Implemented Keep RBY BO3

[16bit]

“Furthermore, we will not be upholding any form of gentleman's agreement or selective submission of games. Players may not retroactively determine whether or not a game is official. Attempts to circumvent this rule will result in the game in question being invalidated, with the players involved being infracted. Subsequent attempts will result in a tourban.”

I think this portion of the ruling is maybe the most absurd part. The precedent that’s been in the rules for years is that “players are allowed to make agreements about their game before it happens, as long as it doesn’t break the rules of the tier it’s currently happening in”. Gentlemen agreements have happened in practice before and been upheld, too, with the Ojama vs Roro no spikes ADV game being a notable example. The DPP community has a significant portion of people passionate enough about the game we play that they want to play more of it at the highest level. As a result, you create a ruling against that precedent that can infract and TOURBAN the RBY/DPP community if they don't abide by this widely unpopular ruling. Great way to flip the middle finger at the people who truly love playing this game.

 

[Brambane]

At the very least, if this decision is meant to stay, the TD team should provide substantial context or logs of the discussion preceding the vote. Considering this was a unanimous vote, there should be some pretty convincing arguments within the TD discussion why pursuing symmetry and uniformity over the established preferred ruleset of the playerbase and, as made readily apparent in this thread, goodwill with the larger tournament community was ideal. It would certainly offer insight into the situation and create a better dialogue between the decision makers and parties affected. The context of this vote is critical to everyone who participates in these team tournaments, as this decision is indicative that when it comes to making these highly impactful decisions, your tier's playerbase or community may simply not be reasonably consulted, if even acknowledged.

 

[avarice]

“Furthermore, we will not be upholding any form of gentleman's agreement or selective submission of games. Players may not retroactively determine whether or not a game is official. Attempts to circumvent this rule will result in the game in question being invalidated, with the players involved being infracted. Subsequent attempts will result in a tourban.”

I think this portion of the ruling is maybe the most absurd part. The precedent that’s been in the rules for years is that “players are allowed to make agreements about their game before it happens, as long as it doesn’t break the rules of the tier it’s currently happening in”. Gentlemen agreements have happened in practice before and been upheld, too, with the Ojama vs Roro no spikes ADV game being a notable example.

Ngl don’t see how the example given is relevant with that just being a singular game, a person can watch that ojama roro game and not “know” an agreement was had. is there anything that actually correlates to the selective submission? with the current rby situation there are decent odds eventually someone will have a close series (this is a team tour) and want their g1 W to count or something after losing the others.

But yeah rby getting grandfather treatment for bo3 on its own seems good enough with the community backing as funny as this spawning from the dpp thread is

 

[Bughouse]

Bo3 in SPL is so bad that it's only worked for RBY during the last 9 editions (not to mention for VGC before that)

unless a RBYer was around ~a decade ago or more, it’s possible they’ve never played a high level tournament that was being done Bo1. Why? Because Bo3. IS. THE. FORMAT. THEY’VE. CHOSEN. FOR. YEARS.

I genuinely cannot fathom the mental gymnastics the current TD team must have made to reach this decision of a 9-0(?!) unanimous vote for this nonsense.

turning to the second point not being discussed enough, the currently existing rule on gentlemen’s agreements, the rule is:
Player Agreements: Players are allowed to make agreements about their game before it happens, as long as it doesn't break the rules of the tier that the game is happening in, for example agreeing to "No Snorlax GSC OU" is acceptable, but agreeing to "Celebi allowed GSC OU" isn't. The players are not allowed to agree to play a different generation than what they were paired up in, nor a different game. It should also be noted that this is all entirely based on honor, Tournament Directors would not hand out a loss to a player that agreed not to bring Snorlax and then brought it.

This rule has existed in its current form for a long time, is imo pretty eminently reasonable, and rarely comes into play anyway. There is no reason to entirely remove it, or at very least no reason laid out in justification by the TD team. If this was an effort to prevent DPPers from Bo3ing, there were much more tailored ways to do that rather than by removing the rule altogether. Or you know… just let those who want to play more Pokémon play more Pokémon. The horror.

 

[Colteor]

I'd just like to say that there's some serious problem with the TD team if a unanimous decision was met with this much outcry this quickly. I'd like to see both parts of the decision reversed and TD applications opened again, given that the team is clearly wildly out of touch with what players actually want and needs help.

