Proposal re: "Draft" in Smogon Champions League

[Pokeslice]

Once again most of the people against Draft in SCL haven't really provided any tangible reasons as for why it doesn't belong other than "Well I like SCL as it is and am against change so we should do what I want"

Once again, most of the people for Draft in SCL haven't really provided any tangible reasons for why it does belong other than "Well I like Draft and it's popular so we should change everything to do what I want"

I don't really think my post was "derailing the thread with nonsense non-starter solutions" like you seem to think it was. As far as I know as a non Draft main non TD non SS member NU guy there's never been a public conversation about the potential for a Draft trophy tour, and there's definitely never been a thread or post asking about it until I said that. I also literally called you guys a "modern pillar of the website" in my post while heaping on loads of praise as I wondered about the possibility for a Draft focused trophy tour to happen, so while I can't speak for others who are against Draft in SCL, you saying that I'm "so repulsed by the idea of this nonstandard format being represented in a big tour" after reading my post feels a bit...off. I clearly want you guys to get your flowers and reach your max potential, and if me not feeling like I've been convinced that SCL should be changed off of the pure popularity and potential of Draft alone suddenly invalidates all of that in your eyes, then so be it I guess. I have total faith in the future of your format and I think that's pretty obvious.

With that said though, in reality, regardless of my own feelings or anyone else's feelings towards Draft comes the hurdles that need to be addressed before adding it to SCL. As someone who's really come around on Draft as a concept and that believes it to be a huge breath of fresh air for Smogon, I personally feel like there are three main categories of questions on the subject that I feel need more answering before change can happen, and I'm not entirely convinced yet on any of them. The first two are the most pressing for change and the last one is more of an internal Draft community question that I'd love to hear more about as well.

Here are those question categories as I've seen them asked in the threads so far:

1) Why should we change SCL? Is there something wrong with the tour as is? Are people unhappy? Does there feel like there's real room for expansion that can be justified? What do we gain/lose by doing so? How would Draft fix things if people are unhappy?

2) If we decide to change it, why should Draft be the tier over something else like Mono or ZU or Rands or anything else? Should we base things off of player base size? General fit with the other tiers in the tournament? Pool strength? Competitiveness?

3) FROM A DRAFT COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVE OUT OF CURIOSITY, why does Draft want to be in SCL at this current moment in time? Is it about getting a trophy tour? Is it about more Smogon integration? What exactly does that mean end goal wise when popularity is already so high? What more needs to be done for Draft and the community to feel really happy with where they are? How does one get there?

For Draft mains reading this, I'm willing to bet that everyone who's anti adding the format to SCL has an issue within one of those first two categories and I really do believe that the best way to make your case is by directly responding to those questions and the subquestions below. So far, some of the posts have addressed them, such as Hacker talking about how isolating DOU, LC, and OU feel in SCL or the comments on the popularity of Draft making it a good candidate, but most posts in favor so far have only talked about how enjoyable Draft is without much more substance. No one is contesting that element, I think we all just want to hear more about why change should happen the way it's being asked to. Based on what I've seen, I personally feel like the best future for Draft would be to have it end up with its own trophy tournament eventually and I'd love to see that timeline. Like I said before, Draft will be a modern pillar of Smogon, if it isn't one already, so its own tour makes a lot more sense to me than squeezing it into SCL, especially since I struggle to see any reason to change the tournament.

 

[Dave]

With Starmaster excal and Shiloh at the helm, you got a better chance at getting SPL to be a bo3 tournament. In fact, I bet excal has already started this campaign as we speak.

I fucking hate that I enjoyed driftings post by the way. I feel like every other year he really improves as a user. And he did so without being short tempered or disrespectful to his peers.

In a sea of Djangos, be a Drifting.

 

[eeriespell]

one thing about this thread that has genuinely confused me is the fact that many advocates of draft see people asking "why should we change SCL?" as gatekeeping and exclusionary, and instead of providing any sort of answer, even just "because we want to", they continue to hammer in the merits of draft as a format. i don't think anyone believes that if the format were to change, draft is undeserving of that spot. i also don't believe that "draft does not deserve a trophy tour or inclusion in one" is genuinely anyone's actual position. yes, smogon does have a heinously bad history of sticking to the status quo. as someone who has been active in both adv retiering discussion and the recent thread about changing tiering as a whole to stop low tiers from being shafted by rises, i am more than well aware of that fact. however, this is one situation where the status quo has been working. SCL as a tour has been successful as is for five years, you DO need to provide a valid reason as to why we should change the format! i feel like dancing around the one point that the community isn't sold on is not the way to convince them to work with you on this.

 

[jscurf]

Hey everyone, I think that the thread has gotten a bit off track and I would like to refocus on some of the core ideas that are being misunderstood from the draft side and acknowledge some of the very valid points the tours community is also making.

After a lot of internal discussion between leaders in the draft community, I want to generally speak on behalf of most of us. For starters, we recognize the SCL format as it stands is GOOD and perceived relatively positively. The onus is on us to show why the tour would tangibly improve by adding Draft. I think that just because something is good does not mean it cannot be better, and that is the distinction we want to make clear. Nobody is really saying we want to tear apart this tour, but we genuinely believe we can positively contribute and there is a track record of this I can show. Most of us draft mains are not SCL players and I think a lot of the arguments have not addressed the main concerns and holdups, which I understand. I do think a lot of the counterarguments have been cherry-picked and focused on 1% of the pro-draft argument that is ambiguous and easy to apply some logical fallacies to.

I was the member who spearheaded draft into the ND sphere as I have been active in that community recently. You can see the thread here re draft into NDCL and later here for NDWC which has just commenced. Draft integrated into these tours seamlessly. NDCL which is a NON CA ZERO PRIZE team tour got more sign-ups than the flagship NDPL CA team tour did. This is because of draft. The community is genuinely hungry for draft, and I know a lot of you do not care that we are essentially the second largest sub sign-ups-wise besides OU, but I think this all tells a story. In NDCL Draft games were the most spectated, I had random teammates very interested in the drafting and prepping and testing processes. It was a unifying slot and it made this the literal most popular ND team tour in recent times with no real incentive for sign ups. It went so well that it was almost unanimous it was now added to CA tour NDWC where it has so far been a positive on the tour and driving sign ups and activity yet again. Draft brings sign-ups, spectators, teamwork, and competitive games.

