Tournament PUWC III: Format Discussion Thread

[Chloe]

Art by AmirAlexander

PUWC III - Format Discussion
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Hello. It's that time of year again. Another PUWC tour, but hopefully for the better this time! I've heard several people from poorer performing teams complain about the format in the past so it sounds like a good idea to discuss this ahead of time. I have a few suggestions on changes we should make this time but I'm of course always interested to see what opinions people may have. We also will again have a custom avatar prize for the winning team.

Pools > Weeks
By moving to a pools based tournament instead of weeks, the tournament wouldn't drag on an excessive amount, and it'd be in line with the official WCoP as well. It would most likely be three weeks of pools into two weeks of playoffs (with a potential additional week for a tiebreaker). 5-6 weeks TOTAL sounds a lot more manageable especially with the new generation rolling around.

Formats
I'm not too sure on this myself, but did people prefer the Bo3 slot we had in PUPL, or should we keep this simpler and keep it as 4 SS. Alternatively, could we use this as an opportunity to test out a relatively unplayed tier like ADV? SS is probably the lowest barrier of entry tier we have so I'm unsure about decreasing the amount of slots we have for it; however, we have had a lot of SS tournaments recently.

Teams
While we can't make definitive calls on what the teams will be we can make some safe assumptions and ideally tweak some of the regions to make it more balanced. Established performing teams like Brazil, AAA and France should probably stay but how do we give teams like India / UK / Canada / LatAm a fairer chance? Should West + South, two strong regions on their own, be merged again? Should the whole of team Europe stay intact after many people considered the team busted last year? One potential solution is splitting Europe into two teams, include the UK, but this may not be popular, so I'm of course interested to see what people think.

Any other suggestions or feedback from last year is also very welcome!!
Looking forward to hopefully a fun team tournament to close out the generation!

 

[Leni]

As a host from two previous years, I think its worth of a shot to comment.

First to say, I might be able to CO-host and help with the sheets that are taken to out of norm and visually showing the difference between the weeks.

All in all, from my experience I would'nt question team India which has been activity wise the best team through last two years back to back. LatAm had a fair shot last year and preferred own team and I think its fair to tag dahli and Raichy to gather their toughts. They were always very helpful and good manner meaning if they can gather a team, I would support it personally.

From the given teams for now, Canada and UK are big question marks to me. Altho, we used to work this around for last couple years by opening both (especiallly last year) manager+player signup at the same time and from there make the call whats the best for the tour.

Tier wise I still do not support ADV, but instead like the idea of BO3.

More than happy to discuss about last couple years and overall feedback from there. Can CO-Host with proactive host if needed and keep it authentic that way. All I hope in nutshell from PUWC is people having fun and teams being based on from people are located from. End of the day this is a wordl cup and the tour should respect that . Good luck to everyone participating, hope you guys have a good run and good time.

 

[Hera]

Here to comment on some things. Gonna be assuming 12 teams unless stated otherwise.

Played OMWC the past two years in pools and weeks format and I vastly preferred the weeks format. Pools felt very hard to play because the optimal move is to john until the end of the 3 weeks so you have the most amount of building time. Considering there's nothing forcing you to just play eariler (beyond the threat of a dead game or an act win, which an be avoided by scheduling well in advance), this is what I would feel would end up happening if pools was chosen over weeks. If time is an issue, i.e we don't want the tour to overlap with the new gen (I don't understand that reasoning considering SS PU will continue to be the main gen until March), it's possible to have a mix of both formats: 2 pools of 4 teams each lasting for 3 weeks, then playoffs. This would mean a strict limit of 8 teams though and would also lead to less games than pools would, assuming 10-12 teams exist for pools. It depends on how many teams PUWC, which is not a question I can answer, but assuming the number remains the same and that time is a big concern, I guess 3 week pools is better than a 5 week standard format (although I would personally take the latter over the former).

Don't have any opinion on splitting up or merging teams but I think if there ends up being too many, then priority should go to teams that made playoffs last time. This would leave us with Brazil, Europe, AAA, France, and US NE (if you count tiebreakers as playoffs). There should be enough teams left after that to use proper judgement, but worst comes to worst we should have time for a quick qualifying round between teams that haven't done super well the past two PUWCs.

