Implemented The Future of the WCoP Format

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kumiko

formerly TDK
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If we want to be ~objective~ the clear answer is to keep the 8 CG OU format. SS OU is a good tier, but not the greatest from a spectator perspective as the tier is filled with some not-so-fun Pokemon and teams usually end up featuring the same core with some different supporting members. The desire to want to change the format from this due to having simply too many of one slot leading to a less than entertaining tournament is very understandable, but most of the proposals here are very poor and simply biased towards what the individual wants.

3 CG OU + 7 Old Gens should not be an option. Why would we have WCoP be the exact same format as SPL? WCoP was made all CG OU to "justify" removing Lower Tiers from SPL in its entirety; SPL was made for Old Gens, SCL for Lower Tiers, and WCoP only for CG OU. This is the logic that was used to change the formats. Now people want to go back on that which is basically a giant middle finger to Lower Tier players simply because a bunch of people who prefer to play old gens are voting it in for their own sake. The tournament's focus should be CG OU, and as elodin said, anything less than half the slots being CG OU is a bad format and shouldn't be considered.

I don't see why people are so against the inclusion of Lower Tiers in this tournament. No ones campaigning to expand the tournament to be huge and add all of them. Personally, I'd like to piggyback off of elodin's idea; 5 CG OU, 1 of the other two STour Tiers, and 3 lower tiers. The vast majority of regions will be able to field players for tiers such as UU far easier than any old generation; the UU community is filled with great players and is easily accessible to non-mains. Just take a look at people like Poek and SoulWind having frequent success in UU Open and SCL in the tier. Old generation communities cannot do the same; old generation OUs do not have the same resources or accessibility for someone trying to pick the tier up that lower tiers have. And every WCoP, some non-main will pick up a tier to play it for their country / region, so this is a very important thing.

I believe this format has very easy "future proofing" that people believe to be important. Like SG said, lower tiers change at the start of the generation, but UU in particular is 100% going to be playable by summer time if the generation has a November release. I cannot speak the same for RU-PU, but tiers generally are much quicker to be ready than in the past. RU was in a pretty playable state during the Spring after SS release.

I do not like the idea of a rotating format. I think changing things up every year is really awkward and leads to no sense of team continuity, which is the biggest factor there is for WCoP, to me.

Having a format such as 5 SS OU / 1 SM OU / 1 ORAS OU / 1 UU / 1 RU / 1 NU would be an easy solution that can satisfy the desire to change while still giving a focus for CG OU. RU/NU could also be replaced if the fear of not being ready upon release of a new generation, but these 3 are very simple and the most "OU like" tiers there are. This format also doesn't give room for any kind of change to SPL format to re-include lower tiers, which were removed under the premise that WCoP was CG only, no old gens.

The options should be between keeping the tournament all CG OU, elodin's proposal (5 CG OU / 1 of each of 7-3 OUs), and 5 CG OU / 1 of the two other STour Tiers / 1 CG UU / 1 CG RU / 1 CG NU (with RU/NU subject to change).
 
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Malekith

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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.
I agree with you, but when this tournament was designed to be the "CG tour" was because there weren't more options, and then they just kept going without questioning anything.

Also, in addition to that, back in those days, they didn't have SCL (3x OU) and OLT (literally thousand of OU games) so CG OU needed a place to be played. In fact, when the tour was created they didn't even have SPL. Now it is too much.
 

aim

pokeaimMD
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wc should be 10 slots. spl/scl are 10. and it's not like there is an extremely limited playerbase so it's "easy" to fill up the slots. nothing wrong with giving more people the chance to play at the cost of "nothing" seeing as how every team gets the same "nerf." there are for sure more than 8 capable players per region lol
 

kjdaas

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I don’t know if this should be in a separate thread, but another way to give more people the chance to play in the main part of WCoP is by increasing the number of teams in Round 1. Last year, we had a record of 24 teams in total signing up to participate in WCoP and only 2/3 of the teams were able to participate in the main event. Some of the teams in last years qualifiers have already participated in the past (UK and India), whereas Argentina got paired up against the future winners of the tour (USA South). The latter is partially the fault of the very unforgiving nature of the current qualifier format and hopefully something will be done about this in the future as well.

Therefore, the TDs should consider expanding WCoP to 20 or maybe even 24 teams so that players from smaller regions are also able to participate in the tour without having to hope that larger continental teams have space for them. The choice for 16 teams is mostly traditional and only has minor benefits for 10 slots per team (which I’ll explain in the spoiler tag below). Currently half of the teams (8) will qualify for round 2, but also for 20 teams you can allow only the top 8 to move on, which has the added benefit of lowering the possibilities of the ungodly tiebreaker formats we have seen in the past few years. The smogon player base has been diversifying in the last few years and as aim mentioned the tds should consider giving more people the chance to play. Hopefully expanding WCoP to more teams will also incentivize new teams to signup that could yield 8(+4 subs) or 10(+5 subs) slot teams (for example The Netherlands or Venezuela). This might also partially solve the issue where new teams will lose their best players to larger continental teams the year after (for example Twixtry, frisoeva and Ruft), which means that these smaller teams constantly need to rebuild their squads.

The current OP states the following, "Divisions will be assigned randomly and each team will play each other team at least once and not more than twice.", whereas previous OP's stated "Divisions will be assigned randomly and each team will play each other team once in SM and once in old gens." So, the reason behind this is simple: Every team has 8 slots at the moment and each player can face 3 players from 3 different teams each in their pool (because every pool consists of 4 players from 4 different teams). This means that a team in total can play 3*8=24 different teams. However, there are only 15 different teams (excluding your own team which you cannot face), so that every team should play another team 24/15=1.6 times. Because you obviously cannot play every team 1.6 times, you will face some teams once and some teams twice.

In a 10 slot WCoP the calculation is a little bit different because you can now play versus 3*10=30 different teams, which is divisible by 15. This means that in a WCoP with 16 teams and 10 slots, you will play every team twice. However, that the math works out nicely for these numbers shouldn’t be a reason why we would choose a format. We should strive for the best tour not the tour in which the math is the cleanest.
 

Vulpix03

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From a spectator's perspective I would love to see gens 1-8. It's simply the most diverse and entertaining and incentivizes some of our sites best players to play.

In terms of competitiveness, having only current gen ou in the tour is probably the best way to try and balance an inherently unbalanced tournament. As much as I love gens 1-8 it is probably the least "competitive" format. You'll have a few superteams and the rest will just be fighting for 5th place. You can argue that this is the case no matter the tiers played, however the learning curve of old generations (1-4) exacerbates this dilemma.

If we want the most competitive format possible while not being bored to death by 8 swsh ou slots, than 4/6 swsh, 2 sm, 2 oras seems to be the best compromise. You have diversity in the tournament while also making it easier for teams to field a competitive roster. It's much easier for a team to find someone to play gens 6/7 than it is 1-4, at a high level at least.

