St. Patrick and the Casting Out of Snakes

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Sabella

formerly Booty
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  • Format and Tiers Played
    • Please, for the love of god, no more 4 CG OU slots
    • Tiers included
      • Multi-tier slots?
    • Total team slots
      • Number of subs?
      • In money auctions, fewer required subs = more competitive auction, more required subs = more forgiving auction
    • Weeks? Pools? Bo1? Bo3? Who qualifies for playoffs?
    • Number of teams?
  • Team Continuity
    • Retentions
      • SPL system
      • Re-auction (essentially you auction off your retains, several ways of doing this, including incorporating it into the second stage of a two-stage auction system)
      • Full retention of teams from year to year plus a free agent system! It's teal6's dream!
    • Expansion or reserve draft

Later gators.
So i wanted to comment on my personal opinion regarding the tiers played and team continuity. I agree with you on the no more 4 CG OU slots. For a tournament thats supposed to highlight lower tiers i dont see the point in 4 CG OU slots. it dilutes the level the games are played at sometimes and frankly it gets a bit boring. I think 2 CG OU would be more than fine especially considering we have all CG OU in WCOP and 3x CG OU in SPL now. As for the remaining tiers, UU RU NU PU LC DOU Ubers Monotype/Bo3 seems viable. Not a fan of bo3 option mainly because preparing 3 teams for a set each week is a headache and by week 9 no one is going to want to continue doing this especially if a tier has issues so i think staying from the bo3 is probably a better idea.

As for team continuity, we could just piggyback off the current SPL system which seems fine but the concept of being able to retain a whole team year after year seems like a very interesting concept to me. It rewards being a great manager much more because if you build a championship team one year you can start to create a dynasty. A way to minimize this being uncompetitive to other teams is making the retains go up 3k like we do for spl each year. Essentially its like paying the players a signing bonus or a luxury tax. It gives teams much more of an identity year to year as well which i think is great for spectators. I will touch a bit on this later tonight more because im getting ready to leave work but just wanted to drop some initial thoughts!
 

EviGaro

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Just a few points:

- Monotype absolutely deserves to be included in some capacity. It's not just because it's an "official" tier, but honestly? It's kinda hype to watch and play in. It's only pure matchups to people who aren't super familiar with it, and if you are in any point you understand how much more intricate the tier is and how to build around. It's definitely rewarding, as much as playing many of the "serious" tiers on smogon, and it's absolutely evidence of skills to be able to consistently perform in it. There's also a good community for it, one that's been generally very included on the website, and it's definitely the most obvious and appealing chance to see it make the jump. Think about that too, if you make this new tour - Champions League sounds cool, admittedly - about only tiers that were excluded from SPL, you already lose a lot of the brand to begin with. Taking this as an opportunity to add a tier that's been around for a while, is very popular, has developed some of the community's most well known personalities and is just hype in game and in the expectation of it alleviates the issues, and just makes sense.

- I kinda recoil at the idea of just... transferring teams from tour to tour because that's way too drastic a step for such an issue and really has not much precedence in any level to make me think it's a good idea. However, I do think that if this tour wants to succeed - and realistically, it needs to - it requires some planning that would go towards future iterations of the tour, and not just make this first one very good despite the need for it to be. So, quick proposal that I might edit lol: expand the retains from SPL to three or four, make them less costly, and have at least one manager from each team sign up to manage two or three tours.

That last point can be kinda eh? given the turnover for every year, but it's certainly not impossible. At lot of the snake managers, despite the tour being unhype according to the mainstream, still were mainstays of the tour community and experienced managers. So really, a three years commitment isn't that big of a deal, really. But it would help, on top of the easier retains, to create identities for teams in this new tour, and just relationships specific to it rather than just what happens on smogon as a whole. Obviously, you'd need to find the people interested to try this, which in turn probably means having the bases of this tour setup a fairly long time in advance and start that search soon rather than two weeks before player signups, but making sure we can retain managers, in my opinion, is by far the most important step towards making sure this tour has an identity that makes sense. And while SPL didn't really do it that way, the fact that managers are easily identified to their team's brand seriously helps the tour maintain its identity, imo.
 
