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Announcement ADV Subforum Tours - Current Direction and Discussion

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goldmason

goldmason

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RoA & Tour Head
With ADVLTL II's conclusion, we are approaching the end of the calendar year. We have two tournaments to round it out that I want to talk to you, the community about. Additionally, I want to get feedback on some significant changes coming to our flagship tournaments next year!


ADV Slam​


ADV Slam is rapidly approaching (early October), and before Joaf stepped down from mod he had a tentative plan to remove the cups and turn this tournament into something more easily approachable for the community, and an easier hosting experience. Here is what it currently looks like:

- No more cups
- Bo5, Double Elimination
- Every week, one tier will be rolled as the starting tier. The loser of Game 1 will choose the tier for the next game, and so on until there is a winner. Repeats are not allowed.
- 5k reacts prize; willing to extend this to more than just the winner.

We would love feedback on this proposal, especially while there is still time before the tournament. Is this something the lower tier community wants? Is there something to change about the format? Do you have ideas about prizing? Let us know!

ADV Last Chance and Circuit​


Just touching on this for a moment; this year's ADV Last Chance is a new tournament that has been done in other generations. It features a No Johns format, which means each round is played over 3-4 days; Mon-Thurs, then Fri-Sun. I hope everyone will play in it and let us know if it is something worth bringing back next year! Also would love to hear feedback on the circuit this year!

ADVPL and ADVLTL​


OK now for the meat and potatoes. ADV mods have been thinking long and hard about ADVPL, ADVLTL, and how we want to approach these tournaments in the coming year. The recent ADVLTL was a major success especially for a tournament with no advertised prize, and we think it's long overdue for custom avatar representation. However, we only have 3 customs per year to allocate. In addition, every year there are more and more tiers vying for inclusion in both of these tournaments, and expanding year over year (which, it seems like every other tour on the site is forced to do) diminishes both the perceived prestige of the tournaments and the player/manager experience.

To combat this, we are cutting the size of ADVPL. When choosing the final lineup for ADVPL, we decided to go back to the basics, and use only the tiers considered "official" (Ubers, UU, NU, and of course OU) at the end of ADV's time as a CG. This matches similarly to the format for the original few ADVPLs, with the exception of not doubling on lower tier slots in favor of OU, since this would be our flagship ADV OU tournament each year. Our other major requirement was 50% OU slots for a similar reason.

We are also dedicated to building hype for this tournament this coming March. You can expect hype articles, video coverage week over week, guest commentary, and especially Power Rankings. We want to bring back the prestige of ADVPL and make it a tournament that the community can really be proud of and hyped about, even more than before.

With those requirements, we sit at 7 slots. We have unanimously decided to give the final slot to ADV Draft; the break week after the draft in order to run PRs is the perfect time to run the Drafts for each team, and it is a powerful tier in bringing teams together to theorize and teambuild. It is also especially popular and we are excited to include it in the tournament.


With ADVPL out of the way, lets talk ADVLTL. We will be giving our third custom avatar to ADVLTL this coming year. Additionally, the following tiers will be guaranteed to return:

ADV UUBL
ADV RU
ADV PU
ADV ZU
ADV LC
ADV DOU
Orre Colosseum

We will also be going up to 8 teams. For the final three spots is where we want the most community feedback. Obviously we can include Ubers, UU, and NU, but their inclusion in ADVPL means we're not sure if people would want that. We can also include other tiers; ADV 1v1 and ADV Random Battles were included this year, and we want feedback from people who played in the tour on how that went. Ideally, we will be going with 10 tiers for the first edition with a custom avatar.

