Announcement BLT XI - Format Discussion

[Frixel]

slightly stolen from last year's post, thank you Theia ​

Hi everyone! BLT XI is right around the corner, with manager signups coming soon and Cycle One tentatively starting April 1st. As last year we made changes that we think were well received, we'd love to hold a discussion about the format of this year's edition.

Points of discussion include:
1. The format of the tournament - Typical format is 2x OU, 1x Ubers, UU, RU, NU, PU, LC, DOU, Monotype.
2. Points for qualifying - BLT IX's point cutoff was 20 points compared to the usual 30. Was this a good change? Does this need to be adjusted at all?
3. Qualifying Cycles - Qualifying was shortened to two cycles with the top 16 from each in the guaranteed pool. Was this a good change? Does this need to be adjusted at all?
4. Starting Date - As of right now, we intend to start BLT on April 1st, hold the auction on May 4th, and begin Week 1 on May 6th; however, we can start earlier if managers are decided during the first qualifying cycle. Does this calendar work for everyone?
5. Other - Any other points of discussion that you feel are important.

Looking forward to your feedback, thanks so much in advance!

 

[Kyo]

Who do I have to pay to get NatDex in the tour?

 

[Stareal]

1. The format of the tournament - Nothing much to say about this other than its fine as is

2. Points for qualifying - 30 -> 20 points i would imagine (i dont actually know) increased player count that could be drafted overall, so yeah this was a good change.

3. Qualifying Cycles - Me personally i liked the 4 cycles with 8 players each cycle more than current due to how it gives more time for people that failed to get garunteed qualify to try again, but can understand how that is circumvented from 16 players per cycle. Though even with that I just liked their being more time to qualify.

4. Starting Date - Doesn't really matter

5. Other -

 

[velvet]

1. Formats for the tier are fine as they follow snake/scl tiers and generally show no complaints (bar the natdex mains)

2. 20 points was good given that many newer players can’t really rack enough wins given the competitiveness in each cycle. It’s fair

3. Ngl as much as I liked 4 cycles I found 2 cycles less time consuming as it would take a dreadful amount a time to wait for the 4 cycles to end + managers finding a time to get the auction done. Plus you still get the same amount of players guaranteed with the 2 cycles being top 16 picked.

4. April is fine, if there’s an option to start late March that would be cool also.

 

[PrinceOfAllTacos]

purge dou add natdex everyone wins

jokes aside half joking...kinda joking? no please make it happen. The format is fine and I think the changes we made last year were fantastic I liked the 2 cycles over 4 and I think 20 points was fine as a cutoff best to keep it low ish in the event of no temp prize to make sure we get enough people. I'd love a march start date as I've never been the most patient of folks but either month is fine whatever works for the majority.

 

[seroo]

Okay so formats for BLT seem fine , they've worked last year perfectly so i see no reason to change them gives chances for any kind of player to participate ( except the stinky OM Mainers but they don't count ).

The 30 > 20 point change in my opinion was good , not only to up the numbers of quals but it also give those players who are newer/don't have as much time as others to qualify.

I stick by what I said last year , I prefer 2 cycles over 4 due to : the first two cycles are usually the ones where most quals happen so the cutoff won't be as different and that it forces a lot more players to play at the same time giving it a more competitive atmosphere and not making it so like last year where the best players waited for a more tame cycle and tried to qualify there picking off the easier and less experienced players. Sure this will make qualifying harder for those less experienced but that's the whole point for a qualifiers , for the best to have a chance at the draft.

 

[TheFranklin]

I think last blt had an excellent format. No changes are needed imo.
Regarding starting date, I think may 6th makes more sense. Having a week between last qualifying week and start of the tour has a positive impact to get hype/momentum for the tour. And managers need time to assess the draft pool.

 

[BlackKnight_Gawain]

1. Format is perfect. No complaints.
2. 20 > 30
3. Keep qualifying the same but see point 5.
4. Start earlier. The seasonal timing prevents a lot of clashes with other tours and irl commitments. Easier to be more invested in a tour that has momentum going than have to deal with things like summer break, etc.

