Tournament DWCoP VI Discussion Thread

[Actuarily]

Discussion Thread
Welcome to the sixth installment of the Doubles World Cup! This thread will serve as the place to discuss all things relating to the upcoming Doubles World Cup, including regions, tournament size, eligibility, etc. Most of the following details in this thread will be tentative upon hearing community feedback, and will be finalized before the tournament starts.

This tour will be hosted by goldmason with assistance from the DOU Forum Moderation team.

Doubles World Cup of Pokémon Six (DWCOP VI) will likely follow the same structure as last year’s tournament. In the first phase players will be placed in pools of 4 with players from other teams, where they must play each of the three other players in their pool in a best of 1 SV DOU match. This pools phase will last two weeks, and will be the qualifying phase for the playoffs. Any substitutions made in the pool phase will continue for the entirety of the pool phase.

The 8 regions with the best record will emerge from the pools and will compete in the playoffs.The #1 seeded team will play the #8, #2 will play the #7, #3 will play the #6 and the #4 will play #5 where each player will play a best of 1 SV DOU match against a player on the opposing team. The team with the best record in this matchup will be the winner. Any ties will result in a tier breaker where 3 players from each team will play a best of 1 SV DOU match.

Last year we had 13 teams with 8 starters and 4 subs on each.

For DWCOP VI, considerings last years numbers, we are looking to have a minimum of 12 teams. Last year we had 13 teams and we’d always like to keep the door open to possible new teams in this edition as well. Teams will be finalized once we have a better idea of signups, but here were the teams last year:
APAC
Brazil
Europe
Canada
China
France
India
Latin America
Iberian Peninsula
US Central
US East
US West
Venezuela


With the US regions divided by the below map:

Our projected timeline is as follows:

• Manager & Player Signups to go up on October 12th.
• Managers will be selected on October 19th.
• Player signups to close October 26th.
• Pools to be posted on October 27th.
• Playoffs to be posted November 10th.

Regarding player eligibility: We are thinking that we will continue the same rules as last year, where players are eligible to play for whatever region they are currently living in (with a verified IP address). However, players that played for a different region last year than what they are currently living in this year are eligible to be “grandfathered” in to their team from last year. This “grandfather” clause will not apply to regions that have been split. For instance, if Europe were to be split between team United Kingdom and the rest of Europe, then all players living in the United Kingdom would only be eligible to play on the U.K. team, not on the team for the rest of Europe, even if they were on team Europe last year.

Use this thread to discuss your thoughts on the tournament, and here are a few questions to get the discussion going:
1. Should there be any changes to team sizes from 8 players and 4 substitutes?
2. Should any additional teams be considered from the 13 that we had last year?
3. How do you feel about the eligibility requirements?
4. Should there be any changes to the tournament structure, whether that’s pool sizes, playoffs size, tiebreakers, or length of the tournament?

Or any other thoughts or feedback you may have!

 

[Amaranth]

team italy is like probably 90% forming again

 

[AIRedzone]

team india is like probably 20% forming again

 

[SMB]

Please let's not do this tournament a full SV DOU tournament for the 4th time

 

[zee]

Please let's not do this tournament a full SV DOU tournament for the 4th time

Free Fairy gens at least. DOU has excellent coverage of oldgens between its forum posts and many tournaments, so even if a region doesn't have a mainer in the format, they should be able to find a slot to get up to speed in the tier relatively easily. We've been doing full SV since 2022, it'd be great to have a shakeup.

 

[Xrn]

would support old gens for this iteration

SV DOU seems to be liked well enough for the most part but having a 4th all SV DWC with a really similar meta to last year would be somewhat underwhelming. 5x SV / 1x SS / 1x SM / 1x XY feels appropriate to keep the majority of slots as SV while adding in our more accessible old gens.

otherwise think the tournament is good as is

 

[sheepie]

Oceanian's rise up! surely we get a team this time. (please, please i'm begging you, this is not cope please) (I was informed we are part of APAC and not AIPAC but still oceania team so I have a chance of getting in)

 

[srvoltmike]

Free Fairy gens at least. DOU has excellent coverage of oldgens between its forum posts and many tournaments, so even if a region doesn't have a mainer in the format, they should be able to find a slot to get up to speed in the tier relatively easily. We've been doing full SV since 2022, it'd be great to have a shakeup.

