RoAPL RoAPL XII: Format Discussion

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goldmason

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It's time again soon for RoAPL! This was last year's format:

1x ORAS OU bo3
1x ORAS OU bo1
1x BW OU bo3
1x BW OU bo1
2x DPP OU bo3
1x ADV OU bo3
1x ADV OU bo1
1x GSC OU bo3
1x GSC OU bo1
2x RBY OU bo3

This year, both ORAS slots will be removed from the tournament, and we will be collaborating with OUPL (pending any Champions changes) to make up for this change.

Here are some other things we're debating internally, though obviously open to any and all feedback:

- 3 Managers per team
- Allowing self-buys (20k per self-buy, counts towards retain cap)
- Budget adjustment to 130k (10 slots, 3 subs) because of removal of ORAS
- Classic Bo5 as the neutral tiebreak tier makes even more sense now, so we are probably going to keep it
- What did people think about the bo3 slots?

Let us know what you think about the above or anything else about the tour! Also, we are looking for any interested RoA hosts who might want to host this. Lmk!
 
Please no selfbuys. They are historically not part of RoAPL and I think it contributes to the prestige of the tournament considerably that we don't start with the same wild unbalances when one of the teams has a really strong manager. They're fine for other PLs but here I don't really see the point of adding them. RoAPL has always been better off without them.

Bo3s good, Classic Bo5 default tb slot excellent, no other opinions worth sharing
 
will draft a longer post depending on how discussion goes.
I would be against 3 managers per team - meaningfully pulls from the top player pools here.
Budget adjustment down because of removal is good.
Classic bo5 as tiebreak was super fire
Bo3 is fine - id prefer we dont make it all bo3 so it's easier to support some of the slots.
I disagree with Amaranth's post above, as I would hope selfbuys incentivise stronger manager pairings to sign up. Manager signups in recent times have been pretty poor, and meaningfully detracted from the tournament. I would personally want to sign up to manage exclusively if selfbuys are in, but I think the tournament would for sure be fine without them. If teams with weak manager pairings get washed...that SHOULD be fine. Surely for RoaPL we can find eight strong manager pairings, right... although if there is selfbuys make it like 15 for one 35 for two or something, anything that nerfs double selfbuying. double selfbuy can be obscenely broken.
 
Keep the Bo3s for sure.

I see little reason to allow 3 managers here. It pulls even more from the player pool and would have significant consequences.

I’d rather self buys not be allowed. If they are, ban double buys and make a self buy at least 20k, 25 preferable. Self buys are extraordinarily overpowered and I don’t think this tour needs that element introduced. This tour should be about attracting and developing talent, not about which team can cheat in a an SPL player who’d go for 30k in the auction for 15. Having a top player as a manager for support and experience is good enough as is - don’t need a guarantee of Amaranth dropping an 8-1 for pennies while supporting half the team.
 
I am considering selfbuys through the following lenses:
One, RoaPL is a tournament with some degree of prestige, and it is reasonable to expect every team to have a powerful selfbuy(i.e they would not be heinously unbalanced)
Two, selfbuys further incentivise top players and community figures to sign up to manage.

if both of these things are true, then I think they should be allowed, as they would not be heinously unbalanced and would improve the managerial pool notably.
 
Hello,
first of all last year format (bo3+bo1) was really good so definitely a good idea to keep it. The budget change could be 10 or 20k less (so 110/120K), but if people would rather spend 30k on their top slot over 20k its up to them I guess. Classic tiebreaker is good as well.
3 managers vs 2 managers is honestly deeply tied with allowing selfbuys to me : 3 managers that can all selfbuy is a really hellish situation, whereas allowing 1/3 managers only is not really better. So only consider the selfbuy idea if its 2 managers, and in that case please dont set an arbitrary value for the managers price (like 20k in this thread). I've never really delved into this but managers should definitely not all have the same price. The way of establishing the price can be more or less arbitrary depending on how you want to do it (previous editions record, overall sheet record etc...). This might seem like extremely tedious and it truly is, but we're talking about fairness here. Weaker managers would be more incentivized to signup this way, providing they can buy themselves at a lower price than 20k which is ludicrous for most players. Imo if you're not willing to put the time and effort into making selfbuys fair, you should just drop the concept alltogether for this tour. 3 managers outside of selfbuy I dont really have a good opinion of. In SPL it made a few pools weaker and a few teams felt like they had a third wheel to fit the new standard instead of a third manager. Im open to anyone who played SPL this year and has a different opinion though.
Concerning retains I think they should just be gone. I know they are not even mentionned in the thread but the sheer concept of retains has always been extra stupid to me, and only valid in VERY FEW tours in which you get returning managers every year or so, which validates the idea you as a returning manager retain a strong player you had last year. In this tour and most others managers change every year, so retains completely lose their purpose and just become "hey i can get this really strong player for less money than in the auction" which is honestly just dumbing down the whole auction process. The only managers who have kept their franchise over multiple years are Amaranth and HSOWA, so if they think retains are good and/or necessary for the tour to function I can understand since they are legitimate in whatever they say as returning managers for multiple instances of the tour.

