Announcement NatDex UU 2024 Tournament Circuit Info & Discussion

[Runo]

NatDex UU Circuit Information and Discussion

NatDex UU Circuit Points Sheet​

Circuit

• NatDex UU Winter Seasonal - Type A - ONGOING
• NatDex UU Open - Type B - Signups in June
• NatDex UU Summer Seasonal - Type A - Signups in July
• NatDex UU Last Chance - Type B - Signups in September
• NatDex UU 2024 Circuit Playoffs - 8 Person Seeding - In November

Team Tours^

• NatDex UU Trios Tournament - ONGOING
• NatDex World Cup* - NOT INCLUDED
• NatDex Premier League* - Signups in August

^ Team Tours will not count towards circuit.
* Pending NatDex UU's inclusion into said team tours.

Original OP

Hey gang! I'm spearheading the creation of NatDex UU's very own circuit with the help of Arishem. But before we can come to a hard decision, we decided it was best to get some community input on how to set this up properly for an enjoyable experience throughout the year. Anyone, from newcomers to veterans, is allowed to participate and we heavily encourage you guys to do so.

Tournament Ideas:

• Winter/Summer/Fall Seasonals
• Open (As apart of NatDex Grand Slam)*
• Ladder Tournament
• Gen 8 Tournament
• Last Chance
• Circuit Playoffs

None of these are set in stone except for Circuit Playoffs
*NatDex Grand Slam is unconfirmed so UU Open is unconfirmed as a result


Tournament Types:
Seasonals: Type A, best-of-3, double-elimination tournaments.
Open / Last Chance: Type B, best-of-3, elimination tournaments.
Cup: Type C, best-of-3-elimination tournaments.
Circuit Playoffs: best-of-3, elimination tournament, 8/16 player seed based off performance throughout the year.

POINTS TO DISCUSS:

• How many tournaments should we have?
  • When should these tournaments start?
    • How spread out should they be?
• Should Gen 8 be included within the circuit?
  • What type of tour should it be?
• Should UU Open be included as apart of the circuit?
• Should a Ladder Tournament be included?
  • What type of tour should it be?
  • How many cycles is sufficient?
    • how long should the cycles be?
    • what is the player cutoff for each cycle?
  • Is it worth including at the cost of influencing usage stats?
• Should Last Chance be included?
• Should circuit playoffs be 8 or 16 players?
  • Should it be a best-of-3 or a best-of-5?
  • what should the prize be (that is in the scope of our capabilities, ergo no Custom Avatar / Ribbon / Trophy)?
• Should team tours (NDUUPL/Trios/Ghosting) be included?*
  • Do we have the playerbase to sustain them?
  • How many should we have?
• Are there any other tournaments that should be included that weren't mentioned?**

*Team tours would not count towards circuit playoffs
**unserious tours such as Rigged or Economy would also not count towards circuit playoffs

We plan to come to a decision after 10 days of discussion so feedback is heavily appreciated.

 

[sealoo]

I’d like to see 2 seasonals, open, and last chance for tours that count for Circuit.

I think Gen8 should be kept out of a circuit where the playoffs will only be Gen9. On the topic of playoffs, BO3 > BO5. NDUUPL sounds neat but idk how itd turn out, worth a shot. A trios tour also sounds great.

I think a circuit overall is a great idea and will improve the tier heavily!

 

[StompBox]

I’d like to see 2 seasonals, open, and last chance for tours that count for Circuit.

I think Gen8 should be kept out of a circuit where the playoffs will only be Gen9. On the topic of playoffs, BO3 > BO5. NDUUPL sounds neat but idk how itd turn out, worth a shot. A trios tour also sounds great.

I think a circuit overall is a great idea and will improve the tier heavily!

Very much agree with the ideas that Sealoo has posted regarding the tourney Circuit and how it would massively benefit the tier, however I would also love to see a Gen 8 tourney take place unless that's too much of a hassle to include with the circuit.

 

[Runo]

Ok so here is my personal opinion on things right now.

5 Individual Tours + playoffs

This is kinda mimicking NDOU's last year format but why fix what isn't broken tbh, + we don't really need to take team tours into account that much so yeah.

