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Tournament NDWC VI - Format Discussion

SS TL here to say that we no longer need 2 SS slots in this tour. SS has good representation across SSNDPL, NDPL, and a soon to be announced SS Grand Slam, in addition to all the circuit tours.

I’m in favor of bringing it down to one or completely dropping it from consideration. Don’t care what it ends up being between the two but the inclusion of other tiers in the current gen is a far greater priority.
 
Probably not taking part in this wc unless midwest is dire for signups, but here to echo jscurf's post a bit. Draft in NDCL was a great success, seeing record number of signups for a ND team tour. The draft community is consistently showing up for tours that it is included in, and if draft is included you can expect to see a lot of signups from both the nd mainer community and outside nd for it. Pretty against having a 7 week long wc, as hex mentioned this is super taxing on the managers when wc is typically a lot of pilots and nonmainers starting compared to stuff like PL and CL. Pools format could be an option, similar to doubles wc.

Format wise, I would suggest something like this:
SV OU x3
SS OU
SV Ubers
SV DOU
SV Draft
SV Mono/SV OU 4

Most regions struggle to field a mono slot, so this could be cut in favor of SV OU x4, but I think keeping the same format with Draft > SS OU 2 and SV Ubers > SV OU 4 is an upgrade to the current format and plays on the strength of some of the regions that may be more stretched for OU mainers.

On Midwest + West merger I don't think format discussion is the place to decide this and it should be left to the hosts after signup period is underway. I personally don't think midwest will have enough signups to form a team, but ya never know ig.

On Africa same as above, I think waiting for signups is best but you can survey the players it affects to see what their preferences are for a potential merger, not a fan of just springing them onto a random team without their input.
 
I’ve heard a lot of people saying they enjoyed learning and playing the UU/RU tiers, and I believe that most regions would have a much easier time finding people for these tiers than 2 SSOU or Mono.

The format could drop these to leave room for combinations like [UU+RU], [UU + Draft], or [Ubers + Bo3]. I don’t believe it would be the consensus, but Bo3 could replace an SV OU slot since it includes OU already. It’s a lot to prep for, but it’s a fun slot that many people including myself find refreshing to watch and play.

Regardless, the inclusion of additional metagames allows for more variety and better representation of the LT community as well as the NatDex community as a whole rather than just finding the best clickers from your region.
 
So after some thoughts, I came to a conclusion. Just as NDCL, I would appreciate that there were 10 slots. The other question is WHICH tiers are gonna be in that slot?

Here‘s my answer for that answer:

1) SV NDUbers
2) SV NDOU
3) SV NDOU
4) SV NDOU
5) SV NDUU
6) SV NDRU
7) SV NDBo3 (NDOU, NDUU, NDRU)
8) SV NDMonotype
9) SV NDDOU
10) SV NDDraft

This distribution is, yeah, just like NDCl. But it gives the tournament a cool variety of tiers for players to play. Therefore making NDWC more fun and challenging at the same time.

Boomenheimer said:
SS TL here to say that we no longer need 2 SS slots in this tour. SS has good representation across SSNDPL, NDPL, and a soon to be announced SS Grand Slam, in addition to all the circuit tours.

I’m in favor of bringing it down to one or completely dropping it from consideration. Don’t care what it ends up being between the two but the inclusion of other tiers in the current gen is a far greater priority.
Click to expand...
I agree with Boomerheimer! While I see why people want to have SwSh NDOU, that Tier has already many tournaments which is more focused on, just like Boomerheimer listed. Therefore it’s be more fun to have tiers (playstyles) for this generation‘s National Dex.

BUT in case SwSh NDOU WERE do be favoured, I‘d go like this:

1) SV NDUbers
2) SV NDOU
3) SV NDOU
4) SS NDOU
5) SV NDUU
6) SV NDRU
7) SV NDBo3 (NDOU, NDUU, NDRU)
8) SV NDMonotype
9) SV NDDOU
10) SV NDDraft

And just like that, I added SS NDOU while keeping the big variety of the pool (at the cost of one SV NDOU slot). So not that big of a change.

So here‘s my opinion on the slots. I can‘t wait to be Part of this tornament for the first time!
 
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I'm naturally a bit biased, but as salmon said:
salmonelephant said:
I’ve heard a lot of people saying they enjoyed learning and playing the UU/RU tiers
Click to expand...
There were a number of people that went into NDCL with very little to no experience with UU/RU and came away with fairly decent records and decent enjoyment of the tiers as well, with continued tiering action and meta-game development in both tiers being big reasons behind that.

