Tournament RUGL II Format Discussion

[TheFranklin]

RU GAMING LEAGUE

s/o Flareblitzkreig
​

Welcome to the second edition of RUGL. After last years succes, RUGL is back to give chance for new community members, fresh talent and others interested in RU to join a RU teamtour. However, since our playerbase is expanding, we wonder what the best format for RUGL is.
There are two major things to decide:

1. 8 vs 10 slots
If we decide on 10 slots there are two options.
2. Either 5 SV, SS, SM, ORAS, BW, ADV or 4 SV, SS, SM, ORAS, BW, ADV, and one other "fun RU tier". This could be but is not limited to: NatDex RU / LGPE RU / BDSP RU / LC RU.

Please let us know which format you prefer and why, don't post one-liners.

 

[Beraldo]

10 SLOTS. 5 SV.

 

[lighthouses]

10 slots should be fine considering the sheer amount of signups rupl had

 

[Flabeauf]

10 slots and 5SV

 

[skylerddd]

10 Slots, 5 for SV

 

[Astrø]

I'm hesitant between 8 and 10 slots so I'll let the masses decide, but I wanna speak on smth regarding the possible 10-slot format:

I'd really like to have a "fun tier" if we get to 10. I'm actually in favor of adding NDRU, but whatever the tier is, I think it might just make the tour a lot more fun, add smth to its identity (as adding ADV did last year) and surely more diverse, instead of it just being the 3rd "standard format" RU tour in less than 4 months (technically the two other ones werent that standard but u get me). Not saying I'm an SV hater at all but I think it'd get too "repetitive" when you know we already had the same in both RUBD and RUPL. Since it's a long tour moreover, I kinda fear that some people might end up bored watching what sounds like a "yes it's RUPL but actually it's not", while adding a weird RU metagame can always hype it up (who would sleep at the idea of watching btboy play LC... ok maybe I would). I might be explaining my shit wrong though but since I consider RUGL a little bit like a tour in its own right I would like it
Plus we never know if that couldnt also get people from different scenes (such as NDex, LC and so on) into RU, like ADV (kind of) did last year.

I assume that suggestion will be an extreme minority among the others, but I think we could give it a try :)
So yeah usual tl;dr 8 or 10 is w/e but if we have 10 I'd prefer 4x SV/old gens/fun RU g4ming

 

[lighthouses]

agree with the 1 fun tier slot, we just had a whole ass thing about fun vs no fun in ru discord regarding the bo3 stuff that happened, why not have a cool tier as a final slot for this

 

[LBN]

I'm gonna voice support for 10 slots and 4 SV + 1 fun slot. NDRU which I know alot of people will just call natdex a mickey format and whatever but it's honestly just a legacy format. Yugioh has a legacy format, iirc TCG had one too. It's only seen as "mickey" because its not officially made by game freak.

That aside, NDRU has pretty much all of ND's player base as options. A lot of ND mains dabble all of them like Runo, Hidin, Sealoo etc and there's a large number of good people like this who'd sign up. Me as well, in fact I find ND RU really fun to play I'd probably sign up for it myself. I think it has the biggest claim to being picked here, and I'd rather just do 5 SV than pick any of the others. In fact, I'd be willing to bet you'd get more quality signups for NDRU than you would for ADV RU, so any concern on playerbase quality should be dismissed. IMO there's no real reason not to pick NDRU unless you think 5 SV is just better.

 

[MachJacob]

5 SV > "fun tier"
LC RU > Doubles RU > LGPE RU > BDSP RU > Bo3 > NatDex RU

NatDex is an OM, with arbitrary rules and Pokemon that are fundamentally designed for different competitive environments. If people want to play with Hidden Power and Z-Moves, we have SM for that. While it may have the largest community, it is in no way RU like all the other suggestions are.

 

[Runo]

5 SV > "fun tier"
LC RU > Doubles RU > LGPE RU > BDSP RU > Bo3 > NatDex RU

NatDex is an OM, with arbitrary rules and Pokemon that are fundamentally designed for different competitive environments. If people want to play with Hidden Power and Z-Moves, we have SM for that. While it may have the largest community, it is in no way RU like all the other suggestions are.

