St. Patrick and the Casting Out of Snakes

[Perry]

Great discussion all around here, loving to see it. I would like to share my 2 cents on one specific post, however:

Hi all, I'm not too concerned with exactly what format tiers and draft wise the next snake takes but I have a cool idea about branding I mentioned on Discord.
I think Snake should be called 'Summer SPL' or something to that effect, and it should keep the SPL team names.
The twist is that the teams get a new freshly designed second logo with a different mon mascot for either this tour or old gen/winter SPL - for example the Tyrants could reboot their legacy TTar mascot for old gen SPL and use the current Tyrantrum one for lower tiers, or as another example the Cryos could keep their Suicune in old gen SPL and have a fresh one with Vanilluxe or something for lower tiers. There's a lot of cool stuff you can do with this, it picks up on the history and charm of the SPL teams while also having a new spin for the new lower tiers tour. SPL team identity works, and this seems like a nice compromise between legacy and originality.

I'm very much against extending the SPL branding to our newest 3rd tournament. SPL should be, by definition, Smogon's premier product. It's not only seen as such by our community, but also our social media audience that rarely evers knows WCoP or Snake or anything else. By extending the SPL brand to our newest tournament, while indeed making the new tournament more prestigious than what a 1st edition would usually be, you are making our "old" SPL less prestigious and I have my qualms with it. Branding aside, I do agree that most aspects of SPL (draft, number of teams, etc) should be carried over, and the discussion wrt tiers has been very interesting thus far.

PS: this is my personal opinion, doesn't really point out to any direction we TDs will take in the future.

 

[Yoda2798]

I'm very much against extending the SPL branding to our newest 3rd tournament. SPL should be, by definition, Smogon's premier product. It's not only seen as such by our community, but also our social media audience that rarely evers knows WCoP or Snake or anything else. By extending the SPL brand to our newest tournament, while indeed making the new tournament more prestigious than what a 1st edition would usually be, you are making our "old" SPL less prestigious and I have my qualms with it. Branding aside, I do agree that most aspects of SPL (draft, number of teams, etc) should be carried over, and the discussion wrt tiers has been very interesting thus far.

I knew there were people who wanted lower tiers (+ doubles) out of SPL because they viewed them as inferior, but I didn't expect such a view to be blatantly on display by a TD. Since it was made clear that SPL would be split into an oldgens tour and a lower tiers tour, there were widespread concerns about one being the "real" SPL. As Hogg said in the OP, "I know some people wanted to see the team tours split up because they wanted an excuse to kick out lower tiers, but for me it was about making sure that BOTH tours stayed prestigious and competitive." (emphasis mine) If the "new" SPL is functionally identical to the "old" one with the exception of including lower tiers rather than oldgens, then to gatekeep the brand in the name of "prestige" is a clear statement of lower tiers being seen as lesser. If both tours are to be seen as equal, then they should be treated as equal, not maintaining the old name and teams on only one of them.

Everybody wants to make the new Snake replacement a success, and as you even admit yourself, using the SPL branding would go a long way in helping that. I entirely disagree with the notion that doing this somehow harms the prestige of the "old" SPL, you didn't even elaborate on how this would be the case. With a couple of exceptions like the possible addition of Monotype, these are tiers which have been played in SPL before already. They would be separate tours and would have separate trophies. If some people still view Winter SPL as the "real" one because it has oldgens, then there isn't much you can do to stop that, but having only one tour keep the SPL brand is a clear indictment that is the real one, in the TDs' eyes at least. If you want a successful example of a tournament being split in two, then look no further than the Olympics being split into Summer and Winter iterations, splitting up the sports (tiers), but maintaining the same Olympics brand across both parts.

 

[MANNAT]

Great discussion all around here, loving to see it. I would like to share my 2 cents on one specific post, however:



I'm very much against extending the SPL branding to our newest 3rd tournament. SPL should be, by definition, Smogon's premier product. It's not only seen as such by our community, but also our social media audience that rarely evers knows WCoP or Snake or anything else. By extending the SPL brand to our newest tournament, while indeed making the new tournament more prestigious than what a 1st edition would usually be, you are making our "old" SPL less prestigious and I have my qualms with it. Branding aside, I do agree that most aspects of SPL (draft, number of teams, etc) should be carried over, and the discussion wrt tiers has been very interesting thus far.

PS: this is my personal opinion, doesn't really point out to any direction we TDs will take in the future.

I really dislike this take, it makes absolutely no sense in the context of this entire discussion. I agree that extending spl branding to the third tour may not be the best idea, but your reasoning for it is very questionable to me. I was under the impression that this whole discussion was about making a third tour that was JUST AS good and prestigious as SPL but here you’re basically saying that you don’t want that to happen and I think this kind of mindset is really detrimental to both community growth and the development of this tour in particular.

