Tournament CAP Teamtours

[Spammernoob]

It's been some time since WCAP has ended, and CAPPL is coming up. Before CAPPL arrives, I wanted to put up a thread to query the community about the future of CAP teamtours (mainly CAPCL).

Firstly, from what I've seen, reception towards WCAP has been positive. I am assuming we will run it as our CA teamtour again this winter. Are there any objections to this? Were there any issues with WCAP that we should address?

Secondly, regarding CAPCL, is there interest in running it as a third CAP teamtour?
If we do run CAPCL, it won't have a CA (as our third is reserved for circuit). Will this be an issue for signups? Also, what should CAPCL's identity be? In the past, this was unclear; some viewed it as another chance to play CAP oldgens (CAPPL-lite), and others as a tournament to develop underdeveloped CAP tiers (CAP OMs like Monotype, Natdex, UU, etc.). Which seems more appealing?

Finally is the question of timing. Currently, there is a 3 month gap between end of WCAP and start of CAPPL, and 4 month gap between end of CAPPL and start of WCAP. There is enough space to fit another teamtour if we shift the timings a bit, but will the downtime be enough? Is there such thing as too much CAP?

Anyways, feel free to discuss.

This thread was made with the blessing of spoo.

 

[shnowshner]

PL and WCAP kinda cover oldgens between the two so I feel there's little reason to not make CL fully focused on the more niche formats instead of PL-lite, i.e. we don't need to focus on CG as hard, and we can comfortably drop the formats included in both of the CA tours (in this case SS SM and ORAS).

I would like to push for CL returning. Having three teamtours throughout the course of a year isn't unheard of, and if people are worried about burnout I suggest that CL should be less "serious" of a tournament. Not having a CA prize already lowers the stakes but it'd also help to keep the tournament short until CAP sees enough growth to properly expand it. Main focus should be centered on giving metas people enjoy playing or talking about a chance to see more competitive development.

Let's say we downsize CL to 6 slots instead of the previous 8. If we set out with like SV / BW / DPP / Mono / ND / UU you're reaching out to multiple Smogon subsections, and even though there's only one SV slot, three of the other five metas are still rooted in SV so people who prefer this generation still have areas they can help with. We could easily keep the 8 slots though which gives a ton of room to expand CL further, potentially throwing in Doubles, LC, 1v1, maybe even Draft or proper CAP OMs should they become popular enough. I kinda prefer a more "unofficial metagames" approach to CL given how small things like STABmons are at the moment.

Regarding timing, people started clamoring for CAPPL like a month after WCAP ended. We could probably get the tournament moving far earlier with Week 1 starting late April/early May and give ourselves like 6 additional weeks, and could then have WCAP start a little later as the current schedule made the deadline right in the middle of the holidays which kinda sucks imo, it'd be preferrable to have the holidays take up the early weeks of Pools/Qualifiers when people are less likely to be playing anyhow. If PL ends around early July and WCAP begins mid-December that's a roughly 5-month period which CL can fit inside of, and CL currently takes a little under 3 months to wrap up. This isn't meant to be the final timings obv, we'd want to consider what other tours are happening at the time both within and outside CAP.

 

[Spammernoob]

I'll give some thoughts compiled from Discord, as well as my own thoughts.

Given that WCAP has all of CAP's pastgens, CAPCL's biggest niche would be exploring experimental metagames. Tiers like Monotype, NatDex, and even DPP CAP have received development in past CAPCLs (to varying success). One consideration is that the Tournament request queue is alive again, which also provides opportunities for these metagames to develop. Teamtours definitely result in better metagame development than individual tours though (the most obvious example for me is how fast Stored/Draining Chugg was found in CAPPL when it went under the radar for the entirety of playtest).

