Doubles Premier League 3: Tier and Format Discussion

[talkingtree]

<3 GenOne
Welcome to the 3rd edition of the Doubles Premier League!
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FAQ

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How does DPL work?

There will be 6 teams, each with their own captain. Captains will then do a snake draft on Pokemon Showdown where they will take turns nomming and bidding in an auction for players who signed up to assemble their teams with limited credits available. The teams will then play one another for 5 weeks, with a new opponent each week. This will culminate with a Playoffs week consisting of the Top 2 teams overall from the 5 week main season.

How does one signup as a player?

Player signups will be incoming shortly with a thread happening early next week at the latest. Watch the forum for the thread to sign up.

How does one signup as a Captain?

To signup as a captain read and post in this thread: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/doubles-premier-league-3-captain-signups.3599032/

When is the DPL Auction?

The auction date will be decided after managers are chosen and they agree to a time. Follow this thread for that information
When does DPL Week 1 start?

The projected start day is Monday April 10th but can change depending on if any circumstances come up.

What is this thread about?

In this thread feel free to discuss anything regarding DPL before it begins and leading up to the auction.
Some possible points of discussion are:

1. Should captains be allowed to play?
- This was allowed last year

2. If so what restriction or in what manner should this be done?
- Last year managers were given the option to buy themselves for 10k prior to the auction, to be able to play in any slot during the main season

3. What Doubles formats should be used this year?
- Last year there were 6 playing slots for each team. 4 XY DOU, 1 XY DUU, 1 BW DOU. With the introduction of SM DOU as the current main tier, this dynamic will have to change

Bring up anything else you find relevant and worth discussing regarding DPL

 

[Arcticblast]

10k for managers to buy themselves, same as last year; fine rule, no reason to change it

BW DOU / ORAS DOU / SM DUU / 3x SM DOU best format and I don't think anyone disagrees, only good change would be dropping ORAS

 

[Checkmater]

1. Should captains be allowed to play?

arguing no, creates a power differential from the onset going into the draft, before it even begins.

 

[Derivatives]

i say 3 sumo dou 1 sumo dubers 1 sumo duu 1 dxy and 1 dbw. i think ubers is a little bit different this year, tapus/z-stones/wide guard ubers seem like good additions to make it less boring than xern+primals vs xern+primals. this also means no ties though so i would also support not doing sumo dubers or sumo duu (probably dropping the former rather than the latter).

 

[AuraRayquaza]

Ties make the whole format more interesting and also has there even been a game of dubers played this gen? 3 sm/1 oras/1 bw/1 sm duu sounds good

 

[marilli]

3 SM / 2 XY / 1 BW

 

[finally]

4 sm/ 1 oras/ 1 bw
edited: i wanna see more fights of the current tier the most.

 

[emma]

3 sm / 1 xy / 1 bw / 1 duu

i would personally like another xy over duu but a lot of people seem to enjoy duu and a lot of different tiers makes the tour more fun imo

 

[Mizuhime]

agree with ablast

 

[miltankmilk]

Definitely agree that managers should be able to play. They often end up being the only players who know BW and I think its best for the tournament if those matches stay at a higher quality.

 

[kaori]

1. Should captains be allowed to play?
- yes

2. If so what restriction or in what manner should this be done?
- 10k price tag is fine, its a pretty large amount and I don't see a reason to change it

3. What Doubles formats should be used this year?
- 3 SM DOU / 1 ORAS DOU / 1 BW DOU / 1 SM DUU

 

[Platinum God n1n1]

1. Should captains be allowed to play?
of course. it was never an issue last year

2. If so what restriction or in what manner should this be done?
none. unless you believe that a manager would not buy his/herself then nothing is changed

3. What Doubles formats should be used this year?
I think player sign ups should happen first so we decide with better understanding of what people want to play. I also think you should ask in player sign ups for Preferred Tier and secondly which other tiers would you not mind playing

but with out knowing all that I would say:

3 SM DOU / 1 SM DUU / 1 ORAS DOU / 1 BW DOU

 

[kamikaze]

1. Should captains be allowed to play?
- Yes. As miltankmilk said I think Captains often fill out some crucial positions for specific tiers during DPL (last year a lot of captains were important for filling out BW slots, this year may be different). And in general some of them are also experienced players who we wouldnt want to deny the ability to showcase their play in a tour like this

2. If so what restriction or in what manner should this be done?
The 10k deal to buy yourself as a player was very unbalanced. 10k just happened to be the average player price during auction, which is what was used.
- On one hand you had managers who probably wouldnt go for that much during the auction and on the other you have some managers who would easily go for way more. More often than not, the managers are the latter. Stratos, Memoric, qsns, KyleCole were all managers who definitely would have gone for over 10k and in some cases 15k or near 20k if they actually went to auction (Stratos is the only one who actually performed well in the end but that doesnt change the potential auction price tags prior to the season). This selective power for some teams to freely get a decent player for cheap and avoid the auction war was imbalanced.
- Also frankly 10k isnt even that big a blow on funds. For the cheap managers its like a small mosquito bite at worst and for the expensive ones its a potential win more. For both sides, I dont really see much risk or reason for you not to buy yourself unless you just dont want to play.
I'm proposing an above average 15k minimum as a buy in price prior to the auction but I dont think 17k or even 20k is unreasonable either. There really should be some sort of feeling of risk and weighing your options before committing to buying oneself in as a player, especially given all the potential advantages that currently come out of it at the 10k price point

3. What Doubles formats should be used this year?
- 3 SM DOU, 1 XY DOU, 1 BW DOU, 1 SM DUU

 

[BlueSkiddo]

3 SM DOU, 1 ORAS DOU, 1 BW DOU, 1 SM DUU is good.

Also, 15k is a reasonable amount to spend on oneself as a manager considering the quality of players the managers will probably be.
Stratos is right, it'd be rude to make n10sit pay so much for himself. Jokes aside, 10k is more reasonable upon rethinking this.

