[Chris is me]

First I do want to clarify; I'm really excited about this event and appreciative of all of the hard work people have put into planning it. If we play 3v3 matches I don't think it will ruin the experience for us or anything like that. My intent here is just to look at some data to compare the two options; I really don't want to step on any toes or otherwise come across as making demands that would alienate anyone. Can't wait for the Rumble!

All of that said, I think there's a lot of merit to playing 2v2 than 3v3, at the cost of ~2 matches per team. Whether or not this is worth it is definitely up for discussion. For the purposes of this post, I'm assuming 16 "teams" (14 real robots + 2 practice bots). All schedules I generated for this were done in MatchMaker assuming 16 teams, aiming to avoid back to back matches, and the best "quality" possible as defined by the software.

First things first: The number of matches. 10 matches per team is a noble goal and I completely support giving teams as many matches as physically possible. However, 10 matches is completely impossible with the current schedule. To give each team 10 matches, let's assume perfectly ideal conditions. Currently we are playing matches from 9:45 - 12 and from 12:30 to 1:30. This allows us 195 minutes to run these matches. 10 matches per team means 27 matches. Given each match is 2:30 long, this gives us only a 4:45 turnaround between matches! This is completely unrealistic even for a regular event, but for a 16 team event with teams going back to back, 4:45 is just not going to happen. It simply will not work. We either need more time or we need fewer matches.

So how many matches can we possibly do? Given a 7:30 turnaround time and a 2:30 duration for each match, then that's 10 minutes a match. In 195 minutes, that's ~19.5 matches. For 3v3 with 16 teams, you can give everyone 7 matches in 19 rounds. For 2v2 with 16 teams, you can give everyone 5 matches in 20 rounds. For any amount of time near 200 minutes, you're going to get two more matches with 3v3 versus 2v2. This is a significant tradeoff.

Now that we have a ballpark number of matches, I generated two schedules using MatchMaker to compare their quality. They're attached if you're curious. In the 3v3 schedule, the minimum delta between matches is 1 (back to back) for 12/16 teams; a minimum delta of 2 (1 match in between) exists for 4 teams. For the most part teams play with and against about 75% of the event in quals. For 14/16 teams, they will play with / against at least one team 4 times.

Looking at the 2v2 schedule, no teams play any back to back matches. The minimum delta between matches is 2; 11/16 teams deal with a one match turnaround. Every team partners with 5 other teams and plays against 10 other teams. No team repeats playing with the same team or against the same team, though almost every team will interact with a team twice, once on each side.

The 2v2 schedule is a lot nicer, but 2 fewer matches is a lot.
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As for the differences between quals and eliminations, I really don't think it's a big deal. It's about as big of a change as the coopertition bridge vs triple balancing in 2012. Trusses, assists, and goals are the same; all that changes is who's on the field. It's really not "completely different strategy" to skip the inbound / pass-back robot. That said, 3v3 would still be a lot of fun and allow for a bit more... "variability"... in alliance partners.