Tiers in SCL

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Finchinator

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Also from my understanding SCL was created to cater to non-OU tiers so I’d hardly find it an issue if it doesn’t have multiple
This is incorrect.

The point of SCL was to give an SPL-caliber tournament that featured lower tiers. This way the official team tournament circuit would be balanced with one tournament that featured all OU generation tiers and one tournament that featured all current generation tiers.

If SCL is going to be taken as seriously as SPL -- which I think we are absolutely on the right track for right now, then it is going to have to have at least 2 OU slots. Otherwise we are automatically diminishing the interest and potential involvement of a very large portion of the community.

I think there is enough room to cover a couple of OU slots while still prioritizing non-OU formats that have sufficient playerbases and communities to warrant inclusion.
 

steelskitty

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Discussed this in Smogtours Discord, figured i'd make the point here as well. With Monotype making such a strong, passionate case for their inclusion (and the discussion around 3rd OU's benefits, as well as those of VGC [unlikely but would be sick tbh]), I find it unfair to immediately guarantee Ubers a slot. I think that the case must still be made for all 3 of Ubers / OU3 / Monotype, from which we can decide upon the 2 to include here.
It's rather unfair that for most of my tenure on this site my main tier has had to fight again and again to prove that it's worthy of official tournament inclusion. I understand that in the past it's been an easy target for various reasons, but the fact of the matter is that the issues that have kept Ubers out of tournaments on-and-off over the past six years are simply not relevant anymore. Is the tier perfect now? No (what SS tier is?), but I and the rest of the tiering council have taken and are actively taking steps to better Ubers so it's as balanced and enjoyable as it can be by the time SCL rolls around. Ubers is in a better place than it has been in years, and it shouldn't have to be the case that Ubers still has to make the case for itself, but fine. If you want a strong, impassioned argument for the inclusion of Ubers, you're getting one.
- "The community is vibrant and active": Perhaps this is true, I can't speak to that.
Your dismissive tone is worrisome. I've seen many people (most of them, like yourself, outsiders to Ubers) put the tier down over the years based on unfounded assumptions about it and its community. The claim here that Ubers maybe isn't active is one such random assumption. There's no "perhaps" about it—Ubers's community is not only vibrant and active, it's growing. Our discord has 1.6k members and plenty more join every day. This year alone, we've had over 260,000 messages in public and private channels. We're killing it on the PS! side of things, too; our room consistently ranks in the top 5 highest user counts online as relative to other rooms representing official tiers, and since New Year's we've had over 128,000 messages in the room from just each month's top 20 users alone. What about the ladder? Last month alone we had 145,283 Generation 8 Ubers battles played. Compare that to Ubers's former rival for official tournament inclusion, PU, which had 63,478. The number of April's Generation 7 Ubers battles alone was greater than that, at 68,785. What about interest in Ubers tournaments? It's also grown significantly. Our ongoing Ubers Premier League (keep up with this week here!), despite the signups thread being open less than a week, smashed last year's record number for signups, netting a bit less than half the signups the entirety of SPL had over three and a half weeks. Ubers Ladder Tournament, which I'm currently hosting, has had 175 signups over its two cycles; compare that to last year's 122. Perhaps most staggeringly, Ubers Winter Seasonal VI had very nearly twice the number of signups Ubers Summer Seasonal V, held 5 months earlier, had. Regardless of how you measure it, Ubers has one of the biggest and most active player bases of any official tier, and that's not something you can just dismiss.
As you acknowledge, though, Monotype's community absolutely meets those criteria, seemingly exceeding Ubers' activity and having a fine reputation.
The thing is, though, there's no reason this has to be an Ubers vs. Monotype situation. Hogg doesn't frame it that way in the OP, and there's very little basis for comparison between the tiers. Ubers absolutely outstrips plenty of other lower tiers when it comes to certain criteria for activity, just as other lower tiers outstrip it in certain ways. Why exclude Ubers instead of other lower tiers that are less active than it in some ways? Moreover, if playerbase activity and interest were the only factors worth consideration, why not just make the tournament all Generation 8 OU? It's Smogon's most popular format by design, and it certainly has a more active playerbase than anything else. Clearly there's more at stake here. The criteria for Ubers's inclusion shouldn't be whether it has a less active playerbase than Monotype (which, I hate to break it to you, pretty much every other lower tier also does), but whether Ubers has a comparably-sized playerbase to the other lower tiers that have been granted inclusion. And it does.
- "Ubers has a long and storied history within Smogon and has been a part of its major tournament scene for over a decade":

Perhaps my opinion on this topic is different than others', especially given my brief period of relevant experience on this site. However, I don't think this is a particularly strong justification for its inclusion. SCL is supposed to be our new tour, why do we need to add a meta that was considered cool in 2010-2013? This was 2 or even 3 gens ago. DPP and BW (maybe oras? idk?) Ubers have storied histories, but how does that necessarily imply that SS Ubers will lead to the same high level of gameplay? Additionally, with other communities vying passionately for this slot, I think inclusion should be based on the current state of the community and tier. An argument grounded in historical prestige holds little weight in my eyes, and I'm curious to hear what others think about this.
Where on earth are you pulling this from? By what metric are you determining that Ubers was only "cool in 2010-2013?" You do realize it's been in plenty of official tournaments since then, right? The argument isn't so much that Ubers deserves to be in because it's one of Smogon's oldest official metagames and one of its first to see official tournament representation, but rather that its inclusion in trophy-bearing tournaments has a long precedent. I actually agree with you that the current state of the tier and community matters more than this precedent, and I've hopefully adequately addressed why the tier and community are in a great place right now. But you can't just cast that precedent to the wind, either. There's a history of Ubers working in tournaments; there have been plenty of officials in the past that Ubers has been a positive addition to, and that's the most logical reason that its prior inclusion means it should receive preferential treatment over an unknown variable like Monotype if it really has to come down to an either-or situation between the two (and, again, it doesn't). And don't get me wrong—due to the actions of a few bad actors long since cast out of the community, there's certainly a perception that Ubers hasn't worked in some official tournaments. I can't not address that. But there hasn't been a cheating scandal in Ubers in years, and with the former head TD as our tier leader it's unlikely there'll be one for the foreseeable future. Don't bash Ubers because it doesn't fit into your arbitrary (and inaccurate) vision of SCL as some shiny new tour that can cast out established metagames as it pleases; this isn't meant to be a brand new thing, but rather a sister tournament to SPL. And don't forget Ubers certainly had a very long history in SPL.
- "Fewer siloed tiers":
This supposed issue, which was used to make the case for 3 OU instead of Monotype, is much more severe for the Ubers community than for Monotype. There seem to be many people that regularly participate in and build for Monotype who have also found success in OU and lower tiers, as Lilburr outlines in her post. Ubers is known for Garay Oak, Pohjis, and TonyFlygon; they can obviously speak far more accurately than me on this matter, but I'm not under the impression that the former 2 build this year-round? Even if they all do, though, this stacked trio doesnt seem necessarily superior to the larger number of crossover Mono players. (Also, I'm not convinced it's that relevant of an argument anyways? As Vulpix03 says, it's fine to kick ass in only your one tier like Ajna in RU, Serene and LilyAC in LC, and a number of other examples).
Your point that this argument isn't super relevant is true, but your perception that there aren't more than 3 Ubers players who play other tiers is deeply wrong. Just looking at tournaments since the start of 2020, in addition to the three names you've listed, we've had Ubers mainers KyogreF4N, 64 Squares, Mysterious M, byronthewellwell, TrueNora, March Fires, Reje, Leru, and Ismakhil playing or managing in WCoP, in 2020 and 2021 you've seen myself, zf, Zesty43, and plenty of the aforementioned names in SPL, spanishlines winning last year's PU Open, etc. And that's not including the players from other tiers that have taken an interest in Ubers; in this UPL alone, we have TJ, Gondra, Bushtush, Eternal Spirit, Silksong, Punny, Lunala, Star, Void, and plenty others known primarily for accomplishments in other tiers competing. There's plenty of overlap between knowledge of Ubers and other tiers, many of which will be in SCL—the notion that the Ubers playerbase is out of touch with other tiers in tournaments is deeply wrong.

