Tournament DCL III Format Discussion

People complaining about how 1 vgc slot leaves people stranded on a island and they want to add another tier off DPP/ADV which now captains must splurge budget on both VGC + whatever new gen gets added just adds to the problem everyone has been complaining about seems like a weird add imo.
 
Last edited:
My personal preference would be (askers???) another USUM or SWSH slot. However, I find it unlikely we’ll ever get people to agree on this, it will be a debate between which, and then people will inevitably say “why not a second ORAS?” or something else. So while it’s my preference, I feel like it’s gonna end up a non-starter.


I do, however, think 4 SV is bad. Beyond what Olivia said (something I absolutely agree with and very much disagree with Hacker on), I think draft team tours have always felt like a celebration of our history as a community. ORAS is a 10+ year old game but it’s where draft started so it always gets its slot. All of these tiers are tiers that were played as current gens, by many of the people who will be participating in this tour.

SV is current gen, and so I understand with that being the case, it’s why people support a 4th SV slot. However, SV already has the most slots as is, it doesn’t need half of them—especially when we already have the seasonals and circuit for high level SV play.

In line with both of these points (team tours being in part a celebration of past current gens and also the need for something distinct here as a separate tier), I would like to renominate SWSH NatDex as the 8th slot from my previous argument last year.

So, why?
1) SWSH NatDex is what people actually played in during all of current gen when it came to leagues, as well as many tours (although LDI onwards, there was a lot more Galar Dex). In terms of drafts’ history, it deserves representation perhaps more than any other currently unrepresented tier (if you buy the argument about team tours being about celebrating said history).
2) *A lot* of the playerbase can already play it at a high level. Anyone that was around for SWSH current gen played this format, it isn’t alien to people like DPP and ADV are (even though I do think these are good tiers and I admire what their communities have done for them a lot!), so there wouldn’t be a need to get people that main it.
3) SWSH NatDex has a lot of elements reminiscent of USUM in it, as well as of course SWSH Galar Dex, whilst being identifiably different from both of them. It strikes somewhat of a middle ground as a tier between a second USUM and a second Galar Dex slot, since I imagine people wouldn’t wanna pick between either.
4) this gives NatDex as a concept representation in DCL without A) adding in even more SV B) adding in a tier that many top players dislike (SV NatDex) for being way too fake (a problem that was not really shared with SWSH NatDex).

Hacker has already raised the point about the second SWSH slot being disliked from DCL 1. However, I do want to put it out there, that SWSH has seen truly massive meta development since current gen ended. The tier is totally different now, and the way we perceive the tier as a community has totally changed. I don’t see the SWSH hate I used to see anymore, and I honestly think seeing the meta in SWSH change and grow has been my favorite part of these past couple team tours as a spectator.

I highlight this because I don’t want a criticism of a SWSH NatDex slot to be “it’s just more SWSH and we already tried that and people didn’t like it.” Not only is SWSH itself a good tier, but it’s a markedly different tier than it was in DCL 1. Additionally, SWSH NatDex is its own distinct tier, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t share commonalities with SWSH—I just think those commonalities are cool, and this is a chance to revive a good metagame we haven’t had in a major team tour since SWSH current gen ended.

Oh and finally, since this got debated a bunch last time—cut moves should not be allowed in SWSH NatDex. Whether or not you THINK they should be banned—it’s how the tier was played as a current gen and there’s really no reason to change it on that front. I understand that Smogon has always interpreted NatDex differently from draft (Z moves allowed, cut moves allowed) but, even as this is a Smogon organized event, it is also one of the two premier team tours for the draft community, largely played by draft players, and I think the interpretation of draft players should take precedence in this context over that of the people who run the NatDex ladders.

Anyways free SWSH NatDex.
 
To add on, I don’t want 4 SV slots, I do find the framing that “old gen players are disenfranchised if they are not top 8” is not an argument I find myself vibing with. We should strive for this to be competitive and have, or strive to have alternative options for lower levels of competition. I just think Scarlet and Violet is a lot more work to build in and the number of slots of the metagame adds on to player burnout, do others agree?
 
If it would be a 4th SV as the picked format, would we do 5 SV drafts? Or are we forcing teams to slot all their SV teams every week?

5 SV drafts seems a little much if you ask me, but completely removing the bench seems pretty bad too if done for a full season.
 
