Tournament UUWC II Format Discussion

[Lily]

thank you lydian we love this spheal so much
​

Hey! I've gotten a few complaints in my PMs about UUWC's format not including certain formats or regions, so I'm making this thread as an opportunity for people to make their case. The current discussion topics are mostly:

• Is 8 starting slots enough? It notably leaves out GSC UU and RBY UU. Would a shift to 10 slots with those two added in be optimal? Maybe a 4th SS or Bo3 > RBY if people still aren't ready for that. Bo3 sucks though.​
• Should US West + Midwest be combined? Both teams were kinda crap last year and people are annoying me about it so.​
• Do other European countries such as Germany, Italy and Spain feel like they can field a full roster? If they do, how do we deal with the extra team count? We'd have to bump up to 16 and I'm not sure if we can manage that.​

For reference, last year's teams were:

US Northeast
US South
US Midwest
US West
Latin America
Brazil
Canada
Europe
France
United Kingdom
India
Asia + RoW

We'd like to include all of these again if possible.

So this thread is for that & and any other questions or answers you may have can go here! Please make use of this, last year's tournament was kind of a shitshow and I think we could really do with some improvements.

 

[freezai]

free india

 

[Pak]

8 slots is enough. Filling out even 8 UUPL teams with 10 starting slots has gotten hard enough as is to some extent. I dont know how many teams we'll settle on but if it's in the neighborhood of 12, then the inherent balance issues with world cups will be even worse than they already are since its not like all these players are evenly distributed throughout the world either. Some teams can legit have strong UUPL starters on the bench with no real concern given their depth, while many of these less smogon-populated regions have a hard time fielding a decent roster on paper with 8 slots as is. This wasn't meant to throw shade, but it would even the playing field in a bit, especially since 8 slots does leave more up to variance too with its smaller sample size since this game is in fact really bad.

Please please please let midwest and west merge. Again this isn't meant to throw shade but from an outside perspective in the west chat last year, it seemed like there were like 2.5 people that cared and they did because they had to. Sure, they were out super fast because of the number of teams that qualified, but it wasn't a huge shock to see a roster that solidly talented on paper fall flat with how little activity there was. I know for sure it would be a repeat this year, if not worse, since chances are the main west guys probably won't want to be tangled up in that again. They did finish last for a reason and seeing them not even form would not be all that surprising. Midwest on the other hand also finished bottom 3 and the man who spearheaded it all hasn't logged on for like 3 months. Considering there are soundly better teams than a theoretical midwest-west hybrid, two of which being in the same country without combining at all, and also Europe which is the hybrid of like 17 regions already, I don't see what the big issue would be. Yes, I'm biased, living in the midwest, but I know for sure it would make things 1000x more interesting for the people living in these two regions.

Also 12 teams spreads things thin enough as is. I don't see any world that we reasonably get to 16 teams in of itself, not even mentioning the resulting drop off in competitiveness after a certain point.

Edit: Last thing: if we do have 12 teams the playoffs should be expanded to 6 imo. I know I know people are going to say its going to reduce hype for the top 2 teams skipping a round etc. etc., but it's uuwc of all things. In all seriousness, 4 teams qualifying out of 12 is just asking for players to not give a shit super quickly, given that teams are bound to have rough starts and coming back can easily seem insurmountable in the early-mid stages. With a pool system like this, people fucking around or getting activitied throws a wrench into everything, especially since it can literally be advantageous to john games against teams off to rocky starts in hopes of getting some bullshit in your favor.

 

[Cam]

I generally prefer more starting slots and tiers, though im sure very few people care about RBY UU, a few more (not sure how big that few is) care about gsc im sure.
But if you expand the starting slots in this tour it makes the teams that already have a roster advantage have a bigger advantage on the teams that field fewer good players. The region restrictions already make this tour naturally more favoured towards certain regions.
Obviously as many people want to be included as possible but teams and their captains will still want to win games and pick out established and solid players to start in each slot. Obviously to keep the tour inclusive I'd personally want the discords for each region to be open to newer players who may not get a starting slot to help the team by playing practice games, helping with teams or being a sub slot if necessary.

 

[AM]

Spectator opinion.

RBY UU is more suited to UUFPL or RBY PL than a WC or regular UUPL version (sorry RBY UU people). It's not a format that's very engaging to watch unless you sort of the main the format or know what's going on. My teammates wouldn't even want to watch my games because watching things like Tenta click Wrap to make "progress" is a bit painful to watch at times, and I didn't blame them nor was concerned as winning was the focus anyways. Its community has made a lot of efforts to balance the format and are making progress with the suspect of things like Dnite but the nature of the format can still be very RNG heavy and chaotic, with games coming down to sleep rolls on Hypno and management of a couple oppressive things like Tentacruel and Dugtrio to not steamroll a team not even accounting for crits and freezes from other things.

