Forum

Obviously, the following suggestions are a result of the muddle my team had with one of its official fixtures this HL season (http://etf2l.org/matches/63961). Since I’m nevertheless a reasonable person I do not want to argue against the applied ruling. I’d rather like to use my own team’s case as an example and, doing so, point out unclear passages in the league’s rules.

The rules that are concerned are from the ‘General Rules’:

2.2 Only players with correctly entered Steam IDs are eligible

All players need to be registered on ETF2L, with their SteamID linked to their profile. Using a player not registered on ETF2L will result in the match being defaulted in the opponents’ favour.

A player that’s not verified on a team’s roster (listed as unverified on the roster, or not on the roster at all) counts as merc. Competition specific rules apply.

3.4 A delay of 15 minutes is allowed

A delay of 15 minutes for showing up for a match is allowed.[…]

And from the ‘Highlander Season 10 Rules’:

1.4 One mercenary allowed by default and up to 3 mercenaries if the opponent agrees

One mercenary is allowed by default and up to 3 mercenaries are allowed if the opposing team agrees. […]

Use the match page to present mercenaries and ask for allowance. Even the default merc has to be presented, so that your opponents can make sure he is not too experienced. If you wish to contest the default allowance of a mercenary , please contact an admin (support page), so that he may decide whether or not the mercenary is too experienced. […]

I bolded relevant wording.

So, what happend?
The match was scheduled to start at 21:00. We decided to use a new player who wasn’t rostered yet but who joined the team the day before – at around 21:06. Technically, he was an unverified player for the next 24 hours by how the ETF2L’s site system works. He was still an unverified player – by the system – when the said match was scheduled to start. Only 6 minutes later, he’d be eligible to play as an official team member. This is when things get dodgy: because according to the time of recording of my pov-demo file, the match started at 21:16. By then, our player should have been considered as regularily eligible to play.

Why wasn’t he?
He wasn’t, supposedly, since the ETF2L’s site system didn’t differentiate accordingly. By 21:00, the scheduled match time, the player was still unverified and was highlighted by the system as such. (Any confirmation on this is appreciated btw.)

The problems
One problem here is obvious: The match started with a delay of roughly 15 minutes which is covered by the General Rules (3.4). The question at hand is whether this delay has to be taken into account when it comes to deciding when the match officially started. The ETF2L’s site system offers 21:00 sharp, as scheduled, as the only relevant time; admins might agree with the system for the sake of stringency but the rules themselves are unspecific. I’d expect something like: ‘Even though starting with a delay of 15 minutes, the match’s scheduled starting time is binding for further reasoning.’

This becomes even more a problem when it is to decide whether a player is unverified or not at a certain (match) time. General Rules (2.2) make no reference to this at all. I’d expect a clear call like: ‘Players who are listed as unverified on their team’s roster at the time of a scheduled match are to be treated as mercs.’ I’d also add an explanation of how long the ‘unverified’ status usually is applied to newly rostered players.

Another problem regarding my team’s issue becomes obvious when reading the HL Season 10 merc rule (1.4) closely – and from a premiership perspective. There, it is stated that teams might present the merc they intend to use on the match page. Considering the context, this applies especially to all divisions/tier that are not premiership. Teams are supposed to present their mercs in advance, i.e. before the match is officially scheduled to start, so that they can reassure themselves that the presented merc is eligible to play (=not too experienced). I’m fine with that.
In premiership however, one default merc is always granted since a player can’t be ‘too experienced’ for this level of play. The teams’ need to confirm the eligibility of a merc themselves isn’t part of the reasoning here anymore. But since this very fact it is not necessarily required to present a default merc before the match is officially scheduled to start in premiership. Generally, a team could do this afterwards – which actually happens quite often (e.g. copypasting chat logs to the match page after the game has been played; even though teams agreed on mercs before the match started, of course). But technically a team could present its merc after the game has been played and get away with it because the rules don’t force teams, especially premiership teams, to do so in advance. We’re not talking common sense here but rules. What about: ‘All mercs including default mercs are to be presented on the match page before the game is scheduled to start.’ Isn’t that tricky, is it? (On a side note: Why not set up discrete premiership rules?)

Another fun quote regarding this, taken from ‘General Rules’:

1.4 Use the match comments to record agreements on mercs, servers and other cases

We encourage using the match comments to keep in touch with your opponents. Any agreement between two teams regarding the use of mercs or servers must be recorded on the relevant match page, and cannot be retracted. Only Leaders and Deputies are given the authority to make decisions on these issues.
If your opponent allows a merc, you are expected to extend the same courtesy to them.

I’m aware that this rule explicitly focuses on the match page itself being used to document any communication between teams. But since mercs are mentioned as well: I’m not forced to present anything on the match page, I’m only encouraged to. And I’m not told when to do this either.

Get your rules straight, try to reduce the need of ‘admin discretion’ when dealing with problems and arguably nitpicking terds like me who actually love well organised sporting events will shut up eventually. #ugcisajoke #makeetf2lgrateagain

PS: I’d offer to go over the ETF2L’s ruleset in general to straighten things but, sadly, I don’t have the spare time needed. (This not a mean side blow btw.)

Here’s my 2 cents on some of the things you mentioned:

Deadline for when a player has to be rosted (i.e. not “unverified”) should be the time the match is scheduled to start. Else, teams might just fuck around for 15 minutes to get their players verified. The scheduled time is also a very clear cut so that is the only time that makes sense to me. This could and should be added to the rules page.

Rule 1.4 is worded like that to stress that only the match comments are regarded as definite proof when it comes to agreements. However, nobody is forced to use them and many people prefer to arrange their matches via Steam chat, which works perfectly fine in most cases. If you don’t use the match comments and just have a screenshot of your arrangement, you risk that your agreement becomes void but that is on yourself. I find that quite clear and do not see any conflicts or contradictions with this rule and the way it is worded.

It was actually pretty fun to read something so grammatically accurate

I think the most ironic fact about all of this is that they wouldn’t even receive a minor warning have they used Scrambled as a default merc, which is an obvious hole in the ruleset.

Also, respect to kuli for staying classy and not mentioning that this minor warning eventually resulted in his team being stripped off a point that would guarantee them a playoff spot. I’m gonna emphasize it myself nonetheless to give people some context.

Quoted from Muuki

so basically you didnt submit an unverified player that was still unverified at the beginning of the official scheduled match start time and got a minor warning?

wow, its like this stuff is rocket science!

also as a side note, p-rec isnt the only way to record demos in this game :)

wow, its like you’re pretending to be smart! :)

Quoted from Carlos Kaiser

And even though this should be a good lesson, I think that the admins can make an exception if Opinions agree on accepting Scrambled as a default merc in the retrospective, it’s prem after all.

Strong opinions were perfectly fine with him playing and as confused as us when we got a minor for it

I don’t really get the Problem, so you had an unverified player and now you say the rules are bad ?
I mean the ‘it’s only 6 minutes’ thing cant be eliminated since with any possible time you can say oh we just had five minutes, so maybe you should add your players more than 24h before the game and its all fine.

Also i don’t see a point in extra rules for Prem, there is no problem with presenting your def merc on the matchpage and rules should stay as simple as possible imo.