Tournament Battle Spot Premier League IV - Commishment Thread

DragonWhale

It's not a misplay, it's RNG manipulation
is a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus

logo by Thick Fat Azumarill

COMMENCEMENT THREAD 4TH EDITION
Welcome to the fourth installment of the Battle Spot Premier League! This is a team tournament where managers draft their team from a pool of players, and the teams face each other playing various Battle Spot formats. For those who are new to Battle Spot, these formats are the ones created and supported by The Pokemon Company with a ranked environment on the actual games on the 3DS. The top teams will continue on to playoffs and eventually one will come out as the BSPL IV Champions! The champions will get a special role in the Smogon Battle Spot discord and bragging rights!

Basic Info:
  • All games are going to be held on Pokemon Showdown and general tournament rules apply.
  • Each week, teams get the following points depending on the result: Win = 2, Tie = 1, Loss = 0
  • Teams with equal points are ranked according to their differential (# of sets won - # of sets lost)
  • Teams that are completely even at the end of the season for a playoff spot will face each other in 3 sets: one format is selected from each team and the third set will be SM Battle Spot Singles
BSPL IV schedule:
  • Manager Signups: July 1 - 7
  • Player Signups: July 1 - 13
  • Draft Auction: July 14 (will be scheduled further so all managers can attend)
  • Week 1: July 15- 21
  • Week 2: July 22 - 28
  • Week 3: July 29 - Aug 4
  • Week 4: Aug 5 - 11
  • Week 5: Aug 12 - 18
  • Semifinals: Aug 19 - 25
  • Finals: Aug 26 - Sep 1
As usual, this will serve as the general talk thread/meme hub of the tournament, as well as the place where pre-tournament discussions will take place.

Discussion points:
  • Format list - everyone's favorite! Will #FreeGBU prevail? Keep in mind that the only formats for consideration are standard Battle Spot Singles and Doubles of gens 5-7. All other formats, such as triples, rotation (lol), special, online competitions, VGC (bar the appropriate Battle Spot Doubles formats), or any other format will NOT be included.
  • Manager pricing - something I've seen people talk about on discord recently. Will it be 10k? Will prices vary according to their past BSPL record? Or are they simply not allowed to play?
  • Teamlock - teamlock is going to stay for BSPL IV.
  • Retains - should we have retains? If so how much should retains cost?
  • Other - whatever else you want to discuss.
Happy posting!
 
Last edited:

DragonWhale

It's not a misplay, it's RNG manipulation
is a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
I guess I should put my 2 cents regarding the discussion points being the host and all:

I think manager prices could be like 10k + 2k or 1.5k per win in BSPL III. That might alleviate the manager strength differences that would come with a static price tag.

Not really a fan of retains.

Everything else can stay the same as last year I think.
 
I think manager prices could be like 10k + 2k or 1.5k per win in BSPL III. That might alleviate the manager strength differences that would come with a static price tag.
How does this work if a format is dropped, those wins don’t count (since not relevant to current tour) or are they still in?
Either way I’m not a huge fan due to the insane price inflation this draft meta has to start.
I’d rather static pricing or not playing.

Retains I think are a negative in small leagues. In addition, if this is chosen to be implemented it should only start in bspl5, as it’s something you have to stratergise for in the previous draft.

I’m still pro-teamlock, but am also loosely interested in having a ‘Classic’ slot (multigen bo3) which obviously wouldn’t be teamlock.
 

Pearl

Romance は風のまま
is a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis the 7th Grand Slam Winneris a Past SPL Champion
Only really interested in playing ORAS if I sign up for this/get drafted, so don't take this post as an attempt of mine to decide what's best for formats I don't really play as much, but personally I enjoyed the teamlock format a lot more than the alternative, especially as somebody who tends to obsess a little too much over detail. Preparing/choosing 3 teams per week, while easily doable, always tends to leave a bad taste in my mouth when I'm not particularly swimming in free time to fine tune all of the options available to me. Besides that, this decision also has a clear effect in team choices, as I believe that people are a lot less prone to pulling off strategies such as SwagPlay/Moody Glalie when they're stuck with that for 3 whole games. Whether this is a good thing or not is up to personal interpretation, but I would be lying if I said I didn't appreciate that part.

