ASB Gym League Activity Discussion

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Kaxtar

Alright, Gym activity sucks, and me and a bunch of other people want to try and fix this. Here is a discussion thread to get back to the community to see how you guys want to fix this problem.

A few ideas to start discussion:

My idea: Rewards system. For different badges (or number of badges), you get rewards. My current idea is for every odd badge you win (1, 3, 5, etc.) you get 5 CC extra as a prize. For the even badges, you get awesome prizes and rewards. Currently, I'm thinking 2 Badges is 20 UC, 4 Badges could be a RP item (maybe a raid glyph or a masterball?). 6 could be custom battle-items or CC available to buy items, or maybe just more UC. 8 would be a Legendary Pokemon (maybe Mewtwo?) as a reward, because it lines up with the video game cannon. Bottom line for this idea, tough battles should yield awesome prizes.

Another plan, give non-tangible prizes. One idea was to set up a Hall of Fame for winners, or maybe giving custom sprites for people to use in their profiles (Smogon and ASB Reg Tower). Other rewards along this line include Voice or HOPS on #Capasb. Your ideas and suggestions are appreciated here.

Finally, all other options are on the table, just speak up. also state whether you think these rewards are feasible, could work, and if they would encourage you to challenge the Gym League more often.
 
I like most of these proposals, I just have a few issues,

First of all, I am against the giving away of Mewteo. I know that was an example but I think if you're going to give away legends, only the minor ones (ie Regis, birds, dogs, musketeers)

Second, what do you mean by "custom battle items" I am very intrigued by it, but I need some more clarification

Also just a suggestion, maybe give away the type boosting item for whatever gym you beat for every badge. For example if I win against the flying gym as my first gym, I should get a Sharp Beak and 5CC (IMO)

So I am in favour of adding all of these as incentive for gyms (other than Mewtwo xD) and hope to get these implemented!
 
First of all, I'd like to note that I'm one of the people who actually coveted Gym badges in the first place, so my point of view may be skewed. But I digress.

As I noted on IRC, I oppose the reward system, mainly for a reason. All the rewards proposed (bar perhaps the legendary, as long as it can be obtained only this way) are temporary in their nature - or they are rewards people can obtain in other ways as well. Take a Master Ball for example. As awesome as it is, what happens after you use it? Cool, you have your Regigigas/Heatran/whatever. So does that other TLR hardcore that has no badges at all. What does remain to differentiate you from him? The badges alone? But if it were the badges that you wanted, you wouldn't have needed the Master Ball in the first place to undergo the whole challenge.

Rewards like those are more fitting for something like a Tournament. Heck, the ongoing tournament has a Master Ball as a reward. That's totally cool. But the Gym League should be something more than a Tournament. I said should because, atm, Tournaments got more traffic and visibility than Gyms, by a long way.

What we need, in my opinion, is a reward (tangible or otherwise) that fits the following criteria:
1) Only those who undertake the Gym League challenge can obtain it. So, you see someone has that reward, and it's immediately apparent what he did to get it.
2) It must be permanent. Even after years, it should be possible to see who defeated the Gym League.

As far as the actual reward goes, I still would like to see further discussion before proposing one of my own. I mostly wanted to focus on what kind of reward (or, better said, incentive) are we looking for.

EDIT: To be honest, after speaking on IRC further, I'm going to be convinced Mewtwo is a nice choice as a final reward. He has the flavor for it (in RB, only the champion could enter his lair after all), and let's face it - how likely it is that a possible Mewtwo's TLR could be harder than going through the whole Gym League?
 
I think the big problem at the moment is that there is a limited number of trainers who have 3 well built Pokemon with a type advantage and lots of experience to beat a gym. If the difficulty was toned down to the point where more trainers could realistically hope to win, it might be easier. I'm not saying make all gyms easy, but possibly scale the difficulty.

For example, in the first gym the leader would have to use the ASB arena PM three Pokemon. With each successive badge, the gym leader could have more Pokemon and use a more "broken" arena. I think this would encourage more challenges if players could realistically get a tangible award.

