After discussion in the tours discord & thinking on it more, I think the MVP award should be a subjective one (like what
Stories was getting at), and not use objective measures like UT proposed. One thing that stood out to me was someone (I think
IPF) mentioning that something like what is being proposed ends up just becoming a record watch. Any potential "MVP Tracker / MVP Watch" will just be "x is 7-0" and "y is 7-0" I wonder who will lose a game first, I wonder who will make playoffs, etc. Theres no real discussion over the MVP and we don't really gain anything from it aside from one person getting the MVP Banner.
I think we can afford to add a bit more fun and try to amp up discussion by making this a more subjective award. While yes, this will lead to potentially more controversy while some people will feel robbed despite having better records, etc. That should be part of it and will hopefully lead to more discussion / talking about it in general, at a time when discussion in both tours cord and smogtours is down a lot.
We can implement things like weekly MVP Trackers (that aren't just this player is 7-0 this player is 7-0 who will stay undefeated), polling from the spectators / players / managers, etc. Have teammates talk about why "x player" is actually the MVP despite maybe not having the best record on the team because they are also building the teams for two other slots that are nearly undefeated, or doing all the prep work, etc. We can work to mitigate a lot of the potential ambigious factors as well by allowing each manager / team to maybe only propose one player from the team for the award at the end of the season, or we do gatekeep by people that have good records, or whatever, but there are plenty of ways to work around the system being abused and someone who has a bad record / someone people want to meme vote get through.
We can also do what sports leagues do and have a portion of the MVP vote at the end come from multiple places. All managers get to vote (anonymously) and they get "x" percent of the total vote, all players get a vote and they get "x" percent, people who submit predicts get "x" percentage, etc. We can figure out a fair breakdown of how to do this, but it should lead to the award going to someone who deserves it more often or not with guidelines like this in place.
I might be alone here but I do think we can afford to add more fun and subjective elements to our tours so they just don't stay just boring record watching, and even if there could be some negative attitudes around it thats going to be the case no matter what. It just seems there could be a lot more benefits to having this award be something that can generate more excitement and discussion around tours like scl / spl / wcop that isn't just sheet watching and does bring in elements to the tournament people don't always get to see. We can highlight the top players that do more than just play, and actually add to the stories of this tournament that won't just be seen on the sheet. With an objective system anyone can open it up and see the players with the top 3 record and just assume one of the was the MVP, we don't need an award to point that out. This gives us a chance to actually add something new, and I hope its actually considered / people chime in.
