Implemented WCoP 2020 Tiers Discussion

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It's about that time of year so let's get right to it. The options being considered are the following:

1) 10 or 8 SS OU
2) 5 SS OU; 1 each of SM, ORAS, BW, DPP, ADV
3) 4 SS OU; 1 each of SM, ORAS, BW, DPP, ADV, GSC

4 current gen is the lowest WCoP has ever gone, and we are not willing to lessen that even more to 3 in order to squeeze RBY in. We've managed 4+6 before and it aligns with SSD so it is an option still. 5+5 is for the "equal newgen and oldgen representation" crowd, or those who feel 4 is not quite sufficient representation for Smogon's main tier. 10 SS OU is all in on current gen representation and growth, but lacks the flavor / variety of having multiple tiers in a team tournament.

Please post in a respectful and topical manner. If you don't, your post will be deleted and you will be infracted. Discuss!
 
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Texas Cloverleaf

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Removing old gens means I don't have a place to play this WCOP. Also makes Canada worse overall.

But that's what should happen anyway. Just about a brand new meta in SS OU, no greater hotbed of innovation and creativity than forcing a country to focus all their energies into the main tier.

WCOP should be responsive to its environment, and both willing and able to shift between current and older gens as circumstances apply. The start of a new generation is the exact time to focus on it.
 

Finchinator

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3) 4 SS OU; 1 each of SM, ORAS, BW, DPP, ADV, GSC > 1) 10 SS OU > 2) 5 SS OU; 1 each of SM, ORAS, BW, DPP, ADV

The 5-5 option does not appeal to me at all. We have not catered to creating an even split between CG OU and old generation representation recently, so why would we start now? As the OP mentions, SSD is 4-6 in its own fashion and recent WCOPs have also been 4-6. If we want to favor the new generation in WCOP, then we might as well go all the way and choose option 1, making the tournament fully SS OU. The 5-5 option is arbitrary and would not make sense given recent decisions and discussions about tournament formats.

As for picking between 4-6 or going all-in on SS OU, I do not have a strong preference. I lean towards the status quo of 4-6 because it has been fine the last few years and it seems less cruel to the teams that have stronger old generation cores/lack new generation depth (hi OCN). This is a classic debate that will occur again each year, so I will leave it to the normal participants in it who are likely more passionate on one end than the other. Just please no 5-5.
 
I think ideas 1 and 3 have their pros and cons in the grand scheme and I’d like to explain why I think Option 3 is superior between the 2 as Finch explained pretty well why Option 2 is unappealing.

1.) 10 SS OU: Imo, this is the less appealing option out of the 2. While current gen OU is what we want most represented in tours (especially since the metagame is new and is only going to change more with DLC 1 dropping) that aren’t classic and this certainly does this desire to be filled and allows for a ton of meta development, it also hurts those who play old gens and the representation of said formats seeing as GSC-BW only get 1 source of individual tour representation a year so team tours are big in how they develop and get shown at high level play. Not only this, but issues of finding 10 SS players can become a big factor in how these teams are drafted and can lead to subpar games. Not to mention (ik this is a selfish af point) but it’d get kinda dull to only see one tier played so much in a team tour when imo, a part of why SPL and WCoP are entertaining are the fact that old gens see play.

3.) 4 CG OU, 1 of GSC-SM: I think this format gives most teams an easier time drafting optimal players and gives spectators and players a much better variety (variety as in different metagames) throughout the tour as to not prevent fatigue with the current metagame. Not only this, but old gens being in this tour are important as they don’t have quite as much representation as CG OU (not trying to imply they should, I’m just mentioning it) so they don’t have as much chance to develop as CG OU so these team tours play a key role in how these metas and their playerbases change. While this does mean CG OU doesn’t get the same amount of representation and play as with Option 1, it still does get the majority out of all tiers and will still see many high level games played. This is the option I prefer personally to benefit those who are managing and drafting teams, the players of old gens, and those who enjoy spectating them while not leaving those with the desire for a lot of CG OU out to dry.

