For
me some, scheduled room tours are also a welcome alternative to the intense competition of the official annual tours, as reflected in the Doubles record sheet. Room tours don't have the same problems as the official tours with waiting (only one lousy game/set a week for months on end) and constant scheduling headaches ("GMT+ what?" "You mean you can only play at my 6 am?" Then, after you've finally gotten scheduled, feverishly waiting for your late opp who may or may not finally show up at any minute). Room tour results don't go on your "permanent record". Everything starts fresh each month. You can even join on a random Showdown alt if you desire some anonymity. Just come and have fun and maybe you'll win a point or two (or three!), and you'll get valuable old gens experience in the process--which could actually help you feel confident enough to try the official tours.
The current "sheet" encourages the type of player who is prone to stress about their win/loss ratio to avoid tours in formats where they are not very experienced or skilled, so as not to mess up their record. If, for example, a player tried to participate in a small seemingly unofficial ROA tour (even under an alt) to get much needed "practice" in a completely new old gen DOU format, someone would helpfully find the results and add those losses to their "full" permanent record—plz don't ask me how I know this
. A hypothetical records format that was just based on tour wins alone (with no win/loss break outs) would be much easier to keep up and would actually yield very similar "rankings" for top players (giving them something to strive for), while incentivizing all players to sign up for as many tours as possible to maximize the chance that they hit a hot streak and win a tour.
What value is there in having a special column for "finals" records in addition to the "trophy" section that already tallies finals wins? Getting to finals is harder than losing in semi-finals, but a finals loss effectively creates a permanent black mark on a player's record.
For a real treat, take a look at the bottom half of the "sheet". Most of those folks have literally never won a tour set. A very large number played and lost a single set and then never darkened the door of another Doubles tour. What value is there in keeping a permanent record of this?
Excluding noobs and a few superstar outliers, most tour battles are between folks whose win ratio for individual games is in the 50-60% range (with many who are a bit under 50% being competent competitors, perfectly capable of winning a tour when RNG smiles on them). Making a big deal over these small differences likely drives more people away than it attracts.
I get that preparing and maintaining the record sheet is a difficult, time consuming and thankless task (largely undertaken by the same person who made the incredible scheduled room tours happen
). I appreciate the selfless intent, and I'm sure many players don't stress about stuff like their permanent record, but I do think it's good to provide alternatives for those who do and scheduled room tours were perfect for that! Frankly, I think CG DOU would also benefit from having regularly scheduled room tours, as even CG participation in Doubles room tours has been pretty hit or miss lately from what I have seen).