Rejected "Draft" in Smogon Champions League

[Larry]

We've gotten a lot of opinions on both sides in this thread, and not really a clear conclusion. To get some more concrete data, we've sent out a form to participants of the previous edition (players and managers). The contents of the form are below. This isn't a "suspect test" where we're looking for some specific majority, but we want to get a gauge of SCL participant opinions on potential additions and will evaluate responses before making final decisions.

Hey man, great initiative but I think the survey you're conducting won't be able to produce the desired results.

For one, I think your target audience is wrong - asking some RU or UU mainers who don't give a shit about either Monotype or Draft won't have any added value. On the other hand, some LC or Ubers mainer seeing this survey will probably vote no on both options because they feel like draft and monotype are a threat to their slot in the tournament. Even if it's not actually the case - there is precedent for tiers being removed (Ubers) from officials and just because there is no threat doesn't mean people won't still see it as one.

I believe that you're missing out on the group of people who actually want to play Monotype and/or Draft in SCL but didn't participate in the previous edition because their tiers were not in it. I think some sort of public survey to gauge community interest in the tiers as well as the vastness and depth of the potential player pool would be a better solution, because you will actually reach the right people with it and get a better idea of what a SCL with those slots would look like.

Basically, I believe you're asking a bunch of backwater UU mainers and LCers trying to protect their slot in the tournament about their opinion on Draft and Monotype instead of the people actually desiring to play those tiers which will cause your survey to not be representative for the actual opinion of your community.

 

[Icemaster]

Hey man, great initiative but I think the survey you're conducting won't be able to produce the desired results.

For one, I think your target audience is wrong - asking some RU or UU mainers who don't give a shit about either Monotype or Draft won't have any added value. On the other hand, some LC or Ubers mainer seeing this survey will probably vote no on both options because they feel like draft and monotype are a threat to their slot in the tournament. Even if it's not actually the case - there is precedent for tiers being removed (Ubers) from officials and just because there is no threat doesn't mean people won't still see it as one.

I believe that you're missing out on the group of people who actually want to play Monotype and/or Draft in SCL but didn't participate in the previous edition because their tiers were not in it. I think some sort of public survey to gauge community interest in the tiers as well as the vastness and depth of the potential player pool would be a better solution, because you will actually reach the right people with it and get a better idea of what a SCL with those slots would look like.

Basically, I believe you're asking a bunch of backwater UU mainers and LCers trying to protect their slot in the tournament about their opinion on Draft and Monotype instead of the people actually desiring to play those tiers which will cause your survey to not be representative for the actual opinion of your community.

The same thing would happen if you ask Draft and Monotype players, they would obviously all vote "Yes" for their format.

 

[Larry]

The same thing would happen if you ask Draft and Monotype players, they would obviously all vote "Yes" for their format.

Read my post. I want to ask the entire community and not just draft/monotype players or everyone except for draft/monotype players. I assume the goal here is to gauge community opinion - for that you'll need to ask the whole community. You also get to gauge what the the potential player pool would look like in the event those tiers do get into SCL.

 

[Icemaster]

Read my post. I want to ask the entire community and not just draft/monotype players or everyone except for draft/monotype players. I assume the goal here is to gauge community opinion - for that you'll need to ask the whole community. You also get to gauge what the the potential player pool would look like in the event those tiers do get into SCL.

Yes, but the SCL playerbase already has a good number of draft and monotype players, as argued by posts already on this thread. IMO, it's much better to ask those who actually participate rather than all of Smogon which will lead to a very high number of votes (brigading) from people who don't/won't even play.

If you opened a community-wide poll asking about Low Tiers in SPL you'd probably get loads of "Yes" votes for the exact same reason, which isn't really helpful to anyone.

 

[a fairy]

My view, my words: Polls are inherently flawed, but so is trying to read the tea leaves of Tour Policy threads to determine large-scale community motivation. We use polls as a way to determine community sentiment to help inform our decisions, but not decide for us. This is the same way that tiering surveys work, though by nature of the scale SCL operates at (over half a dozen tier communities, and countless number of spectators) we needed to raise the entry level to the tier equivalent of "do you have notable results in this format".

