Proposal Bring Back The Substitute List

[UT]

When round robin finals were eliminated, there was a second change that came with it: removing the substitute list. Removing round robin finals meant there are fewer possible bracket numbers, so increasing the number of allowed byes made sense to prevent massive sub lists, but at the extremes this allows for tours with a truly hilarious number of byes (like this AAA tour or this stour, both with two match-ups and then 62 and 126 byes, respectively).

I am proposing bringing back the sub list, but using a higher percentage of acceptable byes in round one to handle the extreme cases without getting exorberiantly large sub lists. This is admittedly 100% subjective and 0% scientific, so I want to float what actual percentages we want to consider.

Status Quo, no Sub list

25% Sub List

15% Sub List

10% Sub List

There are also some other options we can consider, such as:

• Adding a toggleable option for enabling the sub list; perhaps live tours and / or official tours could use no sub list, but others can opt into it.
• Setting a maximum number of byes for larger formats, ie sub list is 15% or 50 total subs, whichever is lower (or flat-out does not exist).
• Anything else you can come up with.

Sub lists do have downsides of course; in addition to obviously having people missing tours, it creates more work for hosts to get inactive users brought in, but I think it's worth considering bringing back in some capacity at least in live tours and preferably all, to avoid tours with a truly abhorant number of byes.

My goal with this thread is to see if there is a line that balances getting most people in without an absurd number of byes, and if yes, see that enacted.

 

[Luigi]

yes we obviously need to bring cutting people out back, the previous limit was 20% and it worked perfectly fine.

but we should keep the current system until week 9 of smogon tour, since the points for the early weeks already got wildly inflated, it's only fair that the points in later weeks are inflated too.

 

[MAMP]

an easier solution for this kind of situation is to just start at round 2 and treat the few round 1 matches as though they'd gotten an extension from the previous round. here's an example with a 9 person bracket:

round 1 with current system:
1 vs BYE
2 vs BYE
3 vs BYE
4 vs BYE
5 vs BYE
6 vs BYE
7 vs BYE
8 vs 9

round 1 with proposed system:
1 vs (winner of 8 vs 9)
2 vs 7
3 vs 6
4 vs 5

and obviously give the people who have an extra match to play round 1 more leeway with extensions etc. the inconvenience to the few people who have to play 2 matches in a week imo is clearly outweighed by not wasting a week running 2 matches

 

[Larry]

an easier solution for this kind of situation is to just start at round 2 and treat the few round 1 matches as though they'd gotten an extension from the previous round. here's an example with a 9 person bracket:

round 1 with current system:
1 vs BYE
2 vs BYE
3 vs BYE
4 vs BYE
5 vs BYE
6 vs BYE
7 vs BYE
8 vs 9

round 1 with proposed system:
1 vs (winner of 8 vs 9)
2 vs 7
3 vs 6
4 vs 5

and obviously give the people who have an extra match to play round 1 more leeway with extensions etc. the inconvenience to the few people who have to play 2 matches in a week imo is clearly outweighed by not wasting a week running 2 matches

The issue with a format like this is that some people would have to play 2 games for 1 point in slam/classic formats while others only need to play 1 game for the same point, and it also doesn't really fit livetours well because in a livetour its still essentially another round in terms of time investment. This is also tough to implement into the global championships format. (if even possible? i guess you could have some people play 1 bo3 instead of 2 bo3's for tournament entry, but dealing with extensions with those is a bitch and 3 bo3's in a week is a bit much, i dont think we can expect this much of players) Would probably work well in a tour like OST where round 1 is longer than a week though.

That said, I think it's still better than the status quo for circuit tournaments such as seasonals, but so is the old system with x% entering the tournament as subs. A bunch of those get to play anyway as long as the host is strict with a 'contact your round 1 opponent by wednesday' deadline.

Bring back the sub list, bring back round robin finals to make sub lists shorter on average. Just gotta bite the bullet on that one I think because its still better than the alternatives.

