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Tournament DCL II - Format Discussion

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Princess Autumn

Princess Autumn

Anyways - so then I cursed her.
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Draft Leader
With DCL manager signups opening up at the end of the month, we'd like to open up the discussion regarding the format of DCL. The tour will remain an 8 slot tour, with the following slots being fixed:

SV
SV
SV
SS
USUM
ORAS
SV VGC

This leaves the toss up of the final slot. There's been consistent complaints against SS2 so that slot is up in the air, with discussions regarding an USUM2, ORAS2 or even a NatDex slot being considered. We will not be considering any other formats, including SV4, so any posts arguing for those will be disregarded and potentially deleted.

Other points about the tour's structure can be addressed here but please do not derail from the purpose of the thread.
 
USUM is pretty unique+popular so I'd pick that. ORAS would also be fine but seems more boring. I don't think Natdex adds much unless it's SS Natdex replacing Galar dex

That being said, I suck at USUM so I'm fine with any of the options. Also DPP should replace VGC next year
 
given that doubles is a largely different format than singles, i think it would beneficial to give vgc the 2nd slot given we have the playerbase to support it. this should decrease the isolation within the teams themselves between the vcg main and everyone else. i agree with yahoodles that theres no reasonable argument to favor one of the old gens over the others. if i had to pick one of the options presented, id have to say natdex makes the most sense but i still dont think its optimal
 
If people are against adding a second slot to any regular old gens tier, SwSh NatDex really is worth considering. it was the primary tier that people actually played in leagues throughout SwSh, and it has next to no representation within draft tournaments despite that. this is unlike SV NatDex which isn’t very common at all, with pdex being the primary format.
 
i want to see ss2 gone. its less popular than every oldgen. i also dont particularly like the argument that you cant favor one oldgen more than the other because thats what we did last year with swsh even if its the newest oldgen

usum/oras both have a plenty big enough playerbase to field enough slots for either, and i cant even name 8 people who actively want to play galar. id probably favor usum more because its newer and more of our playerbase has played it compared to oras, but i think both formats are great and i would be more than happy having either of them be 2 slots

i don't really support natdex. format itself is fine and i would like it more than ss2 but for our big tour of the year i'd rather we just play with the regional dex for the same reason id support galar over natdex galar
 
King L5 said:
given that doubles is a largely different format than singles, i think it would beneficial to give vgc the 2nd slot given we have the playerbase to support it. this should decrease the isolation within the teams themselves between the vcg main and everyone else. i agree with yahoodles that theres no reasonable argument to favor one of the old gens over the others. if i had to pick one of the options presented, id have to say natdex makes the most sense but i still dont think its optimal
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yeah agree with what L5 said, vgc 2 makes sense but if its not an option then NatDex would be my choice out of that or an extra old gen tier.
 
JukeInTheBox said:
If people are against adding a second slot to any regular old gens tier, SwSh NatDex really is worth considering. it was the primary tier that people actually played in leagues throughout SwSh, and it has next to no representation within draft tournaments despite that. this is unlike SV NatDex which isn’t very common at all, with pdex being the primary format.
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I’ve seen alot of NatDex formats that are remotely balanced opt to use Tera Tax (so two prices for a pokemon with and without Terastallization) or actually use High Tier Tera + Low Tier Z to give it a unique flavour. I think it’s worth discussing SV NatDex and I feel people exaggerate how “painful” it is.
 
Would've liked to see 2nd vgc. DCL 1 had a couple dozen very strong apps that didn't get picked due to only having 1 slot, so I think the popularity will absolutely be there. Plus, I agree with the sentiment that it will feel less isolated. I know several players last season didn't have much support on their team, so having the 2nd slot ensures that vgcers will have a buddy to prep with. Last point it also makes matchup selection less of a coinflip to have 3 drafts instead of 2.

Outside of that not sure what you pick. Whatever is popular.
 
I see no tier that deserves the last slot more than SV Natdex.

ORAS - 545
Summer Seasonal - 522
SV Natdex - 489
Winter Seasonal - 473
USUM - 428
SS Natdex - 335
Ubers - 254
Low Tier - 219
VGC - 153

Looking at the numbers above, ORAS reigns supreme with the highest entrants this year, with Summer seasonal closely behind. Both of these obviously have representation in the tour currently, but SV Natdex sits directly behind them with no representation of its own. As a personal observation, I also feel like I see more Natdex leagues advertised than anything else (even normal Paldea), though this is just my own perception of league signups that I am privy to. I don't even like the tier personally but it not getting a slot feels off to me. I would definitely not support another VGC slot just looking at the signup numbers. I don't want to pull data from last year since I think it's important to get a representation of what's happening in the scene currently, but there could be an argument to be made for another tier based on that data. My other support would be for USUM since it seems to have the most community backing.

