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Tournament ZUWC Discussion thread

Tuthur

Tuthur

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While ZUCL is still running, ZUWC qualifiers are about a month away and there is need for discussion on some points regarding the tournament. The ZU moderation team has noted two main discussion points.
  • The format. ZUWC I had 6 SV, ZUWC II had 5 SV / 1 SS / 1 SM / 1 BW. The moderation team is not looking forward adding pre-BW gens.
  • The US map. There were complains last year about the lack of Midwest, and some believe the US should have the standard 4 teams, instead of only 3.
Keep in mind that ZUWC won't have a custom avatar prize this year. Also to ease setting up the tournament, I invite managers to reach out to me if they believe they can form a team for their country. Tagging last year's managers for this purpose (beside rest of the world obviously). Metallica126 Sawra HAVOCKNIGHT seraphz Leni Quagg PandaDoux Tuthur Gallinova Airi BloodAce sleid diegoyuhhi Ale Duncan Toto Zpice OranBerryBlissey10 Medeia BaitWiz LustfulLice Stories Danny Mirbro Irene
 
I have no major complaints over the format last year. With that said, I do believe that we should look to include ORAS given it features a fairly sizeable player base and interest. Here are the two most recent team tournaments (ZUCL I, ZUPL VII) and their signup statistics to back up my claims.

SV ZU - 175 signups
SS ZU - 116 signups
SM ZU - 120 signups
ORAS ZU - 110 signups
BW ZU - 93 signups
Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1VKFvSbOg0Oz-PjEatEWiblq6X5uGqUAdeVNMGgOnovc/edit?usp=sharing
SV ZU - 186 signups
SS ZU - 109 signups
SM ZU - 110 signups
ORAS ZU - 92 signups
BW ZU - 82 signups
Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1rRcq-1EeTBbtrH82pRqE82ZqnP3PxN1P8lFNdibHJCY/edit?usp=sharing

There were many individuals that felt last year at ORAS ZU was hard done by in favour of SV5 / BW. I think there is personally enough demand to warrant its inclusion in this year's ZUWC.

Alternatively, we can reintroduce the idea of all SV, but 8 SV slots might be a bit much.
 
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Hey gang, just wanted to toss out initial thoughts on format discussion for this post; I’ll talk over West/Midwest split in another post.

While ZUCL isn’t an ideal showing of tier interest (since tiers can often have odd representation due to the nature of the CL format), ORAS has seen four slots of representation in every week of this tour except for week 4, where it had three slots, and week 7, where it had two slots of representation. General interest in ORAS seems to also have continued on solidly after the most recent action taken against Huntail and Light Clay, so I feel that it’s at least worthy of consideration for this iteration of ZUWC. I feel that BW, SM, and SS should still be included as well to carry over from last year, for a total of 8 slots for the tour; old gens were a ton of fun last year and I’d love to have them around again this year. Here’s my personal proposed format, though I could be convinced towards another format based on others’ thoughts.

4x SV
1x SS
1x SM
1x ORAS
1x BW
 
Tuthur said:
The format. ZUWC I had 6 SV, ZUWC II had 5 SV / 1 SS / 1 SM / 1 BW. The moderation team is not looking forward adding pre-BW gens.
Click to expand...
I was vocal about this in the 2026 Circuit discussion thread. ORAS ZU has proven its popularity in the last year. Leaving it out of ZUWC would be a mistake. I am also partial to keeping the old gens in the tournament, it feels a lot more fun and more interesting than building 6-8 SV teams every week.
Tuthur said:
The US map. There were complains last year about the lack of Midwest, and some believe the US should have the standard 4 teams, instead of only 3.
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As a member of USNE the last 2 years, I would prefer to keep the US split into 3 teams. USNE was the worst team in the first iteration with no custom avatar. Obviously, we were very stacked last year but that was with a custom avatar involved which was pretty pertinent in our recruiting of players. I foresee a mix of strength between both of the previous teams for this next year, so adding Midwest would greatly weaken USNE and even US West to some degree since I assume it cuts into their territory as well. At the end of the day, I'm fine with whatever the majority people would like to do.
 
