Implemented Smogon Tour Live Tour Times [ SEE: POST #17 ]

[Finchinator]

Prior thread

Hello, the Tournament Director team would like to discuss the future of Smogon Tour times. We have a decreasing number of participants in the earlier Saturday time, which has led to great concern over its place. This thread will be used to discuss the best future times for the live tours that take place each season. Please note this has nothing to do with the other parts of the format such as the playoffs and the tiers included or the circuit as a whole; this thread is only to discuss the timing of the live tournaments.

Right now we have the following:

• Saturday at 10:00 AM GMT-5 (will eventually become GMT-4)
• Saturday at 4:00 PM GMT-5
• Sunday at 2:00 PM GMT-5

The two later times have continued to age pretty well, but the former time -- which was once Friday at 6:00 PM GMT-5 and once Saturday at 6:00 AM GMT-5 -- has been the hot topic for a few years now. All times are subject to change through this thread if deemed appropriate, but the data shows that the later Saturday and Sunday times can be successful.

Some possibilities I have seen discussed on discord and PS:

• Maintaining the status quo
• Shifting back to a Friday time (from the earlier Saturday time) and having one tour each of Friday-Saturday-Sunday
• Moving the first Saturday tour back (and potentially other shifts in accordance with this)

Please leave your thoughts on which option (of those listed above OR your own preference if not listed) will lead to the best outcome. Insight as to why certain options may or may not work is also greatly appreciated as opposed to vague declarations of preference. This thread will be open until we reach a conclusion which could take a number of days or weeks, but will be done well prior to the start of the next season in March.

Have a nice day.

 

[ABR]

We tried the saturday morning thing and it didn’t work. It’s not bad that we tried but the results are pretty clear - less overall signups so theoretical (not actual) austrasia players could play more. Friday worked for eons and we should probably just return to it.

 

[Amaranth]

(posting as myself to share an idea that I had, and not as a Tournament Director)

I might be on crack but here's a thought - why not essentially create two different leagues? I don't see why local qualifiers couldn't work here, and it seems to be the only comfortable answer to these issues, rather than trying to find a frankly unrealistic compromise between completely incompatible timezones.

A league with Fri/Sat/Sun tournaments at the same old US friendly times (hereby "West Hemisphere League")
PLUS
A league with Fri/Sat/Sun tournaments at Asia/Pacific/Oceania friendly times (hereby "East Hemisphere League")

Each player can ofc only play in one of the two leagues

For Playoffs, X users qualify from each of the two leagues, based on total participants. Hard to say where to balance exactly given that we don't know how the Europeans will split between the leagues, but potentially something like:
- Top 6 of WHL and Top 2 of EHL auto-qualify to Playoffs top16
- 7-16 of WHL (10 players) + 3-8 of EHL (6 players) play in a preliminary round and make up the last 8 slots of the top16
Numbers obviously subject to tweaking but hopefully you get the idea

If the WHL is great and the EHL playerbase is only theoretical, playoffs will hardly be impacted. If the EHL playerbase exists & is decent, I don't see why exclude them, when a system like this could easily integrate them. I could see some concerns of people picking one league or the other based on which they perceive gives them a simpler path to playoffs, but I honestly can't imagine there's any significant competitive advantage in doing this as long as the playoff qualification is balanced properly.

If we're not sure about the EHL's practical viability, we can have the EHL season start 1-2 weeks early and check the signup numbers. If they're good enough, confirm it for a full season. If they're bad, scrap it and simply hold the rest of the STour season as normal.

Tournament solved???

 

[Lalaya]

I'm mostly a host so my opinion on the matter is largely irrelevant because from my standpoint as long as the player count is there and the tour works, I'm good with it
Before I express myself I wanted to crunch the numbers of the two last Friday STour seasons vs seasons 33 and 34, the two with the double Saturday.
(I only grabbed the last two to have a fair representation of the *current* state of STour, not what might have been once upon a time with 400 signups or whatever)

counted by replies count; numbers in the tour might be slightly different, but not by much
tiers:
1 - 4 - 7 ss
2 - 5 - 8 sm
3 - 6 - 9 oras

last two friday stours (31 and 32)

