Proposal Availability & Restrictions Impacting Team Tournaments

roxie

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Hello all, I want to express my concerns regarding a player's availability and restricting roles in team tournaments. This is important as it affects how much money a manager is willing to pay for a certain player. I linked some example posts for each category so don't feel offended if you see yours on here! The majority of this is by me and ken/a1012 provided a summary/TLDR at the ending.

Availability:
Availability is supposed to tell us how active a player is going to be during the duration of the tournament. However, this category doesn't give a 100% clear vision of how things would go because things happen, it's life. I'd say that availability is either: taken seriously and beneficial, completely useless and provides nothing, or untruthful and misleading. Overall, this has a large effect on pretty much any draft plan. Useless availability provides nothing useful obviously so I don't see a point in discussing "nothing".

Beneficial Availability:

Beneficial availability provides managers with an idea of your activity. This can be something very simple like saying "yes", which implies you're active during the majority/all of the tour, or "need teams provided", which means you can play most/all of the tour. There isn't a negative in properly filling this out.

Misleading & Untruthful Availability:

As I mentioned before, availability tells us how active someone's going to be in a tournament. This also affects how much a manager is willing to spend on you. I find this information very misleading and abusable. Generally, when someone signs up for the bench role or says that they are busy for x amount of time, I assume that the player can't start at the beginning of the tournament. Anyone can signup and say "busy for the next month with exams don't go too high" as a potential price fix. Availability is really unclear to a point where it can be abusable. I believe if players know that they literally cannot play during a timeframe, they should list that rather than being broad. Maybe saying "Availability (Include Weeks you cannot play during the tournament):" or something along these lines would be more beneficial.

Restrictions: Packaged Deals, Inequitable Actions, and Bench/Substitute in relation to Tier Locks.

Packaged Deals:



Players signing up for a team tournament should be prepared and willing to play on any team, equally. They should also be prepared to not be on the same team as friends. This is where "packaged deals" come into play. Packaged deals pretty much translate to "you must buy me with x user". I find this really restrictive and counterproductive with draft plans. The positive in this is you have teammates getting along and more potential activity in the server. The negative is the drafter might not want to draft x user just for you to perform at an acceptable level. The other player might not be as good and forcing someone you never wanted in the first place is dull. I will admit I have done this once or twice in the past but after managing, it sucks from a manager's perspective.

Inequitable Actions:

Inequitable actions is a broad category but I'd define it as "actions" that are unequal and unfair towards the general environment. NUPL IX was the first Smogon premier league I've ever managed in. The tournament was won by the Pablostoises filled with good players like watashi, TDK, Snaga, and Star (i think?). Snaga and ima wrote in their availability slots that "I WILL CANCER IF YOU BUY ME AND YOU ARE NOT THE PABLOS. I WILL ONLY PLAY FOR THE PABLOS. I WILL NOT JOIN YOUR DISCORD. I AM THE DYNASTY OF PABLO'S DPP NU." and they ended up on the Pablos. I completely excluded them from my draft plans to avoid the risk of drafting potential team cancer. Why would I draft anyone if they're going to give effort to selective teams and go unpunishable? This also happened in the previous NUPL by the same user. NUPL being a "fun" tournament is not a valid excuse for this as well. If players cannot schedule a few minutes after the deadline in a fun tournament, bending tournament rules shouldn't be allowed either (twice). Players should not have the power to prevent themselves from being drafted from certain teams as it allows them to go for a cheaper price since selective managers are willing to bid on them.

Bench/Substitute in relation to Tier Locks:

Bench and Substitute are things put under the "tiers played" option but I find it counterproductive with the Tier Lock rule (if a tournament is using it of course). Tier lock simply prevents players from playing tiers outside of their initial signup post. I take the bench role as "I don't wanna start or really play" and with that in mind, I'm not going to spend as much money because it's limiting. What happens if a "bench/substitute" player ends up starting in earlier weeks? I think it's pretty dumb to sign up for non-tier roles as it promotes price-fixing. If anything, these roles are spots to be determined by the manager.


