Implemented MVP award for Official Team Tournaments

[goldmason]

To be honest, I would prefer that any further team tournament rewards go out to the people who do coverage, write about games, write about players. The players themselves are all replaceable, but the commentators are what really make the tournament what it is. You got good commentary, live VCs, longposting about games--unforgettable tour. You got low effort predictions, toxicity towards players, no analysis--mediocre tour.

As one of the people in charge of coverage and writing about games, I don't need more recognition and support the MVP award. Would love to have more people helping out in the media server though :D

 

[Frontier Owner Scott]

After discussion in the tours discord & thinking on it more, I think the MVP award should be a subjective one (like what Stories was getting at), and not use objective measures like UT proposed. One thing that stood out to me was someone (I think IPF) mentioning that something like what is being proposed ends up just becoming a record watch. Any potential "MVP Tracker / MVP Watch" will just be "x is 7-0" and "y is 7-0" I wonder who will lose a game first, I wonder who will make playoffs, etc. Theres no real discussion over the MVP and we don't really gain anything from it aside from one person getting the MVP Banner.

I think we can afford to add a bit more fun and try to amp up discussion by making this a more subjective award. While yes, this will lead to potentially more controversy while some people will feel robbed despite having better records, etc. That should be part of it and will hopefully lead to more discussion / talking about it in general, at a time when discussion in both tours cord and smogtours is down a lot.

We can implement things like weekly MVP Trackers (that aren't just this player is 7-0 this player is 7-0 who will stay undefeated), polling from the spectators / players / managers, etc. Have teammates talk about why "x player" is actually the MVP despite maybe not having the best record on the team because they are also building the teams for two other slots that are nearly undefeated, or doing all the prep work, etc. We can work to mitigate a lot of the potential ambigious factors as well by allowing each manager / team to maybe only propose one player from the team for the award at the end of the season, or we do gatekeep by people that have good records, or whatever, but there are plenty of ways to work around the system being abused and someone who has a bad record / someone people want to meme vote get through.

We can also do what sports leagues do and have a portion of the MVP vote at the end come from multiple places. All managers get to vote (anonymously) and they get "x" percent of the total vote, all players get a vote and they get "x" percent, people who submit predicts get "x" percentage, etc. We can figure out a fair breakdown of how to do this, but it should lead to the award going to someone who deserves it more often or not with guidelines like this in place.

I might be alone here but I do think we can afford to add more fun and subjective elements to our tours so they just don't stay just boring record watching, and even if there could be some negative attitudes around it thats going to be the case no matter what. It just seems there could be a lot more benefits to having this award be something that can generate more excitement and discussion around tours like scl / spl / wcop that isn't just sheet watching and does bring in elements to the tournament people don't always get to see. We can highlight the top players that do more than just play, and actually add to the stories of this tournament that won't just be seen on the sheet. With an objective system anyone can open it up and see the players with the top 3 record and just assume one of the was the MVP, we don't need an award to point that out. This gives us a chance to actually add something new, and I hope its actually considered / people chime in.

Agree entirely with the last two paragraphs. I think a weekly tracker would get to be a bit much to handle, but if people are motivated I suppose go for it. But when I opened the thread the manager vote / players vote / actual record split percentage was exactly how I saw the MVP being determined before I even read anything, so glad to see it's been suggested. I think that's the most fair route to take this and would be really cool to see it implemented in this SPL even.

As for award, what about a shiny trophy?

 

[shiloh]

Finalizing some details here since my last post, since we are going to go forward with a more subjective approach on the MVP award proposed in the OP of this thread.

• We are going to add in a Tournament MVP award alongside other awards proposed in rey's post as well as the #spl channel on discord
  • MVP will still be the most prestigious and will have the most focus around it, with the winner receiving a banner as well as potentially some indicator in the sheet / whatever else we can think of.
  • Most Improved will be for players that saw the biggest increase in record / performance between last SPL and this SPL. Does not have to be the same tier, but they have to have played both editions. Performance in WCoP / SCL currently won't factor in, but open to debate on that.
  • Rookie of the Year will be between players who have their sheet debuts this SPL season. So anyone that has played in SCL / WCoP but not SPL will not be eligible. This will only be between players who have 0 games in any team tournaments prior to the start of SPL. Official Tournament Playoffs don't count, only team tournament games.
  • 13th Man will be voted on between players who have under 3 starts on the season and aims to recognize the players who might not otherwise be highlighted. This will obviously require more teammate / manager on the players eligible to the voters.
• All these awards will be voted on at the end of the season (post-finals) by a combination of Managers, Players, and Spectators.
  • Currently we are going to be going with weighting the results from each group: 40% for Managers / 40% for Players / 20% for Spectators. This will make it so people can't solely rely on heavy campaigns from people not in the tournament flooding the results to win certain awards, and instead should hopefully even it out more and make it fair. If others have thoughts on how to weight these results, would also be open to adjusting as necessary.
    • Each manager would get a vote, so 30 total from that pool, not 1 for each trio.
  • Managers & Players will not be able to vote on their own teammates for any award otherwise people may feel they have to vote a certain way / bias would be more likely. Votes will also be anonymous for this reason.
  • MVPs will have to be nominated by their managers. Teams not in playoffs will do this during Semis, and others will nominate when their players are out. This will mean the MVP voting pool will be between 10 people total. This will make it so spectators who may not be as dialed in will not be throwing out votes and votes won't be split between teammates.
    • Other pools will just be curated down to people who are eligible based on the criteria listed above, so there may be multiple people from teams that qualify and can be voted on.