Also on another note while it feels a little weird to group them together, both ubers and draft are popular and generally competitive tiers and would both have a fairly decent turn out as pointed out for draft by jscurf and for ubers in last years discussion thread by Runo, bumboclaat and Bobsican (The player list may be from last year but I imagine it has only increased).

As for the complete format,

If we are dead set on 8 slots for both player base and sanity reasons, I think something like:
SV OU
SV OU
SV OU
SV Ubers
SV UU
SV Draft
SV Mono
SV Doubles

While losing an OU slot does feel a little wrong, this would still as I stated earlier allow for a fairly competitive tournament setting.

As for 10 slots:

SV OU
SV OU
SV OU
SV OU
SV Ubers
SV UU
SS OU / SV RU
SV Draft
SV Mono
SV Doubles

This keeps four OU slots and allows for the retention of a SS OU slot or the inclusion of a SV RU slot, but brings its own set of problems that have already been pointed out by a number of people.
 
TBIC106 said:
Personally I believe last year's format was good except for NDMono. Probably should be replaced with bo3, with Ubers or UU otherwise best bet if bo3 isn't an option, but anything other than 'Match-Up Fishing, The Tier' :row:
Click to expand...
This is just a poor look and people in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones. NDUU was unstable enough to require emergency tiering action mid-CL, still has a Pokémon in Pecharunt that is overwhelmingly likely to be banned in the near future, and has multiple other Pokémon that high level players are calling to be banned. I personally would love to see UU in WC, but a council member just tierbashing with same uninspired and incorrect joke isn't a great look to anyone neutral.


General Yap​

I wasn’t planning to make a post in this thread, but have been tagged a couple of times and there is apparently an expectation that I will. I wasn’t planning on making a post due to the lessons learned from my campaign for Ubers inclusion last year and a general dislike of WC formats when they’re anything more than a ‘fun’ tour (aka have prizes attached). WC is an inherently uncompetitive format that requires concessions contradictory to the core identity of the tournament to create a facade of competitiveness. This is a necessity when the tournament revolves around circumstances of geography rather than any competitively minded concept.

Every section on Smogon employs patchwork solutions due to the diaspora of their specific community and formats - usually via continental teams, combining, or splitting up teams. We accept this deviation from WC’s founding principle to enable a somewhat competitive and accessible tournament. At the end of the day, competitiveness is just the guiding principle, but not the only one. A tournament being fun matters. It doesn’t matter how competitive a tournament is if nobody actually wants to play it. Hence, WC is granted an exception due to its popularity as a format when other tours with similar issues are left by the curb (i.e. BD and Snake). There are hurdles that all WCs have to overcome, but there some ND specific ones relevant to this thread that further complicate things – particularly for tiers advocating inclusion.

As a section, ND is somewhat unique with OMs being the closest analog. This is due to ND’s identity being a tangible concept as opposed to defining itself relative to other sections. Conceptually, ND is a sandbox where the limiting factor for a format is player interest rather than those imposed by inherent limitations of the section. Fortunately, this has proven to be more than theory as NDOT maintains an eclectic composition of tiers and players.

That being said, NDOU is the flagship tier with the activity and player quality to justify it. That comes with some perks, one being that any section wide tournament will have around half its slots be OU. I’m not advocating changing that, but the reality is that most tours have more tiers deserving of a slot than those available. This puts any non-OU tier in an awkward situation as it incentivizes tierbashing given it is far easier to argue that your tier is more deserving of a slot than expanding the number of slots. Even if a tier successfully obtains a slot, this incentive ferments animosity between tiers and harms ND as a whole in the long term.

The dynamics inherent to WC impose further roadblocks outside of geographical ones. As the pool of players available to any team is a static and known quantity prior to the tournament unlike auction formats, managers are incentivized to advocate against tiers that their team is unlikely to perform well in. Whether or not a tier deserves to be in WC is irrelevant, the only thing that matters is how the players available to you are. Even an ‘average’ player still comes with an unnecessary risk that most managers are incentivized to avoid.

It isn’t reasonable to expect the average manager (or player) to advocate for anything that fails to provide a tangible benefit for their team. This is largely what makes getting a foothold for any non-established tier unnecessarily difficult. It is easy to point out the flaws with a system, not so much with providing solutions. It’d be nice if people stopped viewing everything as a zero sum game.


