Proposal Smogon Tour Times

[Slowpoke Fan]

So with the completion of the 36th edition of the Smogon Tour (congratulations to Empo for a historic 3rd pink trophy!), I would like to bring up what led to a change of starting times this season: signup numbers. This season saw the format revert to the historical times for the tournament that led to these earth-shattering numbers when compared to the reviled Season 35:

So while the 3-tour format did result in more signups per timeslot, the total amount of signups didn't really budge. I think this serves as reasonable evidence that the demographics of Smogon have changed as ninjadog mentioned last year: other factors like age and shifts in tournament culture are responsible for this decline rather than timeslots that are less friendly for the American userbase. I would like to use this opportunity to request for the introduction of Asian/Oceanic-friendly times (ones that are actually playable for most of Asia instead of the awkward starting times of Season 35), or a format change akin to what Rewer suggested: a number of playoff spots can be assigned to each side in future years based on results in the previous year if people are worried about a strength imbalance between both sides of the globe. Instead of blaming the Asian/Oceanic playerbase for the tournament shrinking, start listening to them - the way that the Smogon Tour can grow is by opening it up to the world, not adopting an inward-looking mindset in hopes of chasing past glories.

 

[Isa]

are these numbers suggesting that 828 players played in week 7 of this years smogon tour or whats going on with those numbers? what are these numbers actually showing

 

[Slowpoke Fan]

are these numbers suggesting that 828 players played in week 7 of this years smogon tour or whats going on with those numbers? what are these numbers actually showing

My apologies for using this rudimentary graph - the numbers are divided into ID ranges as shown in Ticken's spreadsheets. So 828 would mean that there were 828 users between the IDs 471095 — 538394 who participated in Season 36 of the Smogon Tour.

Edit: Edited the image, hopefully that makes the data more legible.

 

[Amaranth]

I would like to use this opportunity to request for the introduction of Asian/Oceanic-friendly times (ones that are actually playable for most of Asia instead of the awkward starting times of Season 35)

Not getting into the rest of the debate but it would really really strengthen your point if you could come up with a set of times that actually achieves this - we talked a lot about finding time sets that would allow all of India (+5.5), East Asia (+8), and East Australia (+10/+11 depending on daylight savings) and it's really not easy.
Given that the numbers from Asia+Pacific regions are absolutely not enough to support individual tours by themselves, you always have to make tours "Europe + Asia" or "North America + Asia", and both of these come with their own struggles: cutting North America entirely leads to really, really tiny playerbases (see the infamous 39-person tour in ST35, which was in the timeslot targeted at Europe+Asia - best I can tell only 7 of those 39 players were actually from Asia/Pacific, 0 from China on a tour that started at 6PM Saturday +8...), whereas trying to even find a decent time for North America + Asia at the same time is a nightmare - India and the US east coast are 9.5 hours apart no matter how you slice it.

Maybe you have a better solution in mind than the ones we settled on, but if so, it would be great to actually see it. "Better times" is a great thing to strive for, but you need to prove that they actually exist, and having put several hours of my time towards solving this problem in the past I sincerely doubt that they do. You might find this post, or the thread as a whole a good insight into how hard it is to actually give every region 2 playable tournaments per week, even with 4 tours - keeping in mind that Americas and Europe, who make up a vast majority of the Smogon userbase, should ideally retain 3 viable times each (as they do in the current 6/4/2 timeslots).

 

[Mimikyu Stardust]

I really hope we can start implementing Asia/OCN friendly timezones because playing at 1am-3am, 3am-5am or 5am-7am is really hard without destroying sleep schedule, and since you just woke up, or woken up sleep deprived, most people really cant compete at a level equal to those playing when they're not super tired, and if you make it far it might cost you your sleep schedule.

I'm going to use my own experience this smogon tour as an anecdote, Smogtours happens at my 1am, 3am and 5am (GMT +7).

for the record, i am a muslim, and the first half of this smogon tour happened during the time of Ramadhan where muslims have to fast from dawn to dusk, Usually i will sleep early at 8-9pm so i am able to wake up at ~3am for sahoor which is basically just having a meal to last the whole day before iftar/breaking my fast. Considering this, i could easily catch games at 1am before sahoor, 3am during sahoor, 5am after sahoor, and it reflected in my points where i earned quite a modest amount. (except week 4 where i lost to a zamazenta freezing my landorus)

the first 4 weeks were during ramadhan (Mar 11, 2024 – Tue, Apr 9, 2024) where i could easily wake up not tired without ruining my sleep schedule. The results were me doing quite well and even winning the first week.

