Tournament Doubles Premier League 10 - Discussion thread

[zoe]

Art by GenOne
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Bit earlier than last year, but still time nonetheless, with some different questions up for debate this time around, which are as follows:

1. Should retains be allowed or no?

Retains are somewhat common throughout team tours, with both SPL and SCL having them, and numerous subforum PLs also featuring them. To summarize it, retains allow managers to benefit from good drafting in a way, as drafting an underrated player who improves or does well gets rewarded in future seasons, but it also arguably puts teams on an uneven playing field if a team gets an already strong player at a lower price and is able to guarantee that player in future seasons (until the price gets too high).

For clarification, the formula used for retains would be:

Last year price+3k x number of times retained OR 10k, whichever one is higher

(same as SPL+SCL)

In addition, while retains are tied to the team they played for last year, if a manager takes a team and then rebrands it, they are still able to retain the previous franchise's retains (If I took the Thieves and then rebranded it to another team name/mascot, i would be able to take the Thieves' retains)

2. Should DPL keep tiebreakers in playoffs?

This has been brought up a few times but most recently last DWCoP, so we're bringing it up for discussion here. Tiebreakers are somewhat contentious throughout the site, with some feeling like they ruin the hype of the tour, but others arguing they give a team that's down a reason to keep on pushing and keeping team morale up. Some proposed solutions have been to increase or decrease the number of slots to make it an odd number or making one slot the tiebreaker. I don't know what else to add here that's pretty much it.

3. Should the format (8 teams, 8 slots) be changed?

Last year the tiers were SV x3, SS, SM, XY, BW, and DUU, and the current plan is to move forward with these. However if anyone wants to suggest a change to either the format or tiers, feel free to do so!

As always if you have a suggestion or anything that wasn't covered by anything shown above, feel free to bring it up anyways :D

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We'll try to get this wrapped up before manager signups on the 1st, so be sure to get your thoughts in before then!

 

[ratpacker]

1. No retains to make it easier to introduce new managers
2. Keep tiebreakers
3. Expanding to 10 slots could be nice to introduce Dubers, NDDOU or DLC.

 

[Test Bots]

I propose that ND DOU should be considered. Over the season and current ND tour, there has been a dedicated player base. The metagame has been well developed and has even spread Coaching to other Doubles metagames.

I haven't been exposed to the Doubles LC community as much as ND DOU, but I think it is an interesting meta and deserves more exposure. Expanding slots to 10 may make more work between the teams (idk), but I still think that old gens are given too much shine in this tour.

 

[Actuarily]

Wanted to post my personal thoughts on some of the main points.

1. Should retains be allowed or no?
I don’t have a super strong opinion on this. While I like the base idea of some level of team continuity, I do think that an open draft is more fun where we can really let everybody’s valuations be determined by the market.

2. Should DPL keep tiebreakers in playoffs?
I won’t lie, I’ve grown to personally not like tiebreakers… (it doesn’t help that every single team tour we do has like multiple tiebreakers) They stretch out these team tournaments and make the other teams & players sit around waiting a whole week.

That being said, I don’t like the idea of the playoffs being a different format than the regular season (like being 7v7 in playoffs vs 8v8 in reg season), because that means we’d be cutting a slot in the playoffs. So I think we should have the same tiers in both regular season & playoffs.

3. Should the format (8 teams, 8 slots) be changed?
I definitely think these tiers are the right ones. With Derby complimenting the team tour structure & playing the tiers not included in DPL, I think it’s much less contentious to have these tiers in DPL. But with my thoughts about question #2, about having no ties & regular season being the same tiers as playoffs, I do think we need to move to a 7v7 format. That means in my opinion we should go with one of two options:

1. Cut one CG DOU Slot.
2. Cut DUU.

Nobody loves DUU more than I do, but putting my bias aside for a minute, I admit it being the only tier (other than CG DOU) that’s in both Derby & DPL may not be fair. I think as long as we can guarantee that DUU has a place in Derby, then I think it would be fine to make that its place in team tournaments. Or if people feel there’s too much CG DOU, we could go with option 1 & cut that.

