Tournament ZUWC II Discussion Thread

[Tuthur]

Signups for ZUWC II will open at the end of the month, yet there are still many points to discuss on how the tournament will be ran.

First point is the format. This includes Old Gens inclusion, and the number of slots per team. Last year, we had 6 SV slots. Including Old Gens could be an easy way of rising the number of starting slots (though this can be done even without old gens). However, including every Old Gen isn't desirable, so there needs to be a discussion on which ones to include (if any), without falling into tier bashing. Including Old Gens also mean that if we might need qualifiers in case the number of teams willing to partake doesn't match pool size.

Second point is team identity. Last year, we allowed for smaller regions to merge such as Oceania with Poland, Africa with France, and Americas with Europe. This only affected a couple players per team, with DugZa and damien the genius in Poland, zS and Yovan in France, and feen and 5gen in Europe. There were many complains about gerrymandering. Do we disallow these teams? Do we allow them to grandfather players from ZUWC I and disallow them from getting any new player?

Third point, which wasn't mentionned in the previous thread and is directly linked the second one, is continental team elligibility. Mainly in regards to national teams not being able to form. Do we prevent people who have the required number of players to form a team from playing in the continental team? Do we prevent people who had a national team last year to play for their continental team? Do we prefer to let this get ruled by the ZU mod team and not have strict guidelines? Do we want a mix of those? Do you have any ideas?

 

[FlamPoke]

All SV is preferred and a lot more competitive overall, as some teams likely lack the means to field competent old gens slots.

Not a fan of merging unless it's something used in official WC formats or for RoW to field a team. Not a fan of grandfathering.

Definitely no continental teams, they're a joke. Allow regions that can't field a lineup to merge where it's obvious and practical (and, ideally, used in official WC formats). Others who lack the players join RoW.

 

[zause]

1. I don't care

2. Gerrymandering is cringe unless its in the same continent

3. If u hv enough players dont play continental otherwise idc

 

[BaitWiz]

I absolutely love the idea of having oldgen representation in ZUWC; I think that our strongest oldgens (in no particular order) are SS, SM, and BW, so seeing some/all of those represented in ZUWC would be amazing and I’d love to see it; I understand the sentiment towards not being able to field old gen slots, but I feel that these old gens are exciting, competitive, and honestly not even that difficult to learn; SM is probably the hardest of the three due to the sheer number of threats, though I think all three of these are great. It also helps give ZUWC an identity that isn’t “build a bunch of SV slots” which was honestly extremely miserable from a manager standpoint last year.

I’ll make a post later about team eligibility if I remember, but my general stance towards it is minimizing some of the ‘weirder’ teams (wtf is Americas + Europe), allowing grandfathering, and aiming to form more ‘local’ teams overall, with only one RoW team to help ‘cover’ for a lot of the more one-off players.

 

[plznostep]

My opinion from discussion in discord; 6 SV, 1 SS, 1 BW looks good, 5 SV, 1 SS, 1 BW, 1 SM/ADV should also work, leaning more SM because that has had more representation in ZU before in both Olympiad and ZUPL which means you can should be able to gauge what the pool would be easier whereas ADV for team tour representation only has Olympiad and arguably the money tour helps despite ADV arguably being the more active gen in general outside of ZU spaces.

ZU should focus more generally on SV over old gens since that is main tier that represents ZU currently and the main way it grows. Tournaments like Olympiad and ZUPL help for old gen representation so I would be happy with both options but lean towards the first one, but I'm either way I don't really think there is a way to fuck up the slots most tiers should do fine.

 

[SBPC]

Talked about it on discord so I feel it's worth just kinda throwing my opinion on here
6 SV, 1 SS, 1 SM/BW is in my opinion the optimal layout for the tour, old gens rep will improve the tour experience a significant amount as well as lessen the strain on full current gen tours in builder.

ZU has a very strong set of pools for the gens mentioned but with SM and BW my main worry sits in player pools getting griefed by the number of (frequently seen) players in those slots being holed up in the americas.

 

[Zpice]

Including old gens helps reward teams which contain ZU mainers that thrive in tiers such as SM and SS. While the priority should stay majority SV, I believe including Old Gens will make ZUWC more competitive through representation of the best players outside of SV. Tiers like SS, SM, and BW have had experience in ZUPL, ZUOL, and BWPL (for BW ZU), and with the rising demand of old gens ZU, I believe reserving at least 2 spots for them would help attract more players.

