Tournament CAPPL XI: Format Discussion

[shnowshner]

Hey all, CAPPL is finally underway! At this point I think we've settled on a strong format consisting of 3 SV slots + every oldgen. I'm certain there's no real desire to change this in any large capacity, considering how difficult it was to navigate the support for each generation back in CAPCL IV. Here was last year's concluding post:

Tiers: SV1 / SV2 / SV3 / SS / SM / ORAS / BW / DPP

Teams: 8 total teams, no Retains

Auction: 120,000 points, Manager self-buys 15k each

The biggest change is going to be the reintroduction of retains, following-up on their removal in CAPPL X as we transitioned from 6 to 8 teams, so that's the main thing we'll want to sort out. Retain pricing is typically a player's price from last year + 3k, or 10k flat, whichever is higher. We (read: spoo) did want to try and establish proper franchises last year, but it didn't really pan out: I think a more "general" system of having retains placed into groups might work better for us, rather then tying them to a specific team you have to sign up for (I.E. instead of retain rights being credited to the Storming Saharajas specifically, their players are placed into "Team A" for any managerial duo to claim as their own), but you may not feel the same way.

I would like to wrap this thread up by May 11th so we can get to manager signups ASAP.

Oh, and one last thing: Murphy Lawden and Anchor9 have both graciously volunteered to join me in hosting CAPPL XI! This means you no longer have to deal with exclusively me throughout the tour (beneficial)!

 

[Gekokeso]

Don't see any reason why not keep format as it is. All 6 generations are solid and besides some kinks in like DPP or SV we haven't had much issues with either of them. Besides most side tiers aren't as appealing or developed, even with the developments that came in CAPCL. Only exceptions would probably CAP UU due to being the side tier with the most activity, and CAP Natdex, which is honestly just nearly identical to SV.

Think retain system of numbered letters instead of franchises looks the best. A single tour isn't enough to establish permanent franchises, I think after this one that could change, but for now, keep them as lettered systems. Plus, this allows new players to signups with new teams. I think the only thing to estaablish is some sort of priority system of the retain pools. Say for example, if a former player of a team and the manager of that same team ask for the retain pool, the manager gets it first, but if its two former players of the same team priority should go to the one who asks first. My proposal for the priority to the rights to a team retain should look something like this:

Lead Manager of former team
Co Manager of former team
Player of former team
Manager / Co Manager of another team
Player of another team
Newcomer

All with permision from the past manager of the pool of course.

 

[spoo]

instead of retain rights being credited to the Storming Saharajas specifically, their players are placed into "Team A" for any managerial duo to claim as their own

iirc this is pretty much how we did retains for CAPPL 2023, it just kinda happened behind closed doors instead of being specified in signups. I’m fine with the team A / team B / etc system though I’d still like to advocate for moving towards permanent franchises in some small way. This is legitimately a huge reason why tours like SPL are so exciting; over the years, the teams develop unique storylines and legacies and lore and personalities and you can keep rooting for them or cheering against them every single year. Permanent franchises are great for a tour’s branding and overall identity. I think introducing between one and four franchises would be really cool. Could pull from historic winners of previous CAPPLs, you could just take the Wu-Tang Clants and call it a day, idk but I think franchises are dope.

Keep tiers as-is. Maybe limit to one manager selfbuy, we used to want to incentivize selfbuys because our managers were also usually our best players and the tour was too small to function without them playing but I think CAPPL is big enough where that’s fine now

 

[Wulfanator]

you could just take the Wu-Tang Clants and call it a day

I am opposed to the idea of being able to take on the identity of a franchise you have not contributed to. I think it will only diminish the legacy of those teams. If we want to entertain franchises, there should be a minimum requirement that one of the users in the managing duo was a former member of that team. Otherwise, they should have to create their own identity.

instead of retain rights being credited to the Storming Saharajas specifically, their players are placed into "Team A"

As a manager, I dislike retains because it artificially creates barriers from being able to team with new people. It's really nice to be able to go into the draft and say "I really want to team with X. I'll dump whatever cash it takes to team with them this season." There are a lot of great users I'd love to be able to say I have teamed with that are just no-brainer retain candidates. Maybe I'm just pissed that Pannu has big tony 2014 retain rights.

Edit: remove argument misunderstanding retain confirmation process

 

[SHSP]

though I’d still like to advocate for moving towards permanent franchises in some small way. This is legitimately a huge reason why tours like SPL are so exciting; over the years, the teams develop unique storylines and legacies and lore and personalities and you can keep rooting for them or cheering against them every single year. Permanent franchises are great for a tour’s branding and overall identity. I think introducing between one and four franchises would be really cool. Could pull from historic winners of previous CAPPLs, you could just take the Wu-Tang Clants and call it a day, idk but I think franchises are dope.

