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With the transition to SV, tier locks are in an awkward position for SCL. Tiers like NU and UU are different, and people who played UU last year might want to play RU this year. Within generations, tier shifts and bans change lowertiers, and locking people into tiers they don't want to play will kill motivation. In an SPL setting, people can pick up tiers from year to year, and tier locking them to last year's tiers sucks when that is the case.
I understand that there's a level of concern with people throwing away a season with the intention of being retained for an unreasonable price the next year. However, this has never actually been an issue in tournaments. So many things can change year to year and people can become significantly better or worse in that timeframe, so it's a very high-risk strategy, not to mention that you basically shoot yourself in the foot for the current year just for the hope of building a "superteam" in a future year. On the other hand, tier locking retains creates very real issues with changing tiers and playerbases that should be amended.
suggestion: make an exception for tier locks when a generation changes, for both scl and spl.
most players that played ss ou, ss uu, etc last gen did so because it was current gen, and most of them also moved to sv ou, sv uu, etc, respectively, with the coming of the new generation. i think it makes much more sense to allow those retains to carry over.
if the players in question aren't interested in playing the current generation, then they can just decline. or in the case of spl, where say, an ss ou player could have been retained for either ss ou or sv ou, they can choose before being retained if they want to play ss, sv, or both. and the same should apply for gen 9 to 10 and so on.
i think this solution is a great compromise between maintaning the competitive integrity that the tier lock is supposed to address, while also giving players some flexibility to play their most likely new main tier for a similar value!
If a player didn't sign up for OU last year, but instead signed up for a lower tier, then they can play ANY lower tier this year since it is a new generation. They can NOT play OU, however, unless it was in their sign up from SCL 2.
I would exclude DOU from "lower tiers" and give DOU sign ups the same treatment as OU. LC I'll leave up in the air for people who will put more thought into this than I have to decide.
In short. If I had only sign up for PU last year, and I was retained this year, then I would be able to play any of PU / NU / RU / UU / Ubers but be locked out of OU.
Thank you for your feedback. While the TD team can understand the sentiment behind the proposal here, unfortunately it both opens up a door for exploitation of the retain system and does not accurately reflect how player pools for a specific tier usually don't change.
The goal of the retain lock is to prevent people from being an incredibly underpriced pickup in tiers they do not play (essentially having them sit out until playoffs assuming the team makes it there), followed the immediate next year by being able to be a 10k pickup in their main tier. Achieving stronger retains through exploitation of the tier lock system is not something we have any desire to enable. The current system where retains are locked for their first retention means that attempts to do this will not only require a 2 year long stretch of sitting out of the main tour, but also result in a 10k penalty the first year and a 16k price tag the second year, something the TD team feels is enough to prevent any serious attempts at price manipulation this way while also allowing for legacy retains to not be locked to tiers they put down 2+ years ago.
Meanwhile, the actual drafted player pools for tiers don't change nearly as much as you're implying, even with a generational shift. To provide an example, going from Snake 3 to Snake 4 (SM to SS generationally), you see a lot of the same players in each pool.
The following players would have been unable to change tiers as they did going from Snake 3 to Snake 4, as they did not sign up for their Snake 4 tiers in Snake 3:
Garay oak (moved from NU to OU (and 1 each of UU and RU)) Raiza (moved from PU to OU) robjr (moved from UU to OU) Bouff (went from 1 game of PU to 1 game of NU) Lopunny Kicks (went from OU only to playing 1 game of RU alongside OU) soulgazer** (went from mostly PU and 1 OU in Snake 3 to mostly PU, 1 OU and NU, and 2 RU in Snake 4, but only signed up for OU in Snake 3)
For completeness's sake, the users in the hide below played in Snake 3 then played different tiers in Snake 4, but would have been able to even on a retain with current rules as they signed up for the tier they played in Snake 4:
Charmflash moved from OU and UU to RU
Kink moved from RU to PU (technically played a game of RU in Snake 4 but mostly PU)
Finchinator moved from NU to OU
Rodriblutar (Bobby Dagen) went from NU to OU
talkingtree went from 1 game of PU to 1 game of DOU (signed up for DOU exclusively in Snake 3),
santu played mostly OU and 1 game of UU in Snake 3 then moved to OU/PU in Snake 4
Indigo Plateau played a single game of UU in Snake 3 then played a single game of OU in Snake 4,
z0mOG went from OU with a single game of RU and DOU in Snake 3 before going to PU (and RU)
xray went from a single game of DOU to OU (signed up for OU exclusively in Snake 3)
frisoeva went from just OU to OU, UU, and a game of LC
Jytcampbell went from just OU to adding a game of NU to mostly OU in Snake 4
This is out of the 140 people who played during Snake 3. This is not a significant shift in what tiers people play from generation to generation - even moreso when you consider how many people on these lists are for a single game in a different tier. Essentially it'd be opening up a potential exploitation of the retain system to benefit a very small number of people.
And, of course, if somebody actively wants to play a different tier going into this SCL than what they signed up for last year, retentions still require the player being retained to agree. The only way a player can potentially be prevented from being able to play what they want is if they agree to be retained while being locked to tiers they no longer want to play. If somebody wants to play different tiers they can choose to go to auction and sign up for whatever they want, they just won't be able to be retained.
In short, we will be keeping the retain tier lock for SCL and SPL moving forward.
