I want to preface this by stating that this is not a proposal universally agreed upon by the TD team at this time; we have discussed it, but have not yet come to a conclusion. I am posting this because I 1) believe it is a good idea, 2) would like to get community input, and 3) want to do this many, many months before SPL is set to begin (I think it'd be difficult to implement this for the upcoming SCL, but am happy to be proven wrong).
This past season of SPL, several top players messaged me complaining about how awful the bo1 environment is. You spend a whole week preparing, and it all goes out the window thanks to a few unfortunate turns, or an extreme matchup, or whatever other aspect of Pokemon variance that you can't always recover from. Most players with team tournament experience have felt similarly at one point.
I am sure everyone would agree that bo3 is, in and of itself, an objectively more competitive format than bo1, especially in a game with as much variance of all sorts as Pokemon is; there is a reason we have adopted it as our go-to standard for every individual tournament. As such, in the interest of the most competitive tournament possible, we should seek to implement bo3 where possible. I am not seeking to make every single tier in every team tournament best of three - I realize these metagames are vastly different. Please consider the following:
RBY has been bo3 in our team tournaments since 2015. Contrary to popular belief, it is not because RBY has so much variance that it needs multiple games to balance it out - this argument applies to most metagames. It is because teambuilding in RBY, while nuanced, is much simpler to put together, and thus it is perfectly reasonable to make three new teams per week if you so desire; there is also the fact that reusing teams (which already happens quite a lot in bo1) is perfectly viable in a bo3 format.
It has often been said that we would make every tier bo3 if we could, and that RBY is the one tier that can afford it. I believe that more tiers can afford it - for example, in a similar vein, it would be completely reasonable to apply this same logic to GSC.
Thus, the premise of my proposal is as follows: in metagames where it is considered reasonable to prepare for a bo3 each week - taking into consideration you have teammates who will help you in doing so, the fact you can re-use (slightly tweaked versions of) previous teams / save unused teams in a 2-0 series, and that there are many players who are just going to recycle others' teams anyway - then we implement bo3. (You can also do what several players do, and make and test teams before the tournament - trying to make something brand new every single week is ridiculous even in bo1!) The variance reduction will make for a much more competitive tournament.
For example, in addition to the aforementioned GSC, there have been requests to make DPP bo3 in SPL before. I believe that would work well, and feel similarly for ADV / BW. If the playerbase for SS OU or other SCL tiers feels it is unreasonable to make their respective metagame bo3 in WCoP / SCL / SPL, then we do not do it. (As an aside, I find it strange that it is considered reasonable to have bo3 in individual tournaments but not in team tournaments - "it's an elimination tour" seems like heavily flawed reasoning if the task of a weekly bo3 is really so unreasonably stressful...but that's a debate for another time.)
I do not have a perfect methodology for deciding what standards are reasonable for a metagame to be bo3, or who specifically should weigh in on the decision; that is why I am making this thread, to get community input on all the ideas I have presented in this thread. In the past, I have suggested that current gen is best of one and past gens are best of three, as the latter are more settled and thus it is not as stressful to work within them, but I am also fine with the idea of taking it meta-by-meta.
Finally, I want to address the popular "team tournaments are really more of a bo8/bo10 so variance evens out and we don't need bo3" argument. I find this argument to not work in practice at all. As anyone who has ever followed a team tournament can tell you, entire series are significantly affected by multiple variance-afflicted games regularly. These are not rarities; it's what happens when each individual game of the bo10 is a bo1 in a game like Pokemon. If we had...maybe not 10 games of bo3, but at least more than one, then the tournament would be more competitive, and that is what we should strive for.
Would it be perfect? No, nothing is. However, by virtue of making the tournament more competitive in any form, we would be making it better - we're supposed to be all about the highest level of competition, after all. As great as our team tournaments are, we shouldn't shy away from making them even better and more competitive just because it's "good enough." I believe the idea has more than enough competitive merit to be tried at least once.