It's likely we need a better system to determine player availability prior to a draft, so that managers have more information going into a draft and can plan accordingly to who can play when. Posting that you're only going to be part of a package deal or will only play for a certain team or teams should be discouraged or disallowed, because it defeats the purpose of a draft-based tour to begin with. Tiers should be categories players are forced to pick from what is actually listed or else their signup should be voided, because signing up to sit the bench is basically signing up just to say you were drafted in the tour.


TLDR: Players being lazy during sign-ups fucks over managers and teams. Players do not get to pick what team they play for. Players do not get to claim they are part of a package or what role on the team they will fill. There are managers for these teams for a reason. Feel free to reply if you have an concerns/questions/contributions towards these topics.
 
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While the misleading situations and "restrictions" you posted about are unfortunate, I think making a giant post suggesting we police it just shows poor managerial judgment.

As a manager, you need to have the common sense to be able to read situations and understand who will give you a full effort and who won't, especially in an unofficial where a lot of people just sign up to vibe with their friends.

Not all managers are created equal. Some managers have a lot more pull than others. This is unfortunate, but if you are managing, I believe it is your job to make the best of this. There is no way to police motivation or activity (beyond totally unreasonable levels). Suggesting players shouldn't be able to put such things in their posts is.. fine, but does it really fix the issue? Just because a player doesn't post "I want to bench" or "package deal with hervalt" in their post, does that mean they will suddenly be motivated when they get drafted by you? Of course not.

I've seen other managers complain about this in the past and I just do not understand it at all. You can't force people to enjoy you or your team. This is a hobby people engage in, not a professional contract they are making. By drafting players who don't vibe with you/your team, you're doing a poor job as a manager. Sometimes this can be unavoidable and that sucks, but most of the time, it's a manager who is just totally unaware regarding who will work well with them and who won't.

In short terms, learn to manage.
 

Lalaya

Banned deucer.
or "package deal with hervalt" in their post, does that mean they will suddenly be motivated when they get drafted by you? Of course not.
while I agree with most of your post (as in: whoever writes "bench" is joining to be a cheerleader or wanting to join getting hard carried for the prize doesn't concern me the most, since you should be able to tell when you should dodge these people or when you can actually draft them without an impact, and I'm not gonna fault whoever can't dedicate 100% to the team, real life exists), the package deal meme and the "I WILL NOT PLAY UNLESS IM DRAFTED IN X TEAM" should be illegal/ARE already illegal, as in a player should be available to play for everyone, with everyone, and if they do not abide by so, you shouldn't enter the tournament at all, since its basically fixing

obviously on a managerial standpoint I wanna get the best players possible that can also go along with the team as a whole but why should I leave a possible advantage for the people drafting them on the table just because they're cancering and it's already illegal by the rules we do not to wait until week 2 to see them not doing anything and then getting tourbanned
they already have malicious intent when joining and yes, you're responsible for your draft, but the point is that they should be barred from signupping as a whole
this is specifically towards for the funny people trying to fix themselves into a team or a pair, again, I don't care about people signing up for being the team mascotte or anything like that (although I'd argue activity levels and by extension eligibility should be determined by TDs and not just the managers but I'm not willing to die on this hill)
I take the bench role as "I don't wanna start or really play" and with that in mind, I'm not going to spend as much money because it's limiting. What happens if a "bench/substitute" player ends up starting in earlier weeks?
soft agree on these people that shouldn't be able to play as starters but to be fair it changes nothing (just sub them afterwards boom problem solved without breaking any ruling you might think of creating for this purpose) and tbf tierlocks are stupid as a practice, if anything it still encourages pricefixing and doesn't solve the ever-present issues when drafting
 

Plague von Karma

Banned deucer.
As someone who's managed myself, much of this feels difficult to enforce. The more you formalise team tours, the less people will be willing to deal with it. The lower the effort to sign up, the higher the sign-ups will get, and this is a good thing because it means more competition. It sounds ridiculous but you know the less clicks = more users thing, right? It's that. Less words to type and/or read is the same principle.