In terms of the actual format, I believe we should have 5x SV, 1x SS, 1x SM, and 1x BW. This should help encourage competitive games in other tiers as well as maintain stability for each tier to thrive. While there might be some concerns in the Americas hoarding old gens players, there are enough resources avaliable for players to build if someone is keen on stepping into other formats, bringing less of a disadvantage overall.

My previous concerns about gerrymandering with teams such as France + Africa and Poland + Oceania still hold true. Although I don't think it should be completely banned, I do think it should be slightly altered considering player sizes and suitability. Teams should be able to expand based on geography, rather than vibes. If they are short of players, Belgium and Switzerland should be allowed to represent part of France to fill their roster. Both Belgium and Switzerland border France, and they have French as part of their official language. If required, a Rest of the World team could be added, Poland could unite with the Baltics or Ukraine (sorry Kiribati), or Oceania could extend to Southeast Asia with Indonesia and the Philippines. Ironing out smaller teams for larger ones will produce better quality games, but we should limit the gerrymandering to what is necessary. This means there should be no continental teams unless they are required (e.g., if Africa isn't able to fill out participants).

This ZUWC looks to build on the foundations set by last year's edition, and I feel these games can bring a lot of excitement and hype to ZU. Let's hope for a thrilling tour!

 

[Lyra]

Add GSC or else

 

[sleid]

I'd like to see oldgens integrated into ZUWC. Something like 4 SV then 1 slot of gens 5-8 seems solid and lines up with what a lot of other tiers do for their WCs. I can understand the argument for leaving ORAS out and doing 5 SV, 1 of SS, SM, and BW, but skipping a generation feels weird and ORAS is a fairly competitive generation of ZU. However, I also understand that as a lower tier we don’t have a lot of spread when it comes to people around the world who play the oldgens. So 6 or 8 SV seems like a solid option too. Whatever most people prefer.

I am also against last years gerrymandering since France, Europe, and Poland probably would have enough players last year without their additions. Can probably send them to RoW or have combine if there is actually a solid reasoning to do so.

I would prefer for teams to form if they have enough players instead of playing for the overall continental team. This lets more people play and keeps things more competitive. There can be circumstances that the ZU mod team can decide on if needed.

 

[Tuthur]

Something I'd like to hear more about is qualifiers versus no-pools.

If the number of teams isn't a multiple of 4 (the pool size), then it's impossible to have pools. There are two solutions to this;

• Have some handpicked teams from the moderation team play in qualifiers so the final number of teams is a multiple of 4.
• Allow everyone to play in mainstage and have pseudo-pools akin to WCOP qualifiers; i.e. your opponents may not face the same players as you do.

 

[diegoyuhhi]

5sv 1ss 1bw 1sm/adv is my personal preferred format, gives some variety to the tour not making it mono sv (which can lead to a buttload of recycles and cheesing, especially considering the current state of the meta) by including some very well developed old gens which have many resources available for even regions who don't have mainers. i'm biased towards adv bc of italy's potential pool of players but sm can work too.

gerrymandering totally disconnected regions always feels weird, i'm not a big fan.

as for grandfathering, my proposed solution would be:
- if the player would end up in rotw, let them grandfather into a team from a previous wc (eg let yovan in france if team africa doesn't form)
- if there would be a team of the country/region, then don't allow grandfathering (eg don't let 5gen in europe if team canada forms)

continental teams are fine if they don't have enough players to form smaller subdivisions. eg team asia can form and have indian ppl if and only if there aren't enough players to make team india, otherwise you'd have team india and team asia with no indian ppl. same case for stuff like china, argentina, benelux, and other (most likely european) countries which could be forming a team of their own. i don't hate the idea of a team europe for instance but i wouldn't want ppl from countries which can form their own teams to end up there.

as for the format, i think the pseudo-pools options is the best one, you can't truly guarantee that we'll have exactly 12 or 16 teams so regular pools feel kinda eh as an option, but a cool alternative would be like what draft wc did, aka have 3 weeks of "regular season" with full teams facing each other, and from there the teams with the best records would make playoffs.

 

[SEROO]

give us adv , the people want it

 

[estra]

supporting the 5x sv 1x ss 1x sm 1x bw. Would personally love to see ORAS in as well as sleid mentioned, but I doubt we have enough support for this.

