Project Suggestions for OM Improvement

[Euphonos]

• Iron Chef: Project - [TEAM BUILDING] Iron Chef Camomons Deluxe, Season 1 Kinda not a tour in the traditional sense, but I really enjoyed doing this for Camo back when Euphonos did this. While it can be adjusted a little, I think choosing the theme carefully might open new options similar to Hit it and Quit it.

Thanks for putting up Iron Chef as one of your ideas for improving metagames. You can also consider using this format instead of the one you brought up if you're not as dedicated enough to coordinate between the host and their appointed people; also, it's actually more faithful to the Iron Chef shtick than the Deluxe one!

 

[pannu]

USA vs The World: This is probably a possible replacement for OMWC if participation gets too low, or just some extra silly tour. (I don't want OMWC scrapped though)

USA VTW is trolling af, make it europe cuz we're an actually viable region kek

 

[Isaiah]

(Anything said here is just my opinion and isn't a completed staff decision etc.)

OM Circuit

I planned to respond to this but then forgot, it's 8 months late but I think this is still relevant so here I am. While it's true that changing metas around carelessly can cause dissatisfaction, ultimately, it's the OM leaders' call on whether it's good to change the metas around or not, whether it's for circuit or team tours. "establish a relatively consistent circuit with a relatively consistent set of metagames in it" is a nice goal, but only when you can make sure all of the metas stay on top in terms of quality. There are a lot of factors that can affect a meta's enjoyment, which is especially true for every passing gen. For example, we don't know what the next gen gimmick/configuration might be, and it might hinder a meta's premise indirectly (For example, there might be a mechanic that allows the user to gain a STAB move of their choice which lowers STAB's playerbase or defensive options get cut even more making Inheritance a heavy offense heaven with extreme matchup fish) or directly (Like they start cutting abilities/cut abilities don't work until there's a mon with it and the pre-Home meta is very limited in abilities or Hackmons mechanics change again). Case in point, GG's enjoyment was the lowest at the start of gen 9 when Game Freak decided to cut the number of true legends from 3 to 2 before Home, and if it somehow becomes 1 next gen (2 is still bad), nobody will enjoy using the same god over and over again. And I say this as the biggest GG fan, I will be fine with having GG get set aside for a year if that GG meta stays for the duration.

There's also the council factor. Unlike official metas with enough players willing to step up, OM total playerbase is already smaller, and this number gets fragmented even more when you take all the OM into account. If a council becomes inactive or busy, an OM can easily turn into a mess with the lack of actions directly interfering with the circuit integrity. Your point about metas changing negatively affecting players' ambition, while valid, is not really a big problem because at the end of the day, it's still mons and the best will still rise on top. Lily had no problem adapting and creating her own teams delving into Inheritance. While there are some metas that require you to put in some extra time, like BH, PiC and SP, as a player, I don't feel like it's a big step up that a player can't get used to (especially considering that even if you fail at Opens, there are half a year until Seasonal, and it's not like you just change out 3-6/6 metas at once). Either way, it's better to have a system in place to deal with emergencies like these, you don't have to use them to swap metas around if you don't want to, but with the lever in place, you give yourself the option to do so when you are forced your hands, you just need to make it clear from the start and make sure it's transparent with community support when it happens.

Meta clarity
Context: When I did the suspect test for GG, I also watched some GG replays and realized something I couldn't have seen playing on PS for too long. I saw 2 GG replays. In the first one, a player asked on a ladder game what the GG meta was about. In the second replay (a game in Tournament room), a player accused the other for hacking because their Pokemon was nuked by a Special Attack-inherited Araquanid's resisted attack. It dawned on me: It makes sense, a casual player can't immediately realize what an OM is about, especially if it's not obvious from the name alone. As veterans and active people in chat/Smogon, we are used to the /tier command to immediately figure out what it is even if we go on a hiatus or supporting commands like /mnm, and even if we don't, we can always just go on Smogon, the main thread likely will give all of the info, or just ask in the room/Discord. But the fact of the matter is most players don't know about any of these, they don't even go on Smogon or join PS rooms (You do see players ask about those metas from time to time in OM and Help, but they are still the minority). So naturally, when they see a meta with unknown elements, they try to guess what it is and can get quickly discouraged if it confuses them when they play a game. Almost Any Ability, STABmons, Balanced Hackmons, a casual player can have an educated guess on what they might be about just looking at the names, but you can't exactly say the same for Inheritance, Godly Gift or hell, even Mix and Mega (Also why you can see a lot of native Mega there).

