Proposal Old Gen Suspect Requirements - An Argument For Reform

[pulsar512b]

In view of the recent controversy around the voting list for the ADV OU BP suspect, I think it is an appropriate time to bring up some grievances I have with the procedure for old gen suspects.
(the parts in spoiler tags can be ignored while still understanding my core argument but I did want to say them anyway and would encourage all to read them as some may address your objections)

The Issue With The Status Quo
The current procedure is flawed. In summary, voting lists are typically (primarily) decided by results in recent major tournaments (both team and individual). However, the definition of ‘major’ and ‘recent’ are up to the council - this leads to situations like the omission of Callous Invitational for instance. There is no agreed upon standard for what counts. There is no transparency as to why these are selected in the vast majority of cases.

Further, especially for smaller tiers, many of the paths to being on this list require you to have played in a team tournament. It is no mystery that team tournaments reward networking and connections as much as skill, and as such requiring players to play in them to be able to have a say in a tier is ridiculous.

footnote

There are typically requirements to win some certain number of games, which at least puts some amount of skill into it, so that goes some way towards fixing this problem. However, this only increases the problem mentioned in the next two paragraphs, and IMO still does not fully reflect skill. If I have connections and successfully MU fish a couple people in a team tour, does that mean I should get to vote on the suspects on it? I would say no.

Often said requirements end up with a relatively short voting list of 20, 30, maybe 40 people. This is in my opinion a sign that these lists are far too restrictive and there is always the undeniable fact that some number of very skilled and worthy players end up left off of said list.

Why is this? Well, often these players were unable to play in these major tournaments or did not have a strong incentive to (rarely would they know that there is one in the end!). Perhaps they just had a mediocre or bad performance in this tournament due to variance or (especially in single/double elim tournaments) got bad luck with their pairings. These things happen, and they should not exclude a player from being able to have a substantial, real say in the tier beyond the 'ooh i can say words in PR' which any shmuck with PR access could do.

a more theoretical/philosophical problem

It is also possible, although I have not heard of any cases of this, to have a malicious council deliberately shape their voting list in such a way that they can effectively predetermine the outcome. If the council wants a certain vote, they can shape the voting list to have an overwhelming majority of players who are inclined to vote in that way. Of course, this requires the vote to at least be somewhat close to begin with, but it is not hard to imagine this monumentally changing matters. I'm not saying it's happened (though if it came out that this has happened I would be far from astonished), just that it is a plausible situation.

The ways to address this
First - some tiers (usually the smaller ones where this is more apparent) have roomtours that would give suspect requirements. These are a great, if sorely limited, solution. I do have my concerns about the number of them and the availability of them and would like there to be more and at varied times but naturally there are logistical difficulties. These are a fine solution as a supplement or replacement when the second option is not available.

Second - The ADV OU BP suspect has a ladder requirement, akin to those in current gen tiers. This is a great idea and I have said repeatedly in private that I think this is how all tiering should be ran. Simply put, there is no difference between an old gen ladder and a current gen ladder. Sure, there's less activity in ADV OU than SV OU, but activity is not an automatic reason to reject the idea of a suspect. Inactive ladders in current gen get suspects all the time.

adv ou suspect requirement weirdness specifically

The adv ou suspect specifically is quite strange in it's requirements. It requires an unusually high ELO (equivalent to ~#40 on the ladder at the time of writing), in addition to a reasonable GXE limit. It does also lack the sliding scale that current gen tiers use. These factors combine for an atypically difficult suspect. I would be interested to hear what the reasoning was here. Perhaps this is off-base and ADV ladder is somehow unusual in such a way that this is actually a perfectly reasonable set of requirements.

In general, suspects are somewhat opaque as far as the reasons for their requirements go, even during current gen. I would welcome more transparency with regards to this in general, but that is perhaps for a different thread.

I would argue that these should supplement (if not replace) tournament-based requirements. The ADV OU BP suspect's requirements are a step forward, and I would encourage that step to be continued. At an absolute minimum, I would advise that a transparent set of procedures for determining suspect requirements be established.

I appreciate the consideration & have a great rest of your day!