Now the above score here is my week 5-9 performance after ramadhan (no more fasting and waking up super early), where i genuinely tried to catch games but couldn't because i couldn't wake up or i didn't want to ruin my sleep schedule. I wake up early at around 5am in my usual every day life but that doesnt mean i can catch the games cause i need to pray during fajr, brush my teeth, wash my face, etc, and even then i sometimes wake up slightly after 5am which means i can't sign up anymore. And thats me, someone who wakes up at 5am early in the morning which is not common at all!

In Week 8 #2, i managed to wake up at 3am to sign up for a live tour, and sent a challenge to my opponent where i fell asleep for 15 mins and waking up to a time lost, thankfully my opponent was a friend of mine, yone so he accepted a re-challenge but i was too tired that i CBA to play and did extremely bad in said game. Thats why i skipped an SV Week post week 4, went 0 wins 3 times in a row because i was too tired to play, and only managing to get points in my SS and SM games in the final 2 weeks at 5 am where i really tryharded to get that final push but was dealt with really tough pools in SS and SM (3d, MDB2, Tace, Reze and Zenadark, ChrisPBacon Respectively).


If i was able to get 4 more points which i could've easily gotten from the missed SV OU week and one of the SM/SS games where i was too tired too play well, i would've made it to playoffs, or at least tie break based on my early performance, where i even won a week. It's disheartening to see that if i lived in a different place i could've easily made it to playoffs to get a chance to win a trophy, but unable to because there's no accommodating time for southeast asians.


I don't really know the demographic well enough on smogon (except being mostly american) to suggest a time suitable for all, but for me increasing the first week time by an hour would help a lot.
Tho i might edit this last part of my post with a better time slot to suit asians better without harming the americans and europeans (maybe late night for asians would work like 9pm GMT+7?).

 

[Slowpoke Fan]

Given that the numbers from Asia+Pacific regions are absolutely not enough to support individual tours by themselves, you always have to make tours "Europe + Asia" or "North America + Asia", and both of these come with their own struggles: cutting North America entirely leads to really, really tiny playerbases (see the infamous 39-person tour in ST35, which was in the timeslot targeted at Europe+Asia), whereas trying to even find a decent time for North America + Asia at the same time is a nightmare - India and the US east coast are 11.5 hours apart no matter how you slice it.

And my point is that the infamous 39 person tour in ST35 was not that viable of a time for Asia - which predictably led to a catastrophically low number of signups. I think the notion that cutting out the West in some timeslots would lead to struggles needs to go and we should attempt to offer times that serve the needs of Asia/Oceania instead of trying to find awkward compromises that help no one. Something like 2am EST Saturday would be reasonable for most of the Far East - it's 11:30 am for India, 2pm for +8 (some parts of SEA and the entirety of China) and 2-5pm for Australia. Even early risers in some parts of Europe would be able to participate around that time .

 

[Amaranth]

And my point is that the infamous 39 person tour in ST35 was not that viable of a time for Asia - which predictably led to a catastrophically low number of signups.

How??? 3:30PM in India, 6PM in China, 9PM in East Australia? What are "viable times for Asia" if not this?

 

[Slowpoke Fan]

How??? 3:30PM in India, 6PM in China, 9PM in East Australia? What are "viable times for Asia" if not this?

3:30pm is certainly nice, but I'm not sure if you really want to feign outrage at 6-8pm (+8 to +10, which encompasses a good chunk of SEA and Australia, Japan/South Korea as well as China) being awkward on a Saturday considering that it was yellowed out from a former tournament host when mapping out potential times for Season 36. 9pm and beyond would be a better time for Asia on Saturday night, but I believe that my proposed time of 2am EST (or around that time) would be better for most of the region.

Edit: Mimikyu Stardust is from Southeast Asia and informed me that he would be praying at 6pm.

