Tournament Doubles Derby II - Discussion Thread

[zoe]

Art by NinjaSnapple, OP mainly stolen from kaori

Sooooo we decided to do this early considering DPL is over and discussion on Derby started a few days ago. Timeline for it hasn't been set in stone yet (same with hosting), but just to recap some stuff from the last edition...​

• This tournament is supposed to provide a competitive environment for doubles tiers that aren't in the spotlight as much, such as Doubles LC and DPP DOU.
• Same as last year, slight preference will be given to those that have not recently managed in DPL or been captains in DWCOP. Do note that this does not exclude those that have managed in the past, nor does it guarantee a spot for new managers.
• Deadlines for games to be played and roster submission will be strictly enforced. Any games scheduled at or beyond the deadline, unless previously communicated to the hosting team due to extreme scheduling difficulties, will result in dead games. Any manager that does not submit a roster before the deadline will have the lineup from the previous week used.
• Most importantly, to fit the name of the tournament, teams will have horse themed names. For those looking for inspiration, kaori and some others made a list of possible names for last edition, with various references to either Pokemon names or famous race horses and so on.

Subjects of Discussion

• Tiers
  • There has been a considerable amount of dissatisfaction with DUbers in this tournament, and several suggestions have been made to replace it.
• Tournament Format
  • Should the tournament be expanded to add more tiers, and if so, should it be done in a way to avoid tiebreakers?

Of course, any other topics relating to Derby are free to be discussed, but these are just the most prominent ones I've seen and remembered recently.

derb

​

 

[qsns]

derb

 

[zee]

Elephant in the room: Dubers should be removed. There was a single VR update for Dubers in between last derby and this one, very minimal engagement in the tier thread, and overall a large lack of enthusiasm for the metagame.

Solution: add a second NatDex slot. National Dex Doubles is one of the most popular (maybe the most popular?) non-SV DOU Doubles metagame and has an active community that could easily fill 12 starter slots. They have a circuit and most recently were included in National Dex World Cup so there are plenty of places to scout for roster slots.

The other slots are probably fine (2x DOU / 2x NDDOU / DUU / DLC / DPP / ADV). Keep the DPL formula for manager selfbuys. 6 teams is plenty and 4 playoffs was fine last year. I hate tiebreakers but no one could agree on the best way to remove them for DPL and I imagine we won't stumble into a solution here & now so, shrug.

 

[bagel]

zee solved it, close the thread. I don't think there is any need to shake things up, last Derby felt really solid in terms of formats, and unfortunately Dubers didn't really do anything over the course of the year to justify the tiers inclusion again.

I don't think this is the place to throw in undeveloped formats, we should stick to established formats to 1) give opportunities for lots of people to play, and 2) maintain a high level of competitiveness. I don't see a reason to drop a second SV DOU slot, its still the most popular and accessible format.

6 teams 4 playoffs felt fine last year, I don't think fielding 8 teams is that feasible given the overlap between player pools. Other than that I don't really have any opinions about selfbuys and tiebreaker stuff, I agree with zee that a satisfying solution isn't likely to show up.

 

[yuki]

It wouldn't be right (or in character) of me to not throw my hat in the ring when there's a chance to shill my metagame, so let's have a little bit of fun with this.

Partners in Crime. I mean, why not right? If there's gonna be a Doubles community tour for this thing to appear in, it's most certainly Derby. Of the Doubles formats I've played, PiC is probably the one that has pushed my creativity both in the builder and in-game the most. In its last few tour appearances, the tournament crowd for PiC has been fairly strong and there's always a sense of intrigue around what's gonna happen in our games (though we do mostly play in a singles world - see OMWC).

Am I biased? Hell yeah I am. But do I think it's at least worth a mention? Eh, why not?

 

[Grandmas Cookin]

free bo3 adv dou

 

[Idyll]

ND DOU
ND DOU
ND DOU
DUU
DLC
ADV DOU (Bo3)
DPP DOU
PiC

My justification for this spread, and the omission of any SV DOU format, is based on the following ethos, as asserted in the last Derby discussion thread's OP:

This tour aims to provide a highly competitive environment to spotlight and develop Doubles tiers that don't get nearly as much attention as some of the other tiers such as previous generations.