 

[Star]

The voting lists have very much been standardized for old gen votes as of last year. The tour reqs ADV is using for the SpeedPass suspect are the exact same as the GSC TrapPass and the BW Gems suspects that happened last year. We plan to use this exact list as the standard tour reqs template for any old gen votes. You are right that this isn't like publicly declared anywhere, but there is indeed no conspiracy at work where we're randomly hand-selecting the cutoffs we want on a case-by-case basis.

Speaking of hand-selecting voting pools though, that's the exact reason why we've moved away from ever allowing Invitationals to be used for tour reqs. It's inherently just biased to use a tournament where invites are issued at the whims of whatever host as a basis for qualification, even if we do believe that those players are "worthy" in our own eyes. We're generally exclusively using the official trophy/circuit Smogon tours (this is a Smogon tier and suspect after all) that are open for anybody to enter. That's not to say it's completely impossible to make an exception for some notable offsite open-entry tour, but there are obviously requirements that tour must meet if Smogon was to tie itself to it officially (not allowing any permabanned users and such).

As for the ladder reqs part of things, that is judged on a more case-by-case basis. For ADV suspects, we've generally added a ladder component because the ladder itself is obviously quite active and of decent quality. However, for a GSC suspect we almost certainly wouldn't include a ladder component because that ladder is dead as fuck (see below). We don't have an exact cutoff for what kind of ladder activity would warrant a ladder component, so that's something we can work on but I don't think standardizing having a ladder component for every vote is the right approach.

November Ladder Stats

RBY - 22726
GSC - 9402
ADV - 233796
DPP - 67865
BW - 55024
ORAS - 57489
SM - 143778
SS - 60579

 

[pulsar512b]

The voting lists have very much been standardized for old gen votes as of last year. The tour reqs ADV is using for the SpeedPass suspect are the exact same as the GSC TrapPass and the BW Gems suspects that happened last year. We plan to use this exact list as the standard tour reqs template for any old gen votes. You are right that this isn't like publicly declared anywhere, but there is indeed no conspiracy at work where we're randomly hand-selecting the cutoffs we want on a case-by-case basis.

Speaking of hand-selecting voting pools though, that's the exact reason why we've moved away from ever allowing Invitationals to be used for tour reqs. It's inherently just biased to use a tournament where invites are issued at the whims of whatever host as a basis for qualification, even if we do believe that those players are "worthy" in our own eyes. We're generally exclusively using the official trophy/circuit Smogon tours (this is a Smogon tier and suspect after all) that are open for anybody to enter. That's not to say it's completely impossible to make an exception for some notable offsite open-entry tour, but there are obviously requirements that tour must meet if Smogon was to tie itself to it officially (not allowing any permabanned users and such).

As for the ladder reqs part of things, that is judged on a more case-by-case basis. For ADV suspects, we've generally added a ladder component because the ladder itself is obviously quite active and of decent quality. However, for a GSC suspect we almost certainly wouldn't include a ladder component because that ladder is dead as fuck (see below). We don't have an exact cutoff for what kind of ladder activity would warrant a ladder component, so that's something we can work on but I don't think standardizing having a ladder component for every vote is the right approach.

November Ladder Stats

RBY - 22726
GSC - 9402
ADV - 233796
DPP - 67865
BW - 55024
ORAS - 57489
SM - 143778
SS - 60579

I'm glad to hear that hand-selected voting pools is not an issue. The reason CI and other invitationals are excluded seems reasonable to me as well.

I would note that there seems to be less standardization for lower tiers and more minor tiers but I'm glad theres at least some opaque attempt at standardization (Again, i would like this to be as transparent as possible.)

However, this post does not address the heart of my concerns with the current system, namely the lack of fairness and equity. In other words, players with connections

There is no agreed upon standard for what counts. There is no transparency as to why these are selected in the vast majority of cases.

Further, especially for smaller tiers, many of the paths to being on this list require you to have played in a team tournament. It is no mystery that team tournaments reward networking and connections as much as skill, and as such requiring players to play in them to be able to have a say in a tier is ridiculous.

footnote

There are typically requirements to win some certain number of games, which at least puts some amount of skill into it, so that goes some way towards fixing this problem. However, this only increases the problem mentioned in the next two paragraphs, and IMO still does not fully reflect skill. If I have connections and successfully MU fish a couple people in a team tour, does that mean I should get to vote on the suspects on it? I would say no.