Re: monotype, honestly mono is one of the metagames I really haven’t followed much at all in Gen 8, so I’m probably not the best person to consider whether it deserves a slot as compared to a third SS OU slot (or some other option, such as Bo3). I don’t think that simply being an official metagame should necessarily guarantee team tour inclusion, though, so if we incorporate mono it should be on its own merits, and not solely for inclusion’s sake. From the perspective of a tiering admin, there are a LOT of non-tournament reasons why tiers/metagames might push to become official, including site resources like dex support, Tiering Contributor badge status, forum placement, permanent PS ladders, etc. I don’t really like the idea that making a tier official guarantees a team tournament slot, because then it adds a new consideration any time someone tries to go official, and could potentially hold communities back from official status purely to avoid having to add them to team tours.

So yeah, not nixing the idea of including mono and in many ways it would fit in really nicely alongside 2 OU slots. I’d just like to hear from more folks in the community who have experience (both pro and con) re: its competitive merit and potential inclusion here, because like I said I don’t think I’m the best qualified person to speak on that.
I wouldn't mind dropping some thoughts on mono. I originally came from the tier back in early 2017 so I've witnessed the tier transition from cancerous side servers to an official and thriving metagame. I'll try and put some reasons why I think monotype should be included from a tournament perspective and some potential cons.

1. Playerbase: I'll firstly start out by saying monotype's playerbase is amongst the biggest and most active. Now while that isn't necessarily a good thing since we look for quality over quantity in officials, there are no shortage in my opinion of good, competent players who will be able to bring decent, if not good, quality games to this tour. There are people who primarily play the metagame (mainers) but also a whole slew of other tournament players who dabble in the metagame who would be able to provide both testing and support to the slot. Speaking from experience, on my team in MPL last year, we had 4 players from the RU community myself included who've regularly played MPL and mono in some capacity. A whole other bunch of tournament regulars frequent the tier so there are plenty of players who will be willing and are able to deliver good games in an official. A potential con is that there are some real idiots in the playerbase who you have to be cautious while drafting in an official setting but no playerbase is devoid of that anyway, a little bit of scouting by managers will make it apparent.

2. Approachability of the tier: I knew gen7 mono quite well but coming into MPL, had very little idea of gen8 which was somewhat true of the non monotype mains on our team. We did require support from both our very helpful and active managers, Kev and Izaya and our workhorse retain Dugza but overall, it was a fairly approachable meta and I was able to practice and grasp the meta fairly quickly. From a tournament perspective, I'd say that means that the mono slot is not very hard to support and shouldn't be alien to many players on the team. To give a counter-example, doubles to me requires a bit more specific knowledge in order to build, play and support that slot (though from personal experience I really enjoy the tier anyway). That would therefore make drafting a mono slot easier either for a main or for another tournament player to slot in.

3. Leadership: I think this is potentially one of the stronger points about mono. The TLs and council, both in the present and past, all regularly play the tier in respective circuit tournaments and unofficial tours. They stay on top of tiering decisions that need to happen and given their friends with many community members, have a pulse on what's going on and the complaints players have to make informed decisions. Mono's probably not gonna change over the course of a tour like this anyway unless some new DLC or some shit drops like a gen4 remake but the tier can handle any chaos that comes its way

4: Dryness of the tier: One reason I branched from monotype eventually was at the time I felt the tier was a bit dry. There weren't regular drops or rises like in lower tiers so no new tools to play with as such so in my eyes that could be a con. However, at the time I also wasn't really a frequent builder. Some of the more innovative builders in the tier explore it enough to even come up with new metagrame trends. Even types in monotype actually come in and out of vogue. From watching enough tours in gen7 at least, there were times when certain types were used frequently but then superceded by other trends and types so much so that it would be a mistake to call the tier static. With the right players and builders, monotype should have enough of a flavour to produce different mus each week so the games themselves don't get too boring

5. Matchup-based nature of the tier: Saved the best for last. I'm not going too much into detail about this since Chait covered this really well in his post and I largely agree with it though at the same time I do feel mu is an inherent part of mono but as the power creep increases, I'd say this is becoming more and more true of other tiers anyway.

To summarise, mono is an approachable tier with an active playerbase and enough variety to keep it interesting for the duration of an official
 
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Wanka

is a Community Leader Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnus
UUPL Champion
Some thoughts I have as a former community leader of monotype.

Took some time to read over some of the things Finch, Hogg, and ABR had to say about the format specifically and potentially including mono. In reference to what Hogg had mentioned about Mono trying to claim a spot solely because we are official, I'm not sure if anything has been mentioned to the TD team about this by anyone from the monotype community, but this couldn't be further from the truth. We've been official for quite some time now and haven't pushed for anything like this publicly until now. I don't want to beat this horn too much though because I'm sure one of our community leaders will have good insight to offer on that notion, whether they talk about it here or privately to the TD team.

