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SPL IX - Commencement Thread
- Thread starter OP
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Interesting fact from SPL week 1
Average length of one RBY game (13 games played): roughly 108 turns
Average length of one GSC game (only 5 games played though): roughly 87 turns
Yet still RBY is Bo3. I know game length is not the main argument for RBY Bo3, but if it ever was one, it is not valid anymore. Games might have been shorter in the old metagame, but mechanics change and rise of Reflect-Normals changed that. At that note, I agree with Mr.E that RBY is not more luck based than other gens (or at least not to that degree that it needs special treatment).
This is not a call for change exactly, merely my opinion and backed up by some facts (I argue on aveage values here, some games are obviously shorter) that I thought were interesting to note.
yea but my 192 turn game lasted 20 minutes. i've seen 30 turn sm games last that long. a lot of the pp stalling is literally just clicking buttons for 3-4 minutes until pps are gone and if neither player cares to break the pattern - which they very often dont care to do - the actual length is not that bad.
then again ggfan and diego had a game that lasted 70 minutes so long matches of rby definitely exist, i'm just saying the turn count is inflated compared to actual length in a lot of cases (peas vs alex also had a game where they just sat in front of each other burning all chansey pp quickly for example)
i do agree that rby is on the slower end of metagames now regardless, but either way bo1 rby is a sin and it triggers my ptsd so let's not do that pretty please
then again ggfan and diego had a game that lasted 70 minutes so long matches of rby definitely exist, i'm just saying the turn count is inflated compared to actual length in a lot of cases (peas vs alex also had a game where they just sat in front of each other burning all chansey pp quickly for example)
i do agree that rby is on the slower end of metagames now regardless, but either way bo1 rby is a sin and it triggers my ptsd so let's not do that pretty please
I understand, and i am aware that a lot of these turns are just button clicking. Still, what does it tell you about a metagame if two SPL players decide their best way to play a game is to PP stall starting turn 2? I don't want to make a fuss about it, but I am beginning more and more to understand what marco means, something is wrong with RBY OU...
Just out of curiosity, why exactly is bo1 RBY that bad? Are you of the opinion (like probably the majority of people, not necessarily RBY players) that RBY needs to be bo3 to balance out RNG or whatever? (basically saying that hax plays a bigger role in RBY than in other gens)
Or do you think bo1 in general is bad and every tier should be bo3?
I, for what it's worth, am fine with RBY bo3, but not for the former reason but for the latter. I don't think RBY needs to be treated differently than other tiers.
Like I once said in an IS thread, people shouldn't be singling out RBY because its bo3. In a perfect world, every tier in SPL would be bo3 since more games = less chance of random events to occur. The thing is that building 3 teams for the most recent generations (even starting from GSC and beyond) in just one week can be extremely tedious, therefore we dont do that. If it were 2 week deadlines then we could very easily do bo3 for every tier (look at Snake Draft), but it would take double the time and kill some of the weekly hype, so it is not a solution.
RBY, being a tier that requires basically no building whatsover, can be done in bo3 fashion because getting ahold of 3 teams in one week is very doable, as proven in all the past SPLs. It doesnt have to do with "RBY being the most luck filled generation" or with RBY having "very short games".
RBY, being a tier that requires basically no building whatsover, can be done in bo3 fashion because getting ahold of 3 teams in one week is very doable, as proven in all the past SPLs. It doesnt have to do with "RBY being the most luck filled generation" or with RBY having "very short games".
You're talking with someone who prefers almost any of the PP RBY lowtiers to the official RBY OU/1U. I agree, RBY OU is not in a fantastic spot, but it's not like it's particularly uncompetitive - PP stalling starting on turn 2 might be boring to some, but it's part of the game, it doesn't take skill out of the game in any way, I'm okay with it. At the end of the day, we'll always be arguing about personal preference and feelings when you use statements like "something is wrong", and you can't make tiering decisions based on those. This is the game we play, deal with it. Let's indeed not make a fuss about it.
The actual main reasoning why I am strongly in favor of RBY being Bo3 is pretty much exactly what reyscarface said. You do it because Bo3 is better and like he said, in a perfect world everything would be bo3 (hell, everything would be bo99 if we had time for it), and RBY can afford it while other tiers can't.
