Potential Changes to WCoP

[starry blanket]

why was a poll sent out if you guys are ignoring a supermajority?

edit: genuine question. don't see much of a point in polling as transparency was already covered by making this thread.

 

[Stone_Cold]

TD's changed the format for a reason. Old gen players felt isolated. It was basically a compromise to the two sides of the community at the time. Unfortunately, I don't think most of you were even around when that reasoning was being made, but the decision to change to all-gens was not liked at first by everyone, it did take some getting used to but it turned out for the better. It's more reasonable to ask one person per team to play GSC than it is to tell people who have no interest in SM that if they want to keep up with the tradition of world cup, they must learn that tier.

I don't understand how you came to a unanimous decision on this matter, I attribute it to 1) not having Aldaron around to question every tiny possible circumstance, and 2) a large fact that most of you weren't around when the original change was made, so maybe not comprehending the full thought process.

I don't mind the region changes, I just truly think it wasn't the right play to change to SM. You have such a large old gens player base, by in large, this decision seems like a huge middle finger to these guys.

Edit: To be clear, I think you guys had good intentions wanting to include newer users and make it more modern. I just don't think you thought of the consequences of your decision before posting.

Edit: To answer ABR's questioning on 2 ORAS, 2 BW. Correct me if i'm wrong but, users tend to love DPP and ADV and there was some masochists that enjoy GSC. From a recruiter's perspective, I could convince someone to play GSC before I could convince them to play BW.

Don't over think this guys, this at the end of the day is a Pokemon Site. Don't lose competitors because you didn't give the majority users what they wanted. You still get a major change with the US regions. Let's see how it goes this year, and evaluate a potential change in tiers next year. Too much change at once is gross and obviously from the backlash, make's people quite upset.

 

[ABR]

Tony and Hogg touched on why last year was flawed so I'm not gonna get into that too much. To say it briefly, older gens -> smaller playerbases
-> unevenly distributed when teams are region based and not draft based. World Cup should be modern. Now, the immediate response to this was evidently an all SM OU tour. This does a lot of good things but I understand there are concerns about this being disinteresting. At the end of the day, I'd like the playerbase (myself included) to enjoy tournaments, so long as there is decent logical backing for the format.

So, something I brought up among other TDs recently was the idea of using Smogon Tour tiers (gens 7, 6, and 5) for World Cup. This addresses the issue of smaller playerbases / difficulty of fielding something like a GSC player, but also provides more diversity than all SM OU. This cutoff can also be justifiable considering Smogon Tour already does it. Additionally, as you'll see below, this format enables 10 slots while all SM OU would mean we could probably only field 8 to maintain quality. It'd also be sustainable in that we know it only goes to 2 oldgens and we consistently can replace the oldest one every time a new tour is released, without ever having to increase or decrease total slots.

As far as specific numbers go, the format would look like: 6 SM, 2 ORAS, 2 BW

Let me know what you think.

 

[destinyunknown]

Honestly when the community is so overwhelmingly in favor of a format, which is also the current one (so it would be simply maintaining the status quo), and even outsiders who didnt vote in the poll and are trying to make new teams are also in favor of the same format, then there's no reason to pick the opposite option.

I understand that the x5 CG + ORAS-GSC format might not be considered sustainable in the long term, but if that was your concern then there should have been a brainstorming thread to discuss a long term solution. I also understand that the survey wasn't meant to be definitive, and if the survey had been a close vote it would have made sense for TDs to step in and decide the format. However, given that there was a supermajority, ignoring the poll shows a lack of respect to the community.

As for ABR's format suggested above, I personally don't see how it fixes much. While it does provide a bit more flexibility than full current gen, it still faces the same issue, that most teams dont have enough 'current gen' players, which are the ones playing smogon tour tiers. The players for the newest 2 generations tend to overlap, and this format also requires 10 players (instead of 8 for full CG), so small teams would still have a hard time filling the slots. Also, this format would still mean changing tiers when a new generation comes out, which is something that we could do with the old (x5 old gen) format as well. Wasn't it decided last year that the format would be x5 current gen + x5 newest old gens?

 

[power]

Before the inevitable blow-up about how TDs ignored community opinion yet again, we actually discussed this quite a bit, and it was unanimous among the TD team that sticking with last year's format (SM through GSC) would be a mistake. Including every generation but one felt arbitrary and awkward, the format is unsustainable over the long term, and it leads to a less competitive tour.

