Implemented Adjustment to Point System for Classic

[Merritt]

In order to partially address the increased number of byes in Round 1 of tournaments, and to bring the structure for Classic's point system in line with Grand Slam, the Tournament Oversight team has elected to slightly change the point yield for Classic Cups.

Cups will award 1 point per win until the round of 32, and wins from that point onwards will award 2 points. Nothing else will be changing with regards to the point system of Classic (no BFL will be implemented, first round bye and all coinflip wins will still defer points until the following win, etc.) If Round Robin tournaments are reintroduced at some point, this will default to being 1 point until the round of 48 while winning a round robin final will provide 3 points for the winner.

The intention behind this change is to slightly curb point yield for early rounds, which are in many cases easier to advance through due to the increase in tolerated bye % with the removal of round robin sized tournaments.

At this point in time we do not intend to apply this change to Smogon Tour, due to their smaller tournament size reaching the round of 32 fairly quickly in some cases. Changes to Smogon Tour points to handle the increase in round 1 byes are still in discussion, including partial discussion in this thread.


This thread will remain open to provide feedback on potential changes to the point system for both Classic/Grand Slam and the Smogon Tour point structure, now that people have had a chance to experience both Slam and Stour and can provide qualified feedback. Please do not use this thread for proposing changes outside of playoff qualification points (not number of cups in classic, stour times, and so on) so that discussion can remain focused.

 

[Reymedy]

Hello,

I think the change does not address the two main issues :
1) it feels unfair to have to play r1 in cups where like less than 50 players got paired
2) the cups do not have the same number of byes, which make some runs less valuable than others for a similar amount of wins

I checked the cups and we have this year (correct me if I'm wrong) :
- BW 80 byes
- DP 48 byes
- ADV 41 byes
- GSC 217 byes
- RBY 226 byes

Right now you basically can consider that everyone bar 30ish people got a bye for GSC/RBY R1, yet these cups have the same point structure as the first 3.
The change you made is fine and it's not what I'm after, it doesn't really matter in theory where you put the threshold for the 2pt jump anyway since everyone is dealt the same points; but this change does nothing to address the real issue : the later cups don't have a R1. The change should not have applied to every cup in my opinion, since only some cups have this "large amount of byes" we're after.

I'll give you an example; in DPP I played and won against 4 people and got 4 points for it. In GSC if I win the next round (R4) I'd have played exactly 2 people and got the same amount of points. And this is an experience that I think is close to being the norm and strongly skews the point distribution.
Ideally, every win should count the same from one cup to another, yet this isn't the case right now.

So I think we should :
- Introduce a +1pt bonus for people playing the R1 of cups where everyone basically got a bye (I'd leave the decision to pick which cups to a year per year appreciation rather than a hard #)
- Keep the old point system, where R4 gives 5 points instead of 4, for the cups that get played normally, and only use the new point system for cups which have a large number of byes (like GSC & RBY this year)

This should address issue #1 & #2.

edit : I'd strongly suggest implementing a change to address issue #2 at least for the current Classic (since I assume that issue #1 has always been identified and willingly ignored), before any playoffs cutoff gets drawn. I find the integrity of the point distribution this year very concerning between the three first cups, and the two last ones. I think we all rather avoid an unfair treatment of players for a tournament this heavy and taxing.

 

[Reymedy]

I understand considering the discussion that ensued my post, or lack thereof, that pretty much nobody really considers this as an issue. Or maybe I'm posting in a dead forum, what do I know.
However I want to reiterate just how bad the situation is.

So I did crunch the numbers :

Above are the points awarded per BO3 played for each cup. To the surprise of absolutely nobody, and as pointed out in my previous post, we have two outliers here : RBY & GSC.

Below the cumulative distribution after R4 (can't go any further because that's the current round for the latest cup).

I think it mostly speaks for itself, but to give an example, it means that :

• the BW cup (after R4) awarded an average of 1.43pt per BO3 played
• the GSC cup (after R4) awarded an average of 3.12pt per BO3 played

In other terms, the GSC & RBY cup, give two times the amount of points per BO3 when compared to the first three cups. To put it bluntly, you get on average twice the points for an equal amount of games played.
Please understand that this is a massive issue because the amount of points awarded after R4 is supposed to follow the increasing difficulty of games in tandem with the rising competition. However as it stands GSC & RBY are more than one round behind BW for instance (since every round /2 the players).

So I'll ask again, and sorry to sound rude but understand that this no doubt ruined the tournament and that I feel strongly about disrespecting the time and effort put by the players into such a draining tournament only for it to remain utterly uncompetitive in its design :

what the fuck is this point structure and why was it not corrected ?

And please don't tell me it's because we don't change it mid-tournament, this does not make any sense in this case. We're not making a change, we're fixing something, and that something was brought up before any kind of top 16 was in sight.

-

This tournament is like 10 years old at this point, and it's still nothing more than a pairings lottery. We could easily have a flexible point structure based on the number of byes. We could also very easily have a much needed seeding system based on the previous Classics which definitely would help considering that this is no OST where you will anyway have to "beat" anyone directly or indirectly. Classic encourages you to make deep runs in several cups, and I'm sorry but if you fight a S-tier player in like 3+ cups for R1/2 you're just cooked and your tournament has been ruined because unlike OST where the round you lost at doesn't matter, unlike ST where you get several chances etc, you don't get anything to make up for it here and to add insult to injury : the point structure makes literally no sense. Kinda infuriating to know that in RBY cup R5 there are people who got here not playing a single game, whereas some dude had to play ABR R1.
But I'm glad we have the replays enforced where everyone unlist them anyway, that's the one change I noticed since I was gone and thank god I'm forced into building something every round to make sure that player fatigue is even stronger for those who got a pairing vs those who win activities.
Sorry for the rant but I am baffled by the state of the tournament and it seems like a very important issue yet no discussion took place.