Announcement BLT X Format Discussion

kythr

save the ocean
is a Tutoris a Tiering Contributoris a Former Smogon Metagame Tournament Circuit Champion
NUPL Champion
1. 2x OU, 1x Ubers, UU, RU, NU, PU, LC, DOU, Monotype is ideal imo - 12 slots is too much and it’s unjust to cut PU for a speculative reason. i do like the idea of VGC as well actually, so i would argue for 10 slots with only 1 OU in that scenario

2. like velvet said, home should release before blt so i don’t see much of an issue. just play the metas as they are when the tour begins

3. shorter qual cycle could be nice, but i’m not gonna act like i know how to best restructure/fix this
 

Fragments

Bound to burn
is a Tiering Contributor
RBTT Champion
Hello all, I don't mean to take away from everything else being discussed, but I have a new discussion point that I'd like some feedback on. I already talked about this with a few people and to my surprise virtually everyone agreed so I felt it was worth bringing here. In short, I believe custom manager prices may be better than fixed prices. If I recall correctly, last year the price for managers was about 12.5k. In my opinion this was rarely a fair price, every team either got a player who woulda ordinarily gone for over 20k for dirt cheap, and others felt like they didnt live up to the price. Because of that we saw some broken combos (stareal + starmaster ou core comes to mind) and some others that were lacking.

In the spirit of competition, and considering this is not supposed to be an "elite" tour but rather one where even middle of the road guys should feel comfortable playing, I think custom prices would help here. No team should be gifted an all-star player before the tour even begins, and likewise, lower caliber managers should not be punished by having to choose between managing and playing because they know theyre not worth the price.

One of the major concerns I know people will bring up will be ambiguity, and how to determine the price of a playing manager. You could do this simply with categories, such as ranking managers in categories of say 12k, 16k, 20k or some other amalgamation. Or, custom prices for each and every manager still works as long as you have some objective criteria for assessing a player's value. Someone told me Ticken had a good formula for this, I'm sure other formulas exist as well.

I know that some people will not agree with this, especially teams that have a cracked playing manager they were hoping to swoop for a steal. But it is healthier for the tour as a whole to not give certain teams a major advantage right off the bat. I would urge everyone to not just oppose this idea because it doesnt benefit them, but rather consider how it could create for a better tour.
 

Baloor

Tigers Management
is a Community Contributoris a Team Rater Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a defending SPL Champion
PUPL Champion
Hello all, I don't mean to take away from everything else being discussed, but I have a new discussion point that I'd like some feedback on. I already talked about this with a few people and to my surprise virtually everyone agreed so I felt it was worth bringing here. In short, I believe custom manager prices may be better than fixed prices. If I recall correctly, last year the price for managers was about 12.5k. In my opinion this was rarely a fair price, every team either got a player who woulda ordinarily gone for over 20k for dirt cheap, and others felt like they didnt live up to the price. Because of that we saw some broken combos (stareal + starmaster ou core comes to mind) and some others that were lacking.

In the spirit of competition, and considering this is not supposed to be an "elite" tour but rather one where even middle of the road guys should feel comfortable playing, I think custom prices would help here. No team should be gifted an all-star player before the tour even begins, and likewise, lower caliber managers should not be punished by having to choose between managing and playing because they know theyre not worth the price.

One of the major concerns I know people will bring up will be ambiguity, and how to determine the price of a playing manager. You could do this simply with categories, such as ranking managers in categories of say 12k, 16k, 20k or some other amalgamation. Or, custom prices for each and every manager still works as long as you have some objective criteria for assessing a player's value. Someone told me Ticken had a good formula for this, I'm sure other formulas exist as well.