I just don't see this to be true, and introducing fairy gens will unfairly penalize the less active regions (i.e. a Venezuela or Brazil). Most of the players on these teams (at least according to roster construction from last year) only have meaningful experience in SV DOU and getting the slot up to speed becomes considerably harder when you realize most of the ladders for these oldgen DOU formats are dead and all basically all meta progression in these tiers happens in tournament. It seems considerably prohibitive to get in shape, especially when there was no indication that some of these players would have to learn new, very different formats until 2 weeks before the tournament happens. Expecting teams to "figure it out" or risk having 3 sack slots in pools seems quite disadvantageous to the competitive integrity of the tournament (pools especially). This combined with the fact that Team India may not even exist this year means that it may be hard to near impossible to field 12 teams with 3 competitive old gens slots. For the sake of accessibility, I believe the tournament should stay 8 SV.

 

[Jazz721]

I just don't see this to be true, and introducing fairy gens will unfairly penalize the less active regions (i.e. a Venezuela or Brazil). Most of the players on these teams (at least according to roster construction from last year) only have meaningful experience in SV DOU and getting the slot up to speed becomes considerably harder when you realize most of the ladders for these oldgen DOU formats are dead and all basically all meta progression in these tiers happens in tournament. It seems considerably prohibitive to get in shape, especially when there was no indication that some of these players would have to learn new, very different formats until 2 weeks before the tournament happens. Expecting teams to "figure it out" or risk having 3 sack slots in pools seems quite disadvantageous to the competitive integrity of the tournament (pools especially). This combined with the fact that Team India may not even exist this year means that it may be hard to near impossible to field 12 teams with 3 competitive old gens slots. For the sake of accessibility, I believe the tournament should stay 8 SV.

I think the same can be said in regards to having 8 SV slots. If there are 8 SV slots there will be old gen mainers being forced into playing a format they aren't experienced in. I don't think the goal of the tournament structure should be to give the underdogs a boost. Having old gens further increases their accessibility as it means there is another tour to play them in, and with that will come more resources. It is also not impossible to simply ask for games to gain practice. I also believe that if one is competent in one format, they can pick up another with a little bit of practice. Zee is one of the best xy players on the site and they did not main the format since its conception. More tiers aside from SV makes the tour more interesting to watch and is better for the game as a whole and I heavily advocate for such a thing.

 

[srvoltmike]

I think the same can be said in regards to having 8 SV slots. If there are 8 SV slots there will be old gen mainers being forced into playing a format they aren't experienced in.

This is a false equivalence. An oldgen main would have had to learn SV to either play in the last 3 iterations of this tournament or would have picked it up though any interaction at all with the DOU community. To say picking up an old gen and picking up SV is the same is simply untrue. The resources to learn and practice SV eclipse any other tier being suggested.

I don't think the goal of the tournament structure should be to give the underdogs a boost.

No, but 8 SV doesn't accomplish this. It just maintains the status quo, which doesn't give anyone a boost.

Having old gens further increases their accessibility as it means there is another tour to play them in, and with that will come more resources.

Sure, viability threads will be updated and team dumps will be posted, but that does not address the issue that *this year* very little notice has been given to teams that they need to field players with oldgen skill set. The opportunities to grow these metagames are also not lacking, its not like the old gens need DWCoP to survive.

It is also not impossible to simply ask for games to gain practice.

Asking for games should not be the baseline for if a tier is accessible. I could ask for challenge cup 2v2 games right now and I am not advocating for its inclusion.

I also believe that if one is competent in one format, they can pick up another with a little bit of practice. Zee is one of the best xy players on the site and they did not main the format since its conception.

Zee is a great pokemon player with success across many formats and has been playing VGC for a very long time. To set Zee as the standard for this argument is setting the bar way too high, in my opinion. As for the general point, while true, there are intricacies of each tier that can't be picked up one day to another. I don't care how good I am at SV, if I've never seen a tapu koko or don't have head calcs for mega pokemon or dont know common z users, im likely to struggle in SM. Also due to tera, SV rewards slightly different skillsets as opposed to some of the oldgens. I think this point is dismissive of the work required to achieve competency in these tiers.