As the week has gone on, I think it is safe to say that there is no clear "best solution", there is negative connotations with every decision, whether that be the isolation of players of a specific tier on a team, the lack of a clear solution of a tier to double up on for the whole season or some people's general distaste for 4SV. Initially I thought that 4 SV would be fine, nothing special but is the least horrible solution. However, what was mentioned previously by Olivia is true, it does lead to a lot of players that don't play SV to end up either undrafted or hardly playing because they are top 8 of their tier. Therefore, you're kind of stuck with players of an older generation that do not really have a natural place if they are not among the top 8 signups of a generation.

This was what brought me back to the question of could the flex spot be refined, whilst still maintaining VGC in the event. This seems like a slippery slope, as the preferred route of flex seems to be the DPL approach of each team picking one tier. The format of flex in one slot last year had its doubters due to the preconceived doubled tier every week across the board, introducing an element of RNG that could not be controlled in any circumstance. It did lead to teams needing to draft multiple players of a tier though, which reduces the isolation problem previously mentioned.

I do believe that I have found the solution to refine flex in a way that takes inspiration from the DPL style whilst also keeping the VGC slot intact that it well and truly deserves. How did I do it? Well I actually didn't, shoutouts to The Diabolic Gift , Bowas and Princess Autumn for dealing with my antics on this and actually being capable of statistical modelling (or at least trying to make it work in Autumn's case). Below are two examples of how the system might work

1746278681657.png


1746278732400.png


Let me explain what madness is going on here. In essence, the idea is to allow for the flex slot be picked by one team every week, essentially leading to teams having "home" (where they get to pick the 8th tier) and "away" (where the opposing team would pick the 8th slot) fixtures in the regular season. This system allows for each team to pick the 8th tier 3 times in a season, with one week needing to be a neutral week to allow for this to be possible. This neutral week would consist of 4 SV as it is the safest "middleground" as previously mentioned. For these examples, I asked for week 7 to be the neutral week but this does not have to be the case. Week 7 was the fairest neutral week to ensure that no team would be able to pick the 8th tier for both their week 6 and 7 series (Trust us on the math here, we tried) as the ability to pick the tier twice this late into the season may be slightly too unfair for the other teams. If people are not as upset about this possible statistical advantage, this neutral week can be moved to week 1 (or week 4 if people would prefer it to be right after mids).

Essentially, this system would allow for the flex slot to be kept, incorporate the tier selection system that is liked in other events for the tactical elements it brings, and also be as fair as possible whilst maintaining 8 slots. If this system was to succeed, it would also ideally prevent the need to have this exact same discussion in the forum again next year if in the hypothetical circumstance that whatever is chosen ends up not working as planned in the event and we're circling back to this exact same debate next year.

If people have any questions on this system, please reach out to me either on here or on Discord, but I am open to feedback on this system which I feel might be the "best of all circumstances", or at the very least is the best that I can think of.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk!!!!
 
Last edited:
"If your not a top 8 old gen player you won't get picked" isn't this tournement supposed to be for the best of the best? Why does this matter? Also if ur a minbid old gen player and u get slotted into eye aye ipro in usum or gypsy king king l5 in oras what does it really matter.. let's be so fr. Even if an old gen did exist in the flex wouldn't it be just 2 extra weeks of playing it anyways? How is this a valid point at all. Dfl also exists for this specific reason to foster new talent we do need need dcl to accommodate for people who aren't "top 8 old gen players"
 
Last edited:
As the week has gone on, I think it is safe to say that there is no clear "best solution", there is negative connotations with every decision, whether that be the isolation of players of a specific tier on a team, the lack of a clear solution of a tier to double up on for the whole season or some people's general distaste for 4SV. Initially I thought that 4 SV would be fine, nothing special but is the least horrible solution. However, what was mentioned previously by Olivia is true, it does lead to a lot of players that don't play SV to end up either undrafted or hardly playing because they are top 8 of their tier. Therefore, you're kind of stuck with players of an older generation that do not really have a natural place if they are not among the top 8 signups of a generation.

