SPL Format Discussion

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Hello, in this thread I'm going to talk about why SPL should stop including lower tiers in its format for the next, and future editions. Every time a new generation of games comes out, the format has to change from one edition to the next one, and there is less room to have lower tiers be part of it; when we already have another team tour that focuses on these. Just like it happened with WCoP, changes to this tournament will have to happen sooner or later, and I believe it's a good chance to set up the bases of it.

Before getting started, I want to clarify something. I don't have anything against lower tiers nor their communities, I like playing them and I think tournaments like Slam and Snake are fun and positive to the community. Refrain from posting in this thread if all you're gonna do is complain about why your main tier is necessary and needs to be included in SPL while not providing any valid arguments.

At the moment, this is the tier list distribution for Smogon's official tournaments:

SS OU: 7/9 (SPL, OST, Smogon Tour 1, World Cup of Pokémon, OLT, Snake, Smogon Tour 2)

SS UU: 2/9 (Slam, Snake) (was not a part of SPL XI because it barely was a real tier, and there was no room for it either way)
SS RU: 2/9 (Slam, Snake) (was not a part of SPL XI because it barely was a real tier, and there was no room for it either way)
SS NU: 2/9 (Slam, Snake) (was not a part of SPL XI because it barely was a real tier, and there was no room for it either way)
SS PU: 2/9 (Slam, Snake) (was not a part of SPL XI because it barely was a real tier, and there was no room for it either way)
SS LC: 3/9 (SPL, Slam, Snake)

SS DOU: 2/9 (SPL, Snake)

USM OU: 3/9 (SPL, Smogon Tour 1, Smogon Tour 2)
ORAS OU: 3/9 (SPL, Smogon Tour 1, Smogon Tour 2)

BW2 OU: 2/9 (SPL, Classic)
DPP OU: 2/9 (SPL, Classic)
ADV OU: 2/9 (SPL, Classic)
GSC OU: 2/9 (SPL, Classic)
RBY OU: 2/9 (SPL, Classic)

If we count Smogon Tour as one tournament, then USM OU and ORAS OU are part of 2/9 tournaments. So, besides SS OU (which is and should be the main focus of tournaments) there is not a balance between the inclusion of lower tiers and old gens, with lower tiers taking the lead. This is unfair. While removing old gens from WCoP seemed like a bad idea at first, I think most people that played it agree that it ended up being a positive change and helped creating a better team environment where everyone could work together through playing and discussing the same tier for the entire tour. The 10-slot to 8-slot change wasn't bad either, there wasn't a decrease of quality in games and as repetitive as the metagame was, it was for sure still as entertaining.

With SPL focusing on old gens, WCoP focusing on current gen and Snake focusing on lower tiers, official team tournaments would finally reach a balance that ends up positive for everyone. There is just no place to fit all the lower tiers either, with at least 2 slots for SS OU and 7 for the other gens. Some lower tiers would still be scrapped out of the tour if they were still to be included because all can't fit, just like there has been discussion about arbitrarily removing RBY from SPL's format because people don't like the tier (which I believe is still an option to this day).

Every lower tier has its own stablished community and tournament circuit now. If the lack of tournament play is a concern (when there are seasonals and the like in the Circuit Tournaments forum as SPL is ongoing), tier leaders can adjust said circuit to their necessities if these tiers don't make it into SPL.

Here is my proposal:

10 slots: 3x SS OU / USM OU / ORAS OU / BW2 OU / DPP OU / ADV OU / GSC OU / RBY OU

or

10 slots: 2x SS OU / SS DOU / USM OU / ORAS OU / BW2 OU / DPP OU / ADV OU / GSC OU / RBY OU

Considering lower tiers are out of the picture, lowering the slots to 10 seems the most factible option. 12 slots would mean that there are at least 4-5 SS OU slots, which looks like too much when we already had 4 OU players per team in what was an snoozefest metagame in Snake. WCoP already showed that more slots =/= more quality, and reducing them shouldn't be discarded as a possibility.

This is all without taking into account if DOU makes it or not. I'm including DOU because it was removed from Grand Slam some time ago (for reasons that I doubt were adressed publicly, as per tournament undirection's usual), and having it only in Snake would be unfair to their playerbase if balance is what we're looking for.

We have a brand new and pretty much unknown SS OU metagame. While the tier is still stablishing itself and this and that gets banned, with the decission of keeping the old metagame for the final stretch of Snake, until SPL this tier will only have been played "oficially" in the past Week 7 of Smogon Tour and in the Smogon Tour playoffs. Achieving an stability as soon as possible should be the goal, and for that 3 slots is the most ideal.

On a final note, regardless of this gets accepted or not, I'd wish for more transparency and incentive from the TDs on matters like these. These discussions always come out from the player side rather from them who, in the past, most of the time just took decissions without consulting anyone and enforcing them if nobody cared enough to fight for it.

Have a nice day and thanks for reading.
 
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Hogg

grubbing in the ashes
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I proposed something similar here - basically, split SPL into two separate tours, one with all old gens and one with all lower tiers, having the latter replace SSD. (I'm also really not a fan of the snake draft format, though, and think the SPL format is basically perfect, so I might be biased in that regard - I'd much rather have the premier lower tier team tour use the tried and true SPL auction/format than anything we've done with snake over the years.)

I don't really think it's necessary for every tier/gen to have exactly perfect representation, but I do think that there are limits to growth that we're rapidly hitting. For years we've been having debates about how much team expansion is too much and what should or shouldn't be cut out of SPL. Splitting up the tour like that seems to me to be a pretty solid solution for the next couple of gens, allowing us to expand without sacrificing competitiveness.

I've wasted a lot of words on this elsewhere and I'm at work so I don't want to repeat myself too much but basically - yeah, I agree, but also make snake into SPL2 but with lower tiers instead of old gens because it's the best team format.
 

Lily

wouldn't that be fine, dear
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UU Leader
kinda got sniped by hogg on this but I already had most of it written so might as well post it anyway, think I have some stuff to add anyway

SPL has long been seen as the "cream of the crop" tournament thanks to its long-standing history, memorable branding, and the more "skilled" management required (as in, auctions being more based around resource management rather than hoping your next pick falls to you). On top of this, many of the best players on Smogon have no interest in CG OU/lower tiers, so a lot of skilled players skip Snake and now WCoP as a result of it being exclusively CG OU. This results in the general view that WCoP/Snake rosters (Snake in particular) are "worse" and reduces the overall hype and interest for the tournaments. SPL doesn't have this problem because of the general (and imo incorrect) view that OU > all other tiers in terms of skill required and metagame health, among other things.

