Project Suggestions for OM Improvement

[longhiep341]

I'm going along the same line with pannu. That means not following any of Isaiah's option but keeping the current structure of this year: 6 Opens and 6 Seasonals, just with NFE replaced by Partners in Crime. Reasons: It's working pretty well, and while there's one meta to be left unplayed in a bo5, I think 1 is better than 0 or 2. 2 means you have to prep for 7 metas while potentially having more unused teams in a round than used ones. In other words, too much work for little reward. 0 means seeding hardly matter, getting to choose a meta first doesn't matter when you have to be better in 3/5 metas anyway. Having 6 metas in a bo5 ensures you are actually rewarded for getting more circuit points since even if you are better in 3 metas but worse in 3 metas the higher seed will still win due to getting their choice first. That will encourage people to get more points even if they are already comfortable enough to guarantee an OMCC slot. If we end up with 5 metas in bo5 for OMCC, I straight up suggest that the first seed gets to choose their opponent ranked between 9-16, then second chooses from the rest, etc and same with QF, SF and final, otherwise what's the point of trying to play more circuit tours? BO7 is straight up too long and shouldn't be considered ever, even a rand BO7 got massive backlash, no way a trambuilding BO7 works when it's 7 different metas.

Then is it unfair to Inheritance? Probably, but the most important thing to remember is PiC was advertised to be a part of circuit, Inheritance wasn't. https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...n-om-team-tours-8th-slot.3725429/post-9726320
Then is Inheritance doomed to be in this middleground spot where it gets represented in team tours but not circuit? Well, for next year, it should at least, but not necessarily forever. I think having a robust middleground system will be healthy in the long run. This goes a bit further than the circuit/team tour scope, so hear me out. I propose that there's a middleground system with annual + biannual (twice a year) review. Annual review: Perma OMs that don't meet the requirement for activity in terms of ladder and tour stats + maybe dissatisfaction from OM players due to meta's nature or council inactivity + forum activity will get demoted to middleground status next year, while the middleground meta moves up to take its slot in the circuit. Biannual review: If there's no change in the annual review/only biannual review, then discussions on whether the middleground meta meets the standard take place. If there's a meta that shows more activity and deserves to get a chance, the middleground meta gets demoted to normal OM while the replacement meta gets representation in whatever team tour for that 6 month period is. This ensures there will be incentive for all metas to thrive to one day make it to the top and a place in the circuit, while potentially also benefit more "seasonal" (can quickly become enjoyable or not depending on meta) metas of sort to be in the middleground spot, like Tier Shift for example who would benefit from 6-month periods with stable tiers but can quickly be demoted upon a new gen + maybe extra content of sort like DLC. How to do this idea specifically? Well besides the regular stuffs like observing activity on Discord, PS, here, maybe a biannual survey + OM leaders' concerns (like the seasonal stuff). Maybe something else, but that's my general proposal.

 

[HiZo]

My opinion is more or less echoing on grand slam being the bo3 tour and introducing pic/inh seasonals. I don’t believe that the virtue of being doubles (i am biased) and/or being a recent addition should automatically equal an instant disqualification from the circuit, and honestly having a 6 meta circuit with one being left out feels unfair to that sole OM. Keeping the post short bc Gimmicky and Greybaum elaborate my sentiment better.

 

[Chessking345]

I am somewhat quite biased and uninformed here because I don't play other metas and the multiformat tours, but I'll give my thoughts

This isn't very related but wanted to briefly talk about the Bo3 slot and how it wasn't as competitive and exciting as some people have hoped.
I think the main reasons were A. It's a new slot that has been established for less than 3 months B. Its first showcase is in World Cup, where not all regions could field the optimal player C. Pools format D. Individual meta quality.
A: Self explanatory, I don't think players have had enough time to actually pick up the metas well, considering there were only 2 tours for the Bo3 metas that started after the announcement.
B: I think (and correct me if I'm very wrong) that because World Cup was the first showcase instead of OMPL less players were incentivized to be slotted into Bo3, as well as players that didn't want to play being forced into the slot. Due to the setting of World Cup certain regions also are lacking in capable players while some other regions might've had multiple options. I'm no expert in the other two metas but for BH in particular weaker/less familiar players default to bringing methods of cheese that likely lowers the quality of the games (but not necessarily enjoyment).
C: Pools format makes it so not only is there less time on average to prep but you also just want to prep less. For BH we saw a significant amount of recycling because teams didn't have enough time to build that many teams, especially considering the number of teams that needed one builder to build for both slots.
D: I could be wrong but it seemed like the metas were not the most enjoyable when the tour went on. BH was maybe fineish but its also BH so non-mains probably don't find it enjoyable either way.
Obviously B and D are like unavoidable lol just wanted to make observation.

