Other 1v1 Tournament Policy Discussion Thread

I have spoken about my views on the new differential system in the 1v1 discord and thought I would do a post here (I know some people disagree with some parts of my views but with the system being as new as it is think there should be a few changes). I should preface this by saying that I much prefer the new system of differentials and h2h deciding who goes through to tb hell. I found out earlier that stravench didn't get through due to his w/l differential being lower than the other 2-1s which is solely due to activity wins being regarded as +3. He was the only player to play one of the people in his pool and after that person lost they decided to pull out of the tour resulting in the others who were yet to play them getting a 3-0 by technicality. In my head this is unfair given the only person who actually beat them was stravench and they were punished for having played their game first and not winning 3-0. I do understand the counterpoint that the other people were not given the opportunity to play this person and so it is uncertain the differential they would receive, however, the chances of both of the other contenders going 3-0 is very slim and by scheduling for later days were given a free qualification from the pool. My proposed change would be to say that if someone loses one game then drops out, the player who won that game regardless of the score should have the calculated differential for that changed to 3-0 to match the other people given free wins. This is by no means foolproof as sometimes one of the remaining players might be counting on the matchup to boost their differential into qualifying range and for these players it sucks, I do think though that this downside is overruled by how much more disheartening it is to lose because you scheduled well. Without a change like this the system contributes further into a meta of johning opponents to maximise the chances of activity and given wins (this is still somewhat the case with my proposed change but punishes you less for playing games early than the current system) and for a two week pool I would rather not see all the games played on the last sunday, which if the system continues I at least will most likely aim for. It is also worth mentioning that in the situation where someone plays two games and drops out I do not think the current policy should change as these two players might have had different differentials between them and the impact on the result of the pool of the last +3 differential is considerably less.

My second proposed change is a less controversial topic as I think everyone agrees with me, but I thought I should still add it in the hopes it gets implemented quickly: coin flips should be +0. I think this is pretty self explanatory but if neither person makes an effort to get the game done in time then neither player should be rewarded for it, the possible situation where someone makes it through due to the differential awarded by a coin flip is kinda wack.
 
There's a couple of things I DON'T agree with;
Classic being first
LT being last
and; having a team tour before March.

Rosa said:
My personal order of tournaments would be this:
Masters
PL
Majors
GC
WC
LT
Classic
Champs
Click to expand...

Since our schedules are done year-by-year, and are not required to be the same, we should definitely build our 2023 schedule around SV. In your circuit, there's stuff I don't really agree with simply because 2023 is first circuit with SV. First, PL is just too early, we should at least have two tournaments before a team tournament whether people think WC or PL is better (imo PL first is better). We should TWO individual tournaments before a team tournament because they help the metagame stabilize. SV is dropping with it a question mark gimmick, plus a ton of new mons, new items, and another dexit, which will take a few months to somewhat stabilize. Masters alone will not help the development of the metagame, especially since replays aren't allowed until late rounds, this will provide nearly zero data about SV in a tournament setting which creates the following problems;
1) Slot discussion 3SV vs 4SV
2) People not sure what they want to play and who managers will gamble on to stay in SV
3) Chaotic metagame with annoying mid-tour broken mons and maybe mons.

This can be fixed by having two tournaments before a team tournament - one of them being LT. In any other, "normal" years, I wouldn't agree with LT being last due to the fact that people get burnt out in the end, and putting the tournament that relies the most on endurance is really a bad idea and would suck any enjoyment out of the tournament. For 2023, I don't agree with LT being last because, it's the tournament where we get the MOST public games and development. LT should definitely be one of the first tournament of the circuit as it is the individual that pushes metagame development to the extreme.

I agree with spacing PL/WC further, something along the lines of PL in March, and WC in July/August seems alright.

We also cannot have Masters first, since it's a seeded tournament based on points, and I don't think we should seed an SV tournament with SS points.

I think the most "fair" solution without putting two big SV individual tournaments in a row is the following;
GC
LT
PL
Majors
WC
Masters
Classic/Champs

Logistically, I don't know how will that pan out but 2022 literally had GC PL LT WC so I think it should work out.
 
