PokeCommunity Tutoring?

[.Aero]

Here's some more thoughts working off of Pokedra's suggestion of different styles of teaching (as in beginner, advanced, ect.)

Beginner - Teaches all the basics of the metagame as well as explaining certain terms, teaching new members how to create a moderately functional team as well as having the members face the "teacher/tutor" in a battle to see how well they learn. If they fail at the battle miserably, they should be recommended to take this lesson again.

Advanced - Teaches members who already know quite a bit about the metagame about huge threats and how to deal with them within their teams. Analyzes every aspect of the student's created teams and makes suggestions for improvement as well as pointing out major holes in defenses (such as DDGyara weak or something along those lines).

Expert - Takes well made teams and teaches the student how to use that team in a real battle experiences. Creating a team is one thing, using it is a whole new skill that must be acquired to perform well.

My suggestions to this whole thing, perhaps Adv/Exp could be combined into one lesson. I wouldn't really know as I don't know how long each would take to "teach".

 

[Aurafire]

The question is then how do you distinguish an advanced and expert battler? It's hard to set characteristics of each skill level, as many battlers have different types of issues that they want to work on. If there were a tutoring program, I feel like there would be too much variation in skill to simply categorize someone as a beginner, advanced or expert.

Rather than sort people by skill level, it seems like simply assigning a student to a tutor, no matter what the skill level of the student, would be the best way to go. I don't know how you'd go about assigning students, but it seems easier than saying "Ok lets divide everyone in groups and have these tutors take that group and those tutors take another group" and having all the organizational problems that come with it and creating more work in the process.

So idk, we could have a thread where people could sign up for the program and explain what they need to work on, and then have whoever is running the program assign him or her to a certain tutor and go from there. Simple and straightforward, with no extra organizing needed.

 

[.Aero]

That is very true and I didn't look at it that way. Very insightful.

However, I still believe that there should be a beginner course that could be handled in a group instead as it should consist of true beginners or those that want a full refresher course on the basics of the metagame. This will make it easier to handle those that don't know so much.

(In fact, if allowed, I could run the beginner courses as I know the basics pretty well and I've described quite a few things MANY times. Namely EVs.)

 

[No you fail]

You could alway's have one of the tuor's battle the person who want's to sign up and place them in a category based on that.

 

[natedogg]

You could alway's have one of the tuor's battle the person who want's to sign up and place them in a category based on that.

There is just one thing wrong with that....hax. You can't always tell how good someone is by just battling them because of hax. Not saying that you couldn't tell how good someone is by battling them. You just never know what could happen. Even a great battler can loose to a noob if they get lucky.

 

[.Aero]

Even if we were to perform a "placement battle", people would still need other specific things that they need to work on. :/ Aura had a valid point and I don't think that throwing it away because of the option of a placement battle is practical.

The beginning/refresher course seems to be the most viable grouping if you ask me. Otherwise the difference in skill is too diverse to be categorized as Aura said.

 

[Anti]

There is just one thing wrong with that....hax. You can't always tell how good someone is by just battling them because of hax. Not saying that you couldn't tell how good someone is by battling them. You just never know what could happen. Even a great battler can loose to a noob if they get lucky.

Hax can be weighted though. This isn't the ladder where it doesn't take any of that into account. If the person plays well but gets creamed by hax, it's not like we're going to ignore him or her playing well. The result isn't the only determining factor, after all.


However, I am against separating battlers by skill, at least the way that is being suggested right now. Aura is 100% right imo, doing strictly (or even loosely) defined groups is not the way to go about this. That kind of approach does seem to have an ignorance of personal need. There are so many different aspects of Pokemon, and assuming that all playersn eed help with the same or similar ones because they all fall into one predetermined skill level group makes no sense to me.

If we're going to do tutoring in any kind of group function, I'd rather it be based on what aspect of the game you need help with, such as team building, executing strategy, long-term thinking, and basic mechanics. that makes more sense to me.

 

[Archer]

If we're going to do tutoring in any kind of group function, I'd rather it be based on what aspect of the game you need help with, such as team building, executing strategy, long-term thinking, and basic mechanics. that makes more sense to me.

That's a great idea. Considering there's far less depth required for individual aspects, it could just be a single hour session, or something. As much as I adore the idea as a whole, I can't see the Smogonesque style working. But, I think Anti's onto something. :D

 

[Ooka]

I tried this a while back, got official threads and everything, approved by mods and such, but it just failed. I suppose you guys could try and see what you get out of the idea, though.

 

[.Aero]

I tried this a while back, got official threads and everything, approved by mods and such, but it just failed. I suppose you guys could try and see what you get out of the idea, though.

We could always try at least. The main point behind this idea is to restore/boost activity to the S&M section by educating people so that this place will be filled up more, but it won't be spammed with noobish comments and such...right?