Rule Changes, Prize Eligibility, Forfeiting and Substitutions
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Hello everyone, I have an important announcement to make on behalf of the Tournament Team as its lead. I hope you can take time to read this, and engage in civil discussions if you have anything to add or comment on.
As some might be aware, there were issues regarding interpretation and implementation of rules in the last three tournaments: Challenger's Cup, LotS Qualifier and King of Setons 2025. To ensure competitive integrity, clarity and satisfaction of all parties involved, the Tournament Team will be implementing a couple of changes/clarifications to the immediate ruleset. Know that we plan to refactor and rework the rules at large - to make them super easy to understand and follow them, as well as incentivize healthy behaviour in and around the time of tournament events. This is a larger project which is already underway, but it will take quite some time to complete - in order to ensure we lay good foundations for the foreseeable future. I look forward to us publishing those, but for now, let us return to the immediate topic.
The following changes will apply to any and all tournaments sponsored/funded by FAF.
Qualifiers and forfeiting
Some tournaments act as qualifying stages for other, larger tournaments, or have a qualifying stage as part of the tournament stage itself. This is often implemented such that reaching a Top X position, e.g. Top 4, qualifies a participant for the next stage/tournament. This was the case with the group stage in Challenger's Cup and theLotS Qualifier. The point of these qualifying tournaments was to both create extra engagement for the community, as well as give new people a chance to join the tournament stage. However, a problematic trend formed where participants, who weren't interested in the qualifying tournament itself, only aimed to reach the "Top X" position, and didn't care about the rest of the event.
Participants like these proceeded to forfeit the remaining games once they got qualified - with their goal already reached. As much as these forfeitures were allowed, they created a very frustrating scenario for the organizers, and a disappointing environment for other tournament participants and community members, who looked forward to the matches. This was especially bad since the matches that got forfeited were, by definition, in the final stages of the tournament - when one might expect the most exciting, high level matches. We don't think this kind of behaviour is very conducive to keeping the competitive spirit in FAF going strong, so we are adding the following rule:
- Any participant that voluntarily forfeits a match at any stage of the tournament will be considered withdrawn from the tournament. This means they immediately relinquishes all rights to prizes, titles, rankings or qualifications they were eligible to receive. This includes: qualification for higher-tier tournaments/stages, monetary prizes, avatar awards, and any other.
As for the particular cases listed, as much as we dislike doing any kind of rule enforcement retroactively, we do believe this is a severe enough situation where some action is required. While we won't be applying the rule in its entirety - since we do believe that wouldn't be fair either - we decided that all participants who broke the rule in this year's LotS Qualifier will not be receiving their 2nd and 3rd placement avatar rewards, the Faction Face/Logo avatars.
We are aware this is a band-aid - we would really like to introduce a rule or a solution that pivots on incentivizing competitive behaviour, rather than punishing unwanted one. However, this would require a substantial set of changes (which, as already mentioned, we are working towards), and just isn't feasible as a single update.
Substitutions and prize eligibility
The recent King of Setons 2025 tournament had an issue that we'd evaluate as "lacking competitive integrity", at the least. Without needing to go into details on what exactly happened, to ensure it does not repeat, we will be implementing and enforcing the following rules regarding substitutions, as well as prize eligibility for substitutes:
- A "substitute" is a person who replaces a member of a team participating in a team tournament. The substitute may only replace a single person, and the replaced member is considered withdrawn from the tournament.
- A person may only participate as a substitute in case they were/are not already an active participant of the tournament - either organizer, participating player, a substitute, or a replaced player.
- The replaced player, relinquishes any and all prize eligibility to the substitute but only once the substitute has won at least 1 series.
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I do think this is a good rule to have, but I don't think it's necessary to take away the qualifier 2nd and 3rd place prizes. This rule wasn't in place at the time, so it can't be applied in any way.
To prevent any confusion/agitation, it might be worth mentioning you're thinking of working with qualifiers that do not include having to play games after you've already qualified. -
Isn’t it a flaw of TDs to use a system like double elimination in a qualifying event where the main priority is getting a qualifying slot? You didn’t even give something like a $50 prize to encourage people to have skin in the game. If you weren’t going to use a prize incentive then you might as well as have done a swiss event instead.