• Winter Seasonal - ASAP
  • No brainer choice, this has been asked for while now and it's been ages since we've had another individual tour. Seasonal is great one to start out with.
• Gen 8 Cup - sometime in April ideally
  • Gen 8 isn't a solved metagame, and we left the tier with some concerns such as Aegislash that might need to be addressed still. A tour like this helps to re-identify old issues. I'm not opposed to cutting this idea however.
• Ladder Tournament - around June
  • After April drops, we have reportedly 3-month shifts instead of the usual 1-month ones, so any concern about potentially screwing up usage stats can be minimized while still significantly improving the state of the ladder, albeit temporarily. June is a really good time to host something like this as well since summer break gives people a lot of opportunities to commit to something like this. More experienced users on the ladder can also be a boon to metagame development on it's own.
• Summer Seasonal - sometime in August
  • Two seasonals seems pretty mandatory for a circuit, not really much else to add here honestly.
• Last Chance - around October
  • with a sizeable time gap between Summer Seasonal and Playoffs, you can probably fit another tournament in here to give people another chance (a last chance even lololol) to make it into playoffs. I also think that it's an interesting tour for meta development since in theory the added pressure to getting a high placement in this tour to make playoffs means that you might see some cool ideas get discovered here.
• Playoffs - December
  • given the amount of tours i'm suggesting, 16 player playoffs seems the best here
  • I strongly belive that some sort of prize should be rewarded to the winner (such as a room / server rank, cash prize, or hell maybe actually a custom banner if we can get approved for such a thing) would give people some insentive to continue in playoffs or make it so that they have to play by forcing infracts on drop outs (since they costed another good player a place in playoffs), but the former is easier said than done since we either have to secure a satisfactory amount of funds or get approval which isn't guarenteed, while the latter is very is a pretty cutthroat way of solving it so I would only have that as a last resort.
  • I don't really care about Bo3 vs Bo5, although we probably have enough tournaments throughout the year where it's not necessary to have a Bo5

Another comments

• NDUUPL seems out of reach until our playerbase increases significantly
  • If we were to include it then
    • Preferably have as few teams as possible. Probably use a similar format system to NDFL, including playoffs format
    • Outsourcing to other prominent tour players (such as JustFranco) in order to fill teamslots might be necessary even though they aren't super familiar with the tier. This works as a solution but we need to more or less give people a reason to join (directly asking friends to join or offering some sort of prize). The burden is also on managers and other teammates to support these people if they're not comfortable with building.
    • Probably around the end of the circuit year would be best I think. Not exactly sure were to put it in a potential schedule
• UU Open (and Grand Slam as a while) is still kinda up in the air as to if that's happening or not (they replied back to me "it is happening i hope", so not exactly giving me a lot of confidence here). So until we know for certain I would rather not waste time on adding it to the circuit and then finding out it never happens. If it happens then cool, just think of it as a nice side tour.

 

[R1C3M4N]

agree with sealoo that gen 8 should be kept out of circuit, though I'd love a gen 8 tour.

Not sure how popular a ladder tour would actually be, the NDUU ladder is notorious for being terrible and a ladder tour might help a little bit, but I'm not sure that non NDUU players would have much of an incentive to grind the NDUU ladder, and imo our playerbase isn't large enough to have a good ladder even if there is a ladder tour going on.

Instead, I'd like a ghosting/trios tour. We don't have enough players for a NDUUPL, but that doesn't mean there can't be a tour that's team-based. Those are the most enjoyable tours to play on this site anyways. Not sure if there are existing rules that could make this count for a circuit, but idt it would be unfair to do so.

 

[3MoreMinutes]

I pretty much agree with everything in this thread except LT support (FUCK LT) (jk I just don't care much)

• Should Gen 8 be included within the circuit?
  • What type of tour should it be?

I love SS NDUU and think we're far enough into the gen we should start giving it some action again. Still agree that it prob shouldn't be in circuit, would love a tour for it though. I'd also like to see SS included in team tours, obviously PL if it happens but also possibly trios.

• Should UU Open be included as apart of the circuit?

yeah

• Should a Ladder Tournament be included?
  • What type of tour should it be?
  • How many cycles is sufficient?
    • how long should the cycles be?
    • what is the player cutoff for each cycle?
  • Is it worth including at the cost of influencing usage stats?

