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Remove live spectators in Automated Tournaments / Limit coaching


XPLOZ

Question

I made an event suggestion yesterday but I think more and more that it is a serious suggestion for every Automated Tournaments.

 

The idea : removing the 'Spectate' function during live battles in Automated Tournaments (not on the Ladder and not in the few Silph Co tournaments). Spectators would be allowed to watch battles with the replays only. 

 

Why ? Because some players are winning tournaments while hiding behind someone else and getting 100% coach'd. This really kills the spirit of the competition. 

As far as I know, Pokemon has always been about individual performances. Even if the team aspect is important in a MMO (help about teambuilding, ressources...), at the end of the day the battles should be 1 player VS 1 player, not 1 army (a big team) VS 1 player, or 1 skilled player who plays instead of a coward VS 1 player. 

We will agree that playing with a mate who gives sometimes his opinion on some situations is kinda alright, but when someome tells you all the moves you should do, it is basically ghosting. Well it isn't on a techinal view, but it is on an ethical view. Someone plays instead of you, and this isn't competitively acceptable. 

 

Pros :

-It would highlight individual skills and improve competition

 

Cons :

-Maybe less hype during live battles in Automated Tournaments, but who cares ? The hype during live battles is already gone with Automated Tournaments. We can't interact with other spectators, so watching replays or live battles is quite the same. 

 

 

Thx for reading and let's discuss. 

Edited by XPLOZ
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I kinda agreeish with what XPLOZ is saying except with the part that nobody should be able to watch live matches. What I think a better solution would be is if maybe during automated tournaments people who play/spectate would be unable to speak through whisper/team chat and instead be placed in a new form of implemented "match chat", we could recreate the hype from silph tournaments while removing all the bullshit from coaching/ghosting/whatever you wanna call it.

Just my view on it.

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Coolio > Why is coaching such a big deal ? Because sometimes, some of the very best players of the game are coaching. I won't go much into it because I think that it isn't the appropriate place for, but I have got in mind pretty big examples. 

 

Kloneman & LifeStyle > You're right, it would be a good alternative. I already thought about it some time ago, but ... TeamSpeak totally counters this. But yeah, it still limits coaching. 

 

 

(Writing on my phone so quotes & stuff are a bit hard to use)

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I get where you're coming from but people aren't dumb, this wouldn't even fix the problem, if someone really wants to get coached they could share their screen with something like skype. All this would do is make it officials less hype. Sure you would kill off some coaching but im sure there still is genuine hype for officials especially in the later rounds.

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Bluebreath > Yeah I was also thinking about sharing screens on skype. But with the latency, the bad quality... It becomes a bit hard to coach. 

 

I understand your arguments, which are good, but when I see one of the best players of All time getting coached every single tournament, I still think that we need to do something against coaching. There is atm very little interest for outsiders to join tournys because they will have to face the best players PLUS cowards who hide behind the best players. 

 

 

But yeah, I guess that the only real solution would be to make LAN tournaments and we would see who are the real players.

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I believe a delay of 3 turns in the matches from the spectator's point of view would be a better option than a full removal.

 

Getting coached by one or two incredibly good players gives an unmeasurable advantage as suddenly there are 2-3 brains processing information and predicting scenarios, in a faster and more accurate way than 1 brain ever could.

I believe a duel between two people should only be decided between those two people (and rng).

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10 minutes ago, Tyrone said:

I believe a delay of 3 turns in the matches from the spectator's point of view would be a better option than a full removal.

 

Getting coached by one or two incredibly good players gives an unmeasurable advantage as suddenly there are 2-3 brains processing information and predicting scenarios, in a faster and more accurate way than 1 brain ever could.

I believe a duel between two people should only be decided between those two people (and rng).

maybe timewise would be better than turnwise, just my opinion.

But yeah, either way, you need to do something about it.

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Yeah, in my opinion Bluebreath kinda said the most important point what comes to the discussion: There's always ways around it. Anyone with little knowledge can start a stream from their screen to get friends to help them. It would definitely be harder to coach but as long as there is a possible way to do so it seems fairly pointless to me to take actions to make coaching harder when it's always possible.

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Everything is always possible. I mean if you want to kill someone, it's possible. Is that a reason to say : "if this is possible, we shouldn't do anything against it because it is pointless." ? Nah, we should limit it as much as possible. 

My example is kinda weird but I don't have much time rn to think about a better one ahah. 

