Tournament NUPL IX Format Discussion

[shiloh]

Hi its that time of the year, with NUPL right around the corner I want to bring up discussion on the format for this edition.

Currently the tiers I see as locked in are as follows:

SS NU
SS NU
SM NU
ORAS NU
BW NU
DPP NU
ADV NU

Now the question is, how do we fill this out, and there are a few ways to go about it.

The way we did it last year was with a Bo3 slot, and it is my preference to do this once again as it has been a large part of NUPLs in the past, and is a great way to highlight the 3 most recent generations with some strong players. This would leave us at 8 slots, but I think there is also a fair discussion on bringing NUPL back up to 10 slots for this season.

If we do increase to 10 slots, the easy inclusions are a Bo3 and another SS NU, bringing the total number of slots up to 9. This last slot therefore could be either another SM NU or bringing back GSC NU. While there was not a lot of positive feedback from the last time GSC NU was included in the tour, since then there have been multiple tiering decisions made around it (spearheaded by Earthworm), as well as its inclusion in GSCPL where it had a very solid playerbase that highlighted the tier well.

Basically this thread is to get the communities viewpoint on a couple of things: First, should we stay at 8 slots, and if so should we fill that last slot with another SS or keep Bo3 in. Second, should we increase from 8 to 10, and how should we fill those last few slots.

 

[Finchinator]

8 slots with Bo3 is best unless we get a large amount of GSC support.

It’s traditionally hard enough to fill 8 slots as is, so 10 feels like a larger stretch. Bo3 has been a huge draw in past years and doing away with it would be a step in the wrong direction. I’m not involved with GSC enough or active enough to relearn the tier to comment on it, but it hinges a lot on community interest I feel. I’ll be happy to be wrong if many people voice support — go ahead! But for now, Bo3 and 8 seem best to me personally.

 

[etern]

GSC / RBY and whatever other niche nu formats exist have no business being in NUPL, they're in no way competitive, no history, and nobody wants to play or watch them apart from 1 or 2 people. Definitely agree with 8 slots, 10 slots was not competitive last time and there was an insane amount of subpar games (and pickups) that made viewing extremely frustrating. Quality > Quantity. I'm not a massive bo3 fan mainly because it's a complete chore to prep for and it can go from hype w1 / w2 matchups to disastrous fodder trading by the middle of the season when people get sick of playing it. That being said, I'd imagine having to fill 3 SS slots would be worse for the pool, and bo3 does have the element of tradition going for it?

 

[Earthworm]

GSC / RBY and whatever other niche nu formats exist have no business being in NUPL, they're in no way competitive, no history, and nobody wants to play or watch them apart from 1 or 2 people.

It's unfortunate that the NU community hasn't been enthusiastic towards these tiers, since they are quite enjoyable. They do get played a fair amount over at RoA, and as shiloh stated, GSC NU proved to be rather competitive in GSC PL. I don't think I have personally seen you playing either of the tiers (at least since the bans a couple of years ago) and I don't know how much attention you give to the relevant parts of Smogon, but there are now a lot of GSC NU analyses and there has been plenty of metagame development over the past couple of years. If you would like to become more informed, I'd encourage you to check out the viability rankings, discussion thread, analyses, and replay thread from GSC PL.

As I've been typing this post someone has already linked this thread on the GSC discord. It might be worth figuring out how many players would be interested in playing it in NUPL.

 

[dawnbuster]

I would like to vouch for GSC NU as someone who absolutely loves this tier, very actively plays it, and has helped many people learn it.

The previous edition of GSC NU that had Raichu, Poliwrath, and Golduck, was a terrible metagame and nobody will deny that, but I think the current GSC NU metagame is an excellent, skill based, and diverse tier that deserves a second shot. This tier was already featured in a team tour(GSCPL), and saw quite a few solid games(1, 2, 3) and showed the tiers diverse options. Xatu is the best Pokemon in modern GSC NU, and has a huge presence over the tier, but I feel its much less centralizing then Raichu was, and it runs Hidden Power Ice almost solely to hit itself which also has the bonus of giving it a guaranteed good Sleep Talk pull vs Dugtrio. This tier has a wide variety of good playstyles, ranging from offense, to Balance, to even more unique styles like Houndour fighting spam and Baton Pass, so there is plenty of variety to be had in the teambuilder. The skill based part of the tier is another element great about the tier, as I feel like there are few bad matchups you can run into in this tier, and playing around various dangerous setup Pokemon such as Kingler and Primeape is rewarding.

GSC NU has a dedicated and active playerbase that I assure you would like to join this tournament, and there are many resources out there for GSC NU(as Earthworm linked). They helped develop the tier just by doing friendlies and Ruins of Alph Room Tournaments, a very notable change was Gloom going from a rare pick to one of the most dominant Pokemon in the tier. I understand not many actual “NU” community members play this tier, but many other new faces would definitely be willing to. Its not a perfect tier(No tier is), but it deserves a second shot and would probably really develop if it was in NUPL as I feel the current tier is pretty underexplored.