I also agree with tdk that lower tiers get too much hate. They may not be your thing but trying to veto them from the tour is silly. An expansion on tdks idea could be 4/6 swsh ou, 1 ubers, 1 uu, 1 sm, 1 oras. Ubers doesn't change much and uu is the easiest lower tier to get ready during a new generation. Ultimately I think that's too much for the tour and I think keeping it simple with stour gens is better, but it's an idea.

If people don't care about making the tour as competitive as possible, than fuck it gens 1-8. I certainly won't complain as a spectator. But stour gens just seen better for a competitive tour, plus it's doesn't require a format change or the nuking of rby when a new gen comes out.
 
Why just now, out of the absolute nowhere, are you trying to revive POWC for a smogon edition? LOL lower tiers dont belong to WCOP please, dont even try, its almost as bad as considering RBY again.

Anyway, I think nobody ever thought about it, but team tournaments arent (and actually shouldnt be) inclusive, specially WCOP with all the regions limitations and teams being historically great no matter the format. In the end, we want the best group to win and its the main shit behind WCOP, you try as much as you can for the people you like the most and your coutry. Also, the main argument in defense of full CG OU is how it forces the team to put their shit together and go for the same direction in the most popular metagame of the moment, while when arguing against it, people bring up the fact that we got too many slots for it and have so many games to be played in a same metagame. All things considered, I believe we could think about a balance in both senses and limit the starting slots to 6 instead of 8. Its a great number to have for enough games in a team tournament, we keep the tie break factor and have the best of their regions starting. Itd increase the level of almost (if not all) the teams, will have a more balanced tournament and play less of a single metagame, while ultimately, keeping all the pros that a full CG OU tournament inevitably can bring.

If you ignore my idea (which is prob gonna happen), just please, DONT MAKE ANOTHER FORMAT WITH RBY, NOBODY STANDS THIS GEN ANYMORE BUT THE SOULESS PEOPLE THAT CLICK ON IT. Let this atrocity die for the sake of our mental heathness.
 

Heroic Troller

Through the Sea of Time
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I mean watching you play and throw game after game in cg ou isn't any better for mental healthness of teammates you know?
By the way i think full cg ou/stours tiers is the way to go, having good/great old gen players sharing country sucks+the tiers have smaller playerbases already, this might be the worst tour of all to have old gens in. And as people said learning cg ou should be the easiest to pick up for starters being the most active tier and all.
 
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If every tournament includes old gens, you’re gate keeping competitive tournaments from potentially strong new players that don’t want to learn the boomer formats from the early 2000s. You’re also going to just have the same players in every tournament, which is exactly how the tournament scene is going to die, since people know there won’t be a shot playing since there’s a guaranteed slot that’s just not going to be available because that team has Ojama or BKC or etc. One team tournament has to be all current gen to garner in fresh blood
 

elodin

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If every tournament includes old gens, you’re gate keeping competitive tournaments from potentially strong new players that don’t want to learn the boomer formats from the early 2000s. You’re also going to just have the same players in every tournament, which is exactly how the tournament scene is going to die, since people know there won’t be a shot playing since there’s a guaranteed slot that’s just not going to be available because that team has Ojama or BKC or etc. One team tournament has to be all current gen to garner in fresh blood
reading posts like this in this thread is starting to get seriously annoying. it's like people don't even bother to read what's being said and just come in to spew random statements with no basis whatsoever. z0mog's first post, which sparked this discussion to begin with, made it clear why a full cg ou wcop is not doing this at all. it is not "garnering in fresh blood" whatsoever. signups are on an all time low and people have no interest in following the tournament anymore. as z0mog stated multiple days ago:
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.
also i don't know why people are pushing for keeping old gens out of wcop when the tournament has had success in the past with this format already. some of the most entertaining editions of the tournament actually had old gens, like 2017 and 2019. if this is about evening out the inclusion of low tiers with old gens in the official tournament circuit, then it makes much more sense to put low tiers back in spl and revisiting that tournament's format later this year instead, because low tiers actually used to be a part of spl until extremely recently. wcop, on the other hand, has never had any low tiers before, adding them now would feel extremely out of place and the reasoning behind it doesn't even make sense considering there's already scl and slam for low tiers (other than tournaments outside the official circuit), and we can revisit spl's format if they want to be perfectly even with old gens or whatever.

as far as the argument goes for making wcop full cg ou because it supposedly brings in new players to the tournament scene, z0mog already proved this to be extremely false, in fact he proved a full cg ou wcop has had the direct opposite effect.

as to the whole point about "some teams don't have good old gens players and this format would be unfair" or whatever... this is literally the dumbest shit i've ever read. the same logic can be applied to literally any format whatsoever. people talk as if you can make a tournament full cg ou and suddenly every team is gonna be able to find 8 beatifuls in the depths of the web to play for them. like i said before, this tournament used to work extremely well with old gens in the past, it was competitive and every team that wanted to compete was able to. yes, sometimes your team would be stronger in a given format, like italy with full cg ou, but that doesn't mean they are fucking unable to put punny in sm, empo in oras, raiza in bw, pietro in dpp and prinz in adv and be a fucking solid team nonetheless. arguing that teams would be unable to find players to fill in the old gen slots is such a stretch that i don't even think it warrants a response. literally just look into the threads of wcop from 2017 til 2019 or whenever we had old gens and you'll see literally every team was able to find players for ALL OLD GENS. my suggested format is even excluding gsc and rby, which makes this even more of a non-issue.
 

Plague von Karma

Banned deucer.
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 don't want to go too deep into this as I otherwise agree with every point made by elodin so far, but I want to point out that RBY's playerbase has exploded since 2019 and is a largely cosmopolitain community. In fact, the Discord server is among the largest of Smogon's Old Gen servers already, and before the old one was removed, it was pushing 500 with incredibly active discussion. Even with the new server up, as you'll see here, it's quickly recovered:
1646320498830.png

While this doesn't show tournament representation, I want to demonstrate that it is popular; you see top players and newbies alike talking in here and people who try to get good tend to reach the intermediate level quickly. There are players from all across Europe, multiple US regions, and Asia, and I don't think it would be difficult for teams to find someone who is at least competent if it were to be included. In regards to tournament representation, well, there's a ton of tournaments coming up now and even the top-level competitors have cited that we're approaching a second golden age in this regard.

I guess I could give some examples...
Canada: Shellnuts, Genesis7
Asia: Torchic, Unowndragon, definitely more
France: Zokuru (would probably be GSC), Oiseau Bleu, Frrf, LaPatateDouce, this one has a decently sized sub-community from what I remember
Germany: FOMG (would also probably be GSC?), Lusch, Serpi
Italy: Amaranth, The Quasar, Heroic Troller
Oceania: Hipmonlee (tends to be busy), Ortheore
UK: Me, I guess there's Diophantine if you want to push it
Benelux: kjdaas (I think?)
Europe: MetalGro$$

This is off the top of my head, like, within 5 minutes of thinking. Can't be bothered to narrow down US regions right now because it makes my head hurt, but I know there's Enigami, Nails, and emma at the very least. There's a lot of these people and they're absolutely all capable of making for a very competitive slot. If I recall correctly, RBYers were always excited for WCoP before it was cut? In my time "lording over the generation" I think I actually found it difficult to find a country that didn't have an RBYer worth their salt, I believe the only notable issue was Brazil, but I think Tiba played for them before? roudolf being banned would be bad for Greece, though I believe Christos may end up coming back for it.