Bigger issue is you would also have the issue of actually slotting and finding someone to play it, it's not even a guarantee if you can get someone to cover it based on country. It's not very hard to learn but at this point in time there's only about a camp of like 10ish people who focus on that format. I think the 8 slots is fine for some of the points Cam and Pak brought up.

 

[BigFatMantis]

Re: RBY UU - I think it’s fine for tours, but not a UUWC simply because finding someone in each specific region to play RBY UU is even harder than finding someone to play GSC UU. It can be perfectly fine for draft tours though, as I think that community has plenty of solid players to be spread across teams in a draft format. As for spectating, I personally enjoy watching RBY games because I think they are funny, and I know others that prefer to watch RBY than some other tiers like GSC. For slots - UUWC is already very large with the player base and teams that 8 slots is fine.

re: West/Midwest - merging is fine - the only “downside” would probably be others in either region being left out, but it also adds a full roster for an extra team to be added in to the tour so I don’t think that’s a big deal. I would like to point out though that the West roster looks just fine, better than a lot of other teams currently, and there are new faces that signed up for West that weren’t on the roster last year that would probably care a lot and be really into it (Maki, faded, Decem, etc). They aren’t mega loaded with super duper superstars like the East roster but there are solid players there. Midwest though is pretty dire and at the moment I don’t even see enough total players signed up to field a team, so if a merge were to happen it should be more because of Midwest’s roster challenges and not so much West’s roster.

re: other teams - how do other world cups handle this? If a country is able to field a full team, could you include all teams that want in and just have qualifiers to narrow down the teams? It doesn’t look like it would be an issue (especially if west and Midwest merge since that opens an extra team slot), but I do believe any team that is able to field a roster should have a shot to play something.

 

[Freeroamer]

Played last year and this definitely needs some work, not playing this year so hopefully I can provide an unbiased viewpoint:

• Is 8 starting slots enough? It notably leaves out GSC UU and RBY UU. Would a shift to 10 slots with those two added in be optimal? Maybe a 4th SS or Bo3 > RBY if people still aren't ready for that. Bo3 sucks though.

Yeah, this is more than enough. Maybe if there had been more of a heads-up that RBY could be included in UUWC and had been included in Classic so potential players would have a chance to pick it up then it would be more feasible to consider it here, but seeing as that didn't happen I think it would be a strange move to include it. Pak also explained why 10 slots doesn't seem like a great idea so I won't repeat that, unfortunately GSC has the smallest player pool out of the other UU oldgens so it's the correct choice to drop.

• Should US West + Midwest be combined? Both teams were kinda crap last year and people are annoying me about it so.

I think a lot of this comes down to the number of teams that you can get together. 12 was a simply awful number last year because it really left no good options for the traditional pools format of a WC. 4 out of 12 qualifying led to teams being knocked out super early which always ruins the most exciting part of the pools phase, the run-in, as teams either don't play their games or don't care. Certainly there has to be a focus on either reducing or increasing the number of teams unless there's a better way to manage 12 teams, I think the former is far more achievable as I would be shocked if you can get 16 teams together without a number of teams having multiple players picking up tiers as they go and potentially getting smashed as a result. Assuming each team needs 8 starters plus 2 subs at a minimum, that's 160+ players that will be involved in the tournament. Last year there was just under 300 signups, plus bigger regions such as the US regions and Europe will inevitably have a larger share of that meaning some regions will have an extremely limited pool of players to pick from, almost certainly requiring players to learn tiers on the fly. UUPL earlier this year had 227 signups for reference. I'm all for inclusivity but not at the complete disregard for competitiveness which I think going for 16 teams would be.

So if you want to go the other way of reducing teams, then combining two teams that performed poorly last year that are geographical neighbours seems a very sensible option. It gets you closer to what is imo a more optimal number of teams and should improve the competitiveness of the team.

 

[Plague von Karma]

Estarossa asked for someone to make a case for RBY, so I guess I'm doing this again. I don't think it's ready, though.

though im sure very few people care about RBY UU

there's only about a camp of like 10ish people who focus on that format

UU is one of the most played non-OU RBY formats, which is why people played it a lot in UUFPL. It ended up getting more signups than GSC UU overall as well, and the people who did sign up were largely not bandwagoners either. The entire strategy dex got revamped, resources are at an all-time high, and people have had sustained interest in it since its revival in 2019. It's got some of the most intricate histories of old Smogon tiers as well. The problem is that the userbase isn't as interconnected with UU itself, unlike other old gen lower-tiers, which is why it was included in UUFPL. Once you go past OU and Random Battles, UU is the next most popular thing. There's a lot more players than you're letting on and I don't know why this stereotype continues to get pushed. 10 is such a lowball.

