Tournament UUWC II Format Discussion

[pdt]

to be honest i enjoy watching and having gsc uu in tours and it's one of my favorites to spectate in uupl, but i agree with ip that adding rby or a 4th ss if we were to try to add gsc is not very good. 4 cg slots at a time where i'd argue that cg lower tier interest in side teamtours is pretty low compared to recent years can be stale and exhausting to prep for, i definitely enjoyed the 3 ss slots like in uu snake. from what i've observed in the rby uu playerbase in uufpl and also gathered from some posts from rby uu players in the thread, i agree with pac above that im not confident in having a multitude of players to pick from for some regions. if there were a willing and bigger playerbase, adding those two old gens would be fun for the tour imo.

 

[TaxiCab]

As someone who was on the midwest team last year I felt like I could offer some perspective on the situation especially considering I am not planning on playing. I'm not speaking on behalf of midwest and I haven't talked to any of those guys about it, this is just me.

First of all the notion that midwest did not try or was dead is not true. If you weren't in that chat how could you testify to that? Outside of loki who basically just showed up one day, went 2-1, and dipped, everyone was active and helping. The experience was very enjoyable and fun and I'm sure others from that roster would say the same. FTL was in fact active, and although he picked a weird roster, he did his part as a manager. I cannot testify for west but based off of people's comments about that team in this thread I can say that midwest and west were not at all the same terms of energy.

I would agree with Pak and others that the midwest roster was not strong and that the pool this year is not looking to be very wide once again. I understand that it would suck being one of the best if not the best g6uu players feeling like you don't get a chance to compete because of something out of your control. However I think anyone who has paid attention over the last year would be able to see that guys like Avarice and Expulso have become much better players and much more knowledgeable within the sphere of UU in particular, and I wouldn't expect them to do so poorly again, especially considering that they were two of the most active guys in the chat. Confide, Loki, atomicllamas and meeps are all established players, and there were other guys on the roster who were helping a ton who didn't get as much of a chance to show it in games, like sickist or jeronipuff.

Its not an all star lineup and I personally think merging west and mw is valid, but based off of the way people have described the west chat, I think you can understand why mw players like expulso (who put in his signup that he won't play if the two merge) would want to keep that bad energy which people have ascribed to west last year away, when midwest had a good time. Also midwest finished with a better record than west despite having a "worse" roster, and I think the guys from the roster last year feel they could do better and build on something. As a result, they have no incentive to bring west on board unless they can't field a roster.

I understand the desire to want to create a more competitive team, but you could also create a more competitve team by...just trying to play for midwest once and see how it goes? Maybe if Pak had played last year, midwest would have done better. He certainly could have improved the combined 2-4 record in SM/ORAS. Hypothetically, if that got boosted to 5-1 and we throw out the dead game Avarice had vs Anish, all of a sudden, midwest is above .500, and would have finished in the top half of the standings. I know hypotheticals are not great for arguments, but I think its a valid point.

I have seen no testimony from the guys who played on midwest last year who plan to play this year. I think it would be good to get their opinions before you scrap their team. I would say though-if I wanted to play for midwest and my potential future teammates on west were trashing me, I wouldn't be thrilled about wanting to merge either.

 

[Shellnuts]

If you are going to try and make an argument about why RBY UU shouldn't be included, do some research before making clearly false statements.

most of the “quality players” reside on the same country

This claim is blatantly false, as Plague von Karma already stated, a lot of the RBY UU player base lives in different locations and would play for different teams. Furthermore, most if not all of the top players in the tier (off the top of my head I would say those are Eb0la, myself, Volk, Lusch, and Sevi) live in different regions (US Midwest, Canada, US Northeast, and Germany, Sevi lives somewhere in the US but I don't know where) would play for different teams. So claiming that most of the "quality players" reside in the same country is completely false.

+ others are not signing up

Why are you using players not signing up to a tournament they have no reason to play in as an argument? Of the UU tiers, RBY UU players are best at RBY UU, with some playing GSC UU to a decent level, both of which are not currently included in UUWC. If neither format is included, then there is little reason for RBY UU players to sign up, ergo few RBY UU players will sign up in the first place, which is what you are using as justification for not including RBY UU. You are arguing that a format shouldn't be included because there are few signups without giving the players a reason to sign up in the first place. This is the definition of circular reasoning.

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.

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.

RNG is a fundamental part of Pokemon and aiming for getting lucky to win is no different than in any other generation, be it hoping to get a lucky Sleep Talk roll in GSC UU, relying on getting the first Scald Burn on the opposing Tentacruel in the Rain Mirror in BW OU (which is effectively a guaranteed win), or just hitting multiple Stone Edges and Focus Blasts in any tier. You cannot say that playing to get a Scald Burn first in BW OU is any more or less natural than playing for a Hypno full paralysis in RBY UU, every format involves playing to get lucky in order to win and claiming that it only occurs in one generation or tier is a blatantly false statement.

Will my Dugtrio crit next turn? Will I manage to hit 43 Wraps consecutively?

