St. Patrick and the Casting Out of Snakes

[Dave]

Simple solution: two SPLs

1) Smogon Premier League
2) Summer Pokemon League

:D

 

[MetalGro$$]

Just chiming in with my personal opinion here:

The new format SPL has already started and it has been called SPL XII, which means talah's suggestion comes too late. If we rebrand the all OU tournament into a new name after an edition has already ran in which it's been called SPL, it will only get confusing for everyone involved and have a negative effect on the branding.
Another potential problem I see with this idea is based on something I read in the following article a couple of weeks ago: https://defector.com/maybe-people-care-about-watching-sports-exactly-as-much-as-they-should/.
Sports watching has been down, and this journalist suggests it's because people not as involved don't care enough to keep up with timeframe changes: for example, The Masters Tournament, which is usually held in April, was held in November this year and had 51% less viewership. Everyone knows SPL runs from January-March, so changing that timeframe might throw some spectators/potential competitors off.

Personally, I really like the Smogon Champions League idea. It keeps the football team of the official team tours. SPL, WCoP and SCL has some nice synergy. No one can argue that Champions League sounds any less prestigious than Premier League. The concern that it is 'not really a league of champions' seems a bit redundant in my eyes, as SPL doesn't have relegation or managers getting fired or actual Premier League teams involved either. It feels like a nice name that shouldnt be looked too hard into.

We could try to work in the dark blue trophy as it would resemble the color of the actual Champions League logo, as I'm a fan of a total rebrand with a new trophy color.

 

[obii]

- tournament name: im strongly opposed to spl summer and spl winter. it kinda ruins the idea of this new tournament creating its own identity and relies on the "spl brand" to have any sense of prestige. im also strongly opposed to naming the new tournament spl and changing the current spl to something else. its just a bad idea for many reasons. spl has a strong history on our website and not respecting that would be a huge mistake. i like smogon champions league. its quick to the point, easy to remember. and SCL is a nice acronym. i like smogon grand prix too and it relates to grand slam since they both share tiers but SGP isn't as nice. i think picking a name soon is important for the reasons finch outlined. maybe hogg can narrow down some options and td's can vote between them? or maybe a survey can be sent out. "smogon snake draft" and the snake theme was literally decided because the managers in the manager pm couldnt agree on anything and time was running out lol so it would be great if we could avoid that same issue. branding is super important

- tiers: i think everyone agrees that 4 ou slots is terrible so im glad we've settled on 2-3. definitely catching flak for this but i dont think mono should be in this tournament. many people are citing the fact that it's an official tier as the reason it's entitled to representation but that doesn't really hold weight. mono was awarded the categorization of official tier because of how popular the tier and how large the playerbase is on ps. mono is not a core tier and it's representation in official tournaments is entirely in the td's discretion. this thread misrepresents how many people want mono in vs doesn't want it in since those who want it in are the ones speaking up while those who are ok with the status quo aren't saying much. i dont think "competitiveness" can be quantitatively measured so every argument about how "good" of a tier mono is or how "its more competitive than it seems" falls short. the bottom line is, mono is way too different from usage based tiers to be a good inclusion in this tournament.

- format: i dont have any strong suggestions here but i do wanna emphasize the fact that i think everyone is being complacent in this regard. i dont think we should automatically default to the spl format. i think we should have more discussion on the benefits of weeks vs pools, take lax's auction system into consideration, and just discuss it more. i think people are being lazy and just saying "well the spl format works lets do it" when there are endless possibilities for being creative and differentiating this tour from spl. why would we give up so quickly and default so spl's format without much discussion when one of the main concerns is giving this tour its own identity? the format is just as, if not more, important than the branding

i dont wanna point fingers as im not fully aware of the situation but snake 1s issue was largely due to poor communication and poor hosting. we were told the format would be pools, akin to wcop, but instead got a format where it was literally 2 weeks compressed into 1. snake 2 was a step up (in my opinion). rey and hogg thought of a creative format and while it was fun, an issue it had was that it eliminated teams way too quickly. snake 3 and 4 were just weeks which i think strongly contributed to the lack of hype and excitement. yes weeks is a good, tried and true format but it gives the feeling of "discount" spl. for what its worth, im not saying DONT do weeks. if we cant think of something else, its fine but i just think the format does deserve a LOT more discussion than its getting and i think thats due to ppl being lazy and defaulting to "if it works why change it" which i think is a terrible mindset when the goal is to create a fresh, new tournament with its own identity