Also, I've also seen people say, in complete seriousness, that it would be too difficult to watch several bo3 series on Sundays...I really don't think it would, but I would also hope that we don't put such (subjective) spectator enjoyment ahead of the competitiveness of our tournaments.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to seeing what everyone has to say.
This past season of SPL, several top players messaged me complaining about how awful the bo1 environment is. You spend a whole week preparing, and it all goes out the window thanks to a few unfortunate turns, or an extreme matchup, or whatever other aspect of Pokemon variance that you can't always recover from. Most players with team tournament experience have felt similarly at one point.
I am sure everyone would agree that bo3 is, in and of itself, an objectively more competitive format than bo1, especially in a game with as much variance of all sorts as Pokemon is; there is a reason we have adopted it as our go-to standard for every individual tournament. As such, in the interest of the most competitive tournament possible, we should seek to implement bo3 where possible. I am not seeking to make every single tier in every team tournament best of three - I realize these metagames are vastly different. Please consider the following:
RBY has been bo3 in our team tournaments since 2015. Contrary to popular belief, it is not because RBY has so much variance that it needs multiple games to balance it out - this argument applies to most metagames. It is because teambuilding in RBY, while nuanced, is much simpler to put together, and thus it is perfectly reasonable to make three new teams per week if you so desire; there is also the fact that reusing teams (which already happens quite a lot in bo1) is perfectly viable in a bo3 format.
It has often been said that we would make every tier bo3 if we could, and that RBY is the one tier that can afford it. I believe that more tiers can afford it - for example, in a similar vein, it would be completely reasonable to apply this same logic to GSC.
Thus, the premise of my proposal is as follows: in metagames where it is considered reasonable to prepare for a bo3 each week - taking into consideration you have teammates who will help you in doing so, the fact you can re-use (slightly tweaked versions of) previous teams / save unused teams in a 2-0 series, and that there are many players who are just going to recycle others' teams anyway - then we implement bo3. (You can also do what several players do, and make and test teams before the tournament - trying to make something brand new every single week is ridiculous even in bo1!) The variance reduction will make for a much more competitive tournament.
For example, in addition to the aforementioned GSC, there have been requests to make DPP bo3 in SPL before. I believe that would work well, and feel similarly for ADV / BW. If the playerbase for SS OU or other SCL tiers feels it is unreasonable to make their respective metagame bo3 in WCoP / SCL / SPL, then we do not do it. (As an aside, I find it strange that it is considered reasonable to have bo3 in individual tournaments but not in team tournaments - "it's an elimination tour" seems like heavily flawed reasoning if the task of a weekly bo3 is really so unreasonably stressful...but that's a debate for another time.)
I do not have a perfect methodology for deciding what standards are reasonable for a metagame to be bo3, or who specifically should weigh in on the decision; that is why I am making this thread, to get community input on all the ideas I have presented in this thread. In the past, I have suggested that current gen is best of one and past gens are best of three, as the latter are more settled and thus it is not as stressful to work within them, but I am also fine with the idea of taking it meta-by-meta.
Finally, I want to address the popular "team tournaments are really more of a bo8/bo10 so variance evens out and we don't need bo3" argument. I find this argument to not work in practice at all. As anyone who has ever followed a team tournament can tell you, entire series are significantly affected by multiple variance-afflicted games regularly. These are not rarities; it's what happens when each individual game of the bo10 is a bo1 in a game like Pokemon. If we had...maybe not 10 games of bo3, but at least more than one, then the tournament would be more competitive, and that is what we should strive for.
Would it be perfect? No, nothing is. However, by virtue of making the tournament more competitive in any form, we would be making it better - we're supposed to be all about the highest level of competition, after all. As great as our team tournaments are, we shouldn't shy away from making them even better and more competitive just because it's "good enough." I believe the idea has more than enough competitive merit to be tried at least once.
Also, I've also seen people say, in complete seriousness, that it would be too difficult to watch several bo3 series on Sundays...I really don't think it would, but I would also hope that we don't put such (subjective) spectator enjoyment ahead of the competitiveness of our tournaments.
Thanks for reading. I look forward to seeing what everyone has to say.
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