roxie
https://www.youtube.com/@noxiousroxie
Hello all, I want to express my concerns regarding a player's availability and restricting roles in team tournaments. This is important as it affects how much money a manager is willing to pay for a certain player. I linked some example posts for each category so don't feel offended if you see yours on here! The majority of this is by me and ken/a1012 provided a summary/TLDR at the ending.
Availability:
Availability is supposed to tell us how active a player is going to be during the duration of the tournament. However, this category doesn't give a 100% clear vision of how things would go because things happen, it's life. I'd say that availability is either: taken seriously and beneficial, completely useless and provides nothing, or untruthful and misleading. Overall, this has a large effect on pretty much any draft plan. Useless availability provides nothing useful obviously so I don't see a point in discussing "nothing".
Beneficial Availability:
Beneficial availability provides managers with an idea of your activity. This can be something very simple like saying "yes", which implies you're active during the majority/all of the tour, or "need teams provided", which means you can play most/all of the tour. There isn't a negative in properly filling this out.
Misleading & Untruthful Availability:
As I mentioned before, availability tells us how active someone's going to be in a tournament. This also affects how much a manager is willing to spend on you. I find this information very misleading and abusable. Generally, when someone signs up for the bench role or says that they are busy for x amount of time, I assume that the player can't start at the beginning of the tournament. Anyone can signup and say "busy for the next month with exams don't go too high" as a potential price fix. Availability is really unclear to a point where it can be abusable. I believe if players know that they literally cannot play during a timeframe, they should list that rather than being broad. Maybe saying "Availability (Include Weeks you cannot play during the tournament):" or something along these lines would be more beneficial.
Restrictions: Packaged Deals, Inequitable Actions, and Bench/Substitute in relation to Tier Locks.
Packaged Deals:
Players signing up for a team tournament should be prepared and willing to play on any team, equally. They should also be prepared to not be on the same team as friends. This is where "packaged deals" come into play. Packaged deals pretty much translate to "you must buy me with x user". I find this really restrictive and counterproductive with draft plans. The positive in this is you have teammates getting along and more potential activity in the server. The negative is the drafter might not want to draft x user just for you to perform at an acceptable level. The other player might not be as good and forcing someone you never wanted in the first place is dull. I will admit I have done this once or twice in the past but after managing, it sucks from a manager's perspective.
Inequitable Actions:
Inequitable actions is a broad category but I'd define it as "actions" that are unequal and unfair towards the general environment. NUPL IX was the first Smogon premier league I've ever managed in. The tournament was won by the Pablostoises filled with good players like watashi, TDK, Snaga, and Star (i think?). Snaga and ima wrote in their availability slots that "I WILL CANCER IF YOU BUY ME AND YOU ARE NOT THE PABLOS. I WILL ONLY PLAY FOR THE PABLOS. I WILL NOT JOIN YOUR DISCORD. I AM THE DYNASTY OF PABLO'S DPP NU." and they ended up on the Pablos. I completely excluded them from my draft plans to avoid the risk of drafting potential team cancer. Why would I draft anyone if they're going to give effort to selective teams and go unpunishable? This also happened in the previous NUPL by the same user. NUPL being a "fun" tournament is not a valid excuse for this as well. If players cannot schedule a few minutes after the deadline in a fun tournament, bending tournament rules shouldn't be allowed either (twice). Players should not have the power to prevent themselves from being drafted from certain teams as it allows them to go for a cheaper price since selective managers are willing to bid on them.
Bench/Substitute in relation to Tier Locks:
Bench and Substitute are things put under the "tiers played" option but I find it counterproductive with the Tier Lock rule (if a tournament is using it of course). Tier lock simply prevents players from playing tiers outside of their initial signup post. I take the bench role as "I don't wanna start or really play" and with that in mind, I'm not going to spend as much money because it's limiting. What happens if a "bench/substitute" player ends up starting in earlier weeks? I think it's pretty dumb to sign up for non-tier roles as it promotes price-fixing. If anything, these roles are spots to be determined by the manager.
It's likely we need a better system to determine player availability prior to a draft, so that managers have more information going into a draft and can plan accordingly to who can play when. Posting that you're only going to be part of a package deal or will only play for a certain team or teams should be discouraged or disallowed, because it defeats the purpose of a draft-based tour to begin with. Tiers should be categories players are forced to pick from what is actually listed or else their signup should be voided, because signing up to sit the bench is basically signing up just to say you were drafted in the tour.
