Announcement National Dex Circuit - Feedback & Planning

[Jho]

Hey all

As the 2020 National Dex circuit is coming to a close and the playoffs starting soon, we wanted to take this opportunity to have a feedback thread where we can discuss what this years circuit did right, and what it could improve on for next year's circuit. I'll be the first to admit this was my first time putting together a circuit and it showed, especially early on, and I definitely think there is a lot of room for improvement. I'll quickly go over some starting talking points and my own personal thoughts -

The 2 double elimination seasonals we ran had a fantastic turnout, easily reaching 64 users for a solid sized bracket. From what I can tell a lot of circuits run 3 of these types of tour (one in the winter to start off a new circuit, one in the summer, and one in the fall). As we got a late start we only managed to fit in 2 of these but since they were by far the most popular making sure we fit in 3 is definitely on the table if people want more of this type of tournament.

The ladder tour had a pretty good turnout, especially in the early weeks, with it dropping off a little bit going into weeks 3 and 4. This may have been a product of the meta as week 4 was the week where IOA had just came out and the meta was in a particularly weird spot thanks to the additions. I'd really like to know what people thought of the ladder tour, if you participated what you thought about it and if/why you enjoyed it, and if you didn't join, why?

The live tours were the biggest area of weakness in my opinion, as they struggled to get a full bracket and almost every week being forced to do round robin finals due to not enough signups. What did people not find appealing about live tours?

We were also a rather small circuit this year due to us starting late as I mentioned earlier, which means we should have time for more tournaments in next years circuit which begs the question of which tournament formats would people like to be included in the circuit? More seasonals, more ladder tours, something different entirely?

Something else that has been bought up to me is the point systems we used for each tour - which were for the most part put together by me albeit adapted from circuits I could find with a similar structure. This point system has lead to a lot of ties and some fairly convoluted tiebreakers (Live Tours for example) so could definitely be an area to improve on going into next year. If you have any suggestions or thoughts on how to implement a better points system / things you maybe liked about this one be sure to let me know.

Please use this thread to discuss anything at all related to this years circuit, any concerns you had, anything you want to see in next years etc.

 

[HoodedZack]

I like the idea of live tours being a literal room tour. This alerts more people, and gets more players overall. It's actually what I thought the Live Tour would be at first, in all honesty. Additionally, since we have room tours every day, it would without a doubt be a good test of practical skill. Though, I would recommend turning off viewing previous matches in the tour, to prevent counter teaming.

 

[Jho]

I like the idea of live tours being a literal room tour. This alerts more people, and gets more players overall. It's actually what I thought the Live Tour would be at first, in all honesty. Additionally, since we have room tours every day, it would without a doubt be a good test of practical skill. Though, I would recommend turning off viewing previous matches in the tour, to prevent counter teaming.

The reason live tours take place on smogtours is because its much more stable - it wont have server resets occurring in the middle of a bracket for example. To my understanding It also does not have any updates pushed to it until after they've been on main server for a bit which adds to it being more stable. If a reset were to happen during a "room tour" live tour the bracket would be lost and it would have to be reset which isn't exactly likely to happen but a consideration nonetheless. On top of this its much easier to find your opponents on smogtours since there are usually less people online and to speak they need to verify their account and use the same name as their forum name(for the most part), which makes everything MUCH easier to keep track of both as a player and as a host. Having everyone pming you in one place is also a massive help as a host for these, which is one reason it was limited to smogtours.

Hosting it as a roomtour also leaves people open to join without signing up, without having a smogon account, joining on alts etc which would just make it a nightmare/impossible to keep track of.

All of this makes hosting livetours, which can take oftentimes take a few hours, much more efficient to do via posting matchups and having it be played out on smogtours (replays are always saved on smogtours as well, which is a factor).

I know that some people can't access smogtours for various reasons so If a midground can be reached that would meaningfully increase live tour turnout I would very much be open to it as I enjoy Live Tours a lot but I personally can't think of anything that would address all of the points above.

 

[Jordy]

I'm not knowledgeable enough about the points system, so I won't touch on that, but I do want to share some of my thoughts about the circuit for next year.

We should not beat around the bush; live tournaments were a massive flop. I think it's an inherent issue with live tournaments for a metagame of our size. While we have a decently sized playerbase, there simply are not enough players interested in investing valuable time of their day into it. I think we should scratch them entirely. Someone brought up the idea of majors, and I really like the idea of replacing live tournaments with such a format. It's done in pools which people generally seem to like, and it has the potential to produce some of the highest quality and quantity of gameplay that we can get.

