And that’s why I like the system right now. It covers all use cases (player ahead out of turn, player behind out of turn, any ball, any situation) while minimizing impact on the game to the best of its ability AND not causing a major decision/burden to fall on the TD. It’s much easier to rule and say “rules are rules” than it is to figure out the proper ruling and explain to the other 2 players why a specific ruling out of the book of options was chosen for this situation. What if the TD’s friend is the victim of someone playing out of turn and with the book of options the TD decides “you can play his ball”/“you get a compensation ball + score” based on the lock status of say, 4/0 locks on Heavy Metal Meltdown respectively?
I can see the merits to the new system, but I don’t like the precedent of adding situational rules for specific situation X.
But that’s why at the end of the day, YOU are responsible for knowing whether it is your turn or not. So you step up and plunge, that’s on you. The other players aren’t responsible for telling you whether or not it’s your turn. That’s up to you to know. They won’t be penalized if you play out of turn, only you will.
I can see this from both sides, but I really would prefer to have the rules stay as black and white as possible. I don’t want to have to ask all these extra questions when someone plays out of order. Much easier to just roll with the rule the way it currently is.
What extra questions? Look at the backglass to see if it happened during ball 1. If so, “you’re dq’d, you play position 3, you play position 4, you stay at position 1”. Done. Simple. No compensation balls. Nobody starts with an extra billion points in AFM. Nobody starts with their Jackbot visor one-shot blown.
When someone plays out of turn on ball 1 there’s a really easy way to give the other 3 players a chance to play a standard game where all players start with 0 points on ball 1. Avoiding this solution because it’s not exactly the same thing as you do on a ball 2/3 play out of order is crazy. It’s a clean, simple solution that exists because the out of order play was on ball 1. Take advantage of it.
What if in my culture the number 4 is unlucky and I try to avoid it at all costs? What if I like my score to be on a certain spot on the screen. Do you update the software to change the player selections for stream integration? When I ask the TD what position I am, how do they answer. I am not saying you are wrong, but there are other things to consider
And for lock stealing games? That complicates things too. Just easier for me to DQ the person out of turn, and have the other player finish his last two balls in his original order. If it needs a compensation ball, then play it, but most the times I have to use this rule it’s not needed.
Another example is GOT. If P1 house balls, and P3 played my turn, locks two balls and drains, and the ruling is I play the P3 position so that I start with zero points, I would be pissed.
I would have zero points, yeah, but I also wouldn’t have a clear sword lock. That is huge for playfield validation reasons.
So the current rule for that scenario is better imo too.
GOT is a pretty bad example though, because if P3 played my ball and chose Lannister, forcing me to play balls 2 and 3 as Lannister, I would be upset about that.
I think this is the kind of thing that is better handled by leaving it to “TD discretion”. There are too many situations like this to address without making the ruleset prohibitively long and complex.
At smaller events where you have like 20 or less machines, it’s not too big of a deal for the TD to make it known that a unique rule applies to a certain game.
But especially at Pinburgh, I think it makes more sense to keep the rules as simple as possible. Otherwise players and officials alike would be spending a ton of extra time digging through rules to find an appropriate ruling for all the unique situations that pop up.
In the long run, you’re probably going to be on the beneficial side of these rulings as many times as you get screwed by them.
It’s clear that there are lots of game specific scenarios where having player 2 play in the three spot that would cause something to be “unfair”, but ultimately I the most unfair thing of all is getting a ton of free points, and/or being allowed to play four balls.
Adding this to the rules would be a few sentences at most. Something like:
“If the DQ’d player has a score of 0, then the affected player will take over that position and play. Otherwise, it will be treated as a major malfunction.”
It could likely be worded a little better than that, but it doesn’t need to be overly complicated. There’s nothing left up to the TD’s discretion. If there is an open slot with a score of 0, then the affected player plays in that slot. If there is not, then the current rules apply.
I’m failing to see how any of the presented scenarios would be worse under the proposed rule change. In fact, I think the rule change would deal with them better.
All of the players would play a standard 3 ball game and this would not be a concern.
The proposed rule change further minimizes impact on the game and does not cause the TD to make a “major decision”. If the situation is applicable then the rule would be applied. It’s not ambiguous.
If you’re playing lock stealing games, the proposed solution still maintains the original order. I don’t see how it complicates things.
You can still pay attention and tell the player to stop playing before they lock balls. I also don’t see how the current rule covers this better. You would get two locks for free and an additional compensation ball rather than starting with a 0 score and getting to pick your house like you do with a normal game.
The proposed rule change would not have any affect if someone plays P4’s ball. Current rules apply.
In this case P3 is still DQ’d. Since P2 is playing in the open slot that was created when P3 was DQ’d, the score they put up in this position stands under the proposed rule change. This seems more fair to me than P2 winning the game through no action of their own.
So we have a game where player 3 plays player 2’s first ball and is disqualified. Player 2 moves to the player 3 spot and gets a game from zero. And then in a moment of confusion, player 1 plays player 4’s ball one and is disqualified. At this point, it is impossible to apply a consistent rule for player 4.
This situation is one that apparently will be revisited in the next rules pow wow.
papa 16 classics - Me, Robert, Daniele and JoeS. Joe Dq’d in a frustrating way oh hokus pokus which led to a weird replay by robert as a single player on a 2 player game. I played daniele’s ball 1 and dq’d as well as the cadence of order of play was fubar by that point.
The shuffling of player order and positions on machine, ESPECIALLY on a 2 player game, was the nexus of confusing the crap out of that match and causing a shitshow.
