Implemented Alumni Trophies

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I physically like how the shine looks but I worry that it might look "too" flashy for something that's supposed to be an alumn. Like with the badge parallel the animated shine is a step above the regular badge, so it could be confusing/contradictory for the shining trophy to be a step "below" a current defending trophy. Because of that I still support "Tony's Other Version"
 

Lily

wouldn't that be fine, dear
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Piggybacking off Ticken's idea for a moment, here's what I think would be a bit more appropriate if an animated alumnus trophy were to be used (I get that this is probably too fast, it runs at the same speed as top badges but maybe I could do with making certain frames last a bit longer while keeping the overall time the same):



I think the flashier version Ticken showed is just a little too much for an alumnus trophy and kind of takes away from the current trophy. Upon asking a few people they said it -still- takes away from the current trophy which I get, so I mocked up a (very poor) version of what would effectively be a "Top" version of the SPL trophy.



Has a small shine (it can be made bigger if required), gives it a little more prestige, but upon asking around ABR brought up the point that messing with the SPL trophy that's been around for eons at this stage is something that might be unpopular, which is fair enough.

What surprised me most, though, is that I didn't see a single option that just involves using a purely greyer version of the current trophy.



Just two examples taken from the frames of the gif I posted above. Earthworm and Raiza both posted something similar but they had their own issues with visual fidelity / ability to tell at a glance which is alumn and which isn't, but I feel like this makes for a stark enough difference that that isn't an issue:



If you're worried about it not being super noticeable you can even change the border colour of the current trophy like Tony suggested - I don't really like the gold myself but it does certainly make it stand out.



Ideas I don't like are changing the background colour of the trophies, it looks a bit too tacky for my tastes. I didn't bother w/ the Snake/WCOP trophy for this example but if people like these I can mock those up - we could also consider giving each circuit its own colour if we want to apply this to those as well. Completely agreed that all alumnus trophies should be separate, people who won SPL 3 times should have 3 SPL Alumnus trophies. Here's an example of how it might look if I were good at mons:





Personally think it still looks nicer without the gold, the contrast isn't particularly nice, but maybe there's a better midground colour? And just for fun with the gifs:



Would be happy to know what people think of this and I'd be good with adjusting it if anyone wants to see what a specific thing would look like, my spriting skills are certainly not amazing but I think we can make something great here.

edit: it has been brought to my attention that i am in fact a dummy and that 2x spl winners would still probably only have one alumnus trophy. that's fine tho same principal still applies, just pretend there's only one alumn in my screenshots above

Edit #2: after talking with Boat, we also came to the conclusion that a trophy that uses two cycles of a standard top badge (i.e. 22 frames) might look better. Here's the result of that:



 
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Not to throw shade at the talent and effort put forth into alternative alumns, but there's no need to reinvent the wheel here. The more ornamented and extravagant-looking neo-alumns become, the further they stray from the purpose of alumns, and the closer they are to just donating a nifty consolation reskin for losing in the next tour edition. The alumn design as-is works best for our needs without having to artistically flirt with a coloured redesign of it.

There hasn't been a compelling reason posted yet as to why the alumn trophies need colour, and for this reason there's no need to be in such a hurry to replace them. What's most pleasing to look at isn't the same as what best honours the alumn.
 

Amaranth

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(obligatory "posting as Amaranth and not as a tournament director" warning)

Not to throw shade at the talent and effort put forth into alternative alumns, but there's no need to reinvent the wheel here. The more ornamented and extravagant-looking neo-alumns become, the further they stray from the purpose of alumns, and the closer they are to just donating a nifty consolation reskin for losing in the next tour edition. The alumn design as-is works best for our needs without having to artistically flirt with a coloured redesign of it.

There hasn't been a compelling reason posted yet as to why the alumn trophies need colour, and for this reason there's no need to be in such a hurry to replace them. What's most pleasing to look at isn't the same as what best honours the alumn.
The purpose of alumns is not as clear and agreed on as you portray here; the OP of the thread pretty clearly doubts that there even is one. That's kind of what we're trying to figure out.

