Proposal Reasonable time to ask for a reschedule

[Vileman]

Pretty simple, there's been instances in which people need to re-schedule a series because of irl issues or whatever. Thing is, we can all agree that telling this to your opponent one hour before the schedule is too close to the time. So is telling them 2 hours ago. But what about 12? 17? 24? Whats the line we cannot cross? Recently this has been a issue in some series, and there's no ruling that explicitly says how long you have to ask for a reschedule.

IMO, its reasonable to expect to know your series will happen at least 24 hours before the game. Personally i often find myself planning my weekends in order to make the schedule times for tournaments, so being told that we need to reschedule any closer than that would be annoying.

What do you all think?

 

[Finchinator]

Personally I have enjoyed the recent movement to value people’s time and take activity wins when the opponent does not respect someone’s time. I do understand some leeway for emergencies though.

Given this and how hard it can be to be flexible, I would think at LEAST 24 hours and I would prefer 48 hours before a time would be the absolute latest someone can ask for a re-schedule. Any hour quantity is arbitrary and I don’t even love opening this bag of worms fully either, but if there’s enough support, then it should probably be a significant amount of time in advance.

It’s one thing if we agree to play Saturday and you ask to change on Tuesday or Wednesday with genuinely good reason, but asking to change Friday or even later on Thursday can make juggling a weekend very difficult when you’ve done nothing wrong firsthand. We need to continue to be mindful of people’s time/scheduling prospects.

 

[pulsar512b]

I would also like to add that in my opinion if you agree to a time, and then say oh no I can't make it because xyz, then even if you give 48 hour warning or whatever, the opponent should be able to claim an activity win. If you agree to a time and then later cannot make it, that is your problem. Maybe there could be some exception for emergencies or whatever but you should not have to reschedule your weekend plans last-minute just because your opponent had something come up. If you can't make the time you agreed, you get a forfeit loss. simple as that. if the opponent is willing and able to reschedule sure great highly encourage that, but it's your responsibility to make sure you can make the agreed time.

I would prefer this to be true at all times of the week to be quite frank, but I understand that this happening early in the week is far less egregious and maybe a full-on activity win is excessive. Maybe this should only apply if the request is after the halfway point of the week or whatever. I think it's quite possible especially if you have multiple other tournaments or other commitments in a week to have scheduled a time, and then filled the rest of your previously available times with various other activities. I think that is a perfectly reasonable thing to do, and this shouldn't risk having to take a coinflip or act loss just because you assumed that the opponent wouldn't bail on the time.

tldr: imo if you agree to a time, then you can't make it, then forfeit loss. opponent can (like with no-shows) be nice and reschedule, but that should not be expected or required

 

[BigFatMantis]

I definitely appreciate the time-value commitment here, but sometimes real things do happen and come up, and the last thing we want to do is start categorizing what is an "excusable" re-scheduling emergency compared to what is not since, you know, people can make stuff up and there is absolutely no way to verify it. I think we need to meet this somewhere in the middle if we truly move forward with enforcement of something like this, so that those who actually do have absolutely bonkers emergencies come up aren't punished, but those who have set a specific time aside still have ample time and notice to re-schedule. Certainly I think most people can agree that less than 24 hours notice is not really acceptable and so this seems like a fine safeguard that accomplishes the goals in the OP while not significantly disadvantaging either side if plans change. I'm sure we have all had scenarios where something comes up, an emergency happens, or we just flat out had to move plans, and have asked for a rescheduling. Locking into your time without any exceptions the moment you schedule is crazy and so long as the notice is reasonable I think it's perfectly acceptable to ask for a re-schedule to a time when both players are available.

It's also important to note that for team tournaments with subs, it may be easier to enforce this with a stricter time deadline since you always have the option to sub somebody in, but I think it'd be a good idea to keep it consistent all around. And one other thing to note - what happens if you schedule for "tomorrow" or "in a few hours" but immediately realize you couldn't do it? Surely you aren't DQ'd 5 minutes after the scheduling simply because you set a time to fight less than 24 hours away. Something like this should have at least a 1-2 hour grace period after scheduling to prevent huge act fishes. Or on the other hand, the rule only applies after 24 hours passes since scheduling is also a thing that could be considered. Gotta be careful that the rule is going to make sense in all scenarios - we are here to play Pokemon after all, not act fish.

