How should we do competitive events?

[t3h Icy]

Our community has had a lot of problems thus far with getting tournaments going. The length of how long pools/brackets can take and the ease of procrastinating matches was abused, but also because of the lack of interest.

So, for competitive events, how should we change things up?

Pools for starters haven't always been popular here, but we sometimes get stacked brackets without them. Should we try to make Pools better somehow, or should we just have random brackets and each player has to hope for the best?

Also regarding brackets, many players seem to grow tired of the length of Double-Elimination. We could do Single-Elimination, and perhaps consolation matches (tiebreakers), but a player may get knocked out a of tournament sooner than they may be due to running into a tough opponent. Single-Elimination is also rough without seeds. However, we could bump up sets to best 3 of 5 to help eliminate luck's factor into matches.

One idea I've had for awhile is weekly Round Robins. Since players never tend to be active unless they have to for tournaments, specific time events may help with that, and Round Robins allows no luck in Pools/Bracket, since everyone plays everyone else. Maybe something cute like PokeMondays? =P

What are your thoughts and suggestions?

[WaterWizard]

Yes, epically long tournaments tend to get boring, so I'd say keep pools out of it. No one really minds random match-up assignments.

Tournament Tuesdays?

[Supreme Dirt]

That would work.

I actually just thought of something. Smogon has success with mashup tournaments, why don't we have one of GSC, RBY, and RBY w/tradebacks? Perhaps throw in ADV there to maybe pull in some ADV players?

[WaterWizard]

haha ADV is out of the question since none of us know it. Maybe one day...

We do try to do themed tournaments every now and then, usually mini-tournaments.

[Crystal_]

Make deadlines for each round.