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Rethink This New Tournament System


Luke

Question

For any that don't know, in the new update tournaments now have a fully randomized bracket.

 

"Standard Tournament brackets will now be randomized between each round.

  • (Players who are waiting for the next round are now paired together randomly.)" 

 

 

I'm unsure as to why this change was made, as the general consensus with the majority of the people who played tournaments was that the old system was fine. I assume this change was due to a  vocal minority which spoke out about this issue:

 

Which this had got 25 upvotes, and 14 likes. Among those 14 likes there is very little tournament success, so I am unsure why this suggestion was listened to.. As this was not an overwhelming opinion by the player base, but an opinion by a minority of players which refused to adapt to the system which tournaments had, and instead condemn it. If people hated this system and absolutely refused to adapt they could simply play matchmaking instead of trying to change a system which was well accepted and enjoyed by the community.

 

This now feels like a glorified matchmaking, which has completely ripped out the core elements of tournaments which have been apart of PokeMMO for so long. There has always been 2 options for pvp, matchmaking for ladder and placement on the leader board. And tournaments for prizes and a long running experience facing players back to back; of which you could see who you were facing. Ultimately creating a completely different PVP experience, now with this new change there is no differentiation. Ladder and tournaments are now almost identical and they have a very similar experience. People who dislike laddering are ultimately screwed as the same format has been repackaged slightly and put into tournaments.

 

People are going to argue that this change helps the newer players breaking into the scene, however I feel it does the complete opposite. If there is a strong player with a very good team that player is going to be able to spam that team every single round without any counter play from his opponent. This is going to create meta game defining teams to be spammed in tours and people are going to be able to do little to nothing other than match-up fish with a counter to these teams, or run very boring repetitive teams to ensure they can cover as many threats as possible through out the tournament. Where as previously the other player could prepare and ensure to pack an extra check / counter for a team which their opponent has spammed through out the tour.

 

"(Players who are waiting for the next round are now paired together randomly.) "

 

Overall I feel like this change only damages the integrity and competitiveness of tournaments which has been established for so long. I ask can the developers please re think this move as it can be detrimental for the environment of the game.

 

Edited by Lvkee
grammar. not the last edit for sure
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8 minutes ago, iJulian said:

This isn’t achieved with the new system either, just like the previous system would sometimes make one side of the bracket giga stacked and the other half full of joes, the new one could keep randomly pairing joe with other joes and he somehow would make it into the finals. If you really wanted to get rid of this issue (and have higher quality matches in later rounds) what they need to implement is a seeding system using matchmaking me as reference (Kind of like big tournaments often work by having the higher seeds play the lower ones)

Although at first glance that idea seems cool, its also sad to see better players eliminated first only cause they naturally have a more difficult bracket than worse players.

For the new system, I wouldn't want to voice that much yet. I can agree it might not work, but I'd prefer to wait and see how things unfold.

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22 minutes ago, gbwead said:

What perspective is that? The perspective of people that can't teambuild decent teams and need to counter their opponent to feel less insecure about their odds. Get good, instead of fishing for match up against players that may not have as much resources as you do.

Lmao for starters, I don’t even counterbuild.I enter tournaments with 4 or 5 already solid prebuilt teams and I just pick whichever one seems to be better against what my opponent has been using. The closest to counter building I’ve done in recent years is changing a single mon in an already built team (like one time I ran sd ferrothorn vs orange in my hail room team). 

Even though I don’t really counterbuild per se, I think that saying that doing so is skilless is one of the worst arguments I’ve seen in the entire thread (and to be fair I haven’t seen many at all) but don’t take it from me:

A936FE90-608D-4562-8D21-C3FE30E1BF99.thumb.jpeg.ccab9cd4324ffb63d1cc8be61ba8953b.jpeg

Edited by iJulian
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5 minutes ago, iJulian said:

Lmao for starters, I don’t even counterbuild.I enter tournaments with 4 or 5 already solid prebuilt teams and I just pick whichever one seems to be better against what my opponent has been using. The closest to counter building I’ve done in recent years is changing a single mon in an already built team (like one time I ran se ferrothorn va orange in my hail room team). 

