Solopl3 Lookback
Tier Selection Committee and Process - I definitely think this was a good idea to have, though I wish that there had been more community involvement in terms of actually joining and vetting the tiers. It was essentially Geko and Beaf doing all of the testing, I showed up halfway through and could really only talk about MG2 and Yoshi BW. As much as I hate to say it, I do think Soda does have a point that there should probably be a several day grace period between when tier submissions close and when they are actually decided on. I will admit I was personally opposed (though only slightly) against 33 Valuemons at the time, and definitely would not have voted for it in the poll had it been included. In hindsight, it probably should have been included in the poll. That being said, the main purpose of submitting tiers to be approved is to ensure they have resources and have been played much more, so submitting the tier five minutes before the deadline isn't exactly the best impression either. I also think having the poll at the end was nice, but ideally will not be necessary in the future.
Restricting Changes During Solopl - This has been the point of discussion so far in this thread. I would like to point out the complete reversal from last year. Solopl1 was largely just people already involved in petmods, so when 7/8 tiers had midtour changes and bans, this wasn't really an issue because, believe it or not, we are used to playing bad metagames. However, during solopl2, the Dave Invasion and general increase in tour mainers signing up brought more players from outside the petmod community. The main complaint I remember from the most recent PMPL and solopl were that tiers changed too frequently. Again, believe it or not, but many petmods and solomods are relatively unbalanced due to a number of factors. This lack of balancing means that there naturally will need to be nerfs, buffs, and bans throughout the course of solopl. Players were frustrated that metagames shifted heavily every single week (or two) because of how many changes needed to be made. The "limit three changes during solopl" restriction was introduced to counter this. I'm not really sure the best course of action. I think the current rule is fair as you can still make three separate changes to the tier over the course of the tour. There are only 9 total weeks, and ideally there aren't any changes that are getting made during playoffs either, so realistically you have three changes to make between weeks 1-7. To be completely honest, I think if your tier needs to be making more changes than that, it probably should not have been in solopl anyway.
The restriction on how many tiering actions we were allowed to make to our metagames during the duration of the tournament made it very hard for us to balance ZA OU and made most of the council and community die out as a result because we felt pressured to make all of our changes in one fell swoop to not exceed the 3 action maximum. Please don't restrict the actions solomods are allowed to make to this extreme in the future.
This feels disingenuous, we felt like we couldn't make any changes despite the new Z-A DLC just dropping like how most normal tiers do quickbans etc because of the restrictions placed on us, not the other way around. We would've done more tiering if it weren't for the limit we had.
ZA OU is obviously a unique case because it has a much larger playerbase than the entirety of the petmods community, so it was always going to be getting included. I still don't think it should be that hard to balance with three total changes. I will also add, seemingly there were zero changes that ZA even made during the course of solopl? The only patch came at the very beginning of week one so clearly this restriction did not matter? Concept and iguan both pointed out that POA and MH had their separate solopl formats so, while that is not ideal, I don't think there is any harm in considering it for ZA in the future.
Thoughts on the Newcomers
POA - Runo somewhat already addressed our teams thoughts on it. I think I'm less of a fan of this tier than Runo is but it's definitely fine. I was more down on the tier in the middle of the tour when it felt pretty solved, but I think Runo showed me there is more room for creativity. I still think Starhuz is stupid and Starfall is the worst designed ability ever. Council can try and convince me otherwise but making a good mon and then giving it an ability that just removes hazards on entry is stupid. Yes it can be pursuited but all the pursuiters are awful. The Loxicant guy I think is also a bit overtuned. It's not broken or overly strong, but it's too good in the sense that you can in theory just remove fairy types from the game with it (outside palde I guess), and it's also just a good mon on top of that. You're giving it 90bp steel type pursuit or whatever on a poison/steel levitate mon with knock, spin, defog, rocks, and other coverage. You look at something like Magnezone or Magnegauss even in POA, and it's a not great mon that has a niche of being able to just delete a type that your team can abuse. Loxicant is just a good mon who you can already just bring normally, and then you give it rocket grab. Too much in my opinion. Obviously Niander is broken but I don't think debilitatingly so to the tier, a minor stat nerf I think is fine and teams can already tech hp fire for it.
