Proposal Smogon Tour Times II

[Slowpoke Fan]

Back for another discussion about Smogon Tour times, and I would like to make a few suggestions that would hopefully be considered or accepted this time around that takes this post from Merritt last year into account:

I would strongly prefer that we A) figure out a way to adjust the single Smogon Tour's timing so that greater global participation is reasonable, though the how is very up in the air, maybe put it in summer instead of spring, B) if adding another tournament to the schedule, lean away from the livetour format that makes it difficult for players in certain countries to participate (as done with Smogon Masters which has been a success by most metrics), or C) at the very least have the second "Smogon Tour" not run the same metagames so that we can at least justify its absolutely mandatory overlap somewhat better.

I think A is something that would help APAC regions participate in the tournament even with no change in the times due to timezones in the West being locked into daylight savings (not to mention that the summer months would be holiday season for students). Assuming that there are no logistical difficulties with swapping the starting times of say OLT and STour (although an early July start date might be better for STour instead of the late July/early August start date for OLT), I strongly believe that the tournament should be pushed to the summer months.

As for time changes, with a year to think about what Western players have said about any potential time changes, I would like to propose the following set of times for the Smogon Tour in 2026:

Friday 6pm -4
Saturday 11:30am -4
Sunday midnight -4

1. This preserves the classic Friday 6pm -4 timeslot that has historically proven to be amenable for both the US and Europe at large, and a big part of why previous attempts to cater to the APAC region have been criticised as it was shifted by 2-3 hours that is not really viable for most people.

2. The timeslots should be reasonable for most players in the West, and still prioritises them over APAC regions in general:

• Players from the East coast can plausibly play in all three timeslots. The third one is later than ideal but it's not the end of the world to play late at night when the next day is a Sunday, and the second timeslot should be very playable to go alongside with the primetime timeslot of Friday 6pm -4.​
• US regions in general have two 'good/workable' timeslots and one that is still possible to play at even if some compromises have to be made. For example, West coast players will not have the greatest time playing on Saturday morning at 8:30am, but that combined with 3pm on Friday and 9pm on Saturday should at least be somewhat reasonable if not outright good.​
• Western and Central Europe are unfortunately more or less locked into the first two timeslots, but with the Friday slot being immensely popular in the region while the Saturday timeslot should be a relatively comfortable hour in the afternoon, I believe that this arrangement gives them a better spread than the APAC region in general and respects the fact that communities in the region have historically been (and still are for the time being) larger than that of APAC.​
• Eastern Europe will have the option of flexing between a late night timeslot and a very early morning timeslot to go along with their evening timeslot on Saturday, which is more or less in line with APAC regions.​
• These timeslots are obviously a lot better than the existing ones and should generally be workable for APAC region players. Here are the times for various APAC regions with a decent presence in the community:​
  • India (+5.5): Saturday 3:30am, Saturday 9pm (primetime for Indians as MAVERICK SHOOTERS told me a while ago), Sunday 9:30am​
  • China (+8): Saturday 6am, Saturday 11:30pm, Sunday noon​
  • Australian CDT (+10:30): Saturday 8:30am, Sunday 2am, Sunday 2:30pm​
  • New Zealand ST (+12): Saturday 10am, Sunday 3:30am, Sunday 4pm​
• The timezones of Latin America/Canada and Africa are not too dissimilar to that of the US and Europe respectively, so this should be workable for players from those regions as well.​

I believe that this proposal should be palatable for most players around the world while acknowledging the fact that players from the West contribute more to the site and should be catered to if possible. I hope that TDs can implement this so the Smogon Tour can maintain its status as the premier individual tournament on Smogon going forward as regions around the world with vastly different timezones grow on the website. But in the case that this proposal might have missed something important and is rejected, I believe that moving the tournament to the summer months and swapping the Saturday/Sunday timeslots (staying up late on Saturday night is a lot more doable for motivated individuals who want to compete regardless of timezones) should be considered by tournament staff.

 

[Merritt]

First, so that people can get an idea of the suggested times without messing up conversions, here's them with dynamic date-time display. Disregard the day (I just used the last fri/sat/sun), instead it's about the listed time.

