WCOP Format II (Pools v. Groups)

[Finchinator]

In the thread posted by Luigi on the tiers for the upcoming WCoP here, numerous users posted about the format of the physical tournament, specifically discussing the current pools format versus an alternative format with groups. Tournament Policy head Star left off the topic by noting it would be discussed in a subsequent thread:

The rules around continental teams as well as pools versus groups will be separate discussions. We will be working to resolve the former while this thread is ongoing to finalize tiers. We will be posting a new thread on pools vs groups and figuring out the according format for qualifiers/main stage following the conclusion of the this thread.

With the prior discussion of tiers now finalized here, let's begin discussion of the physical format of the upcoming WCoP. Before we proceed, here are some pointers and rules for the upcoming discussion:

• Please no off-topic posts -- this means no going back to discuss the tiers selected, no suggestions of rogue formats, and no letting other discussions bleed into this thread as other topics (such as the thread on the identity of WCoP) exist
• Please be respectful of fellow posters as we seek only a productive discussion, no nonsense
• Please adhere to the guidelines outlined here -- if you are not sure something is OK to post, PM a TD to ask or lean towards not posting if it could be deemed offensive
  • We did not moderate the thread on WCoP tiers much at all as it is important to let people from all around the tournament and community participate, but this does not serve as an excuse for derailing the thread or misbehaving

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There are two possible formats for the upcoming WCoP that have previously been discussed and likely will serve as the focuses of this thread: pools (the status quo) and groups. Let's explain both prospects!

Pools

• Each team submits their line-up and every starter is assigned to a pool (of 4 players) in the same tier they are in (giving them 3 opponents)
• Each slot (previously 8, now 10 per team) plays their opponents during the qualification phase of the main tournament
• The top 8 teams in the standings ultimately advance to a seeded playoff (1v8, 2v7, etc.) with results typically logged in a spreadsheet like this

Groups

• Instead of players being assigned to unique pools, teams as a whole will be assigned to groups with other teams
  • This is meant to roughly mirror the format of the IRL World Cup
  • This can involve some form of seeding from prior iterations to "balance" each pool
  • Size of each pool hinges on the tournament specific logistics
• The teams from each group will compete against each other during the qualification phase of the main tournament
• The top 2 teams from each group will ultimately advance to a seeded playoff

Drifting made a post roughly outlining what a tournament using groups could look like in the prior thread here.

Please use this thread to discuss what format you feel would be best for the upcoming edition of WCoP. We encourage anyone with experience in the tournament or with a stake in the upcoming tournament to express their informed opinion. We hope to come to a solution in the near future as this is considered timely, but hope to hear from as many invested parties as possible.

 

[freezai]

As a spectator, I like pools because

• it makes other teams games interesting to watch. In weeks you only care about your group
• the ping pong of teams moving up and down the standings is more exciting than weeks
• every game matters instead of potentially having dead matches after a week is already decided
• the build up in tension to the final weekend is fun. Added intrigue because of the asymmetry of games played. Some teams have a lot of their games done while some teams have a few.

SPL and SCL already have a week format and from my experience in the lower tier wcops that do the week format, they're pretty boring.
WCOP should keep the pool format

 

[ABR]

Agree with freezai.

I think pools are a part of WCoP's identity, explicitly distinct from SPL, and it's extremely fun to see the draw people get. We already changed the tier format, imo in a good way, but we don't need to rock the boat too hard by changing pools too.

 

[Star]

Pretty much agree with the above posts. Groups are a Fine format obviously given we do weeks for everything else, but pools are a big part of what makes WCoP unique and it'd be a shame to see it go. There's pretty much nothing more fun in tournaments to me than spectating/playing the final weekend of WCoP pools. It's just genuinely batshit insane seeing non-stop games that all matter, seeing what teams pull off a miracle comeback, which teams choke their standing etc. There's nothing like it in any other tour and it would really suck to lose it.

 

[Aberforth]

I prefer Groups to Pools.