So with that out of the way, let's talk about the real issue. Distribution, as AM said, which is where things get difficult. This is what I've come up with from surveying the playerbase.

US Northeast - Volk, phoopes
US South - LordThorx, pacattacc
US Midwest - EB0LA
US West - LTG, Ctown6
Latin America - El Cadaver, TC, Zerses
Brazil - idfk, LpZ?
Canada - Shellnuts
Europe - Lusch, kjdaas, Aliss, Justamente, FOMG, Ruft, Amaranth if he's drunk or paid enough. There's a lot here.
France - Koalacancee, iKiQ, Louna, Oiseau Bleu
United Kingdom - Me
I believe ausma, Sevi 7, and SBPC are US but I am not sure where abouts they are. They have all played the tier, though. Samy0w, meloyy, and melanie also exist but I don't know where they're from. Zokuru and Raahel could play but they play GSC. Note that this isn't conclusive; I'm not certain if any of these people that I noted would actually play, and I'm sure some may play a different tier.

I do not know anyone who would play for India or Asia. There are community members from these regions - particularly Asia - but I have not seen them play UU. LpZ was put forward for RBY by esta, and even there I'm very sure Brazil would want them to play something else, like ADV UU. In terms of balance, I don't know if I like this. US Midwest, Canada, and Europe would gain a significant advantage in RBY because the skill gap after the top 3 players widens significantly. This reflects in their RBYPL and UUFPL results. Considering 3, maybe 4 regions may have issues even finding a player, and some are definitely lower-levelled, it feels hard to recommend the tier here. If you expanded the teams to have like, Germany, Netherlands, or something, you may even out the competition, but doing that for the sake of RBY would be like masking a problem.

I'm very glad the tier is being considered, but I think the playerbase would need to be grown first. It's best played as a draft format rather than a WC one. I very much agree with Freeroamer that additional notice would have made it far easier to have players pick it up and feasibly compete. This would have also given a chance for the greater UU community to better-understand the tier and interact with RBYers more, which is something that still needs working on.

If the distribution isn't as big an issue as I think, though, then I see little argument against it. Esta mentioned that other tiers have similar problems?

EDIT: Volk and phoopes confirmed they're US NE, which is actually quite a big deal.

 

[SOMALIA]

Alot of new talent in SS UU (which we seen in UUFARMPL) , I think an extra SS slot would be great to see; as how it is current gen and it'd give newer players a chance to break in. It will also give a significant amount of extra games helping towards metagame development potentially.

 

[Monky25]

hey

on the topic of adding in slots like GSC, RBY, or a 4th SS slot, the only one I see that can work is the 4th SS slot, which I do support largely with the reasoning of the post above. I think its certainly doable to have a 4th slot with it being the current gen and whatnot, and also can bypass the distribution problem talked about in GSC and RBY. I was a big supporter of the creation of UUFPL, and I think its great to allow lesser known players to have more experience in a team environment and build up credibility for future team tours. I admittedly do not care much about GSC or RBY and if they do manage to solve the distribution problem then cool, but rn looking at the scenario it would be better to let them build up their playerbases for a future WC since as of now it only looks suited for a draft format.

edit: just found it it has to be both or nothing for this tour with adding an SS slot so yeah. If each region can get a GSC player then sure add it

on the merging of west and midwest, I don't really mind it too much but as someone who would be on west I'd have a good chance at being left out with the merge since I'm pretty new but if midwest cant field a full roster then sure it can happen. Like BigFatMantis said the West roster looks pretty solid, with goats like Viv, TSR, and shiba leading the pack while other great players like Maki, decem, faded, maroon, KM, bfm, yours truly also being on the roster, so it would moreover be a lack of midwest players this time around. I'm actually make a list of signups by region down below just to show how many per region has signed up.

US West-16
Brazil-13
UK-10
US South-11
Europe-15
LA-11
Midwest-7
NE-13
Canada-8
France-19
Oceania / Asia-3
India-34

this is about a rough estimate of the amount of signups per region. There's also a good amount from germany so that would prob the team that could take the 12th slot if west and midwest were to combine. As for adding other teams, I don't think that's too great of an idea considering 12 is looking rough to make atm with ocenia / asia having like 3 so far (sorry if I am wrong). That's pretty much it, even though I wasn't around last World cup I heard many do not like this tour, so hopefully this post was able to contribute something for solving the current problems to make the tour more enjoyable for everyone.