 

[Oglemi]

I really like teal's proposal. Have a summer and winter SPL. Two drafts. Same managers. Ability to retain from summer to winter (e.g. I buy McM to play UU, i can retain him to play ADV in winter, and then again UU next summer).

I feel like this solves way more problems than it creates. Doesn't "lessen" either tourney, no issues with branding or prestige.

 

[atomicllamas]

Tournament elitists: we wouldn't care if our official tournament was called peepeepoopoo its just about the chance to play competitive games!

also tournament elitists:

I'm very much against extending the SPL branding to our newest 3rd tournament. SPL should be, by definition, Smogon's premier product. It's not only seen as such by our community, but also our social media audience that rarely evers knows WCoP or Snake or anything else. By extending the SPL brand to our newest tournament, while indeed making the new tournament more prestigious than what a 1st edition would usually be, you are making our "old" SPL less prestigious and I have my qualms with it. Branding aside, I do agree that most aspects of SPL (draft, number of teams, etc) should be carried over, and the discussion wrt tiers has been very interesting thus far.

Pro tip if you're arguments inherently contradict each other when responding to different arguments they are probably shit or "peepeepoopoo".

 

[Perry]

Enemy:
Perry

I edited my post (before your own post) to note that it was just my personal opinion, not from the TD team as a whole. It's even more shocking to me that you come to a conclusion that I view lower tiers + doubles to be inferior based on a single post where I express my opinion that the SPL branding should remain unique. As a lower tier player myself, it's of course in my best interest to see a tournament that is "prestigious and competitive" that features them. However, do not be so naive as to think slapping a "SPL 1" or "SPL 2" would make SPL2 be seen as prestigious as the first one because well, it would not. The "winter" SPL would always be seen as main one not because of whatever tier it is featuring (as you claim), but because it would happen at the period of time that our community is accustomed to. As you can see, I'm using "seen". It doesn't mean I agree that any tour would be better or worse than the other. As a matter of fact, I personally love Snake's originality, but I also can't be not be so naive as to not see the problems we've seen since its introduction.

You actually just pointed a very good example of what could happen with 2 SPLs. When you write " If you want a successful example of a tournament being split in two, then look no further than the Olympics being split into Summer and Winter iterations, splitting up the sports (tiers), but maintaining the same Olympics brand across both parts." Yes, they are both heirs to a legacy dated to ancient Greece and they are viewed as great achievements to their players. They are also great business opportunities for cities, countries, and what not. But can you really say that the general public view them with the same regard? Most people don't stop to watch the Winter Olympics, not because they are bad, but because they happen in a different year / different period than its hotter counterpart, the one most people are used to.

You are right that everyone wants to make the Snake replacement a success, just like everyone who helped create Snake wanted as well some four years ago. I can also tell you that no one wants to make this tour a success more than the TD team. I just believe that we can make this tour a success without it being a carbon copy of SPL: we should rather try, just like we did with Snake, to give this tour an identity of its own and actually let it flourish by creating team identities, an stable format, etc. We should look at SPL and see an inspiration, as a way that we can make this tournament approach SPL-status (and SPL didn't start as the huge success it is today, anyway) over time and be a pleasurable experience for everyone.

Enemy:
Perry

same thing, really. Although I after talking to Mannat I do agree that my post sent out the wrong idea, so yeah sorry for that!

also tournament elitists:

i play UBERS lololol

 

[MZ]

I don't understand why you'd want the same team retained across an old gens PL and a low tiers PL. Surely this just disincentivizes buying people from the low tier communities that you're ostensibly looking to give another tour to? It's one thing to buy McMeghan for ADV for one PL and then put him in UU, but there are far more low tier mainers with success in recent official tours who haven't gotten into old gens OU because it's just less common to dabble in old gens OU than pick up a new low tier. Why am I going to buy TJ for PU and try to get him to pick up OU when I can get a strong old gens player to try to pick up current gen PU?

 

[atomicllamas]

Pro Tip: Don't paint a large group of people with the same brush based on something one person said.

Nah, I've been on this site long enough, and seen these threads long enough that this what I said is exactly what needs to be said. We are in a thread started by a former TD, which has the express purpose of adjusting a lower tier team tournament to be as prestigious and awesome as possible, and you have a current TD and quite literally say, "we can't do this idea because then it might be as hype and prestigious as SPL, which would lower the "perceived" value of SPL". This kind of blatant bullshit has existed for a long fucking time on this website, every iteration of the SPL tiers thread has included TDs saying things like "we design our tournaments for tournament players" but when you point out that every single cup in Grand Slam gets more sign ups than the highest cup in Classic, all the sudden tournament players no longer means people who sign up for smogon tournaments. To be frank its very frustrating that we (meaning people who play lower tiers) have had to argue for our inclusion at every turn when the reality is, the inclusion of lower tiers does nothing but benefit the long term competitiveness of the tournament scene on smogon. One of the many draws to smogon for new players is that there is always a way to use their favorites (lower tiers), people that compete in lower tier tournaments also often end up competing in OU tournaments, and several current elite OU players got their start in lower tiers (Garay Oak, Lax, etc.).