 

[gastlies]

I don't think it's worth cutting people from a tour just to avoid a weaker round 1. Round 1 of a tour isn't super exciting anyway so I don't see an issue with having a ton of byes. Let everyone who wants to play play, and then by round 2 all of the byes are gone.

 

[Perry]

As the main host for the Smogon Tour, I personally don’t see any significant issues with the current status quo. While it’s true that a Round 1 with only a few matchups, like the one shown in the OP, isn’t ideal, I am still a firm believer that it’s a better option than reverting back to round-robin finals.

You only have to wait for 30 minutes for the host to get through the first round if you get a bye, and you'll only get points for the first round if you also win the second one. As a quick math, tournaments have been averaging 3 hours to finish this season (which is pretty much the same as it’s always been for non-rb tours), while Round Robins were known to take longer to get through.

Not to mention, we are not cutting anyone from a chance to play, which is significant considering we had a substantial YouTube video covering Smogon Tour for new users: imagine a new user watching the video, signing up three minutes late, and being cut out of the tournament. That is a user that would not be coming back.

So yeah, I would rather have the present status quo to the old one for Smogon Tours, but I do concede that other tournaments would benefit from the sub list shown in the OP.

 

[Luigi]

imagine a new user watching the video, signing up three minutes late, and being cut out of the tournament. That is a user that would not be coming back.

No, that's a user that'll learn his lesson and sign up faster tomorrow. Now imagine that user signing up to play in a "livetour" and having to wait 40 minutes before he gets a game, then having that experience again tomorrow, that's the user that's not coming back. People got subbed in to replace inactice users in the old system too, realistically very few people missed out entirely, especially if we raise the bye% to something like 30%. There's no argument for inclusion that makes this looks good.

You only have to wait for 30 minutes for the host to get through the first round if you get a bye, and you'll only get points for the first round if you also win the second one. As a quick math, tournaments have been averaging 3 hours to finish this season (which is pretty much the same as it’s always been for non-rb tours), while Round Robins were known to take longer to get through.

If the RR final takes an additional 30 minutes, this impacts 4 people (3 players and a host). If Round 1 takes 40 minutes to resolve 5 battles and 124 people staring at the wall, we're wasting infinitely more time than round robin, even if it resets 3 times (which has happened a total of three times in the last 20 seasons). There's no argument about time that makes this looks good.

Additionally, MAMP's post, even though it presents it as a solution eloquently states the biggest problem with the status quo, which is that a few arbitrarilily chosen players need to play a pre-round, which awards no points (this season, the baseline score for winning 1 game is 2 points instead of 1) before they get to join the tour. I got insta-tilted every time i had an opponent R1 this season of Tour because I knew I had to play an extra round compared to everyone else, and had an extra game worth of scouting too for future opponents to look at, meanwhile 90 other people get a bye. The few people that get an opponent are at a disadvantage for no reason.

As a thought experiment, imagine that in Round 3 a quarter of the players were chosen at random to have to play another game before they got to play their Round 4 opponent, and if they lose that game their Round 3 opponent gets the win. That would be absurd right? That's happening in Round 1.

 

[Perry]

No, that's a user that'll learn his lesson and sign up faster tomorrow. Now imagine that user signing up to play in a "livetour" and having to wait 40 minutes before he gets a game, then having that experience again tomorrow, that's the user that's not coming back. People got subbed in to replace inactice users in the old system too, realistically very few people missed out entirely, especially if we raise the bye% to something like 30%. There's no argument for inclusion that makes this looks good.

I am the host, I know it because I have numbers that back me up on this, friend. I mean, you just have to look at the sheet. With two weeks to go, this season is already almost 19% bigger than the whole 36th season in terms of signups, with similar retention rate (72,69% of users played 2+ tours this season, 73,86% played 2+ last season). So yeah, this change did not affect retention rate + got us new people to Smogon, so yeah, they are coming back just as much as how they did last year, just that we got higher numbers this time to back us. I can send you the Excel sheet if you want to take a look.

edit: We also have 417 users who played 3+ tours this season, compared to 336 from our whole season last year, by the way.

