Tournament PU Circuit 2021 Feedback Thread

[MZ]

Hey everyone! This thread is for getting community feedback for planning the 2021 PU Circuit. I know we didn't had a circuit this year, but there are certain topics we would've wanted to gather feedback on from last year if we did have one. Here is our 2019 thread if anyone wants to give feedback and needs a refresher on how it worked last year.

Two seasonals, PU Ladder Tour, the PU Open. These 4 tours constituted our ribbon circuit last year and will definitely be making a return. Playoffs will still be a top 16 and this will all still be for a ribbon. However, back in 2019 as well as this year, many tiers opted to include 5 tournaments instead of 4. 5 gives people more chances to get points and expands our circuit a bit but at the cost of making the year pretty stuffed with tours, there will be something major pretty much all the time especially when you consider we'll also be running PUPL, possibly PUWC again, and other random tours. I personally favor 4 but this is one of the major topics we're looking for feedback on. If we did bump up to 5, the natural tour to include would be PU Classic, something that will definitely get hosted in early 2021 regardless of whether it's for circuit or not. It's slightly weird to include classic when playoffs will be bo3 current gen only, plus I'm sure some people might object to playing BW or ORAS for circuit points, but it does mean that we won't have to play SS PU for circuit immediately following the massive January shift. There will be a bit more of a buffer zone to do some tiering. Of course if people really don't favor classic, we could always try fitting in a third seasonal or a majors-style pools tournament, or something along those lines.

The only other major point of feedback is the points system. We don't recall any major issues with it last year so we can likely reuse the same format, but if people have some objection this would be a great time to speak up. We also need to develop a circuit points system for classic, it could be same as PULT where only playoffs qualifiers get points but given classic's playoffs are half the size I'd rather do something like give a seasonal-equivalent points for only your best open run or something along those lines. I haven't actually looked at how other tiers incorporate their classic yet, but there are definitely prior examples to draw from.

And of course if there's anything I haven't hit, let us know. We've got around a month to plan this out so there's time to give your opinion.

 

[sugar ovens]

The more tours are included, the better/more accurate will the top 16 be and small overlap between the individual tournaments isn't a huge deal. A few weeks only affect the ~4 players in the final rounds who are already getting a large batch of points, most players are in more tours at once anyway, you can always recycle teams, etc etc. I'd like to propose introducing a fifth circuit tour and also to include Classic in the circuit, for six circuit tournaments overall (Ubers and OU have even more; LC and Doubles have 6 tours; Monotype, UU, RU have 5).

As for the fifth tour - a lot of other tiers have been using two formats that PU hasn't hosted yet - pools and swiss. The pools format is sort of fun, i used to be a big fan of it, but the activity issues in the qualification/pools phase are quite unappealing. Personally, i like Swiss tours more, they don't feel as slow as double elimination ones, players get more chances to qualify, more battles... Swiss could also replace one of the double-elimination seasonals. What is also worth considering is reviving the Bo3 tour (SS-SM-ORAS single-elimination tournament). OU has that in their circuit for example, it's a fun format, with Classic it may be too much oldgens for some people, though. I'd prefer it over PULT, the ladder is not as active as it used to be. Just.. rename it to like PU Tour or something, every tour is "Bo3".

If any tournament which includes older generations is included, the point system must change - it's still PU but the circuit is mainly about current gen, and a tour without any SS PU just can't have the same weight as Open. A system that can work and LC, RU, OU, maybe some other tiers use is having three types of tournaments (A - ssnls and Open, B - swiss [or pools or bo3] and PULT, C - Classic). Points from tournaments are then weighted - other tiers use the ratio of 3:2:1, which makes type C tournaments almost completely irrelevant, as the amount of points gained from them is laughable. (except RU which gives type-C points for every Classic Cup and playoffs, but PU will - i think - have too many Cups for that? assuming there will be 5 gens included, i might be wrong here, Classic would award too many points in total) 4:3:2 is much more reasonable.

So to sum it up. 6 tours, points for type A/B/C tours weighted in the 4:3:2 ratio.

Type A: Seasonal 1, Open, Seasonal 2
Type B: two of Swiss / PULT / Bo3
Type C: Classic (points awarded for 16-man playoffs, perhaps bonus ~40 points for winning a Cup)

or

Type A: Seasonal, Open, Swiss
Type B: PULT, Bo3
Type C: Classic

 

[MZ]

My goal is to start hammering this out next week. We've also generated a good bit of discord discussion that can't be reflected in this thread for obvious reasons, but if anyone wants to make a full post like Skipkan has you only have so much time left.

 

[termi]

I think the amount of points one can get for winning a tournament should roughly be determined by two factors: the general reliability of the tournament in advancing better players over worse players (format matters) and the degree to which the tournament promotes skills that are specifically relevant to CG PU (that is to say, "metagame knowledge" and everything that comes with it). With that in mind I think the best way to categorize the tournaments is as follows:

Type A: 2x Seasonal
Type B: Open
Type C: Ladder Tournament, Classic/Bo3

I know Open traditionally is considered a classic example of a "Type A" tournament, but I have to object to this. Although Open has an advantage over other tournaments in that it has a greater amount of competitors than any other PU tournament, including some big names that typically wouldn't bother with a PU circuit tournament, its single elimination format makes it so that it is far easier for adept players to get knocked out early due to an unfortunate pairing or a streak of bad luck compared to a double elimination seasonal. A minor additional point is that it is not uncommon for people who make a deep run into an Open to not be super interested in the tier at hand, only playing it because it is part of Grand Slam, which could result in people who have little interest in the PU Circuit qualifying for playoffs. This seems contrary to the spirit of circuit tournaments, which in my view are meant to reward people for active long-term engagement with the tier in addition to, well, being good at playing mons. For these reasons I think it is warranted to award slightly less points for Open; I doubt many people would find this a dealbreaker given that it is already rewarding to make a deep run in PU Open for other, Slam-related reasons.

