Tournament MWP VI Format Discussion Thread

[Rio Vidal]

It's beginning to look a lot like MWP season... You know what that means!

For a refresher, here's what MWP V looked like in terms of slots last year:

• SV Monotype
• SV Monotype
• SV Monotype
• SV Monotype
• CAP Monotype
• LC Monotype
• National Dex Monotype
• Monothreat

We will not be entertaining a 6-slot format for MWP VI, but we'd like to bring up the following topics for consideration:

1. The format we are most leaning to is 2 SV / 1 SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / 1 BW / 1 NDM last slot is up for debate between another SV slot, SV Bo3, or threat. This is because we now have MOMPL now, so we would like to focus more on old gens while still not mirroring the MPL format entirely.
2. We are discussing a change to budget and manager prices, these are the only options we are entertaining. The budget will be set to 100k, there are three options for manager prices 17.5k/40k, 15k/40k, and 15k/35k. The first price is for one manager buy the second slash is for both managers.
3. Retains will not be in this season due to a large shift in the format.
4. This will be an auction, we are not entertaining any suggestions for a snake draft.

Manager signups will go up Sunday November 17th, meaning this thread will be open for at most a week. If you feel any which way about any of the aforementioned topics, we'd love to hear your opinion and why you feel that way. Please don't shitpost or drop one-liners; if you aren't giving an explanation, it's going to be difficult to use an unsubstantiated opinion to sway a decision in one direction or another. Saying "x" is bad without backing up your opinion means nothing in the long run.

This thread should only be used to discuss the format for MWP V. We do reserve the right to infract and delete unhelpful posts. Once a final decision has been made, this thread will be locked and format will not change.

 

[Attribute]

my proposed format:
SV:
SV:
SV:
SV:
SS:
SM:
NatDex:
Monothreat:

explanation:
think we can all agree 2 sv is too little. 4 is a good number for this tour, as it helps the community grow, and it is a lot easier for a newer player to "break out" in mono tours in current gen compared to an oldgen/om. our recent edition of mono wcop cut out oras and bw so... surely just having the 3 most recent gens is acceptable, right? as for the threat slot, 5 sv is too much so threat is just the natural fit. yall probably don't give a fuck about identity (and well shit i probably don't as well, just thought i should mention it), but it really wouldn't feel like mwp without monothreat. make of that as you will, but you either have an mpl v2 by removing all the oms or you have an mwp that only includes the "normal" ones. and seeing as how natdex seems to be locked, you may as well add threat. if the only formats accepted are the ones in the op then shiiiiiit... 3 sv then! 2 sv is too little! my bad threat. lastly, don't do bo3, a slot shouldn't be more "glorified" than the others etc etc ive talked about this before
edit: the isza format is a fine alternative as well if you don't mind randomly skipping bw

 

[hex]

I agree with this format of MWP entirely. MOMPL takes up the mantle of hosting our OMs in a teamtour and its a bit disheartening that our old generations get recognition through only one team tour per year. There's cup, but no ones watching games until playoffs where they're only showcased in potentially one game per set if the set even goes on that long / if its chosen, and people are just reusing teams there anyway. There's pretty much no reason for new Monotype players to try and learn them because the payoff is pretty bad -- maybe getting into MPL just to play the same pool of people each time, with more incentive I think it would welcome people to innovate these tiers more and get into them at a deeper competitive level and help our old gens come alive a bit more.

SV/Threat > Bo3. I know before there were arguments about Bo3 being fine because the level of prep that goes into that slot speaks more to team chemistry rather than it being hard to prep and after managing a lot of tours this year and just in general, Bo3 sucks. Even if there is good team chemistry a lot of the time people will just buy a good pilot / tour player, slap them into Bo3 and feed them solid teams that are reused or already known. You're not seeing new stuff being built that often unless you're someone like Mushamu let's be honest. If the idea is to not mirror MPL while preserving the spirit of MWP then Threat should definitely be in over SV but I don't have a super strong opinion on that. It's not competitive its just tour players reusing the same shit and no one ever comments about game quality being good or bad really and if they do its just most people trolling saying its all bad so like, yeah Bo3 is a waste of time in Monotype ngl. If it was OLDGEN Bo3 I could be swayed since that is what it was in the MWP I managed in but its SV Bo3 so nobody will gaf about that

Manager prices should be 15k/35k. 17.5k and 40k is od we already saw Attribute go giga negative when he selfbought in MPL IX + he got carried so im sure he learned his lesson about pricefixing

I know there aren't any other manager pricing ideas being entertained so I'm just leaving this for the future, the ways PUPL and NDPL did selfbuy pricing was pretty decent tbh. The good players are expensive and the mid players / first time managers etc. aren't which is a fine enough balance. 17.5k/15k/40k just feels punishing to managers who aren't the best but still want to play. Obviously it pretty confidently owns any sort of pricefixing (kinda lol) but still worth revisiting in the future imo.

edit: LOCK TIERS ALL THE WAY THROUGH THE TOUR + PLAYOFFS PLEASE

 

[Isza]

SV
SV
SV
SS
SM
ORAS
NatDex
Monothreat

No opinion on manager prices.

If you want to include old gens you may as well include all the fairy gens. 2 SV is definitely too little as a CG but 4 definitely just hogs up a slot that another tier can occupy. I think 3 slots is definitely fair, playing quality won't be compromised either.

Threat is a community staple and should be included, with nat dex being the most popular mono OM of all time so that should be in too. Bo3 is fun until you have to prep 21 teams across 7 weeks, with most being reused from other slots. Don't put it in nobody actually likes it.

