Announcement RU Third Custom Discussion Thread

[Rarelyme]

Hello everyone!

As you maybe already know, RU gets to attribute custom avatar (CA) rewards to three different forum projects/tournaments; the first one went to the Ladder Achievements project and the second one to RUPL. This thread aims at gauging community interest in the several options we have for our third CA placement this year.

OPTION ONE
The first option would be to give it to our third team tour which would happen towards the end of the year. Here is a few examples of formats we hosted in the past and could work this year:​

RU Champions League

format

8 teams of 14 players minimum
Round Robin qualification stage followed by a top 4 seeded playoffs bracket
English auction (regular ascending auction)
- 4x SV RU
- 3x Flex slots per team, which can be any RU tiers from SS to ADV. Each team cannot select repeats, but there can be overlap between teams.

This tournament format was pretty trendy last year so we tried it out and it was decently successful. The big upside is that it is very different from RUPL and therefore offers some needed diversity in our team tour formats. However, some players pointed out how frustrating it can become since it tends to heavily reward top players by encouraging unbalanced matchups.​

RU Blind Draft

format

8 teams of 14 players minimum
Round Robin qualification stage followed by a top 4 seeded playoffs bracket
Blind auction (managers place one bet by player without knowing the bet from the other managers, the highest wins it)
- 5x SV RU
- SS RU
- SM RU
- ORAS RU
- BW RU
- ADV RU

We hosted this type of tournament in 2025 and it was also pretty successful. The tier slots are the same as RUPL's so it trades competitiveness for diversity. However, the auction format makes it slightly different from RUPL. The blind auction received mixed reactions: on the one hand it rewarded good planning from the managers in a newer way and on the other it felt pretty underwhelming from a spectator's point of view.​

RU World Cup

format

16 teams (depending on signups) of 14 players maximum based on nationality
Randomized pools followed by a top 4 seeded playoffs bracket
No auctions
- 3x SV RU
- SS RU
- SM RU
- ORAS RU
- BW RU
- ADV RU

Always successful in RU, the famous World Cup format could also be an option. This tournament is loved for being the opportunity for players from one country to play and have fun together. However, this format is unbalanced by nature given how different the countries' playerbases are. This means that some players would be heavily favored to win the CA over some others, making it the most inequitable format from these options.​

RU Snake Draft

format

8 teams of 14 players minimum
Round Robin qualification stage followed by a top 4 seeded playoffs bracket
Snake draft (no bidding, managers get the players they nominate by order)
Trades allowed
- 5x SV RU
- SS RU
- SM RU
- ORAS RU
- BW RU
- ADV RU

This OG format has been abandoned for a fairly long time but could make its return this year. Very much like RUBD, this tournament is undoubtably competitive, however the only thing making it different from RUPL is the auction format which is arguably worse than the regular English auction since it removes most interactions between managers and therefore demands less skill and makes it less fun to spectate. The other thing setting it apart from RUPL is player trades between teams. They are indeed encouraged all throughout the tournament (even though rarely done in practice) which could add another layer to the format.​

These propositions are non exhaustive so feel free to post about different formats or how we could make these ones better!


OPTION TWO
A second option would be to give it to an individual tournament, here are some options but again, non-exhaustive:

RU Circuit
The Circuit rewards the best RU player of the year which makes it the most prestigious tournament of the year. However, the winner gets a ribbon as a reward and oftentimes already has a personal CA making it less meaningful.

RU Classic
The RU Classic is a tournament made of the SS, SM, ORAS, BW and ADV Cups (+ a playoff phase) and rewards the best RU old gens player. This option would give more importance to old gens.



Alright that's it for this post, let's hear your ideas and points of view now! Note that we are also open to exploring forum project ideas for the CA if the community really asks for it. As always, please stay on topic and be respectful to others!

 

[Nemosse]

Ruwcup or ru circuit are the best choice imo , if i have to choose one just reward the winner of the circuit , personal CA for an indiv is really cool and give ppl to tryhard the tier for a reason unless the ribbon win. Ruwcup is cool to make cool avy with ur country if u win the tour

 

[MatLaTomate]

 

[Slikkles]

If you want to give it to an individual give it to the ru circuit.
However I think announcing it in the beginning of the year would've been better if that was the case.
I think this year RUCL would be a good idea. Last year it was a huge success while being competitive and promoting old gens.

