Tournament Second 2019 Team Tournament Discussion

Status
Not open for further replies.
As many of you are aware, we planned to have 2 team tournaments this year in our schedule to try and make up for the losses in our official representation this year. I'd like to open a public discussion with some focus on a new idea Minority came up with and see if we want to give it a shot. The obvious suggestion right now is to simply copy the ongoing Snake Draft's format and just slap Ubers tiers in it, but we aren't sure if it really adds all that much excitement, and would come with identity issues against the UPL. SPL and Snake differ in both represented tiers and drafting style, but UPL and USD would only change in drafting style. We're more interested in a new or unique tournament, if we can find one that reasonably works for us.

The current name for this new tournament idea is "Most Wanted" and it operates on a bounty system with some unique twists and roles not seen in any other tournaments, so it's likely to be heavily experimental in nature. Here is the (current) full ruleset:

Victory:

• The first team to achieve 150,000 bounty by the end of a given week is the winner
• If two teams manage to achieve 150,000 bounty by the end of the same week, the team that exceeds by a higher margin is the winner
• If no team achieves 150,000 bounty by the end of Week 7, the team with the highest bounty upon the conclusion of Week 7 is the winner

Bounty:

• Bounty is held by each individual player
• A team’s bounty is equal to the sum of all its player’s bounties
• A player’s starting bounty is determined by prior UPL standing:
o Their final auction or retention price not to exceed 30,000
o Managers = 20,000
o Official Assistant Managers = 15,000
o UPL Hosts = 10,000
o All Others = 2,000

Team & Player Quantities:

• There will be ten (10) starting teams
• Each team will have exactly seven (7) players
• The total number of initial players will therefore be seventy (70)

Team Roles:

• There are three team roles, and each team will have exactly:
o One (1) Captain. The captain is responsible for developing a draft plan, coordinating with the host, and leading their team to victory, among other responsibilities.
o Four (4) Hunters. Hunters are players who participated in the prior UPL as players, managers, official assistant managers, or hosts, and have an initial bounty associated with them.
o Two (2) Freelancers. Freelancers were not officially associated with the prior UPL and will have a starting bounty of 2,000. Freelancers also have special Assassin Status privileges and limitations outlined later
• All players, including the Captain, are expected to play in this tournament.

Team Formation:

• Teams will be formed though a snake draft.
• Snake draft order will be from lowest Captain starting bounty to highest, and randomly selected for equal values
• Completed teams will not exceed a combined starting credit value of 75,000

Tier Support:

• The tiers supported in the tournament will be identical to those supported in the prior UPL
• Only strict generation tiers will be supported. This means no special tiers such as Best of Three Smogon Tour, etc.
All battles will be best of one or three (community decision)

Tier Registration:


• At signup, players will register for exactly three (3) of the supported tiers
• Before the start of each week, captains and players will decide on what tiers they play
• Players may freely change between tiers every week, but may only play tiers that they registered for in their signup post
• Tiers that receive less than six (6) entrants in a given week will be declared dead and will removed for the remainder of the tournament. Any remaining players registered in a tier that is declared dead must swap their registration for one of the remaining active tiers
• A given team may not register more than three (3) players in a given tier, unless there is an extremely unlikely circumstance in which the above rules require it

Benching:

• All players are expected to play all weeks; however, a team may bench no more than one (1) player per week
• A player may not be benched for consecutive weeks
• A player that fails to complete their matches will be considered an effective bench for that week
• A player or players that cause two or more benches in a given week will have half their current bounty transferred to the highest valued player that is not on their team

Matchups:

• Weekly matchups are determined by a player’s bounty before the start of the week
• Players in a given tier for a given week will be sorted by ascending bounty, and matched against their closest neighbor, top to bottom
• Two or more players with equally close neighbors will have their matchups with said neighbors randomly determined
• In the event that an odd number of players register for a tier, the lowest bounty player will be required to select an alternative tier in which they are registered. If no alternative tier with an odd number of entrants is available, said player will be benched that week
• If a player would be matched against someone with a 50% or greater difference in their bounty and that difference is greater than 5,000, the higher value player will be given Assassin Status for that week
• A freelancer that picks up a third win or a fifth win will be given Assassin Status that may be used in a week of their choosing