  • What are your thoughts on the 2022 circuit? (Think, great, crammed, any change you'd do)
I participated in a big team tour for the first time thanks to the 1v1PL, and it was honestly very long and tiring (also preparing late didn't help) but apart from that tour, the circuit was great.
  • What are your thoughts on format changes? (GC changes, Majors changes, Swiss playoffs format for LT/Champs) and would you change anything in them?
GC is genuinely a good tour, it really rewards consistent players and I hope we will have the same format next year. I have the same opinion about Majors, LT and Champs.
  • Would you like to have more gimmick tournaments? (BST Limit, Monotype, Monopoke.. ?
If we have people that are willing to host them, absolutely. SInce there a not circuit tournaments, nobody is "forced" to enter these tours. It also help newcomers to improve their building skill even outside of the regular 1v1 format. These tournaments are FUN, so why not ?

My order with few explanations because my lecture is finishing :
LT (I think having LT as the first tour is a good way to develop the meta)
GC
PL
Masters
Classic
WC
Majors
Champs
 
As your second half of 1v1 TD my plan is to eradicate single elimination (most uncompetitive format in 1v1 ever) tournaments from competitive tournaments in 2023, and we're slowly getting there. Majors will be, as of now, two rounds of group stages next year which allows us to reduce single elim rounds.

While we finish the final touches on the 2023 Tournament Circuit, we have decided to bring back another victim of mickey single elim format: 1v1 Classic. During last editions of cups and even playoffs we can all conclude that the ceiling is actually low, and in a lot of cases bracket luck and luck in-game affect a lot qualifiers and winners which is a problem if we're aiming for an peak old gen competitive tour. Classic has failed to produce 1) Competitive tournaments (Cups, and poffs), and 2) Old Gens Metagame Development. I do believe Single Elim in cups is in big part responsible of the first problem which is why we should rework classic. Regarding og development, we can't really force anyone to build and push the meta forward when copying previews/stealing from PL/WC is way easier and this is what happens.

There's many ideas that tackles different part of the problem, we either can work on keeping classic identity and working on axing single elim, or change classic identity to a new old gen tours, or introduce a hybrid system where tours are in rotation. Basically I've gathered some options that don't seem bad;

1) Keep Classic Identity - Make Cups Swiss Format, and maybe start atleast a month earlier to have more spacing between cups to allow a more relaxed swiss format
2) Change Classic Identity - Make Classic a year-long tour like Champs and have champs at the end of year + introduce a new old gen tour end of year (OG PL, maybe another idea)
3) Delete Classic forever - Replace Classic entirely by another OG tour
4) Rotational System - Hybrid system between 1 and 3. Make Cups Swiss but don't host Classic every year. This can also be used at a wider level - rotating majors, masters, gc etc.. with other individual formats.

tl;dr classic is a mickey tour, selim is a woat format that should never be used in 1v1 again, pls fix.
 
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completly agree with deg on swiss tour.
I have been disgusted to leave the tour by being haxed every cup, and maybe it would be avoided if there was another format.
Classic is one of the most hyped tournament and it deserves more than a simple elim tour...
I think some players didn't deserve to be qual cause they haxed a lot and reached finals.. Then, swiss tour requires more skill and is less based on luck.
 
XSTATIC COLD said:
completly agree with deg on swiss tour.
I have been disgusted to leave the tour by being haxed every cup, and maybe it would be avoided if there was another format.
Classic is one of the most hyped tournament and it deserves more than a simple elim tour...
I think some players didn't deserve to be qual cause they haxed a lot and reached finals.. Then, swiss tour requires more skill and is less based on luck.
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I agree with this, I disagree with the statement that some players didn’t deserve to reach as far as they did. 1v1 tends to rely on luck a bit more than other metas on smogon and players should recognize that going in. If you are relying on stone edge for coverage you need to recognize you will lose 80% of your winning matchups. If you are using a crit-me-not mon you need to recognize for each turn you play you are running that risk. If a player gets lucky and wins, even though it was a matchup where they had a slim margin of victory, they usually picked the best move to help them win in that losing situation.

not only that but when selecting mons it’s already a total guessing game. On a couple match ups I’ve had in 1v1 where I can’t decide what mon to pick, I have used the”flip a coin” option before, because both of themstatistically have a decent likelihood at winning because there is no way of knowing for certain what your opponent will pick even if “you got that dog in you.”