This was what brought me back to the question of could the flex spot be refined, whilst still maintaining VGC in the event. This seems like a slippery slope, as the preferred route of flex seems to be the DPL approach of each team picking one tier. The format of flex in one slot last year had its doubters due to the preconceived doubled tier every week across the board, introducing an element of RNG that could not be controlled in any circumstance. It did lead to teams needing to draft multiple players of a tier though, which reduces the isolation problem previously mentioned.

I do believe that I have found the solution to refine flex in a way that takes inspiration from the DPL style whilst also keeping the VGC slot intact that it well and truly deserves. How did I do it? Well I actually didn't, shoutouts to The Diabolic Gift , Bowas and Princess Autumn for dealing with my antics on this and actually being capable of statistical modelling (or at least trying to make it work in Autumn's case). Below are two examples of how the system might work

View attachment 737110

View attachment 737111

Let me explain what madness is going on here. In essence, the idea is to allow for the flex slot be picked by one team every week, essentially leading to teams having "home" (where they get to pick the 8th tier) and "away" (where the opposing team would pick the 8th slot) fixtures in the regular season. This system allows for each team to pick the 8th tier 3 times in a season, with one week needing to be a neutral week to allow for this to be possible. This neutral week would consist of 4 SV as it is the safest "middleground" as previously mentioned. For these examples, I asked for week 7 to be the neutral week but this does not have to be the case. Week 7 was the fairest neutral week to ensure that no team would be able to pick the 8th tier for both their week 6 and 7 series (Trust us on the math here, we tried) as the ability to pick the tier twice this late into the season may be slightly too unfair for the other teams. If people are not as upset about this possible statistical advantage, this neutral week can be moved to week 1 (or week 4 if people would prefer it to be right after mids).

Essentially, this system would allow for the flex slot to be kept, incorporate the tier selection system that is liked in other events for the tactical elements it brings, and also be as fair as possible whilst maintaining 8 slots. If this system was to succeed, it would also ideally prevent the need to have this exact same discussion in the forum again next year if in the hypothetical circumstance that whatever is chosen ends up not working as planned in the event and we're circling back to this exact same debate next year.

If people have any questions on this system, please reach out to me either on here or on Discord, but I am open to feedback on this system which I feel might be the "best of all circumstances", or at the very least is the best that I can think of.

Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk!!!!
I do sort of feel like this method still has a similar level of randomness to it - i.e. whether youre picking or not vs harder/easier teams, when in the season you're picking, etc. While I think this is an improvement I think that the following method gives teams a bit more agency:

Team A bans one tier
Team B bans two tiers
Team A bans one tier
One tier remains.

While I am not necessarily advocating for this over other options such as double SV, double Swsh, new format, etc, I do think this is the best way to do the flex slot that gives teams more agency over the tiers they do/do not play.

We could even use TJs method to determine who picks when, and ensure that each team gets to pick three times in each position.
 
I do sort of feel like this method still has a similar level of randomness to it - i.e. whether youre picking or not vs harder/easier teams, when in the season you're picking, etc. While I think this is an improvement I think that the following method gives teams a bit more agency:

Team A bans one tier
Team B bans two tiers
Team A bans one tier
One tier remains.

While I am not necessarily advocating for this over other options such as double SV, double Swsh, new format, etc, I do think this is the best way to do the flex slot that gives teams more agency over the tiers they do/do not play.

We could even use TJs method to determine who picks when, and ensure that each team gets to pick three times in each position.
This is my favorite proposal for the 8th slot so far. I feel like this has the best of all worlds while minimizing the drawbacks:

-Whoever gets to ban a tier first is a much, much, much smaller advantage than straight up picking the 8th tier as outlined in TJ’s proposal.
-There’s no longer the scenario in old flex where, for example, a week is static ORAS and your opponents are undefeated there with really strong players. I believe this was the main issue people had with flex, and the only way it can happen now is if your opponent is overwhelmingly favored in 3 tiers. And if that’s true, then they deserve it lol.
-Having the potential 2nd slot for all the oldgens + VGC makes having 3 drafts in each tier justifiable to increase variety, and since a 4th SV game can easily be banned, there’s no need to increase to 5 drafts.
-I thought it would’ve been cool to see a new format like ADV or DPP, but the timing probably isn’t right for that.

All in all, I really don’t know what the issues with a pick/ban route could be. There’s still some discussion on when the neutral week happens and what tier it should be, but week 7 locked SV feels pretty reasonable to me.
 