Regarding the issue with pastgens competing with OMs, a format that has been floated on Discord is 2 default slots + (4 ? 6) flex slots, where each team picks from a pool of half the available flex slots. Default slots could be 2 SV or SV + Draft (experimental), and remaining slots could flex between OMs (Monotype, LC, UU, Doubles, Natdex) and all CAP pastgens. This is definitely a cool idea that allows for wider representation of formats, though there may be drawbacks (maybe some people are forced iinto tiers they don't play).

One concern with adding a 3rd team tour is player burnout. We currently have 2 tournaments running at a time (1 circuit and 1 unofficial) for CAP, as well as the current 2 teamtours + CAP processes (which mostly avoid eachother). This is a lot to keep up with, and adding a third teamtour means we will have 3 tours running at a time for 8 months in the year, sometimes overlapping with CAP processes. This is a lot, and I definitely could not keep up with actually properly prepping for this much. There are also other Smogon tours outside of CAP to consider, though I am a CAP main so I can't speak on those.

Regarding scheduling teamtours and overlapping with CAP processes, we will probably end up with a CAP dropping in the middle of at least one of the teamtours, which is pretty undesirable.

CAPCL definitely feels like it could be fun though, so I'm up to give it a test run if there's wider interest.

 

[earthflax]

At this point I think it's readily obvious that WCAP and CAPPL are here to stay and that the only role that CAPCL can fill if it wants to survive is that of an experimental tour where things are tried without a ton of pressure.

Flex slots just incentivize buying proven players in developed metagames and can, at times, completely bypass the whole aspect of metagame development by simply leaving experimental tiers unselected. If CAPCL is meant to be an experimental tour then I'd much rather see 8 slots w/ 2 SV and 6 underdeveloped CAP tiers - let's say ND, Mono, LC, UU, Draft, and a suspect slot than I would 8 slots w/ 2 SV and 6 flex slots with the pool of tiers comprising everything previously mentioned and all pastgens.

Player burnout is real, but it's not something that I think should be a major consideration here. Plenty of other sections host 3 team tours a year, and while I get that our playerbase is smaller and we have other things that people also participate in (like the process), if CAPCL's main goal is to spur development in a team tour setting then the quality of the games really only matter insofar as they reflect the players that are playing them. Moreover, I've always believed that we've never done enough to grow the CAP metagame actively rather than passively (free CAP B101 anyone?), and a lower-stakes, low-prestige tour that some CAP tour regulars will skip out on is the perfect staging ground to allow new faces with interest in CAP to participate a) in a team tour format and b) in a CAP team tour (hi slopcat :D).

A CAP dropping mid-CL would be much better than mid-PL for reasons listed previously regarding prestige and competitiveness; I'd much rather drop a new CAP around CL time (eg Shox) than I would drop a CAP around PL or WC time (eg Chugg, Ram).

 

[SHSP]

At this point I think it's readily obvious that WCAP and CAPPL are here to stay and that the only role that CAPCL can fill if it wants to survive is that of an experimental tour where things are tried without a ton of pressure.

Flex slots just incentivize buying proven players in developed metagames and can, at times, completely bypass the whole aspect of metagame development by simply leaving experimental tiers unselected. If CAPCL is meant to be an experimental tour then I'd much rather see 8 slots w/ 2 SV and 6 underdeveloped CAP tiers - let's say ND, Mono, LC, UU, Draft, and a suspect slot than I would 8 slots w/ 2 SV and 6 flex slots with the pool of tiers comprising everything previously mentioned and all pastgens.

Player burnout is real, but it's not something that I think should be a major consideration here. Plenty of other sections host 3 team tours a year, and while I get that our playerbase is smaller and we have other things that people also participate in (like the process), if CAPCL's main goal is to spur development in a team tour setting then the quality of the games really only matter insofar as they reflect the players that are playing them. Moreover, I've always believed that we've never done enough to grow the CAP metagame actively rather than passively (free CAP B101 anyone?), and a lower-stakes, low-prestige tour that some CAP tour regulars will skip out on is the perfect staging ground to allow new faces with interest in CAP to participate a) in a team tour format and b) in a CAP team tour (hi slopcat :D).