As a side note, the example of Ajna kicking ass in "only one tier" is amusing. He kicked plenty of ass in SS OU on my SPL team this year, dude.

====

To sum it up, I think there's strong justification that Ubers should be included by default in SCL. Ubers has a lot of positives, and if there are any arguments used against Monotype that also apply to Ubers they were never explained or elaborated upon in any way in the quoted post. Many of Ubers's strengths outweigh or are equivalent to the standing of other lower tiers in the same categories. I think we should keep this thread on topic and only talk about whether it's better to include Monotype or a 3rd SS OU slot in this tournament, and guarantee Ubers a spot.
 

Expulso

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The above post from steelskitty frankly reeks of entitlement. Reacting to my refusal to comment on the current state of Ubers' community (something I refused to do because I literally am not in the community and thus cant say that much about it!!) with the anger that you have is quite over-the top. You are clearly passionate about Ubers, just as the Monotype community is passionate about Monotype. But when I read your post I'm not inspired to take the side of Ubers and use its history of exclusion as a justification to exclude another deserving tier. I'm not invested in the Mono community in any meaningful way either, but seeing them being cast aside because Ubers 'deserves it' when they, and other communities on this site, also deserve it engenders a lot of sympathy from me. Why should Ubers be the default and not have to make their case like Mono does? Can't we recognize that many of these communities, not just Ubers, deserve a chance, and that defaulting to one of them is a disservice to the efforts of other parts of the site?

I emphasize default-ing because I can see from the statistics you cite that Ubers has a large, passionate community. I find it sad that they don't get a big stage, and it is unfortunate that Ubers was removed from officials since it now seems to be a good place. The entitlement, however, arises when you claim that since your tier is now in a good place it should be prioritized over all other communities, many of which are also in a good place. I also find it sad that the large, active Monotype community doesn't have a big stage; why should Ubers be prioritized over them?

The thing is, though, there's no reason this has to be an Ubers vs. Monotype situation.
There ... definitely is a reason for that? These two tiers are both vying to be included in official tournaments, and the limited space available due to the inclusion of 2 OU + lower tiers and the desire to keep this tour to 10 slots necessitates competition between the tiers that wish to occupy the remaining spots. If we want to talk about expanding the tour to 12 spots or eliminating a few of the lower tiers (going below 2OU has been proposed here, and I agree with Finchinator's response about <2 OU not accurately representing the playerbase of the site), perhaps Ubers and Mono would not need to compete. However, I think such proposals would be very unlikely to succeed, particularly the 2nd (re: eliminating some of the lower tiers), so competition for slots arises.

You claim that Ubers outshines the lower tiers in activity; that is true. Monotype, as Hogg cites in the OP, also does. Y'all both have a strong claim to inclusion, but I don't see how that in any way leads to the conclusion that:
Ubers should be included by default in SCL.
emphasis added by me

What's the basis for Ubers being held in superior standing to Monotype? Ubers had a long history that I perhaps understated with the 2010-2013 remark, as amusing as it is that u had to link me the 2016 open because the next 2 were cancelled. [edit: wait, also the mazar SPL, LOOOOOOL Ya bro u rly showed me the error of my ways] However that seems to be the only thing that stands out in the comparison with Monotype. You both have players that succeed in other tiers; you both have high activity that exceeds that of many (or most?) lower tiers. So why should Ubers be the one included by default while Monotype has to compete with OU3? Your only point addressing that comes here:

There's a history of Ubers working in tournaments; there have been plenty of officials in the past that Ubers has been a positive addition to, and that's the most logical reason that its prior inclusion means it should receive preferential treatment over an unknown variable like Monotype if it really has to come down to an either-or situation between the two (and, again, it doesn't).
there's a history of it working .... but also a very notable history of it not working, flaming out in what one might call spectacular fashion? the hagiography of past Ubers' tournament history is certainly puzzling when u considered it was removed from tours due to cheating lol cmon we cant b calling this exclusively positive, certainly not enough for this history to be prioritized over what is best for right now. but again, ubers isnt bad right now! i just dont think it deserves bonus points for the supposed greatness of the past.

Given the above similarities between Ubers and Mono's aptitude for this tour, why should Ubers be in by default? Why shouldn't Ubers and Mono be compared to each other? Or, since both tiers' activity seems to exceed many lower tiers, why don't we talk more about expanding the tournament to 12 slots and finding a way to include them both? I agree that it doesnt have to "come down to an either-or situation between the two", but defaulting to Ubers being in a 10-slot tour pushes the needle towards an either-or situation by forcing only one of the two comparable tiers to compete with OU3. I just think we should still be considering both Ubers and Mono -- and also considering 12 slots rather than 10 -- rather than guaranteeing one a spot and putting the other in a harder position.
 

kaori

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Not that I really intend on playing but just a couple thoughts since I caught up on the thread:

- I completely get why VGC is a long shot but I think it has similar merits to mono, and while I'm a biased party, and even if it isn't in this iteration I think it certainly warrants consideration both this time and down the line seeing as we "future proof" these tours every 2 years and then change it again when attitudes shift. zeefable has been doing a fantastic job and while the orange trophy has been taken over by OSDT it'd be a great legacy callback similar to ubers to see it played in an official capacity again.

- Speaking of longshots, I wanted bring up another angle on the 1 OU option in that I personally believe could bring a lot more hype to the OU games. Any slot in a tour that features the top 10 players of a tier rather than the top 20 is going to more consistently bring about a higher quality game. It both does this and addresses the issue of the 11 unique tiers that I personally thinkk warrant inclusion (OU->PU/Ubers/Mono/DOU/LC/VGC). Let's not pretend we're excluding too many OU mains either as they will absolutely be picked anyway to fill lower tier holes.
Note: I absolutely do not expect this to even really be entertained but it interests me at the least as a spectator.

- On Mono vs OU3, I'm pretty firmly in the camp of Mono being the best choice. Other people have said it better than me many times, many of the arguments for OU3 seem flawed, ignorant, or can be answered by "draft better".
 
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Nat

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hi, i'm going to be the asshole who takes this thread in a different direction. I will try to keep it to the point & respectful, even if it may seem like i'm attacking a community by suggesting it be left out.

SS OU x3
SS UU
SS RU
SS NU
SS LC
SS DOU
SS Ubers
SS Mono

At the risk of being scoffed at in pu mainer circles, I think dropping pu from the rotation is the tours best play. I'll start by saying I don't find it particularly relevant how big your tiers discord server is or how many projects exist in the subforum, or what's deemed a core tier. I think the basis for inclusion here should be what does the tier potentially bring to the table, or what has it shown to already bring to the table. A great TD once said any tier besides OU is subject to removal at any time, and I think now is the time.

Two years ago or so now, pu took over ubers place in the official teamtour circuit. PU was on the rise and looking to have a chance given to them, while Ubers was in a pretty bad place for a variety of known reasons. In the two years since, ubers cleaned up their issues tremendously thanks to not only nayrz, tony & others in high auth positions, but the ubers community at large at well. I won't talk about ubers end much, but jackie covered it well enough. Monotype, as large as ever, is now in the position where pu used to be. It's continually grown into a better community of players even though it's been that for awhile, and like pu was, it seems very much eager to take a position within an official teamtour. I really can't blame them and think the mono-supporters did a fine enough job outlining why they deserve the same chance pu was given not long ago.

