RCoP Retro Cup of Pokémon 2025 - Admin Decisions and Announcements

[bern]

Hosted by bern and Jusfordlolz | Banner by Samirsin (concept by Lutra)

Hello. This thread will communicate any announcements and other decisions we make as a host team leading up to and throughout the tournament. We also included some important information and helpful links below.

Players Signups​

Tournament Format (stolen from the 2024 OP)

Weekly Format
This tournament consists of eight matches each week, one for every past generation of OverUsed. As such, the following matches will take place every week between teams: RBY OU, GSC OU, ADV OU, DPP OU, BW OU, ORAS OU, SM OU, SS OU. Each team must consist of at least eight primary players and four substitutes.

The Qualifying Stage
Teams that are not pre-qualified for the main stage must participate in a qualifying stage. This will take the form of a Round Robin with playoffs:
Every team will play in a preliminary Round Robin, and the team that wins said Round Robin will automatically qualify for the Main Stage. From the teams ranked 2nd-7th, three additional teams will qualify for the main stage in a seeded, single-elimination playoffs match. This will pit 2nd place against 7th, 3rd against 6th, and 4th against 5th. Teams which win their playoffs match will proceed to the main stage, while those who either lose in playoffs or do not make the top 7 in the qualifying event will be unable to continue. [THIS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE]

The Main Stage
For the first round, players will be randomly assigned into four groups of four players for each generation. The top 8 teams with the most wins collected proceeding to the playoffs.

Seeding for playoffs will be determined as follows: In each group, six points will be awarded for first place, four for second place, and two for third place in a group. If there is a tie for any position, the total number of points between those two positions will be split equally among the tied parties. For example, if two people are tied for first place, they will split ten (six for first + four for second) points between them for a total of five points each.

Playoff Tiebreaks
If there is a tie for the last spot of the qualifier or main stage, or a tie in any playoff round, a tiebreaker round will be played exclusively by them.
The tiebreak round will consist in a bo3, with the captains communicating to the hosts ONE confirmed tier each to play, then ranking the other seven by preference; the most preferred tier between the two unpicked ones will be selected as the third. In case of a tie, the pick will be randomized between the tied tiers.

For those patient enough to have read all of this, Wooper says thanks and wishes you good luck

The Ruins of Alph Discord, where the manager chat will reside, can be found by clicking here.

This goes without saying, but please do not speak here unless you are part of the hosting team or the RoA Tournaments staff team. ​

 

[bern]

Re: Qualifying Teams

The following teams have expressed some interest in forming, captained by the following users. Their participation in the tournament is still unconfirmed and pending a successful roster submission.

Teams - Captains

Africa - HSK7, Silent Waltz
Argentina - HSBT, ziloXX
Austria - Drachenkeule
Bangladesh - Nor
Belgium - B1Kharma
Caribbean - TakingNotesKinda, CrossHeart
Chile - Abele, Mister McLovin
Europe - ?
Greece - Christos, Solo Laddering
India - Piyu, pj
Latin America - TLTK
Mexico - Elian, Mrbanana45
Netherlands - Wesleyy, ojr
Pakistan - 8truc
Peru - SpectralThief
Portugal - Minatevis, UltiNooba
US Midwest - Oathkeeper, Deezcastforms, goldmason
US South - Loven, Stories
USSR - Egor, T1W1B
Venezuela - Raahel, JesusGP
Vietnam - SpaceSpeakers. JC98, LogOffNow

As the norm is 3, it is recommended (not required) that some captains may choose other people to captain, with a clear limit of 3 per team.

There will be 20 teams in the Main Event. With 12 teams (Asia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, Italy, Oceania, Spain, US Northeast, US West, United Kingdom) already qualified, the other 8 teams will emerge from the Qualifying Event.

A rosters thread will be posted by Jusfordlolz, expect it to be posted at a later time (before the end of the week).

 

[Amaranth]

I'm just going to make a post, speaking as RoA Tournaments staff, to clarify a policy shift going forward, for RCoP 2025 and all future RCoPs:
No more random merges to 'save' teams that fail to form.

No more Chile+Argentina (go play for LatAm), no more Austria+Switzerland (go play for Europe), no more US East or US Central (if you are from an US region and nobody else is putting in the legwork to allow your team to form, do it yourself or you're simply going to miss out for a year).
If your region fails to form, it will not exist for the given edition of the tournament, and restart from the qualifiers the next time it does form.

Previously I had allowed these kinds of merges as a band-aid solution, but it is becoming clear that it sets bad expectations for the long term health of this tournament. RCoP will be a lot more standard and rigorous with matters of team borders, as well as IP eligibility, for the 2025 edition and going forward - largely in line with guidelines for WCoP itself.