 

[Amaranth]

3:30pm is certainly nice, but I'm not sure if you really want to feign outrage at 6-8pm (+8 to +10, which encompasses a good chunk of SEA and Australia, Japan/South Korea as well as China) being awkward on a Saturday considering that it was yellowed out from a former tournament host when mapping out potential times for Season 36. 9pm and beyond would be a better time for Asia on Saturday night, but I believe that my proposed time of 2am EST (or around that time) would be better for most of the region.

if 6pm and 8pm are unviable start times then there are basically no viable start times at all; what timeframes Luigi chose to 'yellow out' is entirely arbitrary, and irrelevant to the practical challenge of finding a good set of times. What even are these arguments my dude? 3pm is ideal, 9pm is fine, but 6-8pm are "awkward"? What?

I will repeat again, and refrain from posting further in this thread: if you have a full, concrete proposal for a better set of times than the one used in ST35, by all means go ahead and share it. Begging for "better times" with no concrete proposal is not going to lead anywhere. You aren't getting a random 3PM +8 tournament just for asking nicely, because that's 1AM EST and 9AM Europe, so you better have a damn good justification for outright cutting most of the US and making it uncomfortable for the rest of the US, as well as practically cutting out most if not all of Central/South America, and making it uncomfortable for Europeans (by the same token that the ST35 times were 'uncomfortable' for Asia you would have to agree 9AM is not the most comfortable time for Europeans either).

I really do empathize with this cause and I'm likely the single person who has put the most personal effort towards making things better for Asia. But we had ST35 and Chinese participation was practically nonexistent, even in the unarguably good hours (once again, 6PM being a bad time is simply a ridiculous claim), with numbers from India and Oceania being a little better but hardly noticeable, too. We've seen that ST35 and ST36 times are roughly as good as each other; that's nice; that's a good argument for pushing back to ST35 times. But if you want to push for something better than ST35 times, you have to make a credible argument for it, and that argument cannot start with "6-8PM are awkward times". It just devalues everything else that you're saying when you're confidently saying stuff like that

 

[w_r]

Why can't we just conduct a tour adopting the smogon masters format (with same gens as stour) simultaneously with smogon tour to circumvent the hassles involved in live tours. Both are similar in all fronts even the duration of the tour with masters having a much more ideal format for the better player to qualify regardless of geography while stour has a rich history.

I understand we already replaced one of the stours with masters but the Asian playerbase wants to practice in sv/ss/sm instead of ss/sm/oras!

Seems like the best solution and favours everyone. Cheers

 

[Slowpoke Fan]

if 6pm and 8pm are unviable start times then there are basically no viable start times at all; what timeframes Luigi chose to 'yellow out' is entirely arbitrary, and irrelevant to the practical challenge of finding a good set of times. What even are these arguments my dude? 3pm is ideal, 9pm is fine, but 6-8pm are "awkward"? What?

I will repeat again, and refrain from posting further in this thread: if you have a full, concrete proposal for a better set of times than the one used in ST35, by all means go ahead and share it. Begging for "better times" with no concrete proposal is not going to lead anywhere. You aren't getting a random 3PM +8 tournament just for asking nicely, because that's 1AM EST and 9AM Europe, so you better have a damn good justification for outright cutting most of the US and making it uncomfortable for the rest of the US, as well as practically cutting out most if not all of Central/South America, and making it uncomfortable for Europeans (by the same token that the ST35 times were 'uncomfortable' for Asia you would have to agree 9AM is not the most comfortable time for Europeans either).

I really do empathize with this cause and I'm likely the single person who has put the most personal effort towards making things better for Asia. But we had ST35 and Chinese participation was practically nonexistent, even in the unarguably good hours (once again, 6PM being a bad time is simply a ridiculous claim), with numbers from India and Oceania being a little better but hardly noticeable, too. We've seen that ST35 and ST36 times are roughly as good as each other; that's nice; that's a good argument for pushing back to ST35 times. But if you want to push for something better than ST35 times, you have to make a credible argument for it, and that argument cannot start with "6-8PM are awkward times". It just devalues everything else that you're saying when you're confidently saying stuff like that

Or perhaps that we live in an entirely different continent and have different lifestyles than the West? It's not difficult to understand my point that the early evening hours are not the best for Asia, and I'm arguing that it showed when you were making efforts to accommodate us by having incredibly low signup numbers - you keep on blabbering about how Chinese participation was practically nonexistent but refuse to accept the Chinese person telling you that your times were poor for most of the country. I'm not sure how my argument isn't clear.