I similarly suggested it for ORASCL, another tour which is very big on the status quo, which seems to be the usual for ROA. ORASCL adopted it to a flex tour and draft has been called on average once per series, which is MORE than countless of the lower tiers in that tour. Managers are enjoying it, oldheads and low tier mains are enjoying it, and the better teams are leveraging it well and often to win. We even adapted to fit their community by condensing our Draft week into a third of the usual time. Another very status quo oriented tour DPPPL also just picked up draft, things are clearly changing.

So in short, draft drives engagement, it drives activity, it drives sign ups, it gets spectators, and it highly competitive. If SCL's identity is to showcase the current gen formats and this is by some metrics the second largest SV format which does all of the aforementioned, it seems like a shame to keep it off the tour. I think simply saying draft is fun, loved in almost every tour it has been in, highly competitive, and a CG meta is enough.

Another draw I see is the 12th slot. I think a lot of the most clearly bad faith responses were about disliking the OP saying OU4 was a 12th option (where that was highlighted just as an example but nonetheless). Another thing that adds to SCL is being to introduce 2 formats that are key in the identity of SV tiers on Smogon. Mono and ZU are frankly both deserving of consideration for similar reasons to draft. They should have their own threads and should not be the main focus here however I think adding draft and by symmetry 1 more tier is a positive to further expand the tour into showcasing all SV has to offer. You can ask ND or ORAS managers about how intensive draft is to foster. The mainer is always going to be self sufficient with a wide network. It is not uncommon for a draft player to put up 10-20k lines in their team tour disc. Draft is unlike any other smogon tier in that way via the depth of prep. Although I have had many teammates interested and active in my channel over these tours, it has never really been a burden on the managers. Furthermore, I am captaining Draft's main team tour at the moment, and my team in the finals is composed of 5 alumni from the most recent SCL, 1 of which you would consider a "draft mainer". This is genuinely just not a hard tier to support or even find organic pilots from the existing pool in a pinch.

Ultimately since it is the TDs who have say here I would like to refer back to the final decision last thread

A lot of this just supports my argument and also begs the question what more can we do as a community to make the case SCL would improve by including us? SCL is focused on current generation metagames official metagames: Draft is a huge CG meta and is now in the same classification that OU is, unlike last year. We are official as can be. We are now an extra year into draft's integration. In that year we got into I believe 8 different team tours in subs outside our own, ranging in generations and formats. None received negative feedback as far as I know and most actually led to the highest turns out and activity for these tours themselves. More of the tour community has successfully integrated to Draft and the general consensus seems to be that we lack the competitiveness issue that tours community is wary of in other tiers. The TD team was largely in favour of this as an option and we accomplished both things that were viewed as the stoppages, for sitewide integration I would argue we exceeded expectations vastly.

Ultimately we get that SCL is good and many want the status quo. We get that feeling, however, it is a real belief with samples to back it up that we can make this the best, most exciting, most engaged SCL yet. We fulfilled all of the goals TDs left for us, so I guess if we do not get in, I am just curious what our new goals will be which we will almost certainly reach and jump above. I think saying just include CAP at this point or this proposal sucks because OU4 was mentioned are just ignorant defenses. Last year the post saying a unite slot would be better really stuck with me but I think Smogon is beyond that mindset now. Draft is flourishing and succeeding without SCL/trophy inclusion, and we want recognition for that and to show the greater community how fun and competitive high-level draft games are. This is a logical step that has backing behind it and I genuinely just hope it is entertained with open ears.

 

[Fc]

My position on this topic remains the same as last time this was brought up, which is that I don't think draft should be in SCL. My previous post is here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/draft-in-smogon-champions-league.3755421/page-2#post-10349375

My thought process is still the same on this, but to mention them again:

I think that draft is actually a good format so I don't have bias against it conceptually, I just think SCL both doesn't need to change and wouldn't want draft if it did. Draft would be the only non-ladderable format in any official tournament, which is already a detriment imo. As I mentioned in my last post if you want to actually help out in different slots there's no way to actually practice draft, I've grinded multiple ladders for other lower tiers like DOU in team tours to help out my teams in prep or if I had to move slots but draft doesn't have access to that. That's also partially why the signups might be so high like Drifting had mentioned, but this seems to be a point people brought up so I just wanted to also say idt it has much relevance, since then you could argue for rands way harder with that. Not being able to practice it already makes it isolated, but the different way the format works does that even more, with standard prep not existing and the process of drafting teams all being so far removed from everything else we've had. Instead of making this tour feel more like a cohesive lower tiers working together tournament it would splinter slots even more, and when people already bring that up about tiers like DOU since it's different from the other lower tiers conceptually adding more very differently playing tiers would just make team environments harder to work in.

Something else that I think is important is if people actually want SCL to change at all, since it's been mentioned here a lot that you have to first argue why SCL should include any new tiers before tackling the problem of getting draft in. Since the last post I played in 1 more SCL where I tried to be even more involved in more tiers, and I think it just reaffirmed to me the same belief that the format really doesn't need or want to change. As both a player or a manager in the SCL's I've been in I haven't felt like it's too overwhelming to try and help out in a lot of slots, but with 2 more slots both that would probably be completely new formats with draft especially being so different from standard play, contributing as much relative to the increased tour size is much harder. All our lower tiers are highlighted well in this tournament and I don't think I've seen any complaints about the actual format itself as it stands, only people wanting to change it to get the tiers they like playing into the tour. That's the natural reasoning any of these threads exist usually, but I just don't think we should add anything for the sake of it and don't need to include everything that has a playerbase as we expanded the definition of official tiers.

