Other 1v1 Tournament Policy Discussion Thread

Lumii said:
personal opinion here not speaking for anyone else yada yada etc ya know the drill...

masters sucks as a tour. the positioning of masters every year is honestly (imo) what makes it more competitive, as it is the last tour before champs, and is driven by a lot of people who actually want to play champs. you keep dismissing tournaments because nobody plays them, but the reality is barely anyone plays ladder, and I don't see any complaints about that tour. when a tournament is in circuit, people tend to actually play the tournament. TLT is a nice way to integrate room activity into people actually playing our circuit. there's definitely ways we can run a TLT to make it more equitable to asia + oce people, we just need to find how to structure a points format to do that.

anyways, can we look at how we do manager pricing in ogpl / pl? I was a part in creating how it was done for the past few tournaments, and it basically fixed none of the issues we had with just randomly voting for people, just added more guardrails. flat pricing is honestly a pretty nice idea, but idk.

ok idk anymore I'm tired and jetlagged gn
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You cannot edit the points system to make it more fair. You can limit the tour joined but that doesnt fix that high number of entrants will equal more points logically. LT has been successful every year, if the tour had bad signups and stuff wed be advocating for its removal, it doesnt get more logical.

You can integrate room casuals into smogon without damaging the tour circuit. Theres lot of reasons why this is a bad idea, 1) live tours have always been not popular rt or not, 2) champs is de facto competitive so you its useless to add an official tour to target casuals, 3) unofficials connecting rt to smog is a better idea since theyre usually more lax/less competitive, 4) past experience+logistics give unfair advantage to some people which is unfair as when it leads to champs

Masters good, placing bad, fix placing. Also id love to hear about people opinion on survey regarding masters and live. Tlt is simply a bandage fix that brings nothing positive to champs. Its cool to get more people interested to competitive but you cant do it that way, its damaging to both sides.
 
DEG said:
Release survey results btw
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Patience!! I was working on it.

Here's the survey results
I'll split these into circuit stuff and OGPL stuff so the order isn't the same as on the survey. These results inspired changes to the 2025 Circuit. I'm trying to speak for the other forum mods in the below post, for more questions you can reach out to any of us (but preferably the other two) on discord or smogon

Circuit stuff
For a 16 top cut, people were pretty clear about disliking swiss top cuts, so we're changing those to Double Elimination as it's the most popular. More than half of the responses also want to replace swiss, and replacing masters is near 50/50. Talking about masters first, considering 1v1 Single Elim Bo7 Tour was significantly more popular than Masters in the tour format voting, inserting that over masters seemed like a no brainer.

Swiss was more difficult, with people generally wanting a different format but none of the replacements being more popular than swiss. Live receiving an average vote of ~2.5 was pretty much off the table, so between the options on the survey, we pretty solidly landed on TLT.
Forms response chart. Question title: For tours with a top cut to 16, what is your preferred format?. Number of responses: .

Forms response chart. Question title: Regardless of how you answered above, do you think 1v1 Swiss should be replaced with a new tournament format?. Number of responses: 27 responses.

Forms response chart. Question title: Regardless of how you answered above, do you think 1v1 Masters should be replaced with a new tournament format?. Number of responses: 25 responses.

Forms response chart. Question title: On a scale of 1 to 5 (with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest), what are your opinions of the following formats?. Number of responses: .

OGPL stuff
First things first, people didn't like the namechange, so we're not changing the name. Also, we asked about manager self-buys and pretty much everyone agreed both managers should be allowed to self-buy.
Forms response chart. Question title: Should OGPL have a name change as it becomes an official tournament?. Number of responses: 30 responses.

Forms response chart. Question title: What is your most preferred way to handle manager self-buy?. Number of responses: 31 responses.

From here it gets a little more complicated, and we haven't reached a conclusion fully. The truth is, opinions are incredibly divided on how manager self buys should be handled. If you look purely at people's favourite options, 40% would like to keep last year's system of averaging manager opinions. Upon further inspection however, a very large amount of people voted 1/5 on their preference for that system. Because of this, we don't feel confident setting something in stone right now, and will come to a suitable conclusion in discussion with OGPL hosts and managers.
Forms response chart. Question title: If managers are able to self-buy, what is your most preferred way their price be determined?. Number of responses: 31 responses.

