Letting your opponent miss their triggers

[waxen elk]

Hi!
If a player misses their trigger (that is "advantageous" to you that they miss), I feel like this is very clearly cheating under "a player noticing their opponent making a rule-breaking mistake"; but I have seen a lot of confusion online about this topic.
If a player tells you that they intentionally allowed their opponent to miss their trigger to get an advantage, is it considered cheating?
Thank you in advance!

[severe oak]

You are not responsible for remembering your opponents triggers, regardless if they are good or bad. This is explained in the section for missed triggers.

[waxen elk]

Yes, that is true, but there is a difference between "being responsible to remember them"( getting punished if you don't remember them) and "intentionally allowing your opponent to break the game", isn't there?

[flint grotto]

Intent usually. Giving ample time for my opponent to notice any missed triggers is different from me moving as fast as possible to give as a gotcha. From my experience players tend to give extra time to allow the opponent to notice a missed trigger

[crude summit]

highly recommend checking out the full missed triggered entry, particularly this portion and the philosophy section

"rule-breaking mistake" would be more along the lines of willingly letting the opponent commit a GRV rather than missing a trigger, which is handled much lighter per reasons outlines in missed trigger philosophy

[waxen elk]

Is there anywhere where a "rule-breaking" mistake is defined?
Because missing a trigger is rule-breaking by definition, and if you are aware of a missed trigger and "advance the game state" (playing any card) before opp says their triggers would be considered Rule sharking according to this, but at the same time, you can't just wait 20 minutes for your opponent to remember their trigger so you have to remind them to not fall under that

[crude summit]

A better way to phrase it I guess is "you can't willingly commit FTMGS to gain an advantage", the policy for which specifically carves out missed triggers and references inaction as possible grounds for cheating

part of the reason we handle missed triggers like this is because we don't want players to be penalized for their opponents missing their own triggers. It won't always be something like snatch or pummel, sometimes it'll be the trigger on pulsewave protocol that the opponent has literally never seen. So we put the onus on the player introducing those triggers into the game

[waxen elk]

I do think that is very important to differentiate "deciding to not acknowledge a trigger" with "being responsible" for it, as being 2 very clearly different things
As always, hard to prove intentionality, but that's what cheating is vs just "failure to maintain game state"

[crude summit]

It's explicitly not a responsibility of the player to acknowledge the triggers of the opponent though. It's on the opponent

[waxen elk]

But that's not what the rules say right? Would be great if "rule-breaking mistake" was something more clearly written

[waxen elk]

Yes, but responsability means "you get punished for missing it" and not for omitting it

I can be wrong, and the spirit of the rule to be different, but as of right now I do not think they are the same thing at all

[crude summit]

Policy isn't meant to be comprehensive by nature, that example could probably stand to be rewritten to reference FTMGS specifically though

[crude summit]

so if the player is now meant to declare the opponent's triggers, the opponent is now no longer getting "punished for missing it" even though it's solely their responsibility?

[waxen elk]

Not sure I understand what your question is

[crude summit]

if responsibility means "you get punished for missing it"

and a player misses their trigger, which is solely their responsibility per policy, and the opponent has to remind them of it, they aren't getting punished for missing it

[waxen elk]

They get a caution

or a warning or higher if it was a detrimental trigger

[crude summit]

which isn't something we track, so could happen multiple times over the course of an event with no further repercussions

and could open the opponent up to penalties for something they aren't aware of, which is something the policy is trying to avoid in it's current state

[waxen elk]

Well, that's why "intent" is key, isn't it? If the player says they are aware of their opponent doing a mistake that doesn't follow the rules

[crude summit]

But it's not their responsibility per policy

Players are responsible for the resolution of any triggered effects they control. Players are not required to
acknowledge triggered effects they don’t control even if they are involved in the resolution of the effect, though
they may still do so.

[waxen elk]

Exactly, they can't get called on for "missing" a trigger, but that is different from "knowingly letting their opponent miss it", or not?

[crude summit]

No, they'd only get punished (under rule sharking) for trying to rush their opponent past their chance to declare the trigger

While it may benefit a player not to acknowledge the triggered effects of their opponents, they may not
intentionally cause them to be missed. As such the trigger is only considered missed if the controlling player
acknowledges or allows the progression of the game state passed the point of trigger relevancy without first
acknowledging the triggered effect. Intentionally progressing the game state to cause another player to miss a
triggered effect is considered Rules Sharking (see Section 4.10 - Rules Sharking).

[proven mesa]

This has been a problem in card games like this for 30+ years and nobody has managed to solve it so I don't expect we will here. If you add a penalty to, "knowingly letting them miss a trigger," you incentivize the player to lie to you. "I also didn't notice the trigger" = no punishment. "I did but didn't say anything" = punishment.

[waxen elk]

Which is the case for anything other than a missed trigger

[vernal mountain]

https://fabtcg.com/en/articles/back-alley-oracle-11-missed-triggers-and-player-responsibilities/ recommend reading this article, it explains the philosophy behind the current missed trigger policy in more detail