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Tournament PUPL X - Format Discussion

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ishtar said:
In regards to GSC, I appreciate the support that the tier has gotten and I think that it will be a lot more exciting coming next PUBD, but I do not think that it should have a spot in PUPL at this point in time. When we started planning out PUBD, one of our main concerns was being able to fill in the RBY and GSC slots, we decided that 6 teams instead of 8 should be safe and that we might extend to 8 if there were enough decent signups for all tiers, this did not happen and GSC ended up being the slot with the most difficult pool to fill in.
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I don't think this is very true at all - my team alone in PUBD had 3 very solid GSC PU players and only one was starting. Looking at the rest of the starters that tour, all 6 teams had top quality GSC PU players starting, and this is with a lot of big names like MrSoup not even signing up to play for that tour, and other great players like SANKE CARP who didn't even get drafted somehow. If people thought somehow that GSC PU was hard to fill for that tour, that has nothing to do with the actual pool of capable players as there were plenty - I'd say it's even significantly easier today to find good GSC PU starters as well.

If we're taking the approach of "don't fix what's not broken" and keeping the format the same as last year that's fine, but let's stop pushing false narratives on the GSC PU playerbase/pools.
 
BigFatMantis said:
I don't think this is very true at all - my team alone in PUBD had 3 very solid GSC PU players and only one was starting. Looking at the rest of the starters that tour, all 6 teams had top quality GSC PU players starting, and this is with a lot of big names like MrSoup not even signing up to play for that tour, and other great players like SANKE CARP who didn't even get drafted somehow. If people thought somehow that GSC PU was hard to fill for that tour, that has nothing to do with the actual pool of capable players as there were plenty - I'd say it's even significantly easier today to find good GSC PU starters as well.

If we're taking the approach of "don't fix what's not broken" and keeping the format the same as last year that's fine, but let's stop pushing false narratives on the GSC PU playerbase/pools.
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Please do not assume the worst out of my words in regards the slot situation in PUBD, as me and the other TLs at the time cared deeply about both giving the players a great tournament to test these new tiers as well as showcasing a competitive setting. My point regarding the 6 over 8 teams in PUBD was not false, and my planning sheet shows a significant difference in number of signups for GSC compared to other tiers:
1716267820499.png

Keep in mind that this does not include SV or "All" signups, so that should be taken with a grain of salt.

This is all to say that we had a reason to question the numbers within the tournament, mostly considering the massive overlap at the time between RBY and GSC players, who were often more passionate about one tier or the other. Yes, part of my point regarding the 10 slots is to maintain the environment that we had last year, which was a very successful tournament, and I am willing to also acknowledge that between the time of PUBD and now, the number of people potentially interested in GSC has increased, but when I talk about why we decided to go with the 6 teams and our concerns regarding some of the quality of some slots, this is not a lie. I do not doubt that some teams ended up with multiple great GSC slots and that even more people should've been drafted, but the balancing act of a successful draft has many facets: amount of signups, managers priorities, player interests, etc. , and we achieved our decision in a preemptive manner for the sake of the tournament at the time. Could we have been less careful and gone with 8 teams and expect every team to have the same quality of players across the board? Honestly, who knows, I personally highly doubt it, but our concerns were real and that's simply what I was expressing.
 
ishtar said:
Please do not assume the worst out of my words in regards the slot situation in PUBD, as me and the other TLs at the time cared deeply about both giving the players a great tournament to test these new tiers as well as showcasing a competitive setting. My point regarding the 6 over 8 teams in PUBD was not false, and my planning sheet shows a significant difference in number of signups for GSC compared to other tiers:
View attachment 634463
Keep in mind that this does not include SV or "All" signups, so that should be taken with a grain of salt.

This is all to say that we had a reason to question the numbers within the tournament, mostly considering the massive overlap at the time between RBY and GSC players, who were often more passionate about one tier or the other. Yes, part of my point regarding the 10 slots is to maintain the environment that we had last year, which was a very successful tournament, and I am willing to also acknowledge that between the time of PUBD and now, the number of people potentially interested in GSC has increased, but when I talk about why we decided to go with the 6 teams and our concerns regarding some of the quality of some slots, this is not a lie. I do not doubt that some teams ended up with multiple great GSC slots and that even more people should've been drafted, but the balancing act of a successful draft has many facets: amount of signups, managers priorities, player interests, etc. , and we achieved our decision in a preemptive manner for the sake of the tournament at the time. Could we have been less careful and gone with 8 teams and expect every team to have the same quality of players across the board? Honestly, who knows, I personally highly doubt it, but our concerns were real and that's simply what I was expressing.
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I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I don't doubt you had actual concerns when the tournament started on if you could fill GSC PU slots, which is fine. My point was, saying that afterwards "GSC ended up being the slot with the most difficult pool to fill in" is not correct. The quality of the 23 signups for GSC PU was extremely high quality, and I would pretty safely say looking at how the starters turned out that it rivaled the quality of many of the other pools. Anyone who sees the resulting pools that we ended up with for GSC PU that tour would realize this - so while your concerns were valid at the start of the tournament, they should have been alleviated and shown to be unnecessary once the tournament was underway and many great GSC PU players were starting. If you were talking about purely a numbers game, i.e. 23 is a smaller number than 32, then I suppose that is correct yes, but it sounded like you were saying that it was difficult to actually fill the GSC slots on each team and I just don't see that at all, nor would I see that being an issue in PUPL or any PU tour where GSC PU was included.
 