Hello again,

Two things, we will be able to form a team & overall general consensus is that we prefer all SV over old gens. Theres ton of other tours that represent older gens and part of WC is to be more involving than not for newer faces.

on personal note, fairy gens will get recycled and all of us have seen those MU's already multiple times. There may be one or two that tries to reinvent the wheel again, but thats not worth it
 
I have to agree with Leni that Old Gens aren't really fun in this tournament. 3 was already too many last year, with a lot of pilots haven't touching the tier before and just reusing stuffs from OL and PL. SS, SM, ORAS, and BW are already in 2 other team tournaments and I really liked ZUWC 1 format, which felt fairer for smaller regions and more newcomer friendly (idt I need to reiterate why). PUWC has 8 SV slots and has been a successful tournament, so I don't see why ZUers would struggle with it. I know some people like to spectate diversity in tiers, but as a team player and manager, it's really just more comfortable to only have one tier, where everyone can chime in, than to have half the slots being essentially dead with one or two people being able to help. Old Gen mainers can skip ZUWC if they don't feel like playing SV, they already got a lot of tours to play between ZUCL, ZUPL which surround ZUWC, but also more old gen team tournaments are including ZU (SMPL, SSCL, ORASCL, ADVPL, BWPL...), while SV ZU is our flagship metagame and should get more attention than it gets now.
 
I know people will have mixed feelings about this, but if we are planning to have multiple SV slots this year, would it be possible to include a BO3 SV ZU? I know some people may prefer BO3 > BO1 despite the additional prep.

I would personally propose the following:
  • SV ZU BO3
  • SV ZU
  • SV ZU
  • SV ZU
  • SS ZU
  • SM ZU
  • ORAS ZU
  • BW ZU
I agree with the above that ORAS ZU should be included with the large interest with the player base evidenced with ZUCL and the ORAS ZU Cup going on right now.

It also doesn't make sense to skip a gen from 7 to 5 for an additional SV slot.
 
risin_glory said:
Can we pls define what "general consensus" means? Because general consensus wrt to this thread seems to be in favor of old gens to me.

Can we pls also elaborate on backing/rationale behind "Old Gens arent really fun"? Seems weird cuz over discord chats and this thread anyone can clearly see ppl find old gens fun.

Ofc i agree that we shouldn't have too many old gens but why none at all when ZUWC is a fun based tournament where quality shouldn't be most important and most ppl in community would choose an old gen over SV in terms of fun. Following PU footsteps for an inherently fun tour seems frankly pointless to me and shouldn't even be a point of discussion
Click to expand...
speaking behalf of Team Nordics. I haven't read a single post outside of yours and Tuthurs above to be clear after asking if Team Nordics is allowed in the tournament or not.

To break this down, theres 12 players that prefer in our team more or less to have full SV tour instead of SV+oldgens. Our oldgen goons Quagg (SS/SM/DPP), Shing (BW/all), Alex (BW), Twitt (all) are all making room for newcomers, Eifo (SM) prefers SV and I made my personal opinion straight above.

Whatever been spoken in this thread and is overall view on things is something I'm not aware as I'm only posting really quickly mid work day. My bad if the first (well second..) message wasn't clear enough.

e: Reasoning why full SV resonates our team more is simply that we can all put our effort in one tier and learn through tournament. We don't have too many SV players (which was already showcased last year) and yet we were able to make it far. From what we saw people were questioning our choices in builder, but that's what you get from having fresh pair of eyes in the tier from group that enjoys the game. That's how we define the fun that you're referring to as well. Whereas the building aspect gets lost when we start recycling team after team in older gens. You can recognize most of the teams in games which already kills the fun part for most people
 
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Incognition said:
I know people will have mixed feelings about this, but if we are planning to have multiple SV slots this year, would it be possible to include a BO3 SV ZU? I know some people may prefer BO3 > BO1 despite the additional prep.

I would personally propose the following:
  • SV ZU BO3
  • SV ZU
  • SV ZU
  • SV ZU
  • SS ZU
  • SM ZU
  • ORAS ZU
  • BW ZU
I agree with the above that ORAS ZU should be included with the large interest with the player base evidenced with ZUCL and the ORAS ZU Cup going on right now.