Anyway this tour is always fun tho I usually suck ass in it, lets have a good tour

Cheers
 
I like the Bo3 + Bo1 format I think that's a good compromise, I haven't seen any DPP players complain about being forced into Bo3 so it's probably fine to keep it as 2 Bo3 slots, speak up if you feel otherwise though. I think 3 managers per team is kind of silly in SPL and I wouldn't want it in RoAPL either, it takes away from the player pool in a meaningful enough way. Classic Bo5 as the neutral tiebreak tier is good and hype. I don't have any strong feelings on self-buys.
 
I figured it would help to have a visualization about returning franchises re: Quarante8's post, so I made a spreadsheet.

I think this tournament has had way more iconic franchises than just me and HSOWA - many teams throughout the history of the tournament have runs of 3+ years with the same or very similar managers at the head. It seems on the average edition, about 3/8 are returning teams with continuity and history. I think this is an undeniable Good Thing :tm:. I like that those returning teams have a chance to plan for multiple editions, not just one. It helps keep a team identity and I definitely feel an attachment to the players I have had over the last 4 seasons that would definitely be weakened without retains.

I think what I have is worth preserving, and I think giving new managers "undeserved" retain pools is better for tournament balance than giving them nothing. I like the incentive people have to keep the same franchises running because it makes the tournament better - I distinctly remember RoAPL4->5, with five returning teams, being pretty fucking sick because of it. I really value and enjoy that continuity and the stories that develop.

Even just in the last two years you have Laurel building a "new" franchise with the Yanmas, winning in the first year. and then getting 1st seed but losing playoffs in the second year. I want these guys to stay. I like playing against them and having them be a recognizable team with an identity and a very direct lineage.

If this is a minority opinion and more people would just prefer a clean slate at the start of each year, ultimately it'd be fine. But I do think retains add more than they take away from the tournament, broadly, and I wanted to put the opinion out there
 
Speaking purely personally;

I am a 3 manager hater, possibly the biggest on the site. However I acknowledge that others like it, so I'm fine with discussion about it. I think 3 managers only works if self-buys are added as well; making it so good players aren't automatically taken out of the pool if they manage is valuable if both have enough support. I don't think self-buys should ever be less than 20k, and I'm fine with only doing 1 self-buy allowed. I disagree with variable pricing, the formulas for it are always ass.

Echoing amaranth that I think retains are valuable for tour identity. Everything else about this tour was great last year and I look forward to another strong edition this year!
 
I for one support the removal of ORAS in this year's edition of ROAPL and would like to thank the people in charge for doing so.

My thoughts on the following subjects are as follows:

3 Managers per team
I am typically against manager trios in any tournament as I don't think the workload of managing a tournament is enough to require 3 people. All 3 managers contributing meaningfully to a team is a rare occurrence due to that very reason. This coupled with the fact that they often pull somebody away from the player pool who would have otherwise signed up as a player, means that manager trios directly contribute to diminishing the quality of a tournament.

That being said, I would support them with the introduction of manager self buys capped to 2 per trio for 20k each, as they wouldn't thin out the player pool and aren't much different from manager duo self-buys which I will speak on next.

