How'd we do? - Feedback and Comments

Forever said:
Teams should be more even, with a limited pool, once a certain amount is hit (of people that want to be involved in GT) - roughly 50 from each team then that's 300 people willing to play ball, and teams will be a load farer. Unova only had about 12 people participating overall compared to Hoenn/Johto which had basically everyone, so with that said the smaller teams had literally no chance because overall the bronze/silver medals will add up from all the others, etc. The team atmosphere made the GT worth participating in (normally I wouldn't really bother as much). But yeah... and maybe have the community vote for more events (by having a notice up the top when an event needs your vote) so that everyone's really involved... and an easier way to plan out team strategy. Hikari and I were pming but that's about all we had really to plan out stuff. A team discussion place would defs be appreciated. Also agreeing with less olympics-based themes (and more events like breeding/bug catching contest/encyclopedia/egg swap). They were so creative and soooo much fun, so more things like that would be awesome (plus the middle got a load of participants so people clearly love that sorta stuff). Maybe even a race to shinies or something. But yeah more in-game stuff would be awesome for next get together rather than the "staples" that we tend to have.
Click to expand...

This I totally agree with. I know the admins were initially going to force people to switch teams if things got out of hand but they abolished it at the last minute due to fear of hurting someone's feelings by sticking them in a team they didn't want, and that sadly caused for huge imbalance in member numbers, such as Johto and Hoenn literally stealing over half the community leaving ones like Unova struggling desperately.

I also apparently looked through the medals and Hoenn were the clear winners, dominating literally over half the events, with Sinnoh coming second, Johto third, Kalos fourth, Kanto fifth, and as I expected Unova came stone dead last. We literally did not shine in anything aside from the Egg Swap which RedJ took out for us, but aside from him we sucked and that was likely because we were so small (remember that Unova is the most hated region) that we basically could not compete well with the other teams.

I already ranked this the worst Get-Together I have ever been in, because of all these terrible flaws, and the fact our team performed much worse than everyone else is a further rub in the face to me. If teams got more balanced like initially planned, this would not have happened. Anyways, here's hoping 2016's GT is more well-thought, balanced, not too short and easier to understand.
 
@Hikamaru, I believe I already tweeted some facts your way. I'm not sure how you are deciding these team sizes, but they were 'even' (within reason) and Unova was not the smallest. Perhaps you had less active people, less skilled people, but the numbers were not the problem. I also find it problematic that you're basing the GT on (a) how well you've done and (b) how well your team has done - it was about enjoyment, not winning :(. I may be team hoenn but I've won nothing - I doubt I'll win any of the ongoing RPO challenges as well.

Perhaps six groups was too many, perhaps that's the lesson, but the fact that admin didn't force people to switch teams is not the breaker in this case.

Spoiler:


Yep Hoenn were just really good allrounders and entered a lot more.
 
I guess the reason why I pictured Unova as the smallest was because we had way less active people compared to the others, and that caused us to not do very well in most events. There was tons of flaws with this system, which explains my heavy criticism.
 
IMO:
- Six teams was too many but the team spirit/competitive vibe worked well.
- The Olympics theme was slightly too heavy and shouldn't have bled into as many contests as it did, perhaps.
- Ideally the system wouldn't have glitched to avoid people not getting their region of choice.
- A longer event to encompass two weekends would be ideal.
 
Last edited:
I got tied up in other things so I didn't participate in as much as I would have liked but this GT was great! The theme was really cool, I loved the team idea, there were so many fun events. Overall it was probably the best one I have been a part of since joining.
 
I kinda liked the whole teams thing, and I liked that it was primarily a competition. It should've been longer, though I think that the length of each GT should be decided on a case-by case-basis.

Hikamaru said:
This I totally agree with. I know the admins were initially going to force people to switch teams if things got out of hand but they abolished it at the last minute due to fear of hurting someone's feelings by sticking them in a team they didn't want, and that sadly caused for huge imbalance in member numbers, such as Johto and Hoenn literally stealing over half the community leaving ones like Unova struggling desperately.

I also apparently looked through the medals and Hoenn were the clear winners, dominating literally over half the events, with Sinnoh coming second, Johto third, Kalos fourth, Kanto fifth, and as I expected Unova came stone dead last. We literally did not shine in anything aside from the Egg Swap which RedJ took out for us, but aside from him we sucked and that was likely because we were so small (remember that Unova is the most hated region) that we basically could not compete well with the other teams.
Click to expand...
Yeah I was kinda hoping to do more for the battling tournament and get like top 3 but got lazy and had less time to do things than I wanted to because work. Sorry =(

Mana said:
Perhaps six groups was too many, perhaps that's the lesson, but the fact that admin didn't force people to switch teams is not the breaker in this case.

