Announcement Smogon VGCPL II - Polling and Discussion

Do you want VGCPL II to happen?


  • Total voters
    47

zee

is a Site Content Manageris a Top Social Media Contributoris a Forum Moderatoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a defending SCL Champion
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With NPA's regular season coming to a close and the VGC 2022 season in full swing, we've decided it's time to start looking at VGCPL II. The first question to be answered is obviously: is there enough interest to run it? There was a lot less hype for winter league than VGCPL I, but it could've been a timing thing. One of the biggest advantages to playing on Smogon is that we can offer a custom avatar on PS as a prize, which is something that other leagues can't. There's also the mix of VGC players and Smogon players that is really exciting, and typically can't be found elsewhere.

Assuming yes, there are a few things we should work on from last season. The auction budget was 120K with a roster size of 8 starters and 3 minimum subs. Manager purchases were 10k. This year, we can introduce retains into the mix, at a price of last season price + 3K. More importantly, I think we should discuss the manager pricing. Last year people were worried about managers self purchasing for way below auction price (reminder that we literally had emforbes + Spurrific manager core) at 10K. This year, I'd like for the manager prices to be 15K flat or last season price + 3K, whichever is more expensive. This means drafting yourself as a manager is effectively 1/8th of your budget, and 1/4th for you and your comanager.

The other elephant in the room is the format selection. VGC 15 infamously got outcry for not being in VGCPL I... only to turn around and be the most eyeroller of a format in winter league by almost everyone's judgment. My proposal with old formats is as follows: leave them out of VGCPL II entirely or consolidate them into 1 rotational old format slot. There were a sizeable amount of people in past leagues who signed up solely to play old formats, but there's no denying that working these players into a draft plan actively hurts new players wanting to manage and leaves some teams to just throw fodder into the slots. A rotational slot would allow players to mostly focus on current meta, but allow people to play one or two formats they really liked at some point in the season. With the return to a real circuit though, the main focus should really be on VGC 22, so at minimum that will occupy n-1 of the slots allowed.

I say n-1 because we need to talk about team size. 6 slots? 8 slots? VGCPL and VGCWL were 8 and 6 respectively and within ~15 signups of each other, but the former still felt more competitive because the field was way more stacked. Should we start at 6 and bump to 8?

Lastly, I'd like to touch on the total number of teams. 8 teams would probably be ideal, but maybe like the shorter season that comes with 6 teams? There's pros and cons to both, so would really like to hear what people have to say.

EDIT: Proposed Timetable

Manager Signups: Monday, April 11 - Wednesday, April 20
Player Signups: Thursday, April 21 - Thursday, May 12
Draft: Weekend of May 13
Week 1: May 16-22
Week 2: May 23-29
Week 3: May 30-June 5
Week 4: June 6-12
Week 5: June 13-19
Week 6: NAIC EXTENDED WEEK June 20-July 3
Week 7: July 4-10
Playoffs Week 1: July 11-17
Finals: July 18-24
 
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Borghi

Banana eater
is a Forum Moderator Alumnus
let me manage nerd

1 rotational old format
if we do 6 slots, 13 per team
8 slots, 16 per team

however many teams gives me a team again

-----------------------------------------------------
Serious post

Retains - I like the idea of retains in a larger pool, as it keeps legacies and story lines across seasons. I'm not a huge fan of them in just the second iteration of a league. I think waiting until the next season would be best, but if we do do them now, I certainly have my picks for retains though if we do them.

Manager Pricing - I like the idea of 15k, managers are basically an uncontested drafted player, they should be priced as such

Old Formats - I like 1 rotational slot if we do 6 slots, I like 2 rotational slots if we do 8. Old formats are super fun, and keeping it to 1/6th or 1/4th of the weekly field seems fine to me for the older players who want to play them.