I also think remaining at 8 teams is the move. There’s more than enough talent & opportunity, (especially shown by tours like DWCOP) and every year there’s snubs.

 

[Xrn]

1. I am biased but I think retains are cool for creating some kind of continuity between seasons in addition to rewarding good drafting. The proposed formula also makes retains significantly weaker than they otherwise would be in Smogon's standard system. New managers often have a team they're already associated with and if not a random retain pool works fine.

2. I'm a fan of tiebreakers but I have issues with the idea past my own preference. Changing the format in playoffs to 7v7 doesn't make much sense to me after a full season of 8v8. It just incentivizes teams to throw a 3k into SV3 since the slot doesn't exist for the most important part of the tour. I could see it working better in DWCOP where every slot is the same tier but not here.

3. 8 teams 8 slots worked well last year and I don't see any need to change it. 10 teams makes the tour really long at 9 weeks, 8 teams 7 weeks is the sweet spot to me. Currently DPL has an even 4/4 split between current gen and old gens with every tier not in DPL being represented in Derby. The tour just expanded last year I believe it's best to run the same numbers this year and consider expanding next.

Edit again: please never consider an odd number of slots for regular season. Ties help keep the playoff race competitive for the entire regular season instead of letting 3/4 teams be set by Week 4 or 5. I don't particularly care about the last slots but the tour should always have 3 SV 1 SS 1 SM 1 XY.

 

[tyo]

1. keep retains, rewards great drafting and continues a team's legacy
2. as much as i hate tiebreakers, in a team tour where the formats are not universal 8v8 should be standard
3. put BW in derby and bring DPP in DPL in that slot, the playerbase for DPP is much more competitive right now and DPL should showcase tiers with the most competitive games

 

[Toxinalpaca]

1. No retains so that way it’s easier new managers while taking everyone’s valuation an determining it by the auction
2. As much as no one wants to have tiebreakers, they are indeed necessary as it’s pretty standard in an 8v8 format team tour.
3. I really like the notion to expand to 10 slots, though I think the only 2 other slots that could be added that have enough support would be dpp dou and nddou.

 

[bagel]

1. Repeating what others have said, I think retains are cool to keep some continuity between teams and rewards good managing. I'm of the (possibly unpopular) opinion that it would be cool if DPL franchises were more standardized as I enjoy/value seeing the history+continuity of teams. With this, new managers could just take over a franchise and have options to retain from there.

2. Changing format mid tour is bad and heavily devalues whichever slot is cut. I like the 8 slots so I think tiebreakers are just something you have to live with.

3. I really think 8 teams is good, making the season longer seems bad. Something that could be interesting would be 9 slots instead of 7 or 10. Still solves the tiebreaker issue without devaluing a slot while opening room to add a new tier. I personally would love to see DPP in DPL, whether that be through adding it or replacing BW.

As someone who doesn't really play BW I'm probably not the one to say this but I do think its worth looking at BW as a tier and considering why it seemingly doesn't have the excitement/playerbase other tiers do and try to address those "issues" (if there are any) rather than just dumping the tier.

 

[Yoda2798]

1. Should retains be allowed or no?

No, retains are awful and give teams an advantage based on last year's draft when that shouldn't have any effect on the following year. Getting a unique offer to guaranteed buy someone for a bargain before the draft starts, just because they happened to go for a low price before or have massively improved since last year, is the opposite of rewarding great drafting which should be in the here and now. "Legacy" picks still happen all the time without requiring retains, retains just take away from the draft and open the door to unfair prices. Having "retains" for legacy when it's a different manager/franchise is also wack, but then not having any retains available to them is even more of a disadvantage, so it doesn't really make complete sense from that point of view either way you do it.

