★ UU Team Tournaments - Open Mic

[Lyssa]

>>>> SURVEY HERE <<<<​

Hey everyone! Given UUCL ended not too long ago and while making preparations for 2026, we're looking for some feedback on our team tournaments infrastructure, to find a way to make everyone happy given how erratic it has been in the last few years.

The 2nd teamtour situation has been a little chaotic over the course of it's existence. Many people quite liked UUSD but it was deemed uncompetitive by some due to the nature of snake draft and the rng attached to pick order, which if you ever bothered checking the playoffs representation data, it mostly backs up that claim. Last year in a very rushed situation UUBD came around instead, following the success of PUBD, but evidently didn't translate considering the tournament really wasn't enjoyable for many people, and so this year we tried to do something new yet similar again and took inspiration from NU's successful CL format, which overall seems to have done well, but we'd like to confirm that before announcing it again for next year.

Even though BFM has stepped down as host, and with some critique surrounding the tournament at times, UUFPL has done an incredible job introducing people to UU or to new UU tiers, and we want to confirm it staying on our calendar. We are still looking forward to feedback on some of the more controversial elements of it though, such as tiering changes or "outsider tiers", given people have questioned what the point of having different format to those played in the "higher tier tournaments" in what was effectively a farm league since it's inception, though BFM made it something much more magical than just that. We will also be looking for feedback on it's identity for that reason, and following that we will find an appropriate host for it moving forward.

Finally, the third team tournament situation is a big rabbithole with many different sides to it, and that I'd like to expand on in my own post later in the thread, and I ask to put less focus on this compared to other points at hand for that reason. The only question I have for now is: would people be happy with having smaller and more open community events similar to what "UUSA vs The World" was instead? Our current schedule has a really rough time fitting a full on team tournament without hurting other parts of it, but again I promise to expand on all of this in a personal post at a later date. Nonetheless, I promise everyone will have the opportunity to play and showcase their ability in 2026.

We want to know your thoughts on all of this! Please answer the survey posted above but if you want to expand on things, add more or discuss things at large, feel free to do so in this thread. Finally, I ask of you to keep things on topic and to not put full focus on tangents, if you have any questions feel free to send them to me over on discord or post them in here. We appreciate all kinds of input and we want to give everyone the best experience possible!

 

[AJ]

I did not know BFM had stepped down from hosting UUFPL--this is an incredibly significant loss for this tour. As BFM is no longer here to speak on the tournament, I wanted to step in, as UUFPL is my proudest contribution to this forum.

As Lyssa has stated UUFPL is not on the chopping block; nor should it EVER be, I will not go so hard in the paint about how much I love this tour. UUFPL gathers more signups, attention, and hype than countless tours on this site, including those in UU itself. UUFPL has also inspired many other subforums to have feeder tournaments running in conjunction with official Premier Leagues.

BFM is the greatest reason why UUFPL was such a fun and successful tournament. Without him, the tour is at risk. So, to whoever will be appointed to run UUFPL in the future, please understand the gravity of the task before you. Attack this challenge with the same creativity, enthusiasm, and gusto as BFM did. Otherwise, you stand to be the reason for the downfall of UUFPL. I have played many of the feeder tournaments of lower tiers including RU's, NU's, and LC's. And no offense, those tours will never be close to what UUFPL is. To those tiers, it's just a basic feeder league where you post line-ups, maybe a tab for predictions, and that's it. No creativity, no fun. UUFPL has set itself apart from all of those lame copies with the genius of BFM. That NEEDS to carry on with the next host. There is no other way to keep UUFPL the great tour that it is.

Now, to the more pressing issues:

1. UUFPL should continue to run suspect test slots whenever convenient in lieu of the SV UU Districts format of last year. I think that suspecting Pokemon, especially in ADV and DPP, has brought a lot of attention and excitement to those tiers. UUFPL is a place for creativity and ingenuity and that has helped a lot. I was very transparent with BFM about how much I hated the districts slot. It turned out to be frequently unbalanced and unfair. It was fun--but it's not an idea that should return.

2. I support UUbers, UU Natdex, or some other fun tier being added to UUFPL. While it is a serious tour that people (myself included) work very hard to win, it is also an incredibly fun tour (with no trophies or avatars at stake) where we should experiment and have fun. UUbers has a strong player base and I think it went well the year it was in the tier. I think NatDex would also be successful. Or we could even do a 1v1 slot and incorporate members of that community. There are many ideas to be had and I think a full discussion would be great!