I know that some people will not agree with this, especially teams that have a cracked playing manager they were hoping to swoop for a steal. But it is healthier for the tour as a whole to not give certain teams a major advantage right off the bat. I would urge everyone to not just oppose this idea because it doesnt benefit them, but rather consider how it could create for a better tour.
Approved

Other tours do it so sure
 

Roginald

Always Raining
RBTT Champion
Hello all, I don't mean to take away from everything else being discussed, but I have a new discussion point that I'd like some feedback on. I already talked about this with a few people and to my surprise virtually everyone agreed so I felt it was worth bringing here. In short, I believe custom manager prices may be better than fixed prices. If I recall correctly, last year the price for managers was about 12.5k. In my opinion this was rarely a fair price, every team either got a player who woulda ordinarily gone for over 20k for dirt cheap, and others felt like they didnt live up to the price. Because of that we saw some broken combos (stareal + starmaster ou core comes to mind) and some others that were lacking.

In the spirit of competition, and considering this is not supposed to be an "elite" tour but rather one where even middle of the road guys should feel comfortable playing, I think custom prices would help here. No team should be gifted an all-star player before the tour even begins, and likewise, lower caliber managers should not be punished by having to choose between managing and playing because they know theyre not worth the price.

One of the major concerns I know people will bring up will be ambiguity, and how to determine the price of a playing manager. You could do this simply with categories, such as ranking managers in categories of say 12k, 16k, 20k or some other amalgamation. Or, custom prices for each and every manager still works as long as you have some objective criteria for assessing a player's value. Someone told me Ticken had a good formula for this, I'm sure other formulas exist as well.

I know that some people will not agree with this, especially teams that have a cracked playing manager they were hoping to swoop for a steal. But it is healthier for the tour as a whole to not give certain teams a major advantage right off the bat. I would urge everyone to not just oppose this idea because it doesnt benefit them, but rather consider how it could create for a better tour.
heavily agree here, some managers need to be nerfed without punishing lower skilled managers
 

Dj Breloominati♬

born to play, forced to john
is a Top Tiering Contributor
UPL Champion
Hello all, I don't mean to take away from everything else being discussed, but I have a new discussion point that I'd like some feedback on. I already talked about this with a few people and to my surprise virtually everyone agreed so I felt it was worth bringing here. In short, I believe custom manager prices may be better than fixed prices. If I recall correctly, last year the price for managers was about 12.5k. In my opinion this was rarely a fair price, every team either got a player who woulda ordinarily gone for over 20k for dirt cheap, and others felt like they didnt live up to the price. Because of that we saw some broken combos (stareal + starmaster ou core comes to mind) and some others that were lacking.

In the spirit of competition, and considering this is not supposed to be an "elite" tour but rather one where even middle of the road guys should feel comfortable playing, I think custom prices would help here. No team should be gifted an all-star player before the tour even begins, and likewise, lower caliber managers should not be punished by having to choose between managing and playing because they know theyre not worth the price.

One of the major concerns I know people will bring up will be ambiguity, and how to determine the price of a playing manager. You could do this simply with categories, such as ranking managers in categories of say 12k, 16k, 20k or some other amalgamation. Or, custom prices for each and every manager still works as long as you have some objective criteria for assessing a player's value. Someone told me Ticken had a good formula for this, I'm sure other formulas exist as well.

I know that some people will not agree with this, especially teams that have a cracked playing manager they were hoping to swoop for a steal. But it is healthier for the tour as a whole to not give certain teams a major advantage right off the bat. I would urge everyone to not just oppose this idea because it doesnt benefit them, but rather consider how it could create for a better tour.
agree with this strongly, heres something that I just came up with in a few mins so its rough around the edges, but you get the idea
1677184422938.png
 

Frixel

Double down
is a Social Media Contributor
In short, I believe custom manager prices may be better than fixed prices.
I love this idea, having already internally suggested it last year. However, the problem lies in how would we determine a player-manager's price:
  • Who is responsible for avaliating someone's worth? If we say either the staff, the community or a managers decision, it will always lead to a biased situation where (at least) someone is possibling intentionally tries to over or undervalue someone for their own benefit.
  • What are the criteria (and who defines them)? What are the fundamentals that define someone's value?
  • (Assuming we will divide them into groups? What are the groups and criteria to divide managers?
  • How far do we want to go? What is the level of subjectivity we want to use? Obviously, there will be discrepancies when evaluating someone, mainly if they are clearly not one of the best players
  • Relativity: Imo, how much someone is worth also depends on the average level of players sign ups (or at least the ones expected to be drafted)
Personally, I would heavily support having flexible playing-managers prices, but as much as I love the idea, I think we need to achieve a system that can work in practice, which will always depend on who and how are we evaluating.
 