It's up to you as a manager to judge someone's character to ensure they meet your standards. If someone seems like they're going to be obnoxious, you avoid them. You've been doing that by the looks of things, so you're doing something right there. Good! It's like how you should make sure you're not drafting a person who hates another and such, you're not gonna get far doing that. However, you need to go the extra mile and interview the players you're dealing with to see if their activity is right. starry has the right idea here.

With regards to the availability stuff, I feel like players will give minimal info on their iffy availability with the intention to be screened for it later when they're fully aware of what's up. I'm like this myself: it's not because I'm not trying, it's because I want to be qualitative later. As a manager I'd rather see a sign-up list have "my availability is sussy amogus mate" rather than give me 5 lines about every inch of their availability, because it's easier to interview one than read through many. You've seen how long these sign-up lists can get for some tournaments, right? It's hard enough to sit through as-is and I think the stuff players have been doing so far is swell, really. It's efficient.

Packaged Deals:


Players signing up for a team tournament should be prepared and willing to play on any team, equally. They should also be prepared to not be on the same team as friends. This is where "packaged deals" come into play. Packaged deals pretty much translate to "you must buy me with x user". I find this really restrictive and counterproductive with draft plans. The positive in this is you have teammates getting along and more potential activity in the server. The negative is the drafter might not want to draft x user just for you to perform at an acceptable level. The other player might not be as good and forcing someone you never wanted in the first place is dull. I will admit I have done this once or twice in the past but after managing, it sucks from a manager's perspective.
Inequitable Actions:

Inequitable actions is a broad category but I'd define it as "actions" that are unequal and unfair towards the general environment. NUPL IX was the first Smogon premier league I've ever managed in. The tournament was won by the Pablostoises filled with good players like watashi, TDK, Snaga, and Star (i think?). Snaga and ima wrote in their availability slots that "I WILL CANCER IF YOU BUY ME AND YOU ARE NOT THE PABLOS. I WILL ONLY PLAY FOR THE PABLOS. I WILL NOT JOIN YOUR DISCORD. I AM THE DYNASTY OF PABLO'S DPP NU." and they ended up on the Pablos. I completely excluded them from my draft plans to avoid the risk of drafting potential team cancer. Why would I draft anyone if they're going to give effort to selective teams and go unpunishable? This also happened in the previous NUPL by the same user. NUPL being a "fun" tournament is not a valid excuse for this as well. If players cannot schedule a few minutes after the deadline in a fun tournament, bending tournament rules shouldn't be allowed either (twice). Players should not have the power to prevent themselves from being drafted from certain teams as it allows them to go for a cheaper price since selective managers are willing to bid on them.
Both of these have the same reality: they don't actually have any power over your drafting, you can still do it. Gun-to-the-head fallacy or whatever, sure, but hear me out, because I don't think the fallacy applies in practice here. While I think you're correct, I think your solution creates more problems than it helps. What happens when you draft someone like this is that it will blow up in your face because they do not like you; they will either do very little or cancer completely; the latter has happened in SPL once or twice, I believe.

So what does banning these statements do, actually? Their blarting will make their price lower, but that's better than you drafting someone without knowing their intentions, no? Hear me out, here.

Banning these types of statements ends up making the problem worse. All that will happen is they will make their intentions known either privately or not at all. Then you draft someone all happy-as-larry thinking this problem has magically been resolved, and now they do the same thing as if you drafted them prior to this "restriction"...no, I should call it a "suggestion". I think you could even argue that the price they set for themselves is correct given the risks involved with drafting them. You could argue that these people have no place in the tour at all given these issues, and that could be right, but I don't think what you want to do here would actually function in practice. You're just going to create back-door dealings that go public solely when they go tits-up. Is that the kind of tour environment we want?

Maybe the better way to go is a "preferred team" portion but that may end up creating a negative, anti-competitive culture. Maybe there's just no solution: I know I don't have one. Maybe it's just a cultural fixture. Drafting is difficult and sometimes you will have to work within limitations. This is fine, at least to me.

