Implemented Smogon Masters -- Planning Thread

[Finchinator]

Posting on behalf of myself, but this idea has surfaced in the TD chat a few times over and was approved

I want to create a new official (trophy) individual tournament with SS OU, SM OU, and ORAS OU! This can take the place of the second Smogon Tour season if necessary. The option of adding CG (to make it an even 5 next generation especially) is possible, but not mandatory.

I have been thinking about this idea for a while and TPP recently brought it up again in the TD chat, but nothing is set-in-stone at all -- this is just a proposal and I want reasonable feedback.

This resolves the ORAS problem from here as ORAS would be in an official individual tournament.

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Measures such as adding ORAS to WCoP with old generations are both moot (as CG is the format for the time being) and incomplete (as limited WCoP representation is falsely equalized to a whole slot in an individual).

Measures such as adding ORAS to Classic are seen as undesirable to many Classic players due to increasing the size of the tournament and it being a categorical outlier (yes, the second point is entirely opinion based).

Measures such as maintaining the status quo excludes ORAS relative to every other old generation.

This resolves the communal unrest surrounding Smogon Tour accessibility and convenience from here and here.

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Live tournaments will simply not work for everyone, but they hold a special niche with Smogon Tour. An ideal middle-ground involves maintaining them with Smogon Tour while offering a non-live tour option that includes the other generations not represented in Smogon Classic or the various CG tournaments.

Format wise we have some options (props to TPP for outlining these in the TD server previously):

• Cups such as Grand Slam and Classic can work and have proven to, but also create a strain with scheduling
• A longstanding Bo3 format such as SWISS (or even double elimination I guess)
• Single elimination (like OST with each generation getting one game, but personally I find this less appealing than the above two)

Timeline and circuit wise, it slots in where the second season of STour wise.

Logistically, I will happily fund any art and host/oversee hosting of the first edition.

Name wise, Fairy Cup is an idea, but if this idea gains traction, we can take ideas and find the best name.

I intend to step down from TD after Grand Slam ends this year as life gets busier and my tolerance for nonsense dwindles, but before I go, I think it is important to resolve some issues and this feels like a great opportunity.

 

[MAVERICK SHOOTERS]

In my opinion you should include sv in this cup too (or whatever is current gen later on) since that's what gets the most amount of signups and there shouldnt be any reason to deny it,I see this fairy cup as a good idea since oras isn't getting any representation,so good to have a cup in which its included,but without cg its just asking for less people to join which I doubt anyone would want considering it would be a trophy cup.Classic which is gens 1-5(i think) gets a good bit of signups too and I know this would probs get a good bit of signups too regardless,but having cg would simply make it have even more signups and more welcoming to players who joined competitive pokemon in recent years.
My proposal:
Make it 2sv,1 ss,sm,oras this incorporates cg and keeps the remaining 3 tiers that was initially suggested too and this also makes it bo5 which means there will be no tie issues.
For people who say sv is getting enough representation already we don't need to have it;that's just a bad argument;it's cg yes it should get representation in everything that can have it.

 

[Baloor]

I don't really ever comment on policy because of how time-consuming writing well-constructed informed posts can be and how generally argumentative these threads end up but I really support the idea of adding an official tournament targeted around these 3 gens in particular for a while. As mentioned, adding ORAS to classic was met with quite an overwhelming no by those who the tournament is targetting for the most part, which is where the idea for a new more modern tournament started. While this is sorta covered by smogtour, ORAS is currently left out of the rotation, and coming Gen 10, so will SM. To me, the introduction of a new tournament "similar" to classic that features newer formats just makes sense, since a big part of smogon tournament "policy" as of late has been fair inclusion. I don't feel SV needs to be included in this tournament since I think the approach of treating this as a more modern classic just works better so I will be treating this as such. I'm not opposed outright to adding SV but I feel we get far too much CG within the current tournament rotation and this tournament has more of an identity without it.

Format-wise, at the current time I feel SWISS is the best option out of the ones presented. This is the only popular format of tournament that is actively played on smogon but doesn't have a "big tournament". While OLT exists, it's not the primary focus of the tournament which makes it different. While for generation 9 this SWISS and other single/double elim formats are fine but does raise some questions when we do hit an eventual generation 10. Do we keep the tournament a bo3 between SS, SM, ORAS? Do we want to add SV when it becomes anold gen as it is similar to these generations in mechanics to these 3? Longevity is definitely a point of concern with this tournament and defining exactly what we want this tournament to cover is of utmost importance. While we can just make the tournament and cross that problem when we get there, formats of smogon tournaments don't typically change all too often so it's important to kind of figure out what we want out of the tournament before its inception. Do we just want an official for ORAS/SM/SS? Or do we want a format that we can tact newer generations onto to make it more of a modern classic situation for maximum inclusion? Just to reiterate, if we decide we just want this to SS/SM/ORAS tournament for years to come, SWISS is probably the ideal format here.

