Tournament ZUPL IV - Format Discussion

[S1nn0hC0nfirm3d]

new art pending. art by @Tsareentje

ZUPL IV is around the corner and we need to work out the format, timing, comanagers, and any other concerns. Feel free to post on any of these topics if you plan to participate in this year's ZUPL! Thank you Oathkeeper and Lalaya for hosting!

1. Format:

Last year's format was as follows: 4 SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / BW / DPP. The previous ZUPL forfeited one SS slot for a second SM slot, largely because SS ZU was in its infancy and SM ZU was the most developed and played generation of the lot. Here are the format options as I've seen them, in no particular order, and in respects to removing or keeping the fourth SS slot:

• Keep as is: This format emphasizes the current gen, making having a good current gen playerbase equally as important as oldgens. The effect on drafting could include more current-gen players inside and outside the ZU community; maybe tour players are more likely to play SS ZU than an oldgen ZU slot? The cons here would mostly be burnout, which was apparent last tour. We also are less inclusive to oldgens and oldgen players.
• Bo3: This expands the fourth SS slot to include more coverage for SM and ORAS. The pros here are mostly the same as above, but more emphasis on all-around players, especially ones already experienced with the recent generations of ZU. In turn, Bo3 is known to lead to some hype matchups as well. However, Bo3 exasperates the burnout issue as well as it could be hard to draft for.
• ADV: Absent from prior PLs, ADV has seen a lot of growth since last year. ADV's inclusion would mimic other PLs that naturally go down the line in oldgens + 3 SS. That said, ADV still has a limited playerbase and again could be hard to draft for.
• GSC: See above. GSC follows the same trend as ADV but it awkwardly doesn't follow the same trend as going down the generations, which is a legitimate concern given how antiquated gen 2 can be. However, the same can be said about a lot of oldgens, so I personally would rather just favor the one that gets the most interest.
• Second BW: It's no secret that BW exploded in popularity and meta development recently due to the cash tour. The prospect of a second BW slot could reflect this, that is, if we think there's enough of a playerbase to support it.

These are the main five options that I've seen so far. Remember, we want to fix some of the problems of last PL (i. e. burnout) without causing bigger problems, of course. Feel free to suggest another alternative not listed here, but no meme formats; I love Cufant ZU as much as the next guy but that's not happening any time soon.

2. Timing:

ZUPL IV was moved up to be earlier than last year to avoid overlap with other tours at that time. Regardless of when ZUPL is held, there's going to be overlap with something, but really we just want to accommodate players. Currently, managers signups will open on June 20th. If you believe you would be significantly more inclined to manage and / or play by making manager signups start a month later in July, then let us know; we'd rather go back to our old schedule than lose out on a lot of players. If there's not that much concern on timing then we'll stay on schedule.

3. Comangers:

Signing up with comangers has its pros in relieving the stress caused by a single manager going into a draft. It's also fun; if you want to manage a team with a bud then why not? We still need to balance managers + comanagers in regards to: 1.) the pricing of the comanagers, and 2.) allowing only one or both of the pair to play. Last year's pricing was a fixed 15k changed from a fixed pricing to 10k + 1.5k per win from the previous ZUPL. If comanagers are approved, we likely need to balance them for teams that signup without one, so one way to do this is to make sure only one of the two play in the PL. This was a compromise brought up before and I personally prefer it. Otherwise, other options with pricing could also be explored.

Again, post below on any of these topics if you plan on participating in ZUPL IV. Some topics like retains could be something we bring up but retains have always been excluded from ZUPL so I still don't see a good reason to do so. Also, if necessary, we can resort to a community vote to determine these factors if there isn't an obvious compromise.

Personal thoughts

ADV makes the most sense to me. We alleviate the pressure put on SS burnout and it's the next in-line generation wise. ADV's playerbase is solid enough too. I don't care about the timing. I wrote above comanagers + only one plays makes the makes the most sense to me.

 

[Lalaya]

personal opinion not reflecting host status since I'm fine with everything anyway:
- tiers: bo3 definitely would raise the level of the competition since that slot is probably the hardest to play, even if it could be the hardest to find an actual player for it still definitely goes on skill and on your capacity to draft; otherwise, adv could offer more variety in the pool, and bw thanks to the boom for bw zu could suffice, although i find it a bit harder to justify since only the money tour kept it alive and if I had to guess it will go back to the usual level activity in not that much time
- timing: w/e, but consider that starting late july would mean hitting september with the late stages of the tour, and I know some people would rather not; that being said you're free to choose which part of the summer you wanna get busy, anyway
- co-managers: co-managers are a reality in basically every other PL to the point it's the norm signing up in two anyway, so I don't see why shouldn't you, since it only comes with benefits for all the team, the managers themselves and the hosts; if you're scared that fixing them to 15k is too low for certain people, then yes, make only one of them play, although it wouldn't solve the issue in say, tuthur + random comanager; that being said, managers costing more than other managers when the usual is 15k would just encourage the managers to get a random comanager not pay themselves too much and its a situation of disparity I would rather dodge (why should one deserve to be paid less than another when the price is fixed?)

and please don't pull up retains

 

[Jett]

I'm here to spread my wisdom again. I speak for myself and not for the pekos corporation.

