Proposal Put recent bans in the title of open/cup thread

[Expulso]

Iron leaves got banned during round 2 of RU open. The round 3 thread should be required to say [IRON LEAVES BANNED] in the title to minimize the risk of people forfeiting games. I know it's in the OP but people clearly often miss it, I think there have been at least 5 instances of it this round.

as a concrete proposal: The first round that a new ban is in effect for a Cup/Open, hosts must state that ban in the title.

Thanks

 

[Drifting]

I know it's in the OP but people clearly often miss it, I think there have been at least 5 instances of it this round.
Thanks

It actually only got added to the OP 18 hours ago (source: brought iron leaves to game 1). If it's not gonna be in the title at least put it in the admin thread, because it's no surprise that when a pokemon is allowed on smogtours because of a validator glitch, and neither that ban or glitch are mentioned ANYWHERE in the slam subforum, that people are going to bring it.

 

[pulsar512b]

while i don't think its unreasonable to expect people playing a tournament for a tier to follow the tier enough to notice bans, it seems like this is a pretty low-impact way to help people who are (for whatever reason) not as involved

 

[Clas]

This feels like an obvious change that should've happened or been considered years ago. This is purely a positive change and, outside of requiring an extra 10-20sec to update the round title at maximun, is one that can't come with any drawbacks. 100% supported by me.

 

[SparksBlade]

I think it's a fine idea to have very recent tier changes be easily findable and noticeable in the round thread itself, but I'm not sure about adding it to the title. Personally I prefer titles being as clean as possible, and "RU Seasonal - Round 11 (Losers Bracket) (replays MANDATORY) (Regieleki unbanned)" is a disaster of a title.

For information like these, in my own tours I mention them in two places - first is right above the pairings, and second is below the pairings and above the deadline information. For mid round changes I would post in the thread "Regieleki was unbanned mid round and will not be allowed in Round 11" and add it to the OP. I'm fine with someone else wanting to add all this to their title if they want but would not like it being actual codified policy to do so.

My suggestion is to have an ad-hoc information section in the OPs for very recent and round-relevant tiering changes. Most of the standard rules etc usually go in hide tags so this can stay visible and stand out in whatever fashion.

 

[Expulso]

Personally I prefer titles being as clean as possible, and "RU Seasonal - Round 11 (Losers Bracket) (replays MANDATORY) (Regieleki unbanned)" is a disaster of a title.

While I agree that this looks super ugly, my proposal is explicitly just for Cups and Opens in official tournaments (Smogon Classic and Grand Slam respectively). These are single elimination tours, so no need for the (loser's bracket) label.

RU Open (REPLAYS MANDATORY) (REGIRLEKI BANNED) is a fine length for a title imo. The only issue is if multiple pokemon are banned at once, or a complex ban goes into effect (such as Baton Pass in ADV for the 100th time). However, that can and should be addressed with a blanket parenthetical like (NEW BANS, SEE OP).

a debate about requirement vs "best practices" is fair but i think it's easier just to make it required in officials. can always revisit it if it proves too unwieldy

 

[roxie]

Those OPs matter a lot tbh. People either being in an abundance of tournaments or just simply being slightly out of the loop due to irl/other factors naturally affects how frequent one can stay updated with bans. Although I’m sure Grand Slam has a direct place to announce these bans and this can be a counter argument but having this implemented only gives an extra minor announcement / step to make sure that such an important announcement is in place. I mean you’re getting tagged for a ban of a Pokemon in the same round of X-Tournament. i think this saves a lot of people time and it’s just a small quality of life change that Ampha did during Round 4 of the RU Open. Unrelated but one thing the C&C project does is tag people for a ban to implement on their analyses and maybe a different approach in this vein could be performed if putting these in the OP are just visually unappealing.

 

[BigFatMantis]

Couldn’t you just make a second post immediately after the OP saying “x is banned for this round”? People will look at it if it’s a separate post - could even tag them like Roxie says. The only possible downside is slightly more work for the host but that doesn’t seem that bad, considering the circumstances .

 

[SparksBlade]

While I agree that this looks super ugly, my proposal is explicitly just for Cups and Opens in official tournaments (Smogon Classic and Grand Slam respectively). These are single elimination tours, so no need for the (loser's bracket) label.

Something I failed to mention is that adding these in OPs could be a useful standard practice for all tours to follow, official and unofficial. Sure Grand Slam and Classic titles are short enough to not be a problem, but I would like a solution that'll work for all types of tournaments. If we set the standard expectation to be that a player can check tiering changes in current round's OP no matter what the tournament, it'll be much simpler for everyone than having different ways of conveying same type of information in different tournaments.

Having tiering changes in the OP is much simpler to do for all types of tournaments and all types of tiering changes, such as multiple bans/drops that you mentioned in your post.

