Fietta said:
Shoo. Three out of five administrators are European.
OurGloriousLeader said:
Suggestion: scrap the rule that teams must match 7 players in the event of a dropped player as it is open to abuse.
As the author of that rule, I feel obligated to explain the reasoning for it since it has become a point of contention.
This post is not a resolution of the matter, just an explanation of the reasoning behind the rule as it currently stands.
Ideally, both teams are responsible and respect their opponents. As such, it is in the spirit of fairness that both teams match their numbers each round so that the outcome of the match is a fair representation of the relative skill level of both teams. One cannot argue the advantage that is gained by having more players.
Realistically, yes, it is theoretically open to abuse as one team can purposefully drop a player after the first round has begun and thereby force their opponent to play almost the entire match 7vs7 rather than 8vs8. This begs the question, though, about what advantage this actually confers to the team which forced the drop. You gave an example in the other thread, OGL, and I'll quote it here:
OurGloriousLeader said:
It's also wildly open to abuse - say I have a team of 6 good players and 2 who are filling, and I'm up against a team of 8 good players. It is in my interest to therefore try to force a 7v7.
To this, I must ask: why do you have filler players if you signed up with the intention of winning? Surely a team that is willing to exploit the rules for an advantage is willing to put winning ahead of other concerns, so why did they not cut weak players and take on strong ones? That said, I find it odd that several teams were threatening to not sign up at all because they didn't want to cut any of their good players for the roster cap, and now you're telling me that I legitimately have to worry about teams abusing this rule to compensate for weak fillers on their roster. Which is it? I realize this is beside the point, so let me get back on track. Assuming a team has 6 good players and 2 fillers, and that they are facing a team of 8 good players, yes, dropping a filler to force their opponent to drop a good player does tip the scales a little. It doesn't tip the scales in the first team's favor as they're still playing 6+1 vs 7, though I agree it is scummy and makes a bad situation a little bit better. I'm not convinced this is a realistic situation in this tournament, though, considering the size of the roster cap compared to the player requirement for matches. We also haven't seen it done yet, though that could be because people did not read and/or understand that rule.
Regardless, I am personally open to the idea of a revision. I would like to see suggestions for alternatives, rather than just tossing out the whole rule and its intended effect. Perhaps a caveat that teams only have to match for the first set in which the drop happens (i.e. only the remainder of one set per match), after which it can safely be assumed their opponent had enough time to source a replacement and their failure to do so is their burden to bear. This would still be prone to the same kind of abuse, technically, but its scope would be limited to part of a single set and therefore its effect on the overall match should be minimal. I feel this would allow teams which lose a player for honest reasons to have a fair chance in what should be a one-time incident, and make the impact of abuse so minimal that it wouldn't be worthwhile. Maybe another condition that a team doesn't have to match in the final set, so potential abusers don't "save" their one-time forced matching for a clutch moment?