I think the reason our community is pushing hard for our inclusion now is due in large part to how great of a metagame SM monotype was. SM was really our first opportunity as a community to get our shit together and make a "matchup based tier" as balanced as possible. And quite frankly, we did a damn good job. Now, it's hard for me to sit here and point fingers and make comparisons because I don't play Ubers or PU, but I can confidently say that if we could form a group to talk about the competitiveness amongst these three tiers, we could very easily come to the conclusion that Monotype is as competitive as both if not more than both. To touch on this, LTPL was for lack of better words a cursed tournament, but not because it included something like monotype. I generally think the player pool for each gen was more or less just thrown off a bit (even mono's player pool was incredibly wack and not what it would look like if it were included in something like this). The monotype games that were actually played in this tournament were actually pretty good however and I feel it was a glimpse of how nicely monotype can fit into a tour like this.

What I don't want being taken away from this post is the thought that I think monotype should be slotted over one of PU and Ubers. I think all three should be included and 3 CG ou slots accomplish nothing, especially if we end up rebranding the tournament completely with a new name, new teams, etc. What I want to be taken away from this is that, given the time table of when this tournament is going to happen, Monotypes community, council and community leaders will have done a very good job at creating a balanced metagame that is easily comparable to the competitiveness of PU and Ubers and we're already pretty close. I think like a lot of lower tiers right now, there's a lot going on in terms of development, and things are not as polished as they will be in due time, but again we're already close.

tl;dr SM monotype was fantastic, SS is on track to be as good if not better, we've figured out how to make a "matchup based tier" as competitive as possible, and a fair amount of the tournaments community can vouche for this.

Edit: (I mean shit if you want to see a monotype fighting team beat a monotype flying team multiple times in SM, just click the link in my sig sheesh)
 
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Sam

i say it's all just wind in sails
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One of my favorite things about the original SPL format was the social aspect of including pretty much every community onto one team. Some of my longest lasting friendships on this came from playing UU in SPL 6 with people I probably wouldn't have gotten to know well otherwise. Obviously competitiveness is going to be the most important issue for pretty much every tournament, but I don't think I'm alone in saying the social aspect of this site has become way more important for me than the Pokemon for some time. I think things like PS, a more segmented user base, and an integrated tournaments community have somewhat lessened this impact but it's definitely still something to consider.

One of the biggest pitfalls of snake was the inability of managers to get "their guy". I don't think there was a single person who was surprised when tennisace got MajorBowman, M Dragon got Conflict, etc. That's good! It establishes some existing social rapport and usually means your team chat won't be dead by week 2. In Snake you had to compromise the strength of your team by reaching for your friends in lieu of better competitive fits or take the best player available where your PM with the discord link will be the first message you've ever sent to them. I think the SPL auction format is the best for this and there's no reason to get cute with any sort of novelty draft or auction like Snake. Also for the love of god please don't do pools again. Snake 1 was awful.

While carrying franchises over between SPL and this new tour might seem to carry over the social atmosphere, I really don't think it's a good idea. I'd actually like to prohibit managers from managing in both tours, as there seems to be an overabundance of quality managers with so few slots available in SPL with most managers returning year after year. A new slate of managers would allow more people to explore this option, and I believe there's enough people with managing experience from Snake, WCOP, forum PLs, and such that I don't think finding 10 quality managing pairs should be an issue. Honestly, since the new format goes for a complete split of old gens and lower tiers, I think it would be best to encourage old gen players who want to manage to do so in the new tournament, while letting some competent lower tier players manage in SPL so that there can still be some of that social circle mixing that would happen in the older SPLs (though it's obviously too late to do this for the current SPL).
 

Finchinator

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OU Leader
I do think we should lock in the idea of ten slots, with OU / OU / DOU / Ubers / UU / RU / NU / PU / LC / ??? regardless.
I'm glad we have established this much and agree with it. I think this is a foolproof start and 10 slots is the best play here. It makes the tournament as large as SPL and honestly the size of Snake was one of the few redeeming qualities it had historically imo.

