Proposal Best of three in official team tournaments

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.
 
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peng

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I agree with almost everything here but I can certainly understand people's reservations about going entirely bo3 in a major tournament like SPL just from a volume of games point of view.

I think a good midground would be to implement bo3 for all team tournament finals. At the very least it means that the most important matches at the sharp end of the tournament aren't being decided by bs as often, and you get the big spectacle of a full 30-game series to decide who takes home the trophy. This kind of thing is already done a lot in sports (e.g. in tennis, commonly bo3 all the way up until semis and then bo5 for the finals) because it ensures no-one feels hard done by at the final step and brings hype for the spectators.
 

Texas Cloverleaf

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On first blush of course I love the idea, however in practicality how do you propose addressing the additional time constraints placed by adding additional games? Taking either GSC or modern (gen 6-7) stall as examples, it is not unexpected to have one or more games last for an hour or more to reach their conclusion over the course of a tournament. I forsee several potential issues as regards scheduling, especially when opponents are in time zones with a large difference between them, where games or matches may not be completed simply because there is not a three+ hour window that works for both sides.

A simple solution is merely to suggest that people be more proactive earlier in the week, however that is not a burden we have placed on players in the past and past history shows that players will near universally delay to the end of a week as the importance of the game rises. Such situations also widens the door to unscrupulous tactics, we have examples from the past of players picking teams designed to go to 1000 turns because they knew it would force their opponent to play into the early morning hours, such abuse would be much more appealing over a three game set.

Looking forward to hear if these pitfalls can be avoided.
 

Vulpix03

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Just wanted to pipe in and say that even if individual tiers do not become bo3 during the regular weeks of spl/scl, I believe that tiebreaks should always be bo3 no matter the tier. I haven't been around for long but there are a few tiebreak series that were decided by hax that I can remember. Hax deciding a semis or finals tiebreak is the worst thing that can happen, so bo3 obviously would help with that.
 

Hogg

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Got to say, I’ve never been a huge fan of Bo3 in team tournaments (even for RBY). Yes, playing more games absolutely reduces variance, but in my experience it comes at the expense of significantly slowing things down and making them less exciting. The pressure and urgency of a team tournament where every single game matters is a big part of what makes them compelling, in my opinion. I know that’s subjective, but that’s always how I’ve felt. For me individual tours are a marathon where you really drill down and focus on the abilities of each player over a huge number of games, while team tours are frenetic and intense and full of the drama borne from the fact that every single game makes a difference.

I’m also very much in the “team tournaments are already a Bo10” camp. I know that BKC brought up in the OP why this reasoning is flawed, and yeah, variance/matchups definitely still play a big role in determining a week’s outcome, but to me thinking of team tournaments as Bo10s between teams and not as a bunch of individual sets between players is a good way to put the focus on the team, rather than on anyone’s individual performance. Sure, turning it from a Bo10 to a Bo30 will further reduce variance, but I worry that they’ll do that by shifting some of the focus away from the team’s overall performance and more on how each individual player handles themselves.

Take all this with a grain of salt, of course. I’ve been pretty much washed as a player since like SPL 7, and it’s entirely possible that I’d feel differently if I played more and regularly put my own record and performance on the line. I also think Vulpix03’s point about making tiebreaks Bo3 makes a certain amount of sense (though again, it comes at the expense of some of the drama and excitement of the tiebreak… but fuck, after seeing my team on the losing end of super close tiebreaks for three out of four consecutive SPLs, I’m just about ready to come around on this one).
 

Kink

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I like the idea, playing devil's advocate here on a couple points:

  1. Isn't the premise behind team tours to balance out any luck or unfortunate turns over the course of ~8-10 games? Isn't that the idea behind teamwork and support? The best teams support their players and develop the best overall strategies to win over the course of those ~8-10 games.
  2. We're an aging player-base, and an aging player-base simply has less time to prepare for and set aside the time for 3 games, notwithstanding having an interest in multiple tiers. While there will always be an influx of new users, I think we've reached an inflection point in regards to growth, which means that time will slowly become more and more of a commodity in our community. As ridiculous as this may sound, I know this makes some sort of sense to anyone who is fully adulting.
  3. To further cement the the 2nd point, the generations proposed to be Bo3'd are typically extended, longer games. In addition, it's typically the older player-base that plays these gens. I think this disparity will quickly produce lower quality matches within 1-2 years.
I look forward to hearing different perspectives on some of these points, and how these overall issues can be handled. I know it's a bit of a bird's eye view, but that's how I tend to look at these type of changes.
 

