Today at 2:06 am (CEST) a double sub was forced by the tour hosts resulting in both Luigi and xray being subbed out of their ORAS game in what was a very important week for both the Sharks and Raiders, after Luigi refused to play on any weekday no matter the time and xray refused to play later than his morning Saturday/Sunday. We would like to complain officially regarding this decision and request that this post be seriously looked at by the Host and the TD teams as a direct criticism of everyone involved.
Regarding the decision:
First off we would like to highlight various different points brought up in the post which outlined how the decision to force a double sub had been reached.
Perry said:
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.
This statement is far from the truth. Xray did not offer to play on “almost all the weekdays” but he was willingly to play at basically any time from Monday-Friday and was also fine with playing early his mornings on Saturday as a compromise for Luigis schedule. Despite the fact that Luigi has always played his OST games (with the help of extensions) on Mondays, Tuesdays or Wednesdays he quickly refused to play on literally any weekday on the basis of vague interchanging excuses such as, work, school, being tired, not having enough time to prep, etc.
Perry said:
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 only reasonable decision is to force a substitute for both players.
Despite the fact that xray offered to play in 5 days at nearly any time, this wasn’t enough to force a single substitute which was beyond thick witted but there is actually more to the story. Xray was the one offering times to Luigi throughout the entire week, xray was the one who contacted the Hosts and xray was the one who was trying to avoid the double substitute. Luigi made no significant effort to get his game done but instead instantly decided that a double substitute was needed the moment xray said he couldn’t play after Saturday/Sunday. This is clearly seen in these
logs
Perry said:
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.
We don’t see a problem with taking Luigi’s OST XVII extensions into consideration, as you have to note that since the last 4 rounds of OST XVII Luigi has always been granted an extension and somehow always manages to play on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday. Is it really xrays fault that his opponent was forced to reschedule onto a Wednesday (a day where he could have played him) for an OST round that should have been completed last week? The answer is quite frankly no, its Luigi’s. The topic of preparation is also brought up as Luigi claimed he would not have much time to prep at all, but the same would apply to xray if they had played on a Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday since xray also has to deal with university and a project that he had to submit till Saturday morning.
Regarding the second part of this statement, yes this argument should still apply. This just shows how flexible xray was willingly to be to get this game done whole on the other hand Luigi offered absolutely no compromises, made no suggestions and did want to avoid a double sub at all, it’s almost as if he wanted a double sub. The entire point of offering times that your opponent wouldn’t really think you could play at on a day they said they could not play on, is to find a time that just maybe they could play. It’s not common for players to not ask if their opponents can play at 4 am their time since they automatically assume it’s unreasonable.
It is also no surprise that many people didn't agree with your decision just based off of the amount of haha reacts and backlash in the Stour discord on the decision made in the Administrative Thread
Regarding future precedent:
The future precedent that is being set is just wrong. If Player A can just say that he/she can only play on the days that Player B outlined couldn’t work, forcing a double substitute becomes very easy to abuse. Despite the fact that Player B has showed way more initiative to get the game done, it’s simply ignored off of the basis that Player A refuses to play on days Player B can.
If I were to let’s say play Fear in SPL and I know that my team has a very competent sub in the back for GSC and Fear’s team does not, I could simply force a double sub by lying/being stubborn to give my team much higher odds of winning that GSC game.
This could be easily abused in future tournaments, and this is something we don't really want.
This decision also sets quite a large precedent on the argument of whether offering to play on weekends is more valuable than weekdays. The statement that is being made is basically if you offer to play on Sunday you cannot be forced to be subbed out, which is just a bad statement to make. Seeing how the hosts turned a blind eye to basically every other factor that wasn’t Monday-Friday vs Saturday-Sunday, the line that is being treaded is a very dangerous one.