Often said requirements end up with a relatively short voting list of 20, 30, maybe 40 people. This is in my opinion a sign that these lists are far too restrictive and there is always the undeniable fact that some number of very skilled and worthy players end up left off of said list.

Why is this? Well, often these players were unable to play in these major tournaments or did not have a strong incentive to (rarely would they know that there is one in the end!). Perhaps they just had a mediocre or bad performance in this tournament due to variance or (especially in single/double elim tournaments) got bad luck with their pairings. These things happen, and they should not exclude a player from being able to have a substantial, real say in the tier beyond the 'ooh i can say words in PR' which any shmuck with PR access could do.

The ways to address this
First - some tiers (usually the smaller ones where this is more apparent) have roomtours that would give suspect requirements. These are a great, if sorely limited, solution. I do have my concerns about the number of them and the availability of them and would like there to be more and at varied times but naturally there are logistical difficulties. These are a fine solution as a supplement or replacement when the second option is not available.

Second - The ADV OU BP suspect has a ladder requirement, akin to those in current gen tiers. This is a great idea and I have said repeatedly in private that I think this is how all tiering should be ran. Simply put, there is no difference between an old gen ladder and a current gen ladder. Sure, there's less activity in ADV OU than SV OU, but activity is not an automatic reason to reject the idea of a suspect. Inactive ladders in current gen get suspects all the time.

I would argue that these should supplement (if not replace) tournament-based requirements. The ADV OU BP suspect's requirements are a step forward, and I would encourage that step to be continued. At an absolute minimum, I would advise that a transparent set of procedures for determining suspect requirements be established.

I appreciate the consideration & have a great rest of your day!

(appropriate parts bolded)

As I mentioned, there are alternatives for inactive ladders that would at least go some way in fixing this equity problem, such as roomtours. I see no reason why a tier like GSC could not have these. I originally envisioned these being used for tiers without ladders whatsoever (like old gen lower tiers), but they could be used for inactive ladders.

My dislike of the current system can be summarized as me disliking that players with clout and connections have an advantage. This is simply unacceptable in my eyes.

This complaint has not been addressed whatsoever and I think all suspects should be designed in a way to limit or ideally fully eliminate such a factor.

My proposal for the new standard is that tour-based eligibility should go the way of the dinosaur. For tiers with sufficiently active ladders (please have an actual number of games per month for this not just 'whatever the council thinks'), a suspect akin to CG would be performed. For tiers without that, a series of roomtours should be held. While roomtours are far from ideal, they at least solve the issue of enfranchised players having an advantage.

If you think this is too far, at the very least these could be considered as supplementary routes to being able to vote.

Thank you for reading & have a great day.

postscript - adv ou

I'm still waiting on the reply to the last spoiler in the OP where I mentioned the ADV OU requirements being rather unusual. I would advise you address this, as well as publicly explain the omission of the CI, in the adv ou BP thread. Transparency is key and Smogon in general is doing a shit job of giving it.

(edited to fix a typo)

 

[freezai]

Current suspect reqs are flawed, but I'd argue they're the least flawed compared to the alternatives.

Roomtours/Livetours are notoriously awful for getting suspect reqs, you can bink a 4-0 and get voting reqs and these tours don't provide any sort of meaningful sample size to determine if a player is actually "good", especially for smaller tiers where a Livetour doesn't get a lot of players. At the extreme, there's a case of someone going 0-1 (lol) to get reqs in a gsc nu suspect tour. There's plenty more wrong with roomtours but OP acknowledges the flaws of livetours so I won't go into too much detail.

Ladder reqs are similarly flawed when they're run on less active ladders. Matchmaking takes forever, you don't play good players often, you often play the same players over and over again and you either have to make concessions with a required GXE or accept that very few players can even get reqs. Less active current gen ladders do run suspect tests... and they suck. ZU's most recent ladder suspect test had 7 voters and NU had 13 voters before they loosened reqs and now have 20 voters and Mr bossaru voting with 76 gxe. If you already have a "qualified" voterbase from tournaments then there's even fewer good players laddering and that makes the problem even worse. ADV is in the unique position of having an active ladder and they rightfully have ladder reqs. If your tier is active enough to support ladder reqs it should, but if it can't it shouldn't: Adding more voters doesn't necessarily mean you're improving the voterpool

From my understanding, Smogon has a new zero tolerance policy on affiliating with servers with banned users which is why CI isn't allowed for a voterlist in the adv BP case; that's a separate discussion.