Changing meta names to make them more comprehensible is most likely not viable due to their established history and/or it's unfeasible to find a way to make names that can hint at the premise, but I think some simple changes are possible.
View attachment 656803
In the teambuilder, we already have the resources listed, I think the best option is to add a line between the Add Pokemon button and the resources (I think somewhere near the "you have no pokemon lol" line works even better but that might not be feasible policy wise) with a bigger font that states the meta premise, that will be the biggest help to entice new builders.
View attachment 656804
For actual games, we can also add a box that states the premise like this one in SSB (also where the suspect test notices go). Viewers or sample users will still be able to understand the meta and potentially become invested. I originally wanted to propose this in PS suggestions thread but figured OM leaders must approve this first before this can be implemented. I hope this proposal is seriously considered as I believe it will benefit all OM with just minor changes.

Sidetour ideas
It's great that we have been seeing new projects to highlight different Pokemon and extra team tours, first AAAPL and now Hackmons PL. I think it'd be great to see some fun side singles tours/ more projects to develop metas as well (hopefully people are interested), so here I just throw some ideas around that I suddenly thought of, but mostly took from somewhere else:

• All-rounders: A BO5 tour in STAB, AAA, GG, MnM and PiC. Change: Every round, you must use THE SAME 6 Pokemon for all metas played. You can choose an illegal Pokemon in one or more metas, but then it will only be usable where it's legal (Hence why BH was excluded since its pool of mons is vastly different)
• AAA Happy Change tour: We did this for gen 8 and I think it would be great to see again, especially if we want to see how the metas will shake up to consider changes. 2AC, NAC, FurScales, only Ice Scales, unbans/bans, native abilities, Tera legal, etc I think are all good since they all might benefit the meta in one way or another.
• GG Madness: GG, but both players get a team and must switch the positions of all Pokemon.
• Hit it and Quit it: A tour where once you have used a Pokemon, you can't use it again for later games/rounds. This should work best for AAA, as AAA currently has the lowest diversity between the 7 OM in team tour according to the unique Pokemon used. Exploring more options that can turn out to be viable might improve the enjoyability.
• Iron Chef: Project - [TEAM BUILDING] Iron Chef Camomons Deluxe, Season 1 Kinda not a tour in the traditional sense, but I really enjoyed doing this for Camo back when Euphonos did this. While it can be adjusted a little, I think choosing the theme carefully might open new options similar to Hit it and Quit it.
• Same Six/Five: 5/6 randomly selected Pokemon were predetermined. Also something that's quite fun, but doesn't really develop the metas. Same Five can be pretty great for GG so you can choose a god to accompany the mons.
• STAB vs AAA: STAB teams vs AAA teams. STAB teams will definitely need some unbans to keep up.
• USA vs The World: This is probably a possible replacement for OMWC if participation gets too low, or just some extra silly tour. (I don't want OMWC scrapped though)
• ___ vs The World: A series where one player faces multiple opponents at once, such as Fakes vs The World or MichaelderBeste2 vs The World. Idk who wants to do this, but Ivar is probably the best if we want to go the multi-meta route.
• Break This Team: A project where highlight teams are chosen (successful teams from tours or ladder) and participants nominate Pokemon that can break it. Useful for outside the box thinking of unconventional options.

This actually gets into a follow-up suggestion I was planning to post later in the year but seeing that it's been brought up here, I might as well after I reply to some of your discussion points first.

RE: meta clarity, I've already suggested having metagame info get linked in battles (and in fact, it was my suggestion that got them added to teambuilders to begin with) and adding that stuff to battles was determined infeasible after we asked devs about it--nothing you can really do about that.