thanks to hogg for spearheading this project and everyone else for contributing with their thoughts.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

at this point we're splitting hairs more or less, grand prix and champions have roughly the same plusses and minuses and either one is equally likely to be successful

personally i think smogon grand prix is rather meh, and from an associative stand point i match it to car racing or cycling which typically evaluate over multiple events, akin to classic/grand slam. i personally feel like smogon champions league carries the highest prestige of any name suggested so far and while I acknowledge the potential awkwardness between SPL and SCL, i expect that is mostly due to novelty and after the first iteration of the event you'll find SCL adopted into common use quickly enough

alternatively, chaos Cup

 

[Boat]

I think it's important that the name be accurate to the format.

- Grand Prix already exists (https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/grand-prix-playoffs-finals-won-by-pigeons.3667938/) and it's an individual format.

- If you go with Champion's League, you need concrete differences between the format known as Premier League and this new format called Champion's League. Otherwise, you have two identical tours being called two different format, which makes no sense.

 

[oversway]

There is a way to link SPL and the new tour together that allows for the format and draft method to be similar without giving the impression that they're the same tour. In the US, most professional sports leagues are subdivided into eastern and western conferences. You could divide SPL into separate conferences, for example a "legacy" conference and a "modern" conference, which would put both tours under the SPL umbrella without giving them the exact same name. alternatively, if you wanted each tour to have its own distinct branding, the overall thing could be named "Smogon Masters Conference" or something and SPL and SCL (or whatever other name) could be the individual tours.

re: monotype, include it if the goal is inclusiveness, but not if the most important criteria is perceived prestige. I doubt most people would view a tour with mono on the same level as current SPL simply because it's never had official representation before and likely still has a "matchup-decided" stigma attached to it

 

[SANJAY]

I like the name Smogon Champions League for reasons already stated, but I just wanna talk about the draft/playoff format a bit. I think the idea of an IPL based auction/playoff format is interesting. For context, here's how both of them work:

Auction Structure:

IPL is an Indian Cricket League, which works very similarly to the current Snake/SPL, with only the number of teams being different (8 Team league, Top 4 make playoffs, Round Robin Format). IPL auctions happen yearly, but what makes them interesting is that roughly every 3 years there's a "mega" auction, where teams can only retain a maximum of 5 players.

These 5 retentions are split into 2 categories, Regular Retentions, and Right to Match retentions. Each team is allowed a maximum of 3 "Regular Retentions", and a maximum of 2 "Right to Match" retentions. The Right to Match retention is essentially a price match card, which allows you to retain a former player for the price they end up going for in the mega auction. Regular Retentions happen pre-auction, and the salary is negotiated by the players, whereas the funds deducted happens via a pre-determined value for each player retained. Negotiation happening in Pokemon is obviously flawed due to the lack of salaries, so top players could hypothetically agree to play for 3k if they like the manager, and deflate their actual value (i.e: The value of funds deducted is less than their actual price), so this system would probably need a rework, which I briefly touch on later.

In between these mega auctions, there are "regular" auctions, where teams have an unlimited limit on retains. Retentions that occur are the same price as what the player went for in the previous auction. A player who went for 10k in the first auction would go for 10k if you decided to retain them the next season, for example. These funds will be then (obviously) deducted from your auction total. This allows teams to build some identity.

Trades are allowed to occur before the tournament starts. The IPL format also allows for midseason trades, but in order to be eligible, the player would have had to play less than 3 games. There's no mid-season auction, and traded players are eligible to be retained.

And for what it's worth, this format does happen to be pretty balanced in comparison to most sports leagues I've watched. There are a few favourites on paper, but quite often, that comes down to the importance of scouting.

Pros:

• Easily the biggest one is team identity. Being able to retain players for a long period of time allows a strong team identity to be formed throughout the years.
• It heavily rewards good scouting. The fact that retention price will stay the same in between the regular auctions will incentivise managers to pick up cheap steals which they can retain across seasons.
• Allows teams to rebuild if necessary, whilst still retaining identity. I think the main issue with allowing full retains for an indefinite amount of time is that majority of the good players won't leave specific teams, and some teams with "out of form" players will start struggling and not find it easy to build up. The mega auction would allow teams to rebuild if their player cores in previous seasons flop, whilst still having access to a high caliber pool. It also allows teams to still retain quite a few of their better players, and retain identities.
• Right to match adds another layer to retentions, and makes managers question whether a player would be cheaper if retained, or cheaper in the auction.

