Discussion SV OU Suspect Tournament Requisites Discussion

[Finchinator]

Back in SM OU, we used tournament requisites as an alternative qualification method to laddering. Here is an example of it in action during the last suspect of SM. In addition, old generations rely on tournament reqs across the board as we can see in DPP, ADV, ORAS, and plenty of other tests.

Some members of the OU council and tournament community have discussed adopting the practice in SV OU. We have received complaints about the current process not producing satisfactory voter pools. It is true that tournament reqs could improve the quality of voters, but it also has drawbacks. I will use this thread to outline my thoughts, provide some pros and cons, and provide a vague proposal that I want feedback on from active players/voters (not policy review mains)!

My personal opinion is that laddering for reqs can be annoying and time consuming, but it is not too big of a commitment when given multiple weeks. I -- speaking as an individual, not the council -- do not feel a strong urge for Tournament Reqs, but I am willing to bend if the playerbase and other members of the council express coherent and plentiful support. At the end of the day, it is our playerbase who decides suspects and, therefore, our playerbase should have stake in their makeup. I do want to note that this topic surfaced both in the OU council chat and a chat among other tier leaders, where it seemed to have some support. If other tiers want to adopt this, we can always retool this thread in accordance with that, but I will never speak on their behalf.

In terms of pros and cons, the selling point is having the best possible pool of voters! This gets the most accurate result for our metagames. However, it is worth noting that you save time from people who may get reqs regardless, but now automatically qualify. As for the cons, tour reqs are always going to be arbitrary and it is not an entirely level playingfield. No matter how tournament reqs are drawn up, there are going to be people who fall just short due to team circumstances. In addition, our tournaments are not always inclusive -- WCoP region playing a role in suspect reqs was a problem cited in the past and SPL/SCL managers playing a role in who gets picked and who plays has been a pressure point. Another note is that some would rather leave reqs alone or improve the method of getting them to make it less tedious rather than sidestepping laddering for tour players. Ultimately, it is never going to be perfect, but the benefit of assuring the best players vote is noteworthy.

My personal proposal is that if we discuss light tournament reqs that pull only from recent tournaments. I do not feel comfortable going back a full 6 months of tournaments like we did in SM! I would rather not do anything than go back too far or include people who are not current in SV OU. The metagame changes too much over the course of 6 months, especially if this carries out into future generations. We need to keep in mind that the goal is to have people who are actively engaging with the metagame, not necessarily the biggest names.

I would be fine pulling from the last 3 (maybe 4) months of tournaments (i.e: a suspect now would cover SPL and OST, but not SCL and OLT from last year). I think that there is a lot of room for arguing the metrics that qualify people, but my vague thought is playoffs of individuals (top 16 for OST) and a >=50% win rate in >=3 games in officials. You can argue to include top finishers in the OU circuit, too.

I will leave the specifics about the thresholds to the posters of this thread beyond this, but I think the first thing we should establish is if this is something we want or not. I would love to hear from our players/voters on this topic!

 

[clean]

I am in favor of bringing back tournament reqs. If I took anything away from the various threads over the last month - it's that the suspect turnout for tournament players is shockingly low. The bottom line is that reqs are tedious and a hassle to acquire - but you can't make them easier without introducing a different set of problems. I believe the overarching goal of suspect tests is to make sure as many informed and qualified people have a say in the metagame as possible - something that hasn't been the case for a while now reflected by the very poor tour player turnout.

My proposal would allow people to have tournament reqs if they have done any of the following in the last 4 months: placed top 16 in OST, qualified for OLT, scored 12 SV points in STour, have a positive record in SCL/SPL playing at least 5/9 weeks, or have a positive record in WCoP playing 3 or more games. (I stole a couple of these metrics from lax so thank you to him I guess.) These parameters are not exact and can be changed if needed. At the end of the day I don't think the exact metrics matter that much - as long as we are allowing a higher number of qualified people to participate without a huge hassle I think it's a plus.

To briefly respond to some of the cons proposed by Finch in the OP: I don't really think it matters that certain people will be left out "arbitrarily" by just missing out on tour reqs. The line has to be drawn somewhere and there is still a mechanism for any user on the website to get reqs. I also don't buy into the notion that "SPL/SCL managers playing a role in who gets picked" would be an issue here. This isn't being proposed to promote tour player elitism - and this should not factor into any decision made here. The only goal is to improve the quality of suspect voter pools. There is no discrimination. If you didn't get tour reqs from playing in officials - your voice can still be heard by laddering.

 

[Hacker]

I absolutely support tournament reqs existing alongside ladder reqs.

I've never really been compelled by the arguments against them. The idea of people who are clearly qualified getting reqs by default doesn't really bother me when anyone is able to still use the ladder portion to be eligible to vote. Tiering doesn't only cater to tournament results as reqs are still obtainable enough for casual players to get if they put time into it. However, I think it only really serves to increase the voter pool which is just a good thing and more representative of the playerbase at large

As for implementation, I agree with Finch's proposal. Last 3 month's of tournaments is good criteria that basically guarantees the people getting reqs are people that still are active players of it in tournaments. Any more and I do think it gets sketchy, but I would support implementation of this in some fashion regardless

 

[lax]

I was a big part in pushing this in council chat so I'll post my thoughts here:

frankly, Graybaum's post here was extremely embarrassing for the tournament community. how can such a tiny portion of the most influential SV OU players care so little about the tier? We're the ones playing it and it's easier to complain in private chats than it is to actually put in some effort to contribute to the tier. I'm not coming from some high horse, though, I only did 1/3 of the recent votes and only cuz I'm a Palafin/Chaos enjoyer

that being said, I also get it. I invested my personal time near the end of my semester (regret?) to vote on this test because I was passionate about it & the idea of a positive change for the tier. but, it still takes hours and any one unfortunate game has the potential to set you back a another 20 minutes or more. I honestly don't rate suspect test ladder as the end-all-be-all for who should get to vote. arbitrary 1750 80 gxe.. but that's not the point of this thread

I supported and pushed this idea because it lets accomplished SV players have a say without the barrier and commitment of laddering for reqs. the commitment is already in playing a 9-week long tournament and having to put your A game in team choice and playing, and this should be rewarded with an easier way to contribute to tiering policy.