Anyways this is why I think out of the options Isaiah proposed I find this one

1. Reducing the number of opens to three, but the number of seasonals is 5 or 7.

to be the most appealing.
Having only 3 Opens, being the Bo3 formats, would be really good to support the development of the Bo3 slot. The lower number of tours should in theory increase the number of sign ups, as anyone that actually wants to do Grand Slam would likely need to sign up for all 3 Opens, and also let players invest more effort and time in learning and preparing the 3 metas, which would be a lot worse if there were 5-7 opens instead. On top of providing good practice for potential Bo3 players, this also conveniently makes it immediately obvious which players are potential good options to play in Bo3 slot for the immediately succeeding OMPL.

The one downside I see with this is that the other metas don't get Opens which can make it slightly harder for players of those meta to practice/showcase before OMPL but there's technically Majors in new meta and plus its DLC 2 meta which probably sparks activity anyways and there can always be unofficial tours for the other 4 metas before OMPL starts and I don't think its going to be a problem having such tours running concurrently with the Opens/GS since the overlapping players wouldn't be too significant.

I don't have any opinions towards Seasonals since I don't play the other metas but I will say that having 7 double elim tours running at once does take a long time to complete. Usually each tour lasts 12 weeks and this year they were spaced 3 weeks apart, which gives around a 27 week duration from the start of the first ssnl to the end of the last one, which is like a span of 6 months. Adding another one to the mix would further extend the duration by another 3 weeks which does not seem appealing considering likely/guaranteed overlaps. 2 week spacing is understandably undesirable due to stacking winner bracket players' games all on the same week so maybe if number of seasonals is 7 it would be best having a 1 week spacing, assuming 12 week tours this would make for a 18 week span which would probably fit better considering the 12 weekish gap between end of OMPL and start of OMWC, albeit tighter for players. Between 5 or 7 I don't actually have an opinion because it doesn't affect me so.

Regarding Championship Playoffs format, Bo7 does seem like a nightmare to prep for, so Bo5 is like defaulted as the best option. In terms of having to prep 7 metas anyways, I'm going to agree with MAMP's suggestion of having players determine the metas they will play before the week begins. This can be done through various methods with a lot of variations like picking and slashing etc so won't go into specifics. I would also suggest having the order of metas played also be determined since this can further reduce the prep load on players if they want to focus more on the first metas played and prep lightly for the last meta.

Less tours in the circuit also helps free up the tour schedule in general and allows for more non-circuit tours to be hosted, these can be really good opportunities to develop other non-circuit metagames, or for circuit metas to instigate meta developments, experiment with certain plausible tiering shakeups, etc.

 

[Isaiah]

I am happy to see some feedback on the idea of switching around how many tours we have. Everything said here will be taken into account when piecing together next year's circuit, and whatever ends up getting decided will have accompanying explanations and reasoning. I will note here point blank that early on in the process of trying to actually build a schedule, 7 opens + 7 seasonals is a hellscape option and will almost definitely not end up being real LOL. The others are still absolutely a possibility though and nothing is set in stone. From the responses so far it looks like people are kinda leaning 3 opens + 7 seasonals followed by 6 opens + 6 seasonals (more or less status quo), which is interesting.