Even though I don’t really counterbuild per se, I think that saying that doing it is skilless is one of the worst arguments I’ve seen in the entire thread (and to be fair I haven’t seen many at all) but don’t take it from me:

A936FE90-608D-4562-8D21-C3FE30E1BF99.thumb.jpeg.ccab9cd4324ffb63d1cc8be61ba8953b.jpeg

Referring to what Rendi says about "making an effective cteam to your oppo and not losing the rest of your meta" That's just not the case at all. I'd say in alot of cases when people make these counter teams, their teams they make are insanely weak to another core, or even another mon sometimes also. It's impossible to cover everything when you're building thats just how it is. But if you're confident enough in your ability to build teams and understand the teams you're making then you should be able to win against any team as long as you play properly.

Edited by Parke
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3 minutes ago, Parke said:

Referring to what Rendi says about "making an effective cteam to your oppo and not losing the rest of your meta" That's just not the case at all. I'd say in alot of cases when people make these counter teams, their teams they make are insanely weak to another core, or even another mon sometimes also. It's impossible to cover everything when you're building thats just how it is. But if you're confident enough in your ability to build teams and understand the teams you're making then you should be able to win against any team as long as you play properly.

I agree, but the thing is: right there lies the skill of counter building, anyone can randomly pick mons that beat your opponents previous team, however it takes skill to build something on the spot that beats your opponents previous teams (not just the one from the very previous round but also the other teams they might’ve used in earlier ones) while having your build not insta losing to other metagame cores.

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49 minutes ago, EricRasp said:

How is that a skill lol? You literally look at someone's team and their sets and pick counters from your own team. I'd argue it is a practice that requires the least amount of skill. 

Its easy to counter one particular team, sure, but let's say you're playing finals or semifinals and your opponent has run all kind of archetypes, constantly changing his mons. How do you know what he's gonna use now? you have to look what he uses the most and find the weaker spots , while knowing that he will try to do the same.There a few factors playing here that this new system just wipes out. 

 

1 hour ago, Parke said:

There's literally nothing wrong with the shuffle bracket imo. It just encourages people to use all round more better built & balanced teams, and reduces scouting instead of just straight up building for the guy you're playing after spending 10 minutes scouting his previous rounds. Like, I'm struggling to find any bad side to them adding this to the game???

Like it was stated before, now ppl will just run one team they believe will cover the most, making tournaments way more monotone and boring.

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5 minutes ago, iJulian said:

I agree, but the thing is: right there lies the skill of counter building, anyone can randomly pick mons that beat your opponents previous team, however it takes skill to build something on the spot that beats your opponents previous teams (not just the one from the very previous round but also the other teams they might’ve used in earlier ones) while having your build not insta losing to other metagame cores.

Ok, counter teambuilding is a skill. So what? It's also a skill to pick your nose publicly without people noticing. I don't care how difficult or how skillful counter team building is. It's lame, unfair to new players and shamely uncompetitive. 

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Just now, gbwead said:

Ok, counter teambuilding is a skill. So what? It's also a skill to pick your nose publicly without people noticing. I don't care how difficult or how skillful counter team building is. It's lame, unfair to new players and shamely uncompetitive. 

Tournaments are a competitive environment where skill should be rewarded, saying “it’s lame” is for starters, an opinion, not even an argument. Uncompetitive, why? You don’t even bother expanding on your “arguments” and somehow expect to have a fruitful discussion. Hello?

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2 minutes ago, Moi said:

Like it was stated before, now ppl will just run one team they believe will cover the most, making tournaments way more monotone and boring.

Why would tournaments be more monotone or boring because of that? You literally will not know what you are going to face...

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11 minutes ago, iJulian said:

Lmao for starters, I don’t even counterbuild.I enter tournaments with 4 or 5 already solid prebuilt teams and I just pick whichever one seems to be better against what my opponent has been using. The closest to counter building I’ve done in recent years is changing a single mon in an already built team (like one time I ran sd ferrothorn vs orange in my hail room team). 

 

Literally this.

 

You can build solid prebuilt teams prior to the tournament, but you still want to make sure that the team that you bring against your opponent gives you the best odds of winning.  Noticing defensive holes in a team (being capable of losing to a single mon or opportunity for exploitation) is a skill.  Some players will run multiple teams during a tour, and if you can find a common factor between all those teams that you can exploit, then that's a skill that should be rewarded.  If I notice that my opponent's teams have been weak to a particular set of a pokemon, I can then run a prebuilt team that was built around said pokemon or incorporates said pokemon.  This approach in no way stops you from building well-balanced teams; instead it encourages you to build diverse teams that incorporate different pokemon rather than running the same defensive or offensive cores throughout the tour.