 

[phoopes]

I haven’t really been on Discord today or yesterday to get the real-time RBY Community pulse on this issue but uh, it’s kind of obvious. Going to keep this short for fear of beating a dead horse. As a devout RBYer I will always fight for what’s best for the old gens though and this is something that needs to be changed.

Had the RBY Community known that this was even on the table, we would’ve spoken up beforehand instead of getting super angry about it now. No one really was asking for a change so to get it out of left field in a thread that was about DPP is kind of baffling. While I won’t say no one wants this (as evidenced by Hip, ABR, etc) the vast, vast majority of RBYers want BO3. This is the standard and this is what works. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. I’m not an ancient historian so I don’t know exactly how we got there (if someone could enlighten us that’d be great) but that long-standing decision made years ago was the right one for sure. To reverse course now is absolutely not the play.

Only other thing I’ll add is that if you’re upset about this decision that’s fine, but the amount of people being outright mean to the TDs is whack. People make mistakes, and this one is probably going to be reversed based off the feedback given if I had to guess. Let’s be nicer in our discussions

 

[Chou Toshio]

Bo3 everywhere because I love watching SPL replays. Thank you

 

[Sabelette]

This is a decision so monumentally megalomaniacal, arrogant and stupid it calls into question the capability and integrity of every member of the TD team. It is Aldaron-esque in the way it doubles and triples down on spitting in the face of the community it is ostensibly supposed to serve. This does not deserve appreciation and a pat reconciliatory compromise returning us to the status quo and stomping out any attempts at progress, it deserves contempt and thorough reconsideration of what the TD team's role is, or the qualifications of the current team; either way, unanimously preferring symmetry of ruleset (what the fuck????????????) over the preferences of the playerbase is so laughable, so shameful, it almost defies words.

TDs will for sure push to go back to the status quo to try to save face and honestly fuck that, this is such an out of touch decision that I want to see a complete overhaul and some resignations while we're at it. After all, they unanimously made this decision, and the community seems to near unanimously agree that it's one of the worst decisions of all time. The TD team has shown its contempt for the playerbase of RBY and DPP and this SPL should be boycotted till we get some real change and not just them backing off because of the reaction, otherwise they will simply do this again and again.

 

[1LDK]

I think the way to fix this is just revert everything on Christmas morning, put a cute letter saying "we fucked up, sorry" and open the thread back

 

[Mimikyu Stardust]

Smogon is a community made and run system, So every decision made by the higher ups be it Council or TD should always go through the community first before coming to a consensus. Something similar happened in current gen SV OU where during Pokemon Home meta, Volcarona was banned within just a week or so despite being fine in Pre-Home meta after only having a few Council members writing about why it might be too powerful in the metagame thread, a few people complaining about it in the threads and no suspect test. The reasoning for the ban was for WCOP incase volcarona was too powerful for OU. This ban happened just right after the ban of obviously broken pokemon like magearna and chien pao so it wasn't even given a chance to play in a balanced metagame. There was no consensus from the larger OU community if volcarona is or is not broken, or a dedicated discussion for its power in OU and was met with heavy criticism by a lot of players, saying if the council is interfering too much and ignores community feedback from survey. of course eventually they unbanned it at the start of DLC 2. This sparked discussion on how the council should move forward and how they could prevent the same mistake from happening again.

This rings the same to me where a decision is made by the higher up before consulting the larger community about it. The original thread was about DPP becoming BO3, and while there was a few post saying RBY should go to BO1, the discussion wasn't about RBY, the only correlation was RBY had BO3 aswell. Taking a decision where something big could be changed based on a conversation that wasn't dedicated on it is a terrible idea and should never be done. This should always be discussed with the actual community that cares about it, if the community decided that BO3 is the better format, thats what you use, if the community decided that BO1 is actually the better format, thats what you use.

 

[Eledyr]

This situation shows a very clear misunderstanding of what the community wants among the TD team. I suggest the TD team to revert this decision as soon as possible, as it is going to hurt the community, the quality of Smogon's highest levels of plays, and the interest for tournaments as a whole if it stays in place.

 

[Sabelette]

Just as a reminder the DPP BO3 thread went up March 1 and the TDs waited till December 22 to answer, conveniently a couple days before SPL signups go up. Weird how that took 9 whole months and was decided just moments before signups but after managers signed up...