my suggestion is:
Top 32 OST
All OLT Qualifiers
50% WR+ in 5 or more games in SCL & SPL
2-1 or 50% WR+ in WCoP
Anyone with 12 points or more in SV (or the respective gen) STour

Brief explanations on each:
- Top 32 OST out of a 1,000+ player tournament is surely qualified enough to speak on tiering.
- OLT ladder is at minimum ~2030, which is, ofc, way higher than the 1750 requirement and reaching that high of an elo gets exponentially more difficult because the points you earn is lower and the players you play are better.
- SCL & SPL are insanely long tournaments. To maintain a 50% or higher winrate is very impressive and you'll likely be facing top tier players of the tier.
- WCoP is a much shorter tournament for the majority of teams, but 2-1 in pools as the absolute minimum makes sense to me because going positive also demonstrates you know the tier to a somewhat solid degree.
- 12 points in STour is a lot of wins over 3 total SV weeks. I'd trust most people here to make informed decisions based on their experiences

now, I think it's also valid for people to start whining and calling tournament player elitism. I simply think the best and most influential players should have a say without having to spend extra time doing so. this allows for more votes and more opinions. maybe an extra requirement is to cash in your free vote, you have to make a post in the Qualified Discussion thread that shares some of your thoughts. I'm also interested in live suspect tournaments (maybe a couple a test) and some kind of ladder requirement as well for players who simply don't like tournaments, but those details can be refined if the idea gets approved in the first place.

overall, the main benefit is that this increases the pool of qualified voters by a TON. and that's what really matters

 

[BigFatMantis]

I really used to love the old suspect process back in the day (not the SM one, I'm talking early SS days into early SV before it changed). I would do every suspect I could because frankly it was just a good time for me, laddering the tier trying to score a superb record over not much more than 30 games to try to qual. Additionally, posting the screenshot of the reqs in the main thread with anyone else gave a very cool sense of community. I was really disappointed when this all changed - I thought the COIL reqs were a big mistake and I hope we push away from them. The OU reqs, such as the recent one with 1750 ELO + 80 GXE, I thought was nice. Quite time consuming though compared to how it was in the old days but I felt it does give a good understanding of the tier in its current state by the time you're done. I don't agree with anyone saying anything to the contrary - suspect laddering does in fact give you good quality games with the most current trends. In fact, sometimes it's the tour players that fall behind the new ladder techs and take a few weeks to catch up. Sure you also get some low quality games but so what, even low quality games help you understand your own team and lines vs janky stuff.

All that being said, tournament reqs is a fine idea as a supplement to ladder reqs, but you should absolutely still have ladder reqs be the primary way to achieve reqs and vote. I am an extremely busy person irl and still managed to get reqs for the Tera Blast suspect, despite OU not even being my main tier. It's not that hard tbh and most people can and should invest their time into it if they want to participate. There shouldn't be any reqs that are too free based on marginal participation elsewhere, so if you add tournament reqs, it should be a pretty high bar to achieve and definitely only go back so far. Also, I totally agree with clean in that there's nobody "arbitrarily" being left out. Nobody is ever left out - you always have the option to ladder and get reqs if you didn't quite make the top cut of new tour reqs.

Also, please don't use the addition of tour reqs to try to make ladder reqs "harder" - this does, in fact, arbitrarily gatekeep people not by being difficult but by making the process less fun and engaging that less people want to do do it. There should be no attempts to make ladder reqs more difficult and any addition of tour reqs should simply be a supplemental thing to attempt to get some top players to vote that would otherwise not have voted.

 

[myjava]

I don't really like the idea of tournament reqs. I know, ladder reqs are annoying and a slog to get through, but I do like that it takes an effort and lets the players who care enough about the tier to get reqs have the ability to vote. I've been seeing this sentiment float around that ladder reqs are too easy and allow a lot of scrubs to be able to vote, yet they're also too long and tedious and that making them harder would dissuade more tournament players from getting them... to be frank, I think if you can't be assed to spend ~3 hours laddering in a 2 week timeframe, you shouldn't have the right to vote, even if you are some ABR or Empo level player. I feel reqs should rather reward being passionate about the tier over being a great tournament player. Hell, I've seen a bunch of tour players spout some nonsense takes about tiering, I doubt having tour reqs would in any way improve the quality of voting, whatever metric of quality that may be.

That being said I'm not totally against the idea of tour reqs, but I think they should be quite strict and whatever parameters they're based on should only guarantee players who've had a lot of engagement with the tier in a recent timeframe. The difference between tour reqs and ladder reqs is that people play tours to win a trophy, not because they have an opinion on the tier. For SV OU specifically, it's very possible that some decently solid player that hardly cares for OU gets drafted in SPL or SCL and goes 3-2, or maybe has a good run in OST and makes top 32, and then doesnt play ou for the next few months, but hey now they have a free pass to decide if tera blast should stay in the tier or not. I like some metrics like OLT qualifiers having the ability to vote, given how intensive OLT laddering is and how it forces you to really engage with the tier. Maybe a combination of tours could work, like multiple runs in SPL/SCL/WCOP, or qualifying for the OU circuit, etc etc... Someone smarter can probably find some decent criteria, regardless I think if tour reqs are implemented, they should be strict and include only the most accomplished and active players of the generation.

 

[Aberforth]

I've always seen laddering for reqs as being proof of caring enough about a tier to go through the effort to be qualified to decide on the future of that tier. If you're not invested enough to go for reqs, you probably shouldnt be making a decision on the tier itself, because clearly the outcome isnt that important to you.

I supported and pushed this idea because it lets accomplished SV players have a say without the barrier and commitment of laddering for reqs. the commitment is already in playing a 9-week long tournament and having to put your A game in team choice and playing, and this should be rewarded with an easier way to contribute to tiering policy.

The reward of playing in the 9-week long tournament and putting up your A game is the potential for a trophy, and for the enjoyment of competing against the highest level of competition that you can. If the act of participating in tournaments isnt rewarding for people, those people shouldnt play tournaments for their own sake.

