On SPL Inclusion

[MajorBowman]

I didn't join the discussion in this thread because I didn't want to be that guy that came into a thread to defend his tier when there was no imminent threat. Clearly I should have.

Just gonna be real here - this is stupid. The reasons for dropping down to 10 slots can only be described as the tournament scene elites attempting to create more prestige for themselves by shutting others out. You do realize that this is entirely self-serving right? The one, the only, the singular place where any of this matters is on Smogon. If making SPL "more prestigious" by cutting out DOU and LC to make your little postbit trophy worth a few more Smogon points is the only thing that gets you off anymore then consider taking up a new hobby.

The post announcing the decision that DOU and LC will be dropped from SPL XII is littered with nonsense, and it's offensive that the TDs think this is an acceptable way to step on the throats of every single DOU and LC player on this site.

SPL currently has too many stakeholders with fundamentally incompatible interests. The current format is built on compromises and best serves nobody.

The reason there are "incompatible interests" is because people are trying to make SPL something that it's not. The only incompatibility here is "I want my tier to be represented in the premier tournament on Smogon" vs "I know my tier is never at risk of getting axed and I will always be drafted so I want to make it as hard as possible for anyone else to participate." One of those is very broad in terms of the people it services, and one is very narrow. I'm positive that everyone on this site would share the first sentiment, and while it's obvious that not every single tier here can make it in, cutting out official tiers like DOU and LC sends such an awful message. There is nothing inherently better or worse about any tier from any generation; cherrypicking what to include serves only the people doing the picking and leaves the rest in the dust.

A clean separation of current gen non-OU tiers and old gens will reduce the need for compromises anywhere and therefore produce tournaments that better reflect the desires of their primary stakeholders.

Who are the primary stakeholders? The same 10 people who get picked in the first round of every team tournament? The people running the tiers that weren't just unceremoniously booted from the most important tournament of the year? Because based on this post it sure as hell isn't the Smogon playerbase as a whole.

The restructuring of the two team tournaments in this way also means that any non-CG OU tier can only be in one of the two tournaments. And while Doubles can distinguish itself from low tiers depending on how we choose to categorize non-CG OU tiers, the split being made here is really one between CG OU + old gens and CG OU + current gens. Under this dichotomy, it is clear that Doubles fits one tournament more than the other.

It doesn't mean this. You're making it mean this. Plus it's also just incorrect - DOU is a CG OU tier. The literal one fundamental difference between OU and DOU is the number of Pokemon on the field at any given time. Whether you like it or not, saying "CG OU" does and always should include DOU.

It's clear from this discussion that the community values a meaningful and prestigious tournament as much as they do a competitive one. We know this tournament will be a sufficiently competitive experience regardless of what tier lineup is selected, and moreover, there is no reason to assume a certain set of selected tiers will be the most competitive every year.

God this is the worst part. You understand that the tournament will be competitive regardless of whether you include LC and DOU, yet you don't include them because you somehow think that would make the tournament more meaningful or prestigious? Doubles has existed in every SPL since SPL II - what changed? The single way for me to interpret that is that you don't think DOU or LC are good enough to sit at the cool kids' table. I beg you to tell me why you think the inclusion of LC and DOU in SPL makes the tournament any less special to anyone involved.

Format permitting, as long as we feature RBY in an individual official tournament, it is for the best we support it in team tournaments as well.

I lied, this is actually the worst part. I will admit up front that I am not a fan of RBY, but it's baffling to me that so many hoops are being jumped through to save RBY's representation on Smogon. At this point, RBY OU more closely resembles an OM than the actual games on which the tier is based. There have been multiple successful attempts to change and/or correct mechanics as the tier sees fit since SPL XI. What's worse is that there's next to no actual RBY involvement on Smogon outside of SPL. Every year a few RBY players break their 10-month streak of not logging into the site to sign up and play 27 games then return to Pokemon Perfect or wherever else they hide. Yet RBY players think they're oppressed, how cute. I am not advocating for the removal of RBY OU from SPL because, despite my personal distaste for the tier, there's just no reason to cut it. It's still an official Smogon tier and it deserves representation in official Smogon tournaments. Just like LC and DOU.

I know (or at least hope) that this decision wasn't meant to be a slight on LC or DOU, but I'm having a really hard time seeing this as anything else. Clearly I can't speak for LC, but I feel like I've just been slapped across the face and told that the years of work and effort I've put into my tier were pointless. DOU was one of the first tiers to have a fully fleshed out circuit, and that is due to the hard work kamikaze and I put into creating something from the ground up in 2017. Ever since then we have carefully and deliberately planned out our annual circuits to try to create the most competitive and inclusive tournament environment that we can, and I'm damn proud of it. You have no right to tell me or anyone else that has ever helped plan, run, or play in a DOU tournament that we are less than any other tier on this site. What this decision does is relegate us to representation in one trophy tournament, one that already has (for no good reason, as I have already expressed) a shitty reputation. The message you are sending to me and everyone else that plays DOU is that we don't belong.

All in all this is just discouraging. It's obvious that there was no forethought as to how this might affect anyone except the people at the top, and it's concerning that this is the direction the TDs are taking the tournament scene. DOU and LC both deserve to keep their spots in SPL, and I implore the TDs and anyone else reading this to reconsider both their opinion on this decision and their concept of SPL as a whole. At the very least - just tell us why.

tl;dr: fuck you read my post

 

[Moutemoute]

Alright I wouldn’t have thought to open my mouth on this topic but since pandora’s box has been opened I guess it's worth to talk about it.

I'm not gonna focus on DOU neither LC mostly because I don't think I'm rightful to talk about those tiers since I'm not part of their communities at all but I'd like to talk about the fact that UU seems to have been cut out which is in my opinion a pretty poor decision (the same applies to other lower tiers but once again I'm not part of those communities so I let their spokepersons write their things). Since the first SPL UU has been include in almost all its editions which represents 9 of the 11 SPL. The only two times it wasn't include was in SPL 8 & 11. I don't know why it wasn't include in the 8th edition but I guess it's for the same reason than in the 11th edition (not stable tier I guess ?). I fully agree with Major's feeling and as a UU player I can't help but think that removing UU and to a larger extent lower tiers is kinda an insult to our communities and a true disregard to our players.

I think most players, tier leaders etc.. will agree with me that we're trying our best to make our tiers great. Much like CGOU or old gens OU so I really don't get why should we be sidelined ? Why us ? SPL is the most famous and greatest tournament on Smogon and I think that every community have the right to showcase their bests players in those tournaments. It's always a pleasure to see really high level matchs and SPL are the one that bring the most hype and light in the community.

As it was mentionned in the post above, I really feel like some elitist players are just willing to keep for themselves the aura of SPL. That trully sucks that it wasn't even told why lower tiers should be cutted out of the next edition of SPL, it's not like UU wasn't a tier well known in the history of the SPL. I gott why it wasn't include in SPL XI but man we're working our ass to get the best tier as possible and unless we're getting some random DLC surprise in early 2021 there is no way that UU will not be a good and stable tier. So what's the reason here since it's not about the stability of the tier ? What make us less deserving than others tiers include in the next edition of SPL ? 8th gen has been tough for lower tiers but by march I'm almost sure at least 2 or 3 lower tiers will be stable so why should we get rid of us ?

It's obvious that we're reaching a limit of slot per team because of the number of OU Gen played in SPL (basically 7 slots + CGOU which is most of the time at least 2 slots) but why are we keeping old OU gens instead of DOU, LC, UU or even RU, NU etc.. I'd like to get a real answer to my question and not some kind of bullshit saying that X or Y tiers/communuty is more legit to be included in SPL. We need to try to be fair and I don’t think exclude lower tiers is a good alternative neither the choice to make here. I know some people will think we're whining for nothing but come on, if we don't do it know, we're taking the risk to not be able to do it again.

 

[teal6]

It doesn't mean this. You're making it mean this. Plus it's also just incorrect - DOU is a CG OU tier. The literal one fundamental difference between OU and DOU is the number of Pokemon on the field at any given time. Whether you like it or not, saying "CG OU" does and always should include DOU.

Regardless of the rest of the content of this thread, as the person who coined the term "CGOU" (I used it in a thread about tier representation, a number of years ago) I meant it as a variable that specifically refers to Current Generation Traditional OU.

Whether the term has evolved in discussion from that point forward to refer to DOU as well is a debate I don't really have a dog in, but it is disingenuous to suggest that "CGOU" has always referred to both DOU and OU, because very sincerely, it didn't.

Good luck to the LC and DOU players though, I like both communities so it's cool to see them on smogtours

 

[Eo Ut Mortus]

The team tournament circuit in its current existence cannot be fair to everyone; as it stands, it is not fair to Ubers, a tier that was in the initial edition of SPL, a tier that I myself played for two seasons and believe to have a strong legacy of its own. It is not fair to Monotype or any other future official tier that cannot be accommodated at this point. If you view the problem of representation as solved simply by Doubles inclusion, you are making the same statement you accuse of being made against Doubles against tiers that have just as much merit. I understand that this is not necessarily your problem to solve, but it is hard to simultaneously appeal to a perceived sense of fairness while simultaneously disregarding these other tiers and also denouncing RBY so vehemently in this very thread. You can make the case that Doubles deserves to be distinguished from RBY, Ubers, Monotype, and other tiers that find themselves as candidates for removal by virtue of its relative quality, competitiveness, infrastructure, and so on; all of this could be the case, but none of it is baked into the way we select tiers, for better or for worse. I say this is necessary given how fruitlessly people argued in the last thread as to whether old gens or low tiers were more competitive; deciding which tiers are more prestigious or competitive will always be a political decision, and it is for the better that this discourse does not influence our process.