Forms response chart. Question title: Regardless of how you answered above, please rate the following ways to determine manager pricing. Number of responses: .

OGPL slots
Looking at the responses, 2 slot options stick out above the rest by miles. There's about equal support for keeping last year's slots and introducing some form of a flex slot. However, when you look at people's most preferred option, flex slots have last year's slots beat with 45% of votes as opposed to 32%. That leaves the question of what the slots are actually going to look like and how to fill them with flex slots. SM bo7 and SS bo7 are much more popular than their bo5 counterparts, so it makes a lot of sense to keep those instead of changing either them to bo5. The rest of the votes look like this:
1736178443097.png


Based on this, RBY and LGPE definitely shouldn't be included as flex slots. GSC however has enough support to give it a shot. That leads OGPL to most likely have the following slots:
  • SS bo7
  • SM bo7
  • ORAS bo5
  • BW bo5
  • DPP bo5
  • ADV bo5
  • Weekly Flex Team A bo5
  • Weekly Flex Team B bo5
Flex slots are selected by managers weekly before sending lineups, and can be any of the following generations: SS, SM, ORAS, BW, DPP, ADV, or GSC.
 
Felucia said:
Just means that nobody really knows what to do with the slot, I haven't really seen any better alternatives either. Some people want seasonals, other people have a breakdown when you mention seasonals, it's just tough
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I think the discourse around a tournament is a bit too hostile at points, for something that is just supposed to be a bit of fun

I encourage everybody to just try to enjoy playing some 1v1 even if you didn't get the results you wanted
 
Felucia said:
Just means that nobody really knows what to do with the slot, I haven't really seen any better alternatives either. Some people want seasonals, other people have a breakdown when you mention seasonals, it's just tough
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Masters is just seeded seasonal. Since 1v1 seasonal is a thing for um circuit make it count for 1v1 too gg.

Also tlt is just live but on ps. Also correct me if im wrong but isnt masters more popular than tlt
 
gm

TLT is slated for April 7th, and while we have plenty of time between now and then, I'd like discussion on this new format to start now.

The basics of the tour is fairly straightforward. There will be 4 cycles. At the end of each cycle the top 4 people with the best leaderboard score will be given entry to a top cut DE tournament.

The main things we need to determine are:

1. When is each official tour?

2. How many official tours will there be per day?

3. What will be the format of the room tours?

4. How do we award points from the tours?

These are some things to keep in mind for the tournament.

1. We probably want to discourage just joining every tour and hoping for the best, as this greatly favors people with more availability than others, so a linear "if you get a win you get x points" is probably out of the question. However, you should also be always rewarded for winning a tour.

2. We want to be relatively fair to all time zones to ensure that there is no bias for region selection in determining the qualifiers.


Anyways here's my proposal:

6 tours a day at 4 hour intervals, with each cycle shifting the tours by 1 hour (i.e cycle 1 has tour times in GMT at 12 am, 4 am, 8 am, 12 pm, 4pm, and 8pm then cycle 2 has tours at time 1 am, 5 am, 9 am, 1 pm, 5 pm, 9 pm). All tours are Double Elim.

Points per tour are awarded based on the following table (a general function is linked and explained below)
​
1739309588164.png



Top 4 points placements are all summed together (this part I'm the most shaky on)

1739309034557.png


where x is the number of rounds away from winning you are (0 if you're the winner, 1 if you're the runner up etc) and y is log base 2 of the number of entrants. Based on a 128 person tour winning gets 38 points. Second place gets 80% of that rounded down. Third 80% of second place. etc... With every bracket shrinking, (ie 128 > 64) shifting the larger brackets 3rd place to 1st place. In between sized brackets are linear.
 
Classic is starting soon!

Classic this year will have 6 cups from SS to ADV split up over the course of the year. You can check out the calendar here: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/2025-1v1-tournament-circuit.3757720/

All cups are single elim Bo5. I personally don't think there's much reason to change the point system from last year (you can read more about it below). As for playoffs, with 6 formats it's a little tricky.

