Announcement NFE Circuit 2025 Discussion Thread

[5Dots]

art by 5Dots​

Hi NFE tournament players,

For the first time in NFE history, it is time to commence discussion on the 2025 NFE Circuit! This is also the right place to discuss if you have feedback on any of the other NFE tournaments in the UM Circuit.

The schedule seemed to have positive reception with the NFE discord so far, so I'm suggesting to keep it the same. That means; Open at the beginning of January, Triathlon late February, Classic in May, and Seasonal middle of June. NFEPL, as usual, will have signups going up in late June up to week 1 on July. Swiss in September, after Seasonal concludes. If you have any questions about the format or want to make suggestions to change it, do not hesitate to leave a post in the NFE forums, discord, or the UMPL discord.

We are still deciding the format for Olympiad. As it currently stands, the most commonly discussed format advocates for 6 teams, 8 slots, with 1 DPP, 1 BW, 1 ORAS, 1 SM, 1 SS, and 3 SV.

Now onto things, we want to consider for a change and would love to hear being discussed:

• NFE Olympiad
  • Do we keep the tournament for old generations only? Some people have wanted to have some SV in it. How many generations do we want for NFEPL? Some metagames are still at very early stages at this point.
• ORAS, BW
  • The ORAS and BW slots have been a source of discussion. A lot of people dislike skipping generations, but ORAS and BW are far from the same level of activity and playerbase size as the other pools, compared to SM, SS, and ND. Tagging players who has either played at least one ORAS and BW NFE game in the past 4 NFEPLs to know how they feel about its inclusion for the tournament, or has been council:
  • ORAS:
    • Quagg, OranBerryBlissey10, hayedenn , Shing, gorex, SparksBlade, CrazyStevy, elleapple, I want Atago to sit on me, Splash, Leni, Dragonillis, Elgino, Spacial, Miyami~~~, S1nn0hC0nfirm3d, Jrdn, ArcticBreeze, Tack, raf, Fille, SBPC, Ren, sanguine.
  • BW:
    • jay, King Leo V, innovamania, Voltage, zee, EviGaro, Danny, DnB, RaJ.Shoot, INSULT, PH, trace, Caetano93, neomon, MZ, Jett
• NFE Swiss
  • How many people should qualify? Should it be changed for another format?

You can discuss other topics as well, but the above should be the main focus of this discussion.

 

[Voltage]

I'll be real, I have not thought about BW NFE in almost half a decade, please do not ask my opinion lololol

 

[SBPC]

for both bw and oras my presences on either of those councils is outdated as well (oras has had multiple tier resets since I've last even looked at nfe seriously)

 

[Splash]

I also have no clue cuz i havent touched the oras nfe in a few years! I will say I do enjoy playing the tier tho

 

[Leni]

Pretty much what both players above said. I will therefore forward this to Quagg and Shing who will present my official opinion on NFE. Thanks

 

[Fille]

Love Bw NFE. Will probably never sign up for more NFE stuff tho sorry folks. Life as an LCer has gotten busy

 

[Danny]

Ngl I don’t remember having played this, seems fun tho! I will pass the buck to Tuthur

 

[Tack]

 

[Elgino]

Very sorry to also disappoint, but I also haven't touched NFE in a hot minute, and I've been playing a lot less mons lately anyway. Hope you get it sorted out because NFE was a fun tier to play when I still played

 

[sleid]

I think there are 2 solid options for OL. The current one proposed seems fine, could be a good way to get these metagames back off the ground. They at least have some form of resources and can be picked up by most players just fine. The other would be to do something like 6 teams, 8 slots with 3 SV, 2 SS, 2 SM, and maybe a Natdex in the last slot, Bo3, or SV4, since the concern is the lack of play that DPP-ORAS has had in recent times. We can see how Classic/Triathlon goes to see if the tiers are back to a solid spot with a council and such for next year. As far as NFEPL, i think it should remain the same until other generations get more exploration. Could maybe expand to 8 slots with another SV or something because the player pool was quite solid last year.

As for Swiss, it might be good to start off with 12 qualifiers, with seeds 1-4 getting a round 1 bye. 16 could be doable but im not sure how many signups this tournament would get since non UM NFE tours haven't had a huge turnout and people dislike Swiss formats in general for some reason. This can maybe be played by ear after seeing signup amount?

These are just my thoughts to hopefully start a discussion! Let me know what you agree with, disagree with, or if you have any other opinions!

 

[Shing]

NFE Oly should include SV since Old gens doesn't have enough people for the tiers, and there aren't a lot of opportunities to take SV NFE seriously so it doesn't hurt to add it in. Hell may even add Natdex NFE at some point, but I expect the Natdex Mainers to be there since I found the player base's activity in NFEPL lacking as I didn't see so many tier discussions, nor friendlies and such that it made my time spending on natdex nfe just a pain in the ass.

As for other old-gens in NFEPL, I share similar feelings towards Sleid to see if it's worth picking them up next year and skip it here. But on a personal note, I do want to see BW in the field somewhat. Despite the activity, I think the tier is very underappreciated since it has a lot of cool shit meta-wise. DPP isn't bad, but I'm not sure if more people want to play the tier except for like me, arctic and quagg. ORAS has its fans, but the tier has been a whole mess from banning things and then the playerbase n council(especially me) not knowing what we want to do with it.
A weird take is that NFEPL should lowkey have two SM slots because SM NFE was the height of the peak NFE activity, and there are probably enough people who love the tier more than most others.

No opinion on swiss and triathlon though, I lack knowledge and experience on how these function to begin with.

 

[Miyami~~~]

last time I played oras I couldn't leave my house due to covid lockdowns so please do not ask for my opinion on that tier I have no current knowledge