Now that I've played in Snake I can kinda see why people dislike it, despite the fact that I've had a great experience with my team. Lots of team chats were dead and the drafting format results in more "compromises" being needed, making it harder for managers to actually build the team they envisioned - again, creates an overall lower hype level. There have been threads made about people disliking Snake's format, or at least some aspects of it. Most of this is down to the tournament's lack of an identity, which I agree with - it does kinda just feel like "entry-level SPL", which is probably not what we want. I think the best way to go about fixing this is to remake Snake entirely - under a different name, to remove stigma - and then use SPL's drafting format for it. Current gen OU should also have its amount of slots in Snake reduced in order to increase the balance of how often each tier gets played; not sure what way you'd wanna do this, though. It'd be kinda arbitrary to decide which tiers get which slots, but you could also add more tiers (e.g. monotype) to make up for it, so idk.

I don't think splitting SPL in two is the move per se, because you're always going to have the feeling that one of them is the "real SPL" and one is just "SPL Lite". I think the way to go is to remove lower tiers from SPL, remove some OU from Snake, and then completely rebrand Snake from the ground up. The theme is cool and all but it's nowhere near as memorable as SPL and it's kinda tacky if anything. Using SPL's drafting format (Auction draft, not a Snake draft) also helps with pre-season hype, allows for more opportunities for new and upcoming players to get in because the value of each slot isn't necessarily as high as it is in current Snake, and rewards skilled managers, so there's really very little downside. It also ensures that lower tiers that would normally be cut from SPL like PU and LC still get the representation they deserve.

TLDR this idea is great as long as you adjust other team tournaments, primarily Snake, to go alongside it. Otherwise the representation of OU gets too big and the representation of lower tiers gets too low.
 

Luigi

spo.ink/shadowtag
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Hello

First a clarification on how picking tiers for SPL works since i don't think people are very familiar with the plan, if this doesn't interest you feel free to skip it, though i think it addresses the idea that SPL can't accommodate new gens coming out with its current format.

During the planning stages of SPL 9 the TD team of the time was tired of having to come up with a new SPL tier discussion every year and settled on a format to pick the tiers into perpetuity.

The formats chosen were:

for years where a new gen didn't come out: 2 CG OU, all old gens (at the time, RBY-ORAS, with the plan to drop RBY once gen 8 came out) and DOU, UU, RU, NU.

for years where a new gen did come out: 3 CG OU, all old gens (except the oldest, which would then be dropped in subsequent seasons too), LC, DOU, Ubers

This format meant that RBY would be removed once gen 8 came out (SPL 11), this did not happen due to the multiple cheating scandals that led to us removing Ubers from the circuit entirely, and meant RBY got to be in one last SPL, though the plan still was to remove it from SPL 12. This plan would drop the oldest gen every 3 years, though there was the provision to expand SPL to 14 slots when gen 9 was released if the community felt strongly about keeping GSC

So SPL 12 would be: 2 SS OU, GSC-SM, DOU, UU, RU, NU.
SPL 13: 2 SS OU, GSC-SM, DOU, UU, RU, NU
SPL 14: 3 CG OU, GSC-SS, DOU, LC
SPL 15: EITHER 2 CG OU, ADV-SS, DOU, UU, RU, NU OR 3 CG OU, GSC-SS, DOU, UU, RU, NU

etc, you can see how the system scales

TLDR: SPL can accommodate new gens just fine.

Now as for this proposal, i strongly disagree with it, i believe it does the tournament a great disservice in the long term, twisting the "spirit" of SPL, and in the short term, reducing the quality of the tournament.

What i mean when i say "Spirit" of SPL

SPL will mean different things to everyone that plays it, but since SPL II it has been the pinnacle of competition for every relevant metagame on Smogon, living up to its name as the premier league of the site. To me, this is a fundamental aspect of SPL, the merging of the best lower tier, old gen and CG players is the entire tournament, giving SPL an identity that all other tours in the site (except WCOP) lack, SSD can never be Summer SPL like Hogg proposes, not only because no one "buys in" to the tour at the same level but because it simply doesn't have the same "spirit" that SPL does (Over the years Snake can develop its own spirit, perhaps about being a proving ground for new players making the first leap to team tours, but it will take a while to get there, and i digress).

This is getting really abstract so let me use an example of (a part of) what i mean, SPL is the only tour that bridges the gaps in Smogon tournament culture, which is generally very segregated based on a) nationality, and/or b) metas played/time in which you joined the site. Only in SPL do you see things like Fear (Cypriot GSC player who made his account 14 years ago) and Rozes (American NU player from 2015) becoming good friends. This is very much worth preserving.

As is the concept of the best of every relevant metagame playing in the premier league.

SPL quality itself

Even if you think the previous section is sentimental and silly, hear me out on this one. Stripping the proposal down to its basic components, just with SPL 12 in mind, what you're doing is:

Removing: UU, RU, NU
Adding: RBY OU

That's it.

Now, RBY has a dedicated playerbase and it has its fans, but it is not a controversial statement to say it is the least well liked in SPL by the general public, both in terms of spectators, and the larger playerbase, and it is not a coincidence that the TD team plan i talked about above started the tier-removal process by looking at the oldest old gen, but even if you think RBY is the best tier in the site, can you in good faith make the argument that removing 3 tiers, which get a ton of ladder playtime and have very active, smogon-based communities, is better for SPL, in either the short or long term? From a competitive point of view, you'll get the best players of 3 metagames in the tournament as opposed to just the best RBY players, you'll foster more growth (which our tournaments are in desperate need of, if anyone has paid attention to the numbers), you'll certainly have more engagement from spectators.


TLDR: removing lower tiers from SPL turns it into a completely different and conceptually inferior tour, weakening its identity in the longterm, and cutting 3 tiers for RBY makes it a worse tour at face value on both the short and long terms.
 