To recap, we plan on each tour looking like this:

8 Teams, 8 Slots, 11 players minimum. 110k. Manager selfbuys 15+25

ADV Ubers
ADV OU Bo3
ADV OU
ADV OU
ADV OU
ADV UU
ADV NU
ADV Draft

8 Teams, 10 Slots, 13 players minimum. 130k. Manager selfbuys 15+25

ADV Ubers
ADV UU
ADV UUBL
ADV RU
ADV NU
ADV PU
ADV ZU
ADV LC
ADV DOU
Orre Colosseum

8 Teams, 10 Slots, 13 players minimum. 130k. Manager selfbuys 15+25

ADV UUBL
ADV RU
ADV PU
ADV ZU
ADV LC
ADV DOU
Orre Colosseum
ADV 1v1
ADV Random Battles
+1

Alright, I know that was a lot. Just a few things before I turn this over to community input:

- Feedback on ADVPL is encouraged, but keep the following in mind:
The custom avatars of this subforum are meant to serve the ADV OU community; therefore 50% OU is a strong requirement if we're going to allow LTL to have a custom avatar
Ubers UU and NU were chosen for their historical inclusion in ADVPL, to avoid arbitrary decision making on tier inclusion
Making ADVPL a 10 slot tour is possible. Making ADVPL 12 slots is not on the table for 2027/2028, but expanding ADVLTL for 2027/2028 would definitely be on the table.

- Please make sure your discussion is focused and relevant. One liners will be deleted.
- We are genuinely interested in hearing feedback from the lower tier community! If you played in ADVPL, ADVLTL or ADV Slam over the last year, please mention it in your post.
- Tier bashing of any kind will not be tolerated, and may warrant deletion of your post. Advocate, don't discourage.
 
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I’m a fan of the idea of advltl dropping UU and Ubers who already have advpl representation, but I think moving forward - with the custom avatar reward especially - including random battles as a tier seems unwise. It was very frustrating going undefeated personally and still not qualifying for top cut so I may be biased, but it was always disheartening to tie or barely lose a week where our rands player simply pulled worse teams and for some reason or another wasn’t able to claw back the win because of factors that just seemed outside of their control. As a doubles player I don’t have any experience with other tiers that could replace the slot but I think it’d be a conversation I want others to have.
 
With an obviously large amount of bias as a player who is pretty much an adv nu main (lol) atp: I feel like dropping ubers, uu, and nu from ltl misses the mark. While I can't say for certain regarding the other two tiers, though I'm sure they are in a similar boat, ltl is one of the few teamtours containing what is a relatively popular tier with a competitive upper end of players as far as mickey mouse tiers go.

Our team didn't draft a dedicated rands main into our rands slot and that likely had an impact on my perception of the slot, but it seemed fairly miserable even just putting a generalist who is baseline good at pokemon there. I wasn't left on the highest impression of it as a solid tier going forward, apologies to the randbat mains who will see this, I mean no shade.

1v1 was spectacular and the playerbase there seems very amazing though, I will say.
 
Played OU in ADVPL and RU in ADVLTL, also played last year's circuit (after squeaking by as top 19, rest in peace oof_maxima), I wanted to give my opinion on said tours and their changes:

Regarding Last Chance, the "no johns" format seems very excluding to people with busy weekly schedules, I myself lately only really have real time for mons during the weekend, so, if said short rounds are implemented, I hope there's at least some leniency regarding extensions. Even back when I only had uni to worry about, the ADV Revival 2 format of 5-day-rounds already felt way too short and most people I've seen that have played it seem to agree.

Regarding ADVPL/ADVLTL, I know giving feedback on what has already been decided is probably fruitless, but anyway: Most lower tiers already have few tournaments a year and axing one of their tours, especially being the currently most-prestigious one, feels terrible. Even if ADVLTL reaches the "same prestige" as ADVPL (not really a measurable thing, but you get what I mean), it's still a net loss, especially considering ADVLTL still has somewhat of a prestige among the lower tier players. I wish there was more prior communication/some kind of surveying before taking such an impactful decision. The inclusion of draft also feels a little arbitrary, especially with how the tier has historically had some disputes regarding being included in smogon tours
Regarding the ADVLTL format, I mostly agree with what Stox said, 1v1 is great but Random Battles being on a tour with CA stakes feels iffy, maybe there's a way to include 1v1 without Randbats?
 
*disclaimer that i think either the status quo or the proposed change will not be the end of the world either way


I guesssss the change for slam isn’t crazy but i’d advocate sticking with individual cups. I like being able to choose to only participate in PU cup if i want to play some PU and not be forced to play tiers im not interested in at the moment. yes its harder to qualify for the playoffs if you only do a few cups, but its still not that hard. If you want to reward people for going far in a few cups vs. spreading out a few 3rd round exits in every cup, you could institute a best finish limit of like 3 and count only the top 3 finishes of each player.