I'm pretty against adding another Cup-style tournament to the rotation as they're pretty oversaturated and can be a scheduling nightmare. Twice a year I find is perfectly fine and any more would be overdoing it. Smogtour-style live tours are another format I find pretty uninteresting as they are just pretty unfun to constantly show up to, inaccessible to a lot of different regions on the site and a lot of the time can just come down to whoever has more free time during the scheduled times. It seems live tours are becoming less and less popular within the community based on recent sign-up numbers and general "reactions" within the community.

I feel fairy cup is a fitting name but might be too on the nose? SV is a fairy gen as well as but the way this is proposed (and imo the way we should approach it) is as a more oldgenny tour. Considering fairies are likely a permanent edition to the games I feel its a little too broad if that matters to anybody at all

TLDR: Don't include SV. If we decide that this tournament will be an official of just SS/SM/ORAS for years to come we should 100% do a SWISS format. Though we should discuss if we want to make this a more modern version of the classic so we can also cover newer old gens when they happen, which in turn would affect how we want to format the tournament as a single SWISS tournament doesn't particularly work for this.

EDIT:

In my opinion you should include sv in this cup too (or whatever is current gen later on) since that's what gets the most amount of signups and there shouldnt be any reason to deny it,I see this fairy cup as a good idea since oras isn't getting any representation,so good to have a cup in which its included,but without cg its just asking for less people to join which I doubt anyone would want considering it would be a trophy cup.Classic which is gens 1-5(i think) gets a good bit of signups too and I know this would probs get a good bit of signups too regardless,but having cg would simply make it have even more signups and more welcoming to players who joined competitive pokemon in recent years.
My proposal:
Make it 2sv,1 ss,sm,oras this incorporates cg and keeps the remaining 3 tiers that was initially suggested too and this also makes it bo5 which means there will be no tie issues.
For people who say sv is getting enough representation already we don't need to have it;that's just a bad argument;it's cg yes it should get representation in everything that can have it.

Calling the argument of not wanting to include CG because it has a lot of representation bad is pretty disingenuous when you're also saying people won't sign up for it because it does not include CG. Currently, SV OU is being featured in the following official tournaments; SPL, SCL, WCOP (8 Slots), OLT, Smogtour, and OST. There are several entry-level trophy tournaments that feature CG as well as CG having a ton of representation throughout the year consistently. Yes, CG should have more representation than other OU metagames but it is not owed representation in every tournament just because it is CG. Believe it or not, burnout of the current gen is a thing; we saw it a lot around the end of SS and are already sort of experiencing it with SV. There is a niche in having another official OU tournament that does not include CG which is relatively more "modern" that I find particularly beneficial for the current Official Tournament Schedule. I know there are some people who might like having another OU Trophy Tournament without CG, and we shouldn't force everybody to play it just for a chance at a trophy. I don't feel the "fewer signups without current gen" thing is important as people do actively play these tiers and people will join as it is a trophy individual anyway. Classic gets loads of players, most of which have never touched a classic tier in their life, so I don't get why this is different. Also bo5 every week is just not fun, prepping 5 teams for one tournament thats not even in playoffs sounds like hell.

 

[teal6]

The idea is in the right direction here, Finch. But we do need to be careful to set important precedents and think about this prudently for the long-term. I have been harping on the idea of long-term planning for the circuit design itself for a long time, and while we've done well with it in some respects I think we have indeed failed in others.

Philosophically I do agree that all OUs should exist in a non-team-tour official somewhere. Granted ORAS is probably the gen I care least about actually implementing that for lol, but I know there's a lot of fans and we'll be facing this same problem again in a few years for a better gen (SM) anyway. So let's be smart about what we do now so we don't need to revisit the same concerns when SM drops out of Smogon Tour.

The core idea from my POV is to not fuck around with good existing tournaments. Put bluntly, do not mangle Classic in order to add ORAS to it. This is a bad idea, it shouldn't be done, it will make the tournament worse, do not do it. It doesn't even solve the problem long-term as mentioned above. Anyone that wants to do this, please reconsider, it's bad and we should not explore this option. I will repeat myself as many times as necessary. Do not consider adding ORAS to Classic, it doesn't belong there, do not throw off a tournament that is very good and has a very good format. No. Don't.

So, if we accept the ideas that we 1) want to have ORAS (and future OUs) in an Individual and 2) we don't want to mangle existing official tournaments then creating a new one is by far the most coherent idea available. I'd reckon that, philosophically, it's fine to have some tiers "overrepresented" for some period of time, which SV and SS arguably would be while this tournament exists until they drop out of STour. That's not the end of the world, it's better for a tier to be oversaturated than under, IMO.

I don't know if it's totally necessary to replace second STour, but a lot of people seem pretty underwhelmed with STour as it is now, so I guess it's not the end of the world. I always liked that it was twice a year but I think, eventually, that's going to have to fade away so this might be a fine enough time to rip off that bandaid. Don't have a strong feeling either way, but I will throw out that I think concerns of overlap on the schedule are slightly unfounded, it's a sacrifice we'll eventually need to make in the circuit one way or another, just a question of if we do it now or in the future.

n my opinion you should include sv in this cup too

Hard no on this from my perspective, at least for now. Three or five tiers should be what we aim for, it gives the best playoff formats, and I think if we do this tournament, it should explicitly and purposefully be to recognize and consecrate these three specific generations. CG OU is the flagship but it would get masturbatory at a point, we have it in SPL, WCOP, SCL, OST, STour and then another? I think eventually we hit some saturation.