Sorry if I said anything wrong or odd in this post.
 
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Genesis7

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I would like to say that picking GSC OU to stay over RBY is completely unreasonable given the absolute state the GSC WCoP pool has been in since the very beginning, it's a complete joke.

With that said I think WCoP should return to the old 8 slot current gen only format, I think many of the historically smaller teams are being bogged down by the lack of options for gens 1-4 and are no longer able to make a real push past the second round. I also think that the play on this website is beginning to show a stagnation that was not present at the time old gens were introduced to WCoP. It was a good idea at the time to increase the competition in the tournament, but we are not getting enough new blood in old generations to keep them around any longer. Even top teams like US West have struggled to find top players for old generations and prefer to dig up old relics rather than going with a fresh face. All SS OU fixes this issue, I know that I will be starting several players who have not started before this year if that is the format, otherwise I will be forced to slot the same old faces with 1 or 2 new players cycling in and out.

As for why I prefer 8 vs. 10 starting slots, it is the same reasoning as the above, stagnation. Let us heighten the competition in this tournament by shrinking the pool slightly rather than spreading ourselves thin with the playerbase dwindling. This also allows historically weaker teams to concentrate their firepower and be more immediately competitive in WCoP 2020. It will just make it a better tournament overall and it worked very well for a decade or so before old gens were introduced.
 

z0mOG

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Objectively, full CG OU offers the best benefits for community growth. Old gens are not easy to integrate into and, as Genesis7 said, too many teams end up unviable because of a lack of old gen players. 192 SS OU games sounds brutal as a spectator, but will make the gateway into entering the tournament community scene for your average newcomer much easier.

More often than not, people find themselves on Smogon for the current generation. The new games attract new users. Make the tournament centered around the new games.

I also lean in favor of 8>10 because team tournaments do still need a layer of exclusivity with how Smogon's tournament scene is structured. Two slots may not make the difference for a team like Northeast or Spain, but it will for a team like U.K.
 

Hayburner

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I would be in favour of all CG OU whether it's 8 or 10 slots, but I think one of the best reasons to make it all CG would be the ability to shrink the player pool size without arbitrarily cutting some gens while leaving some in. Shrinking to 8 slots would alleviate a lot of the pressure on some teams to field a full, competitive lineup. 8 slots would improve the competition as the depth of signups is one of the main reasons some teams remain dominant year after year.
 
I don't think having only current gen OU would be good for this tournament.
First, I don't think it would allow community growth more than the current format. There are actually new players that try to participate in older tiers, and I can give you several examples of things like that happening. Besides, seeing 200 games of that pretty limited tier that is SS OU atm wouldn't be especially appealing I think. The tier should be different by then, with more Pokemon available among other things, but going all out with one tier would still reduce the diversity of the show for the viewers, and most likely make less of them interested.

As for the fact that it would be easier for "little teams", WCoP has never been and will most likely never be a balanced tournament. There are some teams inherently far better than others, and I don't think that trying to change the whole format to give the impression that it's less "unfair" even though it still is is a good idea at all. Currently, the goal and aspiration for each team simply aren't the same. US Northeast, for example, will aim to win the whole tournament, whereas other teams will just try to qualify. Trying to artificially patch these disparities by changing the tier wouldn't actually change anything to the fact that there are more top players available for Team Northeast than there are for Austria or Greece. Besides, I'm not even sure that finding 10 WCoP-level players in a single gen would be easier than finding 5 or 6 of them and then finding one player per tier in the most played old-gens.
To be honest, I don't see the problem with starting to exclude the oldest tiers (be it just RBY or RBY and GSC this time). I have seen that last year, the TD team felt it "awkward" to remove one single tier, and maybe it's still one of the problems today. That being said, I personally don't see how it is one. It's obvious that, as we get more generations, we can't just stick with every single one of them in WCoP, especially as some of these have pretty small playerbase. But that's not a reason to remove all old gens, while there are still some of them that have very vast playerbases.
I'll end this post just by reminding you the opinion of the vast majority last year, even though SM OU was a more complete (and arguably interesting) tier than SS OU:
Capture d’écran 2020-01-15 à 09.24.40.png
 