With all my respect to the OU forum mains who sign up for SCL but have yet to crack 1400 on ladder, or the dozens of friendcords who I'm sure would love to align their votes internally to swing the vote, having a publicly available up/down poll would make the poll functionally useless, and provide TDs with no usable information. We are very aware that a large percentage of Draft and Monotype's community as a result are excluded from being able to answer this survey. The same is (somewhat but mathematically less) true for every tier represented in SCL, however that is why this poll is intended to guide our final decision rather than make it for us.

We have a good idea of Draft and Monotype's opinions as a community about SCL in the TD team, there are multiple players of both formats on the team, and each team has a CL or mod who is also a TD - I can assure you that the TD team is not disregarding the opinions of those formats and is not unaware of their proposals and responses to common concerns.

However, we have only a handful of TP threads, a gated entry and non-zero minimum bar for expression of opinion, functionally useless public Discord conversations where the bolder your presence or the quicker you type, the more it seems like you hold the stand-out common opinion for the current conversation, and private conversations internally between TDs or between TDs and other motivated parties, which can only occur via high level of motivation or knowing a TD well enough to be able to send them a block of text and get a meaningful conversation out of it.

In the end, this poll informs, but it does not decide for us. It was our determination that we'd like to hear from a range of SCL participants as a subsection of the community to be perhaps most motivated by the health, future, and identity of the tournament. This is not to exclude the voices of Monotype or Draft, but in supplement to those, as both of those communities have in their ways made their voice heard by us. There is no perfect step to take, but there is good reason to take a step in some manner, and we have chosen to hear specifically by those users we believe to have an elevated interest in the health, future, and identity of SCL. Again, to inform but not decide.

 

[Colin]

As a LCer who has never played monotype and only recently played a couple draft tournaments I didn't really have a strong opinion for either due to lack of tier knowledge. This made the survey weird for me to answer, and more inclined to prefer to not include the tiers in scl on the Survey. I could only identify surface level problems, such as Monotype probably being more matchup based and Draft being unable to do tiering action mid tournament, of which I had no context relating to how players, tiering, and their communities interacted with. I don't even know for certain that these are actually problems relative to other tiers that are included. I believe that it's the draft and monotype communities responsibility to answer these questions, which they 99.9% have a lot just not where I'd read it

I decided to vote to want draft in the format because I believe the format is competitive and I want to attempt to include that community in the tournament despite my concerns, and I decided to not vote to want to include monotype due to lack of information. I also like last years format a lot. I also agree with Larry that with no information there is incentive for me to vote to not include because I play little cup, even though that slot appears unthreatened this year. I think the fact that I have an opinion on it that is uneducated, that I have real incentives to vote (liking current format, etc), and have pretty much no confidence in said opinion gives an example of why the survey is flawed, and why I think it will be difficult to learn much from just a survey of yes/no questions.

 

[hex]

nothing has been concluded because this tournament has no identity currently. I think once TD's clearly define what they want for this tour (to me it's just Smogon's usage based tiers + LC because status quo I guess) then this conversation can continue. But currently any description you can create for what SCL really is cannot contain Monotype or Draft format. I feel either change would be beneficial to the community at large by virtue of inclusivity but until some things are narrowed down it just feels like a weird "pick me" situation and personally SCL is already a perfect tournament and doesn't need to see any changes. Sorry if this isn't really helpful, just wanted to give my two cents on the situation.

I'm obviously being pedantic here but I feel like this isn't brought up enough or at all really. If SCL was made to showcase current generation tiers, why is Monotype, an "official" tier (quotes because it doesn't feel like an official tier atp) having to fight so hard for inclusion? Sinnoh mentioned it in the other thread and his question should be 100% answered since I'm bringing it up again here as well because it's been on my mind. Yet there hasn't been an answer to a perfectly valid question. What is separating Monotype from UMs/OMs truly?