I don't know enough about ladder tours to know whether it would work, but it seems difficult. I'm worried about how agonizing the constant rematches/cteams would be in a tour like this. With likely repeated matches vs other ladder tour players I can see this tour being completely unenjoyable. I don't think influencing usage stats is something we should worry about, if anything LT would make them better. This tour is prob not worth hosting, but I doubt it would have a negative effect on anything other than the players' mental health.

• Should Last Chance be included?

yeah

• Should circuit playoffs be 8 or 16 players?
  • Should it be a best-of-3 or a best-of-5?
  • what should the prize be (that is in the scope of our capabilities, ergo no Custom Avatar / Ribbon / Trophy)?

Unsure if 16 would be worth it. I'm not against more games but I do think that in a circuit there should be some difficulty in qualifying. The more tours are included in the circuit, the more I am open to a top 16 poffs, since it would mean less likelihood of fluke qualifications. I'd say if we have 2 SSNLs + Last Chance + at least 1 other tour top 16 is fine, otherwise top 8. For sure make this BO3.

• Should team tours (NDUUPL/Trios/Ghosting) be included?*
  • Do we have the playerbase to sustain them?
  • How many should we have?

YES
Ok obviously NDUUPL seems tough to pull off. If it's possible it would be very cool, I wouldn't be able to tell you if it is though. There def aren't enough people who actively play to fill enough slots but convincing people to pick it up with support seems maybe plausible. I think trios would obviously be the greatest tour in the history of smogon please do this (2 SV 1 SS maybe?). Ghosting also sounds fun, I agree with the sentiment that having some type of teamtour would be good.

 

[Arishem]

Gen 9 Seasonals first seems like the best choice moving forward - tons of people have been asking for it now, and with the limited representation owing to Draft Tours like NDFL/PL, this seems like a good opportunity to diversify the tier on our own accord.

Gen 8 also has plenty of development opportunities as well, being the last-minute addition of Hydreigon, and potential elements worth looking at based on the circumstances provided (Aegislash, Urshifu, Slowbro-Galar etc.). That said, I insist we keep these formats exclusive to gauge maximum interest between separate playerbases based on metagame enjoyment. NDUUPL and ladder tour seem like plausible ideas, but as it stands, I feel as if the playerbase is way too ambiguous on preferences to justify the activity sufficient to be considered worthwhile, perhaps reinventing this type of discussion after observations made from earlier tours would be most optimal.

Above all though, Team or Ladder Tours aside, I strongly encourage the inclusion of bo3 format / loser brackets, this not only increases the pool of games, but also significantly reduces the impact of hax or other factors in overall performance.

 

[Runo]

Hi everyone sorry for the delay, we have our Circuit schedule for 2024 ready:

Circuit

• NatDex UU Winter Seasonal - Type A - Signups open immediately after this post.
• NatDex UU Summer Seasonal - Type A - Signups in July
• NatDex UU Last Chance - Type B - Signups in September
• NatDex UU 2024 Circuit Playoffs - 8 Person Seeding - In November

Re: NatDex UU Open,
It will be included into Circuit as a Type B tournament, but the date at this point is still uncertain since it's going to be in response to NatDex UU's Circuit schedule so I've been told.

Team Tours^

• NatDex UU Trios Tournament - Signups in April/March
• NatDex World Cup* - Signups in March
• NatDex Premier League* - Signups in August

^ Team Tours will not count towards circuit.
* Pending NatDex UU's inclusion into said team tours.


I will be releasing signups for Winter Seasonal soon, but will leave this thread open as there are still some minor(ish) things we would like input on:

• Are the times included in the schedule fine?
• Is an 8 person seed for playoffs fine?

Additional comments are still welcome of course.
If you would like to host Summer Seasonal, Trios, Last Chance, or Circuit Playoffs then dm us.

 

[N_Mareanie]

Free gen 8

 

[Runo]

We now have a circuit sheet.

Also I repurposed the thread OP so the circuit schedule is more clear.

We also have a date for NDUU Open (June), it shouldn't mess with the schedule to much but pushing things back slightly is still feasible