Assassin Status:

• A player with Assassin Status may challenge any player registered in the tier in which they hold Assassin Status
• Victories with Assassin Status automatically eliminate the losing player
• A freelancer with Assassin Status is automatically eliminated from the tournament if they lose the matchup from their Assassin Status
• Matchmaking priority is given to Assassin Status Freelancers, followed by Assassin Status Captains / Hunters, followed by the standard matchmaking via player bounty

Bounty Transfer and Player Lives:

• A winning player takes 50% of their opponent’s current bounty
• Bounty will not be split into denominations lower than 500, and the quantity of transfer will always be rounded up
• The minimum transaction of bounty is 2,000
• Players will start with three (3) lives
• A life is lost for every week that player loses
• Players that lose their third life are eliminated for the remainder of the tournament
• Captains or Hunters that are reduced to 0 bounty after any loss are automatically eliminated from the tournament
• When a player eliminates another player, they receive 100% of their remaining bounty

Teams & Victory:
  • The first team to achieve 200,000 bounty by the end of a given week is the winner
  • If two teams manage to achieve 200,000 bounty by the end of the same week, the team that exceeds by a higher margin is the winner
  • If no team achieves 200,000 bounty by the end of Week 7, the team with the highest bounty upon the conclusion of Week 7 is the winner
  • Teams will be formed though a snake draft
  • Draft order will be randomly assigned
  • There will be exactly eight (8) starting teams
  • Each team will have exactly seven (7) players
  • The total number of initial players will therefore be fifty-six (56)
Bounty:
  • Bounty is held by each player and a team’s bounty is equal to the sum of all its player’s bounties
  • A player’s initial bounty is determined by draft position
  • IB = 27,500-(X)(500) where X is # of draft position -1
  • All captains will start at 20,000
Tier Support & Registration
  • Only strict generation tiers will be supported. This means no special tiers such as Best of Three Smogon Tour, etc.
  • All battles will be best of one
  • At signup, players will register for exactly three (3) of the supported tiers
  • Captains may not submit lineups with more than three (3) players in a given tier per week
  • Players may freely change tiers every week, but may only play tiers that they registered for at signup
  • Tiers that receive less than four (4) entrants in a given week will be declared dead and will be removed for the remainder of the tournament. Any players registered in a tier that is declared dead will be allowed to swap their registration for one of the remaining tiers
Benching:
  • A team may bench no more than one (1) player per week
  • A player may not be benched for consecutive weeks
  • A player that fails to complete their matches will be considered an effective bench for that week
  • A player or players that cause two or more benches in a given week will have half their current bounty split between the highest valued players that are not on their team
Matchups:
  • Weekly matchups are determined by a player’s bounty at the start of the week
  • Players in a give tier are sorted by bounty and matched against their closest neighbor top down
  • Two or more players with equally close neighbors will be randomly determined
  • In the event that an odd number of players register for a tier, the lowest bounty player will be required to select another tier in which they are registered. If no alternate tier with an odd number of entrants is available, said player must be benched that week
Assassin Status:
  • A player with Assassin Status may challenge any player within the tier they selected
  • Victories with Assassin Status automatically eliminate the losing player if the victor had higher bounty at matchup
  • A player with Assassin Status is automatically eliminated from the tournament if they challenge a player with a higher bounty and lose
  • Assassin Status can be gained in the following ways:
    • If a player would be matched against someone with a 50% or greater difference in their bounty and that difference is greater than 5,000, effective the current week
    • Upon a fourth win and a sixth win, effective the following week
Bounty Transfer and Player Lives:
  • The winning player takes 50% of their opponent’s bounty
  • Bounty will not be split into denominations lower than 500, rounded up
  • The minimum bounty transaction is 1,000
  • Players start with three (3) lives
  • A life is lost for every game a player loses and players that lose all lives are eliminated from the tournament
  • When a player eliminates another player, they receive 100% of their remaining bounty

It's to be expected that the birth of a new tournament format will take some time to get used to, but I recommend trying to understand the ruleset before making quick judgements. Some things to note is that the size of the tournament in terms of teams, slots, and roles are all variable and will likely be finalized after signups conclude. If you are interested in this tournament and wish to voice that in this thread, please cover if you would want the games to be best of one or best of three.