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4 minutes ago, XPLOZ said:

Everything is always possible. I mean if you want to kill someone, it's possible. Is that a reason to say : "if this is possible, we shouldn't do anything against it because it is pointless." ? Nah, we should limit it as much as possible. 

My example is kinda weird but I don't have much time rn to think about a better one ahah. 

Yeah, it sure is weird and I'm sorry but it just doesn't work. You limit people from killing others by giving them hard punishments for doing so. What kind of punishments do people get who go out their way to set up streams to get help from their friends? None. The bottom line is that the dishonest people will win and that's not good for anyone.

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Firstly, I find it necessary for everyone to be reminded that we are in an MMO (and thus a primordially social environment). It's disappointing to note that there seems to be an emerging consensus that favors individualistic and more mechanical practices for the sake of achieving "technicality," which I will qualify later as being ideal. Recently, for example, there has been a suggestion to rid the game of (alleged) 'useless' NPCs. With this thought in mind, I argue that this suggestion (of removing the ability to spectate live tournaments) goes against the very social fiber that makes this game distinct, insomuch as it reduces user participation and thus universal 'fun.' Whilst the term 'fun' may seem untechnical in its precepts as you may argue, it doesn't require much thinking to understand that it's the very reason why we play this game. To simply have fun. In this same thread, I reject the subsequent suggestion to 'delay' spectating matches instead as this disallows the user of the excitement that comes with live tournaments. In reality, for example, it's really no wonder why people prefer a live pay-per-view over a delayed telecast. 

 

I further disagree with the view seeing 'coaching' as an exclusively beneficial function. What merit does it carry, this argument that two (or three or four or five... ad infinitum) is better than one? If a player is presented with a dissenting opinion or perhaps a prediction different than his, does it not trouble him instead? And if perhaps a general consensus is reached, what assures it of its legibility? None, because it still remains a prediction regardless of who or how many put forth the idea and therefore carries the same weight as the adversary's parallel prediction. Unless of course, you're TheChampionMike. 

Edited by whilt
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I really like Tyrone's idea.

 

Having a 3 turn delay could potentially improve spectatorship since right now spectators have no way of knowing when a duel starts. Unless they refresh constantly, the specators have a good chance of missing the beginning of a duel. The 3 turn delay would fix that.

The 3 turn delay doesn't hurt spectatorship at all. The television in my living room has 5 secs delay with the levision in my kitchen. During a live football game, unless someone in my kitchen screams when there is a goal, my spectator's experience should not be spoiled in any way. Since all the spectators in PokeMMO will have the same delay, spoilers are impossible.

 

1 hour ago, OrangeManiac said:

What kind of punishments do people get who go out their way to set up streams to get help from their friends? None. The bottom line is that the dishonest people will win and that's not good for anyone.

Sometimes there is just no way to punish a harmful behaviour, but that doesn't mean disincentives can't be used. 

  • Where I live in Quebec (Canada), medical students don't pay a lot of tuition fees compared to the rest of North America, they become doctors and then they go to the US where they get more paid. Even though the Quebec government paid partially for their studies, they can't force the new doctors to stay in Quebec because that would be unethical. However, the Quebec government would be completly foolish not to do anything.
  • You can't force people to buy local products to help the local economy. However, you can tax foreigh products to encourage the consumption of local ones.

The fact that there are ways to bypass the 3 turns delay doesn't mean it should not be implemented.

 

 

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I like this discussion, there are lot's of good arguments, which show that my first suggestion is far from perfect. That being said, lots of people seem to agree with the idea of fighting against coaching in tournaments, and we should really look deeply into better proposals, like Tyrone's one.

 

Here are the last arguments and my answer to them :

  • "This feature can't be nerfed because it is already a weak point of the game and it needs to be buffed". This is true. The hype around tournys is at the moment very poor. That's why I said "who cares about the hype, there is already no hype". But yeah, my solution is obviously not good because it's a short term solution. If the devs want to improve their game, and to add things like Tournaments Chats... they would be blocked. With Tyrone's suggestion, adding those features would still be possible.
  • "There is less fun if we can't watch live tournaments, and we play to have fun". Kinda true, we play this game to have fun. But playing instead of an other player is arguably the same as ghosting (i.e. cheating). Do players have any fun when they play against cheaters ? I doubt it. Devs of a game always try to highly limit cheats, because if it becomes easy to cheat on their game, nobody wants to play it anymore. Having battles a bit delayed for spectators and limiting coaching in the same process would increase the general fun imo.
  • "Coaching isn't always beneficial anyway". Yes and no. If we're talking about 2 players with the same lvl range and with different playstyles, it indeed isn't always beneficial. But if we're talking about a very good player who plays instead of a less good one, it will always be beneficial. Firstly because the less good player will do much better plays, and secondly because the opponent will sometimes be surprised of facing an other guy than he should.
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10 minutes ago, gbwead said:

The fact that there are ways to bypass the 3 turns delay doesn't mean it should not be implemented.

