Tournament CAPCL III - Policy Discussion

[shnowshner]

Following the general approval of CAP Tournaments runners, it's time to prepare for CAPCL III with our favorite pastime around these parts – discussion! velvet and I are hosting this season as host and co-host respectively, and I'll start things off by setting the preliminary framework.

We'll begin with slots. Here's the lineup we ran last year:

SV
SV
SV
SS
SM
ORAS
BW
DPP

Is 8 slots a good setup for the tournament? Are there any tiers/metas we may want to explore instead of these 6? And how should we distribute the tiers within our desired slot count?

Additionally, there is interest in updating our overall format to better suit our 6-team setup, as per this thread in Smogon Tournament Policy. To recap, this is the most popular and promising tournament structure (proposal C):

Each team plays each other team once. After 5 weeks, the bottom 2 teams are cut. However, rather than going straight into a playoff bracket, the four remaining teams play another round robin, adding another 3 weeks of play for an 8-week "regular season" (though the worst teams only play 5).
The points from the first five weeks carry over, but they are halved. This means teams are fully incentivized to do well in the first half of the season - both to qualify of course, but also to get a leg up for the final part of the season - but even a team that qualifies in 4th place is not so far off that they can't mount a comeback in the final three weeks if they do well.

The goal of this format is to solve two perceived problems:

1. Tournament length is too short at a five-week regular season until the finals period.
2. Removes the bye week for the #1 seed, hopefully reducing waning interest for the top team.

I imagine most seasoned tour players are more than fine removing the bye week for the #1 seed, given this preserves momentum, but there has been some disagreement over whether a shorter tournament is actually a problem. The new format would increase the length of CAPCL by a significant amount for the top 4 teams, and not all players may have the time or commitment to spend roughly 2 months in a single tour.
So, what's the consensus on this approach? Are we fine letting CAPCL test the waters for a new tournament structure?


Last we need to discuss Manager Pricing. We did a fixed manager price of 12.5K for CAPCL II. Do we still want to operate under fixed pricing? If so, is the old pricing where we want it for this year?


We're considering signups to launch about a week from now, so to keep things moving I'll check back in on Monday.

 

[Da Pizza Man]

Slots:

At this point, I think it's fairly safe to say that 8 Slots is the new gold standard for CAP Team Tournaments, and I don't really see a whole lot of reason as to why we would want to deviate from it. 6 Slots just sucks in general, since it pretty much forces us to pick and choose which past metagames are going to be featured in the tournament, and I'm not confident in our ability to gather enough players to the point where 10 Slots would be a viable option.

Regarding the actual slots themselves, my personal line-up would look something like this:

• SV CAP
• SV CAP
• SV CAP
• SS CAP
• SM CAP
• ORAS CAP
• BW CAP
• Monotype CAP

This is pretty much the exact same thing that we had last year, with the only difference being that I have replaced the DPP slot with a Monotype slot. This was done for a couple of reasons.

1: To put it bluntly, the current state of DPP CAP is not good. Last year, the quality of games just really didn't feel like it was up to par with the rest of the tournament, with hax playing way too much of a role in several of the games that were featured. Furthermore, there has been very little if any development in the tier since it was featured last year, which is a fairly big problem, especially considering that balance changes to the tier were just implemented without any real sort of testing done to see how much they would affect the tier. I could see us coming back to this slot next year, assuming there is some sort of tournament in the mean time, but for now I think it would be best that this not be featured.

2: Given the recent push for CAP OMs, I think that including a slot for one in a more casual team tournament would be a fantastic idea both as a way to shake things up and to attract members from other communities. Of the metagames to choose from, CAP Monotype seems like it would be easily the best pick for us, as we have already featured this slot in a prior edition of CAPCL (Not last year but the year before), there is already a bit of overlap between the CAP Community and the Monotype community, and the fact that the format is already being featured in MWPV means that there has already been some development that we could go off on (Which eases one of the concerns I had about DPP CAP).