All this rule means is that people will “play” not that they will play, and then you’ll make an announcement about how tourney team will be actively monitoring the SERIOUSNESS level of tourney participants.
Change incentives for the behavior you seek, otherwise the behavior you keep seeing will manifest in other ways and breed general resentment/apathy.
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yeah that's what I was saying, hybrid has mentioned a system where reaching qualification equals being done, having no more games to play
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I'd say those changes looks clear and fair, and they were needed in terms of recent tourneys perfomances. Thanks, hyb!
Regarding 1st LOTs quals, it turned out that a lot of "Star" players singed up, and I can understand FTX's takes, that for the "Stars" being a "Winner of quals" and getting quals winner Ava or Faction Face/Logo avatars can not be a good motivation to play, when they already got qualified. LIke Yudi was already a winner of Lots and Farms already has like 10 cool uniqe avas.
If some fresh blood players would have gone further, their motivation of just being a winner in the tourney among many eminent players will be for sure enough, but.. unlucky!
As an idea of motivation to play further games after 4 players were already qualified (apart from 50 bucks), there can be a direct invites to the next LOTS (like top 2 players from quals get it).
There also can be rewards for a winner of Quals in the Play Off Stage of LOTS, like being able to ban 2 fractions to enemy or he has immune pick to his fraction during Swiss stage. And he can chose always his starting position. And many others "small pleasant advantages". There can be plenty of interesting motivating advantages apart from money that can be implemented and fun, for example, no one can stop Farms from being UEF REPRESENTATIVE in the Play Offs. -
I mean my position rests on it not really mattering if this succeeds in correcting the “behavior” because all it does is move the ball into “i will end this game min 4 by going pure bombers from first air and either i win or i lose” which will then entail yet another post about playing like you care to win.
People not caring is a structural problem, they cared enough to sign up but it didn’t carry through. That’s the problem to solve not adding penalties like ur an English judge making the penalty death for any crime thinking that solves the problem.
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So basically instead of giving the players a reason to play (a reward???) we give punishments for not playing the non-impactful games.
Also I cant believe the "lack of integrity" of the players in the setons tourney is mentioned. Without going into detail there were connections and organisers at fault too. But I guess in the end this doesn't matter.Overall I like the "replacement system". Nice to see what we talked about 1 year ago (?) gets implemented.
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What about the previous 50 times people dropped out of tourneys, are you also gonna take away their avatars retroactively?
I don't care about the avatar at all, but it's just a matter of principle to me. I just think it's super weird that me and yudi get all the flak over something a lot of people have already done previously a lot of times.
Another thing to bring up is that i forfeited 2 maps (1 vs neytron 1 vs wifi) because i hated the maps, and i just accepted the map loss and went on with the tourney (there are no rules against this, just like the later forfeit). Both you and Rhaelya were privy of this info but you didn't bring this up at all in your post.
@hybrid_ said in Rule Changes, Prize Eligibility, Forfeiting and Substitutions:
who weren't interested in the qualifying tournament itself, only aimed to reach the "Top X" position, and didn't care about the rest of the event.
This also completely refutes this part btw, if i only cared to reach a top position why would i forfeit 2 maps earlier in the tourney?
That aside, maybe it's a good rule to have temporary, but at the end of the day it should probably be the qualifier bracket system that should be changed. I don't care about any of the prize pools, i play tourneys for fun. But if i play a qualifier tourney for the sake of qualifying for the main tourney, why is there a need to continue to play multiple matches after qualifying? All RTS games that i follow/have followed end the games the moment the players are qualified.
Another big issue this creates is the one ftx mentions. Will you force a player to play "seriously"? And if so how will you do that? Clearly my game against yudi wasn't a serious one from my POV because again, the outcome of the game has no value to me because i already qualified. Although this one was coincidentally kind of funny in general this isn't something that's watchable for the audience either, they will just devolve into shit games like what has happened many times in the past (again again, because the outcome of the game has no value). This reminds me of 6 years ago when me and blackheart got a ban for not trying hard enough in a tourney. (should i fake trying hard?)
