Implemented WCOP Format (tiers)

[watashi]

every country should just send their 3 strongest players to the battlefield and duke it out in tiebreak format

 

[zioziotrip]

team us midwest is strongly against the malekith format and in favor of the fixed 10 slots with sv4+dou.

this tour is about working with what you have but expecting teams to be able to find competent players and builders for every single ou is unreasonable especially on short notice. We fail to see how the majority of teams will field an official caliber dpp/gsc/rby and the proposed advantage of having a strong player in active gens like ss/sm/bw/adv seems dubious into teams that have an abudance of veteran players. seems far too arbitrary to create a competitive tour.

all cg is bad. a format change to weeks/groups isnt opposed.

 

[Gilbert arenas]

Adv
Dpp
Bw
Oras
Sm
Ss
Ubers
Uu
2 svou
Doubles is foreign to countless tour players and spectators. They operate so autonomously that I believe doubles slots aren’t reflective of a countries commitment to Pokémon excellence, at least not enough to include them in this tour. It’s thrilling to watch new gen slots cook and various teams be true to their identities through the teams that they use. This past year the Germans demonstrated their dominance in current gens by spamming a single team through qualifiers and anyone in touch with the tour community recognizes the association of Italy with cheese, Northeast with balance, US west with strong offensive teams and countless other regional signifiers. It’s associations like this that make World Cup exciting every year and I don’t think the nature of doubles adds to this in any capacity. Every tournament that I’ve played with a doubles slot has had them operate entirely with their goon(s) and independently from the team. A tournament like World Cup requires people who will vibe with team culture and keep chats active year round with metagame discussions. I think one of the wonders of team tournaments is the impact that you can have on your team as a sub or bench slot with a cool tech, idea or team. Doubles inherently hinders this quality because they aren’t as inclined to speak with singles players over their doubles jerks, and may not be able to substantially contribute to to important metagame discussions results in them being a detriment to the team and the tournament overall as they are taking up a team slot of a more ambitious and up to date singles player.

 

[Star]

Following the post yesterday, it's become clear that a large part of the community, consisting of both big and small teams, don’t favor the proposed tier pick format. While it was an interesting idea, such a radical change isn’t tenable with this much opposition to it. We'd like to refocus discussion to be between the originally proposed formats:

1. 5 SV OU, SS OU, SM OU, ORAS OU, SV Ubers, SV UU
2. 4 SV OU, SS OU, SM OU, ORAS OU, SV Ubers, SV UU, SV DOU

The rules around continental teams as well as pools versus groups will be separate discussions. We will be working to resolve the former while this thread is ongoing to finalize tiers. We will be posting a new thread on pools vs groups and figuring out the according format for qualifiers/main stage following the conclusion of the this thread.

 

[Javi]

1 but erase SS and put DOU there
Noone wants to have SS here, listen to the people

 

[FFK]

1 but erase SS and put DOU there
Noone wants to have SS here, listen to the people

Factos, people wanna change a perfect format already because this is boring apparently, then why on earth are we considering the most boring tier ever, I don’t get it. I also strongly support Soulwind’s post where he says that nobody supports SS OU and masters tiers are not needed, people will still be re using teams and then, we’re back to the initial issue that the format isn’t fun to watch and play. Voting on 1 (but still pro CG OU) even though I don’t support both of these ideas (speaking on behalf of myself and some other people that don’t want to argue with a doomed format anymore )

 

[Laurel]

Can we please revisit randomly adding masters tiers when the 3 most popular old gens are 3, 4, and 7.

It should be easier to find an ADV player than SS given 4x the amount of ladder games… so this should benefit all teams.

 

[Dorron]

Agree with Laurel, ADV and DPP really deserve a slot way more than SS (and even DOU for me). Nobody wants to play or watch SS.