This might as well be called blatant tier-bashing with an egregious amount of bias considering you have chosen the following over ND RU:

- A tier that doesn't even use ladder usage stats for their banlist (LC)
- A tier who's council arbitarily decides what the threshold for rise/drops to ru is (BDSP)
- A tier who's section only retains activity when Eve is active by self-admission (LGPE)
- A tier that doesn't exist and is called actually "NU" in their community (Doubles)

I don't want to hard bash the state or administration of these tiers but this sentiment of ND being the ONLY odd man out is appalling and if I didn't personally know your history with the NDRU community I would just called this a glorifed 1-liner that amounts to nothing but "NDRU is mickey" instead of the biased post this actually.

Bo3 and SV 5 are the only comparable alternatives to NDRU's inclusion. I will make a longer pro-NDRU post later.

 

[THE_CHUNGLER]

I would hate if this tour was just rupl 2 with the same exact slots considering we just had RUWC and RUBD as well that were these exact slots with no change besides the number of sv/bo3 (not having bo3 is a straight downgrade anyway).

If we aren’t trying to do something new or different with this tour, there is really no point in having it, and either this tour or rubd should be cut. We took uufpl’s idea and made it worse by just making it rupl jr. I think we need to add either a new tier or a twist on an existing tier to justify the tours existence. Here’s my proposal:

To keep this tour’s identity as beginner friendly, we could steal the premise of the ADPL (Academy Premier League) and have 5 randomly selected players from the undrafted pool go to each team at random (for a total of 30 undrafted players). These players would play against other undrafted players in an undrafted bo3 slot, so each week 3 undrafted players face off against another 3 from the other team. It works great in adpl, but obviously the quality of undrafted players in this tour will be lower. I think that’s fine considering the quality of players in the other slots is also lower.

No matter what we end up doing, I think the decision needs to be based on making the tour easier for new players to be drafted and to play.

 

[FlamPoke]

I wholly agree with THE_CHUNGLER here, as somebody who invested a lot of effort last RUGL to help myself get into future RU tournaments (and I know Chung did too), I'd like to see this tour be more welcoming to newer names. The idea of using undrafted players in a flex Bo3 is great as well! In my opinion the optimal tiers are:

SV x 4
SS x1
SM x1
ORAS x1
BW x1
ADV x1
Undrafted Bo3 (SV x1, each team picks one tier SS-ADV in a flex slot)

The Bo3 would only count as one win for the sheet but gives a whole three games per week to people who otherwise may not get to play. In an ideal situation we could also force each player to play at least one game during the tour but this requirement is always iffy based on scheduling and stuff so I think it should be more of an encouragement than requirement. Giving newer faces the chance to get into a team environment and learn the basics of scheduling, prepping, and playing meaningful games is what this tour should be about and this idea captures all of that and more.

 

[Canard]

same as the chungler, undrafted Bo3 is a very fun concept and it will also probably reveal some hidden potentials in one or two players

 

[LBN]

Gonna double post actually, but UUFPL constantly has mini suspects for a chunk of their tiers to encourage needing to build and to try to improve the tiers. This UUFPL sees the following:
DPP UU banned Clefable, Sleep and unbanned Smeargle.
ADV UU is dropping Kadabra and Smeargle in
GSC UU is banning Baton Pass and freeing Smeargle
RBY UU is testing Hypno Articuno and Lapras legal.

Frankly we could do something similar. Tons of people complain about ORAS so we could do a mass unban of like a chunk of pokemon. Some shit like Unban Mega Steelix, Tyrantrum, Noivern, Dragalge, Froslass and Shuckle. Orrr just ban Scrafty and free shuckle. Some shit like that can be played around with. BW could do something like banning Durant Sceptile and Clefable idk. SM can free Mega absol / Talonflame. SS doesn't really have anything like that but who cares. ADV can do stuff here too, though idk what they think is dumb down there so

 

[hex]