Tournament Format:

This won't come as a surprise to anybody given my comments on discord, but I see very little reason why we shouldn't implement Amaranth's Proposal C.

The vast majority of metagame development for CAP comes from our bi-annual team tournaments, and with DLC2 being right around the corner, I think that giving ourselves an extra two weeks for the tournament would be incredibly beneficial not only for this tournament, but for the metagame as a whole. Furthermore, I'm personally not really sold that burnout is going to be a huge issue here. 8 Weeks generally isn't that much longer than what most people would expect to see from a team tournament (assuming they don't make playoffs), and there is an argument that having extra weeks could actually help decrease stress from players early on since individual weeks becomes less important to a team's performance overall.

Also, eliminating the #1 Seed Bye Problem and the tendency for players who are on teams that are either out or guaranteed playoffs to load up troll teams for their Week 5 games is something that is very much appreciated. I'm not really going to talk a whole lot about the troll teams, but to illustrate the #1 Seed Bye problem within CAP, here's a list of every CAP Team Tournament since Gen 8, who got Seed #1, and who eventually won the tournament. Let's see if you can spot a pattern here.

CAPPL VI:
Seed #1: Surging Snaelstroms
Winner: Surging Snaelstroms

Snake Draft:
Seed #1: Sizzling Smokomodos
Winner: Red Hot Pyroaks

CAPPL VII:
Seed #1: Ol' Reliable Chromeras
Winner: Thundering Caribolts

CAPCL I:
Seed #1: Steelix D's
Winner: Brazy Breezis

CAPPL VIII:
Seed #1: Lechonkers
WInner: Storming Saharajas

CAPCL II:
Seed #1: Whole Lotl Cottas
Winner: Whole Lotl Cottas

CAPPL IX:
Seed #1: Noble Naviathans
Winner: Vengeful Venomicons

Manager Pricing:

Unlike the other two discussion points, I really don't have a strong opinion on this topic, so this section is going to be way shorter. Quite frankly, I see little reason for us to deviate from the fixed 12.5k price for managers. We have not had any major problems with this price in the past, and I think that if it ain't broke don't fix it.

TL;DR Replace DPP CAP with Monotype CAP from last year's lineup, implement Amaranth's Proposal C, keep manager prices the same

 

[SHSP]

omg its time

disclaimer: not looking to manage this year so anything I say from a manager POV is just my .02$ alone

Slots:
Definitely go for 8 slots, I think it's pretty solidly standard over the last few years and especially for a tour that generally breaks into some more tiers down the line.

When it comes to the tiers proper, I think we're locked in w/some number of SV slots, then the old gens. Retro and the recent BW tour have both done quite well and these seem pretty flagship at this point for us. I don't really have a problem with DPP for once, and I'm certainly not opposed to it reappearing here, though I do agree it's not a perfect last slot. Mono I flatly don't really know a ton about, and I'd definitely like to hear from more embedded members of the community it's in how it has been going this gen- I wanna say it was in a similar mono team tour recently? I can't speak to it personally at the moment, so it may well be a better option overall. I think there's also a definite argument to drop an SV slot and put in both Mono+DPP, but this seems the sketchiest option to me- we're gonna be looking at an early-ish post-ID meta for SV that warrants a lot of attention, I figure.

Format:
I'm not thrilled with the alternate proposal for the format, honestly. I don't really agree with DPM's statement that a longer season reduces effort you have to put into early weeks, considering that if you're in the bottom cut your season ends immediately after the regular 5, so you still have to work pretty hard to stay out of that hole (we've had close races across the board going into the end of the season before). I'm also not a huge fan of 3 weeks of runbacks into two further series of rematches in playoffs; I think it can definitely get stale and probably pretty full of reused teams. We're also not a huge community of mainers, and can be rather low on some outside players' totem poles, so the shorter season doesn't lock people in as much and could be a net bonus. Personally I wouldn't change it, but for all I know we'd be the first to actually implement something like this and it gets eyes on us as a sort of test realm for it and that plays to our benefit.

Fixed pricing for managers and the same cost as last season works well too, I think. Excited for the season and the banger host team.

