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Tournaments ADVPL VI Format Discussion

goldmason

goldmason

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Good morning everyone.

ADVPL Player Signups will now be going up around March 8th, with managers on March 1st. It will be hosted by JensenDale, IncredibleKing, and Jahkem. In anticipation, we will be having our usual format discussion!

As a refresher, ADVPL V was an 8 team, 10 slot tour. The slots were as follows:
ADV Ubers
ADV OU
ADV OU
ADV OU
ADV OU BO3
ADV UU
ADV RU
ADV NU
ADV PU
ADV LC

Nothing is strictly off limits for discussion but any proposal would need to be justifiably better than status quo. Feel free to message me @ goldmason on discord if you want to run your posts by me first.

Tagging last year's managers and retains to get the conversation going: Empo JabbaTheGriffin Plague violet river SEROO Lhions Endill ziloXX SEA Hclat Zpanther FJ2K Howkings Triangles Colteor RealJester Sheik : FatFighter2 Kollin7 Monai AC7 mielke Quinn

Happy discussion!!
 
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Do not cut an OU slot. ADV OU has more than twice as many games played per month than any other retro tier on the site. There are more competent ADV OU players looking for a shot in an on site teamtour than ever before. If anything, add more OU slots. Ideally not at the expense of other tiers, but with the vastly increased OU playerbase over the last few years and the average player being significantly better than when "Jimflation" started, it would make sense to expand teams accordingly.
 
Give UUBL a shot!!

Edit: It is worth clarifying that I don't think UUBL should be added over an OU slot. If management decides that 10 slots is the way that VI will be, I wouldn't advocate for an OU slot drop. Maybe a 12 slot tour with another OU and a UUBL slot?

DoubleEdit: Just for a little more clarification, and not to get into any off-topic stuff - I'd like to see UUBL get a chance because ADV's UUBL is a really unique situation. In an odd way, it halfway functions as our "UU" and it think it'd be fun and potentially valuable to see it get some more time in the sun.
 
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ADV UUBL would be nice, but I'd rather have more ADV OU slots because - as xtina mentioned earlier - ADV OU is one of the more-played "retro" tiers on Showdown outright.

I don't believe in "Jimflation," but the popularity of ADV OU over the past few years due to a multitude of content creators cannot be understated. I considered moving down to ADV UU as well from my constant ladder grinding of ADV OU, but OU is mostly the one everyone wants a lot of the time.
 
Zac said:
Free uubl
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Lhions said:
the format was perfect, i wouldnt change anything, maybe one ou less for uubl o zu, but thats about it.
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I'm usually on record saying that I prefer when genPLs include as many tiers as possible. I am really sympathetic toward UUBL and ZU(moreso ZU if I'm admitting personal bias), but...
xtinaxendrix said:
Do not cut an OU slot. ADV OU has more than twice as many games played per month than any other retro tier on the site. There are more competent ADV OU players looking for a shot in an on site teamtour than ever before. If anything, add more OU slots. Ideally not at the expense of other tiers, but with the vastly increased OU playerbase over the last few years and the average player being significantly better than when "Jimflation" started, it would make sense to expand teams accordingly.
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I simply have to agree with this. ADV OU is far and away one of the most active retro tiers on the site, and one of the most popular OUs for many different reasons. Most people who are going to be signing up for, or spectating this tour, are going to be clicking on the OU games the most. We have zero reason to be cutting an OU, and I'm saying this as someone who largely prefers the LTs for the most part anyway and wouldn't even try to get signed for OU, so I hope it's not seen as biased but more of an honest take.

I wouldn't be against expansion but I also struggle to see why it'd be done considering UUBL and ZU both have opportunities to be played in the lower tier tournament that happened last year, which will surely be coming back this year. If the UUBL community is passionate enough to rally the troops for this though, by all means let them talk. It's just hard to ignore the fact that OU is largely the focus of Smogon, and ADV, as a whole.

I think last year's format is absolutely perfect and one I am very excited to see return. I don't know if expanding is the right call, but if you must*, make it a vote among the confirmed managers for this year. Managers are the ones who should be having a say in if that happens because THEY are the ones who have to deal with the extra work of the extra slots, not us. Any player would naturally be for expansion because it means more playing opportunities.