On the other hand, pu to me is where ubers was 2 years ago, for different reasons. It's taken a stab at snake for two iterations now, neither of which I think went particularly well. The first time (snake 3) it was new, and there ended up being 25 slots play PU over the course of the tour, which is insanely high. like, absurdly high. the closest lower tier to that in the tour had 18 slots. that's nearly an extra pu slot per team. it just went to show really that people didn't know who they wanted to play pu on average, seeing as the majority is just non-mainers going 1-0 or 0-1. In snake 4 it had 6 pu mains starting if you count ham, 3 of which now play OU as well in official teamtours (ktut/tj/ham) and one who could jump into anything really (xiri.) Between the two tours, there's a whopping 2 players who played it each year significantly, one who very likely could be in OU this time around. Even with tiers that are in the 3-4 range returnee range, those 3-4 are definitely expected to return for this iteration to their tier. In my humble opinion it's lacking an identity, and overall not a scene that's developed enough at an official level skill-wise compared to more or less any other tier looking to be in this tour, playerbase wise. What's more over been consistent between the two snakes is a wealth of OU/other tier players just playing pu for shits and giggles, and really well vs the few mains that actually get in. It just feels like the least amount of users would be displaced if pu disappeared, which still sucks for those that are/new hopeful pu talent, but that'd be really anyone looking to get in to any of the removed tiers.

So yeah, I think as I said criteria should be above, it hasn't brought enough to the table to retain a position over gleeful hopeful mono, or entirely rejuvenated ubers with the two chances it's been given imo. Like ubers, this would not be some permanent death sentence for pu. I also think the idea of pu taking the spot of ou3 is a hilariously tragic misstep, given the skill differences. OU3 has really shown to be a lot better than OU4 as a slot in general, i think cutting it is a lot more harmful. Frankly if you cut too many OUs you'll just see the leftover talented talent there taking more slots from mainers in pu or whatever, imo, if they're so inclined to sign up for it.

I have nothing to add abt vgc but i've heard zeefable has done a great job. 12 slots is a good option but i know historically adding slots has been the most denied thing ever, unfortunately. but yeah, adding 12 slots would make everyone happy besides the ppl who keep denying expansion (lol!). sorry if you play pu and hate me now :pirate:
 
First of all, I think it's great that there's such a strong interest shown in VGC and I am actually one of the people zeefable referred to that's planning to participate in the upcoming VGC tournaments. That said, I don't think VGC should be in this tournament right now. Doubles OU is the established official Smogon doubles format and while the new VGC resources and initiatives on Smogon are amazing, its resurgence is still in its budding stage. If VGC keeps growing on our forums like it is currently, then I can't wait for tournaments like a VGC Premier League, a VGC seasonal tournament or even inclusion in our official tournament circuit down the line. Taking up a slot in SCL this year is too soon for me, though.

Other than that I want to show my support for Hogg's proposal and his reasoning for the 10 slot format for SCL. The main goal behind the creation of this new tournament is to have a great tournament that we can get hyped about and look forward to, instead of it being perceived as simply a worse team tournament compared to SPL, like SSD was. It's supposed to be equal to SPL in terms of interest and prestige, yet a celebration of the current gen instead. The new team names and artwork (bless you Zracknel, seriously) have already made me incredibly hyped for this tournament, but the fact that it would mirror SPL in how the teams were formed as well truly makes it feel equal to me. Don't worry about SPL having more history or "importance" right now, because that's only due to a 10 year head start. SCL's overall history and legacy, as well as that of its franchises, will build themselves over time.

To get back on the topic of whether we prefer Monotype or OU3, I'd strongly prefer a third OU slot myself. I touched on mirroring SPL earlier and I think having the same CG OU + old gens/lower tiers balance is perfect to maintain an equal status between the two tournaments. Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of Monotype either. Even though I agree that you can mitigate your team's weaknesses with smart Pokemon and set choices, and some type match-ups aren't nearly as lopsided as one might think either, ultimately your teams are going to have overlapping weaknesses when all of your Pokemon share a typing. That's fundamentally how it is and I don't get why it's such taboo to say that or why it's being compared to having a bad match-up in OU or a lower tier. I understand the appeal of Monotype, I liked teaming up with many of the Monotype players in the last few months and I know a lot of people enjoy Monotype, too, but that's not enough to select the metagame for SCL, in my opinion.

I'm sorry to be so unsupportive, and it really isn't in my nature to dislike any tiers these days, but it was just so unbelievably disheartening watching my Monotype teammates lose to exactly the wrong match-up over and over and over between LTPL, MWP and MWC. Frankly, I'd absolutely loathe to watch my Monotype teammate play at 5-4/4-5 in an important SCL week, only to get trounced by some random Pokemon or just an awful type match-up, for example. Sufficed to say, I'd prefer to have a third OU slot instead.
 

Hogg

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I've got a bunch more to comment on, but I do want to focus on the 10 vs 12 aspect, because it has come up a lot. I very much oppose raising the tour to 12. It's an artificial solution to keep us from making a hard decision by kicking the can down the road for a while. Meanwhile, I think it comes at the expense of making the tour as good as it possibly can be. I know that things like this are subjective, but I strongly feel that 10 slots in a 9 week season is basically ideal, and it was by far my favorite change to the most recent SPL. I talked about why in the previous thread and in the OP, and I don't want to spend too much time repeating myself, so I'll cp the explanation I gave to z0mOG when he asked:




TL;DR: I think 10 playing slots for a 9 week tournament represents the ideal balance, with each game accounting for 10% of a team's potential points in any given week. It keeps relevance for the majority of games and still rewards standout individual performances, without making a single stellar or poor performance make or break a season.

I really value what zee and others have been doing to turn the VGC section around, and I love me some VGC, but I personally wouldn't support any solution that involves increasing the number of slots beyond 10.

I also want to push back a bit on the idea that SCL is specifically meant to be a lower tier tour. Instead, I'd argue that it's a current gen tour. SPL showcases Smogon's flagship tier in all its iterations, and I think SCL should balance that by showcasing the depth of the current generation. Naturally that includes tiers other than OU, but I think OU should certainly still have a prominent role in it. I think dropping OU to 1 slot would be a mistake as well.

There's a lot more to respond to that I hope to get to today, but I wanted to jump in with those two points first and foremost.
 

MrAldo

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How classy.

Anyways, Id argue to add Monotype to give them a chance and cause I think it could be a fun with obvious managerial constraints but cmon now, you can get a solid grasp of Monotype a teach a sub the ropes and go from there. The matchup issue isnt even that bad, some sets for a specific type can really turn the table against one unfavorable typing on paper which is a rather cool dynamic. Id agree this is the most risky approach when in comes from a draft perspective but feel it is going to be the most refreshing option here instead of choosing flagship cause honestly...

OU would be always easier to add regardless, you could give me team comradery and what not but I dont see how is that exclusive to OU only? Again, why not trying to solve the other tiers together as a team in the first place? pretty sure thats the point. OU has plenty of representation on the whole year already when it comes about tournaments that any body can have a chance to prove themselves without anything tied. Id argue a new name being a top 16 contender or someone that reaches olt playoffs is contender to be new blood to be drafted tbh, there are plenty of chances already.

I dont know, I feel many are being too strict when it comes about "trying to emulate SPL" a little too much, and isnt like Im proposing that SCL would be the tournament to add another meta for the sake of it. I have seen the monotype competitive development (from far since I dont directly play it) over the years and the amount of tournaments they do to keep the interest is pretty impressive, and many of the monotype most important names do play plenty of tiers and are capable of providing support for the tiers mentioned here for testing and providing for a team atmosphere, they are specialists but hardly "mainers" in the terminology presented in this thread.

OU addition will always be the easiest addition to defend cause it is always going to be the main tier, but I dont believe it is the right one for this case. WCOP was already modified to be 8 current gen slots so I think 2 slots in this tournament already presents to anyone that OU is the most important tier as it should be. It is matter of philosophies as well, like this is my opinion and perspective. I will always defend more variety and adding the 3rd slot will not make the tournament "far more competitive" like magic out of a top hat, that goal can be achieved with monotype or OU added. Like yeah, managerial constraint but... take a risk? sometimes thats ok, you arent losing much or losing money or anything (well, technically...)

Excited for the outcome regardless for whats added but I do wanted to add my opinion even tho it is somewhat regurgitated, but adding monotype definitely has a ton of value for the tour and definitely deserved so vouching my support for that.

