All Gens Ruins of Alph Tournaments Suggestions and Feedback

[Theia]

Good morning friends, the RoA Tours team would like to open a discussion for feedback on the direction you'd like the RoA circuits and tours as a whole to take. We'd love to hear from you all about any tours you'd like to see, in or out of the circuit, as well as any other feedback you may have about the direction of RoA Tours.

Things to note:
- Do not insult, belittle, or otherwise disparage our hosts. Any posts in this vein will be deleted and possibly infracted as necessary.
- Yes, I know about the RCoP timing, you can stop sending me DMs about it.
- We will not be running Majors again after this year due to the burden on both players and hosts.
- No, we will not be offering money prizes. I am a college student and cannot afford to bribe you to play Pokemon.

We look forward to hearing your suggestions and feedback!

 

[Slowpoke Fan]

- No, we will not be offering money prizes. I am a college student and cannot afford to bribe you to play Pokemon.

Can we bribe you to keep hosting tours for us though

On a serious note, is adding a tour in the late autumn/early winter months feasible? I notice a bit of a lull after summer/early autumn months that could probably be filled by another tour/cup. Or is that intentional for hosts to rest or prepare for other tours on the site?

 

[vani]

Disclaimer: Mainly speaking for the GSC circuit here

I‘d like to propose adding a Swiss tournament to the circuit. I think it would be a good fit for the vacant Majors slot. It would guarantee all players to be able to play multiple rounds since even if you can’t make top cut early on anymore you can still play for a better placement and more circuit points. It also adds more variety to the formats of the circuit (Seasonal - Double Elimination, Global Championship - Pseudo Double Elimination? (Not sure what to call it), Cup - Single Elimination).

 

[Oathkeeper]

I'm not sure if it's in the works or not, but having Grand Slams for other gens has been a nice idea as it gets me interested in other old gens. I love the GSC and ADV Slams I joined earlier and am seriously hoping there'll be one for DPP, BW, ORAS, etc, upcoming. Hopefully I'm not the only one who's interested in this.

 

[zben]

I'm not sure if it's in the works or not, but having Grand Slams for other gens has been a nice idea as it gets me interested in other old gens. I love the GSC and ADV Slams I joined earlier and am seriously hoping there'll be one for DPP, BW, ORAS, etc, upcoming. Hopefully I'm not the only one who's interested in this.

Excellent idea , grandslam for each gen

 

[BigFatMantis]

What happened to the RoA Olympics :skull:

 

[Oathkeeper]

What happened to the RoA Olympics :skull:

agreed, where is them?

 

[pulsar512b]

Can we bribe you to keep hosting tours for us though

On a serious note, is adding a tour in the late autumn/early winter months feasible? I notice a bit of a lull after summer/early autumn months that could probably be filled by another tour/cup. Or is that intentional for hosts to rest or prepare for other tours on the site?

What happened to the RoA Olympics :skull:

View attachment 574870
agreed, where is them?

adding to this - perhaps the roa olympics could be scheduled during this late autumn/early winter time?

as another suggestion, world cups for specific gens would be fantastic (w formats mirroring main WCOP)

 

[Theia]

On RoA Olympics:

It wasn't scheduled this year mainly due to us already having two big team tours and a good amount of negative feedback on last year's edition. Additionally, the autumn/early winter slot will likely be taken by one of RCoP or RoAPL as we shift them away from WCoP proper and SPL.

I'm not against having it, those are just the reasons we didn't run it this year.

 

[AC7]

I would like to say that I did very much enjoy the majors I played in despite not doing well, however I understand the reason behind not running them again. I think if it's not too much of a strain on hosts and players then having a Swiss style tournament like vani proposed above would be a great addition to offer some variety in tournament type.

 

[Theia]

Just to update people on some things, I've started working with the individual forum mods on the schedules for next year.

The biggest change right now is that we have tentatively scheduled RoAPL X to open player signups in Mid-May and moved RCoP waayyy down to have qualifiers start in September. This provides some space around Classic so there isn't such direct overlap and RCoP will run pretty much in parallel with SCL and should wrap up before SPL XVI starts. RoA Olympics isn't currently slotted anywhere (mostly due to lack of space atm)

The other item from this thread in particular is:

I'm not sure if it's in the works or not, but having Grand Slams for other gens has been a nice idea as it gets me interested in other old gens. I love the GSC and ADV Slams I joined earlier and am seriously hoping there'll be one for DPP, BW, ORAS, etc, upcoming. Hopefully I'm not the only one who's interested in this.

which I have brought up with the DPP-SS mods as a possibility. If implemented, these will not count towards the circuit.

Absolutely nothing is finalized yet, and I thank everyone who has been responding to this thread and strongly encourage continued feedback while we work on things.

 

[Siatam]

I think the Majors format was a good experiment this year. It is an enjoyable format, but difficult to run at scale. I'd like to encourage all old gen mods teams to continue to explore different tour formats outside the typical Seasonals, Cups, and Global Championships.

Some circuits this year ended in September/October, which left a decent gap between the last tour ending and the circuit championships starting. Mod teams should consider adding single elimination last chance qualifies to fill any dead time at the end of the calendar. Nearing the end of the year we saw this problem coming, but didn't want to make any changes to the circuit schedule midway through the year.

Thanks for all your hard work Theia

 

[TyCarter]

Some circuits definitely ended way too early namely DPP which I felt could have benefited from having a majors/swiss style tour itself in the fall.

