Implemented The Future of the WCoP Format

[LuckOverSkill]

Introducing lower tiers/re-introducing old gens to WCoP exacerbates regional imbalances. With either of those (or even worse – both), the pool of potential winners shrinks, making the tour worse for everyone except those who are on the right teams.

Here's why:

• Old gens have a huge barrier to entry. It takes lots of time to get good at an old gen because of the time gap — you're going to face people who have been playing them for years. Resources are scarcer, the ladders aren't as active, and there are less people to talk to. It's harder to grow into a great player in old gens compared to CG. Plus, older teams have more means to help each other in older gens. This makes younger teams unviable, reducing competitiveness.
• Lower tiers change too often to have a place in WCoP. We talk a lot about building a legacy and have consistency with the teams/formats, but that's impossible with lower tiers. They penalize smaller teams that don't have access to big talent pools.
• Expanding to 10 slots, again, punishes smaller teams, and it's hard to justify any format with 10 slots. 5 SS OU means that only half of the games will be in the flagship tier. Lower tiers are of 0 interest to anyone who doesn't play them. SM is fine, but ORAS, as I said in my last post, is starting to become ancient.

On burnout and unenjoyable spectator experiences:

Spectators will watch whatever official match is going on. Take note of how many people during SPL complain about RBY matches while religiously watching every one of them. I'll never understand that behavior. If you hate watching too many SS games, don't watch all of them.

How is player burnout an argument for this? Only individuals can feel burnt out. It could happen for SS, RU, or RBY players all the same. I don't see how switching to a multi-tiers format helps with burnout. The only thing that'd help would be to make the tournament shorter.

Also, ideally, we want to turn spectators into players, and CG OU is the best tier for that. Anyone can open PS, load a sample team, and immediately start playing CG OU. Lower tiers? Yeah, that's doable too (to a point). Old gens? Good luck with that.

 

[ima]

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.



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.

Would like to echo this post -- good posts in the threads so far, all of you. Job well done. *claps*

Full CG OU is competitively, and objectively the correct option, however it seems that people forget while it is *objectively* correct it doesn't mean it should feel like the right decision to do. As a member of the SS council (speaking for myself), SS is far from the "perfect tier", for new players and for old, and it seems that most of the arguments for keeping full current gens stem on that tree. While I do believe the changes we've made thus far to this meta have been very balanced, I don't like to think that just because a certain gen is objectively more welcoming than others means it's the right solution. Going off statistics of the polls it seems that more people want to have more options in this tournament than full current gen.

To me the whole situation just seems robotic -- people explain why they believe a full CG OU tournament would be boring, but those arguments just get completely invalidated by "that's the tiers problem, not anyone else's." I come on this website to have a good time and play some quality games of Pokémon, not log on to another bureaucracy talk show every time a tournament comes up in Policy Review on how we should change each format. To me it just seems more like a "facts don't care about your feelings" kind of thing. (in my humble opinion) The whole point of WCOP is to show diversity across your region, enjoy the tournament as a team and show what your team is made of. Regardless if it's all CG OU or w/e, the whole point is to show what your region is made of. Any competitive team in this tournament can do that regardless of format. And if the popular vote is to include lower tiers, older gens and what have you, then I don't see the problem as to why not. I just don't want this thread to perform an echo chamber on why x is good *objectively* because blah blah blah, we need to come up with better arguments as to why it should stay whichever side you're on.

Coconut's post is good. We don't really have the TD's full opinion on what they actually want WCOP to be, lol. My whole take is diversity and enjoying each others company :o.

I will probably play regardless. I have no issues with TDK's format.

 

[SoulWind]

What the teams/players want > what the TDs want

WCoP is the only team tour where team structures don't change too much from one year to the following one. I don't think it is out of the line to let the community decide this matter. All the 16 teams that made it to the final phase should vote. Give a number of like 5 options available, and have every team rank them. If 2 options are tied, repeat the whole process again. If tie persists, the TDs break it. This shouldn't take more than a few days.

If anyone wants my "don't care + didn't ask + L + ratio" opinion, format should stay full CG but with 10 slots. STour tiers option sucks, as well as anything that throws lower tiers in. If one team can't really amount 10 starting CG players then it shouldn't be in this tournament. 10v10 will always be more competitive than 8v8.

WCoP has always been a flawed tour. By adding stuff like old gens back or lower tiers it just makes it even worse in terms of balance. Don't think that should be the aim, but I want the players to decide what is best.

