On Tournament Deadline Times
With the recent start of the Ghosting Tour being the latest iteration of a issue I have seen occur in this format specifically a few times, I would like to use this as a means of requesting that draft start using more consistent tournament deadline times to be more in line with how the rest of the site often functions, as well as to reduce player confusion when it comes to the deadline of a given week.
What is the problem?
While ghosting tour is not the first time I have seen this be an issue, the choice for the deadline to be GMT +1 created more confusion then I normally see when it came to the deadline. Many players outright missed the deadline and thus had their games not count or simply not be played, and others were having the start times of their games reviewed by staff to ensure legality when they weren't even aware of the issue. This arises because more often then not, many tours default to GMT-4(/5 depending on the time of year) as the go to deadline for most tours, and with draft occasionally following this pattern it leads the player base to believe that this is norm will be upheld (I will talk about any "issues" with this later). I am of the belief that deciding on a consistent deadline time for these tours will eliminate a lot of player confusion, and therefore a lot of problems with games not being counted/played due to the inconsistency of the tournament staff in deciding deadline times.
What is my proposed solution?
My proposed solution to this is simply making sure that all tournaments when possible have a GMT-4(/5) deadline, and for the main exceptions to this to lean in adding hours to the week (eg -7). I believe one of the main factors leading to games not getting counted, is that for many players it is common to see games scheduled later in the day on both Saturday and Sunday, as that is when many players have free time, shortening that time by 4 (and in the ghosting tour's case 5) hours can leave players unknowingly having their scheduled times not work, or played games not being counted.
Can't players just read the rules?
Yes, they can. However when more often then not major tiers have fixed deadline times across all their tours, draft should follow this trend of consistency in decision making as it reduces the risk of errors being made by the player base. This consistency does not come at the cost of competitiveness, or anyone's comfort (especially if my suggestion of limiting changes in deadline times to anything that provides more time then a 11:59pm GMT-4 deadline is taken seriously). Tournaments should when possible (in my opinion) make it as easy and accessible for a seasoned player of the format to be able to know what the expected rulings are without having to double check on every tournament.
What about the hosts?
While yes, a consistent deadline time might make some aspects of hosting a tour more inconvenient, with the size of the draft moderation team and fact that it is okay if a round goes up a bit after the deadline (I've seen stuff go up on Tuesdays and have been told it's happened even later, not saying that this should be encouraged but just pointing it out). Threads can be easily locked by someone else with forum mod privileges (of which this format again has many) and timestamps are still available to ensure that a game was played before/after the deadline if the thread is not locked in time. While wanting a tournament to run as smoothly and quickly as possible is very reasonable, I believe that minor delays that aim to service the general player base are overall positive changes.
Why GMT-4? Isn't that American-centric?
Kind of??? I mean I can't really argue with this one, however I can point out that again this deadline is something much more standardized across the site, and therefore something that people from many different timezones have gotten used to doing. You could make the same argument that a standardized GMT+-0 deadline could be just as problematic for someone on the West coast of NA whose best times for playing are Sunday evenings. You can't make a system that works for everyone, however making a consistent system allows for people who it may not function as great for to know what they will have to work around. It is worth noting that the main reason this deadline time is changed is to accomodate for Ladder Tours, as making the deadlines for that "American-centric" can directly give some people an advantage, an issue which draft will never have to face.
In conclusion
While I have brought this up in passing to tournament staff, I wanted to make a public post discussing this as I have noticed this to be far more uniquely a draft issue, and would love to see this format be more approachable to new players coming from the rest of Smogon, consistent for the draft veterans, and overall to try and have less games be left un-played, or flipped even if they were played due to the inconsistent decision making. I believe my proposed solution is simple, and doesn't have many of the downsides people would assume it to have. If the place for this is not a post in a discussion thread, I ask that I am alerted and that this can be made into its own discussion thread as a proposal. Thank you for reading!
With the recent start of the Ghosting Tour being the latest iteration of a issue I have seen occur in this format specifically a few times, I would like to use this as a means of requesting that draft start using more consistent tournament deadline times to be more in line with how the rest of the site often functions, as well as to reduce player confusion when it comes to the deadline of a given week.
What is the problem?
While ghosting tour is not the first time I have seen this be an issue, the choice for the deadline to be GMT +1 created more confusion then I normally see when it came to the deadline. Many players outright missed the deadline and thus had their games not count or simply not be played, and others were having the start times of their games reviewed by staff to ensure legality when they weren't even aware of the issue. This arises because more often then not, many tours default to GMT-4(/5 depending on the time of year) as the go to deadline for most tours, and with draft occasionally following this pattern it leads the player base to believe that this is norm will be upheld (I will talk about any "issues" with this later). I am of the belief that deciding on a consistent deadline time for these tours will eliminate a lot of player confusion, and therefore a lot of problems with games not being counted/played due to the inconsistency of the tournament staff in deciding deadline times.
What is my proposed solution?
My proposed solution to this is simply making sure that all tournaments when possible have a GMT-4(/5) deadline, and for the main exceptions to this to lean in adding hours to the week (eg -7). I believe one of the main factors leading to games not getting counted, is that for many players it is common to see games scheduled later in the day on both Saturday and Sunday, as that is when many players have free time, shortening that time by 4 (and in the ghosting tour's case 5) hours can leave players unknowingly having their scheduled times not work, or played games not being counted.
Can't players just read the rules?