RE: Sidetour/project ideas, the reality is that those projects often sound cool in theory, but die off extremely quickly in practice. We regularly approve all kinds of unique teambuilding/matchmaking/theorymon projects and have done so for years, but the truth is people don't tend to want to contribute to those for very long (take a look at Iron Chef, which by all metrics should be a pretty impressive idea). It's not from a lack of those projects existing as much as it is just not really capturing people's interest (which makes a lot of sense when you consider that the vast majority of casual OM players are not tuning in to Smogon threads even when we advertise in the room and in places like Smogon Discord).

===

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...

It's interesting because I made a whole case for adding more metas to the circuit back then, and here I am attempting to do the opposite. The tl;dr of the point I'm about to elaborate on is: I think we might have a little more sprawl than we can actually support.

I want to suggest reducing the number of circuit metas from 6 to 4 (AAA/STAB/MNM/BH) next year:

• Newer permaladders shouldn't get added to circuit immediately, and they should be subject to PS ladder requirements.
  • Instead of being quick to give certain metagames both a permaladder and a place in the circuit, we should only be doing the former initially. This would give us a chance to actually evaluate if a metagame can consistently meet the requirements to keep a ladder enabled on PS to begin with without having to tie ourselves to it being in the circuit for an entire year right afterwards. I think this is particularly important when you consider suspect tests.
  • I'm of the opinion that we shouldn't have any circuit metagames that can't 1) meet ladder requirements and/or 2) hold normal, TC-eligible suspect tests--recent ones in Inheritance and Godly Gift that struggled to reach double digits without several suspect tours come to mind. I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that for metagames we're treating as "official" enough to be in our circuit, there should at minimum be an active enough ladder to actually meet PS standards + for the community to participate in the tiering process.
• OMPL slots should only be guaranteed for circuit metas, whereas the rest can be determined by vote in the pretour discussion (which might produce a replacement for bo3 since that slots seems to contentious, who knows). PIC in particular seemed super popular this year, so I would be surprised if it didn't make the cut next year in a hypothetical vote.

A reduction in total # of circuit metas would also give us even more room for side tours to help develop other metagames + maybe even include other circuit tours like a Homefield or Last Chance Qualifier or something--food for thought.

 

[Rex]

Other Metas Masters Cup (OMMC) (name very prone to change) - A New Team-Based Tournament Concept

Tournament Overview: The Other Metas Masters Cup (OMMC) is a team-based tournament aiming to promote balanced competition through a combination of draft mechanics, varied skill levels, and metagame rotations. Teams are built using a salary cap draft system and include a mix of players at different skill levels, with a variety of metagames played throughout the event.

Team Formation:
-Draft-Based Teams: Managers draft players using a points-based system. Each player is given a "price" based on their skill level, and each team has a set budget of points to expend. The pricing logic for players would have to be decided but a good way would be addition of tournament participation with positive results (e.g. taking part in a OMPL and ending positive +2 price, MnM open winner +1 price, etc, to a cap) If two or more teams want to buy the same player, they can keep increasing the price (even beyond cap) until one of the teams back down. Managers may draft themselves, but they have to pay their own calculated price.

Metagame Format:
-Rotating Metagames: Each week, teams compete in a selection of rotating metagames (e.g., AAA, Balanced Hackmons, Mix and Mega, etc.), requiring players to adapt and showcase versatility.

-Metagame Swap: Players cannot participate in the same metagame consecutively, encouraging diversity in player expertise and strategy.

Scoring and Matches:
-Underdog Boost: Wins by lower-seeded players or players competing in less common metagames earn bonus points for the team. (It will either chosen for being an uncommon slot, or a hype match big dog vs underdog. Max 1 per team per week.) This will encourage teams to take risks like putting less experience players that would get permabenched in normal tours and give them good support, allowing for a very plural team approach. (I am not sure what scoring this would give to not make it unfair, I was thinking either deciamal score [eg +0.25 or +0.5 points] for tiebreaking, or, also for tiebreaking, something like a x4 value for win diferential.)

