agree with 3rd manager. when u r not available to play but have chance to manager team + provide support, it really give u a sense of achievement and make team more positive
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Tournament DWCOP VII- Format Discussion
- Thread starter eragon
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Hey everyone! The mod team has narrowed down the options for tiers a bit, so seemed like a good time to update and a get a bit more discussion on some specific formats for this tour. Here are the main contenders:
4 SV / 1 Champs / SS / SM / XY
Pretty standard, similar to last year but with a champs slot. Pretty stable but still a lot of SV (would be the fifth world cup on SV) and not a whole lot of development for champs, which we think should probably be one of the main priorities moving forward for now. Still a fairly reasonable format with a lot of continuity from last year.
3 SV / 2 Champs / SS / SM / XY
Seems to be one of the strongest candidates based on community support, with a bit more emphasis on Champs. This is probably the frontrunner at the moment since it's still pretty similar to last year and has a comfortable split between SV and Champs.
More ambitious focus on champs (like 4 SV / 4 Champs or 2 SV / 3 Champs / SS / SM / XY)
A bit of a stronger deviation and not something that we'd like to do without community input, but there's definitely some upsides. While Champs DOU is still young, DWCOP can be an ideal tournament for pushing forward a format thanks to the large number of games in pools (worth noting that SV's first tour was DWCOP, which led to several bans and much of the early development of the tier). Most regions would be on fairly even footing for such a new format like this, so that could be another potential upside. Still, this would be a large departure from last year's tournament so we would definitely understand if the community feels this is too aggressive of a change.
We'd like to get your input on the above 3 ideas, so if you have thoughts please discuss!
Also, we've finalized the schedule a bit more, so signups will go up Sunday and will be open for two weeks, with the tour starting immediately after that.
4 SV / 1 Champs / SS / SM / XY
Pretty standard, similar to last year but with a champs slot. Pretty stable but still a lot of SV (would be the fifth world cup on SV) and not a whole lot of development for champs, which we think should probably be one of the main priorities moving forward for now. Still a fairly reasonable format with a lot of continuity from last year.
3 SV / 2 Champs / SS / SM / XY
Seems to be one of the strongest candidates based on community support, with a bit more emphasis on Champs. This is probably the frontrunner at the moment since it's still pretty similar to last year and has a comfortable split between SV and Champs.
More ambitious focus on champs (like 4 SV / 4 Champs or 2 SV / 3 Champs / SS / SM / XY)
A bit of a stronger deviation and not something that we'd like to do without community input, but there's definitely some upsides. While Champs DOU is still young, DWCOP can be an ideal tournament for pushing forward a format thanks to the large number of games in pools (worth noting that SV's first tour was DWCOP, which led to several bans and much of the early development of the tier). Most regions would be on fairly even footing for such a new format like this, so that could be another potential upside. Still, this would be a large departure from last year's tournament so we would definitely understand if the community feels this is too aggressive of a change.
We'd like to get your input on the above 3 ideas, so if you have thoughts please discuss!
Also, we've finalized the schedule a bit more, so signups will go up Sunday and will be open for two weeks, with the tour starting immediately after that.
The most reasonable and balanced tier selection would be either of the above.
SV is a well developed metagame with extensive resources, and should remain the primary format for this edition of DWCOP even if is quite stale. My personal preference (from experience in previous tours with BO3 slots) would be to see a SV BO3 over one of the SV BO1 slots if there is sufficient community interest for this.
I agree with Champions DOU making its debut this DWCOP, however, this remains a relatively underdeveloped metagame (despite existing for a few months). Thus far, there has only one mini-tour currently in progress, and at the time of writing, this Champions DOU does not have a playable ladder (let alone, an actual format on Showdown - although I presume the Doubles & Champions council(s) are working towards facilitating these). For a format to be included in a tour (which is rewarding a Custom Avatar prize), it should be quite accessible for players.
The Classics tiers of SS, SM & XY are all long standing tiers with accessible resources for players, and definitely helped ease the monotony of 8 SV slots in 2024 - I would be content for these slots to remain as they are. Personally, I'd love to see Vintage tours feature in this tour, however, these tiers are relatively less accessible and unfortunately are not as well suited to DWCOP.
Thus, I would propose the following format:
SV BO3 / 2x SV BO1 / 2x Champions / 1x SS / 1x SM / 1x XY
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I'm going to heavily reinforce what Razachu said above.
Champions DOU is a format which is extremely underdeveloped for taking complete central control over one of the biggest DOU tours of the entire year. I also think that we should consider the fact that this tournament, while late, still falls under the year where SV is still the main tier for DOU, not Champions. If this wasn't the case, then all of DPL, ladder tour, OSDT, SCL, and I think every CA teamtour featuring DOU this year would not be SV focused.