But here I am, this time in a thread, literally about how we can make a lower tier team tournament as prestigious as possible, and you have a TD say, "well, not that prestigious, it can't be as good as the old gen one!". Miss me with that shit.

i play UBERS lololol

To be perfectly honest, I didn't even know you played mons, I just assumed you hosted smogon tours.

 

[Oglemi]

I don't understand why you'd want the same team retained across an old gens PL and a low tiers PL. Surely this just disincentivizes buying people from the low tier communities that you're ostensibly looking to give another tour to? It's one thing to buy McMeghan for ADV for one PL and then put him in UU, but there are far more low tier mainers with success in recent official tours who haven't gotten into old gens OU because it's just less common to dabble in old gens OU than pick up a new low tier. Why am I going to buy TJ for PU and try to get him to pick up OU when I can get a strong old gens player to try to pick up current gen PU?

I would assume we would still limit retains. I think teal is suggesting full dynasties but I personally think staying at 3 retains would be sufficient. Having 3 "superstars" + same managers I think is enough to create a team identity/legacy, sharks being the prime example. Those 3 a team are also going to get drafted regardless if we look at current snake and past spls/wcop. People like mcm, bkc, soulwind, etc are going to get drafted over x amount of mainers simply because they're proven, that incentivization will always be there.

 

[teal6]

I don't understand why you'd want the same team retained across an old gens PL and a low tiers PL. Surely this just disincentivizes buying people from the low tier communities that you're ostensibly looking to give another tour to? It's one thing to buy McMeghan for ADV for one PL and then put him in UU, but there are far more low tier mainers with success in recent official tours who haven't gotten into old gens OU because it's just less common to dabble in old gens OU than pick up a new low tier. Why am I going to buy TJ for PU and try to get him to pick up OU when I can get a strong old gens player to try to pick up current gen PU?

This is quite literally the point of my suggestion. The tournament circuit should incentivize being able to play multiple tiers, old gens and lower tiers included. TJ can be sick as fuck at PU if he wants to be, that's his prerogative, but if there's a player that is slightly worse at PU but can also play ADV at a reasonable level, I'd buy him instead. If TJ wants to get picked up he can learn and practice another tier or an older generation to make himself more attractive to managers, or he could continue the route of "maining" one tier and hope that he is so good at it that it outweighs the negative of uselessness in the SPL part of the tournament.

Most top tier players are top tier at multiple tiers btw. I think it's worthwhile to continue incentivizing that. It's boring when players are just really good and obsessive at whatever pet tier they've picked up, it's more fun to watch how McM's (to use your example) style leaks into other generations (aka suggesting Scarf Last Gambit Copycat in every possible tier ever). If you want a tournament structure that emphasizes being good solely at one tier then you're free to argue it, but I think we're talking past one another because there is no misunderstanding here, I sincerely think it'd be healthier and better to make a structure that encourages and incentivizes people to pick up multiple.

 

[Moutemoute]

Yeaaah same managers and same players for not one but two tournaments now yeaaaah.. Smh for real ?
What's the point of all of this is you're trying to put Old Gens players in lower tiers slots or vice-versa (but that second option will not happen we all know that). The purpose of this whole thread is to make something new and you want to keep the same fucking playerbase that was in the first tournament, what's the point ?!

The purpose of this new tournament seems to lead to something more specific to lower tiers so why should we have to learn another tier (Old gens in addition) when the purpose of the tournament is to allow lower tiers communities to shine of their own since they can't be retain in SPL ? I already dislike the fact in SPL you can lock some players if they were in your team the year before but now you want to expand this so they can be retained in another tournament ?! I mean at this point we should just keep the same 10 × 10 (or 8 × 10) players forever for all the tournaments on Smogon and other people should just shut the fuck up. This look like some sectarianism elitism and it's disgusting.

 

[peng]

Tournament elitists: we wouldn't care if our official tournament was called peepeepoopoo its just about the chance to play competitive games!

also tournament elitists:

Pro tip if you're arguments inherently contradict each other when responding to different arguments they are probably shit or "peepeepoopoo".

There's no contradiction here whatsover because these comments were made by completely different people who have never claimed to be talking on behalf of one-another. I'm very lost by this line of reasoning.

Like why are you even trying to take a swipe at these "tournament elitists", many of whom are fine with moving old gens to a peepeepoopoo league - those people are giving the lower tier players exactly what they claim to want.