Ununhexium

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though again, it comes at the expense of some of the drama and excitement of the tiebreak…
From a spectators viewpoint, I would rather watch a few more high-level games than have the “drama and excitement” of a one game tiebreak, especially since having more games means more opportunities to show off new techs and teams and such. It also just presents more opportunity to push the metagame forward, especially in older gens and lower tiers that don’t get as much representation throughout the year.

In addition, a game 2 or 3 of a tiebreak series can have just as much tension as a single game would.
 
I thought I made this clear enough in the OP, but after seeing what people have said here and on Discord, maybe I didn't, so I'll reiterate / stress it in its own post: bo3 does not mean you have to prepare three new teams per week, every week. Making one new team per week is already ridiculously difficult. One of the great strengths of bo3, in addition to the more competitive series it produces, is that it reduces the importance of bringing something brand-new all the time, as it is much more difficult to matchup snipe someone with a specific counterteam in a best-of-three series. You can re-use teams much more efficiently this way - not only does this encourage building more solid overall teams, as opposed to one-off matchup fishes, but you can also potentially just make slight tweaks and punish anyone who puts too much stock into thinking they know your team. This has already existed in bo1 SPLs and would be much more feasible in bo3. Hell, some players in individual re-use teams in the same series...

Don't think I'm advocating for a tournament of recycling pre-made teams, though - there's nobody stopping you from prepping new teams, and you can do it as much as you like; the point is that there is less pressure on you to do so. I think you could make one new team per week and be just fine - plus, as anyone who's ever prepped in SPL knows, there are good odds that you will make more than one team (or at least team idea) that you like each week. There are many, many teams that go tested in these tournaments. Most people will have more teams they'd like to use than games in which to use them. Plus, there would be series that don't go to three games, and thus teams that go unrevealed, and you can save them for later...plus, there are many players who just recycle others' teams anyway.

We're an aging player-base, and an aging player-base simply has less time to prepare for and set aside the time for 3 games, notwithstanding having an interest in multiple tiers. While there will always be an influx of new users, I think we've reached an inflection point in regards to growth, which means that time will slowly become more and more of a commodity in our community. As ridiculous as this may sound, I know this makes some sort of sense to anyone who is fully adulting.
As outlined above, bo3 would accommodate the aging playerbase more since they won't be punished as hard for not having as much time to prepare.

To further cement the the 2nd point, the generations proposed to be Bo3'd are typically extended, longer games. In addition, it's typically the older player-base that plays these gens. I think this disparity will quickly produce lower quality matches within 1-2 years.
The idea that the playerbase is too old and tired to play three games of these generations per week is laughable at best and insulting at worst.

In other news:

Isn't the premise behind team tours to balance out any luck or unfortunate turns over the course of ~8-10 games? Isn't that the idea behind teamwork and support? The best teams support their players and develop the best overall strategies to win over the course of those ~8-10 games.
I'll just quote myself instead of re-writing what I've already said
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.
With much respect to Hogg, I thoroughly disagree with almost everything here -
Got to say, I’ve never been a huge fan of Bo3 in team tournaments (even for RBY). Yes, playing more games absolutely reduces variance, but in my experience it comes at the expense of significantly slowing things down and making them less exciting. The pressure and urgency of a team tournament where every single game matters is a big part of what makes them compelling, in my opinion. I know that’s subjective, but that’s always how I’ve felt. For me individual tours are a marathon where you really drill down and focus on the abilities of each player over a huge number of games, while team tours are frenetic and intense and full of the drama borne from the fact that every single game makes a difference.

I’m also very much in the “team tournaments are already a Bo10” camp. I know that BKC brought up in the OP why this reasoning is flawed, and yeah, variance/matchups definitely still play a big role in determining a week’s outcome, but to me thinking of team tournaments as Bo10s between teams and not as a bunch of individual sets between players is a good way to put the focus on the team, rather than on anyone’s individual performance. Sure, turning it from a Bo10 to a Bo30 will further reduce variance, but I worry that they’ll do that by shifting some of the focus away from the team’s overall performance and more on how each individual player handles themselves.

