It’s a head-to-head format that scales up well. Similar to other formats that use a waiting list or queue concept, you can accommodate more players with fewer machines. Though obviously it takes more time than it would take with more concurrent games running.
It does feel a lot like Flip Frenzy. Some people like that faster pace of pairings with head to head matches. But they also like WPPRs, so this seems to be a good compromise.
When doing an exact round robin (number of rounds = number of players minus one) it works better than the round robin implementation in Match Play Events. In particular, your event will take less time because you start games without waiting for a full round to finish. It also does a better job of displaying the matches that should currently be active. (In the actual round robin format implementation it shows all rounds at the beginning of the tournament, sorted last round to first round, which players find confusing.)
The problem of “someone could fall behind and run out of pairings” is the price you pay for the efficiencies gained by taking this “roundless” approach. It’s a problem, but with the recent UI changes I think it will be easy to avoid as long as the TD knows to look out for it.
In my opinion we will settle on good solutions for the “what if a player leaves” problem. That problem already comes up in other formats and is handled without substantial issues. The current problems stem from the particular approach that Andreas took in the Max Match Play implementation. If consensus is that a deactivated player should not have their past matches stricken from the record (and if Andreas is willing to accommodate that feature request), then I think that we can settle on good solutions for the “half game” problem that can arise from dropping a player mid-tournament.
I don’t think it’s particularly high TGP per hour.
I’ll also say, that I agree with your overall sentiment though. In my opinion it’s an OK format, but not great. It has some flaws that can be improved, but overall it’s not going to be as popular as group match play or knockout. I think it has the potential to be a little more popular that Flip Frenzy was in previous years.
I’m so engaged in these discussions because I like experimenting and problem solving (so I’m trying to help make the format better), and because I was already in a head to head round robin league so it’s kind of perfect for some complaints that group had about the previous round robin implementation.