Suggestion: Community League

[Fayble]

Ahhh, so you don't plan on making the league then. If that's the case, I'll be willing to pick it up and make it happen. I have some ideas on how to go about doing this, and I may post a thread for feedback in the Battle Center sometime soon. However, I can't guarantee it'll be similar to your idea, but it will retain the basic concept of a league.

Not that I didn't plan on making it... I just didn't plan on making it without proper support, feedback, etc. I do, however, think it would be better off in the hands of mods and actual staff because they can do more, garnish more support, etc.

I feel like a lot of people who brainstorm stuff like this have the mindset of "I'm going to make it and be in charge and blahblahblah."

Not me, not for this. I just wanna see it happen so I can participate. Truth be told, I'd be happy to be a gym leader cause I love monotype teams. I'm probably not good enough but hey... dream big.

Edit: Speaking of monotype teams... I think Wolf mentioned earlier about the limitations and similar stuff. The limitations were there just to try to keep things uniform but really, if your type is limited, you'll probably need every advantage you can get.

I wouldn't mind if gym's were expanded to two types and Elite Four to three, if monotypes are too difficult to make/easy to defeat. I also wouldn't mind if just a general 'theme' was incorporated. Much like although Koga uses Poison Pokemon, his teams over the generations and games (and his actual canon) focus him more as a status inducer. Mostly poison, but he also enjoys using confusion and paralysis. In Gen 2, you could argue his two types were Bug and Poison, but if they were built around one type (presumably Poison), Forretress is Bug/Steel. However, he existed to lay Toxic Spikes, and I don't think anyone really questioned it. I think Lance was really the one guy who really broke the whole "monotype" mold. But no one really questioned him using Aerodactyl, Gyarados and especially Charizard when he said he was the dragon master...

If you look at Koga's team in Pokemon Stadium though... he got out there. Hypno, Tangula, Parasect, Electrode... Stantler. But every single one has some sort of status inducing move (mostly Toxic).

So I think the discussion of "What limitations does a Gym Leader/Elite Four member have when team building?" is one that is really open.

 

[Xander Olivieri]

I'd be in for Wifi battles mostly, even with my restricted schedule...though seeing as I wouldn't be able to join in on the simulator one because of the same restrictions as if I were playing Wifi.

 

[champagnepapi]

Not that I didn't plan on making it... I just didn't plan on making it without proper support, feedback, etc. I do, however, think it would be better off in the hands of mods and actual staff because they can do more, garnish more support, etc.

I feel like a lot of people who brainstorm stuff like this have the mindset of "I'm going to make it and be in charge and blahblahblah."

Not me, not for this. I just wanna see it happen so I can participate. Truth be told, I'd be happy to be a gym leader cause I love monotype teams. I'm probably not good enough but hey... dream big.

Edit: Speaking of monotype teams... I think Wolf mentioned earlier about the limitations and similar stuff. The limitations were there just to try to keep things uniform but really, if your type is limited, you'll probably need every advantage you can get.

I wouldn't mind if gym's were expanded to two types and Elite Four to three, if monotypes are too difficult to make/easy to defeat. I also wouldn't mind if just a general 'theme' was incorporated. Much like although Koga uses Poison Pokemon, his teams over the generations and games (and his actual canon) focus him more as a status inducer. Mostly poison, but he also enjoys using confusion and paralysis. In Gen 2, you could argue his two types were Bug and Poison, but if they were built around one type (presumably Poison), Forretress is Bug/Steel. However, he existed to lay Toxic Spikes, and I don't think anyone really questioned it. I think Lance was really the one guy who really broke the whole "monotype" mold. But no one really questioned him using Aerodactyl, Gyarados and especially Charizard when he said he was the dragon master...

If you look at Koga's team in Pokemon Stadium though... he got out there. Hypno, Tangula, Parasect, Electrode... Stantler. But every single one has some sort of status inducing move (mostly Toxic).

So I think the discussion of "What limitations does a Gym Leader/Elite Four member have when team building?" is one that is really open.

i think 3|3 or 4|2 [pokemon of your type|wildcards] is the way to go. Monotypes are really easy to defeat unfortunately, especially because of the prevalence of counterteaming.

 

[Griffinbane]

If any (bored) mod could dig up the Heart and Soul league from 2008, you could go through that as an example of a (formerly) successful wifi league. There's a few other successful leagues from back then but I barely recall any of them. There was never a sim league on PC, were there? o.O

 

[wolf]

If any (bored) mod could dig up the Heart and Soul league from 2008, you could go through that as an example of a (formerly) successful wifi league. There's a few other successful leagues from back then but I barely recall any of them. There was never a sim league on PC, were there? o.O

Unfortunately, Battle Stadium is set to private, so I can't access it and find the thread. I'll see if the admins are willing to make it public.