Here's a mock visual version of the tournament for added perspective. Note that this only covers the BW pool.




Feel free to post your thoughts, even if its a simple answer. Minority is willing to answer questions on the format if need be. From a player perspective, the burden of knowledge isn't too high - you can sign up, decide where you play, win and pay little attention to the grand scheme of things, but Captains will want to know their way around this. The important thing here is that the new tournament (whatever is chosen) is accepted and players actually want to participate in it. If interest is low in general for a team tournament (which I highly doubt) then we can simply move on with the individual tournaments we have scheduled already. It also won't count for circuit points, so its just for community benefit!
 
Last edited:
This is a new and interesting idea. I do think we should go through with this as it would draw attention to another exciting team tour just like UPL but with a new concept to it. From a player's perspective, the stakes would be high to continue playing through this tour or losing and exiting r1/w1 which makes it exciting and we get to play as if our team needed us the most in each game. I do think bo1 would be more suited for this tour as i believe that it would make the games more intense.
 
quick post but i wanna say this idea is really creative and seems really fun. the idea of seeking out "high bounty" players in a team tour setting is fresh and exciting and adds a new element to the usual bo-whatever we see in upl and other team tours

a general thing i think you should consider though is that too many rules and complication would probably lead to an unsuccessful tour. the key to a good tour imo is not putting too much burden on the participants (mainly the players). having this complicated dynamic of hunters, assassins, etc would probably be too much to manage i think. spl / upl are successful and have been around for a long time because its fun and simple. the only task you have is to prep, show up, and do your best to win. i think the rules should be much more simplified.

a bounty and point system is already enough to differentiate itself from spl format and (the previous 2) snake formats where total wins were counted as opposed to week wins.

a question i have is how to fairly assess and determine a bounty pre-draft. a lot of subforum pl's have methods to determine manager prices and what not but these arent good methods and no one really cares cus its a subforum pl. im not sure if doing this is better than just doing an spl style auction and having the player price directly correlated to the bounty somehow. or at the very least, if we do a snake draft, the round the player went would correspond to a bounty range. using prior upl results is not the best method imo as it doesnt account for ppl who skipped upl a year or just havent played upl at all. also doesnt account for anomalies such as when kebabe went like 0-5.

lastly, small nitpick but if you want this tour to be long-lasting id suggest not using the name "most wanted". not catchy and just seems like those random tour names that no one except soulwind and pohjis play

really excited to see what comes out of this though. fantastic idea and thanks for posting

e: please please please dont do bo3
 

Minority

Numquam Vincar
is a Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Tutor Alumnusis a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
a general thing i think you should consider though is that too many rules and complication would probably lead to an unsuccessful tour.
This is absolutely true, and I think the best way to proceed from the initial ruleset is to determine what nuances are worth holding onto, and which aren't worth their baggage. More specific community input focusing on player perspective and competitive merit of tossing / simplifying certain rules would be appreciated. With that said and as the OP mentions, the specifics of the rules and the burden of tournament administration doesn't really fall on the player. Like with basically any other tour all the players really needs to do is say what tier they want to play and then play it that week, except for a few situations where they'll also say who they want to play or if they want to be benched (which already happens in other team tours anyway). However, captains will have to know the rules well to develop strategy, which I think the format has a lot of potential for. But brevity is the soul of wit, so if the rules can be made simpler without losing the core principal, then they need to be made simpler.

a question i have is how to fairly assess and determine a bounty pre-draft.
The idea behind using prior UPL prices to determine pre-draft bounty wasn't really based on determining a laser-accurate price-tag for players coming in, but rather to build hype on UPL as adding a second major team tour needs to complement UPL, not duplicate or replace it. Traditional tournament seeds are actually built around creating high-disparity matchups, for example, seed #1 vs. seed #16 and so on, but for this tour due to the bounty and live system, initial matchups should probably be reasonably low-disparity. The rules as initially described are probably decent, but not perfectly ideal for determining this, because strong players who may not have played last UPL could sign-up, or players who went really cheap may have been discovered / improved a lot, etc. Performing a traditional PL draft is of course possible, but has the disadvantages of copying the system that already happened in the prior UPL, and does not really build hype for the tour (complementation > duplication). I think snake draft using the round of draft or even position to determine initial bounty is a very promising idea.