 

[Agammemnon]

Back in 2006 or whatever year around that time period, if anyone told us that Reyscarface would be the voice of reason and wisdom, we would have laughed. This is by no means a derogatory post towards rey, as we had "national grudges" against each other - in a healthy, competitive way, at least in my opinion.
Now the year is 2023, almost 2024, and Rey has posted one of the most sensical posts on this thread. Rey and I - like a lot of people here, that is not a point to the argument by any means - have spent many, MANY years overseeing passively or actively the decision path Smogon has taken. Some were good, some were bad, some were mid. The point is that, like any organized system, decisions are made and some are better than the others.

But never. NEVER. Have I seen any such bullshit as the one discussed in this thread.
Since "a long time", rby2k10 has been the competitive authority on RBY competitive games, while the Smogon/Showdown symbiosis has been the facilitator. Don't get me wrong: without rby2k10, the RBY metagame would not have advanced as much as it has until today. No one in their right mind can deny that.
So you would think that the most popular competitive online platform would not SUBMIT - that sounds negative - but rather comply with the community-approved ruleset for this tier, right? Nope. It decided that a few people who apparently are completely out of touch with the competitive community would be the one settings the rules for it. What the fuck, Smogon? You guys used to be the cool guys after Serebii and Battlenet/Shoddy fell down; you were the new cool kids in town. Everyone liked you and respected you because you rose from the ashes of the fallen and applied people-approved rulings. But now we end up with a few out-of-touch people who end up deciding rules for everyone else???
Do TDs even play the tiers they set the rules for?
I do not wish to sound too incisive/adamant in this post, but this is really crazy: for many years, the RBY community has advocated for a Bo3 and even Bo5 ruleset under some conditions, because of the tier's natural conditions. And now we have some unrelated higher-ups deciding the tier format for us despite a complete and utter community outcry?

Please:
1. Do not shoot the messenger
2. Even if you do, LISTEN TO THE PEOPLE, NOT TO YOUR EGO AND WILL OF POWER - LET US HAVE WHAT WE WANT SO RBY CAN THRIVE AS A COMPETITIVE TIER.

 

[Tobes]

I was going to stay out of this topic because I'm washed, disconnected from the general pulse of both Smogon and RBY, concerned about beating a dead horse, etc. Setting aside that Bo1 will further homogenize an already narrow tier, I, like others, find the methodology of the TD team for this decision even more concerning than the actual content of the ruling. If this was a decision made brashly and impulsively by a new TD member, it would be easier to sweep it under the rug, but the fact that the decision (with no transparency whatsoever) was unanimously agreed upon and then immediately implemented without community consultation calls into question the competency of the entire TD team and speaks of a rot that, as far as I can recall, has broadly have been agreed to have been festering for some time now. Ultimately, the TDs serve at the pleasure of the competitors. Indeed, the TDs should be former competitors themselves in order to best service competition, which is the raison d'etre of the site, even if that occasionally gets lost in all the bureaucracy--or at the very least, if the TDs are not competent battlers, they should be exceptional interlocutors whose judgments can be proven sound through strength of reasoning. This is not to undermine that tournament direction is a difficult and thankless job. Excellent TDs from the past do not receive nearly the recognition they deserve for their efforts, especially when their competency is a crucial unsung element to propping up the entire competitive environment. Unraveling ghosting scandals, creating solid precedent in real-time, and responding to shifts in popular demand are all vital functions that the TD teams in times past have successfully navigated, even if we gave them all shit for it at the time. This verdict, however, is no such case, and the respect that a proper TD team should be afforded is not due in this moment. Ultimately, the TDs are volunteers, but ultimately, their role is meaningless without a community to appoint them, and appreciation cannot be expected from that community when their interests are being controverted.

Given that we now have an entire playerbase in open revolt, their tier in question is now competitively compromised for one of our most prestigious tours, as the strongest of its competitors have vocally declared their intent to boycott over this ruling. And this was not at all unpredictable. The optics of a major policy change two days before sign-ups are absurd. The optics of changing a tier's fundamental ruleset without playerbase consultation are absurd. That these occurred in tandem speaks to either incompetence or gross negligence, such that I think it is completely in reason for the playerbase to demand not only a reversion of this ruling but also the resignation of the responsible Tournament Directors and an internal policy reform.