Given that, I want to make it clear I don't believe SPL without Doubles is simply more prestigious than an SPL with Doubles. The only statement I intended to make about prestige, and I believe this is reflected in my current wording, is that an SPL with constantly rotating tiers is less prestigious than one without them. Static tiers serve to establish team continuity between years and help strengthen the identity of the tournament; they, along with many other things brought up in the previous thread, including slot numbers, auction format, and team names, are all important to the tournament's overall experience, necessarily at the cost of representation. This isn't a philosophy that was adopted with this particular format change, but a decision we have made every year when deciding to cut tiers and keep the number of slots at 12 rather than 14. In the same vein, these changes are inevitably necessary to help address the scaling issues posed by the constant proliferation of new old gens and low tiers. It is the TDs' responsibility to consider these factors just as much as representation, and I will even argue that the TDs should prioritize these issues because nobody else is responsible for them. I will say ensuring our tournaments can scale into the future was, to me, the most compelling argument for making this switch. I know having argued in the past about the sustainability of Slam/Classic/SPL formats, these aren't people's top priorities, but my time here has shown me that putting off these problems just means we confront them in the future with little-to-no change shown for waiting.

A few specific points:

It doesn't mean this. You're making it mean this. Plus it's also just incorrect - DOU is a CG OU tier. The literal one fundamental difference between OU and DOU is the number of Pokemon on the field at any given time. Whether you like it or not, saying "CG OU" does and always should include DOU.

As teal said, "CG OU" is exclusively meant to refer to the only tier that is considered the primary format on this website at any given point in time, currently gen8ou. That said, we are indeed making it mean this because making meaning of our tournament formats is the responsibility of the TD team, and the logistical groupings that have separated old gens from CG singles OU have already existed before this reformat and reflected the perceptions of the community then and now. Doubles was in Grand Slam, not Classic.

The single way for me to interpret that is that you don't think DOU or LC are good enough to sit at the cool kids' table.

While there is no mention of Snake (actually, the tournament that will occupy the slot formerly held by Snake, but referred to as Snake henceforth for brevity) explicitly in this post, it's impossible to not interpret this as suggesting that SPL inclusion is the be-all, end-all for prestige, and Snake inclusion is a worthless concession. That's not how I see things at all, and I was surprised to see so many people denouncing Snake in the other thread. I had written this for the other thread and opted not to post it, but I think it's worth saying. Considering how much I invested into this tournament as a player, I hope people will believe my sincerity when I say that Snake is a serious tournament, inclusion in SPL versus Snake never meant anything prior to this point, and even if it ever was, it is certainly rendered meaningless with both tournaments henceforth defined by a logistical separation completely divorced from prestige and a strong push to make the formats of the tours outside of tier selection mirror each other.

Hide

On prestige and Snake:

I am going to spend a bit more time on this part because I think the reasons for changing SPL have already been well-documented in this thread. I want to talk a bit about Snake and the chase for prestige. A lot of people in this thread are conflating competitiveness and prestige. The most obvious example is people trying to make claims that low tiers are systematically less competitive than old gens, when in fact, within the context of these tournaments, low tiers are more competitive than old gens. The impression of old gens is bolstered by the presence of inclusion of several of the top players, but they cannot possibly play all of these tiers at once in SPL, if they even deign to play any at all. The result is that during SPL, only a couple of old gens have any depth of which to speak, and ironically, one of them might be RBY, whose community self-sustains its player pool with enthusiasts. Furthermore, the most competitive experience would be to put all these players in a single tier; this could be enforced by design a la Shrug's mono-CG OU team tournament, but within the current format, it could be something as simple as a call-to-action akin to "Stop sharing your teams" thread ("Stop playing different old gens"). Yet, there is never any widespread effort made on anyone's part to consolidate the top players into a single pool, despite distribution being the biggest obstacle to peak competition. Clearly, the most competitive player experience is neither the largest nor only priority here, and I'm not sure that was ever the primary goal of team tournaments, anyway.

Having said that, this distinction isn't just relevant for low tiers vs. old gens. Snake low tiers are more competitive than SPL low tiers, but the criticism directed towards Snake in this thread would have you think otherwise. During Snake, low tiers do not have to compete with old gens join for their playerbases; this year, SoulWind and Neider were the standouts, but this has also been the case in past iterations of SSD for others like M Dragon and McMeghan. Meanwhile, due to the stratification of certain tiers, there is fewer overlap between LC/PU and UU/RU/NU, so there is no PU equivalent of SoulWind whose absence from the playerbase will be felt during Snake. So it came as a surprise to me to see some players jump so quickly onto the narrative that Snake is a vastly inferior experience to SPL when it certainly isn't in terms of competition. In fact, based on my experience participating in all iterations of Snake and most iterations of SPL, the current format does not result in any differences in the player experience between the two tournaments.

kinda got sniped by hogg on this but I already had most of it written so might as well post it anyway, think I have some stuff to add anyway

SPL has long been seen as the "cream of the crop" tournament thanks to its long-standing history, memorable branding, and the more "skilled" management required (as in, auctions being more based around resource management rather than hoping your next pick falls to you). On top of this, many of the best players on Smogon have no interest in CG OU/lower tiers, so a lot of skilled players skip Snake and now WCoP as a result of it being exclusively CG OU. This results in the general view that WCoP/Snake rosters (Snake in particular) are "worse" and reduces the overall hype and interest for the tournaments. SPL doesn't have this problem because of the general (and imo incorrect) view that OU > all other tiers in terms of skill required and metagame health, among other things.

Now that I've played in Snake I can kinda see why people dislike it, despite the fact that I've had a great experience with my team. Lots of team chats were dead and the drafting format results in more "compromises" being needed, making it harder for managers to actually build the team they envisioned - again, creates an overall lower hype level. There have been threads made about people disliking Snake's format, or at least some aspects of it. Most of this is down to the tournament's lack of an identity, which I agree with - it does kinda just feel like "entry-level SPL", which is probably not what we want. I think the best way to go about fixing this is to remake Snake entirely - under a different name, to remove stigma - and then use SPL's drafting format for it. Current gen OU should also have its amount of slots in Snake reduced in order to increase the balance of how often each tier gets played; not sure what way you'd wanna do this, though. It'd be kinda arbitrary to decide which tiers get which slots, but you could also add more tiers (e.g. monotype) to make up for it, so idk.

I don't think splitting SPL in two is the move per se, because you're always going to have the feeling that one of them is the "real SPL" and one is just "SPL Lite". I think the way to go is to remove lower tiers from SPL, remove some OU from Snake, and then completely rebrand Snake from the ground up. The theme is cool and all but it's nowhere near as memorable as SPL and it's kinda tacky if anything. Using SPL's drafting format (Auction draft, not a Snake draft) also helps with pre-season hype, allows for more opportunities for new and upcoming players to get in because the value of each slot isn't necessarily as high as it is in current Snake, and rewards skilled managers, so there's really very little downside. It also ensures that lower tiers that would normally be cut from SPL like PU and LC still get the representation they deserve.

TLDR this idea is great as long as you adjust other team tournaments, primarily Snake, to go alongside it. Otherwise the representation of OU gets too big and the representation of lower tiers gets too low.

I'm going to pick on your post only because it's the most detailed account of this feeling I'm referencing. A lot of the issues you are citing are not specific to Snake. When you say "compromises," I can only assume you mean "being forced to draft players that did not fit into a manager's ideal vision of the team." This is absolutely perceived as an issue in SPL and is in fact a driving reason behind the arguments in this thread for downsizing the number of slots or teams; people feel that their teams are inevitably compromised because so many player pools are shallow to the point that managers will end up drafting players that do not meet what they consider an acceptable standard of play. It's harsher put in those terms, but it has to be what's meant by team quality; it doesn't matter whether it's the result of tier selection or tournament format. Dead chats also exist in both tournaments, and there are so many factors that play into this, including manager activity, timezones, and interpersonal relationships, that I find it a stretch to just assume that SSD's format is to blame here. My most active and vibrant team chat to this day remains the SSD3 Cobras, which we still talk in despite our inability to qualify for playoffs. The fact is, the mythology behind the SPL experience is largely false; the majority of teams during each iteration of SPL will succumb to the same problems you attribute to Snake. The elevated perception of SPL is built upon the most memorable team iterations throughout its entire history, and not even how they really functioned, but how they appeared to the larger public. If you come into SPL expecting things to be fundamentally different, you will, on average, be disappointed.

