Proposal Extensions

[Tony]

Extensions are extremely common and we don't have a consistent policy in place to handle them at the moment. I think it's good to have extensions available to us, especially in tournaments like Grand Slam and Classic, but we can do a lot better in terms of how they're enforced. My suggestion would be to keep it simple and to set the following two baselines:

1. Extensions have a hard Wednesday / three day deadline
2. Extensions are only granted if the players have successfully (re)scheduled

In recent times we've seen extensions getting stretched out until as far as Thursday, Friday, or even Saturday, which is not fair towards the player that has to wait all week until they know who they're playing. On top of that, it frequently leads to a series of follow-up extensions given the short amount of time that remains to schedule and prepare. With a set Wednesday deadline across the board this issue should be mitigated. It's a generous extension as is, anyway.

I also think it's important that we enforce players to have scheduled a (new) time for that Monday through Wednesday extension window before they're granted an extension. Simply posting "extension please" in the thread shouldn't be good enough, as you can't be sure you'll be able to find a suitable time for both of you and your opponent, especially when you factor in timezones and the fact we're talking about weekdays here. You should schedule with your opponent and then request an extension by showing the host your scheduling once you've been able to find a mutually convenient time to play, in my opinion.

This should be obvious, but a considerable effort to play should have to be made before the actual deadline, too. Extensions are supposed to be an exception and hosting is enough of a headache without having to process a bunch of activity decisions after all.

 

[Finchinator]

Extensions should only be for more dire circumstances; we have handed them out far too liberally, and I include myself in “we” for some NU Open and BW Cup extensions. People have grown to bank on extensions, too. A funny example I just ran into is that less than a day into BW Cup R1, I have someone asking for an extension because they’re on a vacation part of the round with no ability to play and don’t want to play too early in the round; you should never qualify for an extension if you do not follow the rules and make an honest effort to get it done during the round itself. It isn’t just a back-up for laziness and blatant inactivity.

Extensions being handed out excessively has led to things getting out of hand with extension winners requiring further extensions and so on — entire sides of the bracket later on get held up many times. A lot of this is because we are scared to coin flip big-name players for not making scheduling efforts or to make tough decisions on people who did not make a big enough effort. At the end of the day, part of the job of being a host involves making these tough decisions and this will reinforce the need for people to get their games done as well. I support the OP’s notion that the current situation regarding extensions isn’t optimal.

And while I think extensions do have some place for legitimate emergencies or major mismatches in activity, I do believe that they should only be granted if a new time is agreed upon prior to being granted as the OP states. This seems like a foolproof addition to me. I do not really have as firm of a stance on the hard Wednesday time, but I do think we should disallow extensions from cutting into the second weekend no matter what the circumstances. Whatever day we pick prior, I am not too worried about.

 

[Merritt]

Speaking personally here, not as part of the TD team. I'm working under the assumption this is specifically directed at individual tours, not teamtours, since that's not specified in the OP.

I agree very strongly with the Wednesday deadline (with the caveat that it's for tournaments with 1 week rounds - if a tournament has a two week round for both the current and following round then a longer one can potentially be justified) and believe that's already part of the guide for hosting tournaments. If hosts are regularly giving out extensions for longer than Wednesday that leads to exactly the concerns Tony laid out in the OP, especially related to chained extensions.

I don't agree with the second part, requiring that players have rescheduled in order to receive an extension, mostly from what I've personally experienced with giving extensions and considering your stated goal of "reducing headaches for hosts". A significant portion of the time even the people who just aren't good at scheduling manage to get the game done when given an extension, which turns hosting for that specific game from "ok let me comb through walls and potentially screenshots of discord that the players posted often without context that would harm their case for an activity win in order to make a decision that's regularly not clear cut" into a non-entity because the game was completed.

As long as there's indication that both players have actually contacted each other and they're not working with completely incompatible schedules, I believe that giving an extension is the better call - so long as the Wednesday deadline is held to. If the game doesn't get completed that means the host has fewer games to look over, as they only need to make calls on the extended games on Wednesday rather than everything on Sunday and the winner's opponent for the next round hasn't lost much time, seeing as players not contacting until Wednesday or later happens with distressing regularity even without extensions factored in.

 

[Finchinator]

As long as there's indication that both players have actually contacted each other and they're not working with completely incompatible schedules, I believe that giving an extension is the better call - so long as the Wednesday deadline is held to.

The issue with this is that we end up with dozens of extensions and a good portion of them don’t get done. I can go through the numbers from R1-3 of BW Cups and NU Opens — a LOT of people exchange a few lazy VMs with tentative rangers, but don’t get it done, qualify for an extension, and then blow it off. If we stop giving these extensions, force people to schedule properly, and use them less liberally, then there will ultimately be less need and absolutely be less of a mess at the end of each round.

Maybe forcing people that get an extension to schedule within the first 24h of an extended period would be a better middleground? But there really has to be some way to enforce things and improvements from the status quo imo

 

[lax]

As a frequent tiebreak participant, I full disagree with this proposal. As a player of many tournaments, I believe extensions should be removed in its entirety. A player signs up to play and should be able to play sometime during the full week and make the tournaments more of a breeze. Ensuring people uphold their sense of duty as a player is much more important.

Disapproved

 

[Isa]

lax's post but unironically

yes extensions are a pain. why keep them? there's few communities with such an laissez-faire attitude towards tournaments and scheduled times as smogon, where tournaments can often be seen as something you sign up for and then promptly forget. maybe you rely on a nice opponent to vm you or smth.
a much more hardline approach where players cant put their burdens on the host would ease things. if you missed your scheduled time that's on you, the host can't bail you out. combine this with a much harsher policy on activity wins/coinflips (more of the former less of the latter) and voila.

make scheduled times matter again

(if not, then yes to tony's post)

 

[AM]

There should be a thorough explanation mutually agreed on by both parties as to why an extension should be granted in their case and hosts should decide if its allowed. School, work, life, timezones obviously gets in the way of certain availability but let's be honest so many people are just johns these days and are awful at scheduling or make contact 3 days before deadlines.