31 w1: 246
31 w2: 208
31 w3: 176
31 w4: 172
31 w5: 145
31 w6: 121
31 w7: 107
31 w8: 94
31 w9: 103

32 w1: 190
32 w2: 115
32 w3: 107
32 w4: 98
32 w5: 79
32 w6: 90
32 w7: 88
32 w8: 92
32 w9: 75

the two sat stours we did (33 and 34)

33 w1: 198
33 w2: 141
33 w3: 132
33 w4: 139
33 w5: 131
33 w6: 94
33 w7: 102
33 w8: 93
33 w9: 66

34 w1: 161
34 w2: 104
34 w3: 98
34 w4: 102
34 w5: 68
34 w6: 69
34 w7: 68
34 w8: 53
34 w9: 50

On a seasonal basis, both friday tours did better than the saturday ones, but confronting 32 and 33 the latter did better, and I'd dare to say 34 is a bit of an outlier for multiple factors, being the impending SV release or the ever rising number of tournaments this site is accumulating, but I might be wrong on this so don't take my word for it; still, in my opinion the problem is not the time of the first tour of the week, but how Smogtours is received as a whole, the seasonal patterns, how the tournament is progressing - as in, if a lot of players already reached cutoff, they're not giving a damn about joining the remaining tours, so it could be a factor - the amount of other tournaments in that season, the state/enjoyment/playerbase of the singular tiers (seriously, last STour had the lowest count of ORAS players I have ever seen, and this isn't a Friday vs Saturday problem), so the "fix" isn't changing the timeslot of the first tour of the week, but changing the format of Smogtours as a whole, or at least ONE of them; a while ago different opinions surfaced on replacing one of the two Smogtours (i'd say the one that has less players in general, in fall?) with another tournament because ORAS is getting booted out of STour, or Amaranth's "solution" up there that divides the playerbases geografically; either way, the solution in my opinion is not this, but if we have to choose between Friday and Saturday, let the majority of PLAYING users decide, via a google sheet or smth like that; aside from that, I'd consider either changing one of the seasons, or changing them in a non-conventional way; for the moment, I like Amaranth's proposal, but I'd like to think and hear more about it.

 

[Star]

I'm not a fan of splitting the tour into leagues and doubling the tours to 6 for various reasons. I don't think there's a good objective way to decide what % of playoff slots come from each league. Using sign-up numbers doesn't really factor in the whole story when there's also going to be an inevitable gulf in player quality between the leagues. Also from a logistical perspective, I don't think doubling the tours and hosts required is likely to be feasible.

The idea of 4 Tours (only allowed to enter 2 still) has been brought up and it is something I'd be willing to experiment with, at least for one season to see how it goes. The idea would basically be adding a tour to the schedule so it'd look something like this:

Friday: 6-8pm -5 (NA/Oceania/China)
Saturday: 6-8am -5 (EU/Oceania/China/India)
Saturday: 4pm -5 (NA/EU)
Sunday: 2pm -5 (NA/EU/India)

Adding back the Friday night tour and moving the Saturday one back would let us basically have 3 tours that are good for our biggest playerbases by far (NA/EU) and 2 tours that are makeable for the smaller playerbases (China/India/Oceania) that suffer under the current system. Obviously, there are tradeoffs with adding an extra tour in that signups for each tour are likely to go down and they could possibly end up unbalanced. I can't say I'm personally expecting the Oceania/China/India playerbases to suddenly turn out in droves, but this would be a non-drastic experimental change that should be feasible logistically. If it works, then great and if it doesn't, then we have a datapoint for moving back towards a 3 tour system.

 

[Finchinator]

I’m content using next season to experiment with a 4 tour structure where you can join two. Star’s outline lines up with what I deem best, too.

Each tournament will be a bit smaller, which will make it less of a time commitment for both hosts and players. An extra tournament allows for people from all regions to be more likely to be able to participate as well.

Everyone will have to adjust expectations for tournament size, point thresholds likely to qualify, the new time(s), and so on. But it may be worth giving an attempt to see if interest is there. I implore others to comment their thoughts as well.

 

[ABR]

Is yeet the inverse of neet? Regardless, the star/finch proposal is intriguing to me as someone in the former category. I am skeptical about the size of individual tours still but having more options for when to play would make competing more feasible for some I believe.

