According to the current rules, once a team tour has started, an approved sellback reimburses a flat 3k in credits for the midseason auction, regardless of the price of the player. I think that number is unfairly low.
This SPL we drafted Skarpherim for 19.5k. He then disappeared during week 2 without any warning or communication. This happened during the winter storm, so it could be an emergency, but it could also be a standard "cancering" situation. Either way, it's outside of our control as a team, but under the current rules we'd only get 3k to try to patch a 19.5k slot at midseason, weeks later.
The logic I'm using is the same logic that's been argued in this thread: when the rest of the team isn't at fault, the system shouldn't stack extra punishment on top of the loss. For pre-week 1 cases, tournament policy ended up recognizing that value matters: "Teams who sell back players before the start of Week 1 will be reimbursed with credits equal to 1.5k + half of that player's retention cost or value in the auction. These credits may be used prior to the start of Week 1 on undrafted players who signed up, and players selected will be eligible to play starting in Week 1. Any of these credits that remain unused will be converted into sellback credits for use in the midseason auction."
I don't see why that principle should suddenly stop applying the moment week 1 starts. If anything, this situation is worse: you're down a starter for weeks, and even once the sellback is approved you can only buy a new player at midseason, meaning they can't play until week 6. This would not be an "overcompensation". You're still losing value in credits, you're still forced to buy from a restricted midseason pool (often "below average subs", as stated in the thread linked), and you've potentially spent weeks with a player down.
The change I'm arguing for is simple: for sellbacks approved after the start of week 1 and before midseason, the team should receive the same scaled formula as pre-week 1 sellbacks (1.5k + half of the player's price), with the credits still only usable at midseason. The current flat 3k is a massive undercompensation that ignores both the price of the player lost and and the reality that these situations are usually completely outside the team's control.
If the concern with this proposal is that managers (and their team) should be punished for drafting someone who cancers, I strongly disagree. The point of changing 3k to a scaled refund isn't to make cancering "costless", it's to stop teams from getting arbitrarily gutted by something they can't control. As a secondary benefit, it also makes any sort of "social" pricefixing less plausible: if teams aren't heavily penalized for ending up with an unreliable slot, there's less incentive for players to try to strongarm specific outcomes by telling only certain managers they won't play (certain tiers). And for the genuinely rare case where a player is found to intentionally cancer to benefit a team, that should be deterred by imposing significant penalties on both the managers and the player involved if found out to be intentional, just like in other cases of manager misconduct, such as ghosting someone on their team or knowingly drafting the alt of a banned user.
This SPL we drafted Skarpherim for 19.5k. He then disappeared during week 2 without any warning or communication. This happened during the winter storm, so it could be an emergency, but it could also be a standard "cancering" situation. Either way, it's outside of our control as a team, but under the current rules we'd only get 3k to try to patch a 19.5k slot at midseason, weeks later.
The logic I'm using is the same logic that's been argued in this thread: when the rest of the team isn't at fault, the system shouldn't stack extra punishment on top of the loss. For pre-week 1 cases, tournament policy ended up recognizing that value matters: "Teams who sell back players before the start of Week 1 will be reimbursed with credits equal to 1.5k + half of that player's retention cost or value in the auction. These credits may be used prior to the start of Week 1 on undrafted players who signed up, and players selected will be eligible to play starting in Week 1. Any of these credits that remain unused will be converted into sellback credits for use in the midseason auction."
I don't see why that principle should suddenly stop applying the moment week 1 starts. If anything, this situation is worse: you're down a starter for weeks, and even once the sellback is approved you can only buy a new player at midseason, meaning they can't play until week 6. This would not be an "overcompensation". You're still losing value in credits, you're still forced to buy from a restricted midseason pool (often "below average subs", as stated in the thread linked), and you've potentially spent weeks with a player down.
The change I'm arguing for is simple: for sellbacks approved after the start of week 1 and before midseason, the team should receive the same scaled formula as pre-week 1 sellbacks (1.5k + half of the player's price), with the credits still only usable at midseason. The current flat 3k is a massive undercompensation that ignores both the price of the player lost and and the reality that these situations are usually completely outside the team's control.
If the concern with this proposal is that managers (and their team) should be punished for drafting someone who cancers, I strongly disagree. The point of changing 3k to a scaled refund isn't to make cancering "costless", it's to stop teams from getting arbitrarily gutted by something they can't control. As a secondary benefit, it also makes any sort of "social" pricefixing less plausible: if teams aren't heavily penalized for ending up with an unreliable slot, there's less incentive for players to try to strongarm specific outcomes by telling only certain managers they won't play (certain tiers). And for the genuinely rare case where a player is found to intentionally cancer to benefit a team, that should be deterred by imposing significant penalties on both the managers and the player involved if found out to be intentional, just like in other cases of manager misconduct, such as ghosting someone on their team or knowingly drafting the alt of a banned user.