Bench/Substitute in relation to Tier Locks:

Bench and Substitute are things put under the "tiers played" option but I find it counterproductive with the Tier Lock rule (if a tournament is using it of course). Tier lock simply prevents players from playing tiers outside of their initial signup post. I take the bench role as "I don't wanna start or really play" and with that in mind, I'm not going to spend as much money because it's limiting. What happens if a "bench/substitute" player ends up starting in earlier weeks? I think it's pretty dumb to sign up for non-tier roles as it promotes price-fixing. If anything, these roles are spots to be determined by the manager.
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First things first: they don't actually have any power over your decision-making, but you can't force them to work with you either. Managing is a two-way street. They are not your personal army, they are people too. Just because you're going to draft them doesn't mean others won't, sometimes the risk-reward pays off in spades.

Your analysis of the situation is correct, but your reaction is just...what? Yeah, don't draft them if you can't work within their limitations, but why are you going a step further to want to ban their communication? I agree that they should write their tiers in, but holy crap, why are we picking the nuclear solution? It's not that they don't want to play, that really isn't always the case. Sometimes they have life stuff going on, maybe they're cooking up some spice that won't be ready until later, maybe they want to feel things out and practice, maybe they just need a little push for motivation. It is YOUR responsibility to communicate with these kinds of players if you feel their skill can reward you for working with their limitations. Yes, their price goes down as a result - that's reasonable - but I certainly wouldn't put that under the tier lock or price fixing rules, personally. Feels more like availability factors, and if low availability dropping the price is price fixing, then I think you may be making things more complicated than they should be. The one crumb of a point I can derive from this is the "what if they come in sooner?". If they end up coming in sooner than expected, well, are they subbing in or starting? Maybe there's something wrong there, but what if the reasoning for being bench initially was motivation, etc? I don't think this is exactly price fixing so much as people being complex and fickle.

If you think you're going to get a bench player to play week 1-2, then I'm sorry, but you're never going to make that work. What you'll do is make them mad because they communicated it before the draft, have a fight because you're being frankly obnoxious, and now you're in a worse position than you started with. They will cancer and no amount of infractions or tourbans will change that, and the damage done to you is already done. What you're asking for isn't going to work. Again, managing is a two-way street: be respectful of what your player wants to do, and their motivation will go up for it. Perhaps you can converse with them prior to the draft and see what you can work out: this is responsible and respectful managing, rather than forcing them to adhere to something after reading their warning. You need synergy with your players.

The same issues arise as the prior query I brought up: they just won't say it, and if you draft them, then they will say it and now your team is hurt. You realise that by banning this sort of communication you're going to end up with less information when drafting and possibly end up with this issue when you didn't even intend it, right?

I just don't understand why you have the correct reactions when drafting but jump to...eliminating them? Where does this jump come from? It just seems so obtuse.

--

I'm collecting Angry reacts today. Pelt me with em.
 

ken

gm
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I think there are a few things touched on here that are worth considering actual changes to and some that are frankly hard to solve.

With regards to availability, more information is (obviously) always beneficial, because it lets managers plan better prior to a draft when crafting a plan (if they do), so they may be able to decide who to pick on non-overlapping availability issues. I think that much is clear to (hopefully) everyone.

Misleading availability I will admit is one of the issues that is simply hard to solve. If players know of explicit times they cannot play ahead of signing up, I believe it’s responsible of them to acknowledge that, but the problem is some players may respond vaguely in order to, per their own perspective, be more strongly considered.

Packaged deals posts and saying they will cancer if they don’t get picked by a specific team appears to be against the rules that are referenced by many unofficial tournaments’ threads, but disciplinary action taken appears to be more of a case-by-case basis. I do think voiding the sign-up is warranted, as they (assuming the Rules & Guidelines are referenced) clearly breaking the rules, and voiding the signup is less severe than the tournament ban should they continue on and sabotage a team. Price fixing can be suggested here, as knowingly going into a draft as a cancer player has that effect, but I think it’s likely going to be more beneficial to not allow the situation to progress to that point.