Take all this with a grain of salt, of course. I’ve been pretty much washed as a player since like SPL 7, and it’s entirely possible that I’d feel differently if I played more and regularly put my own record and performance on the line. I also think Vulpix03’s point about making tiebreaks Bo3 makes a certain amount of sense (though again, it comes at the expense of some of the drama and excitement of the tiebreak… but fuck, after seeing my team on the losing end of super close tiebreaks for three out of four consecutive SPLs, I’m just about ready to come around on this one).
because it is all centered around some idealistic conception of the tournament as a vessel for optimum drama and excitement, as opposed to being as competitive as possible. This reminds me too much of the "we need cheese/luck strats around because the game is too boring otherwise" arguments - just like nobody actually misses Baton Pass fucking up the tour games it was in, I have a seriously difficult time imagining SPL as a less dramatic, exciting tournament just because there are more games. See Ununhexium's post.

I agree fully with peng's and Vulpix's posts.

I acknowledge the potential issues raised in Texas' post - I do not currently have an idea of how to approach them, but I will think about it. Of course, this issue already technically exists in best-of-one, and in those scenarios, I would say that it is up to the player to ensure they don't put themselves in such positions while scheduling. I wouldn't want my GSCer or my player planning to use multiple Defoggers and Regenerators to start one game at a late hour anyway.
 
Not gonna speak on behalf of all tiers, but I strongly support DPP to be Bo3, and I think most of the DPP community feels the same.

It is far easier to prepare for a Bo3 DPP set than it is a Bo1 set. Matchup fishing in this tier was a big issue in SPL 11 and was still a problem in SPL 12. The amount of pressure to have that one perfect team is significantly higher than to have breathing room within 3 teams. Reusing solid teams happens in Bo1 all the time; I think Bo3 allows for reusing solid teams more easily but also encourages experimentation/showcasing new techs/pushing metagame development more as well, depending on how the player seeks to take it. Bo3 DPP reduces matchup fishing, makes tournament sets more competitive, and eases the burden of preparation.

Smogon has always catered to those with more time on their hands. The classic format is a good example of this, where TDs/others justified the incredibly demanding format by saying that the amount of dedicated time increases the prestige/it's an inevitability of online pokemon/etc. These types of time constraint arguments against Bo3 in teamtours are flawed and more often than not are advocating for the sake of preserving the status quo.
 

Kink

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The idea that the playerbase is too old and tired to play three games of these generations per week is laughable at best and insulting at worst.
I think there's been a misunderstanding. I'm not sure what's laughable, or insulting in saying that people, as they get older, have responsibilities that take them away from recreational activities, such as Pokemon. I never used the words tired, and I'm not attributing this purely to age, rather as a circumstance of having more to do in life - this strongly correlates to our aging community. I can absolutely say that my life responsibilities affect my Pokemon availability, and arguing against this point comes off as disingenuous, or purposefully twisting my point towards a personal agenda. I appreciate your reply on my other points. I'd like to re-iterate that I'm leaning towards supporting your thoughtful proposals but I certainly think that examining the spirit of these issues is important before making a final decision. Accessibility is absolutely a discussion point and should be part of our deliberations in our attempts to create the most competitive environment.
 

Lily

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I am not responding to the OP as a whole yet since I haven't formed a full opinion on it yet but I wanted to respond to Vulpix's point on tiebreaks.

Just wanted to pipe in and say that even if individual tiers do not become bo3 during the regular weeks of spl/scl, I believe that tiebreaks should always be bo3 no matter the tier. I haven't been around for long but there are a few tiebreak series that were decided by hax that I can remember. Hax deciding a semis or finals tiebreak is the worst thing that can happen, so bo3 obviously would help with that.
I agree w/ this on principle but I wanted to bring up the fact that tiebreak deadlines, as inconsistent as they are, should be normalised at a full week if this is the case.

As it stands, the most common deadlines are Wednesday, Friday, and Sunday. Wednesday is often too little time even for a bo1 tiebreak due to people's personal lives not giving them much time to prep, Friday is a meme because it's so far into the week that you're really better off just going for Sunday at that point, and Sunday is often considered to be too much for 3 games. I think making tiebreaks bo3 solves the latter issue for the most part but there we have the Wednesday problem; it is just not enough time to prep 3 teams, possibly across 3 different tiers, and while I completely understand BKC's argument that teams can be and often are reused, I don't find this to be too compelling in a tiebreak setting specifically because of how much higher the stakes are and how important it is to get as much of an advantage over your opponent as possible.

