Abstract
The goal of Ubers Premier League is to be the premier tour for Ubers players.
What does that mean? The tour should be the best team tournament that Ubers has to offer. Best consists of a tournament platform that allows certain attributes to flourish. The four primary goals of UPL should be: to develop players (old and new), to forge quality games, to select a victor based on merit, and to be fun for Ubers players. Every choice made in the structure and administration of the tour must keep this in mind.
Slots per Team, Tiers, Number of Teams
The number of slots per team is a balance between match quality and new talent development. Too many slots results in low quality of matches. Too few slots results in disgruntled players that don’t get drafted / started and don’t have a chance to develop themselves through UPL. This is pretty obvious, but the pool of Ubers players is the factor that determines the number of slots per team.
The number of slots per team must be an even number to keep ties possible. This year in UPL V we used eight slots. Ten is most certainly too many. Six is a number that I consider workable, reasoning provided below. Four is far too little. Based on statistics from recent tournaments, I would place the number of active UPL-quality players somewhere between 35 and 40. Assuming six teams with two subs each, six slots per team would result in a total minimum pool of 48 – this range with approx 10 more slots for “rookies”. The reality is that teams draft more players than their absolute minimum requirement, thus more players can be utilized, capping at 36 total per week.
With 8 slots and 6 teams there were a large number of matches this year that were not at a quality that UPL strives for. This was mostly due to the use of 3 SM slots + 2 ORAS slots rather than the choice of 8 slots per team – a number that was successful in previous years because the tier lineup was different. The reason why many matches had low quality in these tiers is because there were 30 slots created per week for current gen: (3+2)*6. I add ORAS to current gen because it effectively is: a tier not even a year old that is extremely similar to SM. These two are so much more alike than any combination of ADV, DPP, BW, or ORAS. The fact that virtually every ORAS player is interchangeable to SM supports this further.
This year there were five slots for current gen, which creates a weekly pool of 30 players. I pointed this out before UPL started when there was a discussion of 3 SM + 2 ORAS vs. 4 SM + 1 ORAS among managers. They’re the same thing: the same weekly pool of 30 players, both equally bad, and 62.5% of the weekly rep. To do a comparison, SPL VIII used a weekly rep of 30% for its primary current gen tier. UPL simply can’t carry that much rep for primary tier at a decent quality. Add to this that several of the better SM Ubers players were either managing or playing old gens.
We’re here to talk about next year though, not focus on what has already happed. For the future, in terms of total rep, the tour should never give modern gen more than 50% of the total number of slots. In addition to the problem of securing quality matches, the fact is that knowledgeable old gen players are harder to come by and tend to be expensive (BKC, Hack, Problems, Kebabe, Jirachee, zf, etc.). These gens should not be undercut. High rep in current gen results in the reliance on randoms to fill the holes. The result: a modern gen match between two randoms is weighted the same as a match between two strong players of an old gen format. This happened week after week. Lame.
You can even argue the same within the modern gen itself. There was a pretty high price disparity between current gen players this year. Basically because the managers realized that the number of strong SM players was rather limited, yet 30 were required every week. Again, we get the outcome of high level matches weighted the same as battles between randoms, all because the tournament format gave way too much rep to current gen. I don’t see how such a format is conducive to the goal of having the outcome determined by merit.
The number of teams should be an even number, so nobody sits out weeks. Either six or eight teams are probably workable in my opinion, and should be selected on how they affect the total pool of players required. This year the selection of six teams was fine, and will most likely be fine next year as well.
Retains
The retention system is one of the better changes the UPL format has had in recent years. Retains reward managers for scouting developing talent because it means that they can pick them up cheaper (potentially) than normal for next year. Retains also help create legacies for teams, which is part of team cohesion and having a good overall experience. Additionally, retention adds another layer of strategy for the draft and trades with other managers. With eight slots per week, two retains is a good number: compare SPL.
Point System and Tiebreaks
I talked about this in depth last year with Nayrz, dice, Melee Mewtwo, and maybe a couple others. We worked a ton of different angles, but were unable to forge a system that is elegant and better at determining the victor by merit than the system currently in place. Tiebreak system is probably fine.
Best of Three
This year UPL was held in best of threes. I don’t know how it was for the other managers, but a majority of my team did not like this change. Logically it doesn’t make much sense either. A battle between two teams is already a set of matches: a best of eight. So why do these matches need to be further subdivided? Any additional competitive edge to be gained simply isn’t worth the costs in my opinion. The only exception might be for a tier like BW, where it seemed that most of the pool liked the Bo3 format and match quality / teambuilding wasn’t as much of a problem.
The Bo3 format seemed to be another factor of why match quality wasn’t all that great, especially for modern gens. You can say prep work is overrated, recycle teams, bla bla, but it’s still hard to argue that bo3 doesn’t decrease the quality of the matches. The reality is most of the people playing SM / ORAS aren’t even capable of building five quality teams for the tournament, let alone fifteen. So now you have recycling of bad teams and stuff being passed around because it’s too hard to build this many quality squads from scratch. Two of UPL’s main goals are being violated here: developing players and forging quality games. How is a player supposed to improve their building in a tier or develop some cool new teams when building three quality squads a week isn’t reasonable? Instead of spending their time building, they spend it asking around for teams that already exist, or they just recycle the same trash from last week.
Substitutions
This UPL proved once again that there needs to be a hard deadline for substitutions. If there is no hard deadline, what is stopping teams from being inactive the entire week before substituting a player in just hours before the deadline? All this does is create bogus activity situations and frustration. Bottom line: the deadline for substitutions should be 48 hours before the end of the week. 48 hours is the minimum reasonable time an active player can be expected to see a substitution notification and schedule a fair time with cede player.
This year many substitutions were made on games in response to the week being won. I consider this atrocious sportsmanship and an insult to the opposing player and team. It trivializes the match in question, and is a statement of “you’re not even worth getting to fight the player I started originally, here's some benched user that won't get to play otherwise since this game doesn't even matter”. Disgusting. The 48 hour deadline largely eliminates this possibly because it is very unlikely a team is winning a week before the weekend. If there was a situation where the week was won before the sub deadline and that team made a responsive sub, then it would be legal, just a bad show of sportsmanship.
Midseason and Sellbacks
There was no midseason this year and I consider this to be one of the major mistakes in the tournament’s format this time around. No midseason means all credits are worthless after draft. It means there are no sellbacks. It means nobody new can come into the tour. It means managers are stuck with players who quit, players that get banned, and players that cannot mesh with the team.
Sellbacks and midseason encourages performance. It punishes quitters. It rewards hard workers. It allows managers to get reimbursed for bad apples with circumstances that were unforeseeable. It gives people who want to be drafted a second chance. It pushes players to justify their spot. After all, if you’re not doing anything good for the team, why shouldn’t I sell you back? Next year there absolutely needs to be a midseason, preferably after the third week.