 

[BigFatMantis]

Out of curiosity why isn’t 6 CG OU + 2 old gens + 2 lower tiers an option - helps maintain the CG OU majority that many people seem to still want but adding the concession of some variety with other tiers. Masters gens in this format is not sustainable once Gen 10 arrives so you’ll have to eventually just say x amount of old gens are included.

 

[ziloXX]

Posting again to say that Team Argentina heavily supports Laurel's format.

 

[erz]

in favor of 5 ou

playing the same tier with friends you hold dear is the most valuable memory i have of competitive pokemon. it doesn't really matter whether the tier is called sv ou or not, playing the same format with your teammates simply allows you to help and contribute much better. once you're playing on the highest level you don't have a lot of extra spare time to additionally try to give input that is actually valuable for other tiers. if you don't focus on yourself first you will just lose your own game (hurting the team more than helping it). the great part about playing the same tier as your teammates, is that this focus on winning your game will in turn lead to you being able to share your findings to support your mates as well. the fewer tiers you have the more possible it is to support. anyone that has seriously tried to support an entire scl/spl team knows how much of a burden it can be and connecting to your teammates journeys in their tiers can simply get hard. the tier in question being doubles doesn't help, the majority of singles players simply have no real idea of how the fuck to play or build. anyone who has played in the spls that included dou alongside old gens knows that this is the objective truth for, not all, but at least the majority of teams.

i get that tier saturation can happen and the change-up is a welcome one, but it'd be great if at least half the slots would still remain ou. 8 slots may have become a bit too much but the all-ou world cups have exceeded all expectations in terms of country-viability, every single year had a unique first-time winner and as many underdog stories as all of the 10 years prior combined. the more tiers are played the more regions with experts available shine and results skew towards simply having a bigger playerbase. we're extending the teamsize to 10 slots and added 5 other tiers already, let's stop at cutting down ou from being the full tournament to now being 50% with 50% other tiers. one half of the team joining forces as one and the other half doing variety and exploring different tiers feels like a good deal in terms of viewer and player enjoyment but also in terms of competitive balance.

 

[Eoward]

I think if we start quibbling like this, we'll be debating for weeks. We need to keep things logical. Either you incorporate the most recent old gens, or you include all the old gens. Adding only BW and DPP really becomes a case-by-case matter.
I'm not personally pro-SS (or against it, for that matter), but you can't skip a generation over two, so let's keep some rigor.

As it's no longer full CG OU (i suppose?), Belgium is in favor of 5 SV OU and no DOU.

 

[Batzi]

I haven't posted on this thread yet but wanted to leave my two cents.

I much prefer 5 SV OU, SS OU, SM OU, ORAS OU, SV Ubers, SV UU. While DOU could be a nice addition it is just far too mechanically different from singles. For example say you need a sub and your roster isn't very deep in terms of DOU, someone who doesn't main doubles will have to sub in. At the very least for a lower tier non-mainer learning a singles tier is fundamentally a lot easier due to the mechanics being more of less the same. In my opinion I would wait maybe another year for DOU to be introduced to give the majority of keen players more game ready which would also result in higher quality matches.

I don't really see the argument at all for ADV having more ladder players than SS therefore that should be included. While sure ADV has a more active ladder, SS is also the most recent CG excluding SV and was the most played format for 3 years before SV was introduced meaning it is far less foreign and doesn't impact teams without a deep roster or teams without many lower gen players.

Just going to leave it at that, not sure there is much more of value I can add that hasn't been spoken a plethora of times on this thread already.

 

[Ferenia]

I agree that maintaining the logic of the tournament should be the best, not choosing tiers based on which is the most played, ladder or has the greatest number of players, then tomorrow people magically stop playing adv and then we will choose some random old gen just because ADV is no longer the most played? I dont see anything logical.

For those who say that SS is just boring and always reuse the teams, then I invite you to motivate your players to build their teams for the tier, this will make the game more varied and fun if that is what you are looking for, win doing this is possible too.

In LA team we continue supporting option 2.