Besides the live tournaments, everything we had planned was received quite well and I don't think we should touch them. We are starting our circuit earlier this year, so there is more potential to space tournaments out evenly and there should be room for more tournaments, so I don't think that adding another seasonal in the summer should be an issue for example.

I would be particularly interested in reading what others think about the idea of running a majors tournament. You could argue that it skews the distribution of points due to the existence of pool leaders and them theoretically being the "best player in the pool", but is that really much of an issue? I would prefer more even brackets to completely randomized ones that may lead to incredibly stacked and barren pools.

 

[Meme0267]

The ladder tour had a pretty good turnout, especially in the early weeks, with it dropping off a little bit going into weeks 3 and 4. This may have been a product of the meta as week 4 was the week where IOA had just came out and the meta was in a particularly weird spot thanks to the additions. I'd really like to know what people thought of the ladder tour, if you participated what you thought about it and if/why you enjoyed it, and if you didn't join, why?

I thought the quality of games on the ladder during the first 3 cycles of NDLT was higher than it is usually, it really encouraged people to go all out with their best teams. I think that games between people trying to qualify should be made public, and there could be a command which people could use in chat to see the leaderboard. I also think it would be cool to see a Round Robin format introduced during the second stage of the tournament, perhaps with 8 seeded groups of 4 people each

 

[Jordy]

Hey everyone! We've been discussing what our circuit should look like, and here's what we've roughly settled on for now:

National Dex Winter Seasonal - January 14
National Dex Majors - Early April
National Dex Spring Seasonal - May 21
National Dex Ladder Tournament - Early July
National Dex Fall Seasonal - September 15

Please do note that everything is still subject to change.

We saw some talk about a National Dex Grand Slam, so to speak, featuring National Dex UU and National Dex Monotype on Discord, but we did not see enough public support to fit it into this rough draft. If people are genuinely interested in such a tour, please voice that here with arguments and we will consider it!

 

[maroon]

We saw some talk about a National Dex Grand Slam, so to speak, featuring National Dex UU and National Dex Monotype on Discord, but we did not see enough public support to fit it into this rough draft. If people are genuinely interested in such a tour, please voice that here with arguments, and we will consider it!

I am here to argue (on behalf of UU & Monotype NatDex Leaders) to include a National Dex Grand Slam in the 2021 Circuit. There are two main things I want to address in this post. This tour's inclusion would add to the competitiveness to the circuit and that including this tour will not interfere with circuit playoff standings.

Adding this tournament to the circuit would greatly benefit National Dex UU and Monotype. This tour would give both tiers representation in an official circuit, allowing the tiers player bases to develop the tiers with new teams and techs, which tournaments create the environment to produce. This would also allow both tiers to improve their resources further. Only high-level play can genuinely help every resource become more accurate. By extension, this would make it easier for newcomers to have access to better resources and also have a chance to improve their skills in the tournament. Not only would this help National Dex UU and Monotype, but also, by extension, it would make the National Dex OU player base grow larger. How would it help National Dex OU's player base grow? That is a relatively simple answer; if you include National Dex UU and Monotype in a tour that also features National Dex OU, more players from both tiers would be inclined to try out National Dex OU. Overall, I can only see how including this tour would benefit National Dex as a section overall!

The addition of this tour (including National Dex UU & Monotype) will not come close to affecting the circuit playoffs. I know the main focus of this tournament is National Dex OU. However, I believe that one tournament of the potential six would not take anything away from the circuit playoffs. For this, I want to bring in the example of the Monotype circuit. Monotype has five tournaments in its circuit, three current-gen seasonals, one monotype ladder tour, and my tournament Monotype Generations. Monotype Generations is a best-of-three of the most current monotype generations. Even though the tour has non-playoff tiers, it does not measurably affect the playoffs in any way. I'm trying to say that including this tour should not affect the National Dex Circuit playoffs, especially since the circuit would have six tournaments, which should minimize the effects of including this tour.

TL;DR: Yes, add National Dex Grand Slam to the circuit!

 

[LORD SAGIS]

If you want to add Grand Slam to the circuit I would recommend adding National Dex AG to the mix because a Grand Slam with only 2 formats could be kinda boring. I know Natdex AG is technically a AG "Old Gen" but its still apart of National Dex.

I would personally place Grand Slam over Spring SSNL. This comes down to the fact that if Majors' sign ups start in April then another tour's sign ups will start literally a month later. I should note that Majors and Spring SSNL use the same format (National Dex OU) and playing the same tier in 2 separate Circuit Tours who are very close together could get exhausting fast.

 

[dhelmise]

fwiw we were already discussing a grand slam in the circuit, we only posted the confirmed tours so far

E: to clarify this was after jordys initial post

 

[Jordy]

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/2021-national-dex-tournament-circuit.3675341/