I've actually seen next to no vocal support from the lower tier communities for McMeghan's proposal to have SPL be current gen lower tiers, and set up a new poopypoopy league for old gens OU. It makes me think - is it actually important to the lower tier communities to have SPL, or do they only want to be in an SPL that also has GSC, DPP, ADV, BW etc.

I think we need to work out pretty quickly what do lower tier players actually want? Do you even have faith that a team tournament based only on CG OU, UU, RU, NU, PU, LC, Ubers, DOU would work? Would you be happier if that tournament was called SPL and there was a seperate poopypoopybutt league for old gens? Or is it actually important to these communities for the lower tiers to be represented alongside the likes of GSC, ADV, DPP OU etc. If its the latter (i.e. you'd still be unhappy being called SPL with the old gens moved away), then I think these people need to take a look in the mirror before they start calling people elitist, because it feels like you're putting a lot of value on the lower gen OUs yourself too!

 

[KyleCole]

There seems to be some confusion in this thread as to what branding is, how to build a successful brand, what is meant by "brand dilution", and how that comes about/is avoided. This is a big part of conversations that I have basically every day so hopefully I can shed some light on some of these concepts and how they're related to SPL & this new tournament.

1. What is a brand, really, and why does having a good brand matter?
As a quick google of "what is branding" will tell you, a brand is more than just name and logo. A brand is the identity of your organization. If you develop a good brand, you can leverage that into customer advocates and sales . If you have a bad brand, people will go out of their way to avoid engaging with your organization and will tell others to do the same.

If you're a numbers guy/gal like me, you can think of branding in another way. The strength of your brand can be measured by the number and degree of positive interactions with your organization, minus the strength and degree of the negative interactions.

You might percieve that SPL has a good brand if you have fun watching and participating, have positive interactions with your teammates, and enjoy the merchandise. You might percieve that SPL has a bad brand if you always get passed over during the draft, you believe there is rampant cheating during the tournament, or you if think the games in one of the tiers are consistently of poor quality.
Ignoring the number of people who are aware of SPL since I don't have those numbers, because the majority of people appear to fall into the first group, we can say SPL has good branding. SPL leverages that brand every year to build sign ups, sell merchandise, and attract spectators to the games.

2. OK KyleCole, I get what branding is, but what about the new tournament? If we make that "SPL part 2", would that be good or bad?
One concern I'm reading is that using the SPL name for the 2nd tournament would diminish the good name of the first tournament. This is called brand dilution. An example of brand dilution is Reese's Puff cereal. The candy giant decided to enter the cereal market with a subpar product, and as a result, the Reese's brand lost value. The brand was diluted because the name "Reeses" and all associated materials (colouring/font/logo/etc) could not leverage as much sales revenue as before the customer base had negative reactions with the cereal.

One example of doing branding right is when McDonalds entered the retail coffee market with McCafe. McCafe did not just succeed on its own, it strengthened the entire McDonalds brand through positive interactions with customers.

Bringing this back to SPL, a new tournament under the SPL name would of course impact how the userbase percieves both the original and new tournament. If the userbase has a net positive experience with the new tournament, it would add value to the entire brand. If the new tournament sucks, then the SPL brand will suffer.

3. So which is it? Good or bad? How do we know?
As someone above me already explained, there is reason to believe that the new tournament will be successful. The strongest point is that the tiers included in the new tournament have, for the most part, already proven themselves to be successful in driving engagement.
Adding Monotype and Ubers presents different risks from a branding perspective. For Monotype, some believe the tier is too reliant on matchup and too unproven for this tournament. For Ubers, there is concern that the cheating-heavy culture runs too deep to risk inclusion, and that the tier is unbalanced. The benefits of adding these tiers is an inclusion of more community members, and of course the potential positives of branding we talked about earlier.

One final point to address, some users may hold the opinion that there is no need to add the SPL name to the new tournament because the tournament should stand on its own, and if it can do so, why risk any dilution to the SPL brand? Given time and positive engagement, the new tournament could stand on its own; however, to hold this opinion you are overlooking the potential benefits of a strong brand entirely. McDonalds and McCafe do not act in isolation from each other, the success of one helps to bolster the success of the other. By tying the two tournaments together, you can bolster the engagement and merchandise sales for both, and bolster your own name by being a successful player in either.

For these reasons, I recommend that the new tournament carry the SPL name. Don't call it SPL2 or SPL jr. One user above me provided an excellent example in the Winter Olympics and Summer Olympics, where one is not inherently portrayed as superior to the other.
I also recommend including Monotype and Ubers. Again, no numbers in front of me beyond the ladder stats, but it seems that the benefits of including these two tiers far outweigh the risks. There is no measurable reason to suspect that the formats for monotype and ubers are somehow lesser than another tier, and it seems grossly unfair to blame the actions of players who cheated in the past on those with clean records today.
Last, I recommend using the same team names between each tournament for the purposes of cross-promotion and to further the idea that neither of these two tournaments is superior to the other .