You acknowledge that here:

For people who say sv is getting enough representation already we don't need to have it;that's just a bad argument;it's cg yes it should get representation in everything that can have it.

and while I directionally agree that CG OU needs to be emphasized a lot, by forcing it's inclusion in this tournament I think we lose the primary reason this tournament should exist in the first place - to provide representation for those OUs that will eventually be phased out. Let's be clever about it, IMO, and go into the creation of this tournament with a purposeful goal in mind - represent ORAS, represent SM, represent SS into perpetuity in the Smogon Tournament Circuit. That'll be 8 gens with "permanent" individual representation, a good landmark.

The Fairy theming I do actually like, but the other posts itt make a good point in that Fairy isn't likely to ever end, so it'd be a bit like having a GSC tournament called The Steel and Dark Cup or whatever. We uh, have sorta mined a lot of the easier naming conventions at this point, so it's a little awkward to think through. What about something like Serie F? I'm leaning on Italy's football league Serie A, the F obviously stands in for Fairy, but it's not blatant enough to feel strange when we're in gen 13 still using fairies. Downside is that the name might be obscure enough to confuse players.

You might also be right Finch about needing to brainstorm new formats to keep things fresh. I'm going to lean on the name Serie F for inspiration to cook a new idea: (note: I am not married to any of this, just trying to flex a creative muscle)

It feels natural to have three tournaments feed into a playoff system, but what if we shook up how those tournaments run and how people qualify for POs?

Three tournaments: Serie Kalos, Serie Alola, Serie Galar. Start each tournament with brackets until you slim the participants down to 16. Once 16 players are left, create a league table. Each player plays each other player. A 2-0 win is worth 3 points, a 2-1 win is worth 1 point, a loss is worth 0 points. After all matches are played, the player with the highest point total wins the cup. This gives us our first 3 PO contenders (if the same user wins multiple, just go down the table). We add in a 4th PO contender by summing up the point total from each of the tournaments, whoever has the highest (that isn't in the 3 winners) represents the 4th PO participant.

From there, we need 8 more PO participants. We showed the pattern in what we want to reward with the first 4 PO contenders - really good at one tier or good enough at all three. Let's repeat that theme. 4 of the remaining 8 should be "the next highest" in each of the individual tournaments, the other 4 of the remaining 8 should be those individuals with the highest aggregates.

The calculation is a little complicated, as in it isn't "get the most points and win the tournament", but I do still think this emphasizes competitive growth. Players looking to qualify for the main event will have a choice to make, do they spend their time prepping deeply and sincerely for one of the last-16s, or all? Can they even qualify for more than one? The winner of the sub-tournaments going to the finals also emphasizes underdog stories, someone can be down and out on the point count overall but still grab their spot by winning in the high pressure games. And we also get to reward those players that are very good and do well, but something goes wrong in that they don't win the whole thing. I think it's a neat mixture.

In finals, 12 players, original 4 get a by. Do a bracket knockout, BO3 as you'd imagine.

As I typed this out it sounds more complicated than I wanted, and in tournament design simpler is often better, but it sorta does feel like high time to freshen up how we go about constructing these. I think leaning into a league format is a clear place to draw inspiration from, it'd give us a lot of content and also doesn't ask the players to get too heavily invested in figuring out the "how do I qualify??" questions until they actually make it to the end of the tournament, a gradual ascension of complexity that PO participants would learn without much issue in time. Still, I'd be happy to brainstorm on this or be told it's just not going to happen, but if we can, let's maybe avoid "straight bo3 knockout points-per-round" like we've done a trillion times already, it's just a bit boring after a while.

Oh I also think the 2-0 / 2-1 split in terms of reward could be interesting. It's not something we've done a lot in the official circuit, maybe actually even ever, but I thought it was a cool way to incorporate "draws" from football into our tournaments, and emphasizes a complete victory over a hard-fought one.

 

[Baloor]

Didn't think I'd post in this thread so soon after my original post but I did magically think of a naming scheme I liked after reading Luigi's newest post. In my initial post and parts of teals I feel we both are of the opinion that this post should build off of classic and represent newer phased out metas, so I was trying to think of what the next step beyond that would be. After reading Luigis post something did stand out to me, the years of ORAS and SM were particularly big years in the player base in terms tournament participation. 2018 is a pretty notable year in this regard, which was a SM year. That got me thinking in terms of like the golden age, the classical era, eras in history among different cultures. Obviously, some of the names of these historical eras are going to be awful names, but I moved forward mentally with the idea of the "peak" of something. Another important note is that we typically include "smogon" or "official" in our tournament names, as well as mimic our tournaments off of existing ones. Eventually, I found a few synonyms that I figured "fit in" and wouldn't stand out as too much in terms of what we already have, as well as trying to avoid having the chosen key words sound to snarky since we aren't trying to say "these are the best generations of pokemon", moreso, these were the most active times in our community.