 

[Wulfanator]

Slots:
CL was suppose to the more experimental of the team tours. I feel we should lean into that and have more slots dedicated to lesser recognized tiers.

Keep the 3 current gen slots. Never alienate the current format. Retire gens 8 and 7 too. They are a bit over represented at this point, and it frees up space for other options.

Nuke DPP. I'm not overly thrilled with the way the format has been handled, and I lack faith in the direction that section of CAP is moving. DPP needs to reevaluate some of their methodologies and resolve questionable decisions being made before I'd be comfortable entertaining its return.

Give more slots to ORAS. ORAS hasn't felt like its had a ton of development after council unbanned Aurumoth. Give ORAS a large sample size of games played to see where the tier stands and where it is moving.

I enjoyed many of the OM CAP tours Garrett had ran a while back. I would be thrilled to see any of those formats return should there be available slots. It introduces something different into the mix to keep the tour fresh, and can be a format people can goof around with. Making it a Bo3 slot could be fun too.

Beyond that, I have no specific recommendations as to how to allocate slots.

 

[Steam Buns]

Will preface this by saying take my words with a grain of salt, because I am dying to play DPP in tournament which obviously affects my opinion. But I feel it's important for me to put into perspective and clarify the actual position DPP CAP is in right now compared to a year ago.

The last time we had this discussion the tier was in a very different place. There was no real council other than me, binpin and whoever we could get to help at the time, there had been a single 16 player tournament in which grands was me vs reachzero, who had been using teams older than my first PS! account. When I made my post vouching for it's inclusion I called the balance issues overstated because if I outright said that the tier was balanced, it would have been lie. But I still promised Interesting and competitive games and in my opinion that is what we got. Yes we also got some poor quality games, poorly built teams and rng fuelled comebacks. But we learnt a lot from them and there were not unique to DPP in that tournament.

Unsurprisingly when piloted by top DPP players in CAPCL and the later individual tour, krilowatt and revenankh were clearly shown to be overtuned and overcentralising threats, and they both received small nerfs that I personally have a lot of faith in. These changes would not have been possible without the current meta council, which includes two people who became involved in the tier as a direct result of playing in CAPCL last year. I understand the concerns over not having had a tournament to test these changes, but in my opinion saying that the meta hasn't had any substantial development is untrue and more importantly, I don't see why CAPCL can't be that tournament, especially considering the amount of good it did last year. Wulf does have valid DPP leadership concerns though I don't really agree that they should influence it's inclusion, but once again I'm obviously very biased.

I don't have very strong opinions on the role of CAPCL, if we want to commit fully to focusing on oms and experimental metas, I think that's great. but I don't mind if just cappl plus 1 or 2 unique slots either. Same goes for whether or not we leave in more recent and well established oldgens or keep the older ones instead. My main hope is that we can just be clear and consistent with our choices.

In regards to slots, I do agree that 3 current gen slots is a good number and I don't think we should change it. As for OMs I can't really speak to the state of any CAP OMs balance wise but from first impressions they are all really enjoyable and seem to be doing better than they have been historically. So it would be a shame not to include any, especially monotype. Although I would like to hear what actual players of these metagame have to say about them first. Once again I'm not really sure what the best thing to replace would be, there are pros and cons for everything. However if your reasoning to remove something is metagame quality then BW should be the first to go, I've always maintained the position BW CAP is an improvement over OU and I still think that it is, but the more time that has passed the more I've realised that it introduces just as many problems as it solves and in all likelihood is the least competitive CAP oldgen right now despite being an enjoyable tier and one of my favourites. DPP may be unproven in comparison but everyone that plays it feels like its in a really good state right now, and I believe it's as deserving of a spot as any other oldgen.

Will need to spend more time thinking about tournament format and hear more opinions before I can form my own.

 

[pannu]

Retains...please... I need heavenjay...

 

[Da Pizza Man]

Retains...please... I need heavenjay...

Retain these nuts.

 

[JayHeaven]

Retains...please... I need heavenjay...