2. Should DPL keep tiebreakers in playoffs?

Yes, 8 slots is good and while tiebreakers are not ideal timewise, changing to an odd number of slots for playoffs is wack. Like Xrn said I think if anywhere it would be better in DWCOP where everything is the same tier, and you also play pools rather than 8v8 matches before that point so the change is more seamless (might even be able to change the number of players per team in pools to be the same, not sure how that would work).

Edit: I forgot to mention, but I think the aspect of choosing tiers for tiebreaks is cool as well.

3. Should the format (8 teams, 8 slots) be changed?

No, last year's format was great, if a bit long but that's unavoidable with the number of teams. Some people are saying swap BW with DPP but I think it makes more sense to keep the "team preview oldgens" (BW-SS) together in DPL while the "non-team preview oldgens" (DPP & ADV) are together in in Derby, having a mix of SS, SM, XY, DPP in one and BW, ADV in the other is very weird. I could see an argument made just for moving BW to Derby so there's XY-SS in one tour and ADV-BW in the other (three each), but that's not what I'm seeing suggested and I don't think would be a good idea for other reasons. If you want to look at playerbases then BW Cup had 68 signups compared to 33 for DPP Cup (less than that for the DPP Friendly Tour), with BW also being easier to pick up due to having team preview, and fewer mechanics changes relative to current gen. While DPP did fine in Derby, in DPL there would need to be more players for it, while competing against current gen and other oldgens that a lot of its players will prefer to play instead.

I don't know why nobody else has mentioned this yet, but going off what Actuarily said about DUU and being in Derby as well, I think a more realistic path for DPP to be added to DPL would be for it to replace DUU. Then there's no need to remove BW from DPL, and a continuous selection of tiers (DPP-SS in DPL, just ADV in Derby) is maintained without it being a weird intermixed selection in both tours.

 

[qsns]

I don't think BW has the active player base to justify being in this tournament. I would love for BW to be an active tier like the rest but it just isn't right now. For a long, long time, the BW slot has been 2-3 people actively enjoy the slot and go for solid prices, and then a bunch of people get dumped into playing it. The tier has seen Relative stagnation since DaWob's money tour multiple years ago. I don't see anything but historical precedent for keeping this in DPL right now, especially considering we have a new Oldgens Circuit and BW isn't played in the CG circuit.

If you want to look at playerbases then BW Cup had 68 signups compared to 33 for DPP Cup (less than that for the DPP Friendly Tour)

This point feels disingenuous considering BW Cup had Invitational circuit points on the line, as well as being part of the rest of Classic. With regards to the rest of the post, preserving the all-important Big Smogon Uniformity is not something that really that interests me while trying to create the best tournament. DUU has done fine and the Invitationals have been quite fun - I'd rather Derby have a different tier over DUU.

Proposing DPP > BW and BW gets moved to Derby. No slight against ADV, just thinking that some tiering action is planned for the future (Latias/Boom) and it'd probably be ideal to do that before the team tour. Alternatively, I don't hate expanding to 10 slots and including a tier like NDDOU.

 

[variationonatheme]

OK. As an observer, I have opinions.

1. The "retains" idea seems bad to me. Let's be honest, this isn't a well-developed sports league. There's a lot of flux every year. The retains system would reward a few lucky drafts, likely making things more lopsided, and discourage new teams or possible team number expansion.

2. Tie breakers are a drag. Disappointed to see any talk of cutting slots after the success of last year's DPL. The easy way to get rid of tiebreakers here would just be to have 9 slots. Last year, you guys bit the bullet and expanded the team size and guess what? You actually got many more sign-ups (almost 170 by a quick estimate). Team quality did not plummet (honestly, I've been very impressed by the improvement of a number of newer players in the last year, who even I wasn't sure could hack it as tour bros). You still had plenty of nasty snubs. 8 teams with 9 lots each gets you 72 starters, which is likely to be much less than 50% of sign-ups. If you want to be inclusive and get more people involved, put your money where your mouth is.