The biggest thing I find to be an issue is the number of games played throughout the tour. With Pools, the tournament starts off on a whimper, last year there were only 8 games played in the first 10 days of the tournament. While this means there's a dramatic finish to the pools section, I cant help but feel like nothing really happens for about half of the time the pools phase is actually happening. It also means the impact of subs is greater, with people tending to schedule a single game before the week 2 deadline, and the other two as late as possible, so if the player needs to be subbed out for the week 2 game, they cannot play either remaining opponent, and for situations like an unexpected power outage, it should not keep them out of all 3 weeks. Perhaps this hasnt happened, but people have been forced to sub out for all three games before, and especially with SS, USM, ORAS and Ubers/UU added back, this could have a larger negative impact on the quality of games than it did with just an OU slot. I do have to say that, purely subjectively speaking in terms of my own enjoyment, pools means about 20-25 impactful games (about 10% of the games of the entire round) happen as I have to sleep for work on a Monday, so I've never enjoyed the last minute rush as much as people from more convenient timezones.

A secondary factor to this is the fact that part of the appeal of a World Cup is the fact that you and your compatriots are facing off against another country and their best. If I am playing Italy, Germany and France, and my teammate is playing US South, Canada and Spain, there is no overlap there. I am playing entirely different countries to them, and to me it does not properly contribute towards the spirit of a world cup. Groups also allow us to expand the tournament to include more of the qualifying teams, which has been a problem in recent years (see: Argentina needing to beat the eventual winners two years in a row in order to qualify).

 

[Amaranth]

the group format has many flaws that are really hard to overcome.

1. it's very easy to have situations where the third week is completely irrelevant (for example: weeks 1 and 2 have teams A and B beat teams C and D, then it's A vs B at 2-0 when they both already qualify, and C vs D at 0-2 when they are both already out).
this is not a problem in professional sports because of the word 'professional', but here people really have no reason to care (unless they are obsessed with their sheet record i guess). we will see a lot of farcical week 3s.
i would pick low interest at the start (pools) over zero interest at the end (groups) any time. also, if low interest at the start is your main argument against pools, you should push to force players to actually play 1 game a week. no need to completely overhaul the format

2. there are many situations where making it out of the group will be decided on a stupid tiebreaker (3-0 1-2 1-2 1-2 or 2-1 2-1 2-1 0-3 are extremely common final results for groups of 4). pretty much no matter what the tiebreaker is, it will not feel good for anybody involved. many of these situations will be 3-way and require cutting out teams on BD in the interest of time. there might be ways to get over this hurdle but i would have to see them before i believe that they exist
edit: rigas makes a good point in the post below that draws help a little bit with easing this issue. but these scenarios will still happen from time to time and it will suck


week-by-week pairings work fine when the regular season has 7 or 9 weeks, when it only has 3 weeks it breaks down really fast. the logistical flaws of groups are big big hurdles, and there's no need to rock the boat when pools is great as-is.

 

[Rigas]

3-0 1-3 1-3 1-3 or 2-1 2-1 2-1 0-3 are extremely common final results for groups of 4

I'll respond assuming you typo'd and meant 1-2 instead, since 1-3 is not possible in this format.

The results you listed won't be common in this case, because draws are a possibility too and add significant variety to the result possibilities. These 3 ways ties would only be common if the group matches could end only in wins or losses, and not draws as well.

For some actual real-world data, I went and checked every single 4-team group in the history of the FIFA World Cup. A FIFA World Cup 4-team group has the same format being discussed: 4 teams play single-round robin with the possible results per match being either a win, a draw, or a loss. Only 6/115 groups, or ~5.22%, had a 3-way or 4-way tie. Assuming the probability will be the same here, then a format of 4 groups with 4 teams each has only a ~19.30% chance of producing even a single group with a 3-way or 4-way tie.