Spoiler:
Click to expand...
Where'd you get those numbers from?
 
The GT was great this year, and it keeps on getting better every year. I'd say this year was much more fun, and I'm glad to notice that a lot of members didn't truly get upset that their team and whatnot was #1, unlike last year during Survivor. Not that Survivor was bad, but I'm just sayin' that it was much more fun-spirited, and the competition had a much friendlier vibe to it as well. :)
 
Thanks to all the hosts and participants of the Get-Together 12 events for 2015.

I liked the "Olympic regional team" concept, although I think that the option to change region should be left to the user's discretion until points are being tallied. I think I logged in roughly 2-3 days into the event and wanted to change my region, but was dismayed when I couldn't do so within my user profile... Alternatively, if we're re-using the "region" concept for future PokeCommunity Get-Togethers, can we have the "choose your region" option in our profiles way ahead of time (maybe at least one month's notice, or like right now XD)? I somewhat found about this year's Get-Together by chance; I'm not sure how scheduling will be next year regarding timely logging in to set my region (if needed), but I would rather set it now when I can anticipate it and now have a solid choice for region.

As for events, I only participated in the Pokemon Battling Tournament event (which was all I had time for, honestly, even with the lulls between battling {XD}). The hosts did a good job there.

However, my main suggestions for the Pokemon Battling Tournament are that:
--for the thematic Challenges, they need to be planned ahead/added on the first day of the event so that people have enough time to do them. I think the Challenges for this year were added roughly 2 days prior to the event's end, which I don't think is enough time to actively engage in them.
---I was disappointed that even with the delay of the Challenges being posted, they were not retroactively applied for battles that occurred during the GT12 duration but prior to the actual posting of the Challenges... Without the retroactivity being applied for battles that coincidentally meet the challenges, it seems that only the people who manage to see the "Challenges" posted in that small window of time are able to reap the bonus points. I felt that I checked that thread's first page regularly for updates, and the Challenges were added around just when I got more inactive.
--it would help if the first post was updated with participants a little more often. While I managed to "Ctrl+F" user's Pokemon Showdown names and PokeCommunity usernames across the first 2 pages to see who was participating in the event, it did feel a little cumbersome (I think pretty much me and everyone who signed up after me didn't get included XD)...

As for the Get-Together event in general, it definitely needs to be longer... At least 2 weeks might be ideal..?

For the "region name" userbars, maybe they could be made slightly flashier (like the moderator userbars) instead of simple lines of text?

I'm not sure how this could be resolved, but maybe some type of point system could also be used? Even though I know that the end goal is more "fun" rather than "competition, unfortunately, I didn't manage to gain a medal placement for Unova (I was roughly 3 battles/30 points away.. @_@), so it felt like I really didn't contribute at all to Unova's overall standings (despite being the only non-top-3 player over 100 points - for context, Top 3 scores were 335, 244, 196. I was 172 (or 182?), with the next-closest player being at 96), which kind of ruined the "team-spirit" vibe. Now I know how the "4th place and below" Olympic athletes feel.. >.< I'm not sure if this is widespread throughout events, but Participant Emblems for users that didn't place would also help to alleviate the problem..

---------

Hikamaru said:
*inb4 the biggest team is crowned best team*

Anyways, this Get-Together had a lot of flaws for me, and it's usually an event I can never integrate myself in that much to begin with because there's always a lack of events that draw interest from me, and that's because I'm concerned about internet speed and also the fact there's too much Nintendo gaming competitions, and my family did not grow up in that family of games.
Click to expand...

{XD} Lol at your first sentence...although Hoenn did seem to do well..

You bring up a good point about Internet speed/connection. :x While it may not affect too many events (I would say writing ones..?), the ones involving battling/online match-ups (Pokemon, Super Smash Bros., Mario Kart 8) can be potentially afflicted by that.

Elite Overlord LeSabre™ said:
With that said, I didn't care for the "Olympics" theme to it this year. I didn't like being shoehorned into choosing one of the Pokemon game regions when I don't particularly hold a strong loyalty to, or, prefer, any of them. Not to mention that there wasn't much of a team atmosphere besides, "region name now appears on each of your posts." And, many of the events were off-limits to me since they had specific themes that also revolved around the overall "Olympic" theme, and watching paint dry is more exciting for me than the real-life Olympics .
Click to expand...