So if this were to go through, I'd want to see all tiebreak deadlines formalised to be 1 week long, which sounds a bit awful for teams who aren't involved but prepping potentially 9 teams in a 3 day window where you also have to schedule time for a bo3 series despite probably having school or work sounds brutal.

In general I think that making every series a bo3 would maybe be fine? and that at the very least it could be tested in SCL or some iteration of SPL with the mentality of "let's give it a shot and if it sucks we just won't do it again". I do worry about CG players specifically both in OU and lowers because of how ever-changing those metas can be, something that was completely viable 2 weeks ago might suddenly be trash and the bank of teams you've got lying around can be rendered unviable at any moment really, but in oldgens at least this seems fine if Texas's concerns are addressed in some manner. peng's proposal could also be a good place to start if a smaller scale experiment would be preferable, though I'd even go further and say that the full playoff window could be made bo3 instead of just the finals.
 
I think there's been a misunderstanding. I'm not sure what's laughable, or insulting in saying that people, as they get older, have responsibilities that take them away from recreational activities, such as Pokemon. I never used the words tired, and I'm not attributing this purely to age, rather as a circumstance of having more to do in life - this strongly correlates to our aging community. I can absolutely say that my life responsibilities affect my Pokemon availability, and arguing against this point comes off as disingenuous, or purposefully twisting my point towards a personal agenda. I appreciate your reply on my other points. I'd like to re-iterate that I'm leaning towards supporting your thoughtful proposals but I certainly think that examining the spirit of these issues is important before making a final decision. Accessibility is absolutely a discussion point and should be part of our deliberations in our attempts to create the most competitive environment.
I appreciate the input, but I don't think it's unreasonable for "the players are too old to play multiple games" to be the takeaway from your first post, given what you said:
To further cement the the 2nd point, the generations proposed to be Bo3'd are typically extended, longer games. In addition, it's typically the older player-base that plays these gens. I think this disparity will quickly produce lower quality matches within 1-2 years.
If you did not mean this to come off as "more extended, longer games + older playerbase = lower quality matches," or if this equation you posited somehow does not operate on the premise of the playerbase being too old to handle multiple longer games, please help me understand how.

Your second post seems to insinuate that the older playerbase is too busy to play three games of Pokemon per week, in which case I would question their capability of playing even one game of Pokemon per week (at least without rushing through it, since they're apparently just that busy). I do not think this is a relevant barrier of accessibility; I genuinely cannot imagine anyone who played in the last SPL who was so pressed for time they would have been unable to play if they had been required to play a best-of-three. Also, the RBY community has had and continues to have some of the oldest players around, lengthy matches are regular, and yet I have never heard of any of them complaining about the bo3 factor being a significant time constraint.

Excal's post is right on the money as well.
 

Kink

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I appreciate the input, but I don't think it's unreasonable for "the players are too old to play multiple games" to be the takeaway from your first post, given what you said:


If you did not mean this to come off as "more extended, longer games + older playerbase = lower quality matches," or if this equation you posited somehow does not operate on the premise of the playerbase being too old to handle multiple longer games, please help me understand how.

Your second post seems to insinuate that the older playerbase is too busy to play three games of Pokemon per week, in which case I would question their capability of playing even one game of Pokemon per week (at least without rushing through it, since they're apparently just that busy). I do not think this is a relevant barrier of accessibility; I genuinely cannot imagine anyone who played in the last SPL who was so pressed for time they would have been unable to play if they had been required to play a best-of-three. Also, the RBY community has had and continues to have some of the oldest players around, lengthy matches are regular, and yet I have never heard of any of them complaining about the bo3 factor being a significant time constraint.

Excal's post is right on the money as well.
Thanks for replying my guy. I'll happily expand because I'm really not trying to attack anyone or any type of person, nor suggest some of the silliness that perhaps I could've clarified better in my initial post.

Here's the strict reality: if I, King UU, am too busy to play mons then boo-hoo that's my life and no one really should care. I totally stand by this sentiment, and my posts were not pre-supposing that any community should bend over backwards to accommodate these types of viewpoints.

I'm speaking more about overall accessibility. Work with me on this one and I think you'll see my point (at least in terms of logic, not necessarily practise): let's say, for instance, that 20% of the top-level playerbase was affected by the increase in games. Let's say we were able to track users, usage, and games completed by high-level users for the sake of this discussion. Let's further say, that we have been able to track that around 1/5 top-level talent (I mean people like you, Ojama ABR, etc) now have to request more subs, cannot complete games, or cannot commit to a tour as a whole due to the larger requirements. I think we would all agree that this is a problem.