 

[hs]

Echoing the words of the people above that including RBY UU in a supposedly “high stakes” tour is a mistake. While the player base for the tour is very sketchy (as mentioned in some discussion, there is some kind of overlap between GSC and RBY players) and also the fact that most of the “quality players” reside on the same country + others are not signing up, this isn’t the bigger problem for me. As someone who spectated most of the UUFPL games, watching RBY games is not pleasing, due to games having an extensive amount of turns equating to rolling a dice as to decide who’s gonna win. Will my Dugtrio crit next turn? Will I manage to hit 43 Wraps consecutively? This has been brought up multiple times in the UU discord, and all I’ve got was a “this is just how the tier is lol” and “the tier is entertaining af”, and I’m still not convinced at all. It might be entertaining from an outside perspective if you are into RBY for sure, but from my perspective as someone who’s managed UUPL / UUWC / UU Snake before, watching my player struggling to make progress because of an accentuated amount of RNG would not be okay, and I am not the only one to share these feelings. You could say that this could be applied to any other tiers etc, but there is a subtle difference between these things occurring naturally in other tiers as opposed to RBY, where aiming for the odds purposefully in order to get a shot is not an outlier, and this won’t improve the competitiveness of the tour. I’m totally in favor of Bo3 / a 4th UU slot > RBY/GSC.

Regarding: West vs Midwest merge, I’m not strongly against this, but I don’t think this is necessary at all. They’re both completely capable teams, and both are able to fit more than 12 players, especially since this year West seems to have a more substantial amount of people who care about the tour and have lately popped off in tours (i.e Maki, Decem, KM, EternalSnowman, TSR, Meru, Shiba, TJ). Meanwhile, Midwest has odr + fatty this year (which they should have had last one too but god knows what happened lmao), potencially Pak if he doesn’t delete if Midwest + West is not a thing, some players like Confide and Expulso have both gotten Slam semis (in diff years), and Luthier and avarice both had a great performance in some tours, notably the last UUPL/Slam and UU Majors, respectively. This surely improves their roster capacity by a lot now, and I don’t see “competitiveness” being an excuse for both teams to merge. Don’t give me wrong but last year’s failure was a result of the format of the tournament being wack (in Midwest’s case, the fault is on the captain’s shoulder as well, who clearly wasn’t active and still is nowhere to be seen, as of now).

Edit: Seems I forgot to post about the GSC part, but again, as a matter of raw amount of signups / competitiveness, this isn’t it either. Most players from the outside show discontent to the tier due to the mechanics being bad, most turns being relying on Sleep Talk, longer average games and so goes on. Obviously, this isn’t really my concern with it, but just how the majority sees it. Adaam has stated it in his post below mine, but we can’t count on all the people who signed up for UUPL to signup for UUWC. If you take a look at it, for example:

• HSA + d0nut (South)
• Mr. 378 + kaori (Midwest)
• Zokuru (France)
• Estarossa + ReeceHughes (United Kingdom)
• Leru (Germany / Europe realistically)
• Highways, LpZ, Hyogafodex (Brazil)
• Serene Grace (India)
• devin (Asia)

Some of these won’t signup, some won’t opt to play the tier, and there is a huge overlap with the quality players and some regions, which basically leaves a small pool of players. I’ve had enough problems with picking ADV / BW players but throwing someone in that slot and feeding teams is more realistical at least, having GSC would just aggravate this issue.

 

[Adaam]

First things first, expand playoffs to 6 teams and give top 2 seeds a bye, or reduce teams to 10. Pak and Freeroamer already addressed why this needs to be done, and a bye week for UUWC is not a problem at all.

Regarding the merger, I agree West definitely has a startable roster and this would mostly be to the benefit of Midwest players. I think the last year has seen a lot of new West players, so I don’t see them finishing poorly again. However, like Pak said, Midwest currently doesn’t exist and if they’re not able to field a roster it makes sense to give their second eligibility to US West. As of now, they have 7 signups, and if this persists then merge. It sucks for people on West who will get cut, but from what I understand WCOP does the same when qualifying teams lose (for example, Belgium can sign up to play for Europe). It looks like Germany has representation and can replace Midwest if need be (or Asia if Midwest gets players)

Lastly, I am against both GSC and RBY included. It’s already tough fielding 8 + 4 players for some regions and adding 2 more slots just exacerbates the burden for smaller regions. I am also skeptical of the pools being large enough. UUPL had 12-16 gsc signups? I doubt half of them signup for this tournament. Not to mention the geographical complications.

Regarding RBY, I agree with everything hs said. I cannot support a tier centralized around Wrap strategies and Duggy crits in a tournament. It’s mind-numbing. It sounds harsh but I know I’m not alone when I say this

 

[KM]

no strong opinion on everything else but (biased) opinion that west and midwest shouldn't merge -- imo the only justifiable reason for a region merge would be a situation where south and northeast both had 14 signups and west and midwest both had 7, or something similar. judging from signups so far, that doesn't seem to be the case at all -- west is pretty clearly the region with the most signups out of any US region so far and it doesn't make sense to consider a merge with it for that very reason.

i'd go as far as to say that even if it was decided that midwest needed to merge, there's no reason it should be west that it merges with (again, already the most signups of any us region). either merge it with whatever other us group has the least signups, or distribute it throughout. ideally tho, just leave it as four distinct regions

 

[Indigo Plateau]

Given that I’m co-hosting this, made the surveys that were created as a direct response of the complaints from UUWC last year, and have received a lot of PMs regarding UUWC in general, I wanted to voice my opinion on everything discussed. Some of my thoughts might have already been expressed.