I agree with most of Larry's post (not the public poll part), and I also agree with a fairy that surveys are flawed. Anyone with a grasp of research methods knows that surveys can be one of the most unreliable ways to gather meaningful data. The survey sent out asks respondents to consider the competitiveness of the tier and whether adding the tier would improve SCL—offering only two black-and-white answers: "Yes" and "No." My questions are: how can people who have no knowledge of a tier decide if Monotype or Draft are competitive or not? How can the Monotype and Draft player base feel comfortable with people who main tiers like LC answering this question, despite having never played their formats before? As Colin just said, he voted against Monotype despite not having enough information. That really shouldn't have warranted a vote at all—or at most, a response like "I'm not informed enough." Yet, he still considered Draft, the metagame he does play, to be competitive—an inherently biased answer. Sure, he's generally uninformed about Monotype and informed about draft, but had he not played Draft, would his answer been the same? Different? Voted against both for being in SCL? There's too many variables that this survey does not cover at all. I would definitely advocate for some sort of change to this. Not to mention what is believed from person-to-person about what would "improve" SCL is incredibly subjective. I'm sure if more people actually played Monotype, they'd understand that the tier is competitive and perfectly viable. Colin also brought up the matchup-based dynamics in Monotype, which have already been beat to death for literally years. The fact that people are still bringing that up makes me feel like the voter poll is generally uninformed. Which leads me to my next point: why are only last SCL's participants polled? This argument has been ongoing for years, and for some people, last SCL was their first time being involved in any capacity. Why are they the only ones voting whether Monotype or Draft deserve a place in the tournament? If you want to honor Larry's idea, you'd expand the poll to include all previous SCL participants or maybe from the past 2-3 years at most. That would give a much wider sample size. Sure, you might get some non-answers from people who’ve quit the game or don’t care about Smogon anymore—but overall, you'd get a more accurate assessment of the tours community as a whole, without dipping into the "1400 ladder players" (as a fairy put it). It feels intentionally exclusionary to poll such a small group when there are clearly many more valid opinions from players who are SCL-level. Not to mention (again) the questions that are asked are framed in a way that put the audience against both formats even if they're neutral/don't know enough. If people just don't vote because they don't have enough knowledge, then your sample size becomes a lot more skewed than it should be. So as long as the survey really isn't a "decider" then I suppose that can be okay(?). But I'm still using my voice to advocate against it, despite the fact that I never imagined myself posting in a policy thread. Even if you poll more people, they might all vote against Monotype which might make this post silly, but that's okay! The result is obviously important for every community involved. But I believe it should be conducted in a way that feels more responsible, regardless of any outcome. If it's decided to add Monotype and Draft to the tournament, and you send out post-SCL polls and people think it sucked—at least we tried. I consider myself a PU player nowadays, but Monotype and Draft seem to have more odds stacked against them than what I believe is fair.

 

[blank]

Personally, I do not think either Draft or Monotype are compatible with team tournaments, and I don't think either should be included.

Let me preface by saying I actually like Draft and think it's competitive, and I think it probably deserves an individual trophy tournament.

With that out of the way, this format is a logistical nightmare to include in a team tournament, especially from a managerial perspective. Essentially, you are asking to add another "silo" slot to a tournament that already has DOU. lax's beautiful kumbaya vision of everyone working together on the draft and anyone being able to pick it up is just not how things would work in reality. The reality is, if you draft a poor Draft player, you have far fewer options for reviving a failed slot than you do with literally every other tier. Sure, it is easier for anyone to pick up than something like DOU, but it lacks a ladder, and your substitute is locked into your other guy's sub-par draft. It is probably less likely that you need to draft a dedicated support slot for Draft when compared to DOU, but you probably need to either 1.) be a manager good at Draft yourself or 2.) draft support/at least a few players who have a strong understanding of Draft or 3.) spend big bucks on whoever people say is The Person To Get in Draft to avoid having a bad Draft that plagues you for the rest of the tournament.

This format basically puts you into a box. It sucks for everyone else involved on the team. For it to go well, you're essentially required to put way more emphasis on it than all the other tiers, and the OP even concedes this with the way they talk about the whole team collaborating on it. Have you ever been on a team?? Imagine the average comments of your SV OU players during a GSC game in game discussion - now imagine that when you try to gather everyone for a super happy fun time to help your Draft player. It isn't a Team Effort - you need one of the three above things, which is ridiculous given how much intensive support is required for the tiers in SCL when compared to SPL since lower tiers move faster than old gens + dedicated DOU support is a 3k tax every team needs to pay.

