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Other 1v1 Tournament Policy Discussion Thread

hello guys i think 1v1cl should be something like this:
8 teams, each pick 4 tiers (1 group 1, 2 group 2, 1 group 3)
group 1:
bo7 flex 1 (sv, ss, usum, oras, bw)
bo7 flex 2 (sv, ss, usum, oras, bw)

group 2:
bo5 flex 1 (sv, ss, usum, oras, bw)
bo5 flex 2 (sv, ss, usum, oras, bw)
bo5 flex 3 (sv, ss, usum, oras, bw)
bo5 flex 4 (sv, ss, usum, oras, bw)

group 3:
bo5 flex w/ more tiers 1 (sv, ss, usum, oras, bw, dpp, adv, nd, uu, maybe others)
bo5 flex w/ more tiers 2 (sv, ss, usum, oras, bw, dpp, adv, nd, uu, maybe others)

This is good cuz you have bo7 slots, bo5 slots, and possibility dpp, adv, nd, uu representation. Everybody happy :wo:

Picking same tier not allowed to force more tiers to be played, but if opposing manager picks same slot as you then it's ok, such as you pick SV7 and opponent also picks SV7. But you cant send smth like SV7, SV5, USUM, DPP.

Self buys should be flat 15k for 100k budget, using formula is weird cuz 1 bad season ≠ always low price.

"why 8 flex? boo!!"
This tour needs to be distinct from 1v1pl and WC, I think this is the best way to keep the collection of team tours interesting and have variety. Tournament will not be dictated solely on the draft or flex picks if managers do their job well.

"goose larper i dont like 8 flex slots managers are bum johners :(("
Submit tiers Sunday night and lineups Monday afternoon (12 hours for lineup) Whatever is good for hosts and managers but the week should be up by mid Monday.

"hey there arent many dpp or adv or nd or uu players D: one team can just spam that slot for free with a good player!!!!"
People who play tiers very well that are less popular would go to a higher price, making the team likely weaker in another slot. If there is a super strong player on every slot on a team then you guys messed your draft up.

Qs:
Should group 2 be split into something like:
bo5 pl flex 1 (sv, ss, usum, oras, bw)
bo5 pl flex 2 (sv, ss, usum, oras, bw)
bo5 og flex 1 (ss, usum, oras, bw, dpp, adv)
bo5 og flex 2 (ss, usum, oras, bw, dpp, adv)

Should second self buy be more costly than first?

How to do tiebreak?

:monke:
 
1v1cl thoughts:

we should definitely rename it, we should still call it 1v1CL IV tho cause higher number = cooler

6x10 > 8x8, makes it stand out more compared to pl and highlights more tiers (we certainly have enough for consideration)

no thoughts on selfbuys, tb should have at least one bo7 (ideally all bo7)

SS/SM/ORAS/BW/DPP/ADV/ND should be locks, idk why no adv is up for discussion and natdex clearly has a large support base. the mainers can decide bo5 or 7 for these

no hate but the gap between gsc and adv in terms of playerbase and competitiveness is quite a bit, I really don't think there's any justification for including gsc over anything else

multigen seems like it would be cool (I would prefer bo7 no rby/gsc but you could do bo9 as a way for people to possibly play a little rby/gsc), however I also don't think it's better than uu or the options below

I think UU deserves a slot, there's definitely enough sv mainers willing to throw themselves here especially if no sv. good opportunity to develop the tier more and also easy to introduce newer players who might only know sv

that brings us to my preference for the final two slots: SV7/SV5 > Flex/Flex
I think a tour with limited sv would be best to still have hype matches with mainers who might not play otherwise, but we certainly don't need more than 2 slots. don't really get the people who think it's overrepresented, cg is always gonna be the most popular tier with people who want to play it as much as possible.

regarding flex, I will acknowledge the argument that it helps promote more collaborative team environments; however, I don't think this will ultimately improve that much nor do I think this was a particularly major issue in the first place. a good/bad team environment comes from the managers and players, and having two flex slots that overlap with other slots will only do so much to increase teambuilding collaboration. I would be fine I guess with flex replacing both sv or sv/uu but that seems kinda meh. oh yeah also no flex-only spots that's pretty terrible