This isn't to say that I am against Champions being included in this tier by any means: in fact, I think we should definitely put a very heavy influence on it and give it a real chance to actually blossom into a more developed format. It deserves more than 1 slot in this tour for sure, since it is our last opportunity (at least in terms of this year) to truly undergo any "early-gen" changes, filter out any broken stuff from the metagame, and create good compositions for the future.
Edit: Didn't really talk about why I think SV Bo3 should be added this time. Classic SV Bo1 plays very differently to Bo3 obviously, teamtours are often about utilizing the CTS aspect, since there's only one game that you need to win. Bo3 is how a lot of the individual tours are played, and it often requires a different kind of skillset where the result has a higher emphasis on gameplay itself. It also often asks for more in terms of preparation, since many players often have different teams for G1 G2 and if it comes to it, G3 as well. In my opinion, Bo3 will rely more on the gameplay than solely the preparation, make hax still manageable, and allows us to blend the individual and teamtour line more freely which lets us also invite a overall greater variety of skill. Of course, I do still think that Bo1 is a much more teamtour-oriented version of DOU, however because we have only 8 slots here compared to maybe 10 or 12 in a lot of other teamtours, we can afford to extend one of the sets by a slight amount. Therefore, I would advocate for:
1 SV Bo3 - We can try this out, see if it works or not because this is probably the last chance we ever get to actually try to implement this format in a teamtour. With the total amount of SV slots likely decreasing, having a Bo3 lets us keep the priority on CG, which I think is fair. It isn't too much for the spectators since only 1 of the sets takes slightly longer, but in exchange we only have 8 sets per team which makes the DwCOP format shorter anyway.
2 SV Bo1 - Standard, lets us keep the main tier but if we have too many SV it becomes unbelievably monotonous with this being Year 500 of SV.
2 Champions DOU - Explained
1 SS 1 SM 1 XY - Classic gens are fan favorites, we all love em, the playerbase is motivated and there are a reasonable amount of players in these gens worldwide, what more should I say. Let's not drop these unless we must, these are what blend the older players with the new in the cleanest way.
Champions DOU is a format which is extremely underdeveloped for taking complete central control over one of the biggest DOU tours of the entire year. I also think that we should consider the fact that this tournament, while late, still falls under the year where SV is still the main tier for DOU, not Champions. If this wasn't the case, then all of DPL, ladder tour, OSDT, SCL, and I think every CA teamtour featuring DOU this year would not be SV focused.
This isn't to say that I am against Champions being included in this tier by any means: in fact, I think we should definitely put a very heavy influence on it and give it a real chance to actually blossom into a more developed format. It deserves more than 1 slot in this tour for sure, since it is our last opportunity (at least in terms of this year) to truly undergo any "early-gen" changes, filter out any broken stuff from the metagame, and create good compositions for the future.
Edit: Didn't really talk about why I think SV Bo3 should be added this time. Classic SV Bo1 plays very differently to Bo3 obviously, teamtours are often about utilizing the CTS aspect, since there's only one game that you need to win. Bo3 is how a lot of the individual tours are played, and it often requires a different kind of skillset where the result has a higher emphasis on gameplay itself. It also often asks for more in terms of preparation, since many players often have different teams for G1 G2 and if it comes to it, G3 as well. In my opinion, Bo3 will rely more on the gameplay than solely the preparation, make hax still manageable, and allows us to blend the individual and teamtour line more freely which lets us also invite a overall greater variety of skill. Of course, I do still think that Bo1 is a much more teamtour-oriented version of DOU, however because we have only 8 slots here compared to maybe 10 or 12 in a lot of other teamtours, we can afford to extend one of the sets by a slight amount. Therefore, I would advocate for:
1 SV Bo3 - We can try this out, see if it works or not because this is probably the last chance we ever get to actually try to implement this format in a teamtour. With the total amount of SV slots likely decreasing, having a Bo3 lets us keep the priority on CG, which I think is fair. It isn't too much for the spectators since only 1 of the sets takes slightly longer, but in exchange we only have 8 sets per team which makes the DwCOP format shorter anyway.
2 SV Bo1 - Standard, lets us keep the main tier but if we have too many SV it becomes unbelievably monotonous with this being Year 500 of SV.
2 Champions DOU - Explained
1 SS 1 SM 1 XY - Classic gens are fan favorites, we all love em, the playerbase is motivated and there are a reasonable amount of players in these gens worldwide, what more should I say. Let's not drop these unless we must, these are what blend the older players with the new in the cleanest way.