RUWC could maybe work but I heard that there was some problems with it in the past. It will promote more old gens than any other tour so that's a big +.

RUBD and RU Snake Draft are different drafting and promote manager skills but then it's a reg tour.

I think RU classic shouldn't have one unless the main circuit has one. I could see the argument that the ribbon is already a better prize so no like a bad take to say go for it for classic.

 

[Rarelyme]

Ok so if that wasn't clear already, I don't think any of the team tournament formats we hosted in the past are really great options. They are either not competitive enough (RUWC and RUCL to an extent), or just flawed versions of RUPL (RUBD and RUSD). This is why I want to bring other formats to the table that could potentially fit the bill aka be competitive AND different enough from RUPL to make them interesting.​

RU Gauntlet

Instead of a Round Robin regular season, we randomly split 8 teams in 2 pools of 4. They play each other for 3 weeks to then end in a single elimination seeded bracket where the first seed of pool A plays the fourth of pool B and so on.
This format would be substantially different from RUPL while being competitive. The pool phase not being eliminatory balances out the random draw and a single elimination bracket is always very hype. The tournament would last a minimum of 6 weeks (3 weeks of pool and 3 weeks of bracket) which is pretty short but that's honestly a good thing seeing how tight our schedule will get at the end of the year. We could imagine a break week between the pool and the bracket phases to organize events, show matches and even player trades? The format brings a lot of possibilities to hype the tour and make it truly special. I think preventing tiebreaks is a good idea in such a format, meaning we could keep the RUPL slot lineup and just remove Bo3 which can stay RUPL's thing. We could even imagine the pool draw being done on RUtube and farm content you know...​

BLT like tournament

For those unfamiliar with BLT, it is a team tournament hosted by the tournaments room organized around multiple qualification room tours. Good results in room events will grant you a spot in a special pool during the draft and the players from this pool are guaranteed to be drafted. After these room events, a regular signup thread is opened and people can try to be drafted the normal way.
I think this format could do a lot of good to our community on paper. We could easily imagine a month of qualification with planned room tours each weekend in different generations. The top 16 or 24 gets into the special pool and each team has to draft 2 or 3 players from it. Then the draft goes on with the player pool from the signup thread. The rest of the tour can be similar to RUPL aka Round Robin into playoffs.
It is harder to predict if this kind of format will work because it relies heavily on community engagement but I think if a CA is on the line we could assume people will show up during the room qualification phase. Involving the room is always a huge plus in my opinion so this is a concept I would love to see at some point in official tiers.


I do think using the third CA on a team tournament is the best choice, however I think giving it to RU Classic would also be a good idea to give more weight to old gens. I would probably prefer giving it to Classic over RUWC, RUSD and RUBD honestly. RUWC is a great for fun tour but it's not made to have a CA prize in my eyes. RUSD and RUBD are just underwhelming formats to me and I think we can do better than that.​

 

[Bernardo]

Not an RU player but i think that should be like this in all tiers now that the third ava is kind of real.

PL

CL/WC

Individual likely Circuit.

 

[lighthouses]

We should give it to an individual tournament, hear me out.

As someone whos joining a decent amt of team tours across sections on smogon right now i can assure you that most of those team environments just feel like clocking in for a shift at work as most of them are dead or semi dead and all the same people signup to manage for all of them, often at the same time. I believe rupl has been able to retain a good competitive and communal spirit with every manager pair being people who i know wouldnt be managing mulitple other tours at the same time and would care about the tournament. But at some point it just becomes more of the same grinding for as many CAs as possible culture thats going on right now and in my opinion has really killed the spirit of team tournaments.

What i suggest is, since circuit already awards the ribbon for your profile, we should instead differentiate ourselves from other subsections and award the custom to an individual tournament thats unique to us.
What that looks like can be discussed as it seems we arent allowed to award a custom for invitationals but i think this would do wonders for the community as a whole.