In regards to tier locks, if they want to sign-up for a bench spot, I think in many cases they just want to be picked without being a real contribution or to contribute the entire tour with the hope of potentially receiving whatever prize is being offered or just being chosen for the tour in general. Obviously there are exceptions here, but I don’t think selecting bench as your availability or tier makes sense in respect to either- it’s not a timeframe and it’s not a tier. You can have a conversation post-draft w/ a manager (or prior, I suppose) and discuss what you’d like to do in that regard, because managers are the ones deciding who fill the slots. It’s literally why they exist.



Not all managers are created equal. Some managers have a lot more pull than others. This is unfortunate, but if you are managing, I believe it is your job to make the best of this. There is no way to police motivation or activity (beyond totally unreasonable levels).
I think it’s obvious all managers are different. I doubt any of them are clones.

I don’t believe anyone is making the argument to police people on their activity, but rather to be up front and a little more specific about it. It’s hard to gauge how long someone will be busy and unable to contribute when many of the activity-based responses are vague. If someone knows when they are taking exams, for instance, they likely have the week of when this will occur and can state it. That’s more convenient than stating something along the lines of “can’t play during exams” or the other variations thereof, which gives no information on when or how long a period the player may be out.

Suggesting players shouldn't be able to put such things in their posts is.. fine, but does it really fix the issue? Just because a player doesn't post "I want to bench" or "package deal with hervalt" in their post, does that mean they will suddenly be motivated when they get drafted by you? Of course not.
If a player wants to be benched for maybe a week or so, by all means they can say they can’t play for the first week or few due to whatever reason, but just saying ‘bench’ isn’t helpful at all and defeats the purpose of signing up for the tournament in the first place, unless they’ve had a discussion w/ (a) manager(s) to deal with that pre/post-draft.

As a manager, you need to have the common sense to be able to read situations and understand who will give you a full effort and who won't, especially in an unofficial where a lot of people just sign up to vibe with their friends.
We get it- people want to play with their friends. But this isn't how draft-based tours work. You get drafted by someone who thinks you're skilled enough to have wanted to purchase you for that. You don't necessarily have to vibe with them so much as just play your games if you sign up, bringing me to this:

I've seen other managers complain about this in the past and I just do not understand it at all. You can't force people to enjoy you or your team. This is a hobby people engage in, not a professional contract they are making.
It's not a professional contract, but it is still something you have put your name in for to be considered by ALL managers. You can see the managers who are involved prior to signing up for most tournaments. You, again, don't need to completely vibe to function as a team. You don't need to be besties in order to still work towards a common goal.

In short terms, learn to manage.
In regards to this, a good manager knows how to work with people they both vibe and don't vibe with. If you're only going to pick players out of nepotism, then that doesn't automatically make you a 'good' manager.

Despite these examples coming from unofficial tournaments, many still link back to or reference the Smogon Tournament Rules and General Guidelines as being used for those tournaments, meaning the rules regarding minimum activity, sabotaging, and signing up for and playing in a tournament in general, still apply.

Directly quoted from the [link]rules[/link] thread, “it should be noted that signing up to play in a tournament is a commitment to playing. If you don't think you will be bothered to build the required teams to play, or you are going on a holiday in a week, please do not sign up. Tournaments will generally take a couple of months to finish, to give a general idea of the amount of time you may need to dedicate. You are expected to log in at least once every couple of days and preferably daily, and should be available for battle reasonably often.”

Why bother signing up if you are unwilling to commit time to something in the first place?

If you’re going to actively cancer instead of playing the way the team tour is meant to be played, we can revisit the rules thread again.