Now, one could make a reasonable case that match draws in a 10v10 Pokemon team match are less common than match draws in football/soccer, which would mean reduced variety in results, which would mean a higher chance of 3-way ties. Unfortunately, from what I know there is no dataset available of Smogon 10v10 team tournaments with groups of 4 teams each. If there is, please let me know and I'll redo my calculations. Instead, for now let's generously account for this potential difference by flat-out doubling the observed probability that a group will have a 3-way or 4-way tie. But even with this change, the chance of producing even a single group with a 3-way or 4-way tie is only ~35.66%

And even if we do end up with a group that has a 3-way tie, there are many of tiebreaker criteria that can be used to separate the teams without needing to play tiebreaker matches. For example:
- Game score (games won minus games lost)
- Game score between tied teams (games won minus games lost)
- Sonneborg-Berger game score (game score of teams won against + half the game score of teams drawn against)
and more.

Such tiebreaker criteria should be decided and put in a specific order ahead of time, so that teams know exactly how potential ties in the final group standings will be resolved.

The groups format does have some disadvantages over pools, and I'm personally currently undecided on which one would be better, but this particular concern that we might end up in tiebreaker hell is overblown.

 

[Ferenia]

As a spectator, I share the same feeling as Freezai.

Something I would like to add is that the Twitch stream where the pool matchups were announced was full of hype and was really nice to watch.

As a player in my first experience in main stage last year, I think I liked the system much more than the groups would be, I played my 3 pool games within a 12 hour interval between each of them in week 2 and it was really exciting to prepare for each of them, this obviously could not be possible in a group format, a format which we are used to seeing in each team tour on the site, so I would like the pools format that characterizes wcop to be maintained.

 

[Raptor]

We as team Chile want a change in how the teams are selected and qualified to play directly into Round 1 of wcop. We think the current qualy system is unfair and unbalanced. If you qualify from the previous round and then go all the way into the finals you would end up playing around 5 to 6 months depending on tiebreaks. This is simply ridiculous since it really burns the team out and gives other teams that didnt play previous rounds an unfair advantage. We feel that there are plenty of teams that can go directly into the second round of wcop, considering there are 16 to 20 teams on the qualifying stage. An increase of qualified teams or a complete change in the qualifying system is urgent. We urge the mods to take this into consideration and make the changes necessary to give us a more balanced and fair world cup.

 

[Glue]

We as team Chile want a change in how the teams are selected and qualified to play directly into Round 1 of wcop. We think the current qualy system is unfair and unbalanced. If you qualify from the previous round and then go all the way into the finals you would end up playing around 5 to 6 months depending on tiebreaks. This is simply ridiculous since it really burns the team out and gives other teams that didnt play previous rounds an unfair advantage. We feel that there are plenty of teams that can go directly into the second round of wcop, considering there are 16 to 20 teams on the qualifying stage. An increase of qualified teams or a complete change in the qualifying system is urgent. We urge the mods to take this into consideration and make the changes necessary to give us a more balanced and fair world cup.

Team UK played for 13 weeks last year.
We got pretty burnt out towards the end of the tour thanks to our run from Qualifiers, Main Tour and a bunch of tiebreakers happening.
This does not include the fact we held tryouts for newer players as well.
I think qualifiers should be revamped to prevent burnouts for teams that end up going on big runs from the qualifiers stage.

 

[ziloXX]

We as team Chile want a change in how the teams are selected and qualified to play directly into Round 1 of wcop. We think the current qualy system is unfair and unbalanced. If you qualify from the previous round and then go all the way into the finals you would end up playing around 5 to 6 months depending on tiebreaks. This is simply ridiculous since it really burns the team out and gives other teams that didnt play previous rounds an unfair advantage. We feel that there are plenty of teams that can go directly into the second round of wcop, considering there are 16 to 20 teams on the qualifying stage. An increase of qualified teams or a complete change in the qualifying system is urgent. We urge the mods to take this into consideration and make the changes necessary to give us a more balanced and fair world cup.

I support what Team Chile expresses here. With so many teams (and more participating each year), combined with the kind of teams that end up being relegated from the Main Event due to changes in the format to balance the overall level of the tournament, the current Qualifiers has become a truly challenging stage of the tournament.

I'm not sure if a format change is what Qualifiers need to solve this; rather, I believe it's time to accept that the level of many Main Event teams is not far from the level demonstrated by the best teams that participate in the Qualifiers, making an expansion of the Main Event necessary.