 

[FNH]

GSC / RBY and whatever other niche nu formats exist have no business being in NUPL, they're in no way competitive, no history, and nobody wants to play or watch them apart from 1 or 2 people.

I don't know on what metric you are basing this argument. Maybe a year or two ago it was a little bit of a joke, but today's GSC NU is a diverse and competitive tier. Its certainly not a tier that has seasonal interest as well, there is dedicated and active player base that is constantly innovating and developing new strategies (Baton pass spam, Pursuit + Fighting Spam, Shuckle Stall, Bulky offense etc). Personally I am indifferent if it appears in this tour, but your argument that GSC NU has no place here is baseless and just the same fucking "GSC, RBY suck" argument that half of Smogon loves to use.

 

[Lily]

i don't wanna rip into gsc nu too much bc i don't play it & i'm indifferent on whether or not it gets in but saying that its playerbase is innovating baton pass spam and shuckle stall is not going to change the minds of those who don't like it for reasons that i think should be pretty obvious

regardless only here to say bo3 kind of sucks and a 3rd ss would be better, though I've only played nu snake when it comes to nu team tours. maybe it's different in NUPL or maybe it was just the team I was on but I found that bo3 just involved a lot of reusing and the slot was relatively dead. then again my team chat had like 30 lines total so idk. I just find that with so many teams to be made per week and a general lack of specialists in old gens at this point, you're better off with just having a third SS since it's more actively built & allows cultivation of new players a bit more.

 

[Luck O' the Irish]

A biased ranking of NU tiers by watchability:

SM NU
SS NU with good Mainers / tour players w support
DPP NU
ADV NU
ORAS NU
Bo3 NU
SS NU
BW NU
Getting locked out of your apartment with no phone
GSC NU

 

[Expulso]

Luck O' the Irish dpp nu so goated oml. oras & adv nu lowkey kinda bad to watch but it’s ok. decent list

re: gsc nu - it seems weird to insert this tier into the nu community’s events when it’s a tier that solely belongs to the gsc community rn. theres basically no overlap with nu community, so it would be a tier that exists entirely outside of the NU community, but one that nu managers would have to draft for & include on their teams. in other words, it would stick out like a sore thumb in nupl.

this conversation would probably be more worth having next nupl; GSC NU is in the “homefield tour”, a part of the NU circuit, and maybe that will encourage some NUers to try it out and integrate it into the community a bit more.

however right now it seems unfeasible to have NUPL include this totally foreign tier that hasn’t been affiliated with nu in a long time (if ever)

 

[Earthworm]

It's a valid concern that GSC NU is not played and enjoyed by the NU community. There is admittedly little overlap that I'm aware of. I've tried to engage the NU community in the past but have strangely received little enthusiasm. I suspect this is due to a combination of generational stereotypes and the idea of a steep learning curve (on which some players are already at the far end of), which we have tried to address by creating resources with which to learn the tier.

I think Expulso's position is a reasonable one to take, although looking to increase integration between communities through including a tier that should fall under the same umbrella is also a valid alternative position. I suppose it depends on the approach that the community leaders want to take.

 

[bugzinator]

as someone who dabbled in gsc nu back in gsc pl i think the tier is alright but it's very different from anything else nu has to offer. it does have its own active playerbase and community going on, but without proper integration it doesn't it make too much sense to include it right now. if the number of slots is being expanded to 10 then i think it'd definitely be worth having instead of an extra sm, but i personally can't see nupl being ready for 10 slots right now.

i feel 3 ss slots in total provides the best balance of inclusivity/representation + higher level matches which fits perfectly in the current 8 tier setup with 2 ss + 1 bo3 slot. 3 ss + bo3 + gsc would be required to reach 10 which imo is stretching it a little.

 

[shiloh]

Hey I think this threads been open long enough for everyone who has wanted to say something to say something, and I think there is more or less a consensus reached. I agree that 10 slots is probably a pretty big stretch for this nupl, and in that case we should probably stick to 8, and while I think GSC NU does have a future in NU team tours this is probably still not the time to do it.

I am going to stick with Bo3 as well, since while there is a good argument to a 3rd SS, we are currently still planning on having another team tour later in the year that has more of a focus on SS and Bo3 does have a lot of history within NUPL. That being said, this is the final tier list for this years NUPL:

SS NU
SS NU
SM NU
ORAS NU
BW NU
DPP NU
ADV NU
Bo3

Manager signups should be up sometime soon, and I am happy to say Quite Quiet will be hosting NUPL again this year n_n