Tournament NUCL II - Format Discussion Thread

[etern]

Manager signups for NUCL II will be going up towards the final week of November, with a rough plan for Week 1 to commence on Monday, the 6th of January 2025. The NU Moderation team has taken in all the feedback we've gotten regarding NUCL this year and have mostly finalized our new and improved plan for this tour. That being said, we have a few discussion points that we'd like to get some community input on, and would also like to give you all some time to familiarize yourselves with the newly revamped format before manager signups launch in the next 1-2 weeks.

SUMMARY OF NUCL II FORMAT (NOT UP TO CHANGE):
- Reception to the all-gens format of NUCL 1 was mixed / leaning towards negative, so we're returning to a fairy-gens focused format, with the addition of 'all-gen flex slots' to give this tour a unique identity separate from NUPL while still allowing the potential for players of all NU generations to participate meaningfully.
- The Format for NUCL will be the following: SV1 / SV2 / SV3 / SS / SM / ORAS / Flex 1A / Flex 1B / Flex 2A / Flex 2B.
- Each team is allocated two 'flex picks' per week. They must pick two tiers (flex picks) every week ranging from SV all the way down to RBY. Teams MUST pick two different tiers per week with no repeats (e.g, Team A may pick DPP and RBY as their flex tier picks of the week, but NOT DPP + DPP or ORAS + ORAS.). (Note: This restriction does not apply across teams, e.g Team A picking SM does not prevent Team B from also picking SM). These picks can be changed week by week, allowing for managers to tailor their decisions based on the weaknesses of their opponents, as well as adding an additional element of strategy to the auction / draft. EDIT: Refer to "Format Explained" at the end of the post for a more thoroughly explanation on this.
- For the time being, we plan on sticking to a 6 Team tournament as this change received mostly positive feedback and allows us to settle into the new year with a shorter but more dynamic and unpredictable tour.

DISCUSSION POINTS FOR THE COMMUNITY (POINTS THAT MAY OR MAY NOT BE IMPLEMENTED AND ARE UP TO DISCUSSION):
- 'Flex Players' are an idea we're considering for this tournament to add an extra element of strategy and hype to the tour. In theory, one player can be allocated as a 'flex player' for the team per week, and thus they will be able to slot into TWO slots rather than one. However, once a player has been used as a flex player in regular season, they may not be used as a flex player again until playoffs. (But they can still continue to play their one slot per week). EDIT: Refer to "Format Explained" at the end of the post for a more thoroughly explanation on this.
- Bo3 as a Flex tier option? (Both players pick one gen from SV - RBY, with the tiebreaker being SV? Or perhaps Bo3 can be kept to just fairygens?)
- Depending on the amount and quality of signups, we could consider expanding from 6 to 8 teams?
- Should SV be a flex pick at all? or should flex picks only range from Gen 1 - Gen 8?
- One or Two Manager self-buys?

Let us know what your opinion is on these discussion points below!

disclaimer: talk about anything on topic but be NICE

Format Explained

The current format is, as explained:
SV1
SV2
SV3
SS
SM
ORAS
Flex 1A
Flex 2A
Flex 1B
Flex 2B

SV, SS, SM and ORAS will be played as we know, no gimmicks here, and I will refer to them as locked tiers. The Flex tiers, however, is a new concept we will be introducing this tournament. An explanation for this can be seen here as initially proposed by malekith for last WCOP. These flex tiers would play the same role as the team chosen tiers proposed on that post, with available tiers ranging from SV all the way to RBY, with the possibility of Bo3 being included as well. So in other words, the pool of available tiers would, as of now, be: SV / SS / SM / ORAS / BW / DPP / ADV / GSC / RBY.

The way it would work, albeit a bit weird at first, is actually quite simple. Lets say I, Ren-chon, am managing the MF BLOOMS with my friend Aawin, whereas Tuthur is managing the Limber Dittos, and we will be facing each other on the following week. Ideally, the tournament would have two deadlines: one for tier picking (lets say, for example, midnight EST Saturday), and one for actual lineups (11:59 PM EST Sunday). On Saturday, I PM the host my two picks: SM and GSC, while Tuthur does the same, picking SS and ADV. Once every team has made their choice, the host will announce on the manager channel on NU cord every teams pick, which is when we will be informed of them. So in this case, I now know Tuthur chose SS and BW, and they know I chose SM and GSC. So from there, we know our match-up will be as follow:

SV1
SV2
SV3
SS
SM
ORAS
Flex 1A => SM
Flex 2A => GSC
Flex 1B => SS
Flex 2B => ADV

Note there's no back and forth between managers and/or hosts, nor is there a priority order for picking. Every team simply blindly picks their tiers, and then we send our respective lineups by the end of the week as normal. So once tiers (flex tiers) are chosen, the tour basically plays out as normal, just with a goofy tier ordering. Now, the week after that, we're playing Stories managing the Let Flygons be Flygons. Same thing happens here: my team picks SM and BW, but their team instead picks DPP and BW. But wait, doesn't this mean there will be two BW games being played? Yes, it does. Remember: the same team can't pick two of the same tiers, but the same tier can be picked twice between both teams. I can't choose BW and BW, but I can choose BW while my opponents also choose BW. This adds a lot of strategy and decision making for managers, but that's not something I will cover here. In the event of tie breaks, it would just be played out as normal since they already use the concept of flex tiers: SV, Team A, Team B.