Friday - <t:1752271200:R>

Saturday - <t:1752334200:R>

Sunday - <t:1752379200:R>

(as a reminder to those used to 24h time, 12am is midnight and 12pm is noon)

If anybody proposes times, I would strongly encourage also using a dynamic time stamp to make it easier for people to determine what relative time they're dealing with. Personally I think that it's been shown that messing with the times hasn't gone well enough times by now that we shouldn't make yet another attempt, for the record.


For moving Smogon Tour to summer - a preliminary idea would be to move around Classic and Masters, then shift OLT slightly. Masters would take Smogon Tour's previous place in March, Classic would move to September (potentially late August, goal would be to have it conclude before SPL draft happens), move OLT a little later in July/early August so that the laddering cycles still finish before September, and have Smogon Tour begin in early June or potentially late May.

I'm fairly strongly of the belief that OLT should have at least its laddering cycles firmly in the summer, and we're not planning to move the teamtour timing much if at all, but the other individuals around that time are slightly more malleable. Note that Grand Slam should not be planned to be shifted sooner in the year, as that would require a second restructuring any year with a fall generation drop.

 

[Eeveeto]

Speaking from GMT+2 (in summer, in winter is +1) perspective, the current times for me personally are pretty bad. I am unable to play the Friday tour due to being asleep already, if I survive long enough on Saturday's one I will be falling asleep and Sunday's one is the only decent for me, though its right before dinner and would be way better if it was one hour earlier (same goes for Saturday, one hour earlier for me personally would be really good).

The new proposed times for me... are even worse. Now I have unavailable both Friday and Sunday, while Saturday one comes at a time that try to not be at home most of Satudays. Sure, they might be more inclussive for other regions, but at least, from the perspective of someone who doesn,t want to play on Saturday's evening and goes to sleep early, these times are unviable. They would be a little better if the times of Saturday and Sunday tours were swapped, Sunday's evening is not as valuable as Saturday's one. I think other Europeans also don,t want to play at 17:30 on Saturday specifically, so its not just my own problem either.

Since OLT was mentioned, despite being unlikely to try that tour ever again, when I played that tour I found it being in summer very unfair for people that have a job compared to people that study. People that have school/college/university don,t have those in summer, therefore they have a big amount of time to ladder. Meanwhile, most of people who have a job, still have it in summer, therefore they have less time. If the tour was done in any other season, it would be equally "uncomfortable" for students and workers, therefore more fair for all of them. Of course, there are also people that neither study or work, but those will always have advantage no matter what is done.

 

[Slowpoke Fan]

The new proposed times for me... are even worse. Now I have unavailable both Friday and Sunday, while Saturday one comes at a time that try to not be at home most of Satudays. Sure, they might be more inclussive for other regions, but at least, from the perspective of someone who doesn,t want to play on Saturday's evening and goes to sleep early, these times are unviable. They would be a little better if the times of Saturday and Sunday tours were swapped, Sunday's evening is not as valuable as Saturday's one. I think other Europeans also don,t want to play at 17:30 on Saturday specifically, so its not just my own problem either.

To be fair it would also mean that East Asia will be playing close to midnight on Sunday, which is less than ideal

But I absolutely see your concern and would be open to the third slot being held at say <t:1753030800:R> (Sunday 1pm -4 if I've somehow messed up the timestamp) or slightly later so South/Central Asia can still play at a somewhat reasonable time while the West coast gets something that's not either potentially a work hour for them or early in the morning.

I am surprised by you saying that the Friday timeslot is unviable for you though - my impression was that Americans and Europeans loved that timeslot and do not want it changed, which is why I did not touch it in my proposal. If this timeslot is not something that Europeans particularly care about while being a potential work hour for Americans living west of the East coast, is something like <t:1752890400:R> (10pm -4 on Friday) that unreasonable (could be slightly earlier as well)? It would be a lot better for East Asia and Oceania so the third timeslot can be held deeper into the afternoon for American timezones like it was this year.