Well I'm not involved in wcop stuff but I'd like to share my ideas about this issue.
Please don't blast me because I feel like my ideal solution is really unpopular.
We want to change the tiers to make possible every team can play well, but there will always be a large number of teams who have not a good or the minimum amount of players to play a good competition.
Last wcops were predictable, there are few teams with a real balanced roster (us west, east, brazil) and there are teams who don't perform perfectly in newgens and the ones who don't perform perfectly in oldgens.
We should try to do changes but slowly. We can start to see what happens removing unpopular tiers like GSC and RBY but I think we should reduce the amount of teams able to play wcop too and maybe working on the elegibility policy. I think introducing and fixing again things like Cultural Elegibility or allowing some team to take at least 2 players who are not of same country/region would fix a bit the problem if our goal is make the playerbase and teams more balanced. I'm not gonna lie there are a lot of good players that are not taken in wcop (look up at the team france issue of last wcop) that if they would be able to play for other teams the tournament should be more competitive becauee every team would cover certain tiers. I can be wrong but I think this one can be a good solution, idk.
 

Jaajgko

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I completely agree with Adri. I'd like to emphasize that a tournament needs most importantly to be enjoyable and qualitative for the people who play it as well as for the people who watch it, and it's important to remember that the biggest part of the people who watch the tournament games are also playing in the tournament. With 8 SS OU tiers it would hurt the entertainment of both insiders and outsiders as well as the overall competitivenes, as very few team will have good looking last slots in SS. It's a good point that many teams end up recycling retired players in old gens and that CG OU is more prone to the discovery of new players but as adri said old gens are not dead, and benefit greatly to the tour so we should keep them. 6 SS OU slots should be enough and then you fill that up with SM, ORAS, BW and DPP (or option 2 with 5 SS and ADV). The first three obviously being the most active ones, while DPP is less active and tends to have the same playerbase but with the Latias unban we have seen new faces appearing, so it should be decent enough. I'd prefer to have 3 SS and 7 old gens but wanting to change the format is good and there are good motivations behind it so I support the idea, but only one tier would be super boring and nauseous, I'd rather see some low tiers if the format is current gen only.
 
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Full SS OU is the best format for WCoP.

It makes it easier for newer faces to get in. There are plenty of good players who never get picked because their teams have to compromise and bring the same old players in old gens. All SS OU fixes this issue. SPL is the team tournament where it makes sense to keep past generations since you can have people on the team with different backgrounds and experiences.

Many teams rely on a couple of household names for their old generation department. Some squads have no way of replacing someone like Astamatitos, Fear, Conflict, BKC, August, Earthworm, Linearcurve, Troller, and many others since the pool from which each team can pick their players is limited. It is a huge problem that we need to address, and this is the best time since the generation was released recently, and interest in it is high.

Recent WCoPs are the perfect example of the problem, for everyone who says that past generations bring enjoyable games, they do not in WCoP. Have you watched the past WCoPs? It might have looked fun to the untrained eye, but it's not what we strive for when we play tournaments. Some teams do not have access to the talent pool necessary to make the format we have used recently viable in the long term.

Benefits of an all SS OU WCoP include accelerating the development of the metagame, allowing new players to get more involved with Smogon as a whole (both as players and as spectators), and removing the issue caused by the aging of the player base when it comes to old generations.

10 is the logical number of slots, considering that it used to be 8 when it was all current-gen OU, and the player base has grown significantly since then.
 