As for the Flex Player idea, this is a separate suggestion that we're thinking on implementing. It's not tied to the format itself, so don't worry about things being overly complicated. You should analyse them in a vacuum since they're two different matters. The way it works is simple: The same player can be slotted in two categories of tiers: locked tiers, and flex picks. It CAN NOT be slotted twice in locked tiers (so SV1 and SS, for example), neither can it be locked into two flex tiers (like Flex 1A and 1B, or Flex 1A and Flex 1B). If I draft zS, for example, I can slot him into SV1 and Flex 1A, but I can't slot him into SV1 and SS UNLESS I PICK SS FOR MY FLEX TIER. So say, my team picked SS and RBY for our flex picks. I can slot in zS in SV1 and on the flex SS, but not on the tier locked SS. For example, let's say my team picked SS and RBY and the opponent picked SM and GSC:

SV1
SV2
SV3
SS
SM
ORAS
SS
RBY
SM
GSC

The following two line-ups are legal (flex tiers bolded):

Hide

SV1 zS
SV2
SV3
SS
SM
ORAS
SS zS
RBY
SM
GSC

Hide

SV1 zS
SV2
SV3
SS
SM
ORAS
SS
RBY
SM zS
GSC

The following five line ups are not legal (flex tiers bolded):

Hide

SV1 zS
SV2
SV3
SS zS
SM
ORAS
SS
RBY
SM
GSC

Hide

SV1
SV2
SV3
SS
SM
ORAS
SS zS
RBY
SM zS
GSC

Hide

SV1 zS
SV2
SV3
SS zS
SM
ORAS
SS
RBY
SM
GSC

Hide

SV1
SV2
SV3
SS
SM
ORAS
SS zS
RBY zS
SM
GSC

Hide

SV1
SV2
SV3
SS
SM
ORAS
SS
RBY
SM zS
GSC zS

 

[Tree69420]

RBY NU



also 9 week format kinda OD tbh
ngl if u think abt it flex slot is goofy asf

 

[Ren-chon]

As someone whos defended this format the most (...and been in "explaining how nucl will work and when itll happen" duty for the past month), I think this is a good chance to finally give NUCL an identity thats not just a worse NUPL with gsc and rby included, which honestly does no favors to these communities either. With this format, in theory every tier gets its share of representativity while adding a strategy factor that pushes managers out of a pure bureaucratic and glorified helper roles. Since Ive been extensively voicing my opinion on just about every aspect of this edition I will stick to briefly going over each point and try and clear up some misconceptions, or even fair arguments that have been brought up before.

SUMMARY OF NUCL II FORMAT:
- Reception to the all-gens format of NUCL 1 was mixed / leaning towards negative, so we're returning to a fairy-gens focused format, with the addition of 'all-gen flex slots' to give this tour a unique identity separate from NUPL while still allowing the potential for players of all NU generations to participate meaningfully.
- The Format for NUCL will be the following: SV1 / SV2 / SV3 / SS / SM / ORAS / Flex 1A / Flex 1B / Flex 2A / Flex 2B.

I genuinely think this format is great and adds a huge skill expression to both managers and players, specially ones flexing into random tiers. In theory, tiers youve picked will be for players that are often enough good AND self sufficient, so less help will be needed there besides testing and some basic scouting. This means that more attention can be given to flex slots (or rather should be), which can lessen the burden on having to learn a new tier. Also honestly I think atp everyone involved in NU has a basic idea of how every gen bar maybe gsc works, so not like most of 'em will be diving in blind lol think this is also a nice opportunity to increase the playerbase of some tiers tbh

- Each team is allocated two 'flex picks' per week. They must pick two tiers (flex picks) every week ranging from SV all the way down to RBY. Teams MUST pick two different tiers per week with no repeats (e.g, Team A may pick DPP and RBY as their flex tier picks of the week, but NOT DPP + DPP or ORAS + ORAS.). (Note: This restriction does not apply across teams, e.g Team A picking SM does not prevent Team B from also picking SM). These picks can be changed week by week, allowing for managers to tailor their decisions based on the weaknesses of their opponents, as well as adding an additional element of strategy to the auction / draft.

Tree brought a fair point on NU cord about this: what if both teams have a RBYer and both of them pick RBY (as per his example)? Would the 2nd RBY slot just be sacked, since both mainers will play each other? Well... Not necessarily, no. First of all, you can just treat one of the RBY slot as, well, a flex slot and put in one of your non-mainers, so RBY A and B will both be mainer vs non-mainer. Besides that, this is also where a huge deal of skill expression for managers comes into play: if team A has, say, a good RBY, DPP and ADV and team B has a good RBY, GSC and BW, team A can go "what if I dont pick rby and instead do dpp adv? so if team b picks rby, thats the same as me picking 3 tiers", and then guaranteeing a balanced mu into team B pick AND two good team A picks. This is a huge risk of course, but it also means managers will have to be at the top of their game week in, week out to guarantee the best possible outcome for their teams, and also draft a team that plays not only to their strengths, but is also able to account for a variety of situations and adapt accordingly.

- 'Flex Players' are an idea we're considering for this tournament to add an extra element of strategy and hype to the tour. In theory, one player can be allocated as a 'flex player' for the team per week, and thus they will be able to slot into TWO slots rather than one. However, once a player has been used as a flex player in regular season, they may not be used as a flex player again until playoffs. (But they can still continue to play their one slot per week).

Dont have much of an opinion on this, but I dont see the harm in trying if people think this would alleviate the whole flex slot burden.

- Bo3 as a Flex tier option? (Both players pick one gen from SV - RBY, with the tiebreaker being SV? Or perhaps Bo3 can be kept to just fairygens?)

Stick to fairy gens. Every team will need a dedicated fairy gen pool anyway because of the locked tiers. Making it so every team can pick their tiers for bo3 would just make things even more chaotic for our first time trying out this format.

- Should SV be a flex pick at all? or should flex picks only range from Gen 1 - Gen 8?