Double elimination bo5 still has similar issues of being a slog once you get to the later stages/depending on how big the bracket is
 
goldmason said:

ADV Slam​


ADV Slam is rapidly approaching (early October), and before Joaf stepped down from mod he had a tentative plan to remove the cups and turn this tournament into something more easily approachable for the community, and an easier hosting experience. Here is what it currently looks like:

- No more cups
- Bo5, Double Elimination
- Every week, one tier will be rolled as the starting tier. The loser of Game 1 will choose the tier for the next game, and so on until there is a winner. Repeats are not allowed.
- 5k reacts prize; willing to extend this to more than just the winner.

We would love feedback on this proposal, especially while there is still time before the tournament. Is this something the lower tier community wants? Is there something to change about the format? Do you have ideas about prizing? Let us know!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...
I think this tour idea is super cool but I'm altogether opposed to having it replace what currently exists for slam. A lot of people just sign up for the tiers they want to play given these relatively obscure ADV lower tiers rarely see play in individuals, with only one to three tours per year for the tier and generations respective classic/slam tour. I think running this as a seperate tour under the name "ADV Homefield Advantage" at some point between Slam and ADVPL or some other moment of downtime within the tournament schedule makes way more sense personally.

goldmason said:

ADVPL and ADVLTL​


OK now for the meat and potatoes. ADV mods have been thinking long and hard about ADVPL, ADVLTL, and how we want to approach these tournaments in the coming year. The recent ADVLTL was a major success especially for a tournament with no advertised prize, and we think it's long overdue for custom avatar representation. However, we only have 3 customs per year to allocate. In addition, every year there are more and more tiers vying for inclusion in both of these tournaments, and expanding year over year (which, it seems like every other tour on the site is forced to do) diminishes both the perceived prestige of the tournaments and the player/manager experience.

To combat this, we are cutting the size of ADVPL. When choosing the final lineup for ADVPL, we decided to go back to the basics, and use only the tiers considered "official" (Ubers, UU, NU, and of course OU) at the end of ADV's time as a CG. This matches similarly to the format for the original few ADVPLs, with the exception of not doubling on lower tier slots in favor of OU, since this would be our flagship ADV OU tournament each year. Our other major requirement was 50% OU slots for a similar reason.

We are also dedicated to building hype for this tournament this coming March. You can expect hype articles, video coverage week over week, guest commentary, and especially Power Rankings. We want to bring back the prestige of ADVPL and make it a tournament that the community can really be proud of and hyped about, even more than before.

With those requirements, we sit at 7 slots. We have unanimously decided to give the final slot to ADV Draft; the break week after the draft in order to run PRs is the perfect time to run the Drafts for each team, and it is a powerful tier in bringing teams together to theorize and teambuild. It is also especially popular and we are excited to include it in the tournament.


With ADVPL out of the way, lets talk ADVLTL. We will be giving our third custom avatar to ADVLTL this coming year. Additionally, the following tiers will be guaranteed to return:

ADV UUBL
ADV RU
ADV PU
ADV ZU
ADV LC
ADV DOU
Orre Colosseum

We will also be going up to 8 teams. For the final three spots is where we want the most community feedback. Obviously we can include Ubers, UU, and NU, but their inclusion in ADVPL means we're not sure if people would want that. We can also include other tiers; ADV 1v1 and ADV Random Battles were included this year, and we want feedback from people who played in the tour on how that went. Ideally, we will be going with 10 tiers for the first edition with a custom avatar.