For instance, 2/3 of the last WCOP Champions came from Qualifiers, and France barely made it to the second round of qualifiers in the year they won. A giant like Brazil fell to Qualifiers and failed to return to the Main Event, and last year 2/3 of the teams that moved up to Main Event managed to stay, with only Bangladesh relegated by just one win.

I know that Groups format considers this expansion to 20/24 teams in the Main Event, and that's why I support it, but if an expansion of teams is also considered while continuing with the Pools format, I'm fine with that as well.

 

[AV11]

Hello everyone, with the discussion of Pools vs Groups I thought we could take inspiration from another competition that has stirred up a lot of controversy. The Champions League’s league phase.


Essentially this combines the idea of Pools and the idea of groups in a way-ish. Essentially you would seed the teams (even number divisible by 4 or 6 depending on a 3 or 5 week round 1 respectively) into 4 or 6 pots. Let’s assume 4 for now.


each team in pot 1 will be randomly drawn to play one and only one team in pot 2, 3 and 4, with each team in pot 2 randomly drawn to face a team in pot 1, 3 and 4 et cetera. While on the surface this seems to be the same as a group draw, it is not as there are no requirements for the group to be closed off to other teams. I.e. team A can be drawn against B C D but B does not have to play C and in fact you can adjust to make sure B does not play C.


Now, after every team is assigned their opponents, scheduling can occur as following:



Week 1: Pot 1 teams play Pot 4, 2 vs 3

Week 2: 1 vs 2, 3 vs 4

Week 3: 1 vs 3, 2 vs 4


and etc depending on size or 6 pots. You could even increase the excitement by doing a draw each week


the teams are then organised into one large league table with 2/3 points for a win, 1 for a tie and you can take x teams to make a playoffs of choosing.


the first benefit of this would be flexibility: it works for most even numbers save from 22 and 26. Whilst also saving number of weeks as it seems to be a concern for those above.


another, and the biggest benefit would be there would be no dead rubber games. Every game matters as in any sports league and the excitement is maintained all throughout the weeks, instead of in the final few days. The scheduling is also fair as it is done strength-based. An additional layer of fairness can be added through implementing strength of schedule as a tie breaker (NFL rules) in the standings, ensuring that teams with an unlucky draw get the upper hand in a tie scenario.


lastly and more minorly, a group stage with odd numbers (4 groups of 5) would result in bye weeks and with this format, that does not happen.


Without getting sidetracked, I know this format has a lot of detractors as it’s unpopular in European football, but those arguments don’t make sense to me as the reason it is unpopular is because they are squeezing more games that matter into an already packed schedule. I think this is the opposite to the WCoP situation and exactly what it needs right now. I hope it’s given some consideration and pre existing biases aren’t taken into account.

In conclusion, I think this could be a good way to combine a lot of things good about pools while also giving fire matchups between countries all at the same time. Interested to hear thoughts.

 

[FFK]

So, I've been giving a lot of thought to the format for the upcoming WCoP, and I wanted to share my thoughts. I gotta say, I'm really leaning towards the group format. Here's why:

First off, it's all about giving every team a fair shot imo. With groups, every team gets a chance to face off against a variety of opponents. It's not like pools where one tough match can throw everything off. Plus, it gives us a better idea of each team's actual skill level.

It's not just about being fair; it's about keeping things interesting too. With groups, every match is crucial, and there's a real sense of anticipation as teams fight for their spot in the 1st stage. It adds an extra layer of excitement to the tournament.

And when it comes to strategy, teams have to be flexible. They can't stick to the same plan every time. With groups, they need to be able to adapt, analyze their opponents, and come up with new tactics as they go. It adds another challenge to the mix.

And let's not forget about the fans. More matches mean more action to watch, plain and simple. With groups, there's always something happening, always some excitement unfolding. It keeps us engaged and invested throughout the tournament.

So yeah, that's why I'm all in for the group format.

 

[D4 Repertoire]

A problem with the pools format that I have not yet seen mentioned is that The Best team in the tournament can just lose by unlucky pairings.