"If your not a top 8 old gen player you won't get picked" isn't this tournement supposed to be for the best of the best? Why does this matter? Also if ur a minbid old gen player and u get slotted into eye aye ipro in usum or gypsy king king l5 in oras what does it really matter.. let's be so fr. Even if an old gen did exist in the flex wouldn't it be just 2 extra weeks of playing it anyways? How is this a valid point at all. Dfl also exists for this specific reason to foster new talent we do need need dcl to accommodate for people who aren't "top 8 old gen players"
I don’t want to get into whether it’s right or wrong, but I think the real question is what’s better for the tournament. Is it better to have the 9th to 16th best USUM players competing, or the 33rd to 40th best SV players, considering there would be 4 SV slots?
 
After speaking to numerous members of the community, I now think the best option for the 8th slot is a fourth SV. I favored Low Tier in my previous post, but I was primarily arguing for that under the (incorrect) assumption that an extra SV slot wouldn't be popular. At this point, it sounds like there are three viable options- 4th SV, 2nd VGC, and Flex.

VGC, while fairly popular, still sees less signups here than every other slot. In the most recent DCL and DFL, VGC had about half as many signups as each old gen. With that in mind and the tournament's conflicts with other events like Doubles PL and VGC Worlds, I don't expect it to see enough interest to justify an extra slot over the old gens. Top singles players recently trying out VGC Draft recently also helps alleviate some of the concerns from last year about the single VGC slot feeling "isolated."

Flex isn't terrible, but I think the issues brought up in this thread cannot be fixed by another system. Either way, you're going to have lopsided matchups caused by RNG and force people to switch tiers regularly. The new system proposed by TJ seems to make this even worse, as you are now very likely to be playing the worst possible tier on your three bad weeks and encouraged to counterpick tiers on your good weeks. Switching to a slot that guarantees bad matchups every week doesn't sound reasonable at all, when most weeks of DCL 2 were relatively even. I foresee this option being a nightmare for captains, with several of the previous captains already expressing concerns about it on Discord. This point is more anecdotal, but it seems common for the flex slots in DCL/DPL to simply be filled by a captain or another top player, while the newer players handle SV because there are so many more strong options for those slots.
Previously, flex meant they get 2 games max anyways if they weren't a top 8 oldgen player. Also, this is the Champions League. It is supposed to be showcasing the best of the best talent.
I agree with this point as well- it's unfortunate that some players who wish to play old gens will have less of a chance of getting picked up without flex, but there are simply not that many people who "main" the old gens beyond the best of the best. It's also possible for people to get drafted as an SV player or a sub/support for the old gens and take over as a starter if the team is underperforming. DFL is a fine place for fresh old gen talent to play if they truly don't want to touch SV- most of the DFL players who got drafted for the current DPL season ended up going positive. We also plan to expand the number of DFL teams+weeks, giving more players chances to shine there. I believe that an extra SV is better for bringing in fresh talent due to its massive playerbase- like I said before, nearly every currently active draft player has SV experience.

Team A bans one tier
Team B bans two tiers
Team A bans one tier
One tier remains.
This option seems most competitively sound to me for a single slot flex due to the reduced RNG, but it still has the issue of people being forced to switch tiers regularly. With this option, you'd be playing a tier neither team prefers every week. This further encourages a strong player/captain to be locked into flex without playing the tiers they're best at. I think that is unavoidable with flex though, so I'd pick this if not a fourth SV. As Scribble mentioned, there isn't a huge advantage to picking the tier with this system, so we wouldn't have to sweat the schedule as much. It could be as simple as flipping a coin week 1 and letting the lower seed be Team A for future weeks. Another benefit of this system is that it could be carried over to playoffs to give the higher seeds there less of an advantage. I'm not sure if that'd be ideal; but it's another possibility that could make things more balanced.
 
I don’t want to get into whether it’s right or wrong, but I think the real question is what’s better for the tournament. Is it better to have the 9th to 16th best USUM players competing, or the 33rd to 40th best SV players, considering there would be 4 SV slots?
I think double flex is really good for competition, because it showcases like the 9th and 10th best old gen players more often. At the end of the day, to be successful a team has to win, and even in a setup where they draw bad into the tough teams they should have a good shot to win their other weeks. I prefer flex to SV or any old gen.