 

This kind of system is more useful for the newer players who don't have the resources to build multiple teams, but that's an issue relating to the grind of this game, which is separate from the competitive aspect of pokemon. 

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People seem to have tunnel visioned on the whole counter teaming argument, but seem to not be talking about the rest of my points and also:

  • You can fix tournaments with a group of friends / team
  • You can purposely dodge friends
  • Meta games will be stale and boring, heavily centralized around balance and covering the most threats.
  • Stall and HO become very hard to use
  • This is a duplicate form of a system we already have in place (matchmaking)

Also, why do we have to have experienced this new system to acknowledge its flaws? Lmao I have to wait until the devs have dedicated a shit ton of time to a system I believe has many things wrong with it? What kind of a point is that.

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Just now, iJulian said:

Tournaments are a competitive environment where skill should be rewarded, saying “it’s lame” is for starters, an opinion, not even an argument. Uncompetitive, why? You don’t even bother expanding on your “arguments” and somehow expect to have a fruitful discussion. Hello?

So, you deliberately choose to neglect the core of my argument that not everything that requires skill should be encouraged, and you expect to have a fruitful discussion. Hello?

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1 minute ago, iJulian said:

I agree, but the thing is: right there lies the skill of counter building, anyone can randomly pick mons that beat your opponents previous team, however it takes skill to build something on the spot that beats your opponents previous teams (not just the one from the very previous round but also the other teams they might’ve used in earlier ones) while having your build not insta losing to other metagame cores.

I guess so - but I feel like if youre good enough at making teams you should have multiple teams made in advance, and be able to freely switch between those. I get that some people may not have that option, as they may not have access to all the comps etc. But this argument could also be pushed the other way too  - someone who hasnt got all the comps doesnt have to worry about being counter teamed because their opponent knows theyre playing them next and just counter teams them. I just cant see how it's a bad thing for the game to have the shuffle brackets honestly other than the whole "glorified matchmaking" argument which honestly to me isn't really an argument because you're gonna know after a certain amount of rounds anyways that you're either gonna be playing like 1/7 or 1/3 people etc.

 

1 minute ago, Moi said:

Like it was stated before, now ppl will just run one team they believe will cover the most, making tournaments way more monotone and boring.

I can see this yeah, but at the same time even tiers like OU are kinda stale and in the old bracket system even the same cores/or like 4/6 mons in a specific team were ran a lot. So I dont think this is a great basis for an argument as it was somewhat similar in the old meta too. An example is that screens setup team that SO MANY people ran in UU before this update. This is just one example of a team, but theres obviously countless examples of actual cores that people use and just switch out 1-2 mons. This is pretty boring too, the issue isnt the bracket - the issue is that the people who play this game lack creativity in their team builds most of the time.

 

 

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1 minute ago, Parke said:

I'd say in alot of cases when people make these counter teams, their teams they make are insanely weak to another core

Which is exactly the reason why it is a skill. Most players just blindly counter team the last team their opponent ran and then get ran over by their opponent when they switch teams. There are very few players who can actually do this well especially in tournaments with just a 10 minute window to build a team on the fly.

 

I personally never cteam in automated tournaments, not because "cteaming is lame" or anything like that, it's because I am simply not a good enough team builder to do it effectively. I try to use these cteaming principles in PSL where I have a lot more time to build and I have had a huge amount of success doing it, and when its gone wrong its been due to my oversight of something instead of the concept being flawed. I would love to be able to develop this skill more and use it in tournaments to become a much better player and team builder for it, but that looks as though that is no longer a possibility. 

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Counter teambuilding in a resource based game is simply not acceptable. It doesn't matter if it requires skill. It just unfair and shitty to pray on your opponent lack of resources. If both players bring their best teams, may the best player win. If both players try to counter build each other, the one with the most vast resources and the best at counter teambuilding should win. 

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4 minutes ago, gbwead said:

Counter teambuilding in a resource based game is simply not acceptable. It doesn't matter if it requires skill. It just unfair and shitty to pray on your opponent lack of resources. If both players bring their best teams, may the best player win. If both players try to counter build each other, the one with the most vast resources and the best at counter teambuilding should win. 

 

13 minutes ago, NikhilR said:

This kind of system is more useful for the newer players who don't have the resources to build multiple teams, but that's an issue relating to the grind of this game, which is separate from the competitive aspect of pokemon. 

Nothing further your honor.