My proposal is to allocate one of the four Season 35 timeslots to a time that most Asian regions can participate in and have the rest be regular times for the West that Asian players can try to make depending on their timezone. One timeslot that the West can't make out of four is hardly outrageous favouritism shown to the Far East, and I believe that it can be a good experiment to see whether the Asia-Pacific region can fill up a tour by themselves under more ideal circumstances.

Edit: Talked about this a bit with damien the genius and MAVERICK SHOOTERS and 4-5am EST should work if the TDs are insistent on a time that is playable for another region. That would be 7-8pm for +11, 4-5pm for +8, 1:30-2:30pm for India and 10-11am for +2 (I think that's Spain, France, Italy and Germany during summer time?).

 

[Finchinator]

In my opinion, the four time slot Smogon Tour trial season was a failure. It negatively impacted the quality of the tournament and I would prefer us not take a step backwards.

I feel that this season with the classic 6-4-2 PM GMT-4 times was a step back in the right direction as each individual tour was a sufficiently large event (short of some late week tournaments, which has been the case in any season no matter what — and the negative outliers this time around still far surpassed that of last season). Having similar total number of players across 3 tours rather than 4 makes each tournament better and shows it was a success in my eyes.

My gripes currently with Smogon Tour would be that only having one season feels a bit light and, as alluded by some posts above, it isn’t even close to a level playing field for some demographics. Smogon Tour is one of the most exciting formats and spectacles in tournaments, so it’s very important to me that it is done properly. The former gripe maybe is a bit more personal, but I definitely liked the old days with 2 STour seasons. I love Masters and it needs to stay as well of course, but coexistence should be a discussion. As for the latter gripe, that’s a tale as old as time and the point of this thread. I think we have come full circle to a point where we realize the difference in numbers and can’t just run out a whole tournament every week with a generally bad time, but maybe some middleground solution exists.

The main solution that came to me personally (and I am speaking on behalf of myself, not the entire TD team) was reintroducing a second season of STour back in the Fall (or pivoting to one Winter one Summer for next year) + having one season keep the current times and another flex around a bit (not a ton, say moving Friday back by 2-4 hours or shifting a weekend time up by a couple hours — I think moving the time of one tournament would probably do a lot given the above comments) for widespread playability.

The flaws of this proposal are that there’s still no set of times that are perfect and everything discussed previously runs into some sort of flaw — look at the above posts struggling to find common ground and the same goes for prior threads, prior attempts, etc. But this has always been the case and will always be the case for live tournaments, so not sure there’s much else to say there. Tying in with this though: some people may not like asymmetry between seasons, to which I say just get over it I suppose

Another flaw is the official tournament circuit then becoming overly congested, which is why we took away the second season to add Masters. For me, I don’t personally mind this and I think people can just not play one tournament or another if they have too much going on, but I know this is a big point for some others.

I am curious what people think of this as it addresses what I personally identify as pressure points, but it’s certainly not a perfect solution either. In the event that things stick with one season, I prefer keeping the times as is as I feel this past season was better than the few prior.

 

[Dorron]

Gatekeeping someone from playing a tour given where they live is crazy. I don't care about signups and it shouldn't for this tour. This site can't claim to be the epitome of inclusivity if almost a whole continent is left out of one of its more emblematics tournaments. I understand that it's not that easy, but come on, we can do better. And about two seasons, it could be a solution, but it doesn't solve the "quality" of the tournament issue you all like raising up. It would simply make people praise more winning the Smogon Tour X (with current times) than winning Smogon Tour X+1 (with the new times). #WeStandWithAsia

 

[Finchinator]

Posts implying we can do better without actual explanations as to how we can do better are not useful.

Every set of times has a give-and-take. If you find one better than another, say something specifically. Vague shots at the status quo without proposals for alternatives do nothing. I would love to hear what your ideal solution is, Dorron.

