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Tournament NDCL I - Format Discussion

sealoo

sealoo

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National Dex Leader
Hi all, NDCL is replacing NDBD as our third team tournament following a standard auction format, but the tiers still need to be hashed out.

For the sake of streamlining the process by not having two divergent formats, I’d like to ask that people assume 10 slots total as NDBD had for this discussion at least.

NDBD I Format:
SV OU 4x
SV UU
SV RU
SV UBERS
SV MONO
SV DOU
Bo3 (OU, UU, RU)

The primary two options here are the above format or something relatively close, or the more standard model for other CLs with flex slots, that typically has left good impressions on the communities who have implemented it (for those unaware, this involves in each team having X amount of slots they can pick the tier for, I’ve put an example matchup below to hopefully help visualize).
Toronto Staraptors vs Houston Stealth Rockets
SV OU (guaranteed): Xurkiyee vs Kayzn
SV OU (guaranteed): Sputnik vs Ineros
SV OU (guaranteed): 1yr vs chansey and lulu
Bo3 (guaranteed): Micaiah vs mrfraud
SV UU (Staraptors pick): Iride vs Sagazhina
SV RU (Staraptors pick): LBN vs kimer
SV MONO (Staraptors pick): style.css vs Neko
SV RU (Rockets pick): seth vs Danbear02
SV OU (Rockets pick): hidin vs sealoo
SV Ubers (Rockets pick): Sami vs emoxu9

To hopefully help focus discussion, here are a few particular questions to be answered with respective options:

NDBD I adjacent format:
— Is 4x SV too much (essentially 5 due to a guaranteed play in Bo3)?
— If yes, what should be changed? SS OU is not off limits for this tour but it is also represented quite well in the other two tournaments

Flex slots:
— Should the 4 “base tiers” be SV OU? A potential option is 3 SV OU + aforementioned Bo3 instead + 3 flex slots from each
— Flex slot tier pool; all lower tiers included in NDPL / NDBD should be included, but should SS NDOU be present? I’d also just lean to say rn that no Bo3 is allowed for time purposes because multiple bo3s is a pain to prep

Feel free to discuss beyond these questions as well, just don’t get too sidetracked pls and ty! Will keep this open a week or so
 
just run back same format flex slots r too much of a headache and no guarantee pools are deep enough for it to be viable, gen10 next yr(i think) + ca potentially moved to it then so we can overhaul format to account for more signups and new tiers when that happens. wouldnt be against 2x flex slots over sv3/sv4 but 2 svs sounds like too little. If its not broke dont fix it.
 
Idk what we should replace it with but 4 sv formats is too much imo. 3 SV’s seems like a good amount to me so swapping one SV out for SS could be nice. Could also do another Uu and Ru over two of the SVs? Tho like Seth said 2 SV seems like too few.

Editing this to say I 100% support a draft slot over one of the SV’s.
 
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No bias let’s add a draft slot. ND Draft is entering the next draft CA team tour I am the ND leader over there and we just overhauled the board. You can check out the last SCL thread to see the rationale but it’s a great tier to encourage teamwork, building, tests, and it fits pretty easily into schedules for these team tours with drafting just taking a week. Can dm me if you have questions.
 
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My primary preference is for flex slots, however, I also wouldnt mind the NDBD format with a draft slot > SV4.

SV4 slot is really expendable so its a nice testing ground for a new idea like draft to get a test run provided hosts are familiar with the logistic work that will go into actually setting up the draft in a break week (or on one sunday if all the players lock in after a saturday draft…)
 
SV OU 3x
SS OU
Bo3 (SV, SS, Godly Gift)
SV UU
SV RU
SV UBERS
SV MONO
SV DOU


3 SV OU > 4 SV OU --- having fewer SV allows for more choices, and thats what we expect from a CL

Bo3 (OU, SS, Godly Gift) > Bo3 (OU, UU, RU) --- the Godly Gift is a really interesting tier and fun, its different from what were used to seeing, the UU and the RU can be tiers chosen multiple times so why not make place for an other tier

(add SS too)
i find its sad to not have SS while its a very good tier with lots of funny ideas so why not
 
Draft is cool and either of the options Sealoo presented are good. Flex + 2 draft slots sounds like a lot of fun to me personally. I'm not a fan of dropping slots, but if the community wants to replace SV 4 with something else I'm not against that, but also won't advocate for it. LC or 35 Pokes is cool as well, but I don't see those getting support over other options
 
CEO of NDCL here, this is gonna be likely the only CL without a custom so lets enjoy and have some fun.

3x SVOU
BO3
3x Flex slots per team

Weve never done flex slots and I think it rewards drafting adaptable and highly active players along with fostering a good team environment where multiple people help prep the flex slots each week. This is a chance for a very fun and interesting tour and since we aren't really playing for anything other than fun here anyways might as well give it a go and see how we like it.

