Competitive Mindset and the Players that Have It

[Barrage]

I was looking through round table the other day, glancing at the teams that are on the front page right now. While I did so, I realized that there were no teams that were really about competitive battling. Maybe on some level, they are -- e.g. breeding comps, using them in tournies, etc. However, there are no teams that are really out there to play just for the fun of competition. And on an even smaller scale, I don't know how many players there are left like this.

 

Back when I played this game frequently (2012-2013) we had at least a couple teams/players who would go to every tournament with the intention of placing well. Probably many people still know the name Compuboys, which was a small group of players that always tried to do really well together. They were often one stop ahead of people in terms of metagame, and would place in finals and semi-finals at any event where they participated. These players didn't care what the prize was -- they just went to the tournaments because they liked competition. I feel like there are no players who are this involved in competitive play on PokeMMO anymore.

 

I see people complaining about prizes and stuff like that. Who cares about the prizes? Is no one interested in the intrinsic reward of attending a tournament and doing really well just for the sake of being a strong competitor? There are communities out there, like smogon, where many strong players -- probably some of the best in Pokemon around the world -- compete in tournaments pretty much just for the fun of it. Because they love competition. PokeMMO is an MMO, I get it. But I find it odd that it is pretty much void of attitude like this towards competitive play.

 

Just thought I'd share my musings on that with everyone.

 

EDIT: Since I seem to have confused some people with the "take-away message" of this thread, I will include this TL;DR:

Players don't seem to have the same intrinsic value of and approach to competition today as I saw in players from another period.

Edited January 24, 2015 by Barrage

[Gunthug]

I was looking through round table the other day, glancing at the teams that are on the front page right now. While I did so, I realized that there were no teams that were really about competitive battling. Maybe on some level, they are -- e.g. breeding comps, using them in tournies, etc. However, there are no teams that are really out there to play just for the fun of competition. And on an even smaller scale, I don't know how many players there are left like this.

 

I'm glad you were able to learn enough about the current teams of Pokemmo that you were able to make a blanket generalization about every single one of them simply by reading round table threads.

[Emlee]

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume he read the event section too LOL. 

[JonazDK]

i think people with this mindset stopped play pokemmo and began playing on showdown...

[ThinkNice]

I hope you can cope with these changes

[Munya]

 Please come back jeehad, I miss you and our duels with no bullshit attached

[Gunthug]

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume he read the event section too LOL. 

LOL!

[OrangeManiac]

For the prizes part, I agree. I'll admit that I have sometimes questioned some of the prizes officials had but I dislike if they become the main reason of playing comp. I remember the first tournament I ever spectated was FNF February 2013 with a shiny Mankey prize and the tournament had a full 64 man bracket. The concept used to be about wanting to play comp and when you actually won you might have checked the prizes part and see what did you win. Also spontaneous tournaments used to be more common than officials at that time but when you look at unofficial tournaments subforum, it looks kinda sad.

[Munya]

Yeah I brought that up to emlee before on skype.  There aren't near as many unofficials as there used to be, not that it has anything to do with this topic, or maybe it does.

[Gunthug]

For the prizes part, I agree. I'll admit that I have sometimes questioned some of the prizes officials had but I dislike if they become the main reason of playing comp. I remember the first tournament I ever spectated was FNF February 2013 with a shiny Mankey prize and the tournament had a full 64 man bracket. The concept used to be about wanting to play comp and when you actually won you might have checked the prizes part and see what did you win. Also spontaneous tournaments used to be more common than officials at that time but when you look at unofficial tournaments subforum, it looks kinda sad.

I think the metagame is still in a bit of a frenzy right now, with people hurriedly trying to stack new comps and get them ready for the plethora of standards coming our way. This probably is contributing to the lack of unofficials at the moment, and I hope to see a lot more unofficials in about a month or two when the tiers are set again. But we'll see

 

At Barrage, you can't take complaints about prize size and warp that into some sort of 'State of the Competitive Atmosphere' generalization. Were you here for the PSL? No one on my team gave a shit about prizes, and they all competed their asses off every single week. I know eggplant's team was the same way, as well as a few others

[Winterbrah]

Nostalgia Goggles Inc.

 

You're exagerating a fair amount brah, if anything you should have mentioned your team because it was just Unreal, Saphy and you (Jag too if im not mistaken) yet you all seemed to do well even without all the comp borrowing or scouting network shit other bigger teams had.

[Barrage]

Nostalgia Goggles Inc.

 

You're exagerating a fair amount brah, if anything you should have mentioned your team because it was just Unreal, Saphy and you (Jag too if im not mistaken) yet you all seemed to do well even without all the comp borrowing or scouting network shit other bigger teams had.

rip [ez], you will be missed. But isn't that all the more reason to say that there were more competitive players back then? We didn't care about prizes either, really -- we just wanted to play the game competitively. I gave CB as an example, but I feel most people who participate in tournaments/the competitive scene these days just have a way different mindset than people did back then.