If I had to give a ranking SV Natdex > USUM 2 > ORAS 2 > everything else > VGC 2
 
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ComputerWhiz said:
I see no tier that deserves the last slot more than SV Natdex.

ORAS - 545
Summer Seasonal - 522
SV Natdex - 489
Winter Seasonal - 473
USUM - 428
Ubers - 254
SS Natdex - 335
Low Tier - 219
VGC - 153

Looking at the numbers above, ORAS reigns supreme with the highest entrants this year, with Summer seasonal closely behind. Both of these obviously have representation in the tour currently, but SV Natdex sits directly behind them with no representation of its own. As a personal observation, I also feel like I see more Natdex leagues advertised than anything else (even normal Paldea), though this is just my own perception of league signups that I am privy to. I don't even like the tier personally but it not getting a slot feels off to me. I would definitely not support another VGC slot just looking at the signup numbers. I don't want to pull data from last year since I think it's important to get a representation of what's happening in the scene currently, but there could be an argument to be made for another tier based on that data. My other support would be for USUM since it seems to have the most community backing.

If I had to give a ranking SV Natdex > USUM 2 > ORAS 2 > everything else > VGC 2
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I dont think the smog vgc draft tour numbers are the full story bc they did full draft over 8 mon and a separate draft team tour for vgc was happening concurrently with that tour, which reduced the number of signups.

SV Natdex is generally less competitive than sv due to the sheer number of mons in the format so that's why I'm a little wary of it being the 8th dcl format.
 
of the options listed above I would primarily be in favour of SV Natdex as it feels a bit odd to me to double up on any one particular old gen over the others. Would also echo the sentiment that a 2nd VGC slot does seem valid for the prior reasons mentioned earlier and should be considered.
 
The mod team would like to start discussion on the amount of drafts that tiers with only one slot should have. We are considering making it so that if instead of you only drafting 2 teams for a slot with only one game, we are considering making it so it is three teams.

The main point of doing this is pretty simple. You get to avoid dynamics such as your teams having one good matchup and one bad matchup by having the option of an additional team. Alongside that, this could help reduce the amount of repeat matchups come playoffs. The main drawback with this is you are drafting more teams during drafting week and we want to know the communitys opinion on if the positives could possibly outweigh the negatives here. There comes more to discuss with this though such as how many transactions you could make during midseason if this was implemented so we encourage people to give their thoughts.

Please feel free to continue discussing the actual tiers in this tournament alongside this, but two VGC slots will not be on the table.
 
Hacker said:
The mod team would like to start discussion on the amount of drafts that tiers with only one slot should have. We are considering making it so that if instead of you only drafting 2 teams for a slot with only one game, we are considering making it so it is three teams.

The main point of doing this is pretty simple. You get to avoid dynamics such as your teams having one good matchup and one bad matchup by having the option of an additional team. Alongside that, this could help reduce the amount of repeat matchups come playoffs. The main drawback with this is you are drafting more teams during drafting week and we want to know the communitys opinion on if the positives could possibly outweigh the negatives here. There comes more to discuss with this though such as how many transactions you could make during midseason if this was implemented so we encourage people to give their thoughts.

Please feel free to continue discussing the actual tiers in this tournament alongside this, but two VGC slots will not be on the table.
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The viability of 3 drafts 1 slot is highly dependent on the number of one slot tiers IMO. A lot of ppl like to oversee all drafts so adding several more might be tricky. It depends on the 8th tier to an extent. As it stands might be tough adding 4 extra drafts (swsh, usum, oras, vgc) so if it's natdex that's 19 drafts, extra usum or oras would be 16.
 
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Hacker said:
The mod team would like to start discussion on the amount of drafts that tiers with only one slot should have. We are considering making it so that if instead of you only drafting 2 teams for a slot with only one game, we are considering making it so it is three teams.

The main point of doing this is pretty simple. You get to avoid dynamics such as your teams having one good matchup and one bad matchup by having the option of an additional team. Alongside that, this could help reduce the amount of repeat matchups come playoffs. The main drawback with this is you are drafting more teams during drafting week and we want to know the communitys opinion on if the positives could possibly outweigh the negatives here. There comes more to discuss with this though such as how many transactions you could make during midseason if this was implemented so we encourage people to give their thoughts.