*To reiterate: if expanding means cutting an OU slot, do not do it. I know I already wrote this in my post but I have to stress it here for clarity's sake.
 
xtinaxendrix said:
Do not cut an OU slot. ADV OU has more than twice as many games played per month than any other retro tier on the site. There are more competent ADV OU players looking for a shot in an on site teamtour than ever before. If anything, add more OU slots. Ideally not at the expense of other tiers, but with the vastly increased OU playerbase over the last few years and the average player being significantly better than when "Jimflation" started, it would make sense to expand teams accordingly.
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This is well said and I agree 100%. ADV OU is still gaining new faces and as much as I love lower tiers, it feels like it would not be adding anything of significant value to take away an OU slot in favor of UUBL (for example).

Edit: As much as I would love to see ADV Draft included in this, it would require a ton of coordination with the (highly organized) ADV Draft community outside of Smogon in order to ensure things are up to the tier's standards. It is a massively popular format with a lot of outstanding talent, but it would not be worth the headache unless there is a real attempt to properly collaborate with community heads (which I know has been a pain point in the past).
 
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Last year’s format was great, cutting ou slots should be a non-starter the tier is one of the most popular on the site. If anything we would add an ou slot+uubl or another tier with good momentum like draft

I think the adv pu games last tour were very high quality (obviously I’m a bit biased since I mostly played that tier) and the metagame is in a great place right now. Viability rankings, smogon dex sets, and sample teams are all current and updated within the past month in time for advpl. New managers or players will have a solid basis to learn the tier with updated resources. Players like Mind Gaming built new sets and team styles that didn’t really exist before last ADVPL and I don’t see that trend stopping based on what we’ve seen in the ongoing PU team tour.

If we’re going to change the format, I’d prefer to either add 2 OU slots or add 1 OU+ 1 of uubl, zu, or draft

Edit: UUBL also has an additional benefit of being much closer to OU’s power level compared to other tiers, I’ve seen many adv ou players begin playing the tier over the past year and be successful. It would be an easier transition for an OU player to play uubl than most adv low tiers (except maybe draft but I cant speak to it at all)
 
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If UUBL gets added (I see a lot of demand for it in these posts), adding another OU alongside it would be great. There are plenty of capable (OU) players who went undrafted last year. Not knowledgable enough to give input on lower tiers but if an even amount of slots were to be kept, the above proposal (+UUBL, +OU), keeping the format as is, or even adding two more OU slots would all be good choices.
 
Ok being serious I would genuinely like to see an additional OU slot. The ADV OU playerbase is really large and I think giving more opportunities to them would be a good thing. Especially now since there is ADVLTL for tiers that might miss out with an additional OU slot I think that’s a fair compromise. Some of the lower tier player bases are considerably smaller. And often players from the other tiers will have to play some of them from lack of depth. This wouldn’t be an issue with OU.
 
Honestly I'm a fan of keeping our current format as is.

Firstly I understand the wanting to add more OU slots to the tournament as it is true it's one of the most played old gens but I also don't think we should stray from 10 slots, and adding more to those 10 slots would mean removing other tiers which I am fully opposed too due to how well this format worked last year. I also managed the year before that and while it was fine I do agree that the removal of DOU to add RU was a great call especially as I've been told and seen how janky ADVDOU is especially after the recent bans. This follows the 10 slots , which again I think is the perfect number for managers to draft around as it gives leeway to them to actually draft a team without having to scrap for players for additional tiers or subs ending in one of those 30 team army.

Honestly I'm not fully opposed to uubl as i think even if its small it may have its playerbase, but i think overall every other tier has a bigger one and we shouldn't stray from the official tiers and it should stay in advltl which i also managed so I can say I think with the other tiers it just better fits in there for the time being. I also have to say the same for ZU and draft even tho i think both tiers are great and have their playerbase I personally don't see any room for them, I think they should be played a bit more and I fully support them in advltl for the time being.

Finally I'm just gonna repeat that 10 slots feel perfect, while I'm not opposed to adding another OU I just feel like it will force us to pick up one of the tiers mentioned above out of pure vote because we need to pick one and not because we want to at this point. This being said i also think the playerbase for both ZU and UUBL will make the whole drafting process annoying and even tho 8 more OU players may get drafted this year it also means that a lot will still be left behind and we won't have the leeway to draft newer blood like i did last year due to us having to scavenge around the pool for players who can play multiple tiers and not OU mains.
 
