Tournament Winter Team Tournament Format Discussion Thread

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We’ve been discussing the format for this tournament in mod channel but have been inconclusive, so we wanted to get the opinions of the playerbase on what people want to see most. The current options are between UWC format and some form of auction draft, be it the old UWL format or something else entirely. Feel free to share ideas and preferences here.
 
Uwc format is the worst format ever possible. So unless it changes to pools, would prefer uwl.

Imo best thing is to make uwc have qualifiers, so there wont be too many teams and the weak teams will be eliminated. So there wont be any bs like its not a competitive tour
 
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Please not UWC. I’ve said this a million times over but what on Earth is the appeal of a tour where at best 6 teams have a chance at winning and the rest were dead on arrival anyways. Sure playing for your country can be fun for some people but the tour is far from competitive. I’d want to see some kinda UWTT come back, possibly even just last years UWC format but, as an auction tour not split by regions.
 
Going back to UWC would be the worst outcome with the second worst outcome being Boosted UWTT. IMO the purpose of this thread should be to explore some new ideas, and if none of them are liked enough then we can default to UWTT (but no boosted please). Also I agree with Skimmy that UWC weeks was a terrible idea, if we go back to that do pools + add GSC.

Any ideas should IMO be a new take on the auction (team forming phase). Anything that changes how games themselves work or are weighed (like the boosted tournament) are extremely lame and don't even change how the tournament pans out much. What I'd enjoy is being able to team with a different group of players / team in a different structure to UPL, and I did like how Most Wanted allowed teams to be flexible in what tiers they field.

Here are "my" best ideas:
1) SparksBlade's format: proposed here
  • My ideal format would be 2x RBY-SS (to form 16 slots) + 6 SV + 2 Bo3 (7-8-9). Can be adjusted to have an old gens Bo3 like 4-5-6, 3-4-5, or whatever is popular, maybe slightly less or more SV. Again nothing needs to be set in stone, exact numbers can be altered based on signups.
  • The auction itself should pretty much be "Double UPL". So ~350k credits, probably up to 3 manager selfbuys, up to 4 retains in the future years, manager groups of up to size 4, 4/5 substitutes (or perhaps more).
  • 4 or 5 teams - expect 5 teams to demand many signups though. May need to cull slots. But you get a 9 week long tournament which is standard.
  • The season will involve teams playing every other team twice for 6 weeks, before the best 2 differential (or week score - but lets not have mass dead games) teams advance to finals. So 7 weeks maximum, not including tiebreakers - I'd expect TBs to be rare in this tournament.
  • pros:
    • Way different auction structure, with super teams.
    • Each generation will have a second slot so every mainer will have someone to work with which is awesome - often I'm forced to do SS on my own which is fine, but a bit boring for a team tour.
    • Lots of UPL players find themselves with the same group of people every year, personally I've been a vish for 5 years which is great, but something like this would let me team with a different group of players
    • If you have a group of 6 SV players together or like 2 of each gen's players together, expect meta advancement to happen more
  • cons:
    • Maybe too ambitious on signups?
    • Maybe the tournament is too short ? (6-7 weeks sounds like a good amount of time to me though).
2) Flex Slots: described here.
  • pros:
    • More exciting weeks as the week structure is different
    • Get to see top and new players try different gens,
    • Way more exciting auction as teams can be tailored towards specialism (you could have a BW team with 4 BW players lol, or an SV specialist team with 6 SV players)
  • cons:
    • Someone might have to play a gen they don't like or aren't comfortable in - I see this as a positive tbh. Imagine seeing Hack vs Highlord in SS
I'm not going to elaborate on the following ideas because I know how these threads work - if I try push too many ideas none of them will end up with traction - but here's some extras:

3) Big Jerk Teams like Covid PL. Basically a super UGTT. But not all in 3 days ofc
4) UPL but you can't play any tier you played in UPL
5) Most Wanted
6) Old gens only
 
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Just wanna chime in to say that I'd love to have a team tournament with double adv ubers slots. For specific old gen specialists like me, double slots is probably the biggest change you can make to a weeks based team tour that will make things feel actually different from upl (or some budget/gimmick upl). I don't really care about whatever makes up the rest of the tournament so if the best way to justify this is with the structure outlined by icemaster then that's good enough for me.

