Intentionally Drawing Games vs Intentionally Drawing Matches - IPG changes

[fbatista]

In multiplayer it's possible to agree to ID a Game or a Match.

Players that have lost the current game, are considered spectators and don't have a say on the decision to Intentionally Draw the Game -- This decision must be unanimous among the players still playing the Game.

However players that lost the current game are still playing the Match, and they do have a say on the decision to Intentionally Draw the Match -- This decision must be unanimous among the players still playing the Match.

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The reasoning here is that a player may not want to ID a game nor a match, and the opponents might eliminate them, with the objective of IDing afterwards.

This if fine, in the context of the Game, since the remaining players could instead of IDing, craft a game situation that would result in a draw, and that would only drag the game.

However, they cannot ID the Match, unless all (4) players in the match agree.

[fbatista]

Re-opening this issue because there is potential for the rule to cause a side effect:

• Player A doesn't want to ID the Match. -- They have a turbo fast deck that has a high chance to win if they play a new game
• Player B, C, D want to ID the Match. -- They have decks weak against A's strategy.
• Player A loses the current game.
• Players B, C, D are forced to continue playing without attempting to win for the remainder of the match.

Now one can argue that what B, C, D are doing is a form of Stalling, however, the IPG philosophy on stalling is clear that it cares about the players playing SLOWLY, which may not be the case here.

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/mtr5-5/ https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg3-3/ https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-7/

However, in this situation, the players aren't playing slowly, but are still aiming to drain the clock and make the game end up in a draw.

So unless we change the Stalling policy to allow for this situation to be caught, we should change the ID policy to allow for the 3 players to ID, since otherwise they can just drag the game, which is bad for everyone.

[fbatista]

It makes sense to change the stalling policy, because otherwise a player that actually wants to play the game through, can't do anything to prevent this type of situation, which right now is within what's allowed by the 1v1 rules.

In 1v1 this situation doesn't exist, so I think it makes sense for us to add a philosophical change to Stalling.

[purplejudge]

I'll have to think about how we could do that, because assuming players who wish to draw are going about their game plan at a good pace, it'll be hard to "accuse" anyone of doing so intentionally. We'll have to start inserting ourselves more and more in matches and subjectively analyze whether or not a specific action could have been taken differently to attain the same result faster. Because, and we must remember this, once we change the Stalling policy, we also change the Slow Play policy. This means that players inadvertently taking actions in a sub-optimal sequence / not advancing toward a win will warrant a slowplay warning, which is very dubious on our part.

I'm not sure there is an elegant solution for this, to be honest. Players can argue that the three remaining opponents can kill them first in a match and that it hurts their tournament experience, but that's just a part of a multiplayer format. We have never and probably will never update policy to prevent that type of situation. This feels very similar to that philosophy. Yes, there will be times when your opponents will kill you first. Yes, there will be times when they will kill you off just so they can draw the match. That's just part of multiplayer, and we sort of have to live with the ups and downs of it

[fbatista]

I'd say we need to very precise in the application of this policy, so it doesn't leak outside of the desired case.

And our desired case is very specific: Player A wants to ID the game and players B,C,D want to ID the match. They will have to talk about this at some point during the match, and since we don't allow secret conversations between players, I believe that it's possible to enforce the policy.

I also believe that the players knowing about the policy will act as a deterrent so that they don't even consider dragging the game in a situation like this, and if they do so without communicating at the table, perhaps they have colluded pre-match and agreed on the strategy beforehand, which is also undesirable. In that case i agree with you that it will be much more difficult to catch them, but again collusion is always difficult to catch.

Check the small change i did to the proposal:

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Implementation Proposal

Policy Additions

4.7A. Definition In Multiplayer Tournaments, in a situation where one or more Players lost the game and doesn't agree with the remaining opponents proposal of Intentionally Drawing the Match, the remaining opponents cannot purposefully drag the the game, while still physically playing at a fast pace, with the goal of draining the Round timer and finishing the match in a draw.

4.7B. Examples In a Multiplayer Tournament, during swiss rounds, Player A is about to win the game, so is Player B if Player A is stopped. Facing this standoff, an Intentional Draw is proposed. Players B, C and D want to Draw the Match, while Player A disagrees and only agrees with drawing the current game and then starting a new game with the remaing 60 minutes on the clock. Player A desires to start a new game becaue they believe they have a good chance to win even with few time remaining, while Players B, C and D recognize that Player A might have an good chance to win a new game fast. Players B, C and D then agree to eliminate Player A and not attempt to win for the remaining time in the Round. Players B, C and D are Stalling.