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I usually don’t post in these threads, but…
I am a huge supporter of 1 SV Bo3 slot. I think it’s a great idea, and in general I think a bo3 “neutral” slot something that should be done more in team tournaments (shoulda had it in DPL too tbh). I think 3 SV 2 Champs triple old gen is good as a format, but I want to heavily push for 1 Bo3 slot.
I am a huge supporter of 1 SV Bo3 slot. I think it’s a great idea, and in general I think a bo3 “neutral” slot something that should be done more in team tournaments (shoulda had it in DPL too tbh). I think 3 SV 2 Champs triple old gen is good as a format, but I want to heavily push for 1 Bo3 slot.
- I think we should definitely have at least two Champions slots; I wouldn't mind 3 or even 4. 4 SV 4 Champs sounds like a better format than many proposed here.
- I oppose a Bo3 slot (for both SV and Oldgens). It would further polarize the top teams from the newer ones, given the additional prep and skill burden. The teams with the top-end players have their skill advantage multiplied, and they'd have a larger pool of teams to pull from. Further, more SV is never the correct answer to any question that isn't "what would make me want to quit mons forever?"
- I still think oldgens drives a wedge between the stronger and weaker teams, and the results were visible last year. I'm not strongly opposed to their inclusion, but I maintain that it would be unfair to the teams with shallower player pools. It makes very little sense that we morphed the all-CG tour into a DPL 2 with no draft to patch weaknesses.
- Putting all of this together, my preferred formats, in order of preference, would be:
- 4 SV 4 Champs
- 3 SV / 2 Champs / SS / SM / XY
- 2 SV / 3 Champs / SS / SM / XY
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Lets talk about tour identity for a second.
Based on my interpretation, tour identity encompasses the unique qualities of any one given tournament with respect to its circuit. I've only been around for 3 iterations of each of these tournaments, but as I see it, the three tours in the DOU circuit were broken down as follows:
Derby- Horse themed, for fun, Pre-Fairy Gen nonsense, less current gen DOU in favor of lower tiers (Loosely? takes after SCL/Snake with its inclusion of lower tiers)
DPL- The "prestigious" team tour, with the banner and custom avatar and all iterations of DOU tiers that had ever been current gen (Takes after SPL)
DWCoP- Regional team tournament, historically a 8x CG tour until last year (the obvious WCoP parallel)
DWCoP as the regional team format worked because it was 8x CG, and was, of the three, the lowest barrier of entry due due to the abundant Smogon resources, active ladder environment, and various individual tournaments accessible to its flagship format. To me, that's the identity that DWCoP carries at its heart and soul. This tournament has also been used as a testing ground in the past, being the first SV team tournament (and featuring all 8 SV slots less than 3 months removed from the release of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet).
If the central tenant of a tour is accessibility, then the introduction of oldgens to the tournament should be antithetical to its core. And it kind of was. Why were oldgens introduced to this tournament in the first place? It was largely because of SV fatigue with no viable alternative outside of oldgens. Luckily for us this year, Champions DOU remedies this, as its:
a. A metagame that the council seemingly wants to push and develop for the future.
b. In dire need of a large sample size of games.
In a few ways this actually parallels the first year of SV in DWCoP, which brings me to my main argument: DWCoP VII should cannibalize the oldgens slots, instead of the SV slots, in favor of Champions DOU. DWCoP VI saw the introduction of oldgens to its slots and the result ended up being that- across the last 3 world cup winning teams (US South, US West, Latin America), all three had higher old gens win % than current gen win %. Anecdotally, in the case of US West, we were not realistically a top 8 team in terms of performance last year in SV, but we snuck into playoffs quite largely in part due to our oldgens record. If we want to maintain the identity of DWCoP as the parity tournament, a distinction I believe to be important in the context of the circuit and community at large, then oldgens should be relegated to the other team tournaments the circuit has to offer. I'd also refer to AIRedzone 's post above. He as the manager of Team India last year, has a very unique perspective in how newer players can be caught up to speed in CG vs oldgens, and the concessions he had to make in roster construction and prep due to the constraints of oldgens slots.
I don't care all too much about the bo3 vs bo1 debate, however, I'd argue that a bo3 slot is similarly damaging to the tournament's parity as an oldgen slot is. Felt I wanted to at least mention it, but my main gripe is with the 3 oldgens slots up for grabs.
In conclusion, I support the 4 SV / 4 Champs slots approach the most out of any outlined in eragon's post. There are plenty of opportunities to play oldgens on this website between individual tournaments, the other Smogon Doubles room circuit team tournaments, and SidePLs. DWCoP doesn't need to be another.