I always hate when 1v1 players use the argument “I’m better you just got lucky.” That is mons, luck is a skill.
 
Kowasabii said:
I agree with this, I disagree with the statement that some players didn’t deserve to reach as far as they did. 1v1 tends to rely on luck a bit more than other metas on smogon and players should recognize that going in. If you are relying on stone edge for coverage you need to recognize you will lose 80% of your winning matchups. If you are using a crit-me-not mon you need to recognize for each turn you play you are running that risk. If a player gets lucky and wins, even though it was a matchup where they had a slim margin of victory, they usually picked the best move to help them win in that losing situation.

not only that but when selecting mons it’s already a total guessing game. On a couple match ups I’ve had in 1v1 where I can’t decide what mon to pick, I have used the”flip a coin” option before, because both of themstatistically have a decent likelihood at winning because there is no way of knowing for certain what your opponent will pick even if “you got that dog in you.”

I always hate when 1v1 players use the argument “I’m better you just got lucky.” That is mons, luck is a skill.
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Imagine when you outplay your opponents and you lose all your series cause of luck.
That happened in my classic.
So, no, luck is not a skill.
 
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I don't really participate or even spectate classic all too much, but I do agree that it hasn't really been the most stellar tour in the lineup for a while now. Why that is can likely be attributed to multiple factors like single elimination, bracket luck, general lack of interest to play oldgens in a non-team tour setting, there just not being that many seasoned oldgen players who've stuck around, etc.

In that regard, I discussed some ideas with deg before having the discussion brought here between the likes of having an oldgen circuit, having a bunch of corona premier leagues (1 day per round) for each individual old gen, swiss cups, a proper oldgen premier league or draftpools, adopting the monotype generations format, and so on, with none of them really standing out to either of us.

In my opinion, it generally seems like there's not a lot of enthusiasm about oldgen individuals, and if cash prizes and custom avatars won't do the trick, idk what will. When it comes to meta developments, I think most of the bigger developments come from having a dedicated core of players working together and labbing new sets and strategies, so perhaps replacing 1v1 Classic with some kind of oldgen team tour would be better? At the same time, however, that runs the risk of just pigeonholing the usual oldgen mainers into their same slots without giving new people as much of a chance to pick up the tier, so it ends up feeling like a bit of an impasse with no standout options.

Everything said, if we were to stick with Classic, I think swiss cups would probably be the best way to go about it, if everyone is alright with the fact that there would be periods of time where everyone is playing in all 6 cups (SS coming next year) at once. Alternatively, maybe I'm wrong about the prospect of an oldgen team tour; perhaps the removal of all the current gen slots would end up giving way for the current gen players who sign up to pick up something new, even if the oldgen mainstays would still be doing most of the heavy lifting. I'm curious to hear what everyone has to think about these two prospects, or even anything else I mentioned above.
 
Rosa said:
I don't really participate or even spectate classic all too much, but I do agree that it hasn't really been the most stellar tour in the lineup for a while now. Why that is can likely be attributed to multiple factors like single elimination, bracket luck, general lack of interest to play oldgens in a non-team tour setting, there just not being that many seasoned oldgen players who've stuck around, etc.

In that regard, I discussed some ideas with deg before having the discussion brought here between the likes of having an oldgen circuit, having a bunch of corona premier leagues (1 day per round) for each individual old gen, swiss cups, a proper oldgen premier league or draftpools, adopting the monotype generations format, and so on, with none of them really standing out to either of us.

In my opinion, it generally seems like there's not a lot of enthusiasm about oldgen individuals, and if cash prizes and custom avatars won't do the trick, idk what will. When it comes to meta developments, I think most of the bigger developments come from having a dedicated core of players working together and labbing new sets and strategies, so perhaps replacing 1v1 Classic with some kind of oldgen team tour would be better? At the same time, however, that runs the risk of just pigeonholing the usual oldgen mainers into their same slots without giving new people as much of a chance to pick up the tier, so it ends up feeling like a bit of an impasse with no standout options.

