Implemented WCoP 2020 Tiers Discussion

[Wolf]

Supporting every post about making Wcup a full CG OU option. And if 10 slots becomes a nuisance, then lets make it 8, which should make things easier. CG OU needs more attention right now as more than half of the tour community are old gens mainers (take this with a grain of salt).

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.

This might single-handedly make Wcup the best tournament we ever had, because, and as stated, new meta will push every team to invest a lot in teamwork. And more than never, new faces will have a golden opportunity to show up and make themselves a name in this community. Absolutely supporting this as well

 

[pasy_g]

While i personally don't really care about what format this end up with, i think some points are a bit shortsighted and the decision should be thought through properly. That's why i appreciate this thread being made that early.

Since the last time wcop was CG OU only, the composition of the overall playerbase has changed quite a bit. In those days basically everyone was playing the current gen, now we have big dedicated playerbases for each generation and excluding them for the sake of bringing in new faces might just make us end up with the same players that wouldve played anyway, just in a generation they're less comfortable in and don't enjoy that much, which would obviously hurt the quality of play. It would be interesting to get feedback from team managers if they're confident they have an easier time fielding 8 players for the current gen than getting players for the oldgens. I recall hearing a lot of voices saying the SM OU games in the last few team tournaments have been rather weak, so expanding that could be dangerous, might have been because the generation was at its end and people were just sick of it, idk.

At the start of a new generation it might be a good format to go with though, it does not have to be the format to go on with forever and trying it out is probably a good idea. 8 players should be the maximum, I absolutely can't see how a 10 slot CG OU team tournament could ever end up with the desired results.

Also Amaranth that's just how the world works, it's a chance you can get and profit from. Without me playing ADV in wcop 2 years ago my way might have gone way differently, you should rather question the "scouting" of SPL managers than people living up to their opportunities.

 

[p2]

i like option 3 but can still get behind all CG (prefer 8 over 10)

agree with the geezers saying all CG helps teams work together better, because this is a brand new gen and lets be real who isnt playing it? If you are good at old gens you can probably play CG competently as well as long as you learn mechs and shit. I disagreed with going all CD mid-gen in SM and I dont rlly remember what my opinion was when sm initially dropped, but if there is a time to make the change do it when the gen is brand new

dunno what weight my post has since im a washed up bag but hey i was pretty relevant a couple wcops ago!!!

 

[EB0LA]

I agree with TIN when he says that the exclusion of old gens from this tour can give it light in other tours/areas. I like the idea of making WCOP 8x CG OU, making SSD Low Tiers, and making SPL All OU gens :). Dividing the 3 pools into 1 major tour for all equally would keep each area lively, and make each different tour have its own attraction.

 

[fsk]

On behalf of a potential Team China that will try to qualify this year, I would prefer 4 CG OU + 6 Old Gens, and 8 CG OU would be somewhat acceptable if that is enforced upon us. 10 CG OU (15 CG OU players) is quite hard to fill just as others have expressed.



So far several reasons were proposed to support a full CG OU WCOP, and I find some of them valid at glance but not so sound when trying to quantify:


1. Re:

It would foster community growth / "make it more accessible to the average newcomer" / "give historically smaller teams a chance by not having them worried about the lack of options in past gens"

In terms of the raw size of the player pool, the latest gen surely have an advantage over the old gens. However, this doesn't necessitate that finding 8 quality new gen players would be easier than finding 4 or 5 new gen players in addition to 1 player for each old gen. (The consensus so far is that finding 10 quality new-gen player would be harder than both, apparently.) There are also sub spots that need filling.

Granted, it varies from region to region and there are players or captains from multiple teams expressing the desire for 8 new gen OU format. I presume that some captains believe they could have a better result under such format. However, let's look at the statistics: Is it true that the weaker team has a slightly better time in the latest gen and struggles a bit more with the old gens? Lavos did similar statistics in the 2018 discussion thread as well. The data for the past 3 years are attached below:

The conclusion is simple: The teams that made playoffs have about the same win rate in CG OUs as in old gens (~60%) and the teams that didn't make playoffs have a similar win rate across CG and old gens (~40%). I’m in no way disregarding the difference from teams to teams, nor am I presenting academic level statistics, but you should get the point. It could be argued that the priority is not to tweak the format to have a more balanced scene nor give the struggling team a better chance. But let's don't make it seem like the teams struggling would truly benefit from the full CG OU format: it truly varies from region to region, even from years to years. Even if some teams could fill 8 CG OU a bit easier, the end result would roughly stay the same. If the result changes, it is the overall quality of a region's player base and the morale of a team that makes things for the better, not a simple change of format.