Why is including every generation in World Cup continuously referred to as unsustainable? This same logic was used to force out RBY last year, but there's no actual proof that the format is unsustainable. Adding an extra slot every 3-4 years is fairly reasonable; We won't even hit 15 slots till the 2030s. Not to mention with the changes sweeping the video game industry, normal Pokemon games are likely to not be made forever; at some point over the next 10 years it's incredibly likely that Game Freak does away with the entire concept of generations because of how untenable "Gotta Catch 'em All!" has become.

1 of each old gen (including RBY) + 4-6 SM OU is likely to be a sustainable format for at least the next ten years, which is plenty enough for all intents and purposes; it's much more likely something else comes up long before sustainability becomes a true issue

 

[Hogg]

why was a poll sent out if you guys are ignoring a supermajority?

edit: genuine question. don't see much of a point in polling as transparency was already covered by making this thread.

Because we made a survey fairly early on in our discussion process while we were still gathering ideas, and sent it out with an explicit message that it was just an informal survey and that we weren't necessarily planning on going with the popular option. As I said, in the interim we continued discussion, and came to the conclusion that keeping last year's format (SM/SM/SM/SM/SM/ORAS/BW/DPP/ADV/GSC) would be a big mistake and would only cause problems in the long term.

I don't think any of us are opposed to exploring other potential options, but while individual members of the TD team may have different ideas of what the ideal WCOP might look like, every single one of us agreed that last year's format was not the right decision.

 

[patlop2307]

Tony and Hogg touched on why last year was flawed so I'm not gonna get into that too much. To say it briefly, older gens -> smaller playerbases -> unevenly distributed when teams are region based and not draft based. World Cup should be modern. Now, the immediate response to this was evidently an all SM OU tour. This does a lot of good things but I understand there are concerns about this being disinteresting. At the end of the day, I'd like the playerbase (myself included) to enjoy tournaments, so long as there is decent logical backing for the format.

So, something I brought up among other TDs recently was the idea of using Smogon Tour tiers (gens 7, 6, and 5) for World Cup. This addresses the issue of smaller playerbases / difficulty of fielding something like a GSC player, but also provides more diversity than all SM OU. This cutoff can also be justifiable considering Smogon Tour already does it. Additionally, as you'll see below, this format enables 10 slots while all SM OU would mean we could probably only field 8 to maintain quality. It'd also be sustainable in that we know it only goes to 2 oldgens and we consistently can replace the oldest one every time a new tour is released, without ever having to increase or decrease total slots.

As far as specific numbers go, the format would look like: 6 SM, 2 ORAS, 2 BW

Let me know what you think.

2 questions: Assuming the changes happen, wouldn't it be like a literal team-tour version of Smogon Tour? ; Will SPL witness the same changes as this one right here?

 

[Stone_Cold]

Hogg. To have a tournament, you need players. By changing the format, you're allowing a few new users to have a shot, but the majority of the old gens players probably won't be returning. I understand, you as TD's feel the need to make the "right decision", but you're going to have dead tournaments if you're asking the community what they want, and then don't give them what they want.

I propose to, Revert to the old gens for this year, give the region changes time to sink in. Give the tournament an opportunity to take on it's new form. Let's see what nintendo throws at us in the next year, and next world cup, you can have a community vote based off the NEW world cup from the previous year seeing where things need to go from there.

You're wanting to make the correct decision, but you're doing too much in such a short amount of time. Sticking to your guns isn't worth upsetting the player base that this community is made up of, and it's not worth losing some of your best users over. Some of the best new players on Smogon are old gen players, (Void went fuckin undefeated last year). If there was a closer vote, I would understand sticking to your guns and forcing this decision, however this is not worth upsetting the majority of the players who play world cup.

 

[baddummy]

I am grateful for releasing the results of the poll. However, I think this is a really awful decision.

Before the inevitable blow-up about how TDs ignored community opinion yet again, we actually discussed this quite a bit, and it was unanimous among the TD team that sticking with last year's format (SM through GSC) would be a mistake. Including every generation but one felt arbitrary and awkward, the format is unsustainable over the long term, and it leads to a less competitive tour. We posted the poll early on in our discussion process, but in the interim we agreed across the board that sticking with last year's format was a non-starter.

Perhaps it is indeed reasonable to argue that excluding 1 generation, while including all the others is arbitrary and awkward. It is particularly odd when the RBY community actually has fairly high numbers, and aside from some odd mechanics that just have to be committed to memory, is a very accessible generation for somebody to pick up. The solution to this awkward format, that would also result in much higher satisfaction amongst the community, would simply be to include RBY in the list of wcop tiers. However, instead of this, it appears that you decided to reject community opinion entirely.