Re: non-playing slots, with 10 slots I prefer two mandatory subs rather than four. I know it’ll mean slightly smaller teams than what we are used to seeing in SPL, but from an auction perspective I think it’s better. If we do four mandatory sub slots to keep team sizes the same, I think that the overall auction funds need to be reduced accordingly. 10k allotted per player when almost 30% of those players are sub slots that can reasonably be expected to go for 3-5k on most teams will just end up inflating player prices at the high end.
I agree with the conclusion here re: 2 mandatory subs and the 10k per player average being important to maintain, but I also think a pretty important bit of reasoning is continuing to carry out part of the logic that makes the auction more appealing than the Snake to begin with: giving managers more room to strategize. A Snake limits combinations and access to specific top players whereas an auction allows for more liberal (or conservative) spending strategies to form. Having a lot of substitutes being mandated, especially without the 10k allotted per player, limits the amount of room for excess spending early on or stacking mid-tier players throughout the draft. Maintaining this 10k allotment and the 2 substitute minimum allows gives the most freedom and has never been an issue in SPL itself. This was not meant to be a nitpick so much as to just add on to what you already mentioned, but apologies if it came off that way.

Also (tackling some of Ave's point), if managers believe >2 subs are required for a balance of substitutes to cover the metagames, they can easily draft 3+ and that is just more reason why keeping only 2 mandatory subs is good. This is another outlet for manager auction strategy to come into play: allowing for manager judgement calls to determine if it is worth potentially compromising depth for line-up firepower or prioritizing having everything covered. Both have their merits of course.

That said, I do want to bring the idea back up of allowing teams to place drafted players back into the auction pool mid-auction (with moneys going back to themselves, rather than to the house), though, as it feels like a clean way for teams to make mid-auction adjustments and gets rid of the messiness and hold-up of mid-auction trades.

Let’s say I spent 14k on TonyFlygon in the auction, and I want to sell him back. Maybe I purchased him by mistake as a failed upbid. Maybe I overspent elsewhere and I’m worried I won’t be able to afford an essential pick for my team. Maybe I ended up getting a great bargain later on an unexpected player who fills the same niche, and I want to adjust my auction plan accordingly. Whatever the reason, I want to shift things around.

When it’s my turn to make a nomination, I can choose to nominate TonyFlygon. Initial bidding starts at 3k as always, but unlike normal I’m not allowed to upbid my own nomination. If no one bids, nothing happens and TonyFlygon remains on the roster. If other people bid on him, they can purchase him as normal, and funds equal to the winning bid get added back to my team’s fund total.

Now, there is an inherent risk here. If no one bids at all I’ve wasted a nomination turn (something that it can sometimes be strategic to do) with no gain. And even if he does get drafted, there’s a chance that he ends up only going for 9 or 10k, meaning I end up losing funds overall. (That’s why you aren’t allowed to upbid your own noms - otherwise I can just do “no risk” re-sells by nominating and immediately upbidding to my acceptable sale point.) However, there’s a good chance that I’m willing to accept that loss if it means more funds to spend elsewhere.
I have never considered this idea before this thread, but I think it actually is really cool and would love to see it in practice. If it is done properly and the community gives it a chance, there are very few drawbacks to this and it promotes sound auction strategy in a new fashion. I think setting a limit to 1 or 2 potential "self nominations" (or whatever the phrase we end up using for it) or not allowing "self nominations" on players under a certain amount would be best though, if only to avoid potential late auction collusion scenarios. However, I think the overall idea can be a nice addition with some discussion put into what the optimal implementation approach is.

As for retentions and more ambitious ideas such as the full team retention model I proposed upthread, what do folks think about kicking the can down the road for a bit? Even with a dramatically different retention model, that won’t necessarily impact the initial auction, so I think we can move forward with an SPL-style money auction for the first year and keep the conversation going about doing something more radical with retentions. I do think we incorporate retentions in some capacity, though, even if we just go with the current SPL system. They’re an exciting part of the SPL process and I’d like to see them carried over in some way here as well.
I think a "retentions are in the spirit of the tournament in some capacity and will be in place for future editions" type of logic could be fine, thus allowing for us to return to them prior to the second edition, but the is devil's advocate response to this is that people will grow bias towards retention structures that favor their team after the first edition. This can make that future discussion less genuine, but we have changed how retentions are applied between SPL seasons, so this is nothing new and probably not worth rushing our decision making process for. Just worth weighing out both sides, I do not really have a preference as to if it is decided now or before the second edition.
 