A CAP dropping mid-CL would be much better than mid-PL for reasons listed previously regarding prestige and competitiveness; I'd much rather drop a new CAP around CL time (eg Shox) than I would drop a CAP around PL or WC time (eg Chugg, Ram).

Click to collapse...

Take my .02$ with a grain of salt because i'm all-but retired at this point, but fully agree with Flax here. The advantages that CL has over PL or WCAP is that its by far the best positioned to get games and reps in for these lesser-played, experimental formats. If you're gonna run CL, you gotta lean into that. This does mean, I think, that CL's got a much, much lower ceiling for actually getting people in the door for it, but that's more of a question of if it should run at all compared to what it should look like. Potentially leaning into what Flax says here about new faces is a really valid shout, too, especially if we're considering incorporating stuff like ND and Mono and w/e else that can be fun introductions to CAP for a variety of other places on-Smog.

 

[spoo]

I think that our first WCAP was a resounding success in many ways, and in other ways demonstrated the flaws that are sort of unavoidable with a world cup format (especially when run by a smaller community.) The tour featured a ton of new players and boasted the highest signups we’ve ever had for a teamtour by quite a large margin. This was awesome to see, but it’s unfortunate when half of these players only get to play for three weeks, and three quarters of the players are out by the fourth. Signing up for a normal teamtour is a full seven week commitment at the very least; this is a lot, yes, but it’s also part of the appeal. The entire tournament without tiebreaks is shorter than just the regular season of CAPPL. People want a real opportunity to play these tiers. In a WCOP format, if pools don’t go your way, you are simply out and the tournament is over. I found this to be a really disappointing aspect of the tour.

There is also the birthplace lottery aspect, which some people will care about more than others, but is inarguably something we have to content with to some degree. I don’t find this to be conducive to a competitive tournament because it takes away agency from its participants. It might make the tournament more fun for some people, and it’s fine if those people value the extra fun over extra competitiveness, but I personally place more emphasis on the fair and competitive environment brought about by a draft format. (And it’s not like a three week tournament is very fun for those 50% of players anyways.)

Six slots also felt pretty bad, and I am not sure we can afford to expand to 8 despite the high number of signups we got. I know small regions like Oceania and even larger regions like West+Midwest were a bit pressed just to fill out a full roster. Can’t speak to other regions but it’s probably worth some kind of manager survey to see if we can bump it up to 8. This was another unfortunate compromise we had to make as a smaller community running a WCOP format, and the effect was definitely felt (at least for me.)

Anyways, I don’t mean to be too sour here, I think it was a good tour. I would still like to hear from managers and players — on smaller regions especially — about their experiences, but for now it looks like we will continue to run WCAP in the future. I think draft formats are better but that is just me. As for CAPCL, this is a weird one. We are looking at a 6 team (and maybe even 6 slot) tournament that has no prize, drops our flagship formats for experimental and undeveloped ones, will probably have many CAP tournament regulars sit out, and will probably have a CAP drop in the middle of it. Frankly this sounds like a bad tour to me. Like, I thought CAPCL was already a poor tournament, and I worry that this would just exacerbate the existing issues with it and introduce even more new ones. Still, I agree it would fill an important role in getting playtime for metagames that would otherwise fall completely by the wayside. I think we should just run it and see how it goes. I would like to be pleasantly surprised.

 

[Spammernoob]

Forgot to post this yesterday (oops).

Given the support in the thread for CAPCL, we will run with this tentative schedule:

CAPPL: Early May - Early August (11 weeks + 2 week potential TBs)
CAPCL: Early September - Mid November (10 weeks + 2 week potential TBs)
WCAP: Mid December - Early February (8 weeks + ??? week potential TBs)

We will have a CAPCL format discussion thread up after CAPPL ends to discuss what format we want the tour to be. Currently CAPCL's 10 weeks includes assumed 1 week for Draft.