Most tournament based voterlists incorporate (or at least should) individuals AND team tours,
Even if you believe the Undrafted Player Copium about team tours, there's still plenty of individuals to do well in. Is there a genuine qualm with the current tour reqs for individuals? Should they be less strict? (Adv is an exception here, several of their meaningful tours are tied up with the banned users problem)

Tiering metagames with inactive ladders is a tough problem with no perfect solution. Using only tournament results is one of those imperfect solutions. It's not convincing to me that adding ladder reqs would lead to better outcomes

 

[pulsar512b]

Current suspect reqs are flawed, but I'd argue they're the least flawed compared to the alternatives.

Roomtours/Livetours are notoriously awful for getting suspect reqs, you can bink a 4-0 and get voting reqs and these tours don't provide any sort of meaningful sample size to determine if a player is actually "good", especially for smaller tiers where a Livetour doesn't get a lot of players. At the extreme, there's a case of someone going 0-1 (lol) to get reqs in a gsc nu suspect tour. There's plenty more wrong with roomtours but OP acknowledges the flaws of livetours so I won't go into too much detail.

Ladder reqs are similarly flawed when they're run on less active ladders. Matchmaking takes forever, you don't play good players often, you often play the same players over and over again and you either have to make concessions with a required GXE or accept that very few players can even get reqs. Less active current gen ladders do run suspect tests... and they suck. ZU's most recent ladder suspect test had 7 voters and NU had 13 voters before they loosened reqs and now have 20 voters and Mr bossaru voting with 76 gxe. If you already have a "qualified" voterbase from tournaments then there's even fewer good players laddering and that makes the problem even worse. ADV is in the unique position of having an active ladder and they rightfully have ladder reqs. If your tier is active enough to support ladder reqs it should, but if it can't it shouldn't: Adding more voters doesn't necessarily mean you're improving the voterpool

From my understanding, Smogon has a new zero tolerance policy on affiliating with servers with banned users which is why CI isn't allowed for a voterlist in the adv BP case; that's a separate discussion.

Most tournament based voterlists incorporate (or at least should) individuals AND team tours,
Even if you believe the Undrafted Player Copium about team tours, there's still plenty of individuals to do well in. Is there a genuine qualm with the current tour reqs for individuals? Should they be less strict? (Adv is an exception here, several of their meaningful tours are tied up with the banned users problem)

Tiering metagames with inactive ladders is a tough problem with no perfect solution. Using only tournament results is one of those imperfect solutions. It's not convincing to me that adding ladder reqs would lead to better outcomes

I'll write a longer reply later but if you're saying that 'players with connections and clout have an advantage in the auction' is 'undrafted player copium' that is just a ludicrous take that reeks of privilege.

In general, while I recognize that livetours and ladder reqs aren't ideal they're better than having a tiny and clearly incomplete voting list and needlessly excluding anyone who happened to choose (not knowing the suspect would happen) to skip out on the tours that would qualify - i'll write something addressing this in depth after the holiday season.

 

[pulsar512b]

holidays are over time for my reply

Malicious Councils
In regards to the comments about bad actors on councils rigging the vote by strategically cherrypicking tours to manipulate the voter list, I did not intend to specifically imply that the ADV OU council or any other council is taking or has taken such actions. I was merely expressing a possibility of exploitation that is present under the current system.

A prominent user who wishes to remain anonymous reached out to me and told me that this has happened in the past. While I did not know about this, I'm not surprised and this supports my argument that this possibility is harmful and should be eliminated by modifying old gen suspect requirement norms.

A response to freezai's post

Current suspect reqs are flawed, but I'd argue they're the least flawed compared to the alternatives.

We both seem to agree on this which is good (and you can consult the OP for my thoughts on this, though I will add some more thoughts now in response to freezai's points).

Roomtours/Livetours are notoriously awful for getting suspect reqs, you can bink a 4-0 and get voting reqs and these tours don't provide any sort of meaningful sample size to determine if a player is actually "good", especially for smaller tiers where a Livetour doesn't get a lot of players. At the extreme, there's a case of someone going 0-1 (lol) to get reqs in a gsc nu suspect tour. There's plenty more wrong with roomtours but OP acknowledges the flaws of livetours so I won't go into too much detail.