Everyone will have a yearly RU competitive event to look foward to which rewards something that most people are looking for, it would be a good way to introduce prestige to one of our tournaments giving SCL managers a window into RU competition that isnt ru open(which is single elimination) or just RUPL, as well as encouraging mainers of the tier to really tryhard against the inevitable tour players what would try to join and compete looking for their personal custom avatars.

As a circuit winner myself i can testify to how tiring it can be to have to put up with seasonal after seasonal across an entire year only to then have to compete in a playoff at the end of the year. I dont think this awards the best RU player necessarily, just the ones that are willing to grind for an entire year for it. Having an open event that ideally happens before SCL that has multiple elimination of some kind with some cool format we can think of together and awards the custom would be way better for us as a community in my opinion.

I dont see why we need to just do more of the same

 

[Ruffles]

Speaking with some background experience in deciding our 3 CAs for ORAS for the past two years.

I highly recommend 1 individual tour to have a CA. Something like Invitational or circuit is perfect for that. When there is a tour where only one person could win a CA it's pretty cool.

Since you have the ladder CA (which is quite nice tbh), I do think that having 2 CAs for 2 team tours is nice too. I'm never a big fan of WC tours because its really unrealistic for 80% of the team to ever win and the incentives are quite skewed. If you're going to do another team tour it should be RUCL imo, as its the most unique from RUPL

 

[Lime]

Either give it to Ruwc if team tournament or give it to RU circuit or some unique individual tournament as diogo suggested.

Rucl / Rubd / Rusd are just budget rupl and in case of Ru classic I don't think we should have ca for a tour that struggles to hit any decent signup numbers.

Wc's are definitely bit less competitive in general but it is a significantly more popular format than rucl / rubd going off signups. One of, if not the most loved tour of the site is wcop and that gives a trophy as a reward so I really don't get the argument of not wanting to give ca to ruwc just because its a wc format. I also don't agree with it being too uncompetitive, we literally saw less favourite teams like china and uk make the semis last time it happened.

 

[fvkumean]

rylon time to argument for RUWC!!!!!

FREE RUWC

 

[Incognition]

I wonder if I'll be in the minority here, but I would like to see RU Classic introduced as the tour for the CA. Old gens don't really get as much attention as they should, and LC Classic has been really popular (gens 3-8), although you could argue there's a huge money prize for the winner which may have influenced the number of sign ups (7 rounds + semifinals + finals).

My main selling point is that this will help bring more players into the older gen scene for RU, will help players build/bring a variety of teams, and hopefully will help tier staff with updating the VR and sample teams for the older gens that may have been neglected for a while. There may also be hidden threats identified that wouldn't have been noticed if it wasn't for this tour.

For team tours, I would probably suggest the following:

• RUWC - I think it's a nice idea to bring everyone from the same country/region together and play as a team. Apart from ZUWC, every WC has had a CA, and each WC has had a different winner (e.g. China for DPPWC, UK for BWCOP, Brazil for LCWC, etc). Of course some countries will be stronger than others, but that's always going to be the case with team tours, but there's also the opportunity for a country/team to be a huge underdog and have a great run.

• RU Champions League - This would probably be the secondary option, and it's been a trend lately for team tours (ORASCL, SSCL, LCCL, ZUCL, etc). I think flex slots should be discussed if this were the option, but I can see this being really popular and bring a range of different players.

 

[rylon]

rylon time to argument for RUWC!!!!!

FREE RUWC

Click to collapse...

OF FUCKING COURSE!!

talking seriously though, i think we need to take an step forward and reinstate RUWC as a tournament, i think the main reason being how it has the ability to expand our community and growth, personally even for myself RUWC was the first tour that got me involved and the one that motivated me to stuck around wether ive been a positive presence thats another discussion LMAO

but yeah, there's no secret the community has been on decline these last years, so that's basically a growth spurt for us, the wcop's are more chemistry than skill that's my take, so don't worry about someone getting an easy path for a teamtour, that's a mediocre thinking, everyone loves to face tough competition.

fvkumean LFGI

 

[Astro]

Completely agree with Diogo. I'm glad that someone finally brings up the team tour activity being low because people just sign up for the pixels, lock in every once a week for their game and vanishes the rest of the time. While I acknowledge that RU doesn't suffer from this issue as much as the rest of the site does, I still say that we must not fall into it.