 

[GenOne]

3 SM / 1 ORAS / 1 BW / 1 DUU gets my vote too.

I wasn't really an "involved" user during last year's DPL so I don't have a firm stance on managers playing. I agree that including them would up the overall quality of matches, but also agree that they shouldn't be too cheap to the point where it allows teams to have an advantage just by merit of getting a "good" player at an uncompetitive price.

 

[sam-testings]

10k for managers, as managers are not of equal playing level and some managers may not want to play, giving certain teams advantages.
Other than that, most people seem to agree that 3 SM / 1 ORAS / 1 BW / 1 DUU is probably the best right now n_n

 

[Matame]

imo 3 SM / 2 XY / 1 BW seems best

 

[marilli]

4 sm / 1 xy / 1 bw

problem with duu is everyone pays a lot for a "tier specialist" who is basically just a mediocre dou player who dabbles in duu cuz they wanna feel special for topping a ladder, the "tier specialists" everyone is overpaying for in duu are actually guys who play both dou and duu

 

[miltankmilk]

4 sm / 1 xy / 1 bw

problem with duu is everyone pays a lot for a "tier specialist" who is basically just a mediocre dou player who dabbles in duu cuz they wanna feel special for topping a ladder, the "tier specialists" everyone is overpaying for in duu are actually guys who play both dou and duu

On board with not including DUU more because its so new, but I'd rather see 3 SM / 2 XY / 1 BW because i think 4 of anything is too much. Im a fan of a more diverse set of metas in team tours and I would personally like DPL to be like that.

 

[n10siT]

if duu isn't in this tournament i will explode

captain stuff from last year is fine

something i feel is important to note - whoever ends up managing, please don't be dumb and let 2 teams acquire all the talent at the beginning of the draft, everyone good will go early

 

[Arcticblast]

I am 100% opposed to more than one ORAS slot in this tournament

I understand that many people do not feel this way, but consider the following information

Hide

your opinion is valid and I respect it

I'm just really not a fan of ORAS, I like SM and BW so much better and I even thing DUU has a lot of the good elements of ORAS without the bad ones

 

[Matame]

I don't rly understand why ppl would want duu in this tour outside of developing it (which u can do just fine with some duu mini tours or w.e). A competitive team tour doesn't really seem like the place for an undeveloped lower tier thst not many people play (that in my opinion is basically a weird version of xy which will most likely be played in this tour). Duu ends up being those games that nobody rly wants to watch bc they don't rly get the meta and the players aren't that good

 

[Pocket]

A slot for UU > extra slot of XY/SM imho

 

[Checkmater]

Typing this out because I have time now that spring break has started

A lot of my thoughts have been well-echoed in previous posts but I want to lay them out.

First off: manager costs.

There is no reason this shouldn’t be higher. The reason you would increase manager costs (and the reason they exist in the first place) is so that, if a manager decides they are not playing, they can be comparatively rewarded. That way, the decision not to play has some weight to tip against getting themselves for Xk. For example, if all managers were 3k, no one wouldn’t buy themselves. If all managers were 10k, it’d still be always smart to buy yourself. But if all managers are 15-20k? Then managers have a real decision to make, one that’ll bring teams with weaker (playing-wise) managers closer in line with stronger (playing-wise) managers. I would be fine insofar as even assigning a individual cost (as far as playing cost) to each manager, decided by a separate group, which could potentially be way more fair minus the potential bias.

Second off: DUU in DPL

No matter how I phrase this it’s going to sound like I’m trying to fuck the DUU community. That is not at all my intention, but rather I want you to take a serious look at what DUU in DPL means.

Look at last year, and the players who played in it. None of these were “stellar” players, the type who frequently do well in seasonals/play in spl minus KyleCole, or the type who dedicate a large amount of time and effort into the game. And that’s a serious problem. What ends up happening is, with a few exceptions, a boatload of medium-level players who aren’t really just “good at DUU”. A manager looking at his options for DOU vs DUU in a game is always going to put the stronger player in DOU, and this has pretty much ~0 exceptions. You’re not going to get meaningful meta development from this because nobody good is going into DUU unless they expressly volunteer and are not willing to play gen 5-7.

I’ll draw an analogy here because I think that makes my point easiest to understand. Back a year or so, when we had an influx of VGC players, the ORAS DOU meta developed an incredible amount. We saw the rise of different strats like semiroom, Gardevoir, etc. The death of Talonflame usage. Zard without Venu. AV LandoT becoming popular. A whole plethora of meta shifts and changes. The point is, if you want to develop a meta you need good players with innovative ideas and real drive to play it. DPL is not going to provide that.

Keep in mind that this comes from a player who watched clius and Stratos put weeks and weeks of effort into testing, improving, and developing their DUU teams (and consequently, the metagame) every week. Despite this, I don’t think DUU in DPL is what is going to truly develop DUU. I’d prefer if the DUU communiity developed a definable metagame/tier list/figured a workaround from usage stats before we were willing to throw it into DPL. Compound this with the issue that it’s only been out for 1 month, and, well I just don’t think it’s the best idea. A lot more could be done for DUU if it were given its own tour and its own room to develop, rather than just lumping it into this tournament just because it's also a doubles metagame.

I’d be down for 4x SMoon 1x ORAS or 3xSM, 2xORAS, with 1 BW ofc.

 

[Silverwhiteblue]

3 SM DOU, 1 ORAS DOU, 1 BW DOU, 1 SM DUU

this seems fine to me. its balanced, no meta is underplayed , and seems like the most logical tier list