i managed last rugl (we sucked LMAO) so i figured id say something real quick

the banning/unbanning of mons is cool in theory but in a beginner tour where people are trying to shine and breakout, testing the waters with certain tiering changes doesn't rly make sense bc the assumption is that most of the players in this tour *probably* dont know ru too well or they are new to tournaments in general, so theyre gonna be a pretty bad sample size in trying to see if certain things are better/worse for a tier. the shuffling random undrafted people onto a team is a good idea, but the specific undrafted slot itself seems a little backhanded. like heyyy wooo..i went undrafted so i have to play the..undrafted slot. plus going undrafted isnt a amazing signifier that you werent good enough to get into the tournament anyway so if you shuffle people onto a team after the auction just let them do / play whatever. im not a national dex "main" but i play/manage in their tournaments for fun when i can, just mentioning this so ppl understand i dont have a horse in the supporting ndru race. ndru is a pretty good tier, its balanced and the people who are in charge of the tier put a lot of effort into it. the rubd (lol) i won a few years ago had ndru in it when it was barely a tier so i think nowadays it has more of a legitimate reason to be included in this, its genuinely not a bad tier. not sure if that lc ru doubles ru post was a troll or not but those tiers arent even ru. like you cant just say lc ru then go yep. its ru. no, its lc. a very fundamentally different tier and different power level that requires a different skill/knowledge set than other tiers. with mons that are shit (if its lc *ru*). please be serious

 

[feen]

Echoing with hex in her post regarding NDRU. I also think the tier is rich and the communities merging is a good idea, especially since it's far easier to get into NDRU if you're versed in RU and vice-versa compared to say Ubers UU and UU. I for one do not see any drawbacks including NDRU into RUGL.

Regarding undrafted slots: This is essentially a farm league, we don't need an undrafted slot in a tour that focuses on the RUPL undrafted playerbase. You can make a case for the other CA teamtour we'll have later in the year, but RUGL isn't the tour for these suggestions.

Regarding testing out stuff in older gens: These usually amount to nothing (see: Talonflame in SM RU). It's just annoying for players to prep and unless we are actually doing something with these tests (which I don't see happening), we should leave the tiers as they are. We don't need to redefine the tiers by banning X or unbanning Y; unless there is a strong sentiment of a suspect regarding a specific Pokemon we shouldn't entertain this option.

 

[BigFatMantis]

Re: suspecting tiers a la UUFPL:

I usually ask the community and/or whoever is generally tasked with specific oldgen tiers if there’s any strong sentiment to test something out. It started out as only ADV because of the sentiment at the time that we wanted to “revisit” ADV UU tiering, but since then other communities have been able to test other positive changed (for example I reached out to the RBY UU community several weeks before the start of the tour to see what if anything they wanted to test out, considering that tier is also going through some re-tiering).

There is actually sometimes some randomness to it for fun, but it is mostly serious unofficial tests based on the direction those communities want to go in, and if you want to consider doing that in RUGL I would def reach out to your communities in oldgens to see if there is some desirable change people want to look into.

 

[Fernanch]

Hi, LCRU player here. Someone mentioned this to me, and i would like to give my thoughts

First, i obviously would love to have lcru in this tournament, it is a tier that i played quite a bit on unofficial team tours (lpl) and in a forum tours. I find the tier very fun, and revisit it a lot when there is a metagame shift or when it is included in tours

But, if i am beign honest, lcru is much more of a lc tier than a ru tier. I don't see why put lcru here, unless if it is a way to give a chance for players from a other tier (lc) to be on an environment where they can learn more about ru, and do a transition to the tier in the future with the experience from the team tour

With the tour goal beign to give chance to new community members to get into ru, this could be a really good idea to have, but then again, it is hard to argue for it, since it isn't actually a ru format. I personally like it, but i see why people want the other options, like hex said

not sure if that lc ru doubles ru post was a troll or not but those tiers arent even ru. like you cant just say lc ru then go yep. its ru. no, its lc. a very fundamentally different tier and different power level that requires a different skill/knowledge set than other tiers.

Also want to point out this

- A tier that doesn't even use ladder usage stats for their banlist (LC)

lcru technically does use ladder usage, but it is based on the regular lc ladder usage. As a example, the mons houndour and shellos where banned from lcru due to high used on regular svlc. But we also use tour stats for tier shifts, like how magnemite went from uu to ru because it wasnt used on uu enough on lpl

Anyways, as i said before, i would love to have it here, and i am sure there are some other lc players that would really like this opportunity, and maybe some ru players that might try lc. It is really a unique situation here.

Also, before i head out, i want to talk about the lcru meta:

As it stands, the tier is definitely changing a lot next weeks, since we are getting the tier shifts, and the best mon in the meta (wattrel) will be probably gone, due to his high lcuu usage on the last lc team tour (lcbc). With that, the meta is going to open up for some mons that are nullified by him, like joltik, skrelp and magnemite.

Zorua is the best mon in the meta, with knock/u-turn/sucker/sd/tera blast/sludge bomb as options, and 17 speed tier. Quaxly is a very important piece for the meta, since it is the best spinner, 14 speed that can reach 21 speed, roost and generally uses stab + brave bird. Those 2 are the meta staples, have been around for a long time and basically fit on basically every team.