If we do end up adding 2 more slots it'll be bad imo but it is what it is, but if we do please do not make it OU4. This is a lower tiers tournament we already have 3 ou slots and we're like 4 years into SV no one wants another OU slot. Agree again with Drifting that ZU also shouldn't be added since at some point we gotta stop going down the tiering ladder and I think PU being the lowest in SCL is reasonable. If we expand the tour add monotype as the last slot, but again please don't expand the tour.

 

[King L5]

My position on this topic remains the same as last time this was brought up, which is that I don't think draft should be in SCL. My previous post is here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/draft-in-smogon-champions-league.3755421/page-2#post-10349375

My thought process is still the same on this, but to mention them again:

I think that draft is actually a good format so I don't have bias against it conceptually, I just think SCL both doesn't need to change and wouldn't want draft if it did. Draft would be the only non-ladderable format in any official tournament, which is already a detriment imo. As I mentioned in my last post if you want to actually help out in different slots there's no way to actually practice draft, I've grinded multiple ladders for other lower tiers like DOU in team tours to help out my teams in prep or if I had to move slots but draft doesn't have access to that. That's also partially why the signups might be so high like Drifting had mentioned, but this seems to be a point people brought up so I just wanted to also say idt it has much relevance, since then you could argue for rands way harder with that. Not being able to practice it already makes it isolated, but the different way the format works does that even more, with standard prep not existing and the process of drafting teams all being so far removed from everything else we've had. Instead of making this tour feel more like a cohesive lower tiers working together tournament it would splinter slots even more, and when people already bring that up about tiers like DOU since it's different from the other lower tiers conceptually adding more very differently playing tiers would just make team environments harder to work in.

Something else that I think is important is if people actually want SCL to change at all, since it's been mentioned here a lot that you have to first argue why SCL should include any new tiers before tackling the problem of getting draft in. Since the last post I played in 1 more SCL where I tried to be even more involved in more tiers, and I think it just reaffirmed to me the same belief that the format really doesn't need or want to change. As both a player or a manager in the SCL's I've been in I haven't felt like it's too overwhelming to try and help out in a lot of slots, but with 2 more slots both that would probably be completely new formats with draft especially being so different from standard play, contributing as much relative to the increased tour size is much harder. All our lower tiers are highlighted well in this tournament and I don't think I've seen any complaints about the actual format itself as it stands, only people wanting to change it to get the tiers they like playing into the tour. That's the natural reasoning any of these threads exist usually, but I just don't think we should add anything for the sake of it and don't need to include everything that has a playerbase as we expanded the definition of official tiers.

If we do end up adding 2 more slots it'll be bad imo but it is what it is, but if we do please do not make it OU4. This is a lower tiers tournament we already have 3 ou slots and we're like 4 years into SV no one wants another OU slot. Agree again with Drifting that ZU also shouldn't be added since at some point we gotta stop going down the tiering ladder and I think PU being the lowest in SCL is reasonable. If we expand the tour add monotype as the last slot, but again please don't expand the tour.

Ur right there's absolutely no way to practice draft, ugh. Unless... Wait I have a Brilliant Idea! What if you just built a paste from your opponents perspective, and thus you have a way to Practice the matchup with your draft starter while also getting familiar with the format yourself? This concept might just revolutionize prepping in draft league... I wonder why more people don't do this?

 

[Fc]

Ur right there's absolutely no way to practice draft, ugh. Unless... Wait I have a Brilliant Idea! What if you just built a paste from your opponents perspective, and thus you have a way to Practice the matchup with your draft starter while also getting familiar with the format yourself? This concept might just revolutionize prepping in draft league... I wonder why more people don't do this?

I am well aware of the concept of mocking, but my entire point was that there isn't a ladder to practice on which is fundamentally different from every other format. If you don't play draft but are a fundamentally strong player wanting to help out, you can build a team and play against your opponent, but then what? There's no guarantee your team you prepped is good, and after one game you'll know the techs that are supposed to be an integral part of the identity of draft, with the prep being hidden but teams being known. Mocks don't get you to a baseline level as support they help the player who's slotted, but are no where near comparable to being able to play vs any random player in any matchup to know how to cover things on a ladder.

idk if I'll respond to more posts since I usually don't bc all my thoughts are there anyway, but I mainly wanted to say you aren't helping your case at all with a snarky response, you could easily phrase this in a way to argue your point but instead chose to make a post trivializing what I said while posting nothing of substance. I expect better from a community wanting to be integrated and being in the position of arguing for rather than against.

 

[Celeste]

I want to bounce off of this point that Fc made because its really emblematic of my experience in draft vs ladder formats:

I am well aware of the concept of mocking, but my entire point was that there isn't a ladder to practice on which is fundamentally different from every other format. If you don't play draft but are a fundamentally strong player wanting to help out, you can build a team and play against your opponent, but then what? There's no guarantee your team you prepped is good, and after one game you'll know the techs that are supposed to be an integral part of the identity of draft, with the prep being hidden but teams being known. Mocks don't get you to a baseline level as support they help the player who's slotted, but are no where near comparable to being able to play vs any random player in any matchup to know how to cover things on a ladder.

I have played draft for about 7-8 years at this point, and yes I did spend many of those years not particularily good, so you can get your "skill issue"s out of the way now if you so wish. I think that there is such a big difference between how one gets good at draft and how one gets good at ladder because of that key point of a strong ladder format player "being able to play against a random player with any matchup", compared to draft where the focus now becomes whoever is able to warp an incredibly specific matchup in their favour by trying to gain an informational advantage, by analyzing not just the games themselves, but the specifics of the team and trying to predict what your opponent will bring as accurately as possible. Obviously you do still have to account for some variance, but said variance is so much significantly lower then a ladder format that taking advantage of it is the core focus of draft prep. This isn't to say I don't like draft, because I have stuck around for so long and have been trying pretty hard to improve. I do mocks, I discuss my games, and I play in tours pretty much whenever I am able to to get experience, but I still find that falling rather short.