These examples only serve to show how little you understand the tier. No good player will rely on Dugtrio getting a crit unless they have to, its a last resort option which you only pick if you are about to lose, same as praying for a lucky scald burn or a crit or a Stone Edge/Focus Blast miss as a last-ditch effort in any other generation. If you are relying on Dugtrio winning a lost game on a consistent basis, you are playing poorly. The same goes for hitting 43 Wraps consecutively (which can't physically occur unless your opponent causes Wraps PP to roll over to 63 by switching when Wrap has 0 PP left, in which case that's their fault), if you are relying on it to win, you are hoping to get lucky to win a lost game. Good players do not rely on either situation to win outside of as a last-ditch effort to bring back a lost game, same as in any other format.

You can disagree with including it, everyone is entitled to your opinion, but if you are going to make an argument against including RBY UU, actually do your research before making blatantly false claims off a surface-level understanding of the tier.

 

[avarice]

As one of the UU mainers on Midwest, I personally think we should not merge with West unless actually necessary by signups. Players like myself (literally was maining PU last yr) and Expulso have shown more results since then. We can also get some rly good players that were supposed to be on our team last year (fatty, maybe Luthier and pak should he choose to not cancer) that could significantly increase our standing alone. With this discourse I fully expect to be left off whatever the planned merged roster and like, they're going to pick Pak and ask fatty to not join the "even more elite" NE as the people they're generously taking from Midwest merge only? cmon that's extending region qualification to friends not a true merge. WC is supposed to be a fun tour and I actually had fun last year. I am sorry West didn't have the same experience. I got to meet new people and it was the first time in awhile I was really enjoying myself in the UU community. It's a bummer that apparently most of Midwest is being seen as liabilities and we should be grateful we get to get to merge with West (who will actually try this year if they get their superior friends together?). The Midwest server was active and while we aren't as "elite" I am certain we can do better than last year (already better than West btw). I am not going to ramble on how someone else's team should be managed but West has a fully capable roster with both well established and new talent this year already. Go Midwest!

 

[sasha]

As someone who was on Midwest last year I’d like to chime in. I’m somewhat indifferent as for the whole merging thing, but I am moreso leaning against it because of how other Midwest players feel. I am eligible for both West (primary) and Midwest. Either way I’m not getting into an LU but as far as last year's chat went, the chat was fine. TaxiCab outlined it pretty well, iirc no one who has commented on our chat last year besides him was actually in the server (and now Avarice as I’m writing this) and the server was pretty active. People helped when they could and there was good prep happening across the board in my opinion. It was my first team tour and comparatively to all of the other ones I’ve played in since, that chat was one of the better ones. I definitely don’t think our roster was underwhelming at all with players like Avarice, Expulso, Confide, Atomicllamas, etc. TaxiCab, FTL, Avarice, and Expulso also put in a lot of work building and as Taxi also mentioned in his own post Loki showed up for his games owned in two of them and was around when he needed to be. I don’t really see the need for West and Midwest to merge if they both can put forward a roster that is “competitive”(?) (idk how midwest's roster is going to be bad with pulso ava fatty llamas etc LOL) and that both teams are fine with. And honestly back then I thought of everyone on the roster as good players and it's been a year since and I can only see how they have gotten better so I’m not sure where the arguments of Midwest roster being dire, unless we are talking dire as in sheer number of signups. And I’ll quote Taxi again, I don’t see why anyone who wasn’t in the chat is making comments about it because they “assume” similar things that happened to West happened to Midwest. Honestly I don’t think the roster FTL chose was weird, maybe barring me and like two others since I was like barely not on smogon for 3 months but other than that I’m pretty sure everyone else was a good choice, and solid players (still are). And people already commenting about Midwest not having enough signups is kind of ridiculous given that it has been just barely over 48 hours. I mean, don’t get me wrong there’s a possibility Midwest won’t get enough signups I won’t doubt that but like I think we should give it some time and wait to see how things develop? Assuming that everything will go to shit based off of last years experience for West is (imo) just dooming yourselves for the tour. If you’re going into it thinking it’s going to be a rotten experience again then choose new players? Choose players who are going to have more interest? I mean West usually has a lot of signups yet I see the same players on the same team every time there is a region based tour. I get that a majority of the known West players are friends but I mean this is a tournament meant for people with high interest in UU or winning in general to, well, win. If you just create a roster of a jerk and fuck around then obviously it’s not going to be entertaining if you get fucking smashed in qualifiers or pools.

 

[Rae]

Gonna drop some thinkies on the discussion points

In regards to more slots

In my honest opinion, I don't think that this is necessary. Perhaps i'm showing some bias due to my region having 4 signups total but 8 slots is all we need. I do understand the mentality of including old gens like GSC and RBY, or an additional SS slot to let some hidden talent shine, which is completely fair but considering some teams are going to struggle to get numbers like Canada, Midwest and Oceania I feel like adding even more needed slots is going to a bit of a pain. Furthermore, it's fair to assume that some regions won't have players for particular gens (not saying RBY and GSC, but gens as a whole) Of course, if we had enough signups for both Canada and Midwest since Oceania is pretty much going to merge with another team, it'd be fine. Kinda just what Mister Adaam said.