 

[Jirachee]

I would also like to add that in my opinion if you agree to a time, and then say oh no I can't make it because xyz, then even if you give 48 hour warning or whatever, the opponent should be able to claim an activity win. If you agree to a time and then later cannot make it, that is your problem. Maybe there could be some exception for emergencies or whatever but you should not have to reschedule your weekend plans last-minute just because your opponent had something come up. If you can't make the time you agreed, you get a forfeit loss. simple as that. if the opponent is willing and able to reschedule sure great highly encourage that, but it's your responsibility to make sure you can make the agreed time.

I very much disagree with this! A perverse effect of such a rule is that it actually makes it disadvantageous to agree to a time in advance. If we make times fully binding, then people will just wait until days later to agree to a schedule which, obviously, reduces certainty schedule-wise. The current system works perfectly well in 95% of the cases, so I don't think it warrants such a massive change. Let's keep in mind what we're trying to achieve here:

1. Punishing no-shows with an automatic activity loss;
2. Ensuring players a "right to disconnect";
3. Allowing people to plan their schedule ahead of time;
4. Keeping rescheduling attempts to a minimum.

I think 1) and 2) are well covered by the current rule. The compulsive rn? type of players will be forced to schedule a time. As I covered earlier, the current system is best at covering 3) since we want people to get their scheduling done ASAP. Point 4) is the only one that could be better covered, as currently it is a gray area, but the proposals in this thread all make sense, in my opinion.

As for the specific acceptable time delay (literally the point of this thread) I think 24h is generous but viable. I think we should view it on the point of the "slighted" party: if I'm given a 24 hours warning about my upcoming tournament game being rescheduled, I have plenty of time to fill that time with something else of my preference. I think anything more is excessive.

 

[johnnyg2]

I’m of the opinion this is something that should be up to the host’s discretion rather than a hard and fast rule if someone should be awarded an act win for a reschedule. I think there are many people in this community that would rather fish for an activity win than actually play the game, as the joy is in winning rather than playing Pokemon.

Setting a hard deadline at x time rewards people looking at the clock and being like “ok my opp told me an hour before he/she needs an extra 15-20 minutes, time to call for an activity win”. Is this behavior we want to reward? To those above, I absolutely agree, I want people to respect my time too and I try very hard to respect other’s as well (except when I got Brazil’s timezone backwards and made fruhdazi wait bc I was at the doc’s office into haxing him, I’m sorry :( ). If you just straight up no show, it should be an act win regardless of when it is. But this feels ripe for abuse. I think this discord post by D4 sums it up well:

Well known tour players could start abusing this and get away it, but pikachufan123 claiming act on abr for example feels like it would be an outrage (if im being unclear i apologize, im saying that it shouldnt be an outrage and if you no show, you have rights for act). To me, the downside of the current policy is it puts a lot of pressure on the host when one party is asking for an act win on a reschedule. Hosts already have enough shit to deal w, but to me, this is better than the alternative.

if there had to be a time, I agree w jirachee above. 24 hrs feels very generous, but it’s certainly better than 48 hrs (I play almost all of my tours games before Friday, does that mean if my opp doesn’t respond immediately and my or their schedule changes by an hour, one party can ask for an act win? Feels not great)

 

[pulsar512b]

It's also important to note that for team tournaments with subs, it may be easier to enforce this with a stricter time deadline since you always have the option to sub somebody in, but I think it'd be a good idea to keep it consistent all around. And one other thing to note - what happens if you schedule for "tomorrow" or "in a few hours" but immediately realize you couldn't do it? Surely you aren't DQ'd 5 minutes after the scheduling simply because you set a time to fight less than 24 hours away. Something like this should have at least a 1-2 hour grace period after scheduling to prevent huge act fishes. Or on the other hand, the rule only applies after 24 hours passes since scheduling is also a thing that could be considered. Gotta be careful that the rule is going to make sense in all scenarios - we are here to play Pokemon after all, not act fish.

