2022 DOU Circuit Feedback Thread & 2023 Circuit Planning Thread

[Actuarily]

With 2022 invitationals underway, it's time to look back at the 2022 circuit and begin planning the 2023 one. We strongly value community feedback on the circuit, so we'd like to open the discussion here with some potential talking points:

2022 Circuit thread for reference

1. Official Smogon Doubles Tournament - There were big changes to the structure of OSDT this year, with the tournament structure changing to Swiss as well as requiring replays for all matches.. The tournament has been confirmed for 2023. While not fully under our jurisdiction, we would like to begin discussion on how people felt about the changes to the tournament, and what, if anything, could be improved.

2. Overall Circuit Structure and Points Structure - In 2022, there was a change to the points structure for the 2022 circuit midway into the year by increasing the point structure for OSDT, and this year we would like to avoid this if at all possible. Going into 2023, we have a better idea of how OSDT will be a part of the circuit, and so we would like our points structure to reflect that at the beginning of the year. Alongside this, are there any tournaments that players feel should be removed/added/changed?

3. Classic with a Fourth Oldgen - How should we handle Classic with a fourth non-current generation (SwSh)? Should there just be a fourth cup? For playoffs, would there just be a generation that doesn't get played in each best of 3?

4. Possible New Tournaments - There has been a rise of other doubles formats in recent years, with tiers like Doubles UU, Doubles Ubers, and Doubles Little Cup establishing themselves, and there even was a Doubles NU minitour last generation. Would people like to see some sort of tournament that incorporates all these "lower tiers"? Should it be an individual or a team tournament? When should this tournament occur?

5. Best of 5 Finals - There was some discussion around making tournament finals a best of 5 as opposed to a best of 3. The Doubles OU Fall Seasonal even tested it out. Is that something that people feel should become the norm?

Are there any points from the last circuit discussion thread that people would like to bring back?

Feel free to discuss these or other topics, but remember that the formats for DPL and DWCoP will be discussed and finalized closer to the time.

 

[fespy]

1. Official Smogon Doubles Tournament
Swiss was lit. Don't change a thing.

2. Overall Circuit Structure and Points Structure
Two seasonals and one ladder tournament are both correct.
Majors is super cuttable.
Comments on classic below.

3. Classic with a Fourth Oldgen
Small feedback: add a fourth cup, in playoffs higher seed picks two gens and lower seed picks one.

Bigger picture: classic has always been an awkward tournament. Having three (or now four) separate but sort of related single-elim tournaments running in parallel that in the end don't matter that much individually and just lead up to a more important but smaller single-elim tournament is weird. They also make the tournament drag on way longer than it should- by the time each individual cup is getting to the end, almost everybody is eliminated, but playoffs can't start until a single player remains.

Suggestion: don't have individual single-elim tournaments for each of the three/four gens. Instead, have a few weeks of swiss for each. This greatly reduces the downtime that eliminated players have to endure at the cost of not having a winner for each cup.

4. Possible New Tournaments
Nuke majors and replace it with something similar to classic but for other interesting tiers.

5. Best of 5 Finals
Hype, keep it

 

[Grandmas Cookin]

I probably won't be playing much of circuit this year, but ill definitely continue to track circuit points. however I would love to join classic again this year, but I have some small changes id personally like to see.

the obvious first change is adding SS to classic, but id also really like to see ADV. there has been a pretty big interest in the format as of late, and I think capitalizing on that hype by adding it to the circuit would be beneficial.

my second proposal is for all 5 cups to be run still, but with a week between round 1 going up and signups for the next cup going live. ideally, id like to see the first cup enter round 3 before the second cup starts round 1. this should leave room for players joining every cup to not be playing potentially 5 games a week in classic alone. with 64 players per cup, finals of the first cup would be played when the 4th cup starts r1. this also makes classic playoffs an even bo5 if we want to though not required.

edit: 19-20 weeks for classic definitely sees like too long. apparently UU releases cups in pairs, that could be cool. id still like to see a gap between signups and r1 of other cups going up potentially though. additionally im not sure a swiss bracket is feasible for classic unless you dont crown a winner for cups, as picking the winner of a 64 player swiss bracket would absolutely result in resistance tiebreakers which are incredibly stupid.

I've also heard that DLC has expressed interest in merging with Smogon Doubles? if so (with support from zoe) id like to see the "lower tier" formats like DUbers DUU and DLC have their own tournament(s) that count towards circuit. not sure how points would be dished out considering they won't be played in invitational, so imo they shouldnt have a huge impact on CP counts, but not so unimportant that people pushing for playoffs would skip the tournament entirely. alternatively, have DUbers DUU and DLC in DPL and award CP to players with the best records in those formats.