If--for illustration--you have a team that's composed of the 3rd best player in the tournament in each slot (and the top 2 players are dispersed among the other teams) that team is clearly the best team and will win 8-2 or better against any other team. However, if each of their players lands in a pool containing the top 2 players in that slot, then they'll all go 1-2 in pools and the team will miss playoffs by a lot.

In this case the best team in the tour by far misses playoffs by a lot, not because any other team upset them in a given week, but because the randomly generated superteam that they were paired against would have prevented any team in the tour from making playoffs against it.

This example is obviously extreme and models games as always won by the better player to keep things simple and clear, but it illustrates the way in which pairing luck in pools differs from pairing luck in groups.

In groups, the opposition each team faces is also not identical and subject to some randomness, but it is at least comprised of actual teams; because of this, as long as a team is the Best team (in the extreme sense that they Will defeat any other team they face), they will always win the tour (for this extreme + simplified definition of Best).

---

I will also note that I agree with Aberforth's post and think that teams fighting head to head feels like what's most in the spirit of a World Cup and is what is most enjoyable format for the distribution of games / team cohesion / spectating.

 

[lydian]

A problem with the pools format that I have not yet seen mentioned is that The Best team in the tournament can just lose by unlucky pairings.

If--for illustration--you have a team that's composed of the 3rd best player in the tournament in each slot (and the top 2 players are dispersed among the other teams) that team is clearly the best team and will win 8-2 or better against any other team. However, if each of their players lands in a pool containing the top 2 players in that slot, then they'll all go 1-2 in pools and the team will miss playoffs by a lot.

In this case the best team in the tour by far misses playoffs by a lot, not because any other team upset them in a given week, but because the randomly generated superteam that they were paired against would have prevented any team in the tour from making playoffs against it.

This example is obviously extreme and models games as always won by the better player to keep things simple and clear, but it illustrates the way in which pairing luck in pools differs from pairing luck in groups.

In groups, the opposition each team faces is also not identical and subject to some randomness, but it is at least comprised of actual teams; because of this, as long as a team is the Best team (in the extreme sense that they Will defeat any other team they face), they will always win the tour (for this extreme + simplified definition of Best).

---

I will also note that I agree with Aberforth's post and think that teams fighting head to head feels like what's most in the spirit of a World Cup and is what is most enjoyable format for the distribution of games / team cohesion / spectating.

this seems like such an unlikely outcome and i don't think oversimplifications like this are very meaningful for any sport/game especially one as luck-influenced as pokémon.

assuming 16 teams, so 16 players for each slot, for each slot you'd have what i believe is a 3!/(15*14) chance of this happening. which would be a (3!/(15*14))^10 chance of happening for every slot, this is ~3.625×10^-16, which is so astronomically low. that's about the chance of missing 30 focus blasts in a row.

even if you limit it to this happening to just eight slots and the other two going 3-0 but the team still missing poffs at 14W-16L this is still 10*9*(3!/(15*14))^8 chances i believe (i'm ignoring the odds that the other two 3-0 players draw into one or two of the better players, which would make the odds even lower)? which is still astronomically low at ~4×10^-11. that's about the chance of missing 20 focus blasts in a row.

i get it though, this is an extreme example, but i just don't think making a point with extreme examples, like, helps the argument much? you could argue smaller statistical fluctuations like this could still be the difference between a team making playoffs or not, and yes, absolutely! but, it's impossible to completely remove luck of the draw from pokémon or pretty much any other sport or game. even if you do use 100% seeding, seeding cannot always be accurate on any sport or game, even completely skill-based ones, because there's always the chance someone had a bad day, or missed something, or made a mistake. and even moreso in pokémon, which is a game with a very significant luck component. with the groups format you would also have similar luck-of-the-draw effects with a given team only being paired against stronger teams, even if some sort of seeding is used, you could always get a good team that had back luck last year and is ranked lower, or a team that got new talent and their seeding isn't reflective, etc... and on your argument about the stronger team being able to beat every weaker team one-on-one, if you do assume an universe where the stronger player always wins, sure, a team with the 3rd best player in each pool would likely dominate every other team, but that's just not really how pokémon works, both in the team distribution, and in the game itself. i don't think the argument of which format has more chance for upsets like the ones you mentioned, or more chance to tie like someone else mentioned really holds much weight if we're giving hypothetical oversimplified examples, because it's really hard to accurately simulate them, and at the end of the day i'm sure they're at worst comparable and at best negligible to the luck aspect of the game of pokémon itself,.