I'm a little disappointed in the manner that people are being so quick to give up on Snake, seen here and here as well. I really, really hope that it is not widespread perception among UU, RU, or any low tier playerbase that Snake is a novelty or an entry-level SPL. What was the point of having these tiers in Snake (or even having a Snake, for that matter) if their communities don't take the tournament seriously? If the low tier community doesn't value Snake, then it will never succeed, changes or not. How do you think it comes across to players who represented their tier with strong performances to see their work being diminished by peers from their own community just because this wasn't SPL? The tournament is defined first and foremost by its participants, not its format nor its branding, and the first thing anyone who wants a more prestigious Snake should do is recognize that the players, managers, and others who contributed to enriching Snake's experience all did so because they took this tournament seriously, even with the dumb Snake names and even on years that certain players didn't participate. The figures who made SPL prestigious didn't enter the tournament with the level of prestige observed today as their goal; they played SPL because it was a fun and competitive experience. Snake can be the same; it's going to be harder because low tiers have higher turnover, but it's going to be downright impossible if community representatives buy into narratives that devalue their players' achievements instead of working to develop their own.

I hope it's clear that I am onboard with making changes to improve Snake; I just want them to be made for the right reasons, and I want people to temper any expectations regarding prestige and instead focus on what we can do to foster a competitive and enjoyable experience. I know McMeghan just made a post in which he stated that SPL was amazing from the outset, but my experience was far different from his. I was a participant in SPL 1; after three seasons plagued with difficulties on all three of the hosting, team, and individual sides, I deliberately sat out SPL 4 because I didn't take the tournament seriously and only wound up as host for that season because the original host quit after the auction, and I was the only non-playing TD available. Imagine that happening today. I also sat out SPL 6/7 for similar reasons, following a horrendous season featuring our manager becoming a player and winning SPL, among other issues. I did not begin to see SPL as prestigious until SPL 9, which was the first time since SPL 1 that I was on a team that wasn't in the bottom two. If you remain here for any long and contiguous amount of time, experiences become normal and mundane, and you will likely never realize the moment something becomes "prestigious" because at that point, it'll be based on the impressions of newer players.

 

[roman]

not trying to pull away from the posts made by eo and bowman, as they both contain important sentiments, but why isn't bkc's post getting more buzz? his model is reasonable, more inclusive and more competitive (!!) than the current model, and stops the yearly spl slots shitslinging contest. surely rotating tiers affecting team identity is not such an issue that it causes integral communities to be alienated from the most prominent and respected team tour on smogon

 

[Amaranth]

Stop slagging my tier off for no reason please. It doesn't even help DOU's argument at all.

RE: RBY, which is off-topic, but for some reason keeps getting brought up

I will admit up front that I am not a fan of RBY, but it's baffling to me that so many hoops are being jumped through to save RBY's representation on Smogon.

What hoops? The justifications that were going to be used to cut RBY would have lead to GSC and ADV also being cut some time down the line, and until that was pointed out no one cared to save RBY. Like dude until a couple weeks ago the official word was that we were gonna get axed, I had to type out a thesis to save my tier, much like you have to now. Trying to paint us as the TDs' favorites is a joke, sorry

At this point, RBY OU more closely resembles an OM than the actual games on which the tier is based. There have been multiple successful attempts to change and/or correct mechanics as the tier sees fit since SPL XI.

That's because attempting to resemble the actual games is a fucking nightmare for researchers to figure out and for programmers to implement. The corrected mechanics have been a result of new findings being acted on, we're not making anything up. If we could make stuff up we'd have cut the 256 misses by now. There isn't very much mechanics correction going on at all: there's two instances of it happening, one is freeze clause, and two is a patch applied to prevent literal gamebreaking bugs, much like DPP patches out the Acid Rain bug. Literally nothing out of line is happening with RBY's policy decisions, stop spreading false narratives.

What's worse is that there's next to no actual RBY involvement on Smogon outside of SPL. Every year a few RBY players break their 10-month streak of not logging into the site to sign up and play 27 games then return to Pokemon Perfect or wherever else they hide.

Here's news for you: PP is a bit of a joke nowadays and a far cry from its ~2017 shape, where there'd be multiple tournaments with multiple active top players going at each other. A vast majority of those players has all but quit the tier. Of all SPL9 players that started 7+ games: roudolf13, marcoasd, GGFan, and Diegolh don't play anymore; Alexander plays but switched his focus to other tiers; Lusch and Peasounay play occasionally, and only me and MetalGro$$ are still fully active. There are a few more names that happened to skip SPL9 and only pop up for officials, sure, but that's a symptom of burnout being heavier in repetitive tiers rather than any distaste for Smogon imo.

PP held three RBY tournaments since April 2020 and they all struggled to reach 32 participants. Smogon also held 3 tournaments in that timeframe, two with 64 participants and one with 96 - same numbers as GSC. The old guard may have preferred PP but nowadays only a fraction of the playerbase cares, and Smogon is very much the hub of RBY play. We do have other offshoot sites, due to Smogon-permabanned users who don't want to quit, but their prestige is really floundering, and in terms of actual participation numbers nothing matches Smogon. So I don't really think this criticism is fair anymore; it was in the past, but there's not any secret RBY place buzzing with activity today. Even the RBYPL type of tournaments that used to be held on PP have instead been held on Smogon this year for the very first time. All signs point to RBY activity fully migrating to Smogon if you give it another couple years, especially due to the SPL reinclusion.

Yet RBY players think they're oppressed, how cute.

Ortheore =/= all RBY players. Troller in that very thread opened his post with "This rant is nonsense" and I don't feel like I need to add anything to that.

With that out of the way, my two cents (as someone who also does DOU on the side) is that until the 14-player slot thing becomes an actual practical issue in oldgens SPL I don't really see the harm in including DOU and/or LC. It's true that they likely will become a problem in the future but there's no reason for that to hurt them in the present imo, and DOU in particular doesn't get any individuals so I think it'd be extremely fair to include them in both team tournaments for as long as possible.

 

[Eien]

The team tournament circuit in its current existence cannot be fair to everyone; as it stands, it is not fair to Ubers, a tier that was in the initial edition of SPL, a tier that I myself played for two seasons and believe to have a strong legacy of its own. It is not fair to Monotype or any other future official tier that cannot be accommodated at this point. If you view the problem of representation as solved simply by Doubles inclusion, you are making the same statement you accuse of being made against Doubles against tiers that have just as much merit. I understand that this is not necessarily your problem to solve, but it is hard to simultaneously appeal to a perceived sense of fairness while simultaneously disregarding these other tiers and also denouncing RBY so vehemently in this very thread. You can make the case that Doubles deserves to be distinguished from RBY, Ubers, Monotype, and other tiers that find themselves as candidates for removal by virtue of its relative quality, competitiveness, infrastructure, and so on; all of this could be the case, but none of it is baked into the way we select tiers, for better or for worse. I say this is necessary given how fruitlessly people argued in the last thread as to whether old gens or low tiers were more competitive; deciding which tiers are more prestigious or competitive will always be a political decision, and it is for the better that this discourse does not influence our process.

Given that, I want to make it clear I don't believe SPL without Doubles is simply more prestigious than an SPL with Doubles. The only statement I intended to make about prestige, and I believe this is reflected in my current wording, is that an SPL with constantly rotating tiers is less prestigious than one without them. Static tiers serve to establish team continuity between years and help strengthen the identity of the tournament; they, along with many other things brought up in the previous thread, including slot numbers, auction format, and team names, are all important to the tournament's overall experience, necessarily at the cost of representation. This isn't a philosophy that was adopted with this particular format change, but a decision we have made every year when deciding to cut tiers and keep the number of slots at 12 rather than 14. In the same vein, these changes are inevitably necessary to help address the scaling issues posed by the constant proliferation of new old gens and low tiers. It is the TDs' responsibility to consider these factors just as much as representation, and I will even argue that the TDs should prioritize these issues because nobody else is responsible for them. I will say ensuring our tournaments can scale into the future was, to me, the most compelling argument for making this switch. I know having argued in the past about the sustainability of Slam/Classic/SPL formats, these aren't people's top priorities, but my time here has shown me that putting off these problems just means we confront them in the future with little-to-no change shown for waiting.

A few specific points:



As teal said, "CG OU" is exclusively meant to refer to the only tier that is considered the primary format on this website at any given point in time, currently gen8ou. That said, we are indeed making it mean this because making meaning of our tournament formats is the responsibility of the TD team, and the logistical groupings that have separated old gens from CG singles OU have already existed before this reformat and reflected the perceptions of the community then and now. Doubles was in Grand Slam, not Classic.



While there is no mention of Snake (actually, the tournament that will occupy the slot formerly held by Snake, but referred to as Snake henceforth for brevity) explicitly in this post, it's impossible to not interpret this as suggesting that SPL inclusion is the be-all, end-all for prestige, and Snake inclusion is a worthless concession. That's not how I see things at all, and I was surprised to see so many people denouncing Snake in the other thread. I had written this for the other thread and opted not to post it, but I think it's worth saying. Considering how much I invested into this tournament as a player, I hope people will believe my sincerity when I say that Snake is a serious tournament, inclusion in SPL versus Snake never meant anything prior to this point, and even if it ever was, it is certainly rendered meaningless with both tournaments henceforth defined by a logistical separation completely divorced from prestige and a strong push to make the formats of the tours outside of tier selection mirror each other.

