I put up a survey on Sunday asking about various things about 1v1 just to know what the community and fellow staff want from me as a TL, and as a RO. I'm talking about myself but I get a lot of shit when it comes to dealing with my community and my room over little things. I've received several reports saying that we're too lax in the room and that I can't handle my community. Most importantly, since 1v1 got even more famous on Smogon and between other users I've also got lot of shit about the metagame and lot of questions specially about the council. We're //I// am hearing a lot about that the leaders do not have the metagame knowledge to lead it. I'm going to speak for myself and say that I do not really need to invite the whole room during my laddering sessions, but there's a lot of users/friends from lsf that have seen me ladder on various occasions. My first 1v1 tour was Seasonal and I progressed and I'm proud about where I reached in a metagame that I don't seem to enjoy as much as last gen. I would have loved to join other tournaments such as WC/PL/LT and Classic. I joined classic and lost to hax, during WC I was so busy that I couldn't even check on Smogon or PS! And I've hosted LT and PL so me joining a lot of tours to prove myself isn't going to really work out, I'd rather be hosting and make sure that everything is run smoothly than to play.
There's lot of misunderstanding about being a RO and TL. They don't really have much time playing like the rest of you but they still play. We put a lot of times in creating a great metagame, lot of times in regulating room policy, metagame policy and make sure that everything runs perfectly for the community's enjoyment. Now, I'm not saying that we're being bombarded with complaints but there's many. I appreciate your criticism and that's why I opened this survey for criticism about various thing in 1v1.
Now another point is that, outsiders aren't taking us serious as competitive. "omg it's just rps xDD", "omg there's no skills involved", are things I get and how do we even playing that game as competitive, there's an opinion I sadly can't change. You have to play 1v1 and understand it as a whole concept to really comprehend that it's competitive. And for people saying it's fun and not competitive, when a metagame reaches the balance between competitive and fun this is where it's really a great metagame. Now I'm not saying 1v1 is a great metagame and there's still lot to be done but these two factors are in, there's fun in 1v1 and there's competitivity in 1v1. There's also outsider opinions saying that the 1v1 community is to say it softly chaotic, and that's a point I'm going to address.
Without further words, I'm going to share with you the survey results that had 75 responses, so thank you all.
I - About the tournament circuit.
a) Favorite Tournament in the circuit.
As seen above the most favorite tournament is 1v1 Premier League followed closely by the World Cup of 1v1. This shows that the majority of the playerbase is more into team tournaments. 1v1PL was first probably because it's the most recent tournament and it's being hosted on Smogon rather than Discord like the last World Cup, plus not being region locked is also good. World Cup probably got less votes because it was long ago and only oldies that joined it would vote for it. Opposed to last year, the tournament circuit will be following the schedule below;
Winter - 1v1 Classic
Spring - 1v1 Premier League
Summer - 1v1 Ladder Tournament
Fall / Autumn - World cup 1v1
+1v1 Seasonals
Both the 1v1 Premier League and 1v1 Ladder Tournament (and seasonals) will be hosted on Smogon. This is will allow a single tournament, and a team-based tournament to get enough exposure and easier hosting. Meanwhile the World Cup of 1v1 and 1v1 Classic will be hosted on 1v1boards, it won't get as much exposures but people on the discord will be notified about the start which means that all users that are interested in 1v1 and its tours will receive the notification. Reason we can't host all of them on Smogon is because we're under OM subforum wing and they also have, as a whole entity, a lot of tournaments and projects other than 1v1.
b) Changes about the tournament circuit.
People been asking about more old gens to be implemented or to have more tournaments. We have a pretty tight schedule so I'm not sure if we can fit big tours in-between but we can probably make some fun tournaments in cooling-time on the 1v1boards, I'm ready to approve ideas if I get PM'd by the general idea and who is going to host. Secondly, about including more old gens in the tournament circuit, this is something I and other tournament hosts will decide when times come, old gens can be mostly added to Classic and World Cup, for PL adding BW seems possible if we get enough support. We actually had plans in including a BW slot instead of a third SM but general opinion between managers wasn't in favor of that due to the small playerbase.
We will watch closely the old gens project done by
Yung Dramps and co and we will see how active it is and how much will the old gens get and we will move accordingly.
I also received other changes in tournaments being hosted, such as basing 1v1LT on GXE and not ELO, adding 2v2 Doubles to our tournaments, asking TDs help to make decisions, splitting Europe in World cup, removing UU from PL, adding 1v1 OMs and more... we will take these into consideration but no promises.