5. This is real point of change, and I emphasized this last year as well — give more breakthrough opportunities for first time players. The mandatory draft of top 16 is meaningless for the most part if the players aren't adding value to a team outside of filling a roster and being a one-time slot. Change this rule and make them a more regular fixture in a team which could be achieved simply by increasing the mandatory game count or done in a more thought-out manner such as rotating between tiers. I'd love to hear potential input on this and think it's a strong point of discussion given the nature of the tour stemming from a PS room community while also being one of its strong historical selling points (i.e many tours room players having gone to achieve success elsewhere after gaining tour experience here)

 

[Aqua Jet]

Who do I have to pay to get NatDex in the tour?

me

 

[Fragments]

5. This is real point of change, and I emphasized this last year as well — give more breakthrough opportunities for first time players. The mandatory draft of top 16 is meaningless for the most part if the players aren't adding value to a team outside of filling a roster and being a one-time slot. Change this rule and make them a more regular fixture in a team which could be achieved simply by increasing the mandatory game count or done in a more thought-out manner such as rotating between tiers. I'd love to hear potential input on this and think it's a strong point of discussion given the nature of the tour stemming from a PS room community while also being one of its strong historical selling points (i.e many tours room players having gone to achieve success elsewhere after gaining tour experience here)

I think this is a fine change so long as the additional required games for gpool players is reasonable. And by reasonable, I would put the cap at 2 required games instead of 1. Requiring 4 players to have to play at least 3 games during the tour affects a total of 12 games per team, which could severely impact the success of a team's season. While I do believe it is good to give these players who grinded gpool more of a chance to play, you also don't wanna force managers' hands too much with how they craft their lineups or that takes away from the competitive integrity of the tour. Not to mention it would also be unfair to reg pool players to have to constantly bench in favor of gpool players even when they're doing well, a reward for gpool players should not come at the expense of penalizing reg pool players who maybe just didn't have the time to grind gpool.

 

[PrinceOfAllTacos]

I think this is a fine change so long as the additional required games for gpool players is reasonable. And by reasonable, I would put the cap at 2 required games instead of 1. Requiring 4 players to have to play at least 3 games during the tour affects a total of 12 games per team, which could severely impact the success of a team's season. While I do believe it is good to give these players who grinded gpool more of a chance to play, you also don't wanna force managers' hands too much with how they craft their lineups or that takes away from the competitive integrity of the tour. Not to mention it would also be unfair to reg pool players to have to constantly bench in favor of gpool players even when they're doing well, a reward for gpool players should not come at the expense of penalizing reg pool players who maybe just didn't have the time to grind gpool.

100% I'd honestly rather keep it at 1 I'd rather not be forced to have to bench someone on fire just to hit the required game amount. I've always tried to get everyone in early to avoid such a situation but that becomes much harder to do with more games everyone has to play.

 

[Sylveon used calm mind]

slightly stolen from last year's post, thank you Theia ​

Hi everyone! BLT XI is right around the corner, with manager signups coming soon and Cycle One tentatively starting April 1st. As last year we made changes that we think were well received, we'd love to hold a discussion about the format of this year's edition.

Points of discussion include:
1. The format of the tournament - Typical format is 2x OU, 1x Ubers, UU, RU, NU, PU, LC, DOU, Monotype.
2. Points for qualifying - BLT IX's point cutoff was 20 points compared to the usual 30. Was this a good change? Does this need to be adjusted at all?
3. Qualifying Cycles - Qualifying was shortened to two cycles with the top 16 from each in the guaranteed pool. Was this a good change? Does this need to be adjusted at all?
4. Starting Date - As of right now, we intend to start BLT on April 1st, hold the auction on May 4th, and begin Week 1 on May 6th; however, we can start earlier if managers are decided during the first qualifying cycle. Does this calendar work for everyone?
5. Other - Any other points of discussion that you feel are important.

Looking forward to your feedback, thanks so much in advance!