 

[umbry]

Hi,

1. Official Smogon Doubles Tournament
Loved the hype this year, def keep as is.

2. Overall Circuit Structure and Points Structure
From what I've heard majors was widely disliked so maybe we can cut it or replace it with something else, rest seems fine

3. Classic with a Fourth Oldgen
Is five gens being considered? Imo higher seed advantage might get a little too much with only 4 tiers, I don't fully hate 4 tiers but it kinda just feels wrong. I remember when SM was current gen it was also part of classic, but then again having SV included in classic as well looks a little silly so I wanted to suggest we try and add ADV instead as a 5th gen, it's been getting a lot of play recently especially in the money tour, not totally sure whether theres enough support for it to be included into our circuit yet but it's an alternative and we'd also benefit from a bo5 format. Imo bo5>bo3+cut 1.

4. Possible New Tournaments
I like the idea of new tournaments, tho imo tiers like duu/dlc/dubers shouldnt award points for our main dou circuit. Perhaps this last bit should go in a future DPL thread but we could include one of them there if we can expand to 8 slots as ideally we'd get 4 oldgens + 3 SV + 1.

5. Best of 5 Finals
Too draining in particular for double elimination tournaments, would only consider for classic/single elim.

 

[GenOne]

1. Official Smogon Doubles Tournament
OSDT II was a banger don't change a thing

2. Overall Circuit Structure and Points Structure
Can there be a slightly higher weight to points awarded to top performers (e.g. champions and finalists, maybe semifinalists too) of tours in the circuit and especially for OSDT? Not proposing a drastic shift and only for the best of the best performers in any given tour. The current system heavily rewards those who have the time and capacity to join every single tour in circuit and, while that isn't necessarily a bad thing, I feel like motivation for trying to make invis drops off a lot for players who for whatever reason missed/couldn't join some of the circuit tours but otherwise are top-performers. I'm especially thinking about people (including myself admittedly) that don't have the time and capacity for Classics which is basically multiple concurrent tours + having to refresh/learn multiple formats that aren't practiced year-round.

3. Classic with a Fourth Oldgen
Abstain

4. Possible New Tournaments
Replace Majors with something else it was a pretty meh tour format

5. Best of 5 Finals
Hype keep it

 

[fespy]

the obvious first change is adding SS to classic, but id also really like to see ADV. there has been a pretty big interest in the format as of late, and I think capitalizing on that hype by adding it to the circuit would be beneficial.

my second proposal is for all 5 cups to be run still, but with a week between round 1 going up and signups for the next cup going live. ideally, id like to see the first cup enter round 3 before the second cup starts round 1. this should leave room for players joining every cup to not be playing potentially 5 games a week in classic alone. with 64 players per cup, finals of the first cup would be played when the 4th cup starts r1. this also makes classic playoffs an even bo5 if we want to though not required.

Not to pick on specific posts, but I want to add some details here since it’s relevant to my proposal. If both of the above suggestions go through and cups have > 64 signups, then classic would go as follows:

1: SS signups
2: SS start
3: SM signups
4. SM start
5. XY signups
6. XY starts
7. BW signups
8. BW start
9. ADV signups
10. ADV round of 128
11. ADV round of 64
12. ADV round of 32
13. ADV round of 16
14. ADV round of 8
15. ADV round of 4
16. ADV round of 2
17. Playoffs round of 16
18. Playoffs round of 8
19. Playoffs round of 4
20. Playoffs round of 2

I believe 20 weeks is much much too long

 

[zoe]

1. Official Smogon Doubles Tournament - Perfect outside of the no extensions thing imo. Only solution to that I found though was something Nails brought up where the rounds begin on Wednesday which allows people a bit of extra time after the weekend while still covering it, and only eliminates the first two days, which people barely even play on relatively (I understand this isn't the place for this but just thought i'd introduce the idea).

2. Overall Circuit Structure and Points Structure - Majors is weird but don't really care enough to want it removal, but I do think we should shift to a system for a lot of the reasons GenOne outlined: it simply rewards people who have the time to play in every circuit tour as opposed to the top performers. In addition, we're the only tier that still uses this system, with every other one having a very top heavy points distribution (unless im forgetting one). It just feels weird to reward someone who got 24th in every tour as opposed to someone who won a whole seasonal. An argument I've seen a lot against a top heavy points distribution is how if someone can win a tour they can easily place well enough to qualify anyways, but the issue I have with that argument is how winning a tournament that would allow you to autoqualify with just a few points, i.e OSDT, is very very very long and tiring process, and expecting someone to play more after winning a tour THAT massive seems unnecessary, why make them play more if they've already proven themselves?