I wouldn’t really mind if GSC was included - it would actually benefit South, considering we have two very strong players in HSA and d0nut. However, complications arise if it is included, since we need to find another tier for 10 slots - realistically, probably a 4th SS. I also have a bit of an issue with this given how smoothly 3 SS/CG slots have operated. It’s (imo) the perfect blend of competitiveness and participation. On top of that, you have the signups issue brought up in several posts before mine, so I won’t bother repeating it. A lot of people voiced their disappointment/disinterest in UUWC last year, but there were very few to no complaints on the tiers themselves, so I don’t see why we should change them now. That does transition me nicely to my next point.

I am HEAVILY in favor of merging Midwest and West. Both of these were bottom 3 teams last year for whatever reasons you want to attribute it to. There’s been posts of “well West has a good roster they just need to try”, but these posts forget that: 1) a lot of “key” players for both teams are deleting their signups if the merge doesn’t happen, 2) you can’t force people to care because at the end of the day UUWC (like any region based tournament) is somewhat unbalanced, and good luck convincing someone like say, Shiba or Pak (subjective examples) to care if they already don’t have as much of an interest in mons as they used to and don’t think their roster can beat NE, Europe, or whomever. Sure, there’s bound to be some player cuts here & there, but last I looked at the signups their combined roster could look like a very competitive one of 1/3 old West, 1/3 old Midwest, 1/3 players that weren’t in last year (brewfasa, Pak, odr, etc). The total signups also look flexible enough to make either 10 or 12 teams regardless of the combine. Most importantly though, the vast majority of players on these teams that have either posted or PMd me want the teams to combine, so I don’t really see why they shouldn’t. People from other regions saying “don’t combine just get them both to do better” sounds... well, very stupid. And no offense to anyone when I say this, but having key players delete signups for both of these regions just sounds like a surefire way of having them be at the bottom again.

I do like seeing discussion of the playoffs scenario. UUWC’s main flaw last year was # of teams with awkward playoffs. TPP mentioned to me ideally wanting 16 teams, but that’s pretty much impossible, so the only two options are keeping teams at 12, or decreasing to 10. If we keep teams at 12 I’ll push for a 6 team playoffs, and if we decrease to 10, I think 4 advancing is fine.

 

[KM]

deleting your signups because an arbitrary merge based on last year's performance doesn't happen is incredibly lame and structuring touring policy around people potentially deleting their signups because they didn't get the arbitrary merge they wanted is even lamer

edit: beyond principle, i checked and literally only 4 of the people from last year's west team signed up this year. midwest is also significantly different. making a decision based on last year's standings has no grounds if the playerbases are entirely different (they are)

 

[BigFatMantis]

deleting your signups because an arbitrary merge based on last year's performance doesn't happen is incredibly lame and structuring touring policy around people potentially deleting their signups because they didn't get the arbitrary merge they wanted is even lamer

While I think that Midwest should be able to merge with West if they don’t have enough players, and that the merge has few downsides, I agree with the sentiment here that basing any decisions on potential deleted sign ups should not be a thing and sets a bad precedent for the future for these types of tours.

If you don’t merge them then just let Midwest players put a secondary eligibility to whatever makes sense for them - if it’s mostly West then so be it. If some from eastern Midwest go to NE then fine.

 

[hs]

Given that I’m co-hosting this, made the surveys that were created as a direct response of the complaints from UUWC last year, and have received a lot of PMs regarding UUWC in general, I wanted to voice my opinion on everything discussed. Some of my thoughts might have already been expressed.

I wouldn’t really mind if GSC was included - it would actually benefit South, considering we have two very strong players in HSA and d0nut. However, complications arise if it is included, since we need to find another tier for 10 slots - realistically, probably a 4th SS. I also have a bit of an issue with this given how smoothly 3 SS/CG slots have operated. It’s (imo) the perfect blend of competitiveness and participation. On top of that, you have the signups issue brought up in several posts before mine, so I won’t bother repeating it. A lot of people voiced their disappointment/disinterest in UUWC last year, but there were very few to no complaints on the tiers themselves, so I don’t see why we should change them now. That does transition me nicely to my next point.

