hi, what about to suggest might seem insane to some tournament room regulars considering how disliked the current gen ou is no matter what but hear me out.
I think 3 SV OU slots will benefit this tour a lot. At this current moment, SV OU is white hot and has gained a lot of popularity with the casual community, with the ou room, ladder, and forums being the most active they have been in a long time. With this development, I think for the growth of the room and to keep casual interest in the tour it would be a real missed opportunity to not give OU more spotlight this time around. With all the players that come in from outside communities, 2 OU slots are pretty tight in terms of who is being drafted / who can play so making the tier more accessible is a good idea. There is also a lot of people from lower tiers who picked up SV OU recently and are doing quite well who are staples in this tournament (TheFranklin / Kythr for example) so adding another OU slot and giving more flexibility actually benefits the lower tier pools as well. People are only going to be more invested in the tour with home coming out, so I think for at least this year that we should seriously consider this.
This would mean either needing to drop a tier or adding an additional one. Personally, I feel nixing PU this year is the most logical call as it will be the most underdeveloped tier by a landslide by the time home comes around with how Alpha phases and tier shifts work. This will upset PU players but it's hard to argue that the tier will likely be very messy and generally barren for the most part until home shifts which won't happen till the later parts of this tour if the timeline is what we expect it to be. Adding another slot for one of the formats that have been around just as long as SV OU is an option to hit 12 slots. These tiers being; Ubers, LC, DOU and Mono. Ubers has a notably smaller community than the latter two and is particularly uninteresting atm so its prob fine to not consider it. LC is in sort of the same boat as Ubers where the community is small and the tier being pretty messy. LC players are far more diehard for the tier than Ubers players are but I feel LC is too niche to reasonably give it a 2nd slot? If there's interest I'm fine with it but just thinking from a general standpoint I don't think it would make sense. DOU is particularly niche compared to the rest of the slots but has a large community so can sustain the second slot. I think if taking this approach though the best option is mono. The tier is incredibly popular in the room and has a large community so it most definitely can sustain the second slot, lots of people are playing Mono in general right now thanks to tours like Monotype World Cup and influence from youtubers. Mono is pretty matchup based though so I don't know how I feel about it, but there are players who are consistently amazing in the tier such as Trichtonomy and mushamu who prove that type matchup isn't necessarily everything regularly. Another option is to include a metagame like CAP and NatDex which are notably smaller communities but have been around SV since month one, there is interest in these tiers and where their good players will come from the outside to play them given the tournament prize. I think adding Randbats is a bad idea as Randbats is way too niche and, well, random to take seriously in a competitive tournament. Some might draw a comparison to Mono as a counterpoint here but there are more options in builder and game to nullify sine of the random elements in Mono when Randbats is constantly the wild west. Also having Randbats in a tiebreak situation fucking sucks and should be enough to nix this suggestion all together. Finally adding a SS OU slot also puts you at 12 slots, personally, I think this is a fine option but not sure how interesting people would be in this given that there is out a lot of burnout with SS currently. Though, SPL has proven this tier gets far more shit than deserved with incredible games every week.
Alternatively, a bo3 slot including SV OU, SV UU, SV RU that cannot be selected in a tiebreak scenario, is an option that showcases all these SV tiers even more and think is more possible than ever in BLT due to how popular SV is in general at the moment. Though prepping 4 SV OU teams might be insanely overkill in a more casual setting like BLT. Maybe you can do the 2 Regular SV OU slots, a bo3 slot then add another one of the options i suggested? just spitballing ideas.
I think 3 SV OU slots in some form, whether that is through 2 regular slots and a bo3 or straight up 3 slots, should seriously be considered. There are far too many pros for this tournament to not include a third slot in some capacity. 2 SV OU slots is simply too little for how popular the tier is right now. With OU being smogons flagship format, it deserves another slot in some form.
Also please reduce the qualification phase. 4 cycles, 2 weeks each is insanely obnoxious and people lose interest before the tour even starts due to how long it takes.
edit: also SV OU council is super active in balancing the tier compared to other tiers so it will likely be in a playable state within a few weeks of home coming out. this isnt a knock on lower tier councils but mostly just acknowledging how active the ou council is at the moment which is mostly due to the popularity of the tier. which only makes me more confident that 3 sv ou slots is the way to go this time around given the mess that will be the home drop.
and would rather nobody feels pressured to play for 2882828282818 hours a week just to qual. So, keeping two 2 week qualifying cycles but extending guaranteed pool to top 16 sounds about right.
