Community PP's team tournament schedule

[Sceptross]

Disclaimer: this post is by no means an official announcement by me or the GTT. I'm posting my personal thoughts on the matter and at the same time interested in yours.


Hello everyone,

The recent events we had (overlapping of RoAPL and PPL and WCoP being announced as a new gen-only tournament) mean that it's a matter of utmost importance to rethink PP's team tournament schedule. I don't think anyone would argue with this.

So, here's the deal: we all know how much hype Smogon's major tournaments (namely, SPL and WCoP) generate. It's really unwise to ignore this influence and so far, we haven't ignored it by scheduling any of our major team tournaments for the same time as any of those two. However, as we all know, Smogon has a subcommunity dedicated to old gens - Ruins of Alph. This means that we are also competing with that section of Smogon too - namely, RoAPL and RCoP (Ruins of Alph Premier League and Retro Cup of Pokemon, respectively). To add to this, Smogon also hosts a plethora of Premier Leagues after SPL - ignoring them would also be unwise due to the sheer number of PLs that exist. And don't even get me started on each nation's PLs (EGL, HPL, etc).

Smogon's current tournament schedule is (roughly) as follows:

Winter: SPL
Spring: RoAPL/rest of PLs
Summer: WCoP and RCoP immediately after

In light of this, I think that the best schedule for our tournaments is putting PPL immediatly before SPL and after RCoP, starting in September/October and taking advantage of the fact that WCoP is no longer competing with WCoPP (or not as much since some old gen players still play the new gens) to put WCoPP at the same time as WCoP, before RCoP and after RoAPL/ the PLs.

So, basically:

WCoPP: June
PPL: October

However, following this format this year is awkward, since WCoPP would happen immediately after PPL. While I personally as a player/manager in WCoPP don't mind this (I, in fact, prefer it, since we kind of take advantage of the fact that there's currently a bunch of drama happening regarding WCoP by immediatly presenting an alternative to the outraged masses), I'm fairly sure this will be a problem for a significant amount of people participating in PPL.

So, in my opinion, we have two choices for WCoPP 2018: we do it during WCoP / immediately after PPL or we do it at the same time as yesteryear, in September. Doing WCoPP during WCoP also opens the possibility of hosting PPL4 in October.

What are your thoughts on this? What do you think of my proposal for our team tournament schedule for 2019 and beyond? Do you have any other potentially better alternatives? Post everything, I want to hear you!

 

[Disaster Area]

I don't really approve of having a poll with this. We should have a discussion first.

 

[Disaster Area]

We could try WCoPP right after SPL.

It makes our tour "not just another PL" at that time of year

 

[Sceptross]

The poll is not "official" - it's just a quicker way of people expressing their opinion without having to post.

 

[Mannat]

I really like having WCoPP right after PPL because with the lack of oldgens present in smogon WCOP, we'll be able to fill the void of players that aren't playing in wcop because of the rules changes. That's just my take though, I'm more than willing to hear more viewpoints on this.

 

[Chrysalis]

Again, for GSC-DPP players, these are 2 overlapping tours with the same format. Especially bad since half the WCoPP team will also play in Smogon WCoP. If people choose to do only one of those tours, they will choose Smogon, and if not, this becomes an annoying sidequest that doesn't have a tiny bit of the prestige WCoP has.
The time in October was perfect, there were very few major tours at the same time which allowed the players to comfortably get 1 game done every week over a long period of time. We should really keep WCoPP there and instead host PPL during summer / later in spring / maybe even in winter if we manage to squeeze it comfortably between WCoPP and SPL without having these tours straight back-to-back?

 

[Sceptross]

Again, for GSC-DPP players, these are 2 overlapping tours with the same format. Especially bad since half the WCoPP team will also play in Smogon WCoP. If people choose to do only one of those tours, they will choose Smogon, and if not, this becomes an annoying sidequest that doesn't have a tiny bit of the prestige WCoP has.
The time in October was perfect, there were very few major tours at the same time which allowed the players to comfortably get 1 game done every week over a long period of time. We should really keep WCoPP there and instead host PPL during summer / later in spring / maybe even in winter if we manage to squeeze it comfortably between WCoPP and SPL without having these tours straight back-to-back?

WCoP is going current gen only from now on, so no overlapping. In fact, that's exactly why we want to put WCoPP there.

The time in October is indeed the ideal time to host a tour - not much is happening. The problem with hosting PPL during summer is that lots of people are on holidays so they won't be able to play during portions of the tour - that's why it tends to be avoided. Later in Spring is when we want WCoPP to happen. The overlapping would be the same.

"Squeezing" our two team tours before SPL and one immediatly after the other, on a regular basis, is really awkward for PP and I think it should be avoided. Not only we are around 8 months without a team tour in PP - which is kinda weird when you host 2 - it becomes a massive burnout for people that see PP as their main Pokemon website, because they'll want to play in both. Whereas one time wouldn't be TOO much of a problem (and even that, according to the poll results so far, is still a problem), every year would certainly be not a good idea if we want PP's playerbase to join both tours.