I'm not sure how GSC fares, but I think RBY is fine. I haven't gone out to look at recent signups stats or anything as I'm not entirely invested in the conversation, but I do want to at least clear the air here. I think full old gens is worth at least entertaining.

EDIT: Was told Benelux hasn't been in WCoP for a while and it's either Belgium or Netherlands, so there's that. Also, Aliss would play for either Europe or Netherlands as well, likely over or alongside kj, I believe. There's also Hayburner for Canada, and Maya Chansey for US West.

Other people who've come to me in DMs or otherwise been mentioned
  • Davy Green, Netherlands
  • Tomahawk, would likely play DPP I think?
  • HSOWA, UK
  • Donut, US South
  • Excal, US NE, although may play other tiers?
  • ausma put her name in
  • Chuva, Spain
  • Kenix, Spain, may play GSC
  • Koalacancee, France
 
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If past generations are to return, it's only fair they all return. The idea to permanently remove an old generation & its dedicated community from the tournament only makes sense because some compromise is necessary in order to achieve the necessary balance between CG and old gen slots. Granted, the proposal to have SS OU x5 + SM + ORAS + BW + DPP + ADV didn't receive much backlash, but I think that's mainly because GSC & RBY happen to be less popular. I can already picture the PR thread about the revision of the tournament's format next year when ADV will be the one about to be removed... However, I do acknowledge that some compromise is necessary, so I have a proposal of my own: let's not seek for balance within a single edition of the tour, but do it long-term. We could have WCoP be CG OU x8-10 the for the edition right after the release of a new generation (when the players are most excited for the tier and to help develop it) and adopt SPL's current format for every other edition. This way, the tournament maintains a strong CG identity long-term and doesn't completely exclude any OU community either.
 

MANNAT

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TDK's post has the best format proposed in this thread by far, most of the other options proposed just don't seem very thought through. Keeping in mind that this is a CG OU focused tour, any format that has more non-CG slots than CG slots is worse by default. While this disqualifies any format with all of gens 1-7, I think that elodin's format is a good compromise if you're willing to die on the hill that lower tiers cannot be in this tour.

However, I would mostly like to focus on the pitfalls that come with the Smogon Tour format. The 4/2/2 proposal seems to be an attempt to compromise between competitiveness and variety but doesn't actually do it properly. It has multiple slots for non-CG OU tiers, which results in an over saturation of players in pools that many teams are going to struggle to field players for, as interest in SM OU and ORAS OU is considerably lower for slots that would only have half the quantity in this proposed format. Not only that, but these tiers aren't really so much different from SS OU that we'd get the variety we covet like SS NU or ADV OU would for example. Please do not adopt this format, it's easily the worst one proposed in this entire thread.
 

Zokuru

The Stall Lord
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This is a post stating why, in my opinion, Oldgens should come back in World Cup.

I] Multiple formats in the tournament makes it more fun for both players and spectators.

The first thing to say is that not everyone plays or is interested about CG OU to the point to watch a CG OU only tournament, especially with 8 TO 10 SLOTS featuring only this one tier. However, a lot of people don't actually play every oldgens but love to watch high level games, and even have players they like to watch games from. Before the CG-only switch Wcop was a very popular tournament, featuring everyone's favorite players and OU Tier, and it was a great show for everyone to see.

II] World Cup spirit is, in my opinion, the one of a festival showing the legacy of Smogon.

Let me explain this point; I don't know if other people share my view on this but I always saw World Cup as this tournament where the best old players would come back and play great Pokemon for their country, and even when they don't come back, we still have that celebration of Smogon's past formats, being a newer player you still want to be up to the task of playing in the slot others great have played on before. A lot of team have an history, and World Cup itself has an history, and every single year there's story telling because the same players come back again and again to play the tournament, which is why it's so enjoyable. Everyone knows Italy RBY will be very good, or Greece has gen 2 and 3 as their forte. We get a look at the past players confrontations, see if the new name on German roster will be as good as the previous ones, and that's what makes it a great tournament. Without those oldgens we just had less good games, teams having to slot their 5-8th best CG OU players instead of their best particuliar OG player and the metagame being more changeful in CG which may sometimes lead to some MU problems. The crux of this point as been seen in Zomog's numbers above.

III] Less and less people play CG OU

Indeed. This shocked me too but I have numbers to back it up :






Those are numbers for May ( Choosen completely randomly, I don't have the will to dig up for every month and do a wall of stat, you can do it if you want but I feel like those numbers are already pretty convincing, avoid OLT months tho ) of each year since 2016, we can see the massive drop of players for gen 8,. As a reminder, SS launched in November 2019, and lost a huge amount of players, even tought it should've benefited from the the pandemic. ( Note that SM launch lost a lot of players too but got a lot of them back in under a year. The reason for that is, in part, that people who loved SM / ORAS just sticked to it, and didn't see the need to play SS, and there would probably be the same with the future gen 9. We have seen a lot of DPP player stick to DPP when BW came out, same with BW when ORAS came, it's nothing new.

IV] "OK, that's fine and all but how does it not apply to Lowtiers too ?"

That is, indeed, a valid and interesting question. As I said prior in this post, World Cup has an aura of legacy, bringing back the great from the past, or seeing if the newcomers can be as good. On the other hand, lowtiers are a current gen thing, therefore there is no legacy for them. World Cup is also a tournament where you need to have a lively community to have a good team, and that's also why CG OU is so important in it and has multiple tiers. It's obvious to me that this tournament is geared toward OU, it's the king of tiers as they say, and this tournament wants to see the best of what country can produce in every one of the OU. The difference resides in the fact that a lot of non-DPP players want to see a Tamahome vs August game, and a lot of non ADV players will come on smogtours at the scheduled time to watch Ojama vs BKC, lowtiers mainers just don't have the same appeal, not that they are bad, but you can't make people care about it, you already can't make them care about full SS OU.

Conclusion : Go back to 1 of each Oldgens in WorldCup, and depending on if you want an odd or even number of slot add 3 or 4 CG OU, this will make the number of slot slowly rise over the years, but the community should grow with the number of slots so this shouldn't be a problem.

I hope I said everything I wanted to say, will edit if I forgot something. I wish a nice day to everyone who has read everything !
 
reading posts like this in this thread is starting to get seriously annoying. it's like people don't even bother to read what's being said and just come in to spew random statements with no basis whatsoever. z0mog's first post, which sparked this discussion to begin with, made it clear why a full cg ou wcop is not doing this at all. it is not "garnering in fresh blood" whatsoever. signups are on an all time low and people have no interest in following the tournament anymore. as z0mog stated multiple days ago:

as far as the argument goes for making wcop full cg ou because it supposedly brings in new players to the tournament scene, z0mog already proved this to be extremely false, in fact he proved a full cg ou wcop has had the direct opposite effect.
Alright wasn't going to post but now I'm just annoyed.