3. With #2 above, you get to add a tier. Agree that a lot of people seem interested in DPP, though you could do something else too. Expanding available categories likely encourages even more sign-ups.

 

[Yoda2798]

I don't think BW has the active player base to justify being in this tournament. I would love for BW to be an active tier like the rest but it just isn't right now. For a long, long time, the BW slot has been 2-3 people actively enjoy the slot and go for solid prices, and then a bunch of people get dumped into playing it. The tier has seen Relative stagnation since DaWob's money tour multiple years ago. I don't see anything but historical precedent for keeping this in DPL right now, especially considering we have a new Oldgens Circuit and BW isn't played in the CG circuit.

This point feels disingenuous considering BW Cup had Invitational circuit points on the line, as well as being part of the rest of Classic. With regards to the rest of the post, preserving the all-important Big Smogon Uniformity is not something that really that interests me while trying to create the best tournament. DUU has done fine and the Invitationals have been quite fun - I'd rather Derby have a different tier over DUU.

That's true that BW Cup is part of Circuit, but my point was to illustrate the number of people playing the tier. Regardless of BW Cup being part of Circuit, there are clearly at least as many people who have played BW than DPP if you want to talk playerbases. If you want to compare Circuit to Circuit, then as Actuarily has now said on Discord, then BW Cup signups were similar to the other gens, as were the responses to the most recent survey. The numbers don't back up what people are saying about everybody hating BW, it's just people being more vocal about it compared to the other tiers.

 

[Daepiquejt]

Nddou would be nice

 

[PigWarrior19]

1. keeping a legacy is nice but the viability of players fluctuates X player might be barely good enough now and insane next year it's an unfair advantage and really just an unnecessary issue I'd prefer to have the price of players determined by the managers in the draft although I'm not opposed to reworking the formula

2. I'm against a 7v7 switch from 8v8 taking away a slot is horrible you've played all season working towards winning it all just to have to take the backseat when it matters most so there's no tiebreak I wouldn't mind making it 9v9 though just adding another CG and slapping a sub in doesn't sound bad

3. I have no strong feelings about this I like the current format and am not opposed to expanding it to include more popular doubles oldgens/OMS

 

[eragon]

1. don't really see much reason to add retains, they just make the auction less important and make it harder to start new teams (I'm not really a fan of standardizing the franchises, it really limits creativity for new managers and leads to some dumb situations when managers are forced to pick up an existing team to manage). DPL has historically not had these and I think the uneven playing field created by adding it now is just not worth it
edit: I've been informed the last half of this is a nonissue so as long as rebranding is allowed retains seem fine

2. big tiebreak hater here, I've never really felt they add anything to the tour, but I agree that changing the format mid-tour in a tour with various formats is a very bad idea. To be honest I think the best solution if you want to eliminate tiebreaks is to go to 9 slots, but given this has never been tried recently, I think a better time to try an odd-number of slots format would be derby. Keep 8 slots (or move to 10 as I'm about to get into)

3. This is the only area where I think a change could be very appreciated. Echoing support for switching bw and dpp between dpl/derby, there's just a lot more enthusiasm for dpp as opposed to bw just from an outsider's perspective. I don't really have that much against bw as a format, this more reflects dpp's rise and the popularity/enthusiasm I've seen from its playerbase. Additionally, there's now an oldgens circuit, which should reduce any negative consequences that bw would face as a result of being switched over. I don't think replacing DUU is a good idea, it's a generally well-liked tier and last year it was a great inclusion that was one of the best tiers to spectate- I know DUU has experienced many changes since then but the format is well-established and has potential to be one of the best in the tour- please don't eliminate this from DPL.

