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.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.
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.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.
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?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.
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.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.
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.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.
This one is pretty much undeniable. No arguments here.Another factor we considered is the full current gen format's contribution to WCoP's team cohesion.
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.Including every generation but one felt arbitrary and awkward
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.the format is unsustainable over the long term, and it leads to a less competitive tour.
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 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 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.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 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.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 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.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 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.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.
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.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.