Implemented Shorten the scheduling grace window

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dice

dice

is a Tiering Contributoris a Tutor Alumnusis a defending SPL Championis a defending World Cup of Pokemon Champion
Presently, the team tournament scheduling and activity guidelines are as follows: "If Player A and Player B agreed on a time, and Player B failed to show up, Player A or another authorized party must have notified their opponent's team and given them the chance to substitute at least 30 minutes before leaving."

Fogbound Lake was recently given an unsportsmanlike conduct infraction as he has consistently forced all his opponents to wait the entire half hour duration this SPL season before playing. I agree, this is undesirable. But put simply, I prefer to codify the rules to stamp out problematic schedulers rather than introduce another layer of moderator discretion. Ideally, we should not be punishing users if they are following the guidelines we have set forth. If the rule is broken, fix it.

Proposal: change the scheduling grace window to 15 minutes for team tournaments.

I believe we should be respectful of others' time. We ought to curtail angling, pre-game tilt, and anxiety. 15 minutes is ample enough time as a cushion for any exceptions, and it would be for the betterment of players in the long run. Thanks!
 
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Supporting this change. The 30 minute cushion is there on the pretense that it gives managers "enough time to find a substitute" and in case players have emergencies. In practice, I dont think ive seen recently a situation in which managers are scrambling to find subtitutes by the deadline, instead they just wait the full 30 minutes and make a substitute on the last possible second, when the exact same thing could have been done a lot earlier.

If a player is going to miss the time they set, substitutes are there for a reason. In this discord age with organized scheduled times, managers cannot feign ignorance as to what time their player is scheduled to play. And on the same vein, if a player is not going to make the scheduled time, usually the managers have prior notice of this, giving ample chance to get a substitute. And if the player has an impromptu emergency, why would you rush them to play a game when a real life situation is more important.

Really theres 0 reason to be so disrespectful of people's time. Make the rule 15 minutes at most and you will see how nothing will change in regards to activity decisions or dead games, just people will be subbed out faster, to the benefit of the affected player.
 
If we want 30 minutes for substitutes, we could also require a substitute within 15 minutes and then they have 15 minutes to get on. I'm not sure that's necessary, but if we really think substitutes need more time then we can solve that without encouraging waiting.
 
I think the 30 minute window is reasonable - a manager doesn't always immediately see a ping, especially in unofficials. Decreasing the window from 30 to 15 minutes would very likely lead to a much higher amount of activity decisions in those tournaments than necessary.

I get where you're coming from with this proposal, but I don't think the rule should be changed just because a small number of players abuse it - instead of making the situation worse for everyone, just deal with the people using it maliciously on a case by case basis.
 
If the 30 window minute remains I would like to see the rules regarding tagging the opposition team change - so that instead of 30 minutes from the tag it becomes 30 minutes from the scheduled time or 20 minutes after the tag, whichever is later (both times could be adjusted here).

Eg. If the scheduled time is xx:00, if Team A tags from xx:00 - xx:10 Team B has until xx:30 to start the game, if they tag at xx:12 they have until xx:32 to start the game.

This would avoid 'punishing' the player waiting from having to wait even longer if they or their managers don't immediately tag the other team (particularly an issue in unofficials where players often aren't in the respective tier discord and have to wait for a manager), and reduce the number of team pings overall as if you believe an opponent is running slightly late in good faith there's no longer any benefit to rush to tag them.
 
If the rule has been working well for most of the people, and the small fraction of players who abuse it can be and have been punished, why do we bother changing it? Besides, personally as a manager I cannot guarantee that I am able to show up immediately every time a sub is needed. Cutting the waiting time will only bring more than necessary activity calls.

If anything that can be done, maybe we should try to modify the rule so that players don't get disadvantage by waiting a while before pinging at the scheduled time, so they don't need to fall into the dilemma between pinging immediately and waiting an unnecessary 10 more minutes before pinging.
 
this is a no brainer lol it's honestly so silly it's been 30 minutes as long as it has. i would sooner like to see a 5 minute window than a 30 minute window. be online when you agree to play or sooner. you don't show up 30 minutes late to work or an appointment and expect it all to be fine.