THE_CHUNGLER said:
Last year’s format was great, cutting ou slots should be a non-starter the tier is one of the most popular on the site. If anything we would add an ou slot+uubl or another tier with good momentum like draft

I think the adv pu games last tour were very high quality (obviously I’m a bit biased since I mostly played that tier) and the metagame is in a great place right now. Viability rankings, smogon dex sets, and sample teams are all current and updated within the past month in time for advpl. New managers or players will have a solid basis to learn the tier with updated resources. Players like Mind Gaming built new sets and team styles that didn’t really exist before last ADVPL and I don’t see that trend stopping based on what we’ve seen in the ongoing PU team tour.

If we’re going to change the format, I’d prefer to either add 2 OU slots or add 1 OU+ 1 of uubl, zu, or draft
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I forgot to include this in my own post so thanks for reminding me, ADV PU is a fun tier and should 100% not be cut for UUBL which I think I saw while scrolling once or twice.


While I could get behind doing an extra OU + one featured tier of choice(people seem to want UUBL, so maybe that's the way to go if this option is proposed), I don't support draft coming in because of the following which I can't phrase any better, so I just need to quote it and say I fully agree with the below.
Forte said:
As much as I would love to see ADV Draft included in this, it would require a ton of coordination with the (highly organized) ADV Draft community outside of Smogon in order to ensure things are up to the tier's standards. It is a massively popular format with a lot of outstanding talent, but it would not be worth the headache unless there is a real attempt to properly collaborate with community heads (which I know has been a pain point in the past).
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The ADV UUBL community would also need to decide if they wanted to include Raikou or Raikouless in the tour since I know that's been a subject of discussion in the discord about which meta is better, but I'd assume they just default into having Raikou since its "officially" in the tier.
 
ADV OU's playerbase has expanded significantly since this tour started. When it started , OU had 3 slots. The player base has since exploded.
1770919642539.png

Using ladder games as a measure, the player base is somewhere in the region of 5x bigger. But we've only gained one extra ADV OU slot since then.
An additional OU slot is overdue.

One grating counterpoint for an additional slot that gets thrown around is " An additional slot would lead to weak players being fielded in what should be a prestigious tournament". Baseless untrue statement. If we entertain this logic about barring slots based on perceived skill, half the tiers in this tour would get axed.

I'd prefer the slot to be Bo3. Revival, Mushi, ADV World Cup, every ADV tour that has sprouted in recent years has been a BO3 tour, a decision that stems from the player base's appetite for it.
 
Chipping in to support UUBL, whether Raikou or Raikouless. It has a very active community and growing playerbase. And a lot of momentum coming out of the recent tours.

Adding a few slots seems to be a sensible approach to me as I don't favor cutting any of the formats from the last ADVPL as I think one of each of the LTs listed is table stakes. This reflects the growth that ADV OU (and ADV in general imo) is experiencing. Also I think adding another OU slot is very reasonable.
 
FJ2K said:
ADV OU's playerbase has expanded significantly since this tour started. When it started , OU had 3 slots. The player base has since exploded.
View attachment 808206
Using ladder games as a measure, the player base is somewhere in the region of 5x bigger. But we've only gained one extra ADV OU slot since then.
An additional OU slot is overdue.

One grating counterpoint for an additional slot that gets thrown around is " An additional slot would lead to weak players being fielded in what should be a prestigious tournament". Baseless untrue statement. If we entertain this logic about barring slots based on perceived skill, half the tiers in this tour would get axed.

I'd prefer the slot to be Bo3. Revival, Mushi, ADV World Cup, every ADV tour that has sprouted in recent years has been a BO3 tour, a decision that stems from the player base's appetite for it.
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Actually, this would be a very good decision. In a post I made just above yours I supported OU + another LT of choice, but I would also be down for OU + OU Bo3 or OU BO3 + LT of choice if the choice is made to expand

Again though I must stress that I'd rather give the choice to managers who need to deal with the extra slots, but I'm very for the above suggestions
 
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Just want to add that my biggest fear is the lack of players if UUBL was added , because in all honesty how many non ADVUU players do we have that play UUBL as last years UU pool was already decently thin to begin with. ( serious question I don't know the tier or the community but I'd like proof and not a "they just do :5head:" kind of answer and happy to have my mind changed).
I would much prefer a tier with a newer community of players if we end up adding another OU ( again against it but gotta give me thoughts just incase ) and not just the typical "now that there's no one else who plays/knows this tier let me draft someone who can build both tiers and get a pilot" as it kinda takes away from the whole UUBL popularity /community thing everyones talking about
 
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