I don't care about gerrymandering if its something not made on purpose to have a broken team. Stuff from last year like europe + americas is an example of that. As for grandfathering diego gave the strat on his post above

 

[feen]

Either do 1 ss sm oras bw + 4 sv or do 8 sv, skipping a gen is weird and never done afaik. Adding any older gens means teams will have a hard time slotting ppl in those slots.

 

[Charles A. Theist]

Probably the last person to input on this, seeing as my schedule had not been as flexible before concerning tours. Regardless, figured I'd leave some feedback:

Generation Inclusion: I'm always more biased towards the older generation. If we're committing to their inclusion, polling demographics on metagames played and their region is necessary. It wouldn't be right if, for instance, Europe had way more knowledge and experience in SM than America and had the upper hand in most scenarios. sleid's proposal I think would be the best fit for uniformity and keeping with tradition of higher tiers. I'm also not oblivious of ORAS lack of support though, so if another metagame would have to be considered: ADV would be a no-brainer due to the generation's renaissance site wide.

Regions: I think this comes down to player pool overall. I wouldn't be opposed to smaller regions combining, but I think moderator intervention would be necessary to prevent a major power gap between the teams. Personally would advocate for diegoyuhhi's proposal.


Don't really have a preference for qualifers or no-pools, but if I had to pick the poison it would probably be the pseudo-pools.

 

[Pokeslice]

Something I'd like to hear more about is qualifiers versus no-pools.

If the number of teams isn't a multiple of 4 (the pool size), then it's impossible to have pools. There are two solutions to this;

• Have some handpicked teams from the moderation team play in qualifiers so the final number of teams is a multiple of 4.
• Allow everyone to play in mainstage and have pseudo-pools akin to WCOP qualifiers; i.e. your opponents may not face the same players as you do.

I thought I'd throw my thoughts down in the thread in response to this because I'm finding myself enjoying zu tours more and more and want to be more around starting with wc.

Just for starters about where this coming from, I've been spending a lot of time thinking about how we can make our tournaments on this site more exciting, engaging across the entire tour, and interesting for spectators. We've had a lot of behind the scenes discussions about this over in NU, which is how we ended up with the really awesome flex format for NUCL, and there are hopefully some other stuff in the works over there, too. Sadly, I don't know if we'll ever be bringing back NUWC so this can't be applied there in my main tier, but I love the WC concept and I wanted to just share some of my thoughts on the tour.

Personally, I think pools as we do them kind of suck. I find the whole 2 weeks to play 3 games thing to be really not hype and unfun most of the time, especially because it feels like you prep for a half second before a game and just load jank. It also often ends up with a very split tournament games wise, with my perception being that most games are played either in the very beginning or end of the pools stage. I personally find this style of WC to be kind of flawed and I feel like it ruins the team aspect of the team tour while leading to less coutryhood bonding than it could and a mediocre spectator experience. In NU, before my time being involved in those discussions, we did something very different and basically ran a tournament with two distinct pools of teams, 5 teams each, which led to a shorter tournament where every team played the other in its pool one time and had a bye week. As you can imagine, this format was a little bit weird because of the bye week, but a lot of fun for me as a manager and a player. It allowed for a more consistent and enjoyable tournament than other WCs I've played because of the team vs team format, but it left a bit to be desired.

I've thought this for a little bit and I'd like to propose that we shift this tour to be somewhere in between the two models, with full team vs team weeks based on randomly decided divisions of 3-4 teams. So instead of pools based on playing individual matches across two or so weeks, we make it 2-3 weeks of pools with every team in a division playing each other full lineup vs lineup, similarly to how it would be done at the WC or Euros or a million other tournaments out there. By doing this, we keep the spirit of the WC style tournament while make gaming way more consistent and engaging for player and spectator alike. Motivation would be easier to keep up, servers would be more active, and it would be harder to procrastinate. Obviously this would be something reliant on team signups in which the more teams there are the better, but even if it's for a smaller amount of regions, although ZU got 12 teams last tour which would be perfect, I find the idea worth messing around with. I'm curious what others would think about doing a full team vs team style tour based on country with different division vs the normal pool setup as we have it now. It would take a bit of thought to figure out playoff systems, tb systems, etc, but it would be more than worth it. I'd like to recommend using differential and then head to head to in this scenario to avoid unnecessary tb weeks which ruin tournaments because they suck when they can be avoided.