Slots​

Personally, eight slots feels like a vestige from an earlier era. We doggedly adhere to the status quo without a semblance of introspection unsettlingly often. Just because something worked well at a certain point in time doesn’t mean it should be set in stone in perpetuity. My philosophy when it comes to slots is to include the most that can be reasonably accommodated. I don’t know what that number is, but it is surely higher than eight. Add an additional manager if the slots expand. I don't see an issue with an OU slot being swapped out for something else, but it also isn't something I'll advocate for personally or as a leader.

Tiers

Draft Maybe there is one exception, but I’d find it hard to believe that a team wouldn’t be able to find a draft player for reasons outside of managerial laziness or incompetence. Draft in NDCL was a massive success and ND Draft has higher levels of tournament participation than even NDOU. Regardless of the number of slots, Draft deserves one unless there are logistical issues which make it incompatible with the tournament.

UU and RU I’m grouping these together because of the overlap in community. Last year it was mentioned that this overlap in community would cause difficulty in gathering pools for both tiers. I don’t know if that view is still or widely held. Both tiers should be considered, but I think there is a high likelihood of the result being dependent on the number of slots in the tournament. UU has a larger ‘native’ community, but RU has potential to pull a lot of people that are not typically associated with the ND sphere if the effort is put in.

Ubers Last year I put in an obscene amount of time and effort in an unsuccessful campaign to get Ubers back into WC. Consequently, I assumed there was a near zero chance of it being in WC this year and not that much has changed for the tier other than me having a seat at the table. Consequently, NDUbersPL was timed to line up with WC to provide our community a fun our rather than banking on WC inclusion and having a multiple month dead period.

I obviously support Ubers being in WC and think it would make a fine slot. At the same time, I don’t see how it makes it in without a slot expansion or removing multiple OU slots. If we remove an OU slot and stay at eight then Draft is clearly the most deserving replacement. However, if the slots are expanded then Ubers likely deserves one of them. Multiple people tagged me in this thread expecting some big post and I’m not really sure what there is to say that hasn’t been said. Last year nearly every manager from the previous WC gave written support for its inclusion and that still wasn’t enough.
 
I was left mulling in the snowy Maryland today about my beloved NDWC format, and I wanted to share my thoughts in a bit more of a comprehensive post

This year, it appears that there is a lot of support for pretty much every tier that has taken apart NDPL and NDCL in their most recent editions, those being UU, RU, Ubers, Draft, and Bo3.

Related to Ryuji’s earlier post, the only one of these I would be fully opposed to seeing in NDWC is Bo3. There is pretty much no reality where there are is both a fully fledged UU and RU slot on top of Bo3, so it would be a half-baked measure to “represent” UU/RU when they aren’t even guaranteed to be playee in the slot. Not to mention, as someone who played it in NDCL, it is quite a headache to prep and I imagine that not having independent UU/RU players to bounce ideas off of makes that more difficult.

—

I think the main dilemma we face, obviously, lies in how we decide to represent these other 4 tiers.

These are competitive tiers which is why they find themselves with slots in one of or both of NDPL/NDCL, but the issue is that when adding a significant amount of lower tiers, it reaches a point where it starts feeling intuitively wrong to have a large majority but not all of them, and we want to chase uniformity where all low tiers + draft (which I will refer to as a lower tier moving forwards for ease as well) are represented naturally.

So we are left at a bit of a weird crossroads here, where there is pretty much no way to effectively include every lower tier fully without reducing the amount of SV OU slots (1 SS slot has all but been officiallyconceded to help accomodate the low tiers atp, which is a good choice fwiw ) and expanding to 10 slots. However, I think within the context of WC we really need to take a step back and look at what we’re balancing.

To me, SV OU is a great equalizer, where the more SV OU slots you have, the more balanced the tour becomes for the regions with less obviously good rosters due to the large body of resources devoted off of pure size and popularity that no tier within the rotation can really match. This is why I think it is detrimental to reduce SV OU from 4 in any capacity when drawing up the format. While you can point to the fact that some regions benefit from these lower tiers heavily (UK with Jawabarat in RU, Canada with Iride in UU for example), this is more an exception than a rule, and at the end of the day there is nothing that really puts it for grabs like the flagship tier will (which is why in many WC formats, they take up a predominant number of spots as opposed to PLs and such).

—

Theoretic talks aside, how would I actually solve this knowing the problems presented?

