Other Ubers World Cup - Format Discussion Thread

[Aberforth]

Hello all.

We're going to be having Ubers World Cup as our winter team tournament this year following the feedback that we received on the recent tier survey. This thread will be used to discuss the format and options that we can have in running the tournament. There are a few things undecided as of yet that do need to be settled on, and the biggest two are the tiers played and the manner of play. Signups will be unaffected by this, not going live for at least a few more weeks, this is for the legwork deciding the format ahead of time. The number of teams is also something that is currently undecided, but that is something that can only really be decided after looking at signups. I will say, as I will be the one doing the IP checking for signups, I will not be listening to appeals to play for teams for any non-IP related reason. If the IPs make you eligible, you're good, if not, you're not.

Tiers Played:
All Current Gen - This option best reflects the world cup tour from OU, and comes at a pretty good time in terms of shortly after DLC2's release giving a lot of power to active teambuilders and players of current gen, pushing the format more than having minimal CG slots would. The issue with all current gen is that a lot of players like playing Ubers old gens in tournaments, and that it would be potentially too repetitive and boring to have so much focus on any single tier. For the sake of greatest competition, I believe this would be the best format, but pure competitiveness is not the goal of every tournament, and players fun should be a factor too.

All gens - This option is as inclusive as possible, allowing many players to represent their country or region playing the tier that they know and enjoy the most. However, this sort of format comes with its own issues. Firstly, including competent players for all formats is not something many regions can actually do, given how few players, relatively, play things like the first 4 gens at a high enough level to remain competitive. Secondly, it does feel under representative of current gen to only have 20% of the tournament be current gen despite the significant difference in playerbases available for each region.

Mixed Gen - Having a cutoff point, such as gen5, from which earlier generations are not included, attempts to strike a balance between the two prior options. For example, having 8 starters, 4 slots being CG, and 1 slot each for BW, ORAS, USM and SS, attempts to strike a good balance between representing old tiers while not limiting the playerbase too much for regions attempting to build competitive rosters. The issue with this sort of format will be determining where exactly to cut off the number of tiers at, and accepting an inherent imbalance in teams with traditionally strong old gen players which are generally harder to improve in than current gen. This is the option that I am leaning towards at the moment, to try to strike the right balance between competitiveness and fun, and where I believe the current mod team is leaning too, but we're opening up this thread to discuss these options (as well as the schedule below) to take stock of what Ubers players actually want.


Schedule: Pools vs Weeks.

Pools
Pros: A lot of camaraderie and teamwork between the current gen players innovating together, and rewarding teams that put in a lot of effort in innovating current gen teams. A lot of high stakes matches in the final days of pools, where the extra prep time in theory reduces the number of matchup losses that testing can prevent. Pools also lets the qualifying stage go by faster, allowing for more games in less time while still having a large number of games deciding teams placements for playoffs.

Cons: If pools are X weeks long, absolutely nothing seems to happen for the X-1 weeks before the deadline, leading to the tour having a very uneven spread of games and excitement, starting off with a whimper as opposed to a bang. Having a more consistently running format makes the tour feel cohesive and exciting as a whole, and weeks are the traditional format for most tours on the site.

Weeks
Pros: Familiar format that players are all used to and should make it easier for the managers and players to keep to expectations. Consistent progression throughout the tournament, including knowing exactly how well other teams are doing with the same number of games played at every week. More forgiving for activity difficulties than pools would be. Easier to run as a tour host than pools too.

Cons: Weeks would have to run for longer (total time) to pit teams against the same number of opposing teams. Teams eliminated early compromises the latter stages of the tournament more than pools, where eliminations are much later (and with much more work having already been done). If splitting teams into 'conferences', there is a risk of imbalance between the two conferences, leading to good teams not making it to playoffs in comparison to teams with a 'weaker' schedule/conference.

I personally dont really care between pools or weeks, and want to see feedback from the Ubers playerbase before making any sort of decision on them. If I had to say which one I'd be leaning, it'd be pools, so that the tour does not drag on for too long and end up taking two months to actually complete.