Leo

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I think the third option (keeping the old format with SM replacing RBY) is the closest to an ideal solution. Mono CG OU sounds like a cool concept for the new generation at a surface level but most of the arguments in favor of it dont justify the change. "Meta development" does sound appealing but I dont think upping the game count from over 100 games to at least double that amount (depending on the number of final slots) will be such an impacting factor to the point where it makes up for how oversaturated both the playerbase and the spectators would be from only getting ss ou to build for and watch respectively. Exposure for newer faces is fair and it is true that WCoP presents a unique opportunity for new players to make their way into the scene but one of the main factors in providing that exposure is the opportunity of playing against other elite players in a selective field which wont be the case with teams struggling to fill an 8 or 10-man roster with whoever they can get competent enough to play the tier. On that note, the 8 vs 10 slots issue makes mono cg even less appealing to me. With 10 slots all the issues I mentioned earlier are enhanced, with more games and more players needed per teams. If the player count was to be reduced those problems become less prominent but then the usual system where all teams play each other twice can't work and honestly I can't imagine a finals between 2 8-man starting rosters, all playing ss ou, just wouldn't feel like WCoP.

So that would leave either a 4-6 split or 5-5, I wouldn't mind a 5-5 split if there was a reason to remove GSC at all but I don't see one. While I don't play gsc myself I find it to be a perfectly balanced and entertaining to watch tier and cutting it alongside RBY doesn't make much sense, having a 5th SS slot isn't a bad idea but cutting GSC of all old gens isn't the way to go about it imo. Which leaves the third option, keep the status quo while removing the outlier in RBY.
 

Amaranth

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The argument that teams would struggle to fill 10 CGOU slots doesn't really hold up because teams are already struggling to fill in 10 slots with oldgens included, and the CGOU playerbase is a hell of a lot larger than the oldgen one. I have no doubts that on average most teams will have a much easier time fielding complete rosters in full CGOU (and this point would be made even easier to address if we were to go with 8-man rosters).

As for the development of rookies, I think a rookie that gets to team up with a veteran and learn from them by working with them on the same tier would improve a lot more compared to a rookie that's just tossed in to fill an oldgen slot with no support - something that happens a lot when teams are struggling to fill the oldgen slots. And that same CGOU rookie sure as hell improves more than one that isn't even called up to WCoP because managers play it safe by calling up dinos with proven experience over them.

"Too many CGOU games" doesn't seem like a good argument to me either, we're already running plenty of CGOU-only officials and plenty more have a high focus on it, an abundance of CGOU is both natural and already in place, I don't think we'll ever have too much of it.

Above all, I think the Oldgen community would actually benefit from being cut from WCoP, the level of oldgen play in this tournament is mediocre at best currently and I don't think it's very helpful at all. Removal would point more eyes towards SPL/Classic for people who want top level stuff (as it should be) and it would point more eyes towards the RoA circuits and unofficials for people who are looking to develop their skills (also as it should be). New talents should not get their SPL debuts based on being lucky enough to be born in a country where no one else plays the same old gen as them, they should get their debuts based on consistent circuit/seasonal performances which way too many people are overlooking currently. Three games are hardly enough to prove yourself anyway, WCoP results get overvalued on the basis of it being an official team tournament but this prestige is not really earned when you look at the quality and quantity of the games themselves. Cutting WCoP oldgens would force people to turn their eyes towards the right places.

A switch to full CG OU makes the most sense to me at this point in time. If it turns out we've taken away too much representation from oldgens we can reimplement it in different, healthier ways in the future. WCoP is fundamentally unbalanced; the presence of oldgens is not helping the tournament, and the tournament is not helping the oldgen community at the present time.
 
Even if it doesn't benefit me or my team, I've wanted full current gen in World Cup ever since I started playing in this tournament. I've also said before that 8 is the golden number if we were to make the change. I can see the benefits of 10 slots, but I think the quality will drop drastically, and we will have similar issues to the previous setup, with certain teams struggling to find RBY and GSC slots. 8 is the way to go for sure.

ABR said 10 was the only alternative, but a lot of people supported 8, so I made a strawpoll for fun yesterday about the amount of slots. Vote here.