Format Preference:
3 SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / BW / DPP / ADV

I don't mind seeing 1 SS slot being cut, there was quite a lot of burnout on the builders so replacing it with another old gen makes a lot of sense. 4 SS would be my second favourite option fwiw since I personally did not burn out last year. Bo3 while a cool idea, doesn't fix the issue of burnout, and because it defaults to SM and ORAS, it skips out BW which had garnered the most hype and players over the past year. I also think despite having said that a second BW is probably not the wave either; it's really hard to justify any old gen getting an extra slot over a different old gen just getting its first. Now between ADV and GSC, I just believe it to be a more competitive gen msot due to the mechanics which don't represent zu as well as every other later gen. I think that any arguments regarding playerbase don't really hold up any more; they're probably about the same at this point and ADV is definitely more intertwined with ZU. At the end of the day though, I'm probably gonna be slotted into SS but just from a viewing perspective and for competitiveness ADV has the slight advantage (GSC ZU is really fun though don't get me wrong so if that's the direction you wanna go with then sure).

Timing:
I'd still prefer shifting it back a bit probably a week or two will do. Better to avoid clashing with PUPL too much, allows more time for meta adjustments after the July shifts. As a council member I don't wanna be forced to make a decision within the first week. Not the biggest of deals but definitely something worth noting especially because if we're worried about a manager problem, then we'd wanna accommodate for our potential manager signups as much as possible.

Comangers:
Co-managers are fine. Personally not too much of a problem if both play because by having cos you're removing a lot of players (who are usually pretty good) from the pool already. Otherwise you force teams into having a 1 manager who more so only "manages" and maybe builds a bit and then just a star player who is officially called your "co-manager". You could try and get managers to assign prices to each other if you're worried about fixing a certain price and that being unfair because X is better than Y.

Retains:
Pretty meh on retains; fun concept but I realistically don't see it in ZU given playerbase etc.. We're not at that stage where it would be a fun idea that wouldn't significantly harm competitiveness of drafting and the pool. Not to mention, you'd have to give managers a Pl in advance warning in reality for this to be fair.

 

[btboy]

Format
The more I think about it, the more daunting 4 SS slots seems. On top of the burnout that was experienced last year, there are two new factors this year that are worrisome: 1) the influx of tour player signups that could occur with a custom avatar being offered, and 2) the possible scarcity of high-quality SSZU builders in the player pool. For example: czim and kay — who either built for the majority, or all, of their respective teams’ SS slots last year — have both expressed that they are unlikely to participate, and Tuthur is going to be managing.

I’m very skeptical that we collectively have enough building power to accommodate this many SS slots moving forward, especially considering interest from the tours community may demand more support from ZU mains this year.

That said, I’m not sure what the ideal alternative is.

• As Ho3n stated, BO3 exacerbates burnout, so I don’t think this is a good option to replace SS4, even if it is a hype format.
• I do think that there is definitely enough interest in BW to field 12 quality players for two slots. Several big-name players signed up for BW ZU Cup just for fun and I think there would be good turnout especially with a custom. However, I don’t know how I feel about 3 SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / 2 BW / 1 DPP. It feels a bit wacky. At any rate, I obviously have bias here because I’m the BW ZU TL, so any advocacy for a BW2 slot by me should be met with some skepticism.
• I’m pretty neutral on an ADV slot. It’s well-maintained by ADV Council and seems to be pretty well-liked among the ZU old gens players. I’m not against its inclusion and it seems the most reasonable considering it fits chronologically, but I legitimately don’t know how good the signups would be relative to other old gens. I don’t say that as a reason to exclude it; I legitimately am unsure and can’t voice an informed opinion.
• GSC ZU is not a serious option, in my opinion. GSC Cup had the lowest number of signups of any classic tour this year, and the format itself is extremely RNG-based and probably the least skillful of any of our old gens. This format is not good enough to make an accommodation for a playerbase that is small even by ZU standards. I simply don’t think this tier belongs in ZUPL.

I’m interested to see what people’s thoughts are on this, because me saying “burnout is bad and replacing SS could be a good thing,” with no solution offered isn’t particularly helpful.

Timing
As someone who initially advocated for ZUPL to be moved up, I will say that doing so might have been a mistake if it means less participation and/or lower player quality. Either June or July works fine for me personally, but I think we need to do what’s best for most people, even if it means accepting a potentially sunk cost.

It might be good to survey the community at large about this somehow. I know we have this discussion thread, but not everybody who may be interested in ZUPL, will participate.

Comanagers
I am obviously biased because I want to comanage with Toto this year, but I think allowing comanagers is a no-brainer. It helps alleviate stress and burnout and lets people team with their pals. At least two people have voiced to me privately that they would only signup to manage if they found a quality comanager (no, Toto was not one of them.) I could be wrong, but I think relieving the pressure a manager experiences could potentially go a long way in trying to promote manager signups.

That said, it makes sense that you should only be able to buy one since some people might not elect a comanager.