I'm going along the same line with pannu. That means not following any of Isaiah's option but keeping the current structure of this year: 6 Opens and 6 Seasonals, just with NFE replaced by Partners in Crime. Reasons: It's working pretty well, and while there's one meta to be left unplayed in a bo5, I think 1 is better than 0 or 2. 2 means you have to prep for 7 metas while potentially having more unused teams in a round than used ones. In other words, too much work for little reward. 0 means seeding hardly matter, getting to choose a meta first doesn't matter when you have to be better in 3/5 metas anyway. Having 6 metas in a bo5 ensures you are actually rewarded for getting more circuit points since even if you are better in 3 metas but worse in 3 metas the higher seed will still win due to getting their choice first. That will encourage people to get more points even if they are already comfortable enough to guarantee an OMCC slot. If we end up with 5 metas in bo5 for OMCC, I straight up suggest that the first seed gets to choose their opponent ranked between 9-16, then second chooses from the rest, etc and same with QF, SF and final, otherwise what's the point of trying to play more circuit tours? BO7 is straight up too long and shouldn't be considered ever, even a rand BO7 got massive backlash, no way a trambuilding BO7 works when it's 7 different metas.

Then is it unfair to Inheritance? Probably, but the most important thing to remember is PiC was advertised to be a part of circuit, Inheritance wasn't. https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...n-om-team-tours-8th-slot.3725429/post-9726320
Then is Inheritance doomed to be in this middleground spot where it gets represented in team tours but not circuit? Well, for next year, it should at least, but not necessarily forever. I think having a robust middleground system will be healthy in the long run. This goes a bit further than the circuit/team tour scope, so hear me out. I propose that there's a middleground system with annual + biannual (twice a year) review. Annual review: Perma OMs that don't meet the requirement for activity in terms of ladder and tour stats + maybe dissatisfaction from OM players due to meta's nature or council inactivity + forum activity will get demoted to middleground status next year, while the middleground meta moves up to take its slot in the circuit. Biannual review: If there's no change in the annual review/only biannual review, then discussions on whether the middleground meta meets the standard take place. If there's a meta that shows more activity and deserves to get a chance, the middleground meta gets demoted to normal OM while the replacement meta gets representation in whatever team tour for that 6 month period is. This ensures there will be incentive for all metas to thrive to one day make it to the top and a place in the circuit, while potentially also benefit more "seasonal" (can quickly become enjoyable or not depending on meta) metas of sort to be in the middleground spot, like Tier Shift for example who would benefit from 6-month periods with stable tiers but can quickly be demoted upon a new gen + maybe extra content of sort like DLC. How to do this idea specifically? Well besides the regular stuffs like observing activity on Discord, PS, here, maybe a biannual survey + OM leaders' concerns (like the seasonal stuff). Maybe something else, but that's my general proposal.

I wanted to directly answer the annual/biannual review thing here since I actually know what to tell you at this moment (unlike the circuit, which is gonna take some calendar calculations lmao). Swapping around our tour metas twice a year will never happen since that would mean fiddling with the circuit and our team tours midway through the year's completion, which simply isn't ideal. This year was unique in that the previous OM leaders made UMs a thing, so we had to come up with new world cup metas out of necessity; that's an exception rather than the rule. On the topic of an "annual review", we've honestly already been kinda doing things that way as long as I've been around at least. It didn't happen last year because of gen 9, but it happened the year before and would've happened this year if we didn't already do all that surveying before world cup. I don't personally have any problem with making the annual review of what OMs should/shouldn't be in our circuit an official thing, and if that's desired by the community it shouldn't be too hard (literally just plastering somewhere that near the end of every year, we're gonna do surveys and whatnot) for the staff to make it so.

 

[longhiep341]

Apology if this should no longer be discussed, but with Shared Power given a ladder now I feel it's time for this discussion to resurface (I have been wanting to post for a while but keep forgetting). How do we feel about the BO3 slot now that World Cup is over? How competitive is Shared Power to warrant a team tour placement? Should this affect circuit in some way?
I personally think Shared Power should be given a chance in team tours, and now trying to integrate Inheritance into circuit means we have to bring Shared Power in as well and this is where it gets too excessive. Having 2 middle metas that can rotate in and out and potentially replace a main meta with annual assessment I think is worth more now, so I stand by my original opinion of 6 Open - 6 Seasonal. As for the BO3 slot, I feel like it has been uneven and honestly excessive to prep for. Having to recycle teams from other metas, causing burnout too fast, big skill difference in the bo3 slot and general OM playerbase wanting to avoid it are all the complaints I have heard.
We are very near the next circuit, so we need to close out this conversation quickly and have as many inputs as possible before then (2023 circuit schedule released on 27/12 last year).