If the RR final takes an additional 30 minutes, this impacts 4 people (3 players and a host). If Round 1 takes 40 minutes to resolve 5 battles and 124 people staring at the wall, we're wasting infinitely more time than round robin, even if it resets 3 times (which has happened a total of three times in the last 20 seasons). There's no argument about time that makes this looks good.

It's an additional 30 minutes not for the 4 people, but for anyone wanting to watch the tournament as well. In the end, it affects the whole tournament. It's a shitty experience altogether.

Just wait for the whole tournament to end, as we always knew you'd complain and it's always the same people. I maintain my point as the host, we can adjust it, but no RR is a net positive for Smogon Tour.

 

[Expulso]

You only have to wait for 30 minutes for the host to get through the first round if you get a bye, and you'll only get points for the first round if you also win the second one. As a quick math, tournaments have been averaging 3 hours to finish this season (which is pretty much the same as it’s always been for non-rb tours), while Round Robins were known to take longer to get through.

Just on the time management front:

If we give a ton of r1 byes, ~50-100 people will have to wait an extra 30 minutes for stour to start

If we do round robin finals, only the 3 finalists + a host will have to wait an extra 30-60 minutes for the finals to end

I think this is an excessive waste of time for a live tour format, where you don't have to worry about the scheduling issues of a round robin finals.

 

[Larry]

It's an additional 30 minutes not for the 4 people, but for anyone wanting to watch the tournament as well. In the end, it affects the whole tournament. It's a shitty experience altogether.

Contrary to the players, however, spectators aren't expected/forced to pay attention to the tour and play games. It's their own choice whether they want to watch the potential bracket reset or not. If you try to include everyone in the tournament instead, you potentially force over 100 people to wait 30 minutes.

 

[Charmflash]

Personal experience waiting kinda sucks but nothing beats the generational clown shit that was missing out on a tour because you signed up 3 minutes after signups went live. Keep status quo

 

[Finchinator]

I do not think having a 80-90% byes and all of those people watching over 5-10 matches is good for the tournament. The experience itself is very awkward at the start, there is information asymmetry to an unprecedented extent for those who get a R1 pairing, there is an all-time high in 0 or 2 point R2 games, and playoffs are obviously inflated. I do not mind the inflation too much if it is level for everyone and I do not hate the 0 or 2 point flips for R2 games when they always happened to some degree, but I feel like all of these factors together make for a worse experience and plenty of mock-worthy screen grabs of R1 OPs with all the byes.

I personally think in live tournaments, we can revert back to the old threshold or something close to it. When we tried to kill Round Robin finals, two of the big reasons were scheduling conflicts making the spectator/finals experience very choppy and the chance for things to draw out a lot if not everyone is scheduled for the same time with resets. Let's face facts: live tournaments are scheduled for you already. These simply do not apply.

I think keeping round robins killed for standard official tours like Classic/Slam/OST is for the best since it is not essentially a live hostage situation during R1 and it is much cleaner overall to me, but reverting to some degree for Smogon Tour is best. We can be flexible with thresholds depending on the direction of this thread.

 

[QWILY]

i don't think the waiting time or playing experience has changed much, the biggest flaw with this format is the inconsistency in point distribution. sand castle and fc earning the same amount of points doesn't make much sense to me, when the former tour had 100 more signups. to make things worse, soulwind only got 11 points for a tour with even more signups than fc's (just by 2 but i think the point stands). you can say one of the tours should've been a 11-pointer or the other one a 13-pointer (would've meant pdc makes the tiebreak) but this leaves way more room for "error" and just isn't fair in general imo.

 

[Laurel]

i don't think the waiting time or playing experience has changed much, the biggest flaw with this format is the inconsistency in point distribution. sand castle and fc earning the same amount of points doesn't make much sense to me, when the former tour had 100 more signups. to make things worse, soulwind only got 11 points for a tour with even more signups than fc's (just by 2 but i think the point stands). you can say one of the tours should've been a 11-pointer or the other one a 13-pointer (would've meant pdc makes the tiebreak) but this leaves way more room for "error" and just isn't fair in general imo.