This wasn't mentioned but one of my biggest issues in these last two iterations were that dead games were extremely high. I get this is a for-fun tour but even in other team tours that don't really reward anything, seeing one or two dead games is rare. Last year had a stunning TWELVE dead games, and the first iteration also had 5 deadgames. There definitely should be something this year that stops things like Latin America and Midwest deciding they simply would not play during Week 5, or people from eliminated teams not scheduling and not playing even though they signed up for the whole tour. I really don't wanna be harsh on these things but maybe barring a team from participating in the next PUWC if they exceed a certain amount of deadgames (3 or more is my suggestion)? Either that, or we get eliminated teams deadgaming each other again.

3 SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / 1 BW / 1 DPP / 1 ADV is my personal choice. Bo3 worked in PUPL because the tour meant more and more prestigious players signed up. PUWC is not at the same level as PUPL, so my suggestion would be to actually give ADV a chance for once. If not, 4 SS is imo the way to go here.

 

[Leni]

This wasn't mentioned but one of my biggest issues in these last two iterations were that dead games were extremely high. I get this is a for-fun tour but even in other team tours that don't really reward anything, seeing one or two dead games is rare. Last year had a stunning TWELVE dead games, and the first iteration also had 5 deadgames. There definitely should be something this year that stops things like Latin America and Midwest deciding they simply would not play during Week 5, or people from eliminated teams not scheduling and not playing even though they signed up for the whole tour. I really don't wanna be harsh on these things but maybe barring a team from participating in the next PUWC if they exceed a certain amount of deadgames (3 or more is my suggestion)? Either that, or we get eliminated teams deadgaming each other again.

the dead game part is actually very relevant. After first iteration we came up with the solution of deadgames awarding no advantages at all. This meaning if you wanted to get extra points from deadgames you had to call for activity win.

Example: team A was leading 4-3 week and deciding game was a dead game. this granted only one (the tie point) point to the leading team as minimum points to grant 2 full points was 5 wins per week.

Another example: team was leading 3-2 the week and remaining games never happened and no one called for action. Both team received 0 points. For one point u needed to win 4 games and to gain full two points u neede 5 wins. therefor act calls and "forcing" teams to schedule properly came into play

What comes to other point you brought as team number, last two year formats was also lot based on how many teams signed up with full teams. Idea has always been to get as many teams as possible basically. Naturally for upcomign iteration i cant surely call whats up, but thats what been up for last two years.

 

[DiannieRatson]

I posted here to try to push for GSC PU. If ADV is considered to be given a chance in here, why not us in GSC too? I know some takes this tour seriously and others play this for fun. As an audience, it is also nice to see a variety in formats in this tour than in PUPL.

What I had in mind is maybe a Bo3 of SS-ADV-GSC I guess. Some might push RBY too and I am fine with that. RBY-GSC-ADV is actually what I thought to suggest last PUPL but I know it is a very serious and competitive tour so I opt out of even suggesting in there. But in here, I tried to find the courage to try it. Are there also trying to push for BDSP PU? I'm also fine with that. The point is to have a diversity to watch in an audience perspective.

It seems pretty sure the other tiers are already locked and there is really only 1 slot to be tried to be determined. I won't pushing GSC alone and remove ADV and that's why I suggested SS-ADV-GSC over that possible 4th SS Slot or the Bo3 in PUPL. RBY-GSC-ADV is also not look bad to me as some of the players I know play all this generation (not necessarily PU) and can definitely play the PU tiers of those respective gens as they are aware of the mechanics. In reference to NUSD, the problem brought up there is the players signing up to play GSC. Does it really have to be a GSC PU main to sign up? I didn't argue that much about that but for me it is fine. Another argument might be, GSC PU is even more inactive than NU. And what's the reason? One might be the lack of tournament. Some might even say it is underdeveloped or fundamentally flawed, but how can it really be explored if not given spotlight to be played by the top players. My bad since I was getting kinda emotional with what I am saying. There are also no expected changes in the tier happening soon as GSC UU just banned Agilipass recently and it will take a long while for a UU VR update then NU VR update before PU. So, the tier is expected to be frozen for this tour if ever it gets in.