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On prestige and Snake:

I am going to spend a bit more time on this part because I think the reasons for changing SPL have already been well-documented in this thread. I want to talk a bit about Snake and the chase for prestige. A lot of people in this thread are conflating competitiveness and prestige. The most obvious example is people trying to make claims that low tiers are systematically less competitive than old gens, when in fact, within the context of these tournaments, low tiers are more competitive than old gens. The impression of old gens is bolstered by the presence of inclusion of several of the top players, but they cannot possibly play all of these tiers at once in SPL, if they even deign to play any at all. The result is that during SPL, only a couple of old gens have any depth of which to speak, and ironically, one of them might be RBY, whose community self-sustains its player pool with enthusiasts. Furthermore, the most competitive experience would be to put all these players in a single tier; this could be enforced by design a la Shrug's mono-CG OU team tournament, but within the current format, it could be something as simple as a call-to-action akin to "Stop sharing your teams" thread ("Stop playing different old gens"). Yet, there is never any widespread effort made on anyone's part to consolidate the top players into a single pool, despite distribution being the biggest obstacle to peak competition. Clearly, the most competitive player experience is neither the largest nor only priority here, and I'm not sure that was ever the primary goal of team tournaments, anyway.

Having said that, this distinction isn't just relevant for low tiers vs. old gens. Snake low tiers are more competitive than SPL low tiers, but the criticism directed towards Snake in this thread would have you think otherwise. During Snake, low tiers do not have to compete with old gens join for their playerbases; this year, SoulWind and Neider were the standouts, but this has also been the case in past iterations of SSD for others like M Dragon and McMeghan. Meanwhile, due to the stratification of certain tiers, there is fewer overlap between LC/PU and UU/RU/NU, so there is no PU equivalent of SoulWind whose absence from the playerbase will be felt during Snake. So it came as a surprise to me to see some players jump so quickly onto the narrative that Snake is a vastly inferior experience to SPL when it certainly isn't in terms of competition. In fact, based on my experience participating in all iterations of Snake and most iterations of SPL, the current format does not result in any differences in the player experience between the two tournaments.



I'm going to pick on your post only because it's the most detailed account of this feeling I'm referencing. A lot of the issues you are citing are not specific to Snake. When you say "compromises," I can only assume you mean "being forced to draft players that did not fit into a manager's ideal vision of the team." This is absolutely perceived as an issue in SPL and is in fact a driving reason behind the arguments in this thread for downsizing the number of slots or teams; people feel that their teams are inevitably compromised because so many player pools are shallow to the point that managers will end up drafting players that do not meet what they consider an acceptable standard of play. It's harsher put in those terms, but it has to be what's meant by team quality; it doesn't matter whether it's the result of tier selection or tournament format. Dead chats also exist in both tournaments, and there are so many factors that play into this, including manager activity, timezones, and interpersonal relationships, that I find it a stretch to just assume that SSD's format is to blame here. My most active and vibrant team chat to this day remains the SSD3 Cobras, which we still talk in despite our inability to qualify for playoffs. The fact is, the mythology behind the SPL experience is largely false; the majority of teams during each iteration of SPL will succumb to the same problems you attribute to Snake. The elevated perception of SPL is built upon the most memorable team iterations throughout its entire history, and not even how they really functioned, but how they appeared to the larger public. If you come into SPL expecting things to be fundamentally different, you will, on average, be disappointed.

I'm a little disappointed in the manner that people are being so quick to give up on Snake, seen here and here as well. I really, really hope that it is not widespread perception among UU, RU, or any low tier playerbase that Snake is a novelty or an entry-level SPL. What was the point of having these tiers in Snake (or even having a Snake, for that matter) if their communities don't take the tournament seriously? If the low tier community doesn't value Snake, then it will never succeed, changes or not. How do you think it comes across to players who represented their tier with strong performances to see their work being diminished by peers from their own community just because this wasn't SPL? The tournament is defined first and foremost by its participants, not its format nor its branding, and the first thing anyone who wants a more prestigious Snake should do is recognize that the players, managers, and others who contributed to enriching Snake's experience all did so because they took this tournament seriously, even with the dumb Snake names and even on years that certain players didn't participate. The figures who made SPL prestigious didn't enter the tournament with the level of prestige observed today as their goal; they played SPL because it was a fun and competitive experience. Snake can be the same; it's going to be harder because low tiers have higher turnover, but it's going to be downright impossible if community representatives buy into narratives that devalue their players' achievements instead of working to develop their own.

I hope it's clear that I am onboard with making changes to improve Snake; I just want them to be made for the right reasons, and I want people to temper any expectations regarding prestige and instead focus on what we can do to foster a competitive and enjoyable experience. I know McMeghan just made a post in which he stated that SPL was amazing from the outset, but my experience was far different from his. I was a participant in SPL 1; after three seasons plagued with difficulties on all three of the hosting, team, and individual sides, I deliberately sat out SPL 4 because I didn't take the tournament seriously and only wound up as host for that season because the original host quit after the auction, and I was the only non-playing TD available. Imagine that happening today. I also sat out SPL 6/7 for similar reasons, following a horrendous season featuring our manager becoming a player and winning SPL, among other issues. I did not begin to see SPL as prestigious until SPL 9, which was the first time since SPL 1 that I was on a team that wasn't in the bottom two. If you remain here for any long and contiguous amount of time, experiences become normal and mundane, and you will likely never realize the moment something becomes "prestigious" because at that point, it'll be based on the impressions of newer players.

I won't speak to competitiveness, but I believe a tournament's prestige can only be assigned by the people that interface with it. You cannot make a tournament prestigious simply by declaring that it should be just as I cannot simply declare Monotype to be an equal of Doubles or LC, and you cannot force people to believe the two SPLs are equal in value. A singular SPL brings most of the site together, even us who do not play in it, and when you have OU, lower tier, and old gens players playing their tier in the tournament, which team tour do people point to as superior to SPL? SPL absolutely has its flaws, as every tournament does, but it's one that (well almost) every tier values and will make threads like this to ensure they are a part of. SPL is the most prestigious in part because it doesn't truly have competition from any other tour for bringing the site's best players together across the tiers. There is very clearly a divide between old gens and lower tiers communities, but both share the site-unified public opinion of SPL. There is no need to declare SPL the most prestigious tournament because that is what the public has decided it to be. If you split the tour into one of old gens and one of lower tiers, do you believe there would be an equal site-wide view of both tours?

People do and will continue to argue subjectively over whether "a tour of the best OU and old gen players" is better or worse, and in fact argue over what better or worse even means, than "a tour of the best OU and lower tier players" no matter how hard you try to define two "SPL"s as equal. Imagine if, instead of separating SPL, you had added another team tour that is exactly equivalent to the current Snake but with old gens over lower tiers, ending up with (for the sake of argument, obviously the calendar year would disagree with this idea and I don't really care about the names) SPL, Snake Lower Tiers, and Snake Old Gens. Do you think either of these "Snake" tours would have the same public prestige that SPL has even if you wax poetic that they are all highly prestigious tournaments? This thread alone is proof that being in SPL is more than just having one team tour of representation. People can both value each tour on its own and still believe some are more valuable than others (e.g. the so beloved OLT).

You mentioned Monotype when you called the current SPL format unfair for excluding us, but that only proves to me that you don't understand what makes SPL so important to the communities that aren't even included in it at any given time. I could even today call it a pipe dream, but I believe there's a nonzero chance, no matter how unlikely, that Monotype can one day be in SPL given patience and change. Any trophy tour was the next impossible goal I wanted to see us reach after Monotype impossibly becoming official, but SPL was the goal beyond that to be able to compete alongside the most important tiers of the site whether they be old gen or lower tier. I never viewed SPL's tier selection as unfair, even if Monotype was always excluded; what is unfair is the opinion of those who have never touched the tier claiming it is something that it isn't. So at least for the three years I led it, I can happily assure you that SPL's format being "unfair" was hardly a concern for me. For tiers that are not currently in SPL, I am positive that being part of it (again in some cases) is one of the tier's ultimate goals. Unsurprisingly, you've had many tier leaders argue for their tier. That goal is a portion of what brings prestige to SPL from even those that cannot play in it. People aren't always logical, but what people want is what they value.

For what it's worth, a singular SPL wouldn't stop you from simply declaring Snake to be a highly prestigious tour that is not lesser to SPL if you truly believe you can force people to assign such value to any tournament you desire. Simply define Snake as an equal to SPL just as you would define the two SPLs as equal, and surely it would have the same effect. And of course, if you don't believe that the two SPL tours can or should be equal and argue that this is a strawman, then it should certainly be absolutely no surprise to you that a community that believes its version of the tour is and will be viewed as less prestigious would certainly be unhappy with this poor arrangement in contrast to the times when the SPL format had them side by side.

 

[PDC]

i'm trying hard to find a coherent argument in this + other posts shilling for their home tier, but i really just can't find one. the tl;dr sums it up pretty succintly: i want my tier in spl because i want my tier in spl. we could have as many identical threads as there are tiers posted by each respective tier leader, and it would achieve the same effect.

