Tournament Doubles Premier League 4: Tier and Format Discussion Thread

[MajorBowman]

Welcome to the 4th edition of the Doubles Premier League!​

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FAQ

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How does DPL work?

There will be 6 teams, each with their own captain. Captains will do a snake draft on Pokemon Showdown, where they will take turns nominating and bidding in an auction for players who signed up to assemble their teams with limited credits available. The teams will then play one another for 5 weeks, with a new opponent each week. This will culminate with a Playoffs week consisting of the Top 2 teams overall from the 5-week main season.

How does one signup as a player?

Player signups will begin on Tuesday, March 26, and will run until the draft. Watch the forum for the thread to sign up.


How does one apply to be a captain?

To apply to be a captain, read and post in this thread: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/doubles-premier-league-4-captain-signups.3630744/

When is the DPL Auction?

The auction date will be decided after managers are chosen and they agree to a time. Follow this thread for that information.


When does DPL Week 1 start?

The projected start date is Monday, April 9th.

What is this thread about?

In this thread, feel free to discuss anything regarding DPL before it begins. This is meant to be a place for players to voice their opinions and help us decide some key things regarding DPL. Some points of discussion are:

1. Should captains be allowed to play?
- This was allowed last year

2. If so, what restrictions should be in place or in what manner should this be done?
- Last year, managers were given the option to buy themselves for 10k prior to the auction and could play in any slot during the main season

3. What Doubles formats should be used this year?
- Last year, there were 6 playing slots for each team: 3 SM DOU, 2 ORAS DOU, and 1 BW DOU
- There has been some discussion about increasing the number of playing slots to 8

4. If we were to increase to 8 slots, should we add new formats? (e.g. DUU or DUbers)


Feel free to bring up anything else you find relevant and worth discussing regarding DPL.

 

[kaori]

1. Should captains be allowed to play?

yes, i wouldnt manage if i couldnt also play and id imagine this is the same for most other managers

2. If so, what restrictions should be in place or in what manner should this be done?

10k is fine, doesnt really need adjusting imo. last year 2 of the 3 playoff teams didn't buy the manager

3. What Doubles formats should be used this year?
8 slots for sure, i think the minimum would be 3x SM / 2x ORAS / 1x BW if we stayed at 6 for whatever reason, but 8 makes a lot of sense to me in that i had a lot of players on my bench that were fully capable of starting but didn't really get the opportunity to do so. i think more slots would result in more people getting involved with and trying doubles and that's something im all for. we have a ton of talented players and an opportunity to get outsiders involved, i think we should go for it.

4. If we were to increase to 8 slots, should we add new formats? (e.g. DUU or DUbers)

if it goes to 8, which i think it should, i think the formats should be 4x SM / 2x ORAS / 1x BW / 1x DUU.
- 1x bw is kinda obvious, its a good tier with a relatively small playerbase, its worth representing but nothing more
- 2x oras is what we had last year and i think its perfect, enough players know it and its pretty liked among the established community
- 4x sm is a lot but i think an additional sm slot is better for accommodating the increase in players than some offshoot like dubers, dlc, dpp etc., if you wanna keep people around its best to have them play something they can keep playing in more than one tour a year
- 1x duu is not something i really enjoy but its probably necessary, im not a very big fan of it at all and wouldnt be opposed to 5x sm but theres a (very small) playerbase that already exists as opposed to the ones mentioned above and an existing tournament scene. to reiterate, i think this is the 'flex' slot more or less and id be perfectly fine with 5x sm, but for now i'd probably include duu

 

[marilli]

1. Should captains be allowed to play?

idrc

2. If so, what restrictions should be in place or in what manner should this be done?

same

3. What Doubles formats should be used this year?

8 slots agreed. We want more people from tours community and vgc community to actually get to play, not warm benches. they signed up to play so we should let them play. It was a travesty to see players like TDK stay on the bench for half the tour last DPL and I really think these players have a lot to offer for growth of our playerbase. A lot more people than regular dou starters wants a chance to play and I think there should be enough people to fill 8 slots.

4. If we were to increase to 8 slots, should we add new formats? (e.g. DUU or DUbers)

I think the formats should be 5 x SM / 2x ORAS / 1x BW or 6x SM / 1x ORAS / 1x BW I just don't feel comfortable supporting a tier that is incredibly centralized around Broken Pokemon and core Kommo-O, Manectric, Gothitelle, and Azumarill all of which not only by far outclass majority of its competition, but also have incredibly strong synergy. I'm against DUU unless something can be done about it before the beginning of the tournament. But I'm not holding my breath.