MH - Did not touch this tier, I don't think I can confidently talk about it but seemingly pretty unbalanced, had far and away the most changes made. That being said, people seemingly did enjoy this tier even if it was not balanced. For a tier that was included because it would get a bunch of signups, it was basically smack in the middle in terms of the number of players that signed up with BW and POA being the lowest, and ZA and DNU being the highest.
VGC - VGC was a tier that was pretty highly praised in solopl1-2 but I think the playerbase enjoyed it much less this time around. I'm not sure if it was just the new mons, or if it is just that the higher level of play meant a greater understanding of the tier and therefore allowed the players to see its flaws. Not really sure. VGC was previously a lock but if there are other VGC submissions next year I wouldn't be opposed to considering them instead. That being said, the FE VGC sprites are always fantastic and it is visually fun to watch live (though watching with replays you don't get the sprites and it becomes ass to watch grrrr).
ZA - Did not touch the tier, see OLK's thoughts above. I will say that I think other players on our team were not impressed by Yard compared to OLK so I suppose you can take that into consideration.
Touhou - Touhoumons was a tier that Beaf (sorry I'm throwing you under the bus) in particular was somewhat skeptical of because it was changed pretty severely after its initial tour which had just ended which is why it was not immediately approved. It was convincingly voted in and, while the metagame was certainly not perfect, I think probably had the happiest playerbase out of any tier in the tour and should definitely be in the next iteration of solopl.
BW - I had fun playing the tier in initial testing but I thought it would be a bit unbalanced and I think I might have been right. I was a bit surprised to see that it actually won the vote, I thought surely scootopia would be included again (which I also wasn't ecstatic about either) but it turns out the people crave oldgen. It seemed like the players were generally in favor of this tier, though I'll be honest I might be more inclined to see this slot get subbed out in solopl4. I hate to say it but 33 Valuemons could be a better replacement here. I don't hate the inclusion of BW, but I think it was a bit risky and could have been much worse considering the game had like 5 games played ever before it was originally submitted.
Wont really address DNU and MG2 because of bias and because they've been in solopl all three iterations so it seems like they are less conversational to begin with. It seemed to me like the players in these tiers did not hate them.
Only slots I have locked for next year are ZA, DNU, and Touhou. I think POA would be a fine inclusion, I think we need a VGC rep as always and most likely FE VGC would be the best option and I wouldn't be upset about that. Obviously I would want MG2 back but I will let others give their thoughts on that. Not a huge fan on MH but if the players really do like it I wouldn't be super opposed. Somewhat against Yoshi BW being brought back.
Hosting Decisions - I won't really go into details, and wasn't really planning on talking about this publicly but Geko made the thread for I'm assuming this general purpose, but during finals there were several somewhat questionable decisions I think regarding subs. I would say as a general rule that asking TDs can never do any harm if there is any doubt about a ruling. I get that the petmod forum might not be their number one concern, and that petmods in particular has some unique decisions that need to be made in certain cases, but for more general questions like subs then I don't think asking TDs is ever a bad idea.
Regarding the issue of more solopl specific rulings, I think this can be mainly done in-house. I suppose for the case of MG2 there might need to be more enforcement on if tiers can be played on DH or challenge command on main. This was a very, very big issues with MG4 where ash-gren was legal on main but not DH, Terapagos was legal on DH but not main (or vice versa I can't remember), and then like 30% of hidden abilities didn't work on DH but did work on main. Obviously that dramatically changes the landscape of what you can and cannot bring. R8 wanted me to mention this but, during tiebreak, originally the MG2 game should have been played on main challenge command because replays on DH were broken, but then it was discovered that the coding on main had changed and all of a sudden knocked items could not be hit with poltergeist (this was not the case for the history of MG2!) which is a minor change from DH but still notable enough that the game was to be played on DH to keep it consistent with the rest of the tour despite replays being broken.
Dave's Dusknoirs - Larry + Mana 
Mid Metangs - Jumpheart + Noglastica 
Slugmas Slugmas Slugmas - Quinn + NecasInTrouble 
Workers' Union of Gourgsokyo - anaconja + FlamPoke 
Gallade Gladiators - JeoZ + Zpice 
Stamford Starlies - CoruptedUsername + AnnadeNeko 
Earnest Espurrs - GhastlyPixie + Clas 
Terrifying Tanukiefs - Concept + Cow + Spammernoob