Obviously, the later gyms and Elite Four would need to be scaled up to accommodate for the decrease in difficulty, but I feel that having an easier introduction into the league and a lower threshold for entry would encourage more participation, as there are simply too few people capable of earning badges at the moment.
 
I think that as an alternative to Red's proposal, we could have the users themselves decide in which order to challenge the gyms. What I mean by this is that the Gym Leader uses Pokemon at a certain level based on the number of badges the challenger has. So you can decide to challenge Bug or Rock or Ground or Water first, and the relative difficulty of the Pokemon goes up as you win more badges.

Of course, this isn't all about the Pokemon. That's why I think that having two teams of Pokemon, one "weak" and one "strong" for each Leader would be good. The rest could be adjustments in the battle itself, such as going from B3P3 for the Leader to B4P3, like Red suggested.

While there's no real in-game precedence for this, I don't think any of the Gym Leaders like being placed as the first Gym because they're apparently the worst of the Leaders.
 
Guys, not all gyms are 3v3 Singles, js, so use BXPY instead. /rant

Anyways, with this Rewards System, why not just give out a Master Ball to those who get x Badges? I mean, you can catch anything with a Master Ball (in TLR), & you get to choose the Legend you want to catch with it, or even hoard onto it as a memento of your victories. Not everyone likes Mew/Mewtwo, & I seriously doubt DK would allow something like Mewtwo to be dished out "for free" after winning so many badges. Master Ball after so many badges also fits with ingame precedence in Gen II & Gen V, so while I would be all for a Master Ball, I am strongly against giving out legends. Item rewards, I do not have much of an opinion though, & I may contemplate on it some time in the future, though.

If we are going to suggest we should award a badge or an avatar buff or something else forum related for defeating the Gym League (Bar Hall of Fame), all I have to say is good luck convincing administration to allow it; given CAP ASB's reputation across the rest of Smogon is not that great, I would be incredibly surprised if they even allowed something like this.

As far as scaling the difficulty of Gyms, given the minimum size of a match is 3v3 Singles/4v4 Doubles, & the maximum size of a match is 6v6 Singles/6v6 Doubles, why not just make gyms B6PX vs. BXPX instead of B8PX vs. BXPX? Not only is it an easy fix, but it reduces the options a Gym Leader can bring to a match, meaning Gym Leaders can not really cover everything & whatnot. Also, it helps those who are aiming to become a Gym Leader, since you only have to raise a minimum of 6 Pokemon to be really viable, not 8.

My five cents worth. Now I sit & wait until someone goes & tries to shoot down my opinion...

Also, this is coming from someone who is a Gym Leader, has won a Gym Badge & has hops on the irc channel, but w/e...
 
Rediamond said:
I think the big problem at the moment is that there is a limited number of trainers who have 3 well built Pokemon with a type advantage and lots of experience to beat a gym.
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This is pretty much the bottom line imo. I'm not going to challenge a gym until I think I stand a realistic chance of coming out on top. I'm building up what I think are some good counterteams for a couple of gyms at the moment but between also building up my own potential gym mons and RL its slow going.
 
Its_A_Random said:
Anyways, with this Rewards System, why not just give out a Master Ball to those who get x Badges? I mean, you can catch anything with a Master Ball (in TLR), & you get to choose the Legend you want to catch with it, or even hoard onto it as a memento of your victories. Not everyone likes Mew/Mewtwo, & I seriously doubt DK would allow something like Mewtwo to be dished out "for free" after winning so many badges. Master Ball after so many badges also fits with ingame precedence in Gen II & Gen V, so while I would be all for a Master Ball, I am strongly against giving out legends. Item rewards, I do not have much of an opinion though, & I may contemplate on it some time in the future, though.
Click to expand...

As I said before, a Master Ball isn't enough of a reward. It can be a good reward for someone who wins a tournament. But the Gym League is infinitely stronger and harder to defeat. You'll need a better reward for it.
 
I'm not sure if this applies to anybody else (although it probably does) but the reasons I'm not challenging the gyms stems from a couple factors, but interest isn't one of them.