I wanna echo z0mOG's post as it pretty much sums up my thoughts and wishes, but I also wanna add that this change would line up better with the team tournament circuit and its goals, allowing us to divide SPL into an old gen tour and Snake (assuming it still exists by this fall) into a lower tier tour. Simplifying SPL saves a lot of discussion over which of RBY / GSC / UU / RU / NU / LC / Doubles / PU / Ubers(?) we have to include each year.


Going back to CG OU slots; a reason I support 8 slots over 10 is because teams haven't had the chance to adapt. If teams want to build a player base for CG OU, you're gonna have to start small. It's better to go from 5 to 8, and then eventually expand to 10 slots maybe by 2021 when teams have built a core, instead of going straight from 5 to 10. A lot of players that would be in old gen slots in a full gen format would probably want some time to pick up CG OU, and some players may be returning just to play World Cup too. This isn't a strong argument, but I think a lot of teams would benefit from it, especially when you have to fill 5 sub slots as well. I personally had a hard time finding 10 guaranteed players for each team, and I'd say only North-East had a lineup of 10 familiar faces. Of course 8 is a lot too, but it is the most logical number, as 6 is probably too low again. I think this solution also helps teams that struggle to find players overall, whether it's current gen or old gen, as current gen is far easier to get involved with.

Tournament/community growth and metagame development remain the biggest reasons to go for a full CG OU World Cup. I will get backlash for this, but I strongly believe there is way too much focus on old gens compared to current gen, and it's showing. For having 30+ players playing CG OU in SPL each season, a surprising amount of the games are of poor quality. Very few of the individual tournaments are growing in the rate it could, especially Smogon Tour. On the other hand, a full CG OU World Cup would feel very inviting for all the new faces that Showdown/Smogon will eventually get, and it allows them to get involved more quickly. CG OU has also lost out on a lot of top dogs not being fully invested in the tier. SS OU is off to a decent start with older players like Jayde, Astamatitos and Triangles seemingly playing the tier actively, but imagine if all time greats like BKC and McMeghan put the same effort into SS OU as they do into old gens. Of course there are reason why they wouldn't/couldn't, but with a CG OU World Cup they'd be forced to if they want to play, and that to me is a good thing. There are more than enough old gen tournaments for them to play their favorites during the rest of the year regardless. I don't really have any objective proof to show this, but I am very certain this will help Smogon's overall growth longterm, as well as SS OU as a metagame.


However, if we go the other route, I'll briefly mention why I think 5+5 is a better option than 4+6. As Genesis7 touched on, several World Cup teams have had big issues filling the GSC slot for several years now. It has a significantly smaller playerbase than RBY, and far less [relevant] signups. Whatever subjective advantages GSC has as a tier shouldn't keep it in over RBY, especially not when RBY is on its last leg in terms of representation in SPL too. You either cut both, or you cut neither. I'd support 5+7 before I'd support 4+6, even if that isn't a viable option. Comparing them to the gens after them, they both have significantly less signups both in team tournaments and in Classic, which is why chopping tiers from ADV and onward shouldn't be an option. When it comes to SS, 5 slots is obviously better than 4 regarding the points above about growth and metagame development. We should aim to have as many slots as possible eventually, but at the same time not rushing it so teams can't keep up.


There were some other fringe alternatives thrown around, but I think the four mention here (10+0, 8+0, 5+5 and 4+6) are the only realistic ones.
In terms of preference for the 2020 I would probably go with:
  1. 8+0
  2. 5+5
  3. 4+6
  4. 10+0
I really think 10 slots is stretching it, considering the current player base, especially when you have subs to fill. I'd wager several teams would fill their 5 sub slots with old gen staples who have no intention of seriously playing just to make the 15 cut. 13 is a more reasonable number, but I think the possibility of going from 5 subs to 4 should be considered if we do choose CG OU with 8 slots. I believe this is what it used to be back when we last had 8 starting slots instead of 10 as well. Again, I'd like to say that I think we should expand to 10 slots in the near future, but not this year. There have been discussions of shrinking the amount of World Cup teams and merging some of the current regions, potentially to 12 or even 8, which means 10 slots would probably be fine, but I'm certain this won't happen this year, so I wouldn't worry about it yet.


