I'm serious when I say that I still got a lot of stuff to figure out for Puyo Challengers -- here's a non-exhaustive list of all the stuff I'm still thinking about even after the "soft launch" of the tournament series. Last year, by the time we started Great Tuesday Rumble we already had a rough outline of how Advent League would be structured -- this time around, there's still way too many unknowns to even start thinking about league structure or stream production.
It bears repeating again, the biggest thing stopping the more ambitious plans from coming to fruition is a lack of volunteers, in particular bracket runners and streamers. This goes for more than just me, nearly every Puyo community running events is shorthanded! Feel free to reach out to me or your favorite TO if you feel like helping out.
Format
- Is the Challengers format actually motivational to get people to want to grind and improve at Puyo? Once the meta has settled down, will being hardstuck Tower or ping-ponging between Tower and Throne Room become too frustrating to warrant participating in Challengers?
- Is the Challengers format antithetical to community building? One of the more "fun" aspects of elimination style brackets is that players who get knocked out can still engage with the tournament through the stream and so on. With Swiss, instead you play 5 matches and end the day. Could this depress community engagement?
- Should Tower and Throne Room have different win counts? After week 1, players indicated FT5 was too short, but is FT8 potentially too long for Tower matchups given the wider distribution of skill level?
- Should Swiss brackets be seeded? While it's unfair to randomly matchmake two highly seeded players in round 1, is it also unfair for some players to essentially start the day off 0-1 or even 0-2?
- Should Throne Room have a much less stringent demotion criteria? I think you should be rewarded for having a good day in Tower, but should you be punished for having a bad day in Throne Room? Maybe demotions should only be reserved for significantly underperforming players?
- What defines an "underperforming" Throne Room player?
- Should separate communities have separate lists of Throne Room players? This is more of an issue if a bunch of servers start running Challengers events. There's a potential for players to snipe "weaker" communities for easier Throne Room promotions.
- Should Tower and Throne Room be held at the same time or on alternating weeks? I think this might solve a couple of issues in this worksheet, but requires me to double my time investment. Or maybe it'll make things easier because I don't have to baby two brackets at the same time!
Production
- What's the best way to ensure a high quality stream for Challengers format? Elimination style brackets naturally trend upwards in hype over the course of the tournament. While Swiss pairings should hopefully trend towards 4-x record players by the final round, the semi-random nature of Swiss means the most consequential matches of the bracket take place in the middle of the tournament.
- How many spectators are necessary to sufficiently cover all relevant matches? And how am I even supposed to find enough volunteers for this lol
- What's a good balance of match coverage between Tower and Throne Room? Given Challengers is supposed to focus on Tower, should Throne Room matches even be covered?
Premier League
- Should I even do a Premier League? See the intro chost for all the reasons I shouldn't. People have already pointed out that currently the only motivating factor to aim for Throne Room is the thrill of battle. That might be enough for some people, but others might need a bit more "encouragement" to participate in the Challengers ecosystem.
- How should the Premier League be structured? I more or less completely threw out the prototype Premier League system in order to realize Challengers. Now that I've committed to running Challengers, where does that leave the Pro League structure?
- How can multiple communities get involved in Premier League? Given the issues raised in the Advent League Retrospective, what's the right way for multiple community/region representation in Premier League?