Hello! First off, I'm really bad at starting forum posts, so please don't mind my way of formatting etc. too much.

I want to address a pretty serious and recurring problem that I have witnessed a lot throughout about every tournament I played in so far (which is a whopping five, but not a single one was free of it): Players who don't show up - either in team matches or in solo tournaments.

I want to spark a discussion about how direly other people think this phenomenon affects their tournament experience and, if wanted by the community, try to find a solution to it.

Right now my observations tell me the following:

• Players not showing up impacts the seriousness of a tournament.
  This is especially bad in team tournaments, as not only one player suffers under the tardiness of others.
  It also takes away a big part of the fun behind the game, namely: Playing it. Your opponent doesn't show up? You don't get to play.

Of course it's nice for some people to advance freely into the next match without effort, but to be honest: did you earn it?

It's a big philiosophical question, that's why I want people to discuss upon that topic instead of just throwing in a suggestion on how to fix it.

However, I also want to propose a possible solution as additional fuel for discussion:

We already have osu!points and similar rating/reward systems - One course of action would be to either penalize players by removing those (into negative if necessary) by a set amount if they don't appear for matches without resigning in time.

Another, more elaborate strategy I thought up (in literally 5 minutes.. there's room for improvement) is the following:

• Players who don't show up to a match get immediately removed from the tournament and gain one "penalty point".
  At the same time, people who DO show up throughout an entire tournament will gain a "reward point"
  
  Penalty points are uncapped and might accumulate into oblivion
  Reward points are capped at exactly one. They also have an additional restriction which I will elaborate later.
  
  The following mechanics apply:
  
  Tournaments are able to flag themselves as "Serious Tournaments" which enables the system. Tournaments not flagged as serious cannot use reward points and also do not penalize through penalty points. (Same as Tournaments can choose to use the osu!points system)
  
  Penalty points have the drawback, that a player who currently has any number of penalty points and is currently in a bracket slot can be "bought out" of that tournament through the use of a reserve player's reward points. This reduces both reward- and penalty points by one for the respective players.
  
  As for team tournaments, there are two mechanics going with this system:
  First: Random-seeded team tournaments - For those, the team can decide to remove a player with penalty points from their team in favor of another random participant without such points. However I am not yet sure how to put an appropriate reward point cost for this action
  Second: Tournaments with Team Applications - For those, a team can be bought out, if half of their players (rounded down) are penalized through penalty points.
  
  Furthermore: If a player has used reward points to do any of the actions above, they are not eligible to gain any reward points from the tournament they used one in.

I am aware that this is a somewhat tedious system which forces participating tournament hosts to keep watch over additional factors throughout a tournament. With enough support however (maybe through external means to manage those kinds of players) I believe the extra effort can be kept at a minimum.

Whoever has read that far, thanks for your attention.
Some people will probably call me crazy - maybe I am. However I felt like it is important to spark this discussion in an environment that everybody can participate in (unlike random discord discussions where this one originated from, for example)

Of course changes to the system or even a complete overhaul are both appreciated and welcome! (Also if the absolute majority of the community seems to be against this, I'll gladly let this topic rest until somebody else feels like digging it up again lol.)


- Yulivee <3

I personally think this is a great idea, tournament players do not show up way too often and something needs to be changed about that :^)

Lool sounds good

i agree with people needing more severe penalties

:c so this is 1 week old now and I didn't even closely get the response I hoped for...

I suck at promoting ideas etc. so I guess I'll let that rot and just complain about missing players like I used to kek.

If this topic gets in some way revived again I'd be happy if we are able to move something together, but as of now the interest in it seems pretty low.

Sad.

#revive

Maybe if tournaments had like fixed schedules from the start and not just "sometime of these X many weekends." Makes no sense to force participants to block off entire weekends just to keep the tournament flexible and then punish them when their match randomly gets scheduled at a time they are unlikely to be able to attend.

It's one thing if it's like, all matches are played out within this 6 hour block on Saturday for the next 4 weeks, but from what I can tell most major tournaments run across 3 days and a large span of hours without matches running concurrently.

Of course it is perfectly fine if some timeframe is not suitable for player X from any team.

Sometimes it is near-impossible to coordinate 8 players, that is just normal - however what I actually aim to penalize is when players agree to a time and don't show up to something they, themselves, said they would be attending.

Same goes for resigning or rescheduling within a given timeframe (I'd say one day in advance?) with the tournament administration.

Stuff can always come up, and the TA are obviously in charge of allowing exceptions as well (Saturday 8pm UTC matchtime, at 4pm the internet connection of some guy blows up, he tells his team via mobile discord for example)

The point is solely to punish people who either don't appear recurringly, or agree to times beforehand and ditch those without any notice.


How dire a case is is always up to the Tournament Administration.

We are all people so:

I agree with points to punish players who do not show up but with one restriction - let them justify unability to be in time. We all have family, home, work and sometimes shit hit the fan and you might be unable to participate.

It's big problem in every game since online many things can be abused, eg. false talk, false "evidence" etc, it all comes to trust. What i can only say - if someone is too lazy to show up in tournament and will lie to justify himself... he gets life karma for this (telling this from experience in over 30 years living in this fuckin world).

If you find idea how to fix this?

I agree with rest.

Since these types of tournaments are unofficial and community driven they aren't taken very seriously; thus being easier to skip matches. Play times might fluctuate too, which results in players finding it hard to plan their weekends accordingly.

I agree on chainpullz's idea on more fixed schedules but not all tournament types have the ability to plan specific matches in specific time frames.
My proposal would be to remind potential participants that they'll have to be flexible (before they sign up) since rescheduling might occur. And players who don't show up gets some sort of penalty point. I like your idea there.

Yulivee wrote:

:c so this is 1 week old now and I didn't even closely get the response I hoped for...

I suck at promoting ideas etc. so I guess I'll let that rot and just complain about missing players like I used to kek.

If this topic gets in some way revived again I'd be happy if we are able to move something together, but as of now the interest in it seems pretty low.

Sad.

Only a small part of the community participate in tournaments sadly :/

you could just make a list of noshows (google docs?) with links to profiles, then let the tournament organizers dedice what to do with it

it's the tournament organizers who would be doing all the work, they are the ones to decide how to do it and if it's even necessary