Tournament VGC Classics PL III - Format Discussion

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zee

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It's finally the season for every boomer's favorite teamtour: VGC Classics PL! For those unfamiliar, this is a team tournament put on by Smogon VGC that features exclusively metagames of past years, giving those mostly forgotten formats a little bit more life each year.

Formats
Last year the formats featured were the following. Formats in bold are expected to return for this year's edition.
  • 2013
  • 2015
  • 2016
  • 2017
  • 2018
  • 2019
  • 2022
  • 23 Reg D
As you can see, 2013, 2015, 2022, and the gen 7 metas are expected to return. However, they aren't guaranteed if the playerbase leans towards something else. 2016 and especially Reg D are what's on the chopping block here. While I will guarantee that at least one metagame for gens 5-8 each will be present, there's no reason to force a gen 9 meta into the tour if it's not something people want. Anything that has been used for "VGC" tournaments is fair game to suggest as a potential slot. So 2009, 2014, Gen 8 Series 7, or Gen 9 Reg C are fair game, Spikemuth Cup or Orre Cup would not fall into this category.

EDIT: Rotating format slots are NOT on the table for this edition of the tournament.

Structure
The first two editions of this tour were 6 teams, 8 slots. However this year we will be offering a custom avatar to the winning team. Is this enough to expand? If we stay with 6 teams, would people prefer a top 3 or top 4 playoff?

We've done a flat self buy price of 15K for managers wanting to self buy with a limit of 1 selfbuy per manager core. This has worked pretty well so far, but could be changed if people have thoughts.

Surely missing a few things on format discussion but if people remember something I forgot feel free to post about it.

Tentative Schedule
Format Discussion will be open until the end of next week. From there, Manager Signups and Player Signups will open simultaneously. The plan is for manager signups to be open for only one week (Aug 4-10) while player signups run for 2.5 weeks (Aug 7-21) with the draft taking place sometime the weekend following (Aug 22-24) and week 1 commencing promptly after (Aug 25-31).
 
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IMO dropping 2016 for 2009 and 2015 for 2014 would be ideal. The Gen 4 metas just got updated with functional no preview so that would be great to see in an actual tour, and it would give a very underplayed format some love again. As for 2015, I just truly think that it is a less interesting and fun metagame than 2014. (Ik Lucien Lachance has even more to say about 2015.) I also would be fine dropping the Gen 9 format, but that doesn't matter a whole lot. If there is a Gen 9 format, I would say Reg C or F deserve the spot.

As for structure, I think it could be interesting to expand to 8 teams but I have no way to judge interest in this kind of thing. Either way, top 4 seems the best for playoffs.
 
Tbh I think that Reg D is a great format for a classics tour as it was a format that was really only present for Worlds and Pittsburgh and is still a bit underexplored in my opinion. Also, playing with Tera is nice as it is more familiar and arguably more balanced than the other generational gimmicks. Although I don't think that a Gen 9 format is necessary, I believe that if we do end up playing in Gen 9, Reg D is the best call.
Edit:
I believe that 8 teams is nice as it gives more opportunity to players, and 8 is a nicer number to my OCD brain than 6 is. :P Top 4 Playoffs definitely makes more sense in my opinion.
 
I don't have a stake in what formats stay/leave really, I personally believe that we should have at least one SV format though, just so we can leave the draft more accessible to new players.

8 teams is ideal and I do believe we will meet this threshold this year (especially since there's a CA now), however it might be better to decide 6 teams vs 8 teams after the manager signups are over. Looking at last years signups, we only got 7, which wouldn't be enough for 8 teams, and we could risk having lower quality managers. There is this thread on possible fixes for the format if we do end up having 6 teams.

also, what's the current plan going into playoffs in terms of tiebreaks assuming we do end up removing the SV slot?
 
