Tournament CAPCL IV - Policy Discussion

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shnowshner

shnowshner

but does he even stand a chance?
is a Community Contributoris a CAP Contributor
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Hey all, CAPCL IV is right around the corner, and there's a good amount I'd like our community to discuss in anticipation. My schedule is crazy right now so please excuse my hasted tone: wanted to get this up today and no later. That said, I will be joined by kenn this season as co-host so that my reign of terror over CAP might be subdued. Onto questions!

-What tiers do we want represented? Last year's lineup was 3 SV / 1 SS / 1 ORAS / 1 BW / 1 DPP / 1 Mono, while CAPPL was the same but with Mono swapped for SM.

-Should CAPCL remain a 6-team tournament, or is there desire/reason to scale up like we did with PL?

-Official Tours are looking into raised manager counts from 2 to 3. Is this something we'd like to adopt as well?
-Accordingly, should budget/pricing stay the same, potentially with 3 managers?

Looking to keep this thread active for one week, give or take.
 
Number of Teams:

Personally speaking, I don't think this should change. While CAPPL was able to support having 8 Teams just fine, I do not have the same confidence that CAPCL would be able to, as the number of players CAPCL attracts tends to be a lot lower for a multitude of reasons (Busier time of the year for many users, no prizes, and oftentimes weirder formats).

Playoffs Teams Cutoff:

I know this wasn't a point brought up in the OP, but I kinda wanted to bring this up anyways. I would personally like to propose raising the number of teams that qualify for playoffs from Top 3 to Top 4. I have been quite vocal about not liking the #1 Seed bye in both last year's CAPCL and this year's CAPPL, and while I was an advocate for Amaranth's proposal last year, I do recognize that extending the length of the tour is undesirable for many users. Raising/lowering the number of teams that make playoffs is the best of both worlds in my opinion, as it eliminates the Seed #1 Bye while also keeping the length of the tournament the same. Speaking personally, I think doing Top 4 as opposed to Top 2 makes a lot more sense as it reduces the chances of teams just being completely out of the tournament by the later weeks rather than increasing it (Which to me is deserible since players on teams who are behind more likely to actually give a shit instead of just trolling their matches, which tends to be a reoccurring theme in a lot of CAP Tournaments).

Mangers:

I would much rather we stick with only 2 Managers. SPL/SCL are much bigger tours than anything we could ever host, so it makes logical sense for their to be more managers than usual for these types of tournaments. I personally do not think that there's really as much burden on individual managers in CAPCL as there would be in a major team tournament such as SCL and SPL. Furthermore, taking players out of the pool to manage is a pretty big issue for a smaller community like ours, and while self-buying does alleviate this a bit, I would be lying if I said it would be completely (Several users simply do not wish to self-buy as they either just want to focus on one thing, or that they simply do not think they are worth the self-buy price). Also, it's very obviously more difficult to form a trio of people who are willing to manage with each other than to just find one person who would want to manage with you, and this would just promote more signups with dead manager slots and/or reduce the number of manager signups in general.

Manager Pricing:

Keep it the same, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

That's all I have for now. I have a lot I want to say in regards to slots/formats, but I'm going to leave that for a separate post as there's a lot I want to say on that.
 
pannu said:
i really wanna team with tsky for this tour please draft me on the same team as him ok thank you guys btw can someone explain shox to me what does it do it looks cool af tho
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# teams is fine, selfbuy price is fine. don't change # managers as it takes players out of the already small pool (and forcing 3 managers instead of 2 means that the quality of managing is, frankly, probably going to drop)

as far as tiers go capmono should be the only currently supported capom that we even think about slotting and i would heavily support its inclusion in the tour (but like for real @council PLEASE ban chugg). CAPCL should have a focus on development of metas while still having the breadth to allow players who might not be starters in PL to shine. if we're keeping # of slots the same the ideal lineup in my eyes should be:
SV / SV / SV / SM / ORAS / BW / DPP / Mono

(edited to add:) HOWEVER if we are open to adding rands in here then imo the ideal lu is:
SV / SV / SV / SM / ORAS / BW / DPP / Rands Bo3

just because rn capmono is in an awful state (which would be fixed by a couple of bans! very straightforward! council please do something!) and you can't really slot it on in good faith without any change to the current tier as is.

SS is the most stable, well-explored, and developed cap meta by far and does not need prodding to reach a better meta state. the natural inclusion if taking out SS is SM. this is a very slight preference from me, though, and i think that doing same tiers or even something like 2 sv + oldgens + mono is fine. if we're removing the om slot altogether (ie no rands in place of mono or something) then that slot should either be sv4 or sm imo.
 
