Proposal Replace “Tiers Not Played” and “Tiers Preferred” with “Tiers Played” in Team Tournament Signups

[MANNAT]

I want to preface this post by saying that it’s much too short notice to be implemented for SPL, but everyone is thinking about it right now, so it’s a good time to have this discussion.

The current team tournament tier declaration system is rife for abuse. Players can omit their best tiers from their tiers preferred and indicate a desire to play tiers that they aren’t as renowned for to managers that they do not wish to play for.

Replacing both of these fields on the form with a simple binding “Tiers Played” leaves no room for creative tier omissions to deflate your price.

Obviously, there is still the discord aspect of price fixing with abrasive DMs or lying about preferences that is kind of impossible to stop, but this proposal would help to curb abuse of the system as it pertains to the signup portion of the process.

 

[QT]

I’m sympathetic, but if I’m, idk, a UU player looking to sign up for SPL, I shouldn’t have to choose between putting down a tier I don’t really play or not being able to sub in in an emergency.

If we want to talk about dms, I’d say making it so that you have to dm a manager for them to know what tiers you’re confident in is a much bigger problem. If I’m managing in a tournament and want to figure out my options for a slot I don’t have a clear standout favorite draft for, I’ll look at people who signed up for it to see what their records look like. The more we drown out those kind of signals the harder that job gets, and the more reliant you are on those sort of DMs. The current system isn’t perfect, but I don’t want to be rid of it.

 

[Excal]

The current team tournament tier declaration system is rife for abuse. Players can omit their best tiers from their tiers preferred and indicate a desire to play tiers that they aren’t as renowned for to managers that they do not wish to play for.

Player signup is a public post that is signaled to all managers, so they are letting all managers know which tiers they prefer. If a player refuses to play a tier that they didn't omit with Tiers Not Played, they can get tournament banned, especially if they try to abuse the system by telling a manager they won't play a tier while playing it for another team.

Players are allowed to have preferences for specific managers. What they aren't allowed to do is refuse to play for a trio or something they have signed up for. There are several ways that players communicate a lack of desire to play for specific managers/franchises that extend beyond the player signup, and this will always be an unsolvable problem.

I do not believe the "abuse potential" of the current system is that significant, nor do I think it's worth sacrificing a player's ability to express their preferences while keeping other tiers open in their signup. The current system, although imperfect, is idealized and doesn't need revision.

 

[Leni]

The current combination of “tiers preferred” and “tiers not played” does not add functional value. Managers only need to know where a player is eligible, and the binding “tiers not played” field already provides this information. All remaining tiers are therefore considered equally playable.

As a result, any form of “preferred tier” (or reworded version of this as signaled in OP) signaling serves no practical purpose during signup and instead creates an opportunity for players to influence their perceived value prior to the auction. Even if this is not the biggest issue in the system, we should aim to close all exploitable gaps wherever possible.

In the nutshell: If anything, do not reword the "tiers preferred". Instead remove it as it's the exploitable part right now. Naturally keep the (binding) "tiers not played" as it signals all the needed information.

 

[Nat]

I mostly agree with excal in that I think the current system should stay in place. I think the perceived problem is tiny in impact, in that spl managers do their research & generally know what the player pool is known to play best. Because lax is SV eligible, he'll still be priced accordingly. This is true in several scenarios of signups that this could apply to. If SoulWind prefers to play SV>BW & I prefer to play BW>SV, this won't impact our price in signups unless we locked out of our respective perceived best tiers. On the flip side, it seems genuinely useful to have tiers preferred for fringe spl talent who maybe all 10 managers aren't intimately familiar with. It'd be lame to make them list every tier they'd be okay playing if they truly were best at just one, but also wanted to make themselves available to other tiers if needed, especially if this in some way would help them get over the hill of getting drafted.

I do think there's room for very minor communicative change, though:
1) instead of displaying "tiers preferred" & "tiers not played (binding)" make it read "tiers preferred" & "tiers eligible (binding)" - it's the same but at least neatly displays exactly what tiers are allowed to be played without having to look at "tiers not played: gens 8,7,6,4,3,2" and work backwards to find what is missing.
2) when a player is nommed in the draft, it will say "nat, tiers played: bw" based off of my listed tier preferences, and tiers not played. I would amend these two lines: one to say "tiers preferred" & one to say "tiers eligible" in uniformity with the above suggestion.

i don't think either of these are going to be particularly big deals, but i think a more clean display is the best this scenario can do for what should be changed.

 

[MANNAT]

I mostly agree with excal in that I think the current system should stay in place. I think the perceived problem is tiny in impact, in that spl managers do their research & generally know what the player pool is known to play best. Because lax is SV eligible, he'll still be priced accordingly. This is true in several scenarios of signups that this could apply to. If SoulWind prefers to play SV>BW & I prefer to play BW>SV, this won't impact our price in signups unless we locked out of our respective perceived best tiers. On the flip side, it seems genuinely useful to have tiers preferred for fringe spl talent who maybe all 10 managers aren't intimately familiar with. It'd be lame to make them list every tier they'd be okay playing if they truly were best at just one, but also wanted to make themselves available to other tiers if needed, especially if this in some way would help them get over the hill of getting drafted.

I do think there's room for very minor communicative change, though:
1) instead of displaying "tiers preferred" & "tiers not played (binding)" make it read "tiers preferred" & "tiers eligible (binding)" - it's the same but at least neatly displays exactly what tiers are allowed to be played without having to look at "tiers not played: gens 8,7,6,4,3,2" and work backwards to find what is missing.
2) when a player is nommed in the draft, it will say "nat, tiers played: bw" based off of my listed tier preferences, and tiers not played. I would amend these two lines: one to say "tiers preferred" & one to say "tiers eligible" in uniformity with the above suggestion.

i don't think either of these are going to be particularly big deals, but i think a more clean display is the best this scenario can do for what should be changed.

I really like this solution, I think that it best encompasses the problems that we are dealing with while maintaining something close to the current system.

 

[LOOR]

I mostly agree with excal in that I think the current system should stay in place. I think the perceived problem is tiny in impact, in that spl managers do their research & generally know what the player pool is known to play best. Because lax is SV eligible, he'll still be priced accordingly. This is true in several scenarios of signups that this could apply to. If SoulWind prefers to play SV>BW & I prefer to play BW>SV, this won't impact our price in signups unless we locked out of our respective perceived best tiers. On the flip side, it seems genuinely useful to have tiers preferred for fringe spl talent who maybe all 10 managers aren't intimately familiar with. It'd be lame to make them list every tier they'd be okay playing if they truly were best at just one, but also wanted to make themselves available to other tiers if needed, especially if this in some way would help them get over the hill of getting drafted.

I do think there's room for very minor communicative change, though:
1) instead of displaying "tiers preferred" & "tiers not played (binding)" make it read "tiers preferred" & "tiers eligible (binding)" - it's the same but at least neatly displays exactly what tiers are allowed to be played without having to look at "tiers not played: gens 8,7,6,4,3,2" and work backwards to find what is missing.
2) when a player is nommed in the draft, it will say "nat, tiers played: bw" based off of my listed tier preferences, and tiers not played. I would amend these two lines: one to say "tiers preferred" & one to say "tiers eligible" in uniformity with the above suggestion.

i don't think either of these are going to be particularly big deals, but i think a more clean display is the best this scenario can do for what should be changed.

just wanted to voice my support for a system similar to this. always had a slight grievance with the current system where even though I am familiar with specific tiers I don't want to go out of my way to inform every manager or the entire player pool my preference on what id like to play. its a minor issue but i've disliked not having the ability to voice this preference in the sign up posts since we moved to using forms