Comparatively, in ladder formats I feel that I have been able to more easily develop a stronger overall meta understanding to the point where in a fraction of the time I've been participating in draft I have been able to get notable achievements in multiple formats due to the relative ease in getting a basic understanding, and have been able to get success in AG, Ubers, CAP, NFE, as well as qualifiying for last years UM Circuit Championships. I think for me this has happened because the things you have to be good at to perform at the highest levels of draft are fundamentally different to the other SCL formats, which with the exception of DOU have largely cross-applicable skillsets. I find that more often then not I see people who are stong at say OU are able to apply their skillset to other tiers pretty effectively, ESPECIALLY when it comes to support as Fc mentioned, because if you are able to understand the variance you have to deal with and the relative lack of information you receive, that is still applicable to other tiers.

Yes, we have seen non draft mainers succeed in the format! Fc himself went undefeated in the last DLWC without many tests and still building a bunch of his own teams, and this DWL features a team in finals that contains all of hjkhj, Lax, Mind Gaming, GXE, and Fogbound Lake. Despite this, I do still agree with Fc's overall point that the skillset needed to learn draft at the highest level is at its core pretty different to ladder formats, both due to ease of access but also the actual fundamentals you need to know. I do enjoy draft quite a lot (perhaps to the detriment of my mental health), but I do think given what I have read here that this descrepency is something that should be taken into account when we talk about draft in SCL, where the slot inherently becomes more individualistic if you do not have a strong pool of support. I think rather than just proving that draft could be included in other tournaments as we are starting to see, I think there should be a much longer review period to see how this actually plays out before draft is seriously considered, as if it was to be included this year I feel like it's way more based on a vague sentiment of "trust me it will be balanced". We have yet to see how draft functions on a large scale as an individual slot, and the concept of using SCL as a testing ground feels questionable at best, and downright laughable at worst.

Lasty, I do want to point out that I feel there has been a lot of discourse supporting draft in SCL that I feel has been focused on bad faith interpretations of anti-draft sentiment, or overall irrelevant points. While I do have many issues with how the OP itself was handled and feel that it opened the door to a lot of discussion that has been received pretty poorly by some people in support of draft, mainly those surrounding Monotype/ZU, criticisms that the OP did not explain why draft should be in SCL for reasons beyond popularity, and a very clunky final suggestion that I think was rightfully interpreted as dismissive of previous discussions around expanding/altering SCL. I think Jscurf's post especially handled the OPs shortcomings well and filled in a lot of gaps, it has been pretty frustrating to see some of the other talking points that have popped up on this thread. Even if I don't personally think draft is in a spot where it could be in SCL right now, I think it has potential in the future and its sad to see that even in the "early days" of this discussion people are being pretty dismissive of what I think are pretty reasonable points to be making at least, I would love to see more discussion surrounding things like the issues Hex, Drifting, or even Pokeslice brought up because I think all of them brought up very valid points that I have not seen some draft supporters try and meaningfully refute, or engage with in good faith. I understand why our community is really protective of this format and really want the best for it, but being dismissive of criticism is really not the way to go about this when I think there is a lot of looking inwards that this community should be doing, both when it comes to questioning why we want to be in SCL but also how we are handling these conversations to begin with.
(This section was re-written from something that was a needlessly harsh and vague regarding topics that don't need to be in this thread.)

 

[goldmason]

obligatory this is me speaking as me not the TD team that I have to put before DugZa roasts me in the QRTs

I find it a little baffling that the general consensus is that this tournament is fine with status quo as we head into the 4th year of SV with no real end in sight (minus one 2027 gen 10 teaser). I feel like SV fatigue has hit every corner of this site but surely SCL more than anywhere else; we have a massive thread ongoing about how SV's drawn out tiering is ruining lower tiers, which alone should be concerning as we head into (to a lesser extent) WCoP season and definitely by the time SCL comes back around. Nearer and dearer to my heart, despite numerous people expecting SPL effort to translate to SCL, and despite a desperate plea by me for literally any lower tier mainer to come help with the channel and do things to make lower tiers more visible, very few people if any showed up to actually help out (shoutout the ones that did like LessThanThreeMan). I attribute this in large part to stigma about this tournament, and SV fatigue.

IMO, adding a new tier to the tournament doesn't fix these problems entirely, but I think Draft specifically has some things going for it that might help keep the hype up for SCL:

- The PR break week aligns perfectly with the need to complete drafts post auction; I cannot tell you how many times people say shit like "dead tour" (not just in Smogon Tournaments) and similar in the week between the auction and Week 1, and having Drafts happen during this week should keep the players AND the general spectators engaged as customs and PRs are finished up.
- Draft is not affected by tiering shifts in any way, which means the meta stays unyieldingly stable for the entirety of the tournament.
- I fully agree with the concept of everyone on a team being able to contribute to draft prep; Lax had a great post last year mentioning Protective Pads Urshifu I believe that I recommend reading. If you know CG, you can contribute to draft, and everyone in this tournament should play CG (or not be in this tournament).
- Draft adds a layer of skill to lineup selection every week, which is another thing I think managers and teammates alike can contribute to if they want to, and adds more engagement in the teamcord.

I am not going to argue the competitiveness or merits of Draft (or any other tiers) in this thread, but I think Draft has a lot to offer to the elevation of this tournament and its format.

Deviating from the OP, I think the solution is actually removing an OU slot rather than adding one. Again, we are heading into the 4th year of CG SV, and I think the tournament being more focused on lower tiers is a valuable identity. Removing OU3 for Draft would also maintain 10 slots, which seems to be valuable to a lot of people in this thread.

Either way, whether draft or anything is added or whether we keep status quo, I hope the people posting in this thread for status quo are more invested in media this year and actually elevating this tournament above "meme spl sister tour" or whatever Smogon Tournaments discord calls it these days. The post-SPL coverage feedback form from last year had a ton of people talking about how they hoped the effort for SPL translated into SCL but I didn't see many/any of those people messaging me to get involved, and changing that this year would be excellent.