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Keep SS. Removing SS is a bad idea. SS is the best CAP metagame. Do not remove SS. Keep SS. SV is bad because Tera is no fun. SM is bad because Magearna is no fun. ORAS is bad because Mega Metagross is no fun. BW is bad because Krilowatt is no fun. DPP is ok.

My proposition is as follows:

SV/SV/SV/SS/SM/DPP/Mono/NatDex

or

SV/SV/SV/SS/SM/Mono/NatDex/UU

CAPPL is the old gens tour. CAPCL should be the other tiers' tour.
 
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Tiers continue to be really weird for CAPCL. Dropping SM last year worked out fine, and I wouldn't hate just running that format back, but it definitely felt a little weird and I wonder if we can find a better solution.

The Problem: between our five oldgens, three standard slots for SV, and the OMs that distinguish CAPCL from being just a dollar store CAPPL, there are simply not enough slots for everything. At least one OM and three SV slots should be non-negotiable. That leaves with a max of four oldgens to work with, potentially fewer if we stuff in more OMs. So at least one oldgen gets dropped. This is awkward, but after mulling it over, I really can't think of better alternatives. This is the least bad solution.

So which gets dropped? Most arguments from last CAPCL's format thread carry over. Perfectly developed ("solved") tiers gain relatively little from inclusion. The tour itself may benefit from including these highly competitive and developed tiers (better games = better tour), but for CAPCL this isn't the most important factor. If we simply want the most competitive games, we would run CAPPL's format, but we don't. "CAPPL but worse" is not a strong identity. This tour is a great opportunity to further develop tiers that wouldn't get that development anywhere else.

To me, the logical conclusion is dropping SM or SS. SS is a great tier, I like it more than SM personally, but it's equally if not more developed than SM, and SM getting snubbed two years in a row feels bad. Cut SS. Okay, now which OM gets the slot? I agree with Earthflax: Mono is the only good choice. UU is on the rise, has some incredible enthusiasm around it, and it is a perfect inclusion for this tour one day. However... tiers should have some baseline amount of development and demonstrable proof of playerbase interest. CAPCL and CAPPL should never be the birthplace or testing ground for a new tier –– recipe for disaster. Compile basic resources, get a council of good players, advertise the tier and rile up some interest, and run a forum tour first, then you have a case for representation. SV / SV / SV / SM / ORAS / BW / DPP / Mono

---

As for the format itself: well, it really depends what we want out of the tour. CAPCL has become sorta known as the more casual / fun little brother to CAPPL. The tour is shorter, not as many players sign up, there's no actual reward for winning, and we don't run our "best" tiers. It's less commitment. Is this casual attitude something we should embrace or reject? I'm not sure myself. But, here are some thoughts on different formats.

6 team PL, top 4 playoffs:
I don't love this one. Not that I love top 3 playoffs either. But this essentially lets teams coast through the regular season. Instead of having to fight to make it into the top half of teams, you just have to not be the worst or second worst team in the tour. That's a pretty low bar; after two or three good weeks, some teams will be essentially locked and can just coast or troll until playoffs. Fighting five weeks to only cull 1/3rd of the pool feels like a waste of time, and then you immediately go into a head-to-head knockout phase in quite the dramatic transition. Weeks go from hardly mattering into being life or death. Ultimately I think this format just devalues the importance of the regular season too much.

6 team PL, top 3 playoffs:
The dreaded first-seed bye. But I have to ask: is it actually that bad? Is it really a straight up disadvantage? Okay, say it is –– what if we gave the third seed the bye instead. That would be more fair, right? Well, no, because that's ridiculous. The way I see it: these teamtours are won or lost on motivation, general activity, and synergy in the team chat, and having a bye week can absolutely break momentum and ruin the team dynamic. But, having to win again in semis is still harder! I think people look at the bye week the wrong way. It's not a free do-nothing week –– it's on you, the manager, or the teammate, to stay active and keep your team dynamic strong. If you can't do that for a single week, you just aren't a winning team. It's not easy, but it IS easier than what the other two teams have to do.

What is actually a problem, though, is when the semifinals teams tiebreak and the first seed team gets two bye weeks. Or worse –– a regular season tiebreaker AND a semifinals tiebreaker. Three weeks of no games just blows. Maybe, make one of the SV games in semifinals worth two points, so that a tie is impossible. Or, if there's a tie in semis, a sudden death single tiebreaker game has to be played that Sunday or Monday. Additional methods for breaking ties in the regular season could be introduced: first point scores, then differential, then H2H, and then maybe SV scores as a final metric, making regular season tiebreakers impossible. IDK, but in general, the disadvantage of a single bye week is largely overstated. If you want to win the tour, guess what, you have to stay active during that single week. Not impossible.