 

[Charmriah]

Hey everyone

I generally do not support old gens at all being mwp as the format last year was perfectly fine imo. I think the issue of putting old gens in mwp is that you have a problem of repeating the exact same team tour as MPL. In the original post outlined there was a focus on old gens but I would like to add there has been exactly 3 tours being team tours as of late with old gen representation. This time there are even less current gen slots then there were in MPL. Which I think hurts the tour because current gen simply has a bigger player base with an overwhelming amount of old gens, new players only familiar with current gen are fighting for 2 slots. Newer players should be absolutely prioritized in every way possible to keep a consistent flow of new and old alike. This format alienates newer players and generally favors those who’ve been around for a very long time. We just had MOMPL with an overwhelming amount of consistency in the formats to pick from.

The problem with old gens generally in monotype is that there aren’t as many players who have a substantial knowledge of the tiers that consistently play these tiers. They either gather around to play the 3 tours and generally do not help newer players learn formats. They are usually left to figure it out on their own and when put against the very few who have this general understanding and consistency they usually have a very difficult time pulling out wins. This often time leads to a giant hunt for old gen players for a team and with their being so little mangers are forced to cough up overwhelming amounts of their budget to put these players on their team. This is very counterproductive as overcentralizing old gens do not push current gen development nor are these older gen players are incentivized to help push current gen development as well since they can just consistently stay in the bubble of their respective generations. Normally staying in a bubble in a tier is fine as you see that throughout the entire site. The exception with monotype is that is incredibly difficult to get into old generations due to a lack of a players wanting to pull newer players into them.

There is an issue with including old gens alongside OMs in this tour because recalling back to the MPL discussion for national dex monotype. It was referred to as an OM that should be kept out of a tour with older generations. Now we have the issue of identity of tours. If it was something unfathomable to include national dex alongside older generations what does the precedent of putting it in MWP set for future tours? It feels inconsistent with how monotype has been in the past. I don’t think a custom avatar should change the identity of a tour. But that is what monotype is essentially what this format doing with MWP. I feel we should be consistent with previous precedents of how the tours have operated in the past and especially this cycle. MPL has old gens and MWP has current gen/oms. I personally do not want to alienate people of the previous mwp cycle from signing up.

Overall I do not support the format as is and would like to see 4 SV/ 4 OMs as it was last year. I think if you want to include old gens you can include 2 and have 2 oms but, no way should thereonly be 2 SV slots.

As far as budget goes, like uhhhhh fix price fixing with tier lock into playoffs woooo!

 

[ken]

let's do blind draft

 

[adjustments]

just to be clear i am in most support of Attribute's proposed format (edit: Isza's works too lol, oras over sv4 is cool too!!)

i've only played a handful of threat games on the sheet but i've prepped/played/built it elsewhere outside of that and i think its a pretty fun om overall. seeing it go would be sad cuz i have plenty of fun in the builder leading up to my match, and i honestly find it less nerve wracking to prep than a regular mono slot since you can actually get really really creative outside of what are regular mono norms. threat "mains" aren't really a thing anymore but i find it a breath of fresh air when i tend to be burning out of sv/oldgen mono. we had a whole discussion before mpl about the identity of mpl and how it's supposed to differentiate from mwp but now mwp is going to go back to an mpl-esque format? idk i want to hear what others who've played it recently/semi-recently think and also want to hear what the REAL argument against threat is. as for the other logistics idgaf but i wouldn't be opposed to hearing more details on a blind draft...

 

[Elvira]

SV

SV

SV

SS

SM

ORAS

NatDex

Monothreat





Good evening everyone, as far as MWP goes, considering MOMPL has taken quite a few of the OMs that we may have had last MWP, I consider that we should keep Natdex and Threat as the final. It should generally be solely focused on actual monotype metas through the generations in my opinion as we already underwent a tour solely designed around the idea of other metas as a whole and it flourished.







Secondly, maintaining a generational spread of Monotype metas can also be a refresher to older gen players who have flourished in the past. While also dabbling into potentially newer in the scene players who enjoy the tour scene. I love watching these type of matches as is it nostalgic and gives me, and potentially other players who watch the tour scene, craft for old gens that we host in the room tours in the future,

 

[Jahkem]

SV Monotype
SV Monotype
SV Monotype
SV Monotype
National Dex Monotype
National Dex Monotype
Monotype UU
Monothreat

The focus should mainly be on current gen Monotype. There is no strong motive to give old gens more rep when SV still has more development to be done. We have the multi gen cups for those that want to pick up which generations they want to play/learn for individual performances and to increase their draft value.

I’m opting for 2 NDM slots since it’s our biggest OM that we should showcase more. I originally had CAP Monotype there but as the OP said, we have MOMPL. Although, I don’t think 2 NDM slots is entirely out of place. Another slot we could consider is SPP8 since, outside of NDM, is our most popular OM. Although, the Random Battle aspect is off putting. Maybe the challenge code can be edited so it can be a team building SPP8? It’s something interesting to look into.

I still propose my above format.

 

[a fairy]

Hoping to manage, so will weigh in--

Losing Monothreat seems like it'd be so disappointing. Monothreat's such a fun format to watch and theorize for, I definitely don't see it in the same category as the OMs being handed to MOMPL. However, only 2 SV slots at all would be unfortunate, so perhaps some consideration to leaving Monothreat elsewhere is necessary. Bo3 is my personal, non-player preference, I think it brings out cool developments and planning. SV3 blankly if the player appetite isn't there for Bo3 is just as fine too.

I'd prefer to see 15k/35k, 40k for two managers on a 100k budget feels way too limiting, and 17.5k/40k seems too harsh for a single-manager buy IMO. But I also recognize the inherent biases in this argument coming from a non-buying manager hopeful.