Same scenario with me… If I get 11 in the last SS tour instead of 9 I’d have qualified for TB, i.e. if there is one more round.

To me however, it’s the BYE system that would need to be reworked. In the last week I needed 3 wins… if I got a BYE, but I didn’t. Getting a BYE or not is hugely important, 1 point really didn’t matter in the end, but 2 points did.

Not trying to make this a pity party, Smogon Tour is the best individual on Smogon to me by a clear margin. Frankly, I’d like to see a US timezone favored Stour and an Asia/Europe timezone favored Stour.

However, I’d much prefer the round robin finals which only ends up impacting the finalists and host. Since R1 wasn’t put up until 10 past or later each round this year and then subs last for another (10?) minutes, I’d venture to say that timesavings was limited this season, if at all.

What if we just ban the bracket reset and if nobody wins on the first go around they all get 10 points, seems like a win/win.

 

[a fairy]

As someone who did not participate in most of the STour but spent a fair bit helping out hosts in the Staff chat, I really would rather not relitigate whether round robin finals are fine, or whatever. The community requested its removal, TDs agreed, but I think there is space for flexibility here. I recognize that this thread was designed to be about all tours, but I think that this thread has kinda become the STour thread.

I do not have particularly strong opinions on this topic. I think that there are a lot of potential solutions here, whether that's introducing some small windows where sub lists are present for all tours, adjusting STour's signup number windows specifically, or even re-imagining how STour points are calculated. However, I do think that something should change - it appears to me from my experience with this year's STour that the status quo is detrimental, a net negative - to be clear, I do think that my personal opinions on RR aside, their removal is a good thing, and I do prefer having byes over having subs for inclusion reasons. However, I think that the way STour ran this year is a step down from how it was last year, due to a change made for non-live tours that has affected the live tour in an unexpected way.

To me, the one I want to do the least is introducing sub windows in all tours. We made a decision for the betterment of Classic, Grand Slam, circuit tours, et cetra, and we should experience what that change looks like in the space it was designed for. I know that the Slam hosts have talked internally a bit about their own signup numbers and stuff, and I know that in the circuits I'm involved in or have a support/spectator seat for (UMs, Draft, RoA, some others) that there have been more than once conversations about the impact of these changes, with both positive and negative thoughts. I think it is for the best to allow these conversations and experiences continue, and should down the line the conversation be raised (the soonest I could see it being logical to would be after Classic's early rounds are all underway) then we can discuss it then.

But I think we can do something for STour in future years, regardless of what we may or may not decide to do for non-live tours. The easiest solution to me would be to grant STour an obvious unique case handling, something that had come up in discussions at the time, allowing STour to better reflect its competitive nature and ensure that there are not illogical point gulfs and variances based on something not intended for STour specifically. We could talk about STour's point system, but to be frank that system works well as is, and changing something that works to try and fix something that maybe doesn't, doesn't seem logical to me.

Anyway. STour is a very fun tour to administrate and help out behind the scenes, and I hope that come next year, we won't be in a situation where an alarmingly high percentage of STours have lopsided point value structures and we have to talk in the staff channel each time trying to predict if a STour will comfortably hit the 256 size, or if we have to cut it off before it hits 129 signups. I don't think that's healthy for a livetour. Other tours may be able to do (x vs y) vs z as a solution or take other approaches, but our STour hosts are stressed enough already, let's loosen their load a bit and not expect them to handle a problem that wasn't expected out of a solution designed for a problem seperate to STour.

 

[Luigi]

What if we just ban the bracket reset and if nobody wins on the first go around they all get 10 points, seems like a win/win.

this is the smartest thing you've ever said. just do this and the problem is solved for tour.

 

[Laurel]

this is the smartest thing you've ever said. just do this and the problem is solved for tour.

Even a broken clock is right twice a day

 

[Perry]

Laurel's proposal + probably a bigger sub threshold is fine enough for me, to be honest