Also, exclusive new gen OU format is yet to prove to have a positive impact on the overall Smogon community growth: Tournament scenes like WCOP is and will always remain highly exclusive to the majority of players. Whatever the format is, there will only be 192 (8 CGOU + 4 subs min) - 240 (old format + 5 subs max) players playing in this tournament and the player pool at large won't have a chance. The number of OST signups have no direct correlation with any new faces in WCOP. Removing old gens and adding in the latest gen simply forces teams to change their way of recruitment or sometimes forces certain old gen talents to pick up the latest gen. Let's don't pretend it would be easier for new players to enter the scene just by having more CG OU slots: they need to prove themselves through hard evidence and we are very far away from making the tour scene less exclusive. Let's be honest and admit that key skills leading to a victory in the tour settings are very similar across generations: how to stay calm and confident, how to stick to the gameplan, how to make the right predictions with correct evaluation of risk and reward, probability management, and how to deduct the opposing team sets based on the information going into the game on top of adequate knowledge of metagame and trend. With the format settled early on, it would be to no one's surprise to have a bunch of old gen talents shine in the latest gens with their high skill ceiling, rather than a significant amount of new faces.



2. Re:

Accelerating the development of the metagame

Granted, gameplay in the official tournament is always a great way for the metagame to develop. However, it is yet unknown whether increasing from 4 or 5 slots to 8 or 10 slots would have a significant impact on the development of metagame. Building teams take effort; building good teams take more time and effort. It is a known fact that talented builders these days are very limited, and the development of the metagame usually starts within the builder. Having 4 or 5 slots for the latest gen would necessitate a full focus on building teams for new strategies, given how it works for the past tournaments. But having 10 slots is likely to result in the repetition and recycling of teams, and for those regions with limited resources, a repetition of several paradigms of cheap cheese would be used to just have a chance at winning. This last part of the argument includes my speculation but is still worth considering: 4 or 5 of quality games help the metagame, but 8 or 10 within a week is perhaps not significantly better or even a bit too much, while also at the cost of development for other excluded gens. (There are even arguments claiming the WCOP old gens inclusion is not helping with meta development, but this statement is truly hard to quantify and there are counterexamples right in 3 posts above me.)


3. Re:

More fun when everyone is playing the same gen.

This is a reason that I can sympathize with, as I don't really need to critically think about its logic. However, this is more of a convenience and satisfaction than a convincing reason to change the status quo. A team that works together should stay and work hard together no matter what the format is.

There are other reasons mentioned such as metagame balance across official team tournaments etc that I regard as mostly at the hand of policy-makers so I won't touch those here.

I admit that all CG OU is not truly a bad idea, and people seem to have hype around it. However, the reasons to support such a change seem not very convincing. Playing in the tournament is still quite an exclusive event for the masses and the strongest teams will remain the strongest since they are statistically better at CG OU while the weaker team doesn't have statistical advantage by having more CG OU; Metagame development is sound but whether it has a noteworthy advantage compares to 4 or 5 slots is questionable.

 

[Tony]

This is me speaking Eo Ut Mortus, not the TD team. Can I still do these now that you're a TD?

Quite a few of you probably know that I've been very much in favor of a full CG OU WCoP format for as long as I've been a TD. The last time we brought up bringing back this format it not only got shot down, but I came back from Some Time Away with RBY having wiggled its way back into the tournament as well. Speaking of which, that was a nice try of attempting to do the very same thing for SPL with your post EB0LA... Regardless, it goes without saying I'm thrilled the reception has been astoundingly positive this time around.

To have it on the record as a show of support I'd like to elaborate on my point of view. I suppose this is also me commenting as a captain, pasy_g. While historically speaking Team Europe hasn't been a great team, we have consistently made playoffs the last few years and made it to the final of WCoP 2017. Admittedly, we've mostly done so on the back of our privilege in the old gens department. However, as one of the old gen starters for Europe last year I'm personally excited about the prospect of all of us coming together to play CG OU. I can obviously only speak for Europe, but you can expect a bunch of our usual old gen players to make the transition in order to still feature in a full CG OU format, myself included. The format gives the old gen players a reason to actually learn the current gen, which in turn helps strikes down the divide in support and team work within a team environment. Especially in WCoP this is huge, as old gen players like Earthworm and McMeghan have argued as well. An extra bonus alongside everyone working on the same tier is that you (almost always) share a timezone with your team mates, too.

As for 8 slots vs. 10, I agree with Genesis7, z0mOG and surprisingly even We Three Kings. If we think we can handle 10 CG OU slots across the board in future iterations we can always expand, but going from 4 to 10 is a big big leap on short notice. Having said that, this format does allow for scouting and training up/tutoring future prospects a lot better. From PS! rooms and communities to ladder heroes to Smogon Tour and OLT qualification there are a lot of opportunities for fresh faces to get their names out there compared to old gens. To use Team Europe as an example once more, this is how players like Adri, le Lliolae and Twixtry worked their way onto our roster last year. Meanwhile our old gen players come out of their wheelchairs for WCoP every year, myself included again.. If we end up going with the 8 slots full CG OU format, then I wouldn't rule out an expansion to 10 slots in the future at all.
Thank you all for posting and sharing your thoughts thus far. If you intend to but haven't posted yet, then please don't wait too long.