 

[Isaiah]

Apology if this should no longer be discussed, but with Shared Power given a ladder now I feel it's time for this discussion to resurface (I have been wanting to post for a while but keep forgetting). How do we feel about the BO3 slot now that World Cup is over? How competitive is Shared Power to warrant a team tour placement? Should this affect circuit in some way?
I personally think Shared Power should be given a chance in team tours, and now trying to integrate Inheritance into circuit means we have to bring Shared Power in as well and this is where it gets too excessive. Having 2 middle metas that can rotate in and out and potentially replace a main meta with annual assessment I think is worth more now, so I stand by my original opinion of 6 Open - 6 Seasonal. As for the BO3 slot, I feel like it has been uneven and honestly excessive to prep for. Having to recycle teams from other metas, causing burnout too fast, big skill difference in the bo3 slot and general OM playerbase wanting to avoid it are all the complaints I have heard.
We are very near the next circuit, so we need to close out this conversation quickly and have as many inputs as possible before then (2023 circuit schedule released on 27/12 last year).

Definitely didn't forget to put a survey up regarding Shared Power over bo3 or anything I will post here to personally say I think 6 Opens and 6 Seasonals makes sense, but I'm very much against rotating circuit/team tour metas around potentially willy nilly just bc the playerbase votes for it, and I'll explain why I think this way. While it's true that we've had to swap out our circuit metas a couple of years in a row now, this is not intended to be the norm. We shouldn't be switching metagames around like Lego pieces just because we want to; my goal as an OM Leader is to establish a relatively consistent circuit with a relatively consistent set of metagames in it (and when I say "circuit here", I do mean both individual and team tournaments). Someone should be able to work towards conquering our circuit with a clear vision of what they need to become "the best" at. If I raise my proficiency in A, B, C, D, E, and F metas, I can be the best--maybe not this year, but I can always try again next year. But what if next year, it's G instead of E? H instead of F? That just gets more and more awkward and frankly nonsensical over time. I might not be a player, but that's how I perceive things. If Shared Power ends up getting added over bo3 in team tours because enough people want that, sure--but I think we should start to shy away from messing around with the individual circuit metas otherwise. 6 is already a high but manageable number of tours from a hosting/tournament scheduling perspective, and I feel like it makes the most sense if those 6 remain as consistent as possible. I really hope PIC ends up being "the magic" addition that sticks this time around...

 

[Cycrum]

How feasible would it be to add an optional place to copy and paste a challenge code into the teambuilder? It would make creating teams for metagames that lack a place in the main server and for tournaments with niche twists far easier. Perhaps it could even be automatically integrated whenever you challenge someone else with that team, and it could even hide mons and moves banned from whatever metagame or tournament that challenge code corresponds to. As for implementation, the place for the challenge code could be around where the tier dropdown menu is.

 

[Isaiah]

How feasible would it be to add an optional place to copy and paste a challenge code into the teambuilder? It would make creating teams for metagames that lack a place in the main server and for tournaments with niche twists far easier. Perhaps it could even be automatically integrated whenever you challenge someone else with that team, and it could even hide mons and moves banned from whatever metagame or tournament that challenge code corresponds to. As for implementation, the place for the challenge code could be around where the tier dropdown menu is.

This is something that would best be posted in the general Suggestions forum instead. We have no control over generalized teambuilder features like the one you're asking for.