 

[talkingtree]

Important point about DUU in DPL: Tier shifts will happen at the end of the month, so the list of Pokemon in DUU will be different than it is currently. Last I checked, Kommo-o is set to rise to DOU, so if that happens the meta will be quite different but still, presumably, similar enough that those experienced with it can apply their ideas to the meta that will be in DPL. With the continued action in having seasonal DUU minitours and n10sit generally getting the meta going, I think it would be worthwhile to have as a single slot for this tour. If the number of slots increases to 8, that also puts less importance on each individual slot so there's less risk associated.

quick answers to the given questions: yes, 10k still works, 8 preferred but 6 isn't the end of the world (retain ties tho), 4xSM/2xORAS/1xBW/1xDUU

 

[n10siT]

on captains playing

absolutely - just buy yourself for 10k or whatever price is appropriate. removing 6 of the best players from playing dpl in an already fairly small community is turbo dumb

i suppose i should make the case for duu being in the tour - i have pushed this tier insanely hard. i would argue its currently more relevant than xy dou in terms of number of people who play it semi actively. i started running a mini circuit for christs sake. some players do not like the format or do not feel that they can personally devote the time to play it seriously, which are both fine opinions. but there are also people who really enjoy the tier, and some people who through playing it in a tournament found that they enjoy the tier after not playing it or liking it before. i would encourage you all to be respectful of people's opinions, you not liking DUU does not mean your peers do not like it or take it seriously. also at marilli's concerns, Kommo-o sits at like 5% DOU usage through February and will absolutely be DOU come april. Goth/Azu is not a broken enough combination (imo) to warrant not including the tier, and even if it were, I think people would be okay with making a tiering decision even if it was just for DPL.

i think if we go with 8 slots, having more than 4 sm is super dumb and if we do that why not just make this a team sm tour. the amount of people who are actively excited about playing bw is barely more than the amount of people excited to play duu anyway. my preference w/ 8 slots is 4 sm/2 xy/1 bw/1 uu. this gives us a chance to let players shine in sm, allows us to play some xy, and leaves room for the more niche formats of bw and uu. my only concern with 8 slots is whether or not we have the playerbase to support 48 players. ok, as i did the math for 6x8 and typed this out i realized that 6x8=48 players my concern is invalid. there are easily 50 people who deserve to play in dpl, im dumb. 8 slots !

 

[Checkmater]

I don't think anything has changed since my argument last year against inclusion of DUU (included below):

Hide

Second off: DUU in DPL

No matter how I phrase this it’s going to sound like I’m trying to fuck the DUU community. That is not at all my intention, but rather I want you to take a serious look at what DUU in DPL means.

Look at last year, and the players who played in it. None of these were “stellar” players, the type who frequently do well in seasonals/play in spl minus KyleCole, or the type who dedicate a large amount of time and effort into the game. And that’s a serious problem. What ends up happening is, with a few exceptions, a boatload of medium-level players who aren’t really just “good at DUU”. A manager looking at his options for DOU vs DUU in a game is always going to put the stronger player in DOU, and this has pretty much ~0 exceptions. You’re not going to get meaningful meta development from this because nobody good is going into DUU unless they expressly volunteer and are not willing to play gen 5-7.

I’ll draw an analogy here because I think that makes my point easiest to understand. Back a year or so, when we had an influx of VGC players, the ORAS DOU meta developed an incredible amount. We saw the rise of different strats like semiroom, Gardevoir, etc. The death of Talonflame usage. Zard without Venu. AV LandoT becoming popular. A whole plethora of meta shifts and changes. The point is, if you want to develop a meta you need good players with innovative ideas and real drive to play it. DPL is not going to provide that.

Keep in mind that this comes from a player who watched clius and Stratos put weeks and weeks of effort into testing, improving, and developing their DUU teams (and consequently, the metagame) every week. Despite this, I don’t think DUU in DPL is what is going to truly develop DUU. I’d prefer if the DUU communiity developed a definable metagame/tier list/figured a workaround from usage stats before we were willing to throw it into DPL. Compound this with the issue that it’s only been out for 1 month, and, well I just don’t think it’s the best idea. A lot more could be done for DUU if it were given its own tour and its own room to develop, rather than just lumping it into this tournament just because it's also a doubles metagame.

tl;dr don't throw it into DPL for no reason, an individual tour would better allow stellar DOU players to also play DUU instead of being forced to play DOU and missing out on DUU, hurting both the tier and the players

On another note, if we're going to do 8 slots, would it be smarter to just have more teams (ie 8 teams?) Additionally, I don't really see a reason not to increase manager price (a topic that came up last year without really being addressed)

 

[Hashtag]

༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ bring back shame marks ༼ つ ◕_◕ ༽つ

 

[Mizuhime]

all for managers playing

whatever you want works

all for increasing slots

all for including uu and ubers

 

[Mr.GX]

1. Should captains be allowed to play?
- Definitely, makes it all the more fun.

2. If so, what restrictions should be in place or in what manner should this be done?
- I don't really care about it, 10k credits seems fine.

