Prefacing this to say this isn't another "Bo3 in SPL" thread disguised as something else, just a legitimate tournament policy thread mostly directed at improving the quality of subforum tournaments.
Intro
From Smogon's official Tournament Rules and General Guidelines:
How to Implement
Some people might immediately dismiss this because their point of view is simply, "why bother making agreements official if it doesn't really benefit anyone and makes things harder for the hosts/managers/players/etc." While this is true to a degree, the amount of effort to specify an agreement in your lineup submission is practically zero - you just add the agreement to the lineup and if the opponent puts the same agreement, the hosts can enforce it.
For example, if I were to submit a lineup with two agreements in the PoA OU and MH OU tiers, I might do something like;
PoA OU (-Hoppyre) anaconja
MH OU (-Whiteblos, -Light Clay) FlamPoke
This immediately flags the host to let them know an agreement is in place for the respective tier, and if my opponents lineup says the same thing, they can therefore assume the managers/players involved confirmed the agreement and want it to be binding. As somebody who has hosted a few tours and submitted a couple of lineups, I sincerely doubt this creates a real burden on the hosting team that can't be resolved with one or two simple messages confirming an absence of an agreement in one lineup or something.
Positives
In my opinion, this change would improve tournaments as a whole. There is already a pretty big section of the site that wants to do Bo3 in their respective tiers and rely on their opponents to not snake them on a mutual agreement each week, which is just begging for it to happen eventually and cause conflict in established communities/tournaments for no reason. Likewise, some people just enjoy experiencing certain metagames with an element removed that might never actually get removed because Big Smogon Politics, so this can also help to enforce these agreements and make the tier more enjoyable for the players involved. I personally think having some flexibility to experiment with certain exclusions or agreements would be a good thing for the players and spectators alike, which is why we play the game.
Negatives
I'm willing to admit some negatives exist as well. This does create a bit of a headache for hosts and managers if players decide to be overzealous with these agreements, trying to cheems a tournament game by agreeing to some nonsense (only use LC mons in an OUPL game, for instance), but maybe some level of host discretion could be given to deter these obvious bad-faith actors. Most hosts/forum mods with any level of common sense can see if people are acting in good faith or trying to undermine a game/tournament for no reason. I also think people might try to abuse this and pressure opponents to agree to something they don't want to, but it should be easy enough to deflect and say your managers didn't sign off or whatever if you really don't want to tell somebody no to an offer. There are hopefully enough safeguards in place between players/managers/hosts/forum mods to keep these agreements within reason and prevent any sort of unfair or uncompetitive advantage for one party.
Impact on Officials / Summary
Now, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the existence of some... disdain for the lack of Bo3 in officials, especially SPL.
Again, this is not in any way supporting or advocating for Bo3 in SPL, just some sort of official Tournament Policy on player agreements so subforums and hosts across the site can have some sort of actual ruling to reference in tournaments that otherwise usually rely on the forum mods to make all the choices, which if you've played any amount of games on this site you know that this isn't always a well perceived thing. Reducing the burden on hosts and forum mods to make decisions around player agreements is probably a big positive overall, since people right now just bash them regardless of what outcome they decide on decisions related to these since there isn't any precedent or rule to really use that cements a basis for yes/no determinations.
Maybe at some point this can be used to decide WCoP/SCL/SPL agreements, but my hope is that some variation of this is implemented that establishes a baseline for allowing player agreements in subforum tournaments to improve the quality of life for everyone involved. We have too many games played on this site to not have some understanding of making them more enjoyable and customizable for the players involved.
Intro
From Smogon's official Tournament Rules and General Guidelines:
One of the best parts of playing tournaments on this site, especially subforum tournaments like your PLs and CLs, is getting to go up against your friends and other people you've interacted with. If you play enough tournament games you'll probably find yourself making gentleman's agreements here and there, playing a Bo3 instead of Bo1 with a friend or agreeing to not use HO with someone you know hates playing HO, etc. The downside to this is that it puts a lot of strain on the player and team, since hypothetically anyone can snake anyone and the hosts can't do anything about it currently and your managers/teammates are likely to be pretty annoyed if you get snaked and lose an important game.Luigi said:
How to Implement
Some people might immediately dismiss this because their point of view is simply, "why bother making agreements official if it doesn't really benefit anyone and makes things harder for the hosts/managers/players/etc." While this is true to a degree, the amount of effort to specify an agreement in your lineup submission is practically zero - you just add the agreement to the lineup and if the opponent puts the same agreement, the hosts can enforce it.