Also, the addition of 2009 or 2010 would be great to add some variety to the format pool. Recently there's been a lot of interest for these formats and Showdown mods just modified the code to allow bring 6 pick 4 without team preview, which is a huge advancement that the players have been asking for a long time. There's the argument gen 4 players would rather play 2013, but I feel there could be room for the two formats. I mean why are both 2017 and 2018 allowed? We could chop 2016 which has little interest imo and allow 2009/2010 without any problem
 
Lucien Lachance said:
Seconding Radio's suggestion to drop 2015 for 2014. I can only speak to my experience in the previous two leagues, but I've yet to have a dedicated 2015 player (nor someone who wanted to be). There were a few people who said they would be okay with playing it but it was seldom their first choice. We've given the other Gen 6 formats an opportunity to be featured; it's 2014's time.
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I want to say Rookie and maybe 1 other person signed up for 2015 specifically, but it definitely was the least popular and least interesting format in my opinion.

I don't have any other strong feelings towards gen 4 formats but I think Reg C would be cool for the gen 9 format, I like having a relatively current option for newer players to capitalize on the growth of the game
 
I agree with Radio, Lucien, and Charlie that 2014>2015. 2015 is a fantastic format for skill expression and battle complexity, but not for teambuilding expression. 2014 with its variety of offensive threats makes for a better than CHALK mirrors.

I wholly agree with 2009 as a format. Generation IV has seen more activity in the past year. 2009 works better than 2010 for three reasons:
  • The newly modified challenge code works as-intended for no-preview 2009, but requires out-of-code enforcement of 2 Restricted/battle for 2010
  • Due to the lack of a functioning code until recently, no-preview 2009 hasn't seen as much exploration as team preview 2009
  • 2010 (4thGS) has seen some exploration in the West, and is the most commonly played retro VGC format in Japan. There are plans for future tournaments in multiple communities, so it already has activity.
For SV, I would really like to see Reg. A. It was an underexplored format due to only one set of Regionals before the shift to Reg. B.

Disclaimer: My opinions on 2014-2016 are based on my experience in those years, not on any post-generation metagame shifts that have taken place since then.
 
2015 is one of my favorite formats. Theres a lot less room to build in 2014 but the gameplay is far more interesting imo. I have nothing against 2014 though.

2016 sucks and so much of playing that format was memorizing gameplans. That’s one of the worst experiences in a retro tour. Ideally you can pick a team, play a few warm up games, and go battle. That’s not effective in 2016.

I think reg C is a far more interesting format than reg D. In fact, I’d go as far as to say reg D is one of my personal least favorite formats of the generation. I’d also be interested in reg H coming back, that was the retro format tournament we had at NAIC and it had like 200+ people playing, which is unheard of for a side event. People really like the format and it really did keep developing until the end (I brought my Toronto team, the last regional in the format, and quickly found out I had no matchup into wolfe’s Toronto winning team, since it didn’t exist when I built mine).


I also don’t care for 2022 - I think 2016 and 2022 is a little too much gs cup (we’re not cutting 2019 ty).

I’d be down to see a gen 4 format - I’m very curious what people teambuilding in that format come up with.

My ideal would be gen 4, gen 5, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23.

That being said, I also think three gen 7 formats is probably too much. It’s when I started playing irl and love those years but also I think we could cut one of those pretty reasonably. I’d be ok cutting 2018 for 2014, which leaves us with a max of two formats per generation.
 