II - About the room
A) About Room activities.
a) Question about favorite room activity.
We asked our userbase which activity they enjoy the most in the room and they picked fun tournaments. I understand the reasoning behind this, laddering and other SM 1v1 tournaments can be stressful so having some fun would make 1v1 room so much better. We used to host a lot of these in the past but recently they seem to have died, so I urge all room staff to host more and more of these they will do no harm, except in the middle of discussions. I realized that ever since we stopped these fun tournaments the tension in the room has grown by a large margin and we get more and more fights. Now I'm not saying that it's only because of that and I'll address room tension/fight later on.
Monthly Official Championship came second because there's some competitivity without bothering signing-up and stuff so I see that both aspects of 1v1, competitive and fun are winning. Team Tours and Community Create-A-Team came last and I predicted the result since not a lot of users used to join them back in the days and when we host CCAT nowadays there's also not a lot of people that are interested. Team Tours I can understand the fact that it has been a long time and people might have forgotten that or that it takes lot of times but I'll make sure that we host them once every week or two. About CCAT; maybe it's because they aren't led properly or people get bored easily or they aren't given enough exposure on Smogon/1v1Boards/Room but I'll try some things and see how they turn out.
We also have a new championship being cooked by we're waiting for the right time to release it, we're stressed atm and there's lot of things to do before releasing it, maybe we can free the testing version in summer.
b) Changes in room activities.
The answers I got were mostly the same and revolved around the idea that we should host of more these fun tournaments because clearly people seem to enjoy them and we haven't been hosting them a lot, so I reassure you that we will be hosting more of them. Second, most popular answer was adding more Official Tournaments. We made a room poll and as room staff we are discussing about it, probably next month we're increasing the # of tours to either 3 or 4 per day, there's lot of considerations before taking the decision firstly, we're worried if we have enough staff to cover all these tournaments and second if we have enough users that will join the tournaments. We will discuss that and will come back to you. I also received opinions asking for more team tours and we will also work on that.
B) About shitposters
Results were pretty 50/50 which means that it depends on which staff is online. There's some staff that are strict against shitposters and some others that aren't. As RO I want less shitposting in the room, we are trying to be taken seriously by other users and specially by authorities on PS! We will be limiting shitposting as much as we can. That doesn't mean that we still won't be cool with the community or allowing other fun conversations outside 1v1. I tell my staff to always be lax on discussion, there's really some times where there's really nothing to discuss in 1v1 and other rooms in general, but if a users ask for help we shall stop
durza off-topic discussions and get back at 1v1. Also if the conversations drift for a lot of times away from 1v1 you shall also get back to discussing 1v1. Staff role isn't only to make sure that everything runs smoothly in the community but to ensure a better communication between both the community and staff, and to make the 1v1 room and relaxing / great place to join.
C) About changes in the room.
Oh boyy, there's a lot, I mean A LOT of complaints concerning the room especially FROM THE COMMUNITY TO THE COMMUNITY. More than 75% of the form responses were saying about how toxic the community and how they aren't kind to newer players. This is something that should be taken seriously and this is why I'm implementing a new policy about strict auth. I will not tolerate anymore serious trashtalking, insults (note serious) and these kinds to other users in the room and especially not shitting on newer 1v1 players. We have already blacklisted a user that would only do this in the room and I'm not afraid to do it to other users. The 1v1 room should always be a happy place to be, somewhere where you can be integrated to the community easily, somewhere where people don't feel the need to pray before posting something in the room. This is something that has been bothering me for such a long time and I won't allow it to happen. We, as a community, are one entity that should like eachother and thrive to make the room and the metagame a better place. With you fighting and bashing eachothers how do you even want other people to take us seriously or to make people join the 1v1 room. Funny that people that do that are the people that complain about people not taking us seriously or say that we need more users. Newer players are to be respected and taught the 1v1 metagame, we were all a beginner at one point and the fact they are even making an effort in learning or have the courage to ask in chat about a set or anything like that mean that they should feel at home and should be helped, who knows maybe one day they will become better than you. I'm not going to name users but I, as a RO, will be taking this very seriously and will notify all staff about this.