Just gonna be real here - this is stupid. The reasons for dropping down to 10 slots can only be described as the tournament scene elites attempting to create more prestige for themselves by shutting others out. You do realize that this is entirely self-serving right?

yeah that's pretty much the Crux of it. i don't need to make a wax poetic argument to tell you that CG OU + OG OU players view themselves more highly when it comes to competitive value -- i am probably the foremost example of it with my crusade against lower tiers in general. originally, i favored a 12-slot spl based upon a simple pedagogy: include tiers that have a distinctive rationale for their tiering fluctuations and proper suspect testing regimens. this meant i would include OUs 1-8 / LC / DOU simply because they are adjacent to OU in terms of tiering philosophy, and thus would belong. however, according to eo's post we are no longer pursuing that theoretical basis for tournament formatting.

according to eo's post, we are splitting the two up based on the difference of "cg + og" and "cg + current gen lower tiers." over the years, i have watched this carousel of tiers go around with new ones added and old ones ditched, and every single year we end up having the same discussion: why is my tier not included in spl? well, at long last we finally hammered out a framework for the future of spl, and decided that for the sake of community interest, the tds will split the two teams. you can call this decision arbitrary, but it is just about as arbitrary as the inclusion of dou IN spl. since we're not defining them on any sort of theoretical basis (i.e. usage vs definitive), then it really just comes down to subjective competitive definitions. and now that your tier is excluded, you are mad about it.

here's another point: i don't care if you think smogon is elitist, or the jerking ou players are excluding you because of some perceived elitism. that's the nature of the game we play, the community we build, and our dedication to making a more competitive tournament. you know what's self-serving? not posting in the first place because you assumed your tier would magically be included to defend other tiers just as arbitrarily decided as yours. i could c/p your entire thread and replace each mention of "DOU/LC" with ubers and effectively reach the same conclusion.

the effort to smear competitiveness as "elitist" or "self-serving" is not taken seriously by any seriously good player.

The reason there are "incompatible interests" is because people are trying to make SPL something that it's not. The only incompatibility here is "I want my tier to be represented in the premier tournament on Smogon" vs "I know my tier is never at risk of getting axed and I will always be drafted so I want to make it as hard as possible for anyone else to participate."

what is spl? is it an inclusive uwu fest where we just decide for the good of the community we perpetually expand slots into oblivion, or is it a competitive tour? you've been around long enough to witness the dozens of threads made over the years about the "purpose" and "inclusionary benefit" of spl, and every year the tds cave and arbitrarily decide what the tournament should be/include. at long last they decided to have a real cohesive framework for the tournament - like every other one on this site - and you're upset about it. spl does not have to "be" anything, but we've decided that it should - as its reputation communicates - be the most competitive tournament possible.

i remember reading an old dice post in one of these discussions in the past regarding suspect testing or something, in which he pointed out that all of the systems we run are naturally unfair because this is a competitive game. everything we do depends on exclusionary measures, and the formatting of tournaments should be no different. just as we have a council to decide what is even allowed to be suspect tested we have a team of tournament directors deciding what tiers/formats directly correlate with competition.

Who are the primary stakeholders? The same 10 people who get picked in the first round of every team tournament? The people running the tiers that weren't just unceremoniously booted from the most important tournament of the year? Because based on this post it sure as hell isn't the Smogon playerbase as a whole.

again, who cares? well, i guess you guys do -- but clearly i, and other top players, don't. and clearly nobody else except your cabal should either. here's a thought: maybe the same 10 people who get picked in the first round of every tournament, the best players, should be the ones who should ultimately decide what dictates a competitive tournament. while soulwind's thread was too kindly worded to communicate it, i can personally tell you that top players do not care about the wider playerbase, being the incoherent mediocre mess that it is. we have no obligation to give any of you special treatment. the only thing you should be guaranteed is representation in some capacity as an "official" tier. finally, we have an definitive split between SPL/Snake, with the latter being promised a full makeover to improve its competitive value, and you're still not happy. SPL does not have an obligation to be inclusive. for a tournament designated as the flagship of competitive prowess, inclusivity to a wider playerbase undermines its objective.

Amaranth basically covered all my points regarding the slander of rby. pretty ludicrous to use it as a punching bag because your tier wasn't included.

I think most players, tier leaders etc.. will agree with me that we're trying our best to make our tiers great. Much like CGOU or old gens OU so I really don't get why should we be sidelined ? Why us ? SPL is the most famous and greatest tournament on Smogon and I think that every community have the right to showcase their bests players in those tournaments. It's always a pleasure to see really high level matchs and SPL are the one that bring the most hype and light in the community.

as an official tier you have the right to some representation, you do not have the right to participate in every iteration of every tour, especially when it means it depreciates the tournament's value. this reads more like an appeal to emotion than anything else. you should be sidelined because a) it does not serve the competitiveness of the tour and b) inclusion doesn't create a better tournament. i would say c) usage based tiers should not exist in the first place anymore and should be de-officialized, but that's an especially militant position.

as discussed in the stours discord today, there are questions about the competitive potential of a 10x10 spl format. some users like bkc would prefer if we went the 8-team bo3 route, which while i don't 100% agree with, would probably upgrade the competitive potential of the tournament even further. a 12 slot spl is acceptable i suppose, but still suffers from the capricious inclusion fest we have every year in IS/PR. a 14-slot spl would be so ludicrous in it's competitive value that i shudder at the fact something like that should even be considered. having 14 slots requires a depreciation of bidding on top players, un-needed ambiguity, and requires scraping the bottom of the barrel for players. pokemon is already a very top-heavy game, including something near 160 (subs) players in SPL would seriously threaten it's integrity as a premier competitive tour.

I could even today call it a pipe dream, but I believe there's a nonzero chance, no matter how unlikely, that Monotype can one day be in SPL given patience and change.

first, god forbid this ever happens.

SPL is the most prestigious in part because it doesn't truly have competition from any other tour for bringing the site's best players together across the tiers.

spl is historically the most prestigious because it offers the chance for well-balanced teams, unlike in wcop, to compete in a battle of wits both in pre-season retention & bidding, but also throughout in which multiple teams are convinced they are on relatively equal footing to win. it is the most 'prestigious' because of the yearly signups/returns of top players, and the inclusion of surplus tiers actively undermines that given the criteria for 'top player' is certainly disputed across different tiers.

on snake and prestige:

the second grievance amongst lower tier players is that without spl, their tiers are relegated to the realm of smogon snake draft -- a patently less respected tournament. first off, i think that the connection between competitiveness and the mediocrity of the included tiers is too big to ignore. however, a complete aesthetic makeover of the tournament will probably do good in the eye's of the public, and if that is what is needed to make snake draft a better tournament, then so be it. i support a full on embrace of advertisement for the ssd remake in the coming year.


tl;dr:

 

[Moutemoute]

as an official tier you have the right to some representation, you do not have the right to participate in every iteration of every tour, especially when it means it depreciates the tournament's value. this reads more like an appeal to emotion than anything else. you should be sidelined because a) it does not serve the competitiveness of the tour and b) inclusion doesn't create a better tournament. i would say c) usage based tiers should not exist in the first place anymore and should be de-officialized, but that's an especially militant position.

• It doesn't depreciate the tournament value. You will not make me believe that SPL 8 & 11 were better than all the other editions because lower tiers were not included in them. It's only that elitist mindset which depreciates the value of the tournament.
• Inclusion does not indeed create a better tournament but then once again why should be keep old gens OU and not lower tiers ? Both playerbases have amazing players and I don't think the best old gens OU players are better than the top of the lower tiers players. I think both are great.

The whole post is biased by the fact that you don't seem to like lower tiers which is fine I don't really care but don't use this "defiance" to say that our tiers are least competitive than old gens OU or CGOU because that's not true and a fucked up reasoning.

One day or the other, we'll have to cut out some old gens OU because of the number of Pokemon generations so why don't we begin with this by cropping the number of OU generations included in SPL. This plus the fact that lower tiers have much bigger communities and much more involvment that old gens (and that's a concrete fact you just need to check on either Showdown! or Smogon).

 

[Fran]

I believe this decision is harming the growth of our website and has nothing to do with the spirit of competitiveness. I don't understand how removing our community makes SPL in any way more prestigious, it feels to me like the TD's are doing the players a great disservice.

How is discouraging the majority of competitive pokemon players from ever participating in SPL making it more more competitive? How is cutting off the top VGC players who regularly join our website for SPL making it more prestigious? Some of these people train all year for the world championship, travel around the world to compete for championship points and face much more determined opponents than they would find on Smogon. Yet we don't want to even give them a chance at participating, just so some old time RBY player can feel better about the value of his virtual trophy.

Removing DOU doesn't just harm the website by making to less attractive to all the pokemon players who are not interested in singles, it's also a massive disservice to all of the people who put their time into building our community, creating a competitive format that could attract way more players than the VGC forums or just spending years learning and mastering the tier. Everyone knows that at some point team tournaments are what every high level player looks forward to, not allowing us into SPL really removes a lot of motivation for sticking around. Personally I can understand why an individual singles player would not care very much about if some other community gets screwed over, but I thought it was the role of TD's to reconcile our interests, rather than favor one group over the other.

I love Smogon probably more than I ever could enjoy in participating in the official pokemon tournaments, but it feels like we're betraying the values that made this website so great. I joined, because it was so easily accessible, you didn't have to buy any stupid game or console. The focus has always been on making the game the most competitive, there was no grinding or other timewasting features. If you tried your best and had some talent you would be recognized and based on your merit, you would get to compete in the coolest tournaments on the website. Now it feels like our values have shifted towards making it "prestigious" through exclusion of competition and making Smogon less accessible to the outside world, just so people who have been here the longest can feel better about themselves.

 

[Hamlette]

again, who cares? well, i guess you guys do -- but clearly i, and other top players, don't. and clearly nobody else except your cabal should either. here's a thought: maybe the same 10 people who get picked in the first round of every tournament, the best players, should be the ones who should ultimately decide what dictates a competitive tournament. while soulwind's thread was too kindly worded to communicate it, i can personally tell you that top players do not care about the wider playerbase, being the incoherent mediocre mess that it is. we have no obligation to give any of you special treatment.