I think its nice to reward our community members who engage across multiple tiers with a cool tour considering with gen10 we will likely follow the standard PL/CL split with PL focusing OU across the 3 gens of natdex and future CL including all current gen lower tiers and dropping ss/sv slots.
 
Can any of the tiers proposed reliably field 6 slots?

NatDex LC activity has been consistently low with fairly low motivation from their contributors.

I never heard of anyone mention NatDex BSS since 2024 if that even exists and has players.

jscurf I'm not a Draft head so no negative comments there yet but every other NatDex Tier has their own pool of icons and star players that makes their respective pools not just generic clicker spam. Would like to know who NatDex Draft's stars are before feeling comfortable with them being included.

Godly Gift should stay in NDAMs and has no place in this tour. All of Godly Gifts core players are forced to pick it over tiers they frankly main more than Godly Gift, and with the pool being so barren compared to every other tier it is going to be of mediocre quality if it's not just apathetic clicker on apathetic clicker action.

Flex slots are fine if you follow what Oculars and Sealoo said above. I strongly belive that Best of 3 should NOT be a flex slot tier though.
 
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i have 0 stakes in this tour unless draft is added but figured i should post anyways

natdex draft is, to put it simply, popular as hell. we'll be including it in our next CA tour as we in draft largely consider it developed enough now. heres the sheet of the latest team tour featuring natdex draft and heres the latest individual tournament with it. in the draft team tour community not a lot of draft players really main natdex but a LOT of people can slot it and do well, including people who arent like established solid draft players. a few people like me, jscurf, and Ryan&Ditto will almost surely sign up to play though.

and just to put this out there draft in team tours does work perfectly fine. the rationale behind it in the scl thread still tracks and we've been playing LGPE draft in LGPL and theres been no logistical issues there. if natdex staff wish to include us in the tour and need any help with logistics im happy to help and im sure jscurf would be super happy to asw. cheers everyone, once again would would love to have draft in the tour
 
As was stated earlier, this is probably going to be the only CL without a custom avatar from here on out, so I'd think now is the time to figure out what tiers we would actually want to see in CL next year, so giving draft the bump is something I agree with. My proposed set of 10 is:

SV OU 3x
Ubers
UU
RU
DOU
Draft
Flex for Team 1
Flex for Team 2
Flex pool: OU, UU, RU, UBERS, SS, MONO

I think having flex slots as an X factor that managers can use to help secure a week is great. Having too many flex slots, IMO, makes everything messy, but having the option rewards clever drafting and gives managers much more agency week to week compared to being locked to 10 slots. Having only 2 flex slots also doesn't stretch the pool of competent players too thin, as an additional point.

I took a while to consider whether to include SS in the guaranteed pool or in the flex pool (or in cl at all). I think for CL, it would make sense for all the guaranteed slots to be current gen. However, SS as a generation is extremely developed, meaning that as a flex slot, it would be one of the most reliable for managers who opt to draft players competent in the tier. I think that's reason enough for a non-shallow SSOU pool to be considered.

My selection for flex pool doesn't include lc, dou &Draft simply because I think it would stretch a teams budget thin(since this would mean some teams would have to potentially draft 3-4 high caliber doubles&draft players and I'm taking what runo said about ndlc activity being somewhat low into consideration), however I specifically think that having mono be in the flex pool is perfect for an X-factor slot that managers can take a gamble on if they so choose to, especially if the team they are facing that week happen to have poor coverage in terms of mono players. Lastly, regarding flex slots, having to consider 3 slots that aren't guaranteed also means that 3k buys will actually hold more weight, as both having the support and the option can be a huge boon to an otherwise mid-tier team, while drafting lots of star power but not covering all 9 potential tiers will leave you with holes you can't ignore.
 
I don't think bo3 should be dropped, it was one of the best things about last year's NDBD, at least in my opinion, but it should especially not be dropped for SS in a primarily cg tour. I think you can incorporate all of bo3, draft and flex slots with something like:

3x SVOU
Bo3
Draft
5 Flex slots with a pool of Ubers, UU, RU, Mono, and Doubles? maybe this needs to be a guaranteed slot

Though you could just shelf flex slots to the side and keep the ndbd format + draft over a SVOU slot instead if people aren't too enthusiastic about the idea of flex slots.

edit: ive been reminded that 5x flex slots do not work... oops! just go doubles as a guaranteed slot
 
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NDBD format is fine as it is. Just drop bo3 for Draft.

Draft has been on the comeup on Smogon since the start of the gen and it has proven itself and deserves a chance. The playerbase certainly have the skill and I second the point of Draft in LGPL which is significantly smaller than what NDCL is gonna be.
 
Yea I love these Ideas NDCL will be some fun.
Draft is a dope idea so with my little influence Id like to back that anyways.
However the cons are, that draft needs its own separate attention like VGC almost very time consuming and draining.

So maybe just the regular formats. 1yr is the goat of draft hes TPL champion he could explain better.
 
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