Based on my interpretation, tour identity encompasses the unique qualities of any one given tournament with respect to its circuit. I've only been around for 3 iterations of each of these tournaments, but as I see it, the three tours in the DOU circuit were broken down as follows:
Derby- Horse themed, for fun, Pre-Fairy Gen nonsense, less current gen DOU in favor of lower tiers (Loosely? takes after SCL/Snake with its inclusion of lower tiers)
DPL- The "prestigious" team tour, with the banner and custom avatar and all iterations of DOU tiers that had ever been current gen (Takes after SPL)
DWCoP- Regional team tournament, historically a 8x CG tour until last year (the obvious WCoP parallel)
DWCoP as the regional team format worked because it was 8x CG, and was, of the three, the lowest barrier of entry due due to the abundant Smogon resources, active ladder environment, and various individual tournaments accessible to its flagship format. To me, that's the identity that DWCoP carries at its heart and soul. This tournament has also been used as a testing ground in the past, being the first SV team tournament (and featuring all 8 SV slots less than 3 months removed from the release of Pokemon Scarlet and Violet).
If the central tenant of a tour is accessibility, then the introduction of oldgens to the tournament should be antithetical to its core. And it kind of was. Why were oldgens introduced to this tournament in the first place? It was largely because of SV fatigue with no viable alternative outside of oldgens. Luckily for us this year, Champions DOU remedies this, as its:
a. A metagame that the council seemingly wants to push and develop for the future.
b. In dire need of a large sample size of games.
In a few ways this actually parallels the first year of SV in DWCoP, which brings me to my main argument: DWCoP VII should cannibalize the oldgens slots, instead of the SV slots, in favor of Champions DOU. DWCoP VI saw the introduction of oldgens to its slots and the result ended up being that- across the last 3 world cup winning teams (US South, US West, Latin America), all three had higher old gens win % than current gen win %. Anecdotally, in the case of US West, we were not realistically a top 8 team in terms of performance last year in SV, but we snuck into playoffs quite largely in part due to our oldgens record. If we want to maintain the identity of DWCoP as the parity tournament, a distinction I believe to be important in the context of the circuit and community at large, then oldgens should be relegated to the other team tournaments the circuit has to offer. I'd also refer to AIRedzone 's post above. He as the manager of Team India last year, has a very unique perspective in how newer players can be caught up to speed in CG vs oldgens, and the concessions he had to make in roster construction and prep due to the constraints of oldgens slots.
I don't care all too much about the bo3 vs bo1 debate, however, I'd argue that a bo3 slot is similarly damaging to the tournament's parity as an oldgen slot is. Felt I wanted to at least mention it, but my main gripe is with the 3 oldgens slots up for grabs.
In conclusion, I support the 4 SV / 4 Champs slots approach the most out of any outlined in eragon's post. There are plenty of opportunities to play oldgens on this website between individual tournaments, the other Smogon Doubles room circuit team tournaments, and SidePLs. DWCoP doesn't need to be another.
Old gens definitely skew the tour heavily towards the established on-paper favorites and as much as I like them I wouldn't mind moving back towards a DWC format with only modern formats. 4 SV + 4 Champs still accomplishes the goal of including non-SV slots which was the whole point of adding old gens last year while having other benefits prior posts touched on. Gives less established teams a better chance, helps develop the Champs DOU meta, eliminates any isolated slots, etc. Biasedly I would still prefer the format with SV + Champs + Old Gens, but I see why 4 SV + 4 Champs could be a better fit for DWC.
If the 4 SV + 4 Champs format were to be chosen the only question to me would be how do we handle tiebreaks? I see a few options worth looking at:
1. SV default format, then each team picks between SV or Champions. SV is still currently our official format at the end of the day, so keeping it as the default format makes sense.
2. SV and Champions always in as the first two slots, then the higher seed picks between the two for the third slot. Extra reward for the top performing pools teams while ensuring both formats always make it into a tiebreak. Having a 3 SV tiebreak when the tour has a 4/4 split would be pretty strange.
3. Obligatory mention to try killing tiebreaks again and actually just do 4 SV + 3 Champs or some shit idk.
I'd kinda fuck with 2 personally but 1 is obviously the safe and easy choice in this scenario.
If the 4 SV + 4 Champs format were to be chosen the only question to me would be how do we handle tiebreaks? I see a few options worth looking at:
1. SV default format, then each team picks between SV or Champions. SV is still currently our official format at the end of the day, so keeping it as the default format makes sense.
2. SV and Champions always in as the first two slots, then the higher seed picks between the two for the third slot. Extra reward for the top performing pools teams while ensuring both formats always make it into a tiebreak. Having a 3 SV tiebreak when the tour has a 4/4 split would be pretty strange.
3. Obligatory mention to try killing tiebreaks again and actually just do 4 SV + 3 Champs or some shit idk.
I'd kinda fuck with 2 personally but 1 is obviously the safe and easy choice in this scenario.
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