IN SUMMARY:

As the founder of UUFPL, and someone who was so incredibly delighted to watch BFM transform it into the GREATEST tournament this forum has ever seen, I would be very upset if the identity of UUFPL changed. I strongly believe that the next host should carry our the general mission, format, and message that BFM so diligently and fantastically wove into this tournament. This includes storylines, themes, maps, challenges, and every single amazing thing BFM did (even if people didn't participate). BFM transformed UUFPL into something far beyond what I initially intended and imagined. DO NOT LET THAT SLIP AWAY!

I hope all are receptive to my message and my intentions, and that UUFPL remains the amazing tour it is!

 

[Bouff]

disorganized thoughts here

-uucl vs other tours: i think this format was a success overall and was p competitive for the most part even though some of the oldgen games were like really poor for some reason. i think this tour was better compared to uubd because a) format obv, rewards drafting flexible players and 2 sv is ideal imo, and b) a lot of good players actually signed up and cared which made the tour feel more engaging. i would strongly encourage keeping this tour for next year to others, even though snake drafts can be really funny.

-i had no idea until the post above that drew made uufpl and not bfm but i think unless he comes back there has to be rebrand name wise. kind of nitpicky and maybe irrelevant but like it is just not the same without him so i feel like itd be a disservice to have the same name for the tournament (obviously you keep the actual format more or less).

-i think doing suspect slots is like fine in uufpl but i honestly don't know how much people enjoy or value them? for adv i feel like it typically ends up as "yeah this thing is in fact kind of stupid". would like to hear more from ppl who actually played these tiers this is just an observation

-before i get into the actual third team tour point as far as uu goes, this is more of a general thing site wide i've been feeling for a little while now. i do not think tiers NEED three team tours a year, from what i've seen player burnout is a very real thing for a lot of people and it feels exhausting for something to always be going on so to speak. of course you can argue "you dont have to play these tours", to which i say yeah no shit but if good players don't give a fuck about the tours....then they're gonna be low quality events and they're gonna be regarded negatively during and after their runtime. this is what i kind of observed about uubd, we had a team with zero points in uucl and i felt like it was still exciting for the whole community despite some of the wacky oldgen games and the cheesy sv games.

-to follow up on this, uuwc fucking sucks for the most part. 2023 was pretty hype because sv was still relatively fresh which led to high quality sv games and meta development (at least i think maybe im making this up god i hope im not...) but other than that it feels like a chore for most teams. everyone complains about it except for like one or two teams that feel really passionate about it but i don't think that should be enough. i think uusa vs world was fun even though it was v memey (part of the charm) but i am confident that it would work better than uuwc and i'd advise against having it until the start of gen 10 after that year's uupl.

thanks to reina viv and the mod team for getting this going, feel good about where uu tours are headed for the community and hope it continues to trend this way :)

 

[Mister McLovin]

Hello, I’ve really been enjoying UU, and I think I’ve played enough of the tier to give my opinion. I participated in UUFPL and UUCL, and here are my thoughts:

1) UUFPL was amazing. I really liked the general concept of the districts slot (which I had the honor to play) as a sort of “suspect” tier. I do think it started to get a bit unbalanced once we began including Ubers in UU (like Mewtwo, lol), but if it’s well-directed, I think it could even involve the UU council in future suspect testing. It would be really cool to see actual replays of things being retested in UU if that were ever the case. To me, this is one of the best aspects of UUFPL.

On another note, I’m very sad to hear that BFM is stepping down from hosting UUFPL. Everything about that tour felt really well organized, and I think we all noticed the amount of effort that went into it. While I personally don’t support a name change, I do hope whoever steps up can continue the legacy that BFM built.

2) As for UUCL, I found the format a little bit weird, if I’m being honest. I understand the general idea and I do think it’s cool that it rewards players who can play more than one tier, but I personally prefer UUBD’s battling format (fixed tiers each week instead of picking tiers depending on the opponent). Of course, that’s just my personal feeling, and I also get that making UUCL with that format would make it very similar to UUPL. Still, I think we could find something in between if we’re really set on dropping UUBD, which I also enjoyed. Also, I wouldn’t mind adding another SV UU (or CG UU) slot to UUCL if we decide to keep the current format.

3) And finally, UUWC: I liked it, I don’t care what anyone says.

That being said, I filled out the survey, and I hope I can contribute some positive feedback to the UU subforum. Cheers!

 

[AM]

UUFL is the only team tour I care about on this forum (i've explained more in the survey response) but the tldr I suggested is to dead it, make it something new. BFM did such a great job in the later iterations with lots of quirkiness with it that it's too much pressure on any future host to do all the additional leg work that made the tour what it is. Would hate to see it be another rando tour where people sort of load and click and not gaf, cause we have enough of those on the site truthfully. But at least if it's gonna end up being that it wouldn't have the UUFPL name attached to it.

Thanks BFM for all the work.