This decision is bad, on every front.
1) This goes against the wishes of the community
2) The reason cited that it supposedly helps struggling teams is false. There are already messages from Oceania and Austria players in this thread saying that this actually weakens them. I'm here to confirm that UK is weakened by this decision too.

The result of this is that you have a decision that neither satisfies the community nor succeeds in the goal you set out to do. I'm not asserting my opinion in the above statements, I am stating something that is factually accurate.

In addition to what Lavos has already said, I would like to add these figures:
Number of 0-3s in SM OU: 13
Number of 0-3s in Old gens: 8

There was already difficulty in teams putting together 5 good SM slots, and this decision only exacerbates that issue. The 5th SM OU slot of a weaker team will likely not have much tour experience, if any at all. But stronger teams can of course field 5 SM OUers with tour experience, and the result is what can be shown above, there were significantly more players thrown into SM OU who then got chewed up losing 0-3, than there were players who couldn't compete at a tour level in an old gen. The 5th slot of a weaker team's SM OU getting trampled by 1 of the 5 high level tour players of a stronger team was always a much greater issue, and deducted from the tournament way more, than 1 gsc main going up against a better gsc main. It isn't actually an overly difficult task for a team to draft 1 player from each old generation, even for the weaker teams, but it is difficult for a single team to have such a large number of tournament level players from a single tier. From a subjective viewpoint, having a team tour with only 1 tier in it seems very bland, and it would appear the majority of people agree with me.

I also disagree with the idea of simply copying stour tiers to wcop. As Dunk has already mentioned, having so many modern gens still pressures weaker teams, rather than spreading out the tiers and giving people the chance to play what they are best at. The format of including all old gens was not one that needed fixing at all, and TDs have only made things worse by trying.

Going against such a large majority of people, 71.5%, is an alarming decision, and it points to a larger trend of the higher ups on smogon not respecting the opinions of the larger community, and assuming they know better. Ultimately, not only does this fail to do what it set out to, but it actually leaves weaker teams in a worse condition than they were in before. I would urge the TD team to actually listen to the wishes of the community, and try to mend what is becoming a major problem on smogon: a lack of trust between the community and the higher ups. Please do not overthink this, the solution is as simple as just having a wcop with gens 1-6 included.

 

[Ciele]

As much as I would like a more centralised tier distribution in tours (pls no more new lower tiers), I think the removal of old gens in this World Cup is a mistake. While it was stated that the results of the survey would only be used as a guide, it's always going to look bad if you go against a 71% supermajority in a poll that you yourself sent out. If you feel strongly enough about an issue that you're willing to against 71%, you probably shouldn't be asking for community opinion in the first place. It's pretty obvious that some policies can't be decided by popularity alone, and if World Cup tiers is one of these cases, don't include it in the survey at all.

Now don't get me wrong, I know the TDs made this call with good intentions. I don't think there's any need for bashing or mocking them or whatever. But at the same time, I do think they should be open to overturning their decision if it's the Right Thing to do. And to me at least, the reasoning for change does not seem nearly strong enough to justify going against the popular opinion. Let's look at the reasons given:

The first and foremost reason behind this change is the difficulties smaller regions and teams experience with finding good old gen players for their rosters.

In theory this should be true. If you want new teams participating, there is a greater chance of them being able to field a competent team with just USM OU players than with multi-gen. However, due to the way Smogon's World Cup works, this is only a relatively minor issue. New teams in the traditional sense are barely relevant in this tournament. There's no real directive to reach out to other communities to get them to form new teams and join World Cup. The division of teams discourages it, and the objection to expanding past 16 teams despite 20+ existing means that only one new team at most can join each year. This results in the same 15-16 teams competing each year, and as shown in the posts above mine, the current "lesser" teams have no real issue with old gens vs. new gens.

Even if you do want to be more inclusive (which I strongly support), you're not going to lose out on seeing new applicants, especially since this year's hopefuls such as Austria and India/ISGME have already prepared for old gens. You just make the process of reaching 32 or w/e slower, which if you want to ensure higher quality, is actually a good thing. After all, it's far less likely that you'll get an application from a random team with 5-6 old gens players than it is one with 10 USM OU. This means if a new team is applying, they'll probably be of respectable quality.

Another factor we considered is the full current gen format's contribution to WCoP's team cohesion.