"ok but what if we had more flex slots or almost all flex?" yeah this probably would help promote collaboration, but I also think it would be more hassle than its worth. for starters it's much more difficult for managers and hosts to resolve lineups each week, and it also makes it harder to scout/compare/analyze individual results (these are both problems with flex in general). you also have to determine what tiers can be flexed and if there's a limit per tier, especially if you do something complex like prunyy's proposal, all of which would be difficult to agree upon. tldr: many flex = many complications and idk why we would bother, 2 flex is ok tho.

to summarize my thought on slots: SV7/SV5/SS/SM/ORAS/BW/DPP/ADV/ND/UU > (SV/UU)/SS/SM/ORAS/BW/DPP/ADV/ND/Flex/Flex
 
I would like to propose the tour spotlight ND and take the form of Classic League over Championship league coz this is like an unofficial, meta deserves a tour for it and there's a decently big enthusiastic playerbase PLUS YOU CAN DRAFT PEOPLE TO PLAY NATDEX UNLIKE WC. Also gives us a chance to trial promising metas like ND to give more info on whether we need our PL slot to be most recent oldgen bo5 because it's been debatable how good the slot is across the years.

Putting CG SV in a tour meant to spotlight old gens is unsavory to me since pl is 3x SV (7+5+5) and wc is 4x sv (7+7+5+5); along with UMPL UMBD most seasonals all being dedicated to CG. OGPL has been the best tour 3 years straight in terms of average game quality so we shouldn't be changing the formula, especially when we accomodated the lack of SV in this tour in wc e.g having a lot more SV. It's fine if we want to add it to make sure slots are consistently powered but I don't agree with it being the draw to the tour in any way, and it should be more disposable than old gens that don't get a real tour like ADV and DPP.

I also disagree with any combination of major flex slots due to how they interact with one meta only players: if i draft two ORAS players who are good, and flex ORAS every week, it doesn't mean i can get two ORAS slots because i can't be guaranteed flexed into (this is actively disincentivised because i have two good oras players); this leads to talent drafted just being benched and localized rather than distributed which sucks. Flex slots that are global and only for metas in the tour are ok though I don't prefer their existence currently.

8 slots:
ND7/ND5/SS/SM/ORAS/BW/DPP/ADV

10 slots:
ND7/ND5/SS/SM/ORAS/BW/DPP/ADV/(Flex+Flex / UU Slot + UU slot / Rotating OM Slot (???) + UU slot / SV + UU slot) etc pick your poison.

My preference for this tour would be to include UU if it goes to 10 slots in some fashion but I understand if people do not enjoy the idea enough to justify that and am not attached to it. I think every slot in my listed 8 slots should be compulsory otherwise.
 
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throwing this out there: theres been a big push towards bo7 recently and 1v1cl is an experimental tour anyway, so why not make every slot bo7 as a bit of an experiment? the biggest deterrent to 1v1 being mainly bo7 is that it would be hell prep-wise; lets put that theory to the test and see if its manageable/better
 
RADU said:
throwing this out there: theres been a big push towards bo7 recently and 1v1cl is an experimental tour anyway, so why not make every slot bo7 as a bit of an experiment? the biggest deterrent to 1v1 being mainly bo7 is that it would be hell prep-wise; lets put that theory to the test and see if its manageable/better
Click to expand...
Flex slots+bo7 on all tiers sounds like a pain; especially for the first few weeks when players are learning new tiers and now have to build more (and the usual benefits of bo7 like cteaming/switching usage or w/e doesnt apply if you don't have a good grasp on your meta)

Also yeah sv slots in le old gen tour is bad, at most 1 since over that you're just stealing good players from other gens=worse gameplay

Also also super unclear direction on what this tour should be; ogpl was super simple (the oldgen tour) but now it just seems like a mess (flex slot simulator? oms/natdex/uu?? gsc/sv???)

Also also also no more than 2 flex slots pls (flex slots are bad both from manager/slotting perspective and player perspective unless u wanna learn multiple tiers but alas)
 
Flex slots discourage skill. There are many posts here from people who did not experience flex slots as a manager, and I wanted to speak on how flex slots actually impacted our tournament experience. There are two conceivable reasons why a serious team would use their flex slot: slot an overdrafted player in their preferred tier, or pick into an opponent's weakest tier.

In the first case, managerial mistakes are smoothed over, rewarding poor planning. For example, during the OGPL draft, our team already had Waylaid, and accidentally bought Kry off a failed upbid. Normally, this mistake would mean sending one of these high value players out of their "preferred" tier of SM, but since we had the option of flex slots, we just picked SM most weeks.