[purplejudge]

I'm sorry, I'm just not convinced... Again, this doesn't seem much different than "They're the best player, let's just eliminate them first and then play amongst ourselves". If a player came to us and complained, we would just say "That's multiplayer for you". Why is it different here?

Perhaps there's some point here, that I'm just not seeing, which would make me agree with you instantly, but I haven't found it yet

[fbatista]

That's a good point. Let's keep this one on the backburner for a while. I still think this situation is not desirable and we should be able to write policy for it. I agree that it's just not there yet.

[fbatista]

@purplejudge today i was thinking about non-deterministic loops and how in light of the standard rules they constitute slow play.

The player is definitely not playing at a slow pace and doing their best to resolve the game actions as fast as possible.

Why is it that in this situation we consider the non-deterministic loop slow play (and arguably stalling if they are doing it on purpose) and here, in the examples above we can't?

[JimmyLang420]

If players decide to play for a draw, theres nothing we can do about it. If however they are not advancing the boardstate in a meaningfull way or making relevant decisions, we already have rules for it - Stalling

Changing the IPG, in such a way that we stop this from happening entirely will be a nightmare, and will leave alot of it on the shoulders of the judge who takes the call on an ingame event. He will ultimately be the the one that decides what an "ok" ID is from a forced ID, as theres no really one good way to write and explain and catch every corner case on this topic.

[fbatista]

Re-opening this issue because there is potential for the rule to cause a side effect:

• Player A doesn't want to ID the Match. -- They have a turbo fast deck that has a high chance to win if they play a new game

• Player B, C, D want to ID the Match. -- They have decks weak against A's strategy.

• Player A loses the current game.

• Players B, C, D are forced to continue playing without attempting to win for the remainder of the match.

Now one can argue that what B, C, D are doing is a form of Stalling, however, the IPG philosophy on stalling is clear that it cares about the players playing SLOWLY, which may not be the case here.

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/mtr5-5/

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg3-3/

https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-7/

However, in this situation, the players aren't playing slowly, but are still aiming to drain the clock and make the game end up in a draw.

So unless we change the Stalling policy to allow for this situation to be caught, we should change the ID policy to allow for the 3 players to ID, since otherwise they can just drag the game, which is bad for everyone.

this situation happened today!

[fbatista]

Re-opening this issue because there is potential for the rule to cause a side effect:

• Player A doesn't want to ID the Match. -- They have a turbo fast deck that has a high chance to win if they play a new game
• Player B, C, D want to ID the Match. -- They have decks weak against A's strategy.
• Player A loses the current game.
• Players B, C, D are forced to continue playing without attempting to win for the remainder of the match.

Now one can argue that what B, C, D are doing is a form of Stalling, however, the IPG philosophy on stalling is clear that it cares about the players playing SLOWLY, which may not be the case here. https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/mtr5-5/ https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg3-3/ https://blogs.magicjudges.org/rules/ipg4-7/ However, in this situation, the players aren't playing slowly, but are still aiming to drain the clock and make the game end up in a draw. So unless we change the Stalling policy to allow for this situation to be caught, we should change the ID policy to allow for the 3 players to ID, since otherwise they can just drag the game, which is bad for everyone.

this situation happened today!

More context:

The player asked me if they could simply not draw the game and just keep playing "normally" and draw the match.

My answer was: "You cannot burn clock time on purpose in order to draw the match".

He says: "But we're just playing normally just drawing cards and playing things"

To which I said: "You cannot burn clock time on purpose in order to draw the match".

They proceeded to continue playing normally and I didn't see any signs of stalling or anything suspicious.

[purplejudge]

Running the risk of sounding like a broken record here: I still believe this is simply something inherent to multiplayer tournaments. Yes, sometimes your opponents will kill you first and then draw the match. That sucks, but other times will see you on the other side of the coin. Maybe you need the draw and only one of the opponents doesn't want to ID. This policy line doesn't sound so bad now, does it?

Moving towards a policy where the "alive players" can ID would probably be best. It saves everyone's time and is more in line with the philosophy of why we allow for IDs in the first place.

I honestly believe competitive multiplayer tournaments are still suffering from growing pains, where players want both a very entertaining and lively match AND a very engaging competitive tournament. Sometimes these goals align, other times (such as with this issue)... Not so much. It is a "feelsbad" when everyone targets you and then draw out the match. However, said opponents are doing what's in their best interest to win the tournament, not necessarily have a fun match. I've said this before and I'll say it again: I do not think we should prevent this

[fbatista]

The argument for "allow players still playing the game to ID the match" as a shortcut to prevent durdling until time runs out makes sense when you put it that way, with the 1v1 perspective in mind.