==========================

Also, just because you asked, on the subject of qualifiers, don't. Qualifiers aren't really anything more than a momentum suck in these lower tier wcs I think. In WCoP, there's a lot of hype because of the nature of the tournament, and a week or two or three off doesn't necessarily kill that. Here, and in other WC lower tier tours that I've been in, it's felt like such an annoying momentum killer if your team is already qualified. Like I signed up two months before I can game it's awful.

To fix the issue of potentially having an awkward number of teams, I think you just have to make sure you get a number easily dividable that works for playoffs. Say, for example, any number divisible by 3 or 4, probably 4. To do this, you might need to combine teams and give us Poland + Kiribati again in order to help fill the tournament. I know people dislike this whole "gerrymandering" thing, but in truth, ZU, and a lot of lower tiers, don't necessarily have enough players to field a full tournament of single region or country lineups. You could throw everyone in RoW or continental teams, or you can try your best to throw people together to make viable and thematic teams, like Poland + Kiribati. I think it's much healthier for the tournament balance to do something like this instead of going ahead and having a really lopsided tournament where my team, team UK, steamrolls everyone. I also think that this is a lower tier wc that doesn't need to be as serious as the normal WCoP because we can't field the same level or amount of teams. Would it be ideal to end up with 8-12 single region teams? Yes 1000%. Is it always possible? Idk.

Moral of the story though, don't do qualifiers I think they're bad.

==========================

Do old gens. Full cg kind of sucks and leads to more burnout and a lack of creativity because having ideas and prepping for 8 cg slots is really tough.

========================

Hopefully all of these approaches will incentivize consistent activity, a better team environment, and a better spectator experience, but even if people don't like this approach, I hope whatever decision is made is made with those specific visions in mind, not what's considered "normal" or "tradition" for a WC. We can do better here I think.

 

[sleid]

Allow everyone to play in mainstage and have pseudo-pools akin to WCOP qualifiers; i.e. your opponents may not face the same players as you do.

I don’t have a lot to add about this next part, but this seems more ideal to me rather than handpicking who gets in and who has to fight their way in. I don’t see an apparent downside to this. If people have an opposing opinion I’d love to hear why.

 

[Tuthur]

I don’t have a lot to add about this next part, but this seems more ideal to me rather than handpicking who gets in and who has to fight their way in. I don’t see an apparent downside to this. If people have an opposing opinion I’d love to hear why.

It makes the tournament fairer and cleaner. There are always complain about how unfair your pool is, but at the very least, the pool is unfair to the 4 people in it. It does add even more randomness to a format that is very hard to balance (team tour with over 10 teams that doesn't last 9+ weeks), and cuts down on the fun of seeing who will get the upper hand in tough pools (very good spectating experience in my opinion).

Removing pools for something very abitrary is making the tournament worse for everyone, imo, spectators like players, and I don't think it's preferrable.

If we agree that pools can be 4 or 5 people based on the tournament needs and assume there are gonna be between 10 and 20 teams; that's the number of teams we can allow without needing qualifiers / arbitrary pairings: 10 / 12 / 15 / 16 / 20. That means that worst case scenario, if there are 19 teams signing up and we really cant motivate a 20th team to form, we'd have 3 teams to cut, which I don't think it's too much of a problem (especially as getting so many teams when we only had 12 last year does seem a bit much).

Qualifiers can go quickly and be based on objective criteria (new teams and teams which did the worst last year). They can be done in like 1 week if we do UUWC style, or in 2 weeks if we do WCOP style. I don't think delaying the tournament by such a marginal timeframe is making the experience worse for anyone (it's different from break weeks as the tournament hasn't started) and while I see why people having to play in qualifiers might dislike it, I don't think it's too unfair to them and makes the tournament slightly worse for only a handful of players instead of everyone.

 

[BaitWiz]

Something I'd like to hear more about is qualifiers versus no-pools.

Qualifiers are a horrible idea - we're already a tier that's going to struggle to get a ton of signups as it stands, so adding qualifiers to the mix will make people even less interested in a tier that they barely even play to begin with. I understand the sentiment of frustrations with uneven teams, but I think doing a pseudo pools/round robin/whatever with whatever odd number of teams we have is infinitely better than any other solution; last year's format was extremely lame (scheduling 3 games in two weeks and then that's it for a world cup felt fucking terrible as a team that didn't make playoffs) and I think qualifiers are also significantly worse than just facing 4-5 weeks of full teams semi-round robin similar to the format of official WCOP qualifiers and then going from there based on performance. However, I don't think this is the best solution...