 

[Setsu]

Highly agree with both posts above. While not totally against tournament reqs, going back a certain amount of time for tournament records while not applying the same logic to ladder reqs seems very unfair to me. Citing 4 months / the most recent tournament seems okay at first, and it of course seems okay when we are in the 4th year of the generation and hadn't had tiering action in 1 year; but at any given time, tiering action might happen back to back to back.

Bloodmoon Suspect - Sep 27th 2023
Roaring Moon Suspect - Oct 17th 2023
Gliscor Suspect - Nov 1st 2023

These happened while SCL and OST playoffs were taking place, soon after DLC 1 and WCoP yet still less than 4-5 months after. For such cases, would you grant voting to WCoP players even if it was a completely different meta? What about to OST and SCL players? Even when the meta can change a lot in between suspects? While this is in the past and revisionism isn't the best, truth is that players that get / got reqs for all 3 of these weren't given that privilege; they were asked to ladder a reqs alt 3 times in the span of 1 month and a half to, as I read it, prove that they understood the tier in its current new state.

You can argue that tournament players are more qualified and likely to keep up with the meta, but this is not a given, just as it is not for the voters that get reqs with the system as it is. Any extra methods of gettings reqs should come with similar advantages for the players that already put in the effort to help adjust the tier.

 

[lax]

The reward of playing in the 9-week long tournament and putting up your A game is the potential for a trophy, and for the enjoyment of competing against the highest level of competition that you can. If the act of participating in tournaments isnt rewarding for people, those people shouldnt play tournaments for their own sake.

I don’t get the point in this “gotcha!”

Of course I am not implying that participating in tournaments and facing the highest level and getting the trophy etc etc isn’t rewarding enough. How is this what you choose to highlight? You should delete this.

Maybe I phrased it poorly. The point is the most accomplished and active players are actively pushing the metagame forward and dictating what is good and worth using. The amount of sample teams that are All over ladder is proof enough as they originate from tournaments.

Ladder and Tournament runs hand in hand. Both impact each other to an amazing degree, which is what makes the balance so great. Arguably, though, with sample spam specifically I’d lean it towards Tournaments advancing the meta more. That’s why including accomplished players and tournament runs as their Suspect Reqs makes sense to me. Also, I think an extra requirement such as making a post about meta thoughts should be included with the “free vote”.

The specifics and logistics can get refined and worked on. I’m cool with tighter restrictions in combination with consecutive results if that’s what works for most people!

 

[Expulso]

I support tour reqs 100%. Lagely as a rebuttal to aberforth's argument about lack of reqs = lack of care:
When playing in a team tour i feel like suspect laddering is actively a detriment to your prep/performance as u have to spend 3/4 hours slogging through a low ladder that's largely irrelevant to the meta as played in tours instead of using that time to prep, play tests, etc for the tour. I also think most (team) tour players exceed the requirements for reqs with the volume of tests/ladder games they play over the course of the tour.

I support all the team tour reqs proposed.

I support reqs for all OLT qualifiers, they easily exceed the required elo, +1 to lax's arguments there. I'm a bit wary of giving reqs for OST -- I hit top 32 of OST without testing and used like 5 teams, it's a pretty random tour that I don't think guarantees meta knowledge the way the others do. Not a strong opinion here though. I'd also consider giving reqs to top 4 of the sv ou seasonals because they're usually like 14-16 rounds and take more games than OST, though there's a debate about what level of prestige a tour should have before we award good performance with reqs.

Also agree with setsu that this should be limited to tours that have occurred after the most recent suspect. e.x. performance from last OST (tera blast meta) shouldn't count towards any ou suspects that occur in the future.

Finally, everything we're discussing here applies for ou suspects and lower tier/oldgen suspects. while it's easiest to create a solution for sv ou due to the high volume of high stakes tours, perhaps we can consider expanding tournament reqs into other tiers if it's successful in sv ou.

 

[ego]

I was a big part in pushing this in council chat so I'll post my thoughts here:

frankly, Graybaum's post here was extremely embarrassing for the tournament community. how can such a tiny portion of the most influential SV OU players care so little about the tier? We're the ones playing it and it's easier to complain in private chats than it is to actually put in some effort to contribute to the tier. I'm not coming from some high horse, though, I only did 1/3 of the recent votes and only cuz I'm a Palafin/Chaos enjoyer

that being said, I also get it. I invested my personal time near the end of my semester (regret?) to vote on this test because I was passionate about it & the idea of a positive change for the tier. but, it still takes hours and any one unfortunate game has the potential to set you back a another 20 minutes or more. I honestly don't rate suspect test ladder as the end-all-be-all for who should get to vote. arbitrary 1750 80 gxe.. but that's not the point of this thread

I supported and pushed this idea because it lets accomplished SV players have a say without the barrier and commitment of laddering for reqs. the commitment is already in playing a 9-week long tournament and having to put your A game in team choice and playing, and this should be rewarded with an easier way to contribute to tiering policy.

my suggestion is:
Top 32 OST
All OLT Qualifiers
50% WR+ in 5 or more games in SCL & SPL
2-1 or 50% WR+ in WCoP
Anyone with 12 points or more in SV (or the respective gen) STour

Brief explanations on each:
- Top 32 OST out of a 1,000+ player tournament is surely qualified enough to speak on tiering.
- OLT ladder is at minimum ~2030, which is, ofc, way higher than the 1750 requirement and reaching that high of an elo gets exponentially more difficult because the points you earn is lower and the players you play are better.
- SCL & SPL are insanely long tournaments. To maintain a 50% or higher winrate is very impressive and you'll likely be facing top tier players of the tier.
- WCoP is a much shorter tournament for the majority of teams, but 2-1 in pools as the absolute minimum makes sense to me because going positive also demonstrates you know the tier to a somewhat solid degree.
- 12 points in STour is a lot of wins over 3 total SV weeks. I'd trust most people here to make informed decisions based on their experiences

now, I think it's also valid for people to start whining and calling tournament player elitism. I simply think the best and most influential players should have a say without having to spend extra time doing so. this allows for more votes and more opinions. maybe an extra requirement is to cash in your free vote, you have to make a post in the Qualified Discussion thread that shares some of your thoughts. I'm also interested in live suspect tournaments (maybe a couple a test) and some kind of ladder requirement as well for players who simply don't like tournaments, but those details can be refined if the idea gets approved in the first place.

overall, the main benefit is that this increases the pool of qualified voters by a TON. and that's what really matters

I'll leave the "should there be tour reqs" conversation to others, but I am interested in what tour reqs would look like and this post gives a tangible starting point. For what it's worth, I think it'd also be very valid to dedicate these towards the absolute best players in the tier. smth like top 8 OST/OLT, mininum 6 wins in the tier in SPL/SCL/WCOP, something like 20+ points in SV STour livetours. If the goal is to reward actively playing the tier and putting effort into it then traditional reqs are likely as good or better, and if the goal is to reward mastery then stricter requirements make sense. Based on the general shape proposed here, though, it seems like the intention is more "tour reqs reward understanding and active engagement with the tier", so I'll go with that.