 

[Finchinator]

I'm not a fan of splitting the tour into leagues and doubling the tours to 6 for various reasons. I don't think there's a good objective way to decide what % of playoff slots come from each league. Using sign-up numbers doesn't really factor in the whole story when there's also going to be an inevitable gulf in player quality between the leagues. Also from a logistical perspective, I don't think doubling the tours and hosts required is likely to be feasible.

The idea of 4 Tours (only allowed to enter 2 still) has been brought up and it is something I'd be willing to experiment with, at least for one season to see how it goes. The idea would basically be adding a tour to the schedule so it'd look something like this:

Friday: 6-8pm -5 (NA/Oceania/China)
Saturday: 6-8am -5 (EU/Oceania/China/India)
Saturday: 4pm -5 (NA/EU)
Sunday: 2pm -5 (NA/EU/India)

Adding back the Friday night tour and moving the Saturday one back would let us basically have 3 tours that are good for our biggest playerbases by far (NA/EU) and 2 tours that are makeable for the smaller playerbases (China/India/Oceania) that suffer under the current system. Obviously, there are tradeoffs with adding an extra tour in that signups for each tour are likely to go down and they could possibly end up unbalanced. I can't say I'm personally expecting the Oceania/China/India playerbases to suddenly turn out in droves, but this would be a non-drastic experimental change that should be feasible logistically. If it works, then great and if it doesn't, then we have a datapoint for moving back towards a 3 tour system.

The Tournament Director team would like to expand on this prospect as we continue to discuss internally while valuing the insight provided externally (in this thread).

A possibility for four live tournaments with one Friday (likely 6-8pm), two Saturday (likely 6-8am and 4pm), and one Sunday (likely 2pm) is seen as realistic. Please note these times are GMT-5 (will become GMT-4 when clicks change). For more on this, read Star’s post I am quoting or my post right after it.

We would like to hear more feedback and specifically on the exact times for the first two tournaments. If you feel strongly, do not hesitate to voice your stance here. Thank you.

 

[awyp]

The Tournament Director team would like to expand on this prospect as we continue to discuss internally while valuing the insight provided externally (in this thread).

A possibility for four live tournaments with one Friday (likely 6-8pm), two Saturday (likely 6-8am and 4pm), and one Sunday (likely 2pm) is seen as realistic. Please note these times are GMT-5 (will become GMT-4 when clicks change). For more on this, read Star’s post I am quoting or my post right after it.

We would like to hear more feedback and specifically on the exact times for the first two tournaments. If you feel strongly, do not hesitate to voice your stance here. Thank you.

Friday: 6-8pm -5 (NA/Oceania/China)
Saturday: 6-8am -5 (EU/Oceania/China/India)

I personally think this is a great idea to host 4 tournaments and still keep the format of joining 2 per week. This gives a lot of people opportunities to take the Smogon tour more serious rather than not (purely based on timing). There have been a good amount of volunteers willing to host last Smogon tour so I don't think there's a problem with having 4 > 3.

On the times I'm cool with the first 2, but to nitpick; if someone in California wanted to join the Smogon tour on Friday it would be 3 PM for them which is a bit early (since it's not a weekend there's still work / school), Maybe start an hour later? [Not a hard suggestion]. As someone who's hosted a Saturday morning Stour before (prior one) there's always a small interest (anywhere between 48-64 participants since we need to start within 10 minutes after posting for anything outside of SS). I'm all for accessibility for (EU/Oceania/China/India) so if size isn't a concern I'm all for the proposed Saturday time but I just wanted to preface that.

 

[Perry]

I do believe the Star's times proposed are fine and should be tested, more-so so we can eventually evaluate and see how the community (yes, the community has grown smaller over the years and this is partly the reason the smogon tours have grown smaller, so it's important to compare with the same "sample", if you will) will react to it, but I mostly only see positives barring the possible lack of tournament hosts -- they have been declining for some time, and it's really important to gauge if we'd have enough people for this new time. I'm unfortunately not spending so much time looking over it anymore, but i am sure a lot of former stour hosts (me, kj, etc) would be willing to help people with our experiences in the discord channel for smogon tours hosts if needed! But for what it's worth, I've seen some great hosting lately from new faces and I hope more people will show up in the next season(s).