Add SV as a flex pick. Honestly, in most cases theres a considerably drop in quality after SV2 since thats usually when you start slotting in non-mainers or people who havent been staying up to date with the meta. If a team wants to focus on 4 GOOD SVers, or even just 3 (SV1-2 and then SV flex), let them. In general I think this would be a bad draft strategy anyway since its a lot easier for a random user to pick up SV than it would be for them to idk, play a top 3 BW NUer, so imo this would be just a waste of a flex slot a lot of the time.

- One or Two Manager self-buys?

Two is fine for now since we're still trying out this format and seeing what works and what doesnt, so it can help lower the floor as the community as a whole gets used to it. However, we should do something like 10k-30k or 15k-35k

- Should we adopt the GSC PL format for this tour? (Every team will be playing every other team for the first 5 weeks of the tournament. For each win, a team is awarded two points. For each tie, a team is awarded one point. For each loss, a team is awarded no points. We will then have a three week round robin between the top four teams. Then the top two teams will move on to the finals.) (Basically 6 teams play for the first 5 weeks > bottom 2 taems are eliminated > top 4 teams play for 3 weeks > top 2 teams move on to finals)

I was the one who brought it up and I think it would be a cool way to make the tour longer without increasig number of team slots. Honestly, most side teamtours nowadays last 10 weeks minimum (8 teams) anyway since theres always a tiebreak, so this format would basically equate playing time without sacrificing overall quality. One of the biggest arguments against this would be potentially screwing up the 2025 team tours schedule, which is fair but I think we can plan out things since NUWC is axed for the near future.

Since I know zs aint posting in this thread, I wanna bring up a good point he mentioned on NU cord: how would tier lock affect flex picks? Since you obviously wont know what tiers are gonna be picked by your opps before draft, you risk running into a situation where you can in theory just not have players that can be slotted into, say, DPP unless you shuffle around your whole lineup which could run into more tier locking issues. So, should we keep tier lock for your opponents flex picks? Imo at least, I think the answer is yes, and managers just need to plan out every situation. Maybe increasing budget to compensate for it, so they can draft more subs? Idk, but I firmly believe if you dont have a single player that can play a specific tier then something went wrong in your draft. Still, that is a really good point that we should talk about.

All in all, I have really high hopes for this edition. I dont wanna be overly optimistic and say everything will work out well and itll be all fine and dandy and rainbows and daffodils and your opp having limber ditto when you bring HO, but keeping in mind that we were already gonna change things for next NUCL, I think its more than fair to make changes this year already and seeing what works and what doesnt for NUCL III. Maybe this could lead to a messy tournament this year, but in return it would greatly help finally making this a serious tournament for future editions.

 

[Django]

I'd like to drop a few thoughts on potential concerns about the new format since I'm a big fan of it as well. Two points I've seen brought up are a) the quality of matches in flex slots being worse than otherwise and b) not having enough depth / overlap of tiers to draft enough flexible players to fit a player into the flex slots.

Would quality of matches be worse in flex slots?

So to address this point I'll theorymon draft strategies in this format. Flexible players who can play many tiers are going to cost more as their value has gone up, while strong 6-8 players are also worth more as suddenly your SS / SM / ORAS superstar can also support a second slot. Strong SV only players are probably worth around the same, while single tier only players are probably worth a bit less. I'll look at records from the last few NU team tours to support this. With that in mind, some potential strategies might be:

a) get two niche tier specialists for your two flex slots (someone you expect to go x-1 or x-0) e.g. Teh in RBY, BeeOrSomething in GSC, Finchinator in BW. Then get 3-4 cheaper but flexible players who can play many tiers to cover your opponents flex spots. For this to work as a manager you'd have potentially uncover some hidden gems, so manager scouting becomes a big factor
b) get four flexible players to cover both your own and your opps flex spots, changing your picks every week. Looking at last NUCL / NUPL, these players have all played multiple tiers with varying levels of success across price ranges: LpZ, watashi, Real FV13, Floss, Roxie, plznostep, xiri, pokeslice, innovamania, oathkeeper, xrn, frankjosh, quziel, thiago nunes. This is from scanning the last two team tour sheets for a few seconds, so doesn't include anyone who might be able to play tiers but hasn't done on those sheets. This is where manager knowledge of the playerbase becomes huge.
c) get four solid pilots and rely on you and your co manager to build for them each week. Certainly the high maintenance option, but we saw how successful this can be with shiloh and hellom in nupl this year. This is where manager support becomes a large factor.

Looking at these types of players (niche tier specialists, flexible players, solid pilots) it's worth comparing the top and bottom of pools from previous tours. Looking at the NUCL sheet for RBY-BW and NUPL sheet for ADV-BW, we see a pattern: top of the pool is a specialist (e.g. Teh, BeeOrSomething, Finchinator, Banbadoro), while the middle - bottom of the pools is more specialist players who end up flexing into many different tiers (e.g. Roxie, Oathkeeper, Innovamania, Bughouse). So realistically the types of matchup we see which would be "worst" are the specialists vs flexible players (best records vs worst records) - and these are exactly the types of matches we're already seeing. So overall I don't think there would be any difference in quality of matches. This is of course only true if we have the depth of flexible players to support this model...

Is there enough depth to draft enough flexible players?

The previous NUPL and NUCL are tours where there were 24-30 players needed across BW-RBY. In this tour we need the same - 4 flex slots for 6 teams is 24 starters + 6 subs at an average estimate. I think in reality we're very likely to see almost the same set of players across BW-RBY, with simply the middle set of matches (flex player vs flex player) reduced slightly, as some teams will opt to flex into gens 6-9, which will mean more games where there is a specialist vs a flex player. I don't really see the argument that there isn't enough depth when we can already support 24 players in ADV-BW in NUPL, and 30 players across RBY-BW in NUCL. I didn't see any criticism of quality about those gens in NUPL, and for NUCL there seemed to be a few concerns but I think this format addresses those by not forcing every team to have a specialist, and allowing flexible players to be more useful.