 

[tier]

Personally, I think one of the biggest aspects of Wcups, at least in other tiers, is the pools component. There is very little to differentiate this and any old team tournament in ubers otherwise, and to me it would just feel like you decided teams alittle and told me to replay UWL or UPL. One contention I have tho is it can be difficult to schedule with 3 other people, someone ALWAYS ends up being MIA and not scheduling forever which is super annoying and not productive towards actually having a fun tournament. I think picking adequate managers tries to remedy that but like you said, a week of nothing is always gonna happen. I think something worth noting is that if you do weeks, shit if we are for real, nothing happens till the weekend regardless so how much of a change really is it. I think there should be some enforced, mandated amount of scheduling like if this person has had 0 lines in the team cord and hasnt scheduled a single game in the first 5-6 days then shit they should be penalized/subbed for that. Not to say they have to play a game that early or even give a concrete time theyre available but shit at least show SOME life and be like "Yo busy week for me this week, ill get back to u when i know my schedule better" which takes 5 seconds of a day to do, because then im not sitting there going one of my opps doesnt exist. At the end of the day tho not doing pools, to me is a disservice to the entire point of world cup tournaments regardless of us having some way to force scheduling or games, and if imma be real, unless there is a prize, I wont be playing a weeks version of the tournament.

To speak towards the gens, imma be biased as fuck but I enjoy seeing multiple gens. I only really care abt up to DPP so i guess for me the favorable choice would be doing only to BW but that sounds kinda ass....You might as well do them all at that point. I dont know how active the older gen community for ubers is, like GSC and things look so woat to me so I could defo see one region just destroying in old gens but that happens regardless. Having more gens means more different kinda players get to play (vs just ladder heros, someone bad at SV might get to learn a worse/emptier pool i.e. ADV), more interesting dynamics in teams (the old heads can help the yungins) since tournaments like these are generally the gateway for newer players to get into shit like UPL i think thats helpful, granted a lot of oldheads probs wont gaf. All current gens is an equally reasonable way to approach it tho, It forces adaption in the metagame and helps the tier not feel stagnant (something i feel that ubers is struggling w rn), fwiw to me you either commit to all SV or you have all the gens. These are just my intial thoughts tho id love to hear some other takes

TLDR:
POOLS + ALL SV / ALL GENS

 

[Fardin]

as the speaker on behalf of the non sv community(i was appointed, u have no say in this), 8 current gen slots would probably bring the least competitive uber team tour we have seen in a decade with probably very small innovation due to it not being as prestigious as UPL. u can even see how stale the games are for the official world cup which has a vast bigger player pool.

uber should capitalize on its extremely strong old gen community which other official tiers aside from ou lack, and take full advantage of it. gen 5 to gen 9 is the ideal cause non preview ones are dog shit and u got to make it a bit different from UPL to give it its own unique identity.

pool vs weeks is probably the less relevant thing to worry about, i would personally be fine with either. but uber MUST integrate lower gens somehow imo to make this tour remotely fun and not as stale

 

[BigFatMantis]

GSC Ubers

 

[Nyx]

I believe that out of all the options for formats, mixed gens is the most ideal for World Cup.

While mono SV does have its perks (and is personally my favourite option), notably pushing innovation in what’s going to be a relatively fresh metagame, it’s going to be tough to convince people to care about 8 SV slots when there’s no prize on the line beyond pride. skooma outlined the issue pretty well in his post so I’m not gonna re-hash it. Definitely the second best option by a mile.

Running all gens runs into the issue of smaller nations being unable to form teams because they simply lack players who have the skillsets to play a lot of older gens. It leads to the formation of super teams such as last year’s Europe which was almost entirely SP/CL calibre players, going against a large point of world cup formats, which is to make it easier for upcoming players to find their way in. Absolutely the worst option here and it isn’t even close in my eyes, at this point letting people join teams with friends regardless of nation would literally be more feasible because numerous countries will have to merge just to plausibly fill a roster.

