[PCL] PCL Feedback Thread

With 5 of the 8 clans now out of contention for the Championship (and another one with a week off), we wanted to begin collecting feedback now.

What do you like about PCL and what don't you like? What should be changed and what should stay the same? Have you had an enjoyable experience? Do you have any ideas, even if they differ from how the League is currently constituted? We want honest feedback.

Some topics of interest (which the BSS are currently discussing) might include leadership, organization, membership/activity, format, scope, the size of the League, social/communal aspects, competitiveness, and its functionality as a learning or tutoring tool. Feel free to bring up anything else that seems relevant to you as well.

(It should be noted that, once the Championships are concluded, the League will not simply die until the next Championships begin. The League will just take on a different character. Feel free to discuss anything relevant to this period as well.)

Archy said:

I would like to ask, what's going to happen with the clans that didn't made it through?

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Any clan member that didn't make it through is available as a merc in the playoffs but you guys are essentially done for this round of PCL. We will probably retain some of the clan heads next round but we will be downsizing to about half of the clans so expect some big changes!

What do you like about PCL and what don't you like?
I really liked the weekly battling. It was nice, and when I finally won one the feeling was great. I feel like I legitimately got what I signed up for, which was experience with competitive battling. I was not a fan of the lack of activity from a lot of users. It was really annoying because half the weeks I didn't get to battle. I also agree with Archy, there wasn't enough stuff with the clans outside the weekly battling. It was pretty sad because I tried to get conversation going in my team thread for some advice on my battles but rarely received a reply.

Also, the number of users that just didn't bother to participate was rather disappointing. By the end I feel like maybe less than half of us are still bothering to participate.

What should be changed and what should stay the same?
Keep the weekly battles! It was cool to battle a new person each week. But, add more battles. Just a single battle for my clan a week didn't really make me feel like I was doing anything with them. Perhaps some tournaments? I think I saw a bit of that, but it stopped pretty quickly too. I'd also like to see a more proactive pruning system. If a person is inactive for a week, and without letting their clan know beforehand, kick them out! It would sure save a lot of time.

Have you had an enjoyable experience?
Immensely! If it wasn't for this, I may have never even tried the battle server. :)

Do you have any ideas, even if they differ from how the League is currently constituted?
More clan activities! That's the only thing I'd like to see. Maybe promoting clans to actually visit their rooms on the battle server too.

I think, PCL is definitely far from where it could be. For me, it only consisted of doing one battle a week, that is, if the opponent didn't fall inactive. Outside of that I've seen a couple attempts of other activities, but it seems like they all just died down pretty quickly. Let's just take that teambuilding thread as an example, where we couldn't even get past the first Pokemon.

Tbh. as it stands now, PCL definitely failed as a learning tool, because most of the stuff I actually learned came from me doing tons of research and spending many hours just to get a team that doesn't completely suck, on my own. The fact that I won my matches didn't come from me being a good battler (I still consider myself a complete noob, who doesn't even battle that often), but rather, because I'm slightly more interested into the meta, than most of my opponents. And that's where I think, the whole thing failed: PCL shouldn't teach you how to battle, it should show people how it is done, but in such a way, that they get interested in such a way, that they want to spend a good amount of time learning everything on their own, only asking their clan members when there's something, that's unclear to them.
Oh, and you should never pull of a thread about teambuilding, let people decide what to use and then proceeed to crush their believes, by pointing out tons of options and drawbacks and whatnot, because especially when you are trying to teach something to newcomers, all they will come up is "this is so hard. maybe I should look for another hobby."

I'm also not going to talk about inactive people who just vanished into thin air, but what I'm going to talk about is people who make it clear that they're going to be inactive beforehand and who nevertheless still get dragged into the proceedings of the league. If you're inactive for a while and you made that clear, then you are inactive untill you have time and you should not be forced to still participate or try to get an activity win by writing an excuse of a challenger VM, or something like that. It's the fault of the organization who failed in noticing as much as it is the clan heads fault for not being able to come up with a proper replacement.

ABout clans I really can't say much, but from what I so read, they all have some kind of comunication problems. Maybe some in-clan events could help?

Jk, just wanted to point that out, for no apparent reason.