The role of the manager

In my view all of this makes the manager(s) way more important. As bolded above, it means you can choose strategies which focus on your ability as a manager who's great at scouting, or already has deep player base knowledge, or who can simply support the slots themselves. It's cool that the format opens up different routes for managers other than just "draft one of the top 2-3 players in each slot, let them be self sufficient". It also introduces mind games each week from the managers vs each other, which is another neat aspect.

The role of the player

It also puts more pressure on players to do more than just lock in their own tier and do nothing else, which in my view is crucial in a team tournament. If you simply want to lock in a single tier and not interact with any teammates, then play an individual tournament. Even tiers that have been criticised for this in the past (RBY/GSC) benefit from this format as a potential double flex slot in those tiers means they might need to help prep someone else to play as well. This could also result in new people playing (and potentially liking!!) different tiers, always a good thing.

 

[Tree69420]

I agree with increasing the budget, cuz 3 SV + 3 fairies + 4 flexes realistically will likely be equivalent to ~12 slots imo (although ive never drafted before so take anything i say with a grain of salt). Might end up with more expensive players getting price hiked but idk i think 14 or 15 player minimum makes sense?

Also, increasing manager skill expression is cool and yeah encouraging more working together across tiers is good

 

[Tuthur]

As the most reasonable NUer, defender of truth, and Snowshrew apologist, I would like to give my opinion on the NUCL II format and answer eternaughty's questions.

- 'Flex Players' are an idea we're considering for this tournament to add an extra element of strategy and hype to the tour. In theory, one player can be allocated as a 'flex player' for the team per week, and thus they will be able to slot into TWO slots rather than one. However, once a player has been used as a flex player in regular season, they may not be used as a flex player again until playoffs. (But they can still continue to play their one slot per week).

This raises many questions. First is "why?", preparing for two slots a week seems like a huge commitment and I'm unsure many players will want to do that. Though I might be wrong. Second is "why can they only flex only once?", I can think of many reasons why it is bad and that I'd be ready to list in another post, but I can't think of any reason to do this.

- Bo3 as a Flex tier option? (Both players pick one gen from SV - RBY, with the tiebreaker being SV? Or perhaps Bo3 can be kept to just fairygens?)

No. bo3 has no place in any serious teamtour if we want to be honnest, especially if you want some people to start in multiple slots. Second, it's going to make the flex slot even less hype to watch. It seems already tough to beat your opposing team's pick, but it's doable in bo1; in a bo3 you're not going to see many upsets and let people express preparation in a tier they don't master.

- Depending on the amount and quality of signups, we could consider expanding from 6 to 8 teams?

6 teams is definitely enough

- Should SV be a flex pick at all? or should flex picks only range from Gen 1 - Gen 8?

Why not? If you want to exclude SV, then exclude SS, SM, and ORAS, as well.

- One or Two Manager self-buys?

selfbuys suck, let people double selfbuy if they want.

- Should we adopt the GSC PL format for this tour? (Every team will be playing every other team for the first 5 weeks of the tournament. For each win, a team is awarded two points. For each tie, a team is awarded one point. For each loss, a team is awarded no points. We will then have a three week round robin between the top four teams. Then the top two teams will move on to the finals.) (Basically 6 teams play for the first 5 weeks > bottom 2 taems are eliminated > top 4 teams play for 3 weeks > top 2 teams move on to finals)

It's really terrible format. It only drags for ever. There is no moment where teams really go into playoff mode and by the time finals happen, everyone is just bored of the tournament. Look at current RBYPL, Dewgongs are already qualified for finals after playing 6 weeks (and sitting out for one due to tiebreak), and they are going to wait 2 weeks for finals (potentially 3 if tiebreak). Keep it short and fun please.

- Each team is allocated two 'flex picks' per week. They must pick two tiers (flex picks) every week ranging from SV all the way down to RBY. Teams MUST pick two different tiers per week with no repeats (e.g, Team A may pick DPP and RBY as their flex tier picks of the week, but NOT DPP + DPP or ORAS + ORAS.). (Note: This restriction does not apply across teams, e.g Team A picking SM does not prevent Team B from also picking SM). These picks can be changed week by week, allowing for managers to tailor their decisions based on the weaknesses of their opponents, as well as adding an additional element of strategy to the auction / draft.

Ok, how does that work? Let's say I'm managing, what kind of back and forth exchanges are going to happen between the hosting team and me?

-Tuthur, Limber Dittos manager

 

[juoean]

~ the "someone can be used as a flex player only once in the regular season" seems not only not a great idea but mathematically impossible.
there are four flex slots per week, there are 5 weeks with six teams, if there can never be a repeat that means that you need 4 times 5 = 20 different players over the regular season just for the flex slots. unless the goal here is to have 25+ players per team?
or i am misunderstanding something.
edit: i see there is a mention that a flex slot player can play up to two of the flex slots in the same week. id echo tuthurs concerns about player capacity, and it wouldnt rly be optional if you have 14 players and u need to fill 20 total flex slots then that means you absolutely have to have a flex player play double at least 6 times, and realistically probably more like 8 times that given that some players drafted may not be able to play any fairy gens etc.

~ i am somewhat confused by the "posts about the flex slots will be deleted" "disclaimer" at the top of the thread. all of these posts are abt flex slots, bc its the new aspect of this format not to mention that its 40% of the slots for each week, ofc a format discussion thread is going to be heavily discussing the flex slots. so i assume this is just a communication issue but what exactly is the OP saying will get deleted / is not permitted for discussion in this thread.

