Tournament Neverused Snake Draft III: Format Discussion [Done]

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roxie

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NU Snake Draft is right around the corner, and it's time for another thread discussing our final team tournament not featuring SV. The snake draft + 10 slot format will remain locked for this tournament, however, potential changes could happen in the future once generation 9 starts.​

Nine of the tiers are relatively locked in as follows:

Code:
x3 SS NU

x1 SM NU

x1 ORAS NU

x1 BW NU

x1 DPP NU

x1 ADV NU

x1 GSC NU
We would like to gauge the community's opinion on the RBY slot from last year. Potential options for this slot are RBY NU + Sleep Moves Clause, Standard RBY NU, SS NU #4, or BDSP NU. Other suggestions are welcome to be brought up in this thread! Please keep your comments civil and don't overstep. Any excessively negative posts about a community mentioned will be deleted. Happy posting!
 
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RBY but only if charizard is banned. SS4 is the next best option (could potentially do a fun slot here w SS + weekly clause, could be anything from random NUBL mon is allowed or blitz or no boots etc)
 

Aawin

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as someone who managed last year (personal bias aside), I wouldn't entirely mind seeing a sleep-less RBY NU slot. Think the tier has come a long way since last snake and I think the player base has grown since then so why not. SS4 would be nice for a sendoff and gives a lot more opportunity for managers and players alike.

Personal bias incoming, but I'm all for including BDSP NU for the tour. While the tier is relatively dormant (this isn't a bash on the tier by any means, but BDSP tiers outside of OU and Ubers never really got any traction), the tier is currently being included in the BDSP sendoff tour and was an incredibly competitive pool in BDSPPL. If you're interested in learning about BDSP NU, there are plenty of good resources located on forums or Discord. The council consisting of myself, Pokeslice (the TL!), jawabarat , glock in my toyota and Realistic Waters have worked incredibly hard since the inception of the tier, and think it's in a good place for consideration for this tour.

edit: +1 to bo3 as well, bo3 is gas
 
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zS

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given that this is the last tournament of the gen, I'd like to propose adding a bo3 slot over one of the SS slots.
bo3 slots have always been rly competitive in most lower tier pls, and they usually make for rly entertaining battles between good players. the downside of this tends to mean having to prep 3 teams rather than 1 per week for a slot, which adds more to do especially cuz lower tier team tours usually involve little to no prep among most players, but I feel like this issue can easily be overcame as I've already managed a tour with bo3 in it and it wasn't that hard of a task to make 3 extra teams as long as you have some sort of support. I rlly think bo3 is something that would make this tour far more interesting and will bring out some evolution to some extent as it allows to keep 12 SS games a week which is enough to get a good sample of what the meta looks like by the end of the gen, as well as provide more games into oras and sm which are generally balanced and appreciated nu tiers.
 

etern

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Bo3 is easily the best option for last slot, it sucks that it keeps getting removed when it was always the slot that provided the most exciting and quality matchups in previous NUPL editions. Prepping 3 teams a week can get tiring but 90% of the time people just reuse, so that's not really a valid argument. Also if you sign up for bo3 and then start moaning about needing 3 teams then idk what to say lol. After that, idrc if it's SS4 or RBY. SS is kind of boring and 4 slots of it is seriously pushing it, but the games will be better bc it's way less punishing to draft for the most recent gen and more people are familiar w the mechanics. RBY has it's niche though and if you're including GSC you might as well just have them both since they're quite similar in playerbase overlap and other ways. Also think the RBY game quality or lack thereof was overstated a bit, it didn't seem too wildly different from GSC to me, and apparently it's been worked on a lot since then so :shrug: BDSP NU has like 3 players but it's way more interesting than most of the oldgens and could potentially have longevity and find a place in the tier if it get's opportunities like this, though it's still prob last on my list.

Bo3 >> SS4 / RBY > BDSP NU
 

MrSoup

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I’m a big proponent of including standard RBY NU, or RBY NU in some form or another. Other than making wholistic sense by including each gen, it also does draws in people from different parts of Smogon to these team tourneys. It’s additionally a meta with a lot of room for development that team tourneys like this can help with. I also am personally biased and enjoy watching RBY NU. It’s neat to see that kind of diversity IMO.
 
