Proposal Equating Byes and Activity Wins in Point System

[Excal]

Currently, the rules surrounding Byes and Activity Wins are as follows:

Round 1 Byes and coinflips do not count as wins, as such you will receive no points for advancing to the next round with them. Upon winning the following round you'll get the points for that round as well as the previous round.
Activity wins and your opponent being disqualified do count as wins, you will receive points as normal.

I think this is an inconsistent ruling. Byes and activity wins/dqs should either always count as a win or never count as a win. For our purposes, the player has no control over whether they will be paired against a "Bye" or their opponent will give an activity win/get disqualified. It feels slightly unfair to punish a player by denying them the opportunity to receive points in the first round of a cup/open, and increasing the stakes of their round 2 game by making it worth double the points. Sure, if they don't play an opponent in round 1, there is merit to not rewarding a point; however, our current system rewards points in the activity win/dq scenario, wherein players will not have to play a round 1 game.

I think there can never be a perfect system, so we should count points for activity wins as well as round 1 byes. Players should have equal opportunities to earn points in each round. Admittedly I don't know the history behind this ruling, but I think it should be reconsidered/discussed.

Edit: ABR made a good point in stours: coinflips staying at 0 points makes sense, as it's the players' fault that the game isn't completed and it incentivizes people to play their games.

 

[Merritt]

Speaking personally ect ect

Activity wins (and to a lesser extent, disqualifications) should always award points as otherwise it becomes possible to screw over a player without having to beat them yourself. Don't think you can beat your r5 opponent, but they've got a high chance of running into one of the top players in r6? Take an act loss and you've got a decent shot of hurting your opponent's qualification chances.

Players not getting points for actually, 100% guaranteed free (unless they happen to roll a substitute) is undesirable in my eyes. They're not excluded from being able to earn points for Round 1 at all so they're not actually at a disadvantage, but they do have to get an actual win in Round 2.

People already can (and do) argue getting a bye in Round 1 is an advantage in the current system, since you only need to win one set to get points equivalent to winning two, but making it so that getting a bye in Round 1 is an indisputable advantage is certainly not better.

Beyond this, are there any cases you're thinking of where somebody getting a bye in Round 1 actually hurt their qualification chances?

 

[BigFatMantis]

Beyond this, are there any cases you're thinking of where somebody getting a bye in Round 1 actually hurt their qualification chances?

Not for an official, but I know that this has happened in smaller unofficial circuits/points based things on Smogon, which will basically always mimic whatever the official rules are on awarding points for byes. For example, in GSC Slam, Raahel would have qualled for playoffs if they got points for byes, since they got byes in GSC ZU and GSC Ubers open but then lost Round 2. Again, not really an official format of any means, but it is definitely does happen, and is more likely to happen when there's fewer players involved in the overall circuit/slam etc. There's other examples too but this was a very recent one I remembered.

No real opinion on whether or not this should be the case, just wanted to point out that this can actually affect someone. It's probably fine for coinflips if nobody made an effort to play a game though, byes are a bit more complicated though since that's nobody's fault.

 

[DragonWhale]

When I was hosting tournaments/circuit for several years I always made it the rule that activity wins don't count as wins/points. Like sure there is the very rare downside of someone intentionally bailing from a match to screw over someone's qualification chances, but there's three things that make this pretty minor:

1. The circumstances have to be very specific, in which the next round opponent has to be someone extremely good that it severely impacts the victim's chances, that the person bailing has an incentive to do so, and that the victim is on the borderline between qualifying and not
2. If there's clear intent on the part of the person bailing, tourbans exist for a reason, making it a further deterrent for the above situation to happen
3. Just boss out and win the next round against the good player, this is Pokemon literally anything can happen

Meanwhile the upside is that I didn't have to deal with shitheads fishing for act wins throughout the years. Very easy choice.