form than it is to sign up and then write a cohesive post explaining your availability and why. It may also result in people locking themselves out of the last weeks of regular season to avoid having to play if their team is eliminated/already qualified, which may result in fewer games being played/more activity issues and strain on managers. Additionally, it will require several conditions to go through, such as establishing a minimum activity requirement and further complicating the signup form.

My overall sentiment is if you really want to move forward with this proposal, it's possible, but I think it would take more work than it's worth. It makes the status quo -- which works fine as is -- more complicated and, most importantly, encourages players to not play all 9 weeks by making it more convenient to lock out of playing. I think our signup process has reached an optimal point and does not need further revision for now.

 

[UT]

We will not be implementing this policy, too much sugar for a dime.

However, we do want to clarify that statements made to managers about availability pre-draft, whether in DMs or commencement thread, will be binding. If you say you can't play the first three weeks, any lineup with you in the first three weeks will be rejected.