If anyone has any objections to this, let me know.

 

[Spammernoob]

Alright, some people wanted to discuss WCAP in Discord, so I'll open this thread up to collect some thoughts for the next week or so.

Personally, cramming WCAP and CAPPL super close together doesn't feel ideal to me, but having WCAP over the holidays is a bit awkward too. I feel like there was something awkward about running WCAP later than it's scheduled for now, but i can't remember it. If anyone has anything to add, I'll definitely take it into account and discuss with rest of mod team about it.

 

[PixelBob]

I personally believe that upping WCap first rather than CL is more beneficial for a few reasons which ill list below

With the success of the first WCap its been a tour that lots of people have been looking forward to, more so with the recent discussion of bumping up the slots to a 8 or even 10 slot tour. If this were to be put into affect I believe its more beneficial to have it rather than later as was mentioned above there are some issues having a world cup tour over the holidays and not to take away for the potential issues cl could also face during from being during them in its place I believe having less issues during WCap especially when changing its format would be more beneficial as to smoothen the playing experience.

This point is especially true when it comes to scheduling, as like we saw with previous WCap trying to schedule with 3 different people which can sometimes have up to a 11/12 hour difference over the holidays when most people are travelling or have plans with family is incredibily difficult and results in a lot more act / subbed games, this becomes even more true out of pools when 2 teams with a very wide gap in time zones meet in playoffs since you only have a week then. This is reduced a lot by having cl over the holidays as its potentially only a few games compared to an entire team due to how its region vs region rather than team vs team

There is probably a few more reasons but these are the first that come to mind and others are definitely better at explaining those points that me, just wanted to point out some of the issues that was experienced in the first iteration of WCap due to the holidays

 

[earthflax]

I would like WCAP to avoid significant overlap with official TTs to maximize availability for player pools from all regions.

Week 1 of SCL starts on 1st August, and projecting for a 12 week season (reg season+semis+playoffs+2 tb weeks) that would put the tour finishing between 15 and 29 November. I think starting at the earlier end of that range (or even earlier) is probably fine, as most SCL players will no longer be playing come playoffs and, if we continue to do pools, there's a bit of leeway with scheduling for these players. If we follow a similar format to WCAP 1, a mid-November start date would have pools finish up in early December, though, which could end up being an issue with major holidays coinciding with the later stages of playoffs (barring TBs).

I'm still fine running that timeline and just giving an extra week for the round of playoffs that happens to be on Christmas week, but if we find that awkward, then we could start WCAP at the start of November, which should leave ample time for playoffs (barring an excessive amount of tiebreakers). Official TT overlap isn't as much of an issue, as 1 November is the start of semis and most players will be available for aforementioned reasons. Pacing for a 1 November start date would mean opening signups in early October, with Format Discussion going up 1-2 weeks before that. This is the schedule that makes the most sense to me, personally.

As for CAPCL, we can run that tour immediately after the holidays, if we wish. I don't really care about the timing of that tour, to be honest.

I have issues with the current format of WCAP, but I will in large part save that for Format Discussion; suffice it to say, though, that the # of slots needs to be expanded.

If anyone has thoughts about this, let me know! Thank you.

 

[spoo]

Trying to outline a rough tournament schedule and it would be helpful to know how people feel about certain scheduling conflicts.

1. How important is not having overlap with OU team tournaments? If overlap is necessary, would we prefer CAP TTs to overlap with the start or the end of OU TTs?

2. How important is not having overlap with the holiday season (last week or two of december, first week of jan)?

3. How important is not having a new CAP drop mid-tour, especially in playoffs?

4. Ignore all other scheduling concerns- in a perfect world, would we rather run CAPPL -> WCAP -> CAPCL, or CAPPL -> CAPCL -> WCAP?

 

[Brigtel]

2. Pretty important, at least to me, I need my celebrations with others to be without much distraction. Obviously only as far as its realistic.