Cheers.
 

lighthouses

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Is adding monotype and making it bo3 completely out of the question?
Im sorry if i missed a post where this is talked about but it doesnt seem to have been mentioned at all, if matchup is the only thing preventing monotype from getting in for a lot of people then surely just making it bo3 is an option?
 

Sabella

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Talked a bit in the scl discord chat but might as well post here to get more posts. First of all, i think we shouldn't have more than 8 tiers, with OU3 being 100% in. As someone who plans to signup as a manager for this, having to address possibly 8 tiers with DOU and LC already working completely differently from all the other tiers in the tour is... not feasible. Trying too hard to be different from SPL would only hurt the tour in my opinion, and the creation of this new tour would be totally pointless.

I've seen some people here arguing that monotype should be included because "good players have been able to play it completely fine", but... that doesn't really make sense? Yes, good pokemon players will be good players wherever you put them, there's no doubt to that. The real question is, is a good Monotype player able to give any sort of support to other tiers?

Now, this obviously isnt a monotype only problem. As mentioned before, DOU and LC have this same problem where their tier is completely different and requires 2-3 players to cover only one slot. And this is totally fine, cause most good Lower Tiers players can help for every single one of them, while with multiple OU slots you would end up drafting at least 5 players anyway. With this, you're able to cover for at least 9 of the slots available in the tour, while still having moneys to spend to focus support on one more specific tier.
Id like to touch on the part about monotype players being able to contribute to other tiers. Monotype has pokemon from all tiers included in the format and pokemon from NU>OU can be viable on certain types for the role that they contribute. Now said player may not be able to build a UU team but they surely could contribute by giving thoughts on certain pokemon or sets and can learn and contribute more along the way. The players in this format have unique similarity with OU players in that they can use pokemon in every tier like i previously said so i do think they will be able to contribute even if only a little bit.
 

MZ

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sorry if you play pu and hate me now :pirate:
Nah this is sorta just the natural outcome whenever we turn these threads into places to pit tiers against each other. As long as we're doing that there's no reason not to compare it with Ubers and Monotype, both of which need to fight for their spots. They're perfectly in the right for pushing to get the shot that PU had and they both deserve it just as much if not more than we did back then. I'll preface this post by saying I want all three of these tiers to be in, turning this into tier vs other tier is silly, I'd even be fine with 12 slots and VGC+3rd OU as well although I know just about zero about VGC. That being said, we should really keep PU in this tour, and that means a response post. Joy.
On the other hand, pu to me is where ubers was 2 years ago, for different reasons. It's taken a stab at snake for two iterations now, neither of which I think went particularly well. The first time (snake 3) it was new, and there ended up being 25 slots play PU over the course of the tour, which is insanely high. like, absurdly high. the closest lower tier to that in the tour had 18 slots. that's nearly an extra pu slot per team. it just went to show really that people didn't know who they wanted to play pu on average, seeing as the majority is just non-mainers going 1-0 or 0-1.
Yeah both Snakes saw an awful lot of different people playing PU. I do not think, however, that this point reflects on the amount or level of the mainers at hand. In both Snake 3 and 4 several managers simply chose to not favor slotting PU mains in the tier for a few different reasons. In Snake 3 every PU main who started (except the very unique case of Tom Holland) stayed on for just about the whole tour and had a record no worse than 3-5. Most of these extra players came from the teams that tried to slot a generally good player into just another low tier and when that didn't go so well they simply tried someone else. I am not trying to blame managers here for not being able to perfectly assess each and every separate community's talent pool perfectly before the draft, I'm simply stating where the large amount of slots were more a repudiation of the idea that the PU community lacks a good playerbase for the tour.

In snake 4 it had 6 pu mains starting if you count ham, 3 of which now play OU as well in official teamtours (ktut/tj/ham) and one who could jump into anything really (xiri.) Between the two tours, there's a whopping 2 players who played it each year significantly, one who very likely could be in OU this time around. Even with tiers that are in the 3-4 range returnee range, those 3-4 are definitely expected to return for this iteration to their tier.
I don't think going back to Snake 3 would be relevant except for how that leads into Snake 4. A lot of PU players retired between Snakes 3 and 4 for sure, missing Teddeh, Sam I Yam, Taskr, and Raiza absolutely caused a large starter shift. In the meantime we had plenty of other players rise up to become some of the tier's stronger candidates for playing in Snake, new players replacing old ones. The critical thing with Snake 4 is, once again, a lot of managers decided to not go into the PU pool for their picks. It's pretty easy for someone actively familiar with the PU community like myself to namedrop players like LordST or termi who could've very easily started in Snake 4, let alone a few of the newer names like zS or Squash. In fact LordST or termi could've both easily started Snake 3, and if they had I think you'd see a much better level of continuity. But the tier is not going to grow continuity when enough people decide to go outside of the PU community for their drafts. If you ask me you could fill 10 starting slots with PU mains just fine and have a solid level of competition- or, for those who are not impressed with the PU talent pool, at the very least a level that matches what we've had in past Snakes with a large split between PU mains and general tour players. Not to say I expect no tour players to get drafted or that it isn't fun to see someone like obii take on the tier. But since Snake 4 I think the number of PU players at a good level for this tour has only grown, there are absolutely players willing to show off what they can do in these tours.

In my humble opinion it's lacking an identity, and overall not a scene that's developed enough at an official level skill-wise compared to more or less any other tier looking to be in this tour, playerbase wise. What's more over been consistent between the two snakes is a wealth of OU/other tier players just playing pu for shits and giggles, and really well vs the few mains that actually get in. It just feels like the least amount of users would be displaced if pu disappeared, which still sucks for those that are/new hopeful pu talent, but that'd be really anyone looking to get in to any of the removed tiers.
I just don't like holding this against the PU community. And I get that most of this post so far could be looked at as "boo hoo nobody wants to buy us" but that's not where I'm trying to take this. It's that not getting to show off an identity in Snake hasn't really been up to PU at all. The first Snake went great for the PU mains that got to play but when there was a large community shift between gens 7 and 8 more PU slots were filled by other tier players than mains even though the PU mains were still there. Nobody expects every managing duo to have a great grasp on every tier's players, PU is a relatively isolated and unproven community, it's a lot easier to grab a good mainer from tiers that have been around longer and/or are also in SPL, a bunch of known quantities moving on from Pokemon with really bad timing messed up people's view of the tier, etc. But the playerbase and the talent are out there and when PU mains actually do get drafted it's to generally positive results. Other metrics of inclusion don't seem to be bad either- the experiences of non-PU players playing the tier in these tours have been generally very positive from what I've seen and the community is slowly growing outward and getting more overlap with regards to PU mains playing other tiers and other tier mains playing more PU. Everything that is necessary to have PU be just another fun tier in a fun low tier tour is here. This isn't "keep PU and it'll grow into something worth keeping", this is "it's already here and perfectly capable of being great". I mean I think it has been great and PU was plenty fun to spectate in the last few Snakes regardless but there's a good bit of bias there. I would love to see Chloe to get a starting shot after her LTPL run last year, or maybe see what Greybaum can do after this PU open run, or maybe finally see termi play in a trophy tour after her open run. PU players certainly aren't invisible here. Even with all the mainer on mainer knockouts I've had to post this time around we've got 3 mainers in Open semis right now and there's been several other team tours we've had since last Snake to look at (LTPL, PUWC, PUPL). I just don't want to see PU axed because the way the team tour draft system is set up means it's just not gotten to show off as many good mainers as people want. To my mind that has far more to do with why non-PU players might just be "playing PU for shits and giggles" than the community lacking people to take those spots. You say PU "hasn't brought enough to the table with the two chances it's been given" but that hasn't ever been a choice. There's no reason that PU has to lack an identity after this long in Snake (well, several of our best known players stepping down or quitting entirely between Snakes 3 and 4 isn't a bad reason ig). Anyway, PU is bringing at least as much potential to this tour as mono or ubers, and let's face it it's a more interesting and fun inclusion than a 3rd OU.
 