 

[RoiDadadou]

Out of curiosity why isn’t 6 CG OU + 2 old gens + 2 lower tiers an option - helps maintain the CG OU majority that many people seem to still want but adding the concession of some variety with other tiers. Masters gens in this format is not sustainable once Gen 10 arrives so you’ll have to eventually just say x amount of old gens are included.

Excellent point: why don't we just do six CG OU, remove DOU/ORAS, and go with SS/SM + UU Ubers? That's still ten slots like everyone wanted, and honestly we can't just see SS/SM and have to add ORAS in the mix. Maintaining a majority for CG OU also allows the smaller teams that have expressed their views to maintain a bit of stability, for this year at least, and have a bit less shaking withing their teams.

If we want to add anything more, we'll have other discussions next year knowing it's on the table, but for now SS/SM + Ubers/UU with ten slots seems like an ideal first step that pleases almost everyone, while keeping other tiers in discussion for 2025.

 

[avarice]

Adv
Dpp
Bw
Oras
Sm
Ss
Ubers
Uu
2 svou
Doubles is foreign to countless tour players and spectators. They operate so autonomously that I believe doubles slots aren’t reflective of a countries commitment to Pokémon excellence, at least not enough to include them in this tour. It’s thrilling to watch new gen slots cook and various teams be true to their identities through the teams that they use. This past year the Germans demonstrated their dominance in current gens by spamming a single team through qualifiers and anyone in touch with the tour community recognizes the association of Italy with cheese, Northeast with balance, US west with strong offensive teams and countless other regional signifiers. It’s associations like this that make World Cup exciting every year and I don’t think the nature of doubles adds to this in any capacity. Every tournament that I’ve played with a doubles slot has had them operate entirely with their goon(s) and independently from the team. A tournament like World Cup requires people who will vibe with team culture and keep chats active year round with metagame discussions. I think one of the wonders of team tournaments is the impact that you can have on your team as a sub or bench slot with a cool tech, idea or team. Doubles inherently hinders this quality because they aren’t as inclined to speak with singles players over their doubles jerks, and may not be able to substantially contribute to to important metagame discussions results in them being a detriment to the team and the tournament overall as they are taking up a team slot of a more ambitious and up to date singles player.

I agree with most of the sentiment in this post, which leads to my confusion on the tiers provided before it. Why put forth the most spread out set of tiers/generations when it's enjoyable seeing trends like "German 6" with a common teambuilding style from a region shine? I can see the appeal in working in the "popular" oldgens, while not directly hopping around generations and slightly reducing the amount of "fodder games" with RBY and GSC out-- it's just, unfortunately, working off the assumption people have a wide range of players to choose from.

I'm from a smaller region and this is the first one of the various formats that put me in a more "defeatist" mood. Having the tiers locked in is a step forward, but having more oldgens than current-gen tiers is two steps back. As exciting as upsets can be, please don't seriously consider throwing in classic gens on top of the masters ones. For smaller regions, people who can say they are familiar with old generations are already needed for the masters tiers. While I sympathize with posts like HANTSUKI's, and it would be cool to team w/ some additional ppl I'm not familiar with like D4 in Midwest, the reality is that not everyone has an ample history of veterans to pull from with such a wide array.

The TD proposed formats are good as is. If one can be expected to contribute across generations with different mechanics, they shouldn't have this "doubles slot isolation" problem either. World Cup having team culture baked in should encourage others to help out, since this isn't an auction tour where you plan drafting x and having y join teamchat in advance (arguably making the previous separation self-fulfilling).

 

[ninjadog]

If we’re serious about making it competitive for the smaller / qualifier teams then an 8 slot format of 4 / 2 / 2 should be considered.

Having to field an extra two players is going to advantage the bigger teams more than any format would, a lot of these smaller teams in quals and including the ones that did well like Belgium are able to field a solid 8 players but the quality drops off massively after that, whereas the big teams will see very little drop off between their top 8 and 9th and 10th.

