Implemented The Future of the WCoP Format

[blank]

I agree that the WCoP format should probably change. All SS OU is cool when the tier is new, but after that it gets very stale for all parties involved.

However, I disagree with the proposal to simply revert it back to the previous format (or an stour format) Instead, I propose a rotating format for the tour: "SPL format" -> "SCL format." Not sure on if it should be 8 or 10 slots though, that's another debacle.

Team tours have inherent imbalances, but for the bottom of the barrel teams in WCoP, these issues are exacerbated. This isn't to say we should totally cater to giving these teams their best shot, but given the general downward trend in activity on Smogon, it is harder than ever for these guys to assemble a competent squad. This really sucks for the good players in these regions.

A rotating format can help to mitigate this issue. For whatever reasons, different regions have different player strengths. Some regions have killer old gens, others have killer SS OU, others have great lower tiers, and some have all 3 (pretty much all the consistent playoff teams). By going to a rotating format, you give everyone something to look forward to, and you keep the format fresh and exciting. This also ensures fair tier balance across the 3 tours (in the long run).

For the lower tier haters:

All SS OU WCoP is (probably) the most competitive format we can get for this tournament. If we are arguing to change it because it is stale and boring, it is foolish and hypocritical to try and gatekeep lower tiers due to being "less competitive." They are easy to pick up, they have lively communities with tons of resources, and they are able to field competitive rosters for their own WCoP tournaments in each individual tier. They do a great job of playing to the strengths of WCoP.

 

[Amaranth]

[obligatory "this is my personal opinion and not the TD team's opinion" disclaimer]

WCoP signups have been on a massive downward trajectory since 2017. 2021 has Less than 1/3rd of the signups as the 2017 edition for a point of reference. SPL and SCL/snake signups have not had the same negative trajectory, with both managing to pull the same or better numbers with future editions, so the issue clearly is not an "all team tours interest" case.

2017 - 986 (granted people still posted team rosters and shitposts at a much higher rate this year than future editions, so the number is a little inflated)
2018 - 634
2019 - 585
2020 - 356
2021 - 300

This edition is gonna be some number starting with 2! Bring back old gens, all SS OU is just not entertaining or enjoyable enough for a tournament in a community like Smogon where spectacle matters as much as it does.

This is an obvious expected result of reducing the number of tiers played. Hundreds of oldgen mains that had no realistic hopes of impacting the tournament would sign up; now they don't anymore. Signup numbers is not in itself evidence of lower interest in the full CG format, it simply reflects the fact that many people have no reason to toss their name in anymore.

I would also point at the growing number of teams each year. I think the full CG format gives wonderful opportunities for those new teams that would never be able to cover a bunch of old gens. There have been great players throughout the years that had their breakout performances in qualifiers (BTB comes to mind), communities built around different languages that would never have interacted with Smogon (eg. China) were given an amazing chance to connect with us, and in general I think the all-SS format gives any and all nations a chance to rapidly build a competitive roster if they have talent and effort, as opposed to the oldgen format which had a ridiculously higher barrier of entry and routinely saw even good-to-great teams struggle to fill specific oldgen slots (GSC Tricking anyone?).

Not to mention the inherent struggle with the number of generations involved: there's 7 oldgens and 10 slots maximum for any given team. Cutting individual oldgens over arbitrary preferences is just disgusting. I'm not even worried about RBY as I'm sure most people will agree we've seen tremendous community growth lately - but I'd hate to see gens like GSC or DPP cut over idiotic complaints such as "nobody plays this" or "iron head flinches too much" or whatever the fuck else. There's no space to give each gen a full slot, and cutting some arbitrarily is just not the way to go.