 

[HANTSUKI]

I also support full CG WCoP with 8 slots. Even if I like my teammates, I remember from the old times that everyone had a better synergy when we were all trying to build and practice for the same gen. Like last year Team Brazil's performance in SM was terrible and maybe if everyone was working on the same field we could use all our potential to shine (or show that we are even more deficient).

Anyway, with different tiers, it's common that some players will end up not even talking to other people outside their main tiers, so I prefer an environment where I can spam kkkkk with all my monkeys and hopefully end up in last place since we're terrible in SS and finally give our spot to China.

 

[idiotfrommars]

Personally I support 4 current gen and 6 old gen OU, but that is the besides the point from the way that the general discussion seems to be heading.

I would like to advocate for 10 slots of current gen over 8 slots. Smogon and competitive pokemon in general has grown since the days of 8 slots in WCoP. We have a much larger userbase to pull players from and I think it would be a shame to drop the number of competitors in one of Smogons flagship team tournaments.

I am not a big fan of drip feeding changes in tournaments and if we are moving in the direction of 10 current gen OU slots, I think it should happen this year. There will be teams that are adversly effected by this, but that is natural in a world cup style tournament. We should not be catering the tournament format towards fixing minute imbalances in team structure and instead move it as fast as possible towards the direction we believe it will head. Sure, there may be some players that are starting for some of the smaller regions that may not be up to snuff for a tournament of this caliber, but this is offset by the regions that are able to go 10 deep in current gen OU. It will also reduces the natural variance that occurs in competitive pokemon and ensure that the best regions can both qualify for and win the playoffs.

If we find that 10 current gen ou players results in a completely uncompetitive tournament it can always be dropped back down the following year, but I think we should give the widest playerbase a chance. They may just suprise you.

 

[Groudon]

4+6 > 5+5 > 8+0 > 10+0

In favor of 4+6, basically just like it was last year. I thought wcop worked pretty well last year and from what I understood most of the issues surrounding wcop was the premise as a whole (being given a set hand based on where you lived along with suspect eligibities) as opposed to a tier dispute. However, there was that whole fiasco 2 years ago where the poll countered much of what had been posted (posts were entertaining cg quite a bit and poll was overwhelmingly favoring the current format). I think you would find a roughly similar result this time around as well. 5+5 might work and accounts for the lack of gsc signups and gives another cg spot as sort of a compromise. Not toally opposed to it and I think it is better than the avalanche of cg ou games in the other 2 options.

All cg wcop is fine in a vacuum but we have to consider that there is now a third tournament that starts in August. A tournament that was not around when wcop was all cg. With snake and all cg wcop (and spl) there would be 500+ regular season cg ou games and less than 50 per old gen. Cg ou should be the most represented for sure but for there to be more than 10 times as many cg ou games seems to be overdoing it. I think there will also be a big burnout factor if this holds for years to come with people taking a break from this relentless cg ou. I think a lot of those opting for cg are just thinking about 2020 and not how they will feel 500+ cg games later next year. If this is going to lead to a change in snake then this point will lose a fair bit of its weight but I have not heard of any changes whatsoever. For the record, I feel that snake is fine as is but that is with wcop as it is.

Anyway if cg is the determinination 8 slots is definitely the way to go. 10 cg is the worst option given in terms of tournament quality and I do not think it is particularly close.

 

[Tony]

Thank you all for posting and brainstorming this with us. We're going to try a WCoP format with 8 CG OU slots and 4 substitutes this year. We're also making a few changes to the schedule for the rest of the year to accommodate this change accordingly, as we want round 1 of the tournament to start after the release of the DLC. This means that the play-ins for teams that aren't currently guaranteed a spot in the tournament will most likely be played in the pre-DLC metagame.

- World Cup of Pokemon 2020 - Round 1 on the first Monday after the DLC comes out

- Grand Slam IX - June 15, 2020 (Unchanged)

- Official Ladder Tournament VII - June 29, 2020 (Unchanged, but pushed back a week if the DLC comes out in the second half of June)

- Smogon Snake Draft IV - August 24, 2020 (Unchanged)

- Smogon Tour Season 30 - September 18, 2020 - (Unchanged)

- Smogon Premier League XII - January 18th, 2021*

* We're also pushing back SPL for two weeks to avoid having to schedule the draft during the winter holidays