Zomogs initial post is fucking awful. The fact you dont feel the need to critique it just showcases an extreme agenda push on your behalf. Ill respond to a couple of snippets here about the zomog stuff then the others after.

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.
Here is why this is flawed. Firstly you include 2017 in your post despite admitting that data isnt remotely as accurate as proceeding years. It should be discounted for that reason alone, yet for the purpose of your post you kept it in so you had a nice bold 1/3rd figure in it with a massive sample so you could say its portray it as fair to use. On the proceeding years, the data here is purely just number of posts in the thread considering we have no actual signups sheets created for WCOP. It has no quantifiable data regarding what tiers were signed or regions they signed up for. If someone has the capabilities to run a script that captures this data for past signups threads I'd love to see it. We can then compare the growth of CG OU tier signups from 2018-2021 and finally put to bed whether it does in fact bleed in new talent and tournament signups.

But wait!

We also have qualifiers now, which despite not counting towards sheet wins, are most definitely apart of WCOP signups data. The data from 2020 and 2021 gleefully rejects the notion that these should be included. Further made laughable when considering 2019 signups included the qualifying teams signups. With this in mind, these are what the signup figures actually are:

2018 - 634
2019 - 585
2020 - 483 (356 Regular, 127 Qualifiers)
2021 - 506 (300 Regular, 206 Qualifiers)

With this data alone you can in fact see WCOP interest is not waning. This is an extremely bad faith argument. This thread should not have been reopened in attempt to change the staus quo if this was the leading argument. If someone could break down the tier signups from previous tours, and look at unique signups from Old Gen WCOP that did not sign up for the CG WCOP I'm sure it will more than make up the difference between the 2018/2019 signup sample and the 2020/2021 sample. One last note of mention would be that arguments from last year regarding 2020 OU being extremely volatile and a first instance of the tier still remain true. Its a small sample, we actively grew the year after, DLC drops wreaked havoc on the tier at large and CG OU tiering practices have improved greatly since then. If this is the fundamental argument of change its blatantly false. ABR has since changed his stance from his first post on the number of tiers but at least his argument of "its boring" is just subjective drivel and not blatant falsehood.


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.

*insert stupid form here*

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)
As for this survey I have no idea why its still live or being used as an influence for any decision making. Its actively propagating poor data that pushes agendas and can influence anyone on the fence about this decision. It has no verification method of who is filling the form in and thus people can blatantly lie in it. Publicity of threads like these happen mostly in OU centric discord servers also. There is lies, damned lies, and flaming statistics! Data depends who you survey and the sample pool of users actually filling in this server just isn't really good enough. If it is a majority of users who are active within the Smogon Tournaments server that eliminates most lower tier mains from discussion. The active participants within the smogtour server are also largely geriatric users who main old gens and do not play CG in any serious competitive way. The post should just be deleted from the thread. The data shows nothing of value to anyone who is serious about doing what is objectively the correct decision.

also i don't know why people are pushing for keeping old gens out of wcop when the tournament has had success in the past with this format already. some of the most entertaining editions of the tournament actually had old gens, like 2017 and 2019. if this is about evening out the inclusion of low tiers with old gens in the official tournament circuit, then it makes much more sense to put low tiers back in spl and revisiting that tournament's format later this year instead, because low tiers actually used to be a part of spl until extremely recently. wcop, on the other hand, has never had any low tiers before, adding them now would feel extremely out of place and the reasoning behind it doesn't even make sense considering there's already scl and slam for low tiers (other than tournaments outside the official circuit), and we can revisit spl's format if they want to be perfectly even with old gens or whatever.

as to the whole point about "some teams don't have good old gens players and this format would be unfair" or whatever... this is literally the dumbest shit i've ever read. the same logic can be applied to literally any format whatsoever. people talk as if you can make a tournament full cg ou and suddenly every team is gonna be able to find 8 beatifuls in the depths of the web to play for them. like i said before, this tournament used to work extremely well with old gens in the past, it was competitive and every team that wanted to compete was able to. yes, sometimes your team would be stronger in a given format, like italy with full cg ou, but that doesn't mean they are fucking unable to put punny in sm, empo in oras, raiza in bw, pietro in dpp and prinz in adv and be a fucking solid team nonetheless. arguing that teams would be unable to find players to fill in the old gen slots is such a stretch that i don't even think it warrants a response. literally just look into the threads of wcop from 2017 til 2019 or whenever we had old gens and you'll see literally every team was able to find players for ALL OLD GENS. my suggested format is even excluding gsc and rby, which makes this even more of a non-issue.
I'll use these as a platform to summarize my response to these arguments as a whole not just from yourself, considering it is largely the same issue across the board people need to have.

CG OU significantly raises the floor of this tours quality by a large margin. It doesn't really effect the ceiling as much but remains a relevant raise. LA is an extreme example of a ceiling team raiser with CG OU. In a CG format they are dark horses in a playoffs race that can field a very strong lineup on paper. In an old gens format their best player is Raichy for most of those gens. Make of that what you will.

Germany would still be able to field a strong older generation lineup but I doubt anyone would argue that their ceiling isn't significantly higher with their track record in both editions of all CG so far.

The Italy example you gave is actually a perfect example of why it doesn't work. Empo has previously said he would rather lose a tour than tiebreak in ORAS so they would have to go and revive Bro Kappa to play ORAS. Pietro is currently the leading cause of creating undefeated records for his opponents in SPLXIII. Prinz is actually the exact type of player starting that proves the point of all pro CG arguments. You have users trying to click moves with their arthritic fingers playing in a tour that's supposed to be by design CG focused, gate keeping new talent from entering the tournament scene. This also prevents you from unearthing the next best old gen player by the way. Earthworm being called to arms for the 60th time since he fought alongside Julius Caesar isn't going to help False's development in GSC or France accepting Ojama in the biggest retreat the French will have pulled since Napoleon left Russia upon Ojamas advice won't help identify any new and exciting French ADV players. Finding players for old gens isn't really what we should be striving for in an inherently flawed geographically based tour. We should be trying to make it competitive. The answer to that is CG or newer gens. Interest is not dwindling as falsely stated, the old gen propoganda machine really needs to find some actual data to support their argument cause its getting tiresome hearing people state opinions as fact.

As for lower tiers, the arguments against them seems elitist and based on "history" which is obviously going to favor generations that were developed when Stone Cold was celebrating the birth of his great grand children. The ones referencing the issues with tiering are reasonable but practices regarding tiering have sped up to a great degree and shouldn't be an issue within certain formats coming the summer of a post new generation release.

If we want to be ~objective~ the clear answer is to keep the 8 CG OU format. SS OU is a good tier, but not the greatest from a spectator perspective as teams the tier is filled with some not-so-fun Pokemon and teams usually end up featuring the same core with some different supporting members. The desire to want to change the format from this due to having simply too many of one slot leading to a less than entertaining tournament is very understandable, but most of the proposals here are very poor and simply biased towards what the individual wants.