Yes, they can. However when more often then not major tiers have fixed deadline times across all their tours, draft should follow this trend of consistency in decision making as it reduces the risk of errors being made by the player base. This consistency does not come at the cost of competitiveness, or anyone's comfort (especially if my suggestion of limiting changes in deadline times to anything that provides more time then a 11:59pm GMT-4 deadline is taken seriously). Tournaments should when possible (in my opinion) make it as easy and accessible for a seasoned player of the format to be able to know what the expected rulings are without having to double check on every tournament.
What about the hosts?
While yes, a consistent deadline time might make some aspects of hosting a tour more inconvenient, with the size of the draft moderation team and fact that it is okay if a round goes up a bit after the deadline (I've seen stuff go up on Tuesdays and have been told it's happened even later, not saying that this should be encouraged but just pointing it out). Threads can be easily locked by someone else with forum mod privileges (of which this format again has many) and timestamps are still available to ensure that a game was played before/after the deadline if the thread is not locked in time. While wanting a tournament to run as smoothly and quickly as possible is very reasonable, I believe that minor delays that aim to service the general player base are overall positive changes.
Why GMT-4? Isn't that American-centric?
Kind of??? I mean I can't really argue with this one, however I can point out that again this deadline is something much more standardized across the site, and therefore something that people from many different timezones have gotten used to doing. You could make the same argument that a standardized GMT+-0 deadline could be just as problematic for someone on the West coast of NA whose best times for playing are Sunday evenings. You can't make a system that works for everyone, however making a consistent system allows for people who it may not function as great for to know what they will have to work around. It is worth noting that the main reason this deadline time is changed is to accomodate for Ladder Tours, as making the deadlines for that "American-centric" can directly give some people an advantage, an issue which draft will never have to face.
In conclusion
While I have brought this up in passing to tournament staff, I wanted to make a public post discussing this as I have noticed this to be far more uniquely a draft issue, and would love to see this format be more approachable to new players coming from the rest of Smogon, consistent for the draft veterans, and overall to try and have less games be left un-played, or flipped even if they were played due to the inconsistent decision making. I believe my proposed solution is simple, and doesn't have many of the downsides people would assume it to have. If the place for this is not a post in a discussion thread, I ask that I am alerted and that this can be made into its own discussion thread as a proposal. Thank you for reading!
While this vote got shut down real quick in the tiering council, we wanted to give Zamazenta a true shot to see if it's really worth all the hype. With our "draft 2, pick 1" format, I anticipate there to be a lot of counterpicking against Zama teams. Within the 14 draft pools, Zamazenta was drafted first overall in 10 pools, with the other four taking it second overall.
Tera Regieleki is a highly divisive Pokemon, and it was almost allowed in Autumn Seasonal, but like Zamazenta, we wanted to give it a true shot to see if it's worth the hype or if it's as underwhelming as some think it is. We priced it at 17 points, two cheaper than Tornadus-T and Raging Bolt. That being said, it was drafted 7 of 14 times, with only 2 going in round 1.
Meowscarada's Tera Price was made 17 while its base price remains 19. While this sounds dumb, it is one of the few Pokemon that actually gets hindered by Terastallization, and with a Tera price cap of 28, players are left with only 11 more points to spend on other Tera Captains. Many teams rely on these top-tier Captains to succeed, so gaining two points to lose out on them is a worthy trade in my eyes. Not a single team chose to draft Tera Meowscarada despite this change.
Sleep moves are banned. Sleep moves are lame, simple as that. While this is another divisive topic, we felt that sleep is uncompetitive and cheesy, so we decided to not allow it.
Dry Baton Pass is allowed. This opens up pivoting options for many Pokemon that would otherwise be less desirable.
16 > 17 - The fat cores that are built with Ting-Lu are as popular as ever, especially with Tornadus-T involved, so it was raised a point to reflect that.
16 > 17 - Roaring Moon is an incredibly strong and popular round 2 pick, so it was given a price bump by one point.
17 > 16 - Greninja has fallen out of favor and does not feel like it should be the same price as Darkrai and Roaring Moon.
15 > 16 - Dragonite exploded in popularity this past DCL/DFL. It was raised to 15 in the seasonal, and we bumped it up one more point to match what we think it should truly be valued.
16 > 15 - Palafin continues its quick descent down the tier list, as it struggles against many metagame staples and offers little role compression for its expensive price.
(Tera) 15 > 16 - Keldeo continues to dominate the metagame as an incredibly powerful wallbreaker, and it does not make sense for it to be cheaper than its Water/Fighting counterparts in Quaquaval & Urshifu-R, so it was given a price raise.
14 > 13 - These three once-popular picks have fallen out of favor, so they were dropped a point to incentivize picking them again.
12 > 13 (Tera 14 > 15) - Iron Moth gained popularity in DCL as well, and its price felt too cheap especially when it has a similar power level to more expensive Tera Captains.
11 > 13 (Tera 14 > 15) - This may have been a bit overkill, but Gliscor has been a popular role compression pick as of late.
10 > 12 - Similar to Gliscor, Tinkaton offers great role compression and still makes for a valuable pick at 12 points.
9 > 10 - While seasonal raised its price by two points, we bumped it up one more, as Cyclizar offers great role compression and Speed and continues to rise in popularity
7 > 6 - Even though it's drafted frequently, 7 point Rotom felt very overkill to us and not worth the price, so we dropped it back down to 6.
2 > 3 - On the other hand, Swalot offers solid role compression for its price and can effectively counter some of the metagame staples. It's also drafted extremely frequently, so we gave it a small price increase.
