Announcement The Future of Smogon VGC Tournaments

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zee

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Hello everyone, today I'd like to make an announcement about tournaments ran on Smogon VGC and how they will operate for the forseeable future. As you may have noticed with the 2022 circuit, we felt that there was a strong issue of running a january-december tournament circuit since that's not how the VGC calendar operates. We adapted by scheduling the 2023 circuit to follow a similar schedule to the 2023 season and run from December - August, ending before the 2023 World Championships.

However, once we got confirmation of series formats making a return, there had to be change. Playing week by week isn't really how VGC is meant to be played, but especially not when you can join a tournament for one metagame and have the format change before that same tournament is completed, and qualify for a circuit playoff in yet again an entirely new format.

So yuki brought it to my attention that we need to pivot to focusing primarily on live tournaments and I wholeheartedly agree. Effective immediately, we are replacing the 2023 circuit with 3 different types of tournaments.

  • Entry fee / Prize pool Scarlet and Violet in-game tournaments
  • Free to play in-game tournaments
  • Free to play Showdown tournaments
You can expect one of the two in game tournaments to be ran on a Saturday + Sunday schedule from us about once every 2 months. As for Showdown tournaments, they will be ran more frequently, in the months where we aren't running in-game tournaments.

Future of Smogon VGC Team Tournaments

It is clear that while there is a general increased interest in VGC on the site - this seems to be more in individual tournaments and not team tournaments. VGC Winter League II has had some of the lowest signup numbers of our 4 tournaments, and yuki and I have agreed that this will be the last instance of a second team tournament in a single year from us. Starting in 2023, we will go back to running our flagship VGC Premier League, notable for incorporating old formats, and leave it at that.

All current prizes for the VGC Kickoff - prize banner, PS! account names, prize winner, hall of fame slot, and discord role will still be given, but as we are cancelling the circuit, there obviously won't be points awarded.

This isn't to say that we'll never run week-by-week tournaments again, as their accessibility proves to be huge for players not used to playing live tournaments, but it's also crystal clear that our focus needs to shift directions.
 
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