 

[juoean]

nvmd it seems i misunderstood the description, it is very confusing. "flex player" is not a player who plays a flex tier but someone who plays both one of the six main slots and one of the four flex slots (i think?)

edit: unrelated but to not triple post:

~ while its a cool idea i do feel like this is going to bring a lot of practical issues. people who only play one gen may not want to sign up for a team tour in which their gen is potentially never even played, or only played once or twice by their team. (as well as fewer games to spectate among other teams.) for both gsc and rby, most of the playerbase is people who only play that gen. ofc to some extent its true anyway u may get drafted as a sub but i think this is pretty different bc even after the draft you still have no idea how much you will actually get to play even if you are the only player drafted for the given tier on your team.

perhaps one way to address this, the double-slot, and the issue of the same old gen getting accidentally selected by both teams would be to exclude gen 6-8 from flex slots and also disallow any repeated flex slot. ie, the flex slots would be four of gens 1 2 3 4 5 9 each week. to ensure the non duplicate you would have to complicate the submission each week, which would kinda suck. (you could have managers submit ranked preferences of the six slots and then maybe if both teams submit the same preference in the same slot it gets axed from both? or u could coinflip it to see who it gets assigned to.)
or another way to do it could be for each team to submit a slot that they do not want included in the four flex slots, and then the four remaining are the flex slots for that week.
eg team A says we reject gsc for this week, team B says we reject dpp, then the four flex slots for the week would be rby adv bw sv.
would still need a system for if both teams submit the same preference for their rejected slot, but this would be simpler to resolve, each team only needs to submit a list of their first preferred rejected slot + their second preferred rejected. if one team first rejection is rby then sv, and the others is rby then bw, then you could cancel out the rby rejections and reject bw + sv, so the four slots would be rby-dpp. or you could coinflip to see whos rby rejection counts and pair it with a bw or sv rejection.
and ofc if teams have the same first and second rejection preferences then those will be the two slots rejected.

but the non-duplicate is desirable for obvious reasons, if gen 6-8 are not allowed for flex then you wouldnt need to have any double-slotting option which i think many people agree isnt desirable its much better if ten people get to each play once per week, and it would ensure that gens 1-5 get played at higher frequencies since at most two of them could be excluded each week, which hopefully would help the issue of people not wanting to sign up for a tour in which the tier they play may only get played once, tho ofc its still not the same as your gen getting played every week.

(you could alternatively just have the four flex tiers be chosen randomly, but my impression is that the whole idea of the flex slot proposal is for the 'strategy' of your flex slot picks, and this would defeat the point of that youd be better off just doing the full 12 slots at that point)

 

[roxie]

- Bo3 as a Flex tier option? (Both players pick one gen from SV - RBY, with the tiebreaker being SV? Or perhaps Bo3 can be kept to just fairygens?)

I believe Bo3 should only be kept for fairy gens for simplicity. Idk I feel like if bo3 is a selectable option it would be a selectable option x2? Tbh I think a void system would be a lot more manageable , Team A picks first then Team B , then vise versa to prevent teams from getting x2 bo3 slots to decrease burnout from a wildcard factor like this. Also side note even locking BW/DPP and just having the one flex slot picks standardizes this so it’s less chaotic and I believe that should be an option on the table for formality.

- Depending on the amount and quality of signups, we could consider expanding from 6 to 8 teams?

This tour was changed to 6 slots and the number of slots for 6 teams along with the actual managers that have contributed towards this community is rather dire. we are a lower tier there is plenty slots. If we want more managers and truly improving what’s being discussed now is an optional 2-3 manager signup. 3 managers are really good nowadays and it’s currently being discussed in a PR thread. Even adding a manager post draft is nice formality too.

- Should SV be a flex pick at all? or should flex picks only range from Gen 1 - Gen 8?

Keep SV in

- One or Two Manager self-buys?

Two manager self buys , managers are typically the more well diverse players in NU. We’ve lowered our manager signups to 6 for a reason and there is no reason to go backwards. If you’re going to manage this tournament you should be available to support most if not all tiers making you capable of playing. If you don’t feel worthy of the price just don’t self buy. There are going to be geniuses / cooks in the tournament but this is a Pokemon game. It’s no reason to nerf manager duo signups just because one feels it’s a disadvantage just because they aren’t self buying or worthy of said price.

- Should we adopt the GSC PL format for this tour? (Every team will be playing every other team for the first 5 weeks of the tournament. For each win, a team is awarded two points. For each tie, a team is awarded one point. For each loss, a team is awarded no points. We will then have a three week round robin between the top four teams. Then the top two teams will move on to the finals.) (Basically 6 teams play for the first 5 weeks > bottom 2 taems are eliminated > top 4 teams play for 3 weeks > top 2 teams move on to finals)

I don’t care 5 weeks was definitely too short and went by too fast. And we had a bye week I think? Idk I wanted to work with my team a little more then it felt like the entire community went back to their 9-5s..lol

 

[Ren-chon]

Ok, how does that work? Let's say I'm managing, what kind of back and forth exchanges are going to happen between the hosting team and me?

-Tuthur, Limber Dittos manager

You'll only interact twice: once to tell them your slots, then host announces in managers channel what each team picked, and then you send them your lineups. There's not much back and forth. Can't speak on how deadlines would work but in regards to communication it won't be too different to how things are currently, just a simple "picking ss adv" in PMs and then sending them your line-up.

 

[Magic Mayhem Maiden]

From reading the discussion here, my understanding of the "Flex Player" is: (rewrote so I can understand)

Each week, one player is the Flex Player and can play in 2 slots. However, after the week, this player cannot become the Flex Player again until Playoffs.

It's unclear whether this Flex Player must play in 1 flex slot, and/or they are allowed to play 2 flex slots (since they both have "flex" in their names). I would clarify that or rename "Flex Player".