As a consequence of these reasons, I believe the following:
- x8 SS OU is fine. Arguably unexciting, but brings a lot of positives and solves a lot of problems with other formats. We should not move away from it unless a convincing alternative is found.
- Mostly-SS with a few slots for Smogon Tour tiers would also be fine. These tiers maintain large active playerbases and would not cause much headaches for any teams, including qualifying teams.
- Oldgens have no place in WCoP unless some ambitious solution to compress them is found. Multi-gen slots, "team's choice" slots, I don't know what exactly could make them viable, but they simply cannot exist with one slot each, and arbitrarily cutting one oldgen community over others would be deeply unfair.
- Rotating formats to include SCL tiers is an interesting concept, perhaps one that could be improved by mixing up oldgens and lowtiers. Lowtier players tend to prefer learning other lowtiers and oldgen players tend to prefer learning other oldgens. Most countries will have a few great lowtier mains and a few great oldgen mains, but very often not enough to fill in x6 full lowtiers or x7 full oldgens. With a hybrid format, a country with 3 lowtier players and 3 oldgen players that would greatly struggle to finish a roster in a full SCL or SPL format may just be able to put together something good enough.
- Regardless, 2022 WCoP should go ahead as a mostly-SS tournament if not full-SS. Teams have been preparing for full SS since the end of WCoP21 and asking them to fill in oldgen slots on short notice would cause many many teams severe difficulties.
- Surveys should be made to poll how popular or unpopular any format idea actually is. Signup numbers don't necessarily tell the full story, and neither do PR threads where not all representatives from all teams decide to participate.

 

[z0mOG]

[obligatory "this is my personal opinion and not the TD team's opinion" disclaimer]


This is an obvious expected result of reducing the number of tiers played. Hundreds of oldgen mains that had no realistic hopes of impacting the tournament would sign up; now they don't anymore. Signup numbers is not in itself evidence of lower interest in the full CG format, it simply reflects the fact that many people have no reason to toss their name in anymore.

I would also point at the growing number of teams each year. I think the full CG format gives wonderful opportunities for those new teams that would never be able to cover a bunch of old gens. There have been great players throughout the years that had their breakout performances in qualifiers (BTB comes to mind), communities built around different languages that would never have interacted with Smogon (eg. China) were given an amazing chance to connect with us, and in general I think the all-SS format gives any and all nations a chance to rapidly build a competitive roster if they have talent and effort, as opposed to the oldgen format which had a ridiculously higher barrier of entry and routinely saw even good-to-great teams struggle to fill specific oldgen slots (GSC Tricking anyone?).

Not to mention the inherent struggle with the number of generations involved: there's 7 oldgens and 10 slots maximum for any given team. Cutting individual oldgens over arbitrary preferences is just disgusting. I'm not even worried about RBY as I'm sure most people will agree we've seen tremendous community growth lately - but I'd hate to see gens like GSC or DPP cut over idiotic complaints such as "nobody plays this" or "iron head flinches too much" or whatever the fuck else. There's no space to give each gen a full slot, and cutting some arbitrarily is just not the way to go.

As a consequence of these reasons, I believe the following:
- x8 SS OU is fine. Arguably unexciting, but brings a lot of positives and solves a lot of problems with other formats. We should not move away from it unless a convincing alternative is found.
- Mostly-SS with a few slots for Smogon Tour tiers would also be fine. These tiers maintain large active playerbases and would not cause much headaches for any teams, including qualifying teams.
- Oldgens have no place in WCoP unless some ambitious solution to compress them is found. Multi-gen slots, "team's choice" slots, I don't know what exactly could make them viable, but they simply cannot exist with one slot each, and arbitrarily cutting one oldgen community over others would be deeply unfair.
- Rotating formats to include SCL tiers is an interesting concept, perhaps one that could be improved by mixing up oldgens and lowtiers. Lowtier players tend to prefer learning other lowtiers and oldgen players tend to prefer learning other oldgens. Most countries will have a few great lowtier mains and a few great oldgen mains, but very often not enough to fill in x6 full lowtiers or x7 full oldgens. With a hybrid format, a country with 3 lowtier players and 3 oldgen players that would greatly struggle to finish a roster in a full SCL or SPL format may just be able to put together something good enough.
- Regardless, 2022 WCoP should go ahead as a mostly-SS tournament if not full-SS. Teams have been preparing for full SS since the end of WCoP21 and asking them to fill in oldgen slots on short notice would cause many many teams severe difficulties.
- Surveys should be made to poll how popular or unpopular any format idea actually is. Signup numbers don't necessarily tell the full story, and neither do PR threads where not all representatives from all teams decide to participate.