Boat

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I'd like to take a moment to re-focus the thread, and comment on what the TD team has decided on in the wake of the arguments made so far.

Firstly, we're convinced that 10 slots is the way to go. Hogg's argument about balancing star power and team support is a good one, and increasing the slots for the purpose of inclusivity over competitiveness feels unwise and against the idea of the tour.

Secondly, as a result of the first, we're pretty comfortable saying that VGC won't be in. The recent efforts of the VGC community are admirable, but DOU is still the flagship doubles meta of Smogon, and we can't fit them both.

Lastly, we're ready to guarantee Ubers a slot. It's been brought up that it's not fair that Monotype, but not Ubers, has to argue their case in this thread, but the fact of the matter is that Ubers made their case in the original Casting Out of Snakes thread. The strong show of support and well-reasoned arguments made in that thread are similar to what Monotype needs to do now, not attempt to make Ubers re-argue their case.

Please try to keep this thread on the original focus that Hogg outlined; third OU or Monotype?
 

Sabella

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Is adding monotype and making it bo3 completely out of the question?
Im sorry if i missed a post where this is talked about but it doesnt seem to have been mentioned at all, if matchup is the only thing preventing monotype from getting in for a lot of people then surely just making it bo3 is an option?
This was actually something I wanted to mention as well. We do this for RBY already and if there is a similar worry about getting a shitty matchup a bo3 option could potentially mitigate this. While you cant change the typing chart and the matchups themselves you can give yourself more than once chance to win.
 

sensei axew

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I'm definitely in favor of adding Monotype as the 10th tier for SCL for a lot of the reasons that Lilburr, Kev, Ticken, Chait etc all touched up on. I don't want to beat a dead horse and repeat all of the many reasons to why it should be included but I do want to touch up on one.

Fewer siloed tiers. One of the oft-referenced issues with Doubles and to a lesser degree Little Cup in SPL was siloization: there just wasn’t a ton of cross-over between Doubles and other tiers/metagames, meaning many teams ended up with DOU as an isolated slot (or else they had to dedicate resources toward multiple players to support a single playing slot). Most other slots didn’t have this problem - in SPL there was almost always enough cross-over with players who played multiple gens, and you see the same thing with most lower tiers. Too many siloed tiers and drafting proper team support becomes a nightmare. SCL will already be including DOU and Little Cup, and Ubers will be seeing a return to an official team tournament for the first time since SSD1. Will adding Monotype mean too many siloed tiers?
Honestly, I really don't think Monotype is that much of a siloed tier. Like Vulpix03 said, Monotype is played the exact same way single tiers, such as RU and OU, are played unlike that of LC and DOU. Therefore, I don't think Monotype is that hard of a tier to pick up on and I'm a prime example of this. Back in the fall, I won the Mono SSNL going undefeated in bo3s and prior to the first round, I hadn't even touched monotype for the entire generation. If some noob can win an entire Monotype seasonal beating prominent mainers along the way, surely Pokemon Jesuses like Soulwind or TDK could pick it up like 1 2 3. And this is basically because the premise of winning and playing a Monotype game is actually quite similar to that of a OU or NU game. You try set up a wincon, keep your necessary pokemon as healthy as possible, and get your breakers in etc etc.

Also, because Monotype is so similar to single tiers, I don't really understand why it's being considered such a siloed tier due to the fact that youre locked to one type per team? Like look at the differance between OU and PU right now. OU is running rampant with behemoths of Pokemon like Heatran, Lando-T, Dragapult, and Slowking ig lol while down in PU they're using uh Passimian, Whimsicott, Aromatisse, and Togedemaru. Like sure the premise is the same but the power creep and strategy is so different that they're basically completely separate tiers following one total guideline. I'm not sure if I'm reaching on this one here but I think it makes sense.

Basically, my point is, anyone who knows the typechart can easily learn Monotype and vice versa. Monotype mains like Chaitainya, Floss, Decem etc. all play other tiers like OU and RU and can provide their team with adequate support and help. Same thing goes the other way around as people who main other tiers can quite easily provide support for monotype based on the evidence I listed above.

So yeah, I’m a firm believer that Mono should be added as the 10th slot for SCL
 
according to the sheet that Ticken posted above i have played a total of 39 games in total on monotype team tours, out of those 39 games i've faced a shitty mu a total of 1 time. my point is that is such an unlikely scenario if you scout and prep/build right, just like, in every tier. you don't go with a team without a ghost resist in ou if your opponent #1 mon in usage is dragapult so its not worth saying anything about the "matchup" issue with monotype because 1) it feels like talking to a wall 2) i think its already debunked and everyone made excellent points about it.

i just wanna say to the people in charge: give it a try, if it sucks then remove it from the next edition of the tour, at this point worse things have been witnessed on this website.

that said i fully support the best of three idea, but bo1 monotype is not that awful, i promise.
 

Kev

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To get back on the topic of whether we prefer Monotype or OU3, I'd strongly prefer a third OU slot myself. I touched on mirroring SPL earlier and I think having the same CG OU + old gens/lower tiers balance is perfect to maintain an equal status between the two tournaments. Admittedly, I'm not a big fan of Monotype either. Even though I agree that you can mitigate your team's weaknesses with smart Pokemon and set choices, and some type match-ups aren't nearly as lopsided as one might think either, ultimately your teams are going to have overlapping weaknesses when all of your Pokemon share a typing. That's fundamentally how it is and I don't get why it's such taboo to say that or why it's being compared to having a bad match-up in OU or a lower tier. I understand the appeal of Monotype, I liked teaming up with many of the Monotype players in the last few months and I know a lot of people enjoy Monotype, too, but that's not enough to select the metagame for SCL, in my opinion.

I'm sorry to be so unsupportive, and it really isn't in my nature to dislike any tiers these days, but it was just so unbelievably disheartening watching my Monotype teammates lose to exactly the wrong match-up over and over and over between LTPL, MWP and MWC. Frankly, I'd absolutely loathe to watch my Monotype teammate play at 5-4/4-5 in an important SCL week, only to get trounced by some random Pokemon or just an awful type match-up, for example. Sufficed to say, I'd prefer to have a third OU slot instead.
I don't mean to offend you or question your integrity with this statement, but it's just so easy to cry matchup instead of actually understanding the how and what. I'll go through the Finals (or Semi-Finals in the case of LTPL) series for each of the tournaments you mentioned and explain how those aren't cases of "randomly losing to the exact match-up/Pokemon" but more the fault of the player / team just like it would be for any other tier. I'll be only focusing on those rounds because they are the ones I've seen you complain about.

MWP Finals:
The games:
King Choco vs Sabella [Psychic vs Dark]
Shiba vs Maki [Fairy vs Dark]
(Bo3 series):
Game 1 [Flying vs Dragon]
Game 2 [Ice vs Flying]

Screen Shot 2021-05-25 at 5.35.49 PM.png


The first thing to point out is that its a Psychic team sweeping a Dark team which is not what anyone inexperienced would instinctively believe at preview. Then, we need to think about context. Your team used Dark and Dragon several times in the tournament, often twice in a week. It was the same structure too, with both teams built with the decision that Hatterene was not a Pokemon because Tapu Lele is more popular. Their Dark team lacked any of the options to handle Hatterene (Heavy Slam ttar / Bisharp / Drapion) and the same goes for Dragon (Sludge Wave instead of Gunk Shot on Dragalge). The opposing team then decide to take advantage of that pattern and slight building flaw by building a solid team that could win plenty of other matchups but would shatter the obvious teams. The impact Heavy Slam Tyranitar plays in this matchup can be observed here. It gives the Dark team a lot more breathing room in the matchup and allows it to put immense pressure on the Fairy team.