The Flex Player idea seems cool and I don't think this implementation has a major issue once clarified. I will say that the Flex Player somewhat overlaps with a Bo3 Slot with what it's trying to do, so I don't think both of them should be in the tour at once.

Edit: Even without the controversy of Flex Slots and Flex Players themselves, I do think trying to change a lot of things at once is a bad idea. It should only be Flex Slots at first.

Note for the GSC PL ("Belgian") format because it's missing from the OP:
Points in the 2nd Phase (Week 6, 7, 8) are doubled compared to the 1st Phase. So Wins are 4 Points, Ties are 2 Points.

 

[Ren-chon]

Since a lot of people have been complaining about the format being a tad hard to understand, specially given theres a lot of information handed all at once, Ive added a Format Explained section at the end of OP explaining in-depth both how flex tiers work, and how flex player would work if implemented. If you have any questions, feel free to post here, PM a mod, or join our discord (https://discord.gg/AveWPRT9fw) since there will be a lot of discussion over this format happening there.

 

[Stories]

Bo3 as a Flex tier option?

hell no

Depending on the amount and quality of signups, we could consider expanding from 6 to 8 teams?

hell no

Should SV be a flex pick at all? or should flex picks only range from Gen 1 - Gen 8?

SV is fine

One or Two Manager self-buys?

Two but one less retain

Should we adopt the GSC PL format for this tour? (Every team will be playing every other team for the first 5 weeks of the tournament. For each win, a team is awarded two points. For each tie, a team is awarded one point. For each loss, a team is awarded no points. We will then have a three week round robin between the top four teams. Then the top two teams will move on to the finals.) (Basically 6 teams play for the first 5 weeks > bottom 2 taems are eliminated > top 4 teams play for 3 weeks > top 2 teams move on to finals)

idk what these means idrc

 

[Tree69420]

perhaps one way to address this, the double-slot, and the issue of the same old gen getting accidentally selected by both teams would be to exclude gen 6-8 from flex slots and also disallow any repeated flex slot. ie, the flex slots would be four of gens 1 2 3 4 5 9 each week. to ensure the non duplicate you would have to complicate the submission each week, which would kinda suck. (you could have managers submit ranked preferences of the six slots and then maybe if both teams submit the same preference in the same slot it gets axed from both? or u could coinflip it to see who it gets assigned to.)
or another way to do it could be for each team to submit a slot that they do not want included in the four flex slots, and then the four remaining are the flex slots for that week.
eg team A says we reject gsc for this week, team B says we reject dpp, then the four flex slots for the week would be rby adv bw sv.
would still need a system for if both teams submit the same preference for their rejected slot, but this would be simpler to resolve, each team only needs to submit a list of their first preferred rejected slot + their second preferred rejected. if one team first rejection is rby then sv, and the others is rby then bw, then you could cancel out the rby rejections and reject bw + sv, so the four slots would be rby-dpp. or you could coinflip to see whos rby rejection counts and pair it with a bw or sv rejection.
and ofc if teams have the same first and second rejection preferences then those will be the two slots rejected.

but the non-duplicate is desirable for obvious reasons, if gen 6-8 are not allowed for flex then you wouldnt need to have any double-slotting option which i think many people agree isnt desirable its much better if ten people get to each play once per week, and it would ensure that gens 1-5 get played at higher frequencies since at most two of them could be excluded each week, which hopefully would help the issue of people not wanting to sign up for a tour in which the tier they play may only get played once, tho ofc its still not the same as your gen getting played every week.

(you could alternatively just have the four flex tiers be chosen randomly, but my impression is that the whole idea of the flex slot proposal is for the 'strategy' of your flex slot picks, and this would defeat the point of that youd be better off just doing the full 12 slots at that point)

the picking 1 flex slot to ban sounds really interesting as an idea actually, the problem is that ie if you have the best GSC player then your opponent can always force no GSC, and then your best play is to prefer GSC ban to cancel out your opps GSC ban and play GSC? which just makes no sense like yeah it makes sense from a game theory perspective but why would we be encouraging mindgames by banning your own best slot lmao

 

[BigFatMantis]

This format seems incredibly convoluted - would there really be any issue with just rotating some oldgen tiers in those final slots instead of playing this flex option? There’s four slots to play with for five more oldgens, surely you can just put them all on the same schedule (ie Week 1 is BW/DPP/ADV/GSC, Week 2 is DPP/ADV/GSC/RBY, etc), and you could even throw in other tiers to the rotation if you really wanted to if the math makes sense. This gives every team the same expectation for what tiers will be played, removes any kind of silly mind games/elimination, and makes the draft more meaningful since you know exactly what tiers are to be played instead of hoping all season that maybe you don’t ever play GSC or something.

 

[juoean]

the picking 1 flex slot to ban sounds really interesting as an idea actually, the problem is that ie if you have the best GSC player then your opponent can always force no GSC, and then your best play is to prefer GSC ban to cancel out your opps GSC ban and play GSC? which just makes no sense like yeah it makes sense from a game theory perspective but why would we be encouraging mindgames by banning your own best slot lmao

ok true lol thatd be extremely unintuitive, so ig the less bad option would be to just coinflip which one counts if both teams select the same option as their first preference to not play ["theoretically" this would be a rare occurrence anyway, but in practice who knows]

(or as bfm says just get rid of the 'strategic component' of the flex slots entirely and just have it rotate or something)

 

[Danny]

As the reigning zu champion, I will respond to the zu tyrant's claims about our benevolent leader etern.

- 'Flex Players' are an idea we're considering for this tournament to add an extra element of strategy and hype to the tour. In theory, one player can be allocated as a 'flex player' for the team per week, and thus they will be able to slot into TWO slots rather than one. However, once a player has been used as a flex player in regular season, they may not be used as a flex player again until playoffs. (But they can still continue to play their one slot per week).

