So I was thinking about just deleting my posts above, after getting trashed on Discord. I thought maybe I'm just a weird interloper who knows nothing about Doubles or the community dynamics. Then, I happened upon this page, with player interviews 4 to 5 years old:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/doubles-ou-player-of-the-week-41-stax.3537370/ and it was, in a word... fascinating.
--I immediately saw that I recognized over half the interviewee names as people currently active and/or currently in leadership positions in the (Smogon/PS) Doubles community. Remarkably low turnover.
--These folks were overwhelmingly young men finishing up HS or in college, and now are in their early to mid 20s. It's still mostly the same group, apparently.
(Edit: I don't intend to criticize people for playing Pokemon into their 20s. In case it wasn't clear, I'm much older. Just observing that, unless the demographics of PS users generally have remained centered on that group over those 5 years, you'd expect to see greater variety in an open system. I don't doubt that it could be personally rewarding being in a tight-knit, more closed group--just didn't realize the extent to which that's what the Doubles community has been for many years.)
--A lot of the talking points haven't changed in 5+ years. Almost all of the mons they were talking about during XY were still around in SM. When asked larger questions about the state of Doubles, many people noted it was a tight community, but one they worried could effectively exclude newcomers or said that they would like to increase the player base.
Here's a comment from a Stratos May 2015 interview (on page 2 of the link above), when he was asked about the future of the tier:
"the number one thing that's always on my mind is playerbase. I think we have a great metagame and a great community so the one thing I'm really looking at is trying to grow our playerbase..."
And yet, here's another comment from him in the same interview:
"...the majority of players on the ladder are stinking garbage. I'm 100% serious that I want to divulge [sic] tiering from ladder stats in DOU because there simply is not a weight you can set where the swarms of bad players outweigh the few good ones. the way I see it, the ladder is truly unsalvageable. It's sad, but true. Statistics are just not in our favor. Even at the literal #1 spot on the ladder half or more of your battles are against players with purely unviable teams."
I can at least say Stratos has been consistent regarding his position on the ladder over the years. However, he doesn't seem to realize the inconsistency with his expressed desire to increase playerbase. Does he think new tour players will appear out of thin air and are totally unrelated to the "stinking garbage" players on the ladder?
My experience playing on the ladder is just very different I guess. Even when battling the 1300-1500 types from a top 10 position on the ladder, I often feel like I learn important stuff and my teams are frequently tested (sometimes--shocker--I even lose). I wouldn't think of a team as "unviable" if it could potentially beat me, and playing only tournament "viable" teams would mean you'd never get exposure to a ton of commonly used tactics. Also, I've had many truly epic battles with great players on the ladder.
Recently, I had a couple other ideas for fun tours that might shake things up a bit:
One idea, have clusters of people sign up for time spots to fit their schedule (anonymously). Say you have 8 people, then each person plays the other 7 consecutively with one team (going 7-0 or 6-1 for instance). You'd learn a lot more about each team that way I think. The top 2 players (with ties being decided in a way similar to NFL playoff rankings are) move on to the next round and you could complete a 128 player tournament in 3 segments in a couple weeks instead of a couple months, and many people would come to see the prescheduled tour segments--maybe getting more people interested in participating.
Or another idea, have a "Ladder Tour". Hype it as Tour Bros vs. Ladder Heroes. Sort of like an extended suspect, people would have say 2 weeks to just rank as high as they can (with new teams with special identifiers, e.g., TBVLH1 X) on the Gen 7 DOU ladder. The Tour Bros would take over the top spots on the ladder mostly, but some Ladder Heroes would fight for them and the general quality of games would go way up. You guys would get to play more of the high quality matches you want at will during those weeks. You might even get more people involved from the ladder and Doubles chat room as well.
(Edit: Thanks to the folks letting me know Ladder Tours already exist. My bad. I really never knew what DLT stood for (a lot of acronyms out there). I guess I'd modify the above to say it would be great to try this for Gen 7 DOU now, as the ladder isn't too packed, so player quality could be higher with high Tour Bros infusion. As noted above, I would expect Tour Bros to dominate, but you could encourage current people active on the ladder (who would otherwise qualify as Bros) to play as Heroes. And maybe this and other events could be promoted/advertised more effectively (There's a lot of empty space on PS game screens that could more effectively provide targeted updates--especially for doubles players on the ladder. PS singles players should be a large potential market as well. The Doubles chatroom also doesn't do much active selling for tours, e.g., periodic messages with links to tour info tailored for those who have never been part of them). Also, not sure how DLT is scored (seems to me there wouldn't need to be "qualifying"), but if you just looked at final ladder ranking, instead of win/loss or GXE, then advancing on the ladder should be something good players can eventually do, even though you would run into a large number of very good Bros who might not be accurately ranked in the beginning of the LT.)
Then, when I read the pages linked above, it really sunk in that most of the folks here don't really want any change. The above would conflict with the regularly scheduled tours. I can expect that 5 years from now, mostly the same people will have the same system as before, same cycle of seasonal and annual tours... probably still reliving the glory days of DOU gens 5-7 (unless gen 9 takes a new and better path) and still arguing about what specs to put on Lando. Some may wonder why the player base doesn't expand more, but most don't seem to do much in practice to make any changes.
So Stratos thinks my ideas are crazy and many/most of you follow along. I get it. He's brilliant and a great player and doesn't want to take advice from someone who doesn't dominate tours with accumulated "Ladder Knowledge", but the best sporstball player isn't necessarily the best coach, the best soloist is not necessarily the best conductor and the best actor is not necessarily the best director. He's not the only national merit scholar here. Though I was one before he was born, my mind hasn't turned to mush yet.
Anyway, if anyone who is relatively new to this like me (less than one year in terms of being active in my case) stumbles upon this (hard to do, since google searches still take you to old rankings that don't allow new comments, and no one seems to want to drive traffic to Oldgens (though most of the Tour Bros don't even really like playing Gen 8 DOU themselves), I hope this will at least be thought provoking. Though I know I'll get more trash for this (and Stratos, please no self-harm--these are just observations I've made--maybe honestly ask yourself what you'd like the DOU community to look like in 5 years and how you can get there--
Edit: and I'd ask that question to those who are/will be upset by this post as well--if this isn't the time and place for that question, when and where is the right time and place?), here goes nothing...
Aegislash
Ludicolo 4'->3
Stakataka 5'->3
Whimsicott UR->5