Some other good mons in the meta are: mankey, for scarf/evio pivot/ meowth-g for rocks, knock and pivot (altrough meowth was used on a lot of lcuu teams, so it might be going)/salandit with evio/lorb, having 18 speed, strong stabs and knock/ gible for rocks and setup moves/ riolu as another good fighting option/ cottone is a good utility mon, with prankster moves, dual stab and beign able to switch into zorua/nymble is a very good lorb/scarf revenge killer,/grevard is a great spin blocker, and fighting switch in(https://pokepast.es/d425482ee3782c1a)/hippopotas is a fine rocker option/magnemite is decent even with wattrel, with scarf tera blast analytic/dewpider is a fine offensive mon, with scarf or evio/varoom is good into cottone, if it isn't the tera blast ground set/meowth-a is a good fast option/Rhyhorn is a good setup sweeper, with sd rock polish/wattrel is broken/shroddle is a decent option as well/swablu is a fine second option for hazzard removal/squirtle is a mon that i never consider, but it is a good shell smash option/sandyghast is a fine defensive mon.

Sorry for the lengthy post and thanks for the time, really hope lcru makes it. Have a good day everyone

 

[GoldCat]

If we want to include other communities in this RUGL, I would rather have LC RU and RUbers joining over NatDex RU. With Grand Slam right around the corner, this would be a great opportunity for us to get to know and work with the LC and Ubers communities. They have the highest barrier to entry out of the Slam tiers. But, also, since LC and Ubers are in Slam and SCL, most RU mainers already have some experience with the tiers. You obviously can't bring the teams built in RUGL to LC or Ubers Open, but team tours are the best opportunities to meet people and share teams.

NatDex RU's relation to RU is rather strenuous bar the name. You had the big money NatDex RU tour that got mainers to sign up but that's about it. I fear most won't be interested in learning NDRU for a low-stakes tour like RUGL. If NDRU ends up being an island slot, there will be very little interaction between the ND and RU mains, which defeats the purpose of including tiers of different communities.

3 SV + RU old gens + LC RU and RUbers is imo the way to go with tier inclusion.

Otherwise, keep it 8 slots.

 

[Adriyun]

If we want to include other communities in this RUGL, I would rather have LC RU and RUbers joining over NatDex RU. With Grand Slam right around the corner, this would be a great opportunity for us to get to know and work with the LC and Ubers communities. They have the highest barrier to entry out of the Slam tiers. But, also, since LC and Ubers are in Slam and SCL, most RU mainers already have some experience with the tiers. You obviously can't bring the teams built in RUGL to LC or Ubers Open, but team tours are the best opportunities to meet people and share teams.

NatDex RU's relation to RU is rather strenuous bar the name. You had the big money NatDex RU tour that got mainers to sign up but that's about it. I fear most won't be interested in learning NDRU for a low-stakes tour like RUGL. If NDRU ends up being an island slot, there will be very little interaction between the ND and RU mains, which defeats the purpose of including tiers of different communities.

3 SV + RU old gens + LC RU and RUbers is imo the way to go with tier inclusion.

I feel like isn't a valid argument considering the "LC RU is more like LC than ru", so would RU Mainers playing LC really make a difference with this type of argument? Especially considering NDRU is definitely more of an RU tier compared. Not to parrot off of feen but it is easier to get into NDRU and vice versa due to it being more like an RU tier, and NDRU has had team tours/tours where mainers/smaller RU lovers have played/slot in. EX: feen himself for NDPL, Micaiah has been consistently playing NDRU as well. I think Ndru SHOULD be in a low stakes tour, to actually possibly Grab even more traction and some other people to play the tier without consequence. You cant predictt that ND and RU mains wont have much interaction without mentioning the possible "little interaction" between LC and Ubers main as well. Can't predict what hasn't really happened yet when it comes to communities

 

[GoldCat]

I feel like isn't a valid argument considering the "LC RU is more like LC than ru", so would RU Mainers playing LC really make a difference with this type of argument? Especially considering NDRU is definitely more of an RU tier compared. Not to parrot off of feen but it is easier to get into NDRU and vice versa due to it being more like an RU tier, and NDRU has had team tours/tours where mainers/smaller RU lovers have played/slot in. EX: feen himself for NDPL, Micaiah has been consistently playing NDRU as well. I think Ndru SHOULD be in a low stakes tour, to actually possibly Grab even more traction and some other people to play the tier without consequence. You cant predictt that ND and RU mains wont have much interaction without mentioning the possible "little interaction" between LC and Ubers main as well. Can't predict what hasn't really happened yet when it comes to communities

I'm not arguing about the tiers but the communities. If we want to include tiers from other parts of Smogon, I think it's better to include those that have more in common and larger overlap with the RU community.

