About The Current Slam Format

[Scottie]

I wont waste your time but while it's still not too late I wanted to give my 2 cents about the BFL3 for this years slam. I was skeptical about the format even before the lc open signup inflation but now I believe the format is completely unfair given it is likely to heavily reward little cup players, in a playoffs sense its not very representive of how usual slam playoffs look, you will find 10+ players farming from all usage tiers giving a very competitive, reasonable and exciting playoff. This year has the potential to be the most volatile slam playoff ever. Another issue I have is BFL3 doesn't reward consistency across all tiers, you could have someone amass 20+ points and have them not make playoffs which I think is personally unfair as consistency across all tiers could be regarded as equally impressive as outright winning an open. I don't have much else to add other than I don't see an issue wit BFL5 at all. It rewards Open winners and consitent players and removes the ongoing massive lc open problem. I know the tour is ongoing but I felt I needed to get the word out there anyways.

 

[dingbat]

i personally think extra points should only be awarded for reaching the last 4/5 rounds of each open, instead of each win from 4th round and beyond. as of now, quarterfinalists in lc are projected to be awarded the same amount of points as the nu/pu open winner, which, as the op implies, doesn't sit right with most, if not all, of the tour community.

with this proposal, these would be the points rewarded for reaching these rounds if the last 5 rounds are rewarded extra points:

current uu/ru/nu/pu/probably uber open point awards

winner: 14 for uu/ru, 13 for nu/pu
finals: 11
semis: 9
quarters: 7
5th round: 5
4th round: 3
3rd round: 2
2nd round: 1

new uu/ru/nu/pu/uber open point awards

nothing changes with 8-round opens

current projected lc open point awards with 2048 players

winner: 19
finals: 17
semis: 15
quarters: 13
8th round: 11
7th round: 9
6th round: 7
5th round: 5
4th round: 3
3rd round: 2
2nd round: 1

new projected lc open point awards

winner: 16
finals: 14
semis: 12
quarters: 10
8th round: 8
7th round: 6
6th round: 5
5th round: 4
4th round: 3
3rd round: 2
2nd round: 1

this would not only lessen the point inflation with any particular open garnering an extremely high number of participants compared to the others (while still rewarding winners of larger opens with more points), but also be less punishing to opens with significantly lower numbers of signups, especially with this current format of playoff determination.

edit: for a little extra clarification, winners in 3-player finals would be rewarded the same amount of points as winners in 2-player finals with 1 extra round, since one would need to beat two opponents to win; i.e. the winner of a 10-round slam with 2 finalists would be awarded the same points as the winner of a 9-round slam with 3 finalists.

 

[Luigi]

I wont waste your time but while it's still not too late I wanted to give my 2 cents about the BFL3 for this years slam. I was skeptical about the format even before the lc open signup inflation but now I believe the format is completely unfair given it is likely to heavily reward little cup players, in a playoffs sense its not very representive of how usual slam playoffs look, you will find 10+ players farming from all usage tiers giving a very competitive, reasonable and exciting playoff. This year has the potential to be the most volatile slam playoff ever. Another issue I have is BFL3 doesn't reward consistency across all tiers, you could have someone amass 20+ points and have them not make playoffs which I think is personally unfair as consistency across all tiers could be regarded as equally impressive as outright winning an open. I don't have much else to add other than I don't see an issue wit BFL5 at all. It rewards Open winners and consitent players and removes the ongoing massive lc open problem. I know the tour is ongoing but I felt I needed to get the word out there anyways.

slam playoffs last year has the bottom 3 seeds get replaced with BFL3, slam the year before that has the 2 bottom seeds get replaced, it's not that volatile. as for your hypothetical player that gets 20 points spread out yeah, he'd get shafted but the guy that lost 3 opens r1 and still kept going and won out on the others benefits instead, which is at least equally valuable, and the latter is far more common than the former if you check previous slam standings. BFL3 works perfectly fine for what it's trying to do if you adjust for the freezai bump, speaking of which

i personally think extra points should only be awarded for reaching the last 4/5 rounds of each open, instead of each win from 4th round and beyond.

this is genius, you guys should definitely do this

 

[Jaajgko]

Please implement dingbat's suggestion. There's no apparent drawback and it improves the balance of this tournament and its future iterations in case another youtuber decides to "make smogon history". This could also be applied to the Smogon Classic.