Yes you are technically drawing from a different player base as it’s different tiers but for every potential new slot except for DOU anyone who mains one of those tiers to any degree of success would already be on the roster in the all OU format for those teams with smaller player bases.

Increasing the starting slots by 2 and the roster size to a total of 15(?) is also going to make it more challenging for new countries to form teams.

If the Malekith format is thrown out due to concerns with competitiveness and fairness - which is completely understandable - the new format should be something that doesn’t also disadvantage these same teams.

 

[RoiDadadou]

Also agree with ninja's post. As explained 8 is better for the inclusivity of smaller teams that was discussed during Malekith, and if we do want to add more tiers, future year's discussion threads will be there for it.

I think 4x SV OU, SV Ubers, SV UU, SS OU, SM OU is a better format than the given options, if it's possible.

 

[Rigas]

Either you incorporate the most recent old gens, or you include all the old gens.

It seems completely impractical to include all old gens; they'd take up 8 slots. Instead, there is a 3rd option you didn't mention which would be incorporating as many old gens as possible while still ensuring at least half the slots stay SV OU. If this were to be followed, the possibilities are:

8 slots: 4x SV OU, 1x SS/SM/ORAS/BW OU
10 slots: 5x SV OU, 1x SS/SM/ORAS/BW/DPP OU

 

[feen]

As for team Bangladesh's piece on this, here's how we believe this should go [5xSV, SS, SM, ORAS] > [Some combination of currrent gen ou uu ru] > [Some combination of SV OU, SV DOU, and other SV/ old gen tiers]. DOU is the absolute worst case for us because of our limited playerbase it is incredibly hard to find skilled and passionate players and as a result we tend to add promising new players under the guidance of our existing OU players who can guide them through the prepping process with their knowledge of the metagames allowing the players to bridge the gaps between players with far more experience. In the case of DOU, there will be absolutely no one to guide or in the case of an atleast semi-competent DOU player, even suggest teams for them and they'd just be sitting and playing alone with no interaction with the rest of the team whatsoever. Not to mention finding someone who fits both the criteria of being a skilled player and also passionate enough to play with 0 interaction from the rest of the team is also not an easy task given the limited size of ours and many other smaller communities.

Also I physically cringed at the fact that the countries with a less dominant playerbase are being told / inferred "If you cant get players for xyz tiers you shouldn't sign up". WCoP is an inclusive tournament that ideally allows all nations to have a chance of winning the tournament, of course that is not the case because some nations have a much more dominant playerbase, but it should always allow all teams to have equal odds in winning in theory. This should be done by having tiers that most of the playerbase can easily pick up and play at a high level, which sadly DOU is not at the moment, since it is vastly different than singles format. Also the statement itself is literally a fucking double standard when you need to make 4 separate teams for USA for having an overstacked roster but that's a story for another thread. Adding a tier that is vastly different than the singles metagames the previous iteration of the tour had skews the balance heavily on teams that have a higher DOU playerbase. Moreover, the timing is also too late, if we learn the tier in the 2-ish months, we will still be heavily disadvantaged from teams that have a more solidified playerbase.

I also agree with Genesis7 's argument that the DOU players will have an island of their own and most of the players will be unable to either A. Give their input at all, or B. Give optimal inputs. Some posts I've seen here claim that Pokemon is Pokemon and cannot differentiate between singles or doubles, but you're either a very exceptional player or just a straight up idiot trying to give bullshit logic, no matter what you say, singles and doubles are vastly different. However, I am open to the idea of introducing DOU to WCoP 2025, but it is too late for a change this drastic.

Reiterating this again, team Bangladesh supports 5 SV OU, SS OU, SM OU, ORAS OU, SV UU, SV Ubers (or 3 SV OU for 8 slots).