Edit:

The DPL coin flip could also partially be resolved by the alternating system in double flex (removing an SV preferably), but for W7 idk tbh…
 
Last edited:
The timing of this tour is very awkward. It's right at the end of STC S4 and NAIC, right at the start of Doubles Premier League, other large Smogon hosted VGC tours including their circuit finals happen during this tour, and it runs through the Worlds Championship. I cannot in good faith, argue for a second VGC slot even though it pains me. Sitrus has seen a lot of success, amassing more apps than Draft Premier League. I think that even though this tour is right after it ends, a lot of these players will sign up for this, but not enough to justify a second slot.

There is already a lot of frustration, and toxicity that VGC draft players already experience. I think having a second slot this year will just lead to more people being frustrated towards the format, when captains become upset that their VGC player is preoccupied with other tours. If the timing of this tournament is better next year, I could likely see this happening then, but as of right now, I don't think its a good idea.

I keep seeing isolation thrown around, I don't think having a second slot is going to fix that. Captains need to be more willing to draft more than one VGC player and not leave them to fend for the wolves if VGC stays one slot. Isolation is not a real problem, unless you auctioned poorly. There should be more than enough talent this year coming in from all over the place, for this to not even be a real topic of discussion. Last year on Cabal, both of my captains and many of the players on the team went out of their way to mock VGC. I am sure it was the same on other teams as well. This stigma that VGC is an island, or just a slot I as a captain don't have to mock needs to die.

My captains last season, and many other high level singles draft players are learning VGC either through Sitrus or through laddering. There are many excellent resources on this website to help you learn VGC draft like Lemurro 's thread on VGC Draft, and players like myself, charmdi, and ~Undead~ are almost always willing to help those learn VGC draft. If you're a captain who's interested in learning VGC, or wanting to figure out how you can better support your VGC players better, I highly recommend reaching out to any of the VGC draft guys. Most of us are really nice.

Final thing I want to say is that refusing to interact with, and blindly spewing hate, on a format you refuse to learn when there are so many resources to do so should not be tolerated. This doesn't apply to just VGC, but ADV and DPP draft as well. Please be kinder. LMK
 
Overall I think last seasons format worked out well. I would like to see the return of flex slot and keeping VGC in the tour. VGC draft has continued to rise in popularity, with Sitrus getting a whopping 197 signups this season.

I would like to echo scions proposal for a 3 manager option. I think this is a great idea, especially if the tour is on track to possibly expand to 10 slots. Mocking & supporting 7-8 slots while usually getting yourself ready is already a lot of prep time, so adding a third manager option can help reduce burnout. I do not think there is a downside to addition of this.

On expansion to 10 slots. I am in favor of expansion. But only if the 3rd nonplaying manager is added. I think the slots get tricky though because I do not think Natdex, DPP, ADV, or LT neatly fit into the existing tour format. I think that the 10 slot format would end up looking something like this, where there is a 4th SV slot and a 2nd VGC slot:

:great_tusk: SV Draft
:great_tusk: SV Draft
:great_tusk: SV Draft
:great_tusk: SV Draft
:garchomp: SS Draft
:tapu_koko: USUM Draft
:gardevoir-mega: ORAS Draft
:flutter_mane: SV VGC Draft
:flutter_mane: SV VGC Draft
:ditto: Singles Only Flex Slot*
After reading through discussion and thinking on a lot of the possibilities here, I have changed my mind on a couple of topics. Just wanted to give my more refined opinions here.

I no longer think 10 slots would be beneficial for this tour. As others have mentioned 8 slots in a draft tour is already taxing for captains, adding to this will increase burnout, even if a third manager slot is added. However, I still believe that adding a third manager that is unable to buy in is not a bad thing for this tour. Yes, you take a player out of the player pool, however many of the people filling into these third manager slots are going to be players that do not want to be slotting and may not have signed up as a player, but still want involved with the tour.

On flex slot. After reading how a lot of the singles players (who are more affected by the flex slot) felt about it last tour, I no longer believe that it is the "best" option. I think this leaves us with a few options. SV4, VGC2, and a more refined flex slot. The pick and ban idea is probably the most competitive version of a flex slot available, so if flex is continued I would like to see something similar to it implemented.

