Rejected WCoP: Europe - Proposing Partial Regional Teams

[Charmflash]

Why
Over the past years the issue of continental teams has increasingly become the topic of discussion, and it is clear that there are issues present with the current system. In this post I will focus on what to do with Europe because that is the region I am most familiar with, and because similar to the US, a large portion of smogon's userbase resides here. The same concept could potentially be applied to other continental teams, but I won't be suggesting any blueprint for those due to my lack of knowledge.

The issues partial regional teams would solve:
- Any sort of multiple team choices. Every player has one assigned team forever. This fixes player poaching, team hopping etc.
- Impermanent spots on teams, be it because the TD's of that year decide that you have to play for your country or be it because your country cannot field a roster anymore.
- Fodder teams that have no hopes of keeping up with the tougher competitors.
- Good players from smaller countries feeling like there is no point in trying to compete and opting into not playing the tournament at all.

How it would be done
While inspired by the split we have in the USA I did not copy the strict splitting. Many European teams are already very competitive with a lot of WCoP history. Instead my aim is to group the tiny countries into viable regional teams, or at the very least into teams with the potential to grow into competitive teams in the future if they work towards it.

The teams

1. Italy
2. Germany
3. France
4. Spain
5. United Kingdom
6. Benelux
7. Northern Europe
8. Central Europe
9. South-Eastern Europe

I don't think I need to explain much why the first 4 teams on this list make sense to keep as-is. They house some of the strongest players on smogon, and most years they either have deep runs or contend for the title, often winning it in recent years. All of them also have sizable population sizes at 59 million (Italy), 68 million (France), 48 million (Spain), and 84 million (Germany), making them quite future-proof.

The United Kingdom is currently significantly weaker but also has a lot of history, and made it back into the tournament this year. They have consistently produced good players and have the potential to grow due to their sizable population of 66 million people.

Benelux is a defined region in Europe consisting of Belgium, Netherlands, and Luxemburg. From a smogon perspective, Belgium have had some good showings in very recent editions of WCoP, suggesting that they do not need to be a part of a massive conglomerate. However, they are prone to the "golden generation" problem since they only have 11 million people living in their country, which could eventually see them fall off like Greece did. The Netherlands have also formed a team, although they weren't able to break through and have some of their best players currently playing for the continental team. Together this team would be able to stand on it's own for many years to come as a few established players reside in this region, and the three nations combined reach 30 million residents.

Northern Europe in this case consists of Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, and Iceland. This team is simply the grouping of all remaining countries located in the geographically northern part of Europe. Despite none of these countries having their own WCoP team there are a lot of prominent players residing in this region which currently play for the continental team, or have played for it. The 6 countries combined arrive at 33 million residents.

Central Europe is a region that can slightly vary depending on the source, but it always includes the following countries: Switzerland, Lichtenstein, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Poland, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czechia. It also includes Croatia and the Baltic countries at times but I think drawing the line at ex-Yugislavia and not including the Baltic states makes the most sense, going for the most commonly accepted definition currently stated in the CIA World Factbook and others. Obviously Germany has it's own very capable team which leaves us with the first 8 countries mentioned. Despite reaching a respectable 82 million residents the region seems to struggle on smogon. Slightly below half of the population in this region is due to Poland, which does not even have a qualifier team and I personally struggle to name a single player from there. Only two (Switzerland, Austria) of these eight countries have ever attempted to create a WCoP team, and no player from this region currently plays for the continental team. Nevertheless, the larger population size of the team gives hope for stability and prospects for future growth.

South-Eastern Europe is the last grouping rounding out the 9 total European teams within this system. It hosts the largest number of countries: Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, North Macedonia, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro, Bosnia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, and reaches 105 million people. While also having the largest population out of the European teams most of these countries have a negligible presence on smogon. The highest populated countries of this team Ukraine and Romania do not have any notable players playing for the continental team nor do they have a team of their own. In fact this grouping also only has two countries that have tried to form a team before: Greece and Portugal. Greece has had a lot of success in older generations but is suffering from a low amount of players (in part due to it's low population), and was reliant on it's golden generation of Fear+Asta+Talah which is a system that falls apart if those players retire or the format changes. They failed to make a WCoP appearance this year again, finishing third to last in qualifiers. Portugal also failed to qualify but they were a bit closer and they also have a player (HighVoltage) playing for the continental team. Speaking of which a mimir is also on the continental team and from Albania. Overall this group would rely on the experience of Greece and Portugal and finding key talent from lower populated countries like mimir or fear if they want to challenge the best teams. Hard task but I would be hopeful on this team.