 

[Dorron]

If we are heading for a single tour each year, I'd probably go for (as example):

Weeks 1-3: Friday 10pm GMT-4 (EST, to give a random American time), Saturday 10pm GMT+2, Sunday 10pm GMT+8 (something like this, I don't exactly know Asian timezones)
Weeks 4-6: Friday 10pm GMT+2, Saturday 10pm GMT+8, Sunday 10pm GMT-4
Weeks 7-9: Friday 10pm GMT+8, Saturday 10pm GMT-4, Sunday 10pm GMT+2

With these times, in weeks 1-3 EST people can comfortably play on Friday and Saturday, GMT+2 people on Saturday and Sunday, and GMT+8 people on Sunday and at 10am on their Saturday (Friday for EST). Same applies for the other weeks but rotating. I think it's a bit uncomfortable for EST to play on Friday at 10am weeks 7-9, but something similar to this should do better for Asians. Once again, this is not perfect at all, and will never be, but it's better than ignoring a whole continent.


If we had two tours each year, I'd be more fine with each tour having their own times, but again the problem of "this Stour is more well earned than yours" could arise. I think Masters was a huge success and reorganizing the whole circuit is not ideal, but I'm not completely opposed to it. If the change is approved, I'm fine with coming up with potential times for the new Stours.

And sorry for the aggresive tone of my previous post.

 

[Drifting]

It has been multiple literal years of people arguing about Smogon Tour times, and in that same timeframe nobody has been able to offer a set of times that works for every demographic (and of course they can’t, obviously, it’s a geographic impossibility).

As an Australian, I obviously was not a fan of the times in this iteration, basically not being able to compete without essentially structuring my life around Smogon Tour. This isn’t a rage post about how the evil Minus Timezone Mob is running Smogon Tournaments from the shadows, attempts have been made, but they’ve all been very flawed attempts considering:

A: The 4 slot weeks were having dire signup numbers due to being split up

B: The times were still pretty bad for Australia so as to coddle Americans/Europeans who want to be able to play in all three slots, I want to play in my afternoon, not when I’m tired immediately after waking up or before I go to bed.

C: Only being able to play the one token Asia time per week isn’t really competitive when you’re supposed to sign up for two tours a week.

With this in mind, I endorse Finchinator’s proposal of a biannual Smogon Tour, a Western Conference and an Eastern Conference with different time slots so as to suit the needs of the Western and Eastern hemispheres respectively. You could have these seasons between SPL and WCoP and then between WCoP and SCL or something, idk.

It’s time to face the facts and realise that no timezone Ramanujan is going to come figure out the perfect formula of three time slots that makes Stour work for everybody equally. This, as far as I can tell is the best solution we have.

PS: If you want to retort to this by arguing “But the Eastern Conference will be fraudulent/meme/free”, remember that there are obviously no restrictions to who can play in either tournament, and even in the current Eastern hostile times we still see players like ChrisPBacon and Mimikyu Stardust do well. It’s not about excluding anyone. People have proven that they are willing to inconvenience themselves for a chance at a trophy. It’s simply a matter of both sides having a convenient option in the first place.

 

[Perry]

I kept thinking I should post and I kept forgetting to do it...

Anyway, I still stand firm behind my previous post on the subject from earlier this year. I am sympathetic to the players that can't participate because of the constraints imposed by the three times we went with this season, but I ultimately agree that going back to three tournament a week was a step in the right direction. Moreover, I can safely add that this season was the smoothest we've had in a very long time and I firmly believe the community agrees with me on the subject. I'd rather we accept that Smogon Tour is not a very democratic tour because it will inevitably gate-keep players from a timezone or another than see it struggling to field live tournaments like we saw last year.