 

[Irpachuza]

That is a great idea, and it should be applied to the current LC Open. But why make it a blanket rule across all Opens? What happens if, on the future, the playerbase grows and most Opens go to 11 rounds? Wouldn't it be a little unfair to give only 1 point to people winning a 5th match -if the playerbase is active (we know that 1500 of the 2000 ins of the current Open LC will hardly schedule)-? Or worse, what happens if a singular Open gets way less signups than the rest? Will its Round 1 grant 2 points from starters? I believe that the current system of "first three wins grant only one point" works fine for our current (real) playerbase and offers a fair balance between points and efforts/performance.

With that said, the application of the idea is absolutely correct and necessary to the current situation, but I think it should be ruled as an "emergency" or "case by case" ammend. It sounds like a soft ruling to serve as precedent could be "If a singular Open gets excessively more signups than the others, and therefore it's entailed to have a signficant larger number of rounds, at hosts best judgement, it will only grant extra points on the same number of late rounds as the mean number of rounds that will grant extra points on the other Opens."

Settling on "the mean of the rest" instead of "4/5" helps having a ruling that would be robust across the years in case of changes on the number of the active playerbase (and having a mean 9 rounds on the current system means, as dingbat proposed, that the extra points will be given on the last 5 rounds).

 

[dingbat]

That is a great idea, and it should be applied to the current LC Open. But why make it a blanket rule across all Opens? What happens if, on the future, the playerbase grows and most Opens go to 11 rounds? Wouldn't it be a little unfair to give only 1 point to people winning a 5th match -if the playerbase is active (we know that 1500 of the 2000 ins of the current Open LC will hardly schedule)-? Or worse, what happens if a singular Open gets way less signups than the rest? Will its Round 1 grant 2 points from starters? I believe that the current system of "first three wins grant only one point" works fine for our current (real) playerbase and offers a fair balance between points and efforts/performance.

With that said, the application of the idea is absolutely correct and necessary to the current situation, but I think it should be ruled as an "emergency" or "case by case" ammend. It sounds like a soft ruling to serve as precedent could be "If a singular Open gets excessively more signups than the others, and therefore it's entailed to have a signficant larger number of rounds, at hosts best judgement, it will only grant extra points on the same number of late rounds as the mean number of rounds that will grant extra points on the other Opens."

Settling on "the mean of the rest" instead of "4/5" helps having a ruling that would be robust across the years in case of changes on the number of the active playerbase (and having a mean 9 rounds on the current system means, as dingbat proposed, that the extra points will be given on the last 5 rounds).

as for the former scenario, i personally wouldn't see an issue with giving 1 point for a fifth rounder. this just means we have a far more competitive landscape as a whole, and looking at the big picture, there will always be a large group of players worthy enough to win the entire slam that won't even make the playoffs. as for the latter scenario, i don't really ever see an open having significantly fewer rounds vs the others since there will always be an incentive for trophy prospects to maximize points via joining every open with this kind of tournament format. additionally, if grand slam ever reached a point where there's only 5/6 rounds in any given open (assuming this isn't due to a massive drop in the overall active playerbase), then an argument can be made that the particular open should just be cancelled.

also i miscalculated the number of rounds, it would be 8 rounds for the non-lc opens, not 9

 

[Irpachuza]

additionally, if grand slam ever reached a point where there's only 5/6 rounds in any given open (assuming this isn't due to a massive drop in the overall active playerbase), then an argument can be made that the particular open should just be cancelled.

This should be a clear ruling then, and I really don't see why it should be cancelled that same year. And the proposal still applies if there is a massive drop of the playerbase. Acommodating by the mean on extreme cases still helps without having to "marry" to an unvariable number of extra-point rounds.

It's nbd tbh, your idea is great and I'm just pointing that a blanket implementation seems, in general, suboptimal since it lacks accounting for variation on the rest of the Opens on the mid-long term.

 

[Finchinator]

The TDs have made a ruling pertaining to this matter. Thank you for discussing and collect your prayers for LC Open hosts.