EviGaro

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RU Leader
I agree with pretty much everything Luigi wrote above - the planning aspect and the lack of dividends for such a move are pretty much all you need imo - but I'd like to expand on a few things as well. First, yeah I mean the lack of growth there is pretty significant for a tournament that is the standard bearer of smogon's competitive scene. It turns SPL into even more of an hyperspecialized tournament, which in all honesty I get why people want it but 1- that's still sort of the case anyway and 2- it cuts the appeal for essentially everyone that isn't really that much into that. It's also a bit of a philosophical question about what you want SPL to be, which I guess is fair, between is this a tour for the extremely invested branch of the community or is it the Standard onto which the Smogon community is showcasing itself? It's pretty obvious that it has been ruled to move in the direction of the latter, and in my opinion, pointing out why that philosophy is the problem would be a much better starting point than crunching some of the numbers on tours, although more on that in a bit.

Case in point: that quote from the OP: "Every lower tier has its own stablished community and tournament circuit now. If the lack of tournament play is a concern (when there are seasonals and the like in the Circuit Tournaments forum as SPL is ongoing), tier leaders can adjust said circuit to their necessities if these tiers don't make it into SPL. "

Now yes, that's true, and as rutl it's definitely a good thing that we have almost full authority in what we think is best, that we can listen to the community, see what works and what doesn't and make changes in consequence. However, why are we doing this yearlong tour? Well from the first two attempts, it's kinda obvious what the payoff is: SPL. The year we did it and RU was in SPL, there's zero doubt in our mind that the playoffs of the RU circuit had a significant impact on who got to be bought in SPL to play the metagame. The top 4 of that circuit all got picked in SPL, some performances were definitely followed by the tour community and prospective managers, so all of that was a clear success. The following year? Sure it was still hype, but there's definitely a lesser goal knowing the next big RU tour is... RU Generations? I've already talked to people saying the RU circuit this year matters, so it's not like there's no reason for this picking up again, it's clearly the expectation that RU would be in SPL again. So yes, we can do things, but all of the options are far worse than what is the status quo.

The other big point for me, the number of tours vs older gens. Now yes, very old gens are getting a bit owned by the wcop change, but let's go a bit more recent to start with: SM OU with, well I guess I'll take SM RU again. Now when SM was the current gen and snake was formed, SM OU was in just one more team tour than RU, that being wcop. Of course it had more slots but let's not bother there. In individuals, OU had another big advantage given that RU was only in Slam Now? SM OU is still in a team tour, although axed from Wcop, and in two other trophy tours with both smogon tours. So it's in three right now, and will likely be for the next, what, eight years? Maybe? Well, SM RU has been dead as an official smogon tournament tier since last year. So, is this process unfair? The drastically lower shelf life of any lower tier due to them being contingent on being current gen to receive official participation makes me think that, well no, the current OU already has a net advantage, and by the time it becomes only a relic in classic, it will have been in what forty more official tours? The math doesn't work the same way for pre BW old gens, although they are still here and obviously their lower tiers have never really received any official participation. Maths wise then, I just don't see how it works at OU's disavantage if you look forward, but it gives some sort of a chance to lower tiers to be as relevant as possible.

But really then, if none of that makes you think otherwise about those points and no there's too much lower tiers, then really... just kill Snake? It's obviously the easier and simpler solution. Lower tiers shouldn't really have to bear the consequences of wcop moving to current gen, like unless I missed a big memo none of us were consulted on this. SPL is far, far more important to the development of our tiers than Snake, which even for us is moreso a novelty that is helpful to tier the metagame, but obviously has none of the impact SPL has, Again, our entire circuits are designed for SPL in mind, not Snake, and it's extremely telling when you look at the correlation of Slam to Snake that it's far less helpful to our communities than circuit to SPL is.
 
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shiloh

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Tiering Lead
going to make a post here myself as well. i honestly dont lean towards major support for either side as i am kind of conflicted here. for one i do want to see nu in the tour because i love the community and would love another chance for everyone to play it in an official tour, and continue the growth, but from a personal standpoint rby is the only tier id want to play in spl, and i would prefer if it was in the tour as well. so instead of voicing support for either side im going to just quell an argument ive seen some people make that this format would not be sustainable in the future, and that spl with lower tiers has a longer shelf life.

in fact, if we go by the format in the op this format should be around for the next ~11 or so years if nintendo keeps to the schedule they have for game releases with a new one every 3 years. ill map out what i mean.
2020/21 - 10 Slots (3x SS / 1x SM-RBY)
2022/23/24 - 10 Slots (2x Gen9 / 1x SS-RBY)
2025/26/27 - 12 Slots (3x Gen10 / 1x Gen9-RBY)
2028/29/30 -12 Slots (2x Gen11 / 1x Gen10-RBY)
overall this format should be fairly sustainable, and will not have to undergo major tier changes for a number of years, and by that point i do hope there is a large enough playerbase to support 14 slots. this sytem also will not have any changes therefore as generations change, much like how they do currently whenever lower tiers have to be swapped out for a third ou / lc. .this will also remove the issue of retains between these years as well, because it is a lot easier to get a top tier lower tier player cheap in a new game year and then retain them for 10k the following year. another pro that i see for this format is the fact that a lot of lower tiers also have shifted to having two team tours a year (also ltpl will def still be around) for just the tier, as well as the recent-ish addition of ribbons to the mix as well. i do think that ribbons do need to undergo a bit of a change though, and its something ive seen in quite a few chats as well, but thats a conversation for another thread. also spl really isnt the only way people vastly different can meet on the site, even though i do love Fear (<3), the reason we became friends was because i was his manager in a year without lower tiers, and so that point is kind of moot. with the amount of old gen players that also play snake nowadays (fear being a good example) theres still plenty of chances for lower tier players to meet old gen players, and even then lower tier players can still be bought in spl since skill does translate.

i did end up ranting a bit there, but im still unsure which spl version i prefer more, as i am being drawn in by both my position as nutl & as a rby player that wants to see / play it in a team tour as much as possible. i also do support just rebranding snake with an auction, but keep the tier split (maybe adding ubers in > an ou).

edit: we also do have plenty of evidence of non-lower tier spls working out fine since we've done it a couple of times now.
 