• Agreed on OLT, ladder qualification is straight up harder than suspect reqs
• Some SV STour point threshold is right, idk what the exact number should be. 12 gives us 37 voters in 2025, and 20 voters in 2024. In the same ballpark as the 32 OLT qualifiers sounds reasonable
• The problem with OST is that you only have to win 5 games (putting aside act wins) to make top 32, and because of the nature of a fully random single elim bracket there's no guarantee that you have to face real opponents to get there (and going through the bracket literally like half the top 32 played their first real opponent in the round of 32). Take Raiza facing Bluxio, Phantom0rion, Rasche, Loneling, and BlueLobster to get there, or lighthouses getting Hacker, Mati R, JinF, yerdunc, and Pherusa. Obviously you can only beat who gets placed in your path, but I think it's clear that making top 32 in OLT, and likely top 32 in SV STour livetours, requires you to beat good players in high volumes, and OST usually doesn't. Top 32 makes sense for symmetry with the others, and I agree that if you have tour reqs then you'd want at least SirPeanutCronch/Silent Waltz/ima/Mada to be able to vote, but top 32 feels low. Curious what others think.
• I'd argue that teamtour reqs would be more useful if the criteria were "played at least 7/8/9 games in SCL/SPL". First, 50% is the only non arbitrary threshold, but really, there's no functional difference between your average 4-5 and 5-4 players. Making decisions about who gets tour reqs when that could be decided by a single miss/damage roll/coin flip seems bad. Creating an incentive for 4-4 players on bad teams to sit out the last week to guarantee their reqs seems bad. And besides, the fact that they stuck it out for the whole season, prepping every week against a new opponent, to me that says more about their meta involvement. Maybe this is a hot take, but if tour reqs are going to be a thing (and the goal isn't to reserve them for like 10-20 people) I have no problem with Finchinator getting reqs from going 3-7 in SCL or myjava getting reqs from going 2-7 just now. They kept grinding it out in the highest level of competition in the tier for three months.
  • Alternatively, if this is unpalateable, I think "4 wins or more" would be preferable to fewer games with minimum winrate too. The incentive there then just becomes "play as much as possible and win as much as possible" with no incentives to sit out, and it avoids punishing players who kept grinding into playoffs and TB even at the expense of their own winrate (i.e. would rather 4-7 gets to vote than 3-2, take Attribute in SCL V as an example)
• The other thing is, like, I think 2-1 in WCoP giving reqs is kinda silly. Like, here's everyone who finished with that record in SV OU last tour:
  • the list

    • Baddy (wins vs zugubu royale, Hiko)
    • Enzonana. (wins vs Quinn, DKM)
    • Hayburner (wins vs Axzel, DonSalvatore)
    • foolycl (wins vs Chaitanya, Minatevis)
    • LOOR (wins vs Drifting, Ox the Fox)
    • ojr (wins vs SpookyZ, cowboyoctopus)
    • Chaos23333 (wins vs SirPeanutCronch, HSBT)
    • ACR1 (wins vs TerriblePlayer17, Trickster7)
    • GXE (wins vs Separation, Pais)
    • Trickster7 (wins vs Lazuli, TerriblePlayer17)
    • haxlolo (wins vs bhkg, TheFranklin)
    • clean (wins vs Uxilon, Silent Waltz)
    • xdRudi.exe (wins vs deaje, Xuwu)
    • Quinn (wins vs DKM, Punny)
    • Leavers (wins vs Flights of Fantsy, elodin)
    • Axzel (wins vs DonSalvatore, Star)
    • Wesleyy (wins vs Pais, GXE)
    • Cow (wins vs Drifting, LOOR)

    [*]
• Most of them beat at least one strong player, but how many beat more than one SPL/SCL caliber player? 4? maybe 5 or 6 if you want to be generous? In all honesty, I'd love to just set the same criteria for all three tours and accept that WCOP grants fewer players tour reqs (the samples are smaller and the competition is less consistently good!) but I do think that at the very least, just making it "minimum 3 wins" and giving reqs to a 3-4 player would give you a better voting pool than giving them to a 2-1 player. The latter's a coinflip away from 1-2 anyway.
• Lastly, I'd also suggest that if tour reqs are going to exist, making it possible via Seasonals (even if just the winner) and OUPL (even if just best record) would improve the pool. The former are barely even worse than OST in terms of testing whether you beat good opponents, and while OUPL isn't as strong as the official tours you'll still have to beat real opponents to get a good record. If we're going to have tour reqs, I think giving them to MGdos16, Xuwu, and Axzel/Originality56/Cow (and Kafkafka and entrocefalo too if you want to grant second place too) would improve the voter pool by giving votes to players that we know are grinding this tier hard and performing against a high volume of real opponents

This is just which results are eligible to confer suspect reqs, of course; I agree with others that only the most recent should actually count. There's no right or wrong answer, but in general I don't think suspect tests would be improved by players who barely play the tier who pick up a few games in a teamtour or OST or whatever, so even though one of the goals for tour reqs would be to increase the strength of the voting pool by giving an alternate route to grinding both on ladder and in tours, I'd argue volume should still matter

 

[RADU]

hello! I am here to give overwhelming support to the idea of tour reqs as its something ive believed in for a long time; many people in the thread are already engaging in debate and illustrating good reasons so ill spare myself from being repetitive

What I came here to highlight is the nature of such a decision and the impact it has on other tiers on the site.
SV OU has a phenomenally good ladder so it has no issue hosting its suspects there, but many other tiers are in different circumstances and struggle to have good ladder suspects.
Ill speak about 1v1 specifically, in very simple measures: our ladder is Bo1, not Bo5 (impossible to implement as it currently stands), which makes for a far higher level of volatility in games, and a way less reliable GXE/COIL increase. The suspects are at the very least miserable, and people that deeply care about the tier have to push through the torture via grit, intense focus and good luck.