Charliezard7 said:
Also, the addition of 2009 or 2010 would be great to add some variety to the format pool. Recently there's been a lot of interest for these formats and Showdown mods just modified the code to allow bring 6 pick 4 without team preview, which is a huge advancement that the players have been asking for a long time. There's the argument gen 4 players would rather play 2013, but I feel there could be room for the two formats. I mean why are both 2017 and 2018 allowed? We could chop 2016 which has little interest imo and allow 2009/2010 without any problem
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I feel like 2019 could be dropped more easily
My ideal would be 10, 13, 14, 18, 21(9), 22, 24(f)
Reg F might be a bit recent (in which case i would go for reg D), but if it is allowed, most people i've talked to agree that reg f was one of the most fun formats to play (including newer players)
series 9 is 100% preference i just think its fun :p but could also be 2017 instead
i dont really have a preference for a gen 4 format, but in terms of tour health would probably go 2010 because i imagine a large amount of people playing 2009 would just use the smeargle/clops/lax/spiritomb team that's on samples which quickly gets old to both spectate and play against.
2016 IMO should be dropped: beating mainly big 6 requires a lot of lines and knowledge of the matchup.
I agree that 3 gen 7 formats is a bit much though. I will leave main discussion as to which but i personally really dislike 2019 :p
IDT 2022 should be dropped; i think having at least one gen 8 format is good and of the 3 formats i would play if i could only have one swsh format (s5, s9, 2022) i think 22 is the best outside of personal bias
 
Carrotman said:
I feel like 2019 could be dropped more easily
My ideal would be 10, 13, 14, 18, 21(9), 22, 24(f)
Reg F might be a bit recent (in which case i would go for reg D), but if it is allowed, most people i've talked to agree that reg f was one of the most fun formats to play (including newer players)
series 9 is 100% preference i just think its fun :p but could also be 2017 instead
i dont really have a preference for a gen 4 format, but in terms of tour health would probably go 2010 because i imagine a large amount of people playing 2009 would just use the smeargle/clops/lax/spiritomb team that's on samples which quickly gets old to both spectate and play against.
2016 IMO should be dropped: beating mainly big 6 requires a lot of lines and knowledge of the matchup.
I agree that 3 gen 7 formats is a bit much though. I will leave main discussion as to which but i personally really dislike 2019 :p
IDT 2022 should be dropped; i think having at least one gen 8 format is good and of the 3 formats i would play if i could only have one swsh format (s5, s9, 2022) i think 22 is the best outside of personal bias
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2010 straight up doesn't work correctly on showdown so I would not suggest running that lmao. I also don't think 2009 would be like that since the people drafted would prob be the people currently playing who don't really use that, and since that sample now doesn't really work with the new no preview stuff its kinda impossible.
 
People seem to feel pretty strongly about 2014 being in the tour and I support that. Was re-reading my post from last year's thread and was reminded I actually advocated for it then but it didn't make it in... conversely, seems that 16 is pretty much universally disliked among the people I've talked to so far so very slim odds that it returns.

definitely open to cutting a gen 7 slot if it's necessary (but I'm not sure it is). my preference would be for 18 to be cut since people had the chance to play that with the RoA spotlight ladder and tournament. 2019 is probably the most beloved iteration of a GS cup meta and a personal favorite so I'd very much not like to see that one go. That being said, I think the majority of this tournament's playerbase are people that had their heyday in this era and all the tiers can be fielded pretty easily so I'd really only wanna look into this as a last resort.

my question to everyone posting about 2009 is: who's actually going to play this? how are managers going to know who to draft? there are definitely some vets still around in the community from the 13 era, good amount of "new" 13 players have been sharing their knowledge on the forum, and there's 2 years of history to go off of for the metagame's inclusion in this tournament. 2009 really doesn't have much of any of this. People are posting "it'd be cool" but not "there are definitely 8 players that can build for this accounting for the oldgen enthusiasts that will go to 13, 14, or another tier". That being said, we can easily just wait and monitor the signups a bit when things go live, but yeah definitely a concern I will need to be talked out of.

for the gen 9 format I'd prefer C, B, or H. Everyone talks about how good C is but to my knowledge it's practically never been revisited. B is effectively the same but the lack of ruin Pokemon could be seen as a good thing by some. I'm also pretty fond of H and echo Adi's sentiments about it.