I've done a PC League before, which was rather successful and lasted for a few months I think. However, it eventually became inactive due to lack of interest. Luke also did a PC League, but I'm pretty sure he shut it down before the league was complete. I did a PC League again more recently (old version new version), but it's a tournament and not your typical league. Aside from official leagues, there were some other battle server leagues like Motisma (BeachBoy's).

edit: Bumping to say that the Battle Stadium is now public, thanks to Went!

Heart & Soul League
PC League (by me)
PC League (by Luke)
Motisma League (by BeachBoy, then me)

 

[acatfrommars]

I think that a league would be plausible. The best leagues imo are the ones that have actual gym leaders. The ones that have people battling against each other via teams are alright, but the gym leader ones seem to be more like a league for Pokemon.

I think PC could create a league and that it could be successful. We have our own PS server, and the website is large enough for the league. the competitive battling community that the site has is large enough too, and with the creation of successful league it would grow.

I haven't read everyone's posts on the subject, but if a league was created here's how I think that it should run.

1.) It should only run for 2-3 months. League's that last longer tend to become too tedious.

2.) I think the guy above me, awolffromspace, should run the league (if he wants to of course). The dude seems like he knows what he's doing, especially since he has an awesome cowboy bebop avatar. He seems like he would be a good fit as coordinator.

3.) Hire 8 gym leaders. Fine 8 people in your Battle section, or who are active on the server and personally ask them. Make sure they are active, and make sure that you have replacements in case they need to become unactive. There seems to be a medley of good battlers on here, make sure you have people you can trust. That's common sense. As well, for the Elite Four and the champion of course.

4.) Create a part of the forum specifically for the league. If you want to make this, then do it big. I'm not talking about a subsection, but an entire section like the Battle Center. Have a thread for each gym, elite four then the champion. Get specific banners and even CSS possibly. Appearance attracts people. Also, make an introduction thread, and an individual signup thread and sticky those bad boys.

5.) Create icons for completion of each gym. When the person beats the gym, they receive the icon. This can be a motivator for me people to sign up. Maybe even create an award for signing up. I'm sure a myriad of fans will sign up, this is a fairly large forum.

5.5) When a player becomes the Champion, give them some type of special privilege such as a colored username or a special award or something. If they are the best battler on a forum this size then they should be honored

That's pretty much it. Yeah it's a lot of work, but it's fun i the ed. Organization is key. I've helped with a league on another site, and it was really fun.

Gyms
For gyms, I would keep the standard at OU GEN VI. If you guys decide to do this ,a standard for GEN IV should be out by that point. I haven't competitively battled much in a while so I don't know all about the standard rules atm. I would have each gym be a dual type. Same for E4. There should also be a theme for each gym as well; this will make you league more unique than others.

Registration
Okay I lied, I read a couple of the above posts. I know you don't like the idea of limiting pokemon, but that's what makes it realistic. In the anime Ash doesn't catch all of the pokemon. Eight may be too small (I think that's a fine number), but the highest I would go would be 16 pokemon per person. Make the gym leaders, E4 and champion follow that rule as well.


Eh, well that's all I have. Most of it was common sense, and you probably knew all of it but just throwing in my dos cents. I think that creating a league would be nice, and I'd be up for it like I'm sure many of the people on here would too.

 

[Fayble]

5.) Create icons for completion of each gym. When the person beats the gym, they receive the icon. This can be a motivator for me people to sign up. Maybe even create an award for signing up. I'm sure a myriad of fans will sign up, this is a fairly large forum.

5.5) When a player becomes the Champion, give them some type of special privilege such as a colored username or a special award or something. If they are the best battler on a forum this size then they should be honored

All of my this.

I don't think an entire section devoted to the league is necessary. A single thread would be enough, but a sub-forum of the battle forum would probably be more than sufficient. You'd want an announcement pinned thread, rules, stuff on registration... then probably just a thread for each gym and Elite Four member. A random chat thread would also be a nice touch.

As for the icons, I don't know how the Emblems that Wolf mentioned earlier work (I'm too hungry to look so I want to finish this post) but even something like permission to use certain sig images. Actually, what'd be really nice is if each Gym had a name based on the badge - I'd make a badge for each type, might as well have the thread created with a mod OP and just lock the inactive ones.

Example being maybe the rock type gym gives the Boulder Badge. The OP is all fancy, posted by a mod/League official. If there's a rock type gym leader, great. If not, lock the thread.