While livetours are flawed, I think another method of qualification for suspects are needed and as you argue ladder requirements are insufficient for smaller or more inactive ladders. If you have another idea I'm all ears.
(Incidentally, I think there are ways to mitigate it - for instance a mini-smogon tour-like points system could be used)

If you already have a "qualified" voterbase from tournaments then there's even fewer good players laddering and that makes the problem even worse. ADV is in the unique position of having an active ladder and they rightfully have ladder reqs. If your tier is active enough to support ladder reqs it should, but if it can't it shouldn't: Adding more voters doesn't necessarily mean you're improving the voterpool

cynically - the first reads more like a reason to eliminate tournament qualification entirely than a reason to not have ladder requirements to me.

but irregardless of this I think there's a deeper issue here that I'll address in the third section.

From my understanding, Smogon has a new zero tolerance policy on affiliating with servers with banned users which is why CI isn't allowed for a voterlist in the adv BP case; that's a separate discussion.

thats a good policy and tbh my issue isn't as much with the ADV BP case as an issue with general tiering policy with the ADV BP suspect merely acting as the impetus.

Most tournament based voterlists incorporate (or at least should) individuals AND team tours,
Even if you believe the Undrafted Player Copium about team tours, there's still plenty of individuals to do well in. Is there a genuine qualm with the current tour reqs for individuals? Should they be less strict? (Adv is an exception here, several of their meaningful tours are tied up with the banned users problem)

Tiering metagames with inactive ladders is a tough problem with no perfect solution. Using only tournament results is one of those imperfect solutions. It's not convincing to me that adding ladder reqs would lead to better outcomes

The strictness concern falls under my third section and is the main focus of that part of this post. However, I think using only tournament results is unacceptable regardless of the strictness of the requirements. I elucidated the reasons why I think such requirements are too strict:

Well, often these players were unable to play in these major tournaments or did not have a strong incentive to (rarely would they know that there is one in the end!). Perhaps they just had a mediocre or bad performance in this tournament due to variance or (especially in single/double elim tournaments) got bad luck with their pairings. These things happen, and they should not exclude a player from being able to have a substantial, real say in the tier beyond the 'ooh i can say words in PR' which any shmuck with PR access could do.

Also as I've previously stated, I don't think it should be controversial to point out that players with connections have an advantage. This is not an attempt to argue for some conspiracy where only a select social group gets the ability to play in these major tours. From the point of view of a manager, especially for large tours, you want to pick up known players with clout especially if someone you trust can vouch for them. It makes perfect sense why this is the case. However, this still creates unfairness when these tournaments are used to grant voting requirements. For instance, the only team tournament used for the ADV vote was SPL. I think it is clear that this is a very small set of players and even very competent players miss out every year (especially if they, again, lack the connections undeniably required for such an elite tournament). Additionally, it is very unusual that tournaments such as ADVPL or ROAPL are not included here. Those still have high levels of play and certainly should qualify people to vote. This ties more into the final section.[/SPOILER]

The Issue With The Current State of Requirements
My final complaint is about the restrictiveness of these requirements. For the purposes of this discussion, let us consider the requirements for a variety of recent and ongoing old gen suspects;

Spoiler

ADV OU BP (27 qualified through tournament):

1) 6+ games or 3+ wins in SPL
2) ADV Cup VII top 8
3) Finals of Seasonals/Globals/Majors this year
4) Overall 2023 ADV Circuit top 16
For those of you not on this list, you are welcome to achieve the voting requirements via ladder. You need to create a new alt with the prefix ADVSP and achieve both a rating of 1650+ and a GXE of 82+ simultaneously.

BW Cloyster/Volcarona (26 qualified through tournament):

1) 6+ games or 3+ wins in SPL
2) BW Cup VII top 8
3) Finals of Seasonals/Globals/Majors this year
4) Overall 2023 BW Circuit top 16

For those of you not on this list, you are welcome to achieve the voting requirements via ladder. You need to create a new alt with the prefix BWVC and achieve both a rating of 1600+ and a GXE of 86+ simultaneously.

