Tournament DWCOP IV - Discussion Thread

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Maia

Maia

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Discussion Thread
Welcome to the fourth installment of the Doubles World Cup! I’m Theia and I will be one of your hosts for this tournament, alongside the wonderful Vertigo! This thread will serve as the place to discuss all things relating to the upcoming Doubles World Cup, including regions, tournament size, eligibility, etc. Most of the following details in this thread will be tentative upon hearing community feedback, and will be finalized before the tournament starts.

Doubles World Cup of Pokémon Four (DWCOP IV) will likely follow the same structure as last year’s tournament. In the first phase players will be placed in pools of 4 with players from other teams, where they must play each of the three other players in their pool in a best of 1 SV DOU match. This pools phase will last two weeks, and will be the qualifying phase for the playoffs. Any substitutions made in the pool phase will continue for the entirety of the pool phase.

The 4 regions with the best record will emerge from the pools and will compete in the playoffs. The #1 seeded team will play the #4, and the #2 will play the #3, where each player will play a best of 1 SV DOU match against a player on the opposing team. The team with the best record in this matchup will be the winner. Any ties will result in a tier breaker where 3 players from each team will play a best of 1 SV DOU match.

Team sizes have historically been 8 players, with 4 substitutes, and we’re looking to continue that.

For DWCOP IV, we are looking to have a minimum of 8 teams. Last year we had 9 teams with Team China added to the mix, and we’d like to keep the door open to possible new teams in this edition as well. Teams will be finalized once we have a better idea of signups, but here were the teams last year:
- US WEST
- US EAST
- CANADA
- LATIN AMERICA
- EUROPE
- ASIA PACIFIC
- CHINA
- ITALY
- US CENTRAL

With the US regions divided by the below map:
hPvhM13.png


Our projected timeline is as follows:
  • Signups to go up on October 15th.
  • Signups to close October 29th, and managers will be selected on that date.
  • A “prep week” from October 29th-November 5th.
  • Pools to be posted on November 5th.
  • Playoffs to be posted November 19th.
Regarding player eligibility: We are thinking that we will continue the same rules as last year, where players are eligible to play for whatever region they are currently living in (with a verified IP address). However, players that played for a different region last year than what they are currently living in this year are eligible to be “grandfathered” in to their team from last year. This “grandfather” clause will not apply to regions that have been split. For instance, if Europe were to be split between team United Kingdom and the rest of Europe, then all players living in the United Kingdom would only be eligible to play on the U.K. team, not on the team for the rest of Europe, even if they were on team Europe last year.

Use this thread to discuss your thoughts on the tournament, and here are a few questions to get the discussion going:
1. Should there be any changes to team sizes from 8 players and 4 substitutes?
2. Should any additional teams be considered from the 9 that we had last year?
3. How do you feel about the eligibility requirements?
4. Should there be any changes to the tournament structure, whether that’s pool sizes, playoffs size, or length of the tournament?
5. Should there be a prep week in between when signups close and the pools are released?
Or any other thoughts or feedback you may have!
 
Wanted to give my personal thoughts on a few things:
Prep week - I think it’s a good idea because we’ve typically had each of signups closing, manager selections, and first week lineup submissions in the same weekend, which doesn’t exactly give a lot of opportunity for a legit lineup selection, or a chance for late signups to get to be a part of the team.

As for teams, I think with the success of team China last year, we should be open to any new prospective teams as long as they have enough signups and ideally a couple established DOU players. Even if not everyone on the roster is a DOU all star, I think the fun of the tournament is having countries/regions banding together and making the most of what their player base has to offer. I also think it would be a good way to introduce newer players to dou.

I think pretty much the rest of the tour should remain the way it was last year, as changes we made like the 4 team playoff was a lot of fun.
 
Real answer for the prep week question: I don't think having one is necessary as teams don't really need extra time to get to settle in. Due to the nature of World Cup team tours like this, teams should already have established cores even as sign-ups just go up, and when it comes to integrating late, unexpected sign-ups and new members, I think it's overall better to still not have a prep week in order to ride the tour's hype and momentum when it comes to quickly integrating new teammates. The pools stage is generally quite long, anyway, most new members should end up just fine.
 
from someone who has hosted many WCoPs big and small:

more new teams is almost always good, except when they turn out to not give a shit about the tournament (which is rare, but does happen)

the play here is:
- when a team says "we want to sign up", get them to send a preliminary roster with enough eligible people about a week before everyone else. if it checks out, cool, if it doesn't check out because they are missing people (or any other reason) then not cool (it is yet to happen to me that people don't send a good preliminary roster when asked, but it has happened that hosts didn't ask for the preliminary roster and when signups came to an end the new team did not have enough people, and it was a struggle getting them to find an acceptable roster before deadline)