Hugely in support of franchises, I think its really sick (guy who repeated team literately last year).
I was curious so I went looking for repeat teams in CAP team tours overall, here's what I found-

Back in ancient history, the dinosaurs repeated teams a lot. The Choice Band Revenankhs participated in five team tours, the Vicious Volkrakens four, and the Naughty Necturna's 3. After that we really haven't had many repeat teams, with one exception.

Teams to appear twice:
Sizzling Smokomodos
Surging Snaelstroms
Weathermen Whimsicotts
Asuka Langley Staryus
Storming Saharajas
Shoenice Squovets

The standout here is also the No Fucks Great Tusks, who went for three, the modern record.

There's also a few teams that are very close to being repeats-
Venomicon-inspired teams went from the Venomous Venomicons to the Vengeful Venomicons
Hemogoblin-inspired teams went from Heart Attack Hemos to the Heartbreaker Hemos
Caribolt-inspired teams are close- Thundering Caribolts, Caribolters
Of all things, there's actually similar Breezi teams- Breezing Breezis and Brazy Breezis

I think if we're going to introduce repeat franchises, even if they're not the whole number of rosters (and probably shouldn't be, considering it'd be nice to get more of our new CAPs in the field), we should focus on some of the more iconic teams. Having a third of the field be Rajas, Hemos, Snaels, etc year over year makes for really cool identities, and I think even stuff like former players becoming managers of the same/different long-term franchise makes for cool storylines- and you guys know I'm a sucker for storylines.

I do agree that retains should be reintroduced, and probably kept in that pool design that's been mentioned.

 

[One Last Kiss]

Hugely in support of franchises, I think its really sick (guy who repeated team literately last year).
I was curious so I went looking for repeat teams in CAP team tours overall, here's what I found-

Back in ancient history, the dinosaurs repeated teams a lot. The Choice Band Revenankhs participated in five team tours, the Vicious Volkrakens four, and the Naughty Necturna's 3. After that we really haven't had many repeat teams, with one exception.

Teams to appear twice:
Sizzling Smokomodos
Surging Snaelstroms
Weathermen Whimsicotts
Asuka Langley Staryus
Storming Saharajas
Shoenice Squovets

The standout here is also the No Fucks Great Tusks, who went for three, the modern record.

There's also a few teams that are very close to being repeats-
Venomicon-inspired teams went from the Venomous Venomicons to the Vengeful Venomicons
Hemogoblin-inspired teams went from Heart Attack Hemos to the Heartbreaker Hemos
Caribolt-inspired teams are close- Thundering Caribolts, Caribolters
Of all things, there's actually similar Breezi teams- Breezing Breezis and Brazy Breezis

I think if we're going to introduce repeat franchises, even if they're not the whole number of rosters (and probably shouldn't be, considering it'd be nice to get more of our new CAPs in the field), we should focus on some of the more iconic teams. Having a third of the field be Rajas, Hemos, Snaels, etc year over year makes for really cool identities, and I think even stuff like former players becoming managers of the same/different long-term franchise makes for cool storylines- and you guys know I'm a sucker for storylines.

I do agree that retains should be reintroduced, and probably kept in that pool design that's been mentioned.

grrr include a team with equilibra, thanks

 

[shnowshner]

Time has crept on me sorry

This post is fairly opinionated so be warned. I'm not huge on franchises and I want to spend time elaborating why.

I think a lot of the fun surround CAPPL is seeing the different teams and managers come around each year. We saw a good amount of this back in CAPPL X and ended up with a pretty diverse selection, and I do enjoy seeing what kind of creative/strange/concerning team names people come up with.

Introducing franchises, even a limited amount of them, feels like it restricts the organic way teams tends to rise and fall. We're not letting the narrative of teams occur as people play and desire to keep the legacy going, we're just deciding that "these particular teams are going to be CAPPL mainstays." My concern is: does anyone actually fucking care? I get wanting to have your own team run it back but if that's the case then sign up with that team again! I don't want to shoehorn franchises into the tour that people have no real desire to play under.


Let me sort through the list SHSP posted here:

The Choice Band Revenankhs
Surging Snaelstroms
Vicious Volkrakens
Naughty Necturna's
Sizzling Smokomodos

I'll be blunt: who are the hell are these teams? When did they play? People outside of the CAP sphere do not know and thus don't resonate with them. There's zero hype around these at all, because they're completely unfamiliar/irrelevant to like ~80/90% of people who are actually going to engage with CAPPL by now. We tried to bring the first two back for CAPPL X and nobody took them because nobody cares. Sorry if that's rude but it's just what happened.

Weathermen Whimsicotts
Asuka Langley Staryus

These two I do actually recognize even as a 2020 signup but they still have the problem of being rather old teams that many people have moved on from. Guys we're not bringing TNM or stresh back stop pretending.