Amaranth's "proposal C"
This solves a lot of what's hard about 6-team PLs. No more bye week shenanigans. However, now you're playing the same team twice, even three times, which I've heard many people express disdain for in the PLs where this format has been run. It also increases the length of the tour, which may be a good or a bad thing depending on what you want out of CAPCL. I don't have much else to say here, because I've never played this format myself. We should get opinions from people who have, though.

8 team tour
The tour is longer and more work. Not necessarily a bad thing. Once again: should the casual, short-and-sweet nature of this tour be preserved, or should it be a more serious tour with a real investment? Also, importantly, will we have the manager and player signups to support this?

Personally, I am leaning towards expanding to 8 teams. While I worry about getting enough signups, we could just accept that games will be lower quality, and embrace the fact that some newer players who wouldn't have otherwise gotten picked will now have a chance. A close second preference is 6 teams, top 3 playoffs, maybe with some modifications to account for TBs in semifinals and/or the regular season.
 
I think CAPCL should be used to develop UU/Mono/NatDex more. While I personally have played Mono and Natdex a lot and I don't think they are in a great state, having them in the tour will help develop them which is always nice and can help "fix" them. UU is a very interesting concept and I think this tour is the best possibility to develop it.

For managers there is definetely no need for 3 managers and selfbuys look fine as they are
 
Gonna post thoughts now to keep discussion moving and since not doing this now means it'll become Saturday way sooner than I think it will. Focusing primarily on contentious topics; there doesn't seem to be a desire to change pricing, number of managers, and tournament scope.

Sentiment is towards CAPCL being OM-focused. Issue is that a lot of CAP OMs are fairly underdeveloped and thus don't feel great to thrust into a teamtour along far more developed metagames. We have sorta used tournaments to give an extra "push" to get some metas off the ground, and it would be nice for CL to be substantially differentiated from PL. I like the idea of CAP UU and would love to have it in CL or even PL one day, but the development is simply too low for me to add in any good faith as UU has extremely small forum presence.

The only suitable options for our OM slot at this period would either be National Dex or Monotype. Both have large playerbases which historically have intermingled with CAP's own community, Mono having starred in last year's CL and CAP Mono being a slot in the recent and very prestigious MOM Premier League. I personally did not think the Mono games from last year where of good competitive quality, but I am a single person, and ultimately Monotype has a lot of activity surrounding it. National Dex has not seen as much activity but I'm very positive in its ability to draw in players, or at least be easily approachable. Which of these two are preferrable?

Now onto a more pressing concern: which old generation is getting dropped? I mulled over this during the latest of my very long procrastination-inducing work shifts, and have a preliminary ranking on what could be cut, from most preferred to least.

1. BW. Gen 5 has been a staple of CAPPL for a long time now, but imo hasn't seen a significant degree of development nor has it really needed any, and I know there's a couple users (Dj Breloominati♬) who do not like the tier at all.
2. ORAS. This is another PL staple gen that seems to be a bit more favored by the community, but is equally ""solved"" as BW is and doesn't feel like a metagame which needs more activity.
3. DPP. My feelings on dropping a particular meta falls off hard here. DPP has been very active lately and drew in a lot of new players to CAP during PL, so cutting it off from CL during what may as well be the beginning of a new era for DPP seems unfair.
4. SM/SS. I don't want to drop SM from CL again, and I don't think it's wise to drop SS either, given it's still recent and familiar to a lot of people, fairly stable and competitive, and easy for newer users to get into as essentially diet SV.

I know some people will argue for dropping SV but SV is the gen we're currently working with and the gen the majority of the site and PS is invested in, and we need to start making concessions now as something is gonna have to budge when Gen 11 rolls around, assuming we continue to keep CL small-scale and want it to be unique compared to PL's focus on the generations CAPs were designed for.

You have until Sunday. It will actually most likely be Monday but so early that there's no functional difference.
 
I have to advocate for keeping SM in because apparently no one else will.