This raises many questions. First is "why?", preparing for two slots a week seems like a huge commitment and I'm unsure many players will want to do that. Though I might be wrong. Second is "why can they only flex only once?", I can think of many reasons why it is bad and that I'd be ready to list in another post, but I can't think of any reason to do this.

For once, Tuthur is correct. Flex players and flex slots are foolish. They add nothing but complication.

- Bo3 as a Flex tier option? (Both players pick one gen from SV - RBY, with the tiebreaker being SV? Or perhaps Bo3 can be kept to just fairygens?)

No. bo3 has no place in any serious teamtour if we want to be honnest, especially if you want some people to start in multiple slots. Second, it's going to make the flex slot even less hype to watch. It seems already tough to beat your opposing team's pick, but it's doable in bo1; in a bo3 you're not going to see many upsets and let people express preparation in a tier they don't master.

This is foolish. You claim that bo3 has no place in any serious team tour without providing anything in defense of that.
1. bo3 stimulates cg development: as seen in tours that have bo3 slots such as PUPL and RUPL, the bo3 allows builders to express more creativity in current generation, seeing as the impact of 1 game is not as significant as in the bo1 format. I will not claim that it develops the older generations as much, but that is just a symptom of them being oldgens rather than an implication on the part of the bo3 format. There is a lot of recycling, however that leads me onto my second point.
2. Most entertaining format. Everyone loves best of threes, it is the site's lifeblood and allows spectators to enjoy watching a series. It is the most fun with regard to skill expression. The betterplayers gravitate towards the best of three, and thus this will help us entice great players to join the tournament to raise the quality of gaming that we will see this tour.
3. This last point is wack. "It seems already tough to beat your opposing team's pick, but it's doable in bo1; in a bo3 you're not going to see many upsets and let people express preparation in a tier they don't master." I don't know about you, but I prefer it when the better player wins. That is what happens in a best-of-three. Your statement boils down to "I want the worst player to win" or "I would prefer a cheese strat that works in bo1 get me a win" rather than the best gravitating towards the top.

- Depending on the amount and quality of signups, we could consider expanding from 6 to 8 teams?

6 teams is definitely enough

I agree. If we have enough quality signups for 8 however I would not be opposed. Don't think it really matters much.

- Should we adopt the GSC PL format for this tour? (Every team will be playing every other team for the first 5 weeks of the tournament. For each win, a team is awarded two points. For each tie, a team is awarded one point. For each loss, a team is awarded no points. We will then have a three week round robin between the top four teams. Then the top two teams will move on to the finals.) (Basically 6 teams play for the first 5 weeks > bottom 2 taems are eliminated > top 4 teams play for 3 weeks > top 2 teams move on to finals)

It's really terrible format. It only drags for ever. There is no moment where teams really go into playoff mode and by the time finals happen, everyone is just bored of the tournament. Look at current RBYPL, Dewgongs are already qualified for finals after playing 6 weeks (and sitting out for one due to tiebreak), and they are going to wait 2 weeks for finals (potentially 3 if tiebreak). Keep it short and fun please.

This seems bad agree with tuthur.

- Each team is allocated two 'flex picks' per week. They must pick two tiers (flex picks) every week ranging from SV all the way down to RBY. Teams MUST pick two different tiers per week with no repeats (e.g, Team A may pick DPP and RBY as their flex tier picks of the week, but NOT DPP + DPP or ORAS + ORAS.). (Note: This restriction does not apply across teams, e.g Team A picking SM does not prevent Team B from also picking SM). These picks can be changed week by week, allowing for managers to tailor their decisions based on the weaknesses of their opponents, as well as adding an additional element of strategy to the auction / draft.

Ok, how does that work? Let's say I'm managing, what kind of back and forth exchanges are going to happen between the hosting team and me?

-Tuthur, Limber Dittos manager

No flex just stack it up with either another SV/SS/SM/ORAS AND BO3

Once again, I will advocate for best of three, it is fun to play, it is fun to watch, it encourages great players to rise up, and it removes variance that occurs in bo1 while rewarding good drafting by managers.

-Danny, zu circuit champion, zu escapee, ATA

 

[juoean]

3. This last point is wack. "It seems already tough to beat your opposing team's pick, but it's doable in bo1; in a bo3 you're not going to see many upsets and let people express preparation in a tier they don't master." I don't know about you, but I prefer it when the better player wins. That is what happens in a best-of-three. Your statement boils down to "I want the worst player to win" or "I would prefer a cheese strat that works in bo1 get me a win" rather than the best gravitating towards the top.

i just want to clarify that the comments you were responding to here, were specifically talking about having bo3 in a "flex slot." the concern was in the context that with the proposed flex slot structure, teams would be heavily incentivized to prioritize gens 6-9 over 1-5 in their draft plans and therefore they may not end up with the best player for each of the older gens.

although im guessing (?) that if bo3 was allowed as a flex slot that it would be sv bo3, not that any team can choose to do bo3 in any gen for their flex slots. so idk that this is an actual issue, but no one was saying that bo3 helping "better players" was a bad idea in general it was only a concern expressed in the context of this flex slots paradigm (which many of us have been confused by in various ways throughout this thread so its ofc understandable).

 

[Danny]

i just want to clarify that the comments you were responding to here, were specifically talking about having bo3 in a "flex slot." the concern was in the context that with the proposed flex slot structure, teams would be heavily incentivized to prioritize gens 6-9 over 1-5 in their draft plans and therefore they may not end up with the best player for each of the older gens.

although im guessing (?) that if bo3 was allowed as a flex slot that it would be sv bo3, not that any team can choose to do bo3 in any gen for their flex slots. so idk that this is an actual issue, but no one was saying that bo3 helping "better players" was a bad idea in general it was only a concern expressed in the context of this flex slots paradigm (which many of us have been confused by in various ways throughout this thread so its ofc understandable).

no bo3 in this context is gen 9, gen 8, and gen 7.