Regarding pricing, I think the UUPL manager pricing that we stole for RUPL is a pretty cool formula with fairly intuitive results.

Formula

(Price last RUPL or 10,000, whichever is higher + (10,000 + (# of wins last RUPL * 1500))) / 2 , rounded up to the nearest .500.

Retains
To my knowledge, most other PLs have retains. While that in and of itself is not a good reason to have retains, I would like to understand the reasoning they have not been permitted in ZUPL. It adds an interesting dynamic to teambuilding and it rewards good drafting. That said, retains should obviously be limited to one retain per team. Can someone please explain why they have not been allowed?

 

[viet noa]

My Spicy ZUPL Take:
2 SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / 2 BW / 1 DPP / 1 ADV

I honestly think that we could go without 4, and even 3, SS slots. With the burnout we saw last year, we don't want to exhaust our players too much. Furthermore, SS ZU already sees the most competitive attention (which makes sense ofc), with ZULT currently going on and with other big tourneys to come. Perhaps only having 2 SS slots is too radical of a change, but I think ZUPL should serve as a celebration of the many rich metagames we have, so having over 2 slots for ANY meta is a bit much to me.

That's why I'd also give a second slot to BW ZU ~ it's been a while since the Breadwinners tour finish, and it's clear that it was a big success. As the OP mentioned, a second slot would reflect the meta's rising popularity and positive reception.

 

[Toto]

Format:
4 SS is too much, just echoing what's already been said about burnout last year on top of the declining builder pool as btboy stated. Adding Bo3 SS/SM/ORAS is not the move either though, that's backwards thinking as there is still 4 SS builds. However Bo3 SM/ORAS/BW could work, there has been internal discussion about SM2 and BW2 and this caters to both. ORAS is the odd ball here, however ORAS was going to be included in the original Bo3 anyway so that's that sorted. Some may argue this is still a form of burnout as you are building more teams but as these builds would be split up amongst multiple oldgens players the strain would be a lot less. The issue with this slot however would be finding players, imo they would most likely come from the expected excess BW signups flexing on us, mixed with a few people who performed well in Classic. Now this brings me onto BW2, I actually think this might be the best solution, there's no hiding that we could fill 12 slots, and not just fill the slots but have top quality players throughout. So overall I think 3 SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / 2 BW / 1 DPP is the most competitive format for ZUPL IV. Quick note regarding ADV and GSC, I don't really think either tier should have a place in ZUPL personally, especially one getting in over the other in an 8 slot PL. Would much rather a 2nd smaller "classic" team tour be made if these tiers need more representation with 1 SM / 1 ORAS / 1BW / 1DPP / 1ADV / 1GSC which could be expanded to 1SV / 1SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / 1BW / 1DPP / 1ADV / 1GSC in future years if successful.

Comangers:
Adding co mangers seems like a natural progression. All other PL's do it and its time for us too. I also think having cos will increase manager signups which is looking to be much needed and there are concerns of not even getting 6 signups. Furthermore co managers should be optional and not a requirement to maximise singups. Regarding pricing I'm for a flat 15k if both are allowed to self buy. This would make sure that no "broken" pairings would come out of this without paying a hefty price( e.g hoen & Danny). Tbf this is still be a good deal as your getting an underpay for both so maybe we need custom manager prices or only letting 1 self buy. Anyway I'm against using last years format of 10k +1.5k per win, so much can change in a year, such a player getting significantly better or mastering a new gen altogether. Not to mention it gives players who didn't play last year a huge advantage to buy themselves for only 10k.

 

[Corthius]

Hi, personally I don't have much experience with Team tours in general and I only participated in two so far with one being in NU and the other one being PSPL. I'd still like to give my thoughts but take them with a grain of salt.

My preference would be the following:
3 SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / 1 BW / 1 DPP / 1 ADV or 1 GSC
No hot take tbh. 3 SS slots is my minimum, I can get behind people potentially feeling burned out, especially if you only have one builder for SS in your team and potentially having to build 4 teams sounds incredibly draining. Tho, SS is still the main gen at the moment and the PL should reflect that imo, so 3 still feels like the bare minimum and going as low as 2 SS slots, even tied with BW, is not the move at all in my eyes. We have had a CUP for all the old gens which is enough to shine the light on them. I personally wouldn't emphasize too much on BW, not because it's a bad gen at all, but basically what has been said above; I don't like giving an old gen 'eine Extrawurst' because in my eyes they are all equal and by my numbers (3SS slots) I'd rather include one more old gen than cutting it off for a second slot of another.
Between ADV or GSC I don't have a strong opinion simply because I have no idea which format has the bigger playerbase. There is no real point in adding a tier that is dead and has no one that wants to play it. Again, I have no oversight of that, the most helpful would probably be GSC/ADV player vouching for their respective tier in this thread to gather an opinion on it.

I have no thoughts to add for the timing nor really for comanagers besides what already has been said above and I don't need to repeat everything.

