The Silph League Arena

Silph.gg Updates

March 18, 2019: Get Ready For The Kingdom Cup!

The Tempest Cup is raging in thousands of cities around the world, but in the eye of the storm, we'll take the opportunity to announce what's on the horizon! It's time to start strategizing for the Arena's next Cup: the Kingdom Cup!

Prepare to show the world your mastery with your battle team of Fire, Ice, Dragon, and Steel-type Pokemon! This Cup repeats the 'one per species' rule introduced in February, but the competition will be fierce and novel. Be sure to study hard, build your best team, and we'll see you in the Arena in April. Read more here.

We're also excited to share that the Kingdom Cup is the first Arena Cup with official Cup prize items! Take a look:

From now on, Community Leaders have the option to order these official items from the Arena to sell or award at their accredited Cup tournaments! We love how the first run turned out, and can't wait to begin collecting all the Series 1 collectibles. (Boulder, Twilight, and Tempest Cup items will become available retroactively - but we're nailing down our international supply chain first.) Pre-orders for the Arena's May Cup will open tomorrow!

Leaderboards, Player Tiers, & global Rank

Leaderboards, Player Tiers, and global Player Rank have taken the Arena team much more energy and resources than we anticipated to finalize, but we've taken time to make sure they'll be meaningful and motivating to everyone who participates in the Arena. We've have needed to resolve a lot of complexity in policy, logistics, and development - but we're very happy with where it's landing, and we hope you will be too. Stay tuned for announcements on that front soon!

Find a Local Tournament!

Our Tournament Map which launched last month lists over 1,500+ tournaments taking place in the last two weeks of March! Never fought in the Arena before? Find a chance to compete locally on the map!

Good luck to all in the last two weeks of the Tempest Cup! Keep the feedback coming! And we'll see you in the Arena.

February 15, 2019: Announcing The Tempest Cup!

The Twilight Cup has 1,500+ tournaments scheduled for the next two weekends, but we're now two weeks from March! That means it's time to start strategizing for the Arena's next Cup: the Tempest Cup!

Get ready to prove yourself and increase your player rank with your battle team of Electric, Ice, Flying, and Ground-type Pokemon! This Cup repeats the 'one per species' rule introduced in February, but brings an entirely new meta - so get ready to do your research, assemble your team, and we'll see you in the Arena in March. Read more here.

Take note: several competitive species are re-usable this Cup from the previous two - so look for opportunities to save Stardust and Candy!

Also, be sure to check out our brand new Tournament Map, which lists over 1,500+ tournaments taking place in the last two weeks of February! Then stay tuned for more info about leaderboards (nearly complete!), collectible mementos on your Travelers Card, and player tiers next week.

Good luck to everyone competing in their Twilight Cup soon! Keep the feedback coming! We'll see you in the Arena.

February 1, 2019: The Boulder Cup Report!

January's Boulder Cup concluded at midnight last night - so it's time for the Cup Report! Overall, our inaugural Cup was a massive, global success. Without further ado, here's how the Arena weighed-in in January:

Boulder Cup Cumulative Stats:
  • 1,935 Total Completed Cups
  • 20,797 Total Participants
  • 1,570 Total Host Communities

What an amazing turnout! Over 20,000 unique participants brought their best Rock, Ground, Steel, and Fighting-type teams to compete in the Arena at over 1,500 communities around the world! Thanks to all the amazing League community leaders who donated time (and prizes) in order to put on awesome tournament experiences in cities around the world.

Now February is here, it's time to get ready for the Arena's next challenge: the Twilight Cup!

Also, two quick frequently asked questions we'd like to answer while we're here:

Two Cup FAQs:
  • 1: Are Alolan Muk & Kanto Muk Acceptable on the Same Team?
    With the Twilight Cup's "one-per-species" rule, the Arena will permit multiple Pokemon 'forms' of the same species as long as they have different typing. (So, Spinda forms = not permitted. Alolans = permitted.)
  • 2: What happens if new species or combat changes launch in-game during a Cup?
    Because Arena Cups last a full month on average, there will often be new species and even combat changes during a Cup. As a general rule, all new species are permitted unless explicitly banned. The Arena reserves the right to ban new species (or even existing species after combat changes) if the diversity or balance of the Cup would be sufficiently compromised to warrant it. This will, however, be a hopefully rare occurrence!

Now stay tuned for news on leaderboards and more soon!

January 25, 2019: Announcing The Twilight Cup!