For a very long time there has been a strong push towards enabling tournament reqs in 1v1, and recently we were close to going through and implementing that change, but the policy team met us with something along the lines of "This would mean deviating from official tiering procedures, which would push you further towards an UM and hurt your chances at becoming a top-level format". This is an important deal to many of us, so we didnt end up going ahead with that change.

I fully expect some people to tell us "we dont care about your tier, do whatever you want", which is kinda my point, we cant really do whatever we want. Smogon functions in a very OU-centric manner, which is fair, its the second biggest format on the site, but its also true to say that if you took the playerbase of every tier outside of OU, it would dwarf their population entirely. 1v1PL alone gets about half as many signups as SPL, with very little player overlap. So it feels weird to have such little regard for any non-OU tier affected by this stuff.

I dont wanna digress too much, my main point is that, whatever SV OU decides to do regarding tournament reqs, some official rulings should still be applied, so that any tier which deems that their tiering process would be improved by applying tournament reqs can easily do that, with a set of approved guidelines.

my post was a bit messy but I hope I got my point across

 

[ABR]

Prelude, I hope to avoid the "tour player vs ladder player" narrative as if those arenas are at total odds with one another. They exist in unison and everyone at the end of the day just wants what they perceive to be the best version of SV OU.

As for the specific topic at hand, I don't really vibe with the notion that we should care about "effort" as a requisite for voting. A suspect ladder's primary goal should be to identify those who demonstrate sufficient understanding and knowledge of a tier. If someone is able to show that understanding without laddering (by playing in tournaments) then there's no real reason to force labor out of them.

We can discuss which parameters and duration constitute a "recent display of understanding a metagame" but as a concept tour reqs are a net good.

 

[sequoia]

I've always seen laddering for reqs as being proof of caring enough about a tier to go through the effort to be qualified to decide on the future of that tier. If you're not invested enough to go for reqs, you probably shouldnt be making a decision on the tier itself, because clearly the outcome isnt that important to you.

Laddering for reqs does not prove you care about a tier, many people ladder for tiers they dont play and wont play afterwards just to get reqs, even in OU.

Not going for reqs also does not mean someone doesn't care about the tier, someone may either believe the vote will be one sided and their vote wouldnt make a difference, or they may not have strong opinions about the specific element being suspected and fine with either ban or dnb happening.

For OLT, id argue even some of the people who didnt qualify could be given auto reqs, in cycle 4 last year #12 was still 2040 on the OLT ladder compared to OU reqs being just 1750, but at minimum all qualifiers should get auto reqs if a suspect occurs soon after the qualifying stage

OST has a lot of bracket luck so T16 is probably safer than T32 but both would be a higher bar than the ladder reqs outside of someone getting tons of act wins.

 

[QT]

I don't love tournament reqs but sometimes they are a necessary evil, and from what we see above about tour player participation in suspects they might be. So let's talk implimentation details.

I think we should be pretty strict about what qualifies for a tournament vote, and would rather be more strict than neccesary than less within a tour. This kind of thing is meant to be a substitute for laddering, so it should be imo strictly more skill required than the alternative. If you're giving reqs to people who can't achieve suspect reqs on ladder (as opposed to won't, though again necessary evils) then the problem is that your ladder reqs are too hard, and you shouldn't be artificially inflating them while ignoring that for tours. I do think there's a good point of a broad array of tours involved, though, if we really are trying to give the best players a voice it should include people from tours like OUPL. I'd rather a smaller group from more tours than a larger group but only counting the trophy tours as serious, not when the alternative is ignoring the efforts of some of the skilled players we most want to measure here. I think the time discounting is also pretty important, but rather than just time, I think your tour reqs should also only be valid for one suspect where things change, maybe two. I'm more fine with 6 months since the tour like in old gens when it's the same metagame than 3 months with 4 bans, and unlike in lower tiers OU doesn't need to care about tier shifts for that.

 

[TPP]

Personally I support tour reqs and want to propose the following criteria:

- Timewise because this is only for current gen OU (I'm assuming it is, if not then rip), which means it should apply when Gen 10 happens, I would aim for the 2-3 most months at best but add in a rule like "x most recent months with no tiering actions/changes." By including that, you limit tour reqs to just those tournament players who performed well in whatever that current metagame is, and not an old one with banned elements. Part of the reason is to future proof the policy because whatever we decide on should apply to early and late gen, and early gen we're likely testing more things, and in theory, doing well in just OST would let you vote 2-3 times, which is probably not ideal. I should add that "months with no tiering changes" should include stuff like Home and DLC releases since we're likely to have those again.

As for the tournaments themselves I would do:

- Top 16 in OST
- All 32 OLT qualifiers
- Top 8 or 16 in OU Seasonal (top 16 would be round 12, top 8 would be round 14, but winners bracket play half as many games so idk)
- X points for SV OU in Smogon Tour, but I don't have a good number because it works best after all 9 tours are over.
- Another option for Smogon Tour was for people who win an individual SV OU tour but I'm less strong on this one
- Top 2 in Last Chance Qualifier (signup numbers were 351, 184, 135 from most recent to oldest)

Team Tour wise I would lean towards:

- 5/6/7+ wins in SPL/SCL/OUPL (OUPL is 7 or 9 weeks so 5 wins is a little harder to pull off in terms of total games played)
- 4+ wins in wcop (due to the nature of pools I do not think 3-0 is enough and understand that you don't get to play 4 games if your team doesn't make playoffs. wcop is the is the hardest one to accommodate but I think in general we should promote more games played over other metrics). Alternative could be to exclude wcop in general but I imagine people want it included.