 

[Whitespaniard]

Since it seems we are at a standstill still between repeating oms from mompl or old gen from multiple tours, I propose the following.

SV
SV
SV
SV
Natdex Mono
AAA
Stabmons
DPP

Four SV slots seems to be agreed upon by most and I agree as well. We are in gen 9 and haven’t had a basic SV tour in a while and will not have an open tour for a while after so it seems reasonable to give SV some playtime.

Natdex Mono is the staple OM of monotype and probably belongs in any tour there are multiple current gen slots. It gives a little variety while not changing the concept of monotype.

The next three are clearly the most divisive opinions but I think the best answer is to give the OMs and old gen that had yet to be played.

AAA is one OM that has not recently been played. Having an OM that gets no tour play time is inherently terrible for the OM and might as well not exist in my eyes. I also think AAA (and stabmons) are not inherently flawed nor a significant deviation from standard SV, while terastalizing is inherently flawed in mono and mono ubers feels completely unpolished.

Stabmons is similar to the argument for AAA, as it is an OM that has not seen tournament play for a while. It feels more functional than the other OMs that have not been played. Both AAA or Stabmons could easily be replaced by a different OM, these are just my suggestions.

DPP has been talked about a significant amount during my time in monotype. It seems to be debated if there is enough pokemon to have a functional meta. My personal opinion is that there is enough and that it would be new and exciting to watch. If the consensus is that it is not playable, then substituting it for for a different unplayed OM (or SPP8 if you’re feeling real crazy) is fine as well.

The main thing is that we have just seen quite a few games from mompl and the old gens tourney (as well as mpl and mfpl) for most OMs and old gens. I believe this is perfect time to show some love to the less explored OMs and completely unexplored DPP.

As a final note, I think monothreat is a terrible idea for MWP. Nothing specifically against it, it’s just something you absolutely have to prep for, and you can only prep for during the week it’s announced. This causes a lot of issues when Christmas and New Years comes around and we have two weeks of copy-pasted teams since no one could prep before it and no one wants to during.

 

[Scarfire]

I don't have some big new format to add to the discussion, personally in favour of the suggested one in OP, but with SV3 as final slot.

SV
SV
SV
NDM
SS
SM
Oras
BW

As people have already said, it is kind of disappointing how little our oldgen players get in terms of big tournaments. MPL and MFPL don't rly line up, as you can only play your main tier of choice in one of these, and beyond that there is CUP. As someone who has ventured into plenty of the other official tiers smogon has to offer, this dead oldgen situation has felt pretty exclusive to monotype. Even without being at top level you get plenty of tournament opportunities to play oldgens in the main tiers, and oldgen skill is just as valuable as being good at the constantly evolving new gen.

Arguments against oldgen rep also don't really make sense to me, I've seen the sentiment of "focusing on the current gen". I don't really understand how we can suggest bothering to build up our current gen in the same breath that we devalue our oldgens. Are we saying to put in time and effort into our current gen of mono, then let it all be for jack shit the moment the next one drops? Personally I think thats an absolute waste, and again, this suggestion of prioritizing OMs over oldgens is yet again a mono-specific thing.

Its important to note, as big as the mono OM community as a whole may be, it spreads far thinner when you delve into how many people play each OM. The entire OM community is not signing up to play UU or LC or CAP, its a much small batch for each meta. The only OM with a noticably large playerbase is maybe Threat, and if people have strong enough arguments for putting Threat in then I suppose it would have to replace SV3 if I'm continuing off my suggestion (2 SV is a really disgusting outcome though. Not very "focusing-on-the-current-gen") As far as strong enough arguments for Threat go, I'd hope it dives deeper than this tours "identity". I personally do not think identity matters at all, and considering this discussion seems to happen each time around, I doubt most people care for this made-up identity that somehow insists upon monothreat involvement. The identity argument also changes with the addition of a higher prize for MWP and the added existence of an entire OM centric tournament; the situation of needing OM rep has changed, and this tournament has changed too. Arguments for whether or not monothreat should be a part of this change is something we should be seeing, rather than just "it was there before".

As far as budget, in favour of 15/35k, seems fully reasonable under 100k budget.

 

[Seo.]

SV
SV
SV
SS
SM
ORAS
NatDex
Monothreat

No opinion on manager prices.

If you want to include old gens you may as well include all the fairy gens. 2 SV is definitely too little as a CG but 4 definitely just hogs up a slot that another tier can occupy. I think 3 slots is definitely fair, playing quality won't be compromised either.

Threat is a community staple and should be included, with nat dex being the most popular mono OM of all time so that should be in too. Bo3 is fun until you have to prep 21 teams across 7 weeks, with most being reused from other slots. Don't put it in nobody actually likes it.

THISSSS

Although I also think 2 SV and add BW would be fine too, but seems like a lot of people are advocating for more SV so 3 hits the spot imo

NatDex + Threat are staples, I would keep those 2 for sure

For manager pricing, I’m in favour of 15k/40k.

 

[TheWyvernKing]

Since it seems we are at a standstill still between repeating oms from mompl or old gen from multiple tours, I propose the following.

SV
SV
SV
SV
Natdex Mono
AAA
Stabmons
DPP

Four SV slots seems to be agreed upon by most and I agree as well. We are in gen 9 and haven’t had a basic SV tour in a while and will not have an open tour for a while after so it seems reasonable to give SV some playtime.

Natdex Mono is the staple OM of monotype and probably belongs in any tour there are multiple current gen slots. It gives a little variety while not changing the concept of monotype.