They also took advantage in the other slot by going after the Dark team with a Fairy with lots of answers for Dragon/Dark. Generally, Fairy-type teams do not cover that much STAB (a commonality for most types in Monotype in general) and for that reason have tight matchup with Dark and Dragon despite the "natural advantage". Your own teammate won Dragon vs Fairy earlier in the tour. It is clear the opponents expected these obvious brings so they overloaded the team with answers like Tapu Fini. It is super easy to jut say "lol got monotype'd" instead of acknowledging that the team just got out-prepped because they got too comfortable.

If we look at the Bo3 series, the same thing happened. The team again, brought the very obvious Dragon bring and also Flying which is another highly used type from the team. Again, the exact same team was used before in the tournament. The first game is Flying vs Dragon, which instinctively a person should think Dragon has the advantage because of Kyurem, so blaming matchup for this one doesn't make sense. As for a tech, trichotomy brought an Outrage Choice Scarf Landorus which is a perfect good set to help in a "harder" matchup, especially one that was highly expected. As for the second game, the on paper matchup definitely seems a lot more daunting. However, the Flying vs Ice matchup is really not that bad and does come down to build of the team and how the player plays which is just Pokemon in general. In Monotype team tours, the matchup is probably 2-2 in 2021. trichotomy just took advantage of the very obvious team choices of your team, and EV'd his Glastier to take the Heavy Slam from Celesteela which was a new tech at the time. If anything, it speaks volumes on how that matchup is manageable, because the Ice player was the one that had to fit in a tech to weigh the odds in his favour.

Some examples of Ice losing to Flying in Monotype team tours:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8monotype-1262436038
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8monotype-1300720266

The tl;dr for what happened in this tournament is: Your team was simply predictable and got punished because of that. The same teams were brought very often and the opponents took advantage of that. The same thing could happen in literally any tier. If someone is almost exclusively using Stall or HO for example, or using the team is repeating the same team, eventually someone is going to prep stuff that completely shatters those comfort picks. You wouldn't blame OU or UU if their stall team got owned by a stall breaker, and for the same reason you shouldn't be blaming Monotype if you brought the same thing multiple times and someone checks it. In neither of these SS Monotype games, did your team lose to a random Pokemon or matchup.

MWC Finals:

The games:
Shiba vs Fírnen [Electric vs Dragon]
TJ vs Conflux [Dark vs Dragon]
Maki vs Padox [Electric vs Dark]

Screen Shot 2021-05-25 at 5.34.36 PM.png


So for the first game, we have your teammate winning Electric vs Dragon. I'll highlight this game simply for the fact that I've seen this matchup discussed in the smogon tours discord before. I'm sure some people would say you guys won because Dragon has matchup on Electric (I'll be getting back to this in the LTPL section), but this same matchup (Band Outrage Zeraora) was played by your own teammate before and resulted in a win.

For the second game, we have a case of the exact same problem your MWP team had. Your team has used the exact same Dragon team before multiple times, in fact it was 2/3 of the games from the round before. Naturally, they prepared for this scenario and loaded their team for the matchup. First of all, it should be noted that Dark vs Dragon is not a lopsided matchup in Dark's favour. Weavile is obviously a very tricky Pokemon to face but from many games I've seen it comes down to Triple Axel hitting thrice. The real "tech" on the team here is Choice Scarf Hydreigon. Not really anything revolutionary, but it is far from being the preferred or common set but it has the benefit here of decimating this relatively slow team and lacks the proper components to handle Dark teams, as well as help vs Electric which was also used a lot by your team. It's also worth nothing that the Band Outrage Zeraora in the first game is another result of the extremely obvious team choice. Throughout the tournament the US West was always using a Leftovers set but changed the set to matchup better vs expected types.

For the final game, it is an example of ill-preparedness of your team. US West used Electric multiple times, at least once every single week besides vs Canada as they knew I'd anticipate it. Moreover, Maki himself used it twice already before this. It was also something discussed heavily in Monotype tournament player chats about how good of a type Electric is, comments that were principally from US West players. There isn't really any excuse for Europe ignoring the matchup and using a Dark team from an antiquated metagame. Not to say that team was bad per say, but it was built without taking into consideration the current state of the metagame. If an OU player builds a team without an Electric or Water immunity/resist, or a Ground immunity and runs into Tapu Koko, Rain or Sand, would you blame the OU tier? Or is it OU's fault if your opponent is overwhelmingly known for stall and you decided to bring 0 breakers and got smashed. The same logic applies to Monotype, you need to be conscious of the metagame when you are building. If you feel "powerless" in a matchup, against one of the most obvious picks ever, that is entirely the fault of the one who picked and built it. To make it clear, I am not saying this now just to support my argument, but multiple people in the community were genuinely astonished at the team choice in the game because it just was not good.

tl;dr here is once again, neither of the games are the product of random pokemon/matchup losses. The team got complacent and reused teams and didn't take the effort to properly prepare for their games. The worst matchup moment for your team in this series was an ORAS Monotype game which is irrelevant to this discussion and can be explained in a similar fashion for what it's worth.

LTPL Semi-Finals:

The games:
Floss vs Isza [Ground vs Steel]
lax vs Fylkir Pudin [Dragon vs Electric]

So for the first game, it is again a case of bringing a team with all the necessary tools for an obvious bring. I've repeated this multiple times already so I won't go too into detail. Pattern recognition and player habits are an important things to acknowledge in prep. Isza's usage in both this tournament and MWP that was happening at the same time, as well as his trend to use Steel a lot in general, but particularly in important games, gave Floss a strong case to bring a loaded team like this. Steel teams are more than capable of beating the average Ground team as can be shown here and here. This is just like in any other tier where you can equip yourself to have a really good advantage in a certain matchup, without really losing out in other ones.

For the second game, the downfall was ultimately the team structure and nothing to do with the matchup itself. In the MWC section, I already showcased how this matchup is not lopsided. An Electric team with Band Zeraora was able to beat Dragon and likewise another one lost to Dragon. It should also be noted that Choice Band Zeraora is not a necessity to win the matchup, it is winnable as long as you have a good breaker. The matchup is primarily play dependent. The problem with it here is that the team was built without consideration, there was no good breaker like Choice Band Zeroara or Choice Specs Zapdos, nor was the Tapu Koko Choice Specs. The player even acknowledged that the loss is because of their flawed building and not because the matchup is unsurmountable. Just like in other tiers, the dismissal of important building guidelines is not the fault of the tier but of the builder.

---

This post is really long, but in general Monotype games are hardly ever decided at preview. It'd be dishonest to say that it NEVER occurs because there is probably 2-3 matchups that are blatantly one-sided but they are incredibly unlikely and never seen in competitive tournaments. This is similar to getting cheesed by something like TR, Webs, Screens, etc.. For occasions where matchup does occur, there is generally a reasoning be it predictability or fishing. The past Monotype tournaments and the consistency of good records, and bad records shows that the games generally reward the better player. The history of these tournaments are more than enough proof that the so called impossible matchups never occur. Below I added a bunch of replays from the last 3 Monotype team tournaments, the games are from different points of the SS metagame but they still cover the fact that "lost at preview" is hardly a concept in Monotype. Also, as many others have noted, matchup is a component of other tiers too and to a relatively similar extent. It's just easier to make claims about Monotype matchups than OU or Lower Tiers ones because it seems more obvious at preview.

 
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I think the matchup factor in Monotype is actually very overrated here, as kev could mention on his wall of fucking test (and for once I will agree with something he says). In mono you will prep for "hard matchups" as much as in any other metagame; you need to have tools to beat dark with psychic, elec/grass with water, psychic with fight and etc, and its just the most fun part of monotype since you actually can innovate and consider the most used types when you are building a team. Theres a clear usage percentage of types being "overused" and some players tend to keep in their comfort zone between some types and this is the line i noticed that define the best players of the rest, they are simply cappable of noticing the patterns of other players to use the best types available based on it, which not absolutely means they will just bring the counter type to go for a win. This kind of puzzle is cool, competitive and fun. You should touch monos a bit more by yourselves if you wanna really understand how they handle the metagame.
 