Responding to every point one by one
- Convincing alternative: a format with 3 ou and 7 old gens. Solves the problems of a less boring tour, appealing to more players (re: signup numbers), and inclusivity. I would like to be informed what the positives all CG supplement to compare.
- Agree because anything is superior to all OU. Sure, it might be a logistics nightmare to craft a tournament with more arbitrary tiers to it, but a logistics nightmare is better than a tour nightmare.
- Under what reason do they not have a place besides a smaller groups' personal preference? Solution= 3 ou by 7 old gens. Gen 9 = 4 by 8. Or any other formula frankly.
- That would be interesting but also counters your own point of "teams have been preparing for full SS" by now throwing in an entire different GENRE of pokemon formats (that being the ever changing lower tiers, where at least old gens are only really change through meta developments).
- I don't really buy the notion that "teams have been preparing" for a tournament to be a specific format because what does that actually mean? If you mean in terms of teambuilding... then all that goes out the window as soon as something gets banned or the meta shifts reasonably. If you mean collecting CG players.. that also doesn't make sense because players are already either gonna be active or not be active come ~May regardless. On top of the fact that most player scouting is coming from tournaments shortly before WCoP itself starts (ost/stour/spl). Sure, scouting takes some time but is more than 2 months really not enough...?
- Yes surveys should be made... I personally pointed this out during the discussion last year and nothing ever came of it. I don't mean to come at you directly, Amaranth, but I reckon it should be on the TDs to collaboratively make these surveys instead of a pacifying mention of them without a delivery. I would even be happy to make you guys the google form if there's reasonable expectation that something could come from one -- it takes about 45 seconds.

I plead with the TDs to take the proposals in this thread seriously while WCoP is months away still. Smogon tournaments are not increasing in liveliness -- we as a community really do not need to be putting nails in the coffin when there is player outcry for improvement.

 

[bbeeaa]

What argument besides variety is there against full ss? the same format was played for years and nothing ever happened until 2020. I understand that everyone is going to opt for their preference but I feel that with full ss we have much more integration and fun, between the chemistry of the teams from preparing together / building together /everyone testing and finding ways to take advantage of the meta, thats one of the things I've enjoyed the most these last two wcops. It also balances out a bit the fact that not many teams have decent old gens to compete with, while the current gen playerbase is a lot deeper and easier to find. Add to that that we are also a little late to discuss this, the teams in the qualifiers have already been practicing for a whole year and preparing for full ss, it's a bit fucked up to change the format and having to tell people that expected to play that they will have to cut them to look for old gens players, I think it would be better to discuss this topic with time for next year.

 

[Malekith]

I've been playing SPL all these past years, it never was full CG, and all the mates helped each other, so the point of "preparing together" is so poor, in fact I prefer to help different gens so I (we) bring fresh ideas and not burning out with 24 SS OU teams just for R1.
Plus that, we know how the "prep together" ends: the same team spammed multiple times.

You all know I'm a full supporter of the old gens WCoP, but that is because I firmly believe it is the best for the tournament, not for it being better for me.

1) More diversity: ANY TIER X8 is just very boring, and trust me I like SS, but hype dies when you see the same over and over and over again. Old gen metagames are being reinvented each tour, and I think that is beautiful and more competitive.

2) More inclusive: When I suggested to change the format years ago I talked about how old known players would have in WCoP its space to perform with their mates, some people told they wouldn't, but the truth is that all of them came back and we had a lot of strong teams with incredibly solid line-ups mixing their old players with their new wave ones.

3) Competition?: Ok, lets be honest, not all the teams can be contenders with all gens wcop... neither with full SS OU. A team can be competitive without a good GSC or ORAS, but it can't if they only have 3 good SSers in a full SS format, and I see a lot more solid and competitive teams with the previous format.