Upon registration, players could be allowed to use or be given a badge case sig image or something. Something that can be editted/replaced based on what badges you've earned, so you can display them. That might be a bit much though... unless someone with more coding experience than myself make a code that under your Skype and Xbox link images (top right of this post), is an empty box that can be filled with small (20x20?) badge icons. Even better if members have the option to disable it in their options.

That's dreaming big though.

 

[Nolafus]

All of my this.

I don't think an entire section devoted to the league is necessary. A single thread would be enough, but a sub-forum of the battle forum would probably be more than sufficient. You'd want an announcement pinned thread, rules, stuff on registration... then probably just a thread for each gym and Elite Four member. A random chat thread would also be a nice touch.

As for the icons, I don't know how the Emblems that Wolf mentioned earlier work (I'm too hungry to look so I want to finish this post) but even something like permission to use certain sig images. Actually, what'd be really nice is if each Gym had a name based on the badge - I'd make a badge for each type, might as well have the thread created with a mod OP and just lock the inactive ones.

Example being maybe the rock type gym gives the Boulder Badge. The OP is all fancy, posted by a mod/League official. If there's a rock type gym leader, great. If not, lock the thread.

Upon registration, players could be allowed to use or be given a badge case sig image or something. Something that can be editted/replaced based on what badges you've earned, so you can display them. That might be a bit much though... unless someone with more coding experience than myself make a code that under your Skype and Xbox link images (top right of this post), is an empty box that can be filled with small (20x20?) badge icons. Even better if members have the option to disable it in their options.

That's dreaming big though.

Yeah, I think most of this is going to stay within the Battle Center and really shouldn't be a forum wide thing.

I know from the previous league I was in that a thread made by the gym leaders works out really well. Gym leaders just post who faced them and whether they won or not. Then they keep a list of who has earned their badge that way no one gets confused. Gym leaders keep track of their own thread and it created minimal work for the person running the league. A subforum, however, might be a little much. Unless we get really serious with this. Which, I don't think would be a bad thing, but I think we should test the waters first with a sample league before we do something really big.

 

[Griffinbane]

That's easy enough to do. Just stick a gym champions list underneath each respective gym, have both sides confirm their win/loss like you would in a tourney, and there you go, sorted out. Unlike what all of YOU think, I think whoever creates the thread should be someone else, NOT Wolf, and that this someone else should be active and happily willing to edit and update. That way, Wolf can also go in and edit as well, there would be two people who can fix problems then.

And before anyone goes crying about how only mods can make official tournaments, the official PC tournament before it went boom was not run by a mod. And boy was it successful!

 

[acatfrommars]

I'm active, I would happily do it. It would be good experience. xp As far as setting it up:

Month 1:
- Get all of the rules straight
- Get all of the graphics made (banners, icons, maybe css)
- Recruit all of the gym leaders, E4 and Champion

Month 2-4
Make sure the league is successful. Make sure things are running smoothly. Advertise possibly.

For registration:

Players submit their pokemon, and PM it to a coordinator (it normally works best if there are 2-3 coordinators). Coordinator make sure everything is okay. They don't have to PM movesets or anything, just the pokemon. They get an emblem for doing that (I mean like emblem that goes in the Awards tab). Next, players get emblems for defeating gym leaders, e4 and becoming champion. Once a trainer becomes champion, new trainers that manage to defeat the Elite Four must beat that new champion to become champion.

Also, I'd still be for an entire forum by BC. That is the best way for people to know about the whole thing.

 

[champagnepapi]

It's already been mentioned but limiting the challenger's Pokemon is an absolutely fantastic idea. In a league where gyms are monotype, people are going to do whatever it takes to win, which includes counterteaming. A well built team by the grass leader should be able to handle a Heatran, but what about Heatran and Infernape? Heatran, Infernape and Staraptor? Instead of having to make any arbitrary rules against it, we can just limit challengers to 8-10 Pokemon to use throughout the whole challenge when they sign up [which they can change if a poke is banned] and prevent any counterteaming while increasing the league's difficulty moderately.

 

[wolf]

I don't care if I'm the main host or not. If someone would like to host it and be the OP, then that's fine by me. However, I would be more comfortable if the host was an existing active regular of PC's battling community.

Limiting a challenger's Pokemon seems pretty neat now that I think about it more. However, one worry of mine is that teams can quickly become outdated and obsolete over time as the metagame changes. If there was a way for them to update their roster every once and a while, then that'd be great.