Beyond that, I liked wcup a lot more with pools so if we don't do something new then I'd rather just go back to that. Basically what stories said, tbh.
 
Fwiw UWC format was dogshit. For me it was a miserable experience especially after that incident. Pools are way better for a WC and p much everyone will agree on that. That being said a post above bugged me
Princess Autumn said:
Please not UWC. I’ve said this a million times over but what on Earth is the appeal of a tour where at best 6 teams have a chance at winning and the rest were dead on arrival anyways. Sure playing for your country can be fun for some people but the tour is far from competitive. I’d want to see some kinda UWTT come back, possibly even just last years UWC format but, as an auction tour not split by regions.
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World cups by nature are unfair. Some team like Nepal can't perform the same as USNE. In every world cup there will be teams which can never win that tour. This is not limited to UWC by any means. However a big part of what I find charming about WCs is the growth of teams and players as a whole. India like 2-3 years ago could never make any playoff and were "dead on arrival" . Still then we kept on playing, improving and now I can say we are a formidable team in any WC.

WCs provide the necessary exposure and experience for the weaker teams and players. It is a major chance for unknown players to show their talent. Your reasoning shouldn't be applied to UWC. If the format is right, UWC should be conducted.
 
MMII said:
Just wanna chime in to say that I'd love to have a team tournament with double adv ubers slots. For specific old gen specialists like me, double slots is probably the biggest change you can make to a weeks based team tour that will make things feel actually different from upl (or some budget/gimmick upl). I don't really care about whatever makes up the rest of the tournament so if the best way to justify this is with the structure outlined by icemaster then that's good enough for me.

Beyond that, I liked wcup a lot more with pools so if we don't do something new then I'd rather just go back to that. Basically what stories said, tbh.
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Bruv thinks enough people play that tier that they can have double slots

Think people can consider an all bo3 team tour, though people may push back on this idea
Additionally maybe a tour where there’s a flex slot(s) that can be as ridiculous as managers want, like monotype Ubers oldgen or whatever crack people can come up with, anything to make the week just a little bit more fun lol
 
Piyu said:
World cups by nature are unfair. Some team like Nepal can't perform the same as USNE. In every world cup there will be teams which can never win that tour. This is not limited to UWC by any means. However a big part of what I find charming about WCs is the growth of teams and players as a whole. India like 2-3 years ago could never make any playoff and were "dead on arrival" . Still then we kept on playing, improving and now I can say we are a formidable team in any WC.

WCs provide the necessary exposure and experience for the weaker teams and players. It is a major chance for unknown players to show their talent. Your reasoning shouldn't be applied to UWC. If the format is right, UWC should be conducted.
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Ironic how you state USNE when they literally couldn’t form a team without merging with Midwest here. You’re right that the problem isn’t exclusive to UWC but my points about world cups being terrible as a whole for a secondary team tour. I don't see WCs as any different to a jerk PL that's arbitrarily divided by geopolitical borders.

A big question for this thread should be who's the tour for. Some relevant numbers, out of the 196 players in UWC III:
  • 78 (39.8%) played in UWC III and UPL XII (last UPL)
  • 93 (47.45%) played in UWC III and (UPL XII or UPL XI) (the past two UPLs combined)
For a comparison on the other side, 136 people played in UPL XII, 129 in UPL XI, and 189 played in one or the other:
  • 78 (57.35%) players played in UPL XII and UWC III
  • 68 (52.71%) played played in UPL XI and UWC III
  • 93 (49.21%) players played in (UPL XII or UPL XI) and UWC III
Yes, this does include RBY/GSC players in the UPL pool which does slightly change the statistic so take it with a grain of salt but, it's not a stretch to say that UWC fundamentally caters to a different crowd - primarily players who don't play in UPL; only just over half of all UPL players play in UWC. Whether that's because a lot of UWC players lack the exposure as a player, they're a non-mainer who's playing because it's a World Cup, or simply aren't good enough for UPL that's hard to say, but I don't think its egregious to say that an Ubers team tour should be for primarily the Ubers playerbase and UWC seemingly doesn't fit that. I could point out more flaws of a world cup system but the rest are pretty universal and most people are aware of them and simply don't care so I ain't fighting a fight not worth fighting.

