Proposal Replacement picks ("sellbacks") in Smogon Snake Draft

Finchinator

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Context: A player was drafted for Smogon Snake Draft IV and then traded promptly. Upon arriving in his new team's chat, this player has approximately one line over ~2 weeks despite managers reaching out to him on numerous occasions. While I do believe this team should get a replacement pick, I also believe establishing this precedent and rule is important in the long haul for future editions of SSD.

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Smogon Premier League and Smogon Snake Draft are the two official Smogon team tournaments that involve drafts; WCOP is the third, but it is regionally based ever since we adopted actual eligibility rules a few years back, so it has no place in this discussion. As many of you know, SPL has a sellback system that allows for players who have been purchased to be sold back if they quit or are inactive. This is done around "midseason" and is compensated during an auction using leftover credits as well as sellback credits. For more on this process and the system surrounding it, feel free to check out the following threads which show what this looked like during the most recent SPL: SPL XI Administrative Decisions, SPL XI Midseason Auction, and SPL XI Midseason Signups.

SSD has no system for replacements if they are not clear immediately after the auction, which can cause a problem if this happens as a team is likely to be shorthanded throughout the tournament. It is true that managers are permitted to report users who cancer to be tournament banned still, but this user being tournament banned does not help their team in any capacity as they are still without a compensatory pick. In a format where each team has fourteen drafted players -- no more or less, it would make sense to maintain this number throughout each team whenever possible. I am aware that replicating the SPL midseason draft format is impossible for SSD, but there is a workable solution regardless. The only allusion to this in the rules can be found in the quote below:
2. Player Replacements – Player replacements may only happen between the auction and the start of the first round. As soon as matchups are posted, player replacement will no longer be accepted. Only acceptable reason for replacing a player is team cancering, as defined by our official tournament rules.
I find this rule to be too limiting and in need of prompt reform. It is not fair to managers to have to make this snap judgement in the week between when a tournament draft occurs and when the matchups are posted. In addition, there was not even going to be a week before we lobbied for a gap week, which happened after the introduction thread was posted with this rule. As it stands, this rule is not very useful and it does not give managers a proper mechanism to obtain a replacement player when they deserve one. I will be outlining a proposal for proper replacement picks below.

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I am proposing that we implement a new replacement pick ("sellback") system for players who cancer and/or went inactive for SSD.

This proposal does come alongside some conditions that people should discuss and the hosts should finalize if we do end up implementing the proposal:
  • We should give managers the opportunity to submit an appeal to replace a player during the first few weeks of the season.
    • The hosts much approve this in order for it to go through.
    • There can be guidelines as to what conditions must be met for a team to be eligible for a replacement player and a player to be subject to being replaced. This can go hand-and-hand with the team tournament cancering rules as well as inactivity rules.
    • Recent SPL precedent backs this and it is infinitely better than having the managers vote as a collective.
  • Replacement picks should be made around the middle of the season, likely sometime during week 4 or 5 of the regular season.
    • This means there is still a noteworthy incentive for talking to your prospective picks before drafting them and drafting with team cohesion in mind as you can be without a slot for a few weeks if things go south due to picking someone who did not work out.
    • Recent SPL precedent backs this and it is roughly the middle of the season, which makes it less of an arbitrarily selected point and more of a justified one.
  • Replacement picks should only be players who signed up for the tournament initially.
    • This prevents players from withholding their sign-up initially to only play under the condition that a specific team has a replacement pick. To clarify: the pool of replacement picks would be those interested in participating who signed up initially, but did not get drafted.
    • It is worth discussing if these players would have to abide by the rules about tiers they signed up for the first two weeks of the season (i.e: would they only be allowed to play the tiers they signed up for initially for the first two weeks?) and I do not personally have a stance on that.
    • Recent SPL precedent backs this and it is the most fair option.
  • Priority in making replacement picks should be given to teams who appeal for a replacement player first.
    • It is possible that multiple teams have players quit, cancer, or go inactive and appeal for a replacement player. It is also possible that they would both want to pick the same player from the replacement player pool. Seeing as there is no auction to bid on players, it would only make sense for teams who appeal first to get priority. This is not something that is precedented as far as I know, but it seems like the only logical way to distinguish to me.
    • If you feel otherwise (on this or any other points), please post your own opinion as I am not trying to force things into place myself and I do not want to be the only voice here. I am happily making a proposal for the best of the tournament moving forward, but there are lots of things to discuss pertaining to it.
I do want to note that there are a few cons of this proposal. One of them that has been brought to my attention is the fact that Smogon Snake Draft features all new generation tiers that are constantly evolving, especially when compared to more stagnant old generation metagames. Because of this, it is more possible for a player that was once viewed as not worth picking to be seen as a superior option during the time elapsed between the initial draft and the replacement picks being made. For example, people who did well in Grand Slam or OLT qualifiers may have been overlooked then, but could seem more appealing now. You can argue that this would give teams an unfair advantage if they have a replacement pick in hand for a late round pick. However, you can also argue the case for newer generation 3k sellback picks in SPL, but this has not stopped them from happening in the past. I believe having a uniform policy on this front would make sense, so I do not believe it is enough to derail the proposal unless we want to reconsider SPL sellbacks.