Everything said, if we were to stick with Classic, I think swiss cups would probably be the best way to go about it, if everyone is alright with the fact that there would be periods of time where everyone is playing in all 6 cups (SS coming next year) at once. Alternatively, maybe I'm wrong about the prospect of an oldgen team tour; perhaps the removal of all the current gen slots would end up giving way for the current gen players who sign up to pick up something new, even if the oldgen mainstays would still be doing most of the heavy lifting. I'm curious to hear what everyone has to think about these two prospects, or even anything else I mentioned above.
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Adding ss to classic is probably the worst thing I’ve seen on this thread so far
 
Rosa said:
In that regard, I discussed some ideas with deg before having the discussion brought here between the likes of having an oldgen circuit, having a bunch of corona premier leagues (1 day per round) for each individual old gen, swiss cups, a proper oldgen premier league or draftpools, adopting the monotype generations format, and so on, with none of them really standing out to either of us.

In my opinion, it generally seems like there's not a lot of enthusiasm about oldgen individuals, and if cash prizes and custom avatars won't do the trick, idk what will. When it comes to meta developments, I think most of the bigger developments come from having a dedicated core of players working together and labbing new sets and strategies, so perhaps replacing 1v1 Classic with some kind of oldgen team tour would be better? At the same time, however, that runs the risk of just pigeonholing the usual oldgen mainers into their same slots without giving new people as much of a chance to pick up the tier, so it ends up feeling like a bit of an impasse with no standout options.
Click to expand...

A tournament like Monotype Generations would not hurt as an unofficial, but I don't think It's enough to replace Classic as a main old generation tournament. I suggest keeping Classic's Identity and move forward with Swiss Cups, for sure, logistics might be a bit rough but it can happen. My idea was to have Classic Poffs in mid December-ish and work backward to find when to start, maybe we start directly after WC and find a way to separate Cups. I also don't think CA and Money failed to make people play old gens, this Classic saw a lot of people join but the last rounds looked way more "Mickey" was because of selim and bracket luck so we had wayyyy less hype matchups at the end.

With that being said, I believe that Six Cups should never happen, specially in a Swiss format. The mentioned format already creates some burnout as they last more, and may force some people to play more. I would not oppose six cups if people really want that but I don't think that's something we should do.

This brings the topic of ADV vs SS. Contrary to some people that likes to hold into traditions and stuff, I think it's time to bid farewell to ADV. It is the most disliked generation of 1v1 and all the hype that was surrounding it has died down and I feel like a big part of the community is being "forced" into playing it, correct me if I'm wrong. SS is a gen that a lot of people enjoy and is way less disliked than ADV. If people want to keep ADV then sure, I'm stating my opinion. ADV is just a dead gen that is forced upon people and should just be removed from Classic.
 
This brings the topic of DPP vs SS. Contrary to some people that likes to hold into traditions and stuff, I think it's time to bid farewell to DPP. It is the most disliked generation of 1v1 and all the hype that was surrounding it has died down and I feel like a big part of the community is being "forced" into playing it, correct me if I'm wrong. SS is a gen that a lot of people enjoy and is way less disliked than DPP. If people want to keep DPP then sure, I'm stating my opinion. DPP is just a dead gen that is forced upon people and should just be removed from Classic.

keep adv
 
both are fairly unplayable but dpp is for sure the lesser evil
I think an way you do it is gonna piss off some people
I would generally tend to play classic but swiss format sounds super super time intensive and something i definetly dont think i would commit to personally
Im personally leaning towards just leaving any sort of classic tour out of the official circuit all together
 
Jamez said:
SS > ADV in classic, dpp could also be removed but I think dpp is still better than adv and removing dpp over adv doesn’t make sense anyways. Also jesus where the fuck has time gone swsh gonna be in classic
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If it’s gonna be Swiss I say drop both dpp and adv. 4 tourneys at the same time is enough to handle. Not because team building is hard, but because people can be annoying to schedule with sometimes.
 
