DrReuniclus
Smogon's full of bullies.
Hey some of you don't know me, but that's ok its nice to meet you! Let me preface this on the fact that this post may fall on deaf ears and may be completely off topic and worth deleting, but I just wanted to share what I found on a larger scale and thought this could be an outlet. There have been points where I saw people say both that smogon is growing in tournament representation in threads like WCOP and shrinking when talking to other people individually and something people have posted here. I was generally curious about what it actually was early last year, so I did an analysis trying to simulate the number of signups in different tournaments by using some python code to parse the number of replies on the sign up threads of certain tournaments (filling in manually anything I couldn't get the darn thing to work on) and convert it to csv to make some graphs. Some of the biggest problems with these would be people deleting sign ups/ posts over time, people posting in as sub in the round 1 thread and shitposting especially in some 2015ish threads. Some of these graphs are still a little unclean too, but I'm not getting paid to do this. Anyways, this is what I ended up coming up with:
This is the overall number of replies for major individual trophy tournaments consisting of OST, Grand Slam, Classic, Smogon Tour and OLT. There still needs a few more days worth for Smogon Tour 2020 H2 to end and it could make small difference based on it having the largest total replies. However, as you can see, individuals saw a general increase until 2018 where they peaked out across most individuals and saw a subsequent decrease in 2019 with a slight recovery in 2020. Overall, less people are signing up individually than those had in 2018 and there are not the growth rates seen previously.
When breaking it out by individuals you can see the largest decreases from the 2018 value to 2019 in Grand Slam and Smogon Tour (which is only largest due to reply values I set up by half) with everything decreasing that year aside from OLT which saw 46 more replies across its threads. 2019 to 2020 saw its increase largely due to Smogon Tour increasing back up and classic seeing 162 higher reply number than the previous year.
While looking at overall team tournament growth based on reply numbers to sign up threads, SSD saw the initial surge of being a new tournament in 2017 and decreased largely into 2018 with things being relatively consistent and less hyped than the other two tournaments as commonly spoken about and seen with the decreased signups. SPL is close to a zero growth tournament over the past 5 years with no more than 652 replies and no less than 595 replies. My best guess for WCOP is people largely decide teams prior to the tournament so people pretty much know if they are participating beforehand signing up opposed to previously in 2015 when more people thought they had a chance to make a team and try out. Also more shitposting in 2015 wcop sign ups. From the looks of it, people don't really want to grow team tours whatsoever to keep things more competitive.
Next I'll move onto classic because its probably most relevant to most people still reading. Honestly, I can't really see the convincing of calling RBY a dead tier without calling GSC one too because RBY has been getting slightly more sign ups throughout the years than it. Still averaging about 100 less than the other three, ADV, DPP, BW. But to me if you want to call RBY a dead tier you'd probably have to call GSC it too in a numbers game. Additionally, you can slightly contribute the increased numbers in stuff like BW due to the order that the threads are posted in with the initial hype being there. Otherwise, 2018 saw the largest overall classic playing numbers with a slight increase from 2019 to 2020 after the 2018 to 2019 drop.
As for lower tiers, They saw a much more significant drop in 2018 to 2019, while seeing only a slight increase in 2020. Overall between UU, RU, NU and LC they saw around a 27% drop on average from 2018 to 2019. However, looking at the overall values, they are still higher on average than what's available for classic and always have been generally. Still not current gen OU numbers however.
Next will be OU stuff and an extra lower tier one so I'll put that into another spoiler for those of you who don't care.
OLT saw a peak in 2017 different compared to most of the 2018 peaks, but has decreased going from 2019 to 2020 in almost all cycles. Don't really have much else to say on it other than the obvious decrease in participants cycle after cycle.
Here's the biggie in Smogon Tour with all the data broken out over the past 5 years.
Honestly, when I originally looked into this in 2020h1, I thought this would easily break the 2019 record and make up for all of 2019/2020's activity losses, but 2020h2 almost saw as poor data as 2017h1 thus far. If there was a smogon tour in recent history to go for to get there with the least amount of wins necessary, Finchinator, this most recent one would be it. Also, I can't post to overall because its too much data, but 2020h1 was easily the largest, while 2018 to 2019 decrease was seen on both halves. You can see the overall 2018 to 2019 decrease better in the below graphs and the wide range that is 2020 tournaments.