In the end, if I were to get away from my biased with GSC, I guess at least, secure a slot for ADV. And we'll be hoping in the future, it will be our time.

 

[Chloe]

I posted here to try to push for GSC PU. If ADV is considered to be given a chance in here, why not us in GSC too? I know some takes this tour seriously and others play this for fun. As an audience, it is also nice to see a variety in formats in this tour than in PUPL.

What I had in mind is maybe a Bo3 of SS-ADV-GSC I guess. Some might push RBY too and I am fine with that. RBY-GSC-ADV is actually what I thought to suggest last PUPL but I know it is a very serious and competitive tour so I opt out of even suggesting in there. But in here, I tried to find the courage to try it. Are there also trying to push for BDSP PU? I'm also fine with that. The point is to have a diversity to watch in an audience perspective.

It seems pretty sure the other tiers are already locked and there is really only 1 slot to be tried to be determined. I won't pushing GSC alone and remove ADV and that's why I suggested SS-ADV-GSC over that possible 4th SS Slot or the Bo3 in PUPL. RBY-GSC-ADV is also not look bad to me as some of the players I know play all this generation (not necessarily PU) and can definitely play the PU tiers of those respective gens as they are aware of the mechanics. In reference to NUSD, the problem brought up there is the players signing up to play GSC. Does it really have to be a GSC PU main to sign up? I didn't argue that much about that but for me it is fine. Another argument might be, GSC PU is even more inactive than NU. And what's the reason? One might be the lack of tournament. Some might even say it is underdeveloped or fundamentally flawed, but how can it really be explored if not given spotlight to be played by the top players. My bad since I was getting kinda emotional with what I am saying. There are also no expected changes in the tier happening soon as GSC UU just banned Agilipass recently and it will take a long while for a UU VR update then NU VR update before PU. So, the tier is expected to be frozen for this tour if ever it gets in.

In the end, if I were to get away from my biased with GSC, I guess at least, secure a slot for ADV. And we'll be hoping in the future, it will be our time.

As much as I'd love to see GSC PU develop and grow this is probably too premature an inclusion. I'd definitely be down for us to try to advertise it more and maybe host a forum tour based solely on GSC PU sometime in the near future, but including it in one of our two major tours at this current time wouldn't be appropriate in my opinion. Finding a player from each region for GSC, on top of ADV and every other format would be too much an ask, for a metagame that isn't as established. The suggestion of SS-ADV-GSC would be a weird inclusion in my opinion sorry, even though I'd love to see more development of those metagames I just don't think this is the way to do it.

However, like Hera, I would like to push for the inclusion of ADV given the people involved with it think it's ready for that. It'd be a cool trial given we're coming up to the end of the generation. Of course this all depends on whether ADV is in a good state right now, and if this is a popular proposal.

 

[Squash]

Hey there, going to keep it short, but I really think adding older gens than DPP is a big mistake. The number of people who are able to play DPP at a good level is already limited, even more in countries that’s don’t have a big pool of players interested in PU, so adding a tier where there’s literally nobody to play in would just make it a 50/50 slot. I could understand the fact that you want it to be included more in tours, but I think hosting tours to know if it’s worth it before adding is the way. Also weeks > pools

 

[Antares]

fck pools nobody like pools pools are boring

 

[Chloe]

What we'll be doing:

Weeks > Pools: seems pretty unanimous, people prefer weeks. we have so much time before we have Gen 9 PU anyway so the time constraint really isn't as big an issue.

Slots: 4 SS / SM / ORAS / BW / DPP, same as last year, worked well there, repeating that again. I would like to eventually integrate ADV into our team tournaments, but we definitely need more development for it and more interest first. Expect some things to help on this front soon.

Teams: We can't really say anything for sure now, we'll just have to wait and see.

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People generally seem happy with the same format as last year, so we can repeat it. No issues.

Thank you for your posts! Expect signups within the next few days.