The flaw in my logic is that this pre-supposes a lot, and that we have no clue what the actual number of people will be affect or if its even an amount worth considering (for example, if this only affects 4-5% of the tour community and we have 95/100 matches played with this new format, which you and I both agree will produce a higher skill-output, this doesn't really scream "problem"). Personally, the reason I'm leaning towards your logic and your proposal is simply because I am unable to quantify the number of users affected. Perhaps, in our due diligence, we should go out of our way to find out how many users would find themselves affected. If the number is negligible, then I consider myself corrected and I will dig my heels in supporting your proposal. Likewise, if any type of quantifying shows us that a large chunk of people would play less, or not at all, I think we need to re-examine this proposal and adjust it to not reach a negative outcome.

I hope that clarifies, I'm always available to share my ideas in more detail if you think examining these "issues" are worth your time! You have much more experience than I do in gauging the availability and competitiveness of the community and I hope you understand that my only goal is to ensure your proposal is standing on strong pillars.
 
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This isn’t something that can be fully objectified so I’ll give the subjective view.

Team tournaments are enormous commitments as is. Pretty much anyone who completes a full SPL will come out feeling drained (hopefully pleased too but still). 3x the amount of games is just insanely unappealing.

Additionally, yes, you have 7-9 teammates playing to offset the bo1. The best teams still currently win with bo1. We’d be adding more time and effort for exceedingly minimal gain. Also individual tournaments are usually hidden early and the public bo3/bo5 is for the latter stretch only.

I have no intention of participating further if this goes through and I know I’m not the only one.
 

Kink

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This isn’t something that can be fully objectified so I’ll give the subjective view.

Team tournaments are enormous commitments as is. Pretty much anyone who completes a full SPL will come out feeling drained (hopefully pleased too but still). 3x the amount of games is just insanely unappealing.

Additionally, yes, you have 7-9 teammates playing to offset the bo1. The best teams still currently win with bo1. We’d be adding more time and effort for exceedingly minimal gain. Also individual tournaments are usually hidden early and the public bo3/bo5 is for the latter stretch only.

I have no intention of participating further if this goes through and I know I’m not the only one.
BKC apologies to both you and ABR - ABR I'm not trying to use your words unfairly, and BKC I'm not trying to rub your nose in anything.

This is exactly the type of sentiment I was referring to, and what I was talking about when I discussed "quantifying" how many users this would affect. Much love and respect to all.
 

talah

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i fully agree that bo3 is an "objectively better" format in terms of competitiveness, and i would personally enjoy my games being bo3. i always try to be as involved as possible with building and like bkc outlined i don't think "but you have to prep 3 teams for every slot!" is a valid argument. you can re-use very easily just as people do in individual tournaments, you can use teams you never got the chance to, etc etc. i think there are fair complaints to be made though, especially if such a change were to be blanketly implemented. the arguments about a tournament's reduced excitement are also understandable. we are all here purely for enjoyment, and i don't think every change being made purely for the sake of competitiveness is, or should be, utmost desirable. this is not to say i do not believe bo3 should become a team tournament mainstay. it should, but this is a fairly drastic shift and would likely be better done gradually.

if, for example, every matchup in wcop (assuming the current format of 8 SS holds) were to be made bo3, i think the tournament would overall suffer both in terms of quality and enjoyment/spectacle. the format of the tour is heavily flawed as is (albeit highly enjoyable for most people who play it) and does not support bo3 well, but i think that's okay.

as for SS: should it be feasible, i propose that 1 of the 3 SS slots in the upcoming SCL become bo3. a single bo3 slot will not particularly interfere with any managerial plans while at the least being a cool experiment. to me, one of the most logical arguments against bo3 is player burnout. it is a barrier to being a great and consistent player, and everyone who's played at a top level for a sustained period of time can attest to it affecting their performance. having only 1 bo3 slot would be a practical way of circumventing it alongside receiving some immediate feedback on the proposal, and would allow us to take better informed action moving forward.
 
Bo3 is doable across the board, but from a personal point of view I wouldn't enjoy it nearly as much. In fact I'd definitely stop signing up all together if that were to be the case, but that's just me.