 

[Eeveeto]

To be fair it would also mean that East Asia will be playing close to midnight on Sunday, which is less than ideal

But I absolutely see your concern and would be open to the third slot being held at say <t:1753030800:R> (Sunday 1pm -4 if I've somehow messed up the timestamp) or slightly later so South/Central Asia can still play at a somewhat reasonable time while the West coast gets something that's not either potentially a work hour for them or early in the morning.

I am surprised by you saying that the Friday timeslot is unviable for you though - my impression was that Americans and Europeans loved that timeslot and do not want it changed, which is why I did not touch it in my proposal. If this timeslot is not something that Europeans particularly care about while being a potential work hour for Americans living west of the East coast, is something like <t:1752890400:R> (10pm -4 on Friday) that unreasonable (could be slightly earlier as well)? It would be a lot better for East Asia and Oceania so the third timeslot can be held deeper into the afternoon for American timezones like it was this year.

Dont worry about the Friday one, at least in Spain I am the only guy who usually goes to sleep around 23:00, in Spain most people go to sleep at like 2 am and even though its an outlier in Europe, most people are able to play the current Friday tour, here I am the exception, not the norm.
The Sunday proposed time (the one of the first post) is entirely unviable for all of Europe though.

 

[Luigi]

Every year the players that live in Asia and Oceania, understandably, make the case that Tour should cater to them, and every year some well meaning people "feel" that the Tour times changing to cater to those people will serve a lot of people without any loss of quality to the tour, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary. You can read Amaranth's posts here and here to see why this isn't actually how that works, but maybe it's unfair to expect everyone to be as familiar with this discussion and its numbers as people that have been talking about it for years, so to make sure everyone is on the same page I updated the table Amaranth posted in that thread with the numbers from tour 37.

Season 31 had 6/4/2 times, season 33 had an Asian friendly time on Fridays, Season 35 had the most Asian friendly format possible with 4 tours per week and season 37 had 6/4/2 times again.

Smogon players aren't distributed equitably around the globe, or even proportionally to a country's population. The overwhelming majority of users of the site, and players of this tournament, live in the slice of the world covered by the -8 to +2 timezones, to the point that any time that moves away even slightly from that axis comes with a giant cost in terms of players (would be interesting to see a breakdown of Smogon users by country if that's something SS has access to). Look at the above table, the most inclusive times possible result in not only the lowest numbers ever on an individual tour basis, but on an individual week basis, and in the lowest number of unique players too.

Let's say we do change the times for Season 38, if the sign-up numbers predictably go down again, do we go back to 6/4/2 for Season 39? Just seesaw every year? I propose not only that we don't change the times which are proven to work, but that we freeze the Tour times at 6/4/2 for the next 3 years, then we can try again and see if enough people from Asia and Oceania have joined the community to make those times viable without making the tournament worse for everyone else.

 

[myjava]

I've read through the many iterations of this thread and I wanted to give my opinion since I feel pretty strongly about having accessible times for India / other APAC regions.

Personally I've never understood some peoples obsession with "quality" or the number of participants each week of STour. Like Week 8 of SM OU #1 having 48~ players is some kind of personal offense against them. A horrific tragedy that must never ever happen. I won't deny that Americas/Europe have the largest playerbases and that the current times are the most convenient for the highest number of people. But it does come at the cost of a lot of people in some timezones basically having no chance to play. It doesn't personally affect me, I live in US now and East Coast is p much the "best" timezone for Smogon tours and stuff. And from that perspective, I kinda get how silly it looks, it's easy to laugh and be like "hahaha the 10 Indian/Chinese/Aussie players are whining about STour times again LOOOOL ahahah" but when you're in those timezones and STour season rolls around, and you see everyone having fun playing the tour and trying to qual and you're just cut out cuz of timezones (unless you have a really shit sleep schedule) it sucks. Some robot brains might look at the pure numbers and think we have the objective times but I think it's worth trying to find a compromise that allows people from APAC regions to play and still have convenient enough times for the bigger regions, even if it's just maybe 1 out the 3 tours that have a decent time for APAC players. A lot of these regions have growing / very new playerbases and it's good to have another individual tour for new players to see and aspire to qualify for. It'll probably have less players than the original times, maybe even just be good for 6-7 new players. But I think it's worth more for everyone to have a chance to participate over some vague stamp of "quality" that seems to be the defining reason for why it shoudn't happen.