I am sorry to all who are displeased or caught off guard by this policy shift - clearly it should have been communicated sooner and more effectively - but it is nevertheless the right thing to do. A lot of people are acting like they are entitled to these exceptions to the rules, and clearly that cannot stand. I am tripling down on enforcement of standard WCoP rules since these mercies caused more harm than good.

I am available on Discord or through Smogon PMs if you wish to discuss this decision.

 

[Amaranth]

Definitive update on Qualifier Teams

The qualifier will have 17 teams, 8 of which will qualify to the Main Event (which will have 20 teams in total).
The teams and their captains are as follows (this was already announced, but re-pinging as the contents of this post are in their interest):

Team list

Africa - HSK7, Silent Waltz
Argentina - HSBT, ziloXX
Austria - Drachenkeule
Belgium - B1Kharma
Caribbean - TakingNotesKinda, CrossHeart
Chile - Abele, Mister McLovin, Endill
Greece - Christos, Solo Laddering
India - Piyu, pj
Mexico - Elian, Mrbanana45
Netherlands - Wesleyy, ojr
Peru - White Atoq
Portugal - Minatevis, UltiNooba
US Midwest - Deezcastforms, goldmason
US South - Loven, Stories
USSR - Egor, T1W1B, jozin457
Venezuela - Raahel, JesusGP
Vietnam - SpaceSpeakers, JC98, LogOffNow

Representatives of these teams have until Sunday, August 17th, 11:59PM GMT-4 to add or remove captains as they desire (simply communicate the changes to the host team), and to post their definitive rosters in the Rosters thread. You get a cookie if you post the roster at least 24 hours in advance to lighten our workload.

Notably, teams Europe and Latin America have failed to form, with only 3-4 eligible users for each, given the success of all the national teams. These players have been informed that they may instead join teams of neighboring countries or regions, based on cultural and geographical similarities. This process is arbitrary, but we still wish every interested player to have a chance to partake in RCoP, so we will undergo it.
If you are affected by this situation, the host team should already have reached out and informed you about your options. If this is not the case, please reach out to the host team ASAP so that you may have your eligibility clarified and you may find a team.

Qualifier Format

In order to avoid complex tiebreaker situations such as the one that happened last year, we're going to adopt a different qualification threshold this year. All teams with a final record of 10-6 or better will qualify to the Main Event directly. (Based on the numbers, we should basically never have more than 8 teams with this record.)

If 8 teams qualify through this criteria, we have all our qualifiers, and the Round 2 is skipped.
If 7 or less teams qualify through this criteria, the remaining slot(s) will be decided with a Round 2 playoff, with the following format:

Round 2 Playoff details

Part 1: Qualifying for the playoff

If 7 teams have qualified and one spot is left, 8th place and 9th place will play in this playoff. If 6 teams have qualified, one spot will be decided by 8th vs 9th, and one spot by 7th vs 10th. This will extend until 8 teams in total are qualified.

No tiebreaker will be played to determine the exact seeding of all teams placed 8th or lower. If two teams finish with the same record, the seeding will be decided by Strength of Schedule first. Strength of Schedule is calculated by adding up the records of your opponents: because pairings are asymmetrical (a necessity with 17 teams), some teams might play 'harder' opponents overall. Those teams will be rewarded with a higher seeding in the event of relevant ties for 8th place or lower.

Should the Strength of Schedule also be tied, we will further look at Head-to-Head records - each team will play each other exactly once across their 16 games. The winner of that game will be ranked higher.

This will ensure we will be able to enter the Round 2 playoff with zero tiebreakers needed.

Part 2: The playoff itself
The playoff will be a 7v7 series with a one-week deadline. The 7v7 will ensure, once more, zero tiebreakers.

One of the 8 tiers in the tournament will be cut, using the following process:
1. Both teams will rank the tiers from 1st to 8th.
2. Any tier ranked in the top 3 by either team will be part of the final lineup of 7.
3A. If Step 2 selects 6 different tiers, there will only be 2 tiers left. Whichever tier is ranked higher in the list of the higher-seeded team (see 'Part 1 - Qualifying for the playoff' for information on seeding) will be selected as the 7th and final tier.
3B. If Step 2 selects anywhere between 3 to 5 different tiers, ie there is overlap between the lists of the two teams, we will include the next highest preferences on both teams' lists. Repeat this step until either all 7 tiers are selected, or 6 tiers are selected, in which case we will use the process described in Step 3A to determine the 7th.

This process should be effectively impossible to manipulate and result in the strongest tiers for the respective teams being selected, and therefore the highest-quality games.

Edge case: 9+ teams finish with a 10-6 record. What now?
If 9 teams finish with a 10-6 record or better, they will be seeded internally (see Part 1), with the 8th and 9th seed playing a 7v7 playoff.
This will extend with more playoff sets (7v10, 6v11 etc) until every 10-6 team is either qualified to the main event directly or to one of the playoff spots.
(This should not be relevant in 99.9%+ of universes)