RE: xray vs Luigi
Before Week 9 began, Luigi and xray made contact to schedule a time. They quickly realized that they had incompatible schedules, with Luigi available only for the weekend and xray available for almost all of the weekdays, and brought this to the attention of the hosts. Over the past few days, the host team has attempted on several occasions to find a solution that works within the constraints of timezone differences and real life commitments for both players. These attempts have failed, and so the host team has to make a call in the interest of having the series completed.
Forcing a single substitution has similar criteria as the basis for an activity win, largely based on effort made attempting to schedule a time. For this matchup, both players provided significant, reasonable periods of availability to their opponent. Despite xray’s numerically greater number of available days early in the week, this alone does not give grounds to justify a single substitution of Luigi. The raw number of days or hours a player is available compared to their opponent cannot be used as the only metric for granting a favorable judgement in an activity case - instead the hosting team is more interested in whether or not players provide sufficient reasonable times to their opponent. Relatedly, availability on the weekend does not inherently trump availability earlier in the week, making a single substitution of xray unreasonable. As such, the hosting team has decided the correct decision is to force a substitute for both players.
A couple additional points:
The Sharks posed the argument that because Luigi played his OST XVII Round of 16 series during a time he designated as unavailable to xray, he lied about his availability for SPL and therefore should be substituted out. This was taken into consideration as context, however we cannot use availability for another tournament as a guarantee of availability for SPL. Beyond general arguments about the perceived relative importance of SPL and other tournaments, the series in question was an extension from the previous week, rescheduled from the original Sunday time to Monday and later Tuesday meaning that prep time already existed for this set, unlike the scenario with the SPL matchup. Given these context details, there are insufficient grounds to back up the claim that Luigi lied about his availability for SPL based on his ability to play for OST.
Arguments that xray attempted to show more flexibility than Luigi, such as playing at unreasonable local times for him (1AM-9AM for example) do not provide grounds for xray to be given favorable judgment, as these unreasonable times for him are still times that his opponent has stated they are unable to play. While the attitude of trying to get the game completed is commendable, offering a wider range of times on days an opponent has stated they are unable to play at all cannot be taken as useful additional effort in scheduling.
Result: Luigi and xray are substituted out. Both teams should provide a substitute as soon as possible. Tagging the relevant managers:
M Dragon Trosko Raiza Tricking.