While not the direct topic of this thread, there's another offshoot thread and it has been mentioned here, so I want to say Monotype is a very similar situation. The last thing you want to do in a team tournament is add another silo slot. It is a headache to draft for, it puts unnecessary importance on certain metagames over others, and if you choose not to draft that dedicated support/substitute in favor of support for the other fucking 7 tiers on your team, you're basically screwed if your player ends up struggling.

I know I kinda threw DOU under the bus here, but these complaints have existed for a very long time, and we admittedly just put up with it because DOU has historically been included in these tournaments and it would be pretty mean to just decide to axe it now. Still, two wrongs don't make a right, and we shouldn't be adding in more tiers that exacerbate these issues. The usage based lower tiers + have plenty of crossover and the existence of Slam helps this. The DOU individual also helps to an extent, but less so obviously. It's a similar situation in SPL - between Classic and Masters, you have a lot of crossover across a lot of generations. It is fairly easy to draft a usage based lower tiers super sub in SCL and it is fairly easy to draft a Classic gens or Masters gens sub in SPL. While Monotype and Draft have big playerbases, this crossover is less the case - most of the people who crossover would likely be starting somewhere.

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With all of this said, I am just one person, and I am one person who has not managed SCL (...yet). Others have alluded to this, but I think there's a bigger issue at hand here - the identity of SCL. I personally think the tournament had a rocky start being basically born from the failure of SSD + the complaints of lower tier players demanding a tournament just as prestigious as SPL (you can't artificially manufacture prestige), but I think the tournament has really taken shape and is very much headed in the right direction. What makes these tournaments special is those social intangibles - the hype, the storylines, the drama, the player dynamics, the unique franchises/teams - these are things that have developed over a very long time for WCoP and SPL, so it is natural that it will take some time for SCL... but it is coming along well IMO.

I think the SCL playerbase - the managers and players who are known to love SCL - need to decide what they want here. Are they happy with the current format and direction of the tournament? Do they want to inject more hype into the tournament by including two very large communities, despite the competitive concerns? I think these things need to be kept exclusive to some degree, so it's definitely the right decision to keep the survey limited.

My personal take - give SCL some more time to grow as a tournament before opting for these radical measures to build buzz. It's a competitive tournament right now. No need to mess with it.

 

[Jahkem]

TL;DR 12 slots, include both Monotype and Draft, SCL identity suggestion.

Why not both? How come it has to be either or to be included? You can’t make everyone happy. If you pick one over the other, the respective community left out will feel snubbed. If you include both, there’s gonna be a subset of the tour scene that will be unsatisfied. If we want a strictly competitive format for SCL, include the competition from these two tiers.

I don’t know what identity for SCL everyone can agree on. If I had to suggest one, let this tournament be the one that’s showcasing the best of the biggest tiers on the website, which should include both Monotype and Draft. That would mean expanding SCL to 12 slots to fit these tiers in.

 

[Zcarlett]

TL;DR 12 slots, include both Monotype and Draft, SCL identity suggestion.

Why not both? How come it has to be either or to be included? You can’t make everyone happy. If you pick one over the other, the respective community left out will feel snubbed. If you include both, there’s gonna be a subset of the tour scene that will be unsatisfied. If we want a strictly competitive format for SCL, include the competition from these two tiers.

I don’t know what identity for SCL everyone can agree on. If I had to suggest one, let this tournament be the one that’s showcasing the best of the biggest tiers on the website, which should include both Monotype and Draft. That would mean expanding SCL to 12 slots to fit these tiers in.