For example, if I were to submit a lineup with two agreements in the PoA OU and MH OU tiers, I might do something like;
PoA OU (-Hoppyre) anaconja
MH OU (-Whiteblos, -Light Clay) FlamPoke
This immediately flags the host to let them know an agreement is in place for the respective tier, and if my opponents lineup says the same thing, they can therefore assume the managers/players involved confirmed the agreement and want it to be binding. As somebody who has hosted a few tours and submitted a couple of lineups, I sincerely doubt this creates a real burden on the hosting team that can't be resolved with one or two simple messages confirming an absence of an agreement in one lineup or something.
For the team tour sheets to remain consistent, the hosts would have to leave the tier as-is on the actual weekly matchups post (ie PoA OU (-Hoppyre) remains PoA OU for the sake of keeping the sheet from being cluttered) and note the agreement either somewhere else in the post or in a second follow-up post where they collect all the agreements maybe?
Positives
In my opinion, this change would improve tournaments as a whole. There is already a pretty big section of the site that wants to do Bo3 in their respective tiers and rely on their opponents to not snake them on a mutual agreement each week, which is just begging for it to happen eventually and cause conflict in established communities/tournaments for no reason. Likewise, some people just enjoy experiencing certain metagames with an element removed that might never actually get removed because Big Smogon Politics, so this can also help to enforce these agreements and make the tier more enjoyable for the players involved. I personally think having some flexibility to experiment with certain exclusions or agreements would be a good thing for the players and spectators alike, which is why we play the game.
Negatives
I'm willing to admit some negatives exist as well. This does create a bit of a headache for hosts and managers if players decide to be overzealous with these agreements, trying to cheems a tournament game by agreeing to some nonsense (only use LC mons in an OUPL game, for instance), but maybe some level of host discretion could be given to deter these obvious bad-faith actors. Most hosts/forum mods with any level of common sense can see if people are acting in good faith or trying to undermine a game/tournament for no reason. I also think people might try to abuse this and pressure opponents to agree to something they don't want to, but it should be easy enough to deflect and say your managers didn't sign off or whatever if you really don't want to tell somebody no to an offer. There are hopefully enough safeguards in place between players/managers/hosts/forum mods to keep these agreements within reason and prevent any sort of unfair or uncompetitive advantage for one party.
Impact on Officials / Summary
Now, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the existence of some... disdain for the lack of Bo3 in officials, especially SPL.
Again, this is not in any way supporting or advocating for Bo3 in SPL, just some sort of official Tournament Policy on player agreements so subforums and hosts across the site can have some sort of actual ruling to reference in tournaments that otherwise usually rely on the forum mods to make all the choices, which if you've played any amount of games on this site you know that this isn't always a well perceived thing. Reducing the burden on hosts and forum mods to make decisions around player agreements is probably a big positive overall, since people right now just bash them regardless of what outcome they decide on decisions related to these since there isn't any precedent or rule to really use that cements a basis for yes/no determinations.
Maybe at some point this can be used to decide WCoP/SCL/SPL agreements, but my hope is that some variation of this is implemented that establishes a baseline for allowing player agreements in subforum tournaments to improve the quality of life for everyone involved. We have too many games played on this site to not have some understanding of making them more enjoyable and customizable for the players involved.
Player Agreements: Player agreements are, within reason, recognized by the Tournament Director team. Tournament hosts are permitted and encouraged to allow reasonable agreements to be enforced, at the discretion of the applicable subforum staff and Tournament Director team. All games must be played in the base format of the metagame with pre-defined challenge code modifications, as agreed upon by the players, managers, and hosts. Agreements that are generally permitted are increasing the number of games in a matchup, for instance agreeing to a best-of-three instead of best-of-one, and excluding a legal element of the metagame, including Pokemon, items, abilities, etc. Agreements that are generally not permitted are ones that fundamentally change the tier as to make it unrecognizable, such as both players only bringing PU Pokemon to an OU metagame.