 

[Tuthur]

Format
I agree with the above posts that 4 SS is a lot and caused us some burnouts in the teambuilding and it should probably be reworked. My personal choice would be to give GSC a chance as many users complained last year to not have a slot in the tournament. The tier had a more than sufficient playerbase, both in term of skill and number of players, to fulfill a slot in ZUPL. I have nothing personal against ADV, however, it just lacks the playerbase to get a slot. It can already be hard to fill slots for some already present old gens like ORAS and DPP, so I am against adding an even more niche tier. As a potential future manager, I don't want to have to learn a completely new metagame due to lacking enough mainers to build and play the tier. I understand that some people find it ugly to skip a gen, however GSC has many more qualities than ADV due to an already existing player pool. You'll hardly find 6 people wanting to play and build for ADV, especially when the few names I've been given would rather get slotted elsewhere (namely ADV Tier Leader, waterbend, who is one of the few DPP players); whereas you can find more than enough GSC ZU players who are self-sufficient. A lot of this is based on the people wanting GSC ZU last year still being motivated to get a slot this time. Tagging them so they can tell us more in this thread File 13 Earthworm holly pac Hitmonstars.

In case, the GSC people tell us they aren't interested in getting a slot this time. I would still be opposed to ADV for the aforementioned reasons, but I would agree with Toto that 2 BW would be the most competitive format. There is no doubt we can get 12 BW ZU players with all the attention the format got this year. This would also be easier to cut this slot off ZUPL next year when SV comes out than removing a whole new gen. That said, like Jett and Corthius, I think it is more interesting to give visibility to a whole new tier that has the capabilities to fill a slot than doubling an old gen. I also want to say I am opposed to bo3, Toto already explained well the reasons why I don't want SS/SM/ORAS, but I also don't want from SM/ORAS/BW, because building two teams in SM and ORAS per week would also be unpractical, reusing past teams is quite tough due to both tiers banning one staple. While it is also true for BW, I think the amount of people knowing the tier is more than enough to make up for Articuno's ban changing the metagame.

Timing
Don't change anything. 10 days has always been enough to have tiering actions past a tier shift and it is unneeded to shift the tournament from several weeks. Especially with no other tournament ongoing and helping developping the metagame. PUPL overlap is a problem, but so is SCL overlap and we don't even know when PUPL is, so my take would be to ignore it. Lalaya is also right about having a tournament in September rather than July, it really limits the availability of people as they are most likely going to be more free during the summer.

Comanagers
Everyone wants comanagers. I don't like btboy's math formula because it makes managers always more expensive over time and like Toto said a lot can change during a year. I think the best idea would be to have a fixed pricing and only allowing one self-purchase like Ho3n suggested. As for retains, I don't have a preference for any side.

tldr: GSC>BW>SS>ADV; do not change timing; have fixed price for self-purchase and have comanagers.

 

[Beka]

Format:
I don't mind if the format stays the same as the past year, i believe big tournaments helps a lot in the development of the metagame so keeping SS4 would go along with it. BUT given a burnout has occurred last year, i think it would be awesome to leave the slot to oldgens. As everyone already said, Bo3 doesn't solve the problem at all but is making it worse. However:

- Second BW: I'm not against having a second BW slot in ZUPL, this metagame has proven to be very interesting and balanced with plenty of resources and a good amount of signups for BW ZU Cup. Thus, there will be no problems to reach the required ins.

- ADV: Tbh, i'm kinda reluctant about that one, from what i know, ADV has never been a metagame that has been successful in terms of resources or playerbase but i won't talk more about something i don't know much.

- GSC: It's kinda awkward for me to argue in favor of GSC cuz it's probably the metagame i play the most but eh. In my opinion, GSC deserves a slot in ZUPL; while it had less ins than other tiers in classic, it has a big playerbase at high level. Unlike BW, GSC hasn't a slot in ZUPL yet and unlike ADV, it has a playerbase way bigger than people actually think that want to play in ZUPL.

I don't really care about the timing and the comanagers since both outcomes are fine to me.

 

[wooper]

not going to write a whole lot here but figured i should chime in as the adv tl.

adv council and i have put in a lot of work over the past few weeks updating resources for adv cup and as of writing this, we're still going. we've compiled sample teams, organized a set compendium, updated speed tiers, started a running document for resources, created a role compendium, and are hoping to update vrs once pu updates theirs--which will lead to shifts and more work on our part. dropping ss from 4 to 3 to include adv makes sense thematically and chronologically, and would be a great opportunity to see the fruits of our labor and to have tournament acknowledgement for our efforts.

i understand though that the playerbase isnt as large as newer gens, particularly bw, oras, and sm, and that many adv players overlap with other gens--myself included--and therefore excluding adv doesnt mean that those folks wont play in zupl at all, theyll just play in other gens. in that regard, i can see points being made for 2 bw slots to account for the many, many folks who signed up for the breadwinners tour, but im not sure that that playerbase is invested in bw zu; i think it's safe to say that majority who signed up were motivated by the prospects of a cash prize and not by their love or dedication to bw zu, so do we necessarily want to accommodate them? i dont know the answer to that.