Roster Size - I've always been a proponent of I should be able to swap out my whole roster each week if I get 0-X'd. I like 12 or 16 as the total roster sizes, but I definitely understand 15 as it limits roster size a bit. My personal opinion is 12 if 200~ signups, 16 if 300~

Slots Per Week - If we do 12, has to be 6 slots no ifs ands or buts. I would like to say we do 8 slots each week

Teams/Season Length - I'm a fan of an 8 team/7Week season. 10 Teams would be too much and we prob wont have the player pool to support it fully

Recap - My personal opinions:
No retains
15k for managers to play
8 Teams with a 7 week season
Assuming ~200 Signups: 12 roster, 6 slots, 1 rotating format
Assuming ~300 Signups: 16roster, 8 slots, 2 rotating formats
 
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The best thing out of VGCPL and Winter League for me was playing the older formats, so I'd definitely support those. They often lead to more hyped matches between classic players that had success in those formats which I believe is something that should be advertised because that is effectively VGC history.

A quick note regarding Gen 6 formats, it's sometimes hard to find players who are comfortable in those formats. We're in 2022, playing VGC14 means you need to draft a player that's been playing for 8 years and is still around signing up to these tours. My suggestion would be to keep it to Gen 7 only and maybe do the rotational slot or maybe even two rotational slots if we go with 8 slots total.

I'll probably still sign up as a player regardless.
 
My personal suggestions:

- With old formats 2 slots for these rotating continuously, with maybe the Alolan VGC formats or Alolan VGC formats plus 15 and 16 at the helm of these. So my suggestion is using a randomizer to select the two slots that will be played for the week.

- I thought a 8 week season was okay. One of the problems as a manager I had during the Winter League was that every week was extremely important due to the relatively short season, so there was no time to develop players and we instead had to go with players who we knew would win games.

- Another thing I'd like to suggest is the ability to have 1 manager and 2 co-managers in a team. (but perhaps capping the number of playing managers to 2) I think this is one of the things I'd like to add into the PL.
 

Grandmas Cookin

is a Top Tiering Contributor
DPL Champion
i like start with 6 bump to 8 if we get enough interest, managers at starting at 15k seems good as well.

i also think focusing more on current gen with more of a gauntlet bo3 for old gens would be something to look into? if 2015 had the issue of being stale then only playing 1 game per week instead of 3 could be a way to solve that. would like to hear some thoughts on this.

regardless, im looking forward to this tournament!
 
Happy to play and manage again and defend our title as champions - I think 6 slots is too little. Definitely need 8.

One of the main flaws I noticed with Winter League was a lot of teams overdraft (we say we won't get more than 10, but then some teams end up having 12+ players by the end of the draft regardless)

The issue I found with this is we end up with players who basically don't get to play, or barely at all. I think having 8 slots makes this significantly less of a problem, and makes the league overall a lot more friendly to have more people drafted on teams, and more people actually getting to play. I also liked having playoffs as 8v8 with team's putting 3 players forward to settle a tie too. It felt very fair.

RE: Old formats - I think if we have 8v8 it's kinda cool to have our legacy formats included out of nostalgia. I think Gen 6 is a bit too old - i'd like to see a permanent 19 slot, and a permanent rotating 17/18 slot. 2/8 per week is fine, and not too little to the point where it's insignificant.

PS: With Winter League it was very silly to have a permanent VGC'15 slot not rotating between either 14 or 16, I think if we're going to include a Gen 6 format, we should at least rotate between two of them if we're going to do the same for Gen 7.
 
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Leave old formats; whether it be in the previous iteration or in the new rotational format.

I personally prefer the way PL 1 handled them, but I will settle for anything that isn't removing them. Until it becomes a problem that not enough old hats are signing up to play, I think we have no reason to change it.

Also how have we not evolved past clamoring for gen 6 formats to be part of these lineups? We gotta stop going further than one generation prior imo.
 

Namuko Pro

THE Mr. 34.5k
IDK if I'll end up playing this time but some thoughts based on a season of managing and a season of playing and lots of other team tournament experience.