I am retired.

 

[dex]

SS CAP
SS CAP
SS CAP
SS CAP
SS CAP
SS CAP
SS CAP
SS CAP

think about it

 

[shnowshner]

Hey what's up it's Monday (ignore the part where it's tuesday)

It sounds like people are on-board for 8 slots, but disagree over what said slots should consist of. I knew DPP would face scrutiny going in, yet the idea of dropping our two most recent generations in SS and USUM is a pretty wild suggestion given their relative popularity and development. CAP OMs also have been given a lot of intrigue, with the additional attention granted to them via the Megathread and Tour Nights. I feel this is a choice between CL being more "standardly competitive" as a tournament, consisting of mostly established metagames like the oldgens, or a more unconventional approach that challenges participants to get creative.

Ultimately the structure of the tournament should adhere to what the playerbase wants, and if enough people are onboard for something that could get as silly as 3 SV / 2 ORAS / 1 BW / CAP Mono / CAP AAA, than it's worth exploring. I'd want to hear more from prospective players/managers about a more unconventional CAP teamtour before coming to a conclusion: we should strike a balance between a competitively sound tournament and an enjoyable experience.

There's been significantly less discussion about whether we keep the 5-week regular season or switch to the extended "Belgian" method, and it's hard to gauge which direction users are leaning towards when only two have commented, and largely the exact same people reacted to said posts in the same way. I find this to be a pretty significant talking point given the interesting in keeping CAPCL "experimental" in nature, and what it might mean for other 6-team tours across the site. Tentatively, if there's no real push or shove either way, I'd seek to keep things as they are for the group of players who want a familiar teamtour experience.

I've not seen any objections to the fixed pricing thus far. Knowing the people that like managing I doubt some of them want to play anyhow given the usual circumstances that follow, but I could use a bit more infomation about the exact price. We did 15K for CAPPL and while that's a larger tournament, I could see some people wanting CAPCL to be held to a similar standard.

pannu also reminded me that Retains need to be addressed so please leave your thoughts about retains.


I've taken the liberty to compile a quick form for users who want their thoughts heard, but are terrified at the idea of posting on Smogon.com/forums, so if you have a bit of time, please fill it out! It will help me greatly in future decisions.
Click Here To Access The Form

 

[spoo]

Sorry long post but there's a lot to cover. First, I'd just like to quickly point out that 12.5k is quite cheap as far as normal manager prices go in smogon teamtours. I made some comparisons with other TTs during the policy discussion last CAPPL, and we ultimately made the decision for that tour to bump prices up to 15k. These are obviously two different tours so CAPCL doesn't need to follow suit, but personally I do think 15k is a fairer price that provides some nice symmetry/standardization with CAPPL. If we want to keep prices purposefully cheap, that's fine, but that needs to be an intentional decision to keep manager prices lower than average and not just "well, we did it last year so why not do it again."

I'm not in favor of implementing Amaranth's Proposal C for the structure of this tournament. Yes, this is one of our two premier teamtours every year, but it's also the less competitive, less popular, and lower-commitment tour compared to PL in the summer. I agree with SHSP that a longer regular season may turn off non-mainers that just want to have a bit of fun in a short side tour, which is imo exactly what the purpose of CAPCL should be––an appreciated change of pace from CAPPL/the other many more prestigious and high-effort tours on this site. Adding extra weeks doesn't mean anything if those weeks aren't enjoyable, and since people frankly aren't gonna be caring as much about CAPCL anyways (what no custom avi prize does to a mf), I feel like burnout and low overall activity are genuine issues that would be further exacerbated by this proposal. Let's not force a higher commitment structure where it just may not fit.

Re: slots, 8 is correct. I agree with Wulf that this tour should function as a more experimental venue to develop lesser-played tiers. I also think this is one of the few opportunities we have each year to really connect with people from other communities on this site, in some ways more than even CAPPL. This leads me to heavily favor the inclusion of both DPP CAP and CAP Monotype in this tour.