For users who don't want to be affiliated with a specific region, maybe there could be a catch-all "Undeclared/Independent(s)/Castaways" group..? I think the real-life Olympic Games has a group like this, although the name escapes me at the moment. I thought it was this. - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unrepresented_Nations_and_Peoples_Organization

...I distinctly remember seeing a name like this in either the London 2012 or the Sochi 2014 Olympic Parade of the Opening Ceremonies..

Lycanthropy said:
I agree the competition part is nice, but as you don't really know your team members, there's not much of a team spirit. Just having one DCC solely for your region would probably have been a nice way to get to know people. Although this splits up the userbase in six chats, the competition can repeatedly heat up the conversation, which will make the chat survive.
Click to expand...

A promoted "Daily Chit-Chat" (DCC) for each region would have been useful. Alternatively, implementing "sub-rooms" for the PokeCommunity's IRC chat thingy or on the PokeCommunity's battle server?

Forever said:
[S-HIGHLIGHT]Teams should be more even, with a limited pool, once a certain amount is hit (of people that want to be involved in GT) - roughly 50 from each team then that's 300 people willing to play ball, and teams will be a load farer. Unova only had about 12 people participating overall compared to Hoenn/Johto which had basically everyone, so with that said the smaller teams had literally no chance because overall the bronze/silver medals will add up from all the others, etc.[/S-HIGHLIGHT] The team atmosphere made the GT worth participating in (normally I wouldn't really bother as much). But yeah... and maybe have the community vote for more events (by having a notice up the top when an event needs your vote) so that everyone's really involved... and an easier way to plan out team strategy. Hikari and I were pming but that's about all we had really to plan out stuff. A team discussion place would defs be appreciated. Also agreeing with less olympics-based themes (and more events like breeding/bug catching contest/encyclopedia/egg swap). They were so creative and soooo much fun, so more things like that would be awesome (plus the middle got a load of participants so people clearly love that sorta stuff). Maybe even a race to shinies or something. But yeah more in-game stuff would be awesome for next get together rather than the "staples" that we tend to have.
Click to expand...

I agree regarding capping teams for team evenness as an option. Alternatively (I don't know if this is possible..?), maybe a weighted system could be set up, in which a team with fewer members gets a higher "weight/multipler" (most likely an integer) regarding medal count - this way, teams don't have imposed caps (to prevent people getting stuck with unwanted regions) and less-populated teams aren't at a disadvantage regarding medal count and number of active members?
 
Last edited:
GTs bring so many people together and reel in a lot of new users; it really is a fantastic time to be a member here and I enjoyed this year's just as much as ones before it. Props to you guys for doing such an amazing job.

Though I definitely do agree that one week was way too short a timeframe to comfortably participate in everything you want to, even for those of us not on busier schedules. There were too many events and too little time. We build hype for Get-Togethers beforehand and it would have been great if the events lasted two weeks or possibly even a month to give everyone enough time to participate without feeling pressured to speed up (which could easily be detrimental to the whole experience). The Pokemon Challenge event I hardly had enough time to get through and by the time five days passed I was scrambling to get it completed in time to post.

Time constraints are no fun so I would love to suggest making these more long-lasting next time.. we build up a lot of hype for GTs and they deserve to run for more than just a week. There've been instances where I forgot we even had a GT for that year because it passed by in a blur and that isn't good for the amount of planning we do. We plan and prepare for longer than the events actually run for, which is silly. If it takes us two weeks or more to plan then I think it's safe to assume members would want around as long - or more - to participate, haha.
 
Great suggestions and feedback, everyone. :) We really appreciate it. Especially on the timeframe. That's something we'll definitely have to look into extending for next year.
 
The staff and event organizers all did a fantastic job, so thanks to all of you for the hard work!

I had a great time with the events and interacted with a lot of people on PC who I probably wouldn't have met otherwise. I agree though, a longer amount of time would be great~ Sadly I had to skip out on signing up for some events I knew I'd never have the time for.
 
The last time we did a week-long Get-Together was PCX, and people were complaining that the event took too long. Normally GTs would last less than a week and nobody complained if I remember correctly. :/

Now, if the whole reason is theme-related then...yeah, I can attest to the fact that it needed more "before-the-event" planning rather than last-minute planning because that's kinda what it lacked once the GT launched. We probably needed a bit more planning for the teams as well as more announcements in advance for those people who logged in late and did not choose their preferred team on time. That's probably why most peeps were complaining about teams and stuff. :/

One more suggestion if I may...is it possible to like...have an "event suggestion thread" instead of just a volunteer thread where people can put forth their own events? So many events were left out when the GT began (I'm talking about both Mario Kart & SSB events that were made after the GT began), and I've seen some people asking about certain events such as any TCG events. Maybe next year when we begin to plan out for the next GT, we can have a suggestion thread for all members to put forth, and THEN we can see who's more than willing to volunteer for them. I don't see why this method has stopped since...I think PCX?