3 CG OU + 7 Old Gens should not be an option. Why would we have WCoP be the exact same format as SPL? WCoP was made all CG OU to "justify" removing Lower Tiers from SPL in its entirety; SPL was made for Old Gens, SCL for Lower Tiers, and WCoP only for CG OU. This is the logic that was used to change the formats. Now people want to go back on that which is basically a giant middle finger to Lower Tier players simply because a bunch of people who prefer to play old gens are voting it in for their own sake. The tournament's focus should be CG OU, and as elodin said, anything less than half the slots being CG OU is a bad format and shouldn't be considered.

I don't see why people are so against the inclusion of Lower Tiers in this tournament. No ones campaigning to expand the tournament to be huge and add all of them. Personally, I'd like to piggyback off of elodin's idea; 5 CG OU, 1 of the other two STour Tiers, and 3 lower tiers. The vast majority of regions will be able to field players for tiers such as UU far easier than any old generation; the UU community is filled with great players and is easily accessible to non-mains. Just take a look at people like Poek and SoulWind having frequent success in UU Open and SCL in the tier. Old generation communities cannot do the same; old generation OUs do not have the same resources or accessibility for someone trying to pick the tier up that lower tiers have. And every WCoP, some non-main will pick up a tier to play it for their country / region, so this is a very important thing.

I believe this format has very easy "future proofing" that people believe to be important. Like SG said, lower tiers change at the start of the generation, but UU in particular is 100% going to be playable by summer time if the generation has a November release. I cannot speak the same for RU-PU, but tiers generally are much quicker to be ready than in the past. RU was in a pretty playable state during the Spring after SS release.

I do not like the idea of a rotating format. I think changing things up every year is really awkward and leads to no sense of team continuity, which is the biggest factor there is for WCoP, to me.

Having a format such as 5 SS OU / 1 SM OU / 1 ORAS OU / 1 UU / 1 RU / 1 NU would be an easy solution that can satisfy the desire to change while still giving a focus for CG OU. RU/NU could also be replaced if the fear of not being ready upon release of a new generation, but these 3 are very simple and the most "OU like" tiers there are. This format also doesn't give room for any kind of change to SPL format to re-include lower tiers, which were removed under the premise that WCoP was CG only, no old gens.

The options should be between keeping the tournament all CG OU, elodin's proposal (5 CG OU / 1 of each of 7-3 OUs), and 5 CG OU / 1 of the two other STour Tiers / 1 CG UU / 1 CG RU / 1 CG NU (with RU/NU subject to change).
Personally believe this to be the most amenable solution if the tour is to be changed. It keeps the smogtour tiers to one slot outside of SS OU to prevent over-saturation which will come with an 2 slots of ORAS or SM, and it keeps the tour CG focused, while compromising and incorporating two older generations and lower tiers. This is the only format that actually addresses everyone's issue with this tour (The fact no old gen is in it, that you cant just fuck over lower tiers for no reason and all SS OU is boring).

If the above format isn't to everyone's liking just keep it all CG. Literally the only argument against it is "its boring" and that's a pretty subjective argument, probably not enough for a whole ass thread to debate on the format for three pages.

Also on Zokorus stats considering he posted as I typed this out, that sample of CG player data is more than enough to accommodate an all CG WCOP and is just ladder stats. That's just a general decline of games that's been cherry picked to show only CG OU data. He then makes the utterly asinine historical argument that people love to perpetuate. The likely best series that has happened in the past 12 months as far as smogtours engagement was Lusa vs Gama in smogtour finals and it definitely did not have anything older than gen 6.
 
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z0mOG

is a Top Tiering Contributoris a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis the Smogon Tour Season 26 Championis a defending SCL Championis a Past WCoP Champion
DPL Champion
Here is why this is flawed. Firstly you include 2017 in your post despite admitting that data isnt remotely as accurate as proceeding years. It should be discounted for that reason alone, yet for the purpose of your post you kept it in so you had a nice bold 1/3rd figure in it with a massive sample so you could say its portray it as fair to use. On the proceeding years, the data here is purely just number of posts in the thread considering we have no actual signups sheets created for WCOP. It has no quantifiable data regarding what tiers were signed or regions they signed up for. If someone has the capabilities to run a script that captures this data for past signups threads I'd love to see it. We can then compare the growth of CG OU tier signups from 2018-2021 and finally put to bed whether it does in fact bleed in new talent and tournament signups.
Okay. I went through the 2017 thread and hand-counted the amount of bonus posts that aren't signups and got roughly 60-70, with a few being hard to distinguish. The number still begins with 900. Excellent debunk, you made me spend 3 minutes of my time.

Yes, having qualifiers does increase signups... because the players did not have teams to sign up with the intention of making in years prior to teams such as Argentina or Benelux being included. If we are weighing qualifying signups the same... then signup numbers should be skyrocketing with 24 teams to choose from, in comparison to years where we had 16-18. The numbers are still overall DECREASING!

As for this survey I have no idea why its still live or being used as an influence for any decision making. Its actively propagating poor data that pushes agendas and can influence anyone on the fence about this decision. It has no verification method of who is filling the form in and thus people can blatantly lie in it. Publicity of threads like these happen mostly in OU centric discord servers also. There is lies, damned lies, and flaming statistics! Data depends who you survey and the sample pool of users actually filling in this server just isn't really good enough. If it is a majority of users who are active within the Smogon Tournaments server that eliminates most lower tier mains from discussion. The active participants within the smogtour server are also largely geriatric users who main old gens and do not play CG in any serious competitive way. The post should just be deleted from the thread. The data shows nothing of value to anyone who is serious about doing what is objectively the correct decision.
"Its actively propagating poor data that pushes agendas and can influence anyone on the fence about this decision."
A) Why should people on the fence not be influenced? What use does somebody without an opinion bring anyway?
"It has no verification method of who is filling the form in and thus people can blatantly lie in it."
B) Responses are IP locked. Voting with a troll or fake response is just losing a vote. Any responses from duplicate names have their responses verified with the user in question through discord or smogon. Any obviously fishy responses, or joke responses, such as Ciele clamoring for all CG OU, can also be verified through discord and deleted if necessary. Do you really believe a conspiracy towards pushing for old gens is more so the case than people just actually wanting old gens?
"Data depends who you survey and the sample pool of users actually filling in this server just isn't really good enough. If it is a majority of users who are active within the Smogon Tournaments server that eliminates most lower tier mains from discussion."
C) Yes, data depends on who you survey. That is why there is a question asking in what capacity the responder has participated in past WCoPs. This gives the TDs the option to compare how the stats pan out for the userbase as a whole, or just the wcop userbase.
D) The pool of users being sampled is... anyone who is looking at Smogon. Are you not looking at where this discussion is happening? The google form was posted in THIS smogon thread. Why is the smogon tournaments server even being brought up? Even using that as a counter-argument... if lower tier mains aren't active in the server then is that not implicative of lower tier players activity on Smogon in general?
"The active participants within the smogtour server are also largely geriatric users who main old gens and do not play CG in any serious competitive way."
E) Good. I would hope we can then cater to the people who actively care about smogon tournaments. If CG OU mains care enough to have their format defended then they have all the mediums to do so... this thread, smogtours discord, the survey. The lack of active participation from non-"geriatric" CG and lower tier players is if anything just reflecting that the amount of support for these formats doesn't compare to old gens. Believe it or not there is actually not an age requirement to post in smogtours like you seem to be thinking.
"The data shows nothing of value to anyone who is serious about doing what is objectively the correct decision."
F) Why is catering to the "objectively correct" (as if you could even begin to qualify it) decision better than the subjectively correct decision? The entire thread was brought up under a subjective premise (boring). A survey is used to obtain subjective data. The only reason you could argue the data shows noting of value is because it goes against your personal opinion.