with regard to the inclusion of gsc, although i hated the tier initially, it's really grown on me and i like it a lot! but i want to echo some of my peers' sentiments in that gsc is said to have a larger playerbase, but adv and gsc cup signups were extremely close in numbers, and that the meta is very rng-based and pretty one-note--togetic, croconaw, magby, and smoochum find their way on nearly every team in my experience. however, gsc folks are typically exclusive to the tier unlike adv and they specifically are asking to be included in the lineup, whereas there isnt much of an "adv community," so to speak, asking for the same. so i dont know where that leaves us either.

i know this response doesnt really contribute a definite answer from me one way or the other, but i wanted to at least get some of my thoughts out in the open considering my status as tl

 

[yovan33321]

Thanks for putting this thread up. Firstly I think bw slot 2 is not the first best choice for this tournament. I heavily disagree with the fact that it's the most well loved zu format or most popular, it is pretty stale and very formulaic in terms of building - but that is more a matter of opinion. Instead, you can look at the past ZUPL and ZU classic and you'll see poor quality games in even BW slot 1 quite often. With a low playerbase it's relatively difficult to draft for a second slot. That being said it's better than the other choices presented - all of them have a lack of playerbase for it but also secondary problems. 4th SS makes the tour way too cgen oriented, GSC ZU is quite disliked and struggles to have the playerbase for a single slot, and I don't think ADV can be justified without any prior inclusion in the ZU circuit - genuinely very few if any people know how to play them and there isn't really an established meta in them so we don't know if they are actually good formats.

We should put BO3 in this tour. It is actually genuinely the most hype ZU format of all time from what I see, pretty much everyone from that time who played it acknowledges how fun, diverse and fair the format is. Playerbase shouldn't be an issue, I've talked to people about and a lot of people confirmed they would play it or at least take part in building and given they haven't changed their mind that would include. I acknowledge that it's awkward to have a legacy format but in the context of ZU I think it makes sense given that it was held as the main formats for some years and remains very liked.

So the argument should really be for a BO3 ZU, and from the points I listed I think that is the better choice. Having 1 of the SS slots being BO3 sounds good to me too. Thanks for reading.

3 SS / BO3/ 1 SM / 1 ORAS / BW / DPP

 

[dawnbuster]

Tagging them so they can tell us more in this thread File 13 Earthworm holly pac Hitmonstars.

i have no stake in anything of this site anymore but LMFAO please dont put gsc zu. ignoring that 4 ppl play it, the tier is also very bad / samey / boring / too reliant on croconaw freezing the other croconaw. thank you

 

[Mirbro]

I am gonna speak short as most has already been said but I just want to add more pressure on what I think is the best for next ZUPL (ofc, only an opinion). But next ZUPL I want to directly participate as manager so this discussion highly concerns me.

Format Preference:
3 SS / 1 SM / 1 ORAS / BW / DPP / ADV

I felt like 4 SS last year was too much. In our team Kay, who was the main SS builder, felt a bit exhausted sometimes because scouting and building something consistent for like 4 slots is a bit too much. I know we can have different players and builders for SS but sometimes is a bit too much when also many of our best players/builders are gonna manage/co-manage. So I think 3 spots is more than enough. Bo3 does not solve this problem if it is SS only, if it is Bo3 using SS + old gens, could be cool as something fresh but maybe it would aggravate the building exhaustion and we would see many people just reusing teams from other slots (something I think is not healthy, in principle). I just tend to think adding another old gen is the way to go. Although I am a council in BW, adding two slots of old gen is something I would avoid for old gens' sake. Better develop all of them as much as we can.

Timing:
Tbh, I don't mind. I would prefer the earlier, the better but just for my own preferences (I would like to have more time to prepare for NFEPL in case it exists). Objectively, I think 10 days is more than enough to have a bit the meta solved and also is fine to have some mystery first weeks about what is good and what is really good. I think couple of first weeks are gonna be more than enough and good builders need to shine on those moments. A bit concerned about PUPL and ZUPL clashing but this happens with so many tours anyay... tldr, don't change timing.

Comangers:
Not only co-managers are fine but for me are a must. Co-managers help a ton to teams and also alleviates pressure on manager. Co-managers will also boost the idea of "franchise" which is amazing for morale. I would also agree with having only one manager playing, because otherwise teams would start with two already selected players, which can be very determining. About price, not sure... I tend to agree with Tuthur and Toto but then I feel like this can be unhealthy in the long-run (not this iteration) so I would need to see more discussion about it.

Retains:
I think it would be a fun idea but really problematic if it is not done correctly. Like how many retains, which price, and how this affects having already a co-manager (co-manager is also a retain? if having a co-manager means like 1 less retain?). I think needs further exploration and I think having them or not are valid options which will need to be explored anyway.

Looking forward to this iteration, also we could do like a MVP of the week, with public votes or whatever, but this would be important to look for a solution avoiding self-votes or team-votes.

 

[Hitmonstars]

A lot of this is based on the people wanting GSC ZU last year still being motivated to get a slot this time. Tagging them so they can tell us more in this thread File 13 Earthworm holly pac Hitmonstars.