Postbit badges, colored usernames, and whatnot are the higher staff's domain, so I can't comment on that. Stuff like that would probably only be possible if the league is popular in the future. Badges for use in signatures seem okay, but I don't think it would be worth the effort to produce them. I doubt anybody would care about them, honestly.

A separate forum is not at all necessary and rather contrived, but it would make the league stand out. That's really the only reason to do it, though. I'm fine with using a single thread and expanding on that later if this becomes a success.

Anyway, I'd like to present a more fleshed out concept of my own after I've thought about this. Luke's PC League was a big help as a reference.

Spoiler:

- Two teams of ~5 Gym Leaders. (The number of them may increase over time.) Both teams would have a master who would help choose recruits. The team masters would also be Gym Leaders. The league itself would have one master who isn't assigned to any team.
- 2 team masters + 1 league master = 3 league staff. They would decide who gets into the league. The league master's primary role in this would be to prevent bias, as they are not assigned to any team. 3 is an odd number, so votes would never end in a tie.
- The league would function like any other league, but challengers can choose to defeat one team or both. To become Champion, they must defeat both teams and the league master.
- Thanks to the league being split into two teams, they can get creative with a few side activities like "clan wars" (both teams facing off against each other). Can also base them off of some amusing themes, like heaven and hell, light and dark, fire and ice, etc.

Also, I'm hosting an official tournament soon, and the results could be heavily used for deciding the league roster. It's not a typical elimination tournament either, so there would be less issues with hax deciding the fate of everyone.

edit: I just had a marvelous idea!

Spoiler:

Assuming we use my framework for the league, base the two teams and the master after Team Aqua, Team Magma, and Rayquaza. Every battle that a challenger has with Team Aqua and Magma would always have permanent rain and sun, respectively. (This can be easily done on the battle server.) And battles with the master (Rayqauza) would have no weather at all. May not be very balanced, but it sounds pretty fun.

 

[Fayble]

In response to all the above... this is just how I see things going down.

As far as registration goes, I like everyone being limited on what they can use. Like everyone has been saying counter-teaming, especially on a sim server where there's 0 train time, would be way too common. My initial idea was to not limit a gym leader to 6 Pokemon, but instead give them options so that the challenger is never quite sure what they'll be facing. I think it'd be good to limit Gym Leaders to 15 Pokemon (monotype), Elite Four to 20 (duo type), and Champion/regular trainers to... what? 15? 10, since there's no restriction on type? I feel like this is a balancing act.

Registration should be a seasonal thing. Once you register for a season, your Pokemon are locked. Obviously, if some Pokemon you have changes tiers, you'll be allowed to replace it. Like had this League started Day 1 of Gen6, Blaziken probably wouldn't have been uber... now it is. So anyone who had had one would be allowed (would be forced, really) to change it.

As far Gym Leaders and etc, I think 1 Gym for every 10 registered trainers is a nice ratio, up to a maximum of 8 (if 80 people join). And then one 'Elite Four' for every 2 Gym Leaders. If 80 seems high (I'm sure it is), you could drop the number to maybe 5 (so 8 Gyms would require 40 people).

If this expands, I'd like to see an inclusion of a WiFi league because why not.

So to summarize...

- Gym Leaders: Monotype team, limited to 15 Pokemon, one Gym Leader for every 5 registered participants.
- Elite Four: Duotype team, limited to 20 Pokemon, one Elite Four for every 2 Gym Leaders (10 participants).
- Champion: No Type restriction, limited to 15 Pokemon, title decided by seasonal tournament.
- Trainers: No type restriction, limited to 15 Pokemon per season.

Still a lot of debate on how initial positions should be given. I'd be more than able/willing to organize a tournament that uses a pool play structure.

Basically, how that works is all participants will be put into a number of 'pools' or groups. The size and number of groups depends on the total number of participants. Everyone in a pool plays one match against everyone else. You keep track of their win/lose record and use that to seed them into a bracket. So the people who do the best in each pool will play people who did equally as well in their own pool to start the tournament.

 

[champagnepapi]

I think just having a set number of gym leaders/e4 would be the best. I'm still convinced that a Pokemon-League standard 8 GL/4 E4/1 Champion would be the best if we were to use Fayble's framework but wolf's idea has certainly piqued my interest. Registration is a good idea too.

it might be nice if there was a live discussion of this to lay the framework or something more efficiently

 

[acatfrommars]

I agree with wolf. I personally think that he should host the league, from what I've witnessed he seems like the best candidate. If he does't want to then an active, popular competitive battler o here should host it.

Two teams of gym leaders would be interesting, but I think that it should be 4 vs 4 or you could add the E4 and make it 6 vs 6. I think that Team Aqua thing would be interesting, but I would only implement it as a surprise and if there was enough participation. Also, cool ca't wait for the tournament.