More tiers aside from SV makes the tour more interesting to watch and is better for the game as a whole and I heavily advocate for such a thing.

Lastly, I don't disagree with this point. But keep it in DPL. DPL, an auction style team tournament, can guarantee a competitive pool for each of the fairy gens and makes for a great viewing experience. When you have lopsided matches because winner of SM cup or whatever is playing vs someone who played 3 practice games vs sample teams, it is unlikely to make for an interesting watch. The uniqueness of world cup is tied to the fact it is accessible and any region can join granted they can field a roster to play, I don't see how raising that bar helps this particular tournament in any way.

 

[Éric]

i think you guys vastly overestimate how different playing other tiers is.

 

[ratpacker]

Yes let's make it harder for smaller regions and put oldgens too.
It's way easier if the players can just practice one tier among themselves when a lot of the players don't have that much tour history or come from VGC.

 

[Smudge]

Don't really care either way what the format is, but I have two main concerns:

1. Allow 3 manager slots. (3rd being optional). Normally, in auction tours, this would have an effect of removing an extra player from the auction pool and that's not ideal. However, shouldn't be an issue in world cup due to the talent pool being locked to the region anyways, with all managers being allowed to play already. If a slight expansion of roster size is somehow an issue, just keep the theoretical cap at 14 (2 capt+ 8 starter + 4 subs) and allow a third player to simply be designated and given access to manager chat for all the usual reasons it's needed. Hopefully would make it easier for everyone involved in stuff like act calls and so on.

2. Stop allowing arbitrary combinations of countries. In this case, I'm referring to the concession last year of allowing Team Iberia to form with Spain and Portugal. Last year, the justifications (1, 2) were flimsy at best. Staff were led to believe there'd be a strong presence of Portuguese players on Team Iberia - this was not the case. Out of the 8+ signups for Team Portugal, only two made the cut. Not really great for their development, which was a key point in the suggestion that they should be allowed to play for a combined region, especially given that one of the players selected was already incredibly established in the community. Actuarily/ Hosting team's view on this ended up being the reality when rosters were posted, as expected.

There are exactly zero circumstances where this should be acceptable, it was a mistake, and shouldn't happen with any other regions in the future. It violates the integrity of the tournament's rules and as been litigated to death in the official World Cup tour policy. If you live in a country which doesn't have a full team, your eligibility goes to the continental team. End of story.

 

[SMB]

Regarding some topic that was discussed last year; USA has ~30% of the signups (in the previous world cup that was 71 signups, with the rest of teams having 169 signups). Doing the maths that means that to keep it fair for the rest of the teams they should split in 4 teams:

169 signups were divided in 10 teams
71 signups were divided in 3 teams

The fair number of teams regarding the USA signups should be 4.2 so makes sense to have 4 teams, and they definitely have enough people to form 4 competent teams.

Either that or if we want to keep the integrity of the tour they should form only 1 team, both solutions work depending on if we want inclusivity or integrity

 

[sir jelloton]

Regarding some topic that was discussed last year; USA has ~30% of the signups (in the previous world cup that was 71 signups, with the rest of teams having 169 signups). Doing the maths that means that to keep it fair for the rest of the teams they should split in 4 teams:

169 signups were divided in 10 teams
71 signups were divided in 3 teams

The fair number of teams regarding the USA signups should be 4.2 so makes sense to have 4 teams, and they definitely have enough people to form 4 competent teams.

Either that or if we want to keep the integrity of the tour they should form only 1 team, both solutions work depending on if we want inclusivity or integrity

I think changing the map to split central into midwest and south(maybe south can get like the southeast area too so GA FL etc) isn't the worst idea actually and is maybe worth taking a serious look at if the sign ups actually do support it.

 

[zee]

yeah I mean I guess the question is whether you would prefer to have an inclusive tournament or something more interesting and competitive, personally I feel it should be the latter (a DOU tournament for DOU players and those who are willing to put in the effort to grind games for a few weeks, not rocket science mons is mons etc). In a similar vein I like the single US team idea but I think I'd be speaking with too much top player privilege on that one lol...