3. For CL, not important really. For PL and wcap, if it drops early enough it’s fine especially since we have quick nerfs now, but week6-playoffs can feel pretty bad. To avoid in those cases

4. CAPPL -> CAPCL -> WCAP Mostly to give some time to breathe after PL with the chill tour, and WCAP will be shorter for most and probably introduce more new people who will then be interested. I can see arguments for doing it the other way though

My concern is to ensure representation of DPP/BW so im pretty happy that CL (probably) exists this year.

 

[PixelBob]

2. Very important as most people would agree spending time with the family will take more precedence over mons

3. The current cycle of cap development being finished just before pl is a very enjoyable one as it is caps main tournament giving each iteration a fresh feel in terms of the meta. Though I agree with brigtel that as long as it earlier into the tour for pl (within the first 3/4 weeks) it could also work.

4. I am personally of the idea that a “breather tour” would be better suited around the holidays if a tour is forced to be during that period which is why I’m of the opinion that the tournament order should be PL -> WCap -> CL. I also believe that having WCap around September would help expand the reach of the tournament as this period of time isn't being taken up by a holiday (compared to hosting it near December/Jan) and its also a time where some countries and those in education still have a week / a few weeks off which could help the reach of CL if those who play in WCap end up enjoying it.

Didn’t go into the first point as this issue doesn’t personally affect me so I wouldn’t be able to give an informed opinion on it. ( I also hope for dpp/bw representation hopefully in WCap when that discussion goes up)

 

[Joeshh]

1. I've been thinking this for quite a while, especially from the past few CAPPLs but I think it's very important to try to avoid having an overlap with the major OU tournaments as much as possible. From the success of the previous WCAP I think CAP has garnered a lot of good attention from the general community and it's had a lot more engagement which we've seen from the previous CAPPL being one of the most successful and competitive team tournaments we've had. However I think the overlap between CAPPL and WCOP has been a growing issue for a little while, especially as the number of people who are playing in CAPPL are seeing a greater representation in the WCOP itself.

Just from this year's CAPPL there were a total of 32 people who were actively playing in the main stage of WCOP, 12 of which played in the play offs for the tournament. That's not even including people who were subs, supporting or people who played in the play ins for WCOP as well so there's probably even more people that this applies to (I also could've missed some people as well). I think the burn out is very real, and a lot of people who are playing in these games are going to prioritise WCOP a lot more than CAPPL which they should, especially when some of these players are managing CAP teams as well. It feels like a growing issue as CAP grows and I feel like we should try to avoid situations like this as much as possible, or at the very least for the prize team tours. CAPCL is probably the best tournament to have the most overlap if necessary.

In terms of what's best if overlap is necessary then it'll be better towards to start of the major tournaments when the stakes aren't as high for the people involved which means that people can give more attention to the CAP tours.

2. It's pretty important to avoid, most people won't be able to play in these periods of time anyways and I think we end up in the situation we had last year where we need to introduce breaks or extend play time to make it work which I think feels clunky.

3. I think there should be a cut off for if a new cap is completed mid tournament. It's fine if it's at the start of the tournament because at that point there's enough time to try to experiment with the new cap and it's a good testing ground to get data on the new cap. But if it's dropped in the middle of the tournament in an unbalanced state it can warp the whole tournament in a way which I don't think is very competitive. I think there should be a 3 week cut off for a new cap to be introduced to the tournament. Push comes to shove we have the playtest to also test out the cap. Similar to Brig it might not be as important for CAPCL, but for the other two tournaments I'd like to see a rule like this implemented.

4. I think CAPPL -> CAPCL -> WCAP is greater than the other option. I think in a perfect world on a yearly rotation I think the best option would be WCAP -> CAPPL -> CAPCL but that might cause other complications with the other major tournaments which I think should be taken into account. Like we saw from this year WCAP brought in a bunch of new players into CAP and brought a lot of interest into the tournament which helped fuel CAPPL which had the most sign ups for a team tournament in CAP. WCAP being a shorter tournament as well helps a lot because I think it gives a lot of people who were unaware of CAP the experience of playing in it in a serious tournament which can lead people to want to play more so they'll look into playing CAPPL. Because of this I think having WCAP be before CAPPL is probably best for the growth of the tournament overall.