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@FtXCommando The flaw isn't in using double elimination, its using it and not ending the qualifier when the qualifying slots are determined. Of course and I do understand that the organiser is at fault for the format and or a lack of incentive which was especially bad this time. I don't plan nor want to start policing players which is why this will be something that is always checked properly, I would like to avoid it. The best way to avoid it is just not having a bad format for these issues, which is exactly what we'll try and do next year. Its not about adding penalties or punishing players either, but when you signup to something, you should expect to play it through, that goes for any game or any sport.
@theweakie I don't think its exactly throwing crazy flak or shame. If you signup, you should play it through to get the rewards. I know its not been stated before, but that's because no one even bothered to fix the problem and so we've made that decision now. Which like you guys have said is ending the qualifier when all the qualifying spots are determined. It just happened to be you two involved when the decision is made. However I also understand that you wouldn't have done it if you knew you would get banned, so thats my bad with being a bit misleading on the op. I will review distributing yours and Yudi's prize. In terms of format I think its whether to scrap the qualifier prizes next year, keep them in case we do swiss or any other good idea.
It is absolutely a format issue, which I will make sure everyone in the team thoroughly looks into. I also understand that the qualifier pool was not at a good enough quality which is why your forfeits happened, which I think I've already started to improve on and which you'll hopefully be happier with the swiss pool coming out on monday.
@nuggets It's not about giving punishments, its about following through when you agree to do something. In terms of the Seton's tourney, said organiser barely asked for any help, made a lot of things last minute, and blamed us for not helping. I just think it should be mentioned as its a good example for the sub rule aswell.
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In terms of the Seton's tourney, said organiser barely asked for any help, made a lot of things last minute, and blamed us for not helping. I just think it should be mentioned as its a good example for the sub rule aswell.
Okay let's go over this just to clear things up and give my perspective on things.
Syndicus has been criticized a lot for his tournament management, and I feel like most of what I have read on Discord and the forums so far has not been entirely fair. First of all, as we all know, there were massive connection problems for the entire duration of the tourney (two days). This obviously made managing the tourney much harder, more annoying, and exponentially increased the amount of time he had to sink into organizational tasks. Were mistakes made along the way? I wholeheartedly agree - e. g. the management of the Challonge was suboptimal. But considering the circumstances, the connection problems were 90% of the reason the tourney ended up being scuffed, and most subsequent issues (like the substitution controversy, which I will touch on later) were also caused by them.
In my interactions with him, he always responded quickly to my requests and was generally easy to talk to. This is about as much as anyone can expect from a TD, given the constant inflow of information he had to deal with from two tourneys. Perhaps the King and Price tourneys could be held on different weekends in the future. This would also make tournament coverage by Twitch streamers more thorough as a side benefit.
Another thing that did not make things easier was the trolling in the Discord channels. I personally don't care about players making fun of each other, but reporting false results to the TD is, in my opinion, not acceptable. Managing two tourneys is difficult enough already, let's not make it even more difficult for the person with the most thankless job in the tourney, right?
The recent King of Setons 2025 tournament had an issue that we'd evaluate as "lacking competitive integrity", at the least.
Let's go over this one last time and provide some more context.
The first substitute for my team was Protect, who replaced PANTS because he was not available on Sunday. Protect was lower rated than PANTS at the time of the tourney and had barely played in 2025, so I think he was an acceptable replacement. They are very similar players in terms of skill level in any case. Since the tourney on Sunday also lasted hours longer than usual, Protect had to leave as well because he had a flight to catch. Naturally, this was very unfortunate, and there was a debate about who should replace him. For the sake of fairness, and since the rules were ambiguous, I gave our opponents the option to choose our substitute for us. I am not entirely sure anymore if this is exactly how it happened, but what is certain is that my team let the opposing team (Team Rival) choose our substituting player, which I think is very forthcoming. The other team ended up choosing Terarii over VIP because they thought Terarii would play badly. Team Rival ended up losing the two final games in very close matches.