As far as playing goes, I believe that teamlock is an element that contributes towards minimizing variance, and the whole aspect of being able to adapt and feel out your opponent out throughout a series with the same teams is something I see in a positive light. Still, this is more of a personal take than something that can objectively be used to make the final decision, and I respect anybody who thinks otherwise.

@ above, I don't really play GBU/SM, but a classic BO3 slot is something that would allow me to contribute to a team outside of my own games, so I'm supportive of it :blobwizard:
 
Hey it is Ika here, future manager of the Iki Inkays signing up for du...wait this isn't the right thread :(.

My only big opinion really is that GBU is the best format in terms of fun that BSS has and it is always a shame if it does not continue to be freed. I guess everything can stay the same as last year is my overall opinion.

Asides from that, there is some debate that Managers should be priced based on their value as a player rather than at a static price point. It is my belief that some teams get an inherent advantage over others by having more money to work with. This is by having one of their most expensive players in the manager spot. For example, if I wanted to manage and play, I would be at a huge disadvantage off the bat financially compared to a few of the managers. This advantage can come to 10-20k worth of credits. I'd argue that if you were worth less than 10k in a conventional draft, you have no choice but to not play as a manager.

This will be even more apparent if someone like GreilMercenary9 signs up this year as a manager where he would save his future team 20-25k just by signing up instead of having to be bought at auction. I'm not saying I have a solution to it, only saying that it is actually an issue. On the other end, BSPL doesn't need to be 100% competitive it is also supposed to be a bit of fun which is why I think its good for managers to play, if it was I think the managers would manage rather than play and that would eliminate much of that difference other than game knowledge and managing skill.
 
Last edited:
Regarding format list I think we could expand it to 7 slots and add either a second ORAS bss or a second SM bsd. I would even support adding both for a total of 8 slots so that we could still have the potential of tiebreakers if we have enough players signing up. I feel like we have plenty of new faces from last year that could get a chance to shine with an extra slot or 2.

Manager pricing: I like the idea of non-static pricing but I don't think it needs to be based on wins necessarily. We could maybe come up with some sort of tiering system once we know all of the managers and have the value of each manger decided by the other managers based on how much they would pay to draft them prior to the actual draft.

Teamlock: totally agree with what Pearl said, also relieves some pressure on the people who make teams not only for themselves but for their teammates each and every week.

Retains: not a fan of retains for this tour either.

Other: I think we should have some sort of way to prevent a ridiculous overpay like 40k for me last year, becasue to be honest one misclick pretty much crippled our team for the tournament. Perhaps we set a maximum player price at 30k? Other than that I'm not sure what we could do, but I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts on this.
 
Regarding format list I think we could expand it to 7 slots and add either a second ORAS bss or a second SM bsd. I would even support adding both for a total of 8 slots so that we could still have the potential of tiebreakers if we have enough players signing up. I feel like we have plenty of new faces from last year that could get a chance to shine with an extra slot or 2.

Manager pricing: I like the idea of non-static pricing but I don't think it needs to be based on wins necessarily. We could maybe come up with some sort of tiering system once we know all of the managers and have the value of each manger decided by the other managers based on how much they would pay to draft them prior to the actual draft.

Teamlock: totally agree with what Pearl said, also relieves some pressure on the people who make teams not only for themselves but for their teammates each and every week.

Retains: not a fan of retains for this tour either.

Other: I think we should have some sort of way to prevent a ridiculous overpay like 40k for me last year, becasue to be honest one misclick pretty much crippled our team for the tournament. Perhaps we set a maximum player price at 30k? Other than that I'm not sure what we could do, but I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts on this.
About the other, it is done in other drafts where theres a mistake that is obviously so out there, that you can undo the draft back to the position it was before that mistake an start over from there. I do think there is an element of, just don't misclick.
 

DragonWhale

It's not a misplay, it's RNG manipulation
is a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
I do like the allgens bss bo3 slot idea and a lot of other PLs have started doing them too, but my main concern is that within our small community there's an even smaller number of people who are confident at playing all three gens, even when people can join tournaments like classic to learn about those formats.

Not to mention many of those players will probably be from the scarce "people who can play gbu" pool, so we can face the issue where we just don't have enough people confident enough in gbu to fill the gbu slots and the allgen slots.

Also, the amount of prep needed for allgens will be a lot higher than the other slots, and most of the allgen players are likely going to be centerpieces of their team helping out the oras and gbu slots (many people know sm so I'm not too worried about that), so the amount of work I foresee these players needing to go through every week also raises some concern.