I do generally agree that RBY is more luck based than (most) other tiers, but it's not the main reason why I strongly prefer Bo3. It's just superior.
re: bo3 spl
in competitive games we want to create conditions that allow the better player to win a contest vs an inferior player as much as we can, within reason. we don't do this in SPL. i'll come back to within reason later.
one of the most important resources in SPL is time. You have ~7 days to to prepare yourself for your opponent. if you don't use your time well your odds of getting fucked, presumably, go up. a lot of the time we spend is crafting a team that a) has a good matchup against your opponent's team preferences and b) doesn't randomly lose to the rest of the teams in the metagame. i feel like we generally see a lot of people doing a) well but also see dudes get randomly blown up because of b) (i only really watch the cool games tho so idk if that's generally the historically the case, but it feels like it after the 5 or smthing SPLs I've been in).
again, in competitive games we want to create conditions that allow the better player to win a contest vs an inferior player as much as we can, within reason. if we could do a best of one million and one that would be dope. i wouldn't have to worry about losing to CALLOUS. but pokemon games don't take milliseconds and so we have to utilize our free time efficiently. With a bo3 we've cut down the amount of time everyone has to dedicate to one team because you have to, good sense would say, have at least 2 teams ready. in a bo3 your chances of losing to matchup go down. most players aren't just going to load up 3 anti-BKC teams in a bo3 cause BKC's less likely to run a traditional BKC team in 2-3 games. but in a bo1 BKC is probably going to go with a team that he is more comfortable with because he's probably better than his opp and he wants to run a team he likes. unfortunately in mons bo1 punishes this mentality and so his chances of getting blown up by matchup are higher. I don't think this is controversial yet. ya you should be mixing up your styles and all but that concern is partly addressed in a bo3 format
start controversy: it is within reason to have a bo3 for all SPL tiers as a bo3. yes, you have to spend more time testing three different teams, but those teams can be significantly less catered to counterstyling your opponent and more to counterstyling the metagame at large, with, of course, a privilege for also doing well against your opp's typical flavor of team. i don't think that building three teams for any given week would take a lot longer than what we have now. i anticipate that in a bo3 SPL players will get punished a lot softer for repeating teams throughout seasons and so they'll be more down to repeat teams. you can also just use more average teams against your opponent, especially if you win game one, if you perceive you're a way stronger player than them. also, if u win in 2 games you have that other team saved for later on in the season, reducing the time you spend preparing later. you will be playing up to three times as much pokemon vs your opponent, but I think most of us would agree that teambuilding and testing is a far greater time concern than playing against your opp. we all will definitely spend more time preparing for our SPL matches, but i anticipate the increase in time to be reasonable, and, maybe most importantly, less stressful because odds of losing to team matchups are dropped and losing to team matchup after preping for mad long is one of the most frustrating things about this game.
i could definitely be super wrong. but, if i'm not i think that bo3 has a potential for making SPL a way better tournament. it'd be cool if we could experiment for a week, maybe not in this SPL cause people would probably get super salty, but sometime and gather what people thought about the issue.
*note* I hated this idea for many years but Isa convinced me that this is the way to go
in competitive games we want to create conditions that allow the better player to win a contest vs an inferior player as much as we can, within reason. we don't do this in SPL. i'll come back to within reason later.
one of the most important resources in SPL is time. You have ~7 days to to prepare yourself for your opponent. if you don't use your time well your odds of getting fucked, presumably, go up. a lot of the time we spend is crafting a team that a) has a good matchup against your opponent's team preferences and b) doesn't randomly lose to the rest of the teams in the metagame. i feel like we generally see a lot of people doing a) well but also see dudes get randomly blown up because of b) (i only really watch the cool games tho so idk if that's generally the historically the case, but it feels like it after the 5 or smthing SPLs I've been in).