3. What Doubles formats should be used this year?
- 3 SM DOU, 2 ORAS DOU, and 1 BW DOU seems fine if we are going by 6 slots. I'm not too fond of increasing to 8 slots, which basically means a lot of players from each teams would have to play, making it harder for us to take leaves between rounds.

4. If we were to increase to 8 slots, should we add new formats? (e.g. DUU or DUbers)
- DUU would be fun if Kommo-o gets banned. The format is fun to play, currently waiting for the tier shift. So yeah, I'm all in for new formats for this DLT!

That's all, folks.

Mew Mew

 

[kamikaze]

1. Should captains be allowed to play?

- Yes. I don't want to lose out on important players and I am sure a fair number wouldn't manage if they couldnt play. Which in turn limits our choices for picking good managers


2. If so, what restrictions should be in place or in what manner should this be done?

- Last year, managers were given the option to buy themselves for 10k prior to the auction and could play in any slot during the main season

I am gonna keep saying this each year, hopefully not on deaf ears this time like checkmater brought up above. I still think 10k is low for manager buyin price. 10k is the average price per player in DPL. More often than not the managers are also strong players or people who provide heavy support, who would easily go for well over 10k and in some cases nearly double that if they went for auction. Between sam, miltankmilk, marilli, stax who signed up to manage you can already see 10k as a steal. I would probably bump the price to 13k at least and it can be adjusted based on manager pool if needed. Sorry Sam I love you so consider this a compliment, but after seeing you get a very big advantage in drafting your team across 1 DPL and 2 BSPL because you could draft yourself for 10k I def think we should even the playing field more. Believe it or not this was one of two reasons I didnt sign up to manage in prior DPL's.


3. What Doubles formats should be used this year?

- Last year, there were 6 playing slots for each team: 3 SM DOU, 2 ORAS DOU, and 1 BW DOU
- There has been some discussion about increasing the number of playing slots to 8

I think we can manage 8 slots with 4 SM, 2 XY, 1 BW, 1 DUU. This opens up a lot more people to be on the starting lineup and I think based on the numbers on teams in previous years, this will be possible to pull off. I do however have some concerns with BW specifically that makes me wonder if we can truly keep it around in an 8 slot format which I will address in Part 5.


4. If we were to increase to 8 slots, should we add new formats? (e.g. DUU or DUbers)
I would rather not introduce Dubers when the playerbase is so underdeveloped and we would be spreading ourselves thin with 8 slots. With a very limited number of dedicated Dubers players it would be foolish to add when the best players to put in those slots are better off in another tier. DUU honestly has this issue to some degree but not as bad and I think it can work out fine.


5. The status of BW DOU in DPL: Can we keep supporting it?

This is something I wanted to bring up. So I really dont want to axe BW DOU from DPL esp since its a legacy format that was the beginning of DOU, but there are some concerns. A lot of the main people who play BW are either inactive in terms of tournaments or just gone. Some examples of people who have played BW in the past are Stratos, Mizuhime, Biosci, Level 51, Arcticblast, Laga, shaian, AuraRayquaza, Vinc2612, Pocket, qsns, Yellow Paint. I am probably missing a fair amount but of that list the only ones I have noticed that have expressed interest in playing BW again were Mizu and Biosci. So we really need to see some more interest in BW DOU if we wanna keep having it in DPL. We had the Smogon Doubles Tour feature BW DOU in its first iteration last summer so there are definitely are more people acquainted with the tier. But in terms of those willing to play it over other tiers I am honestly not sure. If people are interested in BW and want to play then thats great. The thing I wanna stress is that people should play what they want to and not feel forced to play in a specific slot that they dont want to from the offset before the draft even begins.