lastly, small nitpick but if you want this tour to be long-lasting id suggest not using the name "most wanted"
The ideal would probably be to use one or two words that capture the bounty hunting aspect in a way that is direct, but not boringly / awkwardly direct. Any subtext or cleverness is a bonus. I'll try to put some thought into one, put hearing proposals would be nice.

Thanks for posting.
 

absdaddy

Banned deucer.
I do agree with the opinion that there's little too much text in the ruleset as it stands right now;
specifically, i think the entire paragraph regarding benching and its consequences plus the maths that determine matching players based on their bounty could be removed to simplify it all and nothing important would be lost, preserving the tournament's original idea.

I really like the concept and while a mock on paper is cool and all, i wouldn't be opposed to us grabbing some volunteers and running a full test week or two to get the community familiarised with the ruleset better.

Make it happen :blobthumbsup:
 

Minority

Numquam Vincar
is a Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Tutor Alumnusis a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
I worked on revising the ruleset based on obii's suggestion for determining initial player bounty and with the mindset of making things as simple as possible while keeping the core principals and competitive aspects. This ruleset is the result:

Teams & Victory:
  • The first team to achieve 200,000 bounty by the end of a given week is the winner
  • If two teams manage to achieve 200,000 bounty by the end of the same week, the team that exceeds by a higher margin is the winner
  • If no team achieves 200,000 bounty by the end of Week 7, the team with the highest bounty upon the conclusion of Week 7 is the winner
  • Teams will be formed though a snake draft
  • Draft order will be randomly assigned
  • There will be exactly eight (8) starting teams
  • Each team will have exactly seven (7) players
  • The total number of initial players will therefore be fifty-six (56)
Bounty:
  • Bounty is held by each player and a team’s bounty is equal to the sum of all its player’s bounties
  • A player’s initial bounty is determined by draft position
  • IB = 27,500-(X)(500) where X is # of draft position -1
  • All captains will start at 20,000
Tier Support & Registration
  • Only strict generation tiers will be supported. This means no special tiers such as Best of Three Smogon Tour, etc.
  • All battles will be best of one
  • At signup, players will register for exactly three (3) of the supported tiers
  • Captains may not submit lineups with more than three (3) players in a given tier per week
  • Players may freely change tiers every week, but may only play tiers that they registered for at signup
  • Tiers that receive less than four (4) entrants in a given week will be declared dead and will be removed for the remainder of the tournament. Any players registered in a tier that is declared dead will be allowed to swap their registration for one of the remaining tiers
Benching:
  • A team may bench no more than one (1) player per week
  • A player may not be benched for consecutive weeks
  • A player that fails to complete their matches will be considered an effective bench for that week
  • A player or players that cause two or more benches in a given week will have half their current bounty split between the highest valued players that are not on their team
Matchups:
  • Weekly matchups are determined by a player’s bounty at the start of the week
  • Players in a give tier are sorted by bounty and matched against their closest neighbor top down
  • Two or more players with equally close neighbors will be randomly determined
  • In the event that an odd number of players register for a tier, the lowest bounty player will be required to select another tier in which they are registered. If no alternate tier with an odd number of entrants is available, said player must be benched that week
Assassin Status:
  • A player with Assassin Status may challenge any player within the tier they selected
  • Victories with Assassin Status automatically eliminate the losing player if the victor had higher bounty at matchup
  • A player with Assassin Status is automatically eliminated from the tournament if they challenge a player with a higher bounty and lose
  • Assassin Status can be gained in the following ways:
  • If a player would be matched against someone with a 50% or greater difference in their bounty and that difference is greater than 5,000, effective the current week
  • Upon a fourth win and a sixth win, effective the following week
Bounty Transfer and Player Lives:
  • The winning player takes 50% of their opponent’s bounty
  • Bounty will not be split into denominations lower than 500, rounded up
  • The minimum bounty transaction is 1,000
  • Players start with three (3) lives
  • A life is lost for every game a player loses and players that lose all lives are eliminated from the tournament
  • When a player eliminates another player, they receive 100% of their remaining bounty