SM has always had competitive games where people's creativity, skill expression, and of course personal style are all very much present and rewarded. The reason people seem to be against is that it is seen as "solved" by #someofyou, mostly because Jordy and his teammates went on a tear in 2020-2022 spamming ReuniTar. This is very much not a solved metagame, as is evident by Clementine in CAPPL loading Pinsir over and over and over again and going almost undefeated. Are people gonna pivot to "well of course he won, SM is solved and Pinsir is S tier clearly!"? I sure hope not.
SM is also in a fantastic state post-Jumbao nerfs, where nothing sticks out as completely and unquestionably broken. You still have some of the more "busted" things you could be doing in SM OU such as Magearna and Kartana, but the CAPs available in SM are juuuust strong enough to bring the standard Pokemon more in line, creating a more diverse and enjoyable (imo at least) metagame.
There's also players who are big fans of the generation such as myself and Clementine (obv), pannu, Lily, and HeavenJay just to name a few. If you must make CL into the OM tournament that includes stuff like NatDex or Partners in Crime or load 18 bring 6 inheritance randbats ft CAP or whatever and thus slots need to be cut, I'd argue SM is more enjoyable than any other older generation and deserves to be back in rotation.


Don't do 8 teams btw, this is supposed to be a 4fun tournament more than anything and 9-11 weeks of games for anyone who plays another tier is gonna end up with severe burnout and/or people getting bored and reusing + it's super heavy load for managers who may have to build for multiple slots every week for 3+ months.
 
There seems to be a lot of justification for monotype being included simply because it is an OM and we need an OM for CAPCL and it is the only one with decent development. I think we should ask a different question though: Is there anyone who is actually excited to play Monotype this CL and would be disappointed if it was not included?
If there are, please do manifest yourselves, Mada has said he's played a bunch of mono and wants to develop it, but it seems to me the majority of support for the inclusion of monotype is from people who don't want to play the tier and are not all that interested in it but think it should be included on principle, just to make CAPCL different from PL. If it isn't what anyone actually wants, is it really worth sacrificing a slot from some of our best tiers, or even from the development of a different OM?
I can see we have standards for what an OM needs to make to be included in the format, standards in terms of how much the tier has been played and how many ressources it has available; well I think we should also have standards of player interest. We should try to gauge player interest in Monotype and National Dex before making a decision. Of course, if I'm wrong and it turns out there really are a bunch of people who want to play Monotype then it should be included, I just don't see that right now. My preference is National dex otherwise, or just keeping another old gen even if it means the tournament isn't very different from PL.

DPP is great no way it gets cut.
I like SS, SM, BW, SM surely should not be cut a second year in a row, BW I would be sad.
ORAS might need to be the one cut

For the rest I think everyone else has said what needs to be said Edit: sorry dex wrong one
 
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DPP: Cutting this would be an absolutely stupid idea. We are no longer in the era where the only people who were taking this seriously were binpin and and Steam Buns, DPP CAP has grown sustainably in the past year and is continuing to see quite a lot development, and given the recent talks of a Jirachi suspect for DPP OU, there's going to be potential for a very large shakeup in the future, which I would like to see accounted for before next year's CAPPL.

BW: I admittedly haven't given this tier a whole lot of thought as to whether or not it should be cut, but I'm honestly kinda neutral on it. Even with one of the more prominent players for this tier recently getting permabanned, the BW CAP Playerbase is still fairly strong and sees quite a lot of activity in these tournaments, so I think that many people would be fairly disappointed to not see this tier included this year. That being said, BW CAP is probably the closest tier to being solved at this point of time, so there's an argument that it doesn't really need a ton of development anymore.

ORAS: Probably the metagame that I think has the strongest case of being cut, and is also one I've been vocal about removing in place of the other old gens on Discord. While I wouldn't go as far to say that this tier has been solved, development on this tier in the past couple of years has been quite slow, and the quality of the games in this year's CAPPL was quite frankly not great. This has the same issue of BW CAP of being a fairly stale meta (Albeit not quite to the same extent), but unlike BW CAP, this metagame also doesn't really have a ton of players. Easy choice for me.

SM: Lasen summed this up way better than I could, and I agree with most of what he has said.

SS: Apart from DPP. this is the tier that I think has the weakest case for being cut. It's by far the easiest old gen for newcomers to get into, is still fairly popular among the userbase, and I actually disagree quite a lot that this tier is being solved. I still think there's a decent amount of exploration that can be done in this tier (Although granted, not as much as something like DPP), and the only reason people say that it's somewhat solved is because people just spam the same Argh balance teams every time in this slot (Which honestly reminds me a lot of how people tended to view SM CAP a few years ago).

That's pretty much all I have regarding the old gens, and I'm waiting for some clarification on something from shnow before I talk about the OM Slot.

Edit: Also don't do 8 Teams.
 
Alright, going to discuss the OM Slot like I said before, and I'm double posting because fuck you.