Here's the same data but in year form instead of half:
Finally, we have the lower tier premier leagues fun stats!
MPL had an outlier in 2017 due to both having probably the largest of these types of tournaments with their playerbase size and because they posted a lot of details in that one thread as well. Ironically, for other forum pls, 2018 had a below average showing for the timeframe for most of the tours (aside from NUPL) which was the highest average for the overall.
Going back to the main points of the thread, I understand the want to cut more tiers in both lower tiers and old gens keep things more competitive for those playing in the tour, but in doing this realize you are going to get less and less people who care about and participate in your community just due to the lack of things to do and this is in part why there have been stagnant sign up amounts. From the way I see most tournament discussions go its a want for competitiveness vs inclusivity and it has shown in the past few years that the goal is peak competition in these tournaments by the majority of the players and spl sign up numbers. The tournament numbers have, to me, hit a carrying capacity based on available things to do. If you're fine with the site not growing for the sake of more competitive current tournaments, that is your choice to make. Please just do not say that the smogon tournament community is growing with the current way of doing things, especially since this decision is bound to upset a decent subset of players based on the two options being looked at. To me it looks like it isn't and this will further decline participation and getting new players involved and if you can prove otherwise, I'd really want to see it non-sarcastically. I can't judge whether or not decreasing the number of slots actually makes it more competitive, but I will leave that for someone else to argue.
This is the overall number of replies for major individual trophy tournaments consisting of OST, Grand Slam, Classic, Smogon Tour and OLT. There still needs a few more days worth for Smogon Tour 2020 H2 to end and it could make small difference based on it having the largest total replies. However, as you can see, individuals saw a general increase until 2018 where they peaked out across most individuals and saw a subsequent decrease in 2019 with a slight recovery in 2020. Overall, less people are signing up individually than those had in 2018 and there are not the growth rates seen previously.
OST | Grand Slam | Classic | ST | OLT | Total | |
2015 | 621 | 1976 | 1264 | 6078 | 2834 | 12773 |
2016 | 1,011 | 2996 | 1473 | 5312 | 2584 | 13376 |
2017 | 896 | 4406 | 1527 | 7511 | 2263 | 16603 |
2018 | 2653 | 4127 | 2592 | 8896 | 1870 | 20138 |
2019 | 1868 | 3067 | 2264 | 7956 | 1916 | 17071 |
2020 | 1711 | 3041 | 2426 | 8804 | 1632 | 17614 |
While looking at overall team tournament growth based on reply numbers to sign up threads, SSD saw the initial surge of being a new tournament in 2017 and decreased largely into 2018 with things being relatively consistent and less hyped than the other two tournaments as commonly spoken about and seen with the decreased signups. SPL is close to a zero growth tournament over the past 5 years with no more than 652 replies and no less than 595 replies. My best guess for WCOP is people largely decide teams prior to the tournament so people pretty much know if they are participating beforehand signing up opposed to previously in 2015 when more people thought they had a chance to make a team and try out. Also more shitposting in 2015 wcop sign ups. From the looks of it, people don't really want to grow team tours whatsoever to keep things more competitive.
RBY Cup | GSC Cup | ADV Cup | DPP Cup | BW Cup | |
2015 | 179 | 173 | 247 | 334 | 331 |
2016 | 250 | 235 | 248 | 367 | 373 |
2017 | 255 | 241 | 338 | 363 | 330 |
2018 | 438 | 391 | 491 | 573 | 699 |
2019 | 374 | 366 | 482 | 531 | 511 |
2020 | 403 | 402 | 527 | 553 | 541 |
Next I'll move onto classic because its probably most relevant to most people still reading. Honestly, I can't really see the convincing of calling RBY a dead tier without calling GSC one too because RBY has been getting slightly more sign ups throughout the years than it. Still averaging about 100 less than the other three, ADV, DPP, BW. But to me if you want to call RBY a dead tier you'd probably have to call GSC it too in a numbers game. Additionally, you can slightly contribute the increased numbers in stuff like BW due to the order that the threads are posted in with the initial hype being there. Otherwise, 2018 saw the largest overall classic playing numbers with a slight increase from 2019 to 2020 after the 2018 to 2019 drop.