Leni

formerly tlenit
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Past SCL Champion
RUPL Champion
Supporting:
  • 10 slots over 12
  • Cutting PU off. It will be way too big of mess in the beginning of meta game and they will surely focus on their own tournaments for development. One thing I would like to bring on table tho would be adding PU when tour is at its midpoint. This would allow the meta game settle a bit and having a vote of its inclusion between managers would be fair call
    • For meanwhile having BO3 (OU+ 1 pick from each players OR OU, UU, RU), NatDex OU or 3rd OU in this order for last slot
  • Shorter qual period with less points needed. eg. week + 25points
  • Custom manager prices meaning all managers can play if they decide so (cant recall if latter part was a thing previous year(s))
Cheers
 

Fragments

Bound to burn
is a Tiering Contributor
RBTT Champion
We've been talking about this in tours discord blt channel, but I feel like it is better and more organized to include all of my thoughts here.
Who is responsible for avaliating someone's worth? If we say either the staff, the community or a managers decision, it will always lead to a biased situation where (at least) someone is possibling intentionally tries to over or undervalue someone for their own benefit.
As mj mentioned in blt channel, this is prolly best left up to the other managers. My recommendation is to use a tiering system, ranking every manager from S through C let's say, and multiple players can be ascribed to a tier. To prevent intentional highballing, each manager has to justify their rankings with notable performances and records.
What are the criteria (and who defines them)? What are the fundamentals that define someone's value?
As mentioned above, I think it should primarily be based on past tour performances, not just in blt but across smogon. What was this player's best team tour? What about best individual tour? What is the highest caliber tour they've been drafted for, and what was their record there? Questions like this are a good starting point.
Assuming we will divide them into groups? What are the groups and criteria to divide managers?
Again as mentioned, a tiering system works here, and then you can denote each tier by a credit amount. For example, S tier players could be 20k, A tier 16k, B tier 12k, C tier 8k, or some other configuration. Those details can be determined later.
How far do we want to go? What is the level of subjectivity we want to use? Obviously, there will be discrepancies when evaluating someone, mainly if they are clearly not one of the best players
I think I already answered this one, as long as you can point to some objective result to support your judgement, I don't believe there will be any issues here.
Relativity: Imo, how much someone is worth also depends on the average level of players sign ups (or at least the ones expected to be drafted)
This is again something that can be figured out later in time, we don't have to actually do manager rankings for a while, so we can see what the general player pool is looking like before deciding manager prices.
 

seroo

girls do drugs
is a Tiering Contributor
Supporting:
  • 10 slots over 12
  • Cutting PU off. It will be way too big of mess in the beginning of meta game and they will surely focus on their own tournaments for development. One thing I would like to bring on table tho would be adding PU when tour is at its midpoint. This would allow the meta game settle a bit and having a vote of its inclusion between managers would be fair call
    • For meanwhile having BO3 (OU+ 1 pick from each players OR OU, UU, RU), NatDex OU or 3rd OU in this order for last slot
  • Shorter qual period with less points needed. eg. week + 25points
  • Custom manager prices meaning all managers can play if they decide so (cant recall if latter part was a thing previous year(s))
Cheers
Honestly i couldnt agree more with a good 90% of this, my only problem is the pu coming in half way just feels in itself wrong, mainly because you would , one have to force one of your players to learn the metagame and drop what they have been playing for the first few weeks or so and two, honestly we all know pu is kinda a strange metagame, last gen it was somewhat saved with sand and BO but this gen just feels , well sad.

UNLESS WE GET THE SQUAWK IN #SQUAWK4PU
 

Theia

You love me for everything you hate me for
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User Safety Lead
Due to Nintendo not giving us a HOME date in this Pokemon Presents, we will be adopting the Fuck It, We Ball approach.