 

[LBN]

Considering I've played team tours with draft included and SCL last year, I think I can give some degree of qualified input. As far as draft is concerned, I agree with FC here. I think draft isolationism and the lack of ladder is a really massive roadblock, and pretty much all other tiers in SCL I could steal from other team tours even and give some test games just off of raw fundies alone and be helpful. DOU is a tier I don't really play but I know the game well enough to be able to have inputted a decent amount of times, same w a little OU, NU and other slots beyond the Ubers/RU support I was bought to bring. I respect draft as a tier a lot and enjoy playing it solo, as do many of the people in this thread, but I honestly think its a sour fit for a lot of team tours it gets shoehorned into and SCL isn't exempt from this.

I really do think SCL is very good as it is, and even the three SV OU slots, as someone who very publicly doesn't like SVOU, wouldn't even consider taking the 3rd SVOU out.

While this is separate, I want to touch a bit on the point mason made above about tier fatigue and contributing. I watched the clip timestamped and the energy of "you better keep this SPL energy and do this for SCL" followed by little contributions does have numerous factors beyond SV fatigue.

The energy and feeling that OU gets preferential treatment on the website is absolutely founded in a variety of ways, like for example, what feels like infinitely more privilege in tiering actions that other tiers genuinely don't get to perform. (Did you know lower tiers aren't allowed to touch tera blast whatsoever? Yeah me neither until I had to literally become RU council and ask about it.) SV LC players have to put up with tera because of a TL agreement the player bases (of every tier mind you) got jumped on randomly with no buildup and despite a decent support to look at Tera within LC, they have to fear their official tiering status being revoked and being removed by slam and SCL as seen here, and that wasn't remotely restricted to LC. I remember Ubers and RU fearing the same shit before the Tera no-touch announcement. It's these type of restrictions and complete lack of any transparency that, combined with the tier cannibalization is why this fatigue exists and is also why the contributions for this type of tournament are lower. You can't just make people put up with their tiers being locked to an unideal state and then expect people to not get burnt out. This is caused by repeated policy and handling failures, not the players. I also think it has something to do with the state of the world just being terrible and everybody feels like shit but that's not really provable.

 

[bumboclaat]

I’ve been following this thread closely, but have been hesitant to weigh in due to concerns about being able to positively contribute to it. Ultimately, I think I can - so I will. As a disclaimer, the opinions and perspective expressed in this post are solely mine. I’m just speaking personally, not on behalf of ND leadership. I'll put my perspective of ND's experience with draft in a spoiler below because most people don't care.

ND Draft

Figuring out exactly how to structure this post has been frustratingly difficult, but the best place to start is with last year’s thread concluded. As Princess Autumn notes in her OP, the official stance was to wait and see how Draft manages to integrate itself within the wider tournament ecosystem. As she mentions, and jscurf later touches on, ND is one section that has integrated draft into its tournaments. I’m hoping that providing some additional information on that process and the results can help contribute to Draft being included in SCL.

My interpretation of the official TD stance is ‘we are on amenable to Draft inclusion in the future, but demonstrate that you can perform in the minors before getting called up to the show’. Draft’s inclusion and subsequent success in ND tournaments wasn’t some attempt to satiate this condition as I’d already reached out to Hacker about the feasibility of including draft in SSNDPL in early April. That didn’t end up working out, but we hoped for some collaboration between ND and Draft in the future.

Throughout the next couple of months, I continued to quietly campaign for considering Draft within our tournaments. Generally speaking, amongst staff and the wider community, reception skewed negative. This wasn’t due to animus towards Draft itself, but the typical talking points that litter any discussion pertaining to potential changes.

Fortunately, circumstances finally came together for Draft to get a real shot of inclusion with NDCL. First, this tournament did not have a prize, so the community didn’t care that much about it. Second, not only was this a ‘new’ tournament that had no established history, we were transparent that the slots would be subject to change in future iterations as it was assumed that the new generation would impact things. Third, jscurf and Logice started a brash, persistent campaign within the ND cord that was further helped by a couple of prominent players vocalizing their support in the format discussion thread.

The slots were finalized and Draft snagged one and it exceeded all expectations. The draft community got their slot and had a fun time, the slot was generally well received, and the ND community received some exposure to Draft and hopefully some will give the format a go! It ended up being a win for everybody. Even the toxic tournament culture was absent which was a breath of fresh air. It just ended up being a win for everybody involved.

ND Draft went from something I couldn’t even gather support for a casual tournament to a shoe in for NDWC which is the most popular tournament in the community. I’m probably forgetting someone, but a fairy, hacker, jscurf, LogIce, Murphy Lawden, and Princess Autumn all deserve a lot of credit for this. It seems pretty likely that Draft will be a mainstay in ND tours. They’re an organized, passionate, and competitive section. I see no reason why that would be any different in SCL.

MZ’s post most closely resembles my thoughts on Draft in SCL. I don’t have a strong opinion on how that should be done, only that it should be. It’d be nice if this thread was primarily about Draft in SCL, but if an even number of slots is mandatory, the merits Draft can’t really be discussed in isolation as it can’t be added in isolation so the thread is naturally going to be derailed.

I obviously support Draft being added, but I also hope this this is the last thread on the topic. The discussion is essentially the same as last year and if Draft isn’t added I hope the next thread is a TD saying that Draft has met the benchmarks we are looking for and we are gathering feedback on how to incorporate it. Lastly, while the onus is on those advocating for change to justify it, I also think that as a community we should be continually reflecting on whether or not we are doing things to the best of our abilities. That way we can iterate on successes and hopefully avoid the same pitfalls. Thanks to Princess Autumn for writing this thread and +1 goldmason's post.