[TatsuyaSuo]

well i'm a more recent player (issued on july 20th 2014) but i'll agree that people mostly care about having the best pokemon rather than having fun competing, as if they saw their jolteon's 31 speed iv as the size of their penis in inches, while in fact, most of those people play by a very "square" and shallow metagame, the way they were told was "playing pokemon right", though i strongly believe competition will become way more interesting with the new gen4(-ish) mechanics and movepools, i haven't been into comp that much untill i heard they were going to implement the physical / special split on moves.

[Gunthug]

rip [ez], you will be missed. But isn't that all the more reason to say that there were more competitive players back then? We didn't care about prizes either, really -- we just wanted to play the game competitively. I gave CB as an example, but I feel most people who participate in tournaments/the competitive scene these days just have a way different mindset than people did back then.

I feel like you're not at the tournaments then. If you just spectate a solid matchup in the 2nd or 3rd round of an official you'll see two people competing their asses off. They're not thinking about that shiny prize that they may or may not get a few rounds later, they want to win because losing sucks. I can name a large handful of current competitive players off the top of my head who play to see that check mark next to their names on the bracket and won't tolerate losing. I mean jeez, the team tourneys have horrific prizes and still teams come out and do whatever it takes for the glory

This thread reminds me of those guys who complain about music nowadays, and how 80s rock was "just better, man"

[flavajabari]

I think the metagame is still in a bit of a frenzy right now, with people hurriedly trying to stack new comps and get them ready for the plethora of standards coming our way. This probably is contributing to the lack of unofficials at the moment, and I hope to see a lot more unofficials in about a month or two when the tiers are set again. But we'll see

 

At Barrage, you can't take complaints about prize size and warp that into some sort of 'State of the Competitive Atmosphere' generalization. Were you here for the PSL? No one on my team gave a shit about prizes, and they all competed their asses off every single week. I know eggplant's team was the same way, as well as a few others

 

i played PSL for the money, just saying.

didn't even get sigs this year.

[Gunthug]

i played PSL for the money, just saying.
didn't even get sigs this year.

Shhhh

[Archinix]

i played PSL for the money, just saying.
didn't even get sigs this year.

You got sigs last season youre all good

[flavajabari]

OT, i think teams like AW, LYLE, CIX, POAU & now COPE are here mainly for comp, probably some more teams im forgetting.

sure the attitude might be different, but thats because back then it was new, you didnt mind spending 6h on a tourney for a shitty price.

also lol back then they were handing out shiny starters & rare safaris.

 

and to compare it to showdown, where great players play for basicly no reward, 

they also didnt grind 3 weeks to get a comp team going.

[Barrage]

they also didnt grind 3 weeks to get a comp team going.

So that is proving my point, right? People are not satisfied with the intrinsic reward of performing well in a tournament on an MMO. I (and other players from a different period) enjoyed raising my own comps to do well with, and it didn't matter if I felt compensated by whatever a tournament prize was. I just liked to play the matches and climb the bracket.

[flavajabari]

So that is proving my point, right? People are not satisfied with the intrinsic reward of performing well in a tournament on an MMO. I (and other players from a different period) enjoyed raising my own comps to do well with, and it didn't matter if I felt compensated by whatever a tournament prize was. I just liked to play the matches and climb the bracket.

 

i think its alot of small things that lead to how it is now.

it was new so lots of hype, there were master invites which people could put in their signatures, the shinies you could win were maybe the first on the server, you caught a crazy comp which nobody had and unleashed it on the comp world, etc etc.

[Emlee]

I truly believe people have different definitions of what a "Competitive Mindset" is, which is fine. I tend to agree with OP and it's not so much as nostalgia but as a preference for attitude in my mind. No one is inherently right or wrong about it though. 

[twofist]

So that is proving my point, right? People are not satisfied with the intrinsic reward of performing well in a tournament on an MMO. I (and other players from a different period) enjoyed raising my own comps to do well with, and it didn't matter if I felt compensated by whatever a tournament prize was. I just liked to play the matches and climb the bracket.

 

keep in mind you have to grind 5x more now then we used to

Edited January 24, 2015 by twofist

[Barrage]

keep in mind you have to grind 5x more now then we used to

I don't think so. Catching used to be insanely hard. It was such a long and difficult process that people settled on sub-par natures, or IVs much less-than-stellar in less important stats. No one settles anymore because they really don't have to. But if you didn't want your 6x31, you could make functioning/performing comps with some pretty significant ease. The new breeding system really makes it easy to combine catches that were almost there, but were just missing 1-2 important stats or nature. The old breeding system made it even easier than it is now. So I'm not sure what you mean.

[RysPicz]

keep in mind you have to grind 5x more now then we used to

ye and old players can't help the new ones with borrowing them breeders anymore either :C

 

EDIT:

 

RIP

Edited January 24, 2015 by RysPicz

[Winterbrah]

The real reason the game sucks now is that there isn't as much drama anymore, and most of the controversial players were banned, you don't have mods posting nudes on global anymore and stuff like that ;_;