- make it clear that if they end up giving out multiple actwins / not playing out their games in full, they will not be allowed again the next year (newer teams tend to do this often enough that it's worth warning them ahead of time)


unrelated:
- ask me for how to do the format and the pairings, i have gone through these headaches for you; 8 starting slots x pools of 4 players = you can handle any number, even 11 or 13 or anything else you can think of
 
I'd like to propose the debut of Team India in this edition of DWCOP! The addition of Team China last year was a success, with them putting up a respectable performance and the Doubles community being able to interact (though in a limited fashion) with a great bunch of players. The Indian community is sizeable and highly active on the Singles side of Smogon, and I believe this would be the perfect opportunity to integrate a lot of amazing people into the Doubles community. The GOAT sundays (a prominent voice across several PS and Smogon communities) has been working hard to strengthen our playerbase by organizing laddering sessions and scrim-like private tours, and we believe we have a solid set of players to take a run at DWCOP.


Actuarily and Amaranth make great points about rosters, so here's some information on what we've put together so far. The biggest name on our team, of course, is Nido-Rus, and other established doubles players include Sanjay das and myself. Sundays has been an active participant in this year's DOU circuit with impressive victories against some of DOUCord's celebrities. Other members of our potential lineup include Loudwinner, Faaagamer, Sole Survivor, TDR, skimmythegod, AmoghOp, Spcplayzz, Ashbala, and Piyush25. We're reaching out to the Indian VGC community and others to gauge interest in signups, which I'm confident will enable us to fill the required slots.

Looking forward to an exciting DWCOP!


A few general thoughts about the tour:

  • I personally agree with Memoric about prep week cutting into the tour's momentum and I usually would want to dive straight into the action. However, I think it makes sense to have an extra week for this post-DLC meta to settle and for any potential new team including India to organize their resources/account for last-minute signups.
  • 4 team playoff is great, and the general structure of the tour works well. Let's stick with it. Amaranth is the goat for anything tour format-related.
  • West Coast Best Coast <3
 
Last edited:
AIRedzone said:
I'd like to propose the debut of Team India in this edition of DWCOP! The addition of Team China last year was a success, with them putting up a respectable performance and the Doubles community being able to interact (though in a limited fashion) with a great bunch of players. The Indian community is sizeable and highly active on the Singles side of Smogon, and I believe this would be the perfect opportunity to integrate a lot of amazing people into the Doubles community. The GOAT sundays (a prominent voice across several PS and Smogon communities) has been working hard to strengthen our playerbase by organizing laddering sessions and scrim-like private tours, and we believe we have a solid set of players to take a run at DWCOP.


Actuarily and Amaranth make great points about rosters, so here's some information on what we've put together so far. The biggest name on our team, of course, is Nido-Rus, and other established doubles players include Sanjay das and myself. Sundays has been an active participant in this year's DOU circuit with impressive victories against some of DOUCord's celebrities. Other members of our potential lineup include Loudwinner, Faaagamer, Sole Survivor, TDR, skimmythegod, AmoghOp, Spcplayzz, and Ashbala. We're reaching out to the Indian VGC community and others to gauge interest in signups, which I'm confident will enable us to fill the required slots.

Looking forward to an exciting DWCOP!


A few general thoughts about the tour:

  • I personally agree with Memoric about prep week cutting into the tour's momentum and I usually would want to dive straight into the action. However, I think it makes sense to have an extra week for this post-DLC meta to settle and for any potential new team including India to organize their resources/account for last-minute signups.
  • 4 team playoff is great, and the general structure of the tour works well. Let's stick with it. Amaranth is the goat for anything tour format-related.
  • West Coast Best Coast <3
Click to expand...
:)
pratik2007 Tanish WhoDatMan are also some of our potential members. Our goal is to get more of the Indian community to enjoy smogon doubles as a format and get stronger overall as a team. Hoping to have fun this wc o7.
 
AIRedzone said:
I'd like to propose the debut of Team India in this edition of DWCOP! The addition of Team China last year was a success, with them putting up a respectable performance and the Doubles community being able to interact (though in a limited fashion) with a great bunch of players. The Indian community is sizeable and highly active on the Singles side of Smogon, and I believe this would be the perfect opportunity to integrate a lot of amazing people into the Doubles community. The GOAT sundays (a prominent voice across several PS and Smogon communities) has been working hard to strengthen our playerbase by organizing laddering sessions and scrim-like private tours, and we believe we have a solid set of players to take a run at DWCOP.


Actuarily and Amaranth make great points about rosters, so here's some information on what we've put together so far. The biggest name on our team, of course, is Nido-Rus, and other established doubles players include Sanjay das and myself. Sundays has been an active participant in this year's DOU circuit with impressive victories against some of DOUCord's celebrities. Other members of our potential lineup include Loudwinner, Faaagamer, Sole Survivor, TDR, skimmythegod, AmoghOp, Spcplayzz, and Ashbala. We're reaching out to the Indian VGC community and others to gauge interest in signups, which I'm confident will enable us to fill the required slots.