The merging situation

I have no opinions on the merge really, primarily because it doesn't concern me. West already has some powerful players and 16 signups, probably more at the time of this post, and Midwest doesn't have a lack of power either. I do believe that merging should only occur if teams are low on numbers and it's at the benefit of more people playing. It is more than likely that Midwest will have a full team with good players. I did hear something about deleting signups which is a little bit weird? I do think that playing with your friends is great but it shouldn't be taken to a level where it's at other people's detriment in not having the team. Plus, if you delete your signup and Midwest doesn't have a full team, then they're just going to merge with West, no? Also agree with what avarice mentioned in that there's a difference between merging and breaking region qualifications just to play with friends, which isn't exactly right. If a team has another players to play, they can play.

maybe I just have bad opinions but eh, make of it what you will

 

[Expulso]

Midwest should not merge with West.

I think this tour as a whole is fucking terrible. ... 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.

The people who are motivated do happen to be distributed unequally. However, it’s also the job of the manager (you) to get a team motivated. Last year’s US West roster should never finish 8-16 and dead last; why complain about the format when your region is stacked?

SS UU:	watashi
SS UU:	Ajna
SS UU:	Meru
SM UU:	vivalospride
ORAS UU:	Sjneider
BW UU:	faded love
DPP UU:	TSR
ADV UU:	Shiba

This West team does include some tour players like watashi and Neider who aren't gonna be particularly invested in any sidetour. Fortunately for you, however, West got a ton of new players that are interested in the tier and can boost activity. Established non-UU mainers like Maki (semis UULT, with wins over Lilburr and Accel), Decem, and EternalSnowman and knowledgeable and eager UUers (albeit either less well-known or less established in tournaments) like KM, Monky25, BigFatMantis, and cy (let him join midwest tho) would all help that issue. It seems easy for you to fix some of West's problems without needing to merge with another team! However, that may require the manager to be someone who would care about the tour even if they don’t get to team up with their friends from other regions. I hope West finds someone who fits that description.

======

Midwest's situation is not in as good a shape as West would be. However, when I see this I am inspired to try and improve the team rather than giving up and trying to merge with somewhere else so that I can have more established people. In my eyes, it’s more fun to go after the top dogs than to bend the rules to artificially construct your own “superteam”; do any of us think that what Barclay is proposing represents anything but a shortcut that the other 8 teams that aren’t US East, Europe, or the ones in this proposed merger don’t have access to?

The current US Midwest roster (off of only 2 days of signups — we have a whole week or so to find people) would probably look something like this:

SS: Expulso
SS: Avarice
SS: Confide / odr / Goblin (or whoever else signs up; gotta hit up ladder fiends et cetera to check eligibility)
Sm: meeps (who mentioned he would be willing in PMs today but hasnt posted yet)
Oras: Pak (if not cancering) / jeronipuff
Bw:
Dpp: atomicllamas
Adv: brewfasa

This sure isn't the US East roster, which would cost about 250K in UUPL, but it also isn't worth instantly writing off as terrible. We'd most likely struggle in 1 or 2 slots, but there are also strong and established players in the lineup, particularly if Pak decides to play instead of quitting when he can't land on a "superteam". And believe it or not, it is possible to overcome on-paper deficiencies if you put in effort! As last year’s US West roster shows, success isn’t predetermined; their roster looks like it could rival US East on paper but they ended up dead last.

I've been PMing people about UUWC and asking "randoms" if they're from Midwest in an attempt to see if anyone would be interested in playing BW, filling in as a sub for SS if needed, and so on. This brings in either people new to the tier or people new to competitive Smogon tours, and it's what a team is supposed to do in these WC formats. What a team isn't supposed to do, though, is give up and merge with another team. That removes opportunities for anyone from the region who might want to join in the present or future, and since the tour is going to be required to have 12 teams, such a merger would simply shift the responsibility for finding and leading a competitive team from you to someone else.

TL;DR:
- Only being willing to play for a team that is already strong and established is, in the words of Serene Grace in the UU discord, "the biggest pussy shit I've seen in a while".
- Both teams CAN construct competitive rosters.

- The poor performance of US West in UUWC I is largely due to laziness, particularly in SS UU, and West has new roster pieces that can mitigate these activity issues if the managers are willing to draft and trust them.​

- US Midwest (currently) has a less established roster with more holes, but we neither need nor want a merger. Any one of: the additions of Brewfasa and odr (though he’s unlikely to sign up) from East, rising Midwest stars like Confide and Luthier, and really anyone else we can find would make the team stronger on paper. A team fails or succeeds based on its passion, and we would prefer to strive for success as a genuine team rather than taking a cheap shortcut.​

Go Midwest!

 

[Bushtush]

Just let Canada live bruh please god bless the Maple Leafs

 

[Pak]

Well I guess this is happening again. First off I just wanted to say I’m sorry if it came off that whatever team or player isn’t good enough or that this was some elitist agenda. That wasn’t the intention, as I mentioned earlier, but it’s understandable how that implication could come about. I just want to re-iterate that it simply sounded more enjoyable to me to merge with west. If someone asked you point blank: would you want to be on a team with more people you know and will probably do better, or no, then what real person would say no to that? On a surface level, it seemed feasible, given the points I’ve already mentioned and that it was originally brought up in the first edition. Yes, it did sound more fun to me so I ran with it. This wasn’t meant to be some grand collusion developed long in advance by the corrupt underused jerk. It was literally me PMing viv like 2 weeks ago if he would want to team up in uuwc if it came down to it. Didn’t help that I still feel bad bc I asked him if he wanted to manage uupl together then I backed out like a week in advance. We proposed it on the first day, so there was no way of knowing there would be this kind of interest for west, especially if last year was any indication, and it was all I or any of them had to go off of. Also FTL again has not logged on in months and he was the one that truly got things off the ground for midwest last year. Yeah i admit it was short-sighted but it wasn’t just us going lmao fuck these new guys let’s do this instead.