However, in 1v1, no one is penalized by that decision / strategy.

In multiplayer one or more players are effectively penalized by a strategy that involves NOT playing the game, which is exactly the same, conceptually, to stalling, if we transpose it to 1v1.

In 1v1, if you are playing against a control deck, in Game 1, and you are losing, in such a way that the control player can kill you at any time but instead just durdles, you can always concede game and go for the next game in the best of 3.

In contrast, in Multiplayer, if there are 2 players that want to drag the game, there's nothing you can do. Even if it was best of 3, the problem would still exist!

So yes, this is indeed a multiplayer-specific problem, and maybe i can be convinced that this is an acceptable strategy / outcome. I'm just not there yet. It still doesn't feel right to me!

[purplejudge]

I understand your grievances, truly. However, I simply cannot get a different result with the information presented so far. Perhaps I'm missing a specific counterpoint that will make me completely change my mind, but the way I see it is the following:

1) This situation is not what stalling conceptually is in 1v1. This is because "1v1 Stalling" has its multiplayer counterpart in... Stalling. This scenario in 1v1 would work something like this:

"My opponent doesn't want to draw this last round, but I only need one point. As such, I'll mostly play for the draw, but I'll do so in a timely fashion, so everyone knows I'm not stalling. If I see an opening to get a win, I will, but I'm mostly playing for the draw"

This is what is happening in multiplayer. You need a draw, two other opponents also want a draw, but Mike over here wants to play for the win. So you agree to kill Mike, and then ID. But wait, you can't ID without Mike. As such, you do the next best thing: wait around and get the draw the boring way. This also makes it so one of you can technically go for the win at any point, which when added to the idea that you are not playing slowly, ensures we can't call this strategy "stalling".

2) This does involve playing the game. I'm not advocating that IDing should be done through a majority vote before the match has even started. You have to lose in the game before your opponents can ID without you. That gives you a chance to fight, in-game, for the win. If you argue this is still unfair because everyone can come after you from the start, well, isn't that just multiplayer for you? If this were a situation where a player comes to see us after a round and says "I told them my commander was Atraxa and everyone just came after me after that! Is that allowed?!", would we tell them this was illegal? Probably not.

3) I'm less advocating for this because I think it'll make players incredibly happy, but because (a) I think it is overall much better for our tournaments, and (b) I don't think we realistically have a choice. We either allow it and cut round time by having these tables finish early, or we don't and they'll just play out the clock to get the draw anyway

[fbatista]

Allright, but then this is a particularity of the Best of One, combined with multiplayer, right?

If this was Multiplayer, Best of 3, we would definitely have a problem:

• in the situation where player A wants to play another game, and players B & C don't want to, they just want to draw the match, however, all they accomplished so far was to kill player A in Game 1. So allowing them to ID the match like this, doesn't seem fair, right?

And now that we've established this case for a Best of 3 format, why would a Best of One be different? We know it IS different, but should it be, really? More importantly, should the rules be different?

And before we start saying that "best of 3 is never going to happen in multiplayer", well... In the last event we had, there were multiple cases of matches that had multiple games, sometimes even 3 games in a single 75 minutes round.

I'm not advocating for a Bo3 format, since that's not going to work when there are 4 players sitting at the table. But it is entirely possible that in the future these drawn games should count for something in terms of tiebreakers.

Anyway, Given the arguments that you presented, i'm now feeling a bit better with the way things are NOW. I'm not sure we should go as far as allow players still at the table to ID the MATCH without the consent of every player in the Pod.

There is another argument in favor of allowing the Match ID with the agreement of players still playing the game:

• When one player is eliminated, that player has 2 options:
  • They stay at the table, looking in expectation for the remaining time so that the game ends in a draw and a new game is restarted.
  • They pack up, go get some food / drinks and prepare for the next round. Maybe even go home if this was a single elimination match.

I would say that we have seen both of these happen in our events, and that the mere possibility of the second one happening, is quite huge in terms of what the rules should aim for.

Perhaps we should allow for the "Partial Consensus Match Intentional Draw"? Lets look at the case study scenario where 2 players need to win and 2 other players only need to draw:

• In this situation the 2 players that need the draw have, like you said, had their life easy i suppose, since its simpler to play for a draw than to play for the win, but they had to earn that position based on previous rounds results.

So to finalize. Should we allow "Partial Consensus Match Intentional Draw" ?

I think that if we don't penalize "durdling" (performing non-game winning game actions) as stalling, then we must allow for it. And I suppose that what i'm saying after all this is that we can't really penalize "durdling", because it is a legitimate strategy, as long as players are playing at a fast pace.