Also screw timezones, but I suppose that's something we have to live with. {XD}


As for what could be done, frankly, I don't have a clue. I feel like OU with its somewhat centralizing nature might not be the most opimal place to start as a newcomer. That it, because of all the stuff you need to prepare for, or rather the feeling of needing to prepare for everything, which limits creativity and as such, can easily discourage people who'd like to use certain Pokes, but can't because everyone says it sucks. If we were to easen up the difficulty by removing certain threats, that would leave room for error, which in itself allows for more variety/creativity.
After a while things can be reintroduced to make everything a little bit more difficult, but by that time, people should already be familiar enough with teambuilding, so it's not as bad anymore.

Also more battles, so people can actually get more familar with their teams and come more in contact with other people.


To sum it all up: I definitely had my fair share of fun in this league so far (otherwise I would have long left), but there's clearly things that need to be improved.

Hmmm well I dropped out of PCL in like March or something because school was consuming all of my free time, but there are a few things I'd like to touch on. Some of these have been discussed on the server before, but I'll still list them because I feel like a discussion here would be much more fitting.

First off, I definitely agree with downsizing the number of clans to no more than four. I understand that we might have been able to fill out 8 – 10 clans the first time around, but can you honestly tell me that this format was successful? Participants were dropping like flies left and right, and at times some clans were just simply dead. People weren't even here anymore and their matches were always an automatic activity win. Minimizing the entire league seems to be confirmed already, but I'd just like to say that the pros far outweigh the cons. This also helps out with the mercenary situation since (hopefully) there will be more people waiting in the wings to join a clan, or simply participate.

I also wanted to explore changing the playoffs format a bit. My suggestion was to have a seeded format similar to that of the NBA or College Football Playoffs (yes I like sports, go figure). For example, the top ranked clan would face the worst clan, and then the second best clan would face the third best clan. If you need a visual aid, I've inserted one below.

I think we talked about this on the server, but I don't remember what the thoughts on it were so I felt like it was worth mentioning. I think this helps with the downsize because one clan being left out seems a bit more unfair than five.

There should probably be more organizers to the league as well, just in case people get busy. Most of us are in Uni / College or have work so this is bound to happen.

That is all that comes to mind as far as prospective changes go, but there are a few other things I'd like to touch on. As the user above me said, I didn't really feel like PCL was a learning experience simply because….well, it wasn't, for me at least. I bounced around a few clans and quite honestly the only thing I really got out of it was "make sure to get your battles done." I don't know if this is because individuals didn't care enough to ask for help, or if it was because of some other reason, but I just didn't see it. It seemed like the entire point of PCL was to battle every week and win with no regard to improving unless you put the effort in by yourself. Maybe this could be a focus point next time around, and there could even be something akin to mini-workshops to help individuals improve.

Another thing that slightly irked me was the matchups themselves. I can understand clan head vs clan head and all, but I think that intentionally matching up players that are "near the same skill range" sort of takes away from the learning experience as well. Personally speaking, when I first got into battling, I got better by playing against people who were better than me and learning from them. Though I can understand how completely random matchups might unbalance things a bit, this is just something I never fully agreed with.

This is all I can think of right now other than keep people active, don't join if you don't plan on being active anyways, don't be a dick, etc. I'll post later if anything else comes up.

I want to reiterate that I think auctions are a more better way than drafts.We have discussed it lots of times on the server.The auctions give a clear msg to all players. We have paid for you.We have put our hopes on you.So you better at least try for the needed outcome or we will kick you!
Now some might say that this might bring monopoly/the clan owners will act as if they can do anything they want with the clan members.This may be possible.But I don't think this will be possible in pokecommunity.The fact that most of the clan owners will be from the respected members of poke community and who are famous to be friendly and sensible will ensure that their is no anarchy in the clans.All are friendly here and don't have a lot attitude(Except user Sri,who umm! JK JK).
Also I think having 1/2 extra player in each clan will be more suitable than the mercenary system.As we are seriously debating on having 4 clans having an extra player or two is easily possible.This might solve the problem of inactivity and no-mercenary available.sorry! problem.
The users above me mentioned that it has not been a great learning curve.Though I think that trying to learn yourselves is more imp.than pissing the pants of others.
But anyways for that I would suggest that there should be a central person in each clan who will be helping the newbies.I don't know if we can have things like support staff but we can surely have someone knowledgeable who can pass on a few tid bits to the newbies.
Also I think though this is about learning ,lthe clan members should understand that this is not a tutoring program.So they should make an attempt first to solve their problem with sincerity.
I have lots to suggest but too sleepy atm.
Hope there is something good in this that will help!