-Rivalry Week:
After Round Robin, and before playoffs, OMMC will feature rivalry matchups. Teams which results were pretty one sided, or that developed a real rivalry (either between players, managers or team interaction) get matched with each other on a week with a slot removed (resulting in an odd number of slots, no tie possible). This week's result counts double for qualifying playoffs

Substitution and Support:
-Wildcard Substitutions: Each team has a limited number of wildcard substitutions per week, and unlike normal tournaments, they are allowed and encouraged to use them at any point of the week to increase tactical odds (added rule: the sustitution must respect initial scheduling, if this is not possible, sustitution cannot be made). (There should also be stated a hard cap for when the sub can be announced. Prolly something like max 1 hour before sheduled game).

Team Challenges:
-5.1. Ladder Championships: Each week, teams choose a Champion. That Champion cannot play any slots or take part on other challenges that week nor can he repeat as Champion next week (they can only repeat biweekly). A ladder is proposed, and at the end of week, right at deadline, a screenshot is taken from the ladder. The Champion that is highest wins 2 points for his team, the second and third slot win 1 point for their team. The rest gets no points. The rest of the players are encouraged to jump on ladder and hunt down other Champions.

-5.2. Battle Royale: Every two weeks every team choose a gladiator. Gladiators can play on weekly slots, unlike champions. Gladiators are meant to all together schedule a time (actual hardest part) and play a room tour which only they can join. Possible metas for the tour will be given at the start of the week (3 metas) but decision of what of those three the tour is going to be based on wont be made until just before the tour, at random. Winner of the tour wins 2 points for his team. Runner up wins 1 point for his team.



The OMMC combines elements of drafts, rotation, and different types of scoring to create a balanced and dynamic competitive environment, pushing players to adapt and collaborate while ensuring fair play across teams.
Specifically, it aims to promote an ambience of competitiviness, and that should allow different layers of skill in a single team. It also very importantly aims to shine light onto part of OMs usually abandoned by tours, like room tours and ladder.

 

[Dawn's Piplup]

So I'm not entirely sure this is the right platform to post what I'm about to post, but given it includes suggestions, I'm going for it.

I've been a long-time OM enjoyer since 2015-2016, but I only recently had the experience of going through my 1st OM Submission process and I can't really say it was fun. While rejection was half-expected, the exchange leading up to it (the last one specifically) was comical and appalling. I'm sharing part of the excepts below with leaders'/mods' names redacted followed by suggestions for improvement.

1) Slippery slopes are tricky to argue with. Based on what I circled up there, there is an expectation from OM leadership that I "refute" a claim that is made about something that may or may not come to pass in the future (popularity of an OM that does not yet exist). Now, keeping in mind that the users take some time and effort to prep the submissions, this is not only disrespectful to the effort spent but also insulting to people's intelligence. It also suggests that there is an inherent unwillingness to accept that idea in the first place.

2) If the OM leadership chooses to be parsimonious when it comes to approving new OM ideas, partly because there is a low demand for new ones or if they simply have a "hunch" that the submission in question does not have the attractive "it" factor, and therefore not investment-worthy, those would be much more palatable and honest rejection reasons. On the other hand, the leader's rejection reasons above "personalize" the final decision instead of being constructive and evaluating the idea for its own merit.

3) This brings me to the 3rd thing I circled up there. Respectfully, what I do in my spare time is no one's business. If I'm allotting time from my own weekends to spitball OM ideas for people to discuss, provide constructive criticism, that is evidence of enthusiasm and nothing else. If someone manages to spin a negative light on that and uses it against me to reject a submission, I think that is more telling of that person.

All of this brings me to the "actual" suggestion(s) I would like to make.

1) Please treat your users with the same level of respect you expect from them. Someone puts time and effort into submissions (even if it is nothing compared to the coding work done by Kris or others), receiving this level of dismissiveness is unacceptable.

2) There is clearly a "silent/between the lines" part about OM submissions that needs to be addressed or put into workshop/submissions thread. If there is an expectation that the submitter should concurrently form a discord sub-community centered around their OM idea and put that forward as evidence of any sort, then it is probably best to put that in words in one of the threads.

