SPL X - Administrative Decisions

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Week 1 Tiers


Tier changes might get posted before the start of Week 1. Under normal circumstances, any tier change happening before the start of season would get implemented in Week 1. However, days ago tier leaders and other members of the staff were given the full list of changes in official tiers. No public announcement has been made and this list isn't publicly available anywhere, which means some teams have vital information others lack. Mind you, this isn't the tier leaders "cheating", they simply aren't supposed to publicly talk about tier changes before the official announcement is made.

I will give all managers access to the list shortly after posting this announcement, but that isn't going to change the fact that all managers who didn't have access to it would have less than 48 hours to try to catch-up with the preparation of the more informed teams. We don't think this is nearly enough time to make things "fair", therefore we have decided that even if the public announcement is made before the start of the tournament, usage based tier changes will not be implemented in week 1.

Zygarde's ban in SM OU and Latias's unban in DPP OU aren't usage based changes and they were publicly announced days ago, so those two will be part of Week 1.
 
Smogon Tours Alts

If you're unsure about your opponent's identity, you're free to ask them to challenge you with their verified Smogtours account to ensure you're not being tricked. If an account doesn't have global voice (has a plus at left of the nick) or any other level of auth on smogtours, be careful and make sure to check before accepting a challenge.

Protecting yourself from fake accounts takes seconds, so it's your responsibility if this happens to you. Your actual opponent won't be punished or forced to reschedule, and you will not be given an extension.
 
RE: Get this Money

Situation: Get this money has shown extreme inactivity during the first three weeks of SPL and has made no contribution to his team.

Result: Get This Money will be tournament banned for three months. In addition, he will receive a team tournament ban for a year. The Indie Scooters receive 3k in sellback credits, which can be used in the upcoming midseason auction.
 
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RE: danilo

Situation: danilo refuses to play and is not helping out his team in any way.

Result: danilo will be tournament banned for three months. In addition, he will receive a team tournament ban for a year. The Cryonicles receive 3k in sellback credits, which can be used in the upcoming midseason auction.
 
RE: menci

Situation: menci has not put any effort into being a part of his team in a meaningful way despite being approached by his managers and asked to be more involved.

Result: menci will be tournament banned for three months. In addition, he will receive a team tournament ban for a year. Team Raiders will receive 3k in sellback credits, which can be used in the upcoming midseason auction.
 
While we are continuing to discuss the issue of expectations in team tournaments, as well as the question of sellbacks in SPL, the TD team has reviewed its current rules and decided to separate out activity and participation issues from actual team sabotage and malicious behavior.

We do believe that there should be consequences for completely failing to engage with or otherwise participate in a team tournament, and that doing so constitutes unsportsmanlike behavior. However, we agree that the current rules, which paint all poor team behavior with the same brush, are draconian and overly restrictive.

Therefore, we are making the following changes to our team rules:

1. Failure to cooperate with your team and meet the minimum standards for team behavior is considered unsportsmanlike conduct. You are expected to participate in a team tournament in a meaningful way even if you are not actively playing. You must show some good faith participation in the team environment, whether that involves playing test games, providing feedback on team choices, or otherwise assisting teammates. There is no specific threshold for activity, but if you are drafted onto a team, you must make at least some good faith efforts to assist that team. Failure to do so will result in an unsportsmanlike conduct infraction, and a ban from the next iteration of that team tournament.

2. Before a manager can claim that one of their players has met the definition of unsportsmanlike behavior in point 1, they must first speak to their player and attempt to work with them to find a way that they can contribute. Again, this needs to be a good faith relationship between player and manager, so we need to see that the manager provided opportunities for the player to participate. Unwillingness to perform unreasonable tasks, meet unrealistic expectations of activity or learn in formats other than those that the player has signed up for will not be considered proof of unsportsmanlike behavior.

3. Actively sabotaging your team or otherwise showing malicious behavior (including but not limited to refusal to play any tournament games, sandbagging/intentionally underperforming, consistently attacking and undermining other team members, and repeated unsporstmanlike behavior in team tournaments) will result in a three-month tournament ban and a one-year ban from all team tournaments.

After discussing this with the hosts, it has been decided that these changes will apply to the individuals who were tournament banned for the outdated team sabotage rules this SPL. Therefore, Get this Money and menci will have their tournament bans removed and replaced with an unsportsmanlike conduct infraction. They will be barred from participating in the next iteration of SPL.
 
Since it is not written anywhere explicitly but undermines the point of the midseason auction, there are two new rules added:

1) Credits cannot be traded for credits. This is to prevent one team from trading regular credits away to another team for sellback credits, as its only use would be to have said other team upbid yet another competitor whom you want to weaken. The point of the midseason auction is to strengthen your own team.

2) Sellback credits cannot be used for anything, not even trades with other teams, before 24 hours have passed in the midseason auction. Managers may inform us of trades involving sellback credits before the 24 hours deadline, as this will ensure these trades go through at the exact moment sellback credits become usable.
 
BIGs approached Scooters to try and start trade negotiations, which they eventually accepted. Both teams spent quite a lot of time discussing potential options, but they did not reach any agreement. At some point during the conversation, Stone_Cold let Windsong take over the negotiations and gave him authority to some extent. Windsong continued talking with Scooters and explicitly agreed to one of the options and mentioned he would convince Stone_Cold. Shortly thereafter, he said they agreed to the trade. Following this, Windsong started a trade PM on forums with the conditions the BIGs had allegedly agreed to and included Stone_Cold, the. Scooter's managers and the hosts in the pm. Evidence of the conversation between Scooters and both Stone_Cold and Windsong were shown. Stone_Cold had never openly agreed to anything, but he put his Assistant Manager in charge of the negotiations, who had as mentioned before told the scooters they agreed.

However, Stone_Cold showed up shortly after and claimed he had never agreed to anything. This was incredibly odd, as Windsong had made it seem to everyone that the BIGs were on board, and he was the one who started the PM. So this looked to be either BIGs / Stone_Cold regretting the trade and trying to undo it after it was made official in PM, or Windsong misleading everyone and making the decision without approval from his main manager. We were forced to review a significant amount of evidence from private chats between both teams, private servers and private conversations between the negotiation team, while working on a tight schedule and talking to multiple parties at the same time. This made things particularly difficult for us. The evidence shows that Windsong had never gotten approval from Stone_Cold in-between saying he would convince him and then "officially" taking the offer. As such, Windsong had acted without Stone_Cold's permission in an attempt to force his hand, misleading Scooters, the hosts and all teams in the tournament in the process and undermining Stone_Cold's authority. The trade is null, Windsong will be infracted for this and the hosts will not recognize his authority as an assistant manager from this point onward.

We apologize to everyone directly affected by this and for the unexpected delays.
 
RE: KW vs Pak

Situation: KW and Pak were subbed in after the original two players could not agree on a time that worked for both. Pak either had no time or intention to play, and the Team Raiders had no substitutes left.

Result: KW is granted the activity win over Pak.
 
RE: thelinearcurve vs Gilbert arenas

Siutation: Last night, thelinearcurve and Gilbert arenas faced off for their week 9 ADV OU match. 191 turns in, they realized that the match would easily go on for a couple hundred more turns, if not reach the 1000 turn limit, and asked to tie and rematch instead of wasting several more hours on this game.

Result: The game was tied. thelinearcurve and Gilbert arenas were to rematch with different teams, and this rematch already happened.
 
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