I also want to point out that in my unedited signup it reads that I didn’t want to play. I don’t know why there’s this thing going that midwest would’ve had me playing if none of this shit had ever happened. I legit wanted to chill in a good environment and help people out where I could, but again, I understand how this was all misconstrued along the way. At the end of the day, people want to have fun with all this stuff, and this was the non-heinous vision I had in mind. I can’t blame any of the midwest guys for feeling the way they do about this and I’m fine leaving things as is if that’s how they would get the most enjoyment.

 

[ramolost]

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.

i dont see how the list from pvk demonstrated RBY has a wide diversified regional player base (she said otherwise if you read the whole post). some countries dont even have a single player and some other countries have 1 or 2 lol. if you are forced to pick someone because hes the only mf who plays the tier in your country i dont see how is it diversified regional playerbase. only 3 countries have 3 choices or more : latin america france and europe. and tbfh i dont even know the frenchies on the list. calling other ignorants wont serve your cause btw.

 

[Tinii]

First things first, GO MIDBEST!

Now my thoughts on the whole merging situation, i'm very much against it. Now i'm not quite sure of the situation the West team had last year, but reading up on the Midwest situation as well as my experience with Midwest players, I don't feel like the Midwest is nearly as bad as the people that are trying to push this merge are trying to say. Not to mention it seems that the West's faults were more on them and not on any lack of players or any of that. I also don't think that pressuring a merge by saying " Hey i'm not gonna play if I don't get this merge" is the way to go for this at all. The Midwest isn't some damsel in distress needing saving with a merger, it's a perfectly capable region with perfectly capable players and definitely doesn't need a merge to make a splash. I think this merge is more to the benefit to the West than it is to the Midwest imo and im definitely against that as a Midwest player. I'm sorry the West players had a bad experience with activity last year, but this year i'm inclined to believe that the new names as well as some old names will show up and actually make an effort in this competition, so i see absolutely no reason to make a merge other than "I want to stack the deck AND play with my friends" and if you want a format like that, go do a PL, not a region based competition like this.

But anyways yea, i'm excited for the Midwest AND West squads this year, and i also am strongly in the belief that a merge does not need to happen for either to succeed. Thank you

EDIT: Also i'm not much of a UU-mainer but i'm excited to play if i can make it in!

 

[EB0LA]

#MIDBEST

 

[hs]

i dont see how the list from pvk demonstrated RBY has a wide diversified regional player base (she said otherwise if you read the whole post). some countries dont even have a single player and some other countries have 1 or 2 lol. if you are forced to pick someone because hes the only mf who plays the tier in your country i dont see how is it diversified regional playerbase. only 3 countries have 3 choices or more : latin america france and europe. and tbfh i dont even know the frenchies on the list. calling other ignorants wont serve your cause btw.

This is what I meant by my post, but I worded it kinda poorly. And as a response to Shellnuts post, yes, there is hax everywhere as I’ve mentioned myself, but it just happens to be more accentuated in the tier lol. Comparing games that are being consistently decided on those odds to BW first turn Scald burn or hitting multiple Focus Blast / Stone Edge is not logical. It is what I saw in 90% of the games in UUFPL, where conveniently… most people you mentioned, that have no incentive to join UUWC as there is no RBY in the first place, didn’t signup for. There is a serious lack of players in most countries, and those that have 2+ players are outliers. Managers have to put together a roster of 12 players already when BW / ADV isn’t easy to get players for in most cases, as I’ve mentioned in my post, but you just seemed to ignore that part.

 

[romanji]

As someone in Midwest, I don't think it's time to panic about any potential of not fielding a roster. As Expulso mentioned, it's only been 2 days since the signups have begun. We sure aren't Oceania (sorry Magnum). Though I'm new to World Cup, I think I have gotten some good insight from this thread. I've noticed that is is just mainly West players trying to push the "merge Midwest" narrative, but if Midwest is able to fulfill a roster, I don't see a point. Fatty/Brewfasa and Avarice are signing up so I don't think there would be a problem with good players not being there. The only slight concern is with who would be for BW

#MIDBEST

 

[Plague von Karma]

Just want to add onto this as it's an important point.

i dont see how the list from pvk demonstrated RBY has a wide diversified regional player base (she said otherwise if you read the whole post). some countries dont even have a single player and some other countries have 1 or 2 lol. if you are forced to pick someone because hes the only mf who plays the tier in your country i dont see how is it diversified regional playerbase. only 3 countries have 3 choices or more : latin america france and europe. and tbfh i dont even know the frenchies on the list. calling other ignorants wont serve your cause btw.

To clarify, the playerbase is "wide", and comparable to some of the scarcer tiers, it's just unstable as shit because of how thin it's spread; the lows could result in massive issues. I don't think my post was constructed too well.