Anyone who has asked me to see the survey results has been provided an uneditable link to the spreadsheet. Not only that, but do you think the TDs who have editing access to the spreadsheet also intend on cheating it to kill democracy?

The fact that you have to go out of your way to throw in words like "stupid", "laughable", and edit my form out of your response points to me that you actually know how faulty your "argument" is, and can only use ad hominem in an otherwise civil thread.
 
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The survey should be completely thrown out given it:
  • does not represent the format proposed by TDK that was made after the survey
  • does not represent the format proposed by elodin that was made after the survey
  • does not represent lower tier formats AT ALL other than my proposed rotating format (which is admittedly an awkward idea, attempting to compromise.
It is also clear that the discussion has accelerated since the initial posts by ABR and z0mOG. There was a motivated push by old generation players early on that dictated the discussion, but now opinions have become more diverse. As someone who loves this tournament, I really appreciate the excitement and good effort guys, but perhaps it is best to wait for TDs to do things like this.

I do not understand why people are getting worked up over the amount of signups. Team tournaments are exclusive. There is a limited number of spots. Why does the number of signups matter whatsoever? I don't think the quality of signups has gone down, even if the number of total signups has.

The current WCoP format may have lower signups, but it has a higher number of competitive teams. Due to having 8 slots instead of 10 and the accessibility of all CG OU, smaller regions have been able to show up much more effectively than ever before. We have also seen an increase in the number of teams playing in qualifiers, indicating growth.

Let's be honest with our motives here. We are not aiming to make WCoP more competitive by changing the format - we are aiming to make it more fun. The 8x CG OU format is as competitive as we can get, realistically. Still, tournaments on Smogon should be about finding that right balance between fun and good competition. That is why we are making the change.

On that note, I really love TDK's proposal, though I would personally make it 3 SS + 1 each of SM ORAS UU RU NU. Despite what the members of absolutely massive regions might say, 10 slots is pretty tough to fill for smaller teams. I think most captains of smaller teams would agree with this. For us, there is a big difference in filling those 2 extra slots compared to bigger regions. Also, given we are making this change ~2 months before the tournament, it's preferable to not increase the number of slots so much. Sure, for a big region it's easy to scout out the additional players, but most other teams gotta get creative on our rosters as-is, let alone when you add 2 more slots.

This format is reasonably fair for tier representation, and it shakes things up enough while focusing on adding some of the most accessible metagames on the site to the mix.
 
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New serious proposal: 7 SS OU + VGC

We need new players in smogon and that's the best idea to do that, I dont see why formats like RBY, GSC or Adv should have 2 team tours + 1 individual tour when they're 10+ years old. No reasons to include lower tiers too, we already have slam+scl

Dw you'll be easily find a good VGC player for your team, there are plenty of them around the world.

If you are boring you can go with 8 SS OU

chaos smogon would work so much better if we could include VGC somewhere in tours. I wanna remember you (and to everyone) that earlier this year we had a VGC a tour and it had 700+ signups. Can we add vgc to wcop and scl?
 
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Okay. I went through the 2017 thread and hand-counted the amount of bonus posts that aren't signups and got roughly 60-70, with a few being hard to distinguish. The number still begins with 900. Excellent debunk, you made me spend 3 minutes of my time.

Yes, having qualifiers does increase signups... because the players did not have teams to sign up with the intention of making in years prior to teams such as Argentina or Benelux being included. If we are weighing qualifying signups the same... then signup numbers should be skyrocketing with 24 teams to choose from, in comparison to years where we had 16-18. The numbers are still overall DECREASING!



"Its actively propagating poor data that pushes agendas and can influence anyone on the fence about this decision."
A) Why should people on the fence not be influenced? What use does somebody without an opinion bring anyway?
"It has no verification method of who is filling the form in and thus people can blatantly lie in it."
B) Responses are IP locked. Voting with a troll or fake response is just losing a vote. Any responses from duplicate names have their responses verified with the user in question through discord or smogon. Any obviously fishy responses, or joke responses, such as Ciele clamoring for all CG OU, can also be verified through discord and deleted if necessary. Do you really believe a conspiracy towards pushing for old gens is more so the case than people just actually wanting old gens?
"Data depends who you survey and the sample pool of users actually filling in this server just isn't really good enough. If it is a majority of users who are active within the Smogon Tournaments server that eliminates most lower tier mains from discussion."
C) Yes, data depends on who you survey. That is why there is a question asking in what capacity the responder has participated in past WCoPs. This gives the TDs the option to compare how the stats pan out for the userbase as a whole, or just the wcop userbase.
D) The pool of users being sampled is... anyone who is looking at Smogon. Are you not looking at where this discussion is happening? The google form was posted in THIS smogon thread. Why is the smogon tournaments server even being brought up? Even using that as a counter-argument... if lower tier mains aren't active in the server then is that not implicative of lower tier players activity on Smogon in general?
"The active participants within the smogtour server are also largely geriatric users who main old gens and do not play CG in any serious competitive way."
E) Good. I would hope we can then cater to the people who actively care about smogon tournaments. If CG OU mains care enough to have their format defended then they have all the mediums to do so... this thread, smogtours discord, the survey. The lack of active participation from non-"geriatric" CG and lower tier players is if anything just reflecting that the amount of support for these formats doesn't compare to old gens. Believe it or not there is actually not an age requirement to post in smogtours like you seem to be thinking.
"The data shows nothing of value to anyone who is serious about doing what is objectively the correct decision."
F) Why is catering to the "objectively correct" (as if you could even begin to qualify it) decision better than the subjectively correct decision? The entire thread was brought up under a subjective premise (boring). A survey is used to obtain subjective data. The only reason you could argue the data shows noting of value is because it goes against your personal opinion.



Anyone who has asked me to see the survey results has been provided an uneditable link to the spreadsheet. Not only that, but do you think the TDs who have editing access to the spreadsheet also intend on cheating it to kill democracy?

The fact that you have to go out of your way to throw in words like "stupid", "laughable", and edit my form out of your response points to me that you actually know how faulty your "argument" is, and can only use ad hominem in an otherwise civil thread.
Ill just quickly respond before I go out because you don't really understand data gathering or analytics.