As for how manager pricing will be, if it's not going to be a static price then it will be based on an objective criteria. I just gave individual wins in BSPL3 in my suggestion because it's the easiest and most straightforward, but it can be something else as well, just as long as it's not subjective. I'm not in front of my computer right now but the price tags of last year's managers if they were to manage this year wasn't that far fetched using their number of wins.
 
I approve of this Bo3 Classic slot. It will allow me to run the same stall in both USUM and ORAS.

I think it sounds cool and I like the idea of it, but I don't think we have enough slots unless we were to drop a Doubles slot or GBU and we definitely don't have enough players to play it. We barely have enough top tier GBU players without that split focus.
 
I don't think number of wins is that great of an option either because it doesn't tell the whole story of how much someone's worth. My wins are more inflated for example because I played every week. There's also things like the strength of the players each manager faced, how lucky/unlucky they got, etc.

I agree with concerns that it's a little unfair that managers can get themselves at a bargain but it's really hard to balance properly. I think it should either stay static to keep it simple, or don't let managers play. If our pool of players isn't that big i'd be more in favor of letting managers play though.

I like the allgens bo3 idea too but before i have a real opinion on it my question is: what does it replace?
 

cant say

twitch.tv/jakecantsay
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
can we do all star week this year? I don't want to extend the tour by a week so I've been thinking of a way to do it alongside semi finals (or even finals) and just include eliminated teams, and do it similarly to the NBA all star team selection:
  • open poll for everyone to vote who they want as an all star, top 2 vote receivers become all star team captains (who also play, don't worry). top 8 or top 12 (so teams have an even number so there is the possibility of a tie) are the all stars
  • team captains then take turns to select their team from the pool of all stars, top voted player goes first then alternate.
  • team captains submit their lineup (formats can be decided whenever. I haven't thought that far yet)
  • edit: format ideas:
    • BSS Ubers / Free Battle
    • BSS LC
    • BSS Monotype
    • PBR Singles (gen 4)
    • BSSF Bo7
    • BSS Grudge match (money match[??]) - captains / fans decide a guaranteed MU to play in their preferred format for glory
  • teams play. if there's a tie the captains play for the tiebreaker.
I think it could be really fun!!!!!
 
Last edited:
how about determining the worth of a manager by circuit points for example? IMO that's one of the more objective criteria which also shows how active and successful a manager was over the past months...

Also free oras triples for all star
 

DragonWhale

It's not a misplay, it's RNG manipulation
is a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
The BSPL schedule will not be altered to fit Allstar Week. The circuit schedule is tight enough as is and I will not cut things out of BSPL to fit in a non-serious week. That said, someone can do it on a side thread during BSPL if they want to. I will not be facilitating/running this as I will be running BSPL.
 

marilli

With you
is a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Past SPL Championis a Former Other Tournament Circuit Champion
commishment thread

1. I believe the tour should strive to accommodate for most of the competitive playerbase signing up. Ika complained about lack of quality of the tour and while I believe it's a pointless argument, it is important to raise the overall quality of the tournament to the best of our ability. Because of the general lack of GBU players and how most GBU players are already well versed in more modern Pokemon, but not vice versa, I think it will benefit the tournament to put multigen bo3 over GBU. It might be worth deliberating the tier decision until we gauge the signups. If we only have 3 players or less who prefer GBU over SM, then we should not have it.

2. Allgens slot makes it so that all metas are represented at least twice (except for Doubles, which has SM Doubles and XY Doubles significantly overlap in playerbase regardless.) As Pearl points out, I believe this is a very important factor in a team tour. GBU slots can easily tend to get isolated and withered out to dry, and probably same goes for ORAS. Anything to encourage team play will lead to higher competitive level of the tournament, so should be encouraged.

3. I wish for more USUM BSS representation because it's the most current gen tour and again, this leads to the most competitive format, but I think if we can only field 6 slots per week, then 2 USUM - 1 USUM Doubles - 1 ORAS - 1 ORAS Doubles - 1 Bo3 will have to do. If we were to ever increase slots to 8, both of the new slots should go to USUM.