The only thing that seems to have near-universal agreement is splitting the single "is a past teamtour champion" alumn trophy into three, one for each teamtour, and incidentally that's what most of the art that has been shared has been trying to accomplish - a way to keep mostly-gray trophies, yet make them distinct so that you don't need to hover to see which trophy each user has. That aside, I'm not even convinced that we all agree on old team tour trophies deserving to go gray; there's been some posts in support but I wouldn't quite call it majority consensus.

We're hardly hurrying, thread has been up for close to a full month and we're not particularly close to wrapping this up. No need for alarmism and no need to shoot down ideas while we're mostly still in the middle of the brainstorming process.
 

teal6

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Not entirely sure if this is the appropriate thread to ask, but what is the concept surrounding SSD/SCL? Are we going to view SCL as a continuation of Snake alumni-wise? I understand we're going to use the same trophy for the live ones, at least I think that is the case, and my understanding before was that SCL would be a distinct entity on the 'Alumni' team trophy, so if we do separate the alumni trophies, do we consider it a totally new tournament or a continuation of the old one?
 
Also not sure if this is the right place for it but I do think SCL should be considered an “updated” SSD, not a replacement. Like it’s the same concept in terms of tiers / time of year. It’s a different draft yea but I don’t think distinguishing them is beneficial. It would be very confusing if someone could have 4 alumns also (with only 3 team tours currently existing).

tldr scl = ssd rn
 

Kalalokki

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Also not sure if this is the right place for it but I do think SCL should be considered an “updated” SSD, not a replacement. Like it’s the same concept in terms of tiers / time of year. It’s a different draft yea but I don’t think distinguishing them is beneficial. It would be very confusing if someone could have 4 alumns also (with only 3 team tours currently existing).

tldr scl = ssd rn
You're saying that their alumn trophies should stack or that all of them should have the hovertext SSD/SCL champion or whatever? It gets a bit ambiguous if you would have someone that once won SSD then win SCL, making their hovertext be Two-time SSD/SCL champion, which doesn't differentiate between that, someone winning SSD twice, or one winning SCL twice.
 
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You're saying that their alumn trophies should stack or that all of them should have the hovertext SSD/SCL champion or whatever? It gets a bit ambiguous if you would have someone that once won SSD then win SCL, making their hovertext be Two-time SSD/SCL champion, which doesn't differentiate between that, someone winning SSD twice, or one winning SCL twice.
I think the upcoming tour should be called SCL V. If teal (who won ssd twice already) wins this upcoming tour, he would become a 3x SCL champion (imo).

edit: I really think this is the only clean way to do it otherwise it is way too confusing as you said.

edit2: Frontier and VGC are different because they’re individual.

edit3: everything TonyFlygon says is good.
 
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disagree i believe SCL should be treated as the new and independent tournament that it is which includes different alumn trophies.
SSD alumns aren't any more (or less) confusing than the frontier or vgc trophies, they're just more common
 
I think the cleanest way to do it is to start fresh with SCL I as opposed to SCL V, but to update the hover text options accordingly. The
trophy is rewarded to those that win Smogon's current generation team tournament, which was SSD in the past and will be SCL moving forward. Starting at SCL I accurately depicts that this is a new tournament and not yet another attempt at overhauling a tournament that we've tried to fix unsuccessfully multiple times already. I think that's really important and it's one of the main things we set out to do here. From an SS point of view, I'm fairly sure we can attach the same alumned trophy sprite to three separate hover text options, which would look like something along these lines:

- is a past Smogon Snake Draft & Smogon Champions League winner
- is a past Smogon Snake Draft winner
- is a past Smogon Champions League winner

To follow the above example, teal could have an alumned trophy on his profile with a hover text that indicates he won both tournaments if he wins SCL this year and doesn't again next year. The hover text currently says "Champion", but the tournament name having "Champions" in it makes that clash a little I think. These are obviously details we could easily figure out, though. Doing it this way clears up which tournament someone has won while still maintaining SCL's identity as a new flagship team tournament.