 

[Niko]

If we are heading for a single tour each year, I'd probably go for (as example):

Weeks 1-3: Friday 10pm GMT-4 (EST, to give a random American time), Saturday 10pm GMT+2, Sunday 10pm GMT+8 (something like this, I don't exactly know Asian timezones)
Weeks 4-6: Friday 10pm GMT+2, Saturday 10pm GMT+8, Sunday 10pm GMT-4
Weeks 7-9: Friday 10pm GMT+8, Saturday 10pm GMT-4, Sunday 10pm GMT+2

With these times, in weeks 1-3 EST people can comfortably play on Friday and Saturday, GMT+2 people on Saturday and Sunday, and GMT+8 people on Sunday and at 10am on their Saturday (Friday for EST). Same applies for the other weeks but rotating. I think it's a bit uncomfortable for EST to play on Friday at 10am weeks 7-9, but something similar to this should do better for Asians. Once again, this is not perfect at all, and will never be, but it's better than ignoring a whole continent.


If we had two tours each year, I'd be more fine with each tour having their own times, but again the problem of "this Stour is more well earned than yours" could arise. I think Masters was a huge success and reorganizing the whole circuit is not ideal, but I'm not completely opposed to it. If the change is approved, I'm fine with coming up with potential times for the new Stours.

And sorry for the aggresive tone of my previous post.

Different times for different weeks could probably be a decent compromise (which I think wasn't tried before too?) but then the risk is that you miss the most "casual" portion of the playerbase, which is a relevant one in ST. It's a mess to make sure people understand such a chaotic schedule. Also, the outcome is still that you get an inferior number of signups, just not every week.

I think after all these years of trying it all comes down to what Perry mentioned. If you force times that can include all timezones you probably end up sacrificing a bit of partecipation. I personally believe we would regret turning such a historical and loved tournament in a side tour (in terms of perception), but I'm also not much involved in the timezones problem.

For these reasons the solution I'd like the most would probably be to try having 2 ST each year with different times as Finchinator and Drifting were proposing before. It's a cool solution because in this moment with a single ST per year you can try it without touching the already existing tournament and if it doesn't work - imo you still want a decent enough partecipation to keep the second ST in schedule - you can easily go back to the status quo.

 

[Finchinator]

I think the best change here is to expand to a second season (and potentially shuffle around the calendar a tad to achieve greater balance due to risk of massive overlaps in the fall with Classic, OLT, STour, Masters, etc. at once) like we previously had (Masters and either STour can surely change around a bit). Smogon Tour was always good with two seasons per year, and I find it unfortunate that there is only one slated to be this year.

One season at least should keep the current times -- Perry hit the nail on the head with regards to this season running smoother with more regular participation after all. The 6-4-2 (GMT-4, PM) times are classic and continue to have good results after all.

If the other season wanted to throw in an experimental variable with a time (not a fourth tour again, which should be a non-starter now) to see if we can ever appease more people while maintaining numbers, then sure (fine with it keeping the same as well) -- I am not going to lose any sleep over it because there's a reason these threads pop-up so regularly: clearly people care, but it's going to be hard to find the best specific solution. If not, this at least this presents a second season for possible flexibility + I think it was always better when ST was always every six months, not once per year.

I am speaking on behalf of myself and not the whole TD team (who I have yet to even formally propose anything to), but I am curious if anyone actually thinks 1 season is better than the historical status quo of 2 or if people are good with 2, since it feels like establishing this should come before anything else.

 

[ABR]

1) multiple st seasons existing alongside masters would contribute to unwanted inflation in the officials marketplace (and a burnt out playerbase leading to lower quality tours)

2) a second st season with "bad" times has all the same issues as a single "bad times" season. we tried it and it failed, that's life

pretty please do not mess with 2024's smogon tour set up in any way

 

[Finchinator]

1) multiple st seasons existing alongside masters would contribute to unwanted inflation in the officials marketplace (and a burnt out playerbase leading to lower quality tours)

I find it hard to believe that adding a second season of Smogon Tour, which existed for the entire history of Smogon, is suddenly too much just because of Masters. I find it especially hard to believe that someone who has not played Smogon Tour for years + dropped out of the start of Smogon Masters is the best gauge of this. That's not even a shot at you because you can join whatever you want and I am glad you do that, but it seems like a very "personal feel" based argument over anything concrete.

People are free to join whatever tournaments they want and can simply not play every last one if they are burnt out. Claiming Masters being added to the official circuit is suddenly crossing the line into some "unwanted inflation in the officials marketplace" is arbitrarily drawing the line and done without any actual proof. Feedback surrounding Masters has been very good besides some small format shifts, which happens with the first editions of every tournament. Smogon Tour being twice a year has been a staple and I received feedback that this is still desired. Seems clear-cut from there to me.