Looking forward to an exciting DWCOP!


A few general thoughts about the tour:

  • I personally agree with Memoric about prep week cutting into the tour's momentum and I usually would want to dive straight into the action. However, I think it makes sense to have an extra week for this post-DLC meta to settle and for any potential new team including India to organize their resources/account for last-minute signups.
  • 4 team playoff is great, and the general structure of the tour works well. Let's stick with it. Amaranth is the goat for anything tour format-related.
  • West Coast Best Coast <3
Click to expand...
I do agree with this
 
I'd like to propose Team Commonwealth: a Canada, UK/Europe, Australia, India, and Bangladesh (and any other formerly colonise state) superteam, led by the only person who has eligibility for every single one of the aforementioned squads. This is an elegant solution because a) it helps to minimize the number of people who would like to play in DPL but can't because they don't have an associated squad, and b) will create a team that is a true contender to win the whole tour unlike if Canada, the UK, India, Australia, or Bangladesh were to go alone. Any opposition from Europe should be discounted on the grounds that, unless it is ratified by the European Parliament, any proposal that affects all member nations can not be unilaterally agreed upon by a single country (this likely means that Italy is an illegitimate team and therefore Toxigen is mine now).
 
dwcop should get the custom avatar prize over invitationals for a number of reasons:
- it incentivizes more people to join dwcop and builds a greater sense of community and subsequent reward
- people who grind enough circuit tours to reach invitationals would do that without the custom avi prize anyway + it already has a ribbon prize.
- it is more DOU-relevant to have a DOU tour-related custom avatar, which is represented throughout the year (i've seen the US west custom over a hundred times this year). if you want a personalized custom then either contribute in other ways e.g. analysis writing, or win the designated individual tournament (OSDT)
- dwcop has precedent over invitationals (see: 2022 prizes)
- people may argue this diminishes hype for invitationals, but that tournament's issues are so plentiful and inherent that a custom avatar isn't going to save it. aka: a custom would be huge for dwcop but is negligible for invitationals, and as such, dwcop shouldnt have to suffer for it
 
Alongside team India, we'd like to talk about the possibility of making a French Team for this edition of the DWCOP! This project was in our mind since early 2022, but we didn't feel we were in a legitimate position to do so, until now. 2023 is a year where a lot of french players made a very good first impression, if not secured themselves as established players within the Doubles Community.

ratpacker is our rising star, making an impressive run in the last dwcop, and after a well deserved break during the last months, he's eager to come back with a blast! Nephtyrix, John1240, CyndaKill-SH and Gatubraz also had very good results in both DOU and DLC scenes. Sakura☆ (also known as Axior) would also be glad to make his comeback in the dwcop competition, after 2 insane seasons in the VGC circuit. Gataen42, Hera dit cation, Yari, Herv and Cao Jie are all players from our french discord server who played a lot in our tournaments and are eager to make a good start in the smogon scene.

We're currently 14 players motivated to be part of the DWCOP as the French team (we're still waiting for answers from other french players), although one of our concerns is Europe possibly struggling to gather enough players, and we believe this would take priority over the creation of our team.
 
US West favors 2 week pools with no prep week. We agree with this:
Memoric said:
I think it's overall better to still not have a prep week in order to ride the tour's hype and momentum when it comes to quickly integrating new teammates.
Click to expand...
as the hype is quite high in our camp right now!

Last DWOCP, there were delays (due to holidays, not much you can do abt that but still) and it was a bit of a momentum drain, other teams have expressed this as well.
 
Two week pools + no prep week good :blobthumbsup:

I would like to request a clarification of the region eligibility rules so that we can understand who can sign up for what region.
EDIT: I based most of my post on the assumption that DWCoP would follow Singles WCoP rules (lmao I can't read), so I'm editing the hell out of this to make my questions and positions clearer

  • Theia said:
    Regarding player eligibility: We are thinking that we will continue the same rules as last year, where players are eligible to play for whatever region they are currently living in (with a verified IP address). However, players that played for a different region last year than what they are currently living in this year are eligible to be “grandfathered” in to their team from last year. This “grandfather” clause will not apply to regions that have been split. For instance, if Europe were to be split between team United Kingdom and the rest of Europe, then all players living in the United Kingdom would only be eligible to play on the U.K. team, not on the team for the rest of Europe, even if they were on team Europe last year.
    Click to expand...

    I would like to suggest that we follow the precedent from Singles WCoP as stated in this thread: "You are eligible to the national teams of all the nations in which you have resided since creating your Smogon account, as long as this is verifiable through IP records." I believe this is reasonable given how common it is for players to not currently live in their home countries, whether for school, work, or whatever else.