The other side of it as well is that I think having CAPCL after CAPPL helps a lot with burn out as the stakes aren't as high since there's no big prize for it (atleast currently). Having played and managed CAPPL is definitely the most intensive CAP tournament we have in terms of time and investment, so having CAPCL come after that is good for a breather for everyone involved.

I think this whole thing is a pretty hard one to resolve but I think my major thing is to try to avoid the major tournaments as much as possible for the tournaments with prizes in them. In an ideal world we'd be able to avoid it for all of our tournaments as much as possible but that probably isn't feasible.

 

[spoo]

I was discussing a couple potential schedules in our mod channel the other day and thought I'd share here. Having a visual representation is helpful, and it might be good for people to understand what my thought process behind this stuff is like.

The main thing that's pretty much fixed is our CAP release cycle. We usually aim for two a year, unless we do a big framework project like Venomicon, Ramnarok, or if it's the start/end of the generation. The second CAP should release in time for us to run a playtest before circuit champs, which means an october-november release. Working backwards, that means the first CAP drops around april-may.

In general, having a CAP release mid-teamtour sucks. We can avoid this by having a cutoff around w4/w5, but then you'd be playing a dead metagame for 5+ weeks, which also sucks. It should be a big deal when a new CAP drops, but this would kill a lot of hype and excitement. People are going to want to use the mon when it drops - as they should. I think it'd be very disappointing and anticlimactic if after four months of buildup, we weren't able to use the mon in one of our largest, most visible, most competitive events of the year. Having a new CAP available during teamtours is also important for testing - we went through all of Chuggalong's playtest without abusing Stored Power + DKiss sets only to realize it was broken within the first week of CAPPL. I also highly doubt we would've seen exploration of stuff like Red Card Obliteryx if it weren't for this CAPPL.

To me, this makes it really undesirable to have CAPs release in the middle of any tournament. This may not always be possible to avoid; however, it's certainly worth making an effort to. Given that CAP releases are mostly fixed (may-ish and november-ish), this gives us a good anchor for our teamtours.

I'm also 100% on board with avoiding holiday gaming - this was awful during WCAP last year, and should be avoided if possible. I also agree with everything Joeshh had to say about avoiding overlap with OU teamtours. Still, not everything is possible to do at once.

Current timing:

Here's a visual mockup of what things would look like with our current CAPPL timing. Most years CAPPL begins in late may, coinciding with the release of a new CAP. The next tournament - either CAPCL or WCAP - would begin mid september, so that it finishes around the time our next CAP comes out and avoids extending into the holiday season. The remaining tournament would begin early february, keeping all three tours evenly spaced apart.

Option 1:

The main issue with structuring CAPCL+WCAP around our current CAPPL timing is obviously that it leads to heavy overlap with OU tours. This option pushes everything back about 2-3 weeks - CAPPL would start early-mid june, decreasing overlap with WCOP; the next tour would begin early october, overlapping slightly with a CAP release, but hopefully only by a couple weeks; and the final tour would start mid february, also decreasing overlap with SPL, notably during the playoffs phase of the tournament.

Option 2:

Pushing all tournaments back even further results in the least overlap with OU's schedule, but sacrifices one tournament to be run during the holiday season (probably CAPCL). At that point, I don't know if it's even worth running CAPCL at all, but you're free to make up your own mind about it. Can only speak for myself, but it just sounds like a terrible experience. Maybe we put the tournament on a weeklong pause at the end of December...? For the record, we do technically have Option 3 of ditching CAPCL and just keeping CAPPL + WCAP, but I don't imagine that's a popular route either.

