Hello everyone! After some discussion across events about his topic I thought I'd bring it to a larger audience, and see what you all think.

If a player misses a trigger, he gets a warning. If he misses another trigger, he gets another warning. If he misses a trigger for the third time, he gets a game loss.

If a player makes a GRV, he gets a warning. Then he misses a trigger, and gets a warning. Then he misses another trigger, and gets a warning. Then he commits looking at extra cards, and gets a warning. Then he makes another game rule violation, and gets a warning. Then he draws improperly at the start of the game, and gets a warning. etc.

This is the result of having a separate upgrade path per infraction. I believe the philosophy behind having independent upgrade paths is that people should learn from their mistakes and not do the SAME thing wrong over and over, but we understand if they do something else wrong.

An issue that I hear people mention about this pretty frequently is that GRV is a much more diverse category of errors than Missed Trigger. You would expect that if a player heeds a warning to remember detrimental triggers, he's alright for at least the rest of the event because that warning covers the whole infraction. With GRV, warning a player not to cast spells on illegal targets is not going to prevent him from forgetting the legend rule or using wrong mana to cast something.

I would like to take it a little further and ask: What is the warning actually for? Is it meant to mean “Please note that this play is illegal, don't do it again” or does it mean “Please be more careful about playing correctly”? I think it's the latter: Everyone already knows that you are not supposed to miss your detrimental triggers, and that you can't cast Terror on a black creature, and that you're not supposed to reveal the top card of your deck or mulligan to 7. They just had a brain fart / dexterity error and messed up.

But if a warning means “Please pay more attention”, learning from your mistakes now means that you should be playing more carefully. You would expect that the instruction to play more carefully is aimed at reducing every kind of obviously illegal play, regardless of whether that instruction was sparked by a GRV or a missed trigger.

Doesn't it make more sense to have a shared upgrade path for these infractions? To move from “You are getting a game loss because you refused to learn that you're not supposed to cast spells on illegal targets, 3 times” and more towards “You are getting a game loss because your play is really sloppy even though we told you to pay more attention, X* times”.

Thoughts? Reactions? Opinions? Anything?

*We'd need to determine a good number for X

Edited Anniek Van der Peijl (Feb. 13, 2014 10:29:25 AM)

Performing each GPE once is something that is fairly easy to do (well maybe not a missed trigger any more), even twice isn't very hard so if we combined the upgrade paths and changed the number of warnings you'd need to set it to a number that represents that, maybe allow each once and then a “second” of one of Missed Trigger, Looking at Extra Cards, Game Play Error or Improper Drawing at the Start of Game (not including Failure to Maintain Game State and Drawing Extra Cards as they are handled differently). That would make the number be around your 6th warning would be a game loss that would mean if you only had one type of GPE all day you'd get twice as many warnings that you currently do or you could get 3 GRV, 1 ID@SoG, 1 Missed Trigger and then make an honest fumble while shuffling your opponent's deck at the start of a game and be game lossed for your first L@EC offence.

Yes at the moment you can rack up a lot of GPE warnings from playing sloppy, just having a bad day or making simple mistakes but I think the current system is OK, each warning is us trying to tell a player “please pay more attention and be more careful with this element of the game” and the game loss for multiple in one area is for the player not paying more attention/being careful in that area.

I think you are trying to solve a problem that really doesn't exist. There are a vanishingly small number of players racking up 6 GPEs without an upgrade at a single event, and even a relatively small number hitting that magic 3 mark. And if you only look at players who are in contention for prizes (i.e., those for whom Game Losses significantly impact their results, rather than just making them think judges are picking on them for little mistakes when they are just trying to have fun) the number gets even smaller.

If you want to learn more about what Warnings are for (and consequently why hastening to upgrade them isn't necessary), Toby has recently written a blog post on that topic. http://blogs.magicjudges.org/telliott/2013/12/18/warning-signs/

Edits for clarity.