i think the discussion here should be more about what format makes more sense from a "spirit", "feelings", and "vibes" pov, like the second part of your post, because at the end of the day, unless someone mathematically models which format has the least upset chance and tiebreaker chance, that's really all we can do at this point, i think, empirical assumptions, guesstimations, and intuitions can't take us very far. pools, groups, and any other format to me all seem similarly unfair in the sense that bad luck-of-the-draw can happen in all of them.

sorry for using your post as a platform for a mostly unrelated ramble, but i just wanted to share my thoughts because i've seen a few oversimplified examples being used as arguing points, and they don't really feel like they're statistically significant enough to land for me

 

[Charmflash]

the group format has many flaws that are really hard to overcome.

1. it's very easy to have situations where the third week is completely irrelevant (for example: weeks 1 and 2 have teams A and B beat teams C and D, then it's A vs B at 2-0 when they both already qualify, and C vs D at 0-2 when they are both already out).
this is not a problem in professional sports because of the word 'professional', but here people really have no reason to care (unless they are obsessed with their sheet record i guess). we will see a lot of farcical week 3s.
i would pick low interest at the start (pools) over zero interest at the end (groups) any time. also, if low interest at the start is your main argument against pools, you should push to force players to actually play 1 game a week. no need to completely overhaul the format

2. there are many situations where making it out of the group will be decided on a stupid tiebreaker (3-0 1-2 1-2 1-2 or 2-1 2-1 2-1 0-3 are extremely common final results for groups of 4). pretty much no matter what the tiebreaker is, it will not feel good for anybody involved. many of these situations will be 3-way and require cutting out teams on BD in the interest of time. there might be ways to get over this hurdle but i would have to see them before i believe that they exist
edit: rigas makes a good point in the post below that draws help a little bit with easing this issue. but these scenarios will still happen from time to time and it will suck


week-by-week pairings work fine when the regular season has 7 or 9 weeks, when it only has 3 weeks it breaks down really fast. the logistical flaws of groups are big big hurdles, and there's no need to rock the boat when pools is great as-is.

So your complaints are:
1) Last week matters too little
2) Last week matters too much
Impeccable.

Besides, tiebreakers are not stupid and actually pretty hype and fair.
Personally I prefer groups over pools because it allows the better teams to advance more reliably and they also have a more appealing team vs. team vibe. The specific situation D4 outlined where u can face a randomly generated superteam which would beat any team in the tournament isnt even close to the only oopsie that can happen. You can easily face off against a specific teams weaker or stronger players without their counterparts across multiple slots which will result in weaker teams being able to qualify over stronger ones. It is funny that even the best real team could fall victim to this, which although not likely, underlines the absurdity of the current system.

 

[false]

i think groups is a fun concept that i would like to see implemented.

in a tournament like world cup, where a team cohesion and chemistry are at a premium, it seems bizarre that the base format would pit you against a random group of opponents from a swathe of different countries — it is unlikely for there to be any similarities between your pool of opponents and the pool of any of your teammates. instead, the drive for that team cohesion is forced to come from the idea that you want your teammate to win (something which is the case, by default, in every team tournament format). by contrast, a groups format unites your nation directly against another. teams are more likely to have reason to work together because they are competing against a single, unified team, rather than a disparate group of tournament players picked at random. a groups format seems to best encapsulate the spirit of what the world cup of pokemon should be.

