Punishing players for Collusion?

Because everyone gets trophies in T-Ball.

Serious answer.

Look, it’s not complicated. You’ve reached the finals of a small tournament, you’ve accepted a prize split, everything is settled so there’s no incentive for you to play anymore. Maybe you pick a secondary because it’s more entertaining to you, or you want match experience or whatever. As I hear it, these guys at Frosty picked into an Izayoi mirror and spammed taunts or something, which is just acting like assholes. But what should they do? Play like they care even though they have no reason to? Refuse to play the match at all? There doesn’t seem to be a good solution.

Again, you can say that they “should have the pride to play to win no matter what”, but that’s just your opinion, it’s not an enforceable rule. If somebody wants to lose a match, you can’t stop them. That’s why I feel you can only control the behavior of the players rather than trying to control what happens within the match itself.

I see where you’re coming from but players should know that this much bigger than them. The TO put together the tournament and expected Grand Finals to be a legitimate Grand Finals where two competitors will play it out and give it their all. I don’t think any TO just says “Man, I sure hope no one colludes during the Street Fighter Grand Finals, that would suck. Lol Knock on Wood.” The streamer (if there is one) has worked (usually without pay) to film the entire tournament, screwing around during Grand Finals is a waste of their talent and time. A common trope amongst many arguments is the focus on the two players and their relation to the other players who didn’t make it to Grand Finals. With that, sure, I can see why there would be no reason to play it out. But intersectionality is key, the players, the TO, the Stream Producer, the Bracket Runner and the like don’t exist in a void, we’re all affected by the actions of others, them screwing around doesn’t only hurt the pot monsters, it hurts everyone and it hurts the people who haven’t played, have no chance of winning money but still worked hard to put on this event the most.

With that in mind, they do have a reason to play it out, it’s basically a matter about thinking about others. Respect others enough to literally play a video game with the same amount of passion they gave you when putting on the event. I think we can all agree that no one cares about the money and frankly it’s bigger than just the money in my book.

The incentive for you to play a match is that if you don’t you, will forfeit your prize money.

Letting two people mess around in GFs if they want to isn’t a good message, either. I’m sure you realize that.

Well, there are already rules most of the time fortunately, not just people acting like “insane fools” mad that people don’t follow their ethics. Maybe these rules could be a little more specific on what exactly they are forbidding or what the consequences should be but right now I think the general idea of “don’t do it” makes it plenty clear. At least, it should.

The next best thing is to make players at least look like they are, or to make clear that the tournament does not end until GFs are over.

I can agree with this.

this might sound like oranges to this topic’s apples, but let me propose an alternative question: how do you guys feel about scalping? i buy a ticket with clear intention to resell it. but as far as you’re concerned, shit came up and i can’t make it anymore

the practice is of dubious legal enforceability and there are no victims in the sense that there are no victims when grand finalists clown around. and as far as you’re concerned, you should have bought the ticket before i did. you are not “owed anything” because you really wanted to go and i really didn’t

…i mean, come on people. just because human decency is not codified by law does not mean you entitle yourself to doing whatever you please. well, technically you can. just like technically a bunch of bystanders can leave you dying on the street because in many places they are not legally required to call for assistance

or maybe some of you would like to take humans out of the equation and have tournaments organized by robots? have fun showing up a second late assholes. or maybe i should append “fucking idiot” to the end of every sentence i type and we can discover the amount of "fucking idiot"s it takes to legally constitute verbal abuse on the internet.

it’s not rocket science, it’s respect. there is already a system for dealing with dodgy TOs, just like there is a system for dealing with shitty human beings.

Ignorance is not an excuse for colluding/sandbagging in grand finals.

For the record, the pot bonus was a donation from Shinsyn’s own bank account. Pops and Crazy Ape still got the other money.

@ everyone who thinks that players have a “right” to collude in GF…
GF IS STILL PART OF THE TOURNAMENT, thus still under the tournament rules including “no match-fixing” (if the tournament has one)
Players collude, rule is broken, players get punished.
can it b made simpler than that?

Can we just drop all arguments about whether or not “collusion” is the correct term as it’s just plain old unproductive. Arguing over the term simply leads the discussion off topic.

In any case, inkblot’s statement isn’t just limited to “collusion” and also includes “intentionally underperforming” to “manipulate the results.”

You know what happens to professional athletes, be it team sports or individual sports, should they intentionally throw a match, game or contest? The repercussions are severe. This is what should happen should collusion be found.

-Players responsible forfeit their prize money, money goes to 3rd place finisher.
-Players responsible are banned from tournaments held by same sponsor(s)/company(ies)/people.
-Players responsible hand over their controllers/fightsticks to tournament organizer for keeps.

Maybe that will keep such BS from happening, cause weather or not it is ‘legal’ it is something harmful to the spirit of competition.

The third on this is too far given that it’s their property. Banning colluders permanently should be up to the tournament organizer and might make sense for the largest tournaments of the year.