Did I enjoy it, nonetheless? Yes! Duh! I love the GT. It's the best time of the year for me, and it was my 5th one (and 5th year as host!). I was so glad that I was able to host my own panel event, as well as help out with both Splatoon and Skype events. Sadly I didn't participate as much as I wanted to, as I was balancing life stuff and GT stuff! But nonetheless, I enjoyed every single minute of the Get-Together. The adminstrators of the Get-Together pulled an amazing show and I applaud for them. :)
 
I did like participating in the events that I got to, but like many people said... more time. GT was fun, I didn't participate for the last two-ish years so I'm glad I had time this year. Definitely fun, lovely theme, and its obvious there was a lot of work put into it.

I only have a couple things that I noticed...

I agree with the whole team-talk. Honestly, I thought that's what was going to happen with the whole team thing. I was a bit disappointed that there wasn't anything like that, but since others have said more concise statements about this I'll leave it at that.

If there could've been like a Main Thread that had the specifics of the GT in the actual GT forum that would be nice. Perhaps, simply listing all of the events and when the dates that they were starting and ending (including SU periods if those were necessary). It would be a good indicator on which were longer and which were shorter, so if we want to compete in multiple events we know which ones to complete first. I saw a number of events say "This event runs until the end of GT" and others events saying until July 10th or July 13th, so I was confused whether the 10th or the 13th was the end of the GT. Hell, it could've even been a little mention in the beginning of the Lodge thread. It's always better to give a specific date, time, and timezone for the GT event then just expect people to know.
 
I think I'll have to agree with everyone in here...

Personally? More notice before the GT starts is good. Knowing in advance what will actually be there is also good. More time is good. Making it much less competitive is also good - I don't like this GT's theme, to be honest. Way too competitive and team-based. I prefer to let people have their own kind of fun when it comes to random things like this.

The event variety also needs work this time around, too - we could have had more "fun" events to be honest, even if there IS sort of a competition in progress. (Perhaps it's more of a problem with tagging - may I suggest not bothering with For Fun/For Glory?)
 
Twiggy said:
Making it much less competitive is also good - I don't like this GT's theme, to be honest. Way too competitive and team-based. I prefer to let people have their own kind of fun when it comes to random things like this.
Click to expand...

This. I hated the Olympics format to be honest, as it showed being too competitive can lead to huge rivalry and too much favouritism for certain teams causing others to literally struggle or not have a chance at all. It didn't help that our team had way less active and skilled people compared to everyone else, and that played a huge part in us doing absolutely terrible in most of the events, and we were at such a huge disadvantage that we couldn't compete well with the others, particularly Hoenn who pretty much slayed over half the events.
 
Meganium said:
One more suggestion if I may...is it possible to like...have an "event suggestion thread" instead of just a volunteer thread where people can put forth their own events? So many events were left out when the GT began (I'm talking about both Mario Kart & SSB events that were made after the GT began), and I've seen some people asking about certain events such as any TCG events. Maybe next year when we begin to plan out for the next GT, we can have a suggestion thread for all members to put forth, and THEN we can see who's more than willing to volunteer for them. I don't see why this method has stopped since...I think PCX?
Click to expand...
I'd be fine with that if people can also offer to volunteer for the event at the same time. An issue before I recall was when events were approved and people who casually said 'yeah I'll run that' disappeared.

Also would rather the thread started in cq&f to begin with rather than the Treehouse next time.

I enjoyed it overall - sadly the majority of the days the event ran for I was interstate. =( Otherwise I'd have liked to have participated in more. Didn't mind the theme at all, nor felt that it was at all 'too competitive' due to region rivalry. Choosing your team until the very end may have been better though, and allowing for people who didn't want any team to opt out, I suppose. (Alt - just have teams show up in the GT section, if possible).
 
yeah i signed up for a load of stuff but didnt really get to participate extensively in any of them due to the painfully short timeframe. the region/competition thing had absolutely no effect on me whatsoever, like i couldn't care less about it - in fact, i just wanted to be hoenn bc it's my favorite region, not bc of some competition. reading some of these feedback posts it seems as if i participated in a completely different GT than you all did lmao
 
Also, 2 questions:

1. I loved the emblematic images used for the Medals; does anyone know their source? (such as from an official Pokemon game or website?)

2. Do these "PokeCommunity Get-Together" subforums' threads usually get archived in some form?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top