I am HEAVILY in favor of merging Midwest and West. Both of these were bottom 3 teams last year for whatever reasons you want to attribute it to. There’s been posts of “well West has a good roster they just need to try”, but these posts forget that: 1) a lot of “key” players for both teams are deleting their signups if the merge doesn’t happen, 2) you can’t force people to care because at the end of the day UUWC (like any region based tournament) is somewhat unbalanced, and good luck convincing someone like say, Shiba or Pak (subjective examples) to care if they already don’t have as much of an interest in mons as they used to and don’t think their roster can beat NE, Europe, or whomever. Sure, there’s bound to be some player cuts here & there, but last I looked at the signups their combined roster could look like a very competitive one of 1/3 old West, 1/3 old Midwest, 1/3 players that weren’t in last year (brewfasa, Pak, odr, etc). The total signups also look flexible enough to make either 10 or 12 teams regardless of the combine. Most importantly though, the vast majority of players on these teams that have either posted or PMd me want the teams to combine, so I don’t really see why they shouldn’t. People from other regions saying “don’t combine just get them both to do better” sounds... well, very stupid. And no offense to anyone when I say this, but having key players delete signups for both of these regions just sounds like a surefire way of having them be at the bottom again.

I do like seeing discussion of the playoffs scenario. UUWC’s main flaw last year was # of teams with awkward playoffs. TPP mentioned to me ideally wanting 16 teams, but that’s pretty much impossible, so the only two options are keeping teams at 12, or decreasing to 10. If we keep teams at 12 I’ll push for a 6 team playoffs, and if we decrease to 10, I think 4 advancing is fine.

Making it explicit that they are willing to delete their signups if the merge doesn’t happen just goes to show that their interest is not making this a more competitive tour, as they could otherwise fill in a strong roster without any problems, if that’s what they so desire. “Rigging” the tour decisions like this is just lame, as it’s clear they have other intentions with this merge. The “they performed poorly last year” argument is false, illogical and completely unreasonable, and in my view that’s just excusing the inexcusable, as they themselves have complained about “how west didn’t care last year” but then now are turning their backs to this tournament if a decision isn’t being made in their favor. It is clear as the day who cares about this tour and who doesn’t.

 

[ramolost]

i hate USA so i dont give a fuck about the whole midwest thing etc etc
just to say i heavily disagree with RBY or GSC being included. filling a roster for some countries is already hard enough, adding tiers with such a small playerbase wont help. we saw that limit in uufpl where some managers just threw random players into those tiers coz theres just not enough mainers (me included). france, and idt we are the only one, already struggled last year to find 5 old gens players;no need to make it harder. also RBY uu is an awful tier with low interest.
to be honest i dont see the problem with 8 players. while i think 4 ss might be good, bo3 rby gsc are bad ideas and 3 is enough ig.

 

[Indigo Plateau]

I don’t see how there’s talks of tournament rigging lol. The tournament goes on with or without them. I couldn’t care less for the individual player themselves and I’m sure (or I hope) that the underlying point in their deletions here is if the teams don’t merge, then one/both won’t have enough signups or a legit roster. It seems contradictory that it’s being said that them not wanting to participate if the teams don’t merge means that they’re not wanting to be competitive - that’s exactly what it says to me? Asking or expecting someone who’s up and coming vs someone who has been playing this game for years to put in the same effort is, at times, unrealistic. You can call it lame, but I personally wouldn’t want to participate either if my roster didn’t have a competitive environment, whereas a newcomer is taking each & every chance to play. My primary goal, and a main goal for any team tournament, is for it to be as competitive AND enjoyable as possible for everyone involved. As much as I hate the term “competitive”, you can’t argue that having the “bigger” names in the tour would make it more competitive. It’s not like merging both of these squads, one of which has only a handful of signups, is going to somehow destroy chances for newcomers or whatever the apparent scare is here.

I’m also confused as to why saying that they performed poorly last year is completely irrelevant, or maybe I phrased it poorly lol. The caring from last year has already been faulted to the poor formatting on the tournament’s first iteration. I’m not basing decisions on people deleting their signups, but I think it’s just an outright improvement if they were to merge. Like I stated before and will repeat (and again, no offense to anyone), I don’t see why people like TSR, Shiba, Pak, Viv, brewfasa, or whoever would want to participate based on their experiences from last year or if it’s not going to be enjoyable for them, and I think both rosters are very noticeably worse without these types of players in them. I can’t control if they delete their signups or not but if it can be prevented with little downside, why not? Again, I really haven’t seen any arguments against the merge besides “try harder”. Sure you can call it lame but if an individual thinks it’s not worth their time to play in a tour, then they won’t. Half of the people listed in hs’s post get thrown out the window if a merge doesn’t happen and then both rosters are down a few spots and unless we get more signups, it’s a problem that could be easily addressed.

