Hello, player of every single gen ever, former manager, top player and multigen seeded hoster and winner here.
My stance is that we should replace DPP with Multigen Bo5o1. After experiencing it first-hand, DPP has been extremely frustrating to build, play and spectate, and I can speak for experience from my previous team tournaments. In World Cup 4 I had to build every single DPP team that was used in that tournament, and we had to slot in Tom842, since South Europe, a team that has historically had one of the best rosters, did not have anyone nearly qualified to play or build the tier. In PL5, after buying Gym Socks as our main DPP player, both me and zio have had to sacrifice ourselves out of our slots to play DPP, and this isn't due to planning oversight, we simply had to make-do because the player pool did not physically have the DPP players to back up the existence of the slot: you can see a similar situation in the Castelia City Catgirls who had to slot a complete newbie in DPP (trashuny, who as of my knowledge dislikes dpp nowadays) because Jabiru did not want to play in it for most of the season; and also in the Godspeed Scolipedes who had to cycle between three different players and ended up having to slot a player that had never played a tournament game either, in deciding weeks of the season. The other teams who didn't have DPP problems in this fashion had to spend an unholy amount of money on it. The Regalias, Rhyperiors and Slakings spent a whopping 17.5k on their dpp slot each, the only exception being poliwraths and porygons since their dpp slots were playing managers, both of which costed more than 10k.
Now, I wanted to dedicate this section to some math! Since I was brought to attention to an insane data: DPP has been the most expensive slot in PL because of how fucking dry it is, managers being forced to spend insane amounts on it.
This is the average price of players that played DPP in the first few weeks (even tho some didnt play it for the entire season, these were the players that were planned to, and that were expected to do good in it)
DPP: Yami 10.5k + Jabiru 9.5k + Synonimous 17.5k + Euphonos 10.5k + Gym Socks! 15k + 187 Fan 17.5k + Inkreativ 17.5k + SoulWind 11k = 109k / an average of 13.6k per team
For comparison, this is the Bo7 pool, the so called "most competitive" pool in the tournament.
SS Bo7: tears 8k + Mishlef 4.5k + Bopher 11k + 19K DOGKNEES + DenisTheMenace 20.5k + Here comes team Charm! 12k + Nalei 18.5k + SiceXV 15k = 108.5k an average of 13.5k per team
This is insane, that managers have to pay more for DPP than they do for the bo7 pool, and as you can see there is no cheap alternative. Trashuny as a 3k sub does not like dpp, yash was attempted as a sub despite his lack of both experience and results and in fact went negative both in PL and WC, 413X was allowed to play simply because he is a person that wants to play dpp, despite being a player with 0 results or showings ever! its crazy.
I didn't do this for pl4 cause I cba but I'm sure it's a similar result, I remember Synon going for fucking 21k or whatever.
After the anti-dpp banter, some points in favor of Multigen Bo5o1. The format was created in seeded tour which has been running for two years now, with no complaints or hiccups. It's one of the most liked tournaments reaching very high signup numbers, more than any other individual unofficial, even the SS startup tournaments. The biggest complaint I've heard from everyone when talking about the format is that it somehow "isn't competitive" because of switching around within generations. I strictly do not comprehend this consideration, since it's still a Bo5, which is the same amount of games as any other tier, it simply rewards over-all 1v1 knowledge and multiple generation knowledge more than knowledge in a single tier. And Multigen Seeded has been proven to have been very competitive year after year. In the first edition the top 8 was composed by me (winner), ggopw (finalist), waylaid (semis), 187 fan (semis), Aliss, neomon, hctc, dc3; every single one of these is a good player and it is difficult to argue otherwise. Look back at round 3 and you can see that it was still filled with very good players: jabiru ryy kaif smely eblurb akuma sice; mubs. Not a single random/bad player made it past round 2 (except mubs). Similar situation this year, with seeded currently in finals with Potatochan vs Close (fire fucking final if you ask me). The format is definitely competitive and will finally allow for a slot where players knowledgeable in multiple gens can shine. There are plenty of said players that have amazing knowledge of multiple gens and never know what tier to play, forced to tier hop between gens: me close potato crucify deg trashuny jab lrxc just to name a few, and there's plenty others that would be able to play multigen and do just fine.
Now onto the last section, responding to deg's post!
Will keeping DPP create a burden on managers when it comes to drafting?
yes, as I've highlighted, definitely. There's not only a gap in mainers that has to be overcome by stretching year after year, there is simply no new blood worth considering. Even if you look at the most recent DPP Cup, by Round 4 there already is no new player worth trying in my eyes.
Will new players be willing to learn DPP if their team needs it?
Sure, it has happened before, but they are forced, most of them grow into hating it. It is also exceedingly more rare for it to happen than any other tier
If the answer above is no, will the pool of players be sufficient so every team can have a chance to get a DPP player? (*A good manager wouldn't forget a slot when it comes to planning, but is it possible for every manager to be able to make a plan with different DPP players, or even make a plan with people willing to learn DPP)
no, definitely not, it's an issue every year and you can see from the prices, people aren't willing to let go dpp players even at extremely high prices because they have not planned for any backup option (there are none).
Why are we keeping DPP in it if we think it is stagnant?
dpp as a single game slot is easily bearable. This was one of my concerns at the beginning but there is simply no problem with it in my opinion, it reduces all the problems dpp has to a bearable quantity. Building DPP was one of the biggest pains I've ever experienced, but if it's only one team a week it is easily bearable.
Would that not create conflict and hurt other slots competitive aspect? Say the best player migrating from SS Bo7 or even from other gens (SM, ORAS, BW...) to Bo5o1 hurting the pool in the gens.
No, not really. Most of the players that would play multigen already are more of a jolly slot. I wouldn't assign myself, crucify, Potatochan, deg etc. to any pool outright, we're only additions to the slot that our team needs. I was planning to play SM this PL, Potatochan had no idea what tier to play, Close still has no clue what to play, and we are also still able to fill for slots if needed, since multigen is a tier it's much easier to find players for than DPP.
Would having a Bo5o1 slot create a burden when it comes to drafting? Is keeping bo7, bo5o1, and other pools in mind all at once too much?
Absolutely not, especially since the Bo7 and Bo5o1 pool share basically no players in common. The Bo5o1 pool is also not one that is difficult to support, given the multigen nature of it you can have a player from each gen build one extra team a week to add to the bo5o1 slot, which is a non-burden. And it certainly will not prove to be a problem price-wise, given how fucking expensive DPP already is.
As last thing, putting here a proposal to call it "MG Bo5" (MultiGen) for official purposes, since multigen bo5o1 would be ugly in a teamtour matchup and is a sore to write out every time you have to refer to it.