The chosen synonyms I'll be using in this post are; Summit, Apex and Crown Though, I'm sure with enough digging you can find more words that fit what we are looking for. Going to share my favorite and more inspired ideas. These are ideas that I feel would fit well into our current pool of names that are different but wouldn't look too out there thematically.

The Smogon Summit
Smogon Summit Cup/League/Bowl

I feel these these two are the best options here, with a few in real life inspirations but nothing that makes it stand out way too much. The Smogon Summit follows the same naming scheme as The Smogon Classic which is the tour I feel we should build off of. This name just feels right in terms of embracing the "modern classic" feel I wanted. Additionally, since the name of this tournament is based off the Summit League, an NCAA tournament that covers a few sports, Smogon Summit Cup/League/Bowl also work. I feel I like Smogon Summit Cup a bit more than league in this regard since League feels more team tourish to me and I dont want to directly rip from the tournament its based on. Cup is always a give or take for me, it feels more like a B tour name than a official tour name. Bowl is a "suffix" we haven't really used in a official capacity and could be a viable option. I really like this approach due to it fitting with our other tournaments pretty comfortably, while not being in your face with its name but standing out enough to be different. You artistically already have a built in theme which is nice as well.

Smogon Crown Prix

The biggest in real life tournament that we don't have a "pokemon version" of outside of the Olympics is probably The Grand Prix. I didn't directly want to call it the Smogon Grand Prix as thats a little too on the nose and we already have Grand Slam. Smogon Crown Prix has a nice ring to it and the "Crown Prize" fits in well enough. Perhaps somebody has a better idea to fit in the Crown spot but out of my digging and following the kind of theme I wanted to name this tour after, Crown was just the best I could find. The "crown" part also takes inspirations from in real life tournaments, terms such as Triple Crown are used a lot, though with various meanings. I can see this being a popular option as its a little more "fun" than Summit but might stand out a little more than what we already have?

The Smogon Apex
Smogon Apex Cup/League/Bowl
Smogon Apex Prix?

While Apex is probably the least inspired and my least favorite of the bunch, It does have the "benefit" of being probably the least problematic of the bunch. Apex just works as a good word that represents what I wanted out of the name of this tournament and can fit within most of the naming schemes pretty well. While its not my top pick and doesn't really have any real world inspiration, its a pretty middle of the pack and safe option I find with a name that stands out but isn't too obnoxious about it.

Obviously, you can mix and match the "buzzwords" I included. For example, Smogon Crown Tournament doesn't sound awful. I feel this is a good starting point in the naming department and maybe other people can come up with some cool names that fit with either parts of my names or just my naming theme. Most importantly, I feel these names in particular hold up longer than naming the tournament Fairy Cup, which was a issue I had in my previous post.

 

[Finchinator]

Regarding format:

To me, it feels like the community, especially with Slam going on and Classic around the corner, is both tired of having so many overlapping qualifying tours (that feed into a larger playoff) and of having a marathon like overall duration of tournaments.

As such, it kind of feels appealing to pursue a single tournament structure (without feeder cups) such as SWISS. I’d love to hear more people’s thoughts on this. Baloor already had some strong points above in this thread, but I definitely want to hear from a larger sample of individuals.

Regarding names:

Fairy Cup has grown a little on me through discussions already, but I have a really open mind here. It would be cool if people could continue to provide what they see best as possible names (and maybe little explanations as to why so I can do their bidding internally).

So, if we accept the ideas that we 1) want to have ORAS (and future OUs) in an Individual and 2) we don't want to mangle existing official tournaments then creating a new one is by far the most coherent idea available. I'd reckon that, philosophically, it's fine to have some tiers "overrepresented" for some period of time, which SV and SS arguably would be while this tournament exists until they drop out of STour. That's not the end of the world, it's better for a tier to be oversaturated than under, IMO.

Also, just want to state that I fully agree with this when it comes to both not mangling Classic and finding the most practical way to include ORAS within the circuit while setting us up for the future properly.

 

[ABR]

Absolutely cannot
- touch classic
- add without removing something

So if ORAS is to be included somewhere then a 6-8 tour replacing one of the (fall?) stours makes the most sense for sure. Emphasis on the “if” here.

As for names, fairy cup Makes Sense but is kind of feminizing for a playerbase of several genders and identities. I would genuinely like to play this tour but I’m sitting out if my reward is to win fairy cup.

I don’t know exactly what name would be best yet.

 

[fade]

don't rename it from smogon tour

 

[chimp]

I will say that though my opinion matters about as much as a little baby ant's, I don't like the name Fairy Cup because I don't feel like it really adequately represents what the tournament is. When I first read the title of this thread I thought maybe it was like some mono-type tournament or a tournament where you had to bring a Fairy type or something along those lines. I didn't necessarily think "oh its a prestigious official tournament!" like the Smogon Classic or Smogon Premie League evokes. Then again I am excessively dumb. So that could be the issue.