Edit-Also Pcl has not been downright unsuccessful.I will certainly say we have more positives than negatives!

I think that the main reason as to why the PCL was not as successful as it could have/should have been is something that, for better or worse, will not really change anytime soon, although I think that downsizing the clans will help some. The issue is that we simply do not have a large number of people seriously interested in and committed to competitive battling and/or learning the art of battle. PC (and the battle server) is very much just a Pokemon themed hangout, and one of the ways it shows is in the fact that the majority of PC users/battle server users have little more than a passing interest in competitive battling. If I recall correctly part of the reason for the PCL was to garner interest in competitive battling, but it's easier said than done to both get that interest and maintain it in the long-term. Yes, more events would be good and I want to see more too, but if there's no interest in the first place any and all events are doomed to not be participated in and then it's kinda like why bother?

There was also the mercenary system and leaves of absence and quitting. I like the merc system since it gives some other people a chance to occasionally battle and having substitute battlers when people need them for whatever reason is great. But I didn't really understand how to actually use it, though it could just be me. I'd also like it if it was more encouraged for people to post in the LoA thread and communicate that they are quitting the league. The LoA thread hasn't been used much since it was made, but I'm pretty sure that there were more people who should've used it. And then there's the quitting. It's fine if someone feels the need to quit the league, I'm totally fine with that. What I'm not fine with is people quitting and then not adequately communicating it to the rest of the league. Not gonna lie, I was a little annoyed that Anrin Das quit the PCL but never posted in the LoA thread or even told me; I had to hear it from Syn who heard it from Hanaaa who apparently heard it from Anrin himself, but I, nor wolf/Zeffy/Anti/Chase seemed to have gotten official confirmation on that and so Black Magic had this spot with a name in it that was essentially empty for a few weeks. I'm pretty sure that a couple of other clans had a similar issue. Syn, mid, and Dave at least made it known that they were quitting the PCL.

And yeah I'll echo the whole PCL didn't fulfill it's job as a learning tool at all bit. But again, that's hard to do when few people are truly interested in learning about competitive battling, nevermind that ORAS is not an easy meta to learn and we have few people who can really help others learn it.

What were you guys planning to do after the Championships conclude though, since it seems like you have some plans?

Thanks for the replies so far, everyone. This is by no means an exhaustive reply (which will eventually be forthcoming, pending more replies and ideas), but I did want to address the points pertaining to activity.

The League is going to get downsized. I have been discussing this privately with Chase weeks before posting this thread, and I can say with near-certainty that the League's size won't just be reduced, but will be reduced substantially. This ties into many of the points everyone has made above. Likely benefits include a more active and useful mercenary system, excising the mass of indifferent people from the League, lessening the currently enormous timeframe of the Championships, and providing more space for legitimately positive social interactions within the individual clans (which is kind of important in a team tour environment lol and would allow for more natural learning moments within clans that everyone keeps saying have been absent).

This is much more tentative, but I suspect that we will move toward more exclusivity in who we allow in. The most obvious example I can think of is denying signups who neither post in BTB nor come on the Battle Server, regardless of post count or community standing.

If anyone has other specifics to offer, feel free to do so. I just want to affirm that the problem of inactivity is our top priority, and we will be very proactive in rooting it out. (It also helps that, unlike with the original "reboot" ["Week 1, Part 2"], we are not constrained by time and circumstances, which was a major reason for the somewhat ad hoc reboot of the League.)

Nah said:

What were you guys planning to do after the Championships conclude though, since it seems like you have some plans?

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We would really appreciate ideas for this, actually, as it certainly helps to know what people want to participate in.

One thing I'd like to make a regular feature of PCL is a battle of the week (determined by a vote), which also opens the door for commentary and analysis after the fact. Clan wars just for funsies are still there to be had, and I'd like to do some tutoring activities and small tournaments. Team (clan) tours are a possibility as well, but I would like to restructure the League and revamp its roster before doing any of that.

wolf can give you a better answer than I can on this point, though.