TLDR: Players being lazy during sign-ups fucks over managers and teams. Players do not get to pick what team they play for. Players do not get to claim they are part of a package or what role on the team they will fill. There are managers for these teams for a reason. Feel free to reply if you have an concerns/questions/contributions towards these topics.
Availability:
Availability is supposed to tell us how active a player is going to be during the duration of the tournament. However, this category doesn't give a 100% clear vision of how things would go because things happen, it's life. I'd say that availability is either: taken seriously and beneficial, completely useless and provides nothing, or untruthful and misleading. Overall, this has a large effect on pretty much any draft plan. Useless availability provides nothing useful obviously so I don't see a point in discussing "nothing".
Beneficial Availability:
Beneficial availability provides managers with an idea of your activity. This can be something very simple like saying "yes", which implies you're active during the majority/all of the tour, or "need teams provided", which means you can play most/all of the tour. There isn't a negative in properly filling this out.
Misleading & Untruthful Availability:
As I mentioned before, availability tells us how active someone's going to be in a tournament. This also affects how much a manager is willing to spend on you. I find this information very misleading and abusable. Generally, when someone signs up for the bench role or says that they are busy for x amount of time, I assume that the player can't start at the beginning of the tournament. Anyone can signup and say "busy for the next month with exams don't go too high" as a potential price fix. Availability is really unclear to a point where it can be abusable. I believe if players know that they literally cannot play during a timeframe, they should list that rather than being broad. Maybe saying "Availability (Include Weeks you cannot play during the tournament):" or something along these lines would be more beneficial.
Restrictions: Packaged Deals, Inequitable Actions, and Bench/Substitute in relation to Tier Locks.
Packaged Deals:
Players signing up for a team tournament should be prepared and willing to play on any team, equally. They should also be prepared to not be on the same team as friends. This is where "packaged deals" come into play. Packaged deals pretty much translate to "you must buy me with x user". I find this really restrictive and counterproductive with draft plans. The positive in this is you have teammates getting along and more potential activity in the server. The negative is the drafter might not want to draft x user just for you to perform at an acceptable level. The other player might not be as good and forcing someone you never wanted in the first place is dull. I will admit I have done this once or twice in the past but after managing, it sucks from a manager's perspective.
Inequitable Actions:
Inequitable actions is a broad category but I'd define it as "actions" that are unequal and unfair towards the general environment. NUPL IX was the first Smogon premier league I've ever managed in. The tournament was won by the Pablostoises filled with good players like watashi, TDK, Snaga, and Star (i think?). Snaga and ima wrote in their availability slots that "I WILL CANCER IF YOU BUY ME AND YOU ARE NOT THE PABLOS. I WILL ONLY PLAY FOR THE PABLOS. I WILL NOT JOIN YOUR DISCORD. I AM THE DYNASTY OF PABLO'S DPP NU." and they ended up on the Pablos. I completely excluded them from my draft plans to avoid the risk of drafting potential team cancer. Why would I draft anyone if they're going to give effort to selective teams and go unpunishable? This also happened in the previous NUPL by the same user. NUPL being a "fun" tournament is not a valid excuse for this as well. If players cannot schedule a few minutes after the deadline in a fun tournament, bending tournament rules shouldn't be allowed either (twice). Players should not have the power to prevent themselves from being drafted from certain teams as it allows them to go for a cheaper price since selective managers are willing to bid on them.
Bench/Substitute in relation to Tier Locks:
Bench and Substitute are things put under the "tiers played" option but I find it counterproductive with the Tier Lock rule (if a tournament is using it of course). Tier lock simply prevents players from playing tiers outside of their initial signup post. I take the bench role as "I don't wanna start or really play" and with that in mind, I'm not going to spend as much money because it's limiting. What happens if a "bench/substitute" player ends up starting in earlier weeks? I think it's pretty dumb to sign up for non-tier roles as it promotes price-fixing. If anything, these roles are spots to be determined by the manager.
It's likely we need a better system to determine player availability prior to a draft, so that managers have more information going into a draft and can plan accordingly to who can play when. Posting that you're only going to be part of a package deal or will only play for a certain team or teams should be discouraged or disallowed, because it defeats the purpose of a draft-based tour to begin with. Tiers should be categories players are forced to pick from what is actually listed or else their signup should be voided, because signing up to sit the bench is basically signing up just to say you were drafted in the tour.
TLDR: Players being lazy during sign-ups fucks over managers and teams. Players do not get to pick what team they play for. Players do not get to claim they are part of a package or what role on the team they will fill. There are managers for these teams for a reason. Feel free to reply if you have an concerns/questions/contributions towards these topics.
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