Katy

Banned deucer.
Hey y'all,

not to talk much about the tournament setting / rules, there plenty of people, which can talk about it better, and in a more eloquent way than I could do, instead I want to catch up on a great post Moutemoute did earlier in this thread; about how the reward / trophy should / could look like and what are the opinions on people regarding that. My attention goes back to this post because i sincerly think that Moutemoute came up with great ideas about the trophy.

My 2 thoughts, however, are in what way we keep the trophy:

  1. Do we keep the classic, old, green trophy as it also keeps some spirit, which the smogon snake draft tournament built up in the recent years, or
  2. Do we go on with a new trophy; means a fresh start into a fresh, new tour.

What is your opinion about it?

PS: I'd really and honestly think Moute came up with great ideas, which can be used to work with, in case the community decides to go with a new, fresh trophy.

So, ya, what you guys think about that? I know it might not be the most "concerning" thing by now, but i think it's still worth to look into that idea.
 
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I think we definitely keep the same light green trophy. The reason we haven't repurposed frontier or vgc trophies is because they're individual and therefore permanent on profiles, this isn't the case for SSD / the new tour. I also think it's very nice to have the 3 team tours as extremely different colors as they're the most likely to be side by side.
 

Finchinator

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OU Leader
Does anyone oppose the name Smogon Championship League btw? It feels like the only name that has caught on, despite other ideas being floated, and I personally like it.

I feel like picking a name should be established earlier in the process for a few reasons anyway. For starters, if I have to call it "new Snake" or "SPL2" many more times, it's going to take forever to stop associating those nicknames with it. Additionally, it is good to have something to refer to it as for the sake of forming the identity of the tournament.

Also, have to echo ABR about the trophy color.

e: thanks so much for clarification, agree w below
 
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Berks

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Does anyone oppose the name Smogon Championship League btw? It feels like the only name that has caught on, despite other ideas being floated, and I personally like it.

I feel like picking a name should be established earlier in the process for a few reasons anyway. For starters, if I have to call it "new Snake" or "SPL2" many more times, it's going to take forever to stop associating those nicknames with it. Additionally, it is good to have something to refer to it as for the sake of forming the identity of the tournament.

Also, have to echo ABR about the trophy color.
sorry to be a huge nerd again but:

the championship league is the Premier League's B-league, the EFL Championship. Idk why I'm so invested in this name idea but Championship does run the risk of making the new tournament sound like a b-league to british players and soccer fans.

Smogon Champions League, thank you for your time
 
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Boat

fuck nintendo
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Does anyone oppose the name Smogon Championship League btw? It feels like the only name that has caught on, despite other ideas being floated, and I personally like it.

I feel like picking a name should be established earlier in the process for a few reasons anyway. For starters, if I have to call it "new Snake" or "SPL2" many more times, it's going to take forever to stop associating those nicknames with it. Additionally, it is good to have something to refer to it as for the sake of forming the identity of the tournament.

Also, have to echo ABR about the trophy color.

e: thanks so much for clarification, agree w below
I'm a fan of having SPL Summer and SPL Winter. If the format of the new tour is going to be the same as SPL, then it is literally a premier league. PL is a format, not just a name, so making a name that specifically dodges the format of the tour doesn't make a whole lot of sense. The name "Smogon Premier League" does not leave a lot of room for implications of equality, and since the perceived prestige of the new tour is pretty important, I think it should share the name.
 
Does anyone oppose the name Smogon Championship League btw? It feels like the only name that has caught on, despite other ideas being floated, and I personally like it.

I feel like picking a name should be established earlier in the process for a few reasons anyway. For starters, if I have to call it "new Snake" or "SPL2" many more times, it's going to take forever to stop associating those nicknames with it. Additionally, it is good to have something to refer to it as for the sake of forming the identity of the tournament.

Also, have to echo ABR about the trophy color.

e: thanks so much for clarification, agree w below
not a fan of it at all tbh - sounds too much like a draft league name. Teal's suggestion years ago of "Smogon Grand Prix" sounds way more hype to me personally.
 

