Format Discussion Monotype World Cup II Format Discussion

[Sabella]

I'll give my 2 cents to the discussion as well, as other mods have provided us with theirs.

I want a lineup that distinguishes World Cup from the other major team tours we offer, plain and simple, this way the tour can stand on its own and make an identity for itself. The previous iteration of World Cup did this by combining OMs and Old Gens together but considering the general community consensus around Mono OMs being bad, I do not think that is realistically feasible. So what lineups am I favoring now? The two I am favoring most fondly towards is Zarif's 3/1/1/1/1/1 (Old Gens + NatDex + Monothreat) or Ridley's 2/2/2/2 (Old Gens).

While I wish we could add metagames to major tours to give people more reason to play them, I do not see this happening with the OMs unless we get more people playing those formats and being interested in balancing them out more than they are now. The next best thing for me shifts to incentivizing the formats that are less represented but still do not have a soiled reputation: Old Gens, NatDex, and Monothreat. Old Gens are always what people gravitate to after SS, for good reason as they are similar formats but with different Pokemon and mechanic differences, NatDex is on the rise as we are no longer restricted with the Pokemon, item, or move we choose, and Monothreat is basically SS but with an agreement on using the same type. Both options I mentioned before that I like the sound of the most fulfill my requirement of incentivizing other formats that are not SS, to put it blunt, and they allow for more experimentation either by the number of formats represented or by having multiple people on the same team interested in working with each other for a similar goal. While I wish Monothreat could be in, seeing another BW is not a bad option either. Just please, no more SS than 3 at most...

Addressing the Monothreat not being competitive complaint I've seen mentioned in this thread:
I have talked to a couple of people who feel that Monothreat is not competitive so I can understand where they are coming from. Each time they say Monothreat is primarily building related and as a result, you only need to play at a mediocre level to win due to how much building plays a role in the format. Honestly, I think that is a really bad take because Monothreat is easily the most competitive format to build for objectively speaking as you know exactly what threats are to be expected and you both need to make the most out of the options available. Just because your team is solid does not mean you can account for everything! That is the main misconception I feel because there are many archetypes to employ in Monothreat and covering for each is not realistic a majority of the time. Building in Monothreat gives people the advantage because of the nature of the metagame and it is what makes it different from the other Monotype formats we play. People who prep better and have more experience should be rewarded and is what competition SHOULD be. The take that because building plays a larger role in the format ultimately makes it uncompetitive due to battling skills being less necessary is like saying "you shouldn't take your homework seriously, just do well on the test." While there are people like that in school, not everyone should be forced to play like that and Monothreat offers another way to play Mono. Just because you do not like it personally does not mean you should take away the opportunity from others who view it differently. It's an elitist view to say the format you prefer is more competitive and the aspect your format is worse than the other in, building in this case, makes the other uncompeitive is frankly absurd and should not be publicized at all.

I wanted to comment on the monothreat part and specifically how competitive it really is. I think whoever said its not competitive and relies soley on building honestly has little to zero understanding of the metagame or what goes into preparing for it. Id argue that out of all the monotype tiers it potentially is the most skill based. Firstly the fact that both players are using the same type takes a ton of variance out of play. Each player has a list of exactly what pokemon and moves that each of those pokemon get to consider and play around. If you do your hw as a builder you should be able to anticipate a few things your opponent will bring and also make sure you are aware of how to play around it. While the tier focuses heavily on having a good team if both you and your opponent have great teams it will very much rely on who plays better. At least thats my personal take. Leru and TonyFlygon had similar sentiments we spoke about in our teamchat. It was even one of the reason we picked it in the MWP semis tiebreak.

 

[Jahkem]

- 2 SS, 2 SM, 2 ORAS, 2 BW

This format looks the most interesting to me. Originally, I was onboard with excluding BW from MWCOP but after reading Zarif's comments, it changed my view on that generation of Monotype. BW has had a lot of hype over the years and it would feel weird to exclude it from one of our major tours. However, the 8 SS format would be nice for the players and builders. But I don't think the spectators would find as much enjoyment watching pure Current Gen games. However, I could be wrong and experimenting with all SS slots in a major tour could be an opportunity to gauge the community's reaction and interest for future tours.

Nonetheless, I will say I like the 2 of each gen more since it's slightly different and could potentially give some players a chance to be starters for Old Gens compared to other tours that usually only have 1 slot for certain Old Gens and multiple Old Gen players on a roster. While it does suck for some regions that do not have as many Old Gen experts/veterans, I don't think it's that bad. Some regions are bound to be better or worse compared to the others.