I've thought this for a little bit and I'd like to propose that we shift this tour to be somewhere in between the two models, with full team vs team weeks based on randomly decided divisions of 3-4 teams. So instead of pools based on playing individual matches across two or so weeks, we make it 2-3 weeks of pools with every team in a division playing each other full lineup vs lineup, similarly to how it would be done at the WC or Euros or a million other tournaments out there.

If the team number works out ideally, I think this is by far the absolute best solution available. If the teams ultimately don't work out then that sucks, but if they do then I think this format is legit perfect. If we wanted to, we can even somewhat seed existing teams (seed the top 3/4 into separate pools or something?) based on last year's performance, thereby not ending up with a random "stacked" pool - at the same time it'd allow for facing the same lineup of teams across the pools stage. Even without this seeding idea, I feel this format is superior to basically any other solution if it's possible to pull off.

Either do 1 ss sm oras bw + 4 sv or do 8 sv, skipping a gen is weird and never done afaik. Adding any older gens means teams will have a hard time slotting ppl in those slots.

I think that ORAS is a difficult tier to include since it's not as popular and doesn't nearly have the same level of support as the other three old gens do, which is why a lot of people have opted for SS/SM/BW or SS/BW/ADV (though I favor the former). I'd be open to ORAS being included if enough people thought it'd work well, but from what people are saying I don't think it makes sense to include it. I still stand by including old gens in ZUWC; having only SV slots is miserable from a managing perspective and it's pretty damn boring from a player perspective, especially for people who aren't interested in SV as a gen compared to other metagames.

 

[DD Joe]

okay, hear me out... RBY ZU?!

It's a really fun tier atm :)

 

[Tuthur]

Format
ZUWC will have pools just like last year. These pools will be 4 or 5 people in it, based on the number of teams taking part, and will last for 3 weeks. If the number of teams doesn't match a multiple of 4 or 5; we will have a one week qualifiers (more on that below). The format will be 5 SV - 1 SS - 1 SM - 1 BW, meaning the roster size will be 10 to 12 players per team.

Gerrymandering
Non-continental international teams will follow stricter rules than last year. Those teams are still allowed to form but they'll need to combine bordering countries; as such I'll be refering to them as subcontinental teams in the rest of this post. Here are a couple of examples of teams that will be allowed to form; team Benelux, team Iberia, team Caraibs, and team Scandinavia. Such teams will be ruled stricly by the mod team in order to avoid Poland + Oceania situations that displeased a lot of people last year.

Grandfathering
There will not be any grandfathering.

Tagging players affected by this decision

Spoiler

5gen feen damien the genius DugZa Yovan zS

Elligibility
One country should only be able to qualify one for one team, following WCOP rules. However, as established teams don't exist for ZUWC, we will ask people who plan on managing to reach out the ZU mod team before signups open on 30th. If your team didn't form last year, we'd also like you to provide a list of 10 people who'd play for your team. This is not binding and changes to the roster / manager choice can be made afterwards. However if your team doesn't reach out, it won't be elligible to prevent subcontinental and continental teams from taking players from them. For instance, if team Benelux doesn't reach out before 30th, Drud and OranBerryBlissey10 will be allowed to play for team Europe, if team Canada doesn't reach out before 30th, 5gen and feen will be allowed to play for team Americas. This is to allow continental and subcontinental teams to plan their roster without having to worry about last minute signups. However, the mod team may ask continental teams to split up if this allows for more teams to form, hence avoiding qualifiers. Players whose continental team can't form will be grouped together in Rest of the World.

Tagging last years managers (and some other relevant people)

Spoiler

Fluore sinnabyss seraphz estra burstbean Sawra Medeia OranBerryBlissey10 Tuthur Skyrio diegoyuhhi s7a fish anemometer PociekMociek Mirbro Irene plznostep Toto BloodAce sleid Danny Monai LustfulLice BaitWiz Leni Quagg

Qualifiers
Qualifiers are fairly unpopular so we'd like to avoid having them, and if we do we'd like to have them last as little as possible. New teams will be prefered to play in qualifiers over worst performing teams of last year. The definitive qualifiers format will be decided by tier leaders after captain signups close, based on how many new teams join and how many teams take part to the tournament.

Edit: since I've got this question asked quite a lot. Yes, there is a custom avatar prize for the winning team.