It's also worth mentioning that I actually had to dig pretty hard for Latin America, and the last two players don't play the tier much at all. They did compete in the suspect tours, but that was it, I believe? Brazil is also unfortunate as it results in having LpZ unnecessarily handicapped, they're better at other tiers if I recall correctly?

The problem is that there's often just one player there; if even one of the ideal players doesn't play, it kind of falls apart. UUFPL had a couple of these players absent because, well, they have busy lives. Y'know, older playerbase and all that. It didn't do much to affect the quality there, though, as the tier is of the perfect size and passion for draft. In a WC format, on the other hand, there isn't much backup, so you suddenly have a gaping hole in your ranks. Ideally it could work well, but relying on like 5 of the players to compete every time feels like we're pushing it. I'd say our situation is similar to ADV/BW where you find a lost civilisation in the mountains and thank your lucky stars.

As for the French players, all of them are quite notable in the RBY Community, and I believe some have notability in GSC as well. Not saying you should have known - that would be absurd - but they're definitely cool people!

 

[pokemonisfun]

Throwing my irrelevant support to include RBY but I’m agnostic on GSC:

1) Re. “RBY” isn’t competitive. Please prove with replays otherwise I’ll default to trusting the RBY mains who are no doubt biased but also more knowledgeable. Also BW is an awful tier in my view but I don’t want it axed.

2) Re. not enough players. This is the main point that would convince me. If a majority of teams can’t field a RBY player I’ll concede. But I think we should be catering to the formats, not the regions. It’s a weird way of thinking about it, an arguably anti player stance, but I do think tournaments are more about the game we play rather than the individuals playing it even if both are obviously necessary. (My dream is that the community exists for the individuals and the individuals manifest themselves competitively in the tournaments and formats...but that’s a bit rambly)

3) Continuing from 2), RBY has no representation at all in our Subforum except UUFPL and one workshop. UUFPL isn’t guaranteed/established yet, particularly as it’s a seen as a lower version of UUPL which doesn’t have RBY and workshops aren’t tournaments. As I believe we should be catering towards our formats, we need to include RBY somewhere

4) Re. anyone who doesn’t want to watch or like the tier: fine, don’t watch it lol. I know this isn’t anti RBY’s strongest point but I will address it nevertheless

5) Re. RBY gives a region an unfair advantage - well you can’t argue this is true and also say RBY is an uncompetive hax format. If it was uncompetitive, then it wouldn’t give any region a major benefit.

 

[Freeroamer]

Sorry to repeat myself basically, but I really do think if this tournament is going to be a success there needs to be a bit more dialogue about the pools phase and what format qualifying will take. So far only me, Adaam and Pak have really talked about it at all in this thread. This and the imbalance between teams were easily the two biggest issues of this tournament last year, and this is imo a more objective issue and therefore easier to hopefully resolve. Just to catch any uninformed people up, last year the format included 12 teams and the top 4 qualified. This led to teams being out very early and therefore important games coming down to activity or being won against opponents who simply didn’t care. The way I see it there are 3 approaches you can take to fix this:

10 teams - Top 4 qualify
I think if you want the top 4 to advance to a classic playoffs bracket (no byes single elim), then 10 teams is the maximum. Would obviously require reducing the number of teams from last year which would probably have to happen via some mergers, maybe Midwest+West and Europe+UK? Those are only suggestions…

12 teams - Top 6 qualify, Top 2 get byes
This is the solution Adaam and Pak talked about in their posts. Same number of teams as last year, but 2 more teams qualify, giving teams more to play for and opportunity to recover from poor starts. The top two teams from pools would get a bye to the semifinals, also incentivising teams that are already qualified to care more about remaining games. One negative of this is that those teams will have at least a week with no opponent, if tiebreakers are required for the pools phase and/or the quarterfinals series that could easily rise to two weeks or more.

14-16 teams - Top 8 qualify
If it’s possible to get 14 or 16 teams together, then I think you start looking at 8 teams qualifying. 8 out of 14 sounds like a lot, but honestly I don’t think it’s the biggest deal, and definitely preferable to 4/12. As I said in my earlier post I have serious doubts that you can put together that many teams without a significant drop off in quality but it’s an option.

I put these together without really considering whether the number of teams actually work for a pools phase, so if any of these numbers are dumb I apologise for that. Personally I think the 12 team option is probably the best, although tiebreakers extending the bye week would definitely suck. There’s probably other options I haven’t thought of though, so people should definitely share if they think there’s another way to do this!

 

[Monky25]

since Freeroamer is looking for other opinions on what to do with the pools I figured I'd share some thoughts even if they're unimportant in the grand scheme of things

I'm strongly against the 10 team option, this thread has clearly expressed that merging is not a very popular option shown with the West and Midwest scenario, where pretty much everyone who wasn't a part of that group who initially proposed it is opposed to the merge, on both west and midwest's end. I assume those on UK wouldn't want to merge with Europe for the same reasons those on west and midwest don't want to merge; they want to actually play in the tour and there's no doubt some who would be very likely to play on team UK by itself would be left out if UK merged with Europe. The only groups I can see merging is India with Asia and RoW, but then again signups haven't been out for that long and RoW + asia still has a chance to field a team. I just feel merging teams to have a lower number really isn't the best option given the unpopularity of merges in the first place, not to mention the other two solutions are feasible and certainly more favorable for many.