===

This discussion is also a little weird going into 2027 because of Wind & Waves presumably hitting shelves during the standard mid-november release window (can never be too sure with gamefreak though). We'll also only be running one CAP in 2027 for the same reason, so we don't have to worry about scheduling around a CAP drop during that time. I'm hoping to get a semi-reliable tour schedule nailed down for The Future(TM) and maybe we adjust things for 2027 as necessary.

There's a lot to consider here, but I'd like to know people's opinions on the above options. Thank you to anyone who has chimed in so far.

 

[earthflax]

Few points:
1. Completely agree w/Joeshh on overlap w/official TTs. It's a huge factor for a tier like CAP where the majority of our playerbase in tournaments is non-mainers.
2. I don't mind holiday overlap personally, but I understand I'm in the minority on that, and agree it would probably be best to avoid it if possible.
3. Like earlier posts have said, a specific week cutoff for a CAP release should be considered in the case where our process drags into a team tour's start. I'd say that W5 is probably the latest week that a new release can premiere in CAPPL, and a new release that drops during WCAP probably should not be allowed at all (provided we continue to do pools). Throwing in a wild card variable in playoffs or close to it is a pretty bad idea in practice. On the process side, setting a cutoff like this would also make us a lot more aware of our timelines; if we think we're going to finish ahead of it, it pushes us not to delay, and if we think we're going to finish after it, it pushes us not to rush, I guess.
4. Although I'd agree that CAPPL->CAPCL->WCAP is probably a better solution on balance than CAPPL->WCAP->CAPCL, I think that as far as scheduling goes (esp. with prioritizing cutting official TT overlap) the latter sequence is probably more practical.

snip w/timelines

Click to collapse...

Maybe I'm alone in this, but I feel much less strongly about official TT overlap with CAPCL than I do w/WCAP and CAPPL; I think the playerbase overlap is pretty minimal for both tours. Moreover, I think that even if we are trying to avoid overlap as much as possible, we can still make some concessions (because of the holiday season and so on). The last third-ish of each official tour's length here is playoffs and what looks like a one-week window to account for a TB. By the first round of playoffs, 6/10 of the teams in SPL/SCL and 12/20 of the teams in WCoP will be out, and by the next round that'll be 8/10 and 16/20, to say nothing of tiebreaker weeks where only 6 players total will play. I think it's very possible to move CAPPL and WCAP a little bit into the tail end of their preceding official, and we can do this even more w/CAPCL considering, like I said, playerbase overlap with any officials is pretty low

I do want to say that I am still pushing very heavily for that early-November start time to WCAP that I was talking about in my initial post, though, which I guess puts my theoretical position at odds with my practical one. To expand a little bit on point #4, I think (and many agree w/me on this) that the sequence of WCoP->CAPPL->SCL->WCAP is an absolutely incredible way to enable growth for our team tours, if it's one we can pull off. They fall in the lull between official team tournaments and also happen to align broadly with summer and end-of-year/winter breaks for many players. If this is something that we can pull off without significant holiday overlap, it's a pretty obvious slam dunk. The tentative schedule I want to see for this year's WCAP avoids major holidays entirely barring excessive TBs (which can still happen, to be fair, so it's not bulletproof, but at that point I think we can make a concession to 2-week deadlines/break weeks, bc if WCAP quarters start in the last week of November we'd need 2+ TB weeks in 3 rounds of playoffs with a presumably 8-slot format). CAPCL is honestly pretty easy to place after that if we accept some official overlap as well.

I guess to summarize, I'd like to operate off of Option #2, with each CAPTT's start dates shifted a few weeks back, and have WCAP act as our winter tour and CAPCL as our spring tour. Other good ideas in my opinion for scheduling: freeze the meta if a CAP is to release during or after the penultimate regular season week and be open to 2-week deadline(s)/break week for the busiest periods of the holidays.