I disagree with having GSC honestly, the player base just isit there, thou there are a number of players who "can play" GSC ZU, I'm sure a vast majority of then would rather play another gen, the GSC ZU community isit that active in comparison to other gens, Meta is also just isit very fun, It can be very stally (not in a good way) and can feel very stale. Thou I can't comment on my opinions for other gens due to lack of recent experience with them, this is my stance for now.

 

[File 13]

Although I have earnestly tried to encourage more interactivity between the two, there is still a significant divide between the GSC Community and the ZU Community. That being said, this tournament belongs to the ZU Community, so while I'd like to see GSC ZU have a slot in ZUPL IV, I don't think it's reasonable to alienate the ZU Community in order for that to happen. The matter can be readdressed in future iterations of the tournament, anyway. I think that Toto's idea to have a smaller team tournament featuring old generations would be a logical step to take that would also avoid stepping on people's toes.

 

[DurzaOffTopic]

format has to be 4 ss / 1 sm / 1 oras / 1 bw / 1 dpp

old gens can't outnumber current gen, second best option is bo3, agree that sucks for burnout but honestly this is a community problem - "burnout" examples were mostly poor drafting (forcing kay to carry 4 slots isn't fair to him) or the majority of players being sore losers and cancering or stop trying to contribute when they/their team does bad. having active co managers will help with this i think as well

adv and gsc are awful anyway

2 bw makes no sense i guarantee bwzu won't be able to field 2 slots for each team lol, anybody who thinks the million dollar money tour will get enough to field 2 bw slots per team in zupl is on that good good. wasn't enough follow up on the money tour to convert it into retained zu players.

allow comanagers but 1 self buy per team seems fair to me

retains make PLs more fun, create team identity, and pretty much every other subforum PL has had them for years but nobody in zu drafts properly so i guess its yet another year of lack of competitiveness

 

[Medeia]

Despite liking ADV ZU personally and currently being in finals of ADV Cup i'm not sure if there would be enough players for it, it didn't have any more signups than GSC and isn't a lot more active besides that either (if anything the GSC community had shown more effort to establish GSC ZU as a tier over the past year).
2 BW slots is the most unviable option i've seen of them all, if the money tour was a real indication for the BW playerbase to be way bigger than freaking SM (let alone the other old gens) it should've gotten a lot more signups in ZU Classic than it did.

Personally speaking BO3 is the most competitively viable option for the last slot and more viable than a 4th less competitive SS slot and the other lower tier PLs usually also have a BO3 slot, but that's just the 2 cents of someone who just became active in ZU and competitive mons in general again recently.

 

[btboy]

There was some discussion on manager pricing in the ZU discord this evening, so out of curiosity I pulled player records from ZUPL II and ZUPL III in order to run some basic correlations on various pricing formulas (which use the previous year’s records) and the wins a player had.

I ended up with an admittedly small sample of 34 players who participated in both the aforementioned ZUPL editions, and the goal was to see how strongly a given pricing formula correlated to a player’s wins. Obviously not all these players were managers, but they are consistent participants in ZUPL and they help increase sample size.

Anyways, since the goal is to price managers as fairly as possible, there would ideally be a strong relationship between these two variables (price and wins).

I compared several different pricing formulas — last year’s formula, a formula using win differential as a multiplier instead of wins, a formula using win:loss ratio instead of wins, and even the crazy-looking formula UUPL implemented this year. Without getting into too much boring statistician language, the correlations were barely differentiable and, quite frankly, not particularly strong. Meaning that for the given player sample, none of the pricing formulas would have been particularly good at predicting how many wins a player would get. For the statistically inclined, the correlation coefficient for them fluctuated between 0.19-0.20 with a few thousandths difference between them. That is not very compelling.

This is by no means a robust statistical analysis and, again, the sample size is very small, but I wanted to take a few minutes to see if there were any empirical basis for the rhetorical arguments of one pricing formula over another. There were not, and none of the proposed alternatives to last year’s pricing formula were meaningfully better (or worse).

I’d be happy to augment my code and reexecute it for different formulas (or on different datasets) if people have any ideas for something they think might be superior. I’m also willing to forward the requisite .csv and .R file if you wish to reproduce the results and check my work.

TL;DR — I didn’t find any statistical basis that any one formula would be better than the others.

 

[Lalaya]

First, to clarify the purpose of my posting: this isn't the final decision, but just a informative post

We discussed two of the points that were in contention and reached an optimal conclusion: retains and managers

On retains: the general consensus is to allow them, locking them at 1 for team; the player pool is fairly small, any more of them would just heavily undermine the process of drafting as a whole, and there was some discussion in either not allowing them or another idea I'll pitch below; that being said, pricing as per SPL rules (old price +3k, if this is less than 10k then 10k)

On co-managers: obviously, as literally any other PL does we're allowing them, but with the caveat of: only one of the two can buy themself and play. As above with retains, this is to not skew the potential player pool even further by making a team already almost half formed with "guaranteed" players, and removes the bit of advantage a pair of strong managers should bring.