I think baloor's names are the best tbqh but if you really wanna have the name be some connector between all the gens that would be included, what about how they are all '3D generations? Maybe something like, Smogon Dimensions? Smogon Dimensional Cup? Smogon Epic Euclidean Space Tournament? Idk. Just a suggestion. Dont bully me.

 

[Amaranth]

Name
I think you can play on the Classic / Modern parallel, especially if the plan is to add gens 9-10 with time, but "Smogon Modern" by itself probably isn't a good name (could see it growing on me but eh). Maybe it can be a Smogon Modern Melee or something along those lines.
Baloor's "Summit" and "Apex" suggestions are good, I'll throw in "Conference" as well, but these are all words that don't carry enough weight on their own and need some kind of thematic word alongside them imo.

I think exotic names like Fairy Cup or Serie F or whatever aren't good once you get over the novelty.

Format
Split cups are not it imo. Not a fan of them in the existing tournaments already due to how much it strains players and how they're pretty much forced to be single elimination, which is a super high variance format.
Single tournament, Bo3 gen6-7-8 swiss seems great to me. I'm ok with doing funky things with the top cut but for the early rounds swiss seems by far the best option in terms of lowering variance while maintaining great time efficiency, and I don't really see an alternative that's nearly as good to cut down a large number of entrants into an elite top cut.

 

[Drifting]

I remember when this idea was first brought up people were using the name "Smogon Vintage", I don’t know why that seems to have been forgotten. Calling it something like Smogon Apex or Summit would (to me) imply that it’s the most important tour on the site and in general I don’t think is a good fit thematically speaking. Fairy Cup and other gimmicky names are also a bit ridiculous, as Amaranth pointed out.

Smogon Vintage fits the naming convention of Smogon Classic, which this tour seems like it would be analogous to in theory, while also getting across the idea that this tour is about gens that are old, but not too old, and that these gens represent a sort of “golden age” like Baloor said, which fits the definition of vintage perfectly. Plus it just sounds really cool, but that’s subjective of course.

One potential problem could be it overlapping an acronym with Scarlet Violet but it’s not like anyone calls classic “SC” so I doubt it’d be an issue. I’m pretty sure this is the best name we’re gonna get.

 

[Reymedy]

While I know we probably will not touch the Smogon Classic format, I do want to point out that with 9 Gens, doing a GEN1-2-3; GEN4-5-6; GEN 7-8-9 split of the tournaments feels like a sensible option.
I also believe that a tournament with 5 generations always seemed a bit too heavy in my opinion, arguably, mastering 5 generations also makes the tournament way less accessible than any other.

Making our tournaments lighter has a lot of merits, I understand the feeling that the tournament schedule is too heavy. I'm of the opinion that it is not populated enough, while still being heavy. The heaviness mainly stemming from the way these tournaments tend to last over very long periods.

2 Classic formats, with 2x3 Cups, while keeping 2 ST but maybe reduce the number of qualifying weeks, that's the idea I'd explore.

Having two 5-Gens Classics has the merit of settling the issue for a long time, and if I remember right, it was our prefered trajectory back then, but it might be the opportunity to reshuffle the tournaments and shave off a bit of the weight they all have accumulated. The overlaping between ST and the GEN6-7-8 tournament also feels odd to me.

I'd flesh out the idea, but I don't think modifying the Classic will be popular enough so I'll leave it as a thought.

 

[Maxouille]

just replace stour tour by this

 

[Astoria]

just delete rby, gsc and ss and make a supertournament of adv, dpp, bw, oras, sm

 

[Finchinator]

let's keep this thread on topic; we are not using this thread for substantial circuit changes

 

[pulsar512b]

Personal thoughts (as a primarily SS OU player that plays a good bit of SM OU and is getting into ORAS OU):

Smogon Vintage sounds perfect everything else is fine but Smogon Vintage is perfect

I do strongly advise Swiss (I’d like every tour to be Swiss but oh well)

my one new suggestion is to consider instead of each set being a bo3 of ORAS/SM/SS, to have each round be just “this round is oras, next is SM, then SS” (or first 1/3 be oras,next 1/3 sm, next SS). this assumes the round number is a multiple of 3 which could be an issue.

The idea is to avoid people just coasting deep into the tour w not really knowing one of the three- w the other system you could (and I think some do in stour tour) just get some team from a friend and just plan to win the other 2. w this proposed system you have to put up a strong performance in all 3 tiers.

maybe this isn’t an effective way to handle this. also I think it’s unclear if this is even a “problem” and it might be worth discussing what the goals in that sort of respect are.

also love the idea of favoring 2-0s vs 2-1’s - maybe tiebreak?

tbh I’d be fine w any Swiss tournament.


I have some concerns about the dearth of live tours when fall st is removed, as they’re great and an easy way to rack up a lot of high quality games quickly/observe trends. This is slightly off topic but I would encourage past gen ous to perhaps have more live tours to alleviate this worry. This is definitely the bit of this post I’m the most unsure about/care the least about.