 

[hs]

I don’t see how there’s talks of tournament rigging lol. The tournament goes on with or without them. I couldn’t care less for the individual player themselves and I’m sure (or I hope) that the underlying point in their deletions here is if the teams don’t merge, then one/both won’t have enough signups or a legit roster. It seems contradictory that it’s being said that them not wanting to participate if the teams don’t merge means that they’re not wanting to be competitive - that’s exactly what it says to me? Asking or expecting someone who’s up and coming vs someone who has been playing this game for years to put in the same effort is, at times, unrealistic. You can call it lame, but I personally wouldn’t want to participate either if my roster didn’t have a competitive environment, whereas a newcomer is taking each & every chance to play. My primary goal, and a main goal for any team tournament, is for it to be as competitive AND enjoyable as possible for everyone involved. As much as I hate the term “competitive”, you can’t argue that having the “bigger” names in the tour would make it more competitive. It’s not like merging both of these squads, one of which has only a handful of signups, is going to somehow destroy chances for newcomers or whatever the apparent scare is here.
I’m also confused as to why saying that they performed poorly last year is completely irrelevant, or maybe I phrased it poorly lol. The caring from last year has already been faulted to the poor formatting on the tournament’s first iteration. I’m not basing decisions on people deleting their signups, but I think it’s just an outright improvement if they were to merge. Like I stated before and will repeat (and again, no offense to anyone), I don’t see why people like TSR, Shiba, Pak, Viv, brewfasa, or whoever would want to participate based on their experiences from last year or if it’s not going to be enjoyable for them, and I think both rosters are very noticeably worse without these types of players in them. I can’t control if they delete their signups or not but if it can be prevented with little downside, why not? Again, I really haven’t seen any arguments against the merge besides “try harder”. Sure you can call it lame but if an individual thinks it’s not worth their time to play in a tour, then they won’t. Half of the people listed in hs’s post get thrown out the window if a merge doesn’t happen and then both rosters are down a few spots and unless we get more signups, it’s a problem that could be easily addressed.

I think you missed the point of my post, obviously the tour is still going to happen with or without them, but they’re obviously trying to get this decision to happen by using the “i’m gonna quit” card, we are not fools. If this is not rigging the hosters into making a decision, what is it?

I am confused about how “half of the people I mentioned” are deleting their signups, if they’re conveniently: Shiba, Pak, TSR, Viv. It is comical though how these “subjective examples” are coincidently well-known members of the same discord jerk and friends and etc, and just how they’re the only ones in favor of this merge. It is heart touching that their bonds are so strong that they wanna team up in the UUWC for the same team as well, but let’s not make this a side discord tour for the sake of having a healthier tour.

All the newcomers I’ve mentioned have stablished their names at least in the tour scene, Luthier, Expulso, odr, Confide all were in Midwest’s roster for World Cup, some have played the Smogon Snake Draft. And so did Maki, TJ, Meru before. If these “big names” really wanted to seek for a better tournament, they’d also be willing to help the newer faces to play in a for fun tournament, as they’re so experienced. There are new players everywhere, and I don’t see a damn problem with this, why must West and Midwest be the chosen teams to merge?

 

[pokemonisfun]

good luck convincing someone like say, Shiba

 

[EB0LA]

I'm just here to say the ones talking about RBY UU are actually ignorant on the tier, player base, and frankly talking out their asses.

As PVK has demonstrated RBY UU clearly has a wide diversified regional player base, that can cover near all regions in this tour. RBY UU is unfun to watch? I too can say that about every single other Gen. Why? Because same as them I do not follow that gens UU so it would be uninteresting for me to watch too.

Now with that out of the way, should RBY UU be added yet? Maybe, maybe not, but don't keep spreading misinformation if you're uninformed & speaking like you know what's going on in that tier or its playerbase. Sure not many lurk with your community, why? Because of people's opinions about RBY as mentioned already in this post. Instead of being open to learning or being inclusive, people just shut it down without actually knowing what's going on in that tier.

Anyway keep having a good day.

 

[Pak]

Ok here are my honest thoughts on all of this. May not be the most concise thing in the world bc I’m on break at work and this will probably turn into a uuwc rant in general more than anything but here we go. The thing I hate most about this kind of tournament, especially a sub forum World Cup or all things, where there are less implications and firm rules than say, the real thing, is how subjective literally anything is. People will always want to do what’s in their best interest, and for that I can’t fault them. Yes, the idea of being on a team with some of my friends did seem enjoyable. I won’t deny that and of course it was a factor in me pushing for a midwest-west merge. It was that and simply the fact that I know they had a shitty time last year and I know if I played it likely wouldnt have been all that different. Idk if people remember this but the two merging was thrown around last year and it ultimately fell through when ftl got midwest together. It seemed like a natural progression for the two to actually merge this year, especially since both teams finished bottom 3 the year before.