I don't think not giving points for activity wins is an option honestly, it would be incredibly unfair if you were robbed of your opportunity to earn points for your team simply because your opponent was inactive. It could also potentially be abused, leading teams could simply not do any of their games and the chasing teams would have no chance to catch up at all as they wouldn't gain any points even if awarded the activity wins.

are we allowed to give feedback to the users instead? because i have this: if you're gonna participate, check. your. messages. like i am literally gonna drop out if one more person is gonna make me wait 3 days just to check their dumb vm's which takes a literal second. i don't care, it's not my loss, but you're making it harder for everyone else. either check your messages, LET PEOPLE KNOW IF FOR WHATEVER REASON YOU CAN'T, or don't play?? seriously

Since this is now over and stuff I guess I'll post some of my thoughts on this event.

First off, I think you guys deserve props for actually managing to see this through right to the end. Considering this site isn't particularly big on competitive battling, it's quite the feat to manage to host an 8+ week event without it completely dying out before it finishes. I've tried hosting tours on sites with small playerbases before, I can say for a fact that it definitely isn't easy.

As for ways to improve, I definitely think reducing the number of clans to 4 will solve a good number of problems this tour has had. I agree with many others who've stated PCL wasn't really anything more than playing one battle every week. However, this doesn't solely refer to the fact that the hosts didn't have any events outside of the weekly league battles. I've participated in team tours on Smogon/PO that were nothing but playing every week as well, and those were still incredibly enjoyable. The problem here was that the teams weren't really teams at all, it was just groups of 5-6 players each doing their own thing. One of the main reasons I've enjoyed team tours in the past is because the skype group/IRC chat etc was always incredibly active, be it discussing opponents, teambuilding or just chatting about stuff in general. Sadly this tour had none of that, my team's skype group for one quickly became dead. I'd post a message and someone would reply maybe 3 days later. A bit more effort from both the team leaders and the players would be nice to see here; team leaders should try and stir up more discussions, but that would obviously be useless if the players don't reciprocate. Hopefully with the downsizing of the number of clans this issue can be solved, but I think people need to remember that being an active participant of an event like this means more than just playing your game every week.

That being said, hosting more other tier and fun events outside of just OU battles to keep people interested would still be nice. I'd guess a good number of those who dropped out simply got bored of this format. To sustain this kind of event on a forum like this, you definitely need some sort of niche that can't be found anywhere else, so that needs to be taken into consideration.

lol yeah i was actually just about to post that now that the championships are over, if anyone wants to say anything who maybe was waiting to do so, we want to hear it! we're going to be implementing a lot of changes very soon, but we're definitely still open to suggestions, critiques, etc.

edit: i'll also be making a long-ass post in the near future summarizing the thoughts of wolf/chase/myself, explaining changes that are soon to be forthcoming, etc.

sup all, i waiting for it all to be over before i posted something, since i think everyone who participated should be proud that our forum actually did a comparatively big event, and managed to complete it without huge hiccups( i mean there were a few, but all things considered, for the first time, it was a great run) props to the organisers.

Firstly i agree with void on how dead each clan becomes in terms of communication. when i was back in the technicians with zeffy, i was probably the only one enthusiastic enough (or jobless enough, but thats another story lol) to post every so often, i do remember zeffy, sonata chiming from time to time, but the lack of dedication was quite visible, and this is definitely not a singular case, as in the past few weeks a lot of people just do their battles for the sake of doing it.
A lot of participants have definitely improved a shit ton over the span of the even, which is what we were aiming for and is amazing to see. But i also saw a large number of people who have hardly experimented or tried to better a singular skill, this is hugely concerned to ones dedication. and its completely i impossible to change that, unless one wants it himself.
this is more of a feedback than an improvement as such, and is something that i observed. Huge props to anti for giving a shit about his clan mates and people outside it tho.

as for the event itself, was quite good. and yeah reducing the number of clans and retaining people who are actually interested and would be a part of the community would solve a lot of problems. Auctions is something i am quite interested in as well, just dont make it private lol

First off, I wanna say sorry for being sorta inactive during the last weeks of PCL, it was mainly because of my netbook being broken :/ So, the PCL was definitely a fun experience for sure :3 Suggestions for the next league; Why not add a few more "events" to liven up the mood :)

edit: Congrats GoP! ^^

What do you like about PCL and what don't you like?