 

[zause]

I agree with Fp and the chungler also dont add natdex ru lol its an OM with little community overlap and its also natdex

I wish there was some sort of way to make the results of this tour matter more (no bias lol) though i am not sure how

 

[Adriyun]

I'm not arguing about the tiers but the communities. If we want to include tiers from other parts of Smogon, I think it's better to include those that have more in common and larger overlap with the RU community.

okay but this is more because the top “ru mainers” are more or so just good tour players period. I don’t think LC and ubers really overlap with actual RU much

 

[Runo]

lcru technically does use ladder usage, but more of the regular lc ladder usage. As a example, the mons houndour and shellos where banned from lcru due to high used on regular svlc. But we also use tour stats for tier shifts, like how magnemite went from uu to ru because it wasnt used on uu enough on lpl

Fwiw the comment i made wasn't to argue against LCRU but more to point out the fallacy of NDRU being excluded for X, Y, Z reasons.

If we want to include other communities in this RUGL, I would rather have LC RU and RUbers joining over NatDex RU. With Grand Slam right around the corner, this would be a great opportunity for us to get to know and work with the LC and Ubers communities. They have the highest barrier to entry out of the Slam tiers. But, also, since LC and Ubers are in Slam and SCL, most RU mainers already have some experience with the tiers. You obviously can't bring the teams built in RUGL to LC or Ubers Open, but team tours are the best opportunities to meet people and share teams.

I will say that I find it odd that the person above is willing to choose metagames that have little to no presence on Smogon forums such as Ubers RU and LC RU under the guise of "it will help them be more interested in slam tiers" or "make grand slam connections" or whatever. I won't comment on LC heavily out of lack of what goes on there but don't think we need to be expert in Ubers to understand how severely detached a discord only metagame such as Ubers RU is to standard Ubers. You cannot seriously look at an pool of mons like this and tell me with a straight face that it will translate into a better understanding on how to play another Ubers tier. It also took me all of 5 seconds to find that people in both the Ubers UU and LC sections advocate against it in its own section's team tours. A lot of the points to support their inclusion made by Nanchlax can also be said for NatDex RU except there is way less of a risk in the pool being small compared to that of LC RU and others. There are surely better ways of making Grand Slam connections than trolling your own tour.

You had the big money NatDex RU tour that got mainers to sign up but that's about it.

Players such as Feen, LBN, and Thiago Nunes have repeatedly expressed their enjoyment of the tier and have joined tours such as NDPL and NDBD irrelevant of the money. Competent players such as Adriyun, Micaiah, Seth, Jawabarat, Danbear02, and possibly myself if I was egotistical are also more than willing and capable of playing the slot. Who are the LC and Ubers mains that have expressed interest in this tour? The tier in general even? It doesn't even have to be that large of a prep island anyways, good chunk of CG RU mains have "some" idea of what goes on in NDRU anyways way more than LC RU and Ubers RU and maybe even BDSP and LGPE.

dont add natdex ru lol its an OM with little community overlap and its also natdex

Grow up and make a real argument, you play a hobby there is zero reason for elitism.

 

[Heatranator]

10 slots for the tourney, RUPL showed that a lot of people want to play RU rn, so increasing the slots would be wonderful.

I'm also going to say that I agree with Fp and the chungler. I like ND RU, but IDT the playerbase is there. Yes, people signed up for the ND RU money tourney, but ngl, I only played it cause there was money on the line. The other tiers suggested have even less of a playerbase, so yeah. Either make it 5 SV (which we do know we have the playerbase for) or something like undrafted BO3 would be better as a whole. This is meant to be a tourney for people who didn't get picked for RUPL, which IDT a lot of the other tiers did respectfully. For something like RUBD, I'm more then happy to have a more 'fun' tier. Again, not trying to say these are out and out 'bad' tiers, again I've played NDRU and liked it, but just IDT they have the playerbase.