Tournament UU Classic VI

Estarossa

Estarossa

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Host: Estarossa​

Welcome, Smogon, to the sixth UU Classic! This is part of our official UU Tour Circuit where you can test your mettle against the top players in the community. The UnderUsed Classic is a chance to celebrate the history of the UnderUsed tier through the generations. Participants will compete in separate, single elimination UU tournaments for the USM, ORAS, BW, DPP, ADV, and GSC generations, culminating in playoffs and finals. Additionally, players who make playoffs will be awarded points that will count towards the UU Tour circuit of 2022.

This tournament format should be familiar to anyone who has participated in Smogon's Grand Slam or Classic tournaments. The format consists of six separate tournaments: the USM UU Cup, the ORAS UU Cup, the BW UU Cup, the DPP UU Cup, the ADV UU Cup, and the GSC UU Cup. Each participant will earn points for how far they advance in each cup, following a similar point system used in Grand Slam and other tours (see here for more details), but 2 points will be given out for round 3 onwards instead of round 4. When all six cups have been completed, the top 16 players with the most points will advance to the playoffs. There they will compete in a best-of-five series consisting of a combination involving whichever generations they counterpick until we have an undisputed Smogon UnderUsed Classic Champion.

Signups for the first Cup go up on July 10th, 2022, with dates staggered by a week:

SM UU Cup - Hosted by Jade - 10th July 2022
ORAS UU Cup - Hosted by Accel - 10th July 2022
BW UU Cup - Hosted by Lily - 17th July 2022
DPP UU Cup - Hosted by Aqua Jet - 17th July 2021
ADV UU Cup - Hosted by PandaDoux - 24th July 2022
GSC UU Cup - Hosted by holly - 24th July 2022
Spreadsheet Link will be here

If you have any questions or concerns about the format or predictions about the tour, please post them here. Initially, playoffs will be top 16 players, but that's subject to changes depending on the number of signups.​
 
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Reposting - sorry if my previous one came off as whiny and upset which I didn't mean to!

I'd like to have a bit more clarification on why RBY UU isn't included in UU Classic VI. From the 2021 Circuit Feedback Thread, there was a lot of support from RBY mains (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) and UU mains alike (1, 2). The main reasons I see are (and please correct me if I'm wrong! I'm not in the UU Discord so might have missed something!):
For the first two - I'm not sure how much of a difference having 7 cups compared to 6 is, especially since for UU Classic VII SS will be an old gen which probably mandates 7 cups unless you cut another generation. You're already over 5 and if another cup puts significant burnout on players what about a best finish limit to counteract this? And if you want UU mains to actually play RBY UU - I think putting RBY in UU Classic VI solves that problem!

If the consensus is to wait until 2023 I will happily accept this - assuming UU keeps their word. I would really not like to see "we'll probably add RBY to classic in 2023" --> RBY has another successful year in UU Tournaments --> RBY is not in UU Classic VII for whatever reason. This would definitely seem a bit unfair to my community.

I hope I can have some good discussion with Lily Indigo Plateau Estarossa (and others) about why RBY is not included this year and maybe finding a compromise where we add RBY this year but with a BFL limit or striking RBY from playoffs (as examples), or promising RBY in 2023 classic.

Cheers ^^
 
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Please don't cherrypick anything I said I'm writing this off like 3 hours of sleep

There are a few more issues that have been raised in the argument against RBY in UnderUsed Classic. From my understanding (and please correct me if I'm incorrect), they center primarily around RBYers' actual involvement (or lack thereof) in the UnderUsed community. Aside from Shellnut, Torchic, and phoops (who only have a collective 4, 940 lines in total, of which Shellnut comprises 4, 380), there isn't very much interaction between the RBY UU community and the rest of the community. To compare this, I have 14, 243 lines since only the beginning of this year.
I think that RBY's inclusion should be based on what we want the UnderUsed Classic to be - a tournament for the UnderUsed community or an old gens tournament? When I asked this in #circuit-tour-hosts, the response was overwhelmingly in favor of a tournament for the UnderUsed community. Based on that, it would make sense for RBY to not be included in Classic because many people in the UnderUsed community do not consider our communities to be the same people. Outside of the 3 times a year where RBY could possibly be/is included in one of our tournaments, I don't see much effort being put forth from the RBY UU community to actually combine our communities, as seen by Discord line count. Even RBY Tournament games, which are often linked in the UnderUsed Discord, rarely do I see RBY mains talking about them in the UnderUsed Discord. The door is open for the RBY community to join the UnderUsed community -- people just have to talk more.
I still think that RBY should be included in Classic because I like the RBY UnderUsed community and it's still an oldgen of UnderUsed, but only after our communities become more intertwined.
 
I was gonna delay responding to this but now I feel like I have to; there are a few reasons we ultimately decided not to include RBY UU in this iteration of Classic.