  • A particular concern of mine, echoing Team Africa's concern from the Singles WCoP, is that a large number of Indian players live in the US and Europe (owing to a complex combination of overall economic conditions and a pool of players weighted toward countries where Pokemon is heavily culturally marketed). Is there scope for implementing Team Africa's suggestion of allowing players to sign up for a region they are from/travel to frequently?

  • Regarding eligibility grandfathering: how does the formation of country teams impact players who were grandfathered into continental teams in the past? Specifically, for players that have played for a continental team based on former IP history from a country, will they be allowed to play for the country team instead of the continental team?

  • I'd imagine there will be a few edge cases that will require special attention (as described once again by Amaranth in the thread), so I hope that the hosting team will keep with the decisions made there and treat these cases with discretion. Thanks!
 
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Team China favors 2 week pools or 3 week pools with no prep week. We agree with this:
Memoric said:
I think it's overall better to still not have a prep week in order to ride the tour's hype and momentum when it comes to quickly integrating new teammates.
Click to expand...
and this
Smudge said:
Last DWOCP, there were delays (due to holidays, not much you can do abt that but still) and it was a bit of a momentum drain, other teams have expressed this as well.
Click to expand...
I think once the game starts, there is no need for a preparation week, which can maximize the enthusiasm and motivation of the team members
 
so we've discussed a lot of the stuff surrounding eligibility (among other things but that was the main one) so I'm posting about our conclusions (there are two big ones)

1. Eligibility will be changed to anywhere you have significant IP history instead of where you currently reside

Pretty cut and dry, its easier to verify, more or less the standard, and doesn't restrict people into a region they've been living in for a month when they have years of IP history in another location. idk if I need to say anything else here its p straightforward I think (you are still allowed to ask questions tho)

2. :crab: No more prep week :crab:

People do not want it for valid reasons, so it will no longer exist. Do I need to say anything else because its honestly just what people have said already.

ok now im going to respond to AI's post since he asked me very nicely and I feel like it is important for me to do so.


AIRedzone said:
I would like to suggest that we follow the precedent from Singles WCoP as stated in this thread: "You are eligible to the national teams of all the nations in which you have resided since creating your Smogon account, as long as this is verifiable through IP records." I believe this is reasonable given how common it is for players to not currently live in their home countries, whether for school, work, or whatever else.
Click to expand...
we did this

AIRedzone said:
A particular concern of mine, echoing Team Africa's concern from the Singles WCoP, is that a large number of Indian players live in the US and Europe (owing to a complex combination of overall economic conditions and a pool of players weighted toward countries where Pokemon is heavily culturally marketed). Is there scope for implementing Team Africa's suggestion of allowing players to sign up for a region they are from/travel to frequently?
Click to expand...
The issue is with this, specifically the dual citizenship part, is it's very hard to prove without extremely personal documentation that should never be required for something like this, so proving it is entirely off the table (unless there's another way to prove it that we're unaware of). That means the way this would be implemented would rely on taking users' word with no real way of verification. That, or exceptions, both lead to a very slippery slope of user a asking why they can't play for x without IP history when user b can play for y without it. We've already had an example of this in the past so a potential repeat of it isn't desirable, which I hope is understandable. I'm willing to address any concerns or suggestions about this (preferably just ping me in doucord/dm so I can respond quickly tho)

AIRedzone said:
Regarding eligibility grandfathering: how does the formation of country teams impact players who were grandfathered into continental teams in the past? Specifically, for players that have played for a continental team based on former IP history from a country, will they be allowed to play for the country team instead of the continental team?
Click to expand...
ye, so Nido would be able to play for India but not APAC if that makes sense (I think he has significant IP history anyw tho so)
 
DOUBLE POST!! GET HER!!!

keeping this brief but due to the large number of teams this time around (I think 13?) we have decided to increase the number of teams in playoffs to 8, so it'll function the same as a 4 team, but with another round pretty much, outside of that not much else is going to change most likely. outside of that uhh, i can't remember anything else that needs to be announced so bye until I inevitably triple post

ALSO FEEL FREE TO ASK QUESTIONS
 
Here’s a dwcop rap for y’all:

DWCOP is where the doubles is up, DWCOP has people say yo buddy what’s up. US East has the goat Actularily. The great china has Xipht (don’t pronounce the T). Central has cold crew in Fangame the 10. We’ll repeat this again and again. Europe with JRL who’s gonna oppose? Amaranth with Italy now Smogon has rose. APAC has Fey who’s the OSDT goat. India with Redzone he wants them to gloat. Akaru with LA (my culture). Eragon reps Us West (He’ll build with a vulture). France has “High chance to kill” Nephytrix. Canada has Gma to join in the mix. DWCOP is gonna be fun. DWCOP will show off dou’s greatest big guns. I hope the event will be very sweet. I hope Us East will have everyone beat!
 
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