Myself, like the others who stated previously, is most in favor of the 12 teams pool with the top 6 qualifying. Not much to say, 2 more teams qualify and gives teams the incentive to try throughput the entire duration of the tour. Yeah, the tiebreak scenario can be annoying, but out of the presented solutions I still believe this is the best one due to the more simplistic approach it takes.

I also wouldn't mind doing an option with 14 teams and having 8 qualify. The more teams in the tour, the more fun it can be, and it gives teams a sense of accomplishment to formally compete in the quarterfinals. However, as much as I like this idea, it is not my preferred option out of the 3 due to several complications. I do think the quality will remain high unlike what the above post details, but I'm not too sure we can even get 14 teams. Asia + RoW isn't even a lock to get their own team, so we may end up being down to 11 and a country like Germany may end up taking their place. I'm not too well versed in which countries (European for the most part) will be able to even field a roster, so the increase in 14 seems unlikely until we get a better sense of whether Asia + RoW is going to have a team and whether countries like Italy or Germany want to have their own teams as opposed to staying with Europe.

That's pretty much it, glad the merge problems has been solved for the most part with widespread opposition to it. Hope this post offers more insight into each of the 3 possible solutions and why even though none are perfect, the 6 qualifying option is by far the best choice. In general I don't expect a decision to be made for at least a few days considering how the formation of a team is still up in the air. Also, I think it would be cool to hear from a person or group who has the possibility to form a team for their country (Germany, Italy, etc) and see whether it can happen. Though, I will admit, it can be challenging to have 14 teams alongside a potential addition of GSC or RBY due to numbers. However, I'm not truly invested in that topic and those more invested can work that out. For me, if it works, then sure why not I don't really care lol.

 

[pokemonisfun]

I see from last year 141/144 games were complete: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/15d9Hsns4t6GNJ-eWIcF6NPWozD36SuGDZtIPcb7hWw8/htmlview#

Does the 141 games include activity wins? If 141 games were actually played, I’m not so sure why the qualifying needs to be changed. 141/144 is pretty darn good.

Changing it to 6 qualifiers with 12 total will, as acknowledged, give two teams a bye and I hardly think a bye is ever beneficial for a tournament.

Considering every team was within 2 points of another team, I really don’t see how last year was uncompetitive at all.

I’d be more open to letting 8 out of 12 qualify to avoid any byes compared to 6 out of 12.

 

[BigFatMantis]

Whatever format allows for the most possible games to be played is what I would think is the best, as this is one of the more inclusive team tours on the sub forum and I am sure there are plenty of people that simply want to play and have fun. Obviously you want to keep it competitive, but I think a 8/12 format would be just fine, or 8/14 if we can get two more teams (not that hard, we already have 13 if Germany is a team). 4/12 just means that so many people will be out after a short time period, and sometimes it takes teams a few weeks to really find themselves and get going.

As for 6/12 with two byes, it’s not the worst idea either, but we should really try to push for 8 however we can make that possible.

So, whatever is decided, I hope it caters to more games and more fun for everyone involved.

 

[Adaam]

I understand the reservations about a bye week, but having 6 teams qualify out of 12 with 12 teams is objectively better than 4/12. The top 2 teams in both cases start in semifinals, but the 6/12 scenario allows for a 5th and 6th seed to qualify which will increase motivation for middle tier teams. The only argument I can think against it is increasing playoff length, which is again arbitrary. The playerbase is capable of handling a dead week, and we have the 4 other teams providing games to continue the “hype.” I think it’s silly to have the same amount of teams make playoffs as UUPL, which has a measly 8 teams (if we have 12). Please allow 6 teams to qualify.

Edit: 8/12 is too many playoff teams. Pools become insignificant when 75% of teams qualify. I am strongly against it, but this is a decision for the hosts and whether they value pools significance more than a bye week.

 

[pokemonisfun]

I understand the reservations about a bye week, but having 6 teams qualify out of 12 with 12 teams is objectively better than 4/12. The top 2 teams in both cases start in semifinals, but the 6/12 scenario allows for a 5th and 6th seed to qualify which will increase motivation for middle tier teams. The only argument I can think against it is increasing playoff length, which is again arbitrary. The playerbase is capable of handling a dead week, and we have the 4 other teams providing games to continue the “hype.” I think it’s silly to have the same amount of teams make playoffs as UUPL, which has a measly 8 teams (if we have 12). Please allow 6 teams to qualify.

Edit: 8/12 is too many playoff teams. Pools become insignificant when 75% of teams qualify. I am strongly against it, but this is a decision for the hosts and whether they value pools significance more than a bye week.

See the way you're framing it I would agree with but I think there's a logical flaw.

The way you're framing it, is comparing 6/12 to 4/12 and saying 6/12 gives an extra spot to 5th and 6th. That increases motivation and is obviously a benefit to the 5th and 6th team who wouldn't have qualified under 4/12. You're correct as far as I can tell and I agree with this.