Okay. I went through the 2017 thread and hand-counted the amount of bonus posts that aren't signups and got roughly 60-70, with a few being hard to distinguish. The number still begins with 900. Excellent debunk, you made me spend 3 minutes of my time.

Yes, having qualifiers does increase signups... because the players did not have teams to sign up with the intention of making in years prior to teams such as Argentina or Benelux being included. If we are weighing qualifying signups the same... then signup numbers should be skyrocketing with 24 teams to choose from, in comparison to years where we had 16-18. The numbers are still overall DECREASING!
I trusted your intuition with regards to 2017 and shouldn't have my bad! Thats entirely fair to criticize me for that. What happened in 2017 that caused it to be such an outlier in terms of signups though is what the question is from that data when its included. Does it follow previous years signups trends or is it an anomaly. Why did it suddenly drop in 2018 by 300 but all other year remain consistent? Removing it from the data set is still preferable hear if you don't want to do a macro-analysis of WCOP signup trends since like 2012? 10 years would probably be a fair data set. In this micro-analysis 2017 is an anomaly not a norm. It holds no meaning. I can go back and look at other years if you want or you can but the point remains that 2017 is bad data to go off of for these purposes.

WCOP teams are not SPL/SCL teams. These players grow their communities throughout the year with the intention of competing with their friends. When said teams are eliminated from qualifiers these players do not sign up on mass for the continental teams or other teams they are eligible for due to factors such as being team locked the following year or not feeling connected to their larger team counterparts. An example of this for 2022 edition will likely be Team Chile if they go ahead who have an abundance of players available to play for LA but may not due to wanting to support and foster their communities further. This reduces signups for non qualifying and takes away signups from the original 18 teams. They all count. Signups shouldn't be increasing, we diluted them.

You also included qualifier team signups for you 2019 figures.


"Its actively propagating poor data that pushes agendas and can influence anyone on the fence about this decision."
A) Why should people on the fence not be influenced? What use does somebody without an opinion bring anyway?
"It has no verification method of who is filling the form in and thus people can blatantly lie in it."
B) Responses are IP locked. Voting with a troll or fake response is just losing a vote. Any responses from duplicate names have their responses verified with the user in question through discord or smogon. Any obviously fishy responses, or joke responses, such as Ciele clamoring for all CG OU, can also be verified through discord and deleted if necessary. Do you really believe a conspiracy towards pushing for old gens is more so the case than people just actually wanting old gens?
"Data depends who you survey and the sample pool of users actually filling in this server just isn't really good enough. If it is a majority of users who are active within the Smogon Tournaments server that eliminates most lower tier mains from discussion."
C) Yes, data depends on who you survey. That is why there is a question asking in what capacity the responder has participated in past WCoPs. This gives the TDs the option to compare how the stats pan out for the userbase as a whole, or just the wcop userbase.
D) The pool of users being sampled is... anyone who is looking at Smogon. Are you not looking at where this discussion is happening? The google form was posted in THIS smogon thread. Why is the smogon tournaments server even being brought up? Even using that as a counter-argument... if lower tier mains aren't active in the server then is that not implicative of lower tier players activity on Smogon in general?
"The active participants within the smogtour server are also largely geriatric users who main old gens and do not play CG in any serious competitive way."
E) Good. I would hope we can then cater to the people who actively care about smogon tournaments. If CG OU mains care enough to have their format defended then they have all the mediums to do so... this thread, smogtours discord, the survey. The lack of active participation from non-"geriatric" CG and lower tier players is if anything just reflecting that the amount of support for these formats doesn't compare to old gens. Believe it or not there is actually not an age requirement to post in smogtours like you seem to be thinking.
"The data shows nothing of value to anyone who is serious about doing what is objectively the correct decision."
F) Why is catering to the "objectively correct" (as if you could even begin to qualify it) decision better than the subjectively correct decision? The entire thread was brought up under a subjective premise (boring). A survey is used to obtain subjective data. The only reason you could argue the data shows noting of value is because it goes against your personal opinion.



Anyone who has asked me to see the survey results has been provided an uneditable link to the spreadsheet. Not only that, but do you think the TDs who have editing access to the spreadsheet also intend on cheating it to kill democracy?

The fact that you have to go out of your way to throw in words like "stupid", "laughable", and edit my form out of your response points to me that you actually know how faulty your "argument" is, and can only use ad hominem in an otherwise civil thread.
A) People can have opinions and be on the fence, its actually something Finchinator has mastered. The reason you don't want to influence people in this scenario is due to how the data is interpreted through the gathering process. By making results publicly available you begin to eliminate options based on probability. People don't vote for their preferred choice if they have no chance of winning, they vote for their second best option. This skews results in favour of those who voted early, in this instance the CG OU votes werebeing outpaced by both Smogtours and Old gens for this survey by significant enough of an amount to dissuade people from picking preferred options.

B) I dont think its a conspiracy but Finch who is a TD openly mentioned the fact the surveys abusable via lying. If a TD who has access to said survey says this I am inclined to believe them.

C) Thats a leading question, saying I have not played WCOP automatically devalues the opinion in a black and white survey format. Discounting the opinion of those who play lower tiers.

D) Its not implicative of lower tier activity no. That is a leading question. Smogon Tournaments server gets brought up as its where most of the off-site debating occurs on this topic. Its where the form gets posted and the updates are posted whenever anyone asks. Im sure other tier discuss it within their communities but the Smogon Tournaments discord is ou centric and thats just a fact is relevant when you compare where this survey goes.

E) Other communities care about this. Your data is bad for this survey dude. You cant have non blind votes. Even simple poll creators online wont tell you the result until you've posted. Catering to older generations doesn't foster growth. That is the point I am making regards to age and my jokes about EW and Ojama. Points that are made later in my post after the survey.

F) Objectively correct doesn't interpret the feelings of people. Subjective is just opinion shouting. I also later said you can feel free to subjectively argue all you want and even support TDK's which is a subjective argument that compromises. Data however, has to be objective, this survey was an exercise in nonsense.

Threads never been civil nor has the discord, Elodin literally attacked style dota using faulty arguments. The form should be deleted for data purposes and for everything starry said after me anyways. Just make a new one controlled by TD's with a blind vote that has the current 3 best proposals, all cg, elodins old gen, tdk lower tier. This has been my ted talk on how not to do a survey.
 
reading posts like this in this thread is starting to get seriously annoying. it's like people don't even bother to read what's being said and just come in to spew random statements with no basis whatsoever. z0mog's first post, which sparked this discussion to begin with, made it clear why a full cg ou wcop is not doing this at all. it is not "garnering in fresh blood" whatsoever. signups are on an all time low and people have no interest in following the tournament anymore. as z0mog stated multiple days ago:
I read every single post in this thread before I posted, and the general vibe I got for the argument to change the WCOP format was "wah wah wah SS is boring bring back old gens to make it more fun!". Except that's going to be entertaining for a much smaller circle of people compared to the people who actually play SS and know what's going on there. As much as I actually enjoy 200+ turn GSC battles or RBY games that include Chansey/Tauros/+4, or even DPP games with mindgames with lead match up, MOST of the people that currently battle don't find that entertaining because they don't play it.