As far as extension deadlines go it should be two days past deadline if there's a legitimate case so let's say Tuesday if a deadline was established to be Sunday per usual tours. At least that way there's time for scheduling with the next opponent and not already be in the middle of the week, holding up tour and the usual issues that come with these extensions.

 

[Merritt]

The issue with this is that we end up with dozens of extensions and a good portion of them don’t get done. I can go through the numbers from R1-3 of BW Cups and NU Opens — a LOT of people exchange a few lazy VMs with tentative rangers, but don’t get it done, qualify for an extension, and then blow it off. If we stop giving these extensions, force people to schedule properly, and use them less liberally, then there will ultimately be less need and absolutely be less of a mess at the end of each round.

LC Open - I had to make an activity call on 1 extension the entire tour.

NU Open X - 2 r2, no activity decisions on extension calls for the remainder of the tournament (there was some extension weirdness r6 but certainly nothing standard that'd be caught by this proposal besides flipping games players were trying to get done that late into the tournament.)

NU Open XI - 3 r2, 3 r3, none for the remainder of the tour, meaning a total of 6 calls on extended games.

BW Cup VI - 0 r2, 1 r3, 0 r4, 1 r5, 0 r6, meaning a total of 2 calls on extended games.

BW Cup V - 2 r2, 0 r3, 1 r4, 0 r5, 0 r6, meaning a total of 3 calls on extended games.

Either I'm not understanding how you show calls on extended games that don't get played (way I did this quickly was to search for your posts in each round and see if any related to extended games) or this ain't a "good portion" not getting done. You could certainly argue that making extensions more difficult to get would result in even fewer of these calls, but these seem like fairly acceptable numbers to me compared to the number of extensions that were granted and resulted in completed games.

 

[z0mOG]

Whether or not extensions should be allowed seems like something that should be handled on a host-by-host basis, as the burden of ensuring that an extension is given fairly and actually played in a reasonable time falls onto the host. I propose it should be made policy that the tournament host's terms of extensions are stated in the signups (or introduction thread) of every tournament uniquely. This also will inform any signing-up player of the host's terms, which can influence their decision to sign up if they expect to need extensions in future rounds.

 

[drampa's grandpa]

I disagree with the very specific Wednesday deadline. Not every single tour runs Sunday -> Sunday, and not every tour has one week rounds. It should either be a set number of days or proportional to the round length. If that's typically Wednesday... cool.

A bit of a nitpick I guess.

 

[Tony]

Speaking personally here, not as part of the TD team. I'm working under the assumption this is specifically directed at individual tours, not teamtours, since that's not specified in the OP.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and assume that you don't actually mean to imply that any sort of extension in team tournaments could be considered. Yes, this proposal is specifically directed at individual tours. I'm glad you agree with the shortened extension deadline.

I disagree with the very specific Wednesday deadline. Not every single tour runs Sunday -> Sunday, and not every tour has one week rounds. It should either be a set number of days or proportional to the round length. If that's typically Wednesday... cool.

This is a fair point, so thank you for bringing that up. I'd certainly go with a set number of three days/72 hours past the deadline, because giving a longer extension for a longer round seems counter intuitive if anything. A round shorter than a week is pretty much only reserved for an unofficial no johns type of tournament as well, which shouldn't have extensions in the first place.

I suppose I feel less strongly about setting a new scheduled time for the extended window before requesting an extension, but I still believe it could be a valuable change. Under the current rules the deadline really isn't actually on Sunday, because all it takes to get an extension is notifying the host, not even asking for one or talking to your opponent about it. If a player wants to play before the actual deadline expires, due to the Monday through Wednesday window being uncomfortable to schedule for, then that player should really be able to do so. If you want fewer total extensions and fewer scheduling problems within the actual extensions, then make it a requirement for players to reschedule before being granted one.

 

[SparksBlade]

I also think it's important that we enforce players to have scheduled a (new) time for that Monday through Wednesday extension window before they're granted an extension.

I disagree that this should be an actual rule. Many times a scheduled time has to be cancelled last minute and you can notify your opponent about it but there may not be enough time before deadline to reschedule (due to timezones mostly) - both players might know they can easily set up a new time, but they can't finalise that time before the round deadline. I suggest that this be added a strong suggestion in scheduling guide but not be implemented as an absolute rule, and instead host discretion (shudder) be allowed to determine whether to give an extension or not. Just a small suggestion to consider for the rare cases that do happen now and then.

Tony says he disagrees and will instead take the collateral damage of those few cases not getting an extension, which is also fair as host discretion is always a scary thing. I don't think there's a correct answer for this, so I just share my opinion and suggestion, and you guys can decide which you feel the best.

The rest of the suggestion I like a lot and completely agree with.

 

[Conflict]

As a frequent tiebreak participant, I full disagree with this proposal. As a player of many tournaments, I believe extensions should be removed in its entirety. A player signs up to play and should be able to play sometime during the full week and make the tournaments more of a breeze. Ensuring people uphold their sense of duty as a player is much more important.

Disapproved

Seriously this. As a player that has had to get extensions sometimes - the times that happens is mostly down to lazy scheduling or forgetting/not scheduling in the first place. Add to that that seemingly always the same people have to ask for extensions (looking at you FlamingVictini and McMeghan) it is clear that the current system has been abused in some form. Just disregard extensions for these tours and make people actually bother scheduling.