4. I don't think its my place to discuss the number of doubles slots.
 

1_TrickPhony

BSS Circuit Co-host
So as someone who is pretty active in the community, I will say off the bat that I never hear about people talking about doubles for battle spot. I do think there is a place for it, and definitely think that a USUM BSD slot should exist, but I'm not super sold on ORAS-D and would really like to hear arguments in favor of it. And I am definitely not a hater in terms of doubles as a format (its something I'm trying to get more involved in general with). I just think, from looking at the people who were participating in doubles last year, they aren't really involved to the point where I would recommend having an old gens doubles format to cater to them over supporting the most played format in USUM BSS with a third slot.

My recommendations for slots
USUM BSS-1
USUM BSS-2
USUM BSS-3
USUM BSD
ORAS
GBU
Multi-Gen BO3

I was only peripherally involved this past summer in the community and while I did follow BSPL, I was not a part of it so my perspective is limited, but would really love to read more arguments and discussion on the doubles portion of this tour.
 
commishment thread

1. I believe the tour should strive to accommodate for most of the competitive playerbase signing up. Ika complained about lack of quality of the tour and while I believe it's a pointless argument, it is important to raise the overall quality of the tournament to the best of our ability. Because of the general lack of GBU players and how most GBU players are already well versed in more modern Pokemon, but not vice versa, I think it will benefit the tournament to put multigen bo3 over GBU. It might be worth deliberating the tier decision until we gauge the signups. If we only have 3 players or less who prefer GBU over SM, then we should not have it.

2. Allgens slot makes it so that all metas are represented at least twice (except for Doubles, which has SM Doubles and XY Doubles significantly overlap in playerbase regardless.) As Pearl points out, I believe this is a very important factor in a team tour. GBU slots can easily tend to get isolated and withered out to dry, and probably same goes for ORAS. Anything to encourage team play will lead to higher competitive level of the tournament, so should be encouraged.

3. I wish for more USUM BSS representation because it's the most current gen tour and again, this leads to the most competitive format, but I think if we can only field 6 slots per week, then 2 USUM - 1 USUM Doubles - 1 ORAS - 1 ORAS Doubles - 1 Bo3 will have to do. If we were to ever increase slots to 8, both of the new slots should go to USUM.

4. I don't think its my place to discuss the number of doubles slots.
Hello Marilli,

You didn't need to mention my name specifically when you have put your post up as I have been respectful and not brought it up beyond a discord conversation and wasn't planning on posting in the thread at all and letting things pass, but since you have done so, so I shall respond in kind. As I said in the discord thread, I believe you were straw manning my argument. This is probably going to happen whether I like it or not, my opinion is rather irrelevant here but I'll just put my voice on the record.

Is All Gens more competitive than GBU?:

The basic argument put forth by Marilli is that more people are better at USUM and to a far lesser extent ORAS and therefore the quality of the games will be higher. Whilst the basic idea that overall players are better at USUM than GBU is correct, this is flawed for multiple reasons. In terms of competitiveness, in order to play a classic set, you need a higher skillset and knowledge base than merely playing USUM due to having to play multiple generations. Furthermore, the most skilled USUM players are diluted by the USUM slots and the best ORAS players diluted by the ORAS slots and therefore the quality of those games is lowered. The reason for this is because you want your top players in these formats to play what they specialise in rather than risk games on formats they are less familiar with. It is simply far less risky from a managers point of view to put a top player in a single format than a classic format.

To add onto that, I'd argue at least the top 5 GBU players are in fact better at GBU than at USUM despite USUM being a more developed tier overall. Guys like Darkinium, Noved, Megazard and myself are almost certainly more at home in GBU than in USUM, yes USUM is an option for sure but it is not the same comfort as playing an older gen. I am sure similar is for guys like Meese and Geese as well. Yea, some of those might not hugely mind because unlike myself they are nice guys who don't want to cause a fuss. Overall, I feel what you have said has just been made up out of thin air to back your argument rather than based on any fact from talking to the players and actually watching the replays.

Lastly, I'd use classic as evidence at why this format won't be as competitive as GBU, where the games are generally poor and the familiarity is limited in certain tiers despite top players participating. It is just a fact unfortunately that having mastery of all the tiers requires a lot more dedication than just training for GBU. It's not only practicing with three times as many teams like a teamlock which the same people who are advocating this already complain about, it is also trying to learn and be familiar with three times as many metas. In conclusion there are no magical players who are as good at usum as chem/greil, as good at ORAS as GE was and as good at GBU as Dark. So competitive games like chem vs greil not gonna happen most likely.