To recap, we plan on each tour looking like this:

8 Teams, 8 Slots, 11 players minimum. 110k. Manager selfbuys 15+25

ADV Ubers
ADV OU Bo3
ADV OU
ADV OU
ADV OU
ADV UU
ADV NU
ADV Draft

8 Teams, 10 Slots, 13 players minimum. 130k. Manager selfbuys 15+25

ADV Ubers
ADV UU
ADV UUBL
ADV RU
ADV NU
ADV PU
ADV ZU
ADV LC
ADV DOU
Orre Colosseum

8 Teams, 10 Slots, 13 players minimum. 130k. Manager selfbuys 15+25

ADV UUBL
ADV RU
ADV PU
ADV ZU
ADV LC
ADV DOU
Orre Colosseum
ADV 1v1
ADV Random Battles
+1

Alright, I know that was a lot. Just a few things before I turn this over to community input:

- We are not particularly interested in feedback on ADVPL. We want to lock this format in for at least a few years, and 50% OU is a strong requirement if we're going to allow LTL to have a custom avatar.
- Please make sure your discussion is focused and relevant. One liners will be deleted.
- We are genuinely interested in hearing feedback from the lower tier community! If you played in ADVPL, ADVLTL or ADV Slam over the last year, please mention it in your post.
- Tier bashing of any kind will not be tolerated, and may warrant deletion of your post. Advocate, don't discourage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...
I personally think we should run the teamtours like we did this year. Shrinking ADVPL and with the stipulation of 50% OU benefits nobody, since there are less opportunities to play ADV OU for a CA, with a similar effect to people who only play one or two lower tiers (especially with LTL proposal 2). A shrunken ADVPL promotes less tier flexibility and once again with LTL proposal 2 you don't really have a tournament that promotes tier flexibility with LTL placing more of a focus on doubles and weirder formats like Rands and 1v1. 12 slots ADVPL with or this years format with an OU over ZU are probably fine but still feel like downgrades compared to this years formats. As for LTL, I think going down to 10 slots with 8 teams (which is probbaly ideal for a CA tour) creates a situation where something that made the tour feel good gets cut. 1v1 and Rands had a lot of support, but having a "Lower Tier League" without Ubers, UU, and NU just feels bad. I also don't think each team having to draft 3 doubles players (2 starters + 1 sub) is feasible but I could also just be wrong on this.
 
i think lots of these suggestions are awesome actually
new advpl format with ltl being supposed to matter more is p cool. i support adv nfe for 10th slot if ur gonna cut ubers uu nu from advltl.
i also support changing the slam format from cups to bo5s -> a lot of the arguments for classic keeping cups is that they draw in mainers who really want to play their One Tier. as far as slam goes, how many people are like, yea i'm elite tier in Exclusively One ADV Lowtier.
 
As an active ADV forum team tour tour player I'm content with the changes to ADVPL. I think five OU slots in the last edition of ADVPL was certainly too much. I found that the quality of many of the OU games this past ADVPL didn't really meet the standard I'd want for the tour. As one of the players doing a good chunk of the prep work for the bo1 players, I also felt some strain from the number of slots. I'm pretty confident that four OU slots (one bo3, three bo1s) keeps the OU pool up to snuff while accomodating ADV's large and growing playerbase.

On potential changes I'd like to see to ADVPL, I think a 10 slot ADVPL would be wise. I don't mind the 8 slot format, but RU and PU are both good and competitive tiers with enough players to make for solid pools in an 8-team tournament. ADV is also one of the most popular oldgens on the site and the playerbase is more than capable of accomodating 10 slots. I would personally want to see Draft cut from the tour, as having played it team tours and been a standard tiers player in team tours with a draft slot, I find it incongruous and a disproportionately high amount of work compared to the other slots.

What I feel strongest is the ADVLTL proposals. I'm on board with making ADVLTL a custom avatar tour, but cutting Ubers, UU and NU from an ADV lower tier-centred tour seems a little silly given their storied history and importance within the generation. I'm also concerned that tiers like UUBL, ZU, 1v1 or the doubles tiers would have a hard time finding enough solid starters to make a competitive pool. I'd also be down to replace ADVLTL with a flex-slot tour to keep the historically important lower tiers in the tour while giving the smaller tiers in the tour some time in the limelight.
 
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speaking as someone who played nu in all of the previous editions of these tournaments

I don’t think the change to slam is a good one. These tiers only have so many chances to be played each year without a ladder, so reducing the number of games played of each is a negative. Specifically it’s also removing one of only two chances to play it in a bo3 format (the other being single elim nu / other tier classics)

I don’t mind pl / ltl changes at first glance, it’s a neat solution to the problem. I do think it’s a shame to reduce opportunities for OU and any tier only represented in LTL to interact. A lot of lower tiers benefit when OU players drop down and play them, and I think this change further entrenches a gap between the tiers.
 