 

[Tony]

I'm not going to pretend to know the history of your formats, nor do I have a strong opinion about which specific format should be chosen for this tournament, but I do want to take a moment to make a case for Monothreat to be included. I played Monothreat in MWP this season and I've genuinely rarely enjoyed playing in a side tournament as much as this one. For those of you that know me a little, I play in a LOT of tournaments like MWP in all kinds of different tiers and formats, so that does actually hold a little bit of weight.

First of all, the emphasis on team building that people have outlined as a concern for Monothreat actually goes the other way, too. I came into MWP having never even heard of Monothreat and I built all of my teams throughout the tournament myself. There is no metagame knowledge you have to catch up on, there are no commonly used sets you have to get used to and you don't need any big team building support either. You get assigned a type, you look at what you think is good and you prepare for each metagame as well as you can as it comes. That's it. I've loved seeing how every Monothreat player approached each typing differently as well. I didn't run into mirror matchups at all throughout MWP and always found myself using different Pokemon and movesets than my opponents were using. Any region, no matter how many established Monotype players they can field, can get a competitive Monothreat slot going.

As for the competitiveness, I'd argue that Monothreat is particularly competitive as you can't run into a nightmare matchup you didn't foresee or weren't able to cover in the team builder. You know what's coming, so if you get caught out it's simply on you. My team lost the MWP final this weekend and we, bluntly put, got absolutely eviscerated by the Centiskorchers (congratulations btw, you guys were clearly the better team) in the regular Monotype slots after running into awful matchups game after game. We won our Monothreat game, however, and just like in semis my managers would've picked me to play Monothreat in the tie breaker if it needed to come to that, simply because it was more reliable and more in our team's control to win a game that way. How is that not competitive?

Finally, I want to touch on type overlap, because that's actually big when this tournament follows up MWP relatively soon. If Monothreat is selected for this tournament, then we shouldn't repeat types that we've seen in MWP, as teams realistically will just reuse teams from there. Types used in playoffs could be picked, since only two teams were preparing for those, if necessary. I talked to Ticken about this yesterday and even without reevaluating the currently blacklisted tiers, a concept I don't love, we should be able to cover at least the regular season reliably without overlap. I also think that if, to use Fighting as an example, Hawlucha invalidates using an entire typing simply because it's next to unstoppable, that we could consider banning the Pokemon instead of blacklisting the tier entirely. I know part of the ideology is following Monotype's official banlist in Monothreat, but if it's the difference between Monothreat being included or excluded, then surely it's worth thinking about. In any case, we could ensure types chosen in MWP aren't repeated here nonetheless.

 

[Nailec]

I'd like to bring up a point which is, besides the tiers played, a good way to differentiate the world cup from MPL or MWP, Ticken mentioned it in the OP but it hasn't been discussed yet : use pools of players instead of the usual round robin 'team vs team' weeks.

I think one of the reasons any kind of tour burnout happens is that 7 weeks of group stage + 2 weeks of play-offs, sometimes more with tiebreaks, is extremely long. Pools would allow a shorter group stage, like 4-5 weeks, even with more than 8 teams participating, while play-offs would remain unchanged.

Regarding the lineup I prefer the 2 SS, 2 SM, 2 ORAS, 2 BW Ridley suggested, which I think pairs nicely with a pools first stage, as it may allow each team to face every other team in each tier without necessarily having each player play every other team, making it half as much games to play and half the duration of the first stage of the tour. Such a dynamic format would really set the world cup apart from other major monotype team tours and allow more flexibility with the amount of teams participating while keeping it competitive as the overall amount of games played would still make up for the variance the game has.

 

[Sabella]

I also want to say that i like the idea of pools for monowcop as well. I think it helps to differentiate the identity of the tour. As for tiers this is my personal preference:

2 SS, 2 SM 2 ORAS, 1 BW 1 Monothreat

 

[Raahel]

In my opinion I would like to see this wcop in pool with the format of 4 SS, 2 SM, 1 ORAS, 1 BW I would say that it is the best format for the tournament, another format that could work would be 2 for each tier: 2 SS, 2 SM, 2 ORAS, 2 BW, although I don't think it's that good since I don't think everyone wants or has players to play the oldgens since the current gen is the What more people move would be the best option, what if it is not to add any format like NatDex Monotype, Monothreat etc since for that there is already a tour like MWP so I don't see why to do it.