The next three are clearly the most divisive opinions but I think the best answer is to give the OMs and old gen that had yet to be played.

AAA is one OM that has not recently been played. Having an OM that gets no tour play time is inherently terrible for the OM and might as well not exist in my eyes. I also think AAA (and stabmons) are not inherently flawed nor a significant deviation from standard SV, while terastalizing is inherently flawed in mono and mono ubers feels completely unpolished.

Stabmons is similar to the argument for AAA, as it is an OM that has not seen tournament play for a while. It feels more functional than the other OMs that have not been played. Both AAA or Stabmons could easily be replaced by a different OM, these are just my suggestions.

DPP has been talked about a significant amount during my time in monotype. It seems to be debated if there is enough pokemon to have a functional meta. My personal opinion is that there is enough and that it would be new and exciting to watch. If the consensus is that it is not playable, then substituting it for for a different unplayed OM (or SPP8 if you’re feeling real crazy) is fine as well.

The main thing is that we have just seen quite a few games from mompl and the old gens tourney (as well as mpl and mfpl) for most OMs and old gens. I believe this is perfect time to show some love to the less explored OMs and completely unexplored DPP.

As a final note, I think monothreat is a terrible idea for MWP. Nothing specifically against it, it’s just something you absolutely have to prep for, and you can only prep for during the week it’s announced. This causes a lot of issues when Christmas and New Years comes around and we have two weeks of copy-pasted teams since no one could prep before it and no one wants to during.

I do like the idea of DPP tbh or at least trying it out. Something like this but with monothreat/natdex/stabmons or maybe replacing monothreat with whatever is kinda what I like for format.

 

[ken]

gm.

I have a few things I'd like to suggest, the first of which you can find in my original reply:

let's do blind draft

Blind draft gets a lot of flack for only being different from a typical draft and not really affecting the rest of the tour. However, it does (should) cause managers to prep a little bit more due to the way it functions, and it's more fun for spectators than a 3-hour bidding war that is typical somehow of only Monotype and SCL/SPL. If you're unaware how this works, you're too mono-pilled to be saved and have not been paying attention to the blind drafts occurring in other tiers, but a quick run down is this:

1. Team A nominates a player
2. All teams have the opportunity to bid simultaneously (in secret, "blindly") for said player - you get one bid per team - managers cannot see bids placed by opposing managers for the player, so they must put up the value they're willing to pay for a player up front, sometimes resulting in comedic ranges of what different managing pairs/managers would pay for someone
3. After a set amount of time, all bids are revealed, and the highest bid wins; if there's a tie, the quicker, tying high bid wins
4. A nomination defaults to 3k (so you must bid at least 3.5k to steal a nomination from the team who nominated a player)

You can skim through the inaugural Smogon Blind Draft, PUBD (RIP Scrappie), or UUBD at your leisure to see what it looks like in action, the latter being more recent and more reflective of what it'd look like should we consider it. I'd really like to hear your thoughts on whether or not you'd think this would be fun or not.

For the format, I prefer the below, and for those of you who can't read and will surely tag me somewhere asking, it's identical to Scarfire's:

• SV
• SV
• SV
• NDM
• SS
• SM
• Oras
• BW

I think with the tournament schedule we have now, and with officially incorporating OMs into their own team tournament that's ending sometime this week, we can and should focus more on older generations in more than just MPL (I'll leave Cup out of this since if there wasn't a money prize, their respective bracket sizes would be drastically lower). Mono OMs having their own recognition and team tournament has been, at least in my opinion, a major positive for our community, but they shouldn't by simple tradition of existing in MWP previously receive more attention in team tournaments than our actual official tiers, and old gens have, unfortunately, been mostly gathering dust outside of MPL for some time. This does bring me to my next point in that I'd love for there to be discussion on whether or not expanding to 10 slots in MWP would be worthwhile, those slots in the spoiler below:

potential 10-slot MWP

• SV
• SV
• SV
• SV
• Monothreat
• NDM
• SS
• SM
• Oras
• BW

I think that, given this is a Custom Avatar-awarding tournament, the interest is and would be there to more than easily fill slots and teams, though obviously the typical cynical "there isn't enough depth!" argument will rear its head. This isn't MPL; we can afford to have some pickups from MFPL & MOMPL on top of pick-your-favorite-MPL starters, and both MFPL & MOMPL were scheduled before MWP in order to demonstrate the capabilities of some newer faces or those interested in Monothreat & NDM.

We haven't had issues with signups for MPL in the past for this generation, having 352 signups for MPL in 2023 and 292 in 2024, while we had 193 signups for MWP in 2023 and 163 and 156 signups for MOMPL in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Obviously there's some overlap, but we don't lack the interest to fill 8 rosters when some other tiers field more starting slots with fewer signups. If any tour were the opportunity to give it a try before Gen 10, I'd say it's MWP. This would also, of course, mean bumping the budget up to 130k to accomodate the extra slots + 3rd sub that I'd personally be a fan of recommending as a minimum should we go down this path.

My next point is potentially a bit more contentious: if Monothreat is included, or we go with the 10 slots above, we should roll for the 7 types before Week 1, give the list to each team, and then randomly pull from the list throughout the regular season so that teams have more time to prepare. We all know our schedules can fluctuate from week to week, so, while it may be potentially more fun by getting teams to bond over building in a single week, it doesn't often play out as ideally as it sounds.

Lastly, speaking again for myself and not the rest of the forum mods, I don't think we need to include DPP. It sees little to no play or development other than the thread in our pastgens subforum, and while I ultimately enjoy memeing around from time to time, it's not at the level it needs to be for consideration in MWP. I also don't see us returning to 4 slots of OMs in MWP as long as MOMPL is spotlighting them, even if they don't all get included in that tournament annually. And finally, I support 15k/35k for manager pricing if we're sticking with flat rates and a starting roster of 8 slots.