Finally, this is predominantly addressed towards the hosts of SSD: MajorBowman, Merritt, and kjdaas. I understand that, as hosts, being presented with a novel situation and prompt complaints is not an easy situation to handle, so I understand whatever discussions (with TDs, the community, or anyone else) and processes that may need to occur before a conclusion is reached may take some time. Thank you for reading.
 

Eo Ut Mortus

Elodin Smells
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There are two issues at stake here: the policy change itself and whether it ought to apply to this tournament.

Changing the rules mid-tour is a potentially messy decision. It puts the TD team in a position where we have to retroactively justify decisions where we refused to change the rules to accommodate a team and continuously consider the possibility of future mid-tour rule adjustments. While I don't personally want to see a team struggle, we've had to say tough luck to many teams before rather than make exceptions. One such case occurred this WCOP, which also lacks a safeguard against players who quit. SPL is, in fact, the exception to the rule when it comes to player replacements. Being down a 14th round pick is far from the most compromising position a team has experienced this tournament year, and in none of these cases did we adjust the rules on-the-fly. Additionally, expanding the scope of this policy decision to the immediate tournament gives participating TDs (in this case, me) a stake in the outcome beyond the immediate impact of the rule change when we have been working to mitigate undue influence from participating TDs by making host discussions private. Ideally, I shouldn't be put in a position where I can influence the hosts' interpretation of the rules, but I can't opt out of something that affects longterm policy. This proposed policy is also now subject to support/opposition from the general community depending on how it benefits a player's current team, when the policy should be evaluated on its own merits.

As for the policy itself, this, to me, is the core issue of allowing sellbacks in Snake:

I do want to note that there are a few cons of this proposal. One of them that has been brought to my attention is the fact that Smogon Snake Draft features all new generation tiers that are constantly evolving, especially when compared to more stagnant old generation metagames. Because of this, it is more possible for a player that was once viewed as not worth picking to be seen as a superior option during the time elapsed between the initial draft and the replacement picks being made. For example, people who did well in Grand Slam or OLT qualifiers may have been overlooked then, but could seem more appealing now. You can argue that this would give teams an unfair advantage if they have a replacement pick in hand for a late round pick. However, you can also argue the case for newer generation 3k sellback picks in SPL, but this has not stopped them from happening in the past. I believe having a uniform policy on this front would make sense, so I do not believe it is enough to derail the proposal unless we want to reconsider SPL sellbacks.
The reason this has not been an issue in SPL is because leftover auction credits are prioritized before sellback credits, meaning that high-value picks will in most cases go to teams who planned ahead of time to buy them. I don't think it's a good thing if these picks could randomly go to teams who happened to have an inactive player or even teams looking to exploit this system by picking up a known activity risk.

To mitigate activity issues without introducing these types of competitive imbalances, I would rather assign teams an extra two picks (two because of the snake format), taken either during midseason or during the actual draft. In the case of the former, teams would have more control over slot replacement; however, this doesn't fully mitigate the issues of good players emerging in the midseason pool (at least it's as fair as the initial snake draft). The latter properly addresses this issue and is my preference; you could argue that managers could still fall victim to quitters if they backup the wrong slots, but I think an extra two slots is more than enough to cover most common scenarios. In both these cases, order would be based on the initial snake order (reversed if midseason), which I also think is more sensible than first come, first serve.
 