I seriously don't get the oldgen apprehension though. I don't think ladder being "available" really means much of anything when Edu is sending me games of him winning in the 1900s fighting strats you see advertised on those fake showdown youtube shorts. Teams in the oldgens are established, the metagames are considerably more stabile, and I think the gap isn't really that deep. I'd give myself far higher odds to lose to someone playing Kang Deos or Sample Rain in XY than someone loading genies wellspring ghold into me in SV.

Even if it's not oldgens I'd love something to spice this tour up for the actual DOU community members that have been playing for years on end. DUU, NatDex, something man. Else I'm looking forward to all of your SV7-8s loading the same 5 teams throughout the tour!!!!

 

[eragon]

A few thoughts, I think historically the format we've had the last two years (pools into 8 team playoff) has been really enjoyable and the goal should be to maintain that baseline:

Fairy Gens
I'm not necessarily opposed to adding fairy gens. If there was any iteration of the tour to do it in for a year it'd be this one at the end of the gen. However, i do think there's a couple significant downsides that would need to be addressed. Point A is simply the number of teams. We've seen a lot of growth in this tour in the last few years and I think that's great, it's let us adopt the 8 team playoffs which stops pools from becoming the main part of the competition. I don't think we're really at risk of losing a large number of teams from this change but if we did it could be pretty bad, forcing us to go back to a 4 team playoff which just puts more value on the randomness that is pools. In that case, I think an interesting solution could be adding a US south team. This would be pretty in line with how other WC's on the site work and addresses SMB's point above (which I think is a valid concern although adding an all US team I think would genuinely kill this tour) while giving us an extra region that should be fine to play even with 3 oldgens slots.

Point B is pools math. This has always been the issue behind trying to eliminate tiebreaks in this tour and it's equally a problem here. In order for different formats to be added to the pools phase we'd need to cap it out at 8 teams, 12 teams, or 16 teams (which seems difficult to reach especially with oldgens). In that capacity 12 teams would ideal I guess but trying to reach a fixed number of teams seems a bit annoying. It's definitely possible to work out though, last year we had 13 teams. I suppose if it Italy comes back and you add a US South you could maybe reach 16 and then everything works out. There would need to be a definitive solution for this for fairy gens to work.

Point C is the accessibility stuff discussed at length above, which I think is definitely a concern, especially when in a way I'd say this is the team tour that most functions as a way for us to get new players interested in DOU involved with the community (you're kind of screwed if you're from the US but that's another reason to create US south :thumbsup:).

I guess my main thing here is just the fact that if you're adding any of the fairy gens it makes sense to just add all of them, but that leaves us with only 5 SV slots, which both complicates pools math and might be a bit too low of a number for some of the smaller regions (just based on vibes only. A possible solution to fix both issues is to move to 6 SV + 2 Oldgens with the oldgens slots being the same format, as this means that you just need an even number of teams to get pools to work. In that case, there's really two things that come to mind for me. The first is just to make it both slots ss. This is just the most recent and probably most accessible oldgen for regions to find a player for, but the problem for this is that ss is also the least popular of the three fairy gens and I don't think half the people backing oldgens in this tour would even be interested anymore if it was just ss.

My compromise proposal is basically to do 6x SV + 2x classic bo3. This fixes the pools issue by making it so you only need an even number of teams instead of a multiple of 4, includes all the oldgens with playerbases greater than 10, and should in theory make it easier to fill with 2 players playing oldgens rather than needing 3. I'm obviously heavily biased as I'm a big fan of each of the 3 oldgens and I feel like I suggest this anytime there's a format discussion in contention but here I think it's genuinely the perfect midground. We get to include 3 oldgens for the price of 2 slots and make the formatting of pools way easier and keep the tournament still primarily SV DOU. If it doesn't work out then we're just going back to 8x gen 10 next year anyways which should be the plan anyway.

If there's no clear solution found to add oldgens then I think it's probably just best to keep last years format. It's a little grief that we've ended up having 4 years of SV for sure but I think the tour would be fine anyway even if it was it 8x SV.