This one is pretty much undeniable. No arguments here.

Including every generation but one felt arbitrary and awkward

Yes, this is true. I always hated the original multi-gen World Cup for excluding GSC and RBY, and while I used to support dropping old gens after x amount of time, I don't see a need for it in this tour at the present time. Snake, while quite polarising as a whole, did show that 4 OU + 6 others is a perfectly fine format. In fact, it had the highest quality SM OU of any team tour we've seen so far. So why not just make it 4 USM OU + 1 of each old gen? That's still 64 USM OU players, which is far more than any other team tour (and it's boosted to 80 if you do make it 20 teams :x), and you get to represent a very prominent old gen community in RBY.

the format is unsustainable over the long term, and it leads to a less competitive tour.

Okay, this is the obvious reason as to why you "shouldn't" do what I stated above. There's going to be more and more gens as time goes on and there's no way that World Cup can hold them all. Firstly, I want to dispute this. 3 USM OU + 7 old gens isn't that bad, even if a little undesirable, and given Smogon's ever-growing playerbase in Tournaments, an expansion to 12 slots (the so-called perfect amount in SPL) shouldn't be unfeasible.

Regardless though, my main issue is why we're addressing future editions in the first place. Last year (or 2016 idr which), there was an objective to lock tournaments. Grand Slam and Classic would always have five tiers, SPL would always have 12 slots, etc. This is a pretty solid idea, even if a little dismissive of growth, and it makes future decisions a lot easier. However, World Cup's lock has just been broken by changing it to all USM OU, and TDs have stated that this new format isn't necessarily permanent. So if World Cup's tiers aren't being locked for future editions, why are we changing the tiers before the problem becomes relevant? Why not enjoy the positives of old gen World Cup now while we still can and make the changes when they actually need to be made? The tour lock was the reason for deciding this sort of thing in advance, so if that's gone, it's surely better to wait until Gen 8 comes out to decide what is best to do.

I never had much of an opinion on what to do for this tour. It's not a tour I care all that much for, I won't be participating in it, and there's decent reasoning behind both options. But from what I can see now and have argued above, there's not a clear "better" option, and it just so happens that one side has a huge majority of the playerbase behind it. So my opinion now is to revert back to old gens, add RBY over 5th USM OU, and accept the growth of Smogon by not only giving the format that allows for ten starters (multi-gen), but also by increasing the number of teams to 20. Maybe that last part won't be supported by the majority, though.

 

[Hogg]

I propose to, Revert to the old gens for this year, give the region changes time to sink in. Give the tournament an opportunity to take on it's new form. Let's see what nintendo throws at us in the next year, and next world cup, you can have a community vote based off the NEW world cup from the previous year seeing where things need to go from there.

I appreciate the sentiment here. My only worry with your proposal is that the status quo becomes progressively harder to change the longer it exists. I think that last year's WCOP format was a mistake, and I'd like to fix it. I think it's safe to say that the other TDs agree. Now, you may not agree with my own preferred method for fixing it, and if that method is flawed I think we're all open to discussion on finding a better way. But indefinitely continuing with a flawed format because it's less controversial is not really something I want to entertain.

I find the idea that Ciele brought up of going to 4 SM OU slots and reincorporating RBY somewhat more tenable, because if we're including old gens then at least that's thematically consistent. I do firmly believe that this problem is just kicking the can down the road, though; I worry that it is going to limit growth of new teams. I like WCOP a lot as a tour but what I like most about it is the focus on communities, and I would like it to be as inclusive as possible. CG OU to me represents a neutral playing field where communities can all have an equal opportunity to shine, which is why it is still the option I prefer (though obviously I'm in the minority).

(Also as an aside, I have some general thoughts on ways to reorganize team tours as a whole that probably deserve a separate thread, and which might help to explain why I personally am such a big fan of CG OU. Don't really want to derail this conversation, but I think it's also a good conversation to have, so I'll put together a new thread for that.)

So yeah, not opposed to coming up with a different solution to all CG OU (though I still prefer it), but I think that just maintaining last year's format is not the answer. I wouldn't mind seeing more input from more of the smaller teams (thus far the most compelling arguments to me for abandoning CG OU have been the ones from Oceania and Austria, since a big part of our goal was to create a more level playing field for newer teams).

 

[Malekith]

I do support Ciele and baddumy about adding RBY back to WCoP since they are a big community, it is easy to learn, funny to watch ( horrible to play, but we have LC in Slam, Snake and have been in some SPLs so who cares ) and if you still doubt about it just take a look at Classic sign ups.
Also, they didn't have the chance to play last WCoP with no-one noticing them till the very last minute.