 

[Isaiah]

Okay this is a SUPER hot take but just hear me out

*Note: none of this would be for this year, at best would prob be a discussion thread + next year implementation type of deal*

What if we throw world cup into a dumpster and split our team tour setup into two different tours:

> OMPL
Features the most straightforward/fundamental OM ideas and consistently has the same tiers every year (basically just trying to standardize the tour so we stop changing the format every year)

Slots: 2 BH, 2 AAA, 2 STAB, 2 [some type changing meta or just some extremely stable 4th meta]
BH is sandbox meta, aaa is ability meta, stab is moves meta, last meta could be a type changing meta or just w/e we can collectively agree has a very stable CONCEPT (this part is very important as we'd want a concept that can be as timeless as possible) and plenty of potential to be balanced w/o quickly becoming stale (still gets *some* activity and perhaps would see an increase in activity with reduced scope of the tour format)

=================================================

> OM Spotlight League (or w/e we want to call it)
Features popular OMs that perhaps don't have the most balanced concepts or overall activity, but we still want to foster a competitive team tour environment for

Slots: 2 pic, 2 inh, 2 gg, 2 mnm OR 1 pic, 1 inh, 1 gg, 1 mnm, 1 X, 2 X, where x = maybe community votes on what to put here or something

=================================================
not sure how individual tour circuit would work with this, but highkey we could just leave the individual tour circuit as is if it's already working well

=================================================

My goal here would be standardizing OMPL to have a consistent, reliable format every year

 

[Giagantic]

As someone that hosted OMWC, I can say it is a giant pain in the ass to handle. This isn't just because I botched things up (I did botch things up though) but rather a general consensus among those who have hosted World Cups. I am down to toss away the world cup in skew of a different team tour with less exacting rules used to run it, in other words, none of the whole "Where do you live?," "How long have you been there?," or the simple problem of having regions without enough representation and having to make the decision to cut out or merge dispirit regions into another. Even if we don't follow Isaiah's suggestion to the T I think going the route of no World Cups is ideal from a hosting and player representative perspective.

All players should have a shot to play if their skills and history warrant a team picking them up, not if they are part of a region that is well populated.

 

[UT]

I honestly think killing OMWC is a good idea; the teams are unbalanced, region debates are not fun, and it struggles to differentiate itself from OMPL.

However, I think dramatically reducing the number of metas in OMPL is a poor solution. While AAA and BH are clearly the two largest in terms of player base, with AAA that’s even a recent phenomenon all things considered, and the difference between STAB and MnM isn’t huge and historically has changed. Even if the goal is to stabilize OMPL, I don’t think cutting to three metas ensures that.

Featuring metas in major team tours, the largest one obviously being OMPL, is one of the best ways to drive engagement and development. The historical struggles of Spotlight league / Spotlight Trios makes me very skeptical that a second-tier team tour could feature them properly, and I think taking these metas out of OMPL would do a disservice to them.

For the sake of developing as many metas as possible and fostering as wide a community as possible, I would oppose reducing the number of metas in OMPL. I would love to see something in the place of WC, and don’t immediately have an idea for what goes there, but cutting out more than half of the OMPL metas I think would harm the section.

 

[Osake]

I haven't really played since OMWC and I have absolutely 0 ideas of current "popularity" of each OMs so my opinion may not be the most enlightened.

OMPL
Although format changes in OMPL have been a pain, I agree with UT that reducing the slots to AAA / BH / STAB is not something I would like to play. It may results in OMPL being the only interesting tour (cuz as UT said Spotlight tours have mostly been disappointing) and very low interest for other OMs which is not good. Other possibility could be a lose of interest for OMPL itself because it would just be not that much interesting to play or to watch, or only for a few elites player and I don't think that it's OMPL's spirit. I've personally really enjoy OMPL because of meta diversity, as a spectator but also as a player as I had the opportunity to discover new metas with good players, and I would not have learn so much about OMs without OMPL, and I would be really bored to have only 3 metas played in my team (with 1 of them, BH, that I couldn't follow, and even if that's a me issue I'm pretty sure the gap b/w BH players and others is still huge).

OMWC
I may be biased because my country (France) has a relatively strong team and we know each others quite well so it's also a team of friends, but I disagree with previous posts and I'd like to keep OMWC. It is something that is done in many many tiers and I genuiely don't think it's that much difficult to maintain, eligiblity issues are obviously annoying but can be managed, Canada case would need to be investigated to have a strong rule regarding that before the start of the tour, and Canada players feedback on that point would be interesting, I can understand that people that can't play because of where they live are annoyed but tbh that's part of the world cup, that's life, and it is also true in countries / regions with many players, some can't play too not because they are bad but because their team just don't need them. My personal case isn't the most important but it's just the one I know the best, and I have been in team France only once despite 3 sign up and it's not that much of a big deal. It's a bit different when you just can't sign-up because of where you live though, and I know there isn't an ideal solution and we probably need to establish a rule (and we should probably look at how this is adressed in other tiers), but removing the World Cup for that seems really bad in my opinion.

