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Proposal Adjust Smogon Classic to Swiss Bo5

Tizio Potente Ao

Tizio Potente Ao

Approved by goldmason

I’d like to open a discussion about the current structure of Smogon Classic and suggest a format change that, in my opinion, would significantly improve both competitive fairness and the overall player experience.

Why the Current Format Is Problematic:

Smogon Classic currently consists of five simultaneous single-elimination Cups, one per Classic generation, all running at the same time, all with long brackets, and all played in best-of-three (BO3). While these Cups are prestigious in their own right, using them as the qualification system for an official trophy tournament creates several major issues:

1. Scheduling Overload

The biggest problem is the amount of time required. Playing five individual tournaments at the same time means having to contact and schedule with five different opponents every week, managing prep across five different tiers, each demanding its own team choices, testing, and meta knowledge. Participants must also deal with overlapping deadlines because the Cups almost always progress simultaneously.

This creates a huge logistical burden, especially for an official trophy tournament. Even experienced players often end up overwhelmed by the constant multitasking. It’s simply not reasonable to expect players to juggle this level of scheduling stress for weeks on end.

2. Competitive Integrity Concerns

Because the Cups are historically popular tournaments, many players sign up just to play a tier they enjoy—not to compete for the Classic trophy as a whole. But they still earn Classic points, and this can distort playoff qualification:
  • Players with no interest in Classic playoffs can unintentionally block players who are trying to qualify.
  • A player who only plays two tiers can qualify with strong Cup runs despite lacking experience in the other three—only to get immediately outclassed in the BO5 all-gens playoff structure.

These disconnects make Classic qualification feel less like a true test of all-gens mastery and more like a points race across unrelated single-elimination events.

Proposed Change:

Instead of using the five Cups as the qualifying phase, I propose that Smogon Classic starts directly with a Swiss stage, replacing the five-Cup points system entirely. We can keep the Cups as standalone individual tournaments that would still exist as competitive, high-participation events within their respective circuits, just without awarding Classic points.

There are many reasons this would work better:
  • Scheduling with just one opponent per round is vastly easier than juggling up to five matches in a week.
  • The qualifying rounds would match the playoffs system, which is a much more cohesive and symmetrical system.
  • The format would be much more competitively accurate. Bo5 Swiss naturally filters out players who aren't serious about playing all generations. Given that Smogon Classic is the only official individual tournament dedicated specifically to the old generations, it makes sense to give Classic qualification to a format that rewards true dedication to multigen play, rather than rewarding Cup participation volume.
 
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i've discussed this issue for years, and while there are a couple of issues with this post, i definitely support the proposed change. the competitive integrity point is subjective, as there is nothing inherently wrong with players participating in only one of the cups and blocking someone from qualifying. we've also seen players qualify with only two cups and do just fine in the bo5 stage, with spies as the best example qualifying from just rby + gsc and beating soulwind in the round 1 bo5.

i also wanted to emphasize how ridiculous the commitment level is -- from the scheduling, to qualification, to playoffs, etc. a couple years ago, the cup signups became staggered to mitigate the scheduling overload, reducing the frequency of players having to schedule 5 series in 1 week. this helped, but didn't solve the issue and also created another problem: this made the tournament longer, which is especially unbearable due to the qualification format.

the cups are lame and don't hold the prestige they used to. no one cares who wins the cups unless u win them multiple times and you get no reward for doing so.

the oldest join date that has won the past 11 classics is 2014. this tournament, more than any other, caters primarily to seasoned old gen players. yet, this tournament is the most demanding commitment-wise on the site, which is the most deterring for the playerbase that it should appeal to the most. over the years, several old gen greats i've interacted with quit playing classic and have disparaged the format. examples include tamahome, bkc, and roro. while this seems insignificant and is more vibes-based, i believe a format change may rekindle interest and bring more old gen greats back into seriously competing in this tournament.

overall, i feel that the qualification experience is miserable and extremely demanding. i feel that most players would agree that the playoffs format is the most fun and most competitive experience in classic. i feel that the commitment level required to make a playoffs run for this tournament is grossly excessive and does not serve the playerbase. i feel that the individual cups are not worth preserving when they give players no tangible reward for winning. and i feel that scheduling, which is the worst part of competitive pokemon, would become significantly more bearable with the swiss format, which seems like an upgrade to the tournament.

smogon is all about maintaining the status quo, and making any changes to the archaic tournaments we participate in feels so unnecessarily difficult. if anyone resonates with this proposal i urge people to voice their support. get rid of cups and scheduling nightmares and make classic a better competitive experience to spectate and to play.
 