 

[spoo]

Hey gamers it's been a while. This thread has been turned into a poll for you to voice your thoughts. I will explain more below, but here are the poll options:

TIMELINE 1 (BASICALLY OUR CURRENT TIMING, BUT ADJUSTED FOR A THIRD TOUR)

TIMELINE 2 (MEDIUM OVERLAP WITH OU TEAMTOURS, NO HOLIDAY GAMING)

TIMELINE 3 (LOW OVERLAP WITH OU TEAMTOURS, FULL HOLIDAY GAMING)

Please do your civic duty and vote. If there is no option that represents exactly what you are looking for (say, you want timeline 3 but everything pushed back two weeks), just vote for the option that's closest and then briefly explain your position in this thread. Everything can be adjusted. You can read a more detailed breakdown of these schedules if you scroll up to my last post before this.

For the record, mods are currently leaning towards putting WCAP in the spring and CAPCL in the winter. The winter slot is the one with the most problems by far, between holiday overlap, the most OU teamtour overlap, new CAP releases, and eventually new Pokemon game releases. Putting our least important tournament during this time period is what makes the most sense to me. I'd hate for WCAP to be dragged down by these problems long-term. Please express your opinion if you disagree with the above, and want WCAP in the winter and CAPCL in the spring.

I'm going to leave this open for a week or two (whenever I remember to close it). We are not bound to the result of this poll, but it's good information for the tour host and mod team to have.

 

[spoo]

Opinions are split between option 2 and 3, so here is a compromise. We will be locking Something in by the end of the week, so this is your last chance to share your opinion.

• Adjusted all dates for 2027, starting on Mondays. Signups are not included in tour length
• We don't have a 2027 schedule for the OU circuit, so I'm making some assumptions here based on the 2026 schedule
• Placed CAPCL in the winter and WCAP in the spring, see my previous post for the reasoning. Joeshh's post also gives some good insight into the advantages of this ordering
• Pushed CAPCL back (made it later) two weeks from Timeline 2 to reduce overlap with SCL, while still ending before the holidays begin in late December
• Pushed WCAP back two weeks from Timeline 2 to reduce overlap with SPL
• Pushed CAPPL back one week from Timeline 2 to space out the gap between tours and reduce overlap with WCOP
• Put 2028 WCAP on the map to visualize how long the gap between tours is

Some problems with this schedule:

• Yeah CAPCL is still fucked, gen 10 is going to drop right in the middle of it. I don't think people will care about the second half of this tour after the new gen comes out
  • The alternative is pushing CAPCL back a month, so that gen 10 drops right before it begins, and adjusting other tours accordingly (basically Timeline 3). This would hopefully mean people remain interested in the tour. However, now you have the shitshow of CAPCL happening IMMEDIATELY at the start of a new generation, and you run into the holiday gaming issue again, which is two layers of shit.
  • Moving CAPCL forward (making it earlier) so that it ends before the new generation drops is unfortunately not something I'm considering. This would mean moving the other two tours forward as well, which then means far more overlap with OU teamtours during CAPPL and WCAP. Avoiding this seems to be people's #1 priority.
• We'll have a new CAP drop in the middle of CAPCL this year
  • Maybe it'll get banned idk. Just pointing out a headache that we will have to deal with for this upcoming iteration. This isn't a concern during 2027 since we won't be making a second CAP this year, given the new games will be coming out during this time, but will be relevant for 2026 CAPCL if it happens during this same timeslot
• Still some overlap with OU tours compared to Timeline 3
  • Hopefully not a big deal tho
• Pretty big gap between end-of-year CAPCL and start-of-year WCAP
  • Hopefully not a big deal tho

Wish there was a perfect solution that checked every box, but there isn't (unless we kill CAPCL) so hopefully this is satisfactory enough. Comments are appreciated; again, this week is your last chance to speak up

 

[spoo]

Given the lack of objections or any other commentary, we're locking in the above schedule for 2027. This also means we'll be running CAPCL at the end of this year, and trying to find another place for our third yearly CA prize. CAPCL format discussion up soon.