again, in competitive games we want to create conditions that allow the better player to win a contest vs an inferior player as much as we can, within reason. if we could do a best of one million and one that would be dope. i wouldn't have to worry about losing to CALLOUS. but pokemon games don't take milliseconds and so we have to utilize our free time efficiently. With a bo3 we've cut down the amount of time everyone has to dedicate to one team because you have to, good sense would say, have at least 2 teams ready. in a bo3 your chances of losing to matchup go down. most players aren't just going to load up 3 anti-BKC teams in a bo3 cause BKC's less likely to run a traditional BKC team in 2-3 games. but in a bo1 BKC is probably going to go with a team that he is more comfortable with because he's probably better than his opp and he wants to run a team he likes. unfortunately in mons bo1 punishes this mentality and so his chances of getting blown up by matchup are higher. I don't think this is controversial yet. ya you should be mixing up your styles and all but that concern is partly addressed in a bo3 format
start controversy: it is within reason to have a bo3 for all SPL tiers as a bo3. yes, you have to spend more time testing three different teams, but those teams can be significantly less catered to counterstyling your opponent and more to counterstyling the metagame at large, with, of course, a privilege for also doing well against your opp's typical flavor of team. i don't think that building three teams for any given week would take a lot longer than what we have now. i anticipate that in a bo3 SPL players will get punished a lot softer for repeating teams throughout seasons and so they'll be more down to repeat teams. you can also just use more average teams against your opponent, especially if you win game one, if you perceive you're a way stronger player than them. also, if u win in 2 games you have that other team saved for later on in the season, reducing the time you spend preparing later. you will be playing up to three times as much pokemon vs your opponent, but I think most of us would agree that teambuilding and testing is a far greater time concern than playing against your opp. we all will definitely spend more time preparing for our SPL matches, but i anticipate the increase in time to be reasonable, and, maybe most importantly, less stressful because odds of losing to team matchups are dropped and losing to team matchup after preping for mad long is one of the most frustrating things about this game.
i could definitely be super wrong. but, if i'm not i think that bo3 has a potential for making SPL a way better tournament. it'd be cool if we could experiment for a week, maybe not in this SPL cause people would probably get super salty, but sometime and gather what people thought about the issue.
*note* I hated this idea for many years but Isa convinced me that this is the way to go
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I'm not only against BO3 in SPL but also in team tournaments as whole, luck factor isn't that huge because even if you get unlucky in a game your team is still gonna have 9 other players to keep their heads up and try to bring the win. Also i'm a player that doesn't really care about making/picking 3 teams in a week, but seeing from the side that we'll have AT LEAST 100 games instead of 50 per week just makes me think that it's a bad idea overall and it will turn SPL in a boring and less interesting show to both players and spectators.
Also about RBY, i've seen people saying that RBY isn't BO3 because of its high RNG variation/impact in the games, but just because there are like 10~15 viable pokémon in the meta and makes It viable having a BO3 for this gen, and also because there are shorter matches (which is a insanely bad argument when we all know that reflect + rest mons are everywhere and doubs that has 6-20 turns is BO1). If there's nothing that differs RBY to other gens in competitiveness or RNG, i don't think that the low metagame viability is an enough argument to support BO3, i feel like people have been using it as argument just to have less hax involved in their series and its just pointless having less hax variation in a gen that, as i said, doesn't differs in competitiveness/RNG variation than others.
Also about RBY, i've seen people saying that RBY isn't BO3 because of its high RNG variation/impact in the games, but just because there are like 10~15 viable pokémon in the meta and makes It viable having a BO3 for this gen, and also because there are shorter matches (which is a insanely bad argument when we all know that reflect + rest mons are everywhere and doubs that has 6-20 turns is BO1). If there's nothing that differs RBY to other gens in competitiveness or RNG, i don't think that the low metagame viability is an enough argument to support BO3, i feel like people have been using it as argument just to have less hax involved in their series and its just pointless having less hax variation in a gen that, as i said, doesn't differs in competitiveness/RNG variation than others.
Get the precision airstrike ready
What is the reason to not allow trades during the week? The justification for invalidating it is that "it's never happened and won't happen now" but why? The player being traded was removed from the team chat, has accepted the trade, and is ready to play for the new team.
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/smogon-premier-league-week-6.73605/post-2753706
edit: so this isn't 100% shitpost - I disagree with this decision. There's a good reason to make the cut-off for trades at midseason, but if you're already committed to trading a player for midseason credits, why should you have to drag it out a couple weeks? Like Sam said, the teams both agreed, the player agreed, and all it does it put a damper on trading, which is already half dead in-season. All that's gonna happen is Mr. E is gonna idle in a different team chat for 3 weeks before getting a chance to play, which hurts BOTH teams involved (Bigs are down a player already for no strategic benefit; they can't deal those hypothetical credits if they want and they don't have the help/skill of the player. The team they're trading Mr. E to gets screwed because while he can hang out in discord, he can't play which is why I assume they're trading for him).
