Could the tournament have been better if it were not a Battle Royal?

[SSJ YUSUKE]

Just to preface this by saying that I do love the Universal Survival arc as it is. But I do think it was weird turning it into a battle Royale. Before the arc began many of us thought the tournament would involve one on one team battles between Universes like the Dark Tournament in Yu Yu Hakusho. Would this have been a better way to do things or do think a completly different concept would have worked better?

[Logania]

Battle royale is a fine setting, it's just kind of pointless if you're ONLY going to focus on just mainly one universe's perspective, being Universe 7. I'd honestly just like a regular tournament focusing on 5 fighters from each universe, so we could have better fleshed out characters and fights.

[sintzu]

The issue wasn't just the format but them introducing so many characters we'd never seen before.

[Marlowe89]

For the anime, possibly. I don't think they were very good at producing the atmosphere and chaos that a battle royale would have, and that's just on top of having a mere 48-minute time limit that played no role in the plot and only served to detract from the viewer's immersion since it was off by about a dozen hours.

I don't know if changing the entire format would have been feasible, but at least some rule adjustments could have benefited the narrative in Toei's case. The experimental nature of the arc's premise didn't really pay off all that much.

[Bullza]

No not at all. The 1v1 style Tournaments have been hugely played out on this series.

There were three in the original series, not including the Fortuneteller​ Baba Tournament. Z had two, not including the Cell Games "Tournament". GT had one. Super had only just previously had the Universe 6 Tournament.

The battle royal was worth doing. You also wouldn't have had things like Kelfa, Goku and Frieza teaming up, Android 17 surprisingly coming back etc.

It would never have been the same.

[Zagacious]

They definitely could have made better use of the characters if it was a normal tournament or even some kind of 2v2 or 3v3 settings. There were very little teamups and the ones that happened had very little effect on the actual outcome of anything. The only real benefit the Battle Royale had was that we had characters hiding like Frieza and 17 for surprise attacks later on. It also gave them an excuse to eliminate an entire universe in one episode but that's not really a good thing.

The biggest fail was that the teamups had almost no effect on the outcome of any battles, except making them shorter by having stupid matchups where one side has no chance like U9 vs Vegeta and Goku. IMO they completely failed on the Battle royale aspect, even if it was a great tournament overall, it really wasn't a battle royale. Even if the ending was saved by a teamup that doesn't excuse the rest of the teamups having no effect.

[MKCSTEALTH]

Honestly, I think doing something along the lines of a regular tournament would've rendered even more of the characters pointless. They would've been shrugged off for the big fights. Plus we've already had a traditional tournament arc. I know old school Dragonball did 3, but it was spaced between arcs with villains and tension that kept us hooked. Super could not have pulled that off with 2 movie retellings and only one actual arc

[Kataphrut]

It might've been EASIER given the lack of direction going into it, but a Battle Royale is actually a good idea, and pretty novel for Dragon Ball. they just needed more focus on the other universes fighting and to either do away with or greatly extend the 48 minute time limit to allow for more downtime between the fights.

[TekTheNinja]

Obviously the writers couldn't handle the scope of a battle royale so I'd say absolutely.

[Lord Beerus]

And tournament with the same amount of characters would have been WAY more bloated than what we got with the Battle Royal.

The main issues with the Tournament Of Power was the time limit (48 Minutes is far too short) and the amount of character they had to use (80 fucking characters).

[majinwarman]

And tournament with the same amount of characters would have been WAY more bloated than what we got with the Battle Royal.

The main issues with the Tournament Of Power was the time limit (48 Minutes is far too short) and the amount of character they had to use (80 fucking characters).

I agree! The problem with this tournament was the time limit. It should have been at least one hour or more. But, overall I have enjoyed this arc anyway.

[JulieYBM]

Naw, a battle royal was a great idea. Why do a normal tournament of one-on-one matches for eighty characters in detail when you can dick around by having multiple fights happening at once and the point of those battles not being their conclusions, but the overall effect they have on the participants? Something I really wish had been mentioned in the tournament in the cartoon was that in Episode #130 Gokuu and Jiren were both down to something like a fifth of their normal strength, that they had broken bones or handicaps. Too often Dragon Ball fights just have characters fighting in their peak forms. A battle royal should be able having characters never in their peak condition and constantly fighting the conditions of nature, rather than be in this bubble of constantly being in top form.

[GreatSaiyaJeff]

I wouldn't mind if they did something like the Dark tournament from Yu Yu Hakusho and had Universe face each other whether it's a team fight or one on one, it would have been cool. Like the semi finals had U7 against U3 and U11 against U6 or something along those lines.

[namekiansaiyan]

Nothing wrong a battle royale but the problem this arc had was that it didn't seem like a battle royale most of the time.

Episdoe 112 was probably the best episode at showing a battle royale apart from the very start of the tournament.

[SSJ YUSUKE]

I think that a mix between battle Royale and team battles may have worked better.
So divide the tournament into 3 stages. The first stage would be a battle Royale, after 48 minutes the top 4 Universes go through to the next round, the rest get erased. You could do this in fewer episodes and the advantage is you could have the weaker fighters from Universe 7 get eliminated without being out of the tournament and it could act as motivation for the next round.
In the next round the top 4 teams face each other in 1 on 1 battles. As suggested by greatsayajeff it could be U7 vs U3 and U11 vs U6. Each character in U7 gets their own Episode to focus on their individual fight. U6 vs U11 will give could build U11 as a threat and give more focus on the U6 sayians with the Hit vs Jiren fight building up what a threat Jiren is.
The final round could be U7 vs U11 in a 10 on 10 team battle and the finale could still be like what we got in the final episode