1. Exclusive RPs. Granted, this is only TLR right now, but TLR is very popular (and the fact that my ref is about as fast as a Shuckle isn't helping). People want those legendaries, and they're much easier to access than training a team for a gym (see my below paragraph). My suggestion is that we make Gyms ignore exclusive RP's. I see no downsides to letting people use all their Pokemon in Gyms, as it would make it more convenient to challenge them and thus most likely up the number of challenges.

2. Nobody has the teams to challenge more than one or two Gyms successfully. Say, for example, you want the Electric badge. This requires to to train a minimum of three Ground-types until they are strong enough to take down a leader's main Pokemon (so up to around 45 moves would be a good benchmark). Congrats, after investing all that time into training your Pokemon for the battle you now have the Electric badge! Wait, you want the Water badge now? Well, time to go back to the drawing board and start training your Electric- and Grass-types! The fact of the matter is, nobody has a team that has enough powerful Pokemon spread over enough types to take down more than 2 gyms at max. There is nothing that can really be down about this; it's more a characteristic of our ASB system as a whole.
 
I agree with Zarator that the reward should be something unique to the Gym Lague instead of (or maybe even as well as) less distinctive and permanent rewards.
Mewtwo or maybe a choice from a few powerful but unobtainable legends would be suiting or if Deck doesn't like "something like Mewtwo to be dished out "for free" after winning so many badges" it could instead unlock a special TLR/s for that legend/s, which only available for League Winners. Maybe a Master Ball to help them out? Idk.
But Gyms are damn hard; they can take ages to just to prepare, and they battle itself takes place against one of ASB's Finest under circumstances rigged to favour him. As they are I think ASB could possibly cease to exist before all badges are claimed by one player, so if someone does they damn well better have something special which tells everyone "I am they very best, like no one ever was."
IAR said:
why not just make gyms B6PX vs. BXPX instead of B8PX vs. BXPX?
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I support this. It lessens the difficulty but without requiring any overhauls or complications and will hopefully increase Gym Activity as a result; I think many people are reluctant to challenge Gyms because they are goddamn scary.
edit: Although I think B(X+2)PX vs. BXPX is more logical.

Didn't stop me though, I personally relish the chance to take up a fourth battle even if ill fated. :3
Speaking of which its been a while since I last challenged...
Smash said:
1. Exclusive RPs. etc
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Yeah, it'd be nice if we didn't have to decide between using certain mons in a TLR or a Gym Match, though honestly I think this is a fault of TLR itself. Because seriously, fuck RP exclusivity.
 
Jesseus, we've discussed lowering the amount of Pokemon the GL gets to bring in the past but it never really got out there as a legitimate option. Does it make Gyms a fair bit easier? Yes. Does it make them anything approaching accessible to anybody outside the GLs, soon-to-be-GLs, and a select few other users? Not a chance in hell. As you said, even if you knew exactly what the GL was going to bring, you still need to face off against some of ASB's best battling talent, in arenas that favor them, armed with teams that quite often shoot up to 50+ average move counts. And even if you do manage to raise however many powerful Pokemon so you go in with 50+ average moves, battle your heart out, and finally win the badge, guess what? You need to go through the whole process again. And again. And again.
 
Quick post, typing on phones sucks.

I think you guys are horribly overstating the difficulty, or more precisely the necessary preparations it takes, to beat a GL. Why do you need pokemon that have a distinct type advantage? Whats wrong with just bringing three generally strong Pokemon (of which there are a ton of in ASB, like Cychlom, Gengar, Lucario, Dragoniye, etc.) so the matchup becomes much more neutral and down to player skill? Again, the GL does have the arena and 8-Pokemon bench, but those are necessary to prevent an auto-loss against fully built counterteams. What if we lowered the bench GLs have (8->6 makes a pretty big difference in type coverage for most GLs), implemented a rewards system (part ASB tangible like UC, part Hall of Fame) and toned down the arenas just a touch (for some)? Would that be enough to revive the Gym League?
 