RU Classic has no point of being rewarded from a CA, as this is just a circuit tournament among the others and not the same thing as the Smogon Classic (assuming it was the inspiration). As much as I'm a fan of RU older gens, this would just make no sense to give it a CA prize and not giving it to tours like the Homefield or the Pentathlon that follow a similar format and probably require more effort and actual knowledge of the different metagames, whereas you can earn a tiebreaker/playoffs spot in Classic by just winning a cup and get 0 points elsewhere.
The same logic applies for any tournament circuit too.

Now for RUWC... well. I stated that I was against it a while ago so it's no surprise to say I'm against it here, but not for the same reasons this time.
I get the point of rewarding a country winning by earning them a CA, PU does this and that's cool, but I don't think we need nor can afford to do this. The main reason is that lower tiers/older gens' world cups do not have the same meaning and prestige as the official World Cup does. No, this is not a "OU flirting RU harassment" message, but realistically we just cannot make the prize a custom avatar for a tournament that always ends up being unnecessarily messy every year for whatever reason people want to make up. Additionnally, when the discussions we have on RUWC every once a month can be summed up by "we probably wont have one this year", "this tour is a meme" and so on (it has been the case for 4 years), and finally when we actually don't even know if there's going to be one each year or not, this is just not worth trying, as we are just always confused about whether or not the tournament is actually going to take place and if it's going to be credible enough. Add onto this the reasons I had mentioned in my linked post above, and there you have it.

Just like for individual tours, I would apply the same logic for our third team tournament of the year, whatever that is. Our team tournament structure is pretty simple:

1. The Premier League
2. The farmers league for newer players following the PL format
3. That one tournament with a different format, different rules, something combining high level and unorthodox rules of playing, kinda like a crash test tournament

I absolutely love it and I think this is enough. But out of those 3, making the 3rd one worth a CA prize doesn't make much sense either for me. In RarelyUsed's case, let alone the changing rules, the said third tour is being discussed or even changed every year, meaning that we just don't know what it's gonna be until signups actually go live.
My point is that I think CA prizes must only be a thing for a "permanent" tournament / forum project that we have on a global scale (i.e. PLs basically). The thing is that it wouldn't make sense to give RUBD a CA prize if it gets changed for RUCL the year after (not talking from experience at all cough), knowing that it will probably never see the light again.

With that being said, Circuit is what makes the most sense to me. I always thought this had a CA prize for some reason, but turns out it does not. If the point of custom avatars is to reward winning players, this would just be unfair not to let the literal best player of the tier to take it home.
Imagine finally winning the circuit after playing multiple tournaments across the year (if not all of them) to make it to a top 16 that is quite difficult to reach, just for in the end not receiving something that a bunch of dudes can have by just sleeping in their PL team for 9 weeks waiting for the carries to get it for them? I know from experience that most individual tour winners aren't that greedy for such a thing, but this seems a bit unfair.

Moreover, I think the main problem with custom avatars nowadays is that, not only everybody got one for X or Y side tours somewhere, but most of them aren't even personal sprites, as they are team ones, which makes it just bland and uninteresting. By adding a CA prize to the circuit winner, them getting their personal touch on something they spent a lot of time for would make up for the loss of prestige CAs have been suffering for a while (at least for me lmao). In the end it's really not that serious but that's what I think
Circuit winners are not lazy, whoever's gonna win this will deserve it no questions asked, compared to team customs where I mean... whatever.

 

[lighthouses]

Moreover, I think the main problem with custom avatars nowadays is that, not only everybody got one for X or Y side tours somewhere, but most of them aren't even personal sprites, as they are team ones, which makes it just bland and uninteresting. By adding a CA prize to the circuit winner, them getting their personal touch on something they spent a lot of time for would make up for the loss of prestige CAs have been suffering for a while (at least for me lmao). In the end it's really not that serious but that's what I think
Circuit winners are not lazy, whoever's gonna win this will deserve it no questions asked, compared to team customs where I mean... whatever.