6. Temp will give the winners 200$ each instead of 100

 

[Hacker]

please make it so people in the guaranteed pool get more than one game. i viewed joining the guaranteed pool as a surefire way to actually have an experience playing in this tournament and this was my first team tour on this website trying to branch out. i only really got the oppurtunity to play more than one game the year b4 this one on swamperts bc of team circumstances, and i think its silly to punish people who otherwise wouldn't get picked by making it so they most likely would only get one game making it so they never really got to experience the tournament in the first place. i suggest making people in the guaranteed pool be forced to play at least 3 games

 

[Lime]

Agreeing with what BKG and Hacker said in their posts. BLT is a sort of first experience tour for a lot of newcomers ( was my first tour aswell ). Getting 4 play on a team and then just getting them to play 1 game (which is also forced btw) is not a good tour experience for them. I agree with making the cap 3 games.

 

[Fragments]

please make it so people in the guaranteed pool get more than one game. i viewed joining the guaranteed pool as a surefire way to actually have an experience playing in this tournament and this was my first team tour on this website trying to branch out. i only really got the oppurtunity to play more than one game the year b4 this one on swamperts bc of team circumstances, and i think its silly to punish people who otherwise wouldn't get picked by making it so they most likely would only get one game making it so they never really got to experience the tournament in the first place. i suggest making people in the guaranteed pool be forced to play at least 3 games

Agreeing with what BKG and Hacker said in their posts. BLT is a sort of first experience tour for a lot of newcomers ( was my first tour aswell ). Getting 4 play on a team and then just getting them to play 1 game (which is also forced btw) is not a good tour experience for them. I agree with making the cap 3 games.

I'm just gonna restate that forcing 4 players per team to play 3 games is too much, and Im gonna cover a few reasons why I dont like this idea.

1) I am not quite sure why we are operating under the assumption that all the new players come out of gpool. There are quite a number of established players in gpool as well, and there are many rookie players that come outta reg pool. If you're forcing 12 games per team outta your gpool players, it is now these new reg pool players who are not gonna get any playing time. Do they really deserve to be punished cause they didnt have the time to make gpool?

2) Gpool prices are already inflated as is, with a mandatory 3 games per player youre gonna make those prices skyrocket even more. This tour is not supposed to only focus on gpool, it's about balancing gpool with reg pool and that's what's always made the most successful teams. You're really skewing draft to care way more about gpool than anything else, which again is not fair to everyone else in reg pool.

3) As we've seen in the past, sometimes gpool players even got exempted from their mandatory game. What if we now end up with gpool players who get exempted from their mandatory 3 games? That would now lead to a significant advantage for a team. In a worst case scenario, managers may even look for gpool players they think will be dead enough to be exempted just to get outta this rule.
Edit: Just to flesh out this point a bit more, what if you end up with a situation where someone is 0-2 and foregoes their last game to give the team better odds? Or what if you have that 0-2 player who still needs their final game, and you have to bench a positive player just to make it work? You could be highly sabotaging a team by doing this, and as I said in my first post, this would take away from the competitive integrity of the tour.

In sum, we would already be testing out a new change by upping the mandated games for gpool players from 1 to 2. When you're testing out a new rule, you don't want to radically change it from the onset. Going from 1 required game to 3 required games is an extreme change that is coming way too soon. Let's first see how requiring 2 games plays out, and then can always consider 3 next year, but I think it would be a mistake to opt for a massive change from the jump.

 

[Roginald]

The thread seems very idealistic… not every player in the g pool is actually new and there’s typically a huge skill disparity. Forcing 3 games seems pretty arbitrary and with not all players built equally, it’s only forcing managers to pick between handicapping themselves through budget or lineup.

2 is probably fine, but otherwise I’d start looking at other ways of making it new player friendly if you want to approach it that way, like having a new players only pool.

 

[ojr]

Whilst I might not be very well known for participating in this tour, much like Hacker I share some of his sentiments as BLT was one of my first tournaments if not my first on this site and the tournaments room was my first competitive experience on ps. However, Fragments is raising some legitimate concerns with the idea you bring up. Forcing 3 games seems highly unpractical for reasons that were already stated so I won't be repeating that. Besides that making a "new players only" pool seems risky because you have to draw the line somewhere and it seems you are setting yourself up for drama and exploits (someone is in the new player pool shouldn't be in that pool or someone should be in the new player pool but isn't in).