Just here to defend DPP's position in classic, in case we are looking at cutting off tiers. You might not believe me, but the meta has become quite pleasant post shaymin and machamp bans. More people are yet to realise this given how 1 cup in classic and bo5gens is the only tournament play that it gets all year round.
 
As someone who likes ADV and has singed up for both cups so far, is there an issue with keeping it, adding SS next year, and doing what Grand Slam does and having only your best 3 performances count for playoff points? Or is keeping 5 gens preferred?
 
Six cups, let alone six swiss cups, is too much. Limit classic to five cups and give the players whose players were cut a tournament that people have a reason to care about. I think community input from the tiers' playerbases themselves and other 1v1 players (who have for better or for worse gained opinions about most tiers) is the most important part of deciding what tiers should be in tours, so this conversation should continue. Putting the players of tiers against each other isn't the cleanest, but it wasn't that bad last 1v1pl and will happen in the next 1v1pl anyways with SV/SWSH/BW/MG. If you want your tier in or out of a tournament you should make a post when a conversation happens.

Focusing on Swiss specifically, I think there are a lot more issues than people think. The tours would have to be quite spaced out to not have a huge amount of overlap. It's already bad enough for a week or two while you're still losing cups, but players competing would either have a ton of games at once for at least two weeks. If you heavily space the tours out, classic would be very slow and boring. Swiss also would not happen in playoffs (I assume), so the goal of "eradicating single elimination" wouldn't be realized.

If you do swiss, there are two things you could do to make classic less intense. You could either limit people to a certain amount of cups (either four or three), or do what Heracross2.0 said and only count your top 3 cups. I think expecting players who are trying to make playoffs to get as many points as possible among five swiss cups is asking way too much. This makes more sense when you realize players ban a cup in playoffs anyways.

You could also either make cups seeded or change the qualification style, but those are probably more brainstorming and effort than a simple swiss fix. There should be way more old gen tours anyways, please make them consistent in some way for people that want to learn, practice, or just play for fun.
 
SwordIsBored said:
1v1 cups is for relevant old gens
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not really, not many people seriously prep for classic but instead reuse teams for wc/pl. more or less classic is a way for older gens to be played and to develop more. most people however, join to have fun (shocker), not so much as to win the entire tournament. of course there are like 10 tryhards trying to win, but I doubt 100+ people are joining to win the cups entirely
Tom1535 said:
This brings the topic of DPP vs SS. Contrary to some people that likes to hold into traditions and stuff, I think it's time to bid farewell to DPP. It is the most disliked generation of 1v1 and all the hype that was surrounding it has died down and I feel like a big part of the community is being "forced" into playing it, correct me if I'm wrong. SS is a gen that a lot of people enjoy and is way less disliked than DPP. If people want to keep DPP then sure, I'm stating my opinion. DPP is just a dead gen that is forced upon people and should just be removed from Classic.

keep adv
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not really hating on dpp but it's just proving this argument from deg is balls since you can switch out adv for dpp/oras (or any gen in that matter) and there would be no difference
DEG said:
I suggest keeping Classic's Identity
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there are 2 things classic does: allows you to play oldgens guaranteed and shows you who's the best oldgens player. getting rid of a gen ruins part of what makes classic what it is. as what heracross said, counting your top 3 cups instead of all of them is the best option, since now you don't have to play all the cups. playoffs are an issue but adding gsc as a cup then allowing the qualifiers to get rid of 2 gens each is a good option

personally myself, I view having classic keep its identity to play oldgens with a large tournament as more important than having "hype" cups. there are many more people who want to play for fun than seriously, and supporting the majority instead of the "gamers" is arguably better
 
  • Add SS to Classic
  • Cut DPP and ADV
  • Make the Cups Swiss Format
  • Players get eliminated at 3 losses to reduce the amount of sand-bagging/deadgames/lower the overall load of the tournament.
  • 3 weeks delay between cup signups, so people will only be playing in 2 cups at a time at the very most
  • Only your 3 best performances out of 4 count for playoffs
This is most likely the best way to improve Classic as it stands right now.