The linking of communities thing came up above but I don't really want to focus on this one much because I generally agree with emma in that this link isn't just going to be magically forged, so this is mostly a response because of Aqua Jet's post above. As it stands, the wider RBY UU community and the wider UU community aren't really intertwined at all; I can't speak for the RBY Discord, for instance, but in the UU Discord the only active chatter we have that mains RBY is Shellnuts, who is a wonderful presence ofc. Some other players like Torchic and Volk do pop in on occasion and I love talking to them whenever they do; there's really no reason for any division between the communities, both are filled with nice people and we get along. That said, when it comes to RBY players wanting inclusion in tournaments that already exist (Classic, UUSD, etc.) - the onus is not on us to include them by default, but rather on the RBY community to show why we should. Even as someone who plays and enjoys the tier, it is less "oldgen of UU" and more "alternative RBY tier"; the overlap in players -is- extremely small.

But anyway, moving on from that point, I don't want to make any promises about inclusion at any given point. The one part of Jet's post that I agree with (mostly because it came from my own words) is that Classic, despite being an old generation tournament, is a tournament for the UU community first and for the various oldgen communities second. It's part of our circuit, after all; it'd be silly of us to ask the RBY community to add SS UU to their stuff too. I am willing to look into it in the next iteration of Classic, since SS will become an oldgen at that point too; we're gonna have to explore alternative options featuring things like a best finish limit, or just removing the tournament from the circuit altogether and replacing it with a fairygens tournament or something.

Finally, @ the successful year in tournaments bit... I dunno if it can be called that. Most UU mains don't even take part in UUFPL because well, it's a farm league, and it's only had one year of UUSD considering the current edition of UUSD is on week 3. I don't disagree that the RBY games have been fine, mind you, but it's not like there has been much exposure at all.

Regardless, the TLDR here is that we can't (and don't want to) make any promises of inclusion for a format that's already uncertain. It took enough effort to get people to even accept GSC as part of the tournament, and that gen is a lot less polarising too. Next year when SS becomes part of Classic or whatever replaces it, we can have the conversation, but this year nothing is gonna happen.
 
Thanks for the response. I appreciate the answer since not much of what you said above was explained much in the 2021 UU Circuit Feedback thread so I was a bit confused on how we went from (generally) support of RBY in Classic to not being added without much of an explanation.

I agree with basically everything you said. Again, I was asking from a point of confusion rather than a demand for RBY UU to be included since you are right - it's on RBY to be integrated more in UU to continued being added to tournaments. I posted on behalf of the community I represent as a moderator - not as a RBY UU player - so I'll be sure to tell the players more invested than me if they want RBY UU to be more included in the UU Tournament Circuit then they need to include themselves in the UU Community more.

And for what it's worth, I took the successful year in tournaments bit straight from you - "I personally thought our experimentation with RBY in UU Snake was a huge success; we saw a lot of high-quality sets, a bunch of new faces have popped up in the UU community from the RBY community that have made for great presences and overall most managers seemed to get along great with their RBY slots, so minimal hiccups overall."
 
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I strongly believe that it's optically better to include RBY as other gens are included already. I think splitting hairs about whether there's Discord activity is making things wayyy more complicated than they should be. The name "Classic" - and presumably what its namesake - implies it's an old gen tournament as-is.

EDIT: There's apparently murmurs of NU including RBY despite much worse first impressions? Yeah different community but c'mon something's up here lol

--

With regards to RBYers not getting actively involved with UU's greater community, it's kind of hard to demand it when genbashing can be so aggressive. Hell, there's a good of tour replays where people come in to actively shit on the gen. It leaves a very bad taste in player's mouths, and I've heard a good number of complaints since its initial inclusion. Given there is a Discord server close to 700 members with a burgeoning community for the tier, I mean, you see the problem, right? The UU Discord, in terms of quality discussion, is outcompeted by the RBY Discord. RBYers are very used to hearing the same recycled dross about hax and the flavour of the month "points", it's boring, tiring, and not something everyone wants to deal with. I used to, but my overworked ass ended up getting way too drained to deal with it in Ruins of Alph's PS room alone. It is far easier to talk with fellow enthusiasts who actually like the generation than with people who have never played the gen in their lives suddenly being experts because they saw one anomalous game where everything went wrong.

I shit you not: RBYers MUCH prefer it if you're honest and just say you don't like it. I have consistently seen much more civil conversations when people say that, we literally just walk away and cut our losses. We prefer that than being reduced to stereotypes by obtuse pseudointellectuals who think a generation or tier can be "objectively" bad. Here's something you need to hear: YOU CANNOT ARGUE THE ENJOYMENT OUT OF SOMEONE! It doesn't work that way!

I can certainly remember times where I've had genbashing happen personally in UUFPL and UUSD. Moderation-wise it's been generally poor, and that's fair, because it's very hard to regulate tour games and genbashing is typically not something looked at nowadays. Even in teamchats I'm typically being shut down over perceived flaws that I legitimately do not experience.