One thing I would NOT do is use circuit playoffs for this because people that qualify for circuit could have earned their points at any point during the year, including OST, which ends 8 months before circuit playoffs start in December. As long as it's a year-long qualification system then it's not ideal to use for a policy that wants recent results.

 

[Jahkem]

Will reiterate what I said on the suspect reform thread.

To sort of merge with ladder reqs, you can have the successful tournament player votes count as 2. Although, just being drafted in a major/official team tournament only doesn’t exactly make an individual’s vote worth 2 votes. You could say the players of the teams who make it to semifinals/finals of SPL would all qualify to have their votes count as 2 votes each. You could also have the players who made it to semifinals in OST and OLT have their votes count for 2 as well. Whichever prestigious tournaments’ semifinals/finals participants within the past year could have their votes count as 2.

So, disregarding the weighted votes, I propose this list of tour reqs:

• Finalist teams of SPL/SCL/WCoP/OUPL
• Top 4 of OST
• Top 4 of Seasonals
• Top 32 of OLT
• One OU suspect room tour winner
• Finalists of Last Chance

Didn’t include Smogon Tour since I’m unsure what amount of points would be appropriate. You can grab a list of players from whichever tournament(s) are the most recent regarding when a suspect test is held. I originally was saying pick from the past year of tournaments, but as many have stated, the meta changes constantly. The tournaments in the last 3-4 months before the suspect test should be fine. Although, Setsu raised a few questions like if we should have tour reqs when a new generation comes around or when DLC releases. My first instinct would be no since it’s a completely new meta and laddering reqs only would be the best method. You end up with multiple suspects within a short time span, which isn’t ideal, but it’s the best of what we have in place already.

All in all, tour reqs are a great alternative method for top players to vote. Like the OP said, top players in tournaments that would have gotten ladder reqs anyway would save time and quality right away. Certainly a QoL change that would feel a lot better.

 

[Nat]

just wanna voice quick support for tournament reqs as an idea. it's already been adequately displayed why this is a good thing. i would use this for an outline of pre-qualified metrics:
-6+ wins in a singular official team tournament in the relevant tier
-Top 32 of OLT
-Top 8 of OST
-14+ points in an stour season of the relevant tier

If on a 6 month timer, this would already be quite a few people (around 20-40, depending on the time of year), and I don't think extending beyond this is useful. I think making it fairly elitist is a good thing, seeing as it's a perk that saves potentially 10s of hours laddering. Making it more generous for OLT makes obvious sense. I would not include things like OU seasonal or last chance qualifiers, as they're frankly not playing the most elite competition in the tier that would warrant this perk. Any given qualification above would qualify them for 6 months after the end of their achievement. This feels balanced while ensuring not too many people would be given this perk at the same time. If it needs to be said again, the people meeting these requisites have already went above and beyond to ensure they're more than qualified to vote on the tier. This is doubly true if we make it fairly difficult of a barrier to break into.

 

[Finchinator]

If anyone else has thoughts, let us know in the next day or so.

 

[Mada]

Supporting tour reqs, suspects as a whole would only benefit from extra qualified voters and the cons mentioned in the thread look silly, as even if said tour users that would get to vote don't deserve it or are lazy, you would still get them to engage, and same for users that would barely not qualify / would go undrafted. You aren't doing any harm to anyone but just widening your suspect voters with players widely seen as qualified.

I do agree that reqs shouldn't be the easiest, only very recent tours, pretty strict on OST and STOUR but OLT qualifiers should get them, SPL (and maybe SCL) I would be more lenient and give them to everyone with 4 or 5+ wins, as pretty much all those players have spent tens of hours building/testing/laddering, and idt I have seen this specified/mentioned yet but I ofc think there shouldn't be tour reqs for unban suspects

 

[Finchinator]

idt I have seen this specified/mentioned yet but I ofc think there shouldn't be tour reqs for unban suspects

This is a great point! We play tournaments with official rules, so when retests introduce Pokemon from Ubers, nobody is “qualified” and everyone should have to experience the retested Pokemon firsthand.

It would be a misapplication to extend tournament reqs to retests. We are heading towards a retest currently, so worth noting now.

 

[FlamPoke]

Giving tournament reqs is a no-brainer, since most tiering actions are driven by what happens in tours and what the "qualified" player base says in surveys and side conversations.

I'd like to suggest the following tournament reqs similar to what others have already provided:

• All official tours spanning the last four months, but not prior to any other suspect test taking place, taken into consideration
• 5 or more wins in either of SCL/SPL
• 3 or more wins in WCoP
• All OLT qualifiers
  • Includes anybody who gets into the playoffs via somebody else dropping out
• 14 or more points during a Smogon Tour season
  • If the suspect occurs during the Stour season, all finalists of the tours played prior to the start of the suspect qualify
• Top 16 OST

I would like to also suggest not using OUPL or other team/individual tours like seasonals for this. Official tours obviously have the highest stakes and draw the biggest names so, for OU at least, it doesn't really seem like branching out to subforum tours and circuit stuff would improve the pool of players getting reqs this way. For lower tiers I'd like to see that, though...

Lower Tiers

This doesn't fit the purview of the thread but for lower tiers I'd include the SCL/WCoP qualifications as well as;

• 5 or more wins in a PL/CL/BD format
• Top 16 (usually the entire bracket) of Circuit Playoffs
• Top 8 of Seasonal, or any Type A tournament
• Top 4 of any Type B tournament
• Winner of any Type C tournament

 

[ausma]

I am a massive advocate for tournament reqs.

While sometimes they can be a bit messy to organize, they are an effort that is worth it since they are a method to test your knowledge/skill in a way that accommodates individual schedules and limitations. The real lives and workloads of people are a very ubiquitous and obvious reason to consider this, but I think it's very important to consider the idea that different players in general have very unique mental and psychological limitations that can impact their ability to perform even if they have the knowledge and overall skill to make an informed vote.

The most prominent example I can think of is that there are a good amount of people on this site, for example, who have some form of neurodivergence that could impact their ability to participate in sustained wars of attrition that require consistent attention spans. No matter how we slice it, the current form of reqs is functional, but at its core is tedious and does require a good amount of time and attention as you progress. That cost becomes greater as mistakes are made, which does work well at filtering out those who shouldn't be voting in the first place, but I fear sometimes puts off some individuals from getting suspect reqs who very much are worthy of voting but are unable to do so due to workload or actual psychological limitations.