Here's what you said as a proof

Let us agree that OU has the most representation in tournaments.
Let us agree that players from formats with the most representation get picked the most.
It follows that the best OU players, hereafter "we", get picked the most.
Let us assume that the most picked players in tournaments are the best, and consequently should pick the formats for SPL.
It follows that we are the best.
Consequently, we get to pick the formats for SPL, and we decide to exclude all non-OU formats.

It follows that only OU deserve to be in SPL because representation is decided by the best players (us), and we are rightfully so because we get picked the most in tournaments, tournaments in which OU is represented the most – rightfully so, because the best players (us) decide of the representation, ad infinitum.

Proved by circular reasoning. ∎

I hope you realize the ridiculous point you just made.
Calling other tiers an "incoherent mediocre mess" and a "cabal" when you are quite literally showing yourself to be a self-serving circle is pretty insulting, haughty and rather ironic.
The one way this isn't a circular argument is if you made the claim that OUs are inherently more competitive than other tiers, therefore justifying that the top OU players are the best, better than anyone in any other format. Which is just untrue.
This isn't elitism, you're right. This is collective narcissism.

tldr:

 

[sugar ovens]

If you really wanted to make SPL as "competitive" as possible, you'd cut the number of teams, not the number of tiers. The tournament still remains "uwu stupid inclusive", just exclusively for old gen mains. Make SPL a six-team tournament with say, 14 slots and you'll get the best players from all sections of Smogon facing each other. Removing tiers while keeping the number of teams removes some sections of the site, but the quality of play remains the same. Removing tiers doesn't raise "competitiveness".

If you really wanted to make SPL sustainable, it would be done by making it focused at the current gen and the most recent old gens. A new old generation tier is created every three years. This format change doesn't adress anything, it's just catering to the apparently more influential old gen players. Everyone knows that this does not make the format sustainable. Lower tiers at the start of the generation can be addressed by playing the lower tier in the previous generation. RBY will eventually have to be axed or merged to a bo3 or sth - it's inevitable.

The argument is about "include my favourite tier because i like it" vs "my tier is already in so remove the other tiers because <arbitrary, non-existent reasons>" What can be done to make SPL more "competitive/prestigions" - the answer is obvious, but no-one mentions it because no-one actually cares about it. It's a simple irrational "i don't like this, i don't want this" with competely made-up arguments.

For the record, my favourite tier was not in SPL before the change.

 

[Amaranth]

I love Smogon probably more than I ever could enjoy in participating in the official pokemon tournaments, but it feels like we're betraying the values that made this website so great. I joined, because it was so easily accessible, you didn't have to buy any stupid game or console. The focus has always been on making the game the most competitive, there was no grinding or other timewasting features. If you tried your best and had some talent you would be recognized and based on your merit, you would get to compete in the coolest tournaments on the website.

Here's the thing: me the fuck too!!!!! But SPL can't have too many slots because teams start to collapse once you reach big numbers*.

*

To be honest the notion that we can't expand SPL to a million slots is somewhat untested, you'd maybe need to allow larger managing teams to handle it all but I really don't think player dilution will be as much of an issue as it's portrayed to be when all the tiers tend to have different playerbases from each other. But this was never tested so it's hard to say with any certainty. For now the commonly accepted wisdom seems to be that you can't expand the slots, so I'm arguing starting from that point - if you want to challenge it, go ahead

While I personally disagree with the notion that 12 slots is too many, and I might even disagree with the notion that 14 is too many, even then you wouldn't be able to fit every lower tier and every old gen into the same tournament. Splitting SPL into two tournaments is a necessary evil. If not right now, then by the next gen.

DOU has a right to be upset because they don't have the same representation as every other tier if they're removed from SPL, but it seems like everyone else is just whining about not being in "the tournament named Smogon Premier League". Let me tell you, after having my tier face elimination from the circuit I would have bitten anyone's hand off if they told me we were going to be included in any official team tournament regardless of name - complaining about the name of the tournament you're included in seems really silly from my perspective. Fair representation is infinitely more important than perceived prestige. Snake will get a rebrand, a rework to fix its flawed mechanics, and a group of hungry lowtier players - if they put on a fucking show, which I expect them to do, the tournament will be "prestigious" and "respected" and whatever other adjectives are being thrown around.

SPL is excluding lower tiers not because lower tiers should be abolished or whatever PDC said (sorry man what are you talking about LOL), SPL is excluding lower tiers because of what Eo said: a split needs to happen and the Snake Replacement is trusted to be able to meet the heights of SPL.

As Eien said - prestige can only be assigned by the people that interface with a tournament. Not by the tournament's name lmfao. If the players take the tournament seriously then it will be prestigious and that's that. I'd volunteer for oldgens to do the rebrand while lowtiers keep the SPL name if this is such a big deal to them but I'm afraid that's gonna be too difficult due to logistics.

 

[Tony]

I understand how this format makes a lot of sense moving forward for the team tournament schedule, but as a big DOU fan I think it's a huge shame if it would only be in one official tournament from here on out. As a solution, how would you guys feel about bringing back the old Smogon VGC Tournament trophy and re-purposing it as a DOU equivalent of OST? Considering the DOU community is a mostly separate player base and the inherent lack of overlap it would have with our other tournaments, I believe it could easily be worked into the tournament schedule. For those of you unaware, it's this tournament and trophy:

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/smogon-vgc-tournament-iii-finals-won-by-biosci.3484401/​

Counterarguments might include that a non-OU tournament doesn't 'deserve' its own tournament, or that other non-OU tiers might want their own individual tournament, too. The thing is, official lower tiers have their own tournament in the form of Grand Slam, whereas DOU was previously removed from that as well. DOU is also the tier most closely resembling OU, which sets it apart. Like in OU, there are no restrictions other than banning the Pokemon and mechanics that are too strong for the metagame. Not to mention that this specific trophy was already rewarded for a doubles based format previously; a format that was the official doubles format on Smogon at the time. DOU is that format in today's landscape.

Unless I'm underestimating the schedule congestion issue, I'm not seeing any true downsides to this idea. It gives us a chance to meet a community that clearly feels slighted by this decision halfway, while at the same time providing us fans and spectators with more official and high level gameplay to spectate. If anything it probably narrows the gap between the doubles and singles communities, as it gives singles players a reason to pick up DOU to try and win a trophy. I imagine that being a potentially great thing for the team tournament that will still include DOU, for the DOU players especially. I know DOU players would probably rather be in SPL, but I personally think having one official team tournament and an official individual tournament could be a great way to still have sufficient official representation. This tier deserves it.

 

[Kevin Garrett]

This is an unfortunate series of events. I knew from the format discussion thread the possibility for DOU to be left out of SPL was very possible. It's not a tier I or many others can say they are very knowledgable about, but it is both integral to Smogon and possesses pedigree within SPL itself. In fact, in my proposal, I stated that should DOU be taken out of SPL, it needs to have representation increased greatly in other official tournaments. Sadly, this was left completely unaddressed in the announcement of the upcoming format for SPL. As things stand now, DOU is the least represented officially recognized metagame on Smogon—and that's a problem. It's not even in Grand Slam, and honestly, I don't even know if just including it there is enough representation. I had in my head as an idea to see the orange trophy return for an official individual DOU tournament. How all of this could not be addressed simultaneously along with its removal from SPL is beyond me. There is a very fair complaint Bowman has with the circumstances of this decision.

 

[Ace-11]

Unpopular opinion: LC and DOU should not have been removed and this ''new'' SPL format should have been the WCoP format.

 

[steelskitty]

Speaking as someone whose main tier went from the prestige of inclusion in SPL from the very beginning, to exclusion from the tour on completely arbitrary grounds, to having to continue to fight for official tour inclusion, to being excluded from the discussion for official inclusion altogether, the OP comes off to me as entitled to a ludicrous degree. Ubers has lacked SPL inclusion for almost half a decade now. The claim that

DOU is the least represented officially recognized metagame on Smogon

is just offensively wrong. Ubers has been kicked while it's down (and very much continues to be kicked while it's down) since pretty much the end of XY. For a metagame that used to make up a core part of official tours, even being considered a viable option during a number of seasons of Smogon Tour during a time period where playing old gens of OU wasn't technologically feasible, it's no exaggeration to say that Ubers has had it worse than anybody. It has much more of a precedent for official tournament inclusion than any lower tier not named UU, RU, or NU, and this includes Doubles. The fact of the matter is, there is no coherent argument to include Doubles and LC in this edition of SPL yet exclude other lower tiers like Ubers.

This is why I'm very much in favor of cutting lower tiers out of SPL altogether and including as many as makes sense in Snake's replacement. If we tried to include every core and official metagame, in addition to every generation of OU, we'd have a tournament with eighteen slots per team at minimum: RBY/GSC/ADV/DPP/BW/ORAS/USM OU, 3 SS OU slots, and UU/RU/NU/PU/LC/DOU/Ubers/Monotype. Eighteen is already far too many, and the number would only increase as time goes on — we'll keep getting old generations of OU that don't make sense to exclude, and I imagine Other Metagames like 1v1 and ZU would also make serious bids for inclusion at some point. The only viable long-term solution is to make SPL two tours that're identical outside of the tiers they feature: one with current generation OU and old gens, and one with current generation OU and lower tiers. I don't believe it makes sense to think of this other SPL as a spiritual successor to Snake — rather a replacement of it, as the continuation of representation and prestige for lower tiers that Snake should've been yet wasn't.