Larry said:
I think the 30 minute window is reasonable - a manager doesn't always immediately see a ping, especially in unofficials. Decreasing the window from 30 to 15 minutes would very likely lead to a much higher amount of activity decisions in those tournaments than necessary.
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this a good point i didn't initially think of when i read dice's post, specifically the unofficials part though. if you're managing in spl it's on you to know when your players are playing. personally i would tag players all the time and ask if they're all good ahead of their game even if they have talked recently just to check in and be sure they'll show up on time and are all set. i don't think there's anything wrong with an expectation of a manager supposed to be present around the time of a game, especially given the increase to three managers. but for unofficials, i absolutely do not care about keeping track like that, and accept that shit happens there. dunno what the solution is but i think there should be a difference between officials and not rather than "ok well this is what officials use so we should too"
 
What if the time limit was 30 minutes standard from ping if pinged exactly at scheduled start time, minus 1 minute from ping for every minute that passes from scheduled start time, capped at 20 minutes minimum from ping if ping occurs 10 minutes or more from start time. This seems to satisfy a lot of both sides qualms.

edit: a neater way of saying this exact same thing is, the time limit 30 minutes from scheduled start time, so long as the manager ping is within 10 minutes of start time. If the manager ping is past 10 minutes from the start time, then it is 20 minutes from that ping. This eliminates managers trying to ping immediately to "start the clock" since it's reasonable to give somebody a few minutes without causing a hassle, and still punishes those that try to abuse it.

edit 2: this is exactly what ninjadog said oops, well I think that works best then
 
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QT said:
If we want 30 minutes for substitutes, we could also require a substitute within 15 minutes and then they have 15 minutes to get on. I'm not sure that's necessary, but if we really think substitutes need more time then we can solve that without encouraging waiting.
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Really like the premise of this, though the idea of a starter being potentially twenty minutes late and being forced out is not particularly ideal. Perhaps this can be implemented with the understanding that as long as the player who is late notifies their team or opponent that they will be there within the thirty minute window it won't force the sub in fifteen minutes.

ninjadog said:
If the 30 window minute remains I would like to see the rules regarding tagging the opposition team change - so that instead of 30 minutes from the tag it becomes 30 minutes from the scheduled time or 20 minutes after the tag, whichever is later (both times could be adjusted here).

Eg. If the scheduled time is xx:00, if Team A tags from xx:00 - xx:10 Team B has until xx:30 to start the game, if they tag at xx:12 they have until xx:32 to start the game.

This would avoid 'punishing' the player waiting from having to wait even longer if they or their managers don't immediately tag the other team (particularly an issue in unofficials where players often aren't in the respective tier discord and have to wait for a manager), and reduce the number of team pings overall as if you believe an opponent is running slightly late in good faith there's no longer any benefit to rush to tag them.
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This is also something I'd support in some capacity; we've all seen the pings at like twenty minutes past time where the player gets forced to wait up to fifty minutes total for their game because the manager wasn't around or they weren't sure on the ping rule or whatever. Managers should know their players schedule enough to have some plan to get a sub in a reasonable time, so if somebody waits until x:15 to ping twenty minutes should be more than sufficient and alleviates a bit of the burden on people overall.

As far as unsportsmanlike conduct goes, any player who has a history of being more than fifteen (or some arbitrary time) minutes late should definitely be flagged and eventually infracted. The concept of "you have thirty minutes from ping why not use it" is such a lame way of handling things and anything the site can do to deter obvious loser mentalities like this should be encouraged. Something that could maybe work is issuing a warning at the first instance of being late (15 minutes or whatever figure is chosen) in a tour, and then subsequent late arrivals start racking up infracts and potential tourbans?
 
Had a situation very similar to this, opp didnt show, took 6 mins after schedule to realize we needed to ping their managers, opp shows up exactly 35 minutes after scheduled time and by then I had almost no time to play so just ended up loading webs with a final gambit tini and a boom landorus since the stall team I had prepped would have taken too long to play out (and lost ofc). Regardless of my player experiences, as a manager I still support the 30 minute grace window as with players from various timezones around the world the 30 minutes to organize a sub seems more than reasonable, with an exception maybe for tours where there's three managers instead of two so one being instantly available to organize a sub on short notice is more doable.
 
Echoing the notion that 90% of scheduling is fine and its really just a few bad apples ruining it for everyone. In an ideal world you'd be100% ready to play at scheduled time but real life happens and I don't think 30 minutes is an unreasonable time considering that you are usually scheduling for mutual free time. I would rather see tournament bans or some kind of similar punishment that cuts known offenders activity window in half.
 
IMO, for team tours 30 minutes is only reasonable if we adjust the rule so that the time for the player or substitute to appear is from the start of the scheduled time and not the time of the first tag. If somebody waits 15 minutes and then decide to tag, that's not at all a 30 minute grace window in practice.

Either shorten the window or adjust the rule (the latter is probably preferable and cleaner).
 
obii said:
IMO, for team tours 30 minutes is only reasonable if we adjust the rule so that the time for the player or substitute to appear is from the start of the scheduled time and not the time of the first tag. If somebody waits 15 minutes and then decide to tag, that's not at all a 30 minute grace window in practice.

Either shorten the window or adjust the rule (the latter is probably preferable and cleaner).
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I second this, I think a rule along the lines of "Player or substitute must appear by xx:30 or 20 minutes after the tag, whichever of these windows passes later" would be sensible.