 

[ninjadog]

I don't think isolation is a legitimate argument against Draft, as someone who has played LC in multiple SCL/SSDs and received minimal help from teammates it's not really a big deal, you can always get help from friends outside the team and when it comes to the actual games your teammates are as invested as they would be watching any other tier. From experience the OU/UU/RU/ etc slots also don't attract as much team-wide help as people make it sound like.

In saying this, I don't think Draft should be in SCL given it fundamentally isn't the same competitively as other tiers + for the reasons Fc stated. This isn't to say Draft is uncompetitive, it just very clearly isn't in the same way as standard tiers.

In every other tier (or any other competitive esport/irl sport for that matter) both players/teams enter each match operating under the exact same ruleset, with the only difference being player skill itself. In Draft this isn't the case because you're locked into the team you drafted in pre-season, and I admit that there is significant skill in drafting but I do think it creates issues in a tour that can stretch for up to 3 months. I understand you can make changes at mids but you're still going to be behind the 8 ball if you draft poorly to start with.

Due to this, it makes drafting a bad Draft player disproportionately punishing compared to other slots, because in any other tier you can sub out a poor starter (or worse one who cancers) and your sub will be on equal footing with all of the other teams, but in draft if the starter drafted poorly (or even just to a specific style they like) you're stuck with their bad draft(s) all season long with limited chances to change it. We've seen countless times in SCL / SPL where a sub comes in and puts up an amazing record to turn a slot around for a trophy winning team, a big part of this being that they start from a clean slate and don't have to wear any of the starter's mistakes.

I acknowledge a poor draft isn't going to make the games completely unwinnable but to me it's very weird to include in a tournament where the other 11 slots are all 50/50 (before accounting for player skill). A more minor issue is the randomisation of the snake draft order, which whilst all picks would be relatively equal it does further make the competitiveness different from standard tiers (yes you draft twice but unless you were to do 8 drafts this won't be perfect).

I'd support Draft receiving official/trophy representation (probably an individual is best?) I just don't think it fits into SCL.

 

[Rasche]

Ngl, I really think it's more likely that draft gets added to the next Olympics than it gets added to the next SCL/Snake; still gonna read these threads every year though :) . Full disclosure, I am a fan of Draft and have enjoyed seeing the community/format prosper in current gen. I would love to see it taken seriously as a format in Smogon tournaments, even if that tour isn't SCL. With that being said Ill give my piece on why it should be added to SCL as a format.

To address the elephant in the room; Yes, we can keep SCL the same, with no format changes, and I am sure the tour will be great. As Django said the format is fantastic. However, I dont think that point can be extrapolated to infer that the format is "perfect" or above any changes/upgrades. The point of SCL (in my view) is to showcase the highest level of play for a variety of competitive current gen formats within a team envionment. It is not supposed to just cover "lower tiers", it is not supposed to just be a collection of tiers people find comfortable to manage/play in. In SV, Draft has quickly established itself as one of the most popular and competitive formats for CG (See draft circuit stats). It has also been shown to work as a competitive team tour format (DCL, DPL DWL etc....) and has been succesfully integrated into team tours for formats such as NatDex (s/o jscurf). For this reason alone draft deserves some sort of competitive attention from Smogon/TDs.
Setting aside the popularity and competitiveness of draft (especially because it has been covered well in previous posts in this thread), one of the main reasons I want to see draft within SCL/ other team tours is for the insane levels of cooperation and team-play it encourages through its format alone. More than any other tier/format I've played, Draft really motivates you to engage with preparation and bounce ideas off teammates. As many others have mentioned, you don't need to have played draft or played it on ladder to engage with this, if you have ever helped someone build/test a team for a current-gen format, you are qualified to help with draft. The inclusion of Draft into SCL would make it a more competitive tour and increase team-play within SCL.

Finally, I would like to echo the idea/proposal to make draft its own official format and for it to be fully incorporated into the Smogon official circuit and hopefully become a Smogon mainstay. Some context to end this point off: Draft has always been very popular going back to gen 6 days. However, the competitive community has always been split amongst wifi & various discord/PS drafts (hence why most only heard about Draft once it found a place on smogon). I think Draft being treated as an official format on Smogon with trophy events would do a lot of work in centralising players and improving the format further.

 

[Nick6564]

Hello, I am a draft player wanting to give some positive reasons to add draft to SCL :)

I'll start by addressing the 3 questions pokeslice posed at the top of this page, which are all very valid questions.

Q1) Why should we change SCL?
This one is simply a matter of what people prefer. Personally, I strive to have and be a part of the most enjoyable and competitive tournaments to play, but your personal reason can be different. From what I can see however, it seems that sentiment of those against adding Draft who have commented on this thread of SCL format believe the SCL format is "optimized" - If this is your stance, it is unlikely I, or anyone else as of right now will be able to convince you that change is the best course of action. To those that are not fully in this camp, while at the same time, players / managers in SCL previous season acknowledging it was less hype.

Even if I feel that SCL V had less hype than SCL IV, I don’t think that was a format issue.

I genuinely feel that the SCL format is already optimized as the major official team tour to highlight low tiers.

From what I can tell, the "identity" of SCL is not intended to be highlighting low tiers, but instead highlighting the best of the current generation metagames. Screenshot below is Star's comment at the end of last thread on what the "identities" for these tours are.

If this is the case, is the "best" for the tour to showcase the same format over and over? Is the representation you want for Smogon the same tiers each year? That is something for current SCL players / non draft main people to think on themselves, I cannot give you that answer. I can say that it sounds like the intention from Star, and the other TDs is that these tours evolve the tiers as reasons to evolve them are presented. In this case, each flagship tour being a representation of some form of the most enjoyable and competitive parts of what Smogon has to offer would call for an evaluation of the format each iteration, to ensure that what is currently being represented is what the people want. At the end of the day, these tournaments serve the people playing in them and those watching them. It is my personal belief that Draft would contribute to the most enjoyable and competitive parts of what smogon has to offer in current generation metagames, but again, that is your personal opinion on what is enjoyable and competitive.