The only suitable options for our OM slot at this period would either be National Dex or Monotype. Both have large playerbases which historically have intermingled with CAP's own community, Mono having starred in last year's CL and CAP Mono being a slot in the recent and very prestigious MOM Premier League. I personally did not think the Mono games from last year where of good competitive quality, but I am a single person, and ultimately Monotype has a lot of activity surrounding it. National Dex has not seen as much activity but I'm very positive in its ability to draw in players, or at least be easily approachable. Which of these two are preferrable?
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Between these two, I honestly don't like either of these options. Tera being banned in National Dex has basically reset the format all the way back to square one, and if we are turning down CAP UU for having very little, if any development, I personally think that it would be a bit hypocritical for us to say that this format is fine. As for CAP Monotype, I'm going to be real with all of you, the current state of that format is not at all good. First of all, Chuggalong and to a lesser extent Hemogoblin make the metagame pretty much completely unbearable to play, as several different types just flat out do not have viable counterplay to them, and even many of the types that do have to make concessions in the builder to be able to deal with them (This is not speculation, this flat out happened in MOMPL this year). Even if these bans do go in place, I also personally just think that Monotype in of itself just isn't in a great spot at the moment, and there's very little that most of the CAPs do that actually help improve the metagame at all (In fact, in some cases they just flat out make it worse).

Instead, I'm going to propose a third option that was fairly popular on Discord recently, and that was CAP Randoms Bo3. While it wasn't really discussed all that much in the thread (For some reason, it's basically just Earthflax's post right now), there was very little pushback to the idea when it when it was actually brought up. I think this would be a great way to breath some fresh air into this tournament as we have never really played it on a serious level, it has already been featured in a Random Battle Tournament Spotlight (and also its own ladder) a few months ago so there is already a fair amount of development for it, and it has the same advantage that the other proposed metagames have in being able to attract players from another community to sign up. The biggest draw of this format in my opinion, however, is that it essentially demands zero prep, which is actually a huge benefit.
 
ORAS and BW do seem like the most reasonable oldgens to cut. Honestly, I'd be sad about ORAS since I want to spam MMeta some more, but the playerbase is kinda not there. Maybe BW playerbase is also low after tier got banned, but BW seemed more competitive than ORAS in CAPPL at least.

With regards to OM slot, I prefer National Dex over Monotype. The National Dex Tera ban is pretty interesting, and it'd be cool to explore that meta imo (I am also a Monotype hater). There is also a lot of enthusiasm around CAP RandBats, so I think considering a Bo3 RandBats slot might be worthwhile too. Brig's suggestion of no OM is interesting, though I think it's worth having an OM just to widen

It's sad if we don't get CAP UU slot, but it's partially my fault for not pushing out resources... maybe next year... (if we got it this year it would be peak).
 
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Yo quick update

I was notified on Discord that CAP Randbats was seeing a lot of popularity and after a bit of digging can confirm a lot of users liked the idea. It's not universal support—there are concerns about having a random battles format intermixed with standard ones—but there was enough support compared to everything else that it should stand as a contender. It might seem odd as an inclusion but a format that should be pretty easy to field for and can reasonably showcase every CAP doesn't come off as awful, especially in a Bo3 format where bad RNG can be minimized and the usual problems of Bo3 (extra prep) are null since you don't build teams.

Another thing: I have been against slotting in metagames that feel "underdeveloped" because I'm considering how managers and players would need to prep for their inclusion. A metagame with very little documented resources or the stress-test of a forum tour and lacking resources makes it difficult for users to assess the state of the metagame, and I feel dropping a relatively new and unexplored metagame onto teams that have plenty else to worry about is unfair. If there is significant support for having something like CAP UU included specifically to kickstart it's development, then I don't see why we can't allow it during our less serious teamtour. It's just easier for me to side with caution when considering matters that will affect the entire population of the tour vs. a handful of users bored enough to make posts in a policy thread.
 
I think we should have some actual criteria for which tiers that get cut instead of just keeping the tiers that some people happen to find enjoyable and cutting the ones that some people happen to think are boring.

But first, what do we actually want out of this tour? Do we want a mini-CAPPL, where we do our best to showcase our most played, most competitive, and most "serious" tiers? Do we throw that out the window and run a bunch of unplayed OMs to kickstart their development and introduce new players to CAP?

If we prioritize showcasing our most played, balanced, and developed tiers, we would cut all OMs (and if we had to cut a pastgen, it would be DPP first and SS last). If we want to focus on the latter –– kickstart new tiers, explore fun new formats, recruit fresh faces to the tier, don't worry about competitive quality –– you'd probably run, like, 3SV DPP Mono ND UU Rands or something insane. I stand somewhere in the middle, as I think most people do.