You'll get "more" signups by doing old gens, but you're alienating more of the player base, which is NOT good for tournaments.

TDK's proposal is a happy balance of variability and not isolating players, but this should not become another rehashed SPL, because it was that years ago and it was changed BECAUSE of that fact.
 
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Coconut

W
is a Top Social Media Contributoris a Member of Senior Staffis a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Tutor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Staff Alumnus
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So I've been silently following this thread for a bit and it seems like we don't really have a clear definition of what we actually are looking for in WCOP moving forward.

I think the TD team should lead a discussion on what exactly the goal of WCOP in the future looks like. Is it diversity? Competitive balance? A fun tournament? All of these? Priorities seem to be varying from post to post, and finding a solution doesn't really seem to be feasible when we don't have a common goal.
 
Nutrition for neurological enhancement:

Any team claiming they cannot field 10 players is statistically incapable of winning world cup anyway. The claim is either irrelevant or cap.

Any team claiming they cannot field 10 players is defeatist and oozing underconfidence in anyone besides their best 8. Such a mentality cannot win either. Again, irrelevant or cap.

Preference among which specific tiers is fair but 8 should not be valid when every other team tour (wcop itself mind you) is/was totally fine with 10.
 
Premising that I hate current gen and I love to play many old gens (gen 1, gen 4 and gen 5 above all, despite the most recent changes), I strongly support the opinion on which the tournament should be only CG OU.

What makes this tournament different from any other core tournament of the site? We have players that have to be from many specific countries fighting against each other. This unequivocally means the tournament, in order to stay competitive, needs competent players from many parts of the world, so we can have several competitors that can form skillful teams as countries/states/regions representative. CG OU is the only tier helpful for this task.

Regardless of how much a oldgen/lowergen is played on site (which still matters, but not as much in terms of competitiveness, since we need a limited number of players after all), since there's a country/region limit on teams composition, CG OU is the tier that helps most in having every country (that has the needed skillful players number in order to play) at a competitive level /at least/ acceptable for what a core tournament needs.

SS OU is boring? That's not a problem of the tournament format, rather an issue of the tier. That's not a matter for tournaments directors, rather for that specific tier Council.

Core tournaments should have core formats, stable, averse to changes. That doesn't mean they have to be set in stone, sometimes there are urgent needs that make some changes be mandatory in order to keep a good level of skill (which should be the priority, together with format uniqueness), but this should be the exception and not the praxis.

I don't see any other alternative to CG OU only WCoP format for having a world accessible and competitive tournament.
You can group the most 80-160 competent (maybe?) old gen/lower gen players, but they would never be equally spreaded with that specific region/country limit this tournament has.

I am a huge fan of WCoP and I believe this tournament gathers, every year, tons of new spectators. They can also mutate to new players (although this is not a necessary point for what WCoP needs, rather for OST imho); they could also be returning ones, although there are already Smogon Classic (on which every old gen player has the chance to shine) and SPL (on which every current/oldgen top player can aim) for this.
Every other tier different than CG OU adds a layer of difficulty on the team composition that inevitably makes some countries stronger than some other on the start. Sure, there would be some better countries anyway, but you will never find a good e.g. gen2/gen6 competent *random-nonconventionalcountry* for the needed amount of countries. The same can't be said for CG OU.

I don't care about player number, the format runs anyways. Just not make that number too wide, but that should be the standard for a competitive core team tournament. 8 would probably be best, but 10 could be okay, even 9.
 

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SS OU is boring? That's not a problem of the tournament format, rather an issue of the tier. That's not a matter for tournaments directors, rather for that specific tier Council.
Hi, I had a couple small things that I wanted to add to the thread regarding the argument that solo-CG OU is the most competitive option, and really the nature of competitiveness at a high-level in general. I'm quoting this piece from Slimmer particularly because I would argue that mono-CG OU being boring is most certainly a problem with the format and I want to use this as a springboard to mention something I've been thinking about the past few days.

I think something that isn't really being factored in here is that the format being perceived as boring is not just relevant to the spectators, but, prominently, to the players as well. Numerous tournament players have even mentioned this, such as ABR, and I feel like mentioning this specifically is relevant because a tournament format being boring to the players can have legitimate impact on their playing and building ability, since burnout and fatigue are very easy-to-experience and impactful variables, especially at a high-stakes, high-skill level where managing one's own limitations, stress, and pressure is a factor in of itself. There's a reason this thread has exploded with so much activity, and if this were not a problem, I doubt we would even be having this discussion in the first place.

It's important to remember that, as competitive as we may aim to be, we are humans with limits, playing a game we love in a way that we love. Expecting ourselves to be perfectly competitive by nature will, in of itself, rupture our ability to be as competitive as we can be. As such, I feel as though that the idea of mono-CG OU being presented as the peak competitive option seems fine on paper, but in execution, the players will grow weary, frustrated, and, in a vacuum, less motivated to participate, work together, and manage their limits (and some may argue they already have). It's for this reason that I believe that a diverse format is, in execution, a more competitively sound approach since it accounts for the influence of burnout, frustration, and staleness on the player which can actively hamper their potential, while giving room for other players to fill in. I recognize some people may personally not empathize given their own experiences, but not everyone has the same, consistent degree of stamina, and preferences are also going to just be considerably different. We need to be able to consider our limitations at large, as accounting for our own ability to enjoy what it is that we're doing is, ironically, vital to our ability to remain competitive and motivated.

I think the TD team should lead a discussion on what exactly the goal of WCOP in the future looks like. Is it diversity? Competitive balance? A fun tournament? All of these? Priorities seem to be varying from post to post, and finding a solution doesn't really seem to be feasible when we don't have a common goal.
Coconut's post is a really good entry point regarding a productive approach, and I think, truthfully, all of diversity, competitive balance, and a fun tournament is ideal and are not mutually exclusive from one another. They all play into one another in a pivotal fashion, as mentioned above, as an intersection between our desire to have high-level competition, our intrinsic limitations, and really what drives us to be here in the first place. Regarding my stance on what proposals seem the best with this in mind, I personally really like TDK's a lot as it meets a solid middle-ground between major lower tiers and past generations that makes WCOP functionally distinct and, I'd argue, plays more to a region's collective skillset among the different, relevant angles of Smogon formats. It also goes without saying but I also am a fan of boosting the amount of slots to 10, and especially with a bit of format diversity, finding competent players in your region should really not be that hard.

Frankly, though, I will advocate for any solution that will lead to a satisfying solution for the tournament community, I just don't believe mono-CG OU is the way to go considering how staleness can and will influence player ability, and is why finding a satisfying, yet stable solution is so important. Although I don't believe it will be possible to find a solution that will satisfy everyone, at least agreeing on what shouldn't be done is a good modem of progress either way.
 
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