Other complaints is that we should get more room staff. To be honest, YOU make the room staff and not us. We do not create room staff, we find new staff. If you want more room staff you better step your game up and become an active user in the room and on forums, the more you do, the more we notice you and promote you to voice then from there you can climb up the ranks (No we do not promote friends, lol this is dumb). All staff are expected a certain degree of activity, general knowledge about the metagame and the will to help us moderate the room, that's why you have to prove that you have all of that in you before we even consider you. We are always looking through room logs and the forum so don't say that we don't notice you. We have already listed criteria about what we look in a voice so check it out
here.
About other stuff demanded such as more 1v1 guides and stuff, just know that we are working really hard on that, we won't spoil anything but we're working on something.
III - About the 1v1boards
a) About Analysis
We actually had analysis on Smogon and they were one of the most active from OMs but we no longer have that and decided to use 1v1boards as alternative. People also made a discord channel saying that they support 1v1 analysis on Smogon without knowing that we can't move them to Smogon that easily. We have to prove that we are active enough and care about these analysis that's why we need to be more active on the boards regarding these. As shown by the poll there's a good bunch of users that are interesting in the help that these analysis bring (see yes as a reader) but that's the complete opposite for writing them. I don't know who is supposed to write them for you guys to read them. If you want 1v1 analysis to be a thing you have to help us, I'm not asking you to write 5+ but at least 1, it won't take much effort nor time if you really know the Pokemon. If you take 1 you give other writers less and less job which is always good. If you want 1v1 to be able to reach new heights you have to really help us out and not spectate. I'm waiting for new writers, it may sound like hard work but it really is fun when you try it out.
b) About projects
Projects on the 1v1board is always something that I wanted to try. Projects gets the community involved in different ways. There's some users that do not like writing analysis nor talking a lot in the room, they prefer short informative posts in fun threads. I have a lot of projects in mind but I'm afraid they will all be for nothing and they won't even see activity but as the second question showed 84% of the people that took part of the form would join. I'm going to start a test with the two most voted projects being Break My Team and Next Best Thing on the 1v1boards and if they get enough activity we could probably apply for them to be hosted on the OM subforum while hosting others on the boards like longer CCATs and Good Duos. I hope that you guys would join them and make it an enjoyable experience.
c) Changes and opinions on boards.
I'm going to start by addressing some points raised about the 1v1boards indirectly. The 1v1boards shouldn't be more dominant than Smogon nor equal as Smogon. The 1v1boards is a testing ground for various things. First, as a new community inside a large community we just can't host random projects that will die after a week or two, we need to get through the first step to move on to the second step. The 1v1boards isn't just a testing grounds for projects but a testing ground for 1v1 analysis as mentioned above, we need to prove our worth, activity, and our will to create more resources for 1v1. The 1v1boards is also somewhere where we host other tournaments that cannot be done on Smogon which is better than hosting it on Discord.
Now about people saying it's ugly and they get lost in it, we will work it out and try doing something like fixing the colors and putting forums with specific names and purposes otherwise I don't think there's anything else we can do, you need to find the motivation to post on the board and make 1v1 move forward and to higher grounds because the motivation won't come and find you.
IV - About the 1v1 metagame
A) About 1v1 old gens and OMs.
a) About preferences
Outside of SM people seem to like everything that has to do with old gens especially ORAS since it was the most recent gens and there's still a big part of its userbase that still play. Other than that we have 1v1 UU and Monotype tying. Both of these 1v1OMs will get exposure if you guys like them especially 1v1 UU as seen in the 1v1PL. The 1v1UU is working on resources and other things so the future looks promising for it. 1v1 UU will always be part of our official tournament circuit I'm positive but for Monotype I'll see what I can do, but for now it has no place in official tournament circuits same as other popular ones such as Anything Goes, AAA, and STABmons.
The majority of people don't seem to be playing old gens but the most liked old gen is generation 5 and I think it has the most chance to be integrated in the next 1v1PL and it is probably going to stay in the World cup of 1v1. We will also be hosting more old gens tournaments in the room, and probably on boards with the help of the people that lead old gens so stay tuned.
b) Future of 1v1 Old gens and OMs in the tournament circuit.