In the second case, often times, the series ends up being a mediocre BW player into a non-BW player, or a well-supported clicker into an poorly supported clicker. Very few players in the community an expert at more than 2-3 tiers, and it is unreasonable for each team to buy a unicorn player to cover whatever their opponent flexes for. Our OGPL team did not really have any such players, and as a result, threw Mcthelegit into whatever bs the opponent picked. This ended up working well for us, but I don't think that a tournament should consist solely of 3ks trying out random tiers, since I don't think this promotes the most competitive games. People already complain about SV4 for its tendency to spawn gifs, just imagine SV4 players clicking trick on mail.

Bo7 flex is terrible. Any more than 4x flex is terrible. Either of these force your team to suddenly need to prep ~10 new teams in any random given tier every week, and often in your weakest tier(s)
 
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OGPL should not contain any CG slots, flex or otherwise. Rebranding to CL just damages OGPL's identity as "the old gens tour." I'm not sold on flex slots after last year, and I think any flex slots should remain bo5 if kept at all. I do not agree with adding UU or any OMs as they dillute the tour's identity further. OMs and OGs should remain seperate in serious team tour formats. I'm on the fence about ND since it's sort of old-gens related, but I would strongly prefer to see SS bo7, SM bo7, ORAS bo7, BW bo7, DPP bo7, ADV bo7, GSC bo7, (plus ND and Flex bo5 1 and 2 if people REALLY want it) as the available slots for OGPL IV.
 
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OGPL should totally include at least one OM slot as part of a rebrand to CL; I am in favour of making the tour's identity into more of an "all the other 1v1 formats" tour excluding SV. If we were to do 10 slots, I would recommend one of the following:

SS(7?) SM ORAS BW DPP ADV ND UU Flex Flex
SS(7?) SM ORAS BW DPP ADV Flex x4 including ND and UU

I am not against including other OMs, if there is a sufficient playerbase. I do not believe that GSC should be involved, despite my own fondness for the tier, due to general dislike of it. Flex x6 or x8 would be totally excessive, adding far too much unpredictability for managers to have a reasonable draft plan. As for bo7 vs bo5 I do not care
 
Elo Bandit said:
OGPL should not contain any CG slots, flex or otherwise. Rebranding to CL just damages OGPL's identity as "the old gens tour." I'm not sold on flex slots after last year, and I think any flex slots should remain bo5 if kept at all. I do not agree with adding UU or any OMs as they dillute the tour's identity further. OMs and OGs should remain seperate in serious team tour formats. I'm on the fence about ND since it's sort of old-gens related, but I would strongly prefer to see SS bo7, SM bo7, ORAS bo7, BW bo7, DPP bo7, ADV bo7, GSC bo7, (plus ND and Flex bo5 1 and 2 if people REALLY want it) as the available slots for OGPL IV.
Click to expand...
i second this though i think a ND slot with it could be good option instead of GSC since more players play it
 
crow crumbs said:
So obviously this tour has been mismanaged to a beyond egregious degree. To recap the grievances:
  • Unanimous vocal support for Bo7 from the established ss playerbase (people who care about their player experience and the meta they play) unfavored over input from the captains (people who are seeking to maximize their chances of winning the tour).
  • Conflicting region info which lead to a player who expected to be on the roster of one region to actually be a part of another that they don’t make the cut for.
  • Signups going up late but also before slots were finalized, with no sort of accompanying announcement.
  • General lack of transparency on who was involved with making decisions for this tour and how they were made. It seems to be the case that luser, the host of the tour and receiver of the most flac, was kept out of the loop of region discussions/other key decisions while lost heros, who is playing in the tour, was involved(??)
  • And of course, regions getting announced before signup close leading to the creation of a team with, at the very least, more star power than any other team in the tiers history.
Click to expand...
add to grievances:
- ec being a host in name who has their hands tied and can't make free / timely decisions without being forced to consult the TD team. if he's an unbiased host he should be given power to execute his decisions or be paired with someone who can make them as a host for the tour, not have to wait around even though he's active
- general lack of care for team with missing captain while the tour was ongoing (said captain had been awol quite a while earlier with nothing done about it) -> no real steps were taken to help the team out while tour was ongoing
- (mildly understandable but frustrating) lack of addressing tb -> bo7 suggestion before tour started
- pools were... not very well distributed between countries. favoured some teams over others. more minor but shouldn't be smth that recurs.