Developing pre-SM CAP pastgens has been a major prerogative of this community for the past two or three years, and DPP should be no different in this regard. The argument that we should kick DPP to the curb because it's undeveloped or a bad tier confuses me (and also seems to come mainly from people who don't play the tier)––DPP will never actually improve unless it's played in venues such as this one. Its inclusion in last CAPCL hugely benefitted the tier's development, playerbase, tiering, etc and I would like to see that kind of improvement continue to happen.

CAP Mono has received, without a doubt, the most attention any CAP OM has ever seen, and arguably even more attention/development than some of our actual pastgens. It was recently included in Monotypes's MWP (their winter teamtour) which is a feat that I think should speak for itself. It was widely approved in the tour's format discussion and is a tier that people seem very enthusiastic about. Including this tier in CAPCL is a great opportunity to expand our bubble to include other communities, and given that it genuinely seems to be a well-liked, well-tiered, competitive format, I don't think there are any questions about its inclusion dragging down the quality of the tour in any way.

The issue is with fitting both of these slots. Like Wulf, I would not be opposed to cutting SS and/or SM from the lineup. I think these tiers' status as popular and well-developed formats means slightly less in CAPCL, which again I think should be more geared towards lifting up lesser-played formats and expanding our bubble. So, I'll suggest the following format: SV/SV/SV/ORAS/BW/DPP/Mono/NatDex

Natdex may sound like a weird suggestion but it's fundamentally no different than other OMs people are considering like AAA/STAB. In fact, I'd wager CAP Natdex has more development and a much, much larger playerbase than any other potential OM we could include. The tier has a surprisingly active discord server, a VR, preliminary sample teams, a small but active council, they frequently run sizeable roomtours in the ND room, and people seem to be really motivated about developing the format. Natdex and CAP weirdly have a lot of history/overlap with each other, so I think including this format would be huge in terms of boosting signups/general engagement/etc. It sucks that there's no actual tournament play on the forums we can look at yet, but there's even less for other CAP OMs so I digress. Give it some thought.

 

[SHSP]

Slots:
Definitely go for 8 slots, I think it's pretty solidly standard over the last few years and especially for a tour that generally breaks into some more tiers down the line.

When it comes to the tiers proper, I think we're locked in w/some number of SV slots, then the old gens. Retro and the recent BW tour have both done quite well and these seem pretty flagship at this point for us. I don't really have a problem with DPP for once, and I'm certainly not opposed to it reappearing here, though I do agree it's not a perfect last slot. Mono I flatly don't really know a ton about, and I'd definitely like to hear from more embedded members of the community it's in how it has been going this gen- I wanna say it was in a similar mono team tour recently? I can't speak to it personally at the moment, so it may well be a better option overall. I think there's also a definite argument to drop an SV slot and put in both Mono+DPP, but this seems the sketchiest option to me- we're gonna be looking at an early-ish post-ID meta for SV that warrants a lot of attention, I figure.

gave this some more thought today and came to a few conclusions:

1- I feel like there's not really a good reason to exclude DPP or Mono as growing metas that would love this time in the spotlight.
2- Despite the above, it feels shitty to drop SM and SS. They're some of the best CAP metas and produce good games by good players.
3- Dropping the number of SV slots also sucks, cause it'll be a post-DLC metagame and very important to development.

I haven't come up with many solutions that really satisfy 1-3. The closest I feel like I've gotten is 3xSV, 1x ORAS/BW/DPP/Mono, and the last slot being a Bo3 with the Masters tiers- ORAS, SM, SS. That puts in all the old gens, but it absolutely sounds like that'd be a nightmare slot week-in week-out as a player, doubly so with no other SM/SS rep in the tour. If push came to shove, I think SM/SS fall just a bit shorter compared to SV/DPP/Mono, though, as Wulf and Spoo have pointed out. It'd really suck, but it might be worth it if there's really no clean way to fit all the old gens.

As an aside, I'm against retains.