Adding both at once is a lot of change for a tour that's still finding it's footing in the grand scheme of things. Adding 2 tiers at once to a format that clearly has some staying power but isn't a paragon of stability doesn't sound like a great idea. This is without considering how 12 slots 10 tiers is going to be a nightmare to plan and manage for (especially when one of those tiers is draft). We aren't that far removed from Snake Draft burning in flames, but by the same token SCL has had a few years to develop and it's clear SCL has a much better reputation than that ot Snake and thus has more room to experiment. For the record I do think change is good in moderation, but it's just that and adding both at once would be overdoing it.

 

[Dead by Daylight]

I think posts like Colin’s are a great illustration of why this survey won't be representative of the support behind both metagames. As hex put well in her post, voters who vote "no" on a tier because of their preconceived yet unfounded biases against it despite not having enough information or experience with the tier are going to be biasing this survey. I agree that extending it to the general masses runs the risk of swaying the pendulum too far in the other direction, but uninformed voters are another issue to solve with this survey and quite likely one of the reasons why it just won't work to determine support.

I'd also like to address blank's point of Monotype being a silo slot. I don't think this is necessarily true - Monotype isn't really too far off from other tiers insofar that it has to have a dedicated tier mainer to support it or sub. Sure, a 3k buy in the slot would definitely help support for the tier. But as long as you have someone willing to click for the slot, there are easy-to-use resources and samples, much like other official tiers. The post talks a lot about Draft being a silo slot - I'd argue the reason that Draft slots would need a mainer is because there is no standard viability rankings (that I could find, feel free to correct me if I am wrong) and no sample teams to look at to determine whether or not something is good. Monotype doesn't have this key issue.

 

[TheDuckChris]

I think this is the right time to try Draft and Monotype in SCL.

SCL is a tour that has enjoyed an extremely high level of participation and while not perhaps rising to the level of SPL in terms of prestige, it is well on its way to fulfilling its purpose as the second most important/prestigious team tour on the site. The format of all current-gen tiers makes it a great place for newer and fresher talent to fill out the rosters, even in OU. The "identity" of the tour as the current gen / non OU form of SPL is pretty established, and works well. This will be the third SCL of the generation, with the previous two holding the same tier makeup with no changes.

Heading into the end of the generation, this is a perfect time to try out Draft and Monotype. As a third iteration of the same tour, we have the control group of what makes the tournament work well, and we have the room to test. If Draft and Monotype end up being great additions to the tour, they can be carried forward, notably being tiers that begin work very quickly into a new generation and have some time to develop between release and SCL kickoff (release timeline pending changes). If the tiers aren't a great fit, then the tournament can be reset for the new generation as usual.

In terms of the tiers being too different, I think that's overblown. If players can assist with and transition between OU, Ubers, and PU just fine then they can probably figure out Monotype team archetypes and scout an opponents draft options. After all, mons is mons. In terms of Draft being a better fit for an individual or other team tournament, I have no clue how this could work. Draft is an almost perfect fit for a team tournament like this, letting the whole team's win-loss smooth out the matchup effect of Draft squads, hype up the close games, and add more importance to what is usually a closed environment in draft leagues.

The only way we will never know if these work well or not is if they are never tried.

 

[gephicka]

The post talks a lot about Draft being a silo slot - I'd argue the reason that Draft slots would need a mainer is because there is no standard viability rankings (that I could find, feel free to correct me if I am wrong) and no sample teams to look at to determine whether or not something is good.

I would like to note that the equivalent of the VR for draft is the standardized draft board that is actively tiered by Smogon Draft. The draft board & points for each individual mons are adjusted similarly to that of a VR. (see here)

However, drafting in and of itself is a skill that is not always intuitive— and one 9pt mon may have significantly less value to a given draft than another. In general, resources for how to actually put together a draft are fairly sparse & Draft Mainers will have a significant advantage over non-draft players. Following the current Draft meta is not particularly as easy if you are not actively following & playing the tier to know what is or isn't seeing success at the given moment (you could likely say this about most metagames, but, because you will be stuck with whatever you draft for the entirety of a season, the effect is felt even moreso in draft).

Agree with the sentiment of the post 100%, Draft is not necessarily the easiest thing in the world to pick up & mons that you may think are strong because of their power in standard play don't always carry over to strength in draft— a format in which versatility and synergy are king rather than raw BST or utility options. Of course, at the end of the day good mons are still good mons, so it's likely possible to draft a competent draft team without prior experience playing, but Draft Mainers will be at a specific advantage because of their ability to gauge the board as it comes in a way that less experienced drafters cannot.