I just want to stress the fact that when manager signups go up and you want to manage for this tour, please just keep in mind this is the tournaments room tournament. Anyone who will manage will easily be able to make the distinction between your classic lkapkd's from the tournaments room and the official teamtour players. Just keep in mind that those who are playing the roomtours even outside of BLT find this event way more exciting than others who already play a gazillion teamtours a year.

Since a "forcing" rule will probably either be unpractical or exploitable to some capacity id like to advise the managers the following. When you draft your obvious newbies just make them play in the first 3-4 weeks this way you can still just sub in someone else in case of dire situations for playoffs for the final weeks. This way you actually give them some kind of run in the tour, they either flop which gives you a good reason to sub them out when there is still time left and any player should be able to accept that, if not, learning experience for them, that's just how the cookie crumbles in teamtours. Or if they are doing pretty well, well it should be obvious, you let them keep playing!
Trying to squeeze in a game at the end of the season just to give them a shot when either, the game doesn't matter for playoffs (whether you are already in or out), or when it is extremely tight for playoffs and they need to win, are both unpleasant experiences id imagine. Your game either doesn't matter at all which doesn't feel as good, or the pressure might just be too much with a playoff scenario.

My conclusion: Don't enforce anything, just be aware as a manager what tour you are managing and give the newbies a shot at the first half of the season.

 

[drizzle]

1. I like this format. 12 slots does not really work because the way cycles are allows for 2 days of officials per tier, which is where a lot of the non-Tours room players get their points. 12 slots (whether it's adding extra tiers or just more slots for certain tiers) will just serve to mess that up in my opinion.

2. 20/30 are both fine, but 20 makes it a lot more interesting in terms of the people available to get drafted. BLT is a Tours room tour, sure, but let's be realistic most people who are going for quals don't actually spend a lot of time in the Tours room outside of BLT quals but are still people I think a lot of people would agree are "regulars". For example, DJ Breloominati (saw you on the thread while I was writing this so hi). On second thought though, I didn't get drafted out of general pool when it was 20 so I say move it back to 30, maybe 40 even.

3. Two cycles with top 16 is great. 4 cycles with 8 is a drag and it's also usually pretty easy to tell who top 8 are in the first week or so, which takes a lot of the fun out of watching those last couple of days of the cycle.

4. April is probably better. Summer seasonals usually start in June so there would be a lot less overlap.

5. I guess this is kind of a personal nitpick but I have had a much more positive experience (both in performance and overall) when I got to play the tiers I actually signed up for. Most of the people qualifying won't be top performers so the ones that are obviously have more of a say in what they choose, but it was a pretty negative experience for me when I gave input that went totally ignored in the tiers I do play and I have a feeling that a lot of other people may have experienced something similar or just didn't speak at all in team chat out of fear for what I'm talking about. The required 4 people from the guaranteed pool for each team is a good idea to keep everything theoretically balanced, but I think it ends up being that the top players that make it into guaranteed pool are the most contested while the "real" Tours room players who are just playing in roomtours a lot but aren't necessarily top players just go for 3k and sit on the bench. It makes the work to get top 16 feel simultaneously necessary and worthless because if you don't get into the guaranteed pool you won't get drafted but once you get drafted you don't get to do anything. I don't even have a suggested fix for this, just presenting the idea.

 

[Aqua Jet]

I'm unsure how I feel about 3 games for those in the guarentieed pool, but I do think that people should be garenteed more then 1 game if possible. I'm unaware as to what the Tournaments room staff wants BLT to be or sees it as, but to me, BLT-type tournaments have been about having new players face off against well-established players to give them the oppertunity to get some recognition.