Cons:

• 3 years in between mega auctions is a long time. This is Pokemon, a hobby, not a full-time career like a sport. Both players/managers could possibly quit in this time frame, so managers who invest and go all in on big players, in hopes of retaining them for the next few years, may get screwed over. Or alternatively, managers leaving and having replacement managers come in before a mega auction, means they have to pick players from an objectively weaker pool of players if their original players refuse retention, since a majority of the good ones will already have been retained. The solution is probably changing it to a 2-year gap, but my main concern with that, is it enough to build a strong identity if we're back to a limited amount of retains? Maybe. I think some sort of an "inverse tax" system would help (which I touch on briefly later), it allows the more iconic players to be retained for a not-too expensive price. Couple that with the right to matches, I feel like identity can still be formed pretty well since core players feel more accessible.
• Since salaries don't exist in Pokemon, how would we go about the mega auction retentions? I was initially thinking of just sticking to the SPL system, but there are a few cons that come with that. One of them being if you pick a 3k average at the time player in the regular auction, and they evolve into a top player in 2-3 years, then you'd be retaining them for 10k until the next mega auction, where they still only become 16k. However, at the same time, you could see this as just rewarding scouting, which I do feel is one of the main benefits of this system. The other main con is the fact that this system wouldn't really distinguish itself from SPL's system, and could end up resetting "Team Identity".

Playoff Structure:

The IPL also follows a slightly different playoffs structure. Essentially, the Top 2 teams will have 2 chances at reaching the finals, whereas the teams ranked #3 and #4 will have to win twice. The format works by splitting the Top 2 teams into something called "Qualifier 1" and teams #3 and #4 into an "Eliminator". The winner of Qualifier 1 goes directly into the finals, whereas the loser has a second chance, and is placed into "Qualifier 2". The winner of the Eliminator is also moved into Qualifier 2, whereas the loser is well, eliminated. And finally, the winner of Qualifier 2 proceeds to the finals, whereas the loser is also out. I really feel like this system because it heavily rewards teams who dominated/performed consistently during the regular season by giving them two opportunities, whilst still making things interesting as a spectator, seeing if the "Eliminator" teams can pull through, and also provides more high-stakes matches. It also gives incentive for teams that have also secured a playoffs spot to carry on playing as competitively as they can, to lock the Top 2 spot.

Thoughts:

I do think, on paper, the auction system could work. It creates team identity, and rewards scouting and good managerial skills, whilst also allowing teams to completely (or partially) rebuild semi-frequently. The right to match ability, in conjunction with regular retentions, adds another element when it comes to deciding retentions: will the player be cheaper in the auction? Or should I just stick with regularly retaining him? This system has actually worked very well in the IPL, and as I touched on before, the league happens to be very balanced. The teams that do perform consistently across seasons are the ones that have good scouts. However, with that being said, I'm not sure how well it would work in terms of Pokemon, particularly because Pokemon is not a commitment, so it's much more likely that players end up getting burned out between seasons, and ultimately quitting, which could hurt team balance.

The mega auctions may make it seem a bit more similar to SPL, almost resetting some of identity formed, but I really think the ability to retain 5 players does help quite a bit, since these will mostly be your "core". This in conjunction with unlimited retains in between the mega auctions, rewards scouting and could help build legacies.

The main thing is I don't know is how we'd handle retentions during the mega auctions to make them fair. I do think using the SPL system is interesting since again, it incentivises managers to scout for players that can become big steals in the future (since price only increases every 2-3 years). However, some people may find it unbalanced. For example, retaining someone who is 10k for someone who is easily valued at 20-25k for the next 2-3 years (only for it to go to 13k next year). I think perhaps some of sort "inverse tax" system could be interesting. For example: If I were to retain a 30k, 15k and 3k player, perhaps have the value of the cheapest player go up by original auction price of the 3k player + X% of the most valuable retain, then the value of the 15k player would go by original auction price + 0.5X% of the most valuable retain, etc. Perhaps this could incentivise teams to retain their star players to keep their identity, whilst also retaining their up-and-coming players for a justifiable value. It's not too cheap to the point where it's "unfair", nor too expensive to the point where their investment isn't rewarded.

