personally i really like the circuit as it is and would not change any of the tours, but i do think the points distributions are kinda messy and could be improved? I remember whining about points a couple of times to various people so i'll try to be more useful this time and, like, actually suggest something instead of just being annoying
Particularly the swiss tour. Of course, i understand that it was done in rush and stuff
and you totally should have thought about it way before the tour started, but as it is now, there are far more points distributed in swiss overall than in any other tour, and mediocre performances are heavily rewarded compared to other tours. It's fairly visible if you look at the circuit sheet. The thing with Swiss is that the distribution of records between players is completely different to what happens in elimination tours. The records are misleading - while winning 128-player Swiss tour is about as difficult as winning a 128-player elimination tour, a somewhat impressive-looking 5-2 is roughly equivalent to a 3rd round elimination and 4-3?
Half of the players get a positive record - in a way it is like getting a round 1 win in elimination. The bottom half of the players - with a negative record - would not get anything from an elimination tournament.
Why does this matter? Well, even though Swiss is supposed to be worth about as much as seasonal and open, it matters far more for qualifying than any of the two. Right now it is an easy way to get a fairly free boost for qualifying, as you can get a hefty amount of points for a middling performance, and it's the most rewarding tour to join. Also, the winner of Swiss gets less points for no reason - 7-0 is the same performance as winning a single elim tour of the same size.
Swiss rn rewards points on an entirely diferent basis compared to other circuit - and smogon - tours, that is, on the basis of number of wins achieved or score, as opposed to top-x reached in most tournaments. Let's try applying the point distribution of type-A tours to swiss, using the number of players who reach each respective record:
first column is status quo, second column is rigorously applying the type-A tournament point distribution: top1 pt for top1, top8 pts of top8 and so on. I think it makes for a good comparison, and if it wasn't for the differences in numbers in tour stages vs records, like top32 vs top29 it would be the "cleanest" approach, but it admittedly looks - and in fact is - too stingy, as in it results in less points being distributed overall. The third column is type A points, but amended so that the same amount of points is distributed overall as in a double elim tournament. going by the logic that after achieving for example, top8 in swiss you don't have the chance to get extra points by getting to stages like top2, top3, top4, top6 that you would have in elim, all points that would have been awarded to players "above" top8, but "below" top1 will be evenly distributed to players in swiss top8. It's also a simple way to address the issue that the top-x stages that swiss format produces are different than those in elim: to get points for top29 we just take the average amount that the players "between" 9th place and 29th place would get according to the type A point distribution. For example: for the top29 here it's 4*105 (top12) + 4*75 (top16) + 8*55 (top24) + 5*32 (five from top32, points from the other three wold go to our top64), /21 = 65 (rounded). Like, maybe this stuff is unnecessary but it just seems to me like the most straightforward way to make the type A tours equivalent - so that players get rewarded equally for equal performances.
*The records might not exactly match the predetermined top-X stages, but the differences won't be that big and i still think that having some sort of.. reasoning is better than just making up some arbitrary numbers. Also you might notice with the distributing-points-for-stages-that-arent-in-the-tour thing i did above that hey, single elim tours award less overall than double elim. While open giving less than ssnl is a fun fact.. for a 128-player tour, the total amount is 3965 for single elim, 4545 for double elim, not that huge... 8744 for swiss as it is right now. Elimination tours don't grant points to "bottom half" of players, like top96 and top128 in a 128 player tournament, which is showcased by the red numbers for records that would not get any points for the same performance in an elim tour. Either keeping them or having a cutoff is alright, i suppose, though a cutoff is useful for activity issues.
Alright, now as for the rest of the points system, it just.. feels messy, you know? It's not that it "looks bad", there are oddities like that you get the same amount of points for reaching semifinals in type A and type B tournament (250), and for top8, you even get *more* in PULT - 150 compared to 140 in type A tours. Which is i think against the point of having different tournament tiers. Plus - this might be a nitpick, but - even if you don't change anything about the system, have either "top-x" or X-th on the tables, not top-x on the type a points table and x-th on type-b and type-c table - it's confusing. I'd suggest just picking some base point distribution and then a ratio of how much are the tournament types worth compared to each other: let's say 5:4:3 for type A : type B : type C, that's similar to what there is now. Using the point distribution from PU circuit before tournament types started to be used here, and the conversion thing that i very clunkily explained for swiss, plus a cutoff after 4 losses:
So that's my suggestion, of course a different point distribution could be picked as a base, a different ratio can be chosen, some rounding can be done to make it look nicer (tho that means ties might be more likely). Or just adjusting the existing distributions so that pult doesn't give more for quarterfinals than open and using some arbitrary numbers for swiss would work too i guess. I apologize for the very bad job i did explaining, it's difficult for me to do in english.
tldr: Swiss right now gives out disproportionally more points than ssnl/open for mediocre results, which is the consequence of how the format works with player results. Make the tour equivalent to other type A tours by converting W-L to a top-X record and awarding points based on top-X, or just make the reward for X-2 about 3-4 times lower than the X-1 reward. Clean up the point distributions and fix some oddities by picking one point distribution and applying it to type B and C tournaments with a chosen ratio.