The initial bounty determination would look something along these lines:


Note that the starting bounty is higher the earlier a player is drafted, that the minimum value is 4000, the maximum value is approximately the value of the highest priced UPL player, and that all team totals are equal. This is not necessarily set in stone, but provides a good idea of the benefits of drawbacks of such a system. In the future I would likely lower the average starting bounty by changing the slope of the curve, and subsequently aim for a team starting total around 100000.

This format change also eliminates the previously established team roles, and subsequently simplifies Assassin Status. The heart of this tour is the bounty system and the ability to assassinate rival players, and the rule changes focus on simplifying these points. It's important to note that with these rules a majority of them only concern tournament administration and when it comes to the player all they need to do is pick the tiers they want to play and then focus on winning their games.

One of the main points to discuss are the rules concerning tour win via exceeding a bounty cap. The reason for adding this rule was to give additional agency to teams. Fitting the bounty and assassin theme, the tour can end at any time, but requires a team to pull in eliminations against big bounties while maintaining a high consistency among their ranks. From a competitive aspect I think this rule is good to have as it maintains constant tension, gives teams more consideration when it comes to strategy, and incentivizes teams to aim for taking bounties rather than maintaining what they already have.
 
Didn't read lol. I can see that this is a deconstructed lite-spl format where users are valued for whatever asethic reasons you guys desire to increase your marketing ability.

My thought is that you should simply remove the asethic and go by with ladder ratings in order to maintain the pure empiricism that will guarantee the best spectator experience.


Who knows? I'm a clown ain't I? :jynx:
 
really liking these changes. some more opinions:

disclaimer: i dont 100% understand how the match ups would be set up as of now so seeing like a sample match up would be nice. anyway, i personally think match ups should be similar to upl style instead of arranged by the host. this gives a sense of familiarity while still retaining strategy for the teams. for example: team A might have a 4000 bounty player who can sm / oras. the manager might wanna slot them into oras since their opps oras player is 27500. low risk high reward. i think its 10x more interesting without host intervention and sort of mixes the assassin aspect into the tour naturally. something like

sm1 (27500) vs sm1 (4000)
sm2 (5000) vs sm2 (18000)
oras (20000) vs oras (10000)

i believe most of the standard team tour traits should be retained and a snake draft + bounty system is enough to differentiate itself from upl. not to mention the exciting assassin aspect.

im still unsure of the specific rules of player lives bc eliminating a player from a team tour completely might be kinda silly idk. definitely something to discuss but its interesting. id consider being more lenient with the punishment or removing it altogether. also unsure of strict benching rules. you reaaally dont wanna force someone to play or punish them if they cant.

agree with wins via exceeding bounty cap

e: i realize these are my personal opinions so ideally more people weigh in!!!
 
As I understood it, there isn't any host input on the matches. Its essentially an ELO system that uses the bounty of players in that pool in a given week to match them against people with similar bounties on their heads - all the host is doing is matching closest pairs. The images in the OP show this in action. It means we don't need to decide on how many slots USM gets - its determined by how many players are in its pool for a given week, etc. Outliers are covered with the various rules like odd number of players = lowest bounty must change tier. The system seems fairly covered, but it probably isn't perfect yet.

It means top players are always facing top players in their respective tiers which is something unique to a team tournament (can't move slots to farm wins if you wanted like SPL/UPL) and makes strong records worth all the more. It means newer players can start out slower without facing the titans immediately and dying because they get auto Assassinated*. There's a lot of strategy possible by using the bounty of your players to gain matchups even across the 3 tiers available to them, which is why we lock 3 tiers max or that strategy is heavily reduced when the #1 player can go anywhere.

As for the forced playing and benching rules, I think it might be a necessary evil. If you have the #1 player with a shitload of cash, there may be situations where its safest to bench them for a week and let the other players try to make the gap to the 200k goal. Strategic? yea but teams winning because the #1 player is in a vault means other teams don't get the chance to stop that. We want to try and minimize abuse cases and I wonder if benching once throughout the entire tournament is a better idea than having the ability to dodge weeks 1, 3, 5, and 7. A player that does this probably doesn't have significant bounty to be worried about but I'm just thinking ahead.

