As a preface, we would like to thank the Tournament Directors for listening to what the community had to say and changing the format from the full CG OU option to accepting the addition of Old Gens. That said, this post will explain what the community at large would prefer as the format for this year's World Cup of Pokemon.
We believe the best format for this tournament would be the 4+6 option. The reasons for this can be seen in the posts by Ciele and McMeghan, but we will highlight some big points as to why this is the way to go:
- Although some TDs mention that the "sustainability argument" is not one of the most important, we consider the opposite to be true. It is extremely important to understand the reason why the decision to go for a 5+5 format was made last year. Long story short, the reason for the format change was a shift in TD policy making. They were going for a long-term approach, and as such they locked the formats of several official tournaments. This isn't to say that move was right or wrong. The issue comes from the fact that the approach they were going for is no long going to be applied for this tournament. The current TD team has proven that they are free to go against precedent if they believe it will increase the quality of a tournament. As such, they went back on last year's format. The reason this gains relevance is that, by proving that sustainability is no longer a problem, it means we can tailor tourney's formats to be the best in a particular year. A tier was kicked out last year under the false premise that it would be to make the format locked. The tier that was kicked is irrelevant to this, the only thing that is relevant are the motives behind the removal. To better illustrate this, imagine instead of RBY, it was ORAS that got kicked. Or BW, or ADV. One of the main arguments that the 5+5 side are giving is that a 5th SM is much better than RBY, because they greatly dislike RBY. But this isn't about personal bias as to what tier each person believes is best, and as such, the tier in question should be irrelevant.
- Another important thing to note, is that people are looking at things from a different point of view. 4+6 does not mean that "SM is overrun by Old Gens", because it is not 6 of one Old Gen. It would be 4 SM, and 1 of each Old Gen. SM has 4 times the representation of any other tier in the tournament, and that should be good enough. This was proven in Snake Draft last year, as nobody made an issue out of the tournament having "4 SM and 6 Lower Tiers".
- I would also like to talk about the "Old Gens" vs "Current Gen" debate. In 2018, calling previous generations "Old Gens" bother me. These are highly respected tiers, each with a huge and active community. These tiers are all unique, with their mechanics and specificities, independent of the others, and they all should be put on the same level. I entirely agree that the "Current Gen" should be more represented and therefore should get more spots than the others, but it definitely shouldn't justify the unfair removal of a tier just to "balance" the spots between "Old Gens" and "Current Gen". This is totally arbitrary. What makes Pokemon such a great game and makes its strength is its diversity of tiers, mechanics and specificities. It's a chance to play a game with so many different tiers, all unique, with the possibility of playing against the best players of these tiers, or even just watching them play.
- Most of the 5+5 arguments come purely from a subjective standpoint. And as such, the 4+6 supporters also have subjective arguments to be made. One of them would be that (subjectively) a 5th SM spot is much weaker from a competitive standpoint than 1 RBY one. In fact, while some think 5+5 helps "the little teams" to find a more complete roster, the opposite is true. The teams that would have the least amount of userbase, funnily, would prefer having RBY in the tournament. Why this happens is a good question, and there can be plenty of answers, ranging from RBY being easier to get into from scratch than SM, that the RBY playerbase is much bigger than we once thought, etc. But the point stands that removing RBY from the tournament would be doing a disservice not only to the teams you're trying to protect, but also to the massive RBY community at large. I'd also like to understand what is your reasoning behind the sudden come-back of the 5+5 format when you have stated several times that the GSC cutoff isn't an option. (
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- Not everyone shares this opinion, but we believe that part of the mission of the TD team is to achieve the goals the community at large wants to achieve. Maybe this shouldn't happen with every decision, especially not unanimous ones from the TD team, after all if all the members that we entrusted with this power feel so strongly about something without much dissent between them, they are probably right. But in this situation the TD team is split on the decision, and the community feels very strongly about it.
Because of these reasons and more, we have conducted our own survey as to what every (known) team wants for the World Cup of Pokemon. The alleged captains of each of the following teams have had an in-depth talk with their teammates, reaching the conclusion that they (not as players, captains or users, but as TEAMS) support the inclusion of RBY in the tournament and the 4+6 format.
The teams, in no particular order, are:
1. France
2. Greece
3. Germany
4. Italy
5. Austria
6. Brazil
7. Asia
8. Oceania
9. Canada
10. United Kingdom
11. US Southeast
12. US Midwest
13. US West
14. Spain
We urge the split TD team to please act with the community's wishes in mind. Thanks for reading.