 

[a fairy]

pro 10 slot - more players, more games, always better imo and reduces the impact of luck in individual sets, and a larger budget also means manager buying is more flexible and more folks get rostered and get experience/community involvement.
neutral-negative on blind draft - im not against it but i am worried that us being the third or fourth tier to take it up would result in a worse tour especially as folks are real used to the average type of stuff
in favor of a pre-list for monothreat - seems like a no brainer to me honestly

 

[Seo.]

gm.

I have a few things I'd like to suggest, the first of which you can find in my original reply:

Blind draft gets a lot of flack for only being different from a typical draft and not really affecting the rest of the tour. However, it does (should) cause managers to prep a little bit more due to the way it functions, and it's more fun for spectators than a 3-hour bidding war that is typical somehow of only Monotype and SCL/SPL. If you're unaware how this works, you're too mono-pilled to be saved and have not been paying attention to the blind drafts occurring in other tiers, but a quick run down is this:

1. Team A nominates a player
2. All teams have the opportunity to bid simultaneously (in secret, "blindly") for said player - you get one bid per team - managers cannot see bids placed by opposing managers for the player, so they must put up the value they're willing to pay for a player up front, sometimes resulting in comedic ranges of what different managing pairs/managers would pay for someone
3. After a set amount of time, all bids are revealed, and the highest bid wins; if there's a tie, the quicker, tying high bid wins
4. A nomination defaults to 3k (so you must bid at least 3.5k to steal a nomination from the team who nominated a player)

You can skim through the inaugural Smogon Blind Draft, PUBD (RIP Scrappie), or UUBD at your leisure to see what it looks like in action, the latter being more recent and more reflective of what it'd look like should we consider it. I'd really like to hear your thoughts on whether or not you'd think this would be fun or not.

For the format, I prefer the below, and for those of you who can't read and will surely tag me somewhere asking, it's identical to Scarfire's:

• SV
• SV
• SV
• NDM
• SS
• SM
• Oras
• BW

I think with the tournament schedule we have now, and with officially incorporating OMs into their own team tournament that's ending sometime this week, we can and should focus more on older generations in more than just MPL (I'll leave Cup out of this since if there wasn't a money prize, their respective bracket sizes would be drastically lower). Mono OMs having their own recognition and team tournament has been, at least in my opinion, a major positive for our community, but they shouldn't by simple tradition of existing in MWP previously receive more attention in team tournaments than our actual official tiers, and old gens have, unfortunately, been mostly gathering dust outside of MPL for some time. This does bring me to my next point in that I'd love for there to be discussion on whether or not expanding to 10 slots in MWP would be worthwhile, those slots in the spoiler below:

potential 10-slot MWP

• SV
• SV
• SV
• SV
• Monothreat
• NDM
• SS
• SM
• Oras
• BW

I think that, given this is a Custom Avatar-awarding tournament, the interest is and would be there to more than easily fill slots and teams, though obviously the typical cynical "there isn't enough depth!" argument will rear its head. This isn't MPL; we can afford to have some pickups from MFPL & MOMPL on top of pick-your-favorite-MPL starters, and both MFPL & MOMPL were scheduled before MWP in order to demonstrate the capabilities of some newer faces or those interested in Monothreat & NDM.

We haven't had issues with signups for MPL in the past for this generation, having 352 signups for MPL in 2023 and 292 in 2024, while we had 193 signups for MWP in 2023 and 163 and 156 signups for MOMPL in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Obviously there's some overlap, but we don't lack the interest to fill 8 rosters when some other tiers field more starting slots with fewer signups. If any tour were the opportunity to give it a try before Gen 10, I'd say it's MWP. This would also, of course, mean bumping the budget up to 130k to accomodate the extra slots + 3rd sub that I'd personally be a fan of recommending as a minimum should we go down this path.

My next point is potentially a bit more contentious: if Monothreat is included, or we go with the 10 slots above, we should roll for the 7 types before Week 1, give the list to each team, and then randomly pull from the list throughout the regular season so that teams have more time to prepare. We all know our schedules can fluctuate from week to week, so, while it may be potentially more fun by getting teams to bond over building in a single week, it doesn't often play out as ideally as it sounds.

Lastly, speaking again for myself and not the rest of the forum mods, I don't think we need to include DPP. It sees little to no play or development other than the thread in our pastgens subforum, and while I ultimately enjoy memeing around from time to time, it's not at the level it needs to be for consideration in MWP. I also don't see us returning to 4 slots of OMs in MWP as long as MOMPL is spotlighting them, even if they don't all get included in that tournament annually. And finally, I support 15k/35k for manager pricing if we're sticking with flat rates and a starting roster of 8 slots.

I am very down for a blind draft btw! It seems super interesting and a twist to what we are used to, I would love for mwp to be blind

 

[adjustments]

gm.

