Hey pals, today I wanted to take an honest look at the structure of CAP's team tournaments, and open up discussion regarding the policies surrounding them. As of now, I don't believe there has been any serious public discussion on this topic, so by breaking new ground we have a lot of room to work with in terms of innovating and solidifying a coherent structure for CAP's team tournaments.
The main issue I believe merits an extensive discussion at this time is that of CAP's winter team tournament, the CAP Snake Draft. While I want to be explicit in saying we don't necessarily need to replace it at all, I want to open up discussion on whether or not the community would like to see it replaced with a different team tournament format this year. This is prompted by Smogon's official tournament scene ditching Smogon Snake Draft and replacing it with the Smogon Champions League. Since CAP is unaffiliated with official Smogon metas, this shift isn't necessarily a mandate for how to run our own tournament policy, however, after speaking with many of the managers for last year's CAP Snake Draft, it appears there are some glaring issues with the nature of the format itself. The most notable of those issues is the incredible amount of luck that impacts drafting strategies. Managers have no control over their placement in the draft order, and with the fact that Snake Drafts simply allow the manager to pick a player without any form of bidding, drafting a solid team often comes down to luck of the draw. It can be argued that the increased level of nuance involved with auction-based drafts would be preferable to something with a lower skill ceiling like Snake Draft, since managers have more room to make intelligent decisions and be rewarded for them. With this in mind, I'd like to open up discussion on a few paths forward from here. Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list, and if you have a different idea or any sort of amendment to make for items on this list, please let us know in this thread.
The main issue I believe merits an extensive discussion at this time is that of CAP's winter team tournament, the CAP Snake Draft. While I want to be explicit in saying we don't necessarily need to replace it at all, I want to open up discussion on whether or not the community would like to see it replaced with a different team tournament format this year. This is prompted by Smogon's official tournament scene ditching Smogon Snake Draft and replacing it with the Smogon Champions League. Since CAP is unaffiliated with official Smogon metas, this shift isn't necessarily a mandate for how to run our own tournament policy, however, after speaking with many of the managers for last year's CAP Snake Draft, it appears there are some glaring issues with the nature of the format itself. The most notable of those issues is the incredible amount of luck that impacts drafting strategies. Managers have no control over their placement in the draft order, and with the fact that Snake Drafts simply allow the manager to pick a player without any form of bidding, drafting a solid team often comes down to luck of the draw. It can be argued that the increased level of nuance involved with auction-based drafts would be preferable to something with a lower skill ceiling like Snake Draft, since managers have more room to make intelligent decisions and be rewarded for them. With this in mind, I'd like to open up discussion on a few paths forward from here. Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list, and if you have a different idea or any sort of amendment to make for items on this list, please let us know in this thread.
- Standard Auction-Based Draft: This is the simplest option if we're choosing to replace Snake Draft. While it wouldn't be much different from CAPPL with regards to drafting structure, it would still be able to stand on its own as a tournament through the formats played in it, as per this discussion post.
- Hybrid Draft: This format would combine aspects of the standard auction-based draft and snake draft. In essence, the managers would be allotted a diminished pool of auction credits compared to CAPPL, and use those to bid on players for the first few rounds. After a certain point, the rest of the draft would be completed via snaking. This attempts to add more nuance to picking up prestigious or more reliable players in the first few rounds of the draft, while also taking advantage of the efficiency offered by snake drafts.
- CAP World Cup: This option forgoes a standard drafting process and instead allows captains to freely pick from the list of signups based on their geographic region. Ironing out the exact details of which locations can produce balanced teams may be difficult, as certain areas have a much higher representation among CAP players (i.e. US and India) as opposed to others.
- Keeping Snake Draft: I've already gone over some of the negatives regarding this format, but I don't want to make a unilateral decision without gauging where the community stands. As I stated before, this format was generally disliked by last year's managers for its low skill ceiling, but if others truly enjoyed it I'd like to hear opinions from them.
- Other Options: The list above only covers a small swathe of possible auction formats, and there's a massive variety in how these drafts can be performed. I don't want to go into too much detail on each of these, but many of the alternative formats such as a Dutch auction, sealed first/second-price auction, and others can be further researched here.