Said this to you before when we discussed about it, but I definitely agree with everything. Glad the post is out.
As someone who play cups because they are essentially the best single player tour of every classic tier in a year (that's arguable but that's how I see cups), I always felt like it made very little sense how you translate 5 (if you entered all) bo3 of 5 different tiers into one bo5 of all 5 tiers for something that's widely considered as one of Smogon's most prestigious tours. Especially with Masters that seems like a well received recipe by now (from the echoes I got at least), it seems to me like there's no reason to keep this status-quo about Classic (tho as Excal mentionned, "smogon is all about maintaining the status-quo", a feeling I definitely share though I've not been here nearly as long as most).
Anyway just wanted to say I support this and hope more people come here to manifest their support as well. The only way to replace an old, outdated system is to actively voice your concerns and have enough support to back up your idea. Lets not fall back into the status-quo state after a low amount of support. If you disagree with the premise or any points, it would also be nice to have another stance. There's surely people that want to keep classic this way, else it would have changed format at some point. That's already too many words.

Cheers
 
Hi! I've shared many of my thoughts over the years regarding this topic, but here we go...

I disagree rather strongly with the OP on a few fronts. Let's start with the competitive integrity issue mentioned. The Classic qualification process through Cups is how the tour was always intended––acting as a sibling tour to Slam, but for Classic Gens. And it is decidedly more hype this way, for whatever it's worth. There's a level of excitement to Cups and how they can allow Gen specialists to succeed while forcing others to adjust and qualify through Cups outside their main Gens if they lose early in another one. I think there's a general sentiment that it's bad when Gen specialists can beat a well-rounded Classic Gens player, like when spies beat SoulWind in Classic playoffs a few years back. With no disrespect intended...so? The goal of our tours isn't to ensure the "right" player always wins. Upsets do––and should––happen. Back on the subject of competitive integrity, though, not that I supported McMeghan's proposal to seed players in Classic from several years ago, but it's interesting to note that moving from multiple Bo3 Cups to a Bo5 Swiss tour would shift the tour further from more games and matches deciding who qualifies for playoffs to fewer.

What I think is most unfortunate about this is how it could hurt newer players trying to use Cups as a means to get into big tours like SPL. Sure, there are plenty of tours the results from which can springboard you to success, but few have the same prestige as succeeding, or even winning, a Classic Cup. I disagree with the sentiment that "cups are lame and don't hold the prestige they used to." These are illustrious tournaments, and not to mention they give specialists an excellent opportunity to play against the best of the best in their Gen of choice. If Cups go away, no longer will we have sulcata playing and dominating GSC Cup, for instance, and that's a shame for the broader old Gens community.

I will say that the significant time commitment to play/schedule is an issue, but to ameliorate this, further staggering for the Cups should help. Start Cups later so that everyone can have more time to schedule in different rounds.

TLDR: Cups are great; they add, not detract from competitive integrity. Stagger the Cups' scheduling more in the future.
 
I used to like having Cups, and I do think there's some positives to them like Iguana has pointed out, but as someone who tries to qualify every year it just feels like too much to the point that even if I do qualify for playoffs I already feel burnt out on the tournament due to the qualifying process. Excal basically summarized the rest of my thoughts, please make this change I feel it would be a huge benefit for the tournament.
 
Current format is fine as is. Don't fix what isn't broken.

Swiss will go on forever and also require a shitton of time investment. Moreso even because one has to take each round seriously now. Masters is another Swiss tour we have and that tour also goes on forever. I do not think changing the qualifying phase will make this tour any less time-consuming. Preparing 5 tiers seriously per week seems actually more challenging to me than just bringing whatever one has lying around for each Cup (cuz losing 1 Cup does not mean one is instantly out, its easier to take those less serious).

Not having Cups also has the danger of alieniating mains of certain gens that would give each gen a bigger playerbase. This in turn gives 1-gen-mains less chances to show off to present themselves as good options for team tours like SPL. To add on BO5-Swiss-Sign-ups will surely be lower than now.
 
What about having swiss be a Bo3 stage instead of Bo5, but keeping Bo5 for playoffs? I think this could eliminate a lot issues with burnout and risking signup reduction (seeing as most players don’t want to play bo5s regularly) while still ensuring some level of competency in all generations pre-playoffs.

I support the OP btw. I’ve always felt like the playoffs format of mixing all five generations was far and away the most interesting thing about the tournament and it being relegated behind a 16 man qualifier and several months of sluggish cups just kinda killed any hype/interest in the tournament for me from a spectating pov. Having to run all 5 cups at essentially the same time if you’re really intending to make a deep run is just a disaster, especially if you’re involved with other non-classic tournaments simultaneously. I see no need to maintain this archaic format for the sake of preserving something old. Watching the cups play out is incredibly boring and does not give me the feeling of “this is Smogon Classic, a trophy tournament and one of the most prestigious tournaments on the website.” It’s a slog and people don’t care until it’s playoffs. Cups are purely a vehicle to qualify for the vast majority of players. I say this, even as someone who purely benefits from the cup format (I’m a one-gen mainer): this should go. There are surely good alternative options that could be conjured up that are unrelated to Smogon Classic and serve as acceptable replacements for cups if people so desire.
 
Keep Classic as is.

Scheduling with 1 person per week vs up to 5 would be a relief; but I'm not sure the format would be less taxing overall, and the current format is better is so many other ways.