I have a few things I'd like to suggest, the first of which you can find in my original reply:

Blind draft gets a lot of flack for only being different from a typical draft and not really affecting the rest of the tour. However, it does (should) cause managers to prep a little bit more due to the way it functions, and it's more fun for spectators than a 3-hour bidding war that is typical somehow of only Monotype and SCL/SPL. If you're unaware how this works, you're too mono-pilled to be saved and have not been paying attention to the blind drafts occurring in other tiers, but a quick run down is this:

1. Team A nominates a player
2. All teams have the opportunity to bid simultaneously (in secret, "blindly") for said player - you get one bid per team - managers cannot see bids placed by opposing managers for the player, so they must put up the value they're willing to pay for a player up front, sometimes resulting in comedic ranges of what different managing pairs/managers would pay for someone
3. After a set amount of time, all bids are revealed, and the highest bid wins; if there's a tie, the quicker, tying high bid wins
4. A nomination defaults to 3k (so you must bid at least 3.5k to steal a nomination from the team who nominated a player)

You can skim through the inaugural Smogon Blind Draft, PUBD (RIP Scrappie), or UUBD at your leisure to see what it looks like in action, the latter being more recent and more reflective of what it'd look like should we consider it. I'd really like to hear your thoughts on whether or not you'd think this would be fun or not.

For the format, I prefer the below, and for those of you who can't read and will surely tag me somewhere asking, it's identical to Scarfire's:

• SV
• SV
• SV
• NDM
• SS
• SM
• Oras
• BW

I think with the tournament schedule we have now, and with officially incorporating OMs into their own team tournament that's ending sometime this week, we can and should focus more on older generations in more than just MPL (I'll leave Cup out of this since if there wasn't a money prize, their respective bracket sizes would be drastically lower). Mono OMs having their own recognition and team tournament has been, at least in my opinion, a major positive for our community, but they shouldn't by simple tradition of existing in MWP previously receive more attention in team tournaments than our actual official tiers, and old gens have, unfortunately, been mostly gathering dust outside of MPL for some time. This does bring me to my next point in that I'd love for there to be discussion on whether or not expanding to 10 slots in MWP would be worthwhile, those slots in the spoiler below:

potential 10-slot MWP

• SV
• SV
• SV
• SV
• Monothreat
• NDM
• SS
• SM
• Oras
• BW

I think that, given this is a Custom Avatar-awarding tournament, the interest is and would be there to more than easily fill slots and teams, though obviously the typical cynical "there isn't enough depth!" argument will rear its head. This isn't MPL; we can afford to have some pickups from MFPL & MOMPL on top of pick-your-favorite-MPL starters, and both MFPL & MOMPL were scheduled before MWP in order to demonstrate the capabilities of some newer faces or those interested in Monothreat & NDM.

We haven't had issues with signups for MPL in the past for this generation, having 352 signups for MPL in 2023 and 292 in 2024, while we had 193 signups for MWP in 2023 and 163 and 156 signups for MOMPL in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Obviously there's some overlap, but we don't lack the interest to fill 8 rosters when some other tiers field more starting slots with fewer signups. If any tour were the opportunity to give it a try before Gen 10, I'd say it's MWP. This would also, of course, mean bumping the budget up to 130k to accomodate the extra slots + 3rd sub that I'd personally be a fan of recommending as a minimum should we go down this path.

My next point is potentially a bit more contentious: if Monothreat is included, or we go with the 10 slots above, we should roll for the 7 types before Week 1, give the list to each team, and then randomly pull from the list throughout the regular season so that teams have more time to prepare. We all know our schedules can fluctuate from week to week, so, while it may be potentially more fun by getting teams to bond over building in a single week, it doesn't often play out as ideally as it sounds.

Lastly, speaking again for myself and not the rest of the forum mods, I don't think we need to include DPP. It sees little to no play or development other than the thread in our pastgens subforum, and while I ultimately enjoy memeing around from time to time, it's not at the level it needs to be for consideration in MWP. I also don't see us returning to 4 slots of OMs in MWP as long as MOMPL is spotlighting them, even if they don't all get included in that tournament annually. And finally, I support 15k/35k for manager pricing if we're sticking with flat rates and a starting roster of 8 slots.

oh if 10 slots is genuinely on the table then im so for it. i also think pre-listing the threat types in that format makes sense too, since it can be a lot for a manager to prep 10 slots including threat, so it alleviates a little bit of stress.

 

[crash]

I don’t think it will come to anyone’s surprise that I’m here to advocate for old gens being in this tour. It was okay in previous years to ditch old gens in MWP, since we had the option to play in BLT if we wanted, but without BLT theres not really a “serious” team tour where an old gen player can play. (Yeah I know, say what you will about BLT, but it always fun)

If you’re a fan of the game, you know the old gens games are always littered with HL matches and always pushing the boundaries of some new tech that might spark fear for the rest of the tournament. Old gens are the backbone of these team tours and I think we will miss out on a chance for a banger tournament excluding old gens.

3 SV, NDM, SS, SM, ORAS, BW

 

[Whitespaniard]

Lastly, speaking again for myself and not the rest of the forum mods, I don't think we need to include DPP. It sees little to no play or development other than the thread in our pastgens subforum, and while I ultimately enjoy memeing around from time to time, it's not at the level it needs to be for consideration in MWP. I also don't see us returning to 4 slots of OMs in MWP as long as MOMPL is spotlighting them, even if they don't all get included in that tournament annually.

I really don’t think DPP will ever be developed to that level until it’s in a tournament. It’s stuck in circular reasoning right now. DPP doesn’t belong in a tourney because it’s not developed. I won’t waste my time developing DPP because it’s not in a tournament. If people wanna play a 2d monotype tier, they already have BW. I agree that 4 OMs after MOMPL is probably overkill even if wasn’t played specifically in MOMPL, but how can you not say the same about old gens coming off from just as recent of a tour.

As a general note, it seems most want MWP to be MPL 2, but with natdex for a SV, which im actually all for. I thought MWP was supposed to be a unique team tour but the old gens clearly have the more balanced and established metas than the OMs, outside of natdex, so if that’s the goal I support this wholeheartedly.

