fuckfuckfuck you got me
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Tournament DCL III Format Discussion
- Thread starter Hacker
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On a serious note I actually wouldn’t mind 3 drafts per old gen because of the reasons you said. Idk if it’s just making the draft process more work for no reason tho. I find most teams will usually just pick 1 draft the majority of the season anyways. My main point is make it 5 sv drafts not 4.
Thank you everyone for taking part in the discussion about DCL III, the forum mods would like to make a few announcements regarding some topics that were discussed here:
Qualified responses are folks who have accomplished a high placement in one of our individual tournaments or participated in one of our major team tournaments. Other responses will not be disregarded, but it is important for us to know what this group wants, as we believe that they in general have a higher-than-average likelihood of participating in DCL III.
This is a ranked choice poll. Your first selection is the one you want the most, your second selection the one you want second most, and so on.
Poll can be found HERE
POLL CLOSES SUNDAY 12PM-4
- The VGC slot will remain part of the tournament
- Manager buy-in has been raised from 15k to 18k. This is per-manager, not per-slot
- SS/SM/ORAS/VGC will still have 3 Drafts each, while SV will have 4 or 5 pending on the 8th slot decision
Qualified responses are folks who have accomplished a high placement in one of our individual tournaments or participated in one of our major team tournaments. Other responses will not be disregarded, but it is important for us to know what this group wants, as we believe that they in general have a higher-than-average likelihood of participating in DCL III.
This is a ranked choice poll. Your first selection is the one you want the most, your second selection the one you want second most, and so on.
Poll can be found HERE
POLL CLOSES SUNDAY 12PM-4
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Counter Format Tournament will never die.
There are already 3 and with a possible 8th slot choice 4 SV draft spots and that in itself should be more than enough. SV is the majority of players but there should be able to be more than 1 player playing a specific old gen any given week. Some reasons for this are...
1. Weeks are a lot less interesting in terms of strategy. Captains now cant play to their strengths if they have them in vgc or a lower tier. If it was 4 SV thatd be automatically half the week every week being SV skill while being the same for every captain would still make player draft strategies way less interesting.
2. Players who like to swap around gens to not burn out as much would have less opportunity to because of there only being 1 slot a week in the 3 older gens and vgc. This can be worked around but teams especially with a captain who mains a certain gen would never have anyone else get the opportunity to run the gen.
3. If the plan is to keep vgc in this tournament and have it be more relevent it feels whack to take away any chance of getting a second vgc game a week. Theres no reason for any team to ever get more than 1 vgc player and just invite their friends who play the tier to help. Having the chance for a 2nd vgc spot is good for what the tournament is apperently trying to shoot for in terms of vgc inclusion.
4. If you have a better draft order in SV that is such a great advantage instead of getting the good picks in other gens. Having half the games be gauranteed this leaves less counterplay around this sort of thing. While it is a skill issue I do also think teams a bit weaker in sv shouldnt be absolutely cooked with no less options to play around.
If the tournament staff does decide to have a flex slot I think the TJ method is far superior to the Addi one. Both have random elements to it but at least TJs is consistent to where you will always be at an advantage or disadvantage the same amount of times. To be honest with the Addi method we could even keep pick bans as long as every team is "team a" and "team b" the same amount of weeks with 1 week in the middle where its just a tier of the mods choice(probably SV) or something. I do think with whatever pick/ban system in place it is most important to make the ability to have the advantage in a tier pick as evenly split across all teams as possible. Leaving it to a coinflip to decide who bans first is frankly irresponsible. I still like the idea of home and away weeks and adds to the kind of sporty league feel these team tours have. Thats all.
1. Weeks are a lot less interesting in terms of strategy. Captains now cant play to their strengths if they have them in vgc or a lower tier. If it was 4 SV thatd be automatically half the week every week being SV skill while being the same for every captain would still make player draft strategies way less interesting.
2. Players who like to swap around gens to not burn out as much would have less opportunity to because of there only being 1 slot a week in the 3 older gens and vgc. This can be worked around but teams especially with a captain who mains a certain gen would never have anyone else get the opportunity to run the gen.
3. If the plan is to keep vgc in this tournament and have it be more relevent it feels whack to take away any chance of getting a second vgc game a week. Theres no reason for any team to ever get more than 1 vgc player and just invite their friends who play the tier to help. Having the chance for a 2nd vgc spot is good for what the tournament is apperently trying to shoot for in terms of vgc inclusion.
4. If you have a better draft order in SV that is such a great advantage instead of getting the good picks in other gens. Having half the games be gauranteed this leaves less counterplay around this sort of thing. While it is a skill issue I do also think teams a bit weaker in sv shouldnt be absolutely cooked with no less options to play around.
If the tournament staff does decide to have a flex slot I think the TJ method is far superior to the Addi one. Both have random elements to it but at least TJs is consistent to where you will always be at an advantage or disadvantage the same amount of times. To be honest with the Addi method we could even keep pick bans as long as every team is "team a" and "team b" the same amount of weeks with 1 week in the middle where its just a tier of the mods choice(probably SV) or something. I do think with whatever pick/ban system in place it is most important to make the ability to have the advantage in a tier pick as evenly split across all teams as possible. Leaving it to a coinflip to decide who bans first is frankly irresponsible. I still like the idea of home and away weeks and adds to the kind of sporty league feel these team tours have. Thats all.
I completely agree with Lejon.
Edit: This post was exceptionally short so to add on… I think for competitive purposes the TJ flex slot allows teams to showcase their talent and doesn’t completely disincentivize having multiple strong VGC players. I think 4 SV slots is totally unnecessary. There are 8 teams, if there are 4 SV slots that’s 32 SV players plus depth in rotation, with a flex it drops to 24-32 depending on selection. 24-32 plus depth is more than enough.