Was everything about this optimal? No. But given that we even let our opponents choose a substituting player for us (something I've never heard of happening before), I think calling it "lacking competitive integrity" isn't fair either.
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I thought this was previously covered in the rules that were created which said if you choose to forfeit the matches then you forfeit your prize but apparently nobody read those when Swkoll & I wrote them.
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@Nory said in Rule Changes, Prize Eligibility, Forfeiting and Substitutions:
In my interactions with him, he always responded quickly to my requests and was generally easy to talk to.
I guess this was only for you. My experience was: I either cannot reach him or he responds like 20-30min later.
This was because only captains and some others with special privileges could write in the "official" tourney chat. In theory this makes sense, in practice, as we saw, it did not.Apparently Syndicus disagrees as he downvoted.
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I don't want to pay too much attention to the other channels, so the captains-only channel worked out fine for me - but I get why you don't like it. As for the average time it took to get a response, I think not running both the Prince and King tourneys concurrently would likely help the situation.
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@Swatoslav faction immunity is not a small advantage btw
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@Swatoslav Small advantages are unacceptable imo unless you let "stars" play the qualifier which will deny any point in hosting qualifier because all the stars will just fight it out in the quals. Unless you set the boundary when a player becomes a "star" without playing qualifier which will go against the logic why qualifier is already in a place. The games are to be played fair without any advantages since we are finding the strongest player.
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@lunyshko ok-ok, no friendly fire
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@Nuggets Lets go with the facts.
Was the tourney scuffed? Yes.
The connections made this tourney really difficult to manage. When half of the teams are having connection issues, and I'm only referring this to the upper bracket. The lower bracket had little to none issues, which is why they were able to finish 90% that first day.
This brings me to the challonge, I'm not sure what went wrong with the challonge, but wifi's team needed a moment to try to fix connections before starting, in order to help accommodate that, I tried to switch him from starting in the first matches. Retroactively, when you make a change to challonge, its supposed to regenerate with the set paremeters of the seed, not sure why it did not do that.
Teams and substitutes:
Let me put this out as clearly as I can, I as the TD was trying to be reasonable and fair in order to make a great tourney.
Realistically, all the teams that were having connection issues were at a point of disqualification. And if you disagree, that is your opinion, when you drag the game towards another day, that is the effect of being lenient I did not believe that would be fair for the team members still wanting to play.Lets talk about communication:
I made the discord thread specifically for the team captains on purpose. Referring back to your comment nuggets, the amount of pings that i was receiving was insufferable and caused me to lose track of things, cause there were other players with actual issues. So I relied on the team captains to give me viable information regarding the tourney. Of course this was not happening, another thing to try to fix.As someone has already addressed, I'm always open to constructive feedback. What I will not listen to, is whining and crying about tournament being unfair. That provides me nothing to look or address in the future. It comes as simple as contacting me and addressing your issues and concerns, and we can look how to implement changes. And if you dislike the way the tourney is ran and you think you could do it better, you are always more than welcome to host it. I am not part of the TD team, but I host these for the sake of the community.
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Lets talk about communication:
I made the discord thread specifically for the team captains on purpose. Referring back to your comment nuggets, the amount of pings that i was receiving was insufferable and caused me to lose track of things, cause there were other players with actual issues. So I relied on the team captains to give me viable information regarding the tourney. Of course this was not happening, another thing to try to fix.This! ^ It is often a struggle as a TD to get adequate communication that isn't excessive trolling or just being blanked until you're having to force a response. It's very strange to see many players simply not communicate with the TD beyond below the bare minimum and then get upset when the TD isn't happy with their late response. This also applies to the rules not being read often, even in our most recent qualifier here, which is something i think should be looked into on both sides going into 2026
Sorry for the slightly off topic response, but it's something that bugs me when I have to TD for mid-high rated tournaments, since I thought people who have been doing this for years would have some normalcy in how they carry themselves to a standard with TD interactions
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First real rule of being a TD is that nobody reads anything or has any idea what’s going on beyond a tournament happening on a day and time.
Except sometimes they also misread timezones or dates.
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I dont know what you mean...
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