Having SV DOU feels like it goes against this spirit. Of course, this community is particularly centered around SV DOU, this being the flagship format and all, and it does make sense to include it regardless as a "stable" competitive format or something of that nature. However, I wholly believe that we can eschew SV DOU entirely and have ND DOU take up such a mantle. As for why this format in particular, I believe it has the perfect balance of being sufficiently explored, having great support infrastructure (council, discord server, tour representation, etc.,), and having little in novelties as, being NatDex aside, it's essentially a standard current-gen OverUsed format without any drastic mechanics changes like PiC. I believe that giving it this kind of spotlight is very much in the spirit of Derby, and SV DOU won't really be that necessary to have as it already doesn't really align with this Derby spirit in the first place.

DUU, ADV DOU, and DPP DOU are here because of legacy; they've already been there last year and have had consistent enough present and support (having its own circuit / being part of the oldgens circuit) so yeah.

DLC, though apparently on shaky ground relative to the other ones, still has sufficient enough support infrastructure, so it can take a spot. PiC has some level of support as well. These can take the last two spots to round out an 8-slot tour. From last year's tier pool, DUbers should be removed because it's little in engagement and support.

 

[Arcticblast]

Personally I think any format with no SV DOU is a mistake - team tours are already pretty "elite" as is, and I think excluding the most played format means a lot of players won't even get to sign up without trying to learn a whole new format - especially when three of the other formats don't have ladders. Team tours naturally bring people into the community, and I think having the flagship format is vital to that growth.

Idyll's format with a single SV DOU slot over one of the Natdex slots sounds cool to me.

 

[ryo yamada2001]

posting as previous edition's co-host, I feel like I have a fairly involved perspective & understanding of Derby philosophy and prospective as well as legacy choices:

we must always evaluate which tiers deserve team tournament representation based on their active playerbase, relation to the rest of Doubles, and support between Derbies. as DUbers has been entirely neglected by the Doubles playerbase we should cut it. I rallied against DUbers last year as well for the same reasons, but voted it through in the hope that it'd pick up and receive the support necessary to justify it being in Derby II. nothing changed in between Derby I & II; I learned its a mistake to put tiers in team tours like this in the hopes they'll pick up later. thankfully we have a very natural replacement in adding an additional NDDOU slot, so we should do that

I agree SV DOU goes against Derby spirit, but we added the slot last year because other options weren't convincing. this year I'm still not convinced by the options; 3x NDDOU seems a bit speculative for now, and Partners in Crime is too esoteric and disconnected from Doubles at large to justify its inclusion. PiC has an active playerbase and maintains resources, but it hasn't taken steps to integrate in Doubles better. the supermajority of players has little-to-no experience in the tier and would not be able to help, let alone managers knowing who to draft to begin with. it needs to address these concerns before we throw it in Derby

we could consider adding a VGC slot, especially now we know the format: there's a sizeable VGC playerbase in DOU already, could encourage more players to sign up, is supported and sustained on Smogon itself, and the overlap is very significant. managers would have an easy time drafting VGC players and teams would be able to support them easily

DLC should not get cut. that would be wholly unjustified. I'm surprised there's even mention of it

other things we should think of right now:
- we could also simply cut a slot and/or add one so we have an uneven number of games in the regular season to avoid ties because tiebreakers suck the energy out of tournaments for most participants and viewers
- should we add retains starting from this season? to reward good scouting efforts and maintain a greater sense of community & team identity
- should we take a week between draft and round 1 to write PRs? personally im no longer a PR believer because DOU contributors XD but its worth addressing for now

 

[zee]

re: may's additional talking points

this is the most logical way to avoid tiebreaks - and it kind of makes sense with some of the format lineups people have thrown about. However it makes seeding much uglier when the records are more homogenous and you have one less slot to play for a half point or BD. The ideal would be to cut one slot for playoffs specifically, but as pointed out during DPL discussion, this means you have to treat your draft in a particular manner with the expectation that 2/3 of the time one of your slots isn't going to be on the playoffs roster

I am against retains. If DPL doesn't have retains I don't think this is the tour to do them "for science", as Derby encourages new managers to sign up which means they'll only be inheriting old player pools + lack of draft experience could severely make or break the balance of retains. Not really a fan of them in any draft tour at the forum level.