 

[Amaranth]

I have spoken at length with team captains / representatives from all WCoP teams about their thoughts on the format, as well as discussed internally with other TDs, and we have drawn some conclusions.

The first thing to establish is that a format that satisfies everyone simply does not exist. Every single format idea was highly disliked by at least 5 of the 16 main event teams from last year. It is evident that there are extreme differences of opinion within the community, and this is a discussion that will necessarily have to continue over the next years.
Even within the TD team, there is no full agreement on what WCoP should be. But one thing we do know, based on how much negative feedback there is towards each and every format proposal that was brought forward, is that there are issues with the tournament circuit that need to be addressed on a larger scale - looking at potential changes for not only WCoP but also other tournaments, and/or adding more tournaments, to bring the overall state of officials to a state the community is happier with as a whole. Some kind of radical change is needed to address this great unhappiness, and we felt that there is no time between now and WCoP 2022 to develop and implement such radical change appropriately, but it will be one of our main goals ahead of 2023. Look forward to a new PR thread in the next few days.

However, for 2022, it has emerged from my conversations that the format that maintains the most support from the most teams remains x8 SS OU, and that is the format we will be using the upcoming WCoP. It was a strong preference for 6 teams and a soft preference for 3 others, eclipsing all other formats (x3 SS OU x7 oldgens received 4 strong preferences and 3 soft preferences, and every other suggested format did far worse). x8 SS OU also received widespread support amongst qualifier teams, many of which mentioned struggling to put together a roster in other formats.
Additionally, x8 SS OU is the status quo, so the bar for overturning it is slightly higher - and it is far from being reached by any other format.

z0mog's survey has several issues, some of which have been discussed in this thread already, some of which you can understand by reading this old teal6 post, some which haven't been brought up yet but are also valid (eg. the survey does not reach all WCoP demographics equally, it obviously reached avid PR readers much more than other equally valid participants in the tournament), and a huge problem which is evident for all to see - it was rushed out and did not allow for as much nuance as the TD team would have liked.
While it does bring up an undisputable data point - a large number of people are unhappy with x8 SS OU - it misrepresents the proportions of this unhappiness, as well as the unhappiness with all possible alternatives. These issues have emerged clearly after my conversations with all team representatives.

We will reiterate again that we understand x8 SS OU is an unappealing solution to many people, including parts of the TD team itself, but it is a simple fact that it remains the most popular of the available options, and it has many positives which we also acknowledge. We hope you understand our decision to attempt to address the problems with the circuit on a larger scale, given the lack of suitable small-scale solutions that has been made clear by this thread as well as my conversations with all team representatives. We hope you look forward to WCoP 2022 regardless.

 

[august]

After a debate about the decision to keep the World Cup of Pokemon format as 8 slots of CG OU, the TD team sent out a survey to the 16 playoff teams from last years edition. The questions of the survey are shown below:

Teams that answered "Yes" to the question about format preference were then asked to rank the following choices 1-5: 8 SS OU, 3 SS + 7 Old Gens, Smogon Tour Tiers, 5 SS + SM/ORAS/BW/DPP/ADV, and 4 SS + SM/ORAS/BW/UU/RU/NU (coloquially referred to here as the "TDK/ABR" format)

The complete results of the survey for the 16 eligible teams are shown below:

To choose the format, Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) was used, using the PyRank Python Library. The results of the instant runoff voting are:

ROUND 1
Candidate                       Votes  Status
----------------------------  -------  --------
8 SS                                5  Hopeful
3 SS + 7 Old Gens                   4  Hopeful
4 SS + SM ORAS BW + UU RU NU        4  Hopeful
5 SS + 5 Old Gens                   2  Rejected
STour Tiers                         1  Rejected

ROUND 2
Candidate                       Votes  Status
----------------------------  -------  --------
8 SS                                7  Hopeful
4 SS + SM ORAS BW + UU RU NU        5  Hopeful
3 SS + 7 Old Gens                   4  Rejected
5 SS + 5 Old Gens                   0  Rejected
STour Tiers                         0  Rejected

FINAL RESULT
Candidate                       Votes  Status
----------------------------  -------  --------
8 SS                                9  Elected
4 SS + SM ORAS BW + UU RU NU        7  Rejected
3 SS + 7 Old Gens                   0  Rejected
5 SS + 5 Old Gens                   0  Rejected
STour Tiers                         0  Rejected

As a result of the survey and after discussion with the TD team, the format for the 2022 WCoP will remain all CG OU.

Thank you to everyone who voiced their opinions and participated in the two rounds of data collection.