I'm more so a huge fan of the playoff structure, the only "real" downside is that the tournament will take an extra week, if length is an issue, as there are 3 weeks of knock-out games (Eliminator + Qualifier 1, Qualifier 2, Finals) as opposed to 2.

I know a lot of this is probably impractical and that there also probably technicality issues, but I thought it could be quite interesting, particularly the playoffs structure.

 

[Hogg]

While Zracknel is hard at work putting together some sample ideas for us to help choose a direction re: name and branding, I've been working a bit on the overall format and auction model.

Regarding the format, I've been reaching out to a lot of folks privately about their thoughts on Monotype's potential inclusion, both from people in and out of the community. The response I've gotten has actually been almost overwhelmingly positive, with the main criticism being the worry that people "won't take the tour seriously" if Mono is included because too many people think Mono is a meme. I definitely want people to take the tournament seriously, but this was also a concern that people raised about adding PU to Slam/Snake, and I don't think it de-legitimized either tour. (Snake of course had its own issues - but all of those issues existed before we ever added PU.) In fact, from the non-lower tiers players I spoke to, most of them actually seemed more interested in Mono than they did in a lot of current lower tiers. I don't know if that's just a side effect of it being different and new (at least to officials), but it was definitely interesting. I think there absolutely needs to be more discussion here, but if the only actual concern is that it might make people take the tournament less seriously, I think that's more of a PR/branding issue than an actual format issue, and I'd rather address it as such.

Anyhow, onto auctions. Right now I think that there are three potentially realistic proposals for auctions (though I'm still digesting what SANJAY posted about IPL, so maybe that's a fourth option):

• Standard SPL-style money auction
• Standard SPL-style money auction with in-auction sellbacks
• Sealed bid/blind auction

I've been exploring these ideas a bit more, and with power's help hammered out some rules for each, and I think all of them could be quite good. The next step is to actually test these out. I've made some inquiries about getting bots set up with these rules, and once they are, I'd like to run a few mocks with the listed formats. (Probably we can just use the pool of players from the most recent Snake as the sample group.) My thought is that we take them a bit more seriously than your standard mock, with managers selected about a week in advance so that they can actually plan a team. At the conclusion of the mock, each manager should answer some questions about how much they liked the auction format, how much control they felt they had over their team's final outcome, etc.

For those interested, here are the rules we wrote up for the two new auction formats. Happy to answer any questions about these, either here or on PM. If you think you might be interested in participating in some of the mocks, hit me up.

SPL + in-auction sellbacks

Standard SPL Rules + In-Auction Sellbacks

In-Auction Sellbacks:

• When it is your turn’s team to nominate a player, you may nominate a player that is currently on your roster.
• The minimum bid on the nominated player is 3k.
• The team with the highest bid purchases the player you have nominated. That player is removed from your roster and placed on theirs.
• The winning price is added to your team’s total auction funds, instead of being returned to the house.
• If no one bids on the player in question, that player remains on your team’s roster.
• You may not upbid players from your roster that you have nominated.

Blind Auction

Sealed Bid Auction (modified Vickrey)

Team captains nominate players, and all submit sealed bids. Highest bidder wins the auction, but pays the second-highest price (min 3,000). In-auction sellbacks are allowed.

• Team captains proceed in a standard snake order to nominate players for auction.
• All teams have 60 seconds to submit their bids.
  • Minimum bid is 3,000 credits.
  • Bids must be in multiples of 200 credits.
  • The team who nominates must bid on the player nominated.
  • Any team that wishes to skip a particular nomination may submit a nomination of “pass.” They will be removed from contention for the player in question.
  • If a team does not bid within 60 seconds, they are considered to have passed on a player.
  • If the team that nominates a player is the only team to submit a bid, the second-highest bid is considered to be 3,000 credits.
  • No bids are visible until the 60 seconds have concluded.
• After 60 seconds have elapsed, all bids are revealed.
• The team with the highest bid adds the player to their roster. Credits equal to the second-highest bid (minimum 3,000) are deducted from their total.
• In cases of a tie for highest bid, ties are broken in the following priority:
  • If the team who nominated the player is one of the tied winning bids, the nominating team wins.
  • If the team who nominated the player is NOT one of the tied winning bids, the player is re-nominated. Only the teams that were tied for the highest bid are permitted to participate. The minimum bid amount is equal to the second-highest bid from the initial auction.
• On your turn to nominate a player, you may instead sell back an existing player.
  • You nominate one of the players from their own roster.
  • Sealed bids are submitted as normal. You are not permitted to submit a bid.
  • The team with the highest bid purchases the player you have nominated. That player is removed from your roster and placed on theirs.
  • The winning team pays a price equal to the second-highest bid. That amount is added to your team’s total credits.
  • If no one submits a bid, the house repurchases your player for 3,000 credits, and that player is added back to the general auction pool.