FNH

F is for Finchi, N is for Nator, H is for Hater
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San Thomas's explanation of how the Championship League is actually a B League ruins that prospect regardless.
Smogon Championship League doesn't work, but if you want Smogon Champions League does work (Champions League is the top Soccer/Football league in Europe, Championship League is the English b League)

I am fine with Smogon Champions League, it's a good name when I read it. Smogon Grand Prix is cool as well, but I dont really think of a team tournament when I see it. I think more of another individual tournament [I am not really familiar with any sort of racing]. Does copying American Sports League names work? like National Pokemon League, Smogon Pokemon League, Major League Pokemon?
 

sugar ovens

blood inside
is a Top Tiering Contributor
Smogon Champions League is the name which was proposed, got some support in this thread in the first place and saw a little bit of traction elsewhere, and it refers to Europe's most prestigious football competition. "Championship" should not be considered for obvious reasons, i don't really understand why it's discussed now.

It's all subjective, for me personally Grand Prix just feels less "premier" than Champions League, and more fitting as a better name for BLT or Slam-like tournaments. Summer SPL is super bland and probably the *safe* option.

Does copying American Sports League names work? like National Pokemon League, Smogon Pokemon League, Major League Pokemon?
American leagues are less prestigious by definition :<
 

Expulso

Morse code, if I'm talking I'm clicking
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I think Smogon Champions League > Smogon Grand Prix personally but that's just my taste/opinion/etc so no complaints either way.

However, I feel like it is relevant to account for history when considering whether to tie this tour into SPL or not. Wasn't Smogon Snake Draft an attempt to create a new hype team tournament besides SPL, with its own distinct branding, that failed to take off? This attempt seems to have more effort being put into it and doesn't center around a gimmicky brand / bad auction setup, which is good. But I think it's worth asking whether a new team tournament will ever achieve the level of hype we want without an explicit affiliation with SPL.
 

Berks

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Smogon Champions League is the name which was proposed, got some support in this thread in the first place and saw a little bit of traction elsewhere, and it refers to Europe's most prestigious football competition. "Championship" should not be considered for obvious reasons, i don't really understand why it's discussed now.

It's all subjective, for me personally Grand Prix just feels less "premier" than Champions League, and more fitting as a better name for BLT or Slam-like tournaments. Summer SPL is super bland and probably the *safe* option.


American leagues are less prestigious by definition :<
Just to clarify here again, Championship is only being discussed because Finch read the original suggestion wrong (just like my username barring autocorrect shenanigans jaja). It is clear that the UEFA Champions League is just as - if not more - prestigious as the English Premier League.
 
Smogon Champions League easily the best name for me.

SPL Summer and SPL Winter don't make sense imo primarily because I don't believe anyone is going to refer to current SPL as SPL S(ummer) for a long time if ever. Also, keeping 3 letter abbreviations for both tournaments is ideal. SPL + SCL >>>> SPL S + SPL W. Smogon Champions League also means there's no association with SPL which I think can only be a positive for a new tournament trying to get its own brand going.

I think Grand Prix is better than SPL S and SPL W but like FNH said, I don't associate it with team tournaments. SCL please :D
 

Pyritie

TAMAGO
is an Artist
May be a dumb question but since we're willing to make a new teamtour from scratch does this mean we need to change the color of the next trophy since we want it to be a brand new thing ? I think trophies represent Smogon tournaments as much as their name (or logos for SPL) so even tho it's not the most important thing to deal with since we're only at the beginning of the brainstorming, I still think it's a notable aspect of Smogon tournament.. With that in mind I made some tests in order to find a brand new identity to this upcoming tournament...

Individual Tournaments:

Full NameAbbreviationTrophy
Official Ladder Tournament​
OLT​
Official Smogon Tournament​
OST​
Smogon Classic​
SC​
Smogon Grand Slam​
SGS​
Smogon Frontier (alumn)​
SF​
Smogon Tour​
ST​
Smogon VGC Tournament (alumn)​
SVT​


Team Tournaments:
Full NameAbbreviationTrophy
Smogon Premier League​
SPL​
World Cup​
WC​
Smogon Snake Draft (alumn)​
SSD​

The main issue is that those trophies are pretty damn small (16x16) which means it's pretty tough to make something which would have its own identity without be like an old trophy which already existed. With that in mind I try a couple of things :

Dark Blue Trophy:

View attachment 296588
As you can see this color is definitively different than the current blue trophies we have by being much more darker. The issue with those shades of blue is that it tends to be tough to distinguish the trophy from the background. It's also kinda tough to make it lighter without looking too much at the current WC Trophy.