my ulterior motive with making wcop full cg is so mcmeghan wont play this year and is eventually forced onto europe if he wants to play again :val:
 
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Hi I'm new to posting in PR but I'd like to post some stats and former opinions that may or may not contribute to finding a solution.
The following screenshots provide the number of signups, posts in r1 and the viewcounts of both of these threads that always served the same purpose.

For one reason or another it is evident that 2015, 2016 and 2017 were far more popular than all other wcop's. Those iterations were the ones that used the format of 5 CG OU + 5 most recent old gens. Is that the sole reason these wcop's were more popular than the others? Hell no, there are way too many factors to account for. Did the format have any influence at all? We can't say for sure but there's a case it could be.
Adri 's post also shows a pie chart displaying that 5cg+5og is and has been a very popular opinion that people apparently like. The pie chart was taken out of the wcop2018 discussion thread, where some of the current questions have already been answered so I will link a few helpful posts below.

#1 Stone_Cold on the change from full cg to cg + old gens
#2 Ciele on why removing old gens is bad and player/team inclusion
#3 a part of reyscarface's post that is relevant to the current problem [in the spoiler below]
First, something that needs to be taken into account with a switch to full current gen is that you are not asking teams to field 8 solid CG players. Youre asking them to form a team of 12. History has shown that subs are a very underrated part of teams, and having good subs can make a big difference in whether a team succeds of not. Obviously not all subs will play, but I think you can safely assume that 2 of them could see play for each team. So you're at the very least asking for 10 World Cup starting level players per team. Thats double the amount of CG OU players needed for each team when comparing to last year, and almost ten times the amount from SPL. I do not think this will result in a desirable tournament of the highest quality, but thats just my personal opinion on the matter.

Second, I think Earthworm made a good point in his post, but I think Malekith made a great retort that holds a lot of weight and pretty much removes that argument from the table. As an aside, I would like to add that what Earthworm mentioned in his post is not unilateral. This doesn't just happen in full CG OU. Speaking from personal experience, I learned old gens and became a player known for them thanks to my teammates in SPL and World Cup, who basically tutored me back in the day. I wager a LOT of modern old gen players come from a similar background, hell speaking from my team in SPL, I know UD inspired several new players into taking up ADV. So yeah, this argument can go both ways and I would honestly be disappointed if this went away, one of the best part of team tours is getting great insight into tiers and generations you arent proficient in. Its basically the Tutoring program but way less tedious, more fun and with a ton more information

Especially reyscarface 's point that you essentially build a team of at least 12 current gen players makes it strikingly obvious that this is definitly not "less restricting" to teams than fielding 5 old gens. All cg ou relies on the team having good teambuildingslaves or teamsources more than anything else while old gens being maintained allows teams to actually have strong and weak spots. Prime example would be the most recent world cup champion US West having a total record of like 0-8 in ORAS OU.

At last I'm going to echo and underline a part of We Three Kings 's post.
However, if we go the other route, I'll briefly mention why I think 5+5 is a better option than 4+6. As Genesis7 touched on, several World Cup teams have had big issues filling the GSC slot for several years now. It has a significantly smaller playerbase than RBY, and far less [relevant] signups. Whatever subjective advantages GSC has as a tier shouldn't keep it in over RBY, especially not when RBY is on its last leg in terms of representation in SPL too. You either cut both, or you cut neither. I'd support 5+7 before I'd support 4+6, even if that isn't a viable option. Comparing them to the gens after them, they both have significantly less signups both in team tournaments and in Classic, which is why chopping tiers from ADV and onward shouldn't be an option. When it comes to SS, 5 slots is obviously better than 4 regarding the points above about growth and metagame development. We should aim to have as many slots as possible eventually, but at the same time not rushing it so teams can't keep up.
This is very reasonable and it also points us a way of moving forward with the format in the coming years. It seems to be universally agreed that all cg-ou has potential but to a lot of people this seems too drastic. By choosing 5 current gen ou slots this year there would be a representation of cg ou in about 7.5 slots of a full roster [5 starters + 2-3 substitutes]. If all players were to stick around they would be able to field an entire starting roster of the current gen world cup that might come in WCOP2021. The difference of about 6 players against about 8 players of 4vs5 cg-starting slots is noticable. It also solves the dilemma of including gsc but leaving out rby when it feels absolutely arbitrary to do so.