But I wouldn't put RBY over the 5th SM slot, I would go with 6 SM slots + 6 old gens. Again: Take a look at OST signups, our community is bigger than ever, tournaments are growing with them ( OST, Classic, Slam... ) a lot of new players are appearing and doing really good scores, and I don't see 4 SM slots enough for all of them + veterans.
12 slots is not as many as it seems , SPL has 12 slots, even POWC has 12 slots and all the teams are ok, and let me repeat it: P O W C

 

[CBU]

I am a big advocate of speaking when you have something of essence to say. And while I am not affected that much by any OU related decision, my team is. Therefore I am going to speak on behalf of all Team Greece and how we feel about this decision. This format in our, and not only our eyes, seems flawed in more than one ways. The majority of the people voted in favor of last year’s format and as you can see a lot of people are complaining about it and rightfully so. Just take a look at all these posts(including this one) getting so much support. It goes without saying that this is a questionable at best and out right bad at worst decision and it should not happen.
Secondly, we would like to underline a few words some other teams have said(team oceania, team uk and newcomers team Austria) on this topic as it seems we are facing the same problem. It is probably clear that we as team Greece mostly rely on our oldgens and not so much on our USM spots. We barely have enough players to form a team of 5 USM players, let alone 8. This not only shows the format is hindering directly to us, but it also shows that weaker teams have a hard time finding solid USM players which is proving your point wrong. Can our oldgen players step it up and learn to play USM you may ask?Possibly.But that would most likely lead to a dull world cup, dominated by 3-4 teams and a bad experience for the majority of the teams and the spectators. We strongly believe that the format should be changed to to 4USM spots+6oldgens(including RBY).

 

[Hogg]

12 slots is not as many as it seems , SPL has 12 slots, even POWC has 12 slots and all the teams are ok, and let me repeat it: P O W C

I think that issues with inclusion and team growth definitely get worse if we go 6/6. I mean we have teams on this thread saying that they had trouble fielding a 5th SM slot last year, much less add a 6th (and a whole extra old gen to boot). If we decide to maintain old gens, so far Ciele’s suggestion of dropping down to 4 SM slots seems like the best way to do it.

 

[Earthworm]

I think the responses in this thread are going to be strongly biased in favouring older members of the community, of which there are fewer, due to the make-up of the users who can post here and Smogon's general culture of catering to older members. However even though it may weaken current Oceania, I think one of the main reasons I was able to get a foothold in the community was because World Cup when I started playing was the all current gen format. It not only allowed me a slot alongside established players in the team but it also allowed me to learn from both established players who were all playing the same format as me (so we could work together) and established opponents in a typical Smogon team tournament setting. I would not necessarily have been able to further my Pokemon career as much as I did without that format of World Cup, as I sure as hell wasn't going to get into the tour playing GSC at that point in time, nor was I likely to be given a current gen slot over the veterans of those days.

I find it hard to believe people are saying they can't find enough current gen players when there are so many people on Showdown these days. Maybe this will be the catalyst that brings in a new generation of tournament players.

I recognise that this sucks for a few teams who have active and talented veterans (who isn't rooting for Greece??) but I think it's the right decision (although not sure about the "first and foremost" reason given actually being the most important reason).

 

[Malekith]

Hmm, I am the one defending old gens, but I think you are the one living in the past, EW.

When you started, there were like 3 official tours, no SPL, no snake, no Slam, no OLT... Just OST, Tour and WCoP. Newcomers have now a lot of tournaments, officials and no officials, even some named "semi-officials".
Also, the all gens format still has enough SM slots for those people, being completely inclusive by definition. The all current OU can't be more exclusive.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Team Canada supports 4x SM/Old gen inclusion, with similar concerns to other teams about the quality of the lineup we could field in a full OU setup

 

[reyscarface]

Something I would like to see in the future, and if possible in this situation, would be to reveal the votes in the poll, or make a poll with the warning of full disclosure of votes afterwards. The reason for this is that it would give everyone (TDs and community alike) more insight into whats really going on. I think it is easy to assume stuff regarding the results of a poll and subsequently use those assumptions to lean towards either side of a poll. One assumption that I think can be reasonably made in this poll (another poll that comes to mind would be a hypothetical one between 12 vs 14 spots for SPL) is that one side feels much strongly about their side than the other. In this situation, you have one side that is basically at a do-or-die situation. World Cup either has Old Gens or it doesnt, and as such everyone in the Old Gens community has to defend that position. On the other hand, we have Current Gen OU players that perhaps have a minority of people that feel very strongly about CG x 8, a potential big majority that dont care either way (as they get to play regardless, the decision of adding 3 more CG spots doesnt affect them in the slightest) and perhaps another subset of people who prefer multi gen for whatever reason. Revealing the votes would make this apparent, and would give much more validity to the poll result than right now.