Do want to say that RBY NU is pretty much my locked 10th slot given that after talks, sleep will be banned from the tier for the tournament. Not going to say much else, but that's pretty much it. I'm on LOA, so if something else is more appealing or there's significant disagreement with this then I don't mind changing, but that was my plan from the start.
 
Definitely RBY NU + Sleep Ban for me. Not because I also play RBY NU aside from GSC NU but because I don't think having a fourth SS slot is worth it for the tour overall imo. The Bo3 idea is also nice but imo RBY NU needs a slot. This is also an opportunity to develop RBY NU new meta with Sleep ban.

RBY NU + Sleep ban > The current RBY NU > Bo3 > BDSP NU > 4th SS NU slot
 

Sabelette

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RBY NU is a tier that has some issues, and tiering action is being discussed, but it's also a tier with a lot of potential that has exciting developments on the horizon; once the next UU VR drops and new things fall into NU, and once tiering action is taken, I think it's going to be a really cool tier. I strongly support RBY NU's inclusion regardless of the form, as I think it's worth including as-is and more development will only help highlight and fix current issues with it.

However, as someone who plays the tier a lot, Poliwhirl ban > Sleep ban. Whirl creates massive variance in games in a way other sleepers don't and I think a Whirlless metagame would be a lot more balanced (and more fun). Having sleep as an option makes positioning incredibly important to prevent giving an opposing Venomoth or Exeggcute a free sleep and free chances to stun spore something else coming in; with sleep removed entirely, the tier becomes more linear and less strategic and some games end up won in the builder. I will still happily support sleepless or whatever other changes are suggested as long as RBY NU is included but from experience, sleepless really isn't better than Whirlless right now, not unless the next UU VR drops some bulkier mons into the tier (which it probably will). Once that happens I think sleepless NU will be great, but right now defensive switching is minimal at best and sleepless increases the linearity of every game.
 

Rabia

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i oppose the existence and concept of rby nu

HOWEVER!

i am p happy to let it be in this tour assuming sleep is banned :D it'd feel weird to only let RBY be in classic and nothing else, and there's a concerted effort to making the tier as best as it can be. it's also just got a very established and sizable playerbase, so managers should be perfectly capable of finding someone to play the tier.

bo3 sucks stop saying it's good etern
 

Expulso

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BO3 and RBY are both good options. RBY is a very active community and it isnt unplayable! i find it kind of fun personally. the Bo3 slot producing matchups between each team's top player is great as well and it would be very nice to maintain that dynamic. i agree w etern that building concerns are overblown, u know what u are getting into.

GSC nu seems very dead, it's really boring, and the most active player by a mile has retired. i feel like making that slot a success will rely very heavily on throwing in GSC OUers since there isn't much of a GSC NU community. at least for RBY there are people that play specifically RBY NU, but GSC will probably rely on just pulling OUers who know the mechanics and giving them teams from that one holly post. we saw a lot of OUers in the pool last time (siatam / vani off the top of my head) and it's kinda lame to require throwing non-NUers (since i dont think there are 8 GSC NU players) into the nu subforum tour.

can we cut GSC to include both RBY and Bo3?
 
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BO3 and RBY are both good options. RBY is a very active community and it isnt unplayable! i find it kind of fun personally. the Bo3 slot producing matchups between each team's top player is great as well and it would be very nice to maintain that dynamic. i agree w etern that building concerns are overblown, u know what u are getting into.
Agree on this one as I already mentioned.