As for the sprites, I think I agree with ABR on how the animated flashes might be a bit contradictory given that those animated flashes indicate top contributors when it comes to our badges. I personally love the options Blazenix has provided and I still believe the alumned borders to be a great option to go with, too.
 

Moutemoute

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Just throwing my two cents here. I personally prefer much more Ticken + Lilburr versions of alumni trophies than Blazenix ones. Can't deny there is a lot of works on both sides but I don't like the idea of the borders and find those kinda ugly soz. Animated alumni look way cleaner and much more understandable in my opinion. About SCL vs SSD identity, meh, I still think making a brand new trophy (cf here and here) would be much more easier to deal with (agreeing with Dragon Claw thoughts there) but it seems than the majority of people are thinking the opposite and want to keep the apple green trophy for SCL.
 
I don't like the gif direction for alumni trophies. Gifs are eye-catching and if anything they should be for something like winning multiple or something like that. Similarly, I think just darkening or making the trophies more grey will cause the same instant recognition issues as my version. I still think "Tony's Other Version" is the best one.
 

Quite Quiet

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This is just me experimenting and expanding a bit on what Lilburr said regarding grey trophies. Since we've tried pretty much everything else might as well put this out there too with some examples of how it might look. I really don't have anything to add to this except some more example images honestly. It's possible to tinker with how much/little desaturation you do to the images, but they would look roughly like this.

Alumn trophies desaturated:
spl-de.png
worldcup-de.png
snake-de.png


Side by side with the current trophies:
all.png


On profiles:

Alumn/Current:


I don't really know what I prefer here, but this is very much a low-prio thing so we might as well explore all the viable options that people come up with.
 

Aberforth

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Instead of making things slightly different shades, could we do something akin to a band on the current alumni trophies? A lot of these suggestions seem a bit too in-your-face imho.

These were put together in about 5 mins in paint.net, but something like these? Maybe with the hovertext saying how many times each tour was won if someone's won multiple spl/wcops if that's possible at all?
SCL/Snake
proposed snake alumni.png

SPL
proposed spl alumni.png

Wcop
proposed wcop alumni.png



For visual comparison, here they are straight as if someone won all 3 tours as well. proposed snake alumni.pngproposed spl alumni.pngproposed wcop alumni.png
 

Expulso

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For visual comparison, here they are straight as if someone won all 3 tours as well. proposed snake alumni.pngproposed spl alumni.pngproposed wcop alumni.png
Just wanted to say that I really love the models created by Aberforth. The horizontal line makes it clear which tour the trophy represents, which is a stated goal of this revamp, while also clearly conveying that it is alumned because the trophy is mostly gray (unlike proposals where the trophy would be a faded shade of red/blue/green). These also look better alongside other badges/trophies/etc.; I personally feel that the different-colored borders in "Tony's Other Version" lead to a really awkward and visually unappealing look when that trophy is put next to other badges/trophies, and Aberforth's proposal meets all the goals people seem to be looking for while blending in a lot more smoothly.
 

Lily

wouldn't that be fine, dear
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I don't really like the line; maybe it's just down to my poor vision but it feels difficult to see. Such a small pixel count in width isn't really standing out at all, I think the concept is clever but it's just not feasible to execute it with such a restricted amount of space to work with. I totally understand not liking the gifs though.

Mostly wanted to make this post to show off this option though:





Credit goes to shiloh for the idea, I think he plans to make a better version of it too (mine is quite poor bc I only did it as a proof of concept, doesn't have full trophy colour etc) but the idea of tweaking the background/border to match alumni badges is something I hadn't considered when I said I didn't like changing them but I am personally a fan of this. It might still have the issue of popping out a bit too much? But you'd definitely be able to tell upon looking at it that this is the alumnus variant and not the current trophy. I'll probably edit this tomorrow with a more polished variant + what it'd look like on a user.

Regardless I prefer QQ's greyish variants out of everything presented so far, they're a lot more low key and there shouldn't be any visual clarity issues. I still don't think different coloured borders (other than plain grey as soon above) are a good idea; Expulso alluded to it above but basically when the colours don't compliment each other it starts to make the postbit look gaudy. For that reason I'd rather leave it as is and require a hover if we can't use desatured variants.
 