PS: you cannot complain about teamlock to the point where Dragonwhale has categorically refused for it to be debated this year and yet advocate this format. That is pure hypocrisy.

Slots being isolated and all gens being represented:

It is more on the team and the management of said team rather than the format whether the tier is going to be isolated. GBU is, as a singles format, naturally less isolated than a doubles set due to the majority of the players in the community not even playing doubles and far less demanding than the allgens set that is being proposed. Essentially with a lot of these points, they could be applied to any format depending on the team. If you've been on a team like that, thats fair enough but I helped out even with tiers that I wasn't the most familiar with. I did play games with our doubles players last year even though I am clueless about doubles. I guess that's the sort of dude I am. Ultimately, this is less of an argument against GBU and more about teams leaving players on their own.

Secondly when it comes to all generations being represented, why not put in GBU still? It achieves the same effect lol. That isn't even a reason.


Overall, I havent seen a single reason why GBU should be changed out for this All Gens format other than that someone wanted it to, even they just thought it might be a cool idea rather than actually giving any proper reasoning to it as you can see above. And it is a cool idea, in the same way as there are many more cool format ideas that won't be part of BSPL. It's fun yes, but GBU is also fun. Sure it would be brilliant if we had 8 slots and could have both, but the fact is, we don't unfortunately so I put it on the record that I am against All Gens.
 
Last edited:

cant say

twitch.tv/jakecantsay
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Top Social Media Contributor Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
The BSPL schedule will not be altered to fit Allstar Week. The circuit schedule is tight enough as is
I don't want to extend the tour by a week so I've been thinking of a way to do it alongside semi finals (or even finals)
So I will run this and most likely do it alongside semi finals and include seeds 1, 4, 5, and 6, with players from seeds 3+4 that are playing semis able to express their interest as well.

Lego said he'll program the necessary formats onto his server

My recommendations for slots
USUM BSS-1
USUM BSS-2
USUM BSS-3
USUM BSD
ORAS
GBU
Multi-Gen BO3
Remove the third USUM BSS slot and I agree with this.

CONTROVERSIAL IDEA ALERT: At some point though I think we need to look at whether this is BSPL or BSSPL. Since we're arguing about whether GBU has enough players, the same can be questioned for legitimate BSD players in the community without relying on a bunch of VGC players signing up that only Kaori knows.
 

1_TrickPhony

BSS Circuit Co-host
So I will run this and most likely do it alongside semi finals and include seeds 1, 4, 5, and 6, with players from seeds 3+4 that are playing semis able to express their interest as well.

Lego said he'll program the necessary formats onto his server


Remove the third USUM BSS slot and I agree with this.

CONTROVERSIAL IDEA ALERT: At some point though I think we need to look at whether this is BSPL or BSSPL. Since we're arguing about whether GBU has enough players, the same can be questioned for legitimate BSD players in the community without relying on a bunch of VGC players signing up that only Kaori knows.
This was definitely my concern, if I dont know these people filling the doubles slots its hard for me to think they exist within our community to a serious degree. I am in doubles and battle spot rooms 4-5 days a week, and have never heard a single discussion on battle spot doubles. I think usum doubles seems like a good fit for current doubles players who are actually involved in battle spot (mish marilli zaya me), but opening another doubles spot just invites people who aren’t particularly interested in our community outside of this competition. Id much rather open the slot for usum bss or drop the spot (based on number of signups)
 
Last edited:
CONTROVERSIAL IDEA ALERT: At some point though I think we need to look at whether this is BSPL or BSSPL. Since we're arguing about whether GBU has enough players, the same can be questioned for legitimate BSD players in the community without relying on a bunch of VGC players signing up that only Kaori knows.
One of the stranger issues with doubles in bspl, is that it's common for good doubles players to end up in singles slots.
A few examples: Psynergy, kami and qsns have only played singles, despite all 3 being strong options for doubles. nvakna also did one of the two bspl he played in singles rather than doubles. They might have wanted to play singles instead, but what I found while managing was that it felt easier to fill out 2 doubles slots with good/high level players than it was for 4 singles slots. So 'leftover' doubles players, who are capable of singles, end up playing singles. This was the case for myself on side-pups in bspl1 and with my own draft in 2. Thankfully in 3 I got to show off a bit in my 'main' format.
 

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top