I resonate with you on times and the 6-4-2 being the best format personally, but obviously others feel differently there (see: this thread's initial reason for existence). Guess that's why we have these discussions

 

[Luigi]

The other solutions offered in this thread (4 tours, changing the times every 3 weeks, the nonsense Rewer suggestion) are unserious if anyone spends more than 5 minutes thinking about them. Bringing back the second season, which never should have left btw, is the only reasonable option. If this isn't feasible, we should simply do nothing.

That being said, there is no reason this shouldn't be feasible, but there are 2 questions to we must answer first: where does it fit in the calendar and what would the times be for it. I'm going to get the ball rolling on figuring out the first of those now, and we can work out the second one at a later date, though it should definitely still have at least 1 day at a good time and one day at a "reasonable" time for Americans and Europeans. Something like 2 AM, 4 AM and 6 AM EST would be a non-starter. I'm sure the players from the gmt+5 range will have illuminating posts on that topic.

Anyway,

Tournament Schedule 2024

This is what the tournament schedule looks like for 2024, with a few caveats:

• I didn't include finals of SPL, WCOP and SCL, since only a few people will still be in those. If you want to include those, add 1 week.
• I didn't include playoffs of Tour, Slam and Classic, nor top 16 of OST, OSDT, OLT and Masters, for the same reason. If you want to include those, add 4 weeks.
• I didn't include qualifiers for WCOP for the same reason. If you want to include those, add 4 weeks (we should make r1 of qualifiers 2 weeks btw, but that's a topic for another day)
• This doesn't account for potential tiebreaks.

This gives us the "building blocks" of the tournament schedule:

• WCOP lasts 5 weeks
• OST lasts 8 weeks.
• OSDT, Tour, and OLT last 9 weeks
• SPL and SCL last 10 weeks
• Masters lasts 11 weeks
• Slam and Classic last 13 weeks

We also have some general principles that should guide us when building the schedule. These are:

• SPL, WCOP and SCL should be in that order, and about 4 months apart from each other.
• The 2 Tour seasons should be about 6 months apart from each other.
• The schedule should aim to minimize overlap of tournaments that contain the same tiers, ie: Slam and SCL, Tour and Masters, etc. CG OU being somewhat of an exception to this due to how prevalent it is in the tournament circuit.
• There may be other rules influenced by real life factors, such as having the SPL draft in January being better than in late December because of christmas/new years, but I don't personally think (most) of those really matter, other than the SPL one.

With those ideas in mind, a possible schedule for 2025 could look like this:

graphic design is my passion

Biggest change is we have OLT moving up from late July to mid April, exchanging overlap with SCL for overlap with WCOP. SCL now instead overlaps with the second Tour. Master was pushed up a bit and OST pushed back a bit as well, to allow the first tour to move back a little. I left other tours unchanged.

You can open my image on paint and use the cropping tool to move the blocks around and make your own schedule, if you think you can improve on this.

Lastly, while this post aims at finding the ideal schedule for 2025 and beyond, i’m not at all opposed to saying “fuck it we ball” and having a second tour this year, which would start in late September.

- fan of the Smogon Tour

 

[Slowpoke Fan]

The other solutions offered in this thread (4 tours, changing the times every 3 weeks, the nonsense Rewer suggestion) are unserious if anyone spends more than 5 minutes thinking about them. Bringing back the second season, which never should have left btw, is the only reasonable option. If this isn't feasible, we should simply do nothing.

That being said, there is no reason this shouldn't be feasible, but there are 2 questions to we must answer first: where does it fit in the calendar and what would the times be for it. I'm going to get the ball rolling on figuring out the first of those now, and we can work out the second one at a later date, though it should definitely still have at least 1 day at a good time and one day at a "reasonable" time for Americans and Europeans. Something like 2 AM, 4 AM and 6 AM EST would be a non-starter. I'm sure the players from the gmt+5 range will have illuminating posts on that topic.