Playing for the team of your country with people you know / you're close to usually is always a nice feeling, it can also help you to discover people from your country you didn't know well before, and even in general, you discover people you had no idea they existed because they don't sign up for OMPL or don't have the clout to be picked -> happened with a lot of China players at last WCUP, but also someone like BijouMode, etc
I also don't think the gap between teams is that big tbh, China came out of nowhere and stomped the pools this year, 0 US teams qualified even though they won the last 2 WC, I guess Europe and UK are relatively consistent but meh. And even if it was true, yeah that's World Cup some countries have better players, it is not a big deal.

Solutions ?
Even though I disagree with former propositions, I agree that OMPL needs to find a reliable format. Reducing the size to 6 metas is needed anyway since 2v2 and stuff can't be replaced, and AAA/BH/STAB/MnM/GG offer a solid basis (if we consider that GG is now "stable" since it doesn't rely on OU anymore, even though future legendaries distribution might be a problem). If bringing back NFE or 2v2 (I didn't rly like AG, and there's always Camomons..) are out of possibility (it would be the best choices though), it's either keeping BO3 from World Cup or pick one between Inheritance and Partner in Crimes (or any other OM that could look stable). I am not a believer of Inheritance of PIC, I do not think they are stable metas and that they should appear in tournaments. BO3 is better to that regard, and it will have less pressure from OMWC because you'll have a full week to build your teams and not 3 teams to build in 2 weeks, but I'm still not convinced that it's really optimal in a tournament setting, but that's the best option I see so far.
I'd keep OMWC as it is (aka copy of OMWC), I don't think that the overlapping is that important, I never felt like it was the same tournament. It would mean less room for minor OMs well yes but.. if you can like and play those OMs, if they are not major, there's a reason : not enough players or not competitive enough. So I don't think they should appear if one of the 2 main team tours of the community, and perhaps spotlight trio and stuff should be reworked but that's not the subject here. Maybe including some major-minor OMs inside could be interesting to give more opportunities to MnM/GG players for example to play, but idk.

TL;DR : idt we need major changes, go back to old OMPL format with something over NFE, probably BO3.

Have a good day !

 

[Isaiah]

I haven't really played since OMWC and I have absolutely 0 ideas of current "popularity" of each OMs so my opinion may not be the most enlightened.

OMPL
Although format changes in OMPL have been a pain, I agree with UT that reducing the slots to AAA / BH / STAB is not something I would like to play. It may results in OMPL being the only interesting tour (cuz as UT said Spotlight tours have mostly been disappointing) and very low interest for other OMs which is not good. Other possibility could be a lose of interest for OMPL itself because it would just be not that much interesting to play or to watch, or only for a few elites player and I don't think that it's OMPL's spirit. I've personally really enjoy OMPL because of meta diversity, as a spectator but also as a player as I had the opportunity to discover new metas with good players, and I would not have learn so much about OMs without OMPL, and I would be really bored to have only 3 metas played in my team (with 1 of them, BH, that I couldn't follow, and even if that's a me issue I'm pretty sure the gap b/w BH players and others is still huge).

OMWC
I may be biased because my country (France) has a relatively strong team and we know each others quite well so it's also a team of friends, but I disagree with previous posts and I'd like to keep OMWC. It is something that is done in many many tiers and I genuiely don't think it's that much difficult to maintain, eligiblity issues are obviously annoying but can be managed, Canada case would need to be investigated to have a strong rule regarding that before the start of the tour, and Canada players feedback on that point would be interesting, I can understand that people that can't play because of where they live are annoyed but tbh that's part of the world cup, that's life, and it is also true in countries / regions with many players, some can't play too not because they are bad but because their team just don't need them. My personal case isn't the most important but it's just the one I know the best, and I have been in team France only once despite 3 sign up and it's not that much of a big deal. It's a bit different when you just can't sign-up because of where you live though, and I know there isn't an ideal solution and we probably need to establish a rule (and we should probably look at how this is adressed in other tiers), but removing the World Cup for that seems really bad in my opinion.