Alternatively, I think 10 slots is probably my preferred format for this tour. We just had a massive expansion of dwcop to like 14 teams or something, and I think 8x8 is honestly a little on the small side for the number of people who are interested in these tours. Given the timeline we were handed, expanding to 10 teams (which I would not have been opposed to otherwise if there were enough managers) would be pretty unviable and lead to even more overlap with OSDT. Increasing to 10 slots more accurately reflects the size of the playerbase and more importantly gives more of a chance for other formats (like dpp) to be included. With 10 slots, you can keep bw in the tournament (I know there are still a few that want to play this), add dpp (which as stated earlier has a pretty enthusiastic core of players), and add one additional format.

There are several tiers that I think are at a level that could qualify them for DPL, but speaking for myself I believe natdex to be the most viable and interesting pick here. It has a substantial playerbase-- despite being around for less than a year, it already has a pretty functional ladder, its own discord with more than 250 people, and has already performed well in several team tours, including Derby, NDPL, and NDFL. This success has come despite having a metagame that some (including myself) saw as unideal compared to what the tier could be due to the strength of coaching archetypes. However, that issue is currently being addressed with a coaching suspect, which I believe will improve the tier even more (it's already rated highly by its playerbase). This tier was already in derby and I believe shouldn't overlap, but I believe DPL to be a more fitting tournament for it considering its growth + this would leave more room for derby to include other innovative tiers (PIC, etc). This is of course conditioned on expanding to 10 slots, but as mentioned before, our community is large enough to make 8x10 work and DPP is also a very viable tier. This approach avoids having to sacrifice bw to fit dpp and also adds a popular and well-performing format.

 

[Mizuhime]

1. I am biased but I think retains are cool for creating some kind of continuity between seasons in addition to rewarding good drafting. The proposed formula also makes retains significantly weaker than they otherwise would be in Smogon's standard system. New managers often have a team they're already associated with and if not a random retain pool works fine.

2. I'm a fan of tiebreakers but I have issues with the idea past my own preference. Changing the format in playoffs to 7v7 doesn't make much sense to me after a full season of 8v8. It just incentivizes teams to throw a 3k into SV3 since the slot doesn't exist for the most important part of the tour. I could see it working better in DWCOP where every slot is the same tier but not here.

3. 8 teams 8 slots worked well last year and I don't see any need to change it. 10 teams makes the tour really long at 9 weeks, 8 teams 7 weeks is the sweet spot to me. Currently DPL has an even 4/4 split between current gen and old gens with every tier not in DPL being represented in Derby.
edit: dpp replacing bw kinda heat

+1

1. Should retains be allowed or no?

No, retains are awful and give teams an advantage based on last year's draft when that shouldn't have any effect on the following year. Getting a unique offer to guaranteed buy someone for a bargain before the draft starts, just because they happened to go for a low price before or have massively improved since last year, is the opposite of rewarding great drafting which should be in the here and now.

Retains is literally the reward for great drafting though, if you buy an up and comer for a low price and they turn into a beast over the course of DPL you are rewarded for finding that gem in the rough.

 

[big pichu]

1. Retains are stinky and bad. Retains are a pretty significant advantage considering how good a lot of newer players are, and I'm not sure I would be as interested in retains being a long term advantage.

Retains is literally the reward for great drafting though, if you buy an up and comer for a low price and they turn into a beast over the course of DPL you are rewarded for finding that gem in the rough.

In response to this, I think the main reward for great drafting should be doing well in the tourney. I'd rather keep the reward self-contained to the year, rather than giving long term advantages that carry over.

2.) Rename tiebreaks to sudden death so they sound cooler

3.) Don't really have a huge amount to add to what people have posted but I want to shill for NDDOU. There's a pretty sizeable community of people who play NDDOU as their primary doubles tier, so I don't think theres going to be an issue with limited signups for the slot, and its been a pretty exciting endeavor in terms of seeing players help bridge the community gap between singles and doubles and newer players getting excited to play in a tier theyve wanted for a while--and I can see several of them being good enough to be drafted. Theres no doubt in my mind that this would a worthy inclusion and wouldn't have any negative effect on the tourney as a whole.