I genuinely think written PRs are not worth the effort. Do the draft onsaturday and you can have numerical rankings by the first few days of week 1. It is not worth to take an extra week to write 4-5 lines for each player that are basically "player has been active and successful this year, they are looking scary" or "player hasn't shown up in a while (or is new to big tournaments), so they're ranked lower but maybe they can shock us!"

2 NatDex slots is the most I think the playerbase can handle at this time. While they do have a massive volume, a lot of these players are still new to smogon tournaments and that makes me skeptical about increasing their makeup on the tour any further.

I don't think including SV in this tour is criminal. It's accessible, people will always be there to play it. If 2 SV slots is really too much you can just take out one for PiC or something but I agree the interaction DOU has been very minimal so im not too keen on it.

 

[Lhions]

ND DOU
ND DOU
SV DOU
DUU
DLC
ADV DOU (Bo3)
DPP DOU
Filler

1) 2 NatDex seems ok for their player base to handle, 3 seems a little too much + 3/8 seems in a team tour seems a lot for a tier which it isn't cg OU

2) SV DOU at least seems necessary, there is a lot of players that only play CG , either because is the tier the like or because they are new, i know that derby exists to help the grown of lesser important tiers , but having one SV DOU and making this people sign up and follow derby because of it actually helps that grown (it means more chances of new people entering that tiers after watching them here)

3) SV DUBERS = for a foreigner to the tier, it seems 100% abandoned so i understand and support the exclusion, but at the same time, maybe it would be nice to ask the 3 dubers players if they want a last chance to improve the tier and what plans they have to do it, because the tier is fun .

4) Another Fillers = We could go with either a suspect slot of whatever tier ask for it ( i have read people in the cord talking about needing more suspects in ND and UU so this could help ) , classic bo3 (it was suggested in cord too), not something i really like but i think that it is a option better than a second pet mod (and a way to include classic tiers without discrimination between the 3 ) VGC could mean new players to DOU after the tour so is another option i guess , 2 SV DOU (same reasons as above)

5) Retains = I like retains ,but i think that retains should be a no, everytime format changes or new teams are added.

6) Prs = 100% agree with Zee, nowadays written Power Rankings are full PR stuff that you could probably write to every tier in the same way no matter what . so just going with rankins seems fine (and better than , than procrastinating and ending up without PRs)

7) team numbers = Would like to explore if 8 teams are possible, mostly because i hate 6 teams tournaments, you either have more than 50% of teams in poffs after 5 weeks or the 1s team has a week off which sucks so hard .

 

[Smudge]

(2x DOU / 2x NDDOU / DUU / DLC / DPP / ADV)

2 NatDex slots is the most I think the playerbase can handle at this time. While they do have a massive volume, a lot of these players are still new to smogon tournaments and that makes me skeptical about increasing their makeup on the tour any further.

I'm in agreement with both of these. Not only for the reasons stated, but I also wouldn't want to oversaturate the tour with a format not everyone loves, whatever the reason may be. Additionally, we will be well into the currently ongoing NDWC by that time and our seasonal will be starting around then too, it seems like a bit of an overload for the scene. 2 slots is plenty.

Quick(ish) hits:

Written PRs aren't needed, just do numbers.
No retains, it's nice to get a fresh mix of players in each tour.

6 teams 4 playoffs is good & bye week for first seed is bad.
I think I'm ok with 8 teams too.
It would be nice to see a mocc with 8 teams though to see how it shakes out. May need to adjust manager/player signup scheduling to accommodate the determination of how many teams. We should have time to do this, so best to not put it off to the last minute.

-

I think it may be worth considering allowing both managers to self buy in this tour as an alternative to the retain issue that keeps coming up that doesn't seem to inherently hinder a rotating selection of managers, especially if DPL pricing is in place. You're paying through the nose for proven quality players or, altertnatively, managers who are in their "rookie season" and may not have as high a sticker price could grab an edge in their team's economy here since the tour slightly favors them in manager selection.