Hopefully, there is something to take home here and it goes beyond just being a rant.

 

[KaenSoul]

So I made that post, me and someone else said in that thread that we were worried that the format could not be that popular, and your only reply was pretty much agreeing on it?
I'm sorry if you felt that it wasn't being respectful, but you didn't make any further commends on the one thing we said after a bit over two weeks so there wasn't much reason to keep the thread open.

When you are tying to propose an idea, you are intended to sell it to us, if we are worried about something we tell it to you, and if you are trying to sell and idea then is your job to respond back with something that could make us go "maybe there is nothing to worry about after all!".
The format may not seem like something that would be popular? well, what if I tell you it offers the players X thing that no other format does, giving them an experience they can't find anywhere else!

Like, this post really seems like you completely misunderstood what was said, we make quite clear that making new metas begin with a proposal, I don't know why you would think it goes beyond that, we just wanted you to give us a clear answer to our worries, it doesn't need you to do any weird extra work like making a discord or something. We may have made you more questions after, but the process never goes beyond getting a few people for council after the questions have been answered.
The format could have been easily approved if you just asked back then what we meant with our replies, instead of waiting until I closed it.

 

[Isaiah]

Just to add on:

Slippery slopes are tricky to argue with. Based on what I circled up there, there is an expectation from OM leadership that I "refute" a claim that is made about something that may or may not come to pass in the future (popularity of an OM that does not yet exist). Now, keeping in mind that the users take some time and effort to prep the submissions, this is not only disrespectful to the effort spent but also insulting to people's intelligence. It also suggests that there is an inherent unwillingness to accept that idea in the first place.

Typically when submitting a new OM idea yes, it's an expectation that you at least have an idea of sample sets or cores or if you really want to get crazy with it, example teams to show how the tier might be appealing to a more casual playerbase (who is less invested in mechanics and just wants to click "Find Battle!"), which weren't present in your original submission or even after the first open ended comment you quoted on making the forme switches circular.

 

[Dawn's Piplup]

So I made that post, me and someone else said in that thread that we were worried that the format could not be that popular, and your only reply was pretty much agreeing on it?

Yes, it might seem surprising but there is not much to do but agree here. I can give you all the possible sample sets and niche that only exists in this format and it still wouldn't be the answer or counterargument to "whether it will be popular." because it's in the freakin future, and despite all the interesting teams and combinations you muster, the community might still show lack of interest and there is nothing you can do about that.

Like, this post really seems like you completely misunderstood what was said, we make quite clear that making new metas begin with a proposal, I don't know why you would think it goes beyond that, we just wanted you to give us a clear answer to our worries.

Again, I personally really don't think there is much to misunderstand here. I make a post that I think sells the idea. The concept was found to be fine with no indication of whether something was missing from the original post with only a prediction about how the om community would receive it, which I don't have the clairvoyance to surmise. Also rejection reason weirdly alludes to my other extracurricular activities, which does seem a little weird.

Typically when submitting a new OM idea yes, it's an expectation that you at least have an idea of sample sets or cores or if you really want to get crazy with it, example teams to show how the tier might be appealing to a more casual playerbase

Yes, it is my responsibility to sell the idea and given the feedback, I thought I did that and perhaps wrongly assumed that it was the wait period and there was nothing much for me to do. I'm ok with calling it a double-lack of follow up and moving on.

 

[InkyDarkBird]

Can it be required for OMOTM leaders to hold at least 1 community survey while that OM is in the OMOTM? Sometimes the OMOTM forum topic dies due to being overshadowed by the other OMOTM, making tiering action seem slow. Requiring at least one community survey would provide clearer information about the community's views of Pokemon and speed up the tiering process.

 

[Clas]

Seconding, this would really help get info across from the playerbase to the councils of these OMotMs, and (speaking for Revelationmons council) regretted not doing one ourselves. I'd say that it's best for these to be about 2 weeks in so that the meta can develop after potential early bans. Don't really see any downsides here outside of metas that struggle to stay stable before the 2 weeks have passed.