Playing for the team of your country with people you know / you're close to usually is always a nice feeling, it can also help you to discover people from your country you didn't know well before, and even in general, you discover people you had no idea they existed because they don't sign up for OMPL or don't have the clout to be picked -> happened with a lot of China players at last WCUP, but also someone like BijouMode, etc
I also don't think the gap between teams is that big tbh, China came out of nowhere and stomped the pools this year, 0 US teams qualified even though they won the last 2 WC, I guess Europe and UK are relatively consistent but meh. And even if it was true, yeah that's World Cup some countries have better players, it is not a big deal.

Solutions ?
Even though I disagree with former propositions, I agree that OMPL needs to find a reliable format. Reducing the size to 6 metas is needed anyway since 2v2 and stuff can't be replaced, and AAA/BH/STAB/MnM/GG offer a solid basis (if we consider that GG is now "stable" since it doesn't rely on OU anymore, even though future legendaries distribution might be a problem). If bringing back NFE or 2v2 (I didn't rly like AG, and there's always Camomons..) are out of possibility (it would be the best choices though), it's either keeping BO3 from World Cup or pick one between Inheritance and Partner in Crimes (or any other OM that could look stable). I am not a believer of Inheritance of PIC, I do not think they are stable metas and that they should appear in tournaments. BO3 is better to that regard, and it will have less pressure from OMWC because you'll have a full week to build your teams and not 3 teams to build in 2 weeks, but I'm still not convinced that it's really optimal in a tournament setting, but that's the best option I see so far.
I'd keep OMWC as it is (aka copy of OMWC), I don't think that the overlapping is that important, I never felt like it was the same tournament. It would mean less room for minor OMs well yes but.. if you can like and play those OMs, if they are not major, there's a reason : not enough players or not competitive enough. So I don't think they should appear if one of the 2 main team tours of the community, and perhaps spotlight trio and stuff should be reworked but that's not the subject here. Maybe including some major-minor OMs inside could be interesting to give more opportunities to MnM/GG players for example to play, but idk.

TL;DR : idt we need major changes, go back to old OMPL format with something over NFE, probably BO3.

Have a good day !

Never responded to this explicitly but although I support the idea of some kind of reduction to OMPL personally, the community at large generally supports keeping it to 8 slots more (based on the follow-up surveys), so we'll keep it that way and see how things shake out this year :P

====
Anyway, even if nuking OMWC isn't a super appealing choice (note: even if OMWC happens this year, we will probably make at least a couple of changes to standardize eligibility requirements), I still wanted to present my idea for a fun "other" team tour to run at some point during the year:

Name: UU OM Ghosting Premier League
Structure:

• 6-8 teams (depending on signups)
• 2 managers per team (doesn't really matter if they can play or not since you're literally allowed to cheat, but yeah they can self-buy or w/e)
• 8 player slots (all the permaladder UU tiers)
• Blind auction: managers will not know how much others are bidding on each player during the auction.

Rules:

• At baseline: Just like any PL-type tour, each player schedules with their opponent for the week, and they play their game like normal.
  • HOWEVER, as the name implies, a player's teammates are allowed to give them advice (i.e. ghost) as much as they want during their battle (e.g. through discord chat/vc, through some PS groupchat, etc.). Also, activity win/sub situations can be circumvented if the original player is unable to make the time but someone else on their team happens to be available to be the clicker.
  • There is no requirement that a team must ghost; it's all optional. For example, if you schedule your game for a certain time and nobody on your team is able to show up to ghost, you just might have to play a 1v12.
  • To avoid people wasting everyone's time with trying to schedule at impossible times for your opponent just so everyone on your team can be there to ghost, standard tournament rules apply in that sense (and hosts can be relatively strict with shooting down ppl trying to fish for this)

Thoughts? Other than just being a very goofy, fun tour, this also adds a way to develop UU OMs w/o manufacturing the same stress that regular tours might.