 

[Finchinator]

my one new suggestion is to consider instead of each set being a bo3 of ORAS/SM/SS, to have each round be just “this round is oras, next is SM, then SS”

It would be Bo3 sets across the three tiers for sure. Alternating rounds across the three tiers is likely not on the table.

 

[Corazan]

I’ll randomly post some of my opinions regarding this bc I’ve cared about doing smth about the 2nd Smogon Tour for some years now.

I think the biggest issue of the current tournament circuit right now is the amount of tournaments going on at the same time in the period of September, when you basically have :
The Classic playoffs, OLT playoffs, Smogon Tour qualifying phase and the SCL (and I’m not even mentioning the invitationals who are gaining more and more popularity). I believe this overload of tournament makes games unwatchable and most of all, makes tournaments less prestigious (which is imo one of the main issue of smogon right now).

It sounds obvious that when adding the SSD/SCL, something had to be done to compensate wether It’s a tournament being removed or whatever. At that time it wasn’t a big of a deal bc I believe it was during the peak years of smogon so there were no issues with a potential decrease of signups in tours nor a decrease of the hype surrounding tournaments. But now things changed.

One of the solution I was thinking about is just def get rid of the 2nd smogon tour and do not replace it with anything, it would allow players/spectators to breath more during September and makes the smogon tour as prestigious as it used to be. The only good point I find for this tournament is the fact that it’ll be new, so it should be pretty hyped esp for his debut and bring fresh air, which could be great considering smogon state rn, but yea.

When I read this discussion It reminds me of the SPL 14 format thread which was an absolute nightmare to choose, and why this ? Because I believe we’re trying to force things everytime. We’re not forced to include every generations in SPL, as we’re not forced to replace the 2nd Smogon Tour by another one just to have an ORAS representation. With generations accumuIating, I think choices have to be made at some point.

Again this leads to what I think is always the same problem, oldgens. And I don’t really know what should be done to def fix it but It’s going to be more and more problematic with years. Like I know we have a bunch of time left but what will happen when gen10 will come in ? If the Smogon Tour will be 10-9-8 and the « Fairy Cup » 9-8-7, tf will happen to ORAS again in a few years ?

With that said I see that the discussion is progressing and we’re going in a direction where this tournament is more likely to be included in the circuit, by assuming that I think :

Fairy cup is a horrible name and doesn’t make any sense considering other current tours names right now (OST, OLT, ST etc…).
It’s absolutely not fitting but I’m assuming it was just a name Finch gave it while waiting for an idea of a real name. I don’t know if any of the Baloor’s suggestion would be THE name but they are definitely more fitting than Fairy cup. Of course same goes for Serie F, unless you’re renaming every tours with football championships names lol.

For the format : Do not make any Cups/Open nor Swiss format. Those are represented in Classic/Slam/OLT and it happens that those tours will be at the same time as "Fairy cup". I think the best format would be an OST like, with regulars bo3 all over until the finals, It’s a classic and good to go format and it only have one representation in OST (which happen a bunch of time after).

For the period I said it earlier, I’m absolutely not a fan but I don’t know where else this tournament should be. I guess September will be a mess as always but so be it.

Those are my thoughts for the moment, I hope I made myself clear enough and didn't forget anything (if so I might edit). But overall I'm happy with anything as long as it makes things better, and for now I'm just unsure it 100% will.

 

[pulsar512b]

Again this leads to what I think is always the same problem, oldgens. And I don’t really know what should be done to def fix it but It’s going to be more and more problematic with years. Like I know we have a bunch of time left but what will happen when gen10 will come in ? If the Smogon Tour will be 10-9-8 and the « Fairy Cup » 9-8-7, tf will happen to ORAS again in a few years ?

my understanding of the proposal is that it will remain 8-7-6 into perpetuity (as classic does), thus no issue will be present until gen 13 (and then we just can make another 9-10-11 tour if you like at some point there). alternatively when gen 10 happens we can have 'smogon classic'1-5 and 'smogon modern' 6-10 (names can change).

For the format : Do not make any Cups/Open nor Swiss format. Those are represented in Classic/Slam/OLT and it happens that those tours will be at the same time as "Fairy cup". I think the best format would be an OST like, with regulars bo3 all over until the finals, It’s a classic and good to go format and it only have one representation in OST (which happen a bunch of time after).

i dont think this is at all reasonable - single elim in general is just a horrible format for a high-variance game like mons. it is simply unacceptable.