- We will keep the format the same as last year (2x OU, 1x everything else)
- Manager signups will go up very shortly
- Due to popular demand, qualifying will be shortened to two cycles with the top 16 from each in the guaranteed pool. 30 points will remain the qualification bar. This means that the tour will start about a month earlier than planned.

Thanks everyone for their feedback, hope to see you all in the tour :psyglad:
 
Guess there's only manager prices left to decide on, what was ticken's formula that was previously mentioned? Fragments tiering idea wasn't bad with having to justify your ranking to validate.
 
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Fragments

Bound to burn
is a Tiering Contributor
RBTT Champion
Guess there's only manager prices left to decide on, what was ticken's formula that was previously mentioned? Fragments tiering idea wasn't bad with having to justify your ranking to validate.
Hello, so I had a conversation with Ticken that I'll sum up here. The formula as I thought was based on each manager's past 2 tour records with anyone who hadn't previously played defaulting to the middle price for fairness. For our purposes, idt this system works well for this tour because we may end up with many managers who have not played in the past 2 iterations, resulting in virtually everyone defaulting to the middle price which would essentially lead to the same ordeal as fixed pricing.

I then asked him about the system I came up with, that is a categorical ranking system where managers have to support their rankings with objective rationale so they are not able to highball other managers. He said if we are willing to put in the effort to make this work this could be a fine system, and any manager whose rankings are pretty different from the rest can simply be discarded.

The final issue to address then is what the price for each category would be. From our discussion in blt channel, I believe the general consensus is 3 categories with min price around 12k. I would therefore suggest doing either 12k-15k-18k or 12k-16k-20, I personally prefer the latter. Although this may seem like a big difference between min and max price, keep in mind some managers are tours room mains who dont branch out into forum tours very often, whereas others have played in spl/scl, so there is a vast range in skill. Getting such an esteemed player for 20k is honestly still a fair price, as we saw last year these players can easily go for over 20k up to even 30k so idt this is unreasonable. Ofc, would still love to hear others thoughts on the matter and am open to disagreement, so please let me know what you guys think.

Edit: There has also been a suggestion for categories to be 10k-15k-20k, I made 12k my lowest just because I assumed from prior convos this was the lowest people wanted managers to go for. But, if I was mistaken I absolutely support this other variation.
 
Last edited:

Theia

You love me for everything you hate me for
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User Safety Lead
Daki and I are currently making the managers fight over manager pricing, which brought up a question: Should managers be allowed to skip the qualification process to self-buy? The current rule is that they do have to qualify the normal way.

I don't feel strongly towards this and no one on staff (even trace) is old enough to remember when and why that rule was implemented, so I'm simply opening the floor for discussion on this.
 

Aqua Jet

Stardew
is a Contributor to Smogonis a Community Contributor Alumnus
if u think we r capable of managing the tour the idea is we r capable of playing in it so quals r pointless
I think that this is misleading, as some of the managers might not be able to qualify. Using myself as an example, I only actively play 2 of the 10 tiers included in this BLT Edition, meaning I only have the potential to realistically "outbuild" an opponent who is fluent in all of those tiers in 20% of the qualifying tournaments. Which is fine! Some people aren't very good builders but can get passed teams and play amazingly. Unfortunately, I am not the best clicker, and I would not confidently bold myself against many of the players vying to compete in this tournament. As a result of these two factors, I would likely not be able to qualify for BLT. However, because I am a manager, I would be able to play anyways. That doesn't really make sense to me.
Another problem I have with managers being able to qualify automatically is that, in my opinion, it's hardly fair to those that actually have to spend time to qualify. It doesn't make sense to me that just because someone was picked to manage a tournament they get to skip the qualifying phase when they could be unqualified to participate.
If it wasn't clear I do not support managers being able to play without having qualified at this time.
 