With this being said my personal preference would be
13
14
15
17
18
19
22
Reg C (or B/H)

I'm not solely picking the formats and welcome people to chime in further on the discussion but I think this is where I'm at after talking to some folks today. Like I said if we can't come to a conclusion by the time signups go live I don't think there's anything wrong with holding a few slots til signup interest gives a better idea of what players are looking for but yea
 
zee said:
People seem to feel pretty strongly about 2014 being in the tour and I support that. Was re-reading my post from last year's thread and was reminded I actually advocated for it then but it didn't make it in... conversely, seems that 16 is pretty much universally disliked among the people I've talked to so far so very slim odds that it returns.

definitely open to cutting a gen 7 slot if it's necessary (but I'm not sure it is). my preference would be for 18 to be cut since people had the chance to play that with the RoA spotlight ladder and tournament. 2019 is probably the most beloved iteration of a GS cup meta and a personal favorite so I'd very much not like to see that one go. That being said, I think the majority of this tournament's playerbase are people that had their heyday in this era and all the tiers can be fielded pretty easily so I'd really only wanna look into this as a last resort.

my question to everyone posting about 2009 is: who's actually going to play this? how are managers going to know who to draft? there are definitely some vets still around in the community from the 13 era, good amount of "new" 13 players have been sharing their knowledge on the forum, and there's 2 years of history to go off of for the metagame's inclusion in this tournament. 2009 really doesn't have much of any of this. People are posting "it'd be cool" but not "there are definitely 8 players that can build for this accounting for the oldgen enthusiasts that will go to 13, 14, or another tier". That being said, we can easily just wait and monitor the signups a bit when things go live, but yeah definitely a concern I will need to be talked out of.

for the gen 9 format I'd prefer C, B, or H. Everyone talks about how good C is but to my knowledge it's practically never been revisited. B is effectively the same but the lack of ruin Pokemon could be seen as a good thing by some. I'm also pretty fond of H and echo Adi's sentiments about it.

With this being said my personal preference would be
13
14
15
17
18
19
22
Reg C (or B/H)

I'm not solely picking the formats and welcome people to chime in further on the discussion but I think this is where I'm at after talking to some folks today. Like I said if we can't come to a conclusion by the time signups go live I don't think there's anything wrong with holding a few slots til signup interest gives a better idea of what players are looking for but yea
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I would definitely play 09. I feel having 14 and 15, as well as 17 and 18, is a bit redundant. Would drop either 15 since 14 is more popular, or 17 because we have been very focused recently on 18 (RoA Spotlight tour)
 
I personally would like 09 to be featured in this tour, but zee's sentiments above about having enough 09 players who won't go to other slots is important. Maybe some way to at least ensure there will be 6-8 players that actually want to play 09 pre-signups would be a good start to quell 09 concerns. Besides that, I think 13, 14, 22 are 100% locks, 14 especially after I cut it from the tour last year.

Assuming we pick 09, I formulated two ideas:
- 17/19/SwSh/SV [no 18 since it was spotlighted for July]
- 17/18/19/SV
(Slotting 15 over the extra SwSh or 09 works too)

I don't really have preference over SV format so I'll leave that one open for more discussion, but I think B/C/D/F/I are all fine as long as there's good justification supported by many.
 
Sapphire said:
I personally would like 09 to be featured in this tour, but zee's sentiments above about having enough 09 players who won't go to other slots is important. Maybe some way to at least ensure there will be 6-8 players that actually want to play 09 pre-signups would be a good start to quell 09 concerns. Besides that, I think 13, 14, 22 are 100% locks, 14 especially after I cut it from the tour last year.

Assuming we pick 09, I formulated two ideas:
- 17/19/SwSh/SV [no 18 since it was spotlighted for July]
- 17/18/19/SV
(Slotting 15 over the extra SwSh or 09 works too)

I don't really have preference over SV format so I'll leave that one open for more discussion, but I think B/C/D/F/I are all fine as long as there's good justification supported by many.
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Reg I???
 
I've been involved in the drafting process for all the editions so far so I would like to post my thoughts.