As long as this second SPL includes Ubers, I have no problem with it. It has space to include all the other viable lower tiers too — Monotype makes little sense, but you can put in all of UU/RU/NU/PU/LC/DOU/Ubers and 3 SS OU slots and have a competitive and fun ten-teamslot tournament with potential for plenty of engagement and maybe even future growth. Prestige is a valid concern, but there is an open Tournament Policy discussion that asks in part for suggestions on how to improve the new team tour's public perception. Just stop making arguments that Doubles and LC or any other particular lower tier deserves special treatment, because they don't, and insinuating otherwise is at best willfully irrational and at worst straight-up pernicious toward other communities that have struggled in this debate for reincorporation far longer than yours.

 

[lax]

Man I can’t believe PDC got PROOFED lmao PDC get fukt

I feel like most people are missing the entire point on why people are upset. Obviously, their tier was cut out. However, just their tier being cut isn’t the main reason; the reasoning behind their tier being cut is the most infuriating part.

People have this grand idea of making Snake reach the same level as SPL, which is completely impossible. For starters, SPL is literally Smogon Premier League. Based on history and name alone, no team tour can top or be on equal footing as this tournament. You can try all you want, but I doubt Snake becomes something like Smogon Masters League or something stupid yet on equal verbal standing.

The reason why this is an issue comes down to these lame arguments about tiers having equal tournament representation. As long as an Official tier has at least one individual and team tournament it’s in, it shouldn’t matter for picking SPL tiers. There’s just something really lame about essentially calling old gens the most PREMIER on Smogon by masking it as simply providing representation for old gens. We all know that’s kind of bullshit. Well, “we” as in the 60% or whatever of the site that engages in non-CG OU tiers as well.

Additionally, this is an issue because of what SPL stands for. Old (literally age-wise these people are soooo old) old gen players think their tiers are the most important, so they should easily be in the Smogon Premier League. I’m not arguing against this at all because the history of old gen OU tiers is definitely important. What I’m getting at is that lower tier players just want to play and be considered as important. No matter what fancy wording anyone uses, the bottom line is people think old gens are more important or more PREMIER. I’m of the belief that SPL should showcase the entirety of what Smogon has to offer, not just 3 CG OU slots and the old gens. It should have a lot more in it, such as lower tiers and DOU. Lower tiers have councils, forums where people allocate a lot of their time towards analyzing their tier and creating discussions. The same applies to DOU obviously, and DOU has always been one of the most “premier” tiers anyways. No other tier has people making money from Pokemon and people traveling the globe to make money for fucking Pokemon. The fact that this tier was removed for not being the exact same as the other tiers is insane. I’m still shocked that the community has this false notion of “inclusivity” as a large reason to why lower tiers should be axed. Why we replaced 3 lower tiers + DOU for another slot for CG OU and RBY is beyond me. Replacing 4 tiers with immense playerbases for another CG OU slot specifically is incredibly strange, but people have gotten into that previously.

An argument Eo said to explain the current format is to create a long lasting sense of identity because the tiers are static. Well, why does it even matter that the tiers aren’t static? Look at the Bigs last year. They bought Adaam, Kushalos and the versatile Santu. This was in a tournament without lower tiers... and it features 3 of the best lower tiers of recent times. If they were able to be retained this year, a year that was going to include lower tiers, look at how that would work out. Wow! Team identity! Also, speaking from first hand experience, if I wasn’t a moron that got himself banned, I would have been a player bought for NU that became a 16k OU retain. There’s also people like FLCL, Luthier, Sacri’ etc that start as lower tier players that would be bought for OU. Team identity is entirely dependent on the managers and the players and shouldn’t be a factor that affects the tournament slots. I’d also argue that it’s even better to have non-static tiers so nobody can complain. Lower tiers get in, DOU gets in, RBY gets in, LC gets in. This is obviously on a rotation, but what does it matter? What was the issue with this again? Some false senses of inclusivity and wanting the tiers to be static?

The people that comprise of the “best” Pokemon players really just want what they want. This is really strange to cater towards. The issue people have is all this nonsense and bullshit made up to explain to them why people don’t think their tier is PREMIER enough to be in SPL. Representation is a pointless argument that can be solved by no longer making the tournament static. Inclusivity would sooner be solved by reducing the amount of teams. Come on, you know these communities have a right to be upset.

 

[Sunrose]

I dont even know what to say after finding out that dou was excluded from spl. Our community did nothing wrong to be left out. So many upcoming great players were about to be given a chance to display how well they can compete against the best in the dou field. A couple of players and myself recently set up dwcop because the only tours we had to showcase our top dou talent were ssnls and dpl. We also set it up because the dou community was in dire need of another team tour. Every player that plays on this site enjoys playing in teams tours. The TD's justification of having spl be only OU formats doesnt make any sense. People had already mentioned this before but you might as well rename SPL into OUPL. DOU in SPL has always had its best players compete in it. How does this make spl less prestigious? Please tell me and every dou player on this site why. We still havent gotten a clear answer other than EO nitpicking and PDC's head being up in his ass. MajorBowman and Frania made good points in their post and I wholeheartedly agree with everything they said. I care about the dou community a lot as well and will do my best to make sure our players still enjoy playing our tier. Not being included in SPL is doing nothing but being a great disservice to our players and any players in the future that end up joining this site to play DOU.

 

[Valentine]

I've seen the conclusion of the previous thread and the genesis of this one described as dark. What i find most interesting is the genuine surprise from a collection of various subcommunities. This thread does serve its purpose of allowing 'some' relief of pressure that has been built up as a result of the decision. The 'Snake Discussion Thread' also helps in this regard. I have no doubt that 'Snake' in its new form will cater towards a broader scope of the website and serve to please more people. But that still does not highlight the unspoken core issue - True Competition.

The main reason we use Smogon is for the thrill and engagements of competition. The heavily overused "prestige" associated with SPL makes it arguably the most competitive and challenging Pokemon tournament you could participate in. And just like anything successful, this has spawned a market for knockoffs. There have been "Premeir Leagues" made for every conceivable format and tier. For one and all to experience the thrills associated with organized competition and subcommunity dominance hierarchies. This participation extends even to other websites. To a larger extent, the inception of Snake Draft itself was born from the same hunger.

SPL is catered towards the competitive crowd because it was born from the pursuit of competition. Those making the decisions regarding it have the same origin. And those who care most about it are those who influence it. SPL, as a singular tournament, has no ability to serve the boundless people that would like to compete. No amount of logic or well applied argument will change that.

If you want a true answer, these online tournaments exist for the challenge alone. Something for you to challenge and overcome. Your tier isn't in the tournament? Learn a new one, or lever yourself into a position to change that. You don't have friends and the managers don't like you? Make new friends. In short, Figure it out. The power is within you to embrace and overcome the challenge of competition. And as it is in True Competition, there is no room for every party to succeed.

 

[TPP]

Usually I don't bother posting in these threads, but I seriously wanted to ask what's wrong with 14 slots? The 14 I have in mind are:

SS OU
SS OU
SM OU
ORAS OU
BW OU
DPP OU
ADV OU
GSC OU
RBY OU
DOU
UU
RU
NU
LC

I keep hearing that 14 slots makes the tournament worse, but I feel like that's only the case if there are no good players in the last 2 tiers, which is certainly not the case. There are capable players in every tier listed above and excluding any of the above tiers does not magically make the tournament quality worse. This format actually makes the tournament better because a pool of the top 20 SS OU players is better than a pool with the top 30 SS OU players. If SPL is reserved for the highest level of play, then wouldn't it make sense to try and maximize the quality you're getting from the current gen ou slots? Yes the player base is massive, but the point is that it's supposed to be hard to be an SPL starter for current gen OU because this is as high as it gets. You get rewarded for being a top player by getting to play in SPL. You shouldn't get to play just because your tier was chosen over another.

The bonus to 2 SS OU slots is that the SM and ORAS pools indirectly improve as well because a few of those SS OU players who were once SM and ORAS OU players may end up playing those tiers instead. Those 2 tiers in particular have been suffering from being recent current gen tiers. By this I mean that their existing pools are the least developed, and that a lot of their former top players have moved on to play SS OU, as that is the new current gen OU. I think this is going to continue to be a problem as Gamefreak releases more generations, and a temporary solution could be to try and hope that more former top ORAS and SM OU players end up playing those tiers instead of SS OU due to fewer SS OU slots.

14 slots lets both lower tier and past gen ou player bases be happy and unless someone can prove that there are no viable players in at least 2 tiers, then I'm not sure why this option is off the table. Also fwiw, I agree that this tournament should be renamed to OUPL because Smogon Premier League sounds like it encompasses all of Smogon, which won't be the case if a bunch of tiers are missing. Snake is going to take time to become a decent tournament, and I think it's a disservice to the UU, RU, NU, LC and DOU communities to axe their highest level of play one month before the biggest tournament on this site.