Speaking only personally: I think CAPCL should be a more inclusive, experimental, and cross-community tour than CAPPL; I think it should allow for development of metas that have historically lacked big stages, and should help expose new players to CAP; I think it should do these things even if it comes with (minor) losses in competitive integrity / quality of games, but not if it means throwing those things out the window.

So, what are some points for including or excluding any given tier? Not a comprehensive list, but here are my thoughts:
  1. Highly developed tiers gain relatively less from inclusion than less developed ones
  2. With that said, tiers should still have some baseline amount of development
  3. Tiers should have some baseline playerbase and demonstrable enthusiasm
  4. Tiers should be balanced
  5. Tiers should have long-term future prospects or long history of past inclusion
  6. Tiers that help set CAPCL apart from CAPPL are good
  7. The tier is our current gen
I think the only criterion where pastgens differ from each other is the first. They all have demonstrable interest, are more or less balanced, have long-term survivability, etc. Some are easier to learn than others, or have bigger playerbases than others; I am not so concerned with these differences, because every pastgen is well above the baseline requirements, and past that baseline, my goal is not to make CAPCL the most competitive possible tour we can run.

SS is actually my favorite pastgen, I enjoyed building and testing it more than ORAS during CAPPL. Still, it's been played to death the past few years, has had far more representation than any other tier we're considering, and is developing at a slower pace than anything else. It is not the only pastgen that's popular or easy to pick up, SM also shares these qualities. It can sit out this time.

Re: ORAS –– sort of the middle child among the pastgens, in the sense that it isn't wildly popular like SS and SM, nor a fresh and quickly growing tier like DPP. However, saying this tier doesn't have a playerbase, or that it's anywhere close to solved, is just a wild misreading of the tier's current state. The tier had 88 signups last PL and 58 last CL, almost exactly the same as the BW pool, which had 86 in PL and 58 in CL. It's not just the same group of mainers signing up every year, either –– ORAS continues to see fresh faces slot into the tier every PL/CL and have great showings. People like Micaiah, Lasen, Steam Buns, Spitfire, myself, and now people like Spammernoob and tears (or whoever was building for him) all have incredibly distinct perspectives on what's good and bad. More than any other tier except maybe DPP, it feels like different meta perspectives are clashing and there is no one centralized "goodstuff" style. The tier saw a lot of development in CAPPL (explosion in Argh and Zapdos, lots more Lando-T offense/BO just to point out a couple), and I am sure will continue to develop further. Last CAPPL, despite BW being the tier where managers spent the most and ORAS being where they spent the least, I do not think games were a significantly different quality. Skilled players sign up for this tier and put up strong performances.
 
Want to wrap up soon so here's the plan w/ slots

SV1
SV2
SV3
SM
ORAS
BW
DPP
UU

Including UU was something I needed to come around to. The issues with the tier mostly stem from it being a very young metagame, which results in a rather low playerbase and lack of visible resources. However, no other OM has seen as widespread support or interest, and the people working on the tier show great enthusiam to push things forwards.

Given this inclusion, and mixed support for other OMs (many of which aren't in great shape), I needed to decide which oldgen to drop. BW has not seen many defenders, while SS feels rather polarized between defenders and defenestrators. I had wanted to drop BW most since Gen 5 has seen a lot of play already, but adding UU shifted me to drop SS solely because UU feels like it'd showcase way more unique CAPs, many of which stem from Gen 8 itself. It does suck losing a balanced and familiar tier like SS, but its also our most developed non-CG meta by far and can definitely wait for CAPPL. If more people come forward to express support for SS > BW I'm not opposed to changing the slots however.
 
Quick UU hatepost for the job havers that can't read my yap on cord.
  • No established VR and many of the recently built teams are outdated due to recent bans.
  • Tiny player base and awful quantity and quality of games played (roomtours), which in itself limits the ability to come up with good resources.
  • Current # of people familiar with the tier - 2, 3-4 if we're being generous. Disparity of quality in the pool is shockingly big.
  • Pretty much relying on big UU names to come through for the fledgling tier (again, with no real resources and not an established grasp on good teamstyles in the first place!) in a no-CA, no-banner, "little-bro" team tour.
Even those who want CAPCL to be a completely wacky, no-holds-barred OM-tastic teamtour surely can see the issues with putting a tier in this state on the lineup. I have no qualms against CAPUU in general, but it is genuinely detrimental to CAPCL right now. I've shilled Bo3 Rands many a time now but I would also genuinely rather have CAPPL lineup instead of this.
 
spoo said:
I think we should have some actual criteria for which tiers that get cut instead of just keeping the tiers that some people happen to find enjoyable and cutting the ones that some people happen to think are boring.