RE: GPool inflation - Strategize better. I tried writing out an explanation several times but I couldn't think of a nice way to do it so ping me on discord and I'll riff and hopefully not spin out

 

[Stareal]

I like the idea of new players (people qualifying through the garunteed pool) having a guarantee that they will at least play twice due to how everyone can have off days. Yes every game matters and if someone is underpeforming it can affect the team qualifying for playoffs, but there being a chance that someone may have 1 chance to prove yourself in my eyes is a bad way to go about things, which leads to me to believe that it should be pushed to two games that gpool qualfiers are garunteed to play.

Having gpool players having a garuntee that they will be more than twice, when they are underperforming, means that instead of slotting in somebody that would be most likely be more capable for playing, they are now unable to, which can quite easily be a reason why a team doesn't qualify for playoffs since every game matters.

My first BLT, the first tour that I participated in, I wouldn't have liked being forced to play 3–4 times due to how unexperienced I was at the time when it came to participating in team tours, which of course has now changed, but from the perspective of a new player where BLT is their first teamtour, I can see how being forced to play 3–4 games can overwhelm them.


TL;DR dont increase to 3+ games but to 2 for gpool qualifiers.

 

[Frixel]

Given the sentiment on this thread and discussion on our community discord, the following points are set:

1. The format of the tournament - Typical format is 2x OU, 1x Ubers, UU, RU, NU, PU, LC, DOU, Monotype.
We will keep the format the same as last year (2x OU, 1x everything else)

2. Points for qualifying - BLT IX's point cutoff was 20 points compared to the usual 30. Was this a good change? Does this need to be adjusted at all?
Following last year's change seen as overall positive, we will keep the qualification bar for the general pool to 20 points in a single cycle.

3. Qualifying Cycles - Qualifying was shortened to two cycles with the top 16 from each in the guaranteed pool. Was this a good change? Does this need to be adjusted at all?
Following last year's change seen as overall positive, we will keep rolling with 2 qualifying cycles.

4. Starting Date - As of right now, we intend to start BLT on April 1st, hold the auction on May 4th, and begin Week 1 on May 6th; however, we can start earlier if managers are decided during the first qualifying cycle. Does this calendar work for everyone?
Nearly 70% voted for the option of mid-March, which is wrong by 2 days by my mistake (it's supposed to be March 16th). After internal discussions, we decided that the first qualifying cycle will start March 16th! Cycle 2 will start April 1st, auction will happen between April 20th and April 28th, week 1 going up the following Monday.
Manager signups will go up very shortly!

5. Other - Any other points of discussion that you feel are important.

• 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.

Lastly, one point remains to be decided:

• Number of guaranteed games for the qualifying pool: There is strong support for a raise of the number of games for the guaranteed pool from 1 to 2, 3, and even 4. If we are going ahead, we would do it as 2 guaranteed games. Should we go ahead?

 

[PrinceOfAllTacos]

Would def keep it at 1 guaranteed game the implications it has on the draft as well as competitive aspect of the tour with the gpool always being top heavy are massive. You're taking a lot of out of the managers hands forcing them to play often sub-optimal lineups. I don't think there's another team tour on smog that guarantees play time for anyone and imo for good reason.

 

[Baloor]

Personally I think 1 guaranteed game is perfectly fine and I agree with poat that it takes a lot out of the managers control if you are forcing sub optimal line ups. Knowing when to shuffle players when people are underperforming is a important part of the managerial job in making a team successful and throwing just to meet a quota will likely screw over at least one team. Also not everybody in the gpool is going to be a stinker either, I feel this will result in some unfavorable price inflation which may hurt the draft in the long run, the gpool system already inflates prices significantly. Just draft people you think will be a valuable asset to your team and this wouldn't be a problem.

Anything above 2 is absolutely overkill and may hurt even well drafted teams. Keep it at 1 and just trust people do a good job at managing.

 

[Frixel]

Lastly, one point remains to be decided:

• Number of guaranteed games for the qualifying pool: There is strong support for a raise of the number of games for the guaranteed pool from 1 to 2, 3, and even 4. If we are going ahead, we would do it as 2 guaranteed games. Should we go ahead?

After voting amongst managers, the following has been decided:

• Number of guaranteed games for the qualifying pool will be kept at 1;
• Managers can self-buy for 20k.