4) New faces appear to take over: I talked about old known players coming back before, but WCoP is the perfect place to show your skills if you are relatively unknown, you can go with your compatriots, but if you are not known it is p difficult to be drafted in -PL formats, even in unofficilas like RoAPL or equivalents.

 

[Malekith]

Sorry, I forgot 2 points:

5) Learning: If you don't know about X gen, just learn it! this game is beautiful and having the OU metagames active will help you and let you learn a lot, a lot of new players find themselves in an old gen.

6) Mainers: Guys, I like the fact of watching Ojama (for example) play SS for one tour, but I would watch him in ADV every year, same with McM, same with Heroic Troller in RBY... Let's just have the mainers perform in the gen they love and are the bests, and if they want to try the new gens, welcome!

 

[ABR]

update, with several conclusions

- 10 slots is the best team tour number. 8 is just too few games. if a team cannot field 10 players they're never winning anyway
- not only is all ss ou boring, but 10 ss ou is REALLY boring, while 8 is too few. mathematically, all ss is unviable
- if we are going multigen, there is no reason for >half ss either

options pretty much are

1) 5 ss + sm oras bw dpp adv
2) 3 ss + sm oras bw dpp adv gsc rby (SPL)

rotating is cringe and so is the inclusion of lower tiers

 

[Isa]

- not only is all ss ou boring, but 10 ss ou is REALLY boring, while 8 is too few. mathematically, all ss is unviable

you say this while overlooking the beautiful solution that is 9 slots

unironically 9 slots is a good fit for wcop specifically because there are no "weeks", no ties between teams in the groupstage thatd be preferable to keep in. those ties are the reason smogon runs team tours with even-numbered teams, but without them being present in wcop that reasoning does not hold here.

however, in playoffs, even slots are a detriment to the tournament structure as they invariably cause delays through tiebreaks. this is an especially big problem for wcop as there's three stages of playoffs, each waiting for the last to be completed before the tournament can progress. wcop will overlap heavily with classic this year, so i foresee burnout and time pressure being a very real thing if multiple tiebreaks happen.

tl;dr - make wcop 9 slots (or any odd number really). idc about tiers

 

[ninjadog]

If you add old gens back in it'll be once again that old gens are more represented in official tours than lower tiers, despite the fact lower tiers are far more popular. any argument that the player quality in old gens is better than in lower tiers these days is completely unfounded as well. either keep it all cg or find some way for lower tiers to be incorporated in balance with old gens. there's absolutely no reason why an extremely popular tier with a deep player-base like SS UU should have less representation than every old gen.

even as someone whose team is far better w old gens included, all cg is clearly way more balanced and has more upset potential, in 2 years of it we've seen two champions who'd never won before and both finals were contested between teams going for their first title. it also gives newer teams like China and India a chance of competing when they'd get completely obliterated in old gens. ofc it'll vary by team but in general it's a lot easier to find new cg players.

 

[Dorron]

Just giving my view of point as a spectator not as a player. This will probably be my only post here as I don't see myself investing a lot of time in deciding how a tournament should be if I am probably not ever playing it.


Watching a team tournament about the same tier every single day is simply boring and repetitive as hell. Even myself neither playing CG nor most of the OG tiers at all, I would have watched every single Spanish game (and from other teams aswell) if WCoP had more than one single tier I've seen included in every single tournament this website holds without almost no exception. I don't care if you include old gens or lower tiers, I will stay tuned anways, but please get rid of this dogshit system in which there are more than a hundred games of the same tier in a single week.

I've been playing SPL all these past years, it never was full CG, and all the mates helped each other, so the point of "preparing together" is so poor, in fact I prefer to help different gens so I (we) bring fresh ideas and not burning out with 24 SS OU teams just for R1.
Plus that, we know how the "prep together" ends: the same team spammed multiple times.

You all know I'm a full supporter of the old gens WCoP, but that is because I firmly believe it is the best for the tournament, not for it being better for me.

1) More diversity: ANY TIER X8 is just very boring, and trust me I like SS, but hype dies when you see the same over and over and over again. Old gen metagames are being reinvented each tour, and I think that is beautiful and more competitive.