That's true that BW Cup is part of Circuit, but my point was to illustrate the number of people playing the tier. Regardless of BW Cup being part of Circuit, there are clearly at least as many people who have played BW than DPP if you want to talk playerbases. If you want to compare Circuit to Circuit, then as Actuarily has now said on Discord, then BW Cup signups were similar to the other gens, as were the responses to the most recent survey. The numbers don't back up what people are saying about everybody hating BW, it's just people being more vocal about it compared to the other tiers.

In response to this, I think its important to note that a player can play *every* cup, but is exclusively in a single tier each week. There's definitely a difference between "do you enjoy this tier" (given the veritable feast of tiers, i would imagine that one could gorge themselves with all the delights the game has to offer) and "which tiers are your preferred tiers", (given but a single slot to spend, one must prioritize only the most scrumptious pastries)
Im not sure what the best option is for getting this info other than looking at past signups.
I think the best option is still 10 slots but keep in mind that overlap might limit player pools for certain tiers.

EDIT: After hearing arguments for retains in comparison to self buys, I no longer care about retains so long as there are limitations.

EDIT 2: After seeing DaWobs post below, I think that replacing an SVDOU slot with Natdex (and keeping 8 slots) is the best and cleanest way to include Natdex. I dont think that an extra slot would be a huge issue given the amount of Natdex playersas well honestly but it might be futzy with other tiers.
I dont want to argue too too much either way with regards to oldgens (wrt BW -> DPP) since thats probably not my place and others are better suited to it.

 

[DaWoblefet]

I think there's a few points to be corrected about BW, but also a few points about DPP that I think could be made stronger.

I don't think BW has the active player base to justify being in this tournament. I would love for BW to be an active tier like the rest but it just isn't right now.

If by "active tier" you mean promotes independent tournaments outside of standard circuit play, you are correct that DPP is more active. If by "active tier" you mean more people play DPP, I would dispute that it's significantly more "active" than BW. It's difficult to compare numbers from BW and DPP for reasons you said - one tournament is in the circuit, one is a no-stakes forum tournament. If you compare ladders, when BW DOU was RoA spotlight way back in December 2021, it had 1500 games; this month as RoA spotlight, we'll know the final numbers in early January, but DPP's projected right now to have over 2500 games. But again, we're comparing data 2 years apart - if you had looked at DPP's ladder numbers a few months ago, a different narrative could be spun.

As with most oldgens, there aren't many "mains" of the tier. Many players, such as SMB, JRL, Memoric, frania, Actuarily, and so on have historically done well in BW Cup but are also well-suited to play other tiers. The fact is that most good players playing BW and taking it seriously do well; it's not a foreign tier. I don't think the number of players who identify as DPP "mains" is going to be all that different from those who identify as BW "mains". Both BW and DPP can equally produce 8 fine players who would perform well in competitive matches, and I think it's foolish to dispute that for either tier.

The tier has seen Relative stagnation since DaWob's money tour multiple years ago.

As far as metagame development goes, things have changed in BW significantly since the Checkmater-hosted BW DOU money tour (I won the tour, but did not host it). Back then, rain and offense in general dominated - things shifted to a bulky semi-Trick Room balance style becoming more popular, which was then superseded by a rise in Excadrill sand teams, and as of last DPL and BW Cup Genesect offense/balance teams are most dominant. The fact that a 10-year old metagame continues to see metagame shifts at all is pretty impressive. Of course, DPP will have more noticeable shifts - it is a younger metagame. Where you would call the tier "stagnant" I would call it "established".