I won't get very deep into how it works for me, but as someone who does get reqs consistently, it is often a massive struggle because I'm often fighting myself in the process of trying to acquire them due to my diagnosed mental disorders. I am someone who is capable of getting them and I'd like to think I'm competent, but I often consider between my IRL workload and my mental limitations if it's even worth the effort. I can name a few others who I've spoken to who suffer from the same problem.

I think maybe there are some nitty gritty details to consider regarding what tournament results should qualify or if running tournaments for the purpose of acquiring reqs directly is worth the salt, but I think creating more avenues to get reqs is a really helpful thing for our community. It only serves to make them more accessible for those who are 100% capable but struggle due to factors beyond their control, as those who shouldn't have reqs will still be unable to get them anyway.

 

[Fusien]

I am strongly against tour auto reqs. I think it is unnecessary, and may potentially be unhealthy to the way suspects are decided. I do not believe that the purported benefits are worth what I view as the principles broken to achieve them. This is especially so in the existence of what I would argue to be an already sufficient current suspect reqs system, which allows for successful democratic surveying on the direction the metagame should take. Lack of tour player participation in previous suspects is largely a case of people not caring enough for one reason or another to get reqs: the suspect system should not be shifted to give auto reqs - the very important vote to directly change the tier - to people who would otherwise not care enough to do the relatively mild current work directly linked to having this responsibility.

Why I believe automatic reqs are unnecessary
My main reasons for why I believe auto-reqs aren't required are the following; the sufficiency of the current system, and what I believe is the lack of benefit from the new system. I'll start with the former. In our current model, to directly change a tier, one needs to achieve reqs through a ladder record on an alt that meets a certain benchmark. This benchmark has often been subject to scrutiny regarding if it is sufficient, with the most recent change generally making it mildly harder to achieve (see this thread). I believe that there are some very prominent strengths to this approach. A gxe/elo floor and game quantity number systematically restricts the voting ability of players with significant playing issues/lack of knowledge and people less invested in an outcome from directly impacting an often decisive metagame direction, while being low enough to where it is achievable by good-enough players using good-enough teams. Reqs are tedious, but they are not overly so: with focus, most solid players will get through them rather easily in a space of a few hours. Even in the case of non-focused players, or other factors like a series of poor rng, the reqs requirement umbrella is wide enough to often account for this less optimal outcome once a certain line is reached. The week-plus period of reqs means that with sufficient organization, the majority of people who are able in skill to achieve reqs and care enough to try, should be able to do so.

Upon achieving this status, the background of the individual voter becomes irrelevant, as by virtue of having reqs, they are showing that they are both skilled enough to navigate the tier to achieve this baseline, while caring enough about the outcome to spend a couple hours to decide the fate of a tier. This is harmonious with the meritocratic factor of achieving reqs, as in theory it can be expected that established players will have an easier time than those less optimal at playing/having less knowledge.

I believe that this voting power being open to all to reach meritocratically is good, as the tier is played by people from different stripes, and the line that reqs draws provides a compromise between getting a lot of votes while making sure the people voting know and care about what they are talking about. It is important to highlight that direct vote is not the only way to change the tier, and that there are different ways to do so as well like Forum posts and discord/showdown conversations, with the former an often highly efficient ways to persuade for the adoption of a common line of thinking without requiring the individual posting/discussing to achieve reqs to do so (On efficiency, see Tera Blast Ban. From a relatively niche pre-suspect position, it was persuaded sufficiently enough in posts and discussions to reach just over 60% ban percentage in the direct vote, showing how strong the power of indirect influence can be). I believe the step of voting should require, by principle due to its permanence and direct nature, the commitment of a ladder run hitting certain established marks, to distinguish it from the much freer indirect forms of impact.

Another, more subtle aspect to reqs is that by requiring a decent number of ladder games, players are forced to interact with the mechanic of which they are seeking to act upon. Most importantly, they are doing so with the mechanic's suspect in mind. I believe this factor, often sub conscious, is highly important, as it forces people to actually face the problem head on instead of using previous beliefs. This isn't to say that people will necessarily change their previously held beliefs after the suspect laddering; in fact they likely won't, though there have been cases of people unsure prior to laddering. The bigger benefit is that it increases exposure to a threat with said threat's suspect specifically in mind, refining understanding and one's own thoughts. Take the example of Tera Blast. Previous common identification of tera blast as fine on surveys was radically changed as the suspect started and developed, as people laddered for suspect, often with the context of arguments, and ultimately voted and reached the 60+% needed for ban. There have been criticisms of the quality of suspect ladder games, but I believe said critiques aren't fully true. If, for example, your opponent has a suspect threat that is extremely strong, and only doesn't sweep you because the opponent choked, the take away is often alarming: "wow if that opponent didn't choke I would have lost, jeez this mon is so broken it should be banned". Similar analyses can happen with regard to your usage of suspect mon against teams, and seeing its benefits and drawbacks. Ladder is important in increasing the sample size of potential exposure to the suspect threat beyond just what is seen in one's tour run.


To be frank, I can't detach this proposal from tour elitism. I get it - reqs are annoying, and it would be nice, if I, for example, could bypass the grunt work that goes into achieving them, and leave that effort for less experienced names. There is a common viewpoint even among people who wouldn't likely qualify for auto-reqs that because successful tour players have performed so well in a high level tour, a setting commonly (and I believe very correctly) regarded as more advanced than ladder, that this reflects the increased comprehension of the tour player in contrast to others, and as such they should be gifted an automatic suspect vote. Some renditions of this argument have compared the process of getting a successful tour record to that of accomplishing a reqs run. A second point has been made that the lack of tour player voting means that there needs to be a change in the system. I have issues with these two postulations.