Gilbert arenas

Rex rhydon
is a Tiering Contributor
There are numerous problems with Lower Tiers in SPL. I'd like to preface this by saying I understand why there can maybye be a place for tiers with more prominent playerbases, like NU, as they definitely can add a breath of fresh air to the mix. With that said it's really frusturating to watch the inevtible juggles, shitty games and hot new prospects burn out after one good tour. Yes these things happen in every tier with every team, but from my understanding of watching this community over the past few years, the best lower tier players eventually move themsevles out of the tier, which only further dilutes the player pool making it weaker and weaker every year.
This leads me to my next point which is the overall lack of competition in Lower Tiers. Like any tier with a smaller playerbase (GSC,BW), the tier is naturally top heavy. There is one guy who stomps everyone, then a few guys who fight for their scraps, and then a few teams end up getting only 1 or 2 wins over the entire tour.
It's also very hard to value Lower Tier dudes from a managerial prespective. As I mentioned earlier many of yesterdays best lower tier players are filling out OU slots or oldgen slots in an SPL, weakinging the player pool. This brings into question the value of spending money in a tier where inexperienced players have thrived and highly decorated players have failed miserably. I think a tournament of SPLs precieved level should always have a very competitve and smooth draft, as the rest of the tour is hard as shit. Keeping lower tiers in the tour prohibits this, as many managers don't know much about the playerbases, and take advice from community members who have very obvious biases.
In regards to format, I think the focus of any tour should be on current gen OU. SPL has always been advertised as the best Pokemon on earth, and like I mentioned earlier, I am very against putting tiers with imbalanced player pools in this tour. I think we should omit RBY for obvious reasons, and GSC for reasons similar to the lower tier argument. The fact of the matter is not enough people can play the tier at a high enough level to produce 5 competitve games week in and week out.
Here are my four proposals for an SPL format. Ambitious they may be, I think that cutting the player pool size down will only motivate up and coming players to participate and do well in other tours.
Proposal 1:
ADV
DPP
BW
SS OU 5x

Proposal 2:
ADV
DPP
BW
SS OU 4x
Stour bo3/SSBO3

Proposal 3:
GSC
ADV
DPP
BW
Stour BO3/SSBO3
Current VGC format
4x SS OU

Proposal 4:
5x SSOU
Stour bo3/SSBO3
GSC
ADV
DPP
BW
I really think the addition of a BO3 slot will make top players more valuble(as they aren't relatively valuable to their cost ATM) , and provide a lot of great games.
Please consider:)
 
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lax

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Two things I really don't understand are the reasons why people want to remove lower tiers and the reasons why people want to keep RBY of all things.

First of all, I don't understand why equal representation means shit for deciding Smogon Premier League's tiers. Isn't SPL supposed to be just that, showcasing the most premier players and gameplay? Obviously, there are plenty of games and players that don't live up to the standard set as being Smogon's most "Premier", but let's not act like old gens do not also suffer in playerbases and being top-heavy? Do we not remember that most teams that do not secure the old gen player they want end up spending incredibly high on players that might not be worth that much? This is just a random example, and no offense to Blight, but if he was nommed within the first 10 players in SPL XI he just doesn't go for 18k, and that's just what it is.

In marcop's post when he talks about how SPL should be a smooth draft and how many managers don't know the lower tier player base so they rely on "biased" opinions... my response to this is l2d. How strong a manager's draft should be theoretically must be reliant on how good of a manager they are... and how good at scouting and figuring out who is worth at what price the managers are. SPL shouldn't just be straight-forward "ABR... wow that dude won a ton of tournament games... 45k!" or "rozes wow... that dude loses like every single game wtf lol 3k!". What separates the good managers from the bad managers is being able to reach out and find that talent for a good price and help them become the breakout player. I know this is what separates good from bad because I, shockingly, am a bad manager. In SSD 3, I overvalued some people and undervalued others, leading to an embarrassing tournament. This occurs time and time again with SPL, and you can see the teams that suck real bad or struggle because they make the same mistakes, like FV's team last year for example :P. There are a lot of things that contribute to a win in the SPL, and I'm of the opinion that the draft is incredibly important, as obvious as it may sound.

I obviously have a bias towards the inclusion of lower tiers as someone who enjoys playing them. Maybe the lower tier players can see what the old gen farts cannot, but there are so many upsides to including lower tiers. An obvious one is the size of the lower tier communities easily doubling, tripling, x whatever the amount as these old gen groups. Another key one is how lower tiers in the SPL advance the tier. Players innovate and create the meta before your very eyes in SPL, and the players that strive and succeed are the ones leading the charge, bringing new advances into the tier. I don't see how this can be viewed as anything but a massive net positive for Smogon. This isn't to say that innovation and setting the standard for new metas does not occur in old gens, because it obviously does with examples like Nightmare Starmie and the cursed Clefable DPP meta, but there are some metas that have had every single inch of it examined and analyzed... like RBY. The simple idea that we should replace 3 incredibly diverse, new generation metas with extreme potential in UU, RU and NU for a single old gen that is passed its time in RBY is baffling. I don't want to see the latest wrap spamming pokemon RBY can funnel out (there's only 2 viable ones anyways?) or see Tauros spam body slam vs a Reflect Lax. I wanna see entertaining and meta-breaking games with the best lower tier players working towards being the best. There is just too much to offer if we keep lower tiers, and too much to lose if we remove them for RBY.

I doubt the OP is being taken into consideration by the TD team, but I feel like this negative mentality from the old gen players in regards to lower tiers has got to stop. All they are doing is halting progress of tiers that many people actually care about.
 
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Amaranth

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UPL Champion
This isn't to say that innovation and setting the standard for new metas does not occur in old gens, because it obviously does with examples like Nightmare Starmie and the cursed Clefable DPP meta, but there are some metas that have had every single inch of it examined and analyzed... like RBY. The simple idea that we should replace 3 incredibly diverse, new generation metas with extreme potential in UU, RU and NU for a single old gen that is passed its time in RBY is baffling. I don't want to see the latest wrap spamming pokemon RBY can funnel out (there's only 2 viable ones anyways?) or see Tauros spam body slam vs a Reflect Lax. I wanna see entertaining and meta-breaking games with the best lower tier players working towards being the best. There is just too much to offer if we keep lower tiers, and too much to lose if we remove them for RBY.
I'm not gonna add much to this thread because I'll obviously come off as biased but I do want to say that 2020 has seen a lot of fresh metagame trends and RBY is still evolving much like all other oldgens. There are teams I brought in SPL11 that I wouldn't dare to bring nowadays against pretty much anyone, and new builds are still popping up all over the place. To say that "every single inch" of RBY has been analyzed is straight falsehood. Maintaining our presence in SPL will absolutely bolster the development of our community and our metagame - it would help us as much as it would help any other tier in terms of metagame development. (And yes I already held this opinion before I was even aware that bringing RBY back was a consideration in anyone's mind - I mentioned here a month ago how I felt about the stability of RBY atm)

If you want to cut RBY because you want to start cutting away the oldest generations, that's one thing. If you want to cut RBY because you think it's a dead meta that won't gain much from SPL representation, you're very wrong - we have a thriving community that would make great use of it and we are still in the process of pushing the boundaries of competitive RBY. It's far from solved and stands to gain a lot from putting our greatest minds against one another this year, much like it gained a lot each of the past three. I'm not gonna argue that it stands to gain more than lowtiers, but it certainly doesn't stand to gain any less.
 