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4 minutes ago, gbwead said:

Counter teambuilding in a resource based game is simply not acceptable. It doesn't matter if it requires skill. It just unfair and shitty to pray on your opponent lack of resources. If both players bring their best teams, may the best player win. If both players try to counter build each other, the one with the most vast resources and the best at counter teambuilding should win. 

But you can survive without counter teaming? It isn't a necessity. Many players win tours without doing it, if people lack the resources that much that it is an issue and they can not rotate teams they should not be playing competitive and they should be grinding out more comps.

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10 minutes ago, Lvkee said:
  • You can fix tournaments with a group of friends / team
  • You can purposely dodge friends

I don't know what the end result will look like. If that is the case, it will be a problem and the old system will be better.

 

11 minutes ago, Lvkee said:
  • Meta games will be stale and boring, heavily centralized around balance and covering the most threats.

Why? According to Julian people that run unorthodox stuff will benefit from no scouting. No matter your playstyle, your team should always cover most threats regardless of the tournament system.

 

14 minutes ago, Lvkee said:

Stall and HO become very hard to use

Why? I didn't read everything in the thread, so if I missed the explanation on that one, please point me in the right direction.

 

14 minutes ago, Lvkee said:

This is a duplicate form of a system we already have in place (matchmaking)

I disagree. In matchmaking, the reward system is different and that's a big difference. This means you gain/lose very little per duel, so matchmaking is the best platform to test out teams. In a tournament setting, the reward at the end is usually pretty big, so you should not be testing out teams here. You should bring your best teams every time.

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1 minute ago, gbwead said:

Counter teambuilding in a resource based game is simply not acceptable.

That's why there is the ladder though, which caters to players with limited resources.

 

2 minutes ago, gbwead said:

It doesn't matter if it requires skill.

Anything that promotes skillful play matters and should be encouraged.  It's why we have clauses like ohko or sleep because it detracts from skillful play.

 

3 minutes ago, gbwead said:

It just unfair and shitty to pray on your opponent lack of resources. 

The very fact that this is a resource-based game means that if players are choosing to play this over pokemon showdown, then they are accepting that they are or will be at a disadvantage compared to players who don't have the same amount of time to invest into this game.  How is it unfair that someone who has invested more time into this game to acquire more resources will be more advantaged over the person who has invested lesser amount of time into acquiring resources?

 

As a competitive player, I don't go into my games praying or hoping that my opponent does not have the ability to change their teams.

 

10 minutes ago, gbwead said:

If both players bring their best teams, may the best player win. 

There is no "absolute" when it comes to a player's best teams.  It is relative because it is dependent on the opponent you're facing.  

 

13 minutes ago, gbwead said:

If both players try to counter build each other, the one with the most vast resources and the best at counter teambuilding should win. 

Not necessarily true.  I have played and beaten players who probably have more resources than me.  Having resources is an advantage, but it is in no way conclusive on the outcome of a game.

 

15 minutes ago, gbwead said:

If both players try to counter build each other, the one with the most vast resources and the best at counter teambuilding should win. 

Yes, because counter teambuilding can be a skill, and so the person who is better at it should be able to win.  I don't know why it's a bad thing.  If both players try to HO each other, the one who is better at HO should win.  If both players try to stall each other, the one who is better at stall should win. 

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15 minutes ago, gbwead said:

So  we should just ignore the fact that this game is not a simulator and the skill you want to promote comes at a huge uncompetitive cost. 

“Huge competitive cost” all you really need is 2 or 3 well built, diverse teams.

 

If new players can’t meet those standards they should stay content with getting to round 3 or go back to matchmaking/grinding.
 

Even then, the first shiny tournament I won I spammed a single team Doc lent me. I rarely play CCs but when I do I don’t bother playing more than 2 teams and I’ve won plenty. So yeah, it’s not impossible to win with limited resources. Allow me to quote yourself: “Get good”.

Edited by iJulian
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43 minutes ago, Lvkee said:

People seem to have tunnel visioned on the whole counter teaming argument, but seem to not be talking about the rest of my points and also:

  • You can fix tournaments with a group of friends / team You can't
  • You can purposely dodge friends You can't
  • Meta games will be stale and boring, heavily centralized around balance and covering the most threats. They already were
  • Stall and HO become very hard to use Maybe, maybe not, too early to say
  • This is a duplicate form of a system we already have in place (matchmaking) ????

 

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15 minutes ago, gbwead said:

No matter your playstyle, your team should always cover most threats regardless of the tournament system.