VGC 2 - I previously posted in support of VGC 2, but after discussing with some of the other player pool and reading robin's explanation, I no longer think this is the best time for VGC 2 to be implemented. As Robin mentioned, a lot of VGC and Doubles tours will be taking place at the same time as DCL. Increasing the amount of slots for VGC is going to hurt the overall outlook on VGC more than it helps it with the timing of the tour this season. I think that next year VGC 2 could be a real consideration (because the format can easily support it), especially if the tour is later in the summer.
 
The timing of this tour is very awkward. It's right at the end of STC S4 and NAIC, right at the start of Doubles Premier League, other large Smogon hosted VGC tours including their circuit finals happen during this tour, and it runs through the Worlds Championship. I cannot in good faith, argue for a second VGC slot even though it pains me. Sitrus has seen a lot of success, amassing more apps than Draft Premier League. I think that even though this tour is right after it ends, a lot of these players will sign up for this, but not enough to justify a second slot.

There is already a lot of frustration, and toxicity that VGC draft players already experience. I think having a second slot this year will just lead to more people being frustrated towards the format, when captains become upset that their VGC player is preoccupied with other tours. If the timing of this tournament is better next year, I could likely see this happening then, but as of right now, I don't think its a good idea.

I keep seeing isolation thrown around, I don't think having a second slot is going to fix that. Captains need to be more willing to draft more than one VGC player and not leave them to fend for the wolves if VGC stays one slot. Isolation is not a real problem, unless you auctioned poorly. There should be more than enough talent this year coming in from all over the place, for this to not even be a real topic of discussion. Last year on Cabal, both of my captains and many of the players on the team went out of their way to mock VGC. I am sure it was the same on other teams as well. This stigma that VGC is an island, or just a slot I as a captain don't have to mock needs to die.

My captains last season, and many other high level singles draft players are learning VGC either through Sitrus or through laddering. There are many excellent resources on this website to help you learn VGC draft like Lemurro 's thread on VGC Draft, and players like myself, charmdi, and ~Undead~ are almost always willing to help those learn VGC draft. If you're a captain who's interested in learning VGC, or wanting to figure out how you can better support your VGC players better, I highly recommend reaching out to any of the VGC draft guys. Most of us are really nice.

Final thing I want to say is that refusing to interact with, and blindly spewing hate, on a format you refuse to learn when there are so many resources to do so should not be tolerated. This doesn't apply to just VGC, but ADV and DPP draft as well. Please be kinder. LMK
I trust Robin’s opinion a lot regarding this and if he says this is a bad time for a 2nd vgc slot I would probably trust it. With that being said I would 100% vouch for a 2nd vgc slot if the time is right. We have a lot of cool vgc guys and I think a 2nd slot would prove to be really beneficial to give them the love they deserve. Every other slot is singles based and much easier to pick up, requiring more vgc guys makes the tournament potentially more competitive in my opinion.
 
As we get close to completing one week of this format discussion, a lot in my opinion has changed about what can be done for the 8th slot. At first i was a big fan of ADV and DPP being considered despite not playing those formats but after hearing from the ADV community, i think both formats can use more time to develop outside and inside of smogon respectively before joining DCL. Im happy to see all the support VGC has gotten and seemingly keeping its spot in the tournament, and while this year might not be the best for their second slot, i hope next year which will probably be the last DCL for SV we get a second VGC slot. All that said, we arrive at 2 possible options for the last slot: SV4 or a new Flex Slot.
The Flex slot is a great idea in theory giving older gens more games across the season and keeping the format fresh week-to-week, but it can not work without some form of RNG and by the looks of it that seems to be a non starter among the playerbase. Additional Old gen slots only really work in Bo10 but lets face it absolutely no one wants that in DCL. With that said, SV4 looks like the clear option given the state of the metagame and the tournament. My personal preference would likely go to Low Tier since its a middleground between the safe choice and the experimental choice though.

As for the third non-playing manager, i havent seen many comments at all that pushed my opinion one way or another but im leaning towards thinking its something that im fine experimenting with this season.
 
Last edited:
i like sv4 :)

vgc is cool but schedule conflict prob makes me less enthusiastic about doubling that slot

addi's flex slot solution is fire but also annoying for lineup deadlines

basically sv4 is swag cash money super cool and then we get even more hydrapple
 
Back
Top