Number of Teams: Eight is much better than six in my opinion for a couple reasons:
  • Number of players picked: Back in Winter League, Hana and I went through a spreadsheet of literally all the signups and ranked everyone numerically, and we had a ton of people in the 50 - 70 range that we thought would be good 3k pickups in the end... only to end up with even our 3k players being people we had ranked in the top 40. Part of that is because we had a couple people ranked quite a bit higher than anyone else presumably, but also because with only 6 teams and 6 starters there's just not enough of a need to go deep, which left a lot of people who I know for a fact could be good contributors getting undrafted. Even though WL signups weren't quite as stacked as PL signups, it was a really stacked league for the number of people who got drafted, and I think even if the quality of signups stays the same as it was then, 8 teams could easily be supported
  • Longer League: This is more subjective because some people may prefer shorter, but I think seven weeks is better since it gives a lot more breathing room. The main reason is because with five weeks there's zero chance to experiment with your lineups and see what works best, and you have to be in win-now mode right away. This lead to a few of our players only getting to play zero or one week(s), which isn't the best experience, and I would've liked to give everyone at least two weeks to play -- this was only exacerbated due to the fact that less weeks leads to closer standings, meaning we never had a week where we were 100% out of the playoff picture (even though week 5 odds were very low...), so couldn't even afford to have one last relaxed week where we could put in everyone who hadn't got to play a ton with less stakes. Like Zelda said, more slots also alleviates this issue to some degree, but I think more teams gets to include more people. Also, the other benefit of longer league is missing weeks is less of an issue, so if someone who went for a lot of $ needs to take multiple weeks off it's less punishing for the team
Slots: I think the best way to do it would be do the opposite of the number for the teams to start, so either 8 teams 6 slots or 6 teams 8 slots, with the option to expand if needed based on sign-up quality. I think either 6/8 or 8/6 would've been more than fine in WL, although 8/8 might've been a bit much

Old Formats: Keep old formats, a lot of people like to play those and sign up purely to do so (PL would've been way less stacked if no old formats). The 15 experiment was fun but also showed there's not enough demand to go that far back so earliest format should be 17. I think with six slots one 17/18/Ultra rotation is good, two also works, hard to tell whether there's enough support for that if there's only six slots. With eight slots I think you can do two old gen slots, and make one be 17/18 rotation and one just Ultra (or Moon/Ultra rotation if enough people wanted to do that? Ultra seems to be the favorite though), or two 17/18/Ultra rotations that start at different points. One other maybe interesting thing is also have an Old Gen 8 Formats rotation with S9 and S10 (and S5 and/or S11 in the mix too if people wanted that?) as a second old format slot if six slots or third old format slot if eight slots, but not sure if there's enough interest in that to make it worthwhile

Miscellaneous:
  • +3k for retains is good, obviously that's how most leagues do it because it works. The one concern would be if the signup pool is more like WL than PL, then some people would get their value disproportionately warped with a lesser pool, but it's probably not that big of an issue. Maybe put a cap on the number of people you can retain, as well as a floor for anybody who exploded post PL-draft (idk if there was anyone at 3k who'd go for 10k+ now offhand so unsure if that's needed)? I also don't think retains are hugely necessary, especially if there's big manager turnover
  • I think 15k (or old price +3k) is a good enough number, at that level even if you're getting a "steal" it's not a tremendous advantage. One idea I still like is letting teams that aren't having managers play be allowed to pick a "captain" for 15k/Old+3k to lessen the advantage, but that's only necessary if there's 5 or 6 teams with obvious manager buys and only a couple who are at a big disadvantage because of it. My maybe unpopular opinion here is that only the manager or co-manager should be allowed to be purchased instead of both, since it's still theoretically very exploitable for a top player with a good reputation who's basically a lock to get picked as a manager to just select someone they're friends with who is also very good and then just have an elite core right away (bigger deal with six slots than eight). Could also just bump up price for manager purchases to 20k and I think that makes it no longer exploitable at all
  • I think I mentioned this post-WL but in signups it would be best to have people put their twitter so that everyone is on the same page with all the signups
 

yone

The One.
is a Tiering Contributoris a Past WCoP Champion
This kind of PL is a chance for new players to shine, a format with less than 8 teams and 11~12 players per teams looks sad and a bit elitist, as the Winter league was