Icemaster said:
Flex Slots: described here.
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Personally love this idea and dittoing support for it or just a literal UWC clone but as an auction (4 SV, 1 SS-ADV). Not much more to say. Jerk PL is also a fire idea but I know that's not gonna sit well with people.
 
Fc said he'd buy me lunch if I posted here, so here I am. He also said if he forgets then Aberforth can buy me dinner instead. I think the discussion could be broken down in a few ways:

1) World Cup or Non-World Cup

This is deciding how the teams are going to be. World Cup would mean that pools in the traditional format is likely the only option from (besides deciding what the slots are), but if non-wcop is chosen, then you have some more options like:

2) Auction draft, snake draft, or some other type of draft

Auction draft would turn this into UPL 2, but I actually wanted to suggest a snake format like what SCL used to be, where there's no prices, but rather you have to pick players 1 at a time if you're able to get them before being sniped by the people before/after you. Snake does have the issue that you'd only be allowed to get a fixed number of players (probably 14) instead of having more than that. Those are my more serious suggestions, but if you want something fun:

3) Big teams with auction (closer to jerk PL)

The idea is pretty much what corona PL used to be, you'd have something like 20 vs 20 instead of 10 vs 10 and then play weeks from there. You'd get a larger starting budget and idk what the tiers would be, but I'd probably do 6 teams with 5 weeks into playoffs for this. Ideally you meet a lot of people and make new friends have a blast with your army. You can also throw in some fun slots like a best of 3/5 for past gens or whatever else.
 
Haven't read the thread in detail but an idea that I think would be cool:

instead of a traditional auction a blind auction sounds exciting. idk if that's the correct name but what I'm envisioning is a team noms a player, and then managers submit a bid that is hidden until a timer goes off (prob a minute w 5 second warning?), and then the bids are revealed and highest bid gets the player.

sounds like it could be fun in conjunction with the other formats proposed here. I like the snake draft but historically it's been pretty disliked and it also definitely makes the auction less exciting to watch despite being pretty fun to plan
 
Like I said last year I just want to play DPP Ubers with my Oceania peeps. Sounds a bit selfish since it's a good team and not a struggling one and therefore I've never been part of the frustration of being in a team that struggles to fill slots esp in old gens.
Agree pools are probably better since there was a lot of burnout associated with last UWC although you still have the issue where you give everyone a couple of weeks deadline and everyone just does it at the last minute anyway.
 
After the discussions here an internal vote was held within mod channel. After reading this thread the general concensus was that last UWC's format was bad, pools would be better, but a notable amount of people would like to try something new or are indifferent as long as it isn't an older format that was flawed like the boosting format or weeks UWC. The format for this year's winter tournament as voted by the mods will be the sparksblade format. 4 teams, large player count (~30), double round robin regular season.

I personally was in favour of UWC, and I know a lot of players were as well, but there were valid concerns with the format and led to most of the mods wanting to switch it up. UWC did drive the most signups to ubers tournaments, surpassing even UPL last year, but it runs into a lot of logistical issues when hosting. There's an inherent imbalance that people don't like, especially shown by the pool A vs pool B debates people had last year. This along with issues regarding eligibility, number of teams not being static which leads to issues when trying to distribute between pools / qualifiers, and potential conflicting captains and in region issues made it more difficult to host than a standard auction format.

This doesn't mean UWC will be gone forever, this is the 5th time we've switched up the winter tour format in recent years, but we're trying this format to hopefully find something that people enjoy and maybe be a consistent one we have. If it gets good feedback that's great, if not then we'll reassess next year and potentially return to UWC or another format. The winter tour ultimately is meant to be our experimental one as it tries to differentiate itself from UPL to make it actually meaningful instead of UPL lite, so hopefully this format works well for everyone.

The proposed tiers will be as follows (subject to slight change when signups go up in about a week):

SV x6
SS x2
SM x2
ORAS x2
BW x2
DPP x2
ADV x2
GSC x2
RBY x2
BO3 (7-8-9) x2

Total: 24 slots + 6 subs, 30 players

Will consider dropping some number of SV / BO3 if these end up being too much but this is the initial idea.
 
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