It'll likely take a couple of weeks to get everything set up re: bot, time and managers, but I think that all of these are a good jumping off point. Let's see how they look in practice and go from there.

 

[Sapientia]

Regarding names I am willing to provide the name of Smogon's most iconic old gen tournament, so DerDomme Cup as basis for naming the old gen premier league. DerDomme Premier League does not only promise a strong brand and high level plays, but is also connect to old gens, so that everybody will immediately know that this is the most prestigious old gen team tournament.

This also means, that the name Smogon Premier League can be used for the new tournament, featuring current gen plays.

 

[Hogg]

Things have been a bit quiet with the recent focus rightfully on SPL, but I wanted to provide a quick update.

First, Zracknel has mocked up some sample logos for the tournament. In these instances he used green for the color scheme under the assumption that the tour keeps the green trophy, but of course that could be adjusted if we decide to go with an entirely new trophy.

Here’s his Smogon Champions League mockup:

And here’s something he put together under the idea of dual SPLs. He’s still working on SPL Summer/Winter, but he had the idea of doing SPL divisions with a color theme if we go with a dual SPL model, and I really like the output:

He’s also taken some suggestions on team names to put together draft logos, so that we can decide on a theme. I think this is pretty important. A lot of team naming ideas that sound good on paper can get really boring or repetitive in practice (citation: the last four years of SSD, minus the bit about sounding good on paper). The Stark Sharks and Wi-Fi Wolfpack are cool as hell, but they’d lose a lot of their punch if all ten teams had similar names. Conversely, names that probably shouldn’t work can do so by virtue of being clever (usually via a pun/homonym/play on words) or by having a really good mascot and branding. I think if anyone tried to suggest something like Congregation of the Classiest or the Ever Grande BIGs now they’d be totally rejected, but when you see it in practice it just works.

Anyhow, this was mentioned upthread, but Zracknel has suggested that any theme we have be broad enough that you can have a mix of all different naming themes: there need to be both tough team names and funny team names, there should be at least one “asshole” team, one femme team, etc. For the mock-up, I’ve kept it super open and along with Kalalokki started generating some sample names with the caveat that they refer in some way to a part of Smogon, however obliquely. We also said that unless it is REALLY REALLY good the name shouldn’t have the verbatim name of a pokemon or game location (with some exceptions - for example, several Smogon sections such as Indigo Plateau/Power Plant/Ruins of Alph/Dragonspiral Tower were of course in-game locations before they were site/forum sections). That doesn’t mean that we have to go with any of these; we just wanted them as a jumping off point so that we could set up some sample logos for teams and start developing a theme. If it looks like this theme works we can develop them further with broader input.

Re: the auction model, the holidays slowed things down a bit but Kris is still working on a bot that can support these suggested formats. I’ve had a few people reach out to me expressing interest in testing them out via mocks, so I’ll notify you all once they’ve been done. I’d want them treated a bit more seriously than a standard mock - for example, since most mockers don’t plan out rosters way in advance, an unplanned mock wouldn’t show some of the flaws in the snake-style draft. Therefore, I’m going to ask everyone who participates to make at least a rough draft plan before the mocks, and after they participate I’ll ask all the participants a few questions:

sample post mock survey

How close was your final team to the team you had planned?

As a drafter/manager, how much control did you feel you had over the final outcome of your team? More or less control than SPL/Snake?

How easy was it to adjust a draft plan due to unexpected events with this auction model?

Did you enjoy this mock?

Any other thoughts/comments.

I’ll post the results, including the teams and various comments, once we get them.

Thanks to all who have been helping with this, and please continue to reach out if you have any ideas or also want to help!

