Endless Battle Issues

why exactly does it matter that the on-cart ladder doesn't include draw as a feature? i thought we were simulating link battles and theoretically creating a ladder based on millions of link battles that are maintained

if in link battles players can tie if they forfeit at the same time, that is within the realms of accurate simulation to offer draw. our laddering paradigm does not need to match nintendo's laddering paradigm as long as we do not deviate from individual link battles. only allowing offer draw after 100 turns of battling or something is still within the realms of accurate simulation as...they can forfeit at the same time 100 turns later

who cares if it's abusable? if you're caught using this feature in OLT in non-legitimate ways, you get tourney banned or something. if we find out you use it on ladder in illegitimate ways, you get ps! banned or something. nbd

as an aside i disagree w/ sleep clause as implemented but w/e
 
I believe we can't really compare on-cart ladder to the ps one, and neither with regular tournament battles for what regards the lenght of the battle.
We're talkin about two totally different formats, and I believe that Nintendo dropped 6v6 singles from any of its ones long ago with no casuality; if you notice, every battle spot format - including specials - and VGC make you choose some mons from your whole team. While this can be reasoned as adding another layer of prediction skill in choosing the right matchup (whether or not it could be seen as competitive, idt they care SO much and it would be just an opinion anyway), this has surely have to do with fixing battle lenght issues. 6v6 singles can only be done on link battles, where you have the chance to tie.
And yeah, I agree with blarajan, any abuse can be punished.

My only concern about a "tie button" is that in some sticky situations players could decide to not tie even though they're 6-6 at turn 750 in a kind of ABR vs Tele match (ABR asked for draw/rematch at some point in early game tho but tele refused, and then the opposite). This could be not an issue as long as players are fine, you might say, but in the case this would not be ok then TDs should have some power to force the tie, given accurate and unique conditions.
 
Regardless of whether or not we create a forced draw based on "x amount of turns with no move clicked", there seem to be no drawbacks to a request draw button.

If it's possible on link or wifi battles or whatever to tie in some way then this shouldn't be an unappealing option for the sim. Even if there is no precedent, there is still the ability to outright forfeit so there shouldn't be any real harm in allowing a mere request to draw. If you fear abuse of a draw request, I recommend having like a 100 turn minimum and maybe every 100 thereafter. Those numbers don't have to be exact but you get what I'm saying. If I'm missing some downside of this feature then please let me know.

As far as forced draws go, this gets tricky. It's very distasteful to break any sort of game mechanics, so it really just becomes a question of whether or not we decide it's worth it to do so. As far as I know there's no link/wifi precedent for such a thing so we would have to create our own new thing. I think the most feasible is a turn cap that is exceedingly high (think 1000+), so we don't need to create some sort of super arbitrary mechanism such as "game draws when neither player clicks a move in 75 turns". A raw turn cap is favorable because it doesn't unnaturally force players to use PP "before the 75th turn". Rather, with a raw turn cap, players can still play at their own natural pacing, just within a very distant cap that doesn't affect shorter games.

tl;dr: no apparent downsides to an abuse-free request draw button; forced draw should be a raw turn cap (1000+)
 
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Regardless of whether or not we create a forced draw based on "x amount of turns with no move clicked", there seem to be no drawbacks to a request draw button.

If it's possible on link or wifi battles or whatever to tie in some way then this shouldn't be an unappealing option for the sim. Even if there is no precedent, there is still the ability to outright forfeit so there shouldn't be any real harm in allowing a mere request to draw. If you fear abuse of a draw request, I recommend having like a 100 turn minimum and maybe every 100 thereafter. Those numbers don't have to be exact but you get what I'm saying. If I'm missing some downside of this feature then please let me know.

As far as forced draws go, this gets tricky. It's very distasteful to break any sort of game mechanics, so it really just becomes a question of whether or not we decide it's worth it to do so. As far as I know there's no link/wifi precedent for such a thing so we would have to create our own new thing. I think the most feasible is a turn cap that is exceedingly high (think 1000+), so we don't need to create some sort of super arbitrary mechanism such as "game draws when neither player clicks a move in 75 turns". A raw turn cap is favorable because it doesn't unnaturally force players to use PP "before the 75th turn". Rather, with a raw turn cap, players can still play at their own natural pacing, just within a very distant cap that doesn't affect shorter games.

tl;dr: no apparent downsides to an abuse-free request draw button; forced draw should be a raw turn cap (1000+)
While I agree to you, the only downside to this abuse-free request draw button, as far as I've been told, is that you "game the system" (talking of ladder.. obviously, in tournaments there's no sense in abusing of this function, as it would just make you waste time, as far as ties are not contemplated).
The main and positive function of this button is clearly to avoid very long battles, however people can just find an opponent they don't want to play against, for some reasons (be it a friend or whatever), so they could draw the game in order to not lose points each other.
OLT is coming and this abuse can theoretically threaten ladder cycles, as some players at the top can decide to not face each other, at the expense of some other player right below them (like the 7th and the 8th at the expense of the 9th where there's a top 8); there might be other situations that don't come to my mind right now, but this is a reason for which I can clearly see the argument about request draw abuse.

My 2 cents: make this 100% real for non-ladder tournaments (= smogtours); these can have this function as well, but it has to be monitored to prevent a situation like the one I've described above; this should be doable since it's pretty similar to the one already happened where players forfeit their matches in favor of friends (surely less dangerous than this one), although it could be pretty annoying for who have to check games.
 
While I agree to you, the only downside to this abuse-free request draw button, as far as I've been told, is that you "game the system" (talking of ladder.. obviously, in tournaments there's no sense in abusing of this function, as it would just make you waste time, as far as ties are not contemplated).
The main and positive function of this button is clearly to avoid very long battles, however people can just find an opponent they don't want to play against, for some reasons (be it a friend or whatever), so they could draw the game in order to not lose points each other.
OLT is coming and this abuse can theoretically threaten ladder cycles, as some players at the top can decide to not face each other, at the expense of some other player right below them (like the 7th and the 8th at the expense of the 9th where there's a top 8); there might be other situations that don't come to my mind right now, but this is a reason for which I can clearly see the argument about request draw abuse.

My 2 cents: make this 100% real for non-ladder tournaments (= smogtours); these can have this function as well, but it has to be monitored to prevent a situation like the one I've described above; this should be doable since it's pretty similar to the one already happened where players forfeit their matches in favor of friends (surely less dangerous than this one), although it could be pretty annoying for who have to check games.
The reason why I think it's still okay for ladder is that a turn minimum prevents people from immediately requesting draws vs their friends. Sure people can stall it out and then draw their friend, but it'll at least take them x turns and/or y minutes before being able to do so. Most people would probably rather play a game than sit there for 20 minutes repeatedly switching. I also don't think its massively problematic if a few people decide to draw after waiting some amount of turns/time, as it is infrequent and also not too damaging when it does occur.
 
so they could draw the game in order to not lose points each other
The way elo works, your ratings would still change. Take, for example, a player with 1000 rating playing to a draw against a 1700 opponent. This should mean they are probably evenly matched, prompting the 1000 elo player's rating to go up by a fair amount and the 1700 elo player's rating to drop by a lot.

Edit: This effect will of course be weaker than if the 1700 player had lost to their 1000 elo opponent
 

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