2) If we decide to change it, why should Draft be the tier over something else like Mono or ZU or Rands or anything else?
Obviously biased, I believe that draft is one of the most enjoyable and competitive tiers that current generation Smogon tiers have to offer. Additionally, I believe that draft is a tier where anyone who has played a competitive Smogon tier and found success at it can meaningfully contribute to the success of their draft tier as a whole.

Why do I believe this?
Using OU as the comparison, I see that there are 40 pokemon listed as "OU" in the showdown builder. Each week a tour player goes to play an OU match, they are building a team of 6 pokemon that accounts for the 40 different pokemon the other player may have on their team in some combination. They account for this with various moves, ev spreads and strategies to ensure they have the best chances of winning the game as possible into whatever team the other party may bring. That does not include the additional "UUBL" pokemon, as well as the lower tier niche picks that can and will show up to some games. In draft's case, as opposed to having to account for all of those pokemon at the same time each week, you do your best to account for them in the drafting phase, and then are set to only playing 8 pokemon each week with your 8 pokemon. If you are able to account every week for the 40+ pokemon in the OU tier, it seems to me you would also be able to account for the 8 pokemon the opponent has drafted. On top of that, tier mains of various tiers are able to join in and provide valuable insight as they have experience with or against the mons that are in the tiers they play often.

Example: ORASCL
I am participating in ORASCL this year, attached is the team I am on:

On this roster, myself, scionicle, Electraine and Mada are the only members of my team with smogon draft team tour experience. Despite this, my captains c0mp and kingofking, BP, R1C3M4N and Vioz have all meaningfully contributed multiple times in the draft tier since the season has started. They are people that have never played draft at a team tour level and still spoke in the tier and contributed where they could.

But how do your teammates help you prepare for the game?

As I mentioned in my last post if you want to actually help out in different slots there's no way to actually practice draft, I've grinded multiple ladders for other lower tiers like DOU in team tours to help out my teams in prep or if I had to move slots but draft doesn't have access to that.

Fantastic question. Just how you can practice your team in the "other" Smogon tiers via a teammate loading up a team and running a test battle, it is commonplace in draft for teammates to build mock battles of the enemy team and you practice against it with your prep. This can be done by anyone no matter the tier, since the mock battle is to help test the team out against what could potentially come, same in current SCL tiers as is Draft. If you do not have prior experience in draft, players understandings of how mons work from their own respective tiers can and will carry over to preparing in a draft league battle!

3) FROM A DRAFT COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVE OUT OF CURIOSITY, why does Draft want to be in SCL at this current moment in time?
Very simple. We want to be a part of making the most enjoyable and competitive tournaments Smogon has to offer. As a key part of Smogons battling formats, it is on us to raise our voice should we believe we can positively contribute to the compeition and atmposhere Smogon aims to put forth. As such, we are doing so.

Completely candidly, there has been multiple mentions of a trophy tour, I do not know what that is. It seems like something others value given the number of times it has been mentioned as a cornerstone reason for draft being a part of SCL, and while I cannot speak for everyone in the draft community, I can say personally I do not know what that is or care about getting a trophy tour, I simply wish to foster and be a part of the most fun, competitive tournaments.

How do other players perform in Draft given their lack of experience?

I am a player who has captained the most recent DCL, DPL (offsite biggest Draft Team tour, DCL competition equivalent), DLWC and won all of these tournaments either as a player and or captain and have worked with many "other players" who did not begin playing draft before participating in these tournaments. To name a few:

Hellom
Clean
3d
Fc
Theodore Mani
Electraine

Are all players I have captained that have performed adequately in draft despite little to no previous Draft team tour experience. I can personally attest that each of these players, despite having not played Draft Team Tours before, each put in a great deal of effort each week to put the best foot forward and try their best to win their games. As a standout exampe, I captained Fc in the most recent edition of DLWC, where he put up a tour best 6-0 record as the winningest player on our championship winning team. These are all only the players that I personally have captained.

In the most recent Smogon Draft Team Tour, many more "other tier" players participated in draft, such as Mind Gaming, Fogbound Lake, lax, GXE, A3onfa, Mayo, Magialice, violet river, Quarante8, watashi, feen, hellom, clean, seraphz, Electraine, Lpz, evakiyama! and Gondra. Each of these players had little to no Smogon Draft Team Tour experience (minus lax and clean) prior to this event. Despite this, they each signed up and got drafted, a testiment to the transferability of the skillset developed through "other tiers" on smogon and Draft. I find it hard to believe this many people being recognized by the captains of this tour as quality Draft Players would not be the case for others drafted in SCL looking to help out or play Draft themselves.

There is more I could say, but I will leave you with my overall message. I believe SCL should be a representation of the most enjoyable and competitive tiers that Smogon has to offer. I believe that Draft is one of those tiers and therefore should have a part in shaping this to be the best season of SCL since its inception. Players who are unfamiliar with draft can (and when they choose to, do!) provide ample support to the tier and perform in it despite potential lack of previous experience. If you believe that SCL is good as is, I understand this will fall on deaf ears. If you however are open to change and are curious as to how draft can be a positively contributing part of a team tournament, I ask that you only look around to the examples of tours that have added it recently, such as ORASCL, NDWC, NDCL, DPPPL, RBYOMPL, Doubles Derby IV, LGPL, Portugese Spring League and NDUPL.

Thank you for reading :)

 

[eeriespell]

since (i would hope) the TDs are watching this thread, what are the chances that draft could have its own individual trophy tour? it seems that the prevailing opinion from most is that draft is a large and increasingly important part of the smogon community and deserves some form of high level competitive representation, and the hangup is less on that and moreso on changing the format of SCL to fit it in and the logistics of how the format would function in a high-level team tour. i've seen posts from draft players on the matter saying that they feel this is something that has zero chance of happening. is this true? has there been any sort of discussion about it? if this is a total non-starter due to scheduling or manpower or concerns about trophy inflation or whatever else, then sure, fine. however, i really do think that this is the easiest way to give everyone what they want, we don't have to worry about the logistics of changing the SCL format and draft players get their well deserved top level representation with a chance to cash it in for some hardware.