* We actually changed the Assassin kills in between updates to help against people getting taken out quickly and have a safety net for top players getting lucked out. Essentially, in games that become auto-assassin (50% bounty + 5k difference between 2 players), the top player can't be killed, but the lower bounty player can. This deals with shady cases of the lower bounty player going for a cheese game because he's rewarded with a lot of bounty already but would also kill the top player outright under the old rule - its a no brainer to pull out every stop to do that. The top player takes a risk as it is (losing 50% of his large pool), but can kill the lower player if he wins. For a real life comparison - if you try to assassinate the king, you are gonna die if you fail. For the king, it isn't worth the risk to challenge the bottom challengers anyway because he doesn't gain any reward (bounty). This tries to level the rewards for both.

Note: this doesn't apply to games where a player gets enough wins to actually challenge as an assassin, only auto-assassin matches caused by bounty differences. Someone will die in assassin challenges, which is fair because you needed 4 and 6 wins in our "ELO system" to get the ultimate reward (picking someone and potentially taking them out), which should be pretty difficult to pull off in practice.

As for the 3 lives idea, I think its another necessary evil. If we don't have a way to clear out players then the bounty disparity becomes so large at the top and bottom that there become massive swings and a ton of auto-assassin games, which I went over earlier. Having a bunch of players with negligible bounty means nobody is progressing at the bottom because they are earning 1-2k a game. Knocking a player out gives the rest of their bounty to them, which adds to the high stakes nature of the tournament - if you have 20k but one life left, its time to pay attention because your opponent is about to win big.

Long post but I feel its worth going over potential outcomes to showcase the highs this tournament potentially has as a format and clarify some things. If it helps people come to terms with the rules (I edited 1.1 into the OP for new readers) then all the better.
 
Time is a bit short to get this tournament going and finished before SS releases, and we'd want it to be finished before then if we're doing it shortly. The ideal timeline would be to get Round 1 started before September 23rd at worst. That would probably mean captain signups this time next week.

The downside to starting now is the overlap with upcoming tournaments - we have Majors and Live (our last 2 tournaments) starting within 2 weeks. This tournament expects a lot of commitment to run smoothly and if our players jump into Majors and Live at the same time (not to discourage the idea) then things could get very messy for them.

The alternative which we're currently leaning towards is to launch the SS release with this tournament and include SS Ubers. That's when our tournaments are basically over and waiting for the Championship, which combined with SS hype works out in favor for Most Wanted's reception. I did hear feedback last year that the gap between tours ending and Championship was boring for most. This also gives us more time to figure out rules and edits to the format rather than rushing the first attempt out. We also still need an ideal name for this...

Feel free to keep dropping opinions.

and yes i will probably lessen the requirements to join this team tour, but i'll still be keeping a strict eye on things.
 
didnt get to reply earlier but i still wanna talk about how match ups are set up exactly. im not really a fan of matching up players of similar bounties and think the match up system should remain similar to the upl / spl style. this retains an element of familiarity and simplicity while providing an element of strategy for managers such as matching up low bounty players vs high bounty players for "low risk high reward" situations.

in summary, i think match ups and player tier submission should be standard like in previous tours with the only "special" characteristic being bounty points are the way to win and the assassin aspect.

i dont have time to comment on the other rules right now but i definitely disagree w some aspects. gonna try to make another post / edit this one sometime later in the week

i think the tour should be delayed as a rushed tour will probably be a bad experience for everyone involved.

if you can somehow gauge the opinion of the playerbase (maybe you already did, idk havent been in ubers disc for a while) and they wanna start it thats prob fine but id def wait until more ppl share their opinions. im really loving the concept but think it can be more simplified while being different and creative enough


Edit @ below: good points, im on board. still wanna discuss benching and player elimination though
 
Last edited:

Minority

Numquam Vincar
is a Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Tutor Alumnusis a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
im not really a fan of matching up players of similar bounties and think the match up system should remain similar to the upl / spl style.
I will not make this change and I'll try my best to concisely explain why this is the case.