I found that the quality of many of the OU games this past ADVPL didn't really meet the standard I'd want for the tour.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...
With a few outlying exceptions I didn't find this to be the case. Yes, sometimes people occasionally blundered or threw or miscalculated, but this happens in every tour and would still happen with four OU slots. Three years ago, ADV exploded. The number of Little Timmy 1200s on the ladder and in individual tournaments quintupled practically overnight. Many of these players, and those who followed, stuck around and have been developing their abilities. One could argue that Mushi League already serves the role of player development for the tier and that ADVPL should be reserved only for players who are already established and whose skill has fully crystalized, but this fails to recognize a gap that currently exists in the tournament space. Mushi has always been better at uplifting low and midlevel players, since a higher proportion of their team is better than them. If ADVPL's already very competitive draft is further narrowed, this leaves people hoping to ascend to high level play in a much tougher spot. I personally witnessed several surprise budget draft picks improve immensely over the course of the tour, and those people and countless others are still around and will be vying for the same slots, now greatly improved from last year.
As one of the players doing a good chunk of the prep work for the bo1 plyers, I also felt some strain from the number of slots.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...
I think the majority of the slots being bo1 already adequately reduces the strain of helping teammates prep, provided the team has drafted an adequate support core and it isn't just one person prepping 5 slots, which shouldn't be the case anyway.
I'm pretty confident that four OU slots (one bo3, three bo1s) keeps the OU pool up to snuff while accomodating ADV's large and growing playerbase.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...
The overall skill level of the game is increasing across the board just by virtue of the playerbase having spent more time with the game and I see no need to pull the ladder up behind. Keep 5 OU slots, for the culture.
 
in the vein of OU slot competency, I would like anyone to argue in good faith that OU3 and OU4 players were meaningfully better than the OU5ers. there is a vacuum at the top end as lots of elite players stop playing the format in tournament play - let's not scapegoat our growing playerbase of rookies for this
 
from the perspective of someone whos been playing adv lc actively for the past ~2 years or so, i am a bit disappointed to see the possibility of lc being cut from advpl. i get this is in large part to more legitimise advltl as a prestigious team tour (such as the efforts to provide a custom avatar award), and as such it makes sense to make advpl and advltl more distinct from one another. that said, as a player, reducing the slots of advpl from 12 down to 8 feels like a slap towards the other lower tiers esp given how actively played they are and how they hold advpl in high regard. i do see that 10 slot advpl is still on the table and with that in mind id like to also advocate for lc to still be included in a 10 format advpl. i think the meta has been in the best shape its ever been in and theres been lot of meta development and players showing up; itll be able to field a high quality pool of players imo. otherwise advpl format seems fine enough, but again if 10 slots is decided on then i think it makes more sense to have ru pu lc instead of draft imo but at that point idk how you objectively decide to select what formats to include over the other

on advltl, i definitely think format 1 is the way to go here, it feels absolutely wrong to not include uu nu ubers in advltl just because theyd already be in advpl when the tour is called adv lower tier league and theyre literally lower tiers to begin with. compare that with format 2 which has randbats, which respectfully is a whole different playing field from every other format here and it doesnt rly make sense to include. i suppose you could do format 2 then cut randbats so you have 10 slots rather than scrambling to add a slot
 
Slam
I rly like double elimination & Bo5 for a tour where you have to play that much tiers.
But, removing all individual tier tours sounds like a bad idea since most lower tiers are already low on tournaments to play.

ADVPL
I personaly enjoyed playing in this year's format and would be sad to see zu go. But I get the point of seperating the tiers between PL & LTL.
Excited to see draft in this tour. It requires good amount of prep, so having it for only 8 slot would be good for managers that will also help in other tiers.