 

[Eternal Spirit]

I feel like theres a clear elephant in the room when it comes to SCL as a supporting actor in our circuit. Time to time we have some random discussion about adding or swapping shit when the tour clearly has its identity at this point, which doesnt seem optimal to me. Nobody touches SPL at this point as we found the (arguably) best size and format in all gens OU, and for SCL we prob got the right tiers to fill in. I dont think we should touch it and add monotype, draft or anything else.

That being said, i also had the chance to experiment draft recently and had a lot of fun, we definitely should find a way to explore it in our circuit, maybe in a fourth (?) team tour or even individually. Monotype is not as competitive when compared to it IMO, but both would fit together in some kind of other metas team tournament with bigger spotlights in both, right next to National Dex OU/Ubers, AAA, Random Battle etc. Itd have such a coronapl energy with a mix of chaos, fun and personality...

 

[Star]

We will not be adding Monotype or Draft to 2025's SCL.

While the poll was and is non-binding, both formats hovered around 30% support for inclusion (32.3% for Monotype, 30.7% for Draft). As stated, these numbers were only meant to guide TD decision-making, but obviously they are not particularly strong advocates for inclusion. In the end, it is a TD decision, but the poll showed us the pulse of tournament community sentiment that couldn't be easily determined by things by just looking at like counts in the thread or Discord discussions.

There was a lot of talk about "the identity" of our trophy team tours. In our eyes, SPL is focused on the flagship OU metagames throughout the generations, SCL is focused on current generation metagames, and WCOP walks the line between both. These identities have changed in the past (as recently as 2024 for WCOP) and may yet change in the future (inevitable size issues as more gens come along). However, those are our guiding principles for each tour. One key takeaway from the threads and poll is that people do genuinely like SCL as it is. While we don't see an immediate path forward for SCL format changes, we also do not intend to keep it ironclad locked forever if there are logical reasons to add or remove formats.

As far as Draft and Monotype go, we think these tiers are in two different places as far as future outlook is concerned. Monotype is very well established on Smogon and debates over its inclusion in tours have been ongoing for nearly a decade at this point. Every time these discussions have resulted in the general tournament community being against its inclusion primarily due to significant concerns about overall competitiveness that are shared by the majority of the Policy team. I made a post about my thoughts a few years ago, and my concerns pretty much remained the exact same when I went through games from the most recent team tour. This is not to say "wow other tiers are so perfect and the games are always great", but in the Policy team's view Monotype does not meet the bar for competitiveness and interactive gameplay that we expect from tiers in our trophy tours today. Obviously tiers do sometimes dip below that bar (last SCL's Ubers metagame, the last SS LC metagame in SCL as examples in my view), but over the course of generations we see this as a consistent problem for Monotype which is not the case for other tiers. That is not the fault of Monotype tiering, but we see it as a fundamental issue due to the rules of the tier as described in my other post. Given the history here and the Policy team's own view, we do not see a realistic path forward for Monotype's inclusion in official team tours.

Draft on the other hand is a much newer format that has only been present on Smogon for ~2.5 years at this point and is not yet an Official tier. Many concerns (obviously not all) about Draft in this thread stemmed either from a lack of understanding of how it worked in a team tour setting (drafting multiple teams, having a mids to make edits) or a lack of familiarity with the tier in general (compared to Monotype where everybody knows exactly what it is and how it works). Posts also touched on wanting to see Draft become more established across tournaments before it's in SCL (it only had its first Ribbon circuit last year). The Policy team was actually mostly in favor of including Draft in SCL, but obviously isn't going to push that through this year overriding general sentiment. However, we do see many of Draft's problems as solvable by increased recognition (like becoming Official) and integration in the tournament's community so people become more familiar with how it's played and how it can co-exist in a tour with other tiers. All this being said, Draft is certainly not guaranteed to have a future spot in SCL or other trophy tours, but we have a more positive outlook here.