The removal of DPP and ADV is generally non-consequential, following the DPP removal from PL the now non-existent playerbase has been quiet without even the kindle of intention to add it back, and even in this thread where the possibility of DPP being removed is being addressed it only got a one-off post from a guy that shows up once a year and hasnt played a teamtour in years saying the meta is "ok i guess". This tier has no place in this tour.

Onto ADV, one thing that has been plaguing this tier year after year is that the winner of ADV Cup and most of the people that do well in it think the tier is abhorrent and only played it because it was necessary for Playoffs. The tier has been following a decline in popularity as it always does when LRXC goes offline for more than 25 minutes and if we want to be realistic, the loud players that support and enjoy ADV aren't even good at the tier, most of them spend their times using not-quite-viable mons which is not a realistic depiction of how good an actual metagame is in a competitive format. A point could be raised for deddd being viable and enjoying it bc he won ADVLT but the only players that played that tour are people who like ADV (and XSTATIC COLD because he is a masochist i guess) so that point is mute. Most people who do well in ADV Cup sign up for it because it gives better odds to qualify for playoffs not because they like the tier.

Now onto addressing whatever else came up in this chat since I feel like it
SuperMemeBroz said:
Hot take but if you’re removing the older cups, you’re disregarding the main point of classic tourney
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If we cared even a minimum amount about mantaining the same format as smogon classic we'd also be doing 1-5 gens. The point of Classic is to give individual tournament representation to the old gens played in our teamtours, Big Smogon Tournaments do this via Smogon Tour for 6-8 and Classic for 1-5, but gens 1-4 are not represented in our team tours because they are not good (enough) or competitive (enough), so there is no reason for us to keep them in classic just as a sop to a minority of players. I've proposed the potential idea of splitting classic in two, and have a 3-5 tour start of year and a 6-8 tour end of year, but the former would have 1/X the amount of signups the latter would and it wouldn't make sense from a logistics perspective.

Heracross2.0 said:
As someone who likes ADV and has singed up for both cups so far, is there an issue with keeping it, adding SS next year, and doing what Grand Slam does and having only your best 3 performances count for playoff points? Or is keeping 5 gens preferred?
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Grand Slam is a different beast and only has arguably good and competitive tiers in it, this rule they adopt where only 3 cups are counted is because they did not really have other options: they categorically cannot cut tiers out and their cups are huge compared to ours and thus last much longer. It's definitely a system that we could implement but the ideal of classic is to reward players that are good in all gens compared to those that only peak in one or two, so this is a double edged sword that could potentially end up advantaging the one trick ponies in spite of the all rounders.
Either way we are also in a specific circumstance where a few of our classic tiers are actively disliked by a majority of the playerbase, thus making it a better alternative to simply cut those off.

Trashuny said:
Focusing on Swiss specifically, I think there are a lot more issues than people think. The tours would have to be quite spaced out to not have a huge amount of overlap. It's already bad enough for a week or two while you're still losing cups, but players competing would either have a ton of games at once for at least two weeks. If you heavily space the tours out, classic would be very slow and boring. Swiss also would not happen in playoffs (I assume), so the goal of "eradicating single elimination" wouldn't be realized.
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I agree with you on many points you've made but I think only having 4 cups, 3 weeks apart, with only the best 3 counting and people getting eliminated at 3 losses reduces the problems with the amount of load swiss puts on the tour by a metric ton, and makes it easily bearable for people to play. The main thing I wanted to reply to is that while I hate single elimination with a passion for 1v1 tours specifically I think Classic playoffs is a fringe case where it is ok, and there is no feasible change to the format you could make to make it better. With the fact that it's already the Top 8 qualifiers so the amount of rounds is quite thin, the games are Bo3o5 which are a large enough amount to make them competitive.


In response to the echo of two people that have been tirelessly defending ADV and will inevitably reply to this post, there always was a net 0% chance for ADV to stay in Classic over SS, and cutting any other tier or having 6 cups was never going to be a possible option. Point being: adv was already doomed, what I'm suggesting with my post is specifically to also cut DPP with it and to implement the other format changes.
pce
 
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