Something that I'd like to be seriously considered as Gilbert stated is to bring back VGC as part of an official Smogon Tournament. I understand that doubles is the "Smogon" format, but I think the leading competitive Pokemon website should do more to promote participation in the only official format. This isn't a shaft against any other tier, but I think there's no better place to showcase VGC than our biggest tournament of the year.
 

Finchinator

-OUTL
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OU Leader
Going to keep this brief to not derail this thread into a VGC-DOU debate, but need to respond to this post:
Something that I'd like to be seriously considered as Gilbert stated is to bring back VGC as part of an official Smogon Tournament. I understand that doubles is the "Smogon" format, but I think the leading competitive Pokemon website should do more to promote participation in the only official format. This isn't a shaft against any other tier, but I think there's no better place to showcase VGC than our biggest tournament of the year.
I disagree profusely. We have no obligation to include any non-Smogon formats in our tournaments and the whole basis of your argument hinges on that. Smogon has built up an impressive DOU community with countless skilled/dedicated players and has done no such thing for VGC, which has a largely dead section on Smogon and a ton of representation throughout other, non-Smogon communities. While a lot of people in the former (DOU) community come from the latter (VGC) community, that does not mean we can interchange the two, especially on a whim without any drastic changes prompting it. If* a Doubles format is in SPL, it should still be DOU without a doubt.

*This post is not meant to say anything about the inclusion or exclusion of DOU in any tournaments, but rather the fact that it should be the option over VGC.
 
Going to keep this brief to not derail this thread into a VGC-DOU debate, but need to respond to this post:

I disagree profusely. We have no obligation to include any non-Smogon formats in our tournaments and the whole basis of your argument hinges on that. Smogon has built up an impressive DOU community with countless skilled/dedicated players and has done no such thing for VGC, which has a largely dead section on Smogon and a ton of representation throughout other, non-Smogon communities. While a lot of people in the former (DOU) community come from the latter (VGC) community, that does not mean we can interchange the two, especially on a whim without any drastic changes prompting it. If* a Doubles format is in SPL, it should still be DOU without a doubt.

*This post is not meant to say anything about the inclusion or exclusion of DOU in any tournaments, but rather the fact that it should be the option over VGC.
I'm not arguing with the fact that DOU has grown tremendously over the years, if you don't know, I was one of the earliest players during the BW DOU days. I just feel like VGC deserves its fair shake on Smogon and while we are not obligated in any way to support VGC, I believe we should. Yes, VGC is largely dead on Smogon, but this gives us the opportunity to start to regrow that section and become the premier site for all things Pokemon. Personally, I don't understand why we cannot support both metagames with DOU in Snake and VGC in SPL.
 

Yoshi

IT'S FINK DUMBASS
I think removing lower tiers from SPL is a good idea, but not because it would sustain RBY. In fact, removing lower tiers would actually better for lower tiers and for the competitive community as a whole.

I am in full support of SPL becoming full OU and Snake being rebranded into LTSPL. My reasoning is a bit meta but I think it applies heavily given that the competitive Pokemon scene is near-death. We need to do a lot more to not preserve but to grow the player base and overall community. Let me give a metaphor here:

Fortnite is a game marketed to children. It has a cartoony style, goofy characters, and is easy to pick up and play for everyone with an easy-to-learn format. Fortnite also has a competitive scene. The competitive scene is much smaller, with a much tighter community. Since Epic Games caters more to the casual player base (because it is much more profitable and easier to grow than the competitive scene), the Fortnite competitive scene is dying.​
Now imagine if the Fortnite competitive scene said: "Lmao fuck that, we're going to keep doing what we're doing and let the competitive scene die out." They're simply not doing that. They're letting old traditions die and moving on to new types of tournaments, content, and the like, and it's allowing their numbers to bounce back to something similar to what they once were. Why not apply the same philosophy to Smogon, another victim of a dying competitive community?

Luigi talked about how removing lower tiers from SPL would ruin SPL's identity, but I don't entirely agree with that idea. The big hype about SPL are the OUs. No one is waking up in the morning and is excited to watch Lilburr play pif in UU. They're excited to watch ABR and blunder battle off in BW OU, or seeing what version of stall reyscarface is going to bring this week.

Furthermore, we can't just think about the current player base. We absolutely have to draw in new players. Again, what people want to watch is OU. They come in from blunder and Joey's YouTube channels, who prioritize OU content, to then sign up and log on to Smogon and PS! for the first time and have OU shoved down their throats, whether it be for the fact it is one of the first formats on the ladder list, or through the populous OU room. Now, these people have also signed up to watch the most anticipated tournament of the year: Smogon Premier League. Now, imagine one's surprise when they get on smogtours for the first time to watch someone play RU with some mons they've never even seen before--more often than not, they're going to click off the website.

Although Smogon itself likely doesn't have concrete data on this, we understand this to be true by looking at data from other platforms which host competitive communities like ourselves. Let's take a look at Twitch streamer sypherpk. He mainly streams the Fortnite category, in which he gets 10k-15k viewers guaranteed. Sometimes, sypherpk wants to play something like Valorant or Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. With games like those, he'll get anywhere between 3k-5k views. Quite the dramatic difference.​

In this case, Fortnite is the OUs and the other shooters are the lower tiers. The people want to watch OU. If you want a more anecdotal example, just look at sign ups and spectator counts during OST, STours, and Grand Slam. Look at the activity of their respective forums. To preserve the quality and quantity of our competitive community, we have to give the people what they want.