It also doesn't make sense to skip a gen from 7 to 5 for an additional SV slot.
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I'm not a huge fan of BO3 in teamtours, especially of the same tier. However, I believe BO3 SS-SM-ORAS could have some merit to feature as many old gens as possible without taking up too many slots from SV.
 
+1 to include ORAS. +1 for a bo3 slot. I'd join rotw or a combo of Canada + smth this time around. Full SV seems wack to me, though the arguments for it are fair. However, I don't really think team recycling in old gens slots is a strong argument because the same applies to 6 or 8 SV, maybe more so.
 
ayy first time jumping into the controversy, I sure hope no one comes to find me in my sleep !

I'll just go over different points I've seen come up and give my thoughts :
- ORAS : if we do plan to have oldgens I see no good reason to keep it out, and if 4 oldgens is too much, as much as I love BW it should probably be the one to drop
- having oldgens worsens power imbalances between countries : this is just true, not every country has someone able to play, build or test non ladder metagames
- SV ZU is bad/boring/uncompetitive : somewhat subjective and also SV is the main gen, it's the one with a ladder, it's the entrypoint for new faces, blablabla. Fixing SV by just having less of it is a cowardly and unviable way to handle the issue.
- No one wants to watch full sv : I don't think this is something we should care about, it's not like we got sponsors or anything
- No CA : the people that truly enjoy the oldgens would signup just to get to play them so I don't think this weaker player pool thing will have that much of an impact on oldgens
- full SV is better to get newcomers in : as one of these new guys if having oldgens in means I don't get in then so be it maybe I should just get good, also if having ZUFL is a possibility this becomes a non-argument
- team reusage : I don't believe this to be inherently tied to the tour format
- less team cohesion with oldgens : idk bro I'm a new guy

I think this oldgen in or out debate really stems from people having different visions of what the tour should be and the inherent weirdness of the world cup format. If the objective is to have a hype but unbalanced tour you keep the oldgens, accepting that some teams will struggle with these slots but at least the players that want to play oldgens get to and the spectators get to watch those as well. However if the objective is for this to be a competitive tour (which the world cup format is not great at providing) full SV just makes more sense.

Anyhow everyone just ends up raising arguments for what benefits them and that's ok.
 
I would like to reiterate that all SV
kriegueur said:
ayy first time jumping into the controversy, I sure hope no one comes to find me in my sleep !

I'll just go over different points I've seen come up and give my thoughts :
- ORAS : if we do plan to have oldgens I see no good reason to keep it out, and if 4 oldgens is too much, as much as I love BW it should probably be the one to drop
- having oldgens worsens power imbalances between countries : this is just true, not every country has someone able to play, build or test non ladder metagames
- SV ZU is bad/boring/uncompetitive : somewhat subjective and also SV is the main gen, it's the one with a ladder, it's the entrypoint for new faces, blablabla. Fixing SV by just having less of it is a cowardly and unviable way to handle the issue.
- No one wants to watch full sv : I don't think this is something we should care about, it's not like we got sponsors or anything
- No CA : the people that truly enjoy the oldgens would signup just to get to play them so I don't think this weaker player pool thing will have that much of an impact on oldgens
- full SV is better to get newcomers in : as one of these new guys if having oldgens in means I don't get in then so be it maybe I should just get good, also if having ZUFL is a possibility this becomes a non-argument
- team reusage : I don't believe this to be inherently tied to the tour format
- less team cohesion with oldgens : idk bro I'm a new guy

I think this oldgen in or out debate really stems from people having different visions of what the tour should be and the inherent weirdness of the world cup format. If the objective is to have a hype but unbalanced tour you keep the oldgens, accepting that some teams will struggle with these slots but at least the players that want to play oldgens get to and the spectators get to watch those as well. However if the objective is for this to be a competitive tour (which the world cup format is not great at providing) full SV just makes more sense.

Anyhow everyone just ends up raising arguments for what benefits them and that's ok.
Click to expand...
Watching the tour is a big part of the hype and fun btw, it's not about optics it's about participation and making the tour enjoyable!

As much as SV is the ''flagship', 4 slots is already plenty for both meta development and showcasing the tier imo
 
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