But first, what do we actually want out of this tour? Do we want a mini-CAPPL, where we do our best to showcase our most played, most competitive, and most "serious" tiers? Do we throw that out the window and run a bunch of unplayed OMs to kickstart their development and introduce new players to CAP?
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I think spoo's post gets to the heart of the matter. One problem right now is that CAPCL is both the tournament for showcasing and playing our best tiers, which can be a rare occasion when someone doesn't graciously offer to host a solo tour, and also the tournament for developping underplayed metagames, and there is room for appreciating both of those aspects. If we drop the OMs, we are giving up the long terms contributions that CL could make to CAP's underdeveloped tiers, if we drop a past gen we are denying a number of players who love that gen the opportunity to play it again.

I agree with most of the criteria put forwards, and objectively it is probably better that SS would be dropped instead of ORAS, I've come to agree with that. However even among the OMs that would distinguish CL from PL there is not really any tier that satisfyingly fits these points, and finding the tier that fits them the most comes down to how much you value each point.

spoo said:
Tiers should have long-term future prospects or long history of past inclusion
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We also have to deal with the fact that, unlike all the old gen metagames we've developped in previous CLs, most of the development made in tiers like UU or NatDex will likely be lost next generation. It might bring significant long term interest in the tiers however, and short term development is still valuable.

We're left with no easy answer, Shnowshner I would not like to be in your position. A "safe" tournament would be just PL tiers, it would be competitive and give everyone a chance to play their favorite gen, but otherwise bring nothing new. Shnowshner is proposing something more risky, but that could turn out to be pretty rewarding. Despite the state of UU, I don't think it would be worse than how Mono was last year. I'll trust if that's what is selected in the end.

Mono or NatDex don't seem to have that much interest, I definitely think NatDex is more deserving of a chance compared to Mono, things have not gone much better for it since last year when it was included.

Bo3 Rands would be fun, but by that point I don't really see why we would have it instead of including a past gen, there is nothing to be gained in terms of development, even in terms of interest I don't think much will change since this is a random tier with an occasional ladder.

I personally would not mind a CAPPL-lite, and in fact in the long term I think it would be valuable to have such a tournament alongside a more experimental tournament, but that is to be discussed another time.
 
I would second National Dex CAP's inclusion. Compared to Mono or UU, National Dex CAP has a higher chance of retaining its identity in future instalations of the tour on a future generation. Monotype had its chance last year and in recent monotype tournaments as well, UU's meta while interesting, isn't that much stable from what I remember from the tier. It would be best for UU to have some other tours like the plans for a UU forum tour next year to build the basis for its inclusion, especially considering the lack of UU players that tend to roam CAP tours.

In comparison, National Dex CAP has the benefit that a significant amount of the National Dex playerbase has been active in recent CAP team tours or CAP in general. Players like Mada, Dex, Concept, Fragments, Kate, ChrisPBacon among others are National Dex regulars who have been fairly active either in the team tours like CAPCL III and CAPPL X, or are just Fairly involved in the CAP community like in the case of the first 3. I wouldn't mind developing UU in this tournament this time around, but I do believe National Dex currently has a stronger base for actual developments of the meta to take place.
 
I mentioned this over Discord the other day, but the core issue I've been facing is:

1. a lot of people want CAPCL to stand out in terms of content compared to CAPPL,
2. the easiest way to do this is by including a CAP OM,
3. nobody can agree on what OM we should include.

This is a pretty frustrating crossroads to be caught in because, as a host, you want the tournament to be both competitive and enjoyable; these two things generally build off one another, and diminishing one negatives effects the other. If a tier is less developed or even perceived as such, it's going to lower the drive people have to take it seriously, and if it's not taken seriously then the matches aren't going to be a proper showcase of the tier or the people playing in it. It's not as simple as saying "well it's a lower-stakes tournament so just have fun" considering there's seven other actual metagames being played and rigorously prepped for each week, and the success of your team can come down to any one of them.

The true secret of my last post was I wanted to throw something out there and see what the general sentiment was regarding CAP UU, which I felt had the most promise in making CAPCL exciting given how much there is to develop and the popularity of the format amongst the community. At the same time, there's merit to the concerns over CAP UU being far too underdeveloped and underrepresented in viable starters, thus resulting in the slot boiling down to "find a good clicker and build some bullshit" since only a tiny subset of the site are even familiar with the tier. I know the people behind CAP UU are working hard to get resources out ASAP, but I had, from the beginning, felt that there just wasn't enough time for it to be an easy inclusion, if one at all.