This would be true if this suggestion had no downsides. However, it does. What if your friends just wanna enjoy the match real time when no intentions to coach? For me it would feel stupid for me to react to a match 3 turns later as a spectator or 3 turns before as a player. This just hurts the 'honest' people and the people who do wanna use coaching in matches would just find a way to do so and what I wanted to prevent is to have any negative effects to happen to the 'honest' players.

 

On a separate note: If it's official that we dislike coaching, I would highly suggested the staff to openly discourage of doing so in some sort of written form.

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Just now, OrangeManiac said:

This would be true if this suggestion had no downsides. However, it does. What if your friends just wanna enjoy the match real time when no intentions to coach? For me it would feel stupid for me to react to a match 3 turns later as a spectator or 3 turns before as a player. This just hurts the 'honest' people and the people who do wanna use coaching in matches would just find a way to do so and what I wanted to prevent is to have any negative effects to happen to the 'honest' players.

 

On a separate note: If it's official that we dislike coaching, I would highly suggested the staff to openly discourage of doing so in some sort of written form.

I think you are overestimating the harm this would do the honest players. If everyone has the same delay, there is basically no difference between live spectatorship and 3 turn delay spectatorship.

 

3 turn delay is very little delay. I have seen Twitch Poker players with a 30 mins delay stream and they still had tons of viewers. 

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8 minutes ago, gbwead said:

I think you are overestimating the harm this would do the honest players. If everyone has the same delay, there is basically no difference between live spectatorship and 3 turn delay spectatorship.

 

3 turn delay is very little delay. I have seen Twitch Poker players with a 30 mins delay stream and they still had tons of viewers. 

I'm talking about the cases where you just play match by yourself and your friend wants to comment/react to it real time whether it is in Teamspeak, Team chat or whispers. There the 3 turn delay would really take the feel away from that. First of all coaching would suggest the player coaching has more knowledge than the one pressing buttons does. This isn't always the case. In addition there are lots and lots of players who just do not want to get coached whether it would be from anyone in this game. And like I argued before, the people who do want to get coached can get coached.

 

The delay isn't an issue when there's no direct communication between the player and the spectator, yes. But I'm just saying teams no longer can even really enjoy watching their teammate play a tournament and discuss about the match if there was this delay. I personally have never considered coaching as an issue really, I don't really even care if my opposing teammate tells an interesting point/tip about the match he's watching, I'm essentially thinking I'm playing against an opponent and trying to do the best possible plays I can considering every situation instead of thinking about 'the player' I'm playing against. That's just me.

 

Edited by OrangeManiac
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I'm not a big fan of coaching, but when someone complains about it, it's as if they are agreeing that whomever coached their opponent was better than them. I say nah fuck that, if a pleb needs someone to hold their hand throughout a match just to beat me, well then I'll beat them and their handholding coach. 

 

iz part of ze game (sadly)

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I think that coaching should be eliminated so that way the player can show off his/her experience by battling fellow players. How do you eliminate the couching you may ask? I have some simple ideas that could be tried out....

 

1. Disable chat for both players (why do you want to chat with your opponent anyways? He/she might yell some expletives or say how terrible you are.).

 

2. Delay the match for coaches by prolonging the first turn and turns beyond.

 

3. If staff finds out about someone being coached (before idea 1 can be enforced), then the staff can give the player and the coach a Bad Egg via mail and watch how your PC of precious comps is ruined in real time or staff could issue a temp ban.

 

4. Put a clause in the Code of Conduct that prohibits the use of skype (or some other live viewing software) during officials. If you violate this rule during the official, you could have a temp ban for using the service while in an official. - assuming that your enforcing XPLOZ's idea

 

These are some of my ideas about the possible official structure. Is there a hole in my logic or am I right on target?

Edited by Bestfriends
TJ works like a ninja
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