But that isn't to say we should totally neglect lower tiers. In fact, it's the opposite of what I'm saying. As a lower tiers players, lower tiers feel like the heart of Smogon. They're groups of tight communities, borderline families. We can't let that die out. That's why I am support of making SSD a fully lower tiers tournament. Let's take a look at why isolation would be better for lower tiers.

1604715135687.png
This is a chart detailing average viewership and month-to-month growth on twitch.tv. Take a look at the end of this chart here. The last red triangle shows negative viewership growth in the month of July. At the end of July something happened: Logic was signed to Twitch. The beginning of August, where growth started going positive again, Shroud moved back to Twitch with a multi-million dollar deal.​
Logic and Shroud are only two streamers on the platform (and they don't stream as much as other streamers). Can two streamers really increase the growth of such a large platform over a several month period? The answer is yes and no. Yes, because they did bring a lot of those streamers on the platform. But, that wouldn't be enough to have such a large increase in average viewership. The reason this happens is because Logic and Shroud's non endemic users (users who did not previously use Twitch) have become endemic users. They've trickled down to other games, genres, and communities.​
This same ideology can apply directly to Smogon. If we get more people hype for tournaments like SPL by making it OU only (the bait), we can get them to help grow lower tier communities in the long run. This isn't necessarily an immediately rewarding strategy, considering we're much smaller than Twitch and the cost of getting a non endemic user is extremely high. But in the long run it will show extremely rewarding results.

I know it probably sounds stupid to people who play lower tiers, but Hogg's proposal is beneficial for literally everyone involved. If we work more with influencers and switch up the media marketing strategy a little, we can increase Smogon's competitive community and player base logarithmically near immediately (look at what happened when pokeaim made a YouTube video about how to sign up to OST).

At the end of the day, though, these are just some ideas from someone who doesn't even play Pokemon anymore nor has played in SPL or Snake. But I think an outsider's perspective is important, especially when they've got stats to back their perspective up. As a user of this website for four years, I don't expect you guys to drop the circle jerk, but I think if we want to preserve the future of competitive Pokemon on Smogon, it's certainly something to consider.

tl;dr: make SPL OU-only and Snake lower tiers only because it would likely increase Smogon's growth logarithmically.
 

watashi

is a Team Rater Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Three-Time Past SPL Champion
World Defender
2x ss bo3
2x stour bo3
2x classic bo5
2x slam bo5
1x doubles bo3
1x all tiers bo13 (no doubles)

pros:
  • all tiers are represented evenly :toast: if each series goes the maximum length every tier will be played 3 times (except ss ou)
  • lots of games = lots of innovation and metagaming
  • teams chats will be very active
  • if you win in bo13 you will be very cool
cons:
  • you have to play a shitload of games
  • you have to play rby
 
2x ss bo3
2x stour bo3
2x classic bo5
2x slam bo5
1x doubles bo3
1x all tiers bo13 (no doubles)

pros:
  • all tiers are represented evenly :toast: if each series goes the maximum length every tier will be played 3 times (except ss ou)
  • lots of games = lots of innovation and metagaming
  • teams chats will be very active
  • if you win in bo13 you will be very cool
cons:
  • you have to play a shitload of games
  • you have to play rby
This guy has my vote. Rest of the posts here (this one included) are irrelevant, there is already a perfect solution.
 
My ideal SPL would be:

- OU only (idc about RBY being there or not, and DOU should be included);
- All matches should be best of 3. Best of 1 promotes building over playing, and also makes swings of luck extremely detrimental to the series as a whole. Best of 3 mitigates both of these issues, I believe BKC proposed something similar some time ago, and he made some excellent points about it, I'd link the post if I knew where it was.

As for multi-gen slots, I'd only include a Smogon Tour best of 3 one, which makes the most sense to me. There are plenty of good players who try for ST every year, while having a series like a Classic bo5 would make for plenty of poor matches either in the bo5 itself or in other old gen matches, since the pools in some gens are already quite limited and you have to juggle way too many players.
 
I agree with the move to all OU, with a preference for keeping DOU in.

Every third year we need to ditch most of the lower tiers as is, and these years are not any worse than the others. If we already operate with something 1/3 of the time, 3/3 isn’t a big leap.

This may only matter for RBY right now, but what about GSC? ADV? Are we going to be cutting those out of our circuit from all but classic in a few years? Even if you want to say we should take it one year at a time, it is in the larger community’s best interest to foster RBY gameplay. It is a fundamental part of Classic, and unless that changes (I don’t think it does), then we cannot neglect it and cast it aside. It is not stagnant at all and has a much better player base than many other SPL tiers as is. Every other tier featured in an individual tournament has a team tournament to go with it.

In line with not wanting to bump to 14 to include everything, I believe 10 is a better number for slots than 12 is. You have more effort per tier and more individual control as a player. There’s no science behind this but after playing many team tours with 8, 10, or 12, I’m confident 10 is the ideal number.

It also isn’t really a pure trade of “three lower tiers for RBY” because we get 1) more focus per slot and 2) the possibility of lower tier players occupying OU slots. Someone like Santu, Neider, Garay or whoever else would strengthen an OU pool because lower tiers are not in.
 

Plague von Karma

Banned deucer.
To preface, I'm seen as a new face in the active RBY community, in part because I lurked for like...8 years, I think? I've been starting to compete properly these days, knowing full well about its intended removal from SPL along with other old gens in the future. I don't know if reconsidering it is on the table, but hey, if it isn't, that's life.

I really want to echo Amaranth's take on this, though, like him, I don't want to add much because I'm just as, if not more biased. I don't think you'll see too different an opinion from me, so if you want, feel free to just stop reading here.

Anyway, the point...generally I think there's a lot of ignorance regarding RBY.

The RBY community is far from "dead". If anything, it's seeing a bit of a resurgence. Discoveries, meta advancements and tiering decisions continue to be made, and now is a better time than ever to demonstrate that. We've had 4 "patches" made these past few months, has anyone even like...noted that? Generally, RBY's tournament representation is...poor, and removal of it from SPL would only worsen the situation. As seen with RBY Counter, there were a lot of known players excluded because of this. There's likely going to be something messed up found again eventually, and there's still tiering decisions to make regarding some desyncs. Why remove the opportunity for good RBY players to prove themselves on Smogon, potentially enabling future votes from people who still play? What's up with that? Say what you will about the feedback from some players, but they had a point, and the fact that happened in the first place is a testament to it.