In spite of all this, we still push for inclusion and you see plenty of forum interaction whenever the generation is included, and signups out the wazoo. Discord is not everything and I think you know that. You see people making power rankings and stuff like that, no? Isn't that great? The fact someone like Shellnuts is so willing to rant to you all about the generation despite being given a thorough cold shoulder by some people makes him look like a saint in my eyes. Hell, didn't he even hold seminars in your PS room at one point? He's given the earth for you people.

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"So turn off spectators!"
I do specifically when playing tour games over here. Then, I see it all when I review my games, or get told "hey that chat was awful" after it's over. It's not a magic wand and it also drowns out legitimately good discussion that can happen. This also doesn't solve the server issues.

"Well GSC has this happen and they're around!"
You literally made a containment channel. Maybe as a joke, but that's optically not the best thing to see when entering a server. I've heard complaints about GSC's treatment quite a bit when I first started pushing for RBY inclusion, and I'm shocked we've been given as much as we have so far. I'm grateful, but if the logic for including bashed gens is containment channels, why is activity in the RBY server - which effectively serves the same purpose - suddenly an issue? Also, this doesn't consider community differences: RBY is grassroots, GSC, as far as I know, isn't.

--

I strongly believe that there would be more people talking about RBY in the UU server if there was less active hostility. Hell, there was even some just before I came in to make this post. Even then, given there's a willingness to exclude discussion from basic old gen channels for GSC, I think we both know how it would end up. With that in mind, given RBYers keep to themselves in the server that already facilitates discussion just fine, I think what you're asking for would actually do more harm than good. If that's somehow a problem, well, I don't know what to tell you other than that this frankly feels like that falling off a bike meme.
 
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The ship has kind of sailed on RBY inclusion this year in classic, thought it would have been nice but we're a bit past that.

RBY should have plenty of other opportunities coming up to bolster their case for next year:

1) I *think* we are having a UU oldgens team tour, which will probably include RBY UU (at least it most definitely should since it makes sense slot-wise). This gives RBY THREE team tours this year in UU!

2) RBY UU has started its own circuit (RBY UU Open ongoing atm), and a lot of UU Mainers are partaking in it and even going a bit far. This can only lead to better integration moving forward for the other RBY UU Circuit tours, and I encourage more UU Mainers to give it a shot (it's not that hard to play RBY and if you even a modicum of interest you should try it out).

3) While I am unsure of what the UU Team Tour circuit looks like next year, I imagine RBY UU will have at least one team tour well in advance of Summer 2023, which gives yet another opportunity to generate some buzz.

I've tried to work towards RBY UU integration for a while and it only looks positive in how far it's gotten in 2+ years. To illustrate it better:

2020: 0 RBY UU Representation in UU subforums (like seriously it wasn't even in the UU Oldgens Hubs post)
2021: UUFPL + UUSD II had RBY UU included, and we finally added RBY UU to the UU Oldgens Hub.
2022: UUFPL II + UUSD III (+ Oldgen Teamtour?), and lots of UU mainers now partaking in separate RBY UU events like Invitational circuit tours, etc.

I'm sure you can see the direction this is going, and it's a positive one. It doesn't mean that RBY UU is guaranteed to be in the 2023 UU Classic (nothing is guaranteed it could become illegal to play RBY on Smogon over some ancient edict idk), but with the way this is flowing I'd say it's a pretty good shot, provided the communities continue to integrate and attitudes stay positive. So when they revisit the UU Circuit next year (I'm sure there will be a post made sometime in December or January discussing it, which can be further discussed throughout the year next year), the position of RBY UU should be even better and maybe something can be finalized for the classic. But given nobody knows even how it will work with or without RBY atm, that post is when the case can be brought up yet again imo.

:Tentacruel: Go RBY :Tentacruel:
 
I just want to say that, with this year eliminating the + X Circuit Points for winning a Cup, there's really like almost no big incentive/occasion if you win a Cup now and it's a bit disappointing. I'm not sure what there really is to do about it, as I understand why there's no circuit points awarded for them. Fact is, winning a Cup Finals gives the same amount of Classic points as winning Round 3 of another random Cup, so it's hard to really get excited about them. In fact, you could potentially win a Cup and not make Classic POffs, at which point winning the Cup did absolutely nothing for you.

I think something should be done next year to at least give a minimally enhanced incentive for winning an individual Cup. Maybe just let Cup finals games be worth slightly more points for POffs, or maybe there's something else that people higher up than me can think of. But I thought the Cup finals last year were much more eventful and meaningful than the ones this year, and while I get they are sort of just "qualifiers" for the real Classic POffs, it could be fun to put a little more stake into winning each individual one. With next year requiring a bit of an overhaul for Classic with SS being an oldgen and RBY coming up again in the conversation surely, I just thought this should be something else kept in mind when figuring all that stuff out.

*edit*: Also it seems like ADV Cup Finals weren't even played this year because the points didn't make a difference to playoff positioning, and both players preferred to not unveil their ADV teams. Kinda sad, but it makes sense. Hopefully fix this next year.
 
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