2) More inclusive: When I suggested to change the format years ago I talked about how old known players would have in WCoP its space to perform with their mates, some people told they wouldn't, but the truth is that all of them came back and we had a lot of strong teams with incredibly solid line-ups mixing their old players with their new wave ones.

Totally agree on this, 100% accurate and it just reflects most of the spectator's point of view.

rotating is cringe and so is the inclusion of lower tiers

And totally disagree on this. Lower tiers are a good way to have CGcg tiers without them being x10 OU, and most of them are more enjoyable to watch than OU, of which I've already watched hundreds of games. And I don't see the problem with rotating. It just lets more people to have the opportunity to play for their country/region, which really is one of the main features why this tournament is held.


My ideal system, considering there are 10 tiers, that really could fit the tournament would be 3 SS + OGs / 5 SS + Ubers + UU + RU + NU + PU (maybe LC? I've felt it has been a bit underwhelming this generation. Also having doubts about including Ubers, but please never more than 5 SS)


Edit: well it seems Gen 9 has been announced so we are going to have this same discussion in a year?

 

[Prinz]

10 slots

x5 SS OU x2 SM x2 Oras x1 VGC

 

[Malekith]

If you add old gens back in it'll be once again that old gens are more represented in official tours than lower tiers, despite the fact lower tiers are far more popular. any argument that the player quality in old gens is better than in lower tiers these days is completely unfounded as well. either keep it all cg or find some way for lower tiers to be incorporated in balance with old gens. there's absolutely no reason why an extremely popular tier with a deep player-base like SS UU should have less representation than every old gen.

even as someone whose team is far better w old gens included, all cg is clearly way more balanced and has more upset potential, in 2 years of it we've seen two champions who'd never won before and both finals were contested between teams going for their first title. it also gives newer teams like China and India a chance of competing when they'd get completely obliterated in old gens. ofc it'll vary by team but in general it's a lot easier to find new cg players.

Mate, I love lower tiers, I've always played them, but they (old gens) would have more representation, and? I'm not gonna talk about quality, but about the metagames. When you think about a generation you always think about its OU metagame, not about its ZU, Ubers or how big the SS UU community was. Thats why you see ORAS OU still in the official tournament scene and not ORAS RU, or BW NU. Lower tiers die, OU metagames don't.

Trends die, but classics are forever. And when you are playing and old gen, you are playing the history of this game.

And about the representation. I agree they could have the same representation of old gens (not needed, but it is something I would support) so instead of making more problems in something we are trying to solve, lets find a solution to that too: what about another tournament for low tiers? Re-think the doubles one, a smogon tour with lower tiers. Idk. But lets all play the game we love fighting for what we want without stomping on the others!

 

[z0mOG]

Okay. It has been over 2 full days since there was mention of a survey by a TD (who was not even speaking on behalf of the team) without anything publicly posted yet by the TD collective, so I am directing world cup now. Every day spent waiting for the team to take some action while WCoP gets closer is adding the excuse to the argument that the tournament is too close to take action -- and nothing will get done.

https://forms.gle/TjigKzVgtQkYDw1w7

Please share your thoughts on the WCoP format with the above survey. I added a question about prior WCoP experience to try and give more weight to those who can speak on the formats from actual firsthand experience.

(edited some harshness out of the original post)

 

[McMeghan]

Very good survey and initiative z0mOG, sincerely. Thanks for your service, I mean it.

 

[Excal]

I think this tournament is the best avenue for new OU players to enter the official team tournament scene. This past year alone we had several SS OU breakouts from WCoP (cough cough Team Germany), and in past years where old generations were included we saw this happen across the board. Currently it is extremely difficult for new old gen players to start in SPL unless they enter the scene through cg. With lower tiers it's a different story because the player pools are not as solidified & are constantly changing, and because SCL is cg there are more opportunities within lower tier communities.

World cup should prioritize inclusivity for OU tiers more than other tournaments due to its regional parameters and getting many new players involved that otherwise wouldn't be in SCL/SPL. I am obviously biased as an old gens player, but featuring old gens while still having 3 CG slots feels most conducive for inclusivity + hype + player quality.