To summarize this: Revealing the votes means there are less assumptions being made about the result of a poll, giving it more weight. If 90% of the votes in favor of a 70% supermajority for 14 spots in SPL came from people that play PU, LC, Monotype, RBY (generally "segregated" communities) then you can raise an eyebrow. But if said supermajority had a ton of people from multiple backgrounds (honestly, it is quite easy to notice bias) that also make their voice heard in the thread, then ignoring the poll makes very little sense from the TD's point of view. Summarizing the summary: This means the community can tell if the TDs ignoring such a clear cut result poll comes from a real analysis of the results or for a weak reason (not saying this is happening btw). I personally dont see any con to revealing the votes and a decent amount of pros.

Now moving onto the discussion at hand, I am not gonna reiterate the points made by people already regarding whether multi gen makes disparity between teams bigger or smaller because there have been some good arguments posted. There are two things I havent seen discussed so I will talk about those.

First, something that needs to be taken into account with a switch to full current gen is that you are not asking teams to field 8 solid CG players. Youre asking them to form a team of 12. History has shown that subs are a very underrated part of teams, and having good subs can make a big difference in whether a team succeds of not. Obviously not all subs will play, but I think you can safely assume that 2 of them could see play for each team. So you're at the very least asking for 10 World Cup starting level players per team. Thats double the amount of CG OU players needed for each team when comparing to last year, and almost ten times the amount from SPL. I do not think this will result in a desirable tournament of the highest quality, but thats just my personal opinion on the matter.

Second, I think Earthworm made a good point in his post, but I think Malekith made a great retort that holds a lot of weight and pretty much removes that argument from the table. As an aside, I would like to add that what Earthworm mentioned in his post is not unilateral. This doesn't just happen in full CG OU. Speaking from personal experience, I learned old gens and became a player known for them thanks to my teammates in SPL and World Cup, who basically tutored me back in the day. I wager a LOT of modern old gen players come from a similar background, hell speaking from my team in SPL, I know UD inspired several new players into taking up ADV. So yeah, this argument can go both ways and I would honestly be disappointed if this went away, one of the best part of team tours is getting great insight into tiers and generations you arent proficient in. Its basically the Tutoring program but way less tedious, more fun and with a ton more information (I even learned and became quite decent at RU during this past SPL thanks to my RU playing teammates, so this doesnt only apply for old gens but thats a different thread).

And lastly, this point:

However, in addition to the uneven distribution of players, this also misses the fact that most talented old gen players ALSO play SM at a high level but have to choose between how best to support their team.

I think this point has merit, but I have to disagree with its scope. I wont disagree with you when you say most talented old gen players COULD play SM at a high level, but what is missing out is that most dont care for new gens. And in the event they care, you have to consider most of these "oldies" are at a different stage of life than most of the teenager demographic in Smogon, and that means they have a lot less free time. Even if they wanted to, the amount of effort and time needed to go from 0 knowledge of mechanics / metagame in Gen 7 to a level worthy of World Cup starting proficiency is huge. I just did a quick check on the old gen players from last World Cup and even moving all of the ORAS OU players into SM, of the 64+ players left in the other 4 old gens, I would say over half would have no interest in participating in a full CG OU tournament. Sure, you have players like Ojama, McMeghan, Tamahome, SoulWind, BKC, dice and the ORAS dudes. But you also have people like Fear, Astamatitos, UD, Earthworm, panamaxis, Jabba, Danilo, august, Folgorio, NightFox, babido, AM, Jayde, etc. and thats just the dudes I am sure would not have the time / motivation to learn Gen 7 from scratch. I am sure a ton others can be added to this last group. Basically what I am trying to say is this point overestimates the amount of old gen people that would flood into CG OU, and as such underestimates the amount of new players that might not be up to par that will have to be added to the tournament just to fill up spots.