 

[pannu]

i think ghosting team tours are very lame and theyd lose the novelty factor after week 3 or 4, having a uu + fun gimmick pl would be lit as fuck, just not ghosting pls. lets do like uu om no johns pl or something

 

[zastra]

rly not a fan of uu oms tt, esp the ghosting part (agree with pannu). let's bring back spotlight ompl or retro ompl (tiers like PH / ORAS AAA / SM MnM or whatever) instead-- these tiers also have dedicated playerbases and itd be super fun in a team tour setting, especially spotlight OMs cuz they've got newer players associated with them as well. feel like smth like uu ompl would be the same as ompl, like the same bh players playing bh uu etc.

 

[xTimeCrystal]

We should still improve the teambuilder interface. I think people have forgotten about it, but formats like Godly Gift, Frantic Fusions, Flipped, Cross Evolution and Reevolution (especially re-evolution and flipped because it is SO easy to implement just modify the stats file) still need a custom interface for custom stats. Godly Gift could have a specialized slot system so you could put Pikachu in SpA slot without having to fill in the other mons as well.

Too many players are being turned away from OMs because of the complexity of how they work.

 

[KaenSoul]

We should still improve the teambuilder interface. I think people have forgotten about it, but formats like Godly Gift, Frantic Fusions, Flipped, Cross Evolution and Reevolution (especially re-evolution and flipped because it is SO easy to implement just modify the stats file) still need a custom interface for custom stats. Godly Gift could have a specialized slot system so you could put Pikachu in SpA slot without having to fill in the other mons as well.

Too many players are being turned away from OMs because of the complexity of how they work.

To quote UT from the first page:
"This thread is for suggestions and improvements within the OM forum / section (new or improved projects, feedback on how OMs are approved, communication from the mod team, etc). We do not have control over the technical aspects of the sim and cannot implement those types of suggestions, even when we agree with them."

There isn't much we can do about that kind of stuff, neither is this the place to suggest such a thing, it is more of a general showdown overhaul that would require a lot of coding work, I would love to be able to check stats for that kind of formats while teambuilding, but is out of our control.

 

[Greybaum]

All factors for the legality of a Pokemon are checked when checking for donor, including gender, IV legality, shiny legality and item needed. In other words, your Pokemon can only be of the same gender as its donor, If the donor can't be shiny so can't the inheritor, and in order to inherit from non-base Ogerpons, you have to use the respective mask as your held item (The masks will still do nothing if you aren't an Ogerpon).

I believe Inheritance should ditch this part of its ruleset and fall back on its metagame description; "Any Pokemon in the metagame can "inherit" the moves and ability from a certain Pokemon". Pokemon receiving from Ogerpon should be able to go maskless and Pokemon receiving from Paradoxes should be able to run whatever IVs it normally has access to.

- It's not actually being enforced. Great Tusk and Iron Hands are genderless, but validate just fine when inheriting from Pokemon that cannot be genderless. Ogerpon-Wellspring is exclusively female, and often recieves from Gallade, which is exclusively male.
- This doesn't really provide any benefit, but it certainly does make validation errors slightly more confusing than they already are. Cutting this rule out would open up building very slightly, but also nullify that weird bug where Walking Wake recipients have to run 31 attack IVs for no reason (in standards it only needs 3 perfect IVs, not necessarily Atk).


Also, with OMPL coming up I want to push for the introduction of "Metagames not played:" in sign-ups. I also want to suggest we have Manager sign-ups first - it's pretty established that we won't have problems fielding playing slots IMO.

 

[Isaiah]

Gonna dodge the inheritance stuff for now to give time for an actual response to develop, but:

Also, with OMPL coming up I want to push for the introduction of "Metagames not played:" in sign-ups. I also want to suggest we have Manager sign-ups first - it's pretty established that we won't have problems fielding playing slots IMO.

I agree w/ adding OMs not played, yeah. Also, we actually already tend to do manager signups first anyway (1 week of manager signups -> pick managers -> 2 weeks of player signups) so that shouldn't change. Lastly, the plan this year is to hopefully do a tour discussion thread (even if short-lived) or post the admin thread early to get everyone on the same page about how the tour should work + have a way for people to explicitly suggest ways to improve the tour ahead of time.