1. Assassin status challenges are incompatible with strict team vs. team matchups; this would mean players can no longer freely challenge opponents and eliminate them. How does Sasha get to challenge Sweep when Sasha's team is supposed to play Bi-curious Bisharps and Sweep's team needs him to play BW against Death By Durians? Also keep in mind that multiple players will have assassin status in a given week. The assassin aspect is incompatible with strict team matchups.

2. Point 1 cannot be rectified by having assassin status players play both their assassin match and their team match. If the assassin match is scheduled before the team match, then a resulting elimination also nullifies the team match. This also creates a situation where an assassin status player would have to elect to take on additional responsibility by playing two matches in their critical week. Assassin status matches would overshadow the normally scheduled team vs. team matchup thereby invalidating the entire reason of using team vs. team matchups in the first place.

3. Strict team vs. team matchups cannot function fairly or without significant portions of the pool benched in a tour where players can be eliminated. Death By Durians has 7 members, Bi-curious Bisharps are down to 4, do Bisharps have to forfeit 3 games, or field 3 players twice, or do Durians have to bench 3 players? The elimination aspect is incompatible with strict team matchups.

4. Assassin status can no longer be granted via bounty domination in a pool if pools effectively no longer exist. Points 1 and 2 explain why this change is incompatible with the tour premise, but this exemplifies yet another hurdle that would have to be overcome.

5. The whole point of this new tournament premise is to promote player agency within a fresh competitive setting. Locking players into team matchups means that players cannot earn better matchups or steal higher bounties or target specific players through their performance. After going 3-0 in my first three weeks, why should I have to put half my hard-earned bounty against some random 4k player that the opposing team put against my slot when there's nothing to gain for me?

6. Strict team vs. team matchups promote cheese strategies. Since matches are not formed on the basis of bounty, high bounty players that are forcibly matched against low bounty players via the team vs. team system and are put into a situation where it is logically sound for their opponents to fish with RNG dependent strats and polarizing team matchups.

7. Using team vs. team matchups as opposed to individual pool-based bounty matchups reduces strategy because it lowers the number of interesting choices available to captains.

8. All else equal, an arbitrary matchup system by definition has less competitive merit than matchup via a numerical-based performance ranking.

9. Any possible benefits associated with using strict team vs. team matchups over bounty matchups in this specific setting do not outweigh the above deficits.

These are the points that quickly came to mind and there are likely more points that elude me without thinking about it more. There are several aspects of the tournament that are open for debate, but this specific proposal has major problems in multiple aspects, and most importantly, undermines the core aspects of the tour and its greatest potential strengths.
 
I think match up bountys of 3k vs 3k would be really bad, since people can buy players at low price that are incredible good but forgotten by comunity and then get easy wins because probs their 3k opps will be not that good
 
We're about a month out from SS and this tournament is still planned to go ahead shortly after its release. On review I think we have most bases covered and any real holes will have to be seen for ourselves via trying it out in practice, which will likely be hosted by Minority and myself.

I'm just bumping this thread so that if anyone has any suggestions, fears, or questions on the format, it would be great to have them heard ahead of time so that we can debate changes. Expect a recap post nearer to the tournament's signups which will likely close out this thread.
 
Victory:

• The first team to achieve 200,000 bounty by the end of a given week is the winner
• If two teams manage to achieve 200,000 bounty by the end of the same week, the team that exceeds by a higher margin is the winner
• If no team achieves 200,000 bounty by the end of Week 7, the team with the highest bounty upon the conclusion of Week 7 is the winner

Team Formation:

• Teams will be formed though a snake draft
• Draft order will be randomly assigned

Bounty:

• Bounty is held by each player and a team’s bounty is equal to the sum of all its player’s bounties
• A player’s initial bounty is determined by draft position

Team & Player Quantities:

• There will be exactly eight (8) teams
• Each team will have exactly nine (9) players
• The total number of initial players will therefore be seventy-two (72)