ADVLTL
ADVLTL II just ended and it was ultra cool to play and be part of once again. (Let's go Chinchous).
I'd love for it to become bigger and have the custom as a reward, it's a great way to represent our lower tiers and show them love.
If we go for ADVPL's format mentioned in Gold Mason's post and remove "unofficial" lower tiers, we gotta go for the 2nd ADVLTL lineup with more lower tiers to showcase. This would make no dupplicate tiers between the 2 tours, so no jealous, we get to see more cool tiers, everyone is happy.
Keep UUBL & ZU, incredibly good tiers, with way more than enough mainers to join. (If you are a managers and don't know them come ask me)
 
goldmason said:
With ADVLTL II's conclusion, we are approaching the end of the calendar year. We have two tournaments to round it out that I want to talk to you, the community about. Additionally, I want to get feedback on some significant changes coming to our flagship tournaments next year!


ADV Slam​


ADV Slam is rapidly approaching (early October), and before Joaf stepped down from mod he had a tentative plan to remove the cups and turn this tournament into something more easily approachable for the community, and an easier hosting experience. Here is what it currently looks like:

- No more cups
- Bo5, Double Elimination
- Every week, one tier will be rolled as the starting tier. The loser of Game 1 will choose the tier for the next game, and so on until there is a winner. Repeats are not allowed.
- 5k reacts prize; willing to extend this to more than just the winner.

We would love feedback on this proposal, especially while there is still time before the tournament. Is this something the lower tier community wants? Is there something to change about the format? Do you have ideas about prizing? Let us know!

ADV Last Chance and Circuit​


Just touching on this for a moment; this year's ADV Last Chance is a new tournament that has been done in other generations. It features a No Johns format, which means each round is played over 3-4 days; Mon-Thurs, then Fri-Sun. I hope everyone will play in it and let us know if it is something worth bringing back next year! Also would love to hear feedback on the circuit this year!

ADVPL and ADVLTL​


OK now for the meat and potatoes. ADV mods have been thinking long and hard about ADVPL, ADVLTL, and how we want to approach these tournaments in the coming year. The recent ADVLTL was a major success especially for a tournament with no advertised prize, and we think it's long overdue for custom avatar representation. However, we only have 3 customs per year to allocate. In addition, every year there are more and more tiers vying for inclusion in both of these tournaments, and expanding year over year (which, it seems like every other tour on the site is forced to do) diminishes both the perceived prestige of the tournaments and the player/manager experience.

To combat this, we are cutting the size of ADVPL. When choosing the final lineup for ADVPL, we decided to go back to the basics, and use only the tiers considered "official" (Ubers, UU, NU, and of course OU) at the end of ADV's time as a CG. This matches similarly to the format for the original few ADVPLs, with the exception of not doubling on lower tier slots in favor of OU, since this would be our flagship ADV OU tournament each year. Our other major requirement was 50% OU slots for a similar reason.

We are also dedicated to building hype for this tournament this coming March. You can expect hype articles, video coverage week over week, guest commentary, and especially Power Rankings. We want to bring back the prestige of ADVPL and make it a tournament that the community can really be proud of and hyped about, even more than before.

With those requirements, we sit at 7 slots. We have unanimously decided to give the final slot to ADV Draft; the break week after the draft in order to run PRs is the perfect time to run the Drafts for each team, and it is a powerful tier in bringing teams together to theorize and teambuild. It is also especially popular and we are excited to include it in the tournament.


With ADVPL out of the way, lets talk ADVLTL. We will be giving our third custom avatar to ADVLTL this coming year. Additionally, the following tiers will be guaranteed to return:

ADV UUBL
ADV RU
ADV PU
ADV ZU
ADV LC
ADV DOU
Orre Colosseum

We will also be going up to 8 teams. For the final three spots is where we want the most community feedback. Obviously we can include Ubers, UU, and NU, but their inclusion in ADVPL means we're not sure if people would want that. We can also include other tiers; ADV 1v1 and ADV Random Battles were included this year, and we want feedback from people who played in the tour on how that went. Ideally, we will be going with 10 tiers for the first edition with a custom avatar.