 

[false]

i am a big advocator for swiss and i am glad to see so many pushing for it to be included (the scenario in which a live tour is being replaced with swiss is a particularly epic gamer move ). of the options listed in the op; simultaneous cups create scheduling bloat and generally seem unnecessary, double elim is slow and disgusting, and single elim is a format that i think should always be avoided for the qualifying stages, especially in a game like pokemon where a sizeable portions of the game can be taken out of your hands if things go wrong. swiss deserves a tournament on smogon (olt is not proper swiss) and i think something new like this is the perfect grounds for it. being a 'first generation' tournament in this style i think its worth keeping in mind that tds will likely have to look to update some rulings & hosting guides for how swiss is handled in order to avoid issues, such as repeat matchups and tiebreaking, but i think this should be relatively easy to do.

a very quick note on tiebreaking;

also love the idea of favoring 2-0s vs 2-1’s - maybe tiebreak?

i think this was teal's idea, but please do not do this. tiebreaks for swiss should be done via strength of schedule. bo3 is a first to 2 wins format; losses contained within a successful bo3 should be completely irrelevant. the only way i would even consider this making sense is if you force 2-0/0-2 players to play the 3rd game in a series (which i also think is very dumb ftr, especially in a multi-gen tournament where a player might be particularly strong/weak in a certain generation).

as far as format specifics are concerned; what will denote a player being eliminated from swiss? will playoffs be top 16? will there be any advantage for higher seeded players? will there be byes in playoffs?

i personally would like for x-3 = eliminated; with a top 16 playoff bracket. i also think there should be some sort of advantage for higher seeded players, but i don't really enjoy players being able to choose their opponents, so i don't really know what advantage you could give them beside token 'irrelevant' stuff like being able to pick game order (which they would almost certainly have anyway). i don't love playoff byes but i think they are the closest thing to being a reasonable reward that is likely possible. i'd be interested to see the community's opinion on this one specifically because i'm not particularly sold either way myself.

naming-wise i don't have anything specific to bring to the table but i would like to bring up a few popular sporting events which we have yet to co-opt in case somebody more creative than me can come up with an idea from one of these:

​

rose bowl​

daytona/indianapolis 500​

march madness​

tour de france​

kentucky derby​

the masters​

i'm sure there are plenty of other events as well that are worth considering for a remix, those are just a few that i thought of. i really don't like smogon vintage; to me that sounds older than smogon classic, not to mention that gen 6, 7, and 8 aren't really that 'vintage' to begin with. i don't like fairy cup, i don't think it sounds 'important' enough if that sorta makes sense. we already have individual cups as a qualifying means for a bigger tournament, it just feels a bit lowkey to me.

 

[pulsar512b]

i am a big advocator for swiss and i am glad to see so many pushing for it to be included (the scenario in which a live tour is being replaced with swiss is a particularly epic gamer move ). of the options listed in the op; simultaneous cups create scheduling bloat and generally seem unnecessary, double elim is slow and disgusting, and single elim is a format that i think should always be avoided for the qualifying stages, especially in a game like pokemon where a sizeable portions of the game can be taken out of your hands if things go wrong. swiss deserves a tournament on smogon (olt is not proper swiss) and i think something new like this is the perfect grounds for it. being a 'first generation' tournament in this style i think its worth keeping in mind that tds will likely have to look to update some rulings & hosting guides for how swiss is handled in order to avoid issues, such as repeat matchups and tiebreaking, but i think this should be relatively easy to do.

a very quick note on tiebreaking;i think this was teal's idea, but please do not do this. tiebreaks for swiss should be done via strength of schedule. bo3 is a first to 2 wins format; losses contained within a successful bo3 should be completely irrelevant. the only way i would even consider this making sense is if you force 2-0/0-2 players to play the 3rd game in a series (which i also think is very dumb ftr, especially in a multi-gen tournament where a player might be particularly strong/weak in a certain generation).

as far as format specifics are concerned; what will denote a player being eliminated from swiss? will playoffs be top 16? will there be any advantage for higher seeded players? will there be byes in playoffs?

i personally would like for x-3 = eliminated; with a top 16 playoff bracket. i also think there should be some sort of advantage for higher seeded players, but i don't really enjoy players being able to choose their opponents, so i don't really know what advantage you could give them beside token 'irrelevant' stuff like being able to pick game order (which they would almost certainly have anyway). i don't love playoff byes but i think they are the closest thing to being a reasonable reward that is likely possible. i'd be interested to see the community's opinion on this one specifically because i'm not particularly sold either way myself.

you bring up a really important point about updating rulings + hosting guides for swiss, there have been swisses on the site before (OSDT i believeis the largest) to take lessons from, but there's definitely still a gap.

tiebreak thoughts are pretty fair yeah, hadnt thought about it

format specifics i would like all x-2's to be in (say there's 24 x-2's, have the top 8 get a bye and the rest play a play-in round). there's no worse feeling than barely missing out on playoffs in a way that's almost entirely out of your control.
as far as seeding goes i would like the higher seed to choose game order, and I really can't see any other reasonable advantage. however if there's a play-in round I think that'd go a long way into encouraging people to try to get higher seeds to skip the play-in.

 

[GaryTheGengar]

thankfully the community seems mostly against messing with classic, but to reiterate, please don't change the format; gen 6 is a good cutoff point between the 'modern' and 'classic' pokemon gens, introducing defog/fairy type/generational mechanics. it bears little similarity with anything from gen 1-4, so even something like 1-3, 4-6, 7-9 would have an odd man out.