For this tournament to cater to the most people, I would highly recommend having two gen 8 slots. A lot of people who sign up for this tournament are people who started vgc in the covid era and many of them want to play gen 8 again. The first classics PL had 3 gen 8 slots in 22/Series 7/Series 2 and there was more than enough players to fill those. The second classics PL only had one gen 8 slot and there were too many people who wanted to play 22.

Series 2 was the least competitive in terms of players fielded, as in those players weren't actively playing series 2 back then, so the imo best middle ground is removing that for the old SV slot.

Having three gen 7 slots is too much imo and VGC 18 should be the slot that gets cut. VGC 17 and 19 has enough people who were active back in the day who sign up but a lot of past teams just slotted newer DOU players or less experienced players in VGC 18 to fill up their roster. They did well of course, notably Xrn who had a crazy run against top players, but I do think sacrificing that slot for another gen 8 slot would be in the best interest of the playerbase.

I agree with the others on dropping 2015 for 2014, in the past editions at least the 2015 slot was often filled with newer players who weren't able to play their desired format (for example JMOdri signed up for VGC 22 and Reg D but got slot in VGC 15, on my team we had to slot pokesun because there just weren't enough VGC 15 players left in the draft). I'm not sure if 2014 would actually get more interest than the usual signups but it is worth switching up the format to keep things fresh.

Keeping VGC 13 is good, there's enough players that sign up for that to fill out the teams. Worst case you can slot people with BW DOU experience and I'm sure they will keep the games competitive.

As for SV, I think having two slots would be great. There is way more interest for SV than a format prior to 17 so this way the tournament will be as competitive as possible. I know the aim for this tournament is to revisit past gens but a lot of people liked formats like Reg C/F/H etc and would love a chance to play them again. This way, they would be more engaged in the tournament instead of potentially having to slot in an oldgen that they have no experience in.

Any SV format you put will gather enough interest so putting the formats with the highest tournament attendance on average would be good. I also recommend deciding the SV format after they release the format next week in case it is a rerun of an old format.

13/14/17/19/21/22/SV/SV
 
The generation 3/4/5 VGC community has grown tremendously over the last two years. There are active community discord servers for gen 3 VGC (Orre Colosseum) and Gen 4/5 VGC. For this reason I would like to advocate for the inclusion of 2013 and consideration (perhaps a survey or conditional inclusion) for VGC 2009 and 'Pokemon League 2005'. I believe all of these formats will be competitive, popular and interesting for the participants in this league.

Firstly I would like to address why not VGC 2010 - as others have mentioned the 2010 format is currently bugged on showdown to the extent that even Ray Rizzo's Worlds winning team is not able to be used on showdown currently (as he had 3 legendaries on his team, as was allowed in VGC 2010 rules but not currently on showdown). I hope this can be fixed for future editions of Classics PL.

The PL2005 format is in my view the origin of VGC as we know it, it was played with bring 6 pick 4 team preview, national dex with restricteds banned and at Level 50. It does differ in that Sleep Clause and Freeze Clause are active, but over all this is the recognisable 'VGC' format for the third generation. It has an active playerbase (although many play at Level 100, with minimal differences), with frequent tournaments (both online and in person) and has been featured in other Smogon leagues to success (see ADVLTL 1 and TPP 6). I have no doubt it would be a successful inclusion in VGC Classics PL also.


Whether these formats are included or not, I am excited to see this edition of VGC Classics PL and hope that it can reach new heights this year.
 
Definitely agree with dropping 15 for 14 for a season. Too few players and even if there is a similar amount of interest in 2014 then at least its still something new to keep things fresh.

Also one thing I think could be fun is if we have a slot where each game of the BO3 is played in a different format. We would rotate the starting game of the bo3 each week and then loser picks the next format. I think the best two options would either be having 17/18/19 be the rotating formats or have formats from 3 different generations be the options. Maybe 19/22/23? I think it would be fun because it rewards players who are more flexible and every single year ive had multiple players complain about not wanting to have to play the same format each week.
 
