Hello and welcome to yet another WCoP Format Discussion thread lol
A lot of discussion was had about a month before the start of WCoP2022, which evidenced a good deal of unhappiness with x8 CG OU as the format, despite it remaining the most popular option available at the time. We want to nail down the tiers for WCoP23 as quickly as possible so that especially the smaller teams can get to work on finding their best lineups ASAP.
After more discussion with the TD team, we have identified a few potential formats and discussed them - here are the conclusions we came to.
- Full CG OU is not bad. While there are concerns of low variety negatively impacting the spectator experience, the format overall just works. We've seen three new champions in as many years, and I'd say people overall found the tournament adequately exciting. With that said, it is evident from the pre-WCoP22 threads that there is a lot of discontent with it too, so we're happy to look into alternatives.
- We would be unhappy with any format that introduces oldgens without also introducing lowtiers; we believe overall circuit representation between them should be roughly equal, and we also believe introducing oldgens would cause a lot of trouble to the smaller teams and the qualifier teams in general. While we aren't closing the doors on it entirely, we are unconvinced with the prospect of formats such as x2 SV OU + x8 oldgens, or x4 SV OU + x1 each gen 3-8.
- We are strongly considering formats along the lines of the "TDK/ABR proposals" from the WCoP22 threads - something along the lines of x4 SV OU, x3 most recent oldgens, x3 lowtiers. These formats were rather popular in the WCoP22 poll too, and we feel that they would introduce some variety without introducing significant unbalance in representation - we are happy with the notion that the most recent oldgens deserve slightly more representation than ancient ones overall, as they naturally still have larger playerbases. As for the issues with this format, picking which lowtier 'deserves' the spot is a bit of an headache and we haven't settled on a satisfying way to do so - arbitrarily picking, say, UU+RU+NU while excluding other Slam tiers (and Doubles?) feels odd. Also, expanding to 10 slots again will be rather demanding on smaller teams.
- A more radical idea that was suggested to us before WCoP22, but we decided to shelve until now because it requires more time to evaluate, is a format that introduces team picks. Teams would be split in groups of 4 (seeded and drawn based on last year's results to avoid significant unbalance), each team would pick a tier (from a pool of all oldgens + all slam tiers + potentially maybe DOU), and they would then face off in x4 SVOU x4 teampicks. In playoffs, each team would pick 2 tiers instead. We already trust team picks as a mechanic for SPL/SCL tiebreakers (and, in the past, WCoP tiebreakers too), so this isn't too far-fetched of an idea. We believe this has potential for a lot of hype - everyone likes to see the best players playing in their best tiers - but there were concerns over whether teams, especially the smaller ones, would be able to cover every tier, and whether that would influence game quality negatively overall. While I personally don't share these concerns and would be happy to elaborate in a later post, they were prevalent in the TD chat overall.
It also emerged, as a general consideration, that the WCoP format doesn't need to remain the same year after year as long as the formats for future years are decided early enough to allow all teams all the time they need for planning. As such, we would be happy to consider something like x8 CG OU on the first year of each new generation, shifting to something with a more diverse layout for subsequent years.
We are very much looking forward to your feedback now that WCoP2022 is under the belt! (And please keep it related to the format alone for now, more threads will come about eligibility etc in the future!)
A lot of discussion was had about a month before the start of WCoP2022, which evidenced a good deal of unhappiness with x8 CG OU as the format, despite it remaining the most popular option available at the time. We want to nail down the tiers for WCoP23 as quickly as possible so that especially the smaller teams can get to work on finding their best lineups ASAP.
After more discussion with the TD team, we have identified a few potential formats and discussed them - here are the conclusions we came to.
- Full CG OU is not bad. While there are concerns of low variety negatively impacting the spectator experience, the format overall just works. We've seen three new champions in as many years, and I'd say people overall found the tournament adequately exciting. With that said, it is evident from the pre-WCoP22 threads that there is a lot of discontent with it too, so we're happy to look into alternatives.
- We would be unhappy with any format that introduces oldgens without also introducing lowtiers; we believe overall circuit representation between them should be roughly equal, and we also believe introducing oldgens would cause a lot of trouble to the smaller teams and the qualifier teams in general. While we aren't closing the doors on it entirely, we are unconvinced with the prospect of formats such as x2 SV OU + x8 oldgens, or x4 SV OU + x1 each gen 3-8.
- We are strongly considering formats along the lines of the "TDK/ABR proposals" from the WCoP22 threads - something along the lines of x4 SV OU, x3 most recent oldgens, x3 lowtiers. These formats were rather popular in the WCoP22 poll too, and we feel that they would introduce some variety without introducing significant unbalance in representation - we are happy with the notion that the most recent oldgens deserve slightly more representation than ancient ones overall, as they naturally still have larger playerbases. As for the issues with this format, picking which lowtier 'deserves' the spot is a bit of an headache and we haven't settled on a satisfying way to do so - arbitrarily picking, say, UU+RU+NU while excluding other Slam tiers (and Doubles?) feels odd. Also, expanding to 10 slots again will be rather demanding on smaller teams.
- A more radical idea that was suggested to us before WCoP22, but we decided to shelve until now because it requires more time to evaluate, is a format that introduces team picks. Teams would be split in groups of 4 (seeded and drawn based on last year's results to avoid significant unbalance), each team would pick a tier (from a pool of all oldgens + all slam tiers + potentially maybe DOU), and they would then face off in x4 SVOU x4 teampicks. In playoffs, each team would pick 2 tiers instead. We already trust team picks as a mechanic for SPL/SCL tiebreakers (and, in the past, WCoP tiebreakers too), so this isn't too far-fetched of an idea. We believe this has potential for a lot of hype - everyone likes to see the best players playing in their best tiers - but there were concerns over whether teams, especially the smaller ones, would be able to cover every tier, and whether that would influence game quality negatively overall. While I personally don't share these concerns and would be happy to elaborate in a later post, they were prevalent in the TD chat overall.
It also emerged, as a general consideration, that the WCoP format doesn't need to remain the same year after year as long as the formats for future years are decided early enough to allow all teams all the time they need for planning. As such, we would be happy to consider something like x8 CG OU on the first year of each new generation, shifting to something with a more diverse layout for subsequent years.
We are very much looking forward to your feedback now that WCoP2022 is under the belt! (And please keep it related to the format alone for now, more threads will come about eligibility etc in the future!)