Allowing self-buys (20k per self-buy, counts towards retain cap)
I strongly support the addition of manager self-buys as I believe they would directly improve the quality of the tournament. Historically, ROAPL has been viewed as the highest level team tournament for old gens that doesn't provide a trophy. Strong competition is what inspires players to signup for tournaments, and I believe that most manager pairings have somebody who can hold their own respective tiers justifying the self-buy price. In 2025, we had 4/8 manager pairings feature a player who has played in SPL, while in 2024 7/8 pairings featured at least one SPL player (not that being an SPL player automatically warrants a 20k self-buy, its just the easiest metric I could think of). I believe that introducing manager self-buys this year will not only improve the manager signups themselves, but also subsequently improve the player signups as people will want to play for better managers and against better competition.

Budget adjustment to 130k (10 slots, 3 subs) because of removal of ORAS
This makes complete sense. Last year the requirements were 12 slots and 3 subs with a budget of 150k, averaging out to 10k per player. We lose 2 starters with the removal of ORAS while keeping the same amount of substitutes so losing 20k of our budget is completely reasonable.

Classic Bo5 as the neutral tiebreak tier makes even more sense now, so we are probably going to keep it
This was a very cool change last year and I strongly support making this permanent. A classic BO5 obviously includes every tier in this tournament and adds balance to the tiebreaker format which in the past strongly favoured the higher seeded team. Higher seeded teams should obviously have an advantage in tiebreak, but that advantage should come in the form of the lower seeded team picking their tier first, as opposed to the higher seeded team picking 2 slots that favour themselves.

What did people think about the BO3 slots?
This was another change I was very fond of. I believe that every slot having a BO3 and BO1 slot (with the exclusion of DPP and RBY) is fine, but I think the best course of action is polling last year's respective player bases and having them cast their opinions on whether their tiers should have 1 BO3 slot or 2 BO3 slots.
 
Dababy2 said:
I for one support the removal of ORAS in this year's edition of ROAPL and would like to thank the people in charge for doing so.

My thoughts on the following subjects are as follows:

3 Managers per team
I am typically against manager trios in any tournament as I don't think the workload of managing a tournament is enough to require 3 people. All 3 managers contributing meaningfully to a team is a rare occurrence due to that very reason. This coupled with the fact that they often pull somebody away from the player pool who would have otherwise signed up as a player, means that manager trios directly contribute to diminishing the quality of a tournament.

That being said, I would support them with the introduction of manager self buys capped to 2 per trio for 20k each, as they wouldn't thin out the player pool and aren't much different from manager duo self-buys which I will speak on next.

Allowing self-buys (20k per self-buy, counts towards retain cap)
I strongly support the addition of manager self-buys as I believe they would directly improve the quality of the tournament. Historically, ROAPL has been viewed as the highest level team tournament for old gens that doesn't provide a trophy. Strong competition is what inspires players to signup for tournaments, and I believe that most manager pairings have somebody who can hold their own respective tiers justifying the self-buy price. In 2025, we had 4/8 manager pairings feature a player who has played in SPL, while in 2024 7/8 pairings featured at least one SPL player (not that being an SPL player automatically warrants a 20k self-buy, its just the easiest metric I could think of). I believe that introducing manager self-buys this year will not only improve the manager signups themselves, but also subsequently improve the player signups as people will want to play for better managers and against better competition.

Budget adjustment to 130k (10 slots, 3 subs) because of removal of ORAS
This makes complete sense. Last year the requirements were 12 slots and 3 subs with a budget of 150k, averaging out to 10k per player. We lose 2 starters with the removal of ORAS while keeping the same amount of substitutes so losing 20k of our budget is completely reasonable.

Classic Bo5 as the neutral tiebreak tier makes even more sense now, so we are probably going to keep it
This was a very cool change last year and I strongly support making this permanent. A classic BO5 obviously includes every tier in this tournament and adds balance to the tiebreaker format which in the past strongly favoured the higher seeded team. Higher seeded teams should obviously have an advantage in tiebreak, but that advantage should come in the form of the lower seeded team picking their tier first, as opposed to the higher seeded team picking 2 slots that favour themselves.

What did people think about the BO3 slots?
This was another change I was very fond of. I believe that every slot having a BO3 and BO1 slot (with the exclusion of DPP and RBY) is fine, but I think the best course of action is polling last year's respective player bases and having them cast their opinions on whether their tiers should have 1 BO3 slot or 2 BO3 slots.
Click to expand...

I think this post encapsulates my opinion on these matters as well besides the fact that I am split on wether or not self-buys are a good idea but definitely something that can improve the tour.
 
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