View attachment 296601
This version is a bit lighter but the difference isn't really impressive even when you're zooming in :

View attachment 296606

Orange Trophy:

View attachment 296589
Unlike the blue color, there is only one orange trophy on Smogon and it's the Smogon VGC Tournament which has a more light version of orange.


When we compared it to the other tournaments with warm colors, the difference is rather significant so that may be a good thing to look at..

Dark Purple Trophies:

View attachment 296590 View attachment 296618
This colors are also quite nice and are not really represented yet in Smogon trophies. The closers we have to them are OLT and ST which are quite different as you can see below :

View attachment 296590 View attachment 296618


That's all for today.. Really nice thread tho. I hope we'll be able to gather some great ideas on it..!
would it be worth revamping the trophy art a little so dark colored ones don't get sucked into the background? the black background also doesn't match any of the other badge backgrounds, which always felt a little weird to me
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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Champions League frankly doesn't fit... it's a league competed among champions, i.e. the teams that did well in their association last season get to play in the champions league the next season. What did the teams in this future league do in order to qualify? Nothing.

Perhaps a better alternative is "Super League" which is used in tons of different leagues, across many sports, most notably perhaps:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_League
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FA_Women's_Super_League

But also just a lot of leagues in general:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_League_(disambiguation)

Compare to the similar widespread use of "Premier League"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Premier_League_(disambiguation)

In particular, since "The" Super League (the one that gets the wiki page) is the top flight rugby league for english teams, while the english premier league is the top flight soccer league, there's a nice parallel. It's apples and oranges, not one above the other.
 

peng

fuck xatu
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I like Smogon Champion's League as a name but it has two things going against it, specifically with relation to branding and generating interest outside of the active tour bubble:

1. European football fans will know that the UEFA Champions League is the major tournament made-up of the top teams from the big european domestic leagues, including the English Premier League i.e. you qualify for CL by placing highly in PL - this could be confusing from a lay perspective and could lead people to assume SPL is a "feeder" series into SCL? Unlikely but possible.

2. The acronym "SCL" does not roll off the tongue easily, and could be easily mistaken for "SEL" - we've discussed at length that branding needs to be on point here considering the issues with Snake, and it would be a shame to put so much effort into this rebrand only to have a name at the end that is difficult to actually enunciate. Whilst most of us will only be typing SCL and never actually having to say it, content creators like blunder, aim, BKC, Finchinator and now McMeghan will be having to say out loud whatever name we choose. These guys generate a huge amount of interest in the Smogon tournament scene, so we should probably at least get these guys' opinion to make sure that whatever name we pick is actually easy to pronounce. This is especially relevant if Smogon wants to getmore heavily into the youtube / streaming scene in an official capacity in the next 5 or so years. Imagine being a new player tuning into a stream and hearing about "an amazing game last week between ojama and ABR in ess-see-ell" - if you wanted to look this up and find out more it might actually be difficult to do so, an issue you'd never have with our other tournaments like SPL, Classic, Grand Slam, or OST. I don't think any irl event would ever be called "SCL", for this reason.

These are minor points but things that should considered moving forwards!
 
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SparksBlade

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Smogon Grand Prix sounds good. SPL Summer and SPL Winter are terrible because it'll make no sense for our Australian friends, and they already have to deal with a Christmas without snow. Let's not pile onto their misery.

Any name with "League" in it will have to contend against "Premier" and then there'll be people drawing comparisons as to which word is better.
 

NEWAL

THE MAIN MAN
Gonna support Smogon Champions League as the new name, its the most prestigious soccer clubs tournament. Now I would like to hear more about the trophy colour bc the light green one will be asociated with SSD and its failure, and since this will be a new different tour, with different teams and format, a new colour could be appropiate.
 

talah

from the river to the sea
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how would people feel if we gave the new tour the SPL name then re-named current SPL to SCL? this should help with the conerns of the new tour not having a prestigious enough branding, but the biggest positive of this is that the names make more 'thematic sense', in my head at least.

the name "Champions League" invokes previous 'glory' or some kind of achievement, which seems to fit the old generation tour more. just the designation 'old generation tour' on its own is associated with previously established legacy, so it seems to work better.

as for "Premier League", it fits the lower tier tour just as much as current SPL, arguably even more? to me at least, "Premier" is generally about The Best in the Right Now, a sort of invocation of pioneering; which fits with the volatility and constant change of lower tiers. don't get me wrong, it still works perfectly well for current SPL but this naming scheme does sound more appropriate as far as i'm concerned.
 
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