I like this exception proposal, and in general I think this post is really good. One thing that's admittedly slightly off topic is that like time offers like 'in a few hours' and 'tomorrow' (especially when time zones are involved) should just straight up be strongly discouraged - I don't really think you can put a rule in place but people should not schedule that way. offer time areas you can make it. not that hard. ppl should really be able to schedule a specific clear time to play. I also kinda think that cases like changing 15-20 minutes should be treated differently than saying no this entire day doesn't work.

I’m of the opinion this is something that should be up to the host’s discretion rather than a hard and fast rule if someone should be awarded an act win for a reschedule. I think there are many people in this community that would rather fish for an activity win than actually play the game, as the joy is in winning rather than playing Pokemon.

Setting a hard deadline at x time rewards people looking at the clock and being like “ok my opp told me an hour before he/she needs an extra 15-20 minutes, time to call for an activity win”. Is this behavior we want to reward? To those above, I absolutely agree, I want people to respect my time too and I try very hard to respect other’s as well (except when I got Brazil’s timezone backwards and made fruhdazi wait bc I was at the doc’s office into haxing him, I’m sorry :( ). If you just straight up no show, it should be an act win regardless of when it is. But this feels ripe for abuse. I think this discord post by D4 sums it up well:

View attachment 541103



Well known tour players could start abusing this and get away it, but pikachufan123 claiming act on abr for example feels like it would be an outrage. To me, the downside of the current policy is it puts a lot of pressure on the host when one party is asking for an act win on a reschedule. Hosts already have enough shit to deal w, but to me, this is better than the alternative.

if there had to be a time, I agree w jirachee above. 24 hrs feels very generous, but it’s certainly better than 48 hrs (I play almost all of my tours games before Friday, does that mean if my opp doesn’t respond immediately and my or their schedule changes by an hour, one party can ask for an act win? Feels not great)

I think I want to specifically hammer home that it should not matter who you are playing, it could be soulwind or it could be some rando who signed up for their first tournament. If they no-show or fail to schedule or need to reschedule last-minute or anything, you get a forfeit win. end of discussion. people might act fish more vs soul etc but if they just schedule and show up to their games and do their damn responsibility as a player they have nothing to worry about.

(also no-shows should be you get a win. END OF STORY. does not matter anything else that's going on its a forfeit win if you want, you can extend the courtesy of rescheduling but that's being extremely nice and should never be expected)

anyway jirachee's post is also pretty good don't have anything super specific. maybe an alternate solution is to over time infract people who're constantly needing to reschedule? once or twice is fine whatever you had something real. but more start asking questions. the problem i see with this is that this is really hard to monitor (esp w a lot of scheduling conversations happening in private) - maybe we could encourage people to tell the hosts when they get a request to reschedule? that seems like it would be rarely followed.

i guess another question is like - if you schedule to a time and then asked to reschedule & can't find a time then what result should be given? I think a coinflip in this situation is totally unacceptable & would push for a forfeit win (going back to my original proposal). maybe a compromise would be to allow reschedules & say hey if you give enough warning then we expect both sides to make a good faith effort to get their game done, but ultimately if even after good effort from both parties no time could be found you are taking a loss. This is the same as my previous proposal except that instead of trying to reschedule being merely a courtesy the slighted party can extend, it's a required action.

 

[Quantum Tesseract]

I don’t think rescheduling is neccesarily a bad thing, but it should absolutely favor the person Being rescheduled on: if you can’t make a time, you need to reschedule for whatever’s most convenient for your opponent. I don’t want to extend this to “you can’t make the time so now I’m only free at 4am your time,” but if there is a good way to delineate it we should pick it. If I tell someone “I can’t make this time” I should be asking “is there any other time this weekend that works” and not “can you make this one specific block.”

I think there’s is absolutely a limit to how far we want to push this, though. Often times, there is a real benefit to shaky times; if I can probably play at 3pm their time but might have to take a phone call instead, and can definitely play 1 am their time, I don’t want a system that says “you should only pick the time that you can definitely make even if it’s super inconvenient to them.” If I was the other player, I definitely would prefer to have a reasonable game 80% of the time and reschedule 20% of the time than stay up super late 100% of the time because my opponent is worried I’ll just get an act win.