Edit: forgot to mention i'm anti-natdex CAP

 

[skippergamez]

SV x3/SS,SM,ORAS Bo3/BW/DPP/Mono/LC

Totally not biased I just want DPP and LC opinion

(I think @SHSP’s idea is the way to go here, just wanna include CAP LC into the mix because I think it has a lot of potential LOL)

 

[LBN]

As long as SS/SM is kept in, I'm happy.

 

[shnowshner]

Alright, I want get this thread finished in time for Manager Signups to go live in 24 hours, so here's the preliminary framework of CAPCL III:

Manager prices will be fixed at 15k. The previous year was 12.5k, but we recently bumped CAPPL up to 15k which feels like a much cleaner number to work from.

There has not been much vocalized support for retains (outside of one person wanting a retired user) and this tread continued into the small sample size of the poll (6 out of 10 total against retains). I feel that forgoing retains makes sense in CAPCL given the variable lineup each year may bring, and also to encourage teams to draft fresh faces to CAP.

I've also decided that the standard tournament schedule (5 week round robin into Semis and Finals) is the best fit for this year. Support has been very mixed between people heavily in favor of the additional games, lack of a bye week for the first seed, and potential higher competition Proposal C allows for, and others citing its drawn-out conclusion, repeated matchups, and unfamiliar system as turning many players away either before or during the tour. I think the setup is theoretically more competitive and enjoyable as a spectator, but for smaller communities like CAP I don't think it's entirely necessary, especially on the lesser of our two big teamtours. As such I'd rather play things safe and keep things simple as the average player would expect.

Finally, slots. I've had trouble pinning down exactly what I want here, but the sentiment of various users and looking at poll results helped bring me closer to a decision I am mostly happy with.

Current Poll Results for Slots

SV1
SV2
SV3
ORAS
BW
DPP
Monotype

The SV slots aren't going anywhere as that's our flagship metagame and demands the most development. BW and DPP have seen significant support, the latter is and will probably continue to be controversial but recent changes to the two big CAPs of the tier (Revenankh and Krilowatt) promise more varied play than last year. ORAS wasn't in retro and deserves the spotlight here. Monotype saw a lot of mentions in the thread and seems quite popular as an actually played format on the site, and we've included Monotype before back in the first CAPCL.

Now you've probably noticed that's 7 slots instead of 8. Truth is, I've yet to be satisfied with another slot. National Dex has generated a lot of buzz and has potential to draw a lot of attention, but with NatDex our lineup is 5 "Current Gen" metas and then a wide gap from SV to ORAS. In comparison, SS remains popular and would help bridge the generational gap, but SS is also one of the most played CAP metas we have and not in dire need of activity. I've thought about a revolving slot for either OMs or SS/USUM/ORAS but I'm not happy with the pressure that may put on managers, and how it won't be an even playing across every week. Bo3 is another option technically, however, I do not think many people actually want to play Bo3 nor worry about prepping Bo3 each week.

As such, and with wanting to wrap the thread up up soon, I leave 24 hours until I decide on the final slot of CAPCL III and close the thread for good, so if you have any good arguments for a particular meta, speak up now!

 

[Brambane]

Guess I should opine here since I missed the initial window, my bad.

SV is a messy, downright frustrating, and rapidly evolving metagame and I would not be opposed to dropping one of them. The only thing holding it up is what I can only describe as "current gen bias" based on trends from OU.I have no idea what a flagship metagame even means for a community like CAP; for OU it makes sense since it is the prevalent source of media content for that playerbase and the most obvious metagame for new players. Most people learning competitive Pokemon for the first time are not jumping in with an older generation. CAP is small enough that the "flagship" isn't really generational correlative, its more about the CAPs themselves and being able to use them.

Honestly, when it comes to overall accessibility and resources, both SS and USUM probably have a richer history to pull from. SS in particular is really easy to pick-up so long as you are a generally good pilot. Yes it gets a lot of play already, but I think it is for good reason. If you are hosting any CAP team tour and don't know what meta to include, SS seems like the autodefault since it is the easiest to include and easiest to pick up.