Points like "the tournament is too soon and it will screw over people planning for this tour" and "teams will struggle to field a good roster" are nonsensical. There's a valid case for any format consisting of all OU tiers, even all cg, and statements like these are grasping at straws to maintain the status quo over all else.

 

[blank]

Mate, I love lower tiers, I've always played them, but they (old gens) would have more representation, and? I'm not gonna talk about quality, but about the metagames. When you think about a generation you always think about its OU metagame, not about its ZU, Ubers or how big the SS UU community was. Thats why you see ORAS OU still in the official tournament scene and not ORAS RU, or BW NU. Lower tiers die, OU metagames don't.

Trends die, but classics are forever. And when you are playing and old gen, you are playing the history of this game.

I think this argument is flawed. Instead of explaining why old generations deserve a spot in WCoP over lower tiers, you compare old generation OUs to old generation... lower tiers?

How a tier is remembered is not important to this discussion. What is important is how many people play the tiers. Which leads to the next point:

World cup should prioritize inclusivity for OU tiers more than other tournaments due to its regional parameters and getting many new players involved that otherwise wouldn't be in SCL/SPL. I am obviously biased as an old gens player, but featuring old gens while still having 3 CG slots feels most conducive for inclusivity + hype + player quality.

Looking at the ladder stats, tournament entries, etc., it is clear that current generation lower tiers are simply more active and lively than old generation OUs (the notable exception here being SM OU). In the case of a tournament like SPL, I think this would be a poor angle to argue from. In a tournament like WCoP, however, having an international and widespread pool of players is necessary for balancing the tournament. It becomes very important.

Again though, both lower tiers and old generations will lead to many competent teams having holes that will need to be filled by a utility player picking up a new tier. Due to more similarities to CG OU (among other reasons), it is easier for players to pick up lower tiers in these cases. This excludes DOU and LC, which is another topic for debate.

Additionally, as ninjadog pointed out, by shifting the tournament to the previous format or some other old generation focused format, lower tiers will only have 1 official team tournament compared to old generations having 2.

I also think a format that focuses on Smogon Tour tiers is undesirable. With the main options currently discussed, we are either going to add 1 SM and 1 ORAS slot or 2 SM and 2 ORAS slots (while also potentially going to 10 slots overall).

So... what exactly is the difference here? You are adding 2 tiers to a tournament while still having such a huge number of CG OU games, virtually making no difference. Most teams will slot someone in who is maybe marginally better/worse at SS OU than SM/ORAS, and then a few teams will happen to be lucky enough to have standout SM/ORAS players and blow those ones out of the water. I get that ORAS will be out of the stour soon, but that is due to losing representation in an individual tour... not a team tour.

tl;dr - rotate formats for fairness and because lower tiers deserve it. If this can't be done, just stick with the current format. Stour format is dumb, and so is 10 slots for all CG OU or stour format.

 

[Finchinator]

Amaranth was working hard on a survey despite it being within hours of our SPL team being eliminated. I really appreciate the initiative and I love that people care so much about WCoP (I do, too), but it never hurts to reach out.

We will be using the data from the survey z0m posted anyway so that we can reach an accurate and prompt conclusion. z0m shared the data with us already. Please respond if you are interested in the tournament, thank you very much.

If there are any future questions we have for the public, we will absolutely put up a follow-up as well. And please continue posting your thoughts as well as they are very important to us.

 

[DAHLI]

Will do the best i can with my mickey mouse english but:

1- If people are not satisfied with 8SS I think the best format would be 6SS 2SM 2ORAS / 4SS 2SM 2ORAS. That way you keep the current gen represented in the majority of slots, while adding slots of old gens that most of the rosters have viable players for. However, I think the current format makes complete sense and arguments like "its boring" shouldn't be enough to force a radical change since thats subjective and heavily biased (a lot of people find RBY and GSC boring as well).

