I'm giving this advice assuming a few things:
1) In 2022, we will still have multiple (at least 2 and probably 3) UU team tours: UU premier league, UU world cup, and UU snake draft or substitutes of them).
2) The team tours will have roughly 50% of sign ups unable to play because of constraints
3) We're trying for the most competitive tours but they are all open to anyone who wants to sign up as long as they have a Smogon account
So here's some scattered thoughts:
1) Why are we considering replacing UULT? The reason wasn't mentioned in the OP. I think we should keep something with laddering considering how open and fair laddering is (anyone can do it, fewest barriers to entry)
2) The point system should be released for each tournament **before** it starts. UU majors had a messed up point system that was apparently only first commented on by me after I asked to see the circuit point distribution which apparently wasn't posted on the forums until I asked. It definitely gave too many points this year.
3) Pools format is horrible unless penalties for quitting is enforced, and I can understand why penalties are not really frequently enforced.
4) I dislike having leaders in pools. It seems to give an advantage to the leader since they don't have to play another leader. I believe all of these circuit tournaments should be completely open to anyone with a Smogon account and nobody should get an advantage.
5) If we keep a format with leaders, for transparency criteria to determine a leader should be posted at least after pools are made, if not before
6) If UU open has like 400, 500 or whatever number of players, it should have significantly more points awarded than tournaments with 100 or 150 sign ups. I think it should be more than 125 points which is what
Expulso suggested, 150 or even more seems reasonable.
7) If UULT is kept, we should enforce the rule that you have to sign up with your alt and post it **before** starting your laddering run. That way, everything is completely public and it's not on the onus of the players to decide whether to play on a hidden alt or not.
8) Players like
Torchic are pretty much coming into the community now purely because of their RBYness. I think this is good. We should add gen1uu to UU classic.
9)
Adaam made a point of "Double elimination is the objective more competitive format, and I dislike adopting an inferior one just because some people want a shorter tournament." Which sounds nice but also, there is a limit (we can't do best of 17 for every tournament match which should be more competitive than best of 1 or 3, there is always a trade off and Adaam's post wrongly suggests there is no tradeoff here). That said, I think this trade off is worth it and support having a double elimination tournament
10) I don't think we should add another tournament without getting rid of one.
But I propose getting rid of UU classic instead. The only reason I have is that it is not a gen8uu tournament (current gen) and I would like to unify the circuit under the current gen banner. It means it's easier to learn (one tier for the whole circuit). We should still keep UU classic but make it a UU subforum tour that doesn't award circuit points
11) Even if we don't add a live tour, I still support 10)
12) We should probably do more homework before deciding to do a live tour or not, compare playerbase sizes of Smogon Tour and our own playerbase, look at timezones, all of which can be roughly estimated by looking at signups for our team tours
Scattered thoughts...thanks for your consideration and making this thread