This will all be a big push for this first edition of SPL and to make it work I want to set up a "MVP Media Coverage" panel of some kind, to update threads throughout the week, maybe put together articles pre-tour (on who to watch based on what each person thinks), mid-tour with some kind of MVP Ladder article, and post tour with testimonials from managers / teammates / etc for each award and the people most likely to win. Polling / Making weekly MVP ladder posts, etc could all also work, but just depends on peoples desire / excitement around this award. If anyone is interested in doing coverage for this just reach out to me, was thinking between 3-5 people would be the ideal amount.

If anyone has any questions / wants to propose any changes to the things listed just post here, but this thread will get locked post SPL auction since we will want to lock in any changes by then.

 

[reyscarface]

Feels to me that 13th man will just devolve into which player went 3-0 or 2-1 or something. I would still prefer if that award was more general and was given by each team to one player on their own team for the best supporting partner on the team. Or you can keep 13th man and add this as just a different color in the SPL spreadsheet. Doesnt need to be in hall of fame or give anything, just a nod to all the builders / testers that a lot of the time go unrecognized.

 

[Expulso]

If you want to change 13th man it could be something like "unsung hero" "rising star" etc and highlight players that either didnt start wk1 or were power ranked near the bottom but had breakout seasons. E.g., off the top of my head,
- Franco in BW last SPL (never touched bw before, forget if he started wk1),
- Kate last SPL (subbed into an 0-3 slot and did great),
- Taka this SCL (i believe he came off the bench and had a very good record),
- Lime last SCL (power ranked last and went 8-3),
- Kenix last SCL (got picked up midseason, thrown into uu, and went like 6-1 for the dynamos after their Uu got banned).

Different objective than what rey proposes, his "nod to builders / testers" would also make a good award. I cant think of a good name though.

 

[heileone]

Why cant the mvp just be decided like every sport on the planet. Just get a panel of like 10 TDs/media team members and have them rank their top 5 players throughout the season with points awarded based on ranking. Then the person with the most points wins. To me it seems like the obvious good option.

Edit: I think I should add that I dont really think its a good idea to have managers and players vote for mvp. Spectators its probably fine to have a small share but like.... I think competitors voting for other competitors for the mvp vote seems very bizarre.

 

[Gilbert arenas]

.

• • MVPs will have to be nominated by their managers. Teams not in playoffs will do this during Semis, and others will nominate when their players are out. This will mean the MVP voting pool will be between 10 people total. This will make it so spectators who may not be as dialed in will not be throwing out votes and votes won't be split between teammates.
    • Other pools will just be curated down to people who are eligible based on the criteria listed above, so there may be multiple people from teams that qualify and can be voted on.

This will all be a big push for this first edition of SPL and to make it work I want to set up a "MVP Media Coverage" panel of some kind, to update threads throughout the week, maybe put together articles pre-tour (on who to watch based on what each person thinks), mid-tour with some kind of MVP Ladder article, and post tour with testimonials from managers / teammates / etc for each award and the people most likely to win. Polling / Making weekly MVP ladder posts, etc could all also work, but just depends on peoples desire / excitement around this award. If anyone is interested in doing coverage for this just reach out to me, was thinking between 3-5 people would be the ideal amount.

If anyone has any questions / wants to propose any changes to the things listed just post here, but this thread will get locked post SPL auction since we will want to lock in any changes by then.

I like all this but think it should be more consistent with real sports: Only players on contending teams get premium MVP votes and have a shot at the trophy. So 1/2 nominations from each contending team+an ultimate vote from mangers+media and hosts seems a better way to go about it. MVP is largely narrative and situational, so to emulate this would be ideal for us.

 

[blank]

If we’re going with a vote rather than objective metrics, I think it should be limited to just hosts, TDs, media team, and managers. I think any sort of wider voting pool will lead to people just voting for the “more known” players or their friends, even if the vote is weighted. Just look at the tournament related results for Smogon’s end of year awards.

Keeping it limited to people in “leadership” positions helps to minimize bias while avoiding making some kind of panel/council specifically for these awards.

Also agree that MVP should be limited to playoff teams and the voting should probably be after the other ones.

edit: also I think Rookie of the Year should be players playing in that specific tournament for the first time given it is a lot easier to get into WCoP than SPL/SCL. Like last year leng had a couple random sheet games before SPL, but it would be strange for her to not be eligible for this award.