Normally the format is this.

Code: 
High seed selects one generation.
Low seed selects one generation.
Low seed strikes one generation.
High seed strikes one generation.
Remaining generation is selected.

First generation played is selected by higher seeded player
Loser of previous match selects the next generation played.

If we keep that format we have 4 generations available, with the generation that is ultimately dropped from the series being decided by whoever lost the penultimate series. That's fine, but not really preferred in my opinion. I'd rather reward the higher seed with an extra strike at the end. This way players know exactly which generations they will be playing, so that they can theoretically plan for it, and have better prep.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...rmation-and-resources.3750672/#post-10256031/

Please feel free to share your opinions.
 
As much of a fan of ADV I am, why was it added back to Classic? The benefit of striking ahead of time is preparing teams for the tiers that are decided ahead of time, it's not like 6v6 tours where you just bring one team for each gen, the current system would likely have you prepare upto 30 teams a week if you wanted to be competitive because you don't know what tiers are being played ahead of time, and prep is a large part of 1v1. If ADV's inclusion in this tour is a decision set in stone, I would still keep the striking system with a winner picks from the two gens ahead of time for that reason.

ADV has always had decent representation between OGPL and Cups but adding it to Classic is IMO shortsighted, the second SV ends and gen 11 gets announced, we should be moving onto BW/ORAS/SM/SS/SV being our tiers and not lugging behind 7 tiers for Classic, and by that logic, it makes little sense to add ADV starting now to the roster however competitive it might be. Maybe there's a better spot eventually for the really old generations wrt tours (see: smogon masters for oras/sm/ss) but however good a generation is, it shouldn't stay beyond its time and by precedent bloat future editions of the Cup imo.

Anyway on other format suggestions that have been brought up multiple times before
-> Make Classic qualification top 12/16 not top 8, reduces variance in the long run + doesn't force people to have to play every cup to qualify, especially given these tours are spread out over a full calendar year now. Would also effectively auto qualify people who win a cup, which is IMO in the best interest for people who play specialized tiers, since if they're the undoubted best that year in the cup, it makes little sense that they're just not going to qualify to the final stage.
-> Scale points better to avoid cup sizes causing a disparity. A bracket size difference of two equates to a very large difference in volume for points given out by each cup, and rewards tiers differently which just goes against what Classic stands for.
-> Potentially seed Classic tours to stop people just getting inact runs throughout the tour vs people who are screwed by their bracket.
 
LittEleven said:
As much of a fan of ADV I am, why was it added back to Classic? The benefit of striking ahead of time is preparing teams for the tiers that are decided ahead of time, it's not like 6v6 tours where you just bring one team for each gen, the current system would likely have you prepare upto 30 teams a week if you wanted to be competitive because you don't know what tiers are being played ahead of time, and prep is a large part of 1v1. If ADV's inclusion in this tour is a decision set in stone, I would still keep the striking system with a winner picks from the two gens ahead of time for that reason.
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uh, it's my understanding that classic never made anyone prepare 30 teams a week... unsure how you got to the total of 30 teams, you pick and strike during scheduling and then start the prep process.


I like the idea of...

1. higher seed strikes
2. lower seed strikes
3. lower seed picks
4. higher seed picks
5. higher seed strikes
6. remaining is played

This gives the higher seed a slight advantage, but it's probably good to have that advantage anyways. Also, dropping lowest cup still seems like a good idea most likely given cups are still selim.

all I've got ig, no real horse in this race bc I (as usual) don't plan on playing classic
 
Lumii said:
I like the idea of...

1. higher seed strikes
2. lower seed strikes
3. lower seed picks
4. higher seed picks
5. higher seed strikes
6. remaining is played
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Both players getting to strike their opponent's best tier is an abysmal idea that will lead to lower quality games. I agree with Litt that ADV's inclusion makes little sense as we are approaching the next generation, especially since there is no good solution for choosing tiers with 6 tiers in the tour.
 
Gm double posting for the poll results.

Classic​


Should ADV be included?

1741445538350.png


With such mixed support, we've elected to NOT include ADV as an official cup this year. Timeline for the remaining tours is unlikely to change at this time. With this decision there is no need to look at a hypothetical six cups.

