If you got even the slightest chuckle out of any iteration of scRUb League, or just interacted with me at all before, please read this post.
I thought that this year had the best meta conceptions out of any of our years of hosting. This year probably also had the best shitposts all around, and I'm pretty pleased with how the smack talk thread turned out. Similarly, I'm glad that the manager inbox turned out exactly the way I wanted it to, perhaps except for a certain very disgusting image.
There were some things that I wish went differently; like, I meant to include more random puzzles/challenges to get wins. It was kind of hard to justify them though when it didn't seem like the interest was there. Something that became more apparent than ever this season was a paradox where this tour is supposed to be a low-effort meme tour for you guys, but at the same time it's pretty meticulously crafted from a hosting point of view. Similarly, there was also the issue of keeping the tournament fun and functional at the same time; for example, force-adding people who didn't sign up is funny and definitely in line with this tour's ethos, but it also just led to a bunch of unnecessary inactive players that stood in the way of playing games. This is the kind of thing that led me to remove like half the players in the tour for the last week; I chose to be functional in this instance, but that isn't always the right decision for an intentionally dysfunctional tournament.
I don't mean to be negative or accusatory here, but it seems that unofficial tours have changed a lot in general since I was active. The main way we used to play unofficials was just in the regular old Tournaments forum, but now there are like literally 3 there. Now you guys do mainly these circuits and seasonals I think, and as a result there are like 10 SPL clones every year; this kind of thing makes it harder to get interest and stand out. All things must come to an end, and this seems like as good a time as any to lay scRUb League to rest.
Thanks so much to everyone who participated in scRUb League both this year and in past years. The fact that this tournament somehow had 4 editions is down to the support and interest of everyone involved. Another huge thanks to my cohost
phantom for all these years; I don't even remember where the idea to revive a knock-off RUPL (which is itself an SPL clone) into a meme tour came from, but I'm really glad that we did it.
I'd also like to thank the RU community in general for accepting me and this tournament. I know that having a tier leader as one of the hosts helps in this regard, but at least when we first started, RU is probably the only community that this tour would have worked for. I also greatly appreciate that you guys don't treat me like a washed up has-been on Discord, even though that's exactly what I am.
Smogon and competitive mons were a huge part of my life, and I'm so grateful for all that I've experienced here. For all of the friends that I made, especially those from the original #rarelyused, thank you for the memories. For all of the people that I impacted negatively (hopefully not many), I'm sorry; I was probably like 15 at the time so I hope you forgive me.
This is my last post; thanks for listening to my thought process and other feelings. It's been real.