4. Wow KyleCole I am convinced you are a genius, any outstanding ideas that no one else has brought up yet?
1) Number of teams and tiers included nonwithstanding, I recommend that there is one team captained by representatives from each community. One manager + assistant team from each of UU, RU, NU, PU, DOU, MT, Ubers, and LC makes 8 and it would do wonders for establishing and engaging communities that are either new or may feel slighted by the split from the original SPL.
OR
2) Guarantee the most successful managers (say, top 4) the option to retain their positions in the 2nd SPL tournament. This will add credibility to the tournament, and provide incentive for managers to draft the best possible team vs. a team of friends only.

 

[Finchinator]

I view getting the tier format defined as pressing in this overall process. Why? Players need know what to expect well beforehand in order for this tournament to catch on like we hope for it to. Building that type of foundation can help lead towards players having an expectation for the tournament and growing excitement levels forming. I personally can say that every year I am looking forward to SPL because I know that it will have some of my favorite generations; I hope that many people can look forward to this every year because it has their favorite modern metagames. Obviously that does not mean we need to finalize tiers overnight as this and many other topics Hogg discussed deserved careful consideration, but it should be something we focus on politely engaging about rather than picking each other apart over.

OU1, OU2, UU, RU, NU, PU, LC, and DOU seem like locks for the first 8 slots. Ubers is gaining lots of traction for inclusion as the ninth given just about everything I have heard*. Regardless of the potential ninth slot, it seems like Monotype and OU3 make the best sense for additional inclusion, and they are likely going to have to be the subject of some prolonged debate as it may be one or the other.
*I am not involved with Ubers, so this point is not one I wish to contest much myself either way. I am just happy people are enjoying the Ubers community.

One potential alternative -- UU/RU/NU Bo3 -- for the tenth slot does not seem like a good idea to me. I think a UU/RU/NU bo3 slot does not make much sense. I have seen it mentioned both on here and discord, but I just do not understand how it can be justified. Every other slot is bo1, so adding a bo3 seems a bit off to me naturally. If someone wanted to play devil's advocate with that, you can easily argue that this promotes versatility, which I think is something worth promoting. However, this is a bit of an arbitrary promotion as managers are naturally inclined to draft versatile players to help support and potentially play various tiers as is, which is a large part of why some of the most expensive players are competent in various tiers as is.

Digging a bit deeper, if we were to include a non-bo1 slot, then why would it be just a bo3 or these 3 specific tiers? How can one draw the line there without it being entirely arbitrary? They cannot without taking leaps in logic. Sure, UU-RU-NU were official "first", well before PU, as true usage based lower tiers and sure, UU-RU-NU have remained in tournaments consistently for longer than Ubers and are level 100 based unlike LC, so there are some arguments you can make that string them together. This is done by finding all of the unique differences between other metagames as opposed to one common one, however. The thing is that using these arguments to base a single slot in the tournament without them having any other bearing on how things are decided seems poor. Threading together specific unrelated circumstances to define a slot in an official tournament that completely stands out from every other slot has never been done in another official like this, so let's not start doing so now either. We already have multiple strong solutions for closing out the format that do not require reinventing the wheel here.

For what it's worth, you could probably even argue a Bo5 UU-RU-NU-PU-LC slot before a bo3 even because it at least mirrors the format of Grand Slam, which makes it a bit less arbitrary, but a bo5 slot in an official seems even more ridiculous and arguably exhausting. Overall, I think there would need to be an exceptional argument made for any bo3 slot to be added to begin with and I do not know that there is one to be made for this one in particular.

Given this, I think that the final format boils down to a few questions:

• Do we believe there is enough quality depth for a third OU slot?
• Do we believe Ubers is in the right position to be included in official tournaments?
• Do we believe Monotype is in the right position to be included in official tournaments?

You can phrase the last two questions differently, but surely you know what they are getting at.

To answer them personally: I believe both Ubers and Monotype are in the right position to be included. Ubers seems to have been moving in the right direction for a while now and with a combination of freshly motivated leadership and a growing playerbase, I have confidence that it will be able to be a positive addition to the tournament without the excess baggage it previously brought to the table. Monotype is a bit harder of a sell for me, but after taking a deeper dive into the depth of their community and tournament circuit, I was admittedly very impressed. The explanations Chaitanya and lax provided also helped understand things that are not easy for someone disconnected from Monotype to be sure of such as the match-up dynamic. Much like Ubers, Monotype has promising players that could compete at this level and a format that clearly appeals to many people at a high level.