 

[Hugo]

I just found out about this thread and since I managed last year and I am hoping to manage this year again I thought id put in my 2 cents for what its worth.

Should Dubers go?
In terms of Dubers im not sure how to feel, at one hand its my favourite tier so I think it would be a shame to see it go and im sure that there are more people that feel like this and I think it would suck for the small but dedicated following Dubers has, but on the hand if there really is quite some dissatisfaction for it I understand that it might need to go. In my view Derby is all about showing some love to all the doubles formats that aren't normally played that much (or at all) in tournaments and Dubers is one of them and if im not wrong it has the biggest player base out of all the non SV DOU (natdex and regular dou) formats by quite a big margain, for example Dubers had 80408 battles last month while Duu had 22918 battles the same month, which is quite the gap. I also think that besides show love to these types of tiers Derby also functions to hopefully introduce players who play said tiers to the tournaments scene, where as they normally might not get that much in contact with it because most tours are Dou or Duu focused, as a player who came from Dubers originally I think it would be a shame to get rid of this possible pipe line since there are some seriously skilled and creative ladder bosses out there. I think the main problem is that not a whole lot of managers scouted for said ladder bosses and that a lot of the Dubers players weren't aware of derby at the time and I think that it could be a completely diffrent story this time if we can somehow get more Duber players aware about derby, maybe even put a link to the sign up above every game in the same style as suspect tours who also show a message above every ladder game.
In conclusion/TLDR; I think its to early to give Dubers the boot since it does have a large player base and I think 1 tournament's results aren't enough to make a hard conclusion on it and it might prove itself if we give it a bit more time and I think it goes somewhat against the spirit of Derby to remove one of the most played doubles tiers that sees 0 tournament use outside of this to my knowledge.
(sorry if it was hard to read because of the unorganized mess this randmon thought dump is and the shit interpunction, but my mind is completely fried at the moment of writing this because ive been studying all day for upcoming exams)


Tournament format & tie breakers
I personally never had a problem with tie breakers but I can see why a lot of people do and I wouldn't mind seeing them go, I think the only real way to get rid of them is to add a slot or remove a slot so there can't be any ties anymore. I think that derby would be a good tour to try it out in, since it isn't as prestigious as something like Wcup or DPL but its still a good representation for a team tour and its already a little experimental by nature, so I think this wouldn't be to out of place to give a shot.


Which tier would be a good addition
Incase Dubers goes and/or the tournament format changes so we have 1 more slot/tier to add I think that Yuki's suggestion to look at PiC is a pretty good one (I might be biased tho), since its a doubles tier that while it does see play in 3 team tours (OMFL, OMPL and OM Wcup) it is a format with a lot of depth to it and I do think it could be a nice way to introduce OM players to doubles and vice versa. The only concern I would have is that OMPL starts somewhere at the start of next month and that would mean that OMPL and Derby are gonna overlap and that means that or we get less skilled and experienced PiC players or that PiC playershave to dual wield 2 big tours which also isn't ideal and I think that is a real concern to have. There is 1 other tier that ive no one seen talk about and thats 2v2, while you might think I would be all for that im here to tell you absolutely not! 2v2 does not have a big enough player base that is skilled enough to accommodate for a tour like derby especially after quite a bit of the experienced 2v2 players got banned last year, trust me when I say don't go for 2v2, I would have a big advantage as manager or/and as player if 2v2 got put in but even then im still against it so take it as a sign of how much im against 2v2.

Sorry again for the big mess this is but I just kinda splashed my thoughts into this post while being way to tired haha, the one thing I do wanna stress is OMPL and Derby will overlap which could give problems for PiC.

 

[ryo yamada2001]

the spirit of derby isn't to introduce people to new tiers; that is the responsibility of the tier all year long outside of derby. derby is to acknowledge tiers that are successful on smogon but could not fit in other team tours. furthermore we have had a year of trying this already and there have been literally exactly zero dubers initiatives undertaken since, so we can deduce dubers in derby won't actually resuscitate the tier to begin with

 

[Daepiquejt]

2 nddou slots is good
I have no opinions on the others since I don't play them