On manager pricing: well, here comes the annoying part, but btboy right above seemingly determined that with such a small sample size the exact formula doesn't matter and we have some options, so (obviously numbers can have some fine tuning, but that's the general idea)

• Base price (10k) + difference based on differential: let's say, Tuthur went 4-1 in the last ZUPL; if he wants to selfbuy as manager, he needs to pay 10k+(3*3)=19k
• Base price (10k) + 2k for win, - 1k for loss; as for the example above, he needs to pay 10k+(4*2-1*1)=17k

The difference is simply: differential based doesn't care about how many matches you played but its the more balanced one, a W/L based formula does but it weighs wins more (obviously as intention, because otherwise it would be the same as diff) and players who played more games are usually easier to evaluate (although arguably if you wanna pick someone as your co-manager you already KNOW what they can do), so pick your poison

Also for the argument we didn't touch yesterday: tiers
I'm still at the ZU Gods' mercy on this one, but any decision we make on this we'll end up making someone unhappy, be it BW2, SS4 or the BO3, so optionally leaving the tier undecided until signups or making a survey could do the trick

If you have any questions, feel free!

 

[Xayah]

• Base price (10k) + 2k for win, - 1k for loss; as for the example above, he needs to pay 10k+(4*2-1*1)=17k

I just want to mention that I brought up this suggestion, specifically because myself and btboy considered it strange for a 3-2 player to cost the same as a 1-0 player; this proposal basically focuses on targeting sample size.

Specific pricing probably has to be adjusted. If the alternative is 3*differential, I imagine a close proposal to that is +3 for a win, -2 for a loss, which would put Toto at 10+(4*3-1*2) = 20k. In general, I'd expect players that played a lot to be more expensive in the W/L system than in the differential system.

Finally, I also added a '10k minimum', so a player that had a very negative record would still cost 10k.

 

[btboy]

Also for the argument we didn't touch yesterday: tiers
I'm still at the ZU Gods' mercy on this one, but any decision we make on this we'll end up making someone unhappy, be it BW2, SS4 or the BO3, so optionally leaving the tier undecided until signups or making a survey could do the trick

I think it makes the most sense to cross this bridge when we come to it. I do think we can get 12 quality players to accommodate a BW2, but the caveat is that we should not count on all the starpower from Breadwinners to return. I do believe BW will get several high-caliber signups but I don’t think we should expect 12 BW players to be a murderer’s row with SPL-caliber matchups across the board every week.

I’m really intrigued by an old gens BO3 (SM-ORAS-BW), but I don’t think it solves the burnout issue and it may not be as hype as it sounds if teams are being reused. It also has the possibility to pull mainers away from SS, which could exacerbate our concerns about the availability of SS builders in the pool that made us reconsider SS4 to begin with. (I could be wrong about this.)

Again, I think it’s better to just gauge the signups and go from there. Unless there’s something I’m not privy to, I don’t think we need to make this decision right now.

 

[Jett]

I wanted to be lazy and not write anything but it seems like people hate writing so here we are.

1 manager self-buy and 1 retain is fine, Retains pricing is completely fine at 10k or old zupl price +3k as per SPL and pretty much every PL. However, for manager pricing, please do not set the pricing for managers low aka don't make it 10k. This is an awful suggestion from managers wanting to abuse the system and buy themselves for a low price.

I think most systems are pretty bad at setting fair prices but at least they aren't as abusable perhaps. Regardless a flat 15k or any high bar would basically make it so manager pricing isn't abusable in anyway and it's the easiest solution. It's not going to be the best but many of the formulas fail to give an accurate depiction of what people should actually be priced so it's not actually that bad.

Similar if you want to do differential, the starting price has to be higher because there's no way someone who is even should go for the same as an 0-5 player. For example 15k + 1k per differential from last ZUPL, where negative differential in the regular season would also be factored in. Say you went 0-5, then you'd be 10k, while 20K is the highest someone could be for 5-0. Suddenly we don't get the issue of a 10k player for someone who went 2-2 or new players some how cheating out the system. Though this doesn't account for the fact a 3-2 player should be valued higher than a 1-0 player so maybe you wanna split it to 1.5k per win and -1k per loss still with the higher base price. The floor price can be lower than 10k if you wanna mess with numbers such as differential pricing so long as the base price we start at is higher than 10k.

Lastly, if we did wins, this would be trickier. Again I'm not a fan of having this at 10 because for those who haven't played at all, there are cases where this is very . You could up the starting price but ig the status quo from last year of 10k + 1.5k per win really isn't that bad.

Would like to say that my numbers aren't necessarily the right ones the use and that the system doesn't have to be perfect, but at least fair and not allow for potential abuse to occur. whatever pricing system is decided on, please do not let the base be 10k because it's extremely abusable. No team should be getting 2 players for ONLY 20k before an auction when they're both expected to perform above average at the very least. It makes no sense when the same people have said countless times that self-buys and retains are not equivalent yet they want to possibility of making self-buys so cheap that it would effectively be better for teams to cheat out two retains with one effectively being a "self-buy".