Edited Joshua Feingold (Feb. 13, 2014 06:13:50 PM)

It's also worth noting that one of the very first things that the DCI expects of players is that they maintain a clear and legal game state (MTR pg 9). The Warning as a penalty is even less about a specific instance of “you dun goofed” and more related to this philosophy, I think. Even though we recognize that players are human and will make mistakes, it's still their responsibility to play correctly at all times, which is ultimately what that Warning is trying to reinforce, especially when we hand out GRV/FtMGS or double GRV penalties. The existence of the upgrade path just makes it very clear that we do take that policy seriously and that if you keep goofing in similar ways, you should probably shape up your technical game. This isn't your kitchen table.

IMO, a very big drawback to this approach is that it becomes very harsh and punitive for mistakes. Some of which are very easy to commit just via dexterity errors as the day progresses and players get more tired.

For example, flipping over the second card of your library while drawing for the turn… That happens easily enough when sleeves get stuck together. Or a player missing something after having played for seven rounds that he may not have missed during round one. Certainly we can assert that we expect a reasonable level of care and precision from players, but having an upgrade path that crosses different categories of GPEs will increase the degree to which we expect players to be careful or precise. It makes things very challenging for players at the end of a long day.

This has another detrimental impact if you include GPE: FtMGS in this upgrade path. If the player gets FtMGS after having two other GPEs, does it get upgraded? Or, if the player committed FtMGS earlier in the day, does it now count towards upgrading that second GPE: GRV? You could exclude FtMGS from this approach, and only consider the other GPEs for upgrading, but that's still a pretty high expectation for players to play very well.

Which leads me to another drawback… It gives a player an incentive to not call a judge. Right now, you could make a few mistakes as a player, and simply be Warned to be more careful. Whereas if you always get a Game Loss by the third mistake… Would a player want to call a judge at that point? While there are general options to downgrade in MIPG 1, is that something a judge would consider at that point? Or would a judge follow policy exactly and issue the Game Loss for that third mistake? So, the player would likely try not to call a judge for that mistake to avoid the Game Loss. Thus leading to more detrimental behavior.

The current system is a very forgiving one, and allows for players to make mistakes without too serious a penalty for repeated errors. IIRC, that's one of the reasons why the policy changed to allow the upgrade path to reset across multi-day events. So that a player gets a clean slate at the start of a new day, without having too much carry over from the first day when he might have committed a penalty towards the end of a long day. It also lets the player call a judge and have the judge “help” (despite the Warning) rather than “punish” the player with a Game Loss. It makes us more helpful, providing positive customer service, rather than being seen as an obstacle to the day.

IMO, this philosophy that has evolved over the years to allow judges to be seen as more helpful, with a less harsh enforcement approach, has been a step in a positive direction. It allows players to play, without necessarily worrying about every mistake they might make. (Or getting caught by a technicality they never considered mattered.)

Just my two cents.

Just to clarify: I had no intention of including ftmgs in this.

I prefer the current GPE upgrade path system where a warning only becomes a game loss when a specific infraction is commited three times instead of giving a game loss after any GPE has been committed for a third time.

If a player gets an upgraded penalty becuase s/he looked at extra cards three times, missed a detrimental trigger three times, screwed up after taking a mulligan for the third time, or simply tapped the wrong lands for the third time; then it will reinforce the education that s/he has to pay attention because s/he already made the same error three times.

If the upgrade to a game loss is from three GPEs from different categories, then the penalty could rather feel like a punishment to the player. A player can certainly feel like s/he's being punished with a game loss for a mistake if it's only the first time that mistake was made by him or her.

It can also feel like a punishment if other players in the room make the same error as that player for the first time and all they get is a warning for it. That player with the game loss will likely feel s/he's not being treated as equally as everyone else.

As a player, have you ever had “one of those rounds?” Usually early in the tournament, against a deck you've never seen and you feel like you are in chaos. I recently had a match in which I received 3 GPEs in different categories. After the match was over, I thought about the warnings I received and took them each to heart and had a clean tournament from a technical standpoint.

I believe this is the philosophy of the warning. The point is not to be punitive, but to encourage the players to continue more carefully which results in a better event for everyone involved.