Couldn’t you just make a second post immediately after the OP saying “x is banned for this round”? People will look at it if it’s a separate post - could even tag them like Roxie says. The only possible downside is slightly more work for the host but that doesn’t seem that bad, considering the circumstances .

This would not always work for tiering changes that happen during the round. I think a post whenever said tiering change happens + adding it to the OP for mid round stuff is good enough. For anything that happened before round goes up it can just be in the OP. Tagging all players can be a good idea.

 

[FlamingoPokeman]

My suggestion is to simply update the layout of Open (and other Tours, ideally) to standardize a pretty simple task.

Current Layout

Welcome everyone to the 13th iteration of the RU Open!

Tournament Rules:

• General tournament rules and regulations can be found here.
• Grand Slam rules can be found here.
• Standard SV RU.
• Best-of-three, single elimination.
• Battles should take place on Pokemon Showdown!
• SV cartridge win conditions are in place; there are no ties.
• Tiers are locked at the beginning of each round.

Rules
Battle Clauses:

• Evasion Clause
• OHKO Clause
• Sleep Moves Clause
• Species Clause
• Timed Battle
• Team Preview

General Recommendations:

• Contact your opponent as soon as possible upon the round going up. Activity cases will be handled strictly.
• When scheduling, offer a wide swathe of available times to play. 1 hour of activity on one or two week nights is unlikely to be considered acceptable.
• Schedule specifically - do not schedule for "Friday afternoon" or "Sunday morning", pick a date, a time and note the timezone.

This tournament will also award points towards the RU Tournament Circuit, so points for that will also be awarded accordingly depending on how well you do.

Feel free to contact me or a tournament director if you have any questions regarding this tournament (or Grand Slam in general).


Round 3

Proposed

Welcome everyone to the 13th iteration of the RU Open!

Tournament Rules:

• General tournament rules and regulations can be found here.
• Grand Slam rules can be found here.
• Standard SV RU.
• Best-of-three, single elimination.
• Battles should take place on Pokemon Showdown!
• SV cartridge win conditions are in place; there are no ties.
• Tiers are locked at the beginning of each round.

Rules
Battle Clauses:

• Evasion Clause
• OHKO Clause
• Sleep Moves Clause
• Species Clause
• Timed Battle
• Team Preview

General Recommendations:

• Contact your opponent as soon as possible upon the round going up. Activity cases will be handled strictly.
• When scheduling, offer a wide swathe of available times to play. 1 hour of activity on one or two week nights is unlikely to be considered acceptable.
• Schedule specifically - do not schedule for "Friday afternoon" or "Sunday morning", pick a date, a time and note the timezone.

This tournament will also award points towards the RU Tournament Circuit, so points for that will also be awarded accordingly depending on how well you do.

Feel free to contact me or a tournament director if you have any questions regarding this tournament (or Grand Slam in general).

Tiering Action:
Round 3

This seems pretty self-explanatory and would be posted right above the player listings, updated at the time of the ban implementation ideally by the Tour host. Some examples for those who want to see how to implement:

Tiering Action: Iron Leaves banned from RU 05-16-2024 - will NOT be allowed in RU Open Round 3.
Tiering Action: Pelipper was banned from UU 05-13-2024 - will NOT be allowed in UU Open Round 3.
Tiering Action: "x" was banned from "y" 05-10-2024 - WILL be allowed in "y" Open Round z.

 

[Lumii]

Gonna speak from my experiences as a tournament host here, and would like to note that all these thoughts are my own and definitely do not speak for all tournament hosts. Also my bad if this reads really badly, it's midnight on a Friday and I'm exhausted lol...

In a lot of circumstances (albeit less so lately), I find myself hosting tournaments in a tier that I do not play or really know much about. I really just host tournaments because I, for the most part, like hosting tournaments. When I am hosting for 1v1, which I do know enough about, I tend to just make a second post reminding players that [insert pokemon here] got banned or something.

If people in charge of tiers want to tell me what got banned, I'd gladly make posts about them in the thread reminding players. I generally don't like putting it in the title for visual reasons, as 1v1 Global Cup III - Round 4 (Second Phase) (Replays Required) (Ogerpon-Hearthflame Banned) is a title I would not wish on any person on this site.

Anyways, if y'all want to make it policy for hosts to give out a reminder, that would be fine. Idk how this is for other tournament hosts, but if someone wants a reminder to go out about tiering action and wants to ping / dm me to ask me to put out some sort of reminder, I'd gladly do so without second thought. I also think doing a second post is better because it's overall more visible than just putting it in the OP, but doing both is even more visibility for players.


But please for the love of god don't make 1v1 Global Cup III - Round 4 (Second Phase) (Replays Required) (Ogerpon-Hearthflame Banned) a tournament round title.....