Swiss I've seen executed in 2 ways; a variant that has a top cut (think this year's NU Swiss, vgc events or Smogon Masters) which can be time consuming or a variant where it goes on until there is only 1 x-0 player left. (Ex: this year's PU Swiss or UU Blitz in the UU subforum) If time constraint is an issue then I believe the latter variant could fit for some circuits. For circuit points on the second variant I mentioned, I've seen it done based on swiss record.

Swiss as a format I think should definitely be tried out more and I do believe is under explored.

 

[Theia]

Not directly related to circuits but to RoA Tours as a whole, we're also looking for feedback on our Spotlight tours as we head into the new year!

Please take a few minutes to fill out this survey and let us know what you think!

 

[susciety]

I'm indifferent on whether swiss is implemented into the circuit schedule or not but I would like to see a Rising Stars tour implemented for all the generations (RBY format not DPP). Having a tour where select players wish to show off their skills after playing during the circuit period by pitting against other driven players is in my opinion the best way to utilize a swiss format tour.

With regards to the downtime after the last circuit tour finishes (the period between late August-November), it be the best time for a swiss format tour to be implemented.

 

[pulsar512b]

I'm indifferent on whether swiss is implemented into the circuit schedule or not but I would like to see a Rising Stars tour implemented for all the generations (RBY format not DPP). Having a tour where select players wish to show off their skills after playing during the circuit period by pitting against other driven players is in my opinion the best way to utilize a swiss format tour.

With regards to the downtime after the last circuit tour finishes (the period between late August-November), it be the best time for a swiss format tour to be implemented.

big agree here
would like for something like ~4 out of the 32-64 slots in rising stars to be not-invite slots of some sort (roomtour qualifiers seems like the most sensible to me) - increases openness/gives an opportunity for anyone to get their name out more easily on a large stage without having to have connections

 

[Cdijk16]

My suggestions are as follows:
1. We could add a Last Chance Qualifier to the circuit similar to what we have in current gen circuits. It would fill in the downtime between last tour of the season and circuit championships.
2. We could add a third Seasonal called Fall Seasonal. If three seasonals are too much, it could be a different format like Swiss.
3. I like the idea of adding a Swiss tours as it would add more variety to the circuit.
4. I enjoyed the ADV Grand Slam and would like to see similar tours added for all gens. It gives the lower tiers some much needed attention. I think having lower tiers tours in circuit would incentivize people to play them more.

 

[D4 Repertoire]

I'm indifferent on whether swiss is implemented into the circuit schedule or not but I would like to see a Rising Stars tour implemented for all the generations (RBY format not DPP). Having a tour where select players wish to show off their skills after playing during the circuit period by pitting against other driven players is in my opinion the best way to utilize a swiss format tour.

With regards to the downtime after the last circuit tour finishes (the period between late August-November), it be the best time for a swiss format tour to be implemented.

I'm am strongly opposed to having any tournaments of this nature as part of the circuits. Invitational tournaments and hand seeded tournaments have no place in the circuits. Any circuit tournament should be either open to everyone or objectively qualified for, and the tournament itself should not be rigging the bracket/matchups via hand seeding (mathematically earned seeding like in playoffs is fine).

Regarding the downtime, i would recommend spacing out the existing tournaments more (this year there was quite a bit of overlap) rather than adding another tour to the schedule.

 

[Theia]

Good morning good morning! After discussion with the mods for each individual gen (not RBY, I'm not responsible for them) the 2024 circuit schedules are out!

While these are by no means perfect (shoutout to it being a nightmare to schedule every single fairygen around Smogon Masters), hopefully this is an improvement and satisfies as much feedback as possible.

Behold My Nightmare

Thank you to everyone who gave feedback, this thread will remain open in general for any other bits of feedback that come up.

 

[pulsar512b]

dunno if theres a better place to ask this question but:
1) are the last chances swiss tournaments or a more typical format for smogon tournaments
2) why do some gens like SS and BW have them but eg ORAS/SM not

 

[Theia]

dunno if theres a better place to ask this question but:
1) are the last chances swiss tournaments or a more typical format for smogon tournaments
2) why do some gens like SS and BW have them but eg ORAS/SM not

1) Last chances are no johns single elimination
2) The schedules for circuits are made in conjunction with the forum mods of that tier, so they vary slightly based on what they want for their community's circuit

 

[pulsar512b]

1) Last chances are no johns single elimination
2) The schedules for circuits are made in conjunction with the forum mods of that tier, so they vary slightly based on what they want for their community's circuit

cool so what’s up w no Swiss tours after community support was made clear above

 

[Theia]

cool so what’s up w no Swiss tours after community support was made clear above

Please reread point two, I do not have unilateral control over the circuits. My job is to facilitate what the mods want for their circuits by organizing what they want for their tier within their circuit as neatly as possible around official tours and getting them wrapped up by the end of November. Some mod teams, like BW, prefer to keep their schedule the way it has historically been, while other mod teams gave me little to no feedback to work with, resulting in me defaulting to the previous circuit structure, since far be it from me to make major changes without their okay.

I recommend reaching out to the appropriate team of whichever gen you want a Swiss tour for and suggesting the change instead of making passive-aggressive comments at me about not following the will of the community.

 

[pulsar512b]

Please reread point two, I do not have unilateral control over the circuits. My job is to facilitate what the mods want for their circuits by organizing what they want for their tier within their circuit as neatly as possible around official tours and getting them wrapped up by the end of November. Some mod teams, like BW, prefer to keep their schedule the way it has historically been, while other mod teams gave me little to no feedback to work with, resulting in me defaulting to the previous circuit structure, since far be it from me to make major changes without their okay.

I recommend reaching out to the appropriate team of whichever gen you want a Swiss tour for and suggesting the change instead of making passive-aggressive comments at me about not following the will of the community.

fair mb, just wish stuff could change