 

[Nolafus]

If we do go with the separate leagues, then I'm not sure if we should go with themes. It would be cool, don't get me wrong, but if the theme is hindering the gym leader's ability to cover weaknesses, then it won't work. I'm not sure how I feel about gym leaders having a limited number of pokemon either. What if a strategy comes up, gains a lot of momentum, and the gym leader doesn't have the pokemon available to counter it? Gym leaders can't counter team every team, so I'm not seeing the point in limiting the number of pokemon the gym leader can have. Challengers, I can understand, gym leaders, not so much.

 

[wolf]

There is no clear advantage to using the traditional league format instead of teams. On the other hand, the team format has many pros: 1) more lasting appeal, the league can have competitions with each other as teams without having to decide beforehand, in addition to the usual elimination tournaments (there are more side activities for the league to do instead of relying on challengers); 2) better sense of competition within the league, teams can try and outdo each other in performance; 3) challengers have more options, they can choose to defeat a single team or more, so it benefits those who have short attention spans; 4) more flexibility and isn't as convoluted, can easily expand the amount of teams and the size of them as opposed to the traditional league format always needing Gym Leaders, the Elite, and a Champion; 5) all of the league except for the league master is on the same level, so everyone has equal battle opportunities (the Elite often don't get much action!). And, if we were to strictly follow the in-game rules regarding the Elite Four (challengers must defeat each Elite Four member without losing or they have to start over), it would be incredibly difficult to defeat them. While I'm all for making the league challenging, we want the difficulty to be reasonable for the community we have. Trying to defeat some of PC's best battlers would already be challenging enough for most of PC.

I don't like restricting the league member's Pokemon. There's no reason to do so, unlike challengers. If you're worried about league members counterteaming challengers, just keep their registered Pokemon private with the league host. Besides, league members are already restricted enough by having to use themed teams, so they're already at a disadvantage. No sense in making that worse.

80/40 participants are wayyy too much. I've never seen a PC battling event exceed more than 20-30 participants without the help of other battling communities like Smogon. It'd be more reasonable to predict the league getting around 10-20 challengers, when taking into account that the league itself has ~10 people as well.

I still think challengers should be able to update their Pokemon roster every month or so (unless that's how long a "season" will be?). As I said, the metagame constantly changes and teams can quickly become outdated due to recent trends. One example of this is Gastrodon suddenly becoming popular in BW OU due to this team among others. There's no reason not to let challengers update their registered Pokemon, as long as the host ensures that they aren't trying to abuse the feature.

Two teams of gym leaders would be interesting, but I think that it should be 4 vs 4 or you could add the E4 and make it 6 vs 6.

Why 4v4 instead the standard 6v6? Or are you referring to players and not Pokemon?

 

[acatfrommars]

What if we have challengers start with 10 or so pokemon, then after they beat each gym or participate in each event, they are allowed 4-6 new pokemon? I like your ideals for the tournament. I think smaller tournaments would be good, and like small weekend events for the league would be good as well.

and I meant two teams of 6 vs 6 players. One team would consist of 4 gym leaders plus 2 E4. Also, players shouldn't have to start over if the lose to an E4, that seems too hard. Just do a one and done, if they beat one E4, they never have to face them again.

 

[wolf]

What if we have challengers start with 10 or so pokemon, then after they beat each gym or participate in each event, they are allowed 4-6 new pokemon?

Sounds pretty neat, though it would defeat the purpose of limiting their Pokemon to prevent counterteaming. For example, a challenger could defeat one Gym Leader, then add a bunch of Pokemon designed to beat the next Gym Leader they plan to battle. Rinse and repeat.

and I meant two teams of 6 vs 6 players. One team would consist of 4 gym leaders plus 2 E4. Also, players shouldn't have to start over if the lose to an E4, that seems too hard. Just do a one and done, if they beat one E4, they never have to face them again.

That'd be fine, but I do like the advantages of having only Gym Leaders.

 

[acatfrommars]

Sounds pretty neat, though it would defeat the purpose of limiting their Pokemon to prevent counterteaming. For example, a challenger could defeat one Gym Leader, then add a bunch of Pokemon designed to beat the next Gym Leader they plan to battle. Rinse and repeat.


That'd be fine, but I do like the advantages of having only Gym Leaders.

If the gyms had a monotype or dual type, then you would have to limit the trainer's pokemon because if they were allowed unlimited then they could do that for every leader. Limiting the amount of pokemon tests the trainer's team creating skills.