I agree with Hogg's point of view that "team tours are already bo10", and the emphasis with the current format is on how well the team prepares & performs as a whole, including the support each player can give and receive from their managers & teammates. I actually feel this aspect would be lessened if a team had 30 matches to prepare for instead of 10.

You could also argue that tripling the number of matches in a week lessens the "spectacle" aspect of team tours considering the sheer number of matches that would have to overlap. One of the best things about team tours is that players have the chance to perform on the big stage with a packed smogtours lobby spectating them - I feel some matches are gonna be cared about a lot less when they're overlapping with other ones, and spectators as a whole would have to pick & choose a lot more, which devalues the tournament for certain players.

I'd definitely support bo3 tiebreakers though. I feel it makes a lot of sense for tiebreakers to be decided by the star players of each team, plus it's a good way to lessen the variance of the current tiebreaker setup.
 

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maybe this is heaven
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I genuinely cannot imagine anyone who played in the last SPL who was so pressed for time they would have been unable to play if they had been required to play a best-of-three.
i played gsc for the indie scooters last spl. i am australian, so finding times to schedule tournament games is already quite difficult for me. furthermore, gsc has a tendency to become drawn out (my debut game was ~70 mins in duration). during scheduling i was required to allow for at least 90 mins in order to be comfortable that i would have enough time to complete my games. finding a spare hour or 2 in and of itself is not too difficult. however, finding that large of a window during my weekend (the time when almost all my opponents preferred to play) that also overlapped with their availability (often a 12-hour time difference) was usually challenging. making gsc bo3 would essentially make it impossible for me to play gsc in spl. i'm sure a similar struggle would be the case for some other players with unusual timezones.

on another note, i also disagree with the idea that spectators should be a low priority when it comes to tournaments. for sure the spectators experience is not as important as ensuring we have a competitive tournament circuit, but that doesn't mean shouldn't recognise spectators as a very large portion of the smogtours userbase. while i'm sure there are a small number of users with ample free time that would enjoy having 3x as many games to watch on a weekly basis, i feel like turning every match into a bo3 would raise the barrier to entry a considerable amount for newcomers, and make it less convenient for many already part of the community. if i wanted to watch just my own team, as well as the games in my tier, i am now watching up to 39 games in a week. last season that would've gotten me basically every important game in every series.

the stakes for a bo3 are elimination. the stakes for a bo1 are personal record, the overarching bo8/10, and the season standings. there are already enough measures in play to ensure that the best performing teams are the ones that are fighting for the trophy when the time comes. variance exists, and it will continue to exist even in a bo3 format, however the best players consistently perform well because they win these bo1s. i think bo3s would create an exhausting environment for players and teams; and a less-hyped, more repetitious, and time-consuming experience for spectators.
 

Amaranth

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Something that I feel is very important and getting somewhat lost in this discussion is that the shift to Bo3 doesn't have to apply to all tiers at once. RBY is already there, so it's not like the idea of this being a tier-by-tier thing is new, and the DPP community seems to think their metagame would also benefit. If GSC or any other oldgen doesn't have the same general agreement, they should be allowed to run their own surveys and whatnot to figure out whether they want more games or not. This doesn't have to be a sweeping change that is forced on all communities, it can simply be a potential option to improve tiers that want to do it.

Personally I think it would be very very foolish to deny the DPP community the chance to try this, since the actual community wants to try it out. I think it's good to allow other communities to have their own discussions, and I think it would be a huge mistake to flip a switch from Bo1 to Bo3 from everyone overnight. There very much is space in the middle, and that's probably where we ought to aim at. Other proposals like making playoff series and/or tiebreakers Bo3 are also much more reasonable than the extremes of "all bo3" or "all bo1", which I feel are ignoring practical benefits of each format for some weird idealistic obsession over which one is best.
 
I thought I made this clear enough in the OP, but after seeing what people have said here and on Discord, maybe I didn't, so I'll reiterate / stress it in its own post: bo3 does not mean you have to prepare three new teams per week, every week. Making one new team per week is already ridiculously difficult. One of the great strengths of bo3, in addition to the more competitive series it produces, is that it reduces the importance of bringing something brand-new all the time, as it is much more difficult to matchup snipe someone with a specific counterteam in a best-of-three series.
I think this is the single most foolish thing in this entire thread. The opposite has been demonstrated over and over. During OLT, 3? years ago where we had the "hidden deadline" it was assumed that people will just ladder for a bit, while they can, and then stop. This way we would eliminate all sniping and some of the tryharding right?
:psysly: :psysly: :psysly: :psysly: :psysly: :psysly: :psysly: :psysly: :psysly: :psysly:

1 reality check later:
People laddered throughout the entirety of the potential deadline. Anybody who could not had no shot at qualifying.