The reason this has not been an issue in SPL is because leftover auction credits are prioritized before sellback credits, meaning that high-value picks will in most cases go to teams who planned ahead of time to buy them. I don't think it's a good thing if these picks could randomly go to teams who happened to have an inactive player or even teams looking to exploit this system by picking up a known activity risk."
I don't agree, these picks wouldn't be "randomly going to teams" but to teams who've had players confirmed to be cancering by the hosts. High-value midseason picks have been less susceptible to being exploited ever since the pool was limited to people from initial signups, and the sellback conditions in place now are clearly defined in "Team Tournaments Rules" section. These alone make exploiting sellbacks very unlikely, as it's up to the hosts' discretion and they're going off of guidelines laid out to minimize exploitation. I also disagree with the idea that this system can be exploited in Snake, it has 14 fixed slots compared to no cap for players in SPL, which makes it really difficult for teams to take advantage by picking up an activity risk as they'd be down a player for half the season. Speaking of activity risks, I see it as being a very subjective term because of what I've witnessed in the past year, and tournaments in general, that players can turn "act risks" if they don't end up on a team they wanted to. I agree that there are players in the tournament scene who would fit the act risk profile, however, I believe that there are checks in place already for these individuals, as well as teams who may try to game the system. Lastly, I think if you as a TD can identify these act risks, then there should be no reason why those players should be allowed to sign up in the first place. Minimum expectations and activity has been clearly defined in the Team Tournament Rules, and so have the criteria for sellbacks, which circumvent the concerns you have about sellbacks in Snake.

From my conversations with the TD hosts, the current Snake rules in place for cancering were only intended to catch explicit cancering (i.e. not joining the server, refusing to play, etc), and not inactivity. Snake roughly runs the same amount of time as SPL, and I believe that there should be a safety net for teams when this situation occurs. The current rules don't have anything in place for inactivity and I fully support the OP's outline for SSD sellbacks. The proposed guidelines above would be based off of the current team tour rules, and once there's an appeal process in place, I think it would let the hosts make a better decision for these cases as they'd be going off evidence collected over 4/5 weeks.

"Changing the rules mid-tour is a potentially messy decision. It puts the TD team in a position where we have to retroactively justify decisions where we refused to change the rules to accommodate a team and continuously consider the possibility of future mid-tour rule adjustments. While I don't personally want to see a team struggle, we've had to say tough luck to many teams before rather than make exceptions. One such case occurred this WCOP, which also lacks a safeguard against players who quit. SPL is, in fact, the exception to the rule when it comes to player replacements. Being down a 14th round pick is far from the most compromising position a team has experienced this tournament year, and in none of these cases did we adjust the rules on-the-fly. Additionally, expanding the scope of this policy decision to the immediate tournament gives participating TDs (in this case, me) a stake in the outcome beyond the immediate impact of the rule change when we have been working to mitigate undue influence from participating TDs by making host discussions private. Ideally, I shouldn't be put in a position where I can influence the hosts' interpretation of the rules, but I can't opt out of something that affects longterm policy. This proposed policy is also now subject to support/opposition from the general community depending on how it benefits a player's current team, when the policy should be evaluated on its own merits."
I understand that changing the rules mid-tour puts the TDs in a tough position, however, I don't agree with your statement that you've said tough luck to teams before. In regards to the WCoP case, you guys undid the ban after reviewing the details and both sides. That's different compared to the situation mentioned in the OP, WCoP regular season is 3 weeks compared to 9 weeks with SSD and SPL. WCoP is all-CG OU, so the implications of not being able to get a replacement pick would be less than it is compared to the other team tours. I think the benefits of setting a precedent mid-tour outweigh any possible skepticism, in this case it would give teams the opportunity to get a replacement for players who've cancered through inactivity, midway through the tour.

Lastly, in terms of valuation for players and how it would work in SSD: Players are valued through what round they were picked in compared to $ in SPL, the current unpicked pool would all technically count as R15s if we went ahead with sellback replacements. This is always going to be an inherent problem with midseason when it comes to player valuation and improvement during the time they went unpicked and get picked up at mids, however, I think that this is a separate conversation to be had as it applies to SPL as well
 

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