Click to collapse...

Personal CAs have inherent prestige attached to them, the goal of my proposal would be to have an individual tour that is unique to the ru community that happens before scl and can benefit from that prestige.

Circuit has been around since forever, already awards a ribbon and realistically does literally 0 for improving competitiveness and making this community grow in that regard. Other communities have it award a CA like in oras, but i can tell you from experience this does fuck all in making people care about a circuit win by enlarge.

Having an open tournament that everyone can signup is also better for this as its going to drag in the most amount of competition possible, CA for circuit effectively does nothing for us as a community.

Urge yall to consider doing something different here for a change

 

[Kafkafka]

WCUP is the most popular teamtour. on one side ppl tend to play pokemon with friends from the same country as themselves. on the other side, wcup give some newcomers from many countries a chance to learn and touch a new tier. cuz most countries don't have enough players to make a full mainers team, so they must find some good clickers or newcomers to learn it under the help of mainers. this will efficiently infuse fresh blood into the tier's community. for example i myself never touched PU before PUWC, but my teammates helped me learn it in a short time. I finally did well in both PUWC and PUCL, and joined PU community successfully. as a OU mainer, i have learned every lower tier well through playing WCUP with my fellow Chinese players in the past a year, I love WCUP very much. so I'm glad to see we can have RUWC again.

RU Circuit as the most important individuals deserves a CA. In contract RUCL RUBD RUSD are mid.

I think the best way is giving RUWC the second CA and RU Circuit the Third one.

 

[colorednaem]

i really like lighthouses idea for a new individual to take the 3rd custom for a lot of the reasons outlined in their post. Seasonals and Cups whilst very fun aren't always the most prestigious until the later rounds and the same can be said for open to an extent. I think introducing a new individual tour of some kind with one option being multiple elimination and going from bo3 -> bo5 for the later rounds (maybe like top 16?) with the custom avatar prize would be really good for the community as a high stakes individual tournament. Another option for the format i can think of is maybe a swiss format where you play a set once or twice per week and eventually the top 16 make a final bracket and from there it is single elimination bo5 games. I personally would lean more towards a swiss format as it seems more competitive and the top 16 will be pretty hype from a community perspective with the higher stakes and best of 5. As for when it should be i recon it should end just before scl and circuit. If we dont end up going with a new individual i think ruwc would be the next best option but i feel we could run it without a ca and be fine with maybe a cash prize or smth.

 

[TheFranklin]

Gonna post my own opinions here for clarity.
First of all, I am very much against giving the custom to RUWC. RUWC has always been a quirky tournament with lots of interesting decisions that wasn't the most serious. Last RUWC we tried to change that by giving it a ca prize. I don't think adding the ca prize had the effect we hoped for since most people still didn't take the tour very serious (less serious than RUBD or RUCL).

I am in favor of giving the third CA to either circuit or the third team tour. I don't really have a strong opinion between the two. I think all other options named in this thread are worse

 

[lighthouses]

i really like lighthouses idea for a new individual to take the 3rd custom for a lot of the reasons outlined in their post. Seasonals and Cups whilst very fun aren't always the most prestigious until the later rounds and the same can be said for open to an extent. I think introducing a new individual tour of some kind with one option being multiple elimination and going from bo3 -> bo5 for the later rounds (maybe like top 16?) with the custom avatar prize would be really good for the community as a high stakes individual tournament. Another option for the format i can think of is maybe a swiss format where you play a set once or twice per week and eventually the top 16 make a final bracket and from there it is single elimination bo5 games. I personally would lean more towards a swiss format as it seems more competitive and the top 16 will be pretty hype from a community perspective with the higher stakes and best of 5. As for when it should be i recon it should end just before scl and circuit. If we dont end up going with a new individual i think ruwc would be the next best option but i feel we could run it without a ca and be fine with maybe a cash prize or smth.

Click to collapse...