Please feel free to continue discussing the actual tiers in this tournament alongside this, but two VGC slots will not be on the table.
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Touching on the double VGC slot… ComputerWhiz had a great breakdown on the number of sign ups for each tour, and that’s easily one of the best indicators for what the community enjoys. ORAS getting more sign ups than any SV tour I think is a pretty easy metric to sign off on for a second slot. By the same measurement, it’s hard to justify a second VGC slot when it got 150 sign ups (nearly 30% of the bigger tours) and a larger than normal percentage of the VGC games were activity wins. We want to give the VGC community love, but they gotta reciprocate first and show up when we run VGC events.

@ other formats like NatDex, do prospective managers really want 5 formats for BO8 each week? Seems super excessive when every other tour is 3 formats…

I’m a huge fan of the 3 teams minimum per format with 1 weekly game, I would have loved the ability to be dynamic with team choices in previous team tour playoff performances. A lot of times you’ll have 1 person who is drafted for that slot, so they’ll gravitate towards one team all season, and there isn’t much thought given to team selection. Allowing for another team per format may also entice off-meta draft choices, and people feeling more comfortable playing tiers outside of their most preferred.
 
No sv natdex, no one wants a cringe and uncompetitive meta with tapu koko and 6 quark guys and another slot requiring 2-3 drafts. Swsh makes the most sense as it was the last recent gen behind SV, but if people don't like it should lean USUM or ORAS preferably usum :P

As for amount of teams 3 teams for sure. Gives more creativity in the draft phase and avoids alot of mu fishing/fixing and rematches in playoffs
 
ComputerWhiz said:
I see no tier that deserves the last slot more than SV Natdex.

ORAS - 545
Summer Seasonal - 522
SV Natdex - 489
Winter Seasonal - 473
USUM - 428
SS Natdex - 335
Ubers - 254
Low Tier - 219
VGC - 153

Looking at the numbers above, ORAS reigns supreme with the highest entrants this year, with Summer seasonal closely behind. Both of these obviously have representation in the tour currently, but SV Natdex sits directly behind them with no representation of its own. As a personal observation, I also feel like I see more Natdex leagues advertised than anything else (even normal Paldea), though this is just my own perception of league signups that I am privy to. I don't even like the tier personally but it not getting a slot feels off to me. I would definitely not support another VGC slot just looking at the signup numbers. I don't want to pull data from last year since I think it's important to get a representation of what's happening in the scene currently, but there could be an argument to be made for another tier based on that data. My other support would be for USUM since it seems to have the most community backing.

If I had to give a ranking SV Natdex > USUM 2 > ORAS 2 > everything else > VGC 2
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I do not get the point of comparing signups for each tour at least on the topic of VGC interest. It should really come as no shock to anyone that the double signups are low in a primarily singles community so not sure why it keeps getting brought up. VGC not included in the main server until a week before application cycle ended did not help this either. There are other reasons why the Smogon VGC tour did not do well, and it feels really disingenuous to cite this as the main reason for not having a second VGC slot when in first season of DCL, most of the community did show up, and many solid players did not get drafted.

I cannot speak personally, but I know many of my friends who were drafted last season for VGC suffered from lack of support to the point where they would be going to mock with people from enemy teams almost every week. I think a second slot would at least alleviate this issue, as captains can no longer draft one good VGC player and leave them to fend for themself.
 
Lindwurm said:
VGC not included in the main server until a week before application cycle ended did not help this either
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No other tour there has signups longer than 7 days, this should not be a factor.

Speaking on behalf of the mod team, the premise that signup count is not everything is true, but the VGC draft community has not proved that it deserves a second slot in our flagship team tour. Please focus on the options outlined in the OP or an alternative format that could receive consideration and not an option that has been hard vetoed already.

As for my own opinion, DCL is meant to be the peak of draft competition and bluntly a community that can't turn up for its individual tour on 2 different occasions and can't get games done if they did does not deserve a second slot in a "primarily singles community". We only have 8 slots ultimately and it makes zero sense to give 1/4 of them to a format that makes up a small fraction of our community. Rissoux outlined the full reasoning in his post so please stop the VGC2 discussion, it will not be happening end sentence.

EDIT: This is a singles team tour primarily, having 1/4 of the tour be a non-singles format does not sit right with me when it caters to less than 1/4 of the playerbase.
 
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The excuse of having no prep/mock support for vgc isn't real. Its up to the captains to draft the players for the team and getting them the support for their slots is their job. The tour doesn't need to accommodate a extra slot (fraud tier) for captains who decide to forgo more then 1 vgc player that is on them.
 
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