Points per cup?
1741445833625.png

Both no change from last year and tour size determining how many points per round had the same plurality of votes. However, it's also clear that there's a desire for some change from last year's system. Because of this we've elected for points to be determined where the first n rounds of a tour are worth 2 points, and the remaining rounds are worth 3 points, where n is dependent on the tour size.

TLT
​

TLT is a lot easier and more straightforward

1741447069952.png


We've elected to have 4 Daily Double Elimination Tournaments where the Top 8 performances will be counted per cycle and winning a Daily Tour will give a small number of points additional for that tour.
 
Now we have only 5 gens for certain, can we please consider bo5o5 as a real option? I feel like this only benefits the competitiveness of the tour. It would also allow the tour to mirror the smogon classic format, a format known for producing some of the most entertaining series of all time. Strikes are fairly cheap as it allows people to play classic; which is supposed to test mastery of all generations, to skip their weak generations all of playoffs.

bo5o5 adds an extra layer of strategy, the format would be higher seed choosing the first generation and from there, the loser decides which to play next. This adds strategy through making players consider their options; they may have a likely win if they choose their best tier but decide to choose a different gen to give themselves a safety net later. A player may also pick their strongest tier first to try to gain momentum from the very start. This rewards skilful play and incentivises good preparation beyond just building.

The main benefit of bo5o5, which I outlined earlier is it means players must be proficient in every generation, both in building and play. This format would perform the intended purpose. For example, last classic, dpp was in just one of seven series and Marshmelto, a finalist, didn't play a single dpp series during playoffs. bo5o5 wouldn't ensure certain tiers will be played more, rather it doesn't allow players to sleep on certain tiers. If a player mains ss and wants to pick it no matter what, but knows an opponent is weak at dpp, they can pick it into them at any time. Normally they would pick ss, their opponent would pick their gen and then strike dpp. This means the opponent has a reason to patch up their weakness in dpp, or have a lower chance of winning.

This would enhance classic from a spectator point of view, I feel like this element is under looked, but it makes the players care more for the same reason they care more about winning in pl than even a high individual round - there's more eyes on them. There is more games - more chances for iconic games, longer series so higher turnout overall and the actual format of picking generations adds to the experience - see smogon classic. There's also the added element of seeing two players play gens they aren't known for to a high level which is another big draw.

The main problem with this format is time, both in preparation and time to play. I feel like time to play has lesser impact so I'll address that first. If a person can set an hour and a half aside, which is a high estimate for how long the average series under the current format takes, they could likely spare an extra 45 minutes to an hour. Each series is very important and players already prioritise fitting in their series normally. Extensions would still be an option in case someone doesn't have the time that specific week.

Time for preparation is the main flaw with this format; players would have to prepare 25 teams compared to the regular 15, which is a significant difference and a lot, even for people with a lot of free time. With that said, there's no doubt it would grant better preparation the advantage. Under the new format, players have a long time to prepare teams before the start of playoffs, which they could use throughout. If players win in less than 5 games in a tier or less than 5 tiers a series, they would be able to preserve teams to use against future opponents. Additionally, while I'm not encouraging people to reuse, it's fairly inevitable to also happen in playoffs regardless of format; bo3 w strikes or bo5o5. While I personally believe the trade-off of added time is worth it, I'm sure this change wouldn't be for everyone.

In summary, I think bo5o5 is a viable option to increase both the competitiveness and hype surrounding classic, and the change in format could be utilised to reform how playoff series are played, however it does have some flaws in relation to time.
 
I agree with bo5o5. Like RTM said above, classic is not about being the best in 3 out of 5 gens, it’s about being the best in every old gen (uncompetitive ones excluded). Classic is already a top 8 format for playoffs, so you only have to prep 3 series to make it to finals. Sorry for the short post but I don’t think more words would help my point that playing every gen is good in the tour about every gen
 
ok now that ogpl is over im posting thoughts before survey results to pre-game whenever those are released basically.