This is where it gets dicey for me as personally I think there are easily enough strong OU players to fill a third slot, too. And my personal belief is that showcasing SS OU as much as possible when reasonable is best as it is a "moneymaker" -- everyone has at least some familiarity and experience with the metagame, it is the best way to draw in spectators who are likely more connected casually to Smogon tournaments or with PS, and it is the most popular metagame. However, I think a lot of people make fantastic points about Monotype in the prior posts and I think there is a lot to say for Ubers as well.

I'm at the point where as the big advocate of OU inclusion who is involved with OU a lot, I can make a persuasive post trying to sell the tier I love, but I feel that any effort I make is met with an equally passionate effort from the other side that is also justified. So I have to say that if the support is there and the people making this decision believe the playerbases are ready, then I am all for Ubers and/or Monotype being included. I never thought I would see the day when Monotype would be included in an official and I am still skeptical to a degree -- perhaps that's the crusty OU player deep within talking after all, but I am not one to judge a metagame without playing it and it's clear the Monotype community shows signs of being ready given the prior posts.

This leaves us with three potential formats for SSD (all having 8/10 slots the same):

• SS OU (1), SS OU (2), SS OU (3), SS Ubers, SS UU, SS RU, SS NU, SS PU, SS LC, & SS DOU
• SS OU (1), SS OU (3), SS OU (3), SS Monotype, SS UU, SS RU, SS NU, SS PU, SS LC, & SS DOU
• SS OU (1), SS OU (2), SS Monotype, SS Ubers, SS UU, SS RU, SS NU, SS PU, SS LC, & SS DOU

Finally, I believe that a 2 substitute minimum and 120k auction credits (assuming it is an auction, which many signs are pointing to) make the most sense given all of these tier formats.

Also, Smogon Champions League is a good name

 

[ABR]

spl auction style is idealized.

tiers should be 3x ss ou, dou, uu, ru, nu, pu, lc, ubers. the ubers scandals are history by now and it’s dmax-less like every other tier. as for monotype, we should be adding tiers to tournaments to help tournaments, not to provide inclusion to the tiers. example: pu was added to slam/ssd because we physically needed the slot filled, not because we were being kind to them. in this case i’d say 3 ss ou is better than 4 and ubers is a tier with a competitive history so we can put it as the 7th non ou. i don’t think 2 ou is better than 3 by a margin great enough to justify adding mono, if it’s even better at all.
(edit: multi-tier slots do not belong in team tours)

re: branding, i’m unsure. the points of contention are tournament name and team names. we basically have 3 options here.

1) use the spl name; use spl team names
2) use the spl name; use new team names
3) use a new name; use new team names

i really don’t have a preference at this point in time, so we’ll see where the discussion takes us.

side note, but i’d consider using the same ssd trophy for this tour. the tours are “different” but the basic tier setup is the same. so maybe we can treat the new tour alumns the same way we treat ssd alumns. so in 3 years, someone who won ssd3 and smogon champions league 1 would have the same postbit? just a thought

 

[sensei axew]

Giving my two cents on a bunch of the topics that have been discussed here (gonna be brief because almost everything I will say has already been said)

RE: Branding
I'm kind of at a toss-up here between a) using same spl name + different team names or b) using same spl name + same team names. In one way, using different team names would help give "summer spl" it's own classification besides the tiers being played. If we were to roll with this idea, I would definitely go with the sister team names as it's unique but similar at the same time. The other option is straightforward so I won't ramble on about that (although I will say that the latter option makes sense with retains while the former doesn't).

RE: Tiers
Once again I'm at a toss-up between a) OUx2, UU, RU, NU, PU, LC, DOU, Ubers, Mono or b) OUx2, UU, RU, NU, PU, LC, DOU, Ubers, Bo3 (UU, RU, NU). I don't think there should be more than 2 OU slots as this is supposed to be the SPL about lower tiers. Additionally, 2 OU slots means that the 10 games played a week will feature the best of the best competition which I know people were complaining about with this previous iteration of SSD. As for Mono vs Bo3, I personally think Mono should be included because, as lax and chaitanya said, it is an official smogon tier but I definitely understand the arguments against it so I'd be okay with either option.

RE: Retains
I like the idea of retaining 3 players throughout both the winter and summer spl. Retaining a whole team sounds uh interesting? but I don't think it'd work in the long run.

RE: Timing
This tour should definitely take place during the summer. The beginning of the school year being right smack in the middle of snake was a pain in the ass and I think that most people would appreciate it starting 1-2 months earlier. Overlapping with WCOP may be an issue but I'l let the TD's deal with that :x

RE: Trophy
I like the idea of changing the trophy color to a different color, preferably that darker purple. It's basically gonna be a completely different tour than snake with the only similarities being the tiers played (and even this will have some changes) and the timeframe so a different color trophy would make sense.