Sabotaging the Team: If a player signs up and is picked for a team tournament they are expected to have the team's best interests in mind. If the managers of a team believe their player is acting improperly they may get in contact with the TD team about it, and if they can prove their player is behaving in a way that we define to be sabotaging the team, such as refusing to play any games, sandbagging, attacking teammates etc, the player in question will be Tournament banned for 3 months and banned from joining team tournaments for 1 year.
There’s no reason to join a draft-style tournament and expect to throw a tantrum when a player isn’t picked by the team they decided they wanted to play for (and only for). If they sign up, they risk not getting picked by that team. If they want to make the decision for which team they play for, sign up to manage themselves or join a tournament with retains. Saying they will be a bench sitter or only will play for whichever team(s) is both sabotage and fixing, because they’re effectively confirming ahead of time they won’t meet an activity threshold and/or cancer anyone who wishes to bid for them besides that/those specific team(s).


Before I move onto the next post, I will agree with the three of you that responded, starry, Lalaya, and May, that managers should be able to weed out the potential problems themselves here w/ regards to personality, and in those circumstances I’m going to (likely incorrectly) assume the managers may have enough context surrounding some of these players to do so. But I believe focusing on that detracts from the points made regarding the issues of things that shouldn’t be included in sign-up posts to begin with.


obviously on a managerial standpoint I wanna get the best players possible that can also go along with the team as a whole but why should I leave a possible advantage for the people drafting them on the table just because they're cancering and it's already illegal by the rules we do not to wait until week 2 to see them not doing anything and then getting tourbanned
they already have malicious intent when joining and yes, you're responsible for your draft, but the point is that they should be barred from signupping as a whole
I think this is part of the main issue at hand- the rule exists, but it’s not necessarily enforced very well until it becomes an issue. While implementing an actual policy that requires policing this conduct specifically across the board may require more effort, would it not save time later on from having to deal with the actual time wasted in fixing the issue?


As someone who's managed myself, much of this feels difficult to enforce. The more you formalise team tours, the less people will be willing to deal with it. The lower the effort to sign up, the higher the sign-ups will get, and this is a good thing because it means more competition. It sounds ridiculous but you know the less clicks = more users thing, right? It's that. Less words to type and/or read is the same principle.
I’d say the only difficult part would be the availability issue. It’s something that likely has no perfect solution. I think being able to give a more apt description than, for example, someone claiming exams as an issue, would simply be to give the week they’re busy. It’s a minimal amount of extra effort.

Less clicks = more users may be true, but just because you get more sign-ups doesn’t directly correlate to better competitiveness. With this notion in mind, however, I will say that filling out a form would likely alleviate some of these issues, as they’d just click buttons for half the questions rather than type themselves.

With regards to the availability stuff, I feel like players will give minimal info on their iffy availability with the intention to be screened for it later when they're fully aware of what's up. I'm like this myself: it's not because I'm not trying, it's because I want to be qualitative later.
I will agree with this- some players may intentionally save this for a later conversation in order to explain some of it away in a more direct manner, rather than posting publicly about it. However, I think this also, unfortunately, allows for many players to either exaggerate or flat out lie about their availability up front in order to be more strongly considered. It’s just.. Again, it’s something with no perfect answer.

So what does banning these statements do, actually? Their blarting will make their price lower, but that's better than you drafting someone without knowing their intentions, no? Hear me out, here.

Banning these types of statements ends up making the problem worse. All that will happen is they will make their intentions known either privately or not at all. Then you draft someone all happy-as-larry thinking this problem has magically been resolved, and now they do the same thing as if you drafted them prior to this "restriction"...no, I should call it a "suggestion". I think you could even argue that the price they set for themselves is correct given the risks involved with drafting them. You could argue that these people have no place in the tour at all given these issues, and that could be right, but I don't think what you want to do here would actually function in practice. You're just going to create back-door dealings that go public solely when they go tits-up. Is that the kind of tour environment we want?
Well, those statements are technically already breaking the rules, just not necessarily enforced equally. Should these back-door dealings arise, as has previously happened [link https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/spl-xi-administrative-decisions.3656323/#post-8321356], it leads to more of a headache, you’re right. It’s also an issue that may not have an overt disciplinary solution, but something that should still be watched for and policed when found.




To sum it up, I think the availability issues are something that are generally hard to solve, because there is no “good” solution. Requiring something more specific if someone brings up issues may be beneficial, but also may lead to more dishonesty in filling out that section.