 

This is just not how the game works. When you are building you take into account the most prevalent threats in a metagame, but there are far too many and particular teamstyles are always going to have weaknesses. For example, your HO builds are usually going to be weak to rain and other speed boosters. Your balance builds are going to be weak to wallbreakers, bc you cant counter them all. Your stall builds are going to be weak to stallbreakers that you are unable to cover. 

 

I see many people making the argument along the lines of "Counterteaming is bad, so good". There will still be bad matchups, except it will be random when you face it. It is the same problem that matchmaking has and why tournaments are held in higher regard than mm. It does not matter what team you use when you play matchmaking, you are going to run into bad matchups and theres nothing you can do, you can't prepare for everything. Some games will be lost to matchup. In tournaments, players have more control of the matchups they face. The better players can mitigate bad matchups by not bringing particular mons/playstyles vs particular players, and be more consistent than worse players. Why would we not want to control for this factor instead of making it random? 

 

For the people say that there is little skill in counter teaming, that is absolute nonsense. Go watch psl games where people bring dogshit counter builds and get destroyed by just another sound team. Not many players are able to both know what will be strong against their opponent and how to build a solid team that doesnt have a bad matchup if the opponent brings something different. You have to have knowledge of the metagame, knowledge of your opponents playstyle/range of builds, and how to build a proper team. The skill is not easy, and you guys are greatly overestimating the playerbase if you think any considerable portion of players here are good at this.

 

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2 minutes ago, NikhilR said:

That's why there is the ladder though, which caters to players with limited resources.

Every player has limited resources. It doesn't matter if you're able to spot holes in your opponent's teams, if you don't have the comps to exploit these holes. If don't see why new players should be penalized when entering tournaments, that's incredibly dumb imo.

 

2 minutes ago, NikhilR said:

Anything that promotes skillful play matters and should be encouraged.  It's why we have clauses like ohko or sleep because it detracts from skillful play.

There is a lot of thing that require skill that should not be encouraged. You can't just ignore the context like that. Not everything is a meaningful skill.

 

2 minutes ago, NikhilR said:

The very fact that this is a resource-based game means that if players are choosing to play this over pokemon showdown, then they are accepting that they are or will be at a disadvantage compared to players who don't have the same amount of time to invest into this game.  How is it unfair that someone who has invested more time into this game to acquire more resources will be more advantaged over the person who has invested lesser amount of time into acquiring resources?
As a competitive player, I don't go into my games praying or hoping that my opponent does not have the ability to change their teams.

It's not a very competitive environment if you promote time/grind over skill. This game will never be perfect, but that doesn't mean we should just throw the towel and say fuck it, if you play more, you will win more. If you play better, you should win more.

 

2 minutes ago, NikhilR said:

There is no "absolute" when it comes to a player's best teams.  It is relative because it is dependent on the opponent you're facing.  

 

Not necessarily true.  I have played and beaten players who probably have more resources than me.  Having resources is an advantage, but it is in no way conclusive on the outcome of a game.

I'm not sure what's your point here. You paraphrased what you quoted me on, no?

 

2 minutes ago, NikhilR said:

Yes, because counter teambuilding can be a skill, and so the person who is better at it should be able to win.  I don't know why it's a bad thing. 

It's a bad thing because counter teambuilding may take skill, but it comes at a huge uncompetitive cost. On showdown, if you want to counterbuild your opponents in 10 mins, are you really going to actively teambuild a team in 10 mins. No, you will choose from the many many many teams you already made in order to counter your opponent. In MMO, you have to build a team because you don't have many many many teams prebuilt rdy to counter your opponent. You have to look through your resources and your friends resources to build a counter team and that is overall extremely uncompetitive. In a PSL setting where you have a full week to prepare, that's fine. But in a 10 mins window, that's just not the case and that is fundamentally wrong. I'm glad devs are trying to make this resource based game more accessible and competitive for everyone by doing their best at reducing the impact of counter teambuilding. I don't know what the end result will look like, but I hope for the best and if you care about make this game as competitive as possible, you should too.

 

2 minutes ago, NikhilR said:

If both players try to HO each other, the one who is better at HO should win.  If both players try to stall each other, the one who is better at stall should win. 

Hmm, that is not really relevant to scouting/counter teambuilding in general. HO vs HO, doesn't mean players are on equal playing fields when it comes to match up. Same thing for stall.

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