believing in tour management feels really disillusioned if the second people join a tour they withhold their contributions for fear of seeming biased / have a lesser impact. rulings should have checks and balances but inactivity and a lack of handing that trust to other people makes it feel a lot worse to play a tournament. would rather there be much more involved presence towards that end during a tour rather than apologetic posts for mistakes that have happened.

suggestion: probably mandating an TD member in the host team per tour would be much more beneficial if they could handle everything for that tournament and take a break after; and only have to consult the td team for serious decisions. barring which just give the host room to act upon the tour they are hosting apart from complex decisions.

not changing policy after this tournament would be the easiest way to prove that nothing was learned from this cavalcade of poor decision making. organise tours better or give the organisers enough liberty to make the tour feel satisfying to compete in.
 
Add more tds/people to help with major decisions (and give them the power to make decisions)

Just looked at 1v1 discord and found out all decisions regarding 1v1cl is halted because a single person is on loa (lost heros) which is ridiculous.

Not that current tds are incompetent or they don’t have lives, but cmon, we have active, responsible people that can help out (that are also active in the 1v1 community) but we still don’t give them power. I assume it’s due to “contact with malicious banned deucers” but honestly could be anything at this point (why would luser have no authority over the tour he was hosting?)

This is also why I assume lost heros had major decision making powers in WC despite being on a team, so if we want to learn our lesson from wc, lighten the load and let others help out. I’m sure deg radu or whoever has been on this site for a decade can help out and be responsible enough to improve the current tournament process.

#frogfactsfortd
 
Just to be clear, I had the authority to make most decisions except Akeras/the alts, however, I am frankly severely lacking in expertise and experience, and usually looked for confirmation from another TD before making a decision. For most of the tournament, I didn't have that many people to turn to for guidance on running such a large tournament, with my co-host and 2/3 of the TDs not really active, and the other TD being a captain, making unbiased decisions more difficult. Ultimately, this meant I often turned to lost heros, who was the only particularly active TD, for advice on making decisions, as long as they did not directly involve his team.

I would like to echo tom's post and suggest that the TD and Forum Moderator roles once again be split, with additional TDs appointed. I'm sure there are people in the community who are interested and capable of becoming a TD but not a moderator, and would be more available during these major tournaments compared to the currently somewhat spottily active forum mod team.
 
for context I'm on a bit of an extended LOA rn as well (...well a set of extended LOAs as of late really) due to some ongoing health issues becoming a bit too bad to ignore + some other assorted irl stuff that been going on. This should be resolved in less than a month, but I likely won't be able to help much with OGPL/CL planning until then. I'll try to chip in here and there but no promises.

I don't plan to play 1v1 for the next year or so except in usa v world and maybe an indiv here or there. I'll ofc still be keeping up with the tier and meta development and stuff, but I'll mostly be focusing on hosting / TD stuff going forward. For the next year or so, there should be at least one TD who can host tours + give decisions without some of the bottlenecks involved because of this.

No hate to anyone involved with hosting as of late, but 1v1 staff should really be doing more to teach hosts how to host tours. I got lucky with having people to look up to in 1v1 and RoA who taught me how to be at least a decent host, and that's not really something we have right now, so I'm hoping that I can step into that role more next year by having a couple cohosts for everything I'm doing.

LittEleven said:
- general lack of care for team with missing captain while the tour was ongoing (said captain had been awol quite a while earlier with nothing done about it) -> no real steps were taken to help the team out while tour was ongoing
Click to expand...
This part I want to give my understanding of what happened, given that I was the person who conveyed this report from Team France to the wider forum mod team. I did not catch any wind of this situation until the last weekend before pools ended, when I got told to go talk to another user about the situation. These type of situations generally involve infractions (as what we saw occurred with Akeras), so they do take some time and discussion on what the forum mod team chooses to do, but with there only being less than a day and a half before pools ended when we learned about the situation, there was not much we could do at that point, especially with France already being out of playoff contention.

side note I have no idea what's going on with the "TD" position. I don't think we have a formal TD team at the moment, even one within forum mods, so that's probs smth to start with...
 