GSC nu seems very dead, it's really boring, and the most active player by a mile has retired. i feel like making that slot a success will rely very heavily on throwing in GSC OUers since there isn't much of a GSC NU community. at least for RBY there are people that play specifically RBY NU, but GSC will probably rely on just pulling OUers who know the mechanics and giving them teams from that one holly post. we saw a lot of OUers in the pool last time (siatam / vani off the top of my head) and it's kinda lame to require throwing non-NUers (since i dont think there are 8 GSC NU players) into the nu subforum tour.

can we cut GSC to include both RBY and Bo3?
About GSC, I don't think it will be cut-off anyways but I guess being GSC PL commencing soon should also brought up players that can play for GSC NU too in NUSD. Afaik there are 6 teams for GSC PL and one slot for GSC NU so that will be 6 players. GSC NU Cup had some good players in it too. In the current finals, Arctic or neomon might play other tier (like adv) while estarossa will be in gsc (right? but might play gsc uu in GSC PL so that's another slot.) There might really be only few players who still play it actively currently but GSC NU is already an established tier. I am also pushing for RBY NU but I would argue GSC NU is at least a playable and been stable for a quite long while unlike RBY NU that might pursue that sleep ban. I mentioned that there might be upcoming changes in GSC NU but that wouldn't be an issue for now as it depends if UU updates their VR to overhaul the mons pool or banning problematic mons. But the current GSC NU metagame is already very playable and established so definitely its slot should be locked.
 
I was hesitant on commenting here because I know I'm just going to be regurgitating common sentiments without providing much of anything original but for a 10 slot tournament I think 3 current gen (SS) and one of each other gen going all the way down to 1 is quite easy and makes enough sense. The main three questions I see different answers to are as followed:

1) Is RBY ready to show its face in the tournament scene again? It was met with a lot of negative feedback in the previous Snake tournament for completely justified reasons. Although plenty of metagame development has been made in the tier, as far as I'm aware no actual tiering action in regards to the biggest issues with the tier, revolving around Charizard and Fire Spin, and Poliwhirl and Sleep-inducement. Regardless of which aspects have action taken upon them, I personally thing RBY is simply too young to see itself in a tournament that we would want to have high standards for.

2) Will GSC even receive enough signups? Obviously a far smaller issue, and not much of an issue in the first place, but it does have some weight to it. GSC NU "mains" are far and few between, with the CEO of the tier on a tentative break. Big names like Siatam, Earthworm, and Estarossa obviously would make for some great games, but are there enough players so every team can have a competent player in an admittedly complex generation / tier? It wouldn't make sense to include a NASCAR race in which a majority of the competitors don't even have a driver's license...

3) In light of potentially dropping at least one of RBY and GSC, would there even be a suitable replacement? I think the answer to this is just no, although that does not mean RBY or GSC should be kept simply because there's nothing better. The most feasible solution is a best of 3, either with the 3 most modern generations, or one similar to the Homefield tournament format, where game 1 is SS, and the proceeding loser picks a generation of their choice. The first bo3 format is the most consistent, although the amount of prepwork needed for one slot makes it less ideal. The homefield concept, while probably more fun and versatile, makes prepping pretty much impossible unless played over the course of an entire week or players lock the tiers at the beginning of the week or for the entire tournament (I prefer a weekly basis). The discussion of BDSP or a petmod NU are not viable for the standards of the tournament I mentioned earlier. No disrespect to the members who run the tier and made it as good as it possibly can be, but BDSP is simply just not good. The usage stats are incredibly warped and inaccurate due to the disappointingly low game counts on the ladder, which really shows how willing people are to play it. Beyond the technical aspects for why its far from an ideal option, mechanically its just not fun; modern mechanics on Pokemon is nice, but they're completely gutted from their typical movepools and some item choices. Other petmods like Aawin and I's MutantMons have no place here, although I will be hosting a tournament for it soon :)

I'm curious to see the different answers to these questions because they obviously are all subjective, so the best course of action moving forward is to consider what we want Snake to be (I'd imagine featuring all generations is the common goal) and also abide by majority rules.
 

roxie

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The list below is the format for the upcoming Snake Draft. More significant changes could happen in the next NUSD during generation 9. Manager signups will be up soon/in a few days.
Code:
x3 SS NU

x1 SM NU

x1 ORAS NU

x1 BW NU

x1 DPP NU

x1 ADV NU

x1 GSC NU

x1 RBY NU + Sleep Moves Ban
 
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