Tier Support & Registration

• Only strict generation tiers will be supported. This means no special tiers such as Best of Three Smogon Tour, etc.
• All battles will be best of one
• At signup, players will register for exactly three (3) of the supported tiers
• Captains may not submit lineups with more than four (4) players in a given tier per week
• Players may freely change tiers every week, but may only play tiers that they registered for at signup
• Tiers that receive less than two (2) matchups in a given week will be declared dead and will be removed for the remainder of the tournament. Any players registered in a tier that is declared dead will be allowed to swap their registration for one of the remaining tiers

Benching:

• A team may bench no more than one (1) player per week
• A player may not be benched for consecutive weeks
• A player that fails to complete their matches will be considered an effective bench for that week
• A player or players that cause two or more benches in a given week will have half their current bounty split between the highest valued players that are not on their team

Matchups:

• Weekly matchups are determined by a player’s bounty at the start of the week
• Players in a give tier are sorted by bounty and matched against their closest neighbor top down
• Two or more players with equally close neighbors will be randomly determined
• In the event that an odd number of players register for a tier, the lowest bounty player will be required to select another tier in which they are registered. If no alternate tier with an odd number of entrants is available, said player must be benched that week

Assassin Status:

• A player with Assassin Status may challenge any player within the tier they selected
• Victories with Assassin Status automatically eliminate the losing player if the victor had higher bounty at matchup
• A player with Assassin Status is automatically eliminated from the tournament if they challenge a player with a higher bounty and lose
• Assassin Status can be gained in the following ways:
o If a player would be matched against someone with a 50% or greater difference in their bounty and that difference is greater than 5,000, effective the current week​
o Upon a fourth win and a sixth win, effective the following week​

Bounty Transfer and Player Lives:

• The winning player takes 50% of their opponent’s bounty
• Bounty will not be split into denominations lower than 500, rounded up
• The minimum bounty transaction is 1,000
• Players start with three (3) lives
• A life is lost for every game a player loses
• Players that lose their third life are eliminated for the remainder of the tournament
• When a player eliminates another player, they receive 100% of their remaining bounty

The main changes are that we are offering more slots per team (from 7 to 9) to allow more players - the numbers will look similar to a UPL team minus substitutes. This could change in either direction based on player signups but this would go to a captain vote at that point.

Anyway, since the format is new and kinda complex i'm gonna leave a "guide" of sorts explaining the tour in laymans terms. This will mostly be a "learn by experience" tournament, but its not as complex as the rulebook lets on. Most of the ruleset is to protect against edge cases and have the tournament run smoothly. All of the complex stuff is for hosts (myself and Minority) to deal with and be aware of.

Players, here's all you really need to know:

- sign up with 3 tiers of your choosing from SS / USM / ORAS / BW2 / DPP / ADV.
- high activity is a requirement to play in this tournament because you can only be benched once every 2 weeks. everyone drafted (including captains) will play regularly.
- these tiers are LOCKED all tournament. choose wisely what you want to offer to a team. you cannot play any other tiers.
- you (might) get drafted via a snake draft method by captains. your value (starting bounty) is based from your draft position. drafted earlier = higher bounty. teams will all have the same total starting bounty by the end of the draft.
- your captain (and you) will decide what tier you play each week (only 1). your opponent will be someone in the same tier that week with a similar bounty to you. this is where things are very different from UPL because you don't "take turns" facing teams. its all down to whos in the pools.
- if you win, you take 50% of your opponents bounty. vice versa if you lose.
- if you lose three times, you are dead and cant play any more games. on the third loss, your final opponent takes all your bounty.
- work with your team to get the total bounty across all members before week 7 ends. that number is TBD (because its based off player count).

Optional info: Assassin status

- players who become assassins can pick a player in their tier pool and challenge them to a deathmatch. whoever loses is out of the tournament.
- players CAN become assassins (optional choice) if they win 4 or 6 games during the tournament.
- OR if they face someone with a drastically higher bounty than them. the higher bounty player cannot be killed via this method, only the smaller one.

Captains will want to read the ruleset and know more so they can properly make strategies and interact with the tournament hosts, because that will be a common situation. I can't promise the tournament will go perfectly but the idea is promising and its better to try and see how it goes in practice. Expect signups for captains to go up when the SS meta has time to settle in.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top