I'm personally looking forward to it whatever format we end up with.
 

McMeghan

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Just had an idea that I posted on discord. Delay r1 until we get the first dlc and make the tour full cg OU. Everyone will be compelled to explore the new meta as a team, teamwork will be more useful than ever.
 

z0mOG

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Just had an idea that I posted on discord. Delay r1 until we get the first dlc and make the tour full cg OU. Everyone will be compelled to explore the new meta as a team, teamwork will be more useful than ever.
Frankly, this should be the route taken regardless of the tour being 10 SS or 4 SS. The tournaments schedule is already frontloaded enough leaving the time period after Snake draft empty. It's hard to find a good reason against moving back everything past WCoP. The only complaint about pushing the tour back a bit is the pandering to precedent, which would be a silly reason in itself to not do what is best for our tournaments.


- World Cup of Pokemon 2020 - May 18, 2020

- Grand Slam IX - June 15, 2020

- Official Ladder Tournament VII - June 29, 2020

- Smogon Snake Draft IV - August 24, 2020

- Smogon Tour Season 30 - September 18, 2020

- Smogon Premier League XII - January 4, 2021
 

MANNAT

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Seeing as there's a lot of support for all CG OU wcop, I'd like to address the number of slots debate. 8 slots is by far the superior option simply because it's the perfect balance of community/team evolution while still retaining the competitiveness and relative exclusivity of the tour. In this post, I'd like to address the two most common counterarguments for 8 slots:

With 8 slots teams can't face every other team exactly twice
  • This is definitely the strongest argument against cutting down to 8 slots since it brings up some administrative and completion issues for round 1, but I don’t think the negatives are that bad. Teams in professional sports play other teams in the league an unequal number of times. Everyone already complains about discrepancy between different pools and 8 slots won’t make it that much worse. Even with 8 slots, each team will play every other team at least once, so it's not like you don’t have a chance to play against other teams entirely. I think this is more of a logistical inconvenience from a hosting perspective because they'd have to reconfigure how round 1 pools are made, but the quality of the tournament should ultimately be prioritized over procedural matters in most cases. There really shouldn't be enough of a pool balance dropoff going from teams only facing certain teams once rather than twice that it'll make strength of schedule a ridiculous factor. In fact, with fewer “weak slots” existing with the smaller rosters, this option offers more overall balance than 10 regardless.
8 matches in a single series isn't enough to decide a "deserving winner"
  • I feel like this argument is really flimsy because it's super arbitrary and subjective. Whether or not you believe this is entirely subjective and up to the individual, so I don't really think it's a strong argument against cutting down on the number of slots. Teams in professional sports play series anywhere from bo1 to bo7 for their individual playoff series'. Even in esports team matches are significantly smaller than the majority of smogon tournaments, so there's really no argument for 10 slots over 8 besides "I feel like it's better to decide a deserving winner".
 
as someone who was considering signing up to manage for asia this year, i like the idea of 8 CG OU. i don't think it's very well balanced either way if i'm being honest, so i don't think this balances the scales by any means. exploring the new SS meta would be fun though, and I think the tier change encourages better teamwork. the current system we have locked in place feels like it needs to change year-to-year anyway, and trying to set this in stone is far easier than what was tried with freezing old gen wcops.
 
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