As for Ladder Tournament and Classic, I think both of these are a step below Open still. I am a notorious haters of ladder tournaments and would rather not have it included in the circuit at all, but I am also very fair and reasonable and I understand that it is popular so I will not protest its inclusion. That being said, I deem doing well on ladder to be significantly different from doing well in a standard tournament, enough to a degree where I think there should be a fairly significant decrease in the amount of points awarded for it. This is for two reasons. The first is that "the metagame" as it exists on ladder tends to diverge wildly from the metagame as people understand it in tournament play, and as a result the kind of teams that do well on ladder, the way one plays etc is quite different from what is ultimately expected of you in playoffs. The other reason is that in ladder tournaments, the amount of time you can afford (and want) to spend on Pokemon becomes a much bigger factor than in other tournaments, since in most cases you'll have to play what is colloquially known as a shitton of games in order to qualify for playoffs, which seems to preclude a lot of people with busy schedules from qualifying while privileging people who can afford to play like 150 games within a week.

Elaborating on Classic: Skipkan basically covered it but it's obvious that a tournament that doesn't focus on current gen at all is gonna be less representative of the kind of skills one has to develop to do well in circuit playoffs. In addition, Classic afaik tends to have less signups than other tours (probably depends on the gen too) so there's less competition. That being said, I do like the idea of a Bo3 tour and wouldn't mind having that take Classic's place in the circuit, since it retains some element of CG PU while including the most established PU oldgens and also avoiding the problem of dividing points for Classic (i.e. do we give points for every individual tour or only for playoffs etc). Classic in that case could then remain its own separate thing.

Miscellaneous stuff: I wouldn't be opposed to a 3:2:1 point division system but I understand this might make Type C tournaments a little too marginal, so 4:3:2 also seems reasonable. 5 tournaments > 6 tournaments, as much as I like the idea of a Swiss style tournament I definitely think expanding the circuit any further might be asking too much of people, plus we already have like 2 or 3 team tours in addition to all the circuit stuff so the year's pretty stacked anyway.

 

[MZ]

Thanks for the feedback guys, here's the 5 second summary.
What has changed: 5 tours with classic being included in the circuit, a more defined type A/B/C system where PULT is valued under seasonals and open and classic even less than PULT.
What we won't be implementing: A 6th circuit tour (lots of negative feedback on Discord, hard to fit), valuing open beneath seasonals (true that it's not a double elimination but it is still a more overall important tournament and in theory ought to see a higher level of competition due to greater interest from strong non-PU players).

More in depth: Seasonal and slam will be rated as type A tournaments, equal to each other and giving the same amount of points as they did in 2019. PULT will be a type B tournament, with a similar point distribution to last year but slightly less. I do not have the points mocked up for this but if winning a seasonal/slam still gives 500 points with second place at 375 then winning PULT should award somewhere between 400 and 450 points and second place would be maybe 325. Like I said this is not final, I haven't worked out what a precise 5:4:3 point distribution or w/e would look like yet, this is just somewhere around where I want the points to end up. Classic is type C and valued below the other tours, it has value but it's also only old gens which are not represented anywhere else in the circuit or at all in the playoffs. Points will be awarded only to the playoffs qualifiers, not for individual opens. Winning classic would give around 350 points.

Timing: I do have exact dates here that I've worked out, but no graphic. Classic will start immediately at the beginning of January 2021. The PU Open comes ~the first week of April, I don't have a precise date only the general date TDs have given for when Open will start. Seasonal 1/Spring Seasonal signups will come on May 16th when Open's been whittled down a decent amount. PULT starts July 18th, by which time Open will be concluded and we'll be 9 weeks into the Spring Seasonal (counting signups). Seasonal 2/Fall Seasonal signups will come on August 22nd, 5 weeks into PULT (so after 1 week of playoffs). The timing is such that if the Fall Seasonal takes 14 weeks to complete, including signups, it'll end on Sunday, November 28th. 1 week after that would be Sunday, December 5th, which is when we will start PU Circuit Playoffs.

Playoffs are still planned to be top 16 and work the same way as last year, standard stuff.

What happens to other tournaments: Throughout the year we'll try to fit in more random subforum tournaments but that shouldn't require much explanation, they're just random for fun events that can be run alongside our circuit tours pretty freely. In early January we will start a post-DLC SS kickoff tour so that SS isn't going neglected all the way until Open, but it won't be counted for circuit points. Just some friendly competition. As for PUPL and PUWC, there's not really room to run them anywhere without overlapping solidly with one tour or another. PUWC in particular I only ever wanted to be an exceptional event for the year where we don't have a circuit to get through, but I can't imagine it doesn't return with how popular it was this year. I expect PUPL to be run somewhere around late May, going through the end of Spring Seasonal and into the midst of PULT while PUWC could again come in early October and run through Fall Seasonal into Circuit Playoffs. This is not exact, just what I expect would likely happen.

Sometime before 2021 there will be an official 2021 circuit thread laying out all these dates, exact points, and any other clarifications that people might want.