 

[KaenSoul]

Going to respond here too because is the most visible place, so...
The current stat formula has worked out pretty well, if I remember correctly TS has been chosen OMotM twice already this gen, being one of the few to do so, which already proves it has been able to stay popular despite its current status as a non-permanent ladder, but as any of these formats it suffers from lack of attention when it isn't its turn and because of its nature of being a new tier each time standard formats get updated is difficult to follow, as all your teams become outdated every 3 months now (or every month until some months ago).

The way the buffs work now has been much better than last gen, at least, back then the tier was basically a second PU/ZU with a few extra mons but now basically anything is somewhat viable, as everything is closer to each other in stats, which is also the reason we now allow some Ubers on it, as they don't really mess with the viability of the other tiers and are in fair ground, and despite TS being directly affected by standard tiers, OM still are each one their own things and don't really need to follow the decisions made on other tiers to find their own powerlevel, the "OU based" or "Uber based" mindset is something we left in the past, they aren't based on anything, mons come and go in a case by case basis, and we only ever use the OU banlist when someone wants a starting point for their new format.

tldr I think the new TS stat formula was a success on making so nearly every mon has a niche in the tier.

 

[ZarbyXar]

I want to make a proposal. Could the UU tiers of OMs have their own threads? I don’t quite understand why specifically the underused tiers of OM are in one big thread but not the many versions of ubers uu or even past gen uu. These metagames are already hard enough to get into being lower power level versions of their higher tiers. My main argument for this is that creating threads for these tiers not only help make these metagames distinct but also help develop these metagames. These metagames are chosen for a month and I just want them to be given the same respect as other metagames featured in OMotM. I think that having them not have a thread to help new players is as bad as not having it chosen as Leaders Choice in my opinion.

 

[zastra]

Proposal: Create a Subforum for Old Gen Hubs

As the title suggests, I propose creating a dedicated subforum for Old Gen Hubs. Currently, the OM forum hosts a million threads, from Main Metas to Miscellaneous Metas to Old Gens to OM mashups to tournaments to info threads. This volume makes it a pain to find specific threads, especially the Old Gen ones, which have been lost in the sea of other threads (for example the MnM thread is dead last in page 2). The OM forum would benefit from improved organization, and in my opinion, the best way to start is by creating a subforum for Old Gen hubs. Old Gens are an important part of OMs, and improving their visibility and making them easily findable, I think, is a positive change, and it would help people playing in tours featuring Old Gens like AAAPL / HackPL. Many other forums have done this (uu, mono, etc) as well. It would be a nice change to make the forum neater and reduce the clutter.

As for PH, it's technically an Old Gen but being a permaladder and all, I get why it would be willing to stay in the main forum. Up to PH leaders / OM Staff I guess.

I also think a general thread in the subforum for discussing misc. OM past gens would be nice, because afaik there's no place to discuss them currently (say SS CatSwap for example).

 

[Evie]

Seconding, I would really like to see more exploration of old gen OMs in general and especially ones that don’t get a chance to shine in teamtours (so all of them except AAA and BH). I think a subforum is a good place to start for this and running individual tours and maybe even teamtours would definitely help revive these tiers.

 

[Imw0rstadP0keM0n]

1) Please treat your users with the same level of respect you expect from them. Someone puts time and effort into submissions (even if it is nothing compared to the coding work done by Kris or others), receiving this level of dismissiveness is unacceptable.

to be fair, this is something that a lot of OM councils (you know who you are) struggle with, but this isn't really the place to complain about it? You'd probably get more luck making a report or maybe even having a direct conversation with the leads of that thread (Isaiah and UT) rather than complaining here.

 

[Magic Mayhem Maiden]

Follow-up to the OM Circuit thread:
Because five tiers is ideal for Circuit Playoffs, I was wondering if the 5th tier (after AAA, BH, MnM, and STAB) could be the most popular OM (that is suitable for Circuits) of the previous year. For example, the most popular OM of this year would be in the circuit for 2026.