And in terms of rescheduling? There’s absolute a difference between someone telling me Thursday a time won’t work actually and getting a heads up an hour before the game. I think the former is absolutely reasonable in most cases, and I don’t want to end up in a situation where nobody gives a time until Thursday because they’re afraid of losing to a schedule change.

Ideally, I think we want a system that supports:
1. Scheduling specific times early in the week
2. Encourages people to let their opponents know scheduling changes as early as feasible
3. Doesn’t force people to play at unreasonable times or reschedule RL things because their opponent made a mistake.
4. Working to pick times that work well for your opponent rather than maximizing your own surety.

I’m not sure the best way to get all of these, or even if we fully can get all of them without giving one of the others up. But in terms of proposals given so far, I think there’s definitely something to be said for the 24h limit as at least an improvement on the status quo.

 

[baddummy]

Thank you for addressing this. I think allowing reschedules before the 24h mark is reasonable. As ever, there needs to be some discretion in how to apply these rules. This is why I am suggesting the following be put into writing:
Activity wins for late reschedule attempts will only be granted where the affected player has been significantly inconvenienced.

Suppose that Player A contacts Player B, asking to play on Thursday evening as they are completely free at that time. Player B's timezone is 2 hours behind Player A. Player B agrees, and says they can play at 6pm their time after they finish work. On Thursday morning, Player B discovers they may have to work slightly later that day, and messages Player A, telling them they will be 30 minutes late for their set.

Another case might be where both players make it clear they want to play on the weekend as they have lots of free time then. They agree on Saturday afternoon. On Friday evening, Player A messages Player B, requesting to play on Sunday instead and says they will do their best to make whatever time works for Player B.

The above are the type of cases where we don't want to be giving activity wins. They aren't exactly rare occurrences either, everyone has probably been on both the giving and receiving end of these examples at one point or another. Things like train delays can happen, we want to strike a mid ground where the rules respect players' time, but don't allow for brazen activity fishing. Subjectivity has its downsides, but allowing for a certain amount of good sense appears to be the best way to proceed with this.

EDIT: My overall sentiment remains the same that we need to put things ultimately in the power of the hosts/TDs. But I have rethought the second example I gave, and I think this is the sort of occurrence we want to minimise.

 

[BigFatMantis]

Ideally, I think we want a system that supports:
1. Scheduling specific times early in the week
2. Encourages people to let their opponents know scheduling changes as early as feasible
3. Doesn’t force people to play at unreasonable times or reschedule RL things because their opponent made a mistake.
4. Working to pick times that work well for your opponent rather than maximizing your own surety.

Probably something like this:

In any event that a player asks for a scheduled time to be re-scheduled, the onus is on the player requesting the rescheduling to reasonably accommodate the opponent for a new time, though both players are encouraged to handle the rescheduling reasonably. However, no player is required to reschedule a game if the request to reschedule was done less than 24 hours from the scheduled time, so long as some initial contact for scheduling was done within 24 hours of the matchup being revealed. The host and/or Tournament Directors shall have discretion to ensure this is followed as intended.

 

[Wigglytuff]

but if there is a good way to delineate it we should pick it.

There isn't. The only thing it could be based on is windows of availability the one being rescheduled on already gave previously. If this 24 hour warning period gets codified into the rules, players looking to game the system will simply just give out the minimal amount of information so that it can't be used against them, leading to more messy scheduling in general.

The 24 hour warning period seems impractical in general. Let's say on Monday you and your opponent agree on a scheduled time on Saturday 8 PM, you realize you can't make it, and give 24 hours notice on Friday evening. You genuinely try to accommodate your opponent's times, but you're not available anytime earlier or later on Saturday and your opponent is just as genuinely busy on Sunday.

What happens when it comes to activity decision time? Is the original scheduled time just wiped from the slate? That sounds pretty terrible, because even with 24 hours notice your opponent still made time on Saturday evening for 5 days. If the original time isn't rendered null, then what's the difference between what we have now?