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destinyunknown
Banned deucer.
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/official-trade-announcement-thread.3475450/http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/smogon-premier-league-week-6.73605/post-2753706
edit: so this isn't 100% shitpost - I disagree with this decision. There's a good reason to make the cut-off for trades at midseason, but if you're already committed to trading a player for midseason credits, why should you have to drag it out a couple weeks? Like Sam said, the teams both agreed, the player agreed, and all it does it put a damper on trading, which is already half dead in-season. All that's gonna happen is Mr. E is gonna idle in a different team chat for 3 weeks before getting a chance to play, which hurts BOTH teams involved (Bigs are down a player already for no strategic benefit; they can't deal those hypothetical credits if they want and they don't have the help/skill of the player. The team they're trading Mr. E to gets screwed because while he can hang out in discord, he can't play which is why I assume they're trading for him).
There were 3 trades during week 4 of SPL4 too (posts #21, #22, #23). The first of those even happened 10 minutes before week 4 was posted.
Free MrE
yeah so the biggest problem is that these rules were basically made up on the spot to deny the trade which is a huge crock of bullshit, regardless of the intention behind them (and no harm no foul to OP, i know this was like 0% you my dude).
thanks to being a former td and spl host (insider knowledge!), i know that we talked about making trades happen only pre- and mid-season in the past, but to my knowledge it was never actually implemented publicly, which is the important bit. to all known laws of mankind, the teams involved in the supposed trade thought they were 100% in the clear to make this trade, but they were supposed to be telepaths and know that they couldn't do that. not allowed.
if you're going to implement or change a rule, fine, do it. if you meant to implement or change a rule but forgot about it and then something involving that rule comes up, you can't just pretend that you did it. let them trade and fix this rule after this season, or else you risk losing the integrity of your rules and then what's the point of your job?
e: changing the fine print without telling a soul doesn't count btw. managers should not have been blindsided by this
thanks to being a former td and spl host (insider knowledge!), i know that we talked about making trades happen only pre- and mid-season in the past, but to my knowledge it was never actually implemented publicly, which is the important bit. to all known laws of mankind, the teams involved in the supposed trade thought they were 100% in the clear to make this trade, but they were supposed to be telepaths and know that they couldn't do that. not allowed.
if you're going to implement or change a rule, fine, do it. if you meant to implement or change a rule but forgot about it and then something involving that rule comes up, you can't just pretend that you did it. let them trade and fix this rule after this season, or else you risk losing the integrity of your rules and then what's the point of your job?
e: changing the fine print without telling a soul doesn't count btw. managers should not have been blindsided by this
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Echoing Zeb's post, except perhaps for the part about OP because idk what went on in terms of the decision making process and I'm not here to flame people or point fingers so much as get justice and the right thing to happen (by no means implying Zeb is, btw).
We've had a lot of discussion on discord and while I do not agree at all, we at least established that the people who made the decision seem to believe that the intent behind the modern rules was meant to not allow trades during weeks 1-4 regardless of the contradiction in the actual writing. This is a terribly weak argument, in my opinion. On top of that, this 'intent' was not explicitly communicated to any managers or the public at all ever besides the rules themselves which still had the contradiction. So to this I ask: what is actually wrong with trades during week 1-4? Nobody has actually answered this and I feel like it's kinda important right about now!
We've had a lot of discussion on discord and while I do not agree at all, we at least established that the people who made the decision seem to believe that the intent behind the modern rules was meant to not allow trades during weeks 1-4 regardless of the contradiction in the actual writing. This is a terribly weak argument, in my opinion. On top of that, this 'intent' was not explicitly communicated to any managers or the public at all ever besides the rules themselves which still had the contradiction. So to this I ask: what is actually wrong with trades during week 1-4? Nobody has actually answered this and I feel like it's kinda important right about now!
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https://pastebin.com/0sm4NGmb Ten times more interesting than the kanto game tbh...
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