I think 13/14/15/17/18/19/22/Reg C seems pretty cool. I think C is like the most real 2023 format we had and the rest are all just full year circuit formats (missing 16 but like I think that's totally fine tbh). 2020/21 feel weird bc we didn't have a circuit and anything pre gen 5 sounds like total jank
 
oopsgtg said:
The generation 3/4/5 VGC community has grown tremendously over the last two years. There are active community discord servers for gen 3 VGC (Orre Colosseum) and Gen 4/5 VGC. For this reason I would like to advocate for the inclusion of 2013 and consideration (perhaps a survey or conditional inclusion) for VGC 2009 and 'Pokemon League 2005'. I believe all of these formats will be competitive, popular and interesting for the participants in this league.

Firstly I would like to address why not VGC 2010 - as others have mentioned the 2010 format is currently bugged on showdown to the extent that even Ray Rizzo's Worlds winning team is not able to be used on showdown currently (as he had 3 legendaries on his team, as was allowed in VGC 2010 rules but not currently on showdown). I hope this can be fixed for future editions of Classics PL.

The PL2005 format is in my view the origin of VGC as we know it, it was played with bring 6 pick 4 team preview, national dex with restricteds banned and at Level 50. It does differ in that Sleep Clause and Freeze Clause are active, but over all this is the recognisable 'VGC' format for the third generation. It has an active playerbase (although many play at Level 100, with minimal differences), with frequent tournaments (both online and in person) and has been featured in other Smogon leagues to success (see ADVLTL 1 and TPP 6). I have no doubt it would be a successful inclusion in VGC Classics PL also.


Whether these formats are included or not, I am excited to see this edition of VGC Classics PL and hope that it can reach new heights this year.
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I would like to second the idea that Gen 3 should be reconsidered for inclusion at some point. PL2005 was a Nintendo/Pokemon Company ran, major tournament and really does kickoff the start of Nintendo doubles formats.

I would also argue that JAA also warrants consideration for a Gen 3 slot if Gen 3 were to be chosen. Journey Across America: 2006 Pokémon Video Game National Championships was the first Nintendo/Pokemon Company ran tournament to have "VGC" in the name and I reckon the only reason Smogon has it grouped with RoA rather than with the VGC formats is that it was a national tournament circuit for only USA instead of international.

The Pokmeon Compnay itself seems to considers JAA a notable part of VGC history as this year on the broadcast for the Atlanta Regional they ran a short segment on the JAA meta and how it was influenced by Gen 3 mechanics.

 
I had a brief conversation over discord with zee about this idea but wanted to mention it here - adding more format slots. I too hope there is more interest this time, but the number of additional signups required to roster 2 additional teams might not happen. Adding 2 more formats and expanding rosters by 2 players only requires an additional 12 signups. Creating two whole new teams requires more than twice that. More formats will make roster construction and bench management more important, empowering good managers as well.

Adding more formats also tables the discussion about changing the formats and what formats deserve to be included and why. Whatever outcome the powers that be reach, someone is going to be unhappy that their favorite format was excluded. Adding 2009 (sufficient interest pending) and 2014 would clearly make several of us happy, while keeping 2015 and 2018 would be to the enjoyment of others. Put simpler, more formats means more people get to play their favorite format again. That's why I signed up to play in the first place, and I cannot imagine I am alone in that regard.
 
Gen 3 VGC is without a doubt more entertaining and competitive than some formats currently in the tour like 2015, 2016 or even 2017. I know that it's something totally unknown for newer VGC players so probably that's what is keeping it out from official VGC Smogon tours. However, as Oops and Noodle pointed out, it's a format that has developed rapidly these past 3 years with a huge player base and representation in some Smogon league tours like ADVLTL. Needless to say it was a big success there. Probably adding both 2009 and 2005 this year is too much, so I advocate for 2009 instead. Just wanted to post this so PL2005 could be included another time like next year. If we can gather enough players for 2009 it's gonna be even easier for 2005 due to the recent rise in interest in this format. We need some retro VGC representation for this tour to really be considered "Classic"
 
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