I liked the initiative the mods spent on the project, and the clan system as it made me feel more a part of the community. They did their best to matchup people and keep everyone active.

However it felt a little stale after a while. Aside from checking the server every once in a while to search for your opponent, there wasn't much to do on the server, and I rarely talked with my clanmates.

What should be changed and what should stay the same?

Personally I think whoever decides the matchups should take timezones into account in addition to skill level. Also, maybe more formats in the tour matches? I saw some people (myself included) using the exact or near exact teams match after match, and it gives everyone more experience using all kinds of pokemon.


Do you have any ideas, even if they differ from how the League is currently constituted?

There should definetly be more things gluing together clans. It was fun battling through opponents, but I didn't interact with my clanmates any more than wishing a few of them good luck. I think there should be more activities to get everyone more involved with their teammates, like a team building exercise in which everyone contributes a member or something. Said team would then square off against others of it's kind by opposing clans.

2Fruit said:

Also, maybe more formats in the tour matches? I saw some people (myself included) using the exact or near exact teams match after match, and it gives everyone more experience using all kinds of pokemon.

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Please no other formats, I already have enough trouble familarizing myself with the OU format. {XD}

Also, about team variety: it's true, that using different Pokemon and different teams helps getting more familiar with teambuilding, but it also makes sense to stick to only one team, or two teams, the second one being backup. The main team gets adjusted over the course of the tournament and the backup team comes only into play, when the main one isn't ready, yet. (kinda similar to SSB, where people usually have a main, a second and maybe a third character, they are familiar with)

You also have to keep in mind, that a lot of people just don't have the time to build a new team every week. Even if you just take one from Smogon, you still need to familiarize yourself with how it works, which also takes a good amount of time.

I think there should be more activities to get everyone more involved with their teammates, like a team building exercise in which everyone contributes a member or something. Said team would then square off against others of it's kind by opposing clans.

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Remember that Team Building thread, we had, where we tried to build a team around Mega Scizor? It died, before we could even decide what set it should be running. Everyone could contribute to that thread, even outsiders, but only a handful people even cared for it. I could easily see it even harder, when trying to do something similar with only your clan comrades, because (again), most of them have a lot of other things going for them and don't forget that other thing you mentioned, that causes trouble all the time: different timezones

So what is happening? Can we get a status report as to the developments on the new season ?

srinator said:

So what is happening? Can we get a status report as to the developments on the new season ?

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Sure. Again, apologies for the delay.

Basically, what's left to do is the 3 event threads (mainly presentation stuff, my responsibility), sticky thread for detailing how EXP works, and activity PMs (we need to reconfirm who is still in). I'll be working on all of that starting tonight/tomorrow if nothing crops up. I'm sending out the activity PMs once we're near completion with everything else, then we'll give everyone about a week to respond. We're doing offseason events for a short while, then the next season will start. When that will be depends on how long we want to run offseason events. There has already been a long wait time (hehe), so we might jump into the next season of the PCL Championship near the end of December or so.

The reason it has taken so long is that I've been preoccupied with the battle server (major updates causing tons and tons of conflicts with code, bot breaking, staff reform, dealing with troublesome users, addressing activity concerns from a while ago, Community Weekend, etc). It has been one thing after another, y'know.

wolf said:

Sure. Again, apologies for the delay.

Basically, what's left to do is the 3 event threads (mainly presentation stuff, my responsibility), sticky thread for detailing how EXP works, and activity PMs (we need to reconfirm who is still in). I'll be working on all of that starting tonight/tomorrow if nothing crops up. I'm sending out the activity PMs once we're near completion with everything else, then we'll give everyone about a week to respond. We're doing offseason events for a short while, then the next season will start. When that will be depends on how long we want to run offseason events. There has already been a long wait time (hehe), so we might jump into the next season of the PCL Championship near the end of December or so.