In practice this would mean that there is no point in tagging before xx:10 which also renders the xx:00 tag stuff useless by the way, id imagine quite a few people get annoyed by this because 90% of the time the player theyre searching for appears within a few minutes.

example: Scheduled time 7:00
7:00 tag -> eligible for act at 7.30
7:10 tag -> eligible for act at 7.30
7.20 tag -> eligible for act at 7.40
 
Larry said:
I second this, I think a rule along the lines of "Player or substitute must appear by xx:30 or 20 minutes after the tag, whichever of these windows passes later" would be sensible.

In practice this would mean that there is no point in tagging before xx:10 which also renders the xx:00 tag stuff useless by the way, id imagine quite a few people get annoyed by this because 90% of the time the player theyre searching for appears within a few minutes.

example: Scheduled time 7:00
7:00 tag -> eligible for act at 7.30
7:10 tag -> eligible for act at 7.30
7.20 tag -> eligible for act at 7.40
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I like this proposal a lot. The "30 mins after ping" has always been confusing to me, both as player and manager. This can create situations where, as player, I can't be sure when calling act is reasonable or not, and as manager, how much of a "grace window" I have to sub out a missing player. I believe having a very clear 30 mins past the scheduled time should be enforced. I'd be even further, using your proposal: imo, it should go up to 15 mins past the tag. Compare to your proposal, Larry, it means that

7:00 tag -> 7:30 act call
7:15 tag -> 7:30 act call

The difference and reasoning is that the tag would match the standard duration of a schedule for individuals, meaning that it's easier for players and managers to understand when tagging the opposing team is reasonable, and the standard 15 mins past the tag is also something very in the habits of any player (you know that past 15 mins, the opposing player is most likely gonna leave, and here it means an act win). It also means that, when scheduling a teamtournament game, the scheduling no more means that the player can actually came up 45 mins past the scheduled time.

Feel free to discuss my proposal, but I believe this would help setting better standards for team tournament's scheduling and sportsmanship.
 
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As someone already mentioned, I think we should be more aware of unofficial tours, as they still represent a major part of smogon tours.
I can understand that managers in officials are more aware of schedules, and I would support a change happening in said tours, but in unofficials/side PLs you often already need to do relevant efforts as manager to understand when your players scheduled, as often they will just contact very late in the week, and more often than not on discord to then proceed completely forgetting about sharing their time in the discord server while forgetting to answer eventual tags asking them for it. It is definetely up to the managers to be careful about their player schedules and be present when they play, but sometimes it really becomes incredibly hard to do so for multiple weeks and maybe even multiple tours, especially when a team isn't doing greatly mid-tour.

With a proposed 15min time window, you also are truly expecting the manager to be online at the scheduled time, whereas I think it's understandable that sometimes the managers will log on a few minutes later to check if game is actually happening. Following to that, in case of a tag you must firstly contact your player to see what's happening and then contact all subs to see if they are free to play, and sometimes you even want to be checking tierlocks to make sure you can sub specific players. In case of a sub, you also need to take some seconds to actually log in, find the weekly thread and make a post, on top of having to think of what team having to give to your sub, as you don't always want them to load the planned paste. This really just gives you with a few mins to operate in case of a sub and I really think it doesn't bring any benefit.
I am the first player that gets mad annoyed for waiting as I genuinely will just stare at my screen until an opponent comes online, but I don't think that saving potentially 15 minutes is such a big change for the players, as you could literally always run into a longer game when facing stall, and if 15 minutes change your life couldn't you just schedule for 15 minutes prior to the time you want to play?

I think Larry's proposal works fine, but I wouldn't try to fix something that has been working and rather have harsher punishments for people clearly abusing the current system
 
Larry’s proposal (aka ninjadog’s proposal that I also thought was my proposal) is going to have the most positive effect with the least amount of drawbacks. If anything changes, it should be to that, otherwise should keep things as. There’s no need for a dramatic change when things have generally been working great for years, but a small tweak like this should make most people happy.
 
Personally, I am not super motivated to recommend changes that are likely to cause more activity wins in tournaments, especially team tournaments. I believe that any 15/20/20-from-ping/etc change is not likely to have a positive enough change to counteract the negative impact of dramatically raising the likelihood of activity wins in team tours. I'm also not convinced anything needs changing in the first place, I haven't read anything in this thread or elsewhere that's convinced me that the current situation is an issue. We can and should be using disciplinary tools in order to discourage people taking advantage of reasonable flexibility within rules, rather than limiting that flexibility for every single relevant person because some people act in bad faith. People acting in bad faith is the most understandable reason I can see for wanting to change this section of team tour rules, but I don't see why every player in every team tour that uses trophy team tour rules should be penalized and at risk of games being less likely to happen because of this.
 