There's a solid 44% that want all other 1v1 metagames to be included in the tournament circuit. This doesn't seem feasible but we can try our best to handpick the most popular ones and see if they can fit somewhere. Maybe we can create another tournament between two tournaments that include 1v1 OMs because they are the hardest to integrate in our tournament circuit. Meanwhile for Old Gens 1v1, they aren't as hard to put in the tournament circuit because there's two tours about old gens, 1v1 Classic and World Cup meaning that we can fit them in the tournament circuit but only if people show interest in playing them. As said, I will be keeping a close eye on the old gens thread in the RoA subforum and in room and discord to see if enough people care about old gens. No promises because hosts will be taking about that before the tournament's start so if you want old gens in the tournament circuit you have to prove us that you're capable of delivering competitive battles.
c) Adding other 1v1OMs to the pool.
Yes, there are plans about adding more 1v1OMs to the current pool but we have to make sure that the ones we have now are balanced, and are interesting. We will drop every 1v1OM that won't see much activity in tour joins or discussions and we will leave the place to other suggest 1v1OMs here such as Mix-and-Mega 1v1, No-Z, and LC.
B) About 1v1 resources.
The majority seems fine with the current 1v1 resources and how frequently they are updated. We have a VR council that works a lot to bring you the latest version of the VR with minimal error while other resources don't need as much patching as VR.
The only complaints I seem to get is about Sample Teams which aren't updated often and aren't beginner friendly. I will be reviewing the Sample Teams in the ST chat we have and we will hopefully get them updated more frequently, just remember that we accept teams from everyone in the community and we vote on which we should include or not so don't be shy and send us your best team if you want it to be featured in the sample teams section.
Other resources that people want are a Good Duo resources that I suggested as room project, a role compendium which is feasible and I'll try getting people to work on it, and resources to the various 1v1 OMs. Such resources are hard to create because we have a lot of 1v1 OMs but I'll try to give the most popular ones, see: 1v1 UU, resources with the help of other people.
C) About the current 1v1 metagame.
I don't have pie charts anymore except for the GXE part and I'll respond to popular reponses in the form indirectly while talking about each question.
a) About the 1v1 suspect test philosophy.
Sure we are no longer hosting suspect tests but it's a philosophy that us as council should follow to decide what is broken and what is not, I didn't get good changes other than some complaints about the current system which gives no suspect tests. Just for heads up we are currently working and revising the 1v1 suspect test philosophy we already voted on some changes but there's some more to be done so this should be updated soon tm, and by soon tm I mean really soon and not deg's soon.
b) About the most unhealthy elements in 1v1.
People have voted in order Tapu Koko, Sleep, then Z-moves. These things will be dealt with soon enough, if you think that something other shall be banned post here. The council is always looking for options and community input so please post!
c) About future suspect tests and new GXE requirements.
I have to agree with the majority here the perfect GXE for suspect tests shall be between 78 and 77, nothing more, nothing less. 79 is hard to obtain when everyone on ladder is below that while anything lower than 77 is too easy. Also people have been complaining about why this question if there's no longer suspect tests. All I have to say that I doubt 1v1 will stay permanently in this council leadership for a long time and I think the people must have a bigger say in this, they might not ready now but will definitely will be later. Even if fellow council members are against suspect tests coming back later, I will strongly disagree with them and convice them to have suspect tests in the future.
d) What would you change if you were a 1v1 council member?
People either said to abolish council voting, to be more friendly to newcomers and create more and better resources, make the community more involved in 1v1 decisions, and remove the toxicity in the 1v1 room.
Lot have been talked about the council decision and I won't start it here again. About newcomers and room toxicity, we as room staff and contributors will take a step forward and create better resources and a better room for everyone, give us some time and observe we shall make 1v1 great again. About the community being involved more in decisions, we are trying to do so without the intervention of suspect tests for the being, we started that by implementing the rotational council and we surely will find out other ways to keep the community involved somehow. Other than that, the 1v1 thread discussion is always open to the community's opinion about what they think is broken or not, we read everything and take into consideration everything. Also, I think and I'll be pushing for the re-implementation of suspect test in the future.
As a closing remark, I shall thank everyone that participated in this survey this opened my eyes on many things. There's a lot more opinions that I didn't include here but that doesn't mean I didn't read them or took them into consideration but they either were minor or easily fixable and don't need a post about them. I would like to thank the 1v1 community and room staff for all their hard work and contributions and how they pushed 1v1 into a completely different and better way. Every single one of you can PM me anytime if you want help about 1v1 or not, if you want to ask me how to play a bigger role in 1v1, or if you want to chitchat and shitpost in my discord PMs feel free to do so. Man, we came a long way from being the same 5 people discussing on the smogon thread, look where we at now, let's get it!
shoutout everyone.
stay roffing.
rof.