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I still feel like the TJ method amplifies the issues we had last season (which started this conversation in the first place) by making it so you are at an objective advantage or disadvantage vs certain teams. You could be at a disadvantage in key matchups where you really needed that extra slot, and at an advantage where it doesn't matter. Also, having dibs on tier pick later in the season is likely going to be worse because a lot of teams end up losing steam if they are low in the standings. This is just something that generally happens in team tours that you can't avoid, but I think this system would amplify this problem a lot. There's also whether you get 1 or 2 picks before mids, which is huge if you really need to fix drafts before that tier is doubled up.
The addi system makes it so that there's a lot less happenstance at play. The extra tier is a result of only decisions being made and not at the whim of the randomized schedule. If flex is done, it should definitely be this. I strongly disagree with letting the advantage fall to chance. Also, to the argument of choosing who goes first, regardless it shouldn't be a huge deal because it snakes and both teams seem to get a relatively equal say. You can argue picking first is better but obviously no team is at nearly as big of an advantage as they would be if one team just picked. I think implementing the home vs away system for this would be fine because the advantage gained from picking first is much less significant than just being able to choose the extra slot all together. For the one week that isn't seeded you can do whatever is needed.
4 SV is fine.
The addi system makes it so that there's a lot less happenstance at play. The extra tier is a result of only decisions being made and not at the whim of the randomized schedule. If flex is done, it should definitely be this. I strongly disagree with letting the advantage fall to chance. Also, to the argument of choosing who goes first, regardless it shouldn't be a huge deal because it snakes and both teams seem to get a relatively equal say. You can argue picking first is better but obviously no team is at nearly as big of an advantage as they would be if one team just picked. I think implementing the home vs away system for this would be fine because the advantage gained from picking first is much less significant than just being able to choose the extra slot all together. For the one week that isn't seeded you can do whatever is needed.
4 SV is fine.
I think 4 SV is brutal. When captains often monopolize a ton of power and knowledgeable drafters in the tier, and when it’s a massive advantage to craft your drafts well or have captains be able to act as leaders in a format, “deef and skib” (inferior captains) are at an excessive disadvantage. It is not unlikely some teams simply won’t even have the resources to entirely compete with other teams in SV no matter what they do. This is a skill issue, but it also is very likely to heavily increase the disparity in results based on captain quality to an unhealthy level in my opinion, given the increase in emphasis in an already emphasized tier. Realistically, diversifying the tournament is how to make the tournament more equitable, I think if anything I’d genuinely favor removing an SV for 2 flex slots but that’s clearly not an option. Dynamic pricing even if done right, would do less for equitability than removing an SV slot. Flexes also ensure that the top players in the formats are more likely to play.
Dynamic Pricing doesn’t resolve the captain issue, even done right, even if they don’t buy in or get a fair price they aren’t offering as much to the team in terms of knowledge, and the pool is being drained of up to 16 high quality players (even suggesting 24), diversifying formats can help to resolve knowledge gaps and allow for a more competitive tournament. The exact opposite of this is a massive step in the wrong direction. The other solution is to actually deny the strong captain cores and only take 8 relatively equal and less skilled ones, but that is never happening.
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Hello.
Thank you for the conversations and the voting. We will be moving forward with SV4 and 2 managers for this year, and in future major team tours (not 2025 DFL) will be implementing a 2-3 manager range. It's very apparent that every option or direction had benefits and negatives, and as such, no easy decision existed. This was the purpose of the poll, which we appreciate everyone who answered.
On the topic of SV4: When polled, we asked between three options - SV4, Addison's flex proposal, and TJ's flex proposal. The votes as they concluded left TJ's proposal in third place, so it was not considered further. However, the difference between SV4 and Addison's flex proposal was incredibly minor, a handful of votes total, to the point where staff could not reasonably differentiate between the two or state that a significant majority was reached. Given no significant majority, we discussed the pros and cons of both options, held a conversation with the hosts, and then took an internal moderator vote which selected SV4 by a majority that could not be swung by any one moderator changing their mind.
On the topic of manager totals: The vote was much more in favor of a manager range than any lean in the 8th slot format vote, with that lean of favor growing as a percentage when limiting to qualified responders. We intend to implement these ranges for future team tours and years, so future managers be aware, but for this duo of tours specifically, we are going to keep it to expectations from before. Next year/during our second team tour, ranges will be implemented, but for this tour we determined that the change was too short-notice to be done correctly.
Thank you for the conversations and the voting. We will be moving forward with SV4 and 2 managers for this year, and in future major team tours (not 2025 DFL) will be implementing a 2-3 manager range. It's very apparent that every option or direction had benefits and negatives, and as such, no easy decision existed. This was the purpose of the poll, which we appreciate everyone who answered.
On the topic of SV4: When polled, we asked between three options - SV4, Addison's flex proposal, and TJ's flex proposal. The votes as they concluded left TJ's proposal in third place, so it was not considered further. However, the difference between SV4 and Addison's flex proposal was incredibly minor, a handful of votes total, to the point where staff could not reasonably differentiate between the two or state that a significant majority was reached. Given no significant majority, we discussed the pros and cons of both options, held a conversation with the hosts, and then took an internal moderator vote which selected SV4 by a majority that could not be swung by any one moderator changing their mind.
On the topic of manager totals: The vote was much more in favor of a manager range than any lean in the 8th slot format vote, with that lean of favor growing as a percentage when limiting to qualified responders. We intend to implement these ranges for future team tours and years, so future managers be aware, but for this duo of tours specifically, we are going to keep it to expectations from before. Next year/during our second team tour, ranges will be implemented, but for this tour we determined that the change was too short-notice to be done correctly.
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