I think better enforcing (or proactively enforcing) rules previously established (and sought to be used for tournaments) involving sabotaging and/or activity is the general suggestion regarding the packaged deals/inequitable actions section. Voiding signups may be the easiest solution here, because if you’re willing to overtly cancer before a draft has begun, why allow it to escalate after the potential issues of price-fixing and sabotage arise? With respect to May’s speculation of backdoor deals here, it may simply be that those are things to watch out for. It’s already happened and they likely are already still occurring regardless of whether or not more overt examples (NUPL IX signups) continue.

Overall, sign-ups might be more effectively managed through filling out something like a Google form (followed by a post on the thread confirming the user had submit the form to confirm and there are not impersonation issues). Type their name, check a few boxes for tiers and timezone, provide a short answer for availability- generally easy to setup and export. I realize this has potential to be abused with false submissions, so I don’t expect it to be a real solution.

However, people filling out non-used tiers or bench when they sign-up is something that can be managed, though admittedly it will require more effort. Asking people to type an extra few characters really is not that much effort in comparison to the potential time they’ll spend playing a match or two later that day. Voiding sign-ups as a potential punishment may encourage them to fill out that section more accurately, but warning them prior to this is where I believe the extra effort comes into effect (if chosen to warn them rather than simply void- tour hosts can use their discretion). I think having this section be more accurate helps managers, regardless, because someone asking to be benched without listing tiers at the beginning may change their mind in later weeks, as these tours are months long, which may have potential price-fixing connections (strong player who signed up as “bench” and was thought to maybe just help build teams or perform a support role now in week 4 jumps off the bench and goes X-0 for the rest of the tour!), though weaker than the more explicit sabotage above.


TL;DR: I don’t think focusing on the manager weeding out people based on how they may mesh is the main focus here, rather dealing with things that are or may be against rules existing in most tournaments. Enforcing said rules more proactively(?) is likely a potential solution in those cases. Fill out the tier section when signing up for a tour accurately with the tiers that are being played, but if you’d prefer to be benched, include a note, sure. The activity section of tour sign-ups is just vague when people sign up as quickly and lazily as possible.
 

Merritt

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Obligatory this is my personal stance, not reflective of the opinion of the TD team as a whole.

I am specifically going to address the "package deal" and "will only play for X team" sections right now.

These are already banned in officials. They fall under the various actions taken against price fixing and team sabotage. These are covered by the tour rules, we do not need a tour policy thread to say we need to make a rule to stop these because we already have rules against them.

Subforum tournaments are not under TD purview and are not obligated to follow the official tournament rules. I personally don't have any interest in expanding the TD team's responsibilities to deal with subforum tours, that sounds hellish, no thanks. What rules are and are not applied (in addition to whatever disciplinary action is taken) is up to the host of the tournament and the leaders of that subforum.

Other sections of the OP, such as any potential pricefixing via availability and people signing up for things that aren't part of the available tiers are potentially useful discussions for tour policy. How subforums enforce rules for tours in their subforums, on the other hand, doesn't seem like it's relevant to tour policy.
 

Plague von Karma

Banned deucer.
Overall, sign-ups might be more effectively managed through filling out something like a Google form (followed by a post on the thread confirming the user had submit the form to confirm and there are not impersonation issues). Type their name, check a few boxes for tiers and timezone, provide a short answer for availability- generally easy to setup and export. I realize this has potential to be abused with false submissions, so I don’t expect it to be a real solution.
Don't have much to say, but I can say with 100% confidence that this would not work. Speaking as someone who's run a lot of events in the past on platforms like Discord, these typically go awry as people who use stuff like this don't want to click off the site. Sounds absurd, but in a world where telling someone to Google something is somehow too much, well, there you go. You can monitor the submissions by having it go by email and I think cross-referencing with accounts, but that's already more trouble than it's worth. This isn't a good solution: Smogon tour signups work because the user doesn't have to go through this while the security functions better.

Again, this is being made more complicated than it actually is.
 

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