As my previous low-effort post said, I am definitely team 8 slots, with those being:

SV OU x4
SS OU
SV Mono
SV Doubles
SV Draft

I think this format captures a good amount of SV OU, while also mixing very prevalent low tiers that almost every region will be able to find quality players for, whereas things get a bit more shaky with Ubers, but mostly in UU/RU.
-
I do understand that 10 slots is also popular, so I would like to address a format that as well, although I think 10 slots leads to a more significant asymmetry in included lower tiers as well as promoting the deep, already good regions to have an even bigger advantage (I say this as the manager of one of said regions). That being said, I dont think 10 slots makes the tour irredeemable or anything, but I think 8 would be superior. 10 slots is impossible to include every low tier while not subtracting any OUs and not using Bo3, so unfortunately a concession needs to be made with one of the tiers. Here would be my proposed format:

SV OU x4
SS OU
SV Monotype
SV Doubles
SV Ubers
SV Draft
SV UU

Unfortunately, I think RU gets the short end of the stick here, not to say that it is a bad tier. I think that its competition lies mainly with that UU slot I propose, and I personally think UU just slightly edges RU out. I dont really have a laundry list of reasons why, but I think you need to make a choice there when thinking about 10 slots eventually as to not subtract even more OU slots. Hypothetically, that could be an SS2 slot so there is no asymmetry where UU is in but RU isnt or vice versa, but thats kinda dumb logic to me and what I said about SS in my first post stands: good tier, not much recent development to warrant 2 slots. Id rather see UU represented than both of them not represented, given how many RU players also dabble in UU (vice versa as well).

—

Tough decisions to be made. Make sure to tell your local hosts thank you! :toast:
 
Pretty much echoing salmon's post but I believe we should include lower tiers in the tournament. PL is soon going to exclusively OUs only, which makes lower tiers' representation something to consider. As for the format itself, I'm opposed against adding draft in the tour to be honest. I'm sure that quite a few regions wouldn't be able to find players, resulting in the not so high quality of games. Last years format was fine, except the excessive number of OUs. Dropping an SS slot is good, with addition of other tiers as stated below.

---------

As for the other tiers, I believe Ubers should definitely be added in the format. It's been a decent if not good meta over the years, and the distribution of players is pretty even. Tier is in a better position than most of the others tbh, and the quality of games will surely be high. I don't see a valid argument to not include Ubers in the format like "it has enough representation in the newly introduced NDUPL", and mind you that even ND Monotype has it's own PL.
RegionsUbers
Asia + OceaniaSpaceSpeakers baconeatinassassin
EuropeEntrocefalo, unfuuny,
UKSami, Jumpheart
FranceEledyr, Squeeby
Latin AmericaBobsican
BrazilSenhorlo, Seraphz
IndiaSwas, Interlinked
ChinaMirrorSaMa, emoxu9, Splendid Silver Star, liliou
Canadabumboclaat, Iride, Fc
USA SouthRuno, Kate
USA NortheastNone
USA Midwest + USA WestZrp200, Anchor9

UU is also probably a fine addition since the tier is easy to get well adapted to. The only issue I see with the tier is probably it's stability and spread of players but that shouldn't be much of a hindrance.
RU is a bit worrying since the playerbase overlaps with UU's. On the other hand it's also pretty easy to learn (as seen in CL), and is in a pretty stable condition, while allowing lots of creativity.
Overall I think both should definitely be added, with UU taking the priority, and RU taking the backseat, but I wouldn't mind specifically RU not being there since it overlaps with the invitational.
For the bo3 slot however, I'm opposed to it since it's not a valid slot for representation of lower tiers, as stated above by Sealoo.

----------

On the number of slots, both 8 and 10 slots are fine, except 10 slots annoying managers to look for players more especially for lower tiers. For 8 slots, I think an Ubers should replace an SSOU slot, giving the tour more variety and not being so harsh on the preppers. Same applies for 10 slots with the inclusion of UU and RU.
SV OU
SV OU
SV OU
SV OU
SS OU
SV Ubers
SV Monotype
SV Doubles
SV OU
SV OU
SV OU
SV OU
SS OU
SV Ubers
SV Monotype
SV Doubles
SV UU
SV RU

---------

Anyways, these were my personal thoughts. See you all in the tour and hope that we can play some good games without any unnecessary drama. :heart:

Edit: 3 Managers is also fine
 
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Very much in favour of including lower tiers that are generally included in team tournaments first before considering stuff like draft - obviously do think that newer tiers and metagames can and should be considered, but it shouldn't come at the cost of traditional lower tiers such as Ubers.
 
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