a fairy said:
Personally, I am not super motivated to recommend changes that are likely to cause more activity wins in tournaments, especially team tournaments. I believe that any 15/20/20-from-ping/etc change is not likely to have a positive enough change to counteract the negative impact of dramatically raising the likelihood of activity wins in team tours. I'm also not convinced anything needs changing in the first place, I haven't read anything in this thread or elsewhere that's convinced me that the current situation is an issue. We can and should be using disciplinary tools in order to discourage people taking advantage of reasonable flexibility within rules, rather than limiting that flexibility for every single relevant person because some people act in bad faith. People acting in bad faith is the most understandable reason I can see for wanting to change this section of team tour rules, but I don't see why every player in every team tour that uses trophy team tour rules should be penalized and at risk of games being less likely to happen because of this.
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Sure I’ll bite, here’s my testimonial as to why the current rules have been negatively impacting me. What motivates me for change is the fact that it’s really obnoxious to deal with anyone being any amount of late right now because every minute after the scheduled time you don’t tag the other team is a waste of time. I don’t like being the guy tagging a team after 5 minutes, but the fact that I’ve waited that long already means I have all that extra waiting to do, and it’s only going to get worse. I’d rather be able to tag a team after 15 minutes and know I haven’t forced myself into a potential 45 minute-long wait. Recently I tagged an opposing pupl team after a 6 minute wait because I knew I couldn’t afford to go too far beyond 30 minutes, only for the guy to show up a minute later and multiple members of other team to get annoyed at me for tagging. That’s not a huge deal on its own but it adds up, and it adds a social dimension to what should be a very straightforward process. I’m not convinced simply letting people tag after 15 minutes and still setting the deadline to be 30 minutes from the scheduled time would make a statistically significant uptick in activity cases, but it would mean that you don’t have to personally weigh your feelings about how far past 30 minutes you’ll wait and how annoying you want to be in a random low tier team tour when deciding when to to tag a team.
 
I get why people are upset at the status quo. It sucks if you are on time, but your opponent isn’t. It is commonplace for someone to tag after 10 or 15 minutes, then wait the full half hour only to then play an entirely different opponent or collect activity at the expense of your time being fully wasted. Suddenly it seems like you need to block off an hour or two of your day rather than just the amount of time the game takes — it’s not fun or always possible.

Tagging is an important mechanism to me personally as a Tournament Director because we want to maximize the amount of games played, even if it means substitutes are needed. To me, being respectful of people’s time and getting as many games in are the two priorities here. Tagging gives managers a chance to substitute or pull their player online if possible rather than giving us a larger amount of activity wins in officials.

Personally, I have become comfortable tagging at the scheduled time or within 5 minutes of it if I notice my opponent is not online. Maybe I’m in the minority though. I get what MZ means, even if I approach situations differently, and am open minded to discussion here because of situations like that.

Going to 15 minutes rather than 30 is the obvious change — it cuts in half the wait time. The downsides are that it makes managing (or being a substitute) a bit more time sensitive and it could lead to more activity decisions. That isn’t ideal, but it may be worth the trade-off seeing as it benefits the party that is on time, which is the side that clearly has more grievances about the status quo. I am not sold on this yet, but I sense it’s the trend in the thread so far.

Another option I thought of in the TD chat would be potentially adding a Discord bot to Smogon Tours to automatically tag both teams at a scheduled time if a game hasn’t started yet. There would need to be some automation here and it adds another to-do item for hosts, but this way the clock starts immediately without any awkward pressure. It removes any gray area. Downsides are the potential for excessive tags, but with matches tags and the potential for other scheduling tags, would it really be that bad? Not sure. Not sure if it’s necessary either, but it would be a step in a similar direction.

I do not hate the status quo firsthand, but I think people need to shift towards tagging immediately if we are to keep it and that behavior has not been embraced, so I think the solutions above have some promise as well.
 
One of the biggest problems i have with the current system is that if you do tag after waiting 15 minutes and your opponent shows up 45 minutes late you're now obligated to play or sub out to avoid an act loss. If this happens on a sunday theres not much to be done but i think you should be able to request a reschedule if it happens earlier in the week, and it should be on your opponent to accomodate your availability, or sub out if they can't. Not a perfect solution but at least if you actually have to leave in the time its taken your opponent to show up you and your team aren't being punished as much.

Rule would be something like:
If a player fails to show up within 30 minutes of the scheduled time, then their opponent is entitled to request for the game to be rescheduled. In the event a reschedule is unfeasible due to a lack of availability from the player who missed the original time, that player would be subbed out. If a reschedule is unfeasible for other reasons this would result in a double substitution.

Idk how well this would work in practice but i think even if we keep the current wait period it should be less punishing for people who show up on time and more punishing for people who are late, and i don't see many ways of doing this.
 
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