Closing thoughs
While I don't think that this is the only way to assign the teams it is what made the most sense to me when considering long-term balance, and trying to make the teams make sense. I would love to hear some input from people who would be affected by this change, I am sure that some people will be less happy than others with this proposal and I'm sorry if this ruins the way you want to engage with WCoP, but I truly think that this direction would be the most sensible compromise for the future viability of european teams and WCoP as a spectacle. Thank you for reading.

 

[Luigi]

yes the solution to the problem of people not playing for their country in the tournament about playing for your country is to add more teams that aren't countries. banger.

 

[Charmflash]

yes the solution to the problem of people not playing for their country in the tournament about playing for your country is to add more teams that aren't countries. banger.

Strawman, never once did I make this argument nor should it be one.

 

[Vertigo]

This whole post relies on the assumption that Europe and the US are somewhat similar, which you straight up say as well:

[...] I will focus on what to do with Europe because
that is the region I am most familiar with, and because similar to the US [...]

While inspired by the split we have in the USA

The United States of America is a country. Europe is not by any definition. We already have a split of Europe, it's the borders of the countries within it.

 

[Charmflash]

This whole post relies on the assumption that Europe and the US are somewhat similar, which you straight up say as well:
The United States of America is a country. Europe is not by any definition. We already have a split of Europe, it's the borders of the countries within it.

You just said the US is a country and you did NOT say that the US is 4 countries. Why do they have 4 teams? It is in the spirit of balance. But balance only matters when it comes to the US, why?

 

[Alternator]

You just said the US is a country and you did NOT say that the US is 4 countries. Why do they have 4 teams? It is in the spirit of balance. But balance only matters when it comes to the US, why?

Numbers and, very importantly and unique to the US, the grandfather clause. Reuniting the four US teams into one superteam would boot three full teams worth of players out of WCoP, and the remainder would be overwhelmingly favored to win every year.

There's certainly policy-based grounds to un-split the US, but those reasons are overwhelmed by the practical reasons to keep it apart.

 

[FFK]

You just said the US is a country and you did NOT say that the US is 4 countries. Why do they have 4 teams? It is in the spirit of balance. But balance only matters when it comes to the US, why?

The continental team that is Europe was initially created so players from smaller countries could actually compete. The 4 US Teams are the complete opposite of super teams. There are a few points Alternator didn't mention, but this summarizes it well. Why add even more teams that don't represent a country when the tournament is called WCoP ? I don't think any other WCoP competitions have this many non-country teams, and I'm fine with the number of teams we have in the tour right now, let's just add single-country teams if these one are able to compete of course, but then players can join continental teams. I really don't think splitting Europe is the solution here. As it stands, that team is just viable enough to play at a high level; they aren't dominating every year, like no one did (this also responds to why there are 4 US teams and not 4 European teams, in brief). Honestly, one USA team would completely overpower us.

 

[Charmflash]

My confusion stems from the fact that the only argument people have brought up so far is that these teams wouldn't be countries, which they seem to think is the silver bullet in this case. I haven't seen anybody disputing the balance of the teams or bring up any other issues whatsoever so I am left bewildered when there are already teams present in the tournament that exist solely to improve the tournament experience significantly. They do not exist because they are countries. What, if anything, would be the difference in this case if we agree on them improving the tournament experience?

 

[Celever]

Charmflash is getting dogged on too much so far in this thread, even though I agree with many of the counterarguments such as how Europe is a very different case to the US and the parallels drawn aren’t cogent.

The issue with the proposal is mostly just how prescriptive it is. Statements like “Belgium should be Benelux instead to help The Netherlands and Luxembourg out” leaves a sour taste when Belgium is being quite successful on their own. Telling them they can’t run as a viable country team, which is quite a feat especially since it is a smaller country, ultimately comes off as quite disrespectful. And it’s disrespectful to The Netherlands too who, despite not having a great year this time around, still have more than enough good players to fill a team and there’s great growth opportunity there. Besides, some strong Dutch players played for Europe this year which is a whole different conversation for another thread.