Mixed gens comes in as a perfect middle ground between these two, it means that you’re less likely to see people burnt out from having to exclusively build SV, while also still keeping it within the realms of plausibility for smaller nations to form teams. While limiting this to SV-BW does help, I’d argue to go a step further and limit it to SV, SS and SM; the three most recent gens, making it the most accessible for the most number of countries. I’d personally prefer 4x SV, 2x SS and 2x SM; if it’s SV-BW, 4x SV, 1xSS-BW.

As for pools vs weeks:

There is very little to differentiate this and any old team tournament in ubers otherwise, and to me it would just feel like you decided teams alittle and told me to replay UWL or UPL. One contention I have tho is it can be difficult to schedule with 3 other people, someone ALWAYS ends up being MIA and not scheduling forever which is super annoying and not productive towards actually having a fun tournament. I think picking adequate managers tries to remedy that but like you said, a week of nothing is always gonna happen. I think something worth noting is that if you do weeks, shit if we are for real, nothing happens till the weekend regardless so how much of a change really is it. I think there should be some enforced, mandated amount of scheduling like if this person has had 0 lines in the team cord and hasnt scheduled a single game in the first 5-6 days then shit they should be penalized/subbed for that. Not to say they have to play a game that early or even give a concrete time theyre available but shit at least show SOME life and be like "Yo busy week for me this week, ill get back to u when i know my schedule better" which takes 5 seconds of a day to do, because then im not sitting there going one of my opps doesnt exist. At the end of the day tho not doing pools, to me is a disservice to the entire point of world cup tournaments regardless of us having some way to force scheduling or games

Was going to write something out but this sums up everything I thought so ty tier. No point doing weeks if we’re not doing a regular team tour. Given the plausible number of teams, you either don’t have a Round Robin (and thus some schedules are easier than others), or you have 2 pools of teams and have Round Robins within those, which still results in one pool of teams being stronger than the other.

tl;dr mixed gens (SV, SS, SM) > mixed gens (SV-BW) -> mono SV ->>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> all gens

 

[tier]

I think a large part that is being missed is that we are likely talking abt a new DLC Ubers which means people WILL cook, and to me, doing 4 SV + up to BW means that not very many new guys are getting a chance. Sure the tournament becomes more competitive but personally thats not what i care abt, especially when a tour has no prize (idgaf abt fc vs icemaster for the 19th time, and i think the ubers scl thread is a good indicator that the community has absolutely no interest in high skill players slamming heads rn), id rather it be a gateway for players to explore and for people to try to cook new and exciting things. If you have Torchic + Lasen go 9-0 in their old gens reusing teams from years ago, i think thats boring as fuck (granted i see this as being better than just SV-BW because it offers the potential for a new player to slot into one of those old gens and maybe translate that experience into UPL). Also

it’s going to be tough to convince people to care about 8 SV slots when there’s no prize on the line beyond pride.

I think these younger players being able to prove their ability and have the chance at playing bigger tours IS the convincing factor to care and try their ass off in this tour.

Running all gens runs into the issue of smaller nations being unable to form teams because they simply lack players who have the skillsets to play a lot of older gens. It

While I agree this is likely and I said it also would probs happen, i think it means timmypikachulover might get slotted into GSC and look at every BigFatMantis replay, knowing that established players are gonna be reusing teams and maybe make smth new. Will they win? probs not but shit its better than nothing.


FWIW I think if we want this to be a super competitive tour to highlight impressive ass Ubers players smashing into each other, then SV - BW makes sense, but when you could also just try to have best of both worlds and go all SV or SV-RBY. I dont see a rsn to be giving UWC ur all if it has no prize beyond just wanting to hf and make cool teams if ur a strong player whereas timmy has smth to show

 

[Edgar]

I think everything that I have to say on the matter of tiers played has been said already. I think mixed gens is the best option for the reasons skooma and Nyx already outlined. As for my preference in terms of what tiers should be included, I think 4 SV, 1 SS, 1 USUM, 1 ORAS and 1 BW hits the sweetspot in terms of having enough variance that will encourage people to sign up. Centering the tour around 1 - 3 specific tiers caters to certain people but ulitmately if not many people want to play those specific 3 tiers then they are probably not going to sign up. Furthermore, I think the workload of just finding one team per old gen a week is much more doable than finding or creating 8 SV teams per week, even if it's a new metagame, it can become very stale very quickly. Teams being recycled shouldn't be a point against old gens being included because this happens in a lot of tours where there are old gens involved, and it will most likely happen in an all SV tour regardless. If we're being real, you can't expect much innovation in a tour that has no prize other than collective and personal satisfaction, but that's just what I think.