 

[FlamPoke]

I agree with a lot of the "why should we change SCL and why should Draft be the one included over other options like Monotype/ZU/OU4/etc." arguments, with a few things I think are worth articulating more clearly.

SCL is a very prep heavy tour from what I have seen in my limited exposure the last two years. The starters in the lower tiers, a fair amount of whom don't play the tiers continuously throughout the year, have to adapt to metagame changes multiple times throughout the tour because of shifts/tiering actions. On top of this, the level of play is very high and the meta adapts fast as teams concentrate on getting every advantage they can in the builder, which means they also have to adapt to stay ahead of trends during the tour. The reason I bring this up is because many of the for-Draft arguments focus on people in other slots being able to provide input throughout the tour, which is a big ask considering you have a limited amount of slots to build your team with and asking people to flex into the Draft channel to mock teams and provide heavy input while also focusing on their prep is a big ask, especially since the other players likely have zero input in the actual draft itself and are stuck with whatever the Draft slot ends up picking. Maybe this is me overthinking the prep element of Draft but it seems like it would be one of the most resource-intensive channels if you really want to shore up your weekly matchups and get as much out of the slot as possible, as olivia said below:

Draft is a format that rewards those willing to put in the time and effort alongside those who work well as part of a team, those who don't put in the necessary effort will lose 99 times out of 100

I also don't get some of the points made re: current SCL.

My main current complaint with the tour is how isolating it can feel

This stands out because Draft is surely one of the most isolating slots, especially if the slot performs poorly early. In other tiers you can flex people into the slot on a whim, steal teams from other players, and ladder like crazy to get a feel for the tier. In Draft, how do you secure a failing slot? If your Draft slot had a really shit draft and plays like dog early on, someone has to flex into that slot with a huge disadvantage and no real way out of it besides grinding like hell in a format that does not make it easy to grind like hell. Seems pretty isolating to me, far more than standard ladder formats.

I think simply saying draft is fun, loved in almost every tour it has been in, highly competitive, and a CG meta is enough.

There's a lot more (good) substance to this post, but to summarize it this way feels disingenuous. It has been in, per the OP, six total team tours, all of which are smaller subforum tours. The jump from "we did great in a few small tours" to "we deserve a spot in one of the flagship official team tournaments" is obviously quite big.

If you don't play draft but are a fundamentally strong player wanting to help out, you can build a team and play against your opponent, but then what? There's no guarantee your team you prepped is good, and after one game you'll know the techs that are supposed to be an integral part of the identity of draft, with the prep being hidden but teams being known. Mocks don't get you to a baseline level as support they help the player who's slotted, but are no where near comparable to being able to play vs any random player in any matchup to know how to cover things on a ladder

In Draft, your playing field is fundamentally not level from the start and this could be season ending

Fc nailed this I think. Myself, and others like hex and ninjadog, have alluded to Draft being really an isolated slot no matter how you look at it from a prep and play perspective. The amount of techs to cover for in the builder and in-game can be exhausting, especially if we consider the SCL Draft players to be the best the format has to offer. Django also made a good point that Monotype players have been facing for far longer than Draft players, which is that on a fundamental level the tier just isn't designed to be as neutral as the standard formats. You can't change a bad draft no matter who you put in that slot.

one of the main reasons I want to see draft within SCL/ other team tours is for the insane levels of cooperation and team-play it encourages through its format alone. More than any other tier/format I've played, Draft really motivates you to engage with preparation and bounce ideas off teammates. As many others have mentioned, you don't need to have played draft or played it on ladder to engage with this, if you have ever helped someone build/test a team for a current-gen format, you are qualified to help with draft. The inclusion of Draft into SCL would make it a more competitive tour and increase team-play within SCL.

And to wrap up the quotes, this one from Rasche I think captures the essence of what adding Draft would do. DOU and LC are pretty isolated slots already, being pretty different fundamentally from the other tiers, but have active ladders and lots of resources and capacity to learn the tier in a competitive environment. Draft has a lot of resources as well but you can't just change your draft board and change your approach to the game at a nuanced level to shift your matchups on a weekly basis. This is not an equivalent to the other formats in a lot of capacities besides being current gen and having overlap in the player bases.

--
I have played a few of the Draft formats and some friendly drafts as well, albeit in a very limited capacity, and have had fun during the draft and prepping some of the matchups. I don't think enjoyability is a metric that should be brought up in every for-Draft post the way it has but I get it, the format is generally seen as fun and is new and exciting and stuff, but at some point the following have to be agreed upon:

SCL needs changed in some way (I don't agree)
The inclusion of new formats is the change that SCL needs (Indifferent)
Draft has more merits than other formats for inclusion in a changed SCL format (I don't agree)

Perhaps the best way to actually figure out the first two is to poll the previous SCL players/managers/involved parties to see what the consensus is and go from there. If enough people who have participated in SCL think the format could use optimization, then the discussion of what could/should be included becomes a lot more relevant and objectives can be defined by the TD team, and formats wanting inclusion can have a clear direction for how to get into the tournament. These annual "why you should include us in SCL" posts get a ton of positive and negative attention and I think the site is at a point that it just makes sense to actually leverage the playerbase's feedback to see what is worth considering.

 

[Piyu]

I think most points have already been posted in this thread already so I will touch on a few things I found interesting.

Something that has been reiterated again and again is that draft boosts teamwork and how everyone can help with it. People are overstating how difficult it is to help with prep in any given tier. Mons prep is not rocket science. It is very easy for anyone playing in a trophy tour to look through any scout and give opinions. However most people do not and will not care about helping other slots. That's just how teamtours are in nature. I can assure you outside of a select few, nobody will gaf to support anything outside their 1-2 tiers regardless of how easy said tier is .

Teambonding occurs because of talking in general chat about random topics and discussing during games. 3 more people helping some random slot won't do anything.