The biggest problem many of us worry about in regards to tournament schedules is future-proofing them, and adding a more modern iteration of classic is one of, if not the best solution to the never ending release of new mons games. "fairy cup" can function as a 3 tier tourney until the next release, where it can either morph into some sort of bo3 tour, with players choosing which gens to play, or stay the same until gen 11 releases, allowing for two congruent 5 tier tours.

in terms of the oversaturation of tournaments, adding another to an already congested schedule could be a mistake. I support eliminating the second smogon tour. If I'm not mistaken its the only tournament to have a biannual schedule, which already adds to the saturation/devaluation of trophies to a degree, but also only gives the current champion 6 months to enjoy their time in the sun, so to speak. Replacing one SM-SS tour with another doesn't change the yearly representation those tiers see in officials, while losing some CG representation is arguably a positive, especially with the current world cup format.

Regarding format, I think this could be a good opportunity to explore new formats that could possibly be implemented in other, similar tours moving forward if "fairy cup" is successful. I'm in favor of the swiss format, it hasn't been given a real opportunity on smogon previously. worst case, the format can always be reworked moving forward. It isn't like the other existing formats are perfect either, as cups are a huge commitment from the player's end (arguably less rewarding the less generations that are featured as well), single elimination is rough for multigen tournaments, and double elim is just kind of a shitty format.


Name seems like the least important part for now, can easily hunker down and figure something out in the time before the next smogon tour would come around. In my mind fairy cup has been used as a placeholder name so far. It isn't terrible, but lacks gravity compared to other tournaments. Most "novelty" names (i.e. serie f) are going to share this same issue. I can see the value of drawing a parallel to classic naming wise, but I don't think modern is the right word. Not only does it have a similar lack of weight, but gen 6 isn't exactly modern at this point in time. I'll throw out Smogon Contemporary Cup in this vein, although some of the same concerns apply. It at least has some nice alliteration though. I think false's idea to co-opt some sports championships is solid.

 

[Martin]

Don't have a stake in this really, but I'd try to avoid names like "Modern" or "Contemporary" or whatever just on basis that they are inherently time limited. Unlike Classic, which is 100% fixed in time (the first five gens are never going to stop being the first five gens), the gens that qualify as "modern" or "contemporary" won't be "modern" or "contemporary" by the time gen 12 or 13 or whatever rolls around, and it's probably best to avoid rebranding a few years down the line as it's a bit disruptive. And while this would be solved if it was just something like "most recent 5" or whatever, that would also run counter to what the new tournament is trying to achieve to begin with: keeping gen 6 (and later 7 etc.) in the tournament circuit.

Vintage is also a sorta weird name that doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, lacks any real feeling of gravitas, and is also kinda redundant alongside Classic to begin with (especially considering that arguably only gens 1–3 actually released on vintage hardware at the time of writing; wouldn't call the DS or 3DS vintage just yet...). Time-centric names just seem like a dodgy idea in general and should be avoided where possible.

I think sticking to the names of existing generic tournament names from other sports/esports is probably a safe bet as they don't carry any other baggage with them and let us avoid clashing with particularly strictly-enforced trademarks like Olympics or Super Bowl. There may also be a name from directly within Pokemon that we could yoink, but stuff like the Smogon Frontier has already been done and I can't think of what else there is that wouldn't sound corny.

A few off the top of my head that I can think of:

• Smogon Grand Prix
• Smogon Derby
• Smogon Challengers Cup
• Smogon Bowl
• Some derivative of the Grand National

Probably better to avoid a name like World Championships because that'd probably be better suited to some sorta invitational that comes at the end of a full circuit than it would be to a random past gens tourney and also causes a bit of a branding clash with the official Pokemon World Championships. I considered listing Royal Rumble too 'cuz that name is cool as fuck, but given the format of that it's probably better reserved for some king-of-the-ring livetour.

My personal preference out of these options would be Grand Prix.

 

[Finchinator]

Regarding this, we are going to expedite the pace here in hopes of getting the tournament going later this year. The rough timeline looks roughly as follows:

• Using the next week to finalize a name*
• The following stretch we will make contact on logo/art and formalizing the format (SWISS, Cups, etc.)
• From there, we will set a schedule, I will search for co-hosts, and tie together any loose ends

The goal is for this to all be done within the next month, giving us flexibility if anything happens to take longer. I intend to be as transparent as I can in this thread about updates.

*We will be releasing a poll momentarily where people can fill out the forum poll with the order of names they prefer, so please fill that out when it goes up. More on that in the next post.

 

[Finchinator]

We have opened up a forum vote for you to rank some of the choices of possible names; we have limited it down to a large handful of names, so please follow the instructions in the form that state to rank everything in your order of favorite to least favorite. This has been open and discussed both here and internally for a long while now, so there will be no additions or revisions to the list. As such, you can still post discussing the format and other matters, but discussion of new names has come to a close now.

Edit: Form has been closed and removed as of Wednesday the 26th. Thank you to those who voted.