 

[miltankmilk]

I threw my hat in the ring to manage this year so I feel I should at least post some thoughts on this. I basically agree with Kami on format, managers playing and increasing manager price. 10k for Sam/stax/marilli would be quite the bargain (and i went for more than 10 last year as well) so bumping to 13k or even like 15k would be pretty reasonable imo. I have similar concerns about BW with Kami, the BW that I saw in tour over the summer was more closely resembling team recycling than meta development and I'm concerned that if there aren't many interested players we'll end up with more of the same. I think we should really evaluate BW's place in the circuit/DPL after this tour to see if its really a meta worth supporting if 10 people play it.

I also have concerns with DUU as well. Despite some people's best intentions this tier isn't actually regulated and lower tiers are often the tiers that need the most moderation to banlists. We saw in the DUU tour how quickly things turned to "who can set up kommo-o first" and this doesn't sound like a competitive format for a team tournament. Even if kommo-o, manectric, w/e else is a staple in DUU move up to DOU, there's really no mechanism in place to prevent the next kommo-o from ruining 3 battles a week.

Just my two cents, looking forward to DPL

 

[talkingtree]

One thing that I'll say in response to miltankmilk's concerns about DUU would be to look to the last time we had DUU in DPL, DPL 2. The DUU players universally agreed that Charizard X was broken in the tier, so we tourbanned it and pretended like it wasn't allowed in the tier. I see no reason that couldn't be done again in some upcoming metagame where something ridiculously broken were to drop. DUU might not be currently in a state where bans can happen for the tier as a whole, impacting ladder and friendly play, but that doesn't mean that we'd be helpless to make the meta in its best state for DPL.

 

[stax]

I sincerely doubt that we will have the playerbase to support an 8 slot tour given that I’ve experienced fewer new players come into the fray this past year and more people slowly fading out. It is not a 48 player tour, but rather a 60 player tour and I do not believe that the talent warrants a slot upgrade. At least wait till player signups are concluded to gauge if 8 slots are really feasible.

As for formats I would suggest 4 sm 1 oras 1 bw/duu with 6 slots or 5 sm 1oras/duu/bw with 8 slots. I think sm should have a more of a focus since that is what a majority of us play and helps actually promote the community growing so newer players can potentially play in subsequent tours as well. I was doubtful of a current gen focused format in dpl 2 as well but later realized that it was the better choice as it allowed greater exploration into the meta and made me better acclimated in future tours.

 

[MajorBowman]

stax brought up a great idea and we're going with it - we decided to wait to decide on the number of playing slots until a week from now, or April 2. This will allow us to gauge whether or not all six teams will be able to field a team of 8 starters and a couple subs without spreading themselves too thin. Keep up the discussion!

 

[Z Emledin]

I have a question. I am relatively new to Smogon and Pokemon Showdown, but I would love to participate in a doubles tournament. It seems that there are a lot more resources for singles than doubles, especially since I’m more interested in Doubles UU. What “skill level” would be recommend for this tournament?

 

[Arcticblast]

Z Emledin DPL is a draft tournament, where the six chosen managers attempt to draft strong players and create the best team possible to win the whole thing. Most managers (such as myself!) have an open Discord server where we hold tryouts - whether those are actual tryout games or just a request for replays. It can't hurt to sign up, but if you want to get drafted, you better be ready to show them why they should consider drafting you.

Also, wrong thread :( try the overview/q&a thread next time

 

[kamikaze]

I have a question. I am relatively new to Smogon and Pokemon Showdown, but I would love to participate in a doubles tournament. It seems that there are a lot more resources for singles than doubles, especially since I’m more interested in Doubles UU. What “skill level” would be recommend for this tournament?

Skill level is generally something hard to quantify. Generally people can relatively gauge it based on how you do in tournaments or when people watch you play.

For DUU specifically there is a tournament circuit with another tour starting soon in this forum. You can view the general DUU thread here https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/doubles-uu.3598014/
The second post has teams and the third has a viability rankings of how pokemon are in the metagame.

Just a general advice to players:
You can be one of the best players in the world but if noone knows who you are then they likely wont draft you. Managers generally spend most money on people they know and then with remaining funds see if they can get some shots in the dark or very value buys on lesser known people.This is where talking to managers comes in to get your name out there. You can find links to their discord servers to talk and tryout with them in the admin thread
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/doubles-premier-league-4-administrative-thread.3631300/

Like user cars 3 said, this kind of question usually goes in general q&a but i think this is an important enough message to people looking to get drafted that the visibility here helps. DPL is a great experience working with people in a team environment, so you can get a lot out of it and improve, especially if you havent been involved in one yet

 

[Z Emledin]

cars 3 (lightning mcqueen fuckign dies) and kamikaze, thank you both so much! I’m having trouble finding the Q&A thread, may you link it or something (as I said I’m pretty new to all this)?