Flex Slots:
I think these were an overall net positive and we were able to see a lot more diversity in both players and tiers as well as being really engaging to spectate week by week. I would like to see these be a continuing point of identity for OGPL beyond just being the "old gen tour", as other "gimmicks" kind of add way too much variance to be viable or increase the barrier of potential managers (blind draft the biggest example I can think of and other formats like snake are just as troll). The only part I was dissatisfied with relates to my second point, which is the inclusion of GSC as a flex in this edition. If it was originally a slot in the tour and the slots were increased along with flex slots I think that decision made more sense (even though we probably did not have the signups to expand in the first place) than being an option solely to flex because some people wanted to see it played. It was included on the survey and the average was ~1 point below the other tiers featured in the tour which isn't too much of a deviation but still a bit questionable. If GSC is to be included as a flex slot it would make the most sense to have it abide by the "rules" of flexing and be an actual slot to begin with.

GSC:
I would be opposed to GSC being a slot in future editions of OGPL. Obviously, some people enjoy the tier but i'd rather not beat around the bush in the beginning of this section instead of wasting time leaving my conclusion for the ending if people do not want to read this. EVs are a huge part of 1v1 and with GSC being a fundamentally different gen to prep (alongside lgpe and rby but neither had a chance of support so take with a grain of salt) the tier gives a disconnect in the fundamentals of 1v1. Maxed bulk usually leads to one of the two outcomes fulfilled in most sets, setup or running inaccurate moves (in some cases both). Both of these outcomes often lead to results not favoring the better player, and in the case of some inaccurate moves trying to mitigate this problem will change winning core matchups most of the time to a loss. It left me dissatisfied as a player and spectator seeing so many instances of the "better" player losing series or games due to higher chances of bad luck coming into play.

TLDR: I think OGPL was a fun tour and I would prefer the format to stay the same including flexes, excluding GSC from being an option.
 
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I agree with Drip entirely. I think the flex slots were an exciting, novel thing to bring to the table this OGPL. I'd strongly support their inclusion next year.

Regarding GSC:
I also agree that GSC should be removed from future editions. I'm not planning on poking holes in the generation, I think as a bring 3 pick 1 format it is not especially different from different 1v1 gens, but I don't think it was a positive addition to the tour. I understand that GSC has plenty of resources for new players, but this tour showed me convincing proof that ability to learn the tier =/ an active playerbase resulting in competitive series'. Without making too much of a stink about rng and metagame health or whatever (I honestly don't have a good enough grasp of the tier to speak on that), an absolute minimum of 6 competent GSC players are required to give the tour some hope of competitive GSC games. This is ignoring the fact that players often need support, or that multiple GSC players can be drafted to the same team. I think it was clear that GSC does not have a sufficiently large community to be represented in official tiers, and that it should be omitted from future editions until that is changed.
 
I believe GSC's inclusion as a flex-only slot was the wrong decision. That being said I believe that if it even slightly exceeds its current level of popularity we should strongly consider adding it as a real OGPL slot next year, and that's a discussion we should have sooner rather than later so we don't have to rush to a decision, but it can wait until next OGPL is closer.

Re: flex slots. I think flex slots were a great addition from the perspective of a manager. They give the option of rewarding different drafting styles and it was fun and felt meaningful to figure out what flex to submit to gain the most advantage over an opponent. I think flex slots have a ton of merit in tournaments and will likely be writing a post arguing their inclusion in the next edition of world cup (PL should stay untouched). I'll at least wait with that to see how UMBD turns out though
 
GSC was already a questionable addition as a flex only slot, theres absolutely NO reason it should be considered for a static slot next year. It’s become quite clear that the tier and its community are unable and not close to filling 6 slots and until they are able to we should not be entertaining the idea of allowing GSC in future OGPL editions which is a shame because it fits thematically and has enough resources and depth to it to be a somewhat playable tier. Ideally GSC should be a permanent flex only slot, but it needs to able to fill that role properly.

flex slots were definitely a positive and added extra depth to draft and strategy and should definitely be brought back. dont see any downsides to it
 
i read that we should post in thread regarding our thoughts (despite the discord having a discussion on this every week), so i am here to reiterate that we should definitely not include GSC in future team tournaments. Thank you
 
GSC 1v1 should not be a presence in an official team tour. OGPL would serve much better as primarily a competition of the best talent of the most competitive old gens and the development of new talent within them. Early gens with small playerbases and less development incentive are the wrong direction imo. Arguments about GSC's level of skill are very valid but overdone; The slightly less important secondary argument about whether to keep it or not is if it could feasibly expand its playerbase to a healthy level between today and the next time ogpl signups open. With DPP coming to classic, and ADV rating higher than it in skill expresssion, GSC has a very low development incentive compared to its kin.