 

[Jahkem]

SV Monotype
SV Monotype
SV Monotype
SV Monotype
Multigen Bo3
National Dex Monotype
Monotype UU
Monothreat

Let’s expand on why giving more attention to old gens isn’t the way while trying not to be logically inconsistent. Mainly inspired by Ethereal Sword to post here again because he had a point in the Monotype Discord server. I didn’t really explain much. I’ll explain my reasonings as to why we should not include as many old gen slots.

1. Number of games
The avenues available to play current gen are plentiful. Ladder, forum tours, room tours, asking for Bo3s, etc. This is an objective truth that you’ll always be able to play more games of current gen compared to old gens. It’s harder to get many games played in the old gens. Typically, the older the generation is, the less games you’ll be able to play. The most games you can usually get in old gens are room tours in the Monotype room. The next best thing is asking people to play games with you. This leads into the next my argument.

2. Players aren’t playing old gen games until a tournament starts
I’m speaking in general terms when I say players don’t want to play many games. I personally find this disappointing because when we, as a community, are all playing a good amount of games, we strengthen our skill and sharpen our team building and play making together. On the bright side, there are some players that still enjoy discussing the meta. When you have a good amount of players that are hungry for games in the offseason as well as during the season, there’s a great deal of discoveries that can happen. I played BW with my best friend ArVaDa- (aka Agrekan) for ~5 years. We originally started playing BW to help our dear friend crash and supply him some teams and give him more games to play. Even though Crashy was often busy and unavailable, ArVaDa- and I played dozens upon dozens of games a week. There were some on an off times but I’m sure we’ve totaled well over 7500 games against each other, countless hours of discussion, numerous of replays reviewed from previous tours in the 5 years we’ve been playing BW. This was possible with only 2 passionate players who enjoyed getting games in to learn the meta, discover different strategies and team comps, notice trends, and show what other mons or types had more variety than what was being showcased in tours. You don’t get that many games normally when players aren’t playing old gen until a tour happens.

3. Development of old gens
I don’t necessarily want to say that the old gens are “figured out” per se. I used to think this until I started playing BW. There were some discoveries that ArVaDa- and I found like the Air Balloon Toxicroak for Swampert on Water that completely walled it allowing you to setup, Red Card Nidoqueen to force out a Gyarados that’s set up and clicked Bounce, the SD Parasect Bug team (we were the most proud of this one), and other things that haven’t been showcased yet. We decided to give BW a rest since we are satisfied to see how much BW has changed and the variety is has now. I still think old gens have room for development, but not much more. Outside of banning/unbanning, the meta and type viability of old gens mostly established. Development of current gen is still ongoing through discussion and games being played. Old gens discussions aren’t happening as often outside of team discord servers during a tour. Even with these old gen discussions in the team serves, it’s mainly in preparation of your opponent. If I had come up with a comparison for this, think of teachers preparing their students for standardized tests and memorization instead of helping the students develop an understanding of the material and increase their potential to learn.

In conclusion, I don’t believe old gens interest will increase drastically by saturating tours with more old gens slots. You’ll appease the players that usually play old gens but it won’t bring many more players in the team tours. I believe individual tours would be better like the old gen cups. I’m include a multigen Bo3 in my suggested format to not completely shutout those that want an old gen slot.

EDIT: I want to outline by saying I’m not just talking about BW as the only old gen. My experience with BW applies to the other old gens as well when it comes to finding more games to play in gens 5-8.

 

[schwipper]

After i thought about it for some time, i have decided to just quickly voice my opinion on a few Topics. First off, i think Attributes suggestion is sort of the best of both worlds. You have Old Gen representation and some OM representation, which combined should reach the largest amount of the Playerbase.
My bigger point tho: i am heavily against Bo3 / Bo5 or what ever people suggest at this point. Bo3 is hype to watch to some level, it allows missplays in one of the games (or a terrible MU) without losing the series imidiatly. To me tho, a Bo3 requires alot of time to prep. It's not like a Bo3 in the monotype room. In mono room you go "bo3" and just load what ever you have ready or what you want to test. For Team tours, the Format requires a ton of prep work, with "what ifs" like expecting 3 types, what if they use flying first and win will they go flying again? or will it be the dragon team you prepped for? or Rain water? (just as random examples). So you prepare for so many situations, and at minimum you need 3 teams that you are confident in. This is made even worse if it would be Multigen Bo3, there are not even many players willing to prep 3 games for themselfs, now spread that across 3 gens where the playerbase wildly differs, you will have the worst slot to prep every single week. The games would be hype, no doubt, especially since most likely the "bigger names" would take this slot. But the prep and the potential time dip to me is a strain on people in a team tour. Especially if you think about the fact that a Bo3 slot requires alot of prep and then you only prepped 1 slot with the same (or more) effort than prepping 3 individual slots.

Manager Prices:
I think 15k/40k is fine. 15k if you buy one manager is usually reasonable and 40k since double buying should feel like a heavy investment, given you get ensured players that, atleast from your POV, are worth 15k+. In general tho manager prices are difficult to balance, Attribute 15k feels a lot different than Schwipper 15k. But since no good formular was ever created to make it somewhat reasonable, i would say 15k/40k is fine.

10 slot MWP:
As someone who wanted 10 slot MPL already, i fully support more players in MWP. Monotype has had huge sign ups in MOST tournaments (MOMPL out of this sentence, since its om only). In general the only way to support new players to grow is giving them experience. Experience doesn't come from being put aside every team tour cause people don't want to take the risk on a new face. MFPL showed that even newer players can be incredibly strong, if supported by players that have the experience.