 

[sugar ovens]

A limited number of retains between summer-winter SPL would hurt team consistency. The incentive to retain players is to save money for the auction - why would you retain your oldgens superstar and team mainstay who doesn't play current gen for 20k in Summer SPL, when you can just buy a few good lower tier mains (who don't play oldgens, thus they cost almost nothing) in WSPL just to cheaply retain them later in SSPL for a fraction of their price? This is completely pointless, it doesn't even encourage people to learn new tiers (why would you pay 15k to retain Heroic Troller to play RU in SSPL when you can retain Ajna for 6k?). Maybe i'm wrong, but getting a few 3k subs each time to retain them next season just seems to be much more advantageous - it saves more money than retaining the big names of the team.

Retains between summer/winter SPL would only work/be beneficial if full teams were retained. Without retains, using the same team names for both iterations of the tournament is pointless, there would be "summer" and "winter" versions on the same team with no connection except maybe the manager. Personally i don't like the idea of "counterparts to spl teams" names. It really gives the impression of "sister SPL" "second league"..

Either go with teal6's proposal or create a fresh tour without SPL references.

 

[Arcticblast]

Here's a short summary of my idea

- summer tournament is SPL. whatever we choose to subname it, it's still SPL
- move a limited number of teams from current SPL into new SPL permanently, fill the remaining slots in both tournaments with new teams
- - keeps the "brand" alive with household names; new teams can be entirely new names or some of the best names from forum PLs, to give spectators a little more familiarity and something extra to root for
- - prevents the awkward situation of cross-tournament retention; each team is only in one tournament
- allow users with previous management experience to run a team in both tournaments if they so wish, but encourage new blood for new teams
- start this model after the upcoming SPL

words are hard, bring back the Smog Frogs btw

 

[Hogg]

Wanted to follow up on some of this, since Eo has given the greenlight to develop some of these ideas further.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and as ambitious as the idea of linking SPL teams to this tour and carrying over retains between the two is, I think there are just too many hurdles. Ultimately they boil down to two main issues. First, there exists a very good risk that culturally it will turn this tournament into the annoying offshoot of SPL that “brings down” SPL teams, driving costs up on bargain players based on how they might perform in lower tiers, etc. Second, if the goal of both SPL and this tour is to showcase the competitive best within their respective formats, encouraging a scenario where it makes sense to draft a lower ceiling player based on their ability to perform adequately in both tournaments works against that main goal. I like the idea a ton in theory, but in practice I worry it would cause too many issues.

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 do think we should lock in the idea of ten slots, with OU / OU / DOU / Ubers / UU / RU / NU / PU / LC / ??? regardless. I’ve been thinking a lot about this for a long time and I’m really strong on the idea of ten slots being the ideal balance for a team tour. I ranted about this a bit on discord recently, so just going to paste that rather than retype everything:

I really love 10 slots!

hogg: see now I think 10 slots is like the perfect sweet spot
hogg: 12 spots always felt like just a bit too much to me
hogg: like when I’m making a draft plan I have a lot of metrics on how I rate players, so that I can figure out a good threshold for what % of total funds I’m willing to spend
hogg: one of those is range of wins I can expect from a single slot, you’re obviously not going to win every game but you need to guarantee a certain number of wins from any given slot if you want a playoff berth
hogg: if we’re prioritizing competitiveness above all else, that should be the most important metric
hogg: but the more playing slots you have, the less important that metric is
hogg: it’s counterintuitive
hogg: 10 slots is a nice and clean 10% importance applied to every game
hogg: and I know that like ok whatever what’s the difference between that and 8% (12 slots) or 7% (14 slots)
hogg: but it IS a difference
hogg: in a 12+ slot tour, with you falling below that 10% threshold, it’s definitely to your advantage to draft players who will put in fewer total wins overall but can help other slots more, and that isn’t necessarily a BAD thing (and you actively want this to happen to some degree!)
hogg: certainly you don’t want to go too far the other direction, where individual performance is the only thing that matters
hogg: but there needs to be a balance
hogg: >10 slots = individual results start to get undervalued, <10 slots = team support starts to get undervalued
hogg: 10 slots is the perfect balance of the two for me
hogg: BUT
hogg: I know that’s subjective as shit
hogg: it’s just the reason I personally am a fan of 10

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.

For the auction/draft method, I haven’t seen any realistic proposal that sounds even slightly better than just using the SPL money auction model, so yeah, go with that. 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.

how this might look

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.

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.