As for questions outlined in the OP:
1. Should retains be allowed or no? (no strong opinion)

2. Should DPL keep tiebreakers in playoffs?
There are pros and cons with the current tiebreaker system.

• Pro: You see the best of each team match each other, typically leading to especially high-quality games.
• Pro: There is skill in determining which tiers to select for the tiebreaker matches. Picking the tier where your strongest player resides may not be the best strategy if the opposing team also has a killer in that tier. It may also be unwise to pick a tier where a team has been especially weak, if they can slot in someone who was ordinarily in another tier. But that can be risky because they haven't been playing that tier recently, etc. - it seems to be competitive decision-making.
• Pro: You don't have to add or subtract a tier from the initial 8v8. Both teams would likely have to agree to which tier to add/remove, or it would have to be administratively decided in advance, neither of which feels ideal. Dropping to 7v7 would make more sense if it was like, 7x SV DOU, but that's not how DPL works.
• Con: A full week for tiebreakers takes forever. A 1st seed team may have to wait for 3 weeks to get to play their finals set (tiebreakers for who gets 3rd seed, 2nd/3rd seed play, tie for 2nd/3rd seed).

I think the pros generally outweigh the cons. One potential solution would be to reduce the amount of time for scheduling a tiebreaker set from 1 week to just, say, through Wednesday. The majority of scheduled games occur on the weekend, but if we could complete tiebreakers during the middle of the week, and then immediately proceed that weekend, I think that solves the issue. I doubt the quality of the games would be substantially reduced with a stricter deadline, and then DPL can continue on schedule without bleeding into other tournaments.

3. Should the format (8 teams, 8 slots) be changed?
I've always felt like the Doubles community is stretched pretty thin. The motivation for increasing number of teams is if the community felt like there were "too many" good players being excluded from play. I think good players are excluded from play when they probably could be drafted if more teams existed, but I don't think there are "too many". We would need a lot more players for that to be the case, and if there were they'd probably be SV players. Number of teams is probably fine.

The motivation for increasing the number of slots would be if we felt there were "too many" good players who would not otherwise participate in DPL unless their tier was included. I would think National Dex Doubles has the best case to make for that. If DPP were not included or BW or DUU was cut, I wouldn't think there would be a sizable change in signups. I do not like National Dex as a concept fundamentally, but National Dex DOU is undeniably far more independently popular than any of DUU, DPP, or BW. Of course, I would like to keep BW around because I really enjoy playing it. Perhaps subbing out DUU or an SV DOU slot for National Dex Doubles could be considered. I'm content with the status quo as well.

 

[Xrn]

1. I am biased but I think retains are cool for creating some kind of continuity between seasons in addition to rewarding good drafting. The proposed formula also makes retains significantly weaker than they otherwise would be in Smogon's standard system. New managers often have a team they're already associated with and if not a random retain pool works fine.

If retains are added I agree with the proposal Grandmas Cookin made in DOUcord:
2 of self buy + retains but limited to 1 self buy (or 0 self buy 2 retains)

I would also like to add that the current schedule of Week 1 on January 15th is awful with manager signups not even being out yet. Even if you cut manager signups short from 1 week to 4~ days player signups should always have 2 weeks which currently isn't feasible. Running signups concurrent gives 2 weeks for player signups but is still a suboptimal option. Push the Week 1 date by a week please!!

 

[zoe]

posting my thoughts

1) I think retains are cool and going off of what i've seen in other PLs that have them, allow teams to maintain an identity while still keeping the draft competitive, with a teams' strength still primarily determined by the overall draft and not by the retains. I think a limit (such as the one Xrn suggested) is important though so teams don't literally just skip the draft lol

2) Yeah, I think the tiebreaks situation is way more serviceable in a non-WCoP format and a lot of the solutions I've seen have flaws or downsides that are worse than just keeping the tiebreaks imo (such as changing the format from the regular season to playoffs)

3)I don't have a really strong opinion on anything besides making sure every tier has representation more or less, i.e if BW gets cut it should be in Derby. Outside of that, I'm neutral though. I don't enjoy playing BW but still enjoyed watching it last season.

