Announcement LC Tournament Schedule Discussion

[tazz]

Hello Everyone! We're looking for some community feedback on team tournament scheduling and what tournaments we should have! The current schedule is as follows:

Little Cup Premier League: late May - July
Little Cup World Cup: August - October
Little Cup Winter Teamtour: December - 2026

In theory LCWC should be going up in the next couple weeks. We're still committed to hosting it or another team tour - historically LCWC has been our most popular tournament, so we are hesitant to leave it out of the schedule. Two ideas/concerns that we had, though:

- Is the gap between LCPL and LCWC not big enough, and are people going to be burnt out if we start this right now? Would moving it to a bit later be beneficial?
- We are still looking for ways to up LC PS room activity, and are considering a BLT style team tour with a custom prize. Would this be a good replacement for one of the existing tournaments, and what time of year would this get the most participation? The BLT style may be good because it provides a way for newer players to guarantee getting drafted by doing well in these tournaments, while still giving a relatively low threshold for more established players to get in.

Any other ideas and suggestions about TEAM TOURNAMENT scheduling are welcome.

 

[Winterbub]

I really like the BLT idea. A lot of people are fiends for customs so it could bring new players to the room. Some of which may discover a love for the tier and stick around. Great idea yall

 

[LeJames Chonk]

I think the gap for the next team tour should be larger. I personally set it out as my goal to manage every LC team tour, and after the LCPL run I am burnt out from not only a managing perspective, but as a player too.

This could be the hottest take ever coming from the US South LC ring leader, but I personally would prefer the BLT style team tour compared to LCWC. While LCWC is fun, there are major limitations for a large percentage of the player pool. Some of our top performing SVers this year either were snubbed or barely made the Wentral team. Due to our stacked region an upcoming player like rarre wasn't allowed to play, and Greedy wasn't guaranteed a spot until Expulso willingly stepped down. Unfortunately there are multiple of these regions that exist still. I also don't believe LCWC offers a ton of parity, I get that Brazil made an outlier run last LCWC but going into that tour you have a pretty good idea on who will likely be competing at the end.

As far as timing for the next team tour goes, I don't know exactly when the most active times would be for such a tour, but at minimum I don't think it would hurt to wait at least another month.

 

[Éric]

i think if you are from the us, your opinion on lcwc doesnt matter. that tour is not for you. all tours are lcpls for you. let us have this.

that said, blt idea is phenomenal for both room growth and tier growth. on the timing issue, i understand if we wanted to wait for scl to end and just have it on winter (as it should be), but i also think that would be better for a select few while leaving the vast majority without a tour for three months. idk how much wait is optimal after lcpl, given that, again, not everyone stopped playing it three weeka ago like the players in the finals. its been two months for the majority of people as well. im used to managers signups going up right after the first tour finishes, so i dont really see why this should be much different

 

[LeJames Chonk]

i think if you are from the us, your opinion on lcwc doesnt matter. that tour is not for you. all tours are lcpls for you. let us have this.

Could you elaborate on this?

I guess if you want to play with your friends before ultimately losing to a superior team that's cute, but as far as overall participation and parity goes its an awful tournament.

 

[Zcarlett]

Due to the inherently insular nature of LC's playerbase, a BLT styled team tour does not feel like it would accomplish much that a theoretical LCPL mini would not accomplish at best, and at worst the tour would not have enough players to qualify to function properly. What makes BLT function as a tournament is the wide range of tiers offered and the popularity of the tour, and how active the room itself is. There may not even be enough people who get reqs for the tour for it to properly function. With that said, and individual tournament version with the same concept that counts towards circuit would work a lot better.

As for the Winter team tour, Ive seen the idea floated but having LCBC adopting a Flex Slot system makes a lot of sense. 12 slots can be a lot for 2 managers especially considering the added difficulty of a draft split into a Snake segment and an Auction segment. Going to 3 managers would almost surely require 2 selfbuys to get competent manager trios with only 1 person self-buying. Using the same formats for the tour where there are 2 SV LC slots and then the managers pick 4 slots each from SS through ADV for oldgens, with Doubles and UU also being able to be picked.

 

[tazz]

Could you elaborate on this?

I guess if you want to play with your friends before ultimately losing to a superior team that's cute, but as far as overall participation and parity goes its an awful tournament.