 

[Zuldaar]

This is something more general since it's not limited to OMs, but I don't really lurk other forums so here goes:

Having Tera Blast on physical attackers tends to suggest +4 SpA about 90% of the time. It can be quite annoying.

 

[UT]

Standard disclaimer of I’m not a mod and have no authority on this decision.

I wanted to float ideas for the second OM team tour since that’s coming up and getting an idea of the format sooner rather than later would be good for planning and laying the groundwork. These are all options I’ve seen floated and I want to put all of them up here to get some discussion on what the community wants to see. For the sample lineups, don’t read overly into them, they’re just there to give an idea of what the tour could look like; if we start to seriously consider one, we can then quibble over the exact formats.

Option 1: bring back Spotlights

Spotlights was a former team tour that featured non-perma OMs but flopped in a few different iterations. Now that we have some larger non-circuit OMs (and a custom avatar price to put on the tour) I’m hopeful we can get more buy in from players. The downside is this is a tour that’s flopped before, and non-perma OMs (while we absolutely want to feature them) can be less balanced in a team tour, but featuring our non-circuit metas and giving them a chance to grow is hugely important for OMs.

Potential Lineup, obviously subject to change

Inheritance
Shared Power
Cross Evolution
Sketchmons
Fortemons
Camomons
Frantic Fusions
Pure Hackmons

Option 2: oldgen PL

Everyone looks back fondly on specific old metas, and a team tour could be a fun way to re-ignite interest in them and bring back some old heads. Recent side tours like AAAPL and HackmonsPL have had success on these fronts. The downsides are the existing playerbases are small, some of them are not balanced by modern standards, and we’re passing up an opportunity to develop current gen metas.

Potential lineup

SS AAA
ORAS AAA
USUM BH
SS GG
USUM MnM
SS PiC
SS STAB (or if you want to be really funny, RBY STAB)
No idea what to do about bo3 but we can figure out something

Option 3: OMPL II

Run a second OMPL tour with the same metas; obviously we should come up with something to make it different (make it snake draft, make it a blind draft, etc) but just keep featuring our best metas. Least sexy option, but has that perk.

Option 4: status quo

The devil we know over the devil we don’t. Yes regions are unbalanced, yes every year we have to have fights about who’s eligible where and it’s often a fight to get to eight teams, but if there’s no alternative it’s been viable before and can be viable again.

I’m obviously extremely open to other ideas as well, but just wanted to get the convo going with the ones I could think of.

 

[Giagantic]

Standard disclaimer of I’m not a mod and have no authority on this decision.

I wanted to float ideas for the second OM team tour since that’s coming up and getting an idea of the format sooner rather than later would be good for planning and laying the groundwork. These are all options I’ve seen floated and I want to put all of them up here to get some discussion on what the community wants to see. For the sample lineups, don’t read overly into them, they’re just there to give an idea of what the tour could look like; if we start to seriously consider one, we can then quibble over the exact formats.

Option 1: bring back Spotlights

Spotlights was a former team tour that featured non-perma OMs but flopped in a few different iterations. Now that we have some larger non-circuit OMs (and a custom avatar price to put on the tour) I’m hopeful we can get more buy in from players. The downside is this is a tour that’s flopped before, and non-perma OMs (while we absolutely want to feature them) can be less balanced in a team tour, but featuring our non-circuit metas and giving them a chance to grow is hugely important for OMs.

Potential Lineup, obviously subject to change

Inheritance
Shared Power
Cross Evolution
Sketchmons
Fortemons
Camomons
Frantic Fusions
Pure Hackmons

Option 2: oldgen PL

Everyone looks back fondly on specific old metas, and a team tour could be a fun way to re-ignite interest in them and bring back some old heads. Recent side tours like AAAPL and HackmonsPL have had success on these fronts. The downsides are the existing playerbases are small, some of them are not balanced by modern standards, and we’re passing up an opportunity to develop current gen metas.