 

[teal6]

please for the love of god do not do spl red division and spl green division

 

[Astra]

What about SPL Sword Division and SPL Shield Division, unless we want to avoid using direct references to games (I know that Red and Green are references but it isn't incredibly explicit)? Might be too cheesy, but it's worth a shot.

 

[FNH]

please for the love of god do not do spl red division and spl green division

oh, I might be certified stupid, but I thought the "red division" and "green division" above was just filler text until the actual name is decided upon (assuming the league is broken into two seperate divisions, instead of Champions League and Premier League)

 

[Lily]

What about SPL Sword Division and SPL Shield Division, unless we want to avoid using direct references to games (I know that Red and Green are references but it isn't incredibly explicit)? Might be too cheesy, but it's worth a shot.

the idea here is okay this gen specifically but the problem lies with future branding mostly. spl red and green have the excuse of using the first games as branding (less arbitrary) + not explicitly being references to the original games regardless, but if we're playing gen 9 tiers then being in the sword and shield divisions just kinda jars. we'd need to be willing to use whatever the current gen games are as branding which would suck at times (SPL X and SPL Y are not only terrible but also confusing - are they referring to the OU-only team tournament or the tenth iteration?) and is also a pain in the ass to do. keeping sword and shield division past current gen just seems weird so idt that's an option either.

smogon champions league is cool imo. the mockup looks great, it has continuity with spl and the community seems happy with it for the most part. i don't necessarily dislike spl red and green but i agree that it's inferior overall, think it's better to just go with scl. the acronym sucks but hey can't win em all.

 

[Zephyri]

this might just be me being stupid but i assumed spl red and green were because the trophies are, you know, red and green

 

[Hogg]

It’s been a while, but I wanted to provide an update!

I think at this point it’s safe to settle on Smogon Champions League. It’s had by far the most positive feedback, and seems the least controversial of those. Unless there’s a sudden outcry, I think it’s safe to move forward with this one. Here’s the logo again, for posterity (could of course be recolored if it turns out we change the trophy color):

As for team names, just to get a feel for things, we started brainstorming some ideas using other areas of the site. Between former sections, current unused sections, etc., there’s a lot of room for ideas here, and I’m pretty confident we can get ten great team names out of the bunch. Been brainstorming with Kalalokki and we have a pretty good selection, which were used to mock up a couple of sample logos. If this idea seems like it has legs, I’ll probably open up a separate thread for more ideas.

Anyhow, here are two sample logos, using two current unused site sections (Power Plant and Orange Islands). While these are fairly literal, remember that just because a certain section was the inspiration for a team name doesn’t mean it has to be “[section name] [nouns]” as team names. Think of things like the Alpha Ruiners, Congregation of the Classiest, Indie Scooters, etc., which all used their respective sections as a jumping off point but weren’t tied down by it.

Re: the testing of auction formats, unfortunately the first person I was talking to about setting up the bots had some other commitments come up, so there’s been a delay on that end. Eo Ut Mortus mentioned possibly being able to help, and I’ll maybe reach out to some other folks with bot experience to make sure we can still get that rolling.

But yeah, feedback would be much appreciated! I’m especially looking for feedback on the overall them rather than the individual team names - once we have the theme nailed down, we can start workshopping the team names.

 

[lax]

I like this

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

those logos are kind of hot ngl

 

[Finchinator]

The Exeggutor logo is one of the most creative designs we have ever seen. I feel it is greatly representative of Smogon's current tournament culture with the heads as they are, too. Great job!

Smogon Championships League (SCL for shorthand) seems like a safe bet as you say -- I think this will catch on as easily as other names have.

With regards to the color of the trophy/logo, maybe this one is a bit less universally agreed upon, but I like it the way it is. I think the green looks great on the logo and there should not be many quarrels keeping the same trophy. I get that there is a lot of rebranding being done -- renaming of the tournament, renaming of the teams, restructuring of the draft, and potentially more. However, it will be fulfilling the same rough niche in the overall tournament circuit and be comprised of mostly the same tiers. I think a rebrand can be done without ditching every last detail. Keeping the trophy color seems fitting to me at the very least.

 

[Moutemoute]

The aesthetic of the "Power Plant Dynamos" is outstanding, great fucking job to whoever did it.