 

[Finchinator]

I think the idea that every tier deserves equal representation is poor and we should begin to distance ourselves from it, instead focusing on more practical outcomes. Giving everyone an opportunity to get involved with their respective metagame in an official capacity seems important and should still be a priority, but finding a perfect balance is an impossibility and any established "balance" is already arbitrarily defined.

Keep in mind that our entire official circuit is constantly evolving and the amount of possible tournaments to be included in for various tiers has gone up and down numerous times in my years playing Smogon tournaments as is. Let's use DOU as an example! When I started playing, DOU, a fairly new format, was only in SPL (recently overtook VGC) as SSD did not exist and it was not yet in Grand Slam. Then, it got added to Grand Slam promptly, but by the time SSD became a tournament and had DOU, it was back on its way out of Grand Slam. DOU went from being in 1 tournament to being in 2 tournaments (team + individual) to briefly being in 3 tournaments, finally to stabilize at being in 2 (both team tournaments) in recent years. Depending on the year in our official circuit progression and if it was a year with a new generation being release, DOU has had either more, the same, or less representation than the long-term core lower tiers (UU, RU, and NU as PU did not exist for all of this timeline). The fact of the matter is that finding that perfect balance is not something we can accomplish, but we can define our tournaments and we can go out of our way to achieve an official circuit that caters to each playerbase.

I believe that defining our tournaments sets them up for long-term success. People know what to expect and grow accustom to tournaments, leading to higher retention rate of sign-ups from dedicated players and people growing more committed to the tournament. You could tell people were growing uneasy towards the constantly changing format of SPL that was at the mercy of new generations being released, which was one of the numerous driving forces behind some posts in the prior thread. Yes, there are outdated idiots like PDC who go out of their way to bash specific tiers without having a full understanding of the situation, but I'd like to think they are in the minority here.

The reason why I went out of my way define the formats in my proposal here was to establish that consistency, which will stick with the community for years and pay unspoken dividends moving forward. As someone who frequents BW OU, I am super excited for SPL every year as it is an amazing showcase of the tier and we know it will be in the tier every year. I can only imagine how uneasy someone who follows DOU, LC, or specific lower tiers may feel not knowing what is to come with their tiers in officials, especially if they were overly reliant on the old SSD to be their main official. Needless to say, defining this and focusing on reworking SSD to being a better team tournament, that is not entirely in SPL's shadow, will go a long way.

I also believe that being included in individual tournaments goes a long way, especially for non-OU tiers. Why? Because as it stands, 12-15 or so players are actually getting official games in these tiers, but in individuals any player can sign-up and even prove that they belong to be in the team tournaments. Sure, there are circuits each tier has to prove that, but nothing compensates for playing on the big stage with even more on the line. Seeing all of the lower tiers at least represented in Grand Slam is a huge plus for them, but DOU is not included in that nowadays and for those who are still stuck on 'balance', they should be pointing fingers at that as lower tiers also got removed from the non-generational year SPLs, too. I know it is not an absolutely perfect solution and no longer being included in SPL is a huge hit, but Tony's proposal above about the DOU version of OST is the best solution here. It leaves the team tournament official circuit in a state of defined balance and it gives DOU inclusion in an individual (its own individual, too).

To expand on this, I wrote up a full proposal about it and how we can tie it in with the new official tournament to help improve the chances of both being received well and helping integrate them into our community here.

 

[tennisace]

Static tiers serve to establish team continuity between years and help strengthen the identity of the tournament; they, along with many other things brought up in the previous thread, including slot numbers, auction format, and team names, are all important to the tournament's overall experience, necessarily at the cost of representation.

This is misleading at best. Managers change frequently, and retains have been slowly whittled away down to the point where you can realistically only keep a player 2 or 3 seasons in a row, and only 3 total in a roster of (what was) ~16. Unless you went out of your way to draft the same people year in and year out, the teams were hardly static. Identities changed from year to year depending on where a handful of players ended up.

It is not fair to Monotype or any other future official tier that cannot be accommodated at this point.

Why can they not be accommodated? Seems pretty arbitrary when tiers have been accommodated throughout the tournament's history depending on the generation.

This isn't a philosophy that was adopted with this particular format change, but a decision we have made every year when deciding to cut tiers and keep the number of slots at 12 rather than 14. In the same vein, these changes are inevitably necessary to help address the scaling issues posed by the constant proliferation of new old gens and low tiers.

So then what happens when the next generation comes out and SS OU is an old gen? Do slots expand to 12 or does RBY get the boot? Your assertions that keeping tiers included in SPL static isn't inherently solving your perceived problems of growth.

This version of SPL, as others have pointed out, is essentially just OUPL with old gens. You're saying the only premier portions of Smogon are the OU forum and RoA, which disenfranchises 5 of the top 8 most popular tiers (to say nothing of Mono, which is top 3 but never has had a chance in trophy tours). Here are the ladder games from the latest stats to come out (Nov 15-30). I could do a deeper dive but I think the numbers are pretty clear.

OU - 1,145,323
SM - 184,676
Mono - 137,734
DOU - 121,892
UU - 107,752
Uber - 106,966
RU - 106,588
NU - 34280
DPP - 30,193
PU - 28,910
BW - 26,353
ORAS - 26,193
ADV - 20,945
LC - 18,352
ZU - 8,500
RBY - 8,448
GSC - 3,437

More people play current gen than old gen. There are just as many top players who play current gens as do old gens. Please stop exclusively catering to one group of top players in a tournament that used to represent "The Best Smogon Has To Offer". There is more than enough room on this site to expand SPL without hiding behind mealy-mouthed buzzwords like "prestige" and "competitiveness".

PDC said the quiet part out loud: the players who are currently represented in this iteration of SPL think they are better than the players who are not. The TD team agrees and has decided (at least currently) to support and propagate this elitism. This decision is throwing back to the Smogon of old, where the community wore its elitism like a badge of honor and not like the albatross it actually is. It's a regressive decision at best and actively harmful to the community at large at worst.

 

[baddummy]

Hi, I would like to raise some concerns about procedures and admin. What I mean by this is that I think knowing the exact format of the next tournament in the circuit has an objective value, and that this value will often outweigh the potential, more subjective, value of the changes themselves.

I do not have a strong personal interest in any of the tiers at stake in the decision. However, many players do. Up to this point, for around a year, these players were told that performing well and honing skills in particular tiers would give them a chance to play those tiers to a very high level in a tour that would start in January. In fact, from here:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/growth-and-spl.3650565/page-2#post-8268553

"As for lower tiers specifically, we fully intend on them being part of SPL in years to come."

The intention of me posting this is not to bash TDs past or present, it is to point out that the method by which things are done is important. Notice how the framing of the argument in the closing post is entirely different, talking about bringing together different sections of the website. The 2020 thread talked instead about "competitiveness", a term used very ambiguously and I do not believe I am wrong in saying that from the way it was used, there was a subjective meaning masquerading as an objective term. So the previous objectives were clearly discarded in favour of entirely different ones.

Now, as it happens, I think the changes themselves are likely to be a good thing. Old gen spl and Lower tier spl, or however they will be branded, are probably the best way forward for the site to proceed. I also believe that flip-flopping back on this has the potential to make the situation worse. But sometimes it isn't about the actual substance of the changes, it is about how they are implemented. There are some who will argue that the intent or arguments put forward by the TDs previously shouldn't matter. Expectation is actually a relevant concept in real life, but you should also consider the important ramifications of making decisions in this way.

The takeaway from watching this unfold is that the words and intentions of TDs don't mean anything, and the very next tournament in the circuit isn't confirmed. Making a thread criticising the format of the very next tour on short notice, when the format is acceptable as is, is now commonplace. Eo's post here mentioned disrupting multi-year planning:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/spl-format-discussion.3672858/page-2#post-8653313
Fine, but now, you can't even assume that the agreed upon format for the next month will stay. This is quite clearly a problem, it even undermines the very changes that were just made, by showing that last minute format criticisms are capable of tossing out a year's worth of agreement.

My suggestion is not that format changes can never be made, or that format criticisms should not be taken seriously. But unless the situation is very dire, the next tour's format should generally be kept as is. This is not least because making changes in this manner results in significant community backlash. Criticisms made of the next tour are very valid, and small tweaks can be very beneficial, but big format changes that are not absolutely necessary should really not be made of the very next tour. They should instead apply to the iteration after the upcoming one. Changes can certainly be welcomed if they are done a couple of months in advance, but this decision felt rushed to say the least. Else, there is a high chance that the same painful last minute format discussions happen this time next year too.

 

[McMeghan]

I honestly feel like most people here care too much about the fact that SPL, the "Brand", has been chosen as the OU-focused tournament while the new SPL, the one that was chosen as the CG one, doesn't have the brand yet but pretty much represents everything lower tier players want to see out of a prestigious team tour.

Like, what matters the most, the brand or the tournament itself? Because the new SPL will literally work like the old one and will have everything you guys want right? Do you care that much about the name being SPL and the trophy being red?

Personally, and I say this as an old-gen focused player, I wouldn't mind if the two are swapped. As long as I have a SPL format tournament that features my favorite gens, I don't care about the name, the color of the trophy or its history. I'm here for the game. Give the SPL brand to the more active and more inclusive tiers if that makes everyone happy, as long as I can enjoy a SPL-run tournament focusing on OU gens.

I wonder if other old gen players feel that way or if they care about the SPL brand more than the tournament format itself, because then the issue would just be reversed. Just all seem superficial to me.