Just my opinion
 
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jonas

put your hands to the constellations
is a Community Contributoris a Tiering Contributor
8 teams 8 slots with sm metas is probably best. Old gens team tour will attract older players, and increase the pools density and amount of strong players signed up. Only 3 22 slots is kind of sad as well, because it leaves very little room for new players to get in. 5 is perfect so that top players can have a difference, but new players can also get in
 
Namuko Pro's suggestion of Gen 8 rotational formats sounds good to me as well.
I'd buy 1 rotational 17/18/19 and 1 rotational 20-S5, 21-S7/9, 21-S10 for example. Techically VGC20 and VGC21 are old formats now.
 
With NPA's regular season coming to a close and the VGC 2022 season in full swing, we've decided it's time to start looking at VGCPL II. The first question to be answered is obviously: is there enough interest to run it? There was a lot less hype for winter league than VGCPL I, but it could've been a timing thing. One of the biggest advantages to playing on Smogon is that we can offer a custom avatar on PS as a prize, which is something that other leagues can't. There's also the mix of VGC players and Smogon players that is really exciting, and typically can't be found elsewhere.

Assuming yes, there are a few things we should work on from last season. The auction budget was 120K with a roster size of 8 starters and 3 minimum subs. Manager purchases were 10k. This year, we can introduce retains into the mix, at a price of last season price + 3K. More importantly, I think we should discuss the manager pricing. Last year people were worried about managers self purchasing for way below auction price (reminder that we literally had emforbes + Spurrific manager core) at 10K. This year, I'd like for the manager prices to be 15K flat or last season price + 3K, whichever is more expensive. This means drafting yourself as a manager is effectively 1/8th of your budget, and 1/4th for you and your comanager.

The other elephant in the room is the format selection. VGC 15 infamously got outcry for not being in VGCPL I... only to turn around and be the most eyeroller of a format in winter league by almost everyone's judgment. My proposal with old formats is as follows: leave them out of VGCPL II entirely or consolidate them into 1 rotational old format slot. There were a sizeable amount of people in past leagues who signed up solely to play old formats, but there's no denying that working these players into a draft plan actively hurts new players wanting to manage and leaves some teams to just throw fodder into the slots. A rotational slot would allow players to mostly focus on current meta, but allow people to play one or two formats they really liked at some point in the season. With the return to a real circuit though, the main focus should really be on VGC 22, so at minimum that will occupy n-1 of the slots allowed.

I say n-1 because we need to talk about team size. 6 slots? 8 slots? VGCPL and VGCWL were 8 and 6 respectively and within ~15 signups of each other, but the former still felt more competitive because the field was way more stacked. Should we start at 6 and bump to 8?

Lastly, I'd like to touch on the total number of teams. 8 teams would probably be ideal, but maybe like the shorter season that comes with 6 teams? There's pros and cons to both, so would really like to hear what people have to say.

EDIT: Proposed Timetable

Manager Signups: Monday, April 11 - Wednesday, April 20
Player Signups: Thursday, April 21 - Thursday, May 12
Draft: Weekend of May 13
Week 1: May 16-22
Week 2: May 23-29
Week 3: May 30-June 5
Week 4: June 6-12
Week 5: June 13-19
Week 6: NAIC EXTENDED WEEK June 20-July 3
Week 7: July 4-10
Playoffs Week 1: July 11-17
Finals: July 18-24
I would love to play in this
 

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