You're not stating the fact that you're making it harder for the 3rd and 4th team to qualify though - they have to play an extra week if they want to win the tournament. This is something I don't agree with. I also don't agree with giving free wins if we can make a format that avoids it. Getting a bye is a reward that I don't think anyone really deserves.

Another separate but minor point:

I'm not sure about the logic/math behind this, but I suspect giving a bye to 1st and 2nd for a week also gives them an extra advantage. Considering everyone seems to be in agreement the top team is stacked (Northeast and SOUTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (but seriously, just NE)), I don't see why they need an extra likely advantage.

I don't feel strongly about this by the way so if nobody else or very few people agree with me, I'm not going to keep advocating for 4/12. But really my main point is I don't see any evidence last year was the disaster everyone keeps implying it was. Maybe I just forgot how bad it was.

 

[cherryb0ng]

.

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.

I don't see how this is a problem. Since this argument is constantly thrown around about a game (not mocking you), I am just going to respond with children's logic:
*clears throat* Why should kids care about other kids playing with toys they don't even want?
If there are enough players for GSC UU or RBY then there are enough. It pains me to have to argue over this subject matter though I know you all are good intentioned. In fact, the only reason you must be arguing over gsc in the first place is the fact that a small player base could involve too few people being ending up playing, which would result in an embarassment for everyone. World cup can't just draft people because they are region locked.

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)

Anyway I could add a good few candidates to this list, including myself (Italy, Canada, Europe),vani, Lord Thorx, maybe Ewin, Sapientia, raahel, Diophantine (an overwhelming majority of UK players just isn't fair), Esche, rampagewebber and maybe Earthworm. And that doesn't even necessarily include some of the members of the QC team for gsc UU or the couple of other players in gsc NU that overlap with this tier.

That said I don't think I have all the time to play.
Sorry I couldn't contribute in any other way.

 

[Estarossa]

It should come as no surprise that I am obviously in favour of adding GSC UU to this tour, there's been quite a bit of demand for it as Lily has noted, and its an absolutely beautiful UU gen that has a strong balanced nature to it and consistently offers high quality games when between people of similar skill levels.

The notion that it is some stall infested tier where all games go to 500 turns is obviously a completely false stereotype based on the occasional long games seen in tours like UUPL, where this situation could easily occur in other tiers like SM UU if both players brought stall anyway lol. GSC UU has definitely been becoming more offensive in recent times, and you'll see a lot of shorter games featuring more offensive teams orientated around stuff like Gyarados + Spikes, SD Scyther Pass with recipients like Nidoq/Bull, SD Victreebel etc, and a general move to more offensively inclined defensive cores with Pokemon like Mr.Mime (especially RestTalk in this context) rising up to be one of the top Pokemon in the tier.

Concerns about the mechanics like hs brought up are typically just brought on from a place of either inexperience in the tier or judgements based on selectively choosing the longer games really. Rest + Sleep Talk among other things definitely creates a more bulky orientated metagame, but progress is still easily forced between stuff like Spikes and Thief, as well as the fact that the Pokemon that typically are reliant on rest talk cycling are usually offering opportunities for Pokemon like Nidoqueen / Gyarados etc to eventually break through them with Spikes + chip, potential doubles, and the obvious chances to fish for crits that playing passively around them provide, as well as the passivity creating opportunities for other stuff such as a Scyther pass, Granbull / Kabu set up etc.

On a personal level while it might seem like i'm obviously biased as one of the most "GSC obsessed" people, this is actually pretty much a nerf for team UK if this happens, As I am already in the position of one of the only adv/dpp players on our team, and would create a further gap if i had to fill GSC.

Can regions actually fill a GSC Slot?

Based on like UUPL and some UUFPL players too, as well as known GSC UU players, you could tentatively come up with a list like this for most of the expected regions.

• UK: Estarossa
• US NE: ?
• US West: Siatam
• US Midwest: Kaori, Mr.378
• US South: HSA, d0nut, Lord Thorx
• Latin America: Raahel
• Brazil: LpZ , Highways, Hyogafodex
• France: Zokuru
• Germany: leru , vani
• Europe: Reece, cherryb0ng
• India + RoW: devin depends on how busy they are / if they care bout earthworm is a possibility since devin doesn't want to
• Canada: ? losing 467 and solo definitely stings on this front unfortunately

While i'd agree that certain regions are a bit more stacked than others on this front, for most part GSC is actually going to be relatively easy to field for most teams. Dependent on interest from more busy parties you've always got options like pirate for RoW too. US Northeast struggles but is already an incredibly strong team in general, and still has people capable of passing teams (such as Accel) to whoever gets slotted in there.

On the notion of GSC being hard to slot someone into?

I don't really agree with this notion necessarily, I'd argue that while there's going to certainly be advantages to more experienced players as in any tier, GSC UU is actually noticeably easier to pick up for an experienced player being passed teams than another generation might be, especially gens like ADV with the lack of team preview, or gens like BW which can be really unforgiving to small mistakes due to the highly offensive and fast paced nature of the tier. Lack of team preview isn't the biggest deal in the end due to rather limited pool of mons + more obvious structures, and its not very difficult to really learn the sort of threats you really need to keep an eye on and know which defensive responses you absolutely shouldn't be throwing out for no reason like Omastar.