Hell, if we look at the metagame, Exeggutor's usage has dropped significantly these past few years and is at an all-time low, allowing for a bit more diversity. The old lead trinity of Chansey, Victreebel and Jynx has completely changed, the sleep game is different, you're not often just trading paralysis out the gate either as some players switch Chansey in...to say RBY is solved, dead or both is, frankly, one of the most arrogant, misinformed takes you could possibly make. If anyone is interested in RBY and wants to refresh themselves, I encourage you to learn about it! It's a like-it-or-hate-it kind of thing, but it never hurts to give it a shot! Who knows, maybe you'll change your mind!

I'm of the understanding that older generations have the intention to be removed as time goes on, and that's perfectly ok and understandable. There are 8 generations now, and only so many spots. In which case though, I adore Hogg's idea...
I proposed something similar here - basically, split SPL into two separate tours, one with all old gens and one with all lower tiers, having the latter replace SSD. (I'm also really not a fan of the snake draft format, though, and think the SPL format is basically perfect, so I might be biased in that regard - I'd much rather have the premier lower tier team tour use the tried and true SPL auction/format than anything we've done with snake over the years.)

I don't really think it's necessary for every tier/gen to have exactly perfect representation, but I do think that there are limits to growth that we're rapidly hitting. For years we've been having debates about how much team expansion is too much and what should or shouldn't be cut out of SPL. Splitting up the tour like that seems to me to be a pretty solid solution for the next couple of gens, allowing us to expand without sacrificing competitiveness.

I've wasted a lot of words on this elsewhere and I'm at work so I don't want to repeat myself too much but basically - yeah, I agree, but also make snake into SPL2 but with lower tiers instead of old gens because it's the best team format.
This feels like the most equitable solution: people shut up about RBY and you get tours with the generations and lower-tiers as an entire identity, which I think you could do a lot with theming-wise, but that's a discussion for another time. Seriously, though, I think the idea is great.

I think rozes put out a great point as well, in that, well, why remove generations at all? That system looks great from what I'm seeing, and adopting it feels like a bit of a no-brainer. SPL has had all-gen representation forever, and I'm very sure that there will only be more problems by the time ADV is (eventually) removed. These generations are far from solved and it would pain me to see years of optimization chucked out. It's one of the biggest appeals of old generations, and their removal is squandering it.

However, to remove it based on the misconception that it's some static metagame with nothing to offer, or that you "just don't like it", that would be a tragedy and a slap in the face of the community. You don't have to like it, that's not my point at all, and nobody should take that right to an opinion away from you. However, to arch over and use that to fuel an agenda that the generation is dead is...kind of messed up, really.

If I'm misunderstanding anything, feel free to point it out and/or rip me limb from limb.
 

Fran

formerly Frania
is a Tiering Contributor
DPL Champion
While certainly Bo3 removes some elements of luck (and often stress) I don't believe it should be considered for a team tour format. In my opinion it would make the tournament much less enjoyable and take away from the teamwork aspect of it. In my experience it's hard to support all the players in the slots I'm competent in already, but now if each of them had to build 3 teams everyone would have to work on their own thing and keep all the good ideas to themselves. Furthermore weekends and especially Sundays are something I always looked forward to as I could not only watch my teammates play, but also check on how my friends were doing. If we were to suddenly increase the number of matches 3x it would make it really hard to keep up with what was happening and pretty much impossible to avoid overlaps even between teammates.

I'd also like to add some arguments on why I believe Doubles should be kept in SPL:

- SPL is the most prestigious team tournament on Smogon. If we want to keep onboarding best in the world VGC players to our website (like we have done for multiple years now) they should get to participate in the best tournament.

- DOU has much more common in OU rather it does with lower tiers. Doubles is not a part of Grand Slam, doesn't participate in tier shifts, uses different pokemon than lower tiers. We use pretty much the same stuff as OU players do and and this point have at least 4 generations (SS, SM, ORAS, BW) where we can exchange set ideas and work together.

- Doubles doesn't have a single individual tournament where its players can earn a trophy. I believe this is completely reasonable, as the tier is not as easily accessible to most, but it is only fair we get to compete in tournaments for 2 trophies like the other communities do. Old gen OU players have Smogon Classic (or Smogon Tour, depending on the tier) and SPL, lower tier players have Grand Slam and Snake Draft, so I think we should get to keep our 2 tournaments that are taken seriously by the rest of Smogon.
 
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chiming in to say:

SS OU (x2)
STour Tiers Bo3
SM OU
ORAS OU
BW OU
DPP OU
ADV OU
GSC OU
RBY OU

lower tiers make this tournament incredibly clunky. as abr pointed to, every few years we are thrown a wrench with new releases and spend weeks debating what tiers to put in this fucking tournament! i have been involved in this discourse since before my balls dropped; it is ridiculous! all OU-only creates a smooth precedent that won't have us re-evaluating ad infinitum.

as per luigi's point, i believe the spirit of SPL has always been the pinnacle of competition, not the pinnacle of kumbayah. no offense bros, but i, for one, am not trying form a sewing circle, hold hands with rozes and fear, and smile in NUTL and GSCOAT harmony. rather, i am trying to participate in the most competitive tournament possible, which will always lead back to OU-only. and this is not to start a debate if old-gen ou tiers will be more competitive than lower tiers. please don't devolve the conversation to this point. we've already had it.

yes, all ou will be more competitive and will provide a wider playerbase to choose from

if you want to circlejerk in your discord with as many bros as possible, then just come out and say so. like, it's fine and dandy and i get why you want to. community is fun! but don't try to intellectualize your biases with a finchinator-style rundown about how you want the most competitive tournament ever. coz u don't. i prioritize the prestige of this tournament over having a couple extra people to shoot the shit in discord. besides, half of the teams' discords have like 100 helpers so is this even a relevant point?

if you take anything away from my post though, let it be this: i heavily advocate for an stours slot. i think it justifies expensive players, makes drafting more decisive and interesting, and would have some cool series to watch every week between some heavy hitters. we'd see some great matches weekly guaranteed!!! what's not to like?

also: making spl ou focused and streamlining the prestige of the tour while making snake lower tier focused gives equal representation of old gen+lower tiers in officials
 
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i agree with spl focusing on ou and removing lower tiers. i don't have any new arguments to make regarding that but i also wanna support the shift from 12 to 10 slots.

i never agreed with the inclusivity argument and very much disagree with 14 slots. spl is the site's most prestigious tournament designed to showcase the best of the best. it SHOULD be exclusive. there should be a lower number of slots and it should be very hard to get on an spl team. a lower number of slots accomplishes this and 10 seems to be the ideal number right now

e: im not sure abt a bo3 slot or whatever, it seems weird. i think doubles should be in though
 

McMeghan

Dreamcatcher
is a Tournament Director Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis an Administrator Alumnusis a Dedicated Tournament Host Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis the 5th Smogon Classic Winneris the Smogon Tour Season 14 Championis a defending SPL Championis a Past SPL Champion
Big Chungus Winner
Rather than just liking the posts I agree with, just wanna say that I wholefully agree with prestige of the tournament being associated with the number of OU slots, don't have arguments to add though.