As for timings I prefer the ones used in st 33/34 over the first proposal

9 am GMT EST (GMT-4 currently) on Saturdays
4 pm GMT EST (GMT-4 currently) on Saturdays
2 pm GMT EST (GMT-4 currently) on Sundays

Though nothing really that good for Australia. Maybe the 4pm tour on saturday could be later like 7-8pm? I think that change would have 2 good slots for the big regions (Tour 1 and 3 for Europe, 2 and 3 for west coat and all the times are workable for east coast and South America) and atleast 1 for APAC regions. Maybe something more optimal could be found, I will leave that to people smarter than me. The first tour might have worse participation cuz its an unviable time for west coast and maybe east coast / SA guys dont wanna play in the morning which leaves Europe and the much smaller playerbase of APAC but I dont think this seriously hurts any major region beyond being maybe a bit less convenient than the current times. I hope if a change like this gets implemented people wont freak out like its the end of the world when the APAC centric tour gets lower numbers and immediately revert back to the usual schedule. Let the APAC players have a chance, the tour will run just fine.

I wrote this some time ago but I wanted to add more in reference to Luigi's table

Total No. of Unique Participants
Smogon Tour 31: 750
Smogon Tour 32: 635
Smogon Tour 33: 665
Smogon Tour 34: 558
Smogon Tour 35: 587
Smogon Tour 36: 593
Smogon Tour 37: 733

ST 36 was conducted with the usual 6/4/2 times, and ST 32 I believe had the friday tour changed to saturday 6am est and it was reverted by week 4 to the usual schedule. Both of them have a pretty similar turnout to 33-35 which had APAC friendly times. Overall I do think the 6/4/2 times are more conducive to a higher number of signups since the 2 largest tours here in ST 31 and 37 had the 6/4/2 times but I think it's disingenuous to say having an APAC friendly time totally screwed up the tour and is the only reason why a tour might have lower signups. Both ST 35 and 36 are spring tours with nearly identical no. of participants, even though 35 had the 4 tours per week and 36 was 6/4/2. I think some external factors, like ST 31 being held only a year after covid lockdowns or ST 37 being a year after 36 and maybe having more hype due to that could also be reasons why those tours had higher numbers. Overall I don't think the disparity in total numbers between an APAC friendly tour and the usual ones are as big as the above table seems to suggest.

 

[Drifting]

To my knowledge (I asked get backer on discord) there has never been a season tried where the 3 times were:

APAC+America
APAC+Europe
Europe+America

Obviously, by design one tour would be inaccessible for everyone but when you can only play in 2 tours a week that shouldn't matter. Maybe it is possible that globalizing livetours won't work, as get backer loves to say, but I think it is too hasty to say this without trying such an obvious solution.

I've seen some "figures" floating about like Asia/Oceania being only 5% of the smogon userbase, which is surely an exaggeration, but looking at SPL/SCL and WCOP (obviously) a significant portion of the site's top talent resides in these regions and is currently pseudo-excluded. If you wanna talk about competitive integrity, let's talk about that, because if we want tournaments to be about showcasing our finest players, including 5 random dudes from Minnesota (no offense Minnesotans) over 1 SPL level Chinese player is the wrong way to go about it. Also, a lot of people love to pretend that only STour/OLT exist and so these tours (mostly STour) being inhospitable for anyone with a positive timezone can really hurt the development of these regions when it comes to newcomer players getting recognised and drafted in big tours. It's lowkey like the baseball colour line but for Pokemon.

Anyway, the one problem with this idea is finding a way to make it work comfortably with the days of the week, I'm sure there's a way you could do it where they all take place on the weekend, which should be good enough for most people, and if possible Saturday nights should be avoided, but I'll leave finding the days/times to hosts who know more about that stuff. The idea is fundamentally sound, and while I'm sure at first people might complain that one time isn't designed for them to be playing it, I'm sure they'll be able to adapt to the two which are. Give it a shot.