January's Boulder Cup has only one week remaining - so it's high time we looked forward to February's Arena Cup: the Twilight Cup!

Get ready to face a whole new challenge with your best-designed team of Dark, Fairy, Poison, and Ghost-type Pokemon! This Cup comes with a few new rules and an entirely new meta - so get ready to do your research, assemble your team, and we'll see you in the Arena in February. Read more here. (Note: The competitive season's monthly Cups will not simply follow Kanto gym themes every month, but are instead designed each month to take advantage of some of the most interesting and well-balanced challenges available!)

While we're excited to share a full Cup Report after the Boulder Cup concludes, the Arena team has been watching closely and listening to all the awesome feedback shared in the League Discord server, on the Arena subreddit, and in our own communities all month!

The January Cup was the first of its kind - and overall has been a major success. With that, however, a few things have clearly needed more clarity. So with the February Cup comes the following NEW rule modifications for ALL ranked play:

Ranked Play Rule Changes & Clarifications:
General Arena Rules (Effective Immediately):
  1. Invite Priority Coin Toss: An optional coin toss can be requested to determine who invites/receives each battle invite. This addresses growing evidence (shoutout to DownWithTTP for the thorough examination!) that simultaneously fired special moves ("charge moves") are tie-broken non-randomly. See Rule #4 in the abbreviated Arena Rules for more info.
  2. Re-matches due to technical issues have had procedures clarified! Namely, that players are to begin re-matches with the same exact line-up as the bugged game, and what to do in additional 'corner cases.'

As for the Twilight Cup - we are adding an additional Cup rule this month as well: only one of each species may be used on your team of 6!

Along with these updates and our new Arena Cup, we're also rolling out a group of updates to make things even smoother and faster for both admins and competitors:

v1.5.0 Patch Notes:
Usability / QoL Improvements:
  1. Major Navigation Improvements: It's now far easier to get where you need to go from nearly every page
  2. Cancel/Conclude Tournament Safeguards: No more prematurely concluding or canceling tournaments accidentally
  3. Edit Battle Team After Check-In: Simpler way to edit your battle team right up til the tournament begins
  4. Clearer Check-In Code Info: Check-in codes are there so you don't have to take roll in person. No need to open check-ins til right before the tourney starts!
Bug Fixes:
  1. iOS Fix: Admin & staff match corrections now work from iOS devices
  2. Buchholz Adding Rematches: Buchholz tie-breakers no longer overlook facing an opponent 2x
  3. Duplicate Check-in Fix: Participants no longer need to enter a check-in code twice

So what's next on deck? The roadmap features we listed in our last update (Jan 12) are nearly all complete! Look forward to an update with some brand new toys soon.

Good luck to everyone competing in their Boulder Cup this week! Keep the feedback coming! We'll see you in the Arena.

January 12, 2019: v1.4.0: Major Update!

What a day it's been in the Arena!

Hundreds of accredited Boulder Cup tournaments have been played since the Cup opened less than a week ago - and several hundred more just took place on Community Day!

The Arena team has been working rapidly, and rolled out the first half of a major update Monday with the rest following right before Community Day. Here's what's new!

Part II: New Arena Features (Jan 12th):
New Staff & Admin Tools:
  1. Override match victors! Simply tap a match (until a tournament is concluded)
  2. Staff (not just admins) can remove competitors
  3. "Tournaments I'm Staffing" in Staff's site menu
  4. Markdown support (bold, italic, links, newlines) in Tournament info
  5. Winners now highlighted (up to 3-way ties)
Improved Registration:
  1. Pre-registration now available on tournament page
  2. Edit your battle team via the tournament page until the tournament begins
  3. Join Code now called Check-in Code
Part I: New Arena Features (Jan 7th):
  1. Major pairing algorithm upgrade to better deduce best players & reduce re-matchups
  2. Create Boulder Cup tournaments
  3. Cup enforces species restrictions
  4. Create Ranked (Non-Cup) tournaments
  5. Admin ability to remove competitors
  6. QoL: Match pages now auto-refresh while awaiting opponent's report
  7. Localization: 9 languages update
Bug Fixes:
  • Too many to count! Nearly all known bugs fixed.