As for flex slots, speaking from a player/spectator perspective, they were the most fun aspect of the tour this year. We saw a different draft dyanamic, and plenty of new talent develop as a direct/indirect result of their presence. While it would be weird to add them to PL, I am looking forward to seeing how they play out next OGPL.
 
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I think, mostly as an incentive to play all the different tours, it's important for them to have their own unique traits, and I think, the Flex slot format we ran with this year hit on a lot of markers, so I think it should be what makes OGPL OGPL, format wise at least
I +1 most of the points made about GSC here. I'm not convinced anyone other than 2 or maybe 3 people actively enjoyed playing and building for it (if there were, please let us know your feelings too), next year it would just be perfect to run this same format but without GSC being in as a flex slot but not in at all.

Don't mess with PL format please, as for world cup, you can do whatever you want with that.
 
I’m a gsc council member but the tier shouldn’t be shoved down people’s throats if they don’t want it.

- It’s the only tier you can realistically monopolise. (buy all viable players of)
- It’s objectively influenced by rng more than other tiers.

Both of these are unnecessary dynamics for a teamtour. While it still has its place as a tier, and can continue to receive unofficial tournaments, I support the removal of gsc the next iteration of ogpl.
 
GSC 1v1 should remain in 1v1OGPL as a regular slot. It has a growing playerbase comparable to ADV and DPP 1v1, and its RNG is frequently misunderstood or overstated.
Critical hit damage doubles the Pokemon's level in the calculation, not the damage dealt.
Crits ignore stat modifiers, burn damage reduction, and screens, if the target's defense stat stage is greater than or equal to the attacker's attacking stat stage.
(This means a crit at +2 against a +2 mon does the same as a +1 crit on against a +2 mon, the damage only goes up if it was +3 or greater against +2).
Any Pokemon that learns Curse, Defense Curl, Barrier, Reflect, Light Screen, etc. can mitigate critical hits - their defensive boosts are still calculated on crits, and they don't take enough damage to flip the matchup after an unlucky turn.

Maxed HP and Defenses means neutrally-effective critical hits don't hit hard enough to win a losing matchup most of the time. Even with a crit, you're still not going to win with a super-effective disadvantage in GSC.
Raikou Thunderbolt vs. Vaporeon: 234-276 (50.5 - 59.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Mystic Water Vaporeon Hydro Pump vs. Raikou on a critical hit: 302-355 (82.2 - 96.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO

This can be contrasted with the ADV standard of "crit to win..."
252+ SpA Vaporeon Hydro Pump vs. 252 HP / 0 SpD Raikou on a critical hit: 385-453 (100.2 - 117.9%) -- guaranteed OHKO

...and the DPP expectation of "crit and one-shot through the resist berry."
252+ Atk Choice Band Tyranitar Earthquake vs. 128 HP / 240 Def Shuca Berry Raikou on a critical hit: 353-416 (100 - 117.8%) -- guaranteed OHKO
252+ SpA Choice Specs Cresselia Ice Beam vs. 252 HP / 220 SpD Yache Berry Dragonite on a critical hit: 386-456 (100 - 118.1%) -- guaranteed OHKO

GSC 1v1 is an honest tier. Team preview matchups reflect clear wins and losses. You can easily minimize your own RNG if you like - build around Earthquake Marowak, not Cross Chop Machamp. While it's funny to watch people land a freeze or crit in any gen and say "this is why gsc shouldnt be in ogpl," the reality is gens 3 and 4 aren't really any less RNG-reliant than gen 2.

OGPL is the Smogon tour for GSC 1v1. We want to encourage the playerbase to continue to grow, and that requires sustained tournament representation.
 
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