on a broader level, i enjoy the fact that the format mirrors that of the football world cup; i think it would create an interesting dynamic both in terms of qualification for newer teams and in terms of actualising rivalries for established ones (both things which i think the current pools format handles particularly poorly). i think it would be fun, over a longer time scale, to see how the groups format would create fun narratives, especially from a qualifying sense (pitting newer teams against established ones, rather than watching all the new teams duke it out just so they can be cut in a later round)

the groups format is much more likely to give a fair chance to new teams trying to establish themselves. the current iteration of world cup qualifiers are well known to be unfair — groups format is much more adaptable & will likely allow the majority, if not all teams to slot into the tournament, affording reasonable chances and opportunity for everyone. given that world cup is already inherently an extremely unfair and unbalanced tournament, we should be doing as much as possible to give the chance for all eligible nations to compete.

i'd also like to strongly push back on the blatantly false 'pools is more fun because every game matters' narrative. this is nothing but a rose-tinted view from fans of the final day frenzy. you need look no further than one of the smogtours question of all time "do any of these games matter?" a message you will no doubt read hundreds of times on the final weekend of the tournament because, funnily enough, a large number of games won't matter. even worse, and a point i haven't seen be brought to the table as of yet, the late end of the pools format often results in games only mattering for 1 team, and not the other. obviously unimportant games are going to factor into almost any format, but pools is the only format in which these unimportant games (for qualified or eliminated teams) directly underminine the standing of every single team in the tournament, since all teams are placed onto the same ranking scale.

additionally, for all the credit given to pools for creating an exciting final weekend rush, nobody seems to discredit pools for the dull, languid opening two weeks in which absolutely no one cares and nothing happens. i don’t believe shortening the round is a reasonable fix in that regard, because, speaking from experience, the nature of this tournament exacerbates timezone disparities to a degree that makes scheduling difficult as is. this is just an inherent failing of the pools format.

i would’ve liked to flesh out this idea further but i am currently extremely time poor & will continue to be for a few more weeks, so this will have to do for now (praying there aren’t too many spelling & grammar mistakes)— hopefully this post communicates enough of the general ideas i am trying to illustrate. i would also encourage anyone else who has any outstanding opinions to post them in the thread, i can’t imagine it stays open for much longer.

lastly, i am not deadset on groups being the be-all and end-all of formats, i just think it deserves a little more consideration than it is currently being given. if pools is ultimately deemed to be more well-liked then so be it. however, i would be interested in seeing at least a little more discussion around this topic, everything’s been pretty dry so far imo.

 

[ABR]

We can do pools, but assign everyone a weekly opponent within those pools

- gives more flavor to weeks 1 and 2
- simplifies scheduling instead of coordinating with 3 opponents simultaneously

Example pool of A B C D

Week 1
A vs B
C vs D

Week 2
A vs C
B vs D

Week 3
A vs D
B vs C

rn?

 

[Hipmonlee]

I only skimmed this thread, but did anyone point out that groups are famously unfair? Hence phrases like "the group of death".

I don't have strong opinions either way, but if the goal is ensuring the top teams advance, moving to groups seems like a terrible idea.

 

[dex]

I am a newer gamer to WCOP, and I am absolutely not even assured a spot on a World Cup team this coming year, but I do find the concept of groups to be exciting as a player and as a viewer. I'll give my reasoning why here:

As a player, groups enforce the concept of team play. You and the rest of your teammates for one week are all playing against a singular opponent: a different country. That's the type of situation that can get people really excited and into it. Not to mention, it adds a whole other layer to scouting: checking out a country's preferences. This is obviously already a component of WCOP, but I think it would be a lot bigger of an element in a groups setting. It gets everyone up and involved in a much more easy way than scouting every singular person for everyone. It basically makes prepping a little easier and more approachable while bringing the excitement of the playoff stages, i.e. country vs. country stages, to the rest of the tournament. Now, Hipmonlee's concern about potentially creating "groups of death" is absolutely valid, and it's something bad that happens even in FIFA groups, but I think it is possible to overcome this. I explain this further later in this post.

As a viewer, groups are much, much, better than pools. The way I see it, Pools are more geared for people who want to root for a particular player, not a particular country. While this is fine and dandy for individual tours, in a team tournament setting, especially the World Cup, you want to support a cohesive team. Groups present matchups in a way that you can always root for your favorite team (and root against whoever they are playing) and it isn't too convoluted to figure out who is playing who and in what order and all that. Groups push WCOP towards being more of a team tournament, and that's always more fun as a viewer.