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

Figured I'd chip in my two cents despite actively avoiding the tournaments community for the past several years; keep in mind that I don't have a horse in this race and this decision doesn't affect me personally in any way!

As someone with experience being part of a leading body that makes decisions entire communities hate near-unanimously and then reverting them by myself, this situation is comedically similar to something that happened recently in my corner of Smogon. However, unlike the situation I linked, there don't even seem to be ANY defenders at all for making RBY best of one, and the TD team also haven't said or done anything themselves in this thread to defend it either or give any transparency on their decision making! If that isn't a red flag, I don't know what is. Reverting this decision should be a no-brainer at this point.

Coincidentally, Random Battles Team Tour has proudly hosted RBY rands best of three as a main slot for several years now and we happen to be starting around the same timeframe as SPL...

 

[Iguana]

I wanted to lend my voice to the ever-growing chorus of those expressing their discontent, disappointment, and shock with the TDs' decision. Although I am not an active RBYer, to so egregiously spit in the community's face and reject years of success running Bo3 slots (per RBYers' continued, overwhelming desire), without consulting them or allowing for a time to address this possibility, is shameful. I'd like to remind everyone that this decision originated from a discussion regarding implementing Bo3 slots in SPL for DPP; instead of recognizing what many DPPers wanted, the TDs unanimously decided to disregard another old Gen community's desires.

I hope to come from this debacle is not only a complete reversal of this decision but also a thorough discussion about the role TDs have on this site. Abundantly clear is that, at least in this decision, they are not serving the tournaments community interests.

 

[teal6]

I think we can all agree that this issue has been contentious, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't look for solutions. If some players want BO3 and some players want BO1, why don't we split the difference and go with BO2 for this SPL?

 

[Tbolt]

I do agree that changing the structure of a tour without consulting the playerbase is not exactly the wisest decision. However, I have a compelling argument that surely will bring some consideration:

ahem

Please please please please please please PLEASE please please please please please please please please please please PLEASE PLEASE please please please don't change a tour at the last moment without the consideration of the playerbase. I'm not an RBY player but if this happened in BW or BDSP I'd be rightfully livid that my tour would have changed at the last moment without my (or really anyone else except for the TD) input.

i dont even play or like rby but this is monumentally cringe tbh

my take exactly

tldr please please please please please please please.

 

[Colteor]

Keeping this short because I don't like double posting, why have none of the TDs even answered this thread yet??? Player signups are today and the tour starts on the 6th, time is running out. Given that it was a unanimous decision you'd think at least one TD would have some strong reason (not LMAO BOP DASH SYMMETRY) for making this wildly unpopular change, but apparently they don't have shit cause they aren't saying anything. There really should be a response today and that response better be "Sorry we fucked up, decision is reversed and we'll talk about it like we do every other change on the entire site after spl"

daily reminder that we are a community full of ppl who play a made up format of pokemon for fun.

 

[Gefährlicher Random]

What thread do you want access for?
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/keep-rby-bo3.3733040/page-2#post-9904209

Please submit the post you intend to make.
Hey there. Honestly, there isnt much i want or can add to this discussion, because almost everything has been said. My stance here is pretty similar to what Troller already said and i can get behind the arguments why Bo1 came up and needs to be thought about. At the same time i obviously share the disappointment most people have (also cause it directly involves me since i wouldve most likely been picked i guess and really looked forward to playing).
A major part of the enjoyment i have with RBY is that its always Bo3 (or even Bo5), i just think it fits this tier like a glove since you can basically build 3 teams in 1 minute and from my point of view its more about the actual gameplay than it is about prep (there is a reason why at some point people decided to make it Bo3)
So yeah tldr not much to add to this discussion, just a selfish request to make it Bo3 again since i wouldnt sign up if its only Bo1.

 

[Gimmicky]

Honestly, if I was in a position to join a tournament that was clearly trying to fuck over a massively popular tier, I'd boycott it even if I don't play that exact tier and hope that my peers would as well. It's blatantly obvious that if we don't get a response today, we will not get a response at all. Extremely disrespectful to both the tier and the playerbase, and if this change isn't met with a fierce, quantifiable outcry beyond the scope of a single thread, it sets an extremely alarming precedent for what a Tournament Director is allowed to do to the scene of a tier they don't even play.