The reason it has taken so long is that I've been preoccupied with the battle server (major updates causing tons and tons of conflicts with code, bot breaking, staff reform, dealing with troublesome users, addressing activity concerns from a while ago, Community Weekend, etc). It has been one thing after another, y'know.

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With all due respect, I find this inadequate. What if something else comes up? Is PCL just going to keep getting pushed back? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I am struck by how nothing appears to have been accomplished in the last six weeks? When I left PC, which was over two months ago now, our priority was to hammer out a few more events--PCL Hunger Games and an XY OU Tournament, if I'm recalling correctly?--but mostly to get you, Chase, Nah, and Shawn on at the same time so we could run the auction. I thought EXP had mostly been decided on. It seems like things have actually regressed from then since the delay has been such that an auction is no longer feasible until we (again) get recommitments from people.

While I appreciate everything else you personally do, these things also don't take that long. Maybe I can only speak for myself, but it's not like, say, a tournament OP takes that long to whip up. You come up with the concept, you write up some rules, you slap some styling onto it, and you post it. I know I left a skeleton of a tournament and maybe the Hunger Games too. I don't know if it's just the formatting (the only thing whose timeframe I cannot speak to) but there really isn't an excuse for a two-month delay on that. At best, it shows that PCL is a low priority, as I think was implicitly stated of things like Community Day "pushed PCL aside," if you will.

I find that very disheartening, and I was not encouraged by our VM conversation. From September 24:

wolf said:

Yeah, I've been really busy the last few days but I'm spending tomorrow and this weekend to get all the events and EXP ready. Auction will happen this weekend if we can get all the leaders together, or as soon as possible.

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That was over six weeks ago. From October 29:

wolf said:

I'm aware that PCL is taking forever, and I apologize for that. I'll be working on the threads tomorrow after the next server update (hopefully nothing breaks this time like the damn bot :(). The plan is to send out activity PMs on around this Saturday, give people about a week to opt in for the league again, then start the auction on the Saturday after next. It has to be then, because Chase is going to a football game this weekend and we need to give everyone some time to respond to the PMs. We're requiring everyone to opt in by responding to those PMs, so we may end up with too little participants. However, PCL is still functional with a small amount of members, and we've gotten some newer members that might be interested. (Plus more people will probably be interested in it after it actually starts. v_v)

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This is pretty much what you stated above, only it was two weeks ago so I guess the timeframe was pushed back...two more weeks? Even the language of these messages is ridiculously conditional or indefinite: hopefully nothing breaks; around this Saturday; about a week; if we can get all the leaders together; if nothing crops up. It's not very promising when the excuses are practically built into the assurances that PCL is definitely coming this Saturday, or the Saturday after Chase's football game, or whenever exactly it's coming now.

Look, I'm not trying to be a pain in the ass. At the same time, can we get some hard commitments in terms of dates? Right now this strikes me as extremely disorganized or on the backburner--I can't tell which, or maybe they're just reinforcing each other. In any case, from what I can tell, this needs a clear timeframe that won't get railroaded by whatever the latest thing to "pop up" is. Just to give an example:

[dates meaning: this needs to be completed by the end of the date listed]

Thursday, November 12: Send out activity reaffirmation PMs [CHASE]
Tuesday, November 17: Finish offseason launch event OPs and EXP sticky [WOLF]
Wednesday: November 18: Complete activity inventory based on PM replies [CHASE]
Saturday, November 21: Complete clan auctions [EVERYONE]
Saturday, November 21: Post events and launch PCL offseason [WOLF AND CHASE]

This is a simple 10-day plan that is more than doable. I obviously don't know the ins and outs of the project anymore, but I don't see why it should take any longer than that. (If you're too busy, you can always replace me since PCL probably needs three leaders anyway for logistical purposes.) Maybe you have this type of thing already, but I am insistent on the organization aspect of this since I just don't buy that enough things can go wrong that the things I listed above couldn't be completed at some point in the last two months.

Sorry for the rant-y nature of this post, but I'd kind of like a firm timeframe for the reasons listed above.

Anyway, best of luck.

Right.

Preparations will be done by November 15th. PMs will be sent then. Auction will likely be done on 20th, 21st, or 22nd; however, that depends on how quickly we receive responses (can't start it with too few people). Events will be posted once the auction is over.