Announcing the Fall Season of SBB Organized Play
The third and final phase of 2022 Organized Play is here!
It feels like just yesterday that we announced the 2022 Organized Play program for Storybook Brawl, but we are already entering the final season of the year! Two players have already been crowned season champions and punched their tickets to the World Championship (which will be live from The Bahamas) along with 14 others. Now let's crown the final season's champion and find the final 8 players who will be at Worlds!
Fall Season Schedule
| Tournament | Dates |
|---|---|
| July SBBMonthly | Jul 30-31 |
| August SBBMonthly | Aug 27-28 |
| September SBBMonthly | Sep 17-18 |
| October SBBMonthly | Oct 22-23 |
| Fall Championship | Nov 5-6 |
Changes for the Fall Season
Four qualifying SBBMonthlies (was three)
Prior to this season, we would take off the SBBMonthlies during Championship months. However, we understand that players want more play opportunities and decided that SBBMonthlies should be...well, monthly.
July has both a Championship and an SBBMonthly. There are four Fall qualifying months (July-August-September-October), rather than the previous three.
The Fall Championship will have 40 players:
- the Top 8 of each qualifying Fall SBBMonthly
- the Pro Club leaderboard's top 4 who aren't already qualified
- 4 discretionary invites
November and December SBBMonthlies
There will be regular SBBMonthlies in November and December, but they will be part of the 2023 competitive year. 2022 Organized Play will culminate with the World Championship on December 2-4, with the Fall Championship in early November as its last qualifying event. Those with keen eyes will realize this means the November SBBMonthly (2023 OP) will occur before the World Championships. We know it's a little odd, but its the simplest way to do it.
Adjusted system for pod overflow / byes
One of the more difficult logistical aspects of SBB tournaments are how to handle flights where we have a non-divisible-by-eight number of players (maths & coders may recognize this as 'modulo'). We're not happy with the previous two systems (deferred rounds and auto-byes), as we feel they both had issues. For the Fall Season we will be implementing a new system to handle these.
Here is how it will work this season:
- Each round we will calculate the "modulo 8" (the remainder after splitting the players into sets of 8).
- The bottom X players are determined according to points.
- There will be a maximum of 1 total bot per round.
- Players who have already played in a bot pod will not be assigned to another one.
- Pods will then be generated based on the following chart:
| # Modulo | Pod Structure |
|---|---|
| 0 | All 8-player pods |
| 7 | One 8-player pod with 1 bot |
| 6 | One 6-player pod (no bots) |
| 5 | One 6-player pod + one 8-player pod with 1 bot |
| 4 | Two 6-player pods (no bots) |
| 3 | Two 6-player pods + one 8-player pod with 1 bot |
| 2 | Three 6-player pods (no bots) |
| 1 | Three 6-player pods + one 8-player pod with 1 bot |
We will adjust the scoring of pod respectively to account for the difference in sizes:
8 player pods
| Finish | Points |
|---|---|
| 1st | 10 |
| 2nd | 8 |
| 3rd | 7 |
| 4th | 6 |
| 5th | 4 |
| 6th | 3 |
| 7th | 2 |
| 8th | 1 |
6 player pods
| Finish | Points |
|---|---|
| 1st | 10 |
| 2nd | 8 |
| 3rd | 6 |
| 4th | 4 |
| 5th | 2 |
| 6th | 1 |
Note: the July monthly will be slightly different because this requires an engineering code change that will not be live yet. Starting in August, we will have the ability to create actual 6-person pods (no bots). For the July SBBMonthly, these will be 6-person pods with 2 bots. The scoring for these will be the same as 6 player pods listed above, and bot finishes will be ignored (e.g. if a player finishes 7th behind a bot, that's the same as a 6th).
Pro Club & Player of the Year
We are in the process of revamping the system behind the Pro Club tracking - we appreciate your patience as we finish this up. We know everyone is excited to check their points and benefits, and this new system is needed to help make this much smoother for everyone going forward.
Pro Club Nameplates
One of the hottest requested rewards from Pro Club members is an exclusive cosmetic to show off in-game. Originally we planned to use hero frames, but we determined that this could be a feel-bad for players. We are planning to release tons of beautiful frames into the game soon, and we wouldn't want our top competitive players to have to choose. Therefore, we have created a new cosmetic that for the time-being will only be available to Pro Club members. Introducing Pro Club Nameplates!
When you earn your Pro Club status, you will automatically be granted one of these gorgeous, exclusive nameplates according to your status level. These nameplates will show under your hero in-game and will provide you the ultimate flex.
Player of the Year race
In the final stretch of Organized Play this year, we will keep a closer eye on the Pro Points leaderboard to see who will earn the coveted title of Player of the Year. More information about this will be revealed soon!
Thank you all for reading and see you this weekend at the July SBBMonthly!
-Parney