The only fair way to approach situations like the one that prompted this proposal being posted is for you and your opponent to agree on 2 scheduled times if you have shaky availability for one of them, and it'd only be counted against you if you missed both. If that sounds inconvenient, then you should also recognize the inconvenience of requiring your opponent to scramble to find a time with 24 hours of notice.

 

[Eledyr]

As an host, I strongly support johnnyg2's post. It should be up to the host's discretion to decide whether the reschedule is fair or should end in an activity, a case-by-case seems far more appropriated than any hard deadline. Obviously, asking for a reschedule 1 hour or so before the actual deadline sucks, and it shouldn't be granted unless convincing circumstances. On the other hand, I am and will always support that shit happens IRL, and flexibility should always be a thing. But obviously, this also come with respecting your opponent, so as said, if your opponent don't come at all, you should always be free to take the act, no matter who is your opponent. I know people will not necessarily agree with what I have said, but the way activity wins are handled at the moment do not encourage the players to try to reschedule at all, and it creates a toxic environment where playing dead to fish activity wins has become a common thing, and I strongly believe this can be changed to encourage players to, well, play to Pokemon actually.

 

[ABR]

Anything too rigid and strict will just lead to more fishing and manipulation - leave it a little fuzzy and up to host discretion. The most important factor is "did User X make a genuine, sufficient effort to get the series done" and it's good to leave that a bit subjective. It's pretty easy to tell when someone is trying and when someone is fishing, and I feel like as humans we can do a better job detecting that than a system with too many rules can.

 

[pokemonisfun]

I was all for the policy change/clarification/unification where it’s basically accepted now if you’re more than 15 min late after a clearly scheduled time, you get an act loss unless your opponent is nice.

i felt like people missing times actually happened very frequently and being consistent was key to being fair.

However, in this case, I agree with this post

Anything too rigid and strict will just lead to more fishing and manipulation - leave it a little fuzzy and up to host discretion. The most important factor is "did User X make a genuine, sufficient effort to get the series done" and it's good to leave that a bit subjective. It's pretty easy to tell when someone is trying and when someone is fishing, and I feel like as humans we can do a better job detecting that than a system with too many rules can.

A couple differences

1) I don’t believe people are frequently trying to reschedule compared to the missing tjme situation that genuinely plagued us. I don’t think we need policy for everything, policy can guide but it can also bind

2) when we made a policy clarification on missing scheduled times, I genuinely thought Smogon players would in general value competitive spirit and (grudgingly) agree to reschedule missed games if their schedule could accommodate it. I believe I was wrong. I’ve seen an immense increase of people getting activity wins and show no sympathy to reschedule. I’m concerned that legitimate activity wins still come at the cost of our competitive culture and this will only further erode that

3) rescheduling things often happen at nobody’s fault. I think if you miss a game and never bother to update your opponent, you are always at fault unless you got in some emergency like a car crash, in which you don’t care about mons anyways. But if you need to reschedule, maybe you just got a job interview you can’t miss or your mom told you to buy groceries. These can be anticipated yes but it’s not as clearly in the fault of the player

 

[elodin]

leaving it to hosts' discretion is a very bad plan imo. we always conceptualize this idea that the hosts/tds will be sensible enough to make reasonable decisions case by case, but the minute a complicated situation pops up they immediately deflect from giving their actual input and instead say something like "the rules say x and y, so this is the final decision", or "x precedent goes against this, so we can't do it", or "this would set a bad precedent for x hypothesis" to base their decisions instead.

this isn't meant to throw shade towards hosts or tds btw. i'm just pointing out that this is the way the decision-making process occurs in tournaments and in other sections of the site as well. it is simply a fact that smogon staff prefers to operate by strictly following a set of rules, precedents and guidelines that very rarely need to be bended or changed, regardless of individual circumstances from each case. and i'm not here to debate whether this process is ideal or not, but it's important to acknowledge its existence in order to find a proper solution for the issue presented by the op.

making things 'subjective' like it's been suggested only means issues like these will be recurrent and the decisions will always be contested by the parties involved, who will also never be convinced by them. i don't know how the ideal rule should be written, but i know one is needed simply based on how decisions are made on smogon.