As for pools vs weeks; You can do pools the same way DWCOP does it: at least 1 game has to be played by the end of week 1. You can also make it 2 weeks instead of 3 to avoid creating vacuums in which players can john until weeks 2 and 3. This also makes the tour drag less and be more enjoyable as most games will happen in a short amount of time. Making it top 8 cut instead of top 4 would also take it a step further, the tournament would last 5 weeks at worst this way and there would probably be more variance in terms of playoff contention, giving "less stacked teams" more of a chance. Nevertheless, this depends more on how many teams we actually get, if 12 teams is doable then I believe this is an interesting format.

tl;dr: Mixed gens w/ 4 SV, 1 SS, 1 USUM, 1 ORAS, 1 BW & 2 week pools with top 8 top cut.

 

[Piyush25]

DPP plz so I can baton pass cheese once again

 

[Kate]

I am completely and utterly against any arbitrary distinction such as mixed gens; this is a random cut-off for the sake of appeasing people who voted for the WC format without thinking any further than this. Put simply, I don't see any justification for it besides "I think this would be cool", and there's zero line that can be drawn that has any reasoning beyond what tiers someone likes or dislikes.

I support All Current Gen. With the advent of DLC2 and a new year on the horizon, this is frankly the perfect time for it, people will be motivated, excited, and ready to build and play SV Ubers. If your team cannot field 8 decent SV Ubers players, they frankly never stood a chance anyway. I believe the best use of the team tournament slot that runs opposite to UPL is both Metagame Growth and Player Development. All current Gen is the best solution for this. Old gens have plenty of representation between UPL and circuit already.

In regards to pools vs weeks, I am a bit confused on why anyone would want pools. In all my experiences with that format on Smogon, it completely kills hype for matches and makes team chats very dead at times. We shouldn't be deciding on a worse format just to meet some invisible quota to differentiate UWC from UPL. Go with weeks, it's more fun, more hype, and provides a better team experience.

 

[Fardin]

I am completely and utterly against any arbitrary distinction such as mixed gens; this is a random cut-off for the sake of appeasing people who voted for the WC format without thinking any further than this. Put simply, I don't see any justification for it besides "I think this would be cool", and there's zero line that can be drawn that has any reasoning beyond what tiers someone likes or dislikes.

"I think this would be cool" is a perfectly justifiable reason to go with, knowing the entire purpose of the tour is to get the community involved and have fun. not sure what rules we have to adhere to or why all CG makes more sense than mixed. the goal is to do what the community thinks is cool in a nutshell

idk if the rest of this post has to be addressed, its kind of nonsense

 

[Exiline]

Nuke UWC and bring back beef battle
- The Sexiline, pinnacle of ubers

 

[Gareeb]

Each country needs just "1" player for each gen , im not sure how hard it is to arrange that but my vote goes to "all gens weekly format".
can have more than one CG too along with old gens if majority wants to have more CG in tour.
something like this maybe - 3 CG , G8-G3.
If not then anything besides "All CG" is gold.

 

[LBN]

gonna throw my hat into the ring to vouch for Mixed gens aswell. 4 SV, 1 SS, 1 SM, 1 ORAS, ....1 DPP. DPP is one of the more popular ubers gens while BW.... if i speak i'll be suspended for 6 months. Mixed gens don't entirely need to be included in chronological order, we can cut out a meta if its shit and I think we can and should consider this as an option. We could even nuke ORAS (sorry keys) for ADV and watch the latias's get crit or frozen with SEA/heysup games all over again

All current gens is dogshit, especially since there's a very real chance the meta will be asinine with uncheckable demons and a controversial gen gimmick still around. But what's equally dogshit is pools don't do pools. who cares if weeks are longer.