UU Open | RU Open | NU Open | LC Open | Doubles Open | Ubers Open | PU Open | |
2015 | 494 | 336 | 285 | 381 | 217 | 263 | |
2016 | 601 | 484 | 448 | 397 | 311 | 388 | 367 |
2017 | 1023 | 869 | 1025 | 687 | 802 | ||
2018 | 1032 | 831 | 758 | 719 | 787 | ||
2019 | 697 | 628 | 584 | 517 | 641 | ||
2020 | 648 | 714 | 594 | 540 | 545 |
Next will be OU stuff and an extra lower tier one so I'll put that into another spoiler for those of you who don't care.
Cycle 1 | Cycle 2 | Cycle 3 | Cycle 4 | Cycle 5 | Cycle 6 | Cycle 7 | Cycle 8 | |
2015 | 777 | 425 | 304 | 258 | 259 | 262 | 250 | 299 |
2016 | 691 | 479 | 353 | 347 | 276 | 254 | 184 | |
2017 | 1007 | 505 | 423 | 328 | ||||
2018 | 695 | 435 | 395 | 345 | ||||
2019 | 723 | 455 | 373 | 365 | ||||
2020 | 567 | 435 | 350 | 280 |
OLT saw a peak in 2017 different compared to most of the 2018 peaks, but has decreased going from 2019 to 2020 in almost all cycles. Don't really have much else to say on it other than the obvious decrease in participants cycle after cycle.
Here's the biggie in Smogon Tour with all the data broken out over the past 5 years.
Honestly, when I originally looked into this in 2020h1, I thought this would easily break the 2019 record and make up for all of 2019/2020's activity losses, but 2020h2 almost saw as poor data as 2017h1 thus far. If there was a smogon tour in recent history to go for to get there with the least amount of wins necessary, Finchinator, this most recent one would be it. Also, I can't post to overall because its too much data, but 2020h1 was easily the largest, while 2018 to 2019 decrease was seen on both halves. You can see the overall 2018 to 2019 decrease better in the below graphs and the wide range that is 2020 tournaments.
Here's the same data but in year form instead of half:
Finally, we have the lower tier premier leagues fun stats!
OUPL | UUPL | RUPL | PUPL | LCPL | DPL | MPL | UPL | NUPL | ROAPL | |
2015 | 177 | 185 | 177 | 86 | 170 | 229 | 199 | |||
2016 | 208 | 176 | 151 | 169 | 143 | 188 | 198 | 157 | ||
2017 | 303 | 257 | 185 | 161 | 182 | 179 | 532 | 202 | 245 | 225 |
2018 | 286 | 220 | 168 | 156 | 187 | 110 | 171 | 208 | 284 | 201 |
2019 | 300 | 261 | 175 | 216 | 184 | 126 | 296 | 194 | 196 | 247 |
2020 | 231 | 236 | 184 | 204 | 177 | 100 | 321 | 179 | 185 | 225 |
MPL had an outlier in 2017 due to both having probably the largest of these types of tournaments with their playerbase size and because they posted a lot of details in that one thread as well. Ironically, for other forum pls, 2018 had a below average showing for the timeframe for most of the tours (aside from NUPL) which was the highest average for the overall.
Going back to the main points of the thread, I understand the want to cut more tiers in both lower tiers and old gens keep things more competitive for those playing in the tour, but in doing this realize you are going to get less and less people who care about and participate in your community just due to the lack of things to do and this is in part why there have been stagnant sign up amounts. From the way I see most tournament discussions go its a want for competitiveness vs inclusivity and it has shown in the past few years that the goal is peak competition in these tournaments by the majority of the players and spl sign up numbers. The tournament numbers have, to me, hit a carrying capacity based on available things to do. If you're fine with the site not growing for the sake of more competitive current tournaments, that is your choice to make. Please just do not say that the smogon tournament community is growing with the current way of doing things, especially since this decision is bound to upset a decent subset of players based on the two options being looked at. To me it looks like it isn't and this will further decline participation and getting new players involved and if you can prove otherwise, I'd really want to see it non-sarcastically. I can't judge whether or not decreasing the number of slots actually makes it more competitive, but I will leave that for someone else to argue.