Rejected Team Tournament Divisions/Tiers

[Diophantine]

This may just be the result of lockdown boredom, but I have seen quite a few users talk about changing how these tournaments are done, and I figured it would be a good idea to have a proper discussion about it. I got the idea by listening to other users talk about their ideas/frustrations and learning of the existence of the Other Metagames Farm League. The OMFL is a second division to the Other Metagames Premier League. Essentially, if you do not get bought by a team for OMPL, you may sign up for the OMFL.

Some users have argued for a second division to SPL in the past, and I can see why. It allows SPL managers to have more data on otherwise hidden gems that they could consider picking up for the following SPL. Conversely, it gives newer players an extra platform to showcase themselves, and gain experience, in a team tournament setting. I am aware of the existence of subforum Premier Leagues like UUPL and RoAPL, Pokemon Perfect (am I allowed to mention that here? lol), the ladder, and discord/community based team tournaments. However, generally speaking, these tournaments are not taken too seriously (not including the lower tier premier leagues - those are competitive). I also understand the point that spectators wouldn't really care much for the second division of SPL, but I would argue that the point of it isn't to showcase Smogon's top talent like the actual SPL, instead to showcase upcoming/unnoticed players and to give them a chance to impress. Yes, there's always the "just do well in individuals" argument, and while that does hold a lot of merit, it can be difficult making, say, and OST run when you're haxed out early on or have to play one of the scene's top players. Finding managers sounds like it may be difficult, but I can see it happening - perhaps you could give out a temporary ribbon for winning this.

I have also heard users talk about a move to a divisions based WCoP. A problem for many qualifying teams, such as India, China, etc, is that they have to win a very small amount of series in order to actually get in the tournament. Furthermore, if your team is already in the tournament, it's very possible to crash out in round 1, only lasting 3 weeks with your teammates. This can be very frustrating for a lot of players, as the tournament can be over very quickly, and many people look forward to it all year round. An idea that has been floating around is to create two tiers. The top X (arbitrarily chosen number) and bottom Y (obviously variable dependent on countries that sign up) based on the standings of the previous WCoP. You could make it so that the bottom two teams from the top tier have to battle with the top two teams of the bottom tier to decide promotion/relegation (or just straight up drop the bottom two and raise the top two). This would give teams in the top tier an incentive to remain competitive when playoffs are no longer a possibility, and similarly something for the teams with fewer stars to do. That way, you involve everyone without compromising quality. It also gives you a chance to play with your teammates for longer, so it feels more like a proper team tournament than a three week thing. I understand that in practise this may be difficult, as the second tier has a variable amount of teams in it due to some regions not signing up some years. I also get that international sports tournaments are held over a short amount of time and teams get knocked out early on/have to qualify, but while we do draw inspiration from these, we shouldn't necessarily imitate them exactly.

I hope to spark some interesting discussion. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk.

 

[Amaranth]

I've always been a big fan of the idea of tiered tournaments. The "just play RoAPL" arguments never really convinced me - a lot of big names are still signing up for these tournaments and it's only a few handful of unproven players per year getting their time on the "spotlight" of such tours, and even when they do well for themselves no one really gives a fuck. I'll make a few names from RoAPL 5 to prove a point: Kebab mlml 6-1, false 6-1, fatty 6-2, Hclat 5-2, Melle2402 5-2, SamuelBest 5-2, all sitting comfortably on the outskirts of big team tours, managing at best substitute appearances despite the strong records. And I don't even blame the managers for this, RoAPL is just not a very serious environment, most veterans hardly prep and it has a "just tune in and play some oldgens" vibe to it, which is great, but also not spectacular at fulfilling the goal of fostering new talents, or indeed at producing records that are highly reflective of individual skill. Individuals do a better job sure, but players that might be really good in team tours aren't necessarily as good in individuals - factors such as chat presence, flexibility, working with others etc. are invaluable in a team environment and not nearly as beneficial in individuals.

I firmly believe that giving unproven high potential players more competitive team environments would greatly benefit the tournament scene. You would need experienced and dedicated managers teaching them the ropes, which we may not have enough of, but that's just about the only roadblock in my mind to implementing such proposals. I know I would be all over the opportunity to draft a dedicated group of newer players and help them develop, because working together is one of the most fun things in this game for me - I would genuinely put my heart and soul into it and I think and hope that I'm not the only one who would be happy in such a role.

The problem I see with an SPL Farm League is that most of the big players that are good enough for SPL will want to play SPL rather than spend their time coaching new goons - that is certainly a valid objection, but when you look at the manager list for SPL11 you see a good portion of full-time managers who just prefer managing to playing, so I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to present the hypothesis that perhaps I'm not the only madman who would happily sit out of SPL to manage in such a tournament. I think it would be very reasonable to run some polls and figure out if we'd have the manager force before making any decisions based on assumptions about its size. Something that might even be a possibility would be to allow managers to manage in both big SPL and small SPL together if they wish to - it takes a lot of effort but I think some of them could be up for the task

As for tiered WCoP... it's pretty much already tiered but done poorly. Resizing the main event to filter out the regular bottom feeder teams + elevating the 'qualification' tour to a more dignified format and status seems like a no-brainer to me, I'm not sure where the rest of smogon stands on this but I'm easily in favor

 

[Diophantine]

It would be good to hear the views of the TDs on this Hogg TonyFlygon ABR Eo Ut Mortus jake Luigi Quite Quiet. I know there has been discussion in the discord server, but it's hard to keep track of that.

 

[Eo Ut Mortus]

I talked to Diophantine on discord about this. The gist of it is that we're not really interested in hosting these things ourselves, but we won't stop people who want to do this on their own. As for the ideas themselves: Farm League / B-league has been done before, and it wasn't utilized much by the managers. Nowadays, the larger volume of tournaments and public replays make it even less necessary. We discussed WCOP relegation in more depth. I'm against extending it just for the sake of inclusion, especially when WCOP is an inherently unfair tournament, and good players get shafted from playing because they live in stacked regions. Inclusion efforts would find a better place in other formats. Additionally, I was at the time unconvinced that people would enjoy participating in a consolation tournament, and now that my team is in danger of relegation , I can safely say this would have been the case had we proceeded to play and lose relegations immediately following a disappointing playoffs effort.