I also think Bo3 increases consistency and competitivity across the board but I doubt it would be accepted as the norm because people really like the idea of preparing and teching it up for a single game.

The way I see the game, players who regulary build and play would get rewarded by coming in the tournaments with teams ready and tested while coming up with new things here and there, meaning they'd always have a stash of teams ready to play a Bo3. I also reckon that it's probably more exciting to watch Bo1s in general though and it's also easier to schedule/complete this way.
 

atomicllamas

but then what's left of me?
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
I'm like pretty reluctant to post this cause I don't care /that/ much if lower tiers are removed from SPL. But I do want to address some of the fundamentally bad arguments for doing so. Firstly, it is actually so dumb that people always just assert, as if it is an objective fact, that old gen ou in these tournaments are fundamentally more competitive than lower tiers, when as someone who has both played in SPL lower tiers, and managed twice, this is not even close to true. There are no lower tiers that are forced to be played in a Bo3 in the tournament because people involved in the tour scene think the meta game itself is fundamentally too luck dependent. Before anyone jumps on me about "dissing" rby or whatever, I actually am fine with RBY, if this tournament does switch to all OU and keeps RBY it should be played as a Bo1 (people talking about consistency of including lower tiers in the tournament should agree with this as well).

As for the player base, because the people saying this are just going with a thinly veiled "lower tier players bad", this assertion is baseless. I'm not gonna go through a whole list of examples of lower tier players that have transitioned to OU full time and done quite well, or even just participated in WCOP and done well enough, but either way asserting, without evidence they are worse is dumb. Additionally, I think the argument could be made that lower tiers are /more/ competitive in team tournaments like these. In my experience purchasing for certain old gens (GSC is the first one that comes to mind) is a nightmare. The top to bottom difference of the players in some of these pools is so high that it demands you spend 18K+ on a slot unless you want someone who can only go 3-6 or 4-5 at best (and even then you're still spending like 9k on that slot). This is not the experience I had when managing for lower tiers, yes there were people you could spend 18k on and they'd do very well (ajna in ru comes to mind for me), while also having a deeper pool of active players. I think UU as a whole is probably better as a pool from top to bottom than all the classic tiers except maybe BW, and I don't think RU or NU are that far behind. The reality is there is a much bigger pool to scout from as well which increases the skill it takes to manage the auction portion of SPL.

One of the other things that has been discussed as a reason to drop lower tiers is that it has a lesser "draw" for smogon, or that somehow it is better for the smogon community to include old gens over lower tiers. I think this is also pretty blatantly false. A lot of people are getting involved with smogon because they are drawn to lower tiers, in contrast smogon isn't even the main website for RBY anymore (see recent RBY tiering debacle in PR). If SPL is the tournament by smogon, for smogon, lower tiers are a much more fitting choice to keep in this case.

I want to emphasize again, that it does not really bother me if lower tiers are dropped from SPL. But it should be because we want 3 separate team tournament identities (all current gen OU, all current gen (lower tiers and OU), and all OU (old gens and current gen)). But lets not pretend its because lower tiers are less competitive or because it would be somehow better for smogon the website.

Either way for sure keep CG DOU.
 
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Just wanted to add my 2 cents that prepping for a bo3 slot every week is a nightmare. Expect a lot of reused teams and lack of prep - people barely have time to prep 1 team, let alone 3. I would definitely prefer to keep all slots at bo1. Don't feel super strongly on lower tiers vs old gens.
 

Diophantine

Banned deucer.
Saying that RBY is bad because it's "Wrap/Para/crit/bull spam" or "just the same shit" is uninformed and I won't develop that statement because people above already have. Even if you are informed and you still think it's bad, that's still just your opinion. Evidently, a lot of people genuinely love RBY. Even non-RBY players/non-community members such as myself enjoy watching and playing it from time to time. I can say ORAS is just as bad. Should it be removed? Of course not. Others will tell you how much they hate GSC, DPP or SM, etc. You get the point.

In that same breath, the reasoning that "OU > lower tiers because blunder and aim play them more often so more people are interested in them" is bad and can equally be applied to gens 1-3. Yes, loads of people become interested in Smogon thanks to those types of channels, but a) OU is in every team tour anyway and b) people can like more than one thing, especially if those things are quite similar (Pokemon battles are Pokemon battles). I don't even know if drawing new audiences in with tournaments is even part of Smogon's objectives; if it were, I'm sure they'd use their Youtube channel.

That being said, I think it's pretty unnecessary to have lower tiers in SPL. Having more tiers in a tournament makes each game have less of an impact because they can get away with losing more games. Also, it means managers have a much harder time because they have to know the dynamics of the playerbases of 8 OU tiers, DOU, and however many lower tiers that are in the tour. Yes, you can argue that this would reward people going out of their way to research that, but even after the auction the managers should try to keep up with their players to make sure they're doing well, and can only really do so with some sort of insight into the format that they are playing. Expecting managers to have insights on all of these is a bit of a stretch, especially since (guessing here but pretty confident) most, if not all, managers are in full-time education or employment, and it's not like they get paid or anything to be a manager. This is just a hobby, after all.

Lower tiers have SSD and GS already, along with their own unofficial tournaments. They don't really need another official tournament. SSD just feels like a less interesting SPL at this point. There's also the "which lower tiers should be in SPL?" debate that doesn't really need to be a thing when you can shove them all into SSD.

TTL;DR: SPL: OUx3, STour, DOU, old gens preferably. If not, OUx2 and no STour.
 
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