Anyway,

Tournament Schedule 2024

This is what the tournament schedule looks like for 2024, with a few caveats:

• I didn't include finals of SPL, WCOP and SCL, since only a few people will still be in those. If you want to include those, add 1 week.
• I didn't include playoffs of Tour, Slam and Classic, nor top 16 of OST, OSDT, OLT and Masters, for the same reason. If you want to include those, add 4 weeks.
• I didn't include qualifiers for WCOP for the same reason. If you want to include those, add 4 weeks (we should make r1 of qualifiers 2 weeks btw, but that's a topic for another day)
• This doesn't account for potential tiebreaks.

This gives us the "building blocks" of the tournament schedule:

• WCOP lasts 5 weeks
• OST lasts 8 weeks.
• OSDT, Tour, and OLT last 9 weeks
• SPL and SCL last 10 weeks
• Masters lasts 11 weeks
• Slam and Classic last 13 weeks

We also have some general principles that should guide us when building the schedule. These are:

• SPL, WCOP and SCL should be in that order, and about 4 months apart from each other.
• The 2 Tour seasons should be about 6 months apart from each other.
• The schedule should aim to minimize overlap of tournaments that contain the same tiers, ie: Slam and SCL, Tour and Masters, etc. CG OU being somewhat of an exception to this due to how prevalent it is in the tournament circuit.
• There may be other rules influenced by real life factors, such as having the SPL draft in January being better than in late December because of christmas/new years, but I don't personally think (most) of those really matter, other than the SPL one.

With those ideas in mind, a possible schedule for 2025 could look like this:

graphic design is my passion

Biggest change is we have OLT moving up from late July to mid April, exchanging overlap with SCL for overlap with WCOP. SCL now instead overlaps with the second Tour. Master was pushed up a bit and OST pushed back a bit as well, to allow the first tour to move back a little. I left other tours unchanged.

You can open my image on paint and use the cropping tool to move the blocks around and make your own schedule, if you think you can improve on this.

Lastly, while this post aims at finding the ideal schedule for 2025 and beyond, i’m not at all opposed to saying “fuck it we ball” and having a second tour this year, which would start in late September.

- fan of the Smogon Tour

Bumping this thread in support of the quoted post by Luigi. I would like to clarify that I am not looking for a Smogon Tour that is essentially held at 2, 4 and 6am for the Western hemisphere, what I want is a Smogon Tour that players in Asia and Oceania can feasibly play in.

 

[Star]

I think the discussions in this thread mostly boil down to a few questions.

1. Should there be a second smogon tour?
2. If there is a second tour, what should the times/format be?

For the second question, I think it’s safe to say 4 tours was not it and if we do run a second smogon tour the options are either have the same times as the original or be More Accessible to Asia/Oceania. I don’t think the times being completely focused towards those timezones is remotely feasible for an actually competitive tour on par with our other trophy tours. The size and competitiveness of the playerbases just aren’t the same and that’s a fact of life. I guess it can still be an option but I’d be shocked if this had broad community support.

Obviously we’ve had multiple attempts at figuring out compromises for times that weren’t incredibly effective but I think it’s ok (if we have 2 tours) to have one that’s more broadly accessible across timezones even if individual numbers take a bit of a hit. My thought is to have some kind of community survey on the topic broken down in the following way. Open to hearing feedback on the idea.

1. Do you support the return of a second Smogon Tour?
2. If there is a second Smogon Tour what should the times be? The 3 general options being original, compromise (NA + EU, NA + APAC, EU + APAC), and APAC focused. Don’t think it’s worth figuring out precise times for this survey that can be a follow-up exercise.

The intention of a survey isn’t just to directly use whatever the result is, because obviously people will have their personal biases too but to get a better idea on where community sentiment lies on these questions and help us make a decision.

Small callout: I don’t think ideas like “don’t make it a live tour” are worth entertaining, Smogon Tour being live is literally the whole point. There are other tours in the circuit for each of the relevant tiers if you want to play a non-live tour.

 

[Niko]

Smogon Tour has always been one of the funniest and more competitive tournaments on the site. I would be surprised if the return of a second tour isn't welcome by the community. As for the times, I'm not really good in this logistics stuff but I agree that it should still be a compromise, for it to be competitive you still want the most important timezones to have access at atleast 1-2 tournaments per week at a reasonable time.