Disclaimer: I dont have a preference on the format. I think both CG OU and Old Gens have merits and both would be enjoyable, but I feel like some of the points in this thread can be discussed and as such I made this post. If you want my personal opinion on what should be done, I think Ciele outlined it perfectly. If you are backtracking on "The tournaments are set in their format", that means you can backtrack on it later, when it actually becomes an issue. As long as you inform the community on this, I dont think "status quo cementing" is too much of an issue. It might generate some controversy but certainly not as much as the amount youre dealing with now.

Oh and finally, despite the palpable tension in this thread, I would like to thank the TDs for being so communicative right now. In the past, all these posts would stay unanswered for the most part, so seeing this amount of comunication and discussion going on is worth noticing and it speaks that they took the "Issues with the TDs" thread to heart and are working to improve.

 

[Earthworm]

Hmm, I am the one defending old gens, but I think you are the one living in the past, EW.

When you started, there were like 3 official tours, no SPL, no snake, no Slam, no OLT... Just OST, Tour and WCoP. Newcomers have now a lot of tournaments, officials and no officials, even some named "semi-officials".
Also, the all gens format still has enough SM slots for those people, being completely inclusive by definition. The all current OU can't be more exclusive.

I also started with OST but I think WCoP is different because it is a team tour. Your games feel like they have a lot more weight, you get to play vs some of the best players on the site, and you make new friends who are working towards the same goal. That is quite a different experience to entering the other tournaments. I also think that the ability to help every one of your teammates team build and analyse the same metagame together is something that is difficult in other formats.

I do think the semi-officials are valuable and are possibly providing newer community members with a good team experience, but I doubt it's quite the same as WCoP where all the current top players are involved and deeply invested.

 

[Quite Quiet]

Something I would like to see in the future, and if possible in this situation, would be to reveal the votes in the poll, or make a poll with the warning of full disclosure of votes afterwards. The reason for this is that it would give everyone (TDs and community alike) more insight into whats really going on. I think it is easy to assume stuff regarding the results of a poll and subsequently use those assumptions to lean towards either side of a poll. One assumption that I think can be reasonably made in this poll (another poll that comes to mind would be a hypothetical one between 12 vs 14 spots for SPL) is that one side feels much strongly about their side than the other. In this situation, you have one side that is basically at a do-or-die situation. World Cup either has Old Gens or it doesnt, and as such everyone in the Old Gens community has to defend that position. On the other hand, we have Current Gen OU players that perhaps have a minority of people that feel very strongly about CG x 8, a potential big majority that dont care either way (as they get to play regardless, the decision of adding 3 more CG spots doesnt affect them in the slightest) and perhaps another subset of people who prefer multi gen for whatever reason. Revealing the votes would make this apparent, and would give much more validity to the poll result than right now.

I tried going back in time to see if I could dig the information you're requesting here, but it seems like that has since been deleted so unfortunately (in this specific case) the specifics aren't obtainable (for me, at least). I do think this isn't an unreasonable request though, at lease for the future, if it's made clear from the start how the answers are going to be used. As much as I can't give you the exact facts, I can give you a rough idea of the results team-wise from memory regarding how they voted, but that's the best I can do.

(This is just what I remember from memory, please don't quote this as fact because it's been 2-3 months since I looked at the survey results)
The majority of players who voted against the new USA map was on US East, with none to two people from other teams voting for it as well. Of the teams and players who voted US East was the only team to favor the old map (even in teams where only a few players voted). On the other hand, no team had a majority in favor of all SM OU. The ratio of old gens:all SM OU was roughly equal across the board for all teams that participated. I don't recall any team that had an abnormal ratio on this, but I may be wrong. Lastly, though it may have been the most interesting observation, I can't remember what tiers the people who voted for all SM OU played in the last WCoP. I'm almost entirely sure not all of them had started in SM, though they were the majority iirc, but this isn't something I'd be willing to state as fact.

 

[teal6]

While I don't have the patience nor temerity to write a long and excessive post anymore, I will say that I think the current TD team is doing a good job being transparent about ideas, implementations and compromises as posed by this thread. This is the debate process - any sort of ill-will posed towards them (which I'm not allowed to do as a Grey Badge) will probably lose some respect in my eyes (for whoever possibly cares about that), they're trying to have open communication particularly for why they went against a majority vote which, from my personal experience, is quite hard. I am the reason ORAS isn't in Classic after all.

That said even though it would likely excuse me from playing WCOP for years to come I appreciate the geographic changes as well as the tier changes. More and more I am thinking the emphasis should be on CG OU. Hell, to be honest, I think our tiering/competitive system could use a complete overhaul to look more like some other competitive games (my recent few months exposure to TCGs have given me a pretty new view on how to competitively structure a game tbh) but if there is one thing Smogon is bad at its implementing long term change.