 

[ox04]

I think that inclusion is important and we can't have people that voted world cup and are old gens players now be unable to play because the format is all current gen/mixed gen. All Current Gen has some issues that were already addressed in previous posts and mixed gen feels like a random cutoff like Kate pointed out (how do we even decide which gen should be included or not). That's why I think All Gens is best, but would prefer All Current Gen as a secondary option.

As for Pools vs. Weeks, I know a lot of people are really against pools, and from my experience weeks were considerably more enjoyable to play and watch in addition to being 100 times easier to schedule and prep. That's why I think Weeks is the way to go.

 

[keys]

I'm sorry but I don't really see the point in making this tour all gens, it would just be a bad-format worse UPL with no redeeming qualities and I do tend to agree that mixed gens is arbitrary and would leave some people upset because individual gens are being cut out. As such, I have changed my mind and I believe that the best course of action is making World Cup all current gen. This would serve the purpose of forming teams way easier for less popular regions and would give us the best chance of pushing CG ahead with the introduction of the new DLC (and even when there's no "new meta" it still serves the purpose of developing new CG talent for UPL (which UWL did exceptionally well because it had extra CG slots and UWL is now gone so this should replace that function ideally). I understand that people will be upset with this if they don't play CG because it means they either don't make the tournament or they will have to learn CG but I believe this is a sacrifice worth making (this is coming from someone who doesn't even play CG). This tournament should focus on developing the main gen and not being a carbon copy of another format we already have so I really hope we go this route for WC.

In terms of weeks vs pools, I am a firm believer that pools just sucks as a setup so I would always recommend weeks over pools. Aberforth pointed out that weeks would have to go on for longer but thats not necessarily true. You can still split all teams into 2 "pools" just like pools does but then do weeks within those pools (like 2 groups of 4 teams, 3 weeks of "weeks" within those teams in your pool and top 2 in each group advance to semis and finals), which would give this tour more of a world cup feeling anyway since that's what happens in the actual world cup and would solve all the issues of the potential weeks format imo (as for the unbalanced point, this tour is inherently not balanced or supposed to be equal so I don't really care for that minor caveat, especially since we've had that same setup for pools of being split into 2 groups for the past 2 years and people have not complained about that part of it).

 

[Staxi]

As a former host of Ubers wcup I would honestly prefer weeks rather than pools. From my experience, pools are a pain in the neck for hosts, spectators and sometimes players, I often received criticism about how the format sucked (when it was not about eligibility lmao). Imo the cons are just too annoying to just ignore them and pretty much kills all the hype for the first two weeks, because we Pokémon players are johns.

About the format I would rather prefer full current gen than old gens because it would enhance tier development and we honestly already have Classic, Pentathlon, UPL and previously Winter League for old generations representation. All slots being current gen would also attract competent players who would probably don't care about playing old gens, which might not be the case about current gen as it is an occasion for them to train for Slam's Ubers open.

 

[MMII]

mixed gens is just taking the worst of both worlds. you will still have heavy imbalance in the pre-8 slots. even gen 7 is at the age where if your region doesn’t have somebody who can positive in upl then you are pretty much fucked. mixed gens also isn’t inclusive cause no cutoff is going below gen5 and gens 2-4 are where the more active oldheads are. (even upl teams are often forced to improv for their bw/oras slots) it’s a very sizable portion of the oldgens playerbase that you lose still.

just commit to one direction or the other. if you want more teams with closer skill levels then do full cg. if you want more variety and more participation from the entire ubers community then do full old gens.


pools vs weeks seems already decided by the poll that chose wcup overs uwtt

 