I agree that sticking to last year's format is ideal.

Bo3 is effectively a fourth SV slot that doesn't sacrifice potential development in SwSh and/or SM, and it offers both players and spectators something different (and arguably more competitive) than the Bo1s in every other slot. In addition, it doesn't seem like many people are genuinely in favor of replacing Bo3 so much as they are open to doing so. I also don't think supporting a Bo3 slot isn't as hard as some say. SS and SM have more accessible and up-to-date resources and larger playerbases than other oldgens, as well as more documented games and information, which generally makes it easier to build/test in them as well as learn and play them. As such, I'm very hesitant to support dropping Bo3. This doesn't mean I'm unwilling to reconsider Bo3's place in PUPL next year; concerns of reusing or lack of proper support aren't totally unfounded, and I'm aware UUPL and NUPL didn't include Bo3 and still went fine. Still, whether or not to replace Bo3 feels like something we should discuss if and when its support among players and spectators declines and not while its popularity is still high.

My points about SS and SM are not meant to discredit recent community and metagame developments in GSC or RBY by the way! If you take into account what I said about resources and information, it's just harder from the get-go for managers and teammates to properly support players in either tier. For now, we should wait and see if a potential PUBD II and other RoA tours further increase interest in either/both before adding either/both to PUPL. Including ADV before was a gamble, but it came after being added to PU Classic and years of support, so I don't think it's unreasonable to wait a little longer before reconsidering.

Speaking of ADV, I think removing it after how well its inclusion last year turned out would be arbitrary and not a good choice at all. The support is still here for it, even with PUBD around, and its pools in PUPL IX and PUBD I weren't insignificant at all.
 
If anything I think going back to 8 slots would be the best, cutting 1 SV slot and ADV but I think the current format is fine. Bo3 is the most entertaining/interesting slot every series and it offers a second chance to SS and SM which were both popular during CG, I think removing Bo3 slot would be a huge mistake.

I don't think there's room for gsc (or rby) in PUPL currently, SV is necessary to have a lot of slots of, cutting either a SV slot or Bo3 for it would make it so that SV has too little slots comparatively when it comes to 10 slots format and all the other tiers already in PUPL are more established and have more history to them. From my experience in recent lower tier tournaments featuring a GSC slot, GSC is pretty much isolated from other slots. Non GSCers generally don't play it and won't be able to support the slot, and the GSCers generally play nothing else and can't support the rest of the team. It's still a new tier and if becomes more popular and tied to the PU community, I would be more open to a GSC slot, but currently I don't think it's worth compensating something else for.

Increasing to 12 slots also shouldn't be considered IMO. The game quality was already pretty low last year with 10 slots, and going for 12 would make that even worse. I'm not against inclusivity, but PUPL is the premier PU event and we should have high quality matches on display in it.
 
Hi I have not kept up with the discourse in this thread but please don't cut ADV, the tier is very well-loved and consistently fields a strong player pool which is more than some other oldgens can say (which isn't an indictment of those). I don't know where the notion that the tier's in a bad spot comes from, most of the folks I talk to about it have a high opinion of it and the game quality has been great across the last few team tours. No need to remove it when the format works great as is
 
100% agree with lily's post about ADV. This current ADVPL has had excellent development for the tier- with incredible high level games being played as well as to lily's point that ADV has easily one of the strongest player pools out of all of the old gens for PU. It's been quite a long time since I've personally seen players & builders alike actively continue to develop a metagame to the point where every team being used feels truly innovative & despite the meta feeling "solved" at times (minun or bust), ADV is typically a nail-biter of a generation that challenges the player in ways that most other gens truly don't. Cutting this in opt for another SV slot would truly be a shame and also as a huge advocate for the old gens, I agree with everyone else who mentioned to include GSC into the mix. GSC is actually one of the most balanced old gens of PU there is & giving it the chance to be included in other PU-related tournaments is the best way to increase player pool rather than just banking on its inclusion in the GSC Slam-esque tournaments or the one-off's that just so happen to include it.

Tl;dr - this is PU. We should be as a playerbase encouraging as much PU as possible and that is not limited to CG.

Imo, these are what the 10 slots should be: BO3, SV, SV, SS, SM, ORAS, BW, DPP, ADV, GSC
 
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I dont think any option considering cutting bo3 or less than 3 SV should be seriously considered. Bo3 is a very competitive slot that is not not tiring to prep for, the best of both worlds in that regard. As for SV, I will just echo what has been said multiple times in this thread by stressing the importance for CG representation in our flagship tour, anything lesser than 3 slots and we'd be going against the purpose (especially considering how much it would benefit the metagame rn). As much as other tiers / playerbases feel like their tier needs to be included, it shouldnt be done at the expense of the slots mentioned
 
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