And finally, branding is the big one. I do think things have more or less coalesced around either doing some sort of SPL sister league (other ways of looking at this are winter vs summer olympics, national vs american league MLB, etc.), or going with the Smogon Champions League idea. I’ve been talking to Zracknel and we’re brainstorming some ways that each option might potentially look, and Zracknel’s going to mock up some potential artwork so that we can see how these various ideas will actually look. Still interested in hearing ideas, but in the interest of getting things moving, we’ll start playing with these ideas initially and see if something good can be made out of them.

Edit: whoops yeah no apostrophe in Champions League

 

[Berks]

Just as a little nitpick, if we do want to do the Smogon Champions League idea, it should be noted that the UEFA Champions League on which it is based doesn't use an apostrophe re: Champion's. Not the biggest worry in the world at all but something that could affect any logo/art.

 

[lax]

undisputed brought up a cool auction idea if the same format as the SPL one isn’t set in stone. A blind auction where managers put in bids on a player when someone is nominated and the highest bid gets the player. Each manager only submits a single bid and has no idea what the others will.

Seems like a pretty interesting take on the system and would reward how much a Manager understands pricing. Would be really cool to see pan out. I guess issues include what happens when it reaches the point where all managers bidding use exactly 3k and there’s a tie. This would probably result in a tiebreaker bid until it gets resolved? I dunno. Another issue could be time and convenience but I’m sure a bot could be coded to allow a /submit function to process every bid.

A normal auction format is obviously fine, but if people were looking for a similar style that’s way different from SSD but close to SPL this could be a cool idea.

 

[Moutemoute]

The idea is fine but I really think being able to upbid is something really important in auctions because you can bother others managers by upbiding some players. You have to think about the good upbid to bother people without taking the risk to buy an unexcepted player. With this other option you can't really upbid smth since managers are just doing one blind offer and the highest one gets the players. So yeah I feel like it really removes a whole part of the auctions fun.

 

[Denial]

Gonna share my opinions on some matters i think are worth addressing.

RE: Number of subs.

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.

While managing Snake, something i had troubles with was finding subs for particular tiers. As we were only allowed to get 4 subs, one had to be for DOU, and rest to cover 4 OU slots and all lower tiers + LC. This was hard to cover but not impossible. Now, if we wanna add even more tiers, i'm sure only 2 subs wont be enough , not even sure about 4. Let it be someone flopping or some issues irl, but in 9 (possibly 11) weeks you will have to sub someone. If the format everyone wants to go with is OU / OU / DOU / Ubers / UU / RU / NU / PU / LC / ??? (which i like too), i think only 2 subs wont be enough. Covering so many metagames is nearly impossible, especially if we even add Monotype. Imo, force it to 4 subs per team.

RE: Auction / Draft.
As fun as the other methods sound, i feel like its not worth the risk and to just do the same as SPL. Its the more balanced and has always been fun to watch and follow.

As for the name, i really like Smogon Champions League.
I want to encourage everyone to post in this thread, if you guys want to make this tour great, sharing your opinion wont hurt.

 

[tennisace]

Just a quick point re: subs -

If it's an auction, then there's no need to force more than 2 subs per team. Teams should allowed to buy more if they think they're necessary / if they have the funds like in SPL. Just set the max team size at say, 20 (which mirrors SPL's prior limit of 2x roster size of 24). Leave it up to the individ. managers tho.

 

[Hogg]

Gonna share my opinions on some matters i think are worth addressing.

RE: Number of subs.


While managing Snake, something i had troubles with was finding subs for particular tiers. As we were only allowed to get 4 subs, one had to be for DOU, and rest to cover 4 OU slots and all lower tiers + LC. This was hard to cover but not impossible. Now, if we wanna add even more tiers, i'm sure only 2 subs wont be enough , not even sure about 4. Let it be someone flopping or some issues irl, but in 9 (possibly 11) weeks you will have to sub someone. If the format everyone wants to go with is OU / OU / DOU / Ubers / UU / RU / NU / PU / LC / ??? (which i like too), i think only 2 subs wont be enough. Covering so many metagames is nearly impossible, especially if we even add Monotype. Imo, force it to 4 subs per team.

For what it's worth, unlike Snake there's nothing stopping you from drafting more subs than what's required. And even if we add mono, the total number of tiers played (9 total) would be less than we saw in SPL XI (10 total) or X (11 total), despite those tours having only a 2 sub requirement.

Anyhow, my main issue with increasing the number of required subs is mostly a question of auction dynamics rather than keeping teams smaller. SPL for the past few years has had 140k total allotted to draft 14 players total, 12 of whom are starters. Dropping to 10 starters but keeping the total funds the same will likely skew prices upwards for top players while keeping prices about the same for the low- to moderate-cost players. If we do decide that it makes sense to have four required subs, then we should probably look at adjusting the allotment of funds downward a bit to avoid this. Will need to crunch the numbers but I think somewhere between 126k and 133k is probably ideal for a 10 starter/4 sub breakdown.