 

[BeeOrSomething]

I do not intend to play this tour and did not intend to even before I saw this, but I still feel like commenting.

To my understanding, most teams will not have a reason to actually invest significant cash into mainers of a flex slot gen with the exception of the two they are going to pick every week. It is far more efficient to buy players who are less specialized and can play multiple tiers because you don't know what two tiers your opponents will pick on any given week and managers will assume they will be more helpful to the overall team regardless than someone like me who only bothers with one tier. This creates even larger gaps between the top and middle/bottom of pools and can force people to play tiers they don't want to because their team doesn't have another decent option to send into the 5-0 RBY player or whatever, which can also create uninteresting gameplay from a spectators POV and unnecessary animosity towards such tiers. It also potentially takes away from one more opportunity for mainers of these non-auto included generations to play their tier in a team tour in the year, especially relevant for RBY and GSC, and generally reduces the amount of players for those gens that even get drafted compared to a more typical format. I do not support this idea practically despite the intrigue of the idea.

If I am mistaken about the format feel free to correct me.

 

[Sabelette]

I raised my concerns/thoughts on discord, but I do wanna add that RBY/GSC losing their guarnateed (as in, play every week) slot in an NU crossgen tour discourages RBY/GSC players from participating in the community (which just continuously creates a feedback loop that creates less and less participation) and that its both very unlikely that managers have any clue who to draft in these tiers and very likely that teams try very hard to avoid playing these slots as much as possible, even if they get one of the better players for it; I expect a lot of terrible mismatches and bad teams that click RNG-reliant buttons, making these tiers look worse and reinforcing the idea that these are bad, unskilled tiers with like 6-10 viable mons in them, which isn't true of either tier. This format only feels beneficial to fairy gen players who happen to like an oldgen or two, which is fine if that's what you want, but mainers definitely get shafted. I'm not suggesting changing it, the original post was very clear that's what you're doing - just outside of this tournament, maybe consider if we can get some kind of oldgens teamtour? I'm happy to help host one.

Re: the rest
Flex players - nah, seems like a lot to put on players + really broken to just be able to have a strong multi gen player play 2x in a week
Bo3 as a Flex tier option - if your fairygen players want it, not something that concerns me
8 teams - seems like it'd be even worse in terms of teams just not drafting rby/gsc and lacking player knowledge
should SV be a flex pick - seems like a waste of the format to do this, but to me it seems weird that any fairy gen is a flex pick when they all have guaranteed slots
Manager self-buys - seems fine to have 2 in a format like this but make the second one very pricey, surely
Belgian format - having played this in rbypl twice now, I have to say I think it really drags on and gets exhausting

 

[Amity]

I just want to point out that despite the fact that flex slots aren't going to change, this tournament is going to have ADV NU while Glalie is still in its suspect phase. I do not feel that this tournament should decrease the amount / quality of ADV games as we are seriously looking to see if Glalie is a healthy meta element or not. This was specifically the tour said here to suspect Glalie but I feel like this tournament format is meant to dodge the suspect. Either change the flex slots to have guaranteed oldgen slots or restate your proposal about when Glalie will be given a proper suspect please.

Also do not do flex bo3, putting that random pressure on players will make the tour less fun and if I were a manager I would not pick it for my players.

 

[Meri Berry]

This was specifically the tour said here to suspect Glalie but I feel like this tournament format is meant to dodge the suspect.

I don't care about these threads because format threads are always really awful to try and come to a conclusion from, but what does this mean? If it helps, this idea has been excitedly floated around to me by eternally and Ren-chon for months. I don't really understand what a statement like this is trying to accomplish.

 

[Amity]

I don't care about these threads because format threads are always really awful to try and come to a conclusion from, but what does this mean? If it helps, this idea has been excitedly floated around to me by eternally and Ren-chon for months. I don't really understand what a statement like this is trying to accomplish.

dunno why i couldnt have been dm'ed about this but anyway

What im saying is I think with the way that NUCL format is turning out, this tour shouldnt be used as suspect grounds for Glalie meta, while NU mods said prior to finding out the format this tour will be used to suspect glalie, gather reqs, and vote after. This shouldn't be the tour to do it. If there is another tournament that NU mods would feel showcases Glalie meta ADV NU I would prefer that instead and NU mods can revise their plan.

 

[Ren-chon]

dunno why i couldnt have been dm'ed about this but anyway

What im saying is I think with the way that NUCL format is turning out, this tour shouldnt be used as suspect grounds for Glalie meta, while NU mods said prior to finding out the format this tour will be used to suspect glalie, gather reqs, and vote after. This shouldn't be the tour to do it. If there is another tournament that NU mods would feel showcases Glalie meta ADV NU I would prefer that instead and NU mods can revise their plan.

Uhhh... Care to provide proof of that? I dont recall literally a single person on staff saying any of that, which wouldnt even make sense eitherway since the mod team is in no way involved with tiering other than the TLs and mods who are, unrelated to their staff position, in council of whatever tier that is. What rabia said was:

NUCL is starting in November, so we'll be returning to this topic after the fact so we can have a more formal setting with Glalie actually in the metagame. This also allows more users to potentially get voting requirements for playing ADV in the tournament.

Idk if you misunderstood what he said but the message pretty much just says "lets wait till after NUCL so more people can play glalie meta and then we can make a decision. also giving this matter more time will let more people participate in voting" since historically tournament results have been used as one way to select qualified users to vote, but that doesnt mean this tour will be solely used to that nor does it mean we should change how an entire team tour works just for the sake of a single suspect