It's a tricky situation when there isn't a determination made quickly, as going backwards to change the matchups in the playoffs after they're over is full of big problems.
For an example, my team had yen ring against us in UBR1, and we lost that series 2-1. If we had won, we would have played the actual yen team in the second round. But when they retroactively FFL the games yen played in, we get to win our UBR1 game now, but we don't get to play UBR2 (which I guess we would have got a FFW for also)-- instead, the fake retroactive playoffs just has us go to the lower bracket immediately anyway. We ended up losing in the lower bracket semis, which we physically couldn't have played in if we got FFW's for UBR1 and UBR2 (for playing yen) (since then we make it to UBF and a loss puts you insta into LBF).
Ultimately, I don't think what they do here is wrong or anything, but it DOES ruin the playoffs for everyone involved. The yen team made it to grands, so they screwed over several teams by taking wins off of them, not to mention even more teams cuz yen rang for other teams as well.
But complaining about problems isn't very constructive without solutions, so here's what I proposed in the last post-season survey:
1-- If you're really suspicious of a player cheating, submit reports that have demos, ticks, moments that are sus, etc. Magic already pointed that out before-- this helps the AC a lot.
2-- However, I think what players want, in terms of not having seasons be completely ruined by a cheater, is faster action from the AC. So, my suggestion is: If reports come in that do have stv demos, and specific things to look at, then the AC can take an intermediate step between conviction:
--> If the AC deem that a player passes a certain threshold for POSSIBLY cheating (this is ill-defined, but let's say the AC think there's a decently high chance the player is cheating, based off the initial evidence from reports and whatever else the AC can do QUICKLY), then that player should be placed on a temporary suspension until the AC makes a final decision. That way, that player doesn't play, and for the majority of teams still competing, we avoid the issue of a cheater having to be retroactively banned and matches getting completely ruined.
Is there a chance that we suspend a player and they're later found to be clean? Absolutely, although as long as the threshold is set well, this should be a minority of cases. But even so, if this one player is suspended and misses out, say, on a playoff run, I'd argue that this outcome only really affects that player's team, and even then they only need to get one sub/ringer, and the team is still allowed to play without the suspended player. If that guy is clean and they lose playoffs because of it, then that's unfortunate, but if the MAJORITY of the time, we give MANY teams a cheater-free playoff experience, that's just a net positive overall and more players benefit.
tldr:
- banning cheaters retroactively kinda sucks because many teams take L's in playoffs that cant be accounted for effectively (plus we all just wanna play playoffs, not get a free W months later cuz cheater got banned)
- to avoid this problem, I suggest giving the AC the power to suspend highly suspicious cheater candidates temporarily while investigations are taking place, so that they don't ruin playoffs (regular szn doesnt matter so much since overturning those games doesn't actually cause problems in the same way as playoffs)
- this suspension would allow the player's team to continue competing, but avoid the need to retroactively change game outcomes. If the threshold is set well, the majority of suspended players will be cheaters.
- In the event that a player is suspended and found clean later, it would be unfortunate for the team they're on, but ultimately forcing ONE team to replace ONE player temporarily in the MINORITY of cases is a small price to pay for effectively nuking the cheater playoff runs completely, which will benefit literally EVERY player on all other teams in playoffs.