SS4 > BW2 but idrc that much

 

[Toto]

Ok so my thoughts have changed on the format since last month and I'm on longer pro BW2, did a bit of digging on potential signups and I think fielding 12 players could be tough and even if we did get the required amount, I'm not sure if 2 slots should even be given to BW as its unfair to the other oldgens. That leaves SS4 as the default option as it was the format last year and ADV and GSC have been shot down pretty heavily. However I want to draw attention to bo3 being the 8th slot with the gens just being the standard 3 most recent so SS / SM / ORAS for this years iteration of ZUPL.

Burnout, this gets thrown around a lot whenever bo3 is brought up, however if SS4 if the only other viable option I don't see how it is that much worse if at all. You still need the same amount of SS builders regardless of if the 8th slot is SS4 or bo3, the only way I see this as an issue if it the person building SS teams is also the sole builder of sm and/or oras which in that case your draft just sucks, no wonder your burnout. The step-up from your SM and ORAS players building 2 teams instead of 1 isn't enough to justify not having bo3 imo, again bo3 is only an issue if you already didn't have a SM or ORAS builder. In my experience you throw around multiple teams/ideas each week in oldgen slots anyway and with the ZUPL only being 5 weeks + playoffs alot of the ideas go unused. Reusing teams is also a viable option if your really struggling one week, look at Flamencos reusing the same ORAS team for years.

Next up, do people even want bo3 over SS4 and are there enough players willing to play this? I believe the answer to both is yes. Just from this thread Durza, Descending and Yovan all support bo3 with Tuthur being the only user against bo3. I've talked to Danny and a fruitshop owner too and although haven't not made a post yet, support bo3's inclusion. Now who would be willing to play bo3? Well to start with Danny and a fruitshop owner are both willing to play, S1nn0hC0nfirm3d seems like an easy pick too, seeing as he farmed the ORAS pool last year and is proficient at SS and SM. Players who performed well in classic such as TheFranklin Descending Huargensy 5Dots OranBerryBlissey10 are also options. Any tour player could also play bo3 too as they would be getting fed teams and would play whatever anyway. So ye I think fielding 6 bo3 players is definitely possible with half the slots basically already confirmed.

tldr bo3 > SS4. No BW2

 

[Greybaum]

hi it's the resident hater greybaum

the "10k + 1.5k per win" is a terrible system and i can't understand why it's being considered. statistically at least one top player is going to have a horrible record every PL and you can literally just look at last year's sheet and see this in action:
25500 - kay - 1-2
20000 - 5gen - 3-2
16500 - czim - 2-3
16500 - pdt - 0-3

the post doesn't clarify if this system is meant to be a flat +1.5 per win or a better but still garbage 1.5 + differential but both systems are smeg. a flat 1.5 rate skews the system in favour of people who play less (like kay and pdt above) which is hilarious when you consider that not every team goes into playoffs. if this is meant to be based off win differential like Lalaya proposes you now have kay, czim, and pdt going for 10k and 5gen for 11.5k if they sign up as a manager which is extremely silly. this system gets even worse next year if bo3 is added because the best overall players are likely to be facing off against each other and about half of the top player records are going to be going even at best giving them a HUGE advantage in the far off zupl VI.

just make it 15k. it's enough to make managers think twice if they arent confident in their abilities and isn't so steep it prevents good players from playing. if you're concerned about superteams from 2 managers playing then up it to 18k which is still a fair price for anyone signing up that would consider playing in the first place.

let both managers play. the zu pool collectively isnt very good at pokemon compared to other tiers and having two (fairly expensive) players isnt the advantage you guys seem to think it is. only 6 out of 63 players last year had a differential higher than +1 before playoffs with ho3n being the only of those to be interested in managing afaik. is a net 2-0 differential really broken enough to justify limiting the number of potential manager pairings?

i challenge anyone to name a combination of managers that would be broken if both given the opportunity to play. the best records for potential manager pairings i see from last year are the 4-1 ho3n and a 3-2 manager like fruits or drud. but last year we also had a 4-1 ho3n and a 3-2 yovan on the same team and they LOST. in fact, THEY CAME IN LAST IN PRE-PLAYOFFS. even if you set the manager price to a flat 15k they're only getting 3k more to work with, that's not taking them from 6th to 1st.
or what, does the possibility of a 5-5 drud & greybaum superteam scare you? does a 3-2 tuthur & apagogie monster squad keep you up at night? what about a combination of czim & fruits going 5-5?? these teams existed last year and none of them won!!! durza won!! because he made a better draft!! what are people scared of????

 

[Lalaya]

the "10k + 1.5k per win"

(ftr since this was just mostly on discord we thought this was dumb already and went for a more traditional 15k + diff
also going negative was never in the plans anyway, its just "someone will cost single digit k more")

let both managers play.

since retains are still discussed this + a potential retain would literally mean deciding 1/3 of the team before draft which is honestly going against the point of the draft itself imo
so basically either we allow one or the other

edit: also personal opinion on this, the more you take decisions not in the draft the less power said draft will have, so honestly I'd bar both managers selfbuying even if they statistically don't make the scariest combo ever
1 manager + 1 retain is probably the funniest way you could pull it off IMO