ADV LC Dodrio (18 voters, but only 15 through pre-suspect tournaments)

ADV LC Open Top 4 (4)
ADV LC players in LPL who won at least one game (9)
August 2023 RoA Spotlight Tournament Top 2 (1)
November 2023 RoA Spotlight Tournament Top 3 (1)
Suspect Tournament Winners (or Runner Ups) (3)

GSC NU Swagger (37)

Requirements used:
- Played at least 3 games, won at least 1 game in the past two editions of NUSD (NUSD 3, NUSD 2)
- Played at least 3 games, won at least 1 game in the past two editions of GSCPL (GSCPL IV, GSCPL III)
- Made semifinals or higher from last two editions of GSC NU Cup (GSC NU Cup 2, GSC NU Cup 1)
- Made semifinals or higher from the last edition of GSC NU Open (GSC NU Open 1)
- Played at least 3 games, won 1 least 1 game in the last edition of ALTPL (ALTPL 1)

LGPE Mega Alakazam (28):

• Qualified for, or played in, 2022/2021 LGPE Circuit Championships
• Reached Semifinals of a Double Elimination 2022/2021 LGPE Circuit OU Tournament
• Reached Finals of a Single Elimination 2022/2021 LGPE Circuit OU Tournament
• Reached Finals of 2023's RoA Spotlight Tournament: LGPE OU

These are just the last few suspects I could quickly find in this forum. I am not calling for any of these to be changed or modified, especially as they're currently running or are already completed.

As I've touched on already, the team tournament requirements somewhat inherently require one to have connections. Irregardless of that, to be present as a starter in a large team tournament like SPL or even a smaller one like GSCPL requires you to be not just competent at the relevant tier but one of the best players of that tier, and added win restrictions (against, again, very skilled players of that tier) do not help.
Similarly, coming finals or semifinals in one of the biggest forum tournaments for a tier or making circuit champs/top 16 (as many of these requirements require) typically requires you to be an established top player.

In general I would argue that these suspect requirements are designed in such a way that mostly just established top players are rewarded with voting requirements. Suspects shouldn't be merely made out of the best players - this excludes for instance many rising stars from having a say in the tiers they play and are strong at. I think this is a central issue I have here. I'm not calling for letting any ordinary joe to vote, but I am arguing that tiering should not be solely based on the opinions of the absolute best.

The bar for tiering should be genuine competency in the format. I think even current gen OU surpasses just testing for competency slightly, but compared to that past gen formats are outright elitist. This difference can be seen in the huge pools you see in current gen suspects (for popular metagames, at least!). Loosening these requirements would go a long way to addressing this issue.

Conclusion/Summary
The current tiering system has multiple flaws - it has far too narrow a voting pool (both due to factors beyond player control preventing acquiring voting privileges and due to it's elitist requirements), it is liable to exploitation by malicious actors, and thus changes need to happen. My preferred change is livetours and/or ladder suspects as appropriate being standardized as part of gaining voting requirements in all cases in addition to the current tournament-based system.

A suspect with solely tournament qualification is unacceptable - we need this to be never again the case. Other methods should exist.

 

[BigFatMantis]

I’m not sure I agree with everything posted here, but one thing I do agree with is that the lack of consistency among voter lists for oldgen OUs is a bit ridiculous and should be formalized. I understand ladders are different per Gen (for example GSC OU ladder is quite dead), but there has to be a way to formalize even that aspect with some sort of formula based on how active a ladder is. Also all oldgen OUs should use the same respective tours for reqs, so if one oldgen is using GSC PL, then ADV should be using ADV PL, and SS should use SS PL (I agree with OP that having SPL be the only team tour that counts is a bit off - even if you don’t want to include ADV PL, surely ROAPL will give you individuals with acceptable knowledge and skill in the Gen - not counting anyone outside of SPL is indeed very elitist.) Theres no legitimate reason to not have this be consistent and it’s not hard to get it figured out and put in writing somewhere.

I’m no expert and not sure what the best way to do this would be, but it really should be a set consistent formula that can be reasonably applied whenever a suspect comes up, and not whatever it is right now which just seems to be whatever that particular oldgen council wants to do at that particular time with no real rules or guidelines.

