Accidental Merc Rule

[iightfyre]

Here it is:

1. MERCENARY

• Under no circumstances is any player permitted to switch to the mercenary builder.
• If a player accidentally switches to merc, he/she is required to leave the game immediately. The remainder of the players must draw the game and a DC penalty will be enforced whereas the Merc player will lose ELO and everyone else in game will gain ELO for the inconvenience
• Please note that the merc player MUST leave the game first in order for the DC penalty to be applied.
• Repeat offenders will be investigated by the Mods

This rule is not retro-active. It will only apply to games played after this announcement was posted.

[Feor]

I find this a terrible idea, treating merc switch as a disconnect.

Disconnect is something you probably have no control over it, however going merc even by accident is your own mistake, since you guys game to the decision that merc has to leave and a -elo penalty will be given at least make the punishment bigger than the disconnect one.

One of the main arguments for the not drawing / dc penalty was that people could abuse it to avoid loses. In the same spirit an "accidental" merc switch is even easier to abuse.


I guess if he switches to merc after level 20, he leaves and there is no draw?

[dweiler]

Abusing merc is also way easier to trace than abusing dc.

[Iznogood]

I don't mind making the penalty harder.. but I think losing 18-20 elo will prevent people from abusing it.

[dweiler]

This happened 2x in 3 months of LIHL, in which far over 1,000 games have been played. The chance of this happening is therefore something like 0.1% per game or less.
Or based on the players, we had 80 players play games here, so the chance is 2,5% a player will have 1 accidental merc switch in 3 months. The chance to have 2 is either 0% since no one got it, or 2,5%*2,5%=0,0625%, which means 1 out of 1600 players will have 2 accidental mercs. To have 3 accidental mercs it is 2,5%*2,5%*2,5%= 0,0015625%. That is 1 out of 64,000 players. With 80 players I would call having two accidental mercs (within 3 months of each other) highly significant and reason enough to investigate, and 3 is nearly impossible to get accidentally.

Those chances will actually be even lower, since the player will be 'warned' and will make sure it won't happen again.

If anyone starts to have multiple accidental mercs we will investigate it, and if he has them everytime his team is in a hopeless or bad position, he will be punished in the right way.

There is no reason at all to think this will or can be abused.

For the few times it happens this is just ment as a decent solution to handle this fairly and to prevent the 1 or 2 persons who think they can abuse it from abusing (as you will lose more ELO than if you lose).