The parity argument is fair but the participation is just untrue. LCWC has been our most popular tournament by number of signups, and it's been the introduction to LC for many players from smaller communities (especially China). It's true that the American teams are too stacked for many players to get into, but we can try to go further this year in balancing the teams to avoid that problem.

 

[Colin]

I think LCWC is better for the community than most alternatives. I don't see this specific idea working, but maybe if we hosted predicts or other related events on the LC room it could help? Alternatively, I think having some events with some advertising in the lc discord would be good to bring some of our activity to the room, and then we wait before putting up lcwc sign-ups.

 

[Winterbub]

Due to the inherently insular nature of LC's playerbase, a BLT styled team tour does not feel like it would accomplish much that a theoretical LCPL mini would not accomplish at best, and at worst the tour would not have enough players to qualify to function properly. What makes BLT function as a tournament is the wide range of tiers offered and the popularity of the tour, and how active the room itself is. There may not even be enough people who get reqs for the tour for it to properly function. With that said, and individual tournament version with the same concept that counts towards circuit would work a lot better.

As for the Winter team tour, Ive seen the idea floated but having LCBC adopting a Flex Slot system makes a lot of sense. 12 slots can be a lot for 2 managers especially considering the added difficulty of a draft split into a Snake segment and an Auction segment. Going to 3 managers would almost surely require 2 selfbuys to get competent manager trios with only 1 person self-buying. Using the same formats for the tour where there are 2 SV LC slots and then the managers pick 4 slots each from SS through ADV for oldgens, with Doubles and UU also being able to be picked.

thats a really good point about not having enough participation for BLT style, however I still think something similar could be really cool. Like everyone can sign up, but if you hit X amount of points you lock a spot on a team. With SV -> ADV there’s definitely enough formats. There’s some less serious LC tiers that could be thrown in too. I also think a STours slot could be fun to watch with SM, SS, SV.

 

[LeJames Chonk]

The parity argument is fair but the participation is just untrue. LCWC has been our most popular tournament by number of signups, and it's been the introduction to LC for many players from smaller communities (especially China). It's true that the American teams are too stacked for many players to get into, but we can try to go further this year in balancing the teams to avoid that problem.

Admittedly I did glance past the inverse of the participation piece. I do agree there are some relatively easy divides that could be made to help lessen the "stacked" regions. However with the idea that was mentioned I think we can offset the participation aspect with what would likely be a relatively low bar to qualify. I think the BLT style would provide plenty of opportunity for a number of players to prove themselves. Regarding activity, I think any custom avatar tour will draw plenty of signups, and actually encourages people who would otherwise never play LC a reason to join the room and become involved. From a manager perspective I also think this is wayyyy more fun compared to picking the best players of a region.

 

[Quinn]

If the big teams can't form a team anymore (spain and italy ) the tournament becomes to unbalanced and lose it's niche. Also the argument you can play with your friends only imply for teams that comes from big countries. Because i have no idea who im playing with this year. Teams should be the same everyear and should not be split for balance reasons it only makes it unfair to the team that got split.

 

[Éric]

the argument is not that you can team with friends, but that you can speak in your language. if you speak english as a first language, this makes no difference to you, but for the rest of us, who are already at a disadvantage (depending on your english level), lcwc is the best way to form community, which ultimately just enhances the metagame like nothing else. thats the reason lcwc is the tournamwnt with most participation, and also the one that forms the most superstars (like half of teams china and brazil, and juansg). language barrier is a huge issue you guys cant even begin to understand, just ask quinn for lcpl 13 lol we have people on smogon having to use translators for everything, having to buy vpns just to communicate with teammates. when this barrier is broken, we get huge innovations bc every team is more united, like the rise of carvanha in lcwc 3. this is just like any other tournament for you guys, but its the most important one for the rest, and numbers show that.

 

[Incognition]

I would personally like to see LCWC, I like the idea of people fighting for their country and getting to know each other better.

From a biased point of view, this would be the first time I sign up but I'm also conscious that UK apparently didn't have enough sign ups last year and also acknowledge people's concerns they raised.

I would be open to trying out BLT as well, but my personal preference would be LCWC but potentially moving it to October due to SCL starting soon and having a bigger gap from LCPL finishing.