To recap, we plan on each tour looking like this:

8 Teams, 8 Slots, 11 players minimum. 110k. Manager selfbuys 15+25

ADV Ubers
ADV OU Bo3
ADV OU
ADV OU
ADV OU
ADV UU
ADV NU
ADV Draft

8 Teams, 10 Slots, 13 players minimum. 130k. Manager selfbuys 15+25

ADV Ubers
ADV UU
ADV UUBL
ADV RU
ADV NU
ADV PU
ADV ZU
ADV LC
ADV DOU
Orre Colosseum

8 Teams, 10 Slots, 13 players minimum. 130k. Manager selfbuys 15+25

ADV UUBL
ADV RU
ADV PU
ADV ZU
ADV LC
ADV DOU
Orre Colosseum
ADV 1v1
ADV Random Battles
+1

Alright, I know that was a lot. Just a few things before I turn this over to community input:

- Feedback on ADVPL is encouraged, but keep the following in mind:
The custom avatars of this subforum are meant to serve the ADV OU community; therefore 50% OU is a strong requirement if we're going to allow LTL to have a custom avatar
Ubers UU and NU were chosen for their historical inclusion in ADVPL, to avoid arbitrary decision making on tier inclusion
Making ADVPL a 10 slot tour is possible. Making ADVPL 12 slots is not on the table for 2027/2028, but expanding ADVLTL for 2027/2028 would definitely be on the table.

- Please make sure your discussion is focused and relevant. One liners will be deleted.
- We are genuinely interested in hearing feedback from the lower tier community! If you played in ADVPL, ADVLTL or ADV Slam over the last year, please mention it in your post.
- Tier bashing of any kind will not be tolerated, and may warrant deletion of your post. Advocate, don't discourage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse...
I would like to post in support of both ADV DOU and Orre Colosseum in ADVLTL. I have played in both ADVLTL editions so far, and I have really enjoyed discussing both tiers with my DOU teammate when I have had the chance. I think both formats have a good amount of activity, with Orre in particular frequently running events of all kinds - even offline IRL tournaments.
Whether this proposal goes ahead or not, I hope I can play high level Orre in team tours for years to come.
 
This feels pretty bad, and honestly like a slap in the face to people who actually play low tiers. At least from my perspective, what I care about is being able to play these tiers and having tournaments for them, not the possibility of getting a custom avatar. If these changes go through, you are basically taking away TWO tournaments for nothing in return.

I can understand the PL changes tho. There was starting to be a lot of overlap between the 2 PLs, so trying to differentiate them makes sense, even if I am not a huge fan of the solution. But doing that while also removing the Cups at the same time feels really bad.

As for Slam specifically, I think removing the Cups is a mistake. They are one of the few chances we get during the year to play tournaments specifically dedicated to these tiers, and also to play them in Bo3s. Losing that is just bad for people who actually want to play these formats.

I also do not really see the problem with Slam being a significant time commitment. It is fine for one tournament to demand that much time.

If the goal is to make Slam more "accessible" for people who already play a million tournaments in other tiers and cannot realistically play every Cup, I would much rather see something like a cap on how many Cups can count towards playoff qualification. Is still something i wouldnt like but at least it would preserve the tournaments.

Basically, I do not think these are the right changes. For old low tiers especially it feels like we are just losing two tournaments and getting nothing back.
 
I have not really interacted with lower tiers but did start in OU last ADVPL. I enjoyed watching the lower tiers being played and it did get me more interested in trying out some lower tiers in the future. So in that sense seeing some of them go is a bit sad. However I know that ADV LTL was very appreciated this year and if this is what it takes to get a CA for this tour I am for it, provided that's what the LT community wants. I feel like not having some of the biggest lower tiers in Ubers, UU and NU in LTL is a bit silly though.

Also regarding the player level for the OU slots in the last ADVPL, I feel that the difference between the OU slot 3, 4 and 5 wasn't that big. However I also felt that there overall was a big difference in the quality of opponents in these slots with some games being better than others. I prefer giving more new players a chance in a lower OU slot over preserving higher quality games. I'm not sure one less OU slot would make the quality much better anyways but maybe the quality of mus would be raised slightly.
 
I am sorry for posting again in here, but I was going through old messages and saw the main message I sent to the ADV Mods back when I created ADV Grand Slam in 2023. In reading it, it basically lays out what the purposes of ADV Grand Slam was supposed to be, which is, provide an opportunity for emerging lower tiers to have their own solo tournament space within the ADV subforum. Eliminating the cups and making a straight Bo5 Elimination tournament is contrary to the goals under which this tournament was created . That doesn't mean it's not a good decision if people want to do that - I just would appreciate if the name was changed to something else if so, because it wouldn't really be ADV Grand Slam if that was the format. It's something different entirely.
 