2- Not to trash on non-fairy gens but I don't think we should feature gens 1-5 this year. It feels pushed and would make a lot of teams completely unviable (specially in the qualifiers phase). It's just delusional to think you can pick up and learn an old gen in such a small span of time and play it at the same level of players that have been playing that exact generation for ages, slotting utility players in those slots would only hurt the quality of old gen matches.

3- Lower tier slander is elitist and nonsensical. However, I don't think they belong in WCoP either (SCL was created for a reason)

Maybe a format with old metagames / low tiers / whatever the majority wants can be planned and reworked for next WCoP but for this year I think we should either stick to full CG or stour tiers since that wouldnt be that big of a change imo. I get the nostalgia factor but the format should be picked objectively and looking at the whole picture, the three major teamtours in Smogon are completely different from each other while not being terrible and at the end of the day I think thats what we should aim for.

 

[Expulso]

please just keep the format as SS OU x8. it provides a clear way for people to get involved in the tour. You don't need to worry about trying to figure out what slots your region does and doesn't have; just become a great SS OU player and you can help your region win a trophy. as a (gasp) lower tier mainer, i've appreciated this format a lot due to its simplicity -- anyone that's good at SS OU can contribute. this provides a compelling reason to pick up current gen OU, the supposed flagship tier of smogon, and i picked it up for exactly this reason: just play current gen ou and you can play in or follow one of the biggest tours on the site, and there will be plenty of people from your region with the exact same incentive who are down to play games, test, give advice, etc.

the quality of competition seems just as strong as any other team tour we have, and debating the merits of the competitive quality of 8 SS OU games vs games in stour tiers, gens 1-8, etc. seems to rely entirely on guesswork -- how on earth can you definitively answer that question?

moreover, I find it pretty ridiculous how often this site changes the formats of its team tours. because we constantly change how these tours are organized, it seems that the incentive to change the format of a given tour is stronger than the incentive to just accept the format and work hard to succeed in that tour. if we change the format of this tour, do we really think that people are just going to let the new format be the status quo forever? no, people will complain again and we'll change the format again, sending all the teams back to square one. the format is fine, please just leave the tour alone and let it grow.

 

[SFG]

despite the fact lower tiers are far more popular.

As an old gen player, I'm biased af, but I have to admit I have been surprised by this part of your post. So, I took the number of ins for each most recent individual tour in each oldgen/lowtier:

Except RBY and GSC, which are known as the least attractive oldgens for new players, each oldgen ssnl has at least 44 ins (27%) than the most popular low-tiers tournament. I you look at the ladders stats, low tiers generally have more games played tho (even if the popularity of sm makes the sum of all games played lean in favor of the oldgens). But idt it's fair to state that lower tiers are far more popular in the Smogon community

 

[soulgazer]

The only viable formats that can last through time, space and nebs are : full cg ou and stour tiers

as a canadian i would sure love having lower tiers so we can be viable, but you simply cannot repeat a lower tier format every year with new gens coming out and the absolute clusterfuck that are lower tiers the first year the gen coming out… rotating formats suck major penor and may just kill hype and dynasties. overall, a whole can of worms.

latest 3 gen ou (stour) will always be played at a high level by many to compete in smogon tours, if your country is unable to field ppl for sm and oras by may, you simply aren’t a competitive region and should just disqualify.

you also can maintain a higher amount of cg ou with this while adding some old gen spices.

isn’t it a terrific idea?

 

[LuckOverSkill]

The tournament should have 8 CG OU slots.

The same arguments still apply:

• 10 slots are too many for a regional tournament. Few countries can fill them all with competent players.
• If you go 6 SS 1SM 1 ORAS, you don't fix the alleged issue. You still have hundreds of SS OU games happening in a month.
• If you go 4 SS 2 SM 2 ORAS, you are giving too much weight to older gens, one of which is starting to become ancient.
• Older gens are unviable. I love BW to death and still play it, but having it in WCOP? It's so far removed from CG that it's almost like a different game. Preview-less gens are even worse in this regard.
• Lower tiers shouldn't be included either. The charade of picking which ones to include is always fun to watch, but we don't need any of that.