3. Classic with a Fourth Oldgen - Don't really have a definitive opinion on this but I think at the very least all 4 of BW XY SM and SS should get a cup, ADV might also be cool.

4. Possible New Tournaments - If we add another tour we cut majors, adding another when the schedule is this crammed would be begging for people to get burned out. Don't really have any ideas for what we'd replace it with though.

5. Best of 5 Finals - No.

 

[Nails]

1. Official Smogon Doubles Tournament - I dropped from OSDT because I couldn't get an extension and because requiring replays significantly increases the strain on players. Changing the weeks to weds-tues for tournaments which cannot easily grant extensions is an idea I've been trying to push on anyone who will listen, Mon/Tues are rarely utilized and letting them instead serve as a fallback in case games can't be completed by Sunday should reduce the number of activity losses. Prep time does get cut into a bit, but weekend games still have sufficient time to be prepped for. As for replays, I'm personally not a fan of requiring them until cut. Scouting and cteaming your opponent multiple times every week turns the tournament into a prep grind. I don't feel that strongly about replays though, schedule is the main change I'd like to see.

2. Overall Circuit Structure and Points Structure - Abstain.

3. Classic with a Fourth Oldgen - Abstain.

4. Possible New Tournaments - Abstain.

5. Best of 5 Finals - If you play a format all the way to finals it doesn't make sense to crown a champ using a different format.

 

[big pichu]

1.) i love it, a perfect tourney, ten out of ten. never change
2.) Honestly, I think it would be neat to combine the points structure with something similar to the FIDE Candidates tournament, where tourney winners/runner ups have some of the slots reserved i.e. the winner/runner up of OSDT getting locked for invitationals (maybe another tourney as well), with the rest of the spots going to whoever has the most points out of remaining players. Mostly think this would help make the invis feel like a culmination of previous tourneys, and help build hype over later tourneys being like last chance qualifiers.
3.) Abstain
4.)idk sounds hype tho
5.) seems hype

 

[Actuarily]

Here's my personal thoughts:

1. Official Smogon Doubles Tournament - I agree with others, the tournament was a big success and swiss is an excellent format. I do think we need to find some way to automate it better to make it easier on hosts. Also would like to be able to have extensions, I don't see why there can't be a two day extension if asked for. You'd just set up the next round with the "Winner of X and Y vs Z" and "Loser of X and Y vs W" as we do for current tournaments.

2. Overall Circuit Structure and Points Structure - I think the points structure is good as is, but if anything perhaps a little too heavy at the top. I believe we should be encouraging people to play most circuit tournaments. If players are able to qualify after one or two good placings, then they're less likely to want to sign up for the remaining tournaments.

If you look at the sheet of who qualified, most (~11/16) players hit the cutoff of 22 points in just their two top placing tournaments as it is. For example, I qualified based off of just DLT (won) and Winter Seasonal (came in second), despite DLT awarding the least points of any tournament. There was only ~5/16 that qualified via solid placements in lots of tournaments. In fact, I would argue that most people that just missed the cutoff were players that had lots of decent placements, but no top finishes. So I believe the structure already accomplishes what the people who want it to be top heavy desire, and moving it any further in that direction will just decrease tour entries.

As far as the tournaments go, I feel like we should consider replacing Majors. It's a mess to coordinate/host, scheduling multiple best of 1's is tougher for people with tighter schedules. I think we should consider either replacing this either with a Swiss tournament with a top cut (similar to OSDT) as I think that's arguably the best tournament format, OR trying out a new tournament structure, perhaps something like homefield that incorporates oldgens. I'd love to hear what people's thoughts are on these types of tournaments.

3. Classic with a Fourth Oldgen - I agree that we should look at changing how the cups operate. Currently there's two main issues; the qualifying cups drag on for a long time, and players that do well in the cups have to play a lot of games per week. If you're going far in each cup, you may be having to prep & schedule for four bo3s, while also perhaps trying to play in other overlapping tournaments, like OSDT & DLT. I am not sure what the best solution is, but I do think we need to discuss solutions that address those two issues. (I would also enjoy adding ADV, but am worried it would further exacerbate those issues).

4. Possible New Tournaments - I think that there should be a minitour that is similar to the one we had last gen. Players team up into groups of three, with each playing one of duu, dlc, and Dubers. I think a good spot for it actually would be in the beginning of the year, before DPL, so that we can get some exposure and meta development for these tiers before DPL. Something like running from mid-Jan to beginning of March I think would be perfect, especially since the only tournament going on during this time is the Winter Seasonal.

5. Best of 5 Finals - I was not a big fan of the bo5 finals. They take a long time, require a lot more teambuilding, and are draining for the players. In my experience in big tournament bo3s, I've found that by the end of g3 I'm pretty ready for it to be over.