So after #HoopaCup started, I begun to think about how we could keep this going with a chance for players to get better and everyone being able to take part in tournament, even with little to no experience in battling?
Then I remembered my time with our little Gym Leader -system while I still was at Jr. High School and started scribbling down notes and options on how to best turn this into semi-tournament style thing, with the emphasis on just having fun battling, getting better and trying out new things with Pokémon sets instead of glamorous prices, while still rewarding people with something fun. (Like pictures of badges and stuff you can put in your twitter profile maybe, more about this later!)
So, first we need something to build on, so I tell you guys our really old and bad way of handling things and then go through things I'd like to change with it and in the end go through how I would like to handle things with system like this!
Progression:
First there is a tournament of X amount of people who want to take part in the activity.
Tournament matches are best of 1 matches, battled with 3 Pokémon with VGC -rules.
After the tournament matches, the "Champion", will literally become that. I'll talk about roles and positions little bit later on, but just keep that in mind, ok?
Four runners up become the Elite 4 and depending on how many are left after that Gym leaders are picked from the remaining people, to max of 6 persons.
The people that are left and everyone that want to join after the first tournament can now challange first gym leaders in any order they want to and try to collect badges. After they've collected all the badges from the Gym Leaders they proceed to battling Elite 4 and after E4 they end up battling the champion of the first tournament.
After they've beaten the champion, they themselves become a champion and the previous champion can challange a place in the lineup with Gym Leaders and E4, starting from the first gym leader and using their rules UNTIL the previous champion loses, the last person he or she beat is replaced by him or her and the previous spot holder returns to the pool of "Trainers".
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| A really convoluted explanation of how it used to work in picture form |
Battling rules:
Against Gym Leaders. Best of 3 matches, using 3 Pokémon, with TRAINER having 3 possible substitutions.
Against E4: Best of 3 matches, using 6 Pokémon, with BOTH parties having 2 possible substitutions
Against Champion: Best of 5 match, using 6 Pokémon, no substitutions with EITHER party.
Gym leaders need to have a monotype team. They can use different Pokémon against different challangers, keeping their type, but can't make substitutions while battling.
E4 members need to have a monotype OR themed team. They can use different Pokémon against different challangers, keeping their type or theme and they can substitute 2 Pokémon out of the original party IN BETWEEN the matches.
Champion can have a monotype, themed, or totally free team but they can't use anything but that team against every challanger. He/She can't change their team between challangers and he/she can't use any substitutions, but neither can the challangers. This is a match that tests the strenght of the challangers ingenuity against the team that won the original tournament and see if it can be beaten.
So, there you have the OLD system which has its flaws. For example, it is really exhausting to keep track on everyones postition in the hierarchy. (Trainers, Gym Leaders, E4 members and Champions were changing very often and mistakes were made really often!) Also if anyone got bored it was really hard to find a replacement for him/her and that caused tons of delays.
The most problematic thing, especially nowadays I think, would be the VGC-rules, which may cause confusion and/or rage on people who have picked up Smogon tiers up and learned to play via them.
The matches also can drag on for a while, especially with the champion. BO5's can take a while which is exhausting and it is hard to arrange matches over timezones.
How would I change this to suit the possible tournament format?
- I would ditch the long winded system, especially on thing that's arranged over Internet it would be an insane pain in the butt to keep track on things, people may get bored and timezones may cause problems.
To fix this I would just make this a two round tournament. First round would be just like the old system with selecting the champion, e4 members and gym leaders. SECOND round would just be people challanging them.
This allows the people already winning the first tournament know how strong they are and to "dropouts" a chance to check how they would change their tactics against monotype teams and more strict rulings. - I would switch the ruling system to Smogon mixed tier system with restrictions on too many OU -mons and some of the mons that were moved to Ubers from OU.
Even though I am not a fan of Smogon tierings, the system is more comfortable to most of the people and there are tons of resources around so it'll lower the entry reguirements. - I would keep the second round closed from anyone that already wasn't on the first round. That would reduce the amount of people on tournament and make matches happen faster. It also would help GL/E4/C people to not have too much pressure from having to deal with too many participants.
- I would drop out a challanger out the moment he/she loses on the second round. This also is in favor of time and sanity of the participants.
- I would also have second round participants to battle Gym Leaders / E4 members in order from "worst" to "best". (with the lack of the better words. In order they placed in the first round.) This places participants to a gauntlet-style brackets, that still allows an easy tracking on how they are progressing.
- I would change the GL matches to BO1's and E3 & Champion matches to BO3's with 3, 3, 2 substitutes and 3v3 matches with GL's and 6v6's with E4/Champion.
This lowers the time matches take, brackets move on faster and it allows more freedom to Gym Leaders specifically. Being able to substitute pretty much all of their Pokémon helps a lot and makes both them, and their opponent think outside of the box and try different strategies. - I would change the type restriction to THEME restriction, with monotype still being an option as a theme.
This is just for an intrest of having diverse and interesting teams instead of possibly easily counterable monotypes. - I would ban out move based and gimmicky themes and would encourage Gym Leaders/E4 Members/Champions to go to themes based on Pokémon appearances and their properties instead.
This is just to make it so that participants don't have to battle against dumb shit like F.E.A.R. teams or just super long Baton Pass chains that they may not be able to prepare for and so that we would get actual battles. Now, this doesn't mean that gimmicky and silly strats are banned, just limited. - I would allow for challanger to switch team between BRACKET battles instead of going through the whole gauntlet with same team. But when reaching E4, I would lock their team to keep them fair and add challange for both, the participant and E4 members & Champion.
- If one R2 Challanger would get to R1 Champion and would beat him/her therefore he/she would be the "winner" of the whole tournament.
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| The gauntlet and how it proceeds after the first tournament round |
The whole point of this Tournament is that it can be easily replicated and it can be made a semi-regulard (monthly? once every two months?) thing because of the fairly simple two-round system, while forcing participants to make timely decisions and attune themselves to changing conditions.
This also allows participants to get used to competitive battling while things not being too serious and not having too much in line.
So in nutshell the tournament will be:
- 1 round of BO1 matches with modified Smogon mixed tier rules, which will be followed with gauntlet against the 11 (13, if 8 gym leaders) best performed participants, who have set rules given to them to follow and try to use their imagination to build a team within those rules to beat teams of anyone from round one who may want to try and win the whole tournament.
- Some rules will be set for challangers too for second round. Most notably having to fight with 3 Pokémon against Gym leaders 3 Pokémon and so on.
- Gym Leaders and Elite 4 members must use a team that shares a team, be it monotype, all dogs, all green pokémon etc, while Champion can use his or her Round 1 team if he/she wants to.
- Prizes will be shinies, battle ready Pokémon or such. Also getting experience and learning about Smogon style battling and having fun!
Hopefully you understood what I am seeking with this wall of text and tell me if you have some ideas on how to make this better or what to change or just general feedback!
Thanks for reading!
Kim
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