I also believe this is the perfect timing to bring up Merrit's proposal here: the second Smogon Tour is smaller by all means, and I do think adding up a new Classic-esque tour would help solve the current elephant in the room (lack of individual ORAS representation) while also future-proofing the circuit for another 2 generations, where I believe it will be inevitable to either re-imagine the old gens circuit as a whole or start removing some older generations from it -- but that's a problem for the 2028 / 2029 Smogon community to decide (which Finchinator will probably still be around). There are enough things that I suspect people will bring up here: a) trophy inflation, b) circuit clutter, and so on... but eventually, I do think this is the best scenario moving forward as most players believe fairy-gens are very different from classic-gens and, most importantly, I do think Classic is as good as it could get right now -- adding another tier, most importantly a tier as played as ORAS, would most likely make RBY representation moot, for example... I am willing to bet money that RBY Cup (which is the smaller cup already) would become a shell of its current size and very few people would choose to play it in the playoffs. Like, for real, if you add ORAS to Classic you might as well remove RBY and retire it to RoA for individuals.

I know any changes to Smogon Tour will be hard to make: it was my favorite tournament to host, and I'm sure it's the favorite for a lot of the players as well... but eventually, I do believe this is the best way to move on.

 

[Amaranth]

Friday: 6-8pm -5 (NA/Oceania/China)
Saturday: 6-8am -5 (EU/Oceania/China/India)
Saturday: 4pm -5 (NA/EU)
Sunday: 2pm -5 (NA/EU/India)

If we are adding a fourth tour to make STour accessible to other regions, we should go all the way to make sure it's actually achieving that goal.

I would therefore suggest the following:

- Friday should go to 8PM if not even later. The friday time is already really bad for EU (midnight start), making it even later is not a big deal. 6PM EST is really bad for most of Asia; it's only 7AM for China / Western Australia, and even earlier for a majority of Asia. 8PM EST should be much more manageable for these regions. 6PM EST is a downright bad time that only really works for the Americas. I honestly don't see why not go all the way to 9PM to ensure China can join with relative comfort even after DST shifts.

- The second tour should definitely not be at 8AM, and probably even 6AM is too late. I believe Australian users have lamented that 6AM EST is still a touch awkward for East Australia to make (10PM start) and impossible for NZ. NZ can make other tours reasonably (4PM -5 = 10AM +13) but East Australia can't - I think a further shift back to 5AM -5 (11AM Europe, 9PM East Australia) is a reasonable and practical decision given that it's still very realistic for all regions involved

- India can't make the 8PM, 4PM, or 2PM tours. Pushing the 2PM an hour or two earlier should grant them two viable tours and cause no real negative repercussions given it's still comfortably doable for US/EU.

I would therefore suggest the following:

Friday 9PM -5 (6PM US West Coast / 9PM US East Coast / 9AM most of Southeast Asia / 10AM China, Singapore, W. Australia / 1PM E. Australia / 3PM New Zealand)
Saturday 5AM -5 (11AM Europe / 3:30PM India / 5PM most of Southeast Asia / 6PM China, Singapore, W. Australia / 9PM E. Australia)
Saturday 4PM -5 (1PM US West Coast / 4PM US East Coast / 10PM Europe / 10AM New Zealand)
Sunday 12PM -5 (9AM US West Coast / 12PM US East Coast / 6PM Europe / 10:30PM India)

3 tours to US, 3 tours to EU, 2 tours to all Asian / Oceanian regions
Tournament Solved

My TD colleagues have raised concerns about finding hosts for the 5AM tour and to them I say skill issue - half of the current SPL host team is Indian + I'm sure I can get Lalaya to wake up by 11AM etc. Does not feel to me like a complication that should impede otherwise positive change.

I do want to say that if we're not committing to actually giving India, China, Australia 2 practically viable timeslots, then adding a 4th tour as a whole is a waste of time. Players from those regions won't seriously commit to this tournament if they are limited to only one tour per week. We need to make serious efforts to engage these regions in Smogon Tour, or otherwise give up entirely, as half measures would only make things worse for EU/Americas without actually addressing the problem.