Lastly, we're ready to guarantee Ubers a slot. It's been brought up that it's not fair that Monotype, but not Ubers, has to argue their case in this thread, but the fact of the matter is that Ubers made their case in the original Casting Out of Snakes thread. The strong show of support and well-reasoned arguments made in that thread are similar to what Monotype needs to do now, not attempt to make Ubers re-argue their case.
I'm not gonna argue against ubers cause I think they should be in the tour too but I do want to say we throughly brought it up in the other thread as well (also with strong support lol). Also wanna put out there that literally no one from our community brought up a mono vs ubers argument lol just dont paint this against us

Anyway -

I spoke to boat privately regarding mirroring spl which others also touched upon ↓
I touched on mirroring SPL earlier and I think having the same CG OU + old gens/lower tiers balance is perfect to maintain an equal status between the two tournaments.
I don't understand the need to mirror SPL. They are different tournaments and they can have different identities. The prestige which we want to associate with this tour will come along with time, no number of OU slots is going to fix that immediately. There is absolutely no chance that there is going to be an equal status between SCL and SPL right away, and there probably won't be for a long time. The long history of SPL prevents it.

Kev's post in the first page (quoted below) highlights why the mirroring of SPL will not work in the long run as well. Either SPL will likely increase to 12 slots with new gens, or likely drop a CG slot. What happens then in this tour, do we just cut out a OU slot when the new gen rolls around? Trying to perfectly run along with SPL will not work in the long run. It will just end up with these discussions being had year after year, which I think we are all trying to avoid. It was after all, seemingly the reason why this thread (https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/spl-format-discussion.3672858/#post-8648405) was made in the first place. The format changes too often and it will continue to be the case with new gens in this tour if you try to mirror ou slots from tour to tour.

This argument seems like a disingenuous way of shutting down the inclusion of Monotype. I say this because the idea is not sustainable. The mirroring of SPL and SCL would be "valid" during this generation, but what happens with the release of future ones? This was a discussion that took place during the thread that discussed the removal of lower tiers from SPL. For this argument, I will be highlighting the proposed schedule by rozes. With the potential release of a Gen 9, SPL would be either be: dropping a CG OU slot, dropping RBY or increasing the tournament to 12 slots. Regardless of the decided option, there is no going around the fact that the format will change and SCL will be forced to changed to preserve the cg ou - lower tier / old gen balance. Would Monotype then replace the 3rd OU slot? Would Ubers get axed alongside RBY? Do Monotype and an extra OU slot get added to mirror a 4+8 format? And then what about the release of Gen 10, then we would need to hope a 9th lower tier has the competitiveness and community to support being included. While definitely possible, this is going off the assumption that something will occur.

Overall, my point here is that SCL and SPL being balanced in terms of CG OU and Old Gen / Lower Tier is not very realistic in the long term. It requires making significant modifications to the SCL lineup every few iterations. Every time SPL needs to add a new generation, SCL would need to replace its Old Gen and add a whole new tier. This is something that I find very unlikely to be implemented and keep consistent throughout the years. For this reason, I find the argument of maintaining parity in terms of format between SPL and SCL to be inefficient. The two tours formats should be dependent solely on their personal identity and viability, not on that of the other.
----

Kev kinda sniped me but if people read his second post it's pretty clear Tony's team really just lost due to being outprepped. They spammed the same shit over and over and got punished for it. Players don't win at these rates this consistently if all it takes to win is randomly picking a type and getting a good matchup. As has been touched upon, prep is an important part of this tier as it is all others and doing your due diligence pays off. (I included a small sample of players, if you want a more extensive list visit tickens post and his fantastic spreadsheets)
Screen Shot 2021-05-25 at 3.56.48 PM.png


Frankly, I'd absolutely loathe to watch my Monotype teammate play at 5-4/4-5 in an important SCL week, only to get trounced by some random Pokemon or just an awful type match-up, for example.
Frankly, I'd absolutely loathe to watch my SS OU3 teammate play at 5-4/4-5 in an important SCL week, only to get trounced by some random Volcarona or just an awful team match-up, for example. Yes you mentioned you don't get why it's being compared to OU or lower tiers, but the fact of it is matchup exists in Pokemon as a whole, which has been infinitely spoken about. It occurs in every single goddamn tier and it happens often. Losing is disheartening yes but this entire last paragraph was written from emotion instead of any sort of logic. This is as competitive tier as any. Better players win significantly more often than the worse ones, what more can you ask for?

---

I do not know what the TD team is leaning or why they are leaning any certain way. I can probably guess but it would be pretty helpful to get some insight from the ones making the decision on their stances. Whether the only thing blocking us is that the TD team values 3 OU more or that the TDs think monotype doesn't have a deep enough player base to compete or if they think the matchup issue is uncompetitive. Whatever the issue(s) is if any exist, it would be nice to hear so we can focus on that area instead of a broad argument which is frankly going in circles at this point. Saying this, I do think every potential issue has properly been addressed across both threads so it would be nice to hear from the ones making the decision about any possible issues they identify. Several posts say the matchup issue has been beaten into the ground, and I agree. However, the only arguments in the thread seems to be the matchup 'issue' which as I already said has been done to death, and alignment with SPL which will just cause issues in the future and will not give this tour any sort of extra prestige which I also mentioned earlier. If the TDs think that monotype is fit to be part of the tournament, then surely the sole reason 'aligning with SPL' wouldn't/shouldn't keep it out, right? And if the TDs think we are not fit to be part I would love to hear why.
 

ima

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Personally I think the image people bring upon monotype is heavily short sighted. People see a matchup such as psychic vs. dark and such and think the game is over from preview, however, as someone who got into competitive tournaments from the Monotype community, this is never the case. I don't really want to follow a huge echo chamber by repeating everybody else in this thread (I agree with everybody though) but I will just say first and foremost that monotype is played just like any other tier.

Something I really wanted to point out was the amount of players who have proven themselves that came directly from the Monotype community. I'll name a few ima lax Chaitanya 1 True Lycan Sabella Pak Isza Bushtush Wanka Confide -- I'm not speaking for them, I have no idea what their stance is on this take, but what I do know is we all kinda got into the same game together from the same community, and stemmed into different tiers and proved ourselves on this website (shouts WoA).

Now that I've named a couple people from the community, imagine the amount of potential waiting in the future generation of Monotype. They shouldn't be shadowed, they should be given a chance to show what the tier is really made of, and if Monotype is played the same as any other tier, and is being shunned only because of some fake news that has been the main argument for years, what is stopping Monotype from finally becoming a part of an official team tournament? As someone who has been on this website for *checks join date* six years, I've heard countless stories with TDs from the past saying that Monotype will never be a part of a real tournament (and that we were lucky enough to even be considered official at one point). Jump to where we are now, it is being discussed seriously in a thread full of active players who are strongly vouching for it, and as a veteran of the Monotype community I would love to see this isolation end and I would love to watch some competitive Monotype. The community is big and strong, just as always. Let's make it happen IMO
 

Wanka

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Talked a bit in the scl discord chat but might as well post here to get more posts. First of all, i think we shouldn't have more than 8 tiers, with OU3 being 100% in. As someone who plans to signup as a manager for this, having to address possibly 8 tiers with DOU and LC already working completely differently from all the other tiers in the tour is... not feasible. Trying too hard to be different from SPL would only hurt the tour in my opinion, and the creation of this new tour would be totally pointless.

I've seen some people here arguing that monotype should be included because "good players have been able to play it completely fine", but... that doesn't really make sense? Yes, good pokemon players will be good players wherever you put them, there's no doubt to that. The real question is, is a good Monotype player able to give any sort of support to other tiers?

Now, this obviously isnt a monotype only problem. As mentioned before, DOU and LC have this same problem where their tier is completely different and requires 2-3 players to cover only one slot. And this is totally fine, cause most good Lower Tiers players can help for every single one of them, while with multiple OU slots you would end up drafting at least 5 players anyway. With this, you're able to cover for at least 9 of the slots available in the tour, while still having moneys to spend to focus support on one more specific tier.
Seeing as you plan on being a manager, I do see where your concern lies in the event mono does get included. The last thing a manager would want is to have to draft someone essentially as a specialist for that tier and not have them able to contribute anywhere else. Cool, I get it.