People who want CAPCL to be more competitive would be happiest with just running back the CAPPL lineup given none of our OM slot ideas are ideal, a direction which is at-odds with those that want CAPCL to be used as a launchpad so fledgling metas can get precious exposure. The unfortunate truth is that there isn't any satisfactory option I can choose and say, "this minimizes the amount of people who couldn't get what they wanted out of CAPCL."

As it stands I'm leaning towards including National Dex > UU. There's been a fairly equal amount of support for both of these two (ND seeing a lot more support recently), and both are in need of development given the former is very young as a tier, and the latter hasn't seen a ton of play and now exists in a post-Tera state. Neither is the ideal option I wish they were but I want to pursue CAPCL being focused on alternative metagames in CAP and thus giving the scene an avenue to appeal to other sections of the site, and National Dex has more history to it and a decent amount of overlap between communities, especially as of 2024.

Gonna leave this up until around midnight tomorrow for people to get last-minute comments in. Manager Signups will go up soon after and maybe bleed into Player Signups for a few days to compensate.
 
Short post, but ND CAP would be very cool to see included!

Can’t really comment on how it would actually play out balance-wise, although I think the current NDOU metagame is in a good state so the base will be solid which leads me to believe ND CAP would be similarly enjoyable.

Additionally, It is my belief that the ND base of players would be heavily interested to try this meta out, and at least speaking for myself, would for sure signup to play it.
 
spoo said:
1. Highly developed tiers gain relatively less from inclusion than less developed ones
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Both ND and UU are incredibly fresh and have a long way to go; arguably UU needs the development more, given that the added CAPs are much more impactful than they are in ND and the tier will take longer to figure out as a result, but I think this is pretty much a tie

spoo said:
2. With that said, tiers should still have some baseline amount of development
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UU is slightly closer to having bare minimum development and resources than ND is - I’m unsure if a single NDCAP game has been played since the tera ban - but ND should be able to make up that gap quickly, since I imagine the differences between NDCAP and base ND aren’t very large, i.e. it’s an easy tier to develop. Mostly a tie again, maybe a tiny margin for UU

spoo said:
3. Tiers should have some baseline playerbase and demonstrable enthusiasm
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ND probably wins here by a decent amount? We ran a successful forum tour (pre-tera tbf) and historically there’s strong overlap between our separate playerbases (we get a bunch of ND mains signing up for every teamtour). There was a semi-successful effort to develop NDCAP at the end of SS, so people have been interested in the tier for a long time, and there’s renewed interest in ND as a whole atm because of the tera ban

spoo said:
4. Tiers should be balanced
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Don’t think anyone here actually knows how balanced either UU or NDCAP actually is so I’ll just assume they both need work and call it a tie

spoo said:
5. Tiers should have long-term future prospects or long history of past inclusion
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Hard to say, prob a tie or ND slightly favored. I think CAP UU has a longer history of interest among CAP players, but NDCAP’s past development attempts were bigger and more successful. I have slightly more faith that NDCAP will be a real tier a year from now than I do for UU, but no one can predict the future so I’m sorta inclined to call this a tie as well

spoo said:
6. Tiers that help set CAPCL apart from CAPPL are good
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I see no difference here, both are OMs not featured in CAPPL’s lineup

spoo said:
7. The tier is our current gen
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Neither of these tiers are named SV CAP, so no difference

Not sure how much weight we want to put on this subjective criteria but I think it’s at least a helpful tool for making these sorts of decisions. One point that isn’t represented on this list but is still worth considering is that CAP UU shows off our creations a lot better than ND; ideally we want all the stuff we make to have a viable home somewhere, and I am a big fan of CAP UU providing homes to all the mons that fell off over time. NDCAP by comparison just features the cream of the crop, and I am unsure how much the tier would differ from base ND.

ND is probably the safer choice, but I worry it would be a little boring if it just ends up to effectively be base ND + equilibra + guest stars. CAP UU is the more interesting meta imo but certainly a riskier pick. I guess I’ll go on the record supporting ND here, but the tiers are quite close in my eyes and I don’t think one choice is clearly better - the tiers are more similar than they are different, so just pick your poison.
 
Por que no los dos

If you’re going to drop SS (bad idea, tbh) I see no reason to not also drop SM. Give both ND and UU a slot. Seems like that’d be very informative for future tours. Also ND + SM is demon times, that’s just 2 SM slots but one is a bit more annoying.
 
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