I was thinking maybe a swiss tournament as well, my first idea was something like bo3 gens 9 8 and 7 on a smogon masters format. Feel very strongly about introducing some new individual tournament and giving it some prestige via a CA prize. Dont really understand how just giving it to circuit is better for the community at large but i understand if we just want to play it safe

 

[feen]

indiv tours could be cool but the problem to that is:

Circuit winners get ribbons and I dont see a need to reward them even more. Any individual tour that isnt circuit poffs doesnt make sense because they arent circuit tours. If we put that individual tour in circuit why are we valuing one circuit tour over the other?

Please dont mention invitationals for ca, pu’s one was an oversight by the ps admin and so that was a special case.

CA for ruwc sounds nice but you have the typical wc related issues: some teams will most likely never win.

Third teamtour sounds the best idea to me tbh.

 

[lighthouses]

this is why i proposed we just make a new individual tour for this CA, at least as an experiment, it doesnt need to be a part of the circuit at all
because realistically wed just give it to rucl and see all the same people signing up to manage to farm and it just feels lame to me

 

[Ming549]

I'm most on board with awarding the third custom to a third team tour, it is the most straightforward and proven method that we've used in the past for our customs and adds a certain level of prestige to whatever tour it gets attached to. I would not like to see circuit award a custom since it already awards the ribbon and as others have mentioned already does not need the extra buff for "prestige." I'm also pretty against classic or any RU circuit tournament really being associated with the custom because it just seems a bit silly to me for what is essentially a qualifier tour for circuit to have a prize that circuit would not also have.

As far as like "an outside of circuit" individual tour that could be interesting but would entirely depend on the format of such a tour. In the past I think something like the bellibot introduction tournament could be nicely adapted to try and fit in as this sort of third custom type of tour. That tour had its flaws with how we tallied points but the bones for it are still there and a rework wouldn't be the hardest thing ever

 

[Soul King0]

I think it is reasonable to assign the avatar to one individual project and two team projects. Last year we held RUCL, and this year should be RUWC. Of course, I understand that many people are against this idea, but personally, I really want to play RUWC, even if there is no CA reward.

 

[Flareblitzkreig]

Holy necropost
Offtopic a bit but France vs Spain isnt till 2 days later and I have nothing to do+rarelyme said we need to drum up more support for ruwc in the thread if we want it to happen

I am of the opinion that RUWC should be held this year. 2026 is a World Cup year, as such the hype for these wcop style tournaments is high relative to normal.
In addition, there has been vocal support for RUWC on the rarelyused discord in the past few weeks. It has also been like 2? 3? years since we've had RUWC and I figure it'll be a fun enough tournament that brings the community together like only world cups do.

As for whether RUWC deserves a CA or not: imma be fr idrc, sure CA lends the tournament prestige and whatnot but the guys who wanna play it will play regardless
Also i get that some playerbases will always be more stacked than others, but we've seen teams that arent considered "powerhouses" per se win wcs in other lower tiers with increasing frequency so I doubt the level gap is as high as it was in previous eras.

if not ruwc give the CA to RUCL/BD whatever format we do or circuit
s/o ru gauntlet btw looks fun

Tldr: free ruwc pls

 

[rylon]

OF FUCKING COURSE!!

talking seriously though, i think we need to take an step forward and reinstate RUWC as a tournament, i think the main reason being how it has the ability to expand our community and growth, personally even for myself RUWC was the first tour that got me involved and the one that motivated me to stuck around wether ive been a positive presence thats another discussion LMAO

but yeah, there's no secret the community has been on decline these last years, so that's basically a growth spurt for us, the wcop's are more chemistry than skill that's my take, so don't worry about someone getting an easy path for a teamtour, that's a mediocre thinking, everyone loves to face tough competition.

fvkumean LFGI

Click to collapse...

never count any team out on a world cup. just a lil heads up,

FREE RUWC

 

[Evie]

Quick post but please free ruwc, i would genuinely unretire for one; world cups are always one of the most fun tournaments and i get there are competitive concerns but it’s part of what makes the tour enjoyable. Having hero stories like team UK last ruwc or whatever other team is what makes tournaments interesting