1) While I do believe that on average the high-scoring tour player has higher playing prowess than those not in the group, this should not grant them an automatic vote. A good deal of tours are best-of-1, and even those bo3 have the importance that comes with a defined opponent on the other side. This leads to a variation of the meta that differs in small but meaningful ways compared to ladder trends. As ladder is inherently more general, it is more feasible for tour players to experience ladder games for a reqs than it would be to force ladder players to hypothetically also do a tour reqs. In addition to a distorted meta, tour players are also not guaranteed to have played a large sample size of games relative to ladder reqs. Unlike ladder, in tours opponents cteaming you can expose you to some less-seen metagame trends, which would be more common through a ladder run. Much of one's tour record also may boil down to partial luck: a fortunate opponent or weekly matchup or rng, a stunty play made right, etc. This is not to obviously downplay the very impressive successful tour records throughout the tradition, but to say that there is an importance behind having a set-guarantee that a decent number of ladder games will be played before one has the ability to directly vote. By eliminating the requirement of ladder reqs, high scoring tour players would no longer need to participate in the valuable laddering, of which aspects have been previously discussed. There is practically no situation where the tour player without reqs is valued in skill or experience over that same tour player but with reqs, which shows how the idea boils down to a matter of convenience. I'd argue if these top players are in fact as excellently skilled or knowledgeable in the meta as their record suggests (which they very often are), and importantly care enough to do a bare minimum of work to change the meta, then they should apply these abilities to a suspect run of 2-3 hours, which across a week+ is often very doable.

2) I honestly don't really care that there exist skilled tour players that play ou in tours but don't get reqs. The process exists for all, is often very manageable once a person is at that skill level, and doesn't take much time in the context of the suspect period. If someone has an opinion, but for one reason or another can't participate in getting suspect reqs, then honestly the responsibility is on them for not engaging at the baseline standard to have the right to directly vote on the tier's changes, as these measures are important to make sure that the feasibly optimal informed opinion is had from the voter. There are alternative, more in-direct, avenues they can take instead, if they really wish to contribute without doing reqs. Cases where people would really want to do reqs but can't due to personal irl issues (exams, job, etc.) of course deserve personal and social sympathy, but systematic automatic reqs should not be granted in these cases as a result of the user not achieving the ladder reqs that, I believe, should be required for such an important task as voting.

Why I believe auto reqs may be unhealthy
The current reqs system allows for persuasion, with elements of campaigning and organizing. The result is a system where change can efficiently happen with enough intellectual and popular backing. Tera Blast and Kyurem suspects being decided on a hair reveal how close and important metagame decisions can be, and of the importance that even individual voters can have. Tera Blast Ban was decided by a 2 vote margin. Would it be fair for Tera Blast to have been kept by auto reqs from a very few number of people who played a tour and did well in it 2 months ago, far before tera blast ban was even seriously conceived of? By not being required to play on ladder, the only thing now compelling them to increase their sample size of games is their own will. This is a very real scenario given the tight tests that have occurred in SV, and one that has, I believe, no compelling reason to even be risked. It is the fact that such a vote is given automatically is what is troubling. I also am concerned that automatic reqs would lead to more "closed-off" votes, as having an automatic vote and knowing that others, perhaps friends, will have automatic votes too may theoretically increase the alienation between these players and the rest of the voting populace.

Super Brief Summary
I believe that the current suspect system works fine, and that it should not be drastically changed in order to appeal to people who choose to not ladder for reqs normally, as in doing so many important aspects that come with said process are shed. With how close SV OU suspect tests have proven to be, I believe it to be unwise to make reqs automatic for select people.

 

[cala_aa]

I'm not a fan of tournament reqs conceptually, and I haven't really been moved by any of the pro-tournament reqs posts in this thread so far.

Tournament reqs would fundamentally change the way tiering plays out on Smogon. Smogon tiers for both high ladder and tournament play, and the current system gives equal weight to both parties in suspect voting. Tour reqs upsets this balance by giving well-performing tournament players a vote without having to engage with the ladder, the way the vast majority of games are played. The current system incentivizes engagement with the forums or public smogon-affiliated discord servers through productive debate. In contrast, a system with tour reqs would give far more weight to the opinions of ingroups of tour players who often share similar views on tiering. By enacting tour reqs, decisions will mostly be swung by high-level tour players with less influence from the many players outside of their circles, with no reason to challenge their beliefs. The ritual of laddering for reqs with the suspect in mind is itself important. As we saw with the Tera Blast suspect, many people had no opinion on Tera Blast before the suspect, and many only came to a conclusion after laddering and reading the discussion from qualified individuals in the suspect threads. In a future with tour reqs, many of those with tour reqs will default to their long-held positions without any challenge to their beliefs. This is not something I think we should encourage, especially while knowing how quickly public opinion changes throughout this generation.

On the issue of low participation:
As many others have pointed out, many of the players who would qualify for tour reqs often don't ladder for reqs, even on issues they really care about. For these players, the current reqs should take around 2-4 hours to achieve within a window of 2+ weeks. This is not a massive time investment, but I sympathize with tour players who don't want to go the extra mile to "prove" they're qualified. However, I think an underrated aspect of being really good at mons is that people will value your opinions more, and often the takes you share publicly will have a bigger impact than a single vote would. As we have seen with the Tera Blast suspect, with over 200 voters, plenty of people are willing to grind out reqs to voice their opinions. This includes the many players who don't interact with OU or SV in nearly any capacity, but grinded for reqs to chime in and make the tier more enjoyable for them. Say what you want about the "quality" of these 200 voters, but we aren't in desperate need of more voters. Tour reqs are an ineffective solution to a problem that does not meaningfully exist in our current system.

If low suspect participation remains a major issue for you, there are other avenues that can be taken to increase participation in suspects. I understand that it's especially annoying to have to grind up an alt account for a suspect when that account will immediately become public, since forcing suspect accounts to be public makes it useless for testing teams you might want to bring to tours in the future. A solution to this could be keeping suspect alts invisible, showing who got reqs on the suspect tests page without revealing which PS username they used. This is possible due to Smogon moving away from claiming alts in a forum thread to only requiring you to use /linksmogon on your suspect alts to claim them, removing the need to publicize these alts except to coders. Another thing, the tech team is currently working on a system that would allow people to get reqs on their mains or alts at higher elos, requiring fewer total games to qualify for reqs, making the whole process less tedious for better players, and increasing overall participation. This, to me, is a far better solution to making reqs less tedious, making it easier to prove you're qualified without the downsides of tour reqs.