That said, I don't have too much skin in this game, whatever happens I am more or less fine with. Thank you for the open communication and thanks to most of the community for being tight and not lame. PEace

 

[Energy]

I don't have much to add beyond August's incredible post. The reason why we switched to old gens years ago is to have the highest quality games. Why would I want to watch Astamatitos vs Tamahome play SM, when they could be playing ADV. The other reason that I remember is that building for 30+ BW games (at the time) was incredibly stale and monotonous. Adding old gens created a flavor and an element of diversity that was previously missed.

We now have to wait for SPL every year to build for old gens team tours? More than a super majority of players want old gens included and thats ignored. I just don't understand the rationale here. Then again, none (maybe one?) of the current TDs were active players the last time WCoP was all current gen OU, so they never really got to experience first hand what the problems were. I thank them for the transparency but completely criticize them for this decision.

 

[z0mOG]

So... before this thread dies out before anything gets done (like the last few PR threads that come to mind), can we get a response finalizing the format? Or at least an update on what things are looking like. The last post in this thread by a TD was Hogg expressing his belief that Ciele's format (4 SM / 6 OG) would be the most suitable to include old gens, and then the thread just died shortly afterwards.

Anyways, support seems to definitely be in favor of this format over the initially proposed 8 SM, as shown by the likes in this thread and discussion in the WCOP channel on discord, but it would be nice if we could get a final confirmation sooner rather than later (some teams wanna get organized early ya feel).

 

[Finchinator]

RBYers are probably going to hate me, but...from last WCOP's Administrative Decisions thread, here:

After much discussion the Tournament Director team has decided on a format for this edition of the World Cup of Pokemon. In order to balance the new definition of Classic tiers and their use in Smogon Classic, this World Cup of Pokemon will be establishing a new precedent and consisting of five slots of current gen OU and one slot each of the five most recent older generation OU’s. For WCoP XII the tiers will be SM OU x5, ORAS OU, BW OU, DPP OU, ADV OU, GSC OU. This will allow the tournament to constantly push innovation with half the starters playing in the current generation, while still giving respect to the past. The definition of the tournament will be freezing for the foreseeable future, allowing all teams to properly prepare and anticipate the meta-games played in future years.

This decision was reached last year, nothing has changed about classic/other relevant parts of the circuit since then (besides including Snake, which means more SM OU), and it was one of the few major decisions that was made without a ton of public backlash. Personally, I think all SM OU would be great for the team dynamic and I would enjoy it a lot myself, but it does not make much sense to me to make this (or any) format change given this past ruling. Honestly, if the TD team didn't have a pretty much full turnover in the past year, I do not think we would be having this discussion to begin with (not a bad thing, btw -- it's always fair game to bring up options and I am glad we all want what is best for the tour). Considering all of the potential ways to change the circuit and all of the things people view as currently insufficient or inefficient, we might as well not fix what isn't broken and, imo, the old WCOP format is perfectly fine in terms of tiers included.

I get that many believe RBY deserves some more representation in the circuit, especially with a potential expiration date in SPL in years to come, and I also get that the all SM OU format has a lot of appeal, as outlined by some others throughout this thread, but I think that the intention of the ruling last year was to set things for at least a few years to come, as per the bolded section of the quote, and not much has happened to change this (especially with regards to any extra appeal to make it all SM OU with the addition of Snake, at least the new definition of SPL led to some arguments for including RBY here before the tier pretty much risks going extinct come gen 8). I think SM OU x5 + ORAS OU, BW OU, DPP OU, ADV OU, and GSC OU x1 is what should be used again.

tl;dr - personally fine with all SM OU, but keeping the same tiers as last year makes the most sense to me by far given the quote. above.

 

[eden]

how does it matter what the precedent was? this isn't a courtroom, that isn't a binding document, and clearly precedent here shifts at the drop of a hat depending on who's in charge with facts being twisted(or ignored) to fit particular narratives, opinions(and even decisions!)

the rules are only sacred, until someone important's feathers get ruffled, and at that point the site just bends over backwards to accommodate said opinions, so why even bother pretending that there is any semblance of continuity?

EDIT: I can read; anticipation of the metagames is really just related to knowing the tiers played, which really has zero to do with what those specific tiers happen to be. I did read the context you provided, I just think it uses circular logic to justify itself.