 

[twinkay]

i think oms being phased out is probably a net good - they were never that popular anyway and there will always be drama with which ones are "good" leading them to being changed every year and no real identity being formed...it's a mess.

however I don't understand natdex being prioritized here over threat. natdex is probably the most overrepresented monotype tier considering it has its own subforum, team tour, tournament circuit, and still has a place in monotype team tours. I don't mind if it's in MWP but I think having it here and not threat would be pretty crazy, considering threat has a longer history in monotype and is (probably?) just as popular, but with a fraction of the representation. I'd just commit to having both or none—havkng natdex with a bunch of old gens just for the sake of making it "MWP" seems pretty disingenuous. if we want mpl 2.0 let's just embrace that, but personally id prefer the attribute/isza format or 10 slots

 

[hex]

I think a lot of people are ignoring this excerpt:

The format we are most leaning to is 2 SV / 1 SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / 1 BW / 1 NDM last slot is up for debate between another SV slot, SV Bo3, or threat. This is because we now have MOMPL now, so we would like to focus more on old gens while still not mirroring the MPL format entirely.

Tbh the random posts about things like DPP, UU and etc. should unironically be...deleted..? Idk, they don't address the OP at all but that leads me into my next point.

Imo the forum mods/TLs should try to establish some sort of ideal identity they want MWP to match. MOMPL like I previously stated was created to give OMs their own tournament. MWP is no longer being established as the OM tournament. Keeping the slight identity difference between MPL and MWP by adding NDM / Threat is fine but I think the community just needs to accept that MWP is moving in a different direction, change is okay! We absolutely do not need more OM representation than our old gens, it makes no sense and like Scarlet said is a Monotype specific thing. If I want to competitively play SMOU or SSOU, even SSPU (my favorite tier for example), I have plenty of chances to do that throughout the year in both OU and PU. PU for example has PUPL, PUBD, and PU Classic, and formerly PUWC. That's four chances out of the year that I get to play my favorite tier. In Monotype, if I want to play SM Monotype, I get MPL and Cup where there's only one cup in which it isn't providing the same competitive prowess as MPL/MWP, and there's playoffs where while the competitive level is amped up, you may not even get to play SM due to the length of series. That's like barely twice per year. Conversely, I haven't seen a real cohesive argument as to why we actually should prioritize OMs over old gens from anyone advocating for that avenue.

Last thing I'd like to mention is that the formats proposed that are randomly axing BW make pretty much no sense. There's essentially zero reason to randomly leave out and silo BW Monotype from our other old gens (I'm assuming its because it's not a Fairy gen? Not sure).

If 10 slots is genuinely on the table I support it but I think the tour will function just fine with 8 only.

 

[Ethereal Sword]

I wanted to put my own two cents in regarding the whole OMs vs old gens discussion. Just to get it out of the way, I think Attribute and Isza's formats are the best options for an 8 slot tour, though a 10 slot tour that accommodates everything would be ideal.

My main point is this: old gens are depreciating assets. It is currently gen 9, meaning we have 4 old gens. This number will only increase over time. This not only causes logistical issues (the number of slots required to cover all the old gens will only increase over time) but also raises questions about the intended audience of old gen formats. Already only a small group of people play each individual old gen (especially the oldest gens like BW, which I will take as the primary example here) and while some new players do certainly join and take the time to learn the old gens, some older players also retire. As the number of old gens increases, the rate of new players for each individual old gen must decrease. One would have to be very optimistic to think that the total population of top-level BW players will increase over time rather than decrease.

Is there data to back this up? Absolutely. Here are the ten players who played at least 3 BW games in MPL X: Sabella, Gelbel3c, DAHLI, North, Feaniix, Shiraiki, Meta, crash, Splash, and Trouser Snakes. Of these, four have also played BW in MPL IX; including MPL VIII increases this number to six. Moreover, if you look at who played in the other old gens, many of the same names will show up. So what we end up with is that as many as eight out of the ten BW players in the last MPL have played some old gen in either of the two MPLs before it. The data do not suggest that the inflow of new players into old gens via team tours outpaces the outflow of retiring players (overwhelmingly from old gens). I do specifically mention "via team tours" as another avenue exists which is a much more efficient method of increasing exposure to old gens - namely the cup tournaments, where there will easily be dozens of new players interacting with these formats. Now, will MWP be more similar to MPL in terms of developing old gens or to the cup tournaments?

By contrast, OMs (specifically talking about Threat and Natdex) are not depreciating assets. In Gen 10, Gen 11, and so on, Threat will still exist. It is the most fundamental Monotype OM that does not even require any rule changes from the base format. Similarly, National Dex will still exist and arguably even be enhanced with each new generation. What do both of these have in common? They "update" themselves over time in a manner that is always connected to the current generation, which will undoubtedly be the most popular one among all players anyway. This makes it easy for current gen players to get involved (since these OMs are current gen formats) and do not have the same "barrier to entry" that many of the old gens have today. Will BW still have the same number of players in Gen 12?

Of course, this does not mean that all old gens are unpopular and all OMs are popular - far from it. The recent old gens do not suffer nearly as much as BW does as a larger number of players would have played them even when they were the current gen, so many SV players will still be able to play SS or SM for instance. Moreover, there are fewer mechanical differences between closer generations, which makes more recent old gens easier to learn for current gen players. In a similar vein, some OMs are so unpopular and alter the rules so much that BW would even be more welcoming. Threat and Natdex, being the most popular Monotype OMs, do not suffer from this issue. UU and Wildcard are similar but are currently less popular. Similarly, some old gens are perfectly fine in terms of popularity and accessibility, and this list will likely change as new gens are released. This is why Attribute's and Isza's proposed formats make the most sense. The question should be where to draw the line and not whether or not to remove OMs entirely.