Eien said:
You mentioned Monotype when you called the current SPL format unfair for excluding us, but that only proves to me that you don't understand what makes SPL so important to the communities that aren't even included in it at any given time. I could even today call it a pipe dream, but I believe there's a nonzero chance, no matter how unlikely, that Monotype can one day be in SPL given patience and change. Any trophy tour was the next impossible goal I wanted to see us reach after Monotype impossibly becoming official, but SPL was the goal beyond that to be able to compete alongside the most important tiers of the site whether they be old gen or lower tier. I never viewed SPL's tier selection as unfair, even if Monotype was always excluded; what is unfair is the opinion of those who have never touched the tier claiming it is something that it isn't. So at least for the three years I led it, I can happily assure you that SPL's format being "unfair" was hardly a concern for me. For tiers that are not currently in SPL, I am positive that being part of it (again in some cases) is one of the tier's ultimate goals. Unsurprisingly, you've had many tier leaders argue for their tier. That goal is a portion of what brings prestige to SPL from even those that cannot play in it. People aren't always logical, but what people want is what they value.
It's true; I don't understand this at all. It was never the intended purpose of this tournament to ascribe higher values to tiers included in SPL and lower values to tiers excluded from it. This isn't an intentional thing. This isn't a
good thing. It's a problem that's been warped into normalcy. The purpose of tournaments is not to reify a mythical, community-perpetuated hierarchy of tiers, but to provide a rich and fulfilling experience for its participants. By rooting these two tournaments' identities in a format that eliminates the subjectivity associated with handpicking tiers, this perspective should cease to exist, and that's all the more reason to do it.
I talked with
MajorBowman one-on-one, and while I could personally make sense of a format that accommodated Doubles in both tours, I realized that leaving any room for ambiguous interpretation in the format is what opened the door for constant revision of the tour in the first place. The subjectivity of SPL tier selection ensured it would forever remain an open issue, and Eien's post illustrates why. Many people viewed SPL as a solved problem because the current solution involved rejecting Monotype, RBY, and others into perpetuity, whereas it's abundantly clear from this post he held different ideas. The current solution and similar others relied on different parties assuming different things about SPL and nobody ever putting these assumptions together and discovering that they were fundamentally incompatible. And when that ever happened, as was the case with RBY, the solution was just to ignore them.
When you say I cannot force people to believe the two SPLs are equal in value, you are correct insofar as my word means nothing alone. We can, however, identify where the discrepancy comes from and take whatever measures are necessary to eliminate them. The first step is codifying out of existence the subjectivity that gave room to judge some tiers as "premier" and others as not. When Tony asked me to rejoin the TD team,
this is what I sent him. This was a year ago. How much collective time have we wasted as a community arguing over who deserves representation and who doesn't?
At the moment, there is reasonable distrust surrounding the intentions of the TD team. I have insisted that I held Snake in high regard and will value the new SPL in the same way, but we are at the point where actions matter more than arguments. I am going to make the following promises, and I expect the community to hold me to them:
1.
Hogg has already begun driving the Snake revision, and I am 100% comfortable letting him dictate this project. You can trust his competence and direction from his history of spearheading initiatives in tournaments, and just as importantly, you can trust his intentions as the current UU tier leader.
If any of the TDs, including myself, want to impose upon his design, they should be prepared to express it publicly, supply adequate reasoning for it, and in cases where the vision of the tournament may be compromised, expect the response to be "No."
2. Many of us have ambitious ideas for tournaments, but there is always a degree of risk that comes with adoption. People took issue with the Snake draft format in part because it was seen as experimental compared to the established auction format. In some cases, we will find the need to test unproven formats, but there is no reason only one of the tournaments should be the constant subject. Once we establish a baseline parity between the two tournaments,
any format revision must be also framed with the question "Why not (also) the other SPL?" This does not necessarily mean we will end up with identical formats, but for the most part, any adjustment made for one tournament must also suit the other if we believe them to be equal.
3. It was not the intention to slight Snake in this manner, but SPL has simply received more investment than Snake. The clearest example is the non-uniform branding. Hogg has already stepped up to rectify this with the aid of the incredible
Zracknel. It doesn't stop there, though. We will need the community's continuous help to point out any areas where we may have unintentionally elevated one SPL and not the other. This is not a job we can do alone because so much of SPL is the work of volunteers and contributors, and none of them are obligated to ensure the parity of the two.
It will be the TDs' continuous responsibility to identify gaps in one tournament and find people who can fill them if we can't do it ourselves. This is probably the biggest challenge, but one that I am absolutely optimistic about, given how engaged the entire community has been in the discussion on Discord and yes, even
in the other thread. It is natural there will be disagreements, as for many who will be involved in this tournament, this will not be the main priority, nor does it need to be. Nonetheless, this initiative to reform Snake is the most enthusiastic I've seen people be about anything this year that has come from tournaments. I've been here long enough to recognize that this is a rare opportunity to make things better than they are and invest all our efforts into something unequivocally constructive.
---
Now, Doubles. I am sorry for making this the end of the post in a topic that was supposed to be about Doubles, but I felt it made logistical sense given the direction the thread had taken. As I said above, I want to leave no room for misinterpretation for the identities of the two tournaments, and granting an exception just reintroduces the subjectivity that caused these issues in the first place. It's been suggested that codifying the tier selection eliminates this subjectivity, but that's what we do now. The community doesn't see the selection as objective and opens debate on it every year. No category will ever be truly objective, sure, but some will be more than others. Moreover, while I appreciate that Doubles gains a lot from SPL, I don't think I can simultaneously say I believe that Doubles requires what it got out of the old SPL and that the new SPL will reach the same heights as the old one; it just feels like a disingenuous claim to make.
All that said, I am going with
Tony's idea. The details will be worked out and the tournament schedule reworked to accommodate the new tournament. A simple OST idea makes sense to me, but I'm amenable to any other formats that the community might be interested in. The reason we are granting this exception to Doubles in particular is as follows:
1. The desire to sustain the circuit representation Doubles currently receives
2. The large infrastructure and community established by Doubles on this site and a desire to support them
3. The degree of community support expressed in this thread and elsewhere
4. The existing history of the VGC trophy and the role Doubles plays as its spiritual successor
None of these factors are by themselves considerations; only together do they warrant the exception we are making now.
It is true that balancing the circuit requires me to be impersonal, but that's also not how communities work, so I would like to formally apologize to the Doubles community and its leadership. I hope you can trust me to help make this tournament a success, just as I place my faith in you to do the same.
