Originally posted by Emilien Wild:

valuing consistency is great when we're in an acquisition phase, and it has its own advantages, but once we'll move into a solidification phase, I'd like us to value more empowering judges to deliver the best ruling available to a precise situation, even if that means being a bit loser on consistency.

I strongly disagree. Our philosophy on consistency is not about controlling the behavior of inexperienced judges. It is about providing the play experience that players expect and ensuring that rulings don't appear arbitrary.

Players talk. If a judge somewhere applies a cleaner, more organic, but off-book fix to a certain situation, then if a judge elsewhere has a similar situation and *doesn't* get that fix, that player will feel cheated, and we'll be hearing a lot more of “the judge screwed me” at events.

J-Mo

On further consideration: I'm not sure how much my post actually contributes to the present discussion. I've put this edit first in the hope that my thoughts don't distract from the topic at hand, but are still here in case peopel want to read them.

Originally posted by Jeff Morrow:

I strongly disagree. Our philosophy on consistency is not about controlling the behavior of inexperienced judges. It is about providing the play experience that players expect and ensuring that rulings don't appear arbitrary.

Players talk. If a judge somewhere applies a cleaner, more organic, but off-book fix to a certain situation, then if a judge elsewhere has a similar situation and *doesn't* get that fix, that player will feel cheated, and we'll be hearing a lot more of “the judge screwed me” at events.

This raises the question of why we as judges are philosophically opposed to considering partial fixes in situations where a backup would be ill-considered.

As we've learned with the “go to combat shortcut,” what seems intuitive or reasonable to us as judges is not necessarily what seems reasonable or intuitive to players who aren't immersed in the policy documents. I recognize that in general comparing shortcut policy to GRV fixes is apple-to-oranges, but once we cross into the realm of player experience, the same sorts of considerations apply in both cases.

• Players value things that work intuitively. We make the “combat” shortcut match with their intuitions about how the game ought to work (while keeping in mind our concerns about possible angle-shooting)
  
  Players value consistency. We set up the IPG with very little flexibility so that, if a player is to get mad at a ruling, they are mad at the document and not the judge.
  
  Players also value the game state being “right.” Left on their own, they will usually try to correct honest mistakes to what the game state should be, and will usually only call a judge if a) they know better, or b) it isn't immediately clear how the game should be fixed. For a judge to say, “this is too complicated to back up, so we're going to leave the game state as-is,” can be seen as a betrayal of that expectation, especially when there seems to be an easy partial fix available.
  

From what I've seen, while backups tend to be the most preferred fix, players vastly prefer partial fixes (even deviations that are cast as a “backup followed by fast-forwarding back to where we are now in the game”) to leaving the gamestate as-is in the cases where the error didn't significantly alter lines of play.

Edited Andrew Keeler (June 21, 2017 12:12:46 AM)

Originally posted by Jeff Morrow:

Players talk. If a judge somewhere applies a cleaner, more organic, but off-book fix to a certain situation, then if a judge elsewhere has a similar situation and *doesn't* get that fix, that player will feel cheated, and we'll be hearing a lot more of “the judge screwed me” at events.

Oh boy, and that statement after a GP where a situation occured half of the judges I asked would have ruled GRV and the other HCE(Situation with BBD and Nihil Spellbomb).
Wouldnt a partial fix not increase consistency because judges wouldnt be too afraid to use this one because it's a fix players would have used when not playing in a tournament?