Kalalokki

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Judging from just the graphical side of things, I don't really think you'll ever reach some magical solution that both satisfies all and fits in with the aesthetic of the rest of the badges. More muted colors could just as well mean another trophy entirely, while stripes of colors, outlines, and the various borders just clash badly with the rest of the aesthetic.

If we wanna keep consistency then the only really thing to differentiate is having the shine from Top Badges mean multiple wins, on both active and alumn versions. It's not like any trophy or badge is self-explanatory without a hover text if you'd happen to come across them for the first time, so maybe just have the grey trophies unstack and leave it at that. If not having the shine, the changes to hover texts indicating multiple winners should convey everything you need to know beside what edition of the tour they won, which realistically can't be solved here.

I doubt there's any real rush to get this sorted out, but I believe that just keeping it simple like this would be the best option.
 
bump (also in terms of how we treat scl vs ssd)

at the very least re: actual alumns it seems most ppl agree on separating but not stacking the gray trophies. i think most people also agree w hovertexts indicating how many times they were won

main things up in the air were actual design and the scl/ssd thing

edit: pretty please retroactively rename ssd to scl and we start w scl 5 otherwise the alumn thing is a whole mess (4 separate alumns as well as 1 alumn trophy for 2 diff tours both suck)
 
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Quite Quiet

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This is roughly where all the internal discussions I've held with people since this thread has been posted has lead:
  • The alumn trophies are going to be split up in three (spl/wcop/scl)
  • The alumn trophy will list how many times the tour was won in the past (past x times winner of [tour] (or something))
  • Winning a team tour you already have an alumned trophy for will give you both the current and the alumned version (see next point)
  • Only alumn trophies are going to list however many tours you have won previously. Should you win a team tour with an already alumned trophy for that tour you will keep both and when the active trophy is alumned the number ticks up by one. Your first win will not give you an alumn trophy until after a year when the next tour finishes.
  • Regarding SSD/SCL:
    • SCL shouldn't have its own alumn trophy. Splitting ssd and scl either makes 4 alumns, or tracking wins from the tours individually is not feasible to implement (same reason listing which year ppl won won't work either)
    • The alternatives that exist here are in what we write for the hover text (depending on how explicit you want to be about ssd):
      • past x times winner of ssd/scl
      • past x times winner of scl
  • Nobody knows how to pick which setup for images we should use. Pick one ourselves or just hold a popularity contest among valid proposals (black background was required iirc?)
Read this as mostly a proposal based on this thread plus a lot of discussion elsewhere on what's feasible to do, what we want this to look/work like. It's not the final proposal (unless everyone like it I guess) and things are subject to change if there are valid arguments raised for something else.
 

Quite Quiet

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TonyFlygon Raiza Earthworm Blazenix Lilburr Ticken Aberforth tagging you all because you've posted some sort of concept in this thread.

This goes for everyone, even if I tagged a few people above. I'm going to be starting to formally collect some proposals for this, so anyone who is interested in submitting something or clean up one of the suggestions made by someone in this thread, please send me a pm with a set of three trophies like this:



The only requirements on the submissions are the following:
  • Black background
  • Same general shape of the trophy
  • No gifs

There's no real deadline on this, but I would want to close this sometime in the not too distant future so please don't take too long to submit something if you plan to.
 
TonyFlygon Raiza Earthworm Blazenix Lilburr Ticken Aberforth tagging you all because you've posted some sort of concept in this thread.

This goes for everyone, even if I tagged a few people above. I'm going to be starting to formally collect some proposals for this, so anyone who is interested in submitting something or clean up one of the suggestions made by someone in this thread, please send me a pm with a set of three trophies like this:



The only requirements on the submissions are the following:
  • Black background
  • Same general shape of the trophy
  • No gifs

There's no real deadline on this, but I would want to close this sometime in the not too distant future so please don't take too long to submit something if you plan to.
Thank you for organizing this. Just to clarify, is 3 separate but identical alumn trophies still on the table?
 
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