Lady Writer

on the tv
is a Tiering Contributor
I think that this is misleading, as some of the managers might not be able to qualify. Using myself as an example, I only actively play 2 of the 10 tiers included in this BLT Edition, meaning I only have the potential to realistically "outbuild" an opponent who is fluent in all of those tiers in 20% of the qualifying tournaments. Which is fine! Some people aren't very good builders but can get passed teams and play amazingly. Unfortunately, I am not the best clicker, and I would not confidently bold myself against many of the players vying to compete in this tournament. As a result of these two factors, I would likely not be able to qualify for BLT. However, because I am a manager, I would be able to play anyways. That doesn't really make sense to me.
Another problem I have with managers being able to qualify automatically is that, in my opinion, it's hardly fair to those that actually have to spend time to qualify. It doesn't make sense to me that just because someone was picked to manage a tournament they get to skip the qualifying phase when they could be unqualified to participate.
If it wasn't clear I do not support managers being able to play without having qualified at this time.
ok so but like most of the managers are actually good at the game and it’s very unnecessary to make them qualify. this is like the teacher that punishes the whole class when one kid behaves badly. if you wanna qualify anyway to show that you’re worthy of your position go off but it just seems ridiculous to make all the managers qualify considering how good the manager lineup is this year
 

Aqua Jet

Stardew
is a Contributor to Smogonis a Community Contributor Alumnus
ok so but like most of the managers are actually good at the game and it’s very unnecessary to make them qualify. this is like the teacher that punishes the whole class when one kid behaves badly. if you wanna qualify anyway to show that you’re worthy of your position go off but it just seems ridiculous to make all the managers qualify considering how good the manager lineup is this year
While I agree that a large majority of the managers are very good at Pokemon, my argument that an unqualified manager could feasibly be playing despite not being good at the game (and thus, unable to qualify regularly) still stands if the manager pair wants to play them for whatever reason. My point about fairness to those who weren't selected as managers / have no interest in managing also remains, as I still believe that it would be unfair to have people bypass the qualifying phase because they are believed to be competent enough to draft a solid team.
 

Leni

formerly tlenit
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Past SCL Champion
RUPL Champion
+1 to managers need to qual to play. think its been one of the cool parts of tournament. If it wasnt already implemented, allow both managers play through qual period
 

Isaiah

Here today, gone tomorrow
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UM/OM Leader
Honestly, it shouldn't even matter if a [given] manager is good at the game or not. There are plenty of users who are extremely good at the game who we force to get reqs anyway because that's how it works: once you get on the leaderboard, you're "best" enough to be in the pool of players that managers can bid on. Being chosen to be a manager shouldn't mean you get to dodge the actual "Leaderboarder" part of BLT if you wish to play--that's like half (if not more) of the whole point of the tour. It's traditionally sound and it's only 30 points guys, come on now ;-;
 

MTB

MagearnaTheBoss
is a Tiering Contributor
Another +1, seems fine to me with the managers having to qualify as a player the same way the normal players qualify, and as Isaiah and tlenit have said, it’s one of the main and cool parts of this tour as a whole. Support massively.
 

Theia

You love me for everything you hate me for
is a Tournament Directoris a Site Content Manageris a Social Media Contributoris a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Top Smogon Media Contributoris a Top Dedicated Tournament Hostis a Battle Simulator Admin Alumnus
User Safety Lead
Hi it's me I'm back. Two things:

1. With widespread support both from the managers and the community as a whole, we'll be keeping the requirement for managers to qualify to play.
2. After internal discussions pertaining to historical tournament participation (last year notwithstanding) and the reduced number of cycles this year, we will be lowering the qualification bar for the general pool to 20 points in a single cycle.

As always, thanks everyone for your participation and feedback :psyglad:
 

Daki

is a Social Media Contributoris a Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Smogon Media Contributoris a member of the Battle Simulator Staff
Hello, some points have been brought up recently and here are some decisions that have been taken recently:

  • Players will only be allowed to participate in the qualifiers with 1 alt account to avoid last year's issues. Point transfers will not be accepted during this period.
  • All players will have to play at least 1 game before the end of the tournament for this season, compared to the previous season where players had to play before the fifth week.
This information will also appear on the signup thread which will be posted very soon!
 

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