This would give the player sovereignty in this regard over his team, which may or may not be the precedent we want to set here. In an individual tournament, it's just fine for a person to forfeit any time they want. In a very big game however, such as in the finals of the Smogon Tour, I suspect that anyone that forfeited under dubious circumstances might face the wrath of the tournament directors for cheapening the most important tournament Smogon has. Similarly, in a team tournament like this one, forfeiting affects the team as much as it does the player. Why should the individual player be allowed to choose whether he is okay with accepting a specific controversial result when he team disagrees?
The team manager selected his team members trusting that they would make proper decisions regarding their battles. The individual player is left to his/her own devices when team building and battling. Granted, while it's up to the rest of the team to help during team building (if asked to do so) and to support their teammates in battle, they should have no say in the decisions that the individual player makes. That would be akin to not believing that the player is capable of making sound decisions for himself. This particular issue is indeed more controversial than just that, due to some technicalities, but let's take a look at a few things:
- Phyres allowed Earthworm to continue even though his time was up. People are pushing that Phyres was not allowed to do this as both players have to abide by the Battle Timeout rule, but would people on Phyres' side really be pushing for such a technicality had they not thought his team had an advantage over EW in the first place? I believe most of players watching allowed this to play out without saying too much (correct me if I'm wrong) with the confidence that Phyres had it wrapped up anyway. If this is the case, using this whole Battle Timeout scenario as a reason why Phyres should get the win should probably be null. With the assumption that it is indeed null:
- Earthworm reported a win, Phyres reported a loss. Regardless of what calculations anyone did to believe that one player's chances of winning were better than the other, Phyres forfeited at the end and both players reported. As an aside, you can't prematurely calculate a player's chances of winning a battle. I'm always hearing time and time again about DPP in that one team had a matchup advantage yet the other player had better luck. Had Earthworm won due to a lot of hax after he timed out, would anyone have disputed that as well?
- The main complaint here is how long Earthworm took to make his moves. A lot of people vouch that that's just how he plays and he had no malicious intent to stall (and there's no evidence to prove otherwise). Obviously, for these kinds of scenarios, Battle Timeout is put into effect. Phyres extended his courtesy in allowing EW to go over time. EW extended a similar courtesy in (somewhat) making sure if Phyres was making a sound decision in forfeiting later on. The team might not have agreed with the decision, but it was his decision to make. After all, it's been clarified that we aren't allowed to coach players during battle. Why should disagreeing with a decision AFTER the battle house any more influence on what should be decided?
- Back to the whole time out situation and how Phyres allowed EW to keep playing, by willingly violating a tourney rule, phyres forfeit complaint. A gentleman's act or not. That is how Smogon or any site with a heiraechy in competitive aspects have always done things. Phyres did a nice thing. Assuming he was not allowed to do so in the first place, it would be against the rules and that would ultimately cost him. So while some are seeking to penalize EW for initially timing out, that's something to keep in mind as well.