 

[Havens]

Well, now that I've had a moment to settle from MWP, I'll just say quickly that 3 SS / 2 SM / 1 ORAS / 1 BW / 1 Threat or 4 SS / 2 SM / 1 ORAS / 1 BW is probably the format I think would be the most suitable. It follows the trend with other WCOP's having CG occupy the most slots, while not having a saturation of oldgen tiers (not to hate on 2/2/2/2 or Sab's 2/2/2/1/1, I just don't think it's feasible). Pools as a concept is something I can get behind, but threat being included in said pools sounds hectic. I don't care specifically whether or not Threat or Natdex is the last slot of the former slot selection, just please no Bo3.

 

[GotCookies]

2/2/2/2 is the best fuck SS shits plain as hell even oras is better

 

[Ticken]

Finally, I want to touch on type overlap, because that's actually big when this tournament follows up MWP relatively soon. If Monothreat is selected for this tournament, then we shouldn't repeat types that we've seen in MWP, as teams realistically will just reuse teams from there. Types used in playoffs could be picked, since only two teams were preparing for those, if necessary. I talked to Ticken about this yesterday and even without reevaluating the currently blacklisted tiers, a concept I don't love, we should be able to cover at least the regular season reliably without overlap. I also think that if, to use Fighting as an example, Hawlucha invalidates using an entire typing simply because it's next to unstoppable, that we could consider banning the Pokemon instead of blacklisting the tier entirely. I know part of the ideology is following Monotype's official banlist in Monothreat, but if it's the difference between Monothreat being included or excluded, then surely it's worth thinking about. In any case, we could ensure types chosen in MWP aren't repeated here nonetheless.

I would like to bump this mention and give my opinion on it because it is something worth discussing and I have heard some questions regarding the "since Monothreat types won't be repeated in Mono World Cup" claim from the team dump thread.

I am up to alter how Monothreat works in a team tour setting from the traditional way we do it but I do not want to change too much about it that it introduces some unintended factors and changes the dynamic of the format. Barring certain types for the sake of competitiveness is a necessary evil that we have been doing since I believe 2017 (?) but we never tried implementing bans for a type during a tour to allow them. ToxaNex and I tried Fighting w/o Hawlucha for a bit, testing different teams and ideas, and I believe it has potential so I'm open to that idea. While Galarian Zapdos exists, it is infinitely easier to check than Hawlucha.

On the contrary, I am skeptical about barring all types that were previously used in MWP because of the "as teams realistically will just reuse teams from there" argument. This was never an issue in the past because Monothreat has enough diversity in the format to allow for people to build different archetypes or build on new ideas and still deliver on consistent wins. For example, "I [TonyFlygon] didn't run into mirror matchups at all throughout MWP and always found myself using different Pokemon and movesets than my opponents were using" details how diverse building in Monothreat can be. Having the choice between using an old team or making a new only adds another layer to the prediction of what you may bring to the battle just like any other format. It gives flexibility to players who do well in Monothreat but may be forced to play on a busy week and being forced to build for an unexplored type could be a great hindrance with a lack of time. I built 3-4 different teams of varying archetypes for each type except for one in MWP for people to test against and I did not feel like any type can not be explored more so I struggle with the reusing of a team as a negative argument personally.

Another factor that should be considered here is the randomness of the types chosen. While it is true that we would have enough types to fill the regular season with types not in MWP, is that the best way to go about it? This sounds like a solution to an problem that doesn't exist and would be a mix between what we do now and what we did in 2016 with a type schedule. Personally, I prefer the way it's done now where we give a a list of types, excluding the worst, and then it is up to the randomizer on Sunday to decide which type we build. If we limit it to only types that were not in MWP, it would be very easy to know which types will be in the tournament and I believe the randomness leads to favoring the more experienced, better builder and battler which is something we should opt for in a competitive setting. My take is instead of exclusively choosing which types will be in World Cup, we favor the unplayed types in the randomizer instead by listing them twice instead of once (i.e. !pr Steel, Water, Water). This still leaves it up to the randomizer, it is harder to take advantage of knowing the type that will be chosen for the tour (adds to the hype, needing to adapt, etc..), but also favors the types that were not used recently.

 

[Ticken]

I'll be closing this thread now as we have a good idea of what we want to do regarding the format spread and what the best plan of action is for Monothreat's types. Ty to all who contributed and here's to a great tour!