*edit*: I understand that the general reqs are more standardized now than they were in the past, and that's good and I applaud the oldgen councils for doing this. However I still think the ladder reqs could be more standardized based on ladder activity or some other way, otherwise it seems as though the requirements for ladders are just kind of thought up based on how the council feels. Sometimes it's fine, but it's better to have a standard. Also, I do still think that ROAPL should be included in OU reqs in addition to SPL, and perhaps consider the oldgen PLs or OUPL as well (you can even raise the wins requirement if you want to) - having SPL be the only team tour for reqs is still elitist imo.

 

[baddummy]

Greetings, I thought I should give my opinions on this matter before the topic goes cold. Some of this might come across as more pugnacious than I intend it to, so let's try to not lock horns.

First off, both of the recent old gen suspect tests have a ladder component to enabling players to achieve reqs, and I would like to applaud the ADV and BW councils for this decision. In response to the comment about ZU having easy reqs, I don't think that tier is relevant to the scope of this discussion and if the community wants to have a low floor for their reqs they should be able to. The reason why the ADV community has a competitive ladder is because we collectively decided to make it so. If a tier's ladder is bad and the community treats it like a joke then the ladder will stay bad, this is a downward spiral. For a ladder to become competitive it must be taken seriously, in this respect bemoaning how bad the ladder is becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

With regards to the presence of a single banned user preventing a tournament from being used for reqs, I believe this is bad policy. The intent is to distance Smogon from banned users, but that's not actually going to deter invitational hosts. The actual effect is spiting users in good standing with the community by preventing their achievements from being recognised and incorporated as part of the suspect process. However, I am also aware that this is unlikely to change and consequently won't be pushing further on this issue.

As to whether invitationals ought to be included as an avenue for obtaining suspect reqs at all, I strongly believe that they should. SPL is not a tournament that is open to participation from the general public either and yet it is included. To exacerbate the difference in how SPL and invitationals are treated, this is included as an automatic qualification for reqs:
6+ games in SPL of the relevant tier
I'd like to highlight how this requirement is conditional only on participation rather than success in the tournament. Contrast this with succeeding in an invitational which is designed to be filled with proficient players, and you'll promptly see which is the more competitive metric.

To close things off, I'm not worried about any sort of "rigging" so long as we're all on the same page that laddering is competitive and the only thing that stops it from being such is community mindset. I suspected that Callous Invitational wouldn't be included as part of the auto reqs conditions, and that I might have to take the long way around by laddering, but in either case I was going to ensure that I was on the list of voters for the ADV suspect. As it stands, anybody who is capable and motivated can get reqs in the two ongoing old gen suspect tests. This is the correct decision by the respective councils and how it should stay.

 

[BP]

ZU's most recent ladder suspect test had 7 voters and NU had 13 voters before they loosened reqs and now have 20 voters and Mr bossaru voting with 76 gxe. If you already have a "qualified" voterbase from tournaments then there's even fewer good players laddering and that makes the problem even worse. ADV is in the unique position of having an active ladder and they rightfully have ladder reqs.

In response to the comment about ZU having easy reqs, I don't think that tier is relevant to the scope of this discussion and if the community wants to have a low floor for their reqs they should be able to.

I am fully aware you are talking about Current Gen ZU and not ADV ZUs most recent suspect. I myself only engage in the ZU community strictly for ADV ZU play so take the current gen part with a grain of salt.

During the rotom-fan suspect test there was discussion of holding suspect room tours instead of running a suspect ladder. In my opinion, this would've been the better option as the ladder was effectively dead due to DLC dropping soon which made the meta that they were tiering dead. Due to these reasons and of course ZUs limited community size we only managed to get 7 qualified voters. I think that no matter what option was chosen it would've been a lose lose for the ZU community due to general lack of interest in what I percieved as a dead meta.

Regarding ADV ZU most recent suspect we again were basically tiering a meta we planned to kill but due to a community survey (which admittedly could've been more clear and thought out) we held a suspect test. ADV ZU, for the most part, is even more niche a metagame then current gen ZU. Our ROA ladder just ended by the time the survey came in so we needed to come up with way to qualify voters. Due to our small size we decided on Council members, those who played 3 or more games in ZU Olympiad (an old gens team tour), the top 8 of ADV ZU CUP, the finalists in the ADV Ladder tournament, and two suspect tour winners. In total we had 16 voters overall to decide the decision of this soon to be dead metagame. Given the circumstances this is all we could work with. Had the ROA ladder still been up for another month or so I can guarantee we would've take the ladder approach due to the influx of ROA players on the ladder.