 

[Charlotte]

Radical opinion for the tie breaker issue
We make the regular week mon-sat, and then force tie breakers to be played on Sunday
Imagine casting all the replays of a tied set on Sunday then switching to the live tie breaker
DPL presents Sudden Death Sundays

In general, even if we didn't have active games on Sunday, that time can be used to have a consistent stream schedule to cast over and review the highlights of the week.
VGCWC basically does this already, and they honestly put on a great show. During semis and finals of the recent edition we had to play all our games during the week to have them recorded and ready for the stream, and none of the players had any issues scheduling despite it.
I'll also ask that y'all please support and promote streaming more, a lot of us really love doubles and in sure we'd all like to see it get more attention and grow

 

[qsns]

slightly more extensive post:

1. don't have strong opinions on retains

2. char post is exactly how I'd want this handled. First TB solution that doesn't change format mid-tournament or make the tournament pre-playoffs less interesting. An addition to this proposal: mono-SV tiebreaks? Cuts the time asking for team's tier picks and makes it much easier and generally less punishing to fill in slots if your best-of-the-best players are unavailable for that Sunday.

3. wob post good, pinging Arcticblast to make BW the next friendly series instead to get some more bw games going on. I am not a bw hater I just want to see more active stuff : (

 

[YoBuddy]

1. If retains were to be added I think they should be heavily restricted or balanced in some way that retaining a player comes at a significant cost to their team. The team retaining should always have to pay at least market value or slightly more for their priority access to a player and I don't think a simple formula will ever achieve this 100% of the time. One solution could be to give teams the option to retain live in the draft, rather than before it, to ensure players are always drafted by their market value. The retaining team would have the option to 'steal' the most recently eligible drafted player at an increased cost (eg. +10-20%). This would still open up a bunch of potential issues so I'm not particularly keen on it but I don't think retains are something we really desperately need anyway.

2. I'm in favour of changing the way tiebreakers are played to avoid them lasting the whole week. Having them played in a shorter time period is fine but I wouldn't want to change the format of the tournament in finals. If we want to do 9 slots in finals then we should have 9 slots in all weeks, which is a perfectly acceptable solution with all the new/revitalised doubles tiers going around.

3. As for extra slots I think it’s worth considering National Dex DOU for a DPL slot.

NDDOU is the second most active 6v6 Doubles tier after SV DOU, with the second most ladder games, the second most active forum presence and its own active Discord server. DUbers is the only other format that comes close to NDDOU’s ladder activity but has minimal forum/Discord activity. NDDOU is also establishing its own circuit this year to bring its tournament presence on par with DUU.

The addition of NDDOU to DPL would allow us to grow the doubles community by incorporating Nat Dex players. The NDDOU community includes both players from the doubles community and players that don’t interact with the doubles community as much. Doubles formats often get included in singles team tournaments but due to the limited overlap between the formats the two sides of the Smogon community don’t end up engaging as much. In the case of NDDOU everyone is already a doubles player so they are far more likely to both have the skillset and desire to participate in all the formats, which makes NDDOU mains ideal candidates to help expand our community.

While NDDOU isn’t officially a doubles tier, instead affiliated with Nat Dex, it has been part of Doubles Derby and is run by trusted doubles community members and attracts many players from the doubles community.

 

[xqiht]

1 no,i agree yoda

No, retains are awful and give teams an advantage based on last year's draft when that shouldn't have any effect on the following year. Getting a unique offer to guaranteed buy someone for a bargain before the draft starts, just because they happened to go for a low price before or have massively improved since last year, is the opposite of rewarding great drafting which should be in the here and now.

2 yes,tb is exciting lol
3 i think we can add natdex,dpp,adv and bo3

 

[Lemurro]

1. Agree with Yoda, last year's draft shouldn't affect this year's teams
possible retains this year: 13K Xrn, 10K Fey, 10K xqiht, 10K Paraplegic, 10K Eternal Snowman, 13.5K bage1
2. I'm fine with the current tiebreak system, but one idea I've seen implemented in other tours is adding an extra slot to playoff weeks, with the tier being decided by the higher seed. This removes tiebreaks and adds an incentive to do well in the regular season. This could also be flipped with the higher seed deciding on a tier to be removed.
3. No preference