Now, the big question with groups is how to avoid "groups of death" as Hipmonlee put it. For those unaware, a group of death would be like if a group contained Germany, France, Spain, and another unlucky contestant. There, you have three teams, all strong past contenders, all stuffed in with one other unlucky team forced to try to get through that gauntlet. Not only does this create a shitty experience for the fourth team, but it also means that one or two (depending on how groups are implemented) of the strongest teams won't make it to playoffs, which is obviously not great when a different group could let in a much weaker team. So, the question is, how do you make balanced groups? There is no perfect answer, but I hope to provide a good method below. I'll be assuming that groups are sets of four teams and that two teams from each group move on to the next stage, but this should be easily transferable to a different format if needed.

Now, there are 16 teams in the main stage of WCOP, including two teams that come up from relegation. This means there are four groups of four teams. I propose that teams be placed into groups according to their playoff placement in the previous year's WCOP while using the main stage W/L differential as a tiebreaker. Teams who are still tied after this will be coinflipped into their resultant groups (I mark this below with slashes). While coinflips may seem like a bad thing in a system trying to define balance, I don't think it makes that much difference in the end unless there is something like 4 teams all tied, which seems unlikely. This means that teams that made it to the main stage, avoided relegation, and didn't make playoffs are only "graded" on their individual W/L record. We then sort these teams in a snake pattern, so Spain would be in group 1 as the best team from last year with UK (the eighth best according to the above system) along with one of Italy/India and the worst of the two play-in teams. This system ensures that no group will have more than two previous playoff participants in it. If we use the previous WCOP as an example, groups would be the following:

Group 1:
Spain
UK
Italy/India
Team #2 from Play-Ins

Group 2:
Europe
US Midwest
Italy/India
Team #1 from Play-Ins

Group 3:
Germany
France
Belgium/US South
US Northeast/Bangladesh

Group 4:
Oceania
US West
Belgium/US South
US Northeast/Bangladesh

Now, I am less experienced than all of y'all with this tournament, so if these are unfair pairings and my system is bad, you're more than justified to yell at me. But, from an initial view, this looks like a decent system to avoid true groups of death. The one issue I know can arise from this is teams knowing who some of their opponents are ahead of time while Play-In teams will not, giving the advantage to the teams that have already qualified for the main stage in terms of prep time. However, as I understand it, this advantage is already present somewhat due to the relegation system, though obviously it is more exacerbated here. This isn't a perfect system by any means (Group 3 looks a little stacked haha) but I think it will more often than not provide about as balanced a set of groups as one can hope for.

 

[Star]

Based on the discussion in this thread we've decided to stick with the existing pools format. Opinions on the topic have been very mixed and not particularly active, so we don't feel a change to groups is necessary at this time.

However, we've also heard the concerns about the size of the main event and some of the arguments for groups revolved around using it as a way to expand the size of the tournament. Although we are sticking with the pools format, we will also be expanding the number of teams in the main event to 20. For this edition of WCoP, it will result in the following format for qualifiers and main event

1. The 13 non-relegated teams from last year are automatically in the main event.
2. The first stage of qualifiers will be pools again and contain the 3 relegated teams + all other qualifier sign-ups.
3. The top 5 seeds at the conclusion of the qualifier pools will gain automatic entry to the main event.
4. Seeds 6 through 9 will play one series to decide who makes it among them (6v9 and 7v8). This series will be 9v9, dropping one SV OU slot. This change is to avoid tiebreakers in these series further delaying the start of the main event. It's still possible for tiebreakers to occur at the 5th or 9th seed, and we want to make sure we don't have to delay multiple weeks.
5. Playoffs for the 20 team main event will still be the top 8 teams. We don't feel it's necessary to expand the playoffs to an awkward number as 8/20 is the same ratio as SPL and SCL.
6. From now on, the bottom 4 main event teams will be relegated.