The reason I bring this up is because ADV is a very unique old gen. It has access to a large community via an active ladder and bustling tournaments scene, smogon sanctioned or not. If the issue the council cherry picks, which is hard to prove or justify from my POV, then why not limit intial tournament qualifications for voting and allow a suspect ladder. This allows the council to "cherry pick" in a sense while still requiring genuine ladder participation and metagame knowledge to qualify. I'm aware this is an extremely simple fix that may not change anything but I don't understand why you couldn't just have both. If those passionate about ADV thinks the council Cherry picks and is likely to vote their least preferred option shouldn't this be a motivator to qualify and vote for what they believe? This would also extend the deadline of the suspect which would give way to more discussion on what's being suspected. This is just my two cents on the topic though and my first ever PR post so go easy on me please.

 

[Tuthur]

Hello, I've been part of the ZU moderation and tiering team for many years now, and we are completely irrelevant to this discussion.

There is already a distinction between old gen OUs (played in SPL, played in Classic / Masters / Smogon Tour, have a ribbon circuit), and official old gen lower tiers (from my understanding lower tiers that used to be official when they were current gen, i.e. were played in trophy tours / ribbon circuit). These have different requirements as outlined in this post from shiloh.

ZU is not an official tier, and before SM, ZU wasn't even hosted on Smogon, which makes pre-SM ZU tiers, even less officials. This is why you don't see PR threads for most of them, and discussions happen in the ZU forum. I'm pretty sure it is also the same with official tiers that have unofficial lower tiers (except for RBY fsr). The ZU mod team makes its best to enforce standards from official tiers, but sometimes they are adapted for our needs especially for ADV ZU, a tier with no ladder and little tournament representations, even for ZU standards.

I don't really have anything to say about Old Gens OU's reqs, but please stop comparing them to official and unofficial old gens lower tiers. I can understand people wanting uniformity between OUs (though this could clash like RBY bo1 vs bo3), but comparing them to LGPE OU, SV ZU, or GSC NU doesn't make sense. OU reqs are meant to be harder than lower tiers because the playerbase are smaller and the stakes are much higher.

 

[pulsar512b]

w both the recent ADV and BW suspects closing I think the size of the voter lists further reinforces my points with both getting under 40 (38 and 36 respectively). the playerbases for both (but especially adv) are far larger than this, and as such a huge part of the community is getting excluded due to overly high requirements. in particular, i'd like to remind the community that tiering is meant to serve both serious tournament players and the higher part of the ladder (the latter part being another aspect that supports not having solely tournament-based qualifications for suspects), and I think that such a low voter count (at least for adv) clearly excludes many players in that group. there are definitely more than 40 adv players at least w motivation and sufficient ability that they should get a stay

To close things off, I'm not worried about any sort of "rigging" so long as we're all on the same page that laddering is competitive and the only thing that stops it from being such is community mindset. I suspected that Callous Invitational wouldn't be included as part of the auto reqs conditions, and that I might have to take the long way around by laddering, but in either case I was going to ensure that I was on the list of voters for the ADV suspect. As it stands, anybody who is capable and motivated can get reqs in the two ongoing old gen suspect tests. This is the correct decision by the respective councils and how it should stay.

while i don't really care about the rest of this post (because at the end of the day i don't really care about CI being included or not though i do think its probably correct to exclude invitationals on principle). on principle i agree and think this is very well put but the current standards are overly strict

*edit*: I understand that the general reqs are more standardized now than they were in the past, and that's good and I applaud the oldgen councils for doing this. However I still think the ladder reqs could be more standardized based on ladder activity or some other way, otherwise it seems as though the requirements for ladders are just kind of thought up based on how the council feels. Sometimes it's fine, but it's better to have a standard. Also, I do still think that ROAPL should be included in OU reqs in addition to SPL, and perhaps consider the oldgen PLs or OUPL as well (you can even raise the wins requirement if you want to) - having SPL be the only team tour for reqs is still elitist imo.

this is really well put as well by the way

otherwise most of the arguing seems to be about ZU and i really do not care about zu although I do think its fair to consider lower tiers separately