[8142e33]

in my opinion tiers should be according to popularity and no more than 5(preferably 4)tiers should be played cg is most popular so it should have most slots not including dpp is pretty bad cause its a very popular tier i know that ppl like gen 7 alot too? basically the mixed gen option is the best one in my eyes cause nobody wants to watch gen 1 as for pool vs weeks im a bit confused pools is shittier for host and long number of weeks is shittier for players imo depending on the number of teams we should make 2 groups and make weeks like that so if there are 10 teams we will have 4 weeks and 2 finals weeks thats seems most rational pools is not as fun imo and weeks is very fun so i prefer this

 

[RichardMillePlain]

pools :)

 

[SiTuM]

all gens, weeks

 

[Kanha Greninja]

Im an AG player so dont mind me. But I support current gen because many players dont play the old gens so it would be pretty hard finding players playing old gens in a country where players barely play current gen ubers anyway. - Inspiration taken from Freezias vid

 

[Icemaster]

All Gen > BW onwards > All SV.
SV is not that fun or balanced, nor is it a format you can be reliable in unless you are Entro. BH Mon Koraidon speedtie/Guess the set only remains fun for a few weeks. If we do All SV it is more important we do Koraidon suspect first, so perhaps delaying UWC would be good if that's the decision. I think slotting in a generally decent without metagame knowledge player in any of the old gens would be as reliable as an SV starter. I imagine DLC 2 will make this worse. Do what is fun.
I prefer pools.

 

[Jabba]

mixed gens > old gens > SV
Although I don't know that gen 5 and above should be the cutoff, as people do really like the older gens. But I'm not sure what gens you would cut out then.
No preference on pools vs weeks

 

[SparksBlade]

i felt compelled to make a post so this is a onner (one-ner?) i don't want to engage in any back and forths

all cg: people will be worn out before week 3/end of pool stage. even tho it's a new dlc meta, 8 starting cg slots is just too much. assuming 10 teams and weeks format, that's 40 cg games every week. upl has 12 per week. maybe people like kate and ox can find something to cook for so many games every week but it doesn't make sense to subject the players and spectators to this much of the same thing all at once

all gens: as has been said it's impossible for most teams to field competent slots in all the old gens. sure that's the nature of world cup so we could go with it to drive it home all the way but if we want a pretense of competition then this doesn't make sense. i saw some people say that you can field a random dude in old gens and it's not so bad but tell me how many games highlord is winning vs that field bringing the same team each week. it's not just about finding one player for that slot but it has to be supported and competent in the field. and when one of these slots keeps losing cos they're just outmatched it is brutal for the morale.

mixed gens: prevents cg fatigue and isn't as much of a burden on all teams to find players for. sure what gens to include is somewhat arbitrary but exactly what's wrong with that? as long as it's backed by some reason, to reject it because "if this, why not that as well" is hating for the sake of it.


CONCLUSION
as edgar said, 4sv and bw-ss seems fine. 3sv and 2ss maybe but idk that's just small details. throw in a bo3 cg or mixed who knows. cut off bw too and do oras-onwards whatever. just keep it to 8 slots and no more than 4 cg.



ps: ik enzo poorlami is reading this you're not gonna participate anyway what are you doing here. ik pohjis will come to this thread too cos he loves world cup. have a good week dads.

 

[Fc]

not gonna make my post too long, but I personally prefer some form of mixed gens and pools for this tour, specifically ADV - SV 4x sv 1x rest. We'll have a relatively new meta for SV so I think 4 is a good number, and ADV - SS as old gens just feels right as we've had it before and it worked. I think ADV is kinda the cutoff where it's been integrated so much into the circuit for so long that it'll work, and ADV - SS have proof that teams should be able to field their slots nicely from past wcups. BW cutoff isn't smth we've ever done before and it feels a little awkward / arbitrary, and I think GSC and RBY at least for now just don't have the global playerbase suited for a world cup. Any old gen cutoff could probably be argued as arbitrary but I just support ADV since it's been done a bunch in the past for our tours. Full CG is mid imo, too much of the same and we have a really large old gen playerbase in ubers so it's ideally included. The format itself was fine as a player and captain in the past editions and I think we can just keep it fairly simple with ADV-SV and pools as something that already works.