Many countries don't have competent players for gens 1-5. Why include these gens to make a minority of the playerbase happy at the expense of competitiveness? Opportunities to play old gens abound, both on and off Smogon.

The same applies to lower tiers.

Finding CG boring is no reason to change, once again, the tournament's format. One, boring is subjective. Two, a gen being boring is not Smogon's issue (What if gen 9 is the best gen ever? Do we go back to full CG then?). Three, nobody is forcing you to watch every game or to help your entire team with building / testing.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Ubers, Little Cup, DOU, and Monotype are all resilient to new gens coming out. If that was an important point somehow.

Just please dont do yet another SS/SM/ORAS tournament.

 

[elodin]

i think z0mog's initial post made it crystal clear as to why keeping a full cg ou wcop is no longer viable. people have been gradually losing interest in the tournament because the current format is not only boring for spectators but also tiring for the players competing in it, as the room for creative expression in-game is very limited when there's only 1 tier in the tournament.

that said, considering wcop is envisioned to be smogon's current gen team tournament, i do believe we should look into a format that maintains ss ou as its main focus. and the best way to do this is making sure we have enough games from the tier for it to see the most representation.

with that in mind, i think 5 slots for cg ou is the minimum we should see in wcop, at least for now. 8 slots as the only tier in the tournament was definitely excessive, but dropping from that to 3 slots only would make wcop lose its identity as the main cg ou team tournament in the circuit.

so i think 5 slots for cg ou is ideal here. and then those 5 slots should be complemented by 5 slots consisting of sm ou, oras ou, bw ou, dpp ou and rse ou.

reasoning being gsc and rby already get representation in spl and classic while being by far the least popular old gens. they have the smallest playerbases and are the ones that appeal the least to spectators, especially newer players, the main focus of a cg ou-centered tournament.

i also prefer this format because (i) it keeps the focus of wcop on cg ou as it would have 5 slots; and (ii) 10 slots are imo the best for any team tournament, as it's an even number (tiebreak hype) and also not an overwhelming amount of games.

alternatively, we could look into tour tiers, but then it becomes difficult to keep a decent amount of cg ou games and old gens games balanced. 4 cg ou + 2 sm + 2 oras is very awkward imo, as these 2 old gens individually would have 50% of the relevancy of cg ou (unlike my suggested format, where each would have 20%). not only that but it means less cg ou games and less games overall with 8 slots. if we do 5 cg ou in this format it also becomes weird because 9 slots are not ideal for a tournament where tiebreaks have always been extremely hype. 5 cg ou + 2 sm + 1 oras might be the best move here, but i still think 8 slots is not enough and probably part of the reason why wcop has been pretty boring recently.

with all that said, my suggested format for wcop 2022 is 5 ss ou, 1 sm ou, 1 oras ou, 1 bw ou, 1 dpp ou, 1 rse ou.

 

[MANNAT]

I’m not particularly passionate about any specific decisions with regards to format outside of 6/7/8 WC being a very undesirable format, but that’s a discussion for another day.

The term future proofing is incredibly silly and not at all necessary for the health of tournament culture. As someone guilty of using this term in arguments before, it’s really just a silly excuse to justify specific formats. At the end of the day, changing circumstances and community opinions are ALWAYS going to cause changes in tournaments. We shouldn’t settle for worse options or axe certain formats just because they would need to be changed in the future.

My answer to everyone saying “what are we gonna do with x format when gen 9 comes out” is literally just to change the format again. This tournament was at least partially made all CG OU because it’s a format that wouldn’t need to be changed with the release of new generations and yet here we are trying to change that again because of a shift in community opinion and SS OU burnout. We should explore every potential format that we can and pick the best one for this edition of the tournament rather than worrying about its implication for future formats.

At the end of the day the survival of this online space and tournament scene are extremely fragile. and the community could die off for any number of reasons. Let’s try to cherish it while it’s around and have the best tournaments we can while it’s still here. Format debates and constantly changing tournaments can be exhausting, but it’s worth it in the long run.