The proposal is also giving slightly “colonialist drawing the state borders of Africa” vibes, which doesn’t really help. Ireland and Finland have about as much relation to one another as Ireland and Kosovo do. Actually I think Ireland and Kosovo have more of a bond, historically.

I don’t think the diagnosis of the problem is necessarily incorrect, in that WCOP should be aiming for as many viable teams as possible. But the perspective is wrong; it shouldn’t be up to a Tournament Policy thread to determine what a viable team is, it should be up to the players from a given country to determine that. As it stands, country teams can secede from Team Europe whenever they feel they’re ready, and that’s beneficial to the tournament’s health.

That’s actually why a catch all Europe team is so important, because it means that top players from a country that is more niche on Smogon still have somewhere viable enough to go at any time. The proposal lacks foresight with how it’s balanced — what happens if Poland secedes from Central Europe? They’ve lost around half their population, so does it take some countries from South-East? Wouldn’t that be damaging to the morale of the players who have to suddenly turncoat? And this is a plausibility for sure, considering Poland + Portugal has been a team in a couple of World Cups as of recent. OP might not be able to list viable Poland players, but I sure can.

I’d understand if Europe were broken and made a deep run every year but they… don’t. Making 3 fairly weak teams out of the currently 1 strong-but-not-broken one is just bad for the players who are currently playing for Europe. The benefit of the proposal is that more players would get the chance to play, but how that would end up happening is somewhat dubious since it's not like South-East Europe is in any way an established community on this site, so it's not one that has the foundations for growth potential, and it would be a struggle to meaningfully establish it just for an annual tournament. People generally get into WCOP because of their achievements elsewhere on the site, it's not supposed to be the training ground for unknown players, even if it is from time to time.

The ideology of "the more teams the better" in WCOP is sound, but the execution is far from it. Let the players drive this themselves.

 

[dex]

My confusion stems from the fact that the only argument people have brought up so far is that these teams wouldn't be countries, which they seem to think is the silver bullet in this case.

But that's not the main argument that people have brought up.

The main argument is that players being able to jump from their home country team to Team Europe in an attempt to play for a "better" team damages the potential for those home teams to grow and do well in the future. The general sentiment is that Team Europe should exist for the smaller European countries that can't put together a squad but Team Europe should not, however, be host to all the good players from countries that already have teams. Belgium and the Netherlands have come up in the other thread as examples of this, and I can't say those aren't applicable.

But you already knew that, of course, having done exactly that this past WCOP. Stop attempting to avoid and divert from the topic. I don't really have a horse in this race; I don't think Team Europe is really that bad of a thing right now (let people play where and with who they want in my opinion, it's not like Smogon is the best at figuring out where people are from anyways), but it is disingenuous to keep skirting around people's main complaint, which is that Team Europe is detrimental to the development and main show chances of individual country squads. More Team Europes may end up just making more instances of people jumping ship.

 

[Lhions]

So instead of wanting one "random team," you want to have three? It would make more sense if all your new teams were like Benelux (that's why I said three and not four) with arrangements like Ireland in Great Britain instead of the UK alone, and Portugal with Spain, not with Ukraine (how is that even south?) (It has a player in Europe, by the way).

That not only goes against the spirit of the tournament (which isn't about having the most "balanced tournament ever"), but it also has other problems like the one Celever mentioned: nations that can already form teams, even without the players that stayed in Europe, being forced to be part of a mix instead of playing by themselves, therefore having fewer chances to play (less spots in the team). Another issue is that there will nearly always be a "leader nation" within those teams, and it won't be fair to the other nations. If a player is really good, they will be chosen anyway, but if they are just good, who is going to choose the Belgian captain? The one they know from interacting within the Belgian community or the random Dutch player with the same skill level?

What needs to be done is defining Europe and choosing grandfathering rules more in line with the general sentiment of the forum, not adding more "mix teams."

 

[Dave]

Quite possibly one of the worst ideas I've ever seen. This should be a case study and example to our community that cooking too hard leads to confusion and more complicated rules.

Rejected.