I can't sit here and make promises but I'm like 99% sure that whoever does get drafted into the monotype pool will be generally competent players with either consistent lower tier experience, CG OU experience, or some combination of both. Again, I'm not EXACTLY sure who is going to get drafted, but some of the names in Tickens post are likely being drafted into the pool and can likely help a team with multiple other tiers whether its OU or a lower tier. There are also multiple users that will likely sign up to try and play monotype in SCL that have been getting drafted in Lower tier PLs consistently. Apply the same reasoning you used with justifying tiers like DOU and LC, there's no evidence that suggests that a monotype player you draft will be completely useless otherwise. This is pretty poor reasoning for keeping mono out imo unless you can literally prove the mono pool is useless.
 
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Amaranth

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I do not know what the TD team is leaning or why they are leaning any certain way. I can probably guess but it would be pretty helpful to get some insight from the ones making the decision on their stances. Whether the only thing blocking us is that the TD team values 3 OU more or that the TDs think monotype doesn't have a deep enough player base to compete or if they think the matchup issue is uncompetitive. Whatever the issue(s) is if any exist, it would be nice to hear so we can focus on that area instead of a broad argument which is frankly going in circles at this point. Saying this, I do think every potential issue has properly been addressed across both threads so it would be nice to hear from the ones making the decision about any possible issues they identify. Several posts say the matchup issue has been beaten into the ground, and I agree. However, the only arguments in the thread seems to be the matchup 'issue' which as I already said has been done to death, and alignment with SPL which will just cause issues in the future and will not give this tour any sort of extra prestige which I also mentioned earlier. If the TDs think that monotype is fit to be part of the tournament, then surely the sole reason 'aligning with SPL' wouldn't/shouldn't keep it out, right? And if the TDs think we are not fit to be part I would love to hear why.
The only thing I can say for the whole team right now is that we asked for more discussion about OU3 vs Mono because we're not dead set on the decision. I don't want to add more and speak in an 'official' way when nothing much has been conclusively agreed on yet.

With that said, I think communication is very important, so I'll give you my PERSONAL current take and I will be very welcoming of any incoming constructive criticism to it. The rest of the team could agree with me on everything or overrule me on everything, so take this with a grain of salt.

SCL is already a big rebranding and it's coming with a lot of expectation from a lot of sides. To include Monotype for the first time ever, in the first SCL ever, is bound to result in people conflating the two things and using discontent with one new thing to discredit the other new thing. First impressions are hard to shake off, and if the first iteration of SCL runs into significant issues that could cause significant discontent with the tournament as a whole for years down the line, the same way it happened to Snake.

For that reason I would be inclined to pick the 'safe' option in OU3 over Monotype for this edition of the tournament; the players and the community as a whole are much more of a known quantity. No one will be able to complain about the level of play with OU3; a lot of people will almost certainly say "you promised me prestige and you gave me a tournament with Monotype" if we decide to include it.
And on the flipside, too, if there are any issues with SCL as a whole, Monotype will suffer from it and receive a lot of undue heat. People want something to blame when things go wrong and they'll jump through god knows what hoops to pin it all on the outsiders. I don't want that to happen because I do believe Monotype has potential as part of official tournaments in the long term (again, personal opinion of one guy, don't link this in 2024 if Monotype still won't have made it into any officials).
Of course it could all go splendidly and it's possible that none of these downsides would occur - but I think the worst case scenario for both SCL and Monotype is a lot worse if we introduce both at once, compared to dragging it out a bit more.

I will say I don't personally put a lot of stock into the match up stuff. I've fought in these forums for RBY, a tier with plenty of perceived uncompetitivity issues of its own - people absolutely overstate the impact of luck in these sorts of tiers and like to close an eye to it in their favorite ones. For where I personally stand, that's basically a non-factor. Mons is mons. I will fight for Mono on this specific issue.
I also don't think the siloed tiers argument holds up. DOU is as siloed as it gets and most people love it. It is a little bit of a compounding problem when you stack one siloed tier on the other, but as many Mono players have said, the community has sourced plenty of people who have gone on to play other tiers with great results. I'm not concerned about this; I will also fight for Mono on this specific issue.
All in all, I'm not against Monotype in officials. I'm probably against Monotype in this official, because it's a very delicate one for the entirety of the current gen community, and I don't want people to give easy outs to criticize the tournament. As much as I believe in Monotype's potential to have a positive impact, I don't think it's controversial to say that it would be a much bigger risk than just running with OU3, and as I said earlier, I don't want SCL to go down the path Snake went, so I would prefer to play it safe until the tournament is more consolidated. I'm sure this isn't really what the Monotype playerbase wants to hear, but keeping in mind the interest of the Tournament community as a whole, that's where I'm leaning.

I'm posting here because I could be swayed and because I want to make it clear that I am listening. The discussion so far has been chaotic to say the least but there have been quite a few good takeaways from all sides and I am always looking to better understand the demands of the playerbase. Big thanks to everyone who has contributed and will contribute constructively to this discussion.
 

Moutemoute

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For that reason I would be inclined to pick the 'safe' option in OU3 over Monotype for this edition of the tournament; the players and the community as a whole are much more of a known quantity. No one will be able to complain about the level of play with OU3; a lot of people will almost certainly say "you promised me prestige and you gave me a tournament with Monotype" if we decide to include it.
I personally think the exact opposite. This is the first iteration of the SCL and I trully think that for this reason we should go with the Monotype road instead than 3xSSOU slot. If we go with 3xSSOU, I don't think there will be any issue in the tournament but that's an issue on its own because it will lead people to think that this was the correct call and use this as an argument for the next year to dump away a Monotype slot. I'll not repeat what has already been said many times on this thread by far more knowledged players than me but Monotype over 3xSSOU sounds way better.

I share the point with Lilburr, OU is already everywhere, so let other communities and players get their piece of the pie.
 
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ima

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Double posting to respond to some TDs in the Discord (will post here)
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"I think Mono is fine but people don't see it like that." "If you add Monotype, as unfair as it is to the tier, I guarantee you it will push many many people to not take SCL seriously"

To me this just feels like ignorance of the tier in general. The community is showing you (I'm not talking to you here rly I'm just talking to the people who perceive Monotype as not competitive) why Monotype is competitive and ready to go step by step in this thread and multiple others for years now. It's up to your jurisdiction to decide if Mono really is fit for the tournament but you can't deny the backing support the tier has and I really don't think there are that many people who genuinely think Mono is a shit show. It's a tier that has been alive for about a decade now and it 100% deserves a shot in the spotlight.

"We build this up trying to go for the highest guaranteed competitiveness, and that's OU3 over an unproven metagame that's brand new to officials."

Monotype has been around for a decade now. When is it going to get a chance? If not now, when? I have yet to see an answer on why a huge community that has been around for so long has been constantly denied chances like this, especially all for a third OU slot. To me it just screams that people don't think the tier is healthy or competitive. "unproven metagame" is a really bad take since its been around for as long as I remember. If I recall PU has been alive for way less and its already made its way to official tournaments (different metas, I know! But the fact Monotype has been isolated for this long has been irking me for a while now.) I would love for you to reconsider this stance as "unproven metagame" in general kind of throws everything the Monotype community has done to get here out the window. Let it have a chance to prove itself before calling it unproven. No hate though


Do not give the community false hope by saying stuff like "next year maybe!" The community doesn't want to wait a whole year, or two years, just to see their hard work die off again. If we want to make SCL prosper we should have open arms to people who really want to participate. This doesn't even just go for Mono, this goes for any other tier. Putting a third OU slot for a tournament that really wants to showcase Smogon's lower tiers does not make sense to me, and it feels like hard work just gets thrown out the window.
 
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