Potential lineup

SS AAA
ORAS AAA
USUM BH
SS GG
USUM MnM
SS PiC
SS STAB (or if you want to be really funny, RBY STAB)
No idea what to do about bo3 but we can figure out something

Option 3: OMPL II

Run a second OMPL tour with the same metas; obviously we should come up with something to make it different (make it snake draft, make it a blind draft, etc) but just keep featuring our best metas. Least sexy option, but has that perk.

Option 4: status quo

The devil we know over the devil we don’t. Yes regions are unbalanced, yes every year we have to have fights about who’s eligible where and it’s often a fight to get to eight teams, but if there’s no alternative it’s been viable before and can be viable again.

I’m obviously extremely open to other ideas as well, but just wanted to get the convo going with the ones I could think of.

I was simply planning on doing a Fall OMPL as a replacement for OMWC as it is the most logical and will probably succeed whereas the other options you mentioned have a sizeable chance of faltering and out right failing due to a lack of ladders and metagame progression as far as tiering is concerned compared to a permaladder.

If there is interest in one of the other two options we can poll which and go from there. There is greater degree of flexibility with this tour compared to one of the ones that are set in stone as this will be the first iteration.

I am planning to host the OMWC replacement whatever it may be, though who I host it with is up in the air.

 

[pannu]

just doing ompl2 is very boring, surely we can do SOMETHING to spice it up? maybe like have flex slots or do like a snake draft? Idk, literally ANYTHING would be better than just doing "ompl fall edition"

 

[Giagantic]

just doing ompl2 is very boring, surely we can do SOMETHING to spice it up? maybe like have flex slots or do like a snake draft? Idk, literally ANYTHING would be better than just doing "ompl fall edition"

Yeah, we definitely can maybe do a combination tour with permaladders + 2 (or more) voted on OMs; snake draft is also a possibility as I said anything is really possible.

 

[Osake]

did anyone say Camomons ?

 

[UT]

did anyone say Camomons ?

Yes it was in my suggestion for option 1 (which is my preferred option)

Camomons

 

[word]

Admittedly, I have not been present for the last few years - so can not speak for the last few iterations - but as someone who participated in previous OMWCs, it was genuinely one of my favourite OM team tours to participate in. Other players that I've spoken to have shared similar sentiments.

While it's not always the most balanced or competitive tournament, the community aspect of it is a lot of fun. There's just something enjoyable about teaming up with other players from your region - and it's interesting to see how the different regions approach different metagames.

Plus it's cool to have a tournament that integrates smaller communities like the Chinese OM players with the main OM playerbase.

I can understand that it can be a nightmare from a hosting perspective (getting 8 suitable teams, player eligibility, etc) and I don't really have any productive solutions, but I think it would be a shame to see OMWC go.

It was also kind of nice to have OMPL as the flagship "serious" team tour and then OMWC as a more laid back and fun tour - especially since a lot of players often get a bit burnout towards the end of OMPL

Edit: another thing I liked about OMWC, but forgot to mention is that it's nice to have a team tournament where there's a sense of legacy and being able to team with the same players again each year (with some new faces too, of course). That gives it a strong distinction from other tournaments we have

 

[KaenSoul]

Yes it was in my suggestion for option 1 (which is my preferred option)

The problem with option 1 is that we don't really have that many formats that we can trust with being the focus of a tournament outside the perma ladders, I can only expect some interest in the tiers that lost their perma status in recent years (Inh, Camo, and PiC which got to keep its tour status for now) but at the same time, the very reason they lost their status was the lack of activity which translate to overall interest, specially from new players. (Only way this could work if it is just for these 3 formats, which wouldn't really be a spotlight tour).

We just need to look back at any recent attempt of making side tours for non perma formats to see that spotlights just don't work, at the beginning of the generation we had to abandon the idea of the OMotM tournament because after a few iterations they died (and it was when Fortemons, one of the most popular monthly formats, got its turn), the recent Relay Race tour was an experiment to see if we could do tournaments for new formats catching on their new format hype, but even that didn't work at all.
The way I perceive it, the demand for more tournaments mostly come from old users, so if we want to try something that we could see working, it would need to be something that those players are interested on playing on numbers big enough to sustain those tournaments.