And there's a lot more on deck! The following are in active development:

  1. Leaderboards! Ranked matches are now on record. Local & global leaderboards are almost here!
  2. Cup Badges: Those who competed in a Boulder Cup will receive special Travelers Card collectibles
  3. Player Stats: Win/Loss ratio, total matches played, and unique win count coming to Travelers Cards
  4. RSVPs: The "I'm Interested" button will be returning alongside pre-registrations
  5. Pairing Algorithm: Better, but not yet perfect. Re-match avoidance + even smarter pairings are coming
  6. Time Fixes: Tournament times are wonky. Timezone fixes inbound!

Our inaugural Cup has been a blast! Hundreds of communities have already thrown epic showdowns of their Pokemon GO skill - some already as large as 75 competitors in a single event, like NidosPokemonGOArg's massive "Liga Argentina en Parque Rivadavia" tournament - and others fought in groups as small as only 8 competitors!

We'll have more updates soon. Keep the feedback coming! Best of luck in your own Cup battles!

January 2, 2019: Announcing January's Boulder Cup!

The 2019 competitive season finally has a start date: January 6th. And with it comes the first monthly Cup of the season - the Boulder Cup!

Community leaders are not yet able to create Cup tournaments in their Silph.gg administrative tools, but these will be enabled before January 6th and will last through the end of the Boulder Cup on January 31st.

Learn more about the first global Cup here:

Boulder Cup Info »

We also have a large update to the Silph.gg tournament toolset in the pipeline, including expanded staff/admin tools, a major pairing algorithm update, and more. Stay tuned for more soon - and wish us luck as the competitive season kicks off this weekend!

December 28, 2018: v1.1.0 Update: Public Pokemon Parties, Bug Fixes, & Admin Functions

Less than a week into the Arena's beta period, we've already seen hundreds of tournaments with thousands of participants pour through Silph.gg - and nearly a thousand more are already scheduled for coming weeks!

Great success stories, along with valuable bug reports and feedback have been streaming in from early testers and today we've rolled out the first major update to the Arena's toolset: v1.1.0! Here's what's new:

New Features / Changes to Tournaments:
  1. Display opponent's team of 6 on matchup page (woot!)
  2. Show everyone the full list of all participants' teams of 6 (on the live /results page) once tournament begins
  3. Updated Arena Rules to reflect ability to see opponents' teams
  4. Increased abbreviated Arena Rules font size
Bug Fixes:
  1. Issue with blank usernames in tournaments for folks with TSR account but no Travelers Card
  2. Undesired ability to register multiple times (duplicate users)
New Admin Powers:
  1. Admin ability to 'cancel' a tournament
  2. Admin ability to 'conclude' a tournament early (e.g. if issues occur)

But we're not done! There's much more coming very soon to the Arena. The following are in active development:

  1. Translations!: Get ready to help us translate the entire Arena toolset into your community's language
  2. Pokemon Picker: Pokemon selection textbox with auto-complete
  3. Pairing Algorithm: Improved pairing algorithm to avoid re-matches and more accurately follow Swiss pairings in atypical scenarios
  4. Staff Tools: Elevated Staff tools to overwrite match outcomes and kick participants
  5. The Cup!: Information about the January Cup!

As a reminder, all tournaments in December still are not counted towards player rankings - December is our beta test month! Read more about that here.

Lastly, thanks to all who have joined us in /r/TheSilphArena subreddit and shared their feedback and experiences hosting tournaments so far. Keep up the great work, and we'll have more soon!

December 22, 2018: Beta goes live!

Beta goes live to all 10k+ League communities! We're excited to finally get the v1.0.0 toolset into the League community leaders' hands. We're launching with the following features ready:

  1. Tournament creation / management
  2. Tournament staff addition/removal
  3. Discord & Telegram admins authorized
  4. Discord bot add-tournament-admin (and remove/list) command
  5. Tournament RSVP pages
  6. Tournament registration for TSR accounts and via email (non-TSR accounts)
  7. Modified Swiss-style tournament brackets (modified to allow more asynchronous matching in-person)
  8. Tournament bracket results at /tournaments/results/<slug>
  9. Buchholz tie-breaker sums on tournament result 'Points' tables

And we've got a lot more coming in hot and fast! The following are all in very active development and will be here before you blink:

  • Localization support (translations!)
  • Ability to 'confirm' opponents 6 Pokemon were used after match
  • Participation via anonymous guest accounts
  • The Leaderboards!
  • A tournament map to find upcoming local tournaments at communities in your area

As a reminder, all tournaments in December will not count towards player rankings - consider December our beta test month! Read more about that here.

Lastly, come join us in /r/TheSilphArena and help us make the Arena the best it can be!

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