I think the same applies in this case. People will be most successful by preparing 3 new teams / variations of teams. Anybody who can not will be at a disadvantage.

I'm not entirely against bo3 in team tournaments, because it does allow the better player to win more consistently. This is true. But I would suggest raising the deadline per match to two weeks in order to somewhat allow people with other stuff to do to prepare for their battles at a level similar to people with more free time. Alternatively, I like the following argument: In team tournaments, your performance will average over the entirety of the tournament. Rather than looking at every week as a bo1, look at the tournament as a bo9, because it's not like you get eliminated instantly, you are merely collecting points for a shot at playoffs. Perhaps we could do 2 week bo3 in playoffs only. I think I would Iike that best.
 

Amaranth

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1 reality check later:
People laddered throughout the entirety of the potential deadline. Anybody who could not had no shot at qualifying.

I think the same applies in this case. People will be most successful by preparing 3 new teams / variations of teams. Anybody who can not will be at a disadvantage.
Cool reality check, but we already know from RBY that this is not reality. Depending on the tier, you can reuse a team loads of times in a tournament and be completely fine. To make an extreme example, Nails used the exact same team on 8 separate occasions in SPL X. Let every tier figure shit out and let them experiment with Bo3 if they wish to, I really think shutting the entire idea down for everyone would be beyond foolish
 
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Cool reality check, but we already know from RBY that this is not reality. Depending on the tier, you can reuse a team loads of times in a tournament and be completely fine. To make an extreme example, Nails used the exact same team on 8 separate occasions in SPL X. Let every tier figure shit out and let them experiment with Bo3 if they wish to, I really think shutting the entire idea down for everyone would be beyond foolish
What you are saying makes no sense. How do we know from RBY that what I said was not reality? It was, all you need to do is check the threads. Aside from that, RBY is a very special tier, where re-using teams is perhaps the most viable out of all the tiers. It feels a bit agenda-y to try and point to RBY, but I am not even against experimenting with bo3 ideas overall. The notion that this will lessen your prep work is false however.
 

Amaranth

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What you are saying makes no sense. How do we know from RBY that what I said was not reality? It was, all you need to do is check the threads. Aside from that, RBY is a very special tier, where re-using teams is perhaps the most viable out of all the tiers. It feels a bit agenda-y to try and point to RBY, but I am not even against experimenting with bo3 ideas overall. The notion that this will lessen your prep work is false however.
Maybe my post was unclear; what I'm saying is that your intention to say that this idea will be met with "a reality check" is total speculation at best, based on a massive logic leap, and goes directly against the only evidence we have for the impact of Bo3 in team tournaments.

It feels agenda-y, and it is pretty much straight up fearmongering, to bring up a rule change from OLT in such fashion considering that it has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at hand and the only connecting thread between what you bring up and what is being discussed is "change bad". All the things you said to justify your point of view are either irrelevant or directly contrasting with the one data point we currently have from RBY on the practical impact of Bo3 in team tournaments.
 
Maybe my post was unclear; what I'm saying is that your intention to say that this idea will be met with "a reality check" is total speculation at best, based on a massive logic leap, and goes directly against the only evidence we have for the impact of Bo3 in team tournaments.

It feels agenda-y, and it is pretty much straight up fearmongering, to bring up a rule change from OLT in such fashion considering that it has absolutely nothing to do with the discussion at hand and the only connecting thread between what you bring up and what is being discussed is "change bad". All the things you said to justify your point of view are either irrelevant or directly contrasting with the one data point we currently have from RBY on the practical impact of Bo3 in team tournaments.
The reason it is not a logic leap is because the motivations (proving yourself in officials, getting recognized and drafted in future tournaments), as well as the assumptions (I wouldn't bother, it's not worth for me, why would anybody else bother?) are exactly the same. Again, just because we only have RBY as "evidence", doesn't mean that the same rules apply to other tiers, and the reasons for that can be thought out rather than having to be seen in practice necessarily. I'm sorry for the tripple posting, we are really going off the deep end here. I will leave you with this, I don't have anything else to add besides reiterating the points I have made this far.
 

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