I plan to reach out to the Chinese playerbase and to get a finger on the pulse there and see how much activity they'd bring to these tours. If you have first hand experience with that community and happen to be reading this post, I'd appreciate if you reached out for a chat.

Happy to hear any and all feedback, I really want to figure out the best direction for Smogon Tour going forward.

 

[ABR]

friday 8pm was tried once upon a time and was extremely terrible (signups)

fri 6, sat 4, sun 2 is the og perfect trifecta that should never be messed with again

just mess around w the 4th tour only : )

 

[Amaranth]

friday 8pm was tried once upon a time and was extremely terrible (signups)

fri 6, sat 4, sun 2 is the og perfect trifecta that should never be messed with again

just mess around w the 4th tour only : )

There is absolutely 0 point in adding a 4th tour if you keep 6/4/2. It'd fail to incentivize the playerbases in Asia/Oceania to participate, much like the 6AM tours also failed. Nobody from those regions will commit to STour if they can only play one week instead of the 2 that everybody else gets.

Keeping 6/4/2 is fine if other options are deemed unviable, but then let's not waste our times pretending that we're trying for Asia/Oce. Adding a 4th tour alone does nothing for them.

 

[Lalaya]

I'm sure I can get Lalaya to wake up by 11AM etc.

agree with the notion that if we should be inclusive towards the eastern portion of our fanbase it should be made equal to play for all players, although I also agree that we need their help, both in playing numbers and in host presence; while the second might be covered, we should definitely test the waters, and directly instead of doing another poll that doesn't tell us anything except some numbers in a forum. This must be worth to rewamp Smogtour to a 4 tour, different times, but if there's the possibility to be worth we have to do it, for our playerbase's integrity; all of it.

 

[ABR]

There is absolutely 0 point in adding a 4th tour if you keep 6/4/2. It'd fail to incentivize the playerbases in Asia/Oceania to participate, much like the 6AM tours also failed. Nobody from those regions will commit to STour if they can only play one week instead of the 2 that everybody else gets.

Keeping 6/4/2 is fine if other options are deemed unviable, but then let's not waste our times pretending that we're trying for Asia/Oce. Adding a 4th tour alone does nothing for them.

You’re right, we definitely shouldn’t add a 4th. In the olden days plenty of austrasians made poffs just fine, so it should work as it always did.

 

[ninjadog]

You’re right, we definitely shouldn’t add a 4th. In the olden days plenty of austrasians made poffs just fine, so it should work as it always did.

This is just wildly incorrect if you actually go back and look at what times the tours took place.

In S13 and earlier there were plenty of Australians who qualified for poffs, but in mid s14 the then 8pm tour is moved to 6pm and from that point onwards not a single Australian qualified for playoffs from s14-s31, until false made it in s33 after the stour times were finally changed. Heist and Googly both made it during this time but they're both from NZ so being an extra 2 hours ahead meant the times were a lot more reasonable.

So not a single Australian managed to qualify for playoffs during 18 seasons worth of 2pm/4pm/6pm est tours, despite having made it both before and after.

 

[Finchinator]

We have left this thread open all month and had the four weekly tournament proposal for over three weeks. We also gave people multiple weeks to discuss potential times. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback in this thread.

The four Smogon Tour times (in GMT-5, EST, will change to GMT-4 soon) for Smogon Tour 35 will be as follows:

• 8pm Friday
• 6am Saturday
• 4pm Saturday
• 1pm Sunday

Here is a visual representation of the coverage this provides us with courtesy of Amaranth!

Please note the following:

• You can still only join two tournaments per week with your highest score from each week being taken.
• We expect turnout for individual tournaments to be slightly lower with more options, but overall turnout to be slightly higher.
• We are shifting from mandating a primary host and two back-up hosts for each tour to only needing a primary and a single back-up host.
  • This is due to expecting smaller tournaments and having more tournaments overall to attend to.
  • With this in mind, if we have enough sign-ups, we will have two back-ups when appropriate as well still.
• We understand that this is a new approach and we will be reevaluating it again after the conclusion of season 35.