Talking about the trophy aesthetic I already did a post about 3 months ago and I still think a new color would be useful in order to move on from the "shadow" of Smogon Snake Draft. Yeah we're keeping the same tier but that's pretty much the only thing we're keeping at that point (new teams with brand new logos, new tournament name, new auctions system etc..). So yeah.. I'm personally hyped for something new too on the trophy.

For the record this was the "best" options I found in comparison to other Smogon tournaments :

: Smogon Premier League (current)

: Smogon Champions League (new)

: Smogon VGC Tournament (alumn)

: Official Smogon Tournament (current)

or

: Smogon Champions League (new)

: Official Ladder Tournament (current)

: Smogon Tour (current)

With or without a new trophy, I'm super hyped about this project and I'm looking forward to see what we're going to get at the end ! :palico:

 

[ABR]

The Exeggutor logo is one of the most creative designs we have ever seen. I feel it is greatly representative of Smogon's current tournament culture with the heads as they are, too. Great job!

Smogon Championships League (SCL for shorthand) seems like a safe bet as you say -- I think this will catch on as easily as other names have.

With regards to the color of the trophy/logo, maybe this one is a bit less universally agreed upon, but I like it the way it is. I think the green looks great on the logo and there should not be many quarrels keeping the same trophy. I get that there is a lot of rebranding being done -- renaming of the tournament, renaming of the teams, restructuring of the draft, and potentially more. However, it will be fulfilling the same rough niche in the overall tournament circuit and be comprised of mostly the same tiers. I think a rebrand can be done without ditching every last detail. Keeping the trophy color seems fitting to me at the very least.

even the logo is green, case closed

 

[Malekith]

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

I support every single word of this.

 

[Aurella]

Officially petitioning for an "SCL Mode" for this tournament. It's a shame we abandoned the concept so entirely after SPL X instead of reworking the conveniency of it. The soundtrack/backgrounds & tournament header that made up SPL Mode were great, and I'm positive that a well-made SCL Mode would contribute a similarly enriching and more hype experience for the tour.

 

[Kalalokki]

Officially petitioning for an "SCL Mode" for this tournament. It's a shame we abandoned the concept so entirely after SPL X instead of reworking the conveniency of it. The soundtrack/backgrounds & tournament header that made up SPL Mode were great, and I'm positive that a well-made SCL Mode would contribute a similarly enriching and more hype experience for the tour.

I agree and I also think that a problem with that implementation was all the red tape we slapped on it when we were coming up with it:

To activate SPL Mode, BOTH players must use the command /splmode prior to their game. If only one players uses the /splmode command, the game will not start and you will receive a message letting you know that only one player selected SPL mode.

SPL mode is available to anyone on the custom avatar list. Please do not use SPL mode for non-SPL games; doing so may result in revocation of avatar/SPL mode privileges and being devoiced on smogtours.

In hindsight, this was just needlessly restrictive that led to not many games actually using it. I don't really think there's much of a problem with people using it more liberally, it's just a cool hype feature and we should really encourage more people to use it regardless. I believe the concern was that it would leave it feeling shallow for the actual SPL games or confusing people thinking it was an official game or something. I don't remember the exact details of other implementation suggestions, but I know it being a mod command was also floated around and I believe Zarel could also SPL-ify a past replay as well. Tagging Hogg for his thoughts, as the one most involved with it I believe.

 

[Hogg]

Yeah, I absolutely loved SPL mode in theory but I agree that it ended up being awkward in practice and no one used it. That said, while I agree that we probably didn’t need to have the draconian “using outside of SPL = devoice” rule, IIRC the main reason it was so complicated wasn’t so much that we were worried about its prestige being diluted. When we were doing planning for SPL X, a couple of the folks involved (I want to say ABR and Luigi, but I could be misremembering) were worried that it could be too distracting and didn’t want it to be “forced” onto players. That’s why we set it up so that both players had to activate the command before the game in order to use it… but the process was awkward and no one ever really felt like bothering. It’s a shame, because I thought it was cool as heck and made the games really stand out.

We also tried to stagger announcements of cool features for SPL X in order to increase hype, but because SPL Mode was the last feature and didn’t get announced until a couple of weeks into the tour, I feel like no one really knew about it. In retrospect we probably should have rolled it out before the tour and let folks get used to it and play with it a bit.

I’d love to see it come back for SCL, although I know that it was a fair bit of work implementing it, so I think it’s probably only worth doing if there’s actually interest from players.