In my mind any solid balance player in later gens should have a lot less difficulty picking up GSC to a high enough level to compete in UUWC than quite a few of the other generations of UU really, and as seen in tours like UUFPL, mains of other GSC tiers like Vani have been more than capable of picking up GSC uu and playiyng at a strong level due to GSC skills beeing highly transferrable, meaning teams like US NE can easily field a player who is strong at GSC OU as long as they have someone able to supply teams.

---------------

All in all i'm definitely in favour of GSC's inclusion and think its definitely something that should be considered here. In terms of whatever 10th slot is added i'm relatively ambivalent and would be perfectly happy with RBY inclusion if RBY UU players believe it to be feasible this year, but favour a 4th SS slot, it would definitely have some beneffits in terms of accessibility and opportunities for newer players to make a name for themselves, while providing a side benefit of some further metagame developmeent in a fresher post sciz/mew environment.

 

[devin]

It should come as no surprise that I am obviously in favour of adding GSC UU to this tour, there's been quite a bit of demand for it as Lily has noted, and its an absolutely beautiful UU gen that has a strong balanced nature to it and consistently offers high quality games when between people of similar skill levels.

The notion that it is some stall infested tier where all games go to 500 turns is obviously a completely false stereotype based on the occasional long games seen in tours like UUPL, where this situation could easily occur in other tiers like SM UU if both players brought stall anyway lol. GSC UU has definitely been becoming more offensive in recent times, and you'll see a lot of shorter games featuring more offensive teams orientated around stuff like Gyarados + Spikes, SD Scyther Pass with recipients like Nidoq/Bull, SD Victreebel etc, and a general move to more offensively inclined defensive cores with Pokemon like Mr.Mime (especially RestTalk in this context) rising up to be one of the top Pokemon in the tier.

Concerns about the mechanics like hs brought up are typically just brought on from a place of either inexperience in the tier or judgements based on selectively choosing the longer games really. Rest + Sleep Talk among other things definitely creates a more bulky orientated metagame, but progress is still easily forced between stuff like Spikes and Thief, as well as the fact that the Pokemon that typically are reliant on rest talk cycling are usually offering opportunities for Pokemon like Nidoqueen / Gyarados etc to eventually break through them with Spikes + chip, potential doubles, and the obvious chances to fish for crits that playing passively around them provide, as well as the passivity creating opportunities for other stuff such as a Scyther pass, Granbull / Kabu set up etc.

On a personal level while it might seem like i'm obviously biased as one of the most "GSC obsessed" people, this is actually pretty much a nerf for team UK if this happens, As I am already in the position of one of the only adv/dpp players on our team, and would create a further gap if i had to fill GSC.

Can regions actually fill a GSC Slot?

Based on like UUPL and some UUFPL players too, as well as known GSC UU players, you could tentatively come up with a list like this for most of the expected regions.

• UK: Estarossa
• US NE: ?
• US West: Siatam
• US Midwest: Kaori, Mr.378
• US South: HSA, d0nut, Lord Thorx
• Latin America: Raahel
• Brazil: LpZ , Highways, Hyogafodex
• France: Zokuru
• Germany: leru , vani
• Europe: Reece, cherryb0ng
• India + RoW: devin
• Canada: ? losing 467 and solo definitely stings on this front unfortunately

While i'd agree that certain regions are a bit more stacked than others on this front, for most part GSC is actually going to be relatively easy to field for most teams. Dependent on interest from more busy parties you've always got options like pirate for RoW too. US Northeast struggles but is already an incredibly strong team in general, and still has people capable of passing teams (such as Accel) to whoever gets slotted in there.

On the notion of GSC being hard to slot someone into?

I don't really agree with this notion necessarily, I'd argue that while there's going to certainly be advantages to more experienced players as in any tier, GSC UU is actually noticeably easier to pick up for an experienced player being passed teams than another generation might be, especially gens like ADV with the lack of team preview, or gens like BW which can be really unforgiving to small mistakes due to the highly offensive and fast paced nature of the tier. Lack of team preview isn't the biggest deal in the end due to rather limited pool of mons + more obvious structures, and its not very difficult to really learn the sort of threats you really need to keep an eye on and know which defensive responses you absolutely shouldn't be throwing out for no reason like Omastar.

In my mind any solid balance player in later gens should have a lot less difficulty picking up GSC to a high enough level to compete in UUWC than quite a few of the other generations of UU really, and as seen in tours like UUFPL, mains of other GSC tiers like Vani have been more than capable of picking up GSC uu and playiyng at a strong level due to GSC skills beeing highly transferrable, meaning teams like US NE can easily field a player who is strong at GSC OU as long as they have someone able to supply teams.

---------------

All in all i'm definitely in favour of GSC's inclusion and think its definitely something that should be considered here. In terms of whatever 10th slot is added i'm relatively ambivalent and would be perfectly happy with RBY inclusion if RBY UU players believe it to be feasible this year, but favour a 4th SS slot, it would definitely have some beneffits in terms of accessibility and opportunities for newer players to make a name for themselves, while providing a side benefit of some further metagame developmeent in a fresher post sciz/mew environment.

oh my lord, please do not subject me to this torture. I have never played this tier in my life. I only subbed in because one of our player was off and a sub was needed.