I played 1v1 this year, and first of all, I want to say that the tier was very competitive and fun to play. Unfortunately, some great players went undrafted, so it would be really appreciated if this slot were included in an 8-team tournament.
On the other hand, exсluding Ubers, UU, and NU is a really strange decision to me. Why even name it LTL at that point, when it's more of an ADV OM league? I would personally choose to cut Randbats first, as it doesn't feel as competitive as the other slots.
 
The split is a good idea.

If the intention is to have ADVPL be the "official" formats, get rid of Draft. Give the slot back to OU.

To reiterate the argument I made for the inclusion of the 5th OU slot last year, the tour should aim to serve the current player base.
The player base has grown like 10x since ADVPL 1, the number of slots should reflect this (not necessarily a direct scaling, but an increase at the minimum).

Re quality of games;
Were there some lower quality games in ADVPL 6? ... Yes. Were there also lower quality games in ADVPL 5? ...Yes. This applies going all the way back to ADVPL 1. The overall quality of ADVPL 6 OU slots was pretty much the same as ADVPL 5. Sure there'll be some growing pains, like if someone wants to be a gigantic nerd and count out "bad quality" games in ADVPL 6 , you'd probably end up with a couple more than previous renditions of the tour, but the larger picture is for all intents and purposes the same.

Important to note, I believe the managers and player base were all happy with the number of players in ADVPL 6 anyway? So unless there's a good objective reason to change the format, I see no reason to revert back to 4 slots.

Re Prestige:

"Prestige" is one of the worst larps on the site. You ask any oldhead when the best time of a tier was, they're always gonna say a couple years ago. This has always been the case in the competitive pokemon scene. A community completely enamoured by viewing the past with nostalgic lenses. The tournament should be focused on its current playerbase, rather than making decisions to appease an audience that isn't watching.
 
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I have to say personally I'd rather have 2 teamtours with lower tiers I play in than one of those teamtours get a custom avatar it didn't have before. I find the changes to be kind of unnecessary especially when looking at LTL which is already doing fine without adding a reward.

There's a degree to which it feels like lower tier PL players get "relegated" to the smaller tour, like I personally held off from signing up for LTL this year not because of a lack of reward but because I wanted other players to get a shot to show up. Getting the 2 tours has been extremely helpful and healthy to the ecosystem of ADV PU, allowing the playerbase to grow rather than settle on a core of the top players only and I'd be very reticent to give that up.

I'm also against reducing the integration of lower tiers with the bigger areas of the ADV community, ADVPL is the main time in a year I get to know other players in ADV and hear different perspectives on the state of the tiers and that mechanism would just kinda go away with nothing to replace it. It all feels a bit counter to what I thought was an ethos of the ADV community, that OU will always be a natural focus of the community but integrating it with the lower tiers helps everyone. I don't exactly have a suggestion for what changes I would make if changes are wanted, so I guess my thought is to not change something that's already working.
 
Circuit:

I played in all the OU circuit tours so far except Winters SSNL - was all very fun to me, not much to say. I'd maybe be in favor of one additional OU tour to close the gap between cup and summer seasonal, but if I remember correctly there was something there that just happened to get cancelled. Also, the Last Chance "No Johns" tour sounds cool. But yeah really enjoyed playing those, depending on time I'll certainly run back at least a couple of those next year.

ADVPL:

I also think there should remain 5 slots of OU. There's just an increasing (ton) of people who want to play and it's already genuinely competitive in terms of drafting with 5 OU slots. Also, if the intention is to give a custom to LTL, then yeah I suppose ADVPL should be viewed as primarily OU anyways, where it would make sense to keep 5 slots.

As for the lower tiers I don't play them so I don't have much to say, but it seems like if the LTL people prefer to just have more options for tours and don't care about the compartmentalization of LTL = Custom, ADVPL = OU, then the prior plan (this year) with more lower tier slots across both tours and putting the custom on WC would make sense, so it looks like it just comes down to what those players want (surely though it'd be hype to have a super competitive LTL with a prize).

Thanks to the organizers for all this stuff :pimp:
 
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