I think we default to 3 CG since that is what everyone else does, but we have such growing or existing support for old gens (and I guess CAP Mono now too) that 3 CG seems like a disservice to our community and playerbase. Drop an SV, I assure you it will not be missed once the tour gets rolling. It doesn't make drafting any more difficult, because anyone you WOULD (or should)) have drafted for that slot is going to be a generally good pilot that is going to have no issue becoming your other Fairy gen player. So tl;dr SV/SV/SS/USUM/ORAS/BW/DPP/Mono.

I don't think there are any other lesser played metas worth pulling in at this time, the OMs are fun but none of them really took off enough for CAPCL. The ones listed above is basically the entire CAP Pantheon at this point.

 

[SHSP]

Now you've probably noticed that's 7 slots instead of 8. Truth is, I've yet to be satisfied with another slot. National Dex has generated a lot of buzz and has potential to draw a lot of attention, but with NatDex our lineup is 5 "Current Gen" metas and then a wide gap from SV to ORAS. In comparison, SS remains popular and would help bridge the generational gap, but SS is also one of the most played CAP metas we have and not in dire need of activity. I've thought about a revolving slot for either OMs or SS/USUM/ORAS but I'm not happy with the pressure that may put on managers, and how it won't be an even playing across every week. Bo3 is another option technically, however, I do not think many people actually want to play Bo3 nor worry about prepping Bo3 each week.

Yeah, I'd love a Bo3 slot to fit all gens in here but it's just not good for the tour overall otherwise, which sucks. Natdex has been a thing for like 2 weeks tops and has no relevant exp here, I don't think that should be a thing for CAPCL as I said earlier. It probably means one of SS or SM goes, and SM probably has less valid of a place here just off of signup potentials and established histories? Would absolutely suck as an SM player but I think SS is "safer" so to speak?

As for the above "drop an SV" idea, I think it's mental. It's not like we're playing SS CAP on ladder, and it's not like we were saying "no resources, just go play SM" when Crown Tundra dropped near the first CAP Snake. It's definitely still the most obvious metagame for newer players for those reasons alone, not to mention the fact that every other format on the site is primarily playing CG. Team tours are also where we get the most development in uncertain and newer metas: taking time away from SV's growth is shooting ourselves in the foot currently and in the future.

TLDR: last slot SS>SM barely (and it hurts my heart), under no circumstances should we drop a SV off vibes

 

[shnowshner]

Not been exactly 24 hours yet but I imagine everything that was going to be said has been by this point. I dwelled over everything today and concluded that, with SV itself in a volatile stat following the Indigo Disc DLC, we're naturally going to have some new ground to cover throughout the tour. DPP by nature is a unique CAP experience compared to the rest of our older generations, and Monotype has seen more rigorous play on the site/PS which lends itself to being far more credible. Both have precedent within CAPCL as well. Although other CAP OMs have potential, many are too young or underdeveloped that I'm uncomfortable mandating that managers find the resources and players to properly accommodate said slot.

Although dropping an SV slot would make the decision easier, SV is what most people are interested in right now, and what will be drawing the most attention from users outside of CAP. It's a long time from now, but I believe a lot of the experimentation with oldgens/OMs should be reserved for CAPCL IV, once SV has been better stabilized, and the various CAP metas have been given more time to grow.

All said:

SV1
SV2
SV3
SS
ORAS
BW
DPP
Monotype

It really sucks not being able to fit SM in, but I find that SM offers the least of the different generations, outside of Jumbao being at its most relevant, when it comes to showcasing CAP as a part of Smogon. SS is a remarkably balanced yet creative tier that in some ways feels like SV but with less bullshit, and its continued popularity is far too high to be ignored.

With slots squared away, we're good to move onto Manager Signups! Thanks to everyone who shared their thoughts and gave feedback.

Policy Discussion Recap

Manager Self-buy Pricing: 15k

Retains: None

Tour Structure: Standard 6 Teamtour

Tour Slots:
SV1
SV2
SV3
SS
ORAS
BW
DPP
Monotype