First, re: time commitment, I agree with Conflict's point that having to prepare 5 tiers per week every week is more taxing than prep in the current format where the number is almost always less than 5 (or you qualify very quickly and then it's also less taxing). I imagine some would still take the tradeoff between prep and logistics, but even they might regret it staring down the prospect of preparing for 5+ more rounds of 5-tier BO5s (now single elim) after having prepped and played 5-tier BO5s for the previous 10 weeks.

Second, re: other points in the OP, I don't think any of these are actually issues and in fact like the aspects that attract specialists, as Iguana explains. I personally like my performances in each of the tiers being isolated for the qualification phase of the tournament and testing my level in each independently. For example, this year it was cool to make a deeper RBY Cup run than I expected and to test my newly less-abysmal level against Peasounay there. (I know that there are other tournaments to do this sort of thing in, but having it baked into The oldgen trophy tour is nice--especially vs trying to get those lost elements back in non-trophy tours on top of the trophy tour schedule)

Third, I don't think the way Swiss has been run in Masters has worked well at all, and I don't get why people are trying to gas up that format as something to copy. I don't complain about this much cause I don't play the tour atm, but if it's on the table for Classic then it's time:

The first iteration was plagued by high vs high and low vs low resistance pairings. This was not public and snowballed the gauntlet runs and Mickey runs severely. The effect was so apparent that it got found out before Swiss concluded by people inquiring about the weirdness. This mistake could have been caught before the tour started were it posted anywhere. Having the calculations be too complex to verify with mental math (like points for Cups) makes it inherently less transparent as well.

In this edition the details of the format were even more "TBD" than usual (being even more signup number dependent than prior editions--due to not anchoring to an m*2^n bracket size I believe), had pairings between players with different records for the first time, had a bye propagate to the 7-2 bracket, and had coinflips grouped by join date (due to pairings listed that way + all left / all right coin flips. Not really impactful, but a bit odd).

This tour being new and a lot of Smogon being rather unfamiliar with Swiss may be partially to blame for the recurring confusion we see with the information that is posted, but the continued existence of relevant info that is not published is undesirable.

You could argue that such things will be worked out and understood better with each additional iteration of a Swiss, but the "details TBD based on exact signup numbers" inherent to the format is a point against it in my opinion.

Particularly for its first 2 iterations, the Swiss stage was ending too early to have much of a point. Being single elim from top 64 (with some playins on top of that) meant that in order to win you needed to string together a significantly longer win-on-demand streak compared to a top 16, yet there was still a (9 week) long qualification phase just to get to that point.

It would be better to extend the Swiss phase longer to retain the buffer from sudden death for longer, but that really starts to make the brackets a mess (in terms of having odd numbers and not being able to be mapped out beforehand for "nice" qualification cutoffs and sizes due to not having set numbers of players at each record in every round once it starts to mix) that Smogon doesn't seem ready to embrace. We saw the effects that adding just one round had this year, and that still only got us to a top 32; so trying to force a top 16 (or smaller) out of Swiss seems needlessly difficult.

None of this is even relying on the decade+ history of the tournament and the gravitas that it holds it its current form, which I wouldn't use to deny a significant improvement (if one existed), but I don't believe this proposal is anywhere close to such a thing.
 
I have played many classic editions in the past and I remember scheduling for 4 or 5 bo3s every week to be very hard (soon or later you may lose in some cups, but most players who make playoffs have deep runs in 3 or 4 cups at least)

Imo this change would make the tournament much better
 
This change has been a long time coming. Classic has always been a logistics nightmare to play. You are playing 2-3 cups at once, if not more; having to schedule several bo3s/week with people across time zones for a month+ needs a big time commitment. I loathe how long tournaments take on this website in general, but Classic manages to — at the very least — triple the time needed to compete.

The hype argument makes no sense to me. Early rounds in cups are nothing more than a formality (unless...Pokémon happens). The only exception happens when two serious contenders face each other in the first few rounds of a cup.

My biggest issue with the format though stems from the mismatch between the qualifying phase and playoffs:
  • Qualifying rewards specializing and deep runs in 2−3 specific generations.
  • Playoffs reward being a generalist who can out-compete an opponent in 3 out of 5 generations.
Two completely different skill sets. It is cool that some people manage to qualify by doing great in two cups while losing early in the others. But it runs counter to the spirit of the tournament: crowning the best old gens player.

My last gripe with the cups format: a lot of people sign up and never play their matches. Standard in most big tournaments really. Yet, if you get moderately lucky you can snag 3−4 points from each cup through activity wins → matching against a weaker opponent. You can build a big point advantage through unplayed matches, which is not particularly competitive. Especially considering the fact you get twice as many points per win past the round of 64.

Thus, I support moving to a Swiss Bo5 format. As it stands, the qualifying takes around 2 months and a half. A 9−rounds Swiss would take about as long, while needing a lot less administrative time (the week-long signup threads) and manpower. Preparing for one best-of-5 as opposed to many best-of-3s is less taxing for the players. It also gets a lot of hype match-ups in the latest stages of the Swiss bracket.
 
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