Did you even consider why Shinsyn blew the fuck up in the first place? Because the two brothers intentionally goofed off in the grand finals. Which was a big FU to everyone involved in the tournament, intentional or not. So what’s the root cause now? Shinsyn or the brothers? To say that it was “all on Shinsyn” is excusing the brothers of any blame altogether, which is simply not true, especially when it was their own dumb actions that triggered the whole thing. Shinsyn was simply an aftermath or natural by-product of it. You could argue that he overacted and “handled it terribly” sure, but I cut him slack for losing his cool, when it was his own damn money that’s on the line, plus the blood and sweat he put into organising and running it for everyone else. The fact that he only took away the pot bonus shows that it could’ve been much worse (even worse than “terrible”? Oh my, how could he?!).

He made his message clear. Don’t fuck with his tournament, cause he ain’t taking it and he will lay down the hammer. That’s what people are giving him props for. I’d sure as hell rather this message than letting players know that their above TOs and everyone else, and that them goofing up the GFs is entirely a-okay.

CrazyApe: "If we didn’t think they were gonna take our money away, we might have actually played seriously."
This shit doesn’t cut it. They entered the tournament, it’s their job as a participant to know the rules and what is expected of them. If you don’t and mess up, that’s on you, have fun getting bopped. Some things you learn, you learn the hard way. You decide to shit up the GFs by trolling it up, then you deserve the repercussions of your actions. Just like if you fought hard and earned 1st place, you deserve 1st prize. What you put in is what you get out.

You mention that it was “It was an overreaction to a non-problem. And you know what?You’re actually right in that regards since you only bring up pot-splitting over and over again, (which we’ve already established since page fucking 1 that’s not the issue at hand) and fail to mention the grand finals goof off. For someone actively involved in this discussion, you ain’t doing a good job following along.

The intention to pot-split itself isn’t as causing any damage, no where near as much as goofing off in the grand finals is anyway. That’s the real issue that we’re discussing now that you keep neglecting to mention.

yeah blufang i dont get the third one either

I don’t know why you keep insisting that I’m failing to mention that, because I’m not. In MY opinion, as I already stated (!), there’s no problem if the brothers said “we don’t even want to play it out, tourney’s over, we are co-champions, now pay us 1st and 2nd place money plz.” I don’t expect that to be a popular stance because people have come to expect a show, but in poker tourneys it happens all the time. Celerity’s idea of the players agreeing to an 80% split so that they have something to play for is a good one but I don’t see any way to enforce that.

My point, again, is that “trolling in grand finals” or whatever you want to call it, is basically failing to deliver a show for the TO and other competitors who are still watching, and I’m dead against putting any kind of obligation to entertain on the players. Never mind the fact that often it’s late and everybody just wants to go home anyway and would welcome the event ending ten minutes sooner. What I meant by bringing up the brothers’ statement that “if we knew they’d take our money away we might have played serious” is just that: if the perceived problem, that shinsyn perceived as the problem too apparently, is that they didn’t play serious, well then why the fuck blow up after they’d already agreed to change characters and play it out? Because as you said, the “damage was done,” well what do you mean by that if the pot split is no problem? If that’s no problem who cares if they did a bit of trolling but then agreed to play it out? WHAT “damage” exactly had been done if you aren’t talking about the fact that the ILLUSION of a real competitive GF had been destroyed? And people accuse me of not reading?? Smh…

I do not understand what problem ANYBODY, TO or otherwise, could possibly have with what they did, if the reactions of stream monsters are not taken into account. It looks to me like spectator appeasement and this shit ain’t no professional spectator sport no matter how much some people want to make it one.

I think (from what I’m reading here; again, I didn’t watch it) there is a problem with what they did, because everybody who is running the tournament, watching the tournament, playing in subsequent events etc. has to wait for them to finish playing some bullshit match. They’re holding up the entire event.

I agree that I don’t think there’s any problem at all if two finalists just save everybody’s time by not playing it out, or if they play alt characters for something fresh, as long as they have some idea how to play them. But trolling/stalling shouldn’t be allowed in any match, especially grand finals.

Fixed

So every once in a while I get off of my lazy ass and write an article and drop it in FGD; and the next one, which is months overdue, is about all of the people when donate their own time to making sure the tournaments we go to all run properly, the people that you don’t see on stream. If you are anyone of those people a thrown finals is like those players giving your effort to grow this event the finger. And apart from the personal FU there is also extra offense to be taken as a TO, not just because these players are giving you the finger, but because they are also doing it to people who donated their time, efforts and usually their voices to helping your event.

Do you know what else fails to deliver a show 99% of the time? A guile vs guile mirror in grand finals, but guess what? It if two guile main get to grand finals that’s what you’re are going to get and as a spectator you can sit down and shut up if you can’t appreciate the match up.

Do you see the difference here? You keep focusing on the quality of the show being put on for the viewers, and not the fact that basically every TO is completely okay with horribly boring, sometimes unwatchably slow, LEGITIMATE grand finals that don’t spit in the face of the people who worked on the event.

No way in hell that would happen. I’d bet you’d sooner see stream monsters act civilized that have players just hand over their controllers.

Crabe is a fucking idiot. There is no grey area here, fuck around AT ANY POINT like the AGE peices of shit did at UFGT or Grand Finals or fucking anything you’re a peice of shit giving the people who worked their butts off for this yhe figure and if you think this shit is okay you’re just as wrong. This topic is not a two way street, it’s not black & white, it’s clear cut you act like a POS you’re gonna get called out fir it.