Hi all,

Thank you for your patience. I know there is still a lot to talk about for general tour management, and we will be working to improve our transparency, hosting, and communication skills both as forum mods and tournament hosts. Nonetheless, I do want to move forward with planning our 2026 circuit and next team tour, while we continue to have these conversations, as both are slated to start early in the new year.

Based off conversations both here and on discord, I've created a survey that covers some immediate topics including: OGPL/CL format and slots, 2026 Circuit, and how Bo5 and Bo7 slots will be handled in the future.

Please fill out the survey here

A few things to note:
1. No part of this survey is mandatory, if you just want to express your opinion about 1 of these topics and not the others please feel free to. Also feel free to skip any questions.

2. You can change your answers while the survey is still open. You don't need to ping me to change your answer unless you want to I guess.

3. This survey is aimed to supplement discussion not to replace it. Decisions will not be made solely off of this survey. I promise I've read every message in this thread, and as many as I can on discord. All of your input has been incredibly valuable, and even if this survey doesn't ask specifically about your proposed or preferred format / tour, that doesn't mean I've discarded it. Please feel free to bring up your opinions again here on Smogon and on discord.

Survey open until 11/30


Tldr: Survey
 
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i felt inspired to write something down as i don't have anything to do aside from my umpl match tmrw and i'm not tired enough rn.

1v1CL / OGPL IV (which i'm gonna call 1v1CL during this entire post) may just be one of the most confusing tours so far, and we're just trying to find some sort of identity for it and trying to form a majority feels like it's gonna take some heavy pushing, hence the survey, so i might as well give my opinion.
first off i believe that SS, SM, ORAS, BW and DPP are outright mandatory in the slotting, these gens are pretty much no-debate hands-down going to be in 1v1CL
i have found myself agreeing with most things that Nuxl has said so far about the tournament as well, i would like it to have SV and NatDex, and i think the flex format is a cool enough identity to keep it interesting. i do think though, that more than 3 sv isn't worth it, here are some formats that i think are worth looking into
Code: 
2 Flex (Most viable CL format)
SV Bo7
SV
SS Bo7
SM
ORAS
BW
DPP
ADV
Flex (Includes NatDex and GSC, similarly to OGPL III)
Flex
Code: 
6 Flex (balance of interest while keeping stagnant tiers for common other players)
SV Bo7
SV
SS Bo7
SM
Flex x6 (SV, SS, SM, ORAS, BW, DPP, ADV, GSC, NatDex).
Code: 
8 Flex (Anyone can cook!)
SV Bo7
SV
Flex x8 (SV, SS, SM, ORAS, BW, DPP, ADV, GSC, NatDex).
Code: 
OGPL Format (least viable probably)
SS Bo7
SS
SM Bo7
SM
ORAS
BW
DPP
ADV
Flex (GSC included, maybe NatDex?)
Flex
honestly i think these are the most worth looking into, and i hope that one of these become the official format.

Circuit
good i'm glad we get to talk about the circuit.

ok so. i know this sounds like a shit-tier plan but pls include 1v1 open/ssnl into the circuit, as for the second tour i'm lwk inclined to say swiss???? i feel like people were kinda sick of swiss at the time, but also it shouldn't have been giving out the same amount of points as masters or LT.

here's my proposal for the 1v1 2026 Circuit.

1v1 Global Cup V - Type A/B Tournament
1v1 Open II - Type C Tournament
1v1 Swiss II - Type B Tournament
1v1 Ladder Tournament X - Type A Tournament
1v1 Seasonal II - Type B Tournament
1v1 Last Chance Qualifier II - Type A Tournament

classic can go the same way it did this year, I think people preferred not having all the cups back-to-back-to-back, and top 16 selim seeded sounds nice too. champs could also be selim seeded but idk maybe that's a different case

next we should probably have a real TD team for sure: maybe start with Arai and lost heros and work your way from there. not necessarily have to be Forum Moderator = Tournament Director and viceversa i felt like that was a very weird way to handle things

finally, regarding everything with the bo5/7s and all the things going on there, i really don't know where to go so for now i'd say just keep it as is, the only thing i'd change is make champs bo7 mayhaps.

idk i think that like, it's difficult to change things once people get used to them, and changing bo5s to bo7s out of nowhere can be kinda odd but with lcq, umpl and wc i think people are more welcome to the idea. i hope that some of this stuff is considered. ty for reading.
 
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