 

[Iguana]

As many know, I'm a long-time advocate for old Gens' inclusion in WCoP. I strongly believe an all-CG WCoP is bland and ultimately does little to push the metagame forward (at least during pools) when the same teams are consistently regurgitated. There seems to be a consensus that old Gens of OU need re-introduction into WCoP. The question is how best to do this so that there's at least relative equality between teams. I have an interesting (and not mentioned yet, I don't think?) idea I'd like to propose: In addition to the obligatory CG OU slots, we add in one slot in each of the other "Fairy Gens" of OU (ORAS-SS), one slot each of DOU and Ubers, and one slot of a Classic Gens Bo5 (RBY-BW). Visually, the slots would look as follows:

1 x SV Ubers
1 x SV DOU
4 x SV OU
1 x SS OU
1 x USUM OU
1 x ORAS OU
1 x Classic Bo5 (RBY-BW)

Why these slots? One of the most compelling reasons behind the elimination of old Gens from WCoP a few years ago was some (especially geographically smaller) countries were unable to compete in old Gen slots because their lineups were spread thin. 1 slot of a Bo5 in classic Gens seeks to solve this; instead of having to find 5 players each to play RBY-BW, one player can now tackle the classic Gens collectively. This solution both makes the decision of which OU Gens are included less arbitrary and doesn't unfairly punish some regions' smaller numbers of players.

As for the others, Ubers has ingratiated itself back into trophy tours rather nicely, and it taps into the crossover between Ubers and OU player populations. DOU may be the more controversial inclusion here, but I believe it's time for Smogon's version of the most pre-eminent Pokémon competitive format (not sure if VGC is right to include here) to be included in a significant regional tour.

Lastly, please eliminate pools; they're terrible. Just some thoughts I wanted to share.

 

[Finchinator]

We genuinely meant it when we said the format was coming down to these options:

We'd like to refocus discussion to be between the originally proposed formats:

1. 5 SV OU, SS OU, SM OU, ORAS OU, SV Ubers, SV UU
2. 4 SV OU, SS OU, SM OU, ORAS OU, SV Ubers, SV UU, SV DOU

There is not going to be a Classic Bo5 slot or a stray ADV slot.

 

[Ruft]

Following the post yesterday, it's become clear that a large part of the community, consisting of both big and small teams, don’t favor the proposed tier pick format. While it was an interesting idea, such a radical change isn’t tenable with this much opposition to it. We'd like to refocus discussion to be between the originally proposed formats:

1. 5 SV OU, SS OU, SM OU, ORAS OU, SV Ubers, SV UU
2. 4 SV OU, SS OU, SM OU, ORAS OU, SV Ubers, SV UU, SV DOU

The rules around continental teams as well as pools versus groups will be separate discussions. We will be working to resolve the former while this thread is ongoing to finalize tiers. We will be posting a new thread on pools vs groups and figuring out the according format for qualifiers/main stage following the conclusion of the this thread.

Team Europe largely favors format 1 (5 SV OU) over format 2 (SV DOU).

Furthermore, Eeveeto mentioned that Malekith's format could be an interesting way to spice up SCL, rather than WCoP.

 

[HANTSUKI]

Team Brazil favors the 5 SV OU format.

As a personal opinion, I do love doubles as spectator and I think it should be back to SPL instead of randomly put into WCoP.

 

[Leo]

Since the dust has more or less settled I would like to reiterate Team LA's support of Doubles in WCoP. We've reached a point where everyone is more or less going to stick with the option that they see most beneficial so I'll keep this brief and say that some good arguments in favor of DOU have been made at the start of the discussion and got a lot of support. It's a largely popular tier as evidenced by ladder and forum stats and the most recent Doubles World Cup has shown its wide reach in different regions. Not every team is going to have an excellent Doubles player the same way not every team is going to have an excellent UU or Ubers players, acting like this tier is so much different from the other LTs is a bit baffling. I dont wanna go in circles arguing about how most of the points against Doubles are entirely subjective because at the end of the day if community sentiment is that strongly against it then theres no helping it but I do find it strange how mystified Doubles has become as this evasive tier Singles players are incapable of grasping. Its really not that deep