Whats really annoying here is a few things. First of all, it’s that me or anyone else isn’t alone in acting through their own self interest. For the record, I’m not looking down on the following people for doing the same, but they’re examples worth noting. The first one that comes to mind is that our tier leader up and left team uk to manage team Europe, an objectively much stronger team. Again, I can’t blame her, but at the same time, it applies to much of Europe. A team like Italy or Germany or literally anyone else could form a team if they really wanted to. The issue is that with those European teams and the way things are set up, there is no incentive to. Why would someone like clark make an effort to coordinate team Germany if he can walk into a near guaranteed top 3 roster instead? India is proof enough that any country can set out to make their own team if they want. I mean, look at how many actual “uu players” they have, yet they have the most signups by a mile despite the fact that they could all join team Asia instead. But again, Europe can just handpick the best players from whatever country in the region.

This doesn’t just apply to Europe. People have multiple eligibilities and undoubtedly pick the one that interests them the most. IP lives in the Midwest like 90% of the year but is allowed on south. Last year, northeast was randomly allowed to pick up odr and fatty despite there being no tie to the region. I can’t stress enough that I can’t fault them, but my point is that we aren’t some heinous criminals for trying to conduct a merger that was loosely planned a decent amount of time in advance if uuwc did end up happening. I obviously didn’t think west would have the interest it did. The last thing that bothers me is the fact that the solution to this egregious malpractice is making another arbitrary merger featuring midwest, who at this rate will still not be able to put together their own team.

For the record, I do disagree with the point that the merger should happen because people will quit. The rest of this all just bothered me a lot because at the end of the day, this tournament is subjective bullshit whatever the case but we’re apparently the only ones being castrated for it.

 

[TSR]

As one of the guys getting mentioned here for "rigging" the tour by threatening to delete my signup I feel like some of these arguments might be a little misinformed. Yes Pak, myself and the gang are all good friends, sure, but I'm not sure why the idea of our teams merging has to be such an issue.

As you might've gleaned from things I've said a few times, I think this tour as a whole is fucking terrible. Not through any fault of the tour itself but the format is just inherently unbalanced in player distribution and as such, it really showed in the results last year. The people that are motivated to play this at all just happen to be clustered in a few areas, namely the Eastern US and Europe. Not anyone's fault. US West was just not one of those places. While neither US West or Midwest had bad rosters on paper, I can personally attest to at least the activity level in our team chat being horrendous. Motivation was not there for most of us. Hell, we had to ask half of our team to sign up in the first place rather than it being something that just happened naturally. I can only assume what went on in the Midwest server but looking at the sheet from last year I have a suspicion similar things ensued. In reality, the only reason this actually brought this up in the first place (before the tour was even confirmed to happen again) was because the polls IP started seemed mostly in favor of a second iteration at the time. Now that it's actually here and starting again, I'm clearly biased but I definitely think that combining the rosters would add to the Competitive Integrity (if that's what people are looking for, I also don't know what else to call it) of the tour since we'd be able to make a roster out of people that actually wanna play and that we didn't have to ask to sign up. I think with one more team in the mix that actually has the motivation to compete will at least make the team a bit more interesting, more people gunning for victory and all that. Yeah I do have a bit of personal interest in the merge but at the end of the day UUWC is just a side event in the larger UU tour schedule that we made up on the fly last year because other tiers were doing it. The merge is proposed between West and Midwest rather than any other two teams because our teams were both bottom 3 last year and all we wanna do is field a roster of people who give a shit and actually wanna play. Like Pak just said above me, everyone's gonna try to act in their own self-interest to some extent and it's not something just exclusive to our teams.

 

[pac]

Hey! I'm an RBY UU main myself, and am decently confident in my experience to give an informed opinion into what i'm saying to give a quick post.

I don't believe RBY UU should be in the tour (YET).

Its not about the "Dugtrio crit go brrr haha" RNG mentality some of y'all have about it, as its a very skillful tier that is interesting to watch (IMO, people are different) if we put forward an effort to educate others about the tier and have players ditch the weird mindsets they have going into RBY UU, its about the players themselves. While I would LOVE to see more RBY UU, its the GOAT tier and my personal fav, I think in a WC, the talented playerbase is kinda too small and isn't spread properly across regions to make it truly work. Like, most of the teams have like 1 maybe 2 people to rep. It is not fair to the captains being forced to pick from their extremely miniscule options to play in the gen, and it also makes potential good subs much lower in number, meaning you get people who dislike/dont know the tier being forced to play it as well. I believe that in the future, as RBY UU gets its deserved rep in more tours and garners more players, it would be suitable for representation.

On the other topic of Midwest + West merging, I am not as informed there, but in some games and communities I play in the MW ends up just playing with one coast or the other so it makes sense. People on Smash Bros Melee Doubles matchmaking usually just go with EC for instance. On GSC UU specifically, I don't play that tier at all so I have 0 input there.