Shoenice Squovets(sic)

This is a CL team. They literally were playing a couple months ago. Please keep it that way unless prior Skwovets managers ask to move up.

Storming Saharajas
No Fucks Great Tusks
Venomous Venomicons/Vengeful Venomicons
Heart Attack Hemos/Heartbreaker Hemos
Thundering Caribolts/Caribolters
Breezing Breezis/Brazy Breezis

This grouping of teams are among those active enough in recent memory to warrant people's excitement. If you're going to have franchises please just pick stuff like these or from recent winners, don't try and be cute about it with "legacy teams" which have no significant interest at all.


My point with all of this is that I don't want people to come in wanting to manage CAPPL and then being told "hey, you need to sign up under this particular franchise since we have a quota to meet and all our regulars signed up with their own flavor of team," that just feels lame to do as a manager. I'd much rather have people come in to the tour with their own identity, and have teams return year-after-year not because they're supposed to, but because people want to.

I understand this might be a minority opinion compared to others, and I'm fine with having franchises if that's what the people who actually play CAPPL want. At the same time — the people viewing and interacting with this thread make up a very small portion of people who will end up participating in CAPPL. What might seem like a fun idea to us may fall flat when the wider populace comes around, and I personally lean towards keeping things the same when there's no indication we'd benefit from a change. I understand wanting to have permanent teams to emulate the whole "hometown team" vibe of rooting for/against a particular franchise solely because of how they've developed over time, I just don't see it as strictly necessary as a means of adding hype to the tournament. Again, this is maybe just a personal thing: in any sport/e-sport I've never payed much attention to a team's branding as much as the people playing on said team, and I imagine that's true for a lot of other people as well.

 

[spoo]

re: franchises, I don't think there's a big difference between having them in CAPPL and having them in any other major tour on the site where they're incredibly successful and enjoyed by all measures. I forgot about how it kinda flopped last year when we tried to introduce CB Revs and Surging Snaels and no one wanted them, that's a fair point. Tho these teams are very disconnected from 80-90% of the people managing/playing today, especially the Revs, so I think it was just a matter of choosing the wrong teams. Picking stuff that current managers actually have ties to is ideal. "But if these managers want to return with those teams, then they'll just run it back with them on their own!" Well yea, but those managers will eventually retire, and ensuring that their legacies/dynasties/branding/etc lives on is a good thing for the tour's hype and identity.

The most "iconic"(?) teams in CAPPL today are the ones carried by SHSP+Wulf, myself+D2, and dex+whichever co he picks. These are the managers that come back year after year and consistently win or make playoffs, especially Wulf and dex. So I'd argue for a Hemos team, Rajas team, and a Breezis/Navi team, plus maybe Wu-Tang Clants bc fire name + I think(?) Mada's managing again + they won the first "new era" CAPPL (when we moved to 8 slots / banner prize / reset all retains).

Franchises are hardly necessary, the tour will still be amazing without them, but just cause something's not necessary doesn't mean it wouldn't be beneficial. This is just my perspective from following SPL/SCL every year and believing that the historical legacy-building aspect is by far one of the coolest parts. The "indication that we'd benefit from a change" comes from tours with permanent franchises being way cooler than tours without them. Maybe we run a poll or something to see how popular the idea is, I dunno.

edit:

Maybe limit to one manager selfbuy, we used to want to incentivize selfbuys because our managers were also usually our best players and the tour was too small to function without them playing but I think CAPPL is big enough where that’s fine now

I take this back - we should just limit to 3 total purchases between retains+selfbuys combined. Lot of other PLs are doing it this way and I think it makes the most sense. 3 retains and 2 selfbuys theoretically allows for a team to have 5 out of 8 of their starting lineup decided before the draft even happens, which is just totally absurd even if it costs 50k minimum

 

[pannu]

everyone itc has my blessing to run it back with (CL WINNERS) whole lotl cottas for cappl.

 

[shnowshner]

Something I was thinking about w.r.t. franchises was related to the idea of "lettings teams continue on when managers retire," maybe putting out a poll sometime before the tour starts to gauge interest on which teams should return. It could work but would require a lot of outside feedback which is hard to garner.

Regardless I have a feeling that any of the teams we'd want to franchise are going to be competitors, so I'm not in a huge rush to push out a mandate on having permanent teams; rather, we can use this year + last to better determine who deserves to retain their slot the most for CAPPL XII.

So, quick recap:

-Retains are back this year, all players are put into nondescript teams that any manager duo can retain players from, with priority given to returning managers. Retains are CAPPL X Price + 3k, minimum 10k.
-All teams are limited to maximum 3 pre-draft purchases, which includes self-buys and retains.
-120k Credits as usual.

-Tiers: 3x SV / SS / SM / ORAS / BW / DPP
-Teams: 8 total, 10 players min each (8 starters + 2 subs)

That's gonna be it for this stage, managers signups will be on their way!