Echoing the sentiments of users who are much more qualified than me with much deeper tournament histories, but as a Tournament Director, you're a volunteer who serves the Smogon community, not the other way around. While I can respect the hard work and passion that clearly goes into a position like this, what I can not respect is making such a wildly unpopular change then refusing any accountability and ignoring any criticism. I'm hoping we get this decision reversed, as it truly is a disgusting one.

 

[phoopes]

Hi everyone.

I was told the TDs will be posting a response in a few hours about an hour ago. Please be a little more patient until that happens.

In the meantime, please be respectful, rational, and non-inflammatory if you’re going to discuss this issue on the forums, on Discord, on YouTube, or wherever else. I’m not going to lock the thread but I ask that you take a second to think before you post. I understand many disagree with the decision and some are upset by it, but that doesn’t mean we have to harass people over it.

Thanks all, I hope you’re having a happy and healthy holiday season.

 

[Merritt]

It's abundantly clear that we did not adequately communicate our decision-making process. This post is an attempt to rectify that mistake and clarify how we came to the decision we made.

Apart from RBY, every slot across all trophy team tours has always been Bo1. D4 Repertoire's post in the original thread already covers much of the reasoning why we believe Bo1 is the optimal format for team tours. Obviously, there is slightly more variance in any individual match in a Bo3 vs a Bo1, but in the team's opinion, the drawbacks clearly outweigh the benefits. The primary factor in our consideration was the workload increase across the team that comes with more Bo3 slots, which will inevitably exclude some players who can't commit the increased time and cause fatigue in both the players and supporters of each slot over the course of a tour. Additionally, at the end of the day, these are team tours and each week's result is determined by a team-wide Bo8/10/12 series. We don't think these drawbacks are offset by team reusability either, as that inherently diminishes the creativity on display each week.

We also believe that playerbase votes on Bo1 vs Bo3 are flawed in practice, which is why we denied this proposal in the original thread. A vote before auction absolutely does not guarantee it'd match with the preferences of the players that actually end up playing the tier over the course of the season. A vote after the auction, with each team's starter submitting their preference, comes with its own issues. First, the players signing up have no idea if they'll be playing Bo1 or Bo3, and since they have to be prepared for Bo3, this ends up being exclusionary to those dissuaded by the format for the reasons mentioned above. In addition, it means managers will be forced to draft without full knowledge of what exactly they are drafting for and simply have to pray that the player they buy ends up having the same preference as the majority to avoid negative impact.

With the above 2 conclusions, we were convinced that team tours should generally be Bo1 and that playerbase votes are not a practical solution to determine the match format within a tour. This led us to consider the status of the only outlier in trophy team tours: RBY Bo3. RBY Bo3 has been the status quo since SPL 6, where it was created because the TDs, 9 years ago, believed RBY was too luck-based (relevant screenshots: one|two) to be Bo1 and also didn't require prep due to the mechanics of the generation. Both of these things have proven to be untrue over the years, as any RBY player would argue that the tier is indeed competitive, and while the nature of prep may be different from other tiers, it is not minimal. Given the flawed reasoning for the original decision and similar sentiments echoed by players with significant RBY accomplishments in the thread, we believe it's right to reverse that legacy decision. Bo1 treats RBY as an equal to every other tier in trophy tournaments and keeps our tours completely consistent and standardized as they should have been all along.

We understand that this timing is far from ideal; however, we felt it better to resolve this before the upcoming SPL instead of having another year of inaction on this thread only to come to the same conclusions outlined above. We apologize for the initial miscommunication on our end, but hope you can understand our perspective a bit better after this post.

This was changed.

 

[MeepBard]

We understand that this timing is far from ideal; however, we felt it better to resolve this before the upcoming SPL instead of having another year of inaction on this thread only to come to the same conclusions outlined above. We apologize for the initial miscommunication on our end, but hope you can understand our perspective a bit better after this post.

the playerbase understands your perspective just fine, do you understand theirs? because this post reads as not knowing what the past page of vitriol was directed at. please reconsider this decision

 

[Sabelette]

Nobody failed to understand the poor reasoning that led to this decision, you all simply failed to understand what players wanted. Congrats on retiring a bunch of the best RBYers and moving RBY ever closer to getting the axe, I hope you’re proud of this inane decision.

Edit: I’m actually fucking gutted by how much this is going to fuck up RBY, please boycott this SPL regardless of what tier you play.