Smash I know, I'm not in any way saying we should just change to B6PX vs. BXPX and call it a day, the Gyms are undoubtedly quite powerful and more may be required to fix the system. But I think this is a step in the right direction, and something that should be done.

And that said, its not like Gyms are totally unwinnable. You say " for example, you want the Electric badge. This requires to to train a minimum of three Ground-types until they are strong enough to take down a leader's main Pokemon (so up to around 45 moves would be a good benchmark)." But honestly, I'm not sure bringing mons with STAB SE/Resistance to the gym type is necessary or even wise. A player should have at least a fair selection of strong Pokemon before they are worthy of a badge, and it should be possible to win by exhanging strong neutral stabs or weaker SE attacks just like any other battle.
But given 3v3 is such a common format I think anything above B6PX vs. BXPX pushes things a little too far in favour of the leader.
Although I think B(X+2)PX vs. BXPX is more logical.
 
Kaxtar said:
Quick post, typing on phones sucks.

I think you guys are horribly overstating the difficulty, or more precisely the necessary preparations it takes, to beat a GL. Why do you need pokemon that have a distinct type advantage? Whats wrong with just bringing three generally strong Pokemon (of which there are a ton of in ASB, like Cychlom, Gengar, Lucario, Dragoniye, etc.) so the matchup becomes much more neutral and down to player skill? Again, the GL does have the arena and 8-Pokemon bench, but those are necessary to prevent an auto-loss against fully built counterteams. What if we lowered the bench GLs have (8->6 makes a pretty big difference in type coverage for most GLs), implemented a rewards system (part ASB tangible like UC, part Hall of Fame) and toned down the arenas just a touch (for some)? Would that be enough to revive the Gym League?
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I would be 100% OK with this.

I don't know if I like the idea of BXPX changing depending on how many badges you have, it seems unnecessarily complex.

If you guys want to talk prizes, go for it. I think they should be meaningful (and like zarator wants, intangible and/or exclusive), UC is I suppose acceptable for earlier prizes, but I do think larger rewards should be "better." I'm OK with the idea of Mewtwo or something similar -- anyone who actually ends up getting it is clearly good enough that having such a powerful Pokemon really won't be that much of a power increase to them.
 
I'm surprised none touched on this aspect, but...

If we are to revise Gym system in a way that makes it more accessible, then we need to revise the way Gym Leaders are selected/discarded. I'm sure a lot of them made their gym impossibly hard just because they're seriously afraid of falling below the threshold that allows them to stay as Gym Leaders.

Effectively, the very idea of 50% win ratio over 5 battles is skewed. A comparison with Smogon Frontier clearly shows my point. In SF, the Brains face trainers like Philip, yes, but also very weak trainers - without any restriction on who they can or can't fight. So, in the end, attaining a 50% win ratio is extremely easy, especially because the cost for preparing for a Frontier Brain are laughable.

But what about ASB? Players know a battle with a GL is a once-in-two months opportunity, more or less. So, they will prepare seriously before challenging one, until they feel they stand a good chance at winning. The very fact the system prevents weaker challengers from competing, while required for a lot of reasons, actually play against Gym Leaders trying to keep their ratings.

To make an example: let's suppose Bloo is chosen as a Frontier Brain. In order to keep his place, he must attain a 50% win ratio over 5 battles. Just like ASB. Then, his opponents are... Philip7086, Taylor, etc. Let's say 5 really strong trainers that have a good chance at beating Bloo. If Bloo loses 3 out of those 5 matches... is it really fair to remove him from his position? As smashlloyd and Jesseus said, Gym leaders are our finest trainers. But have you looked at the list of the challengers? Half of them were Gym Leaders or soon-to-be themselves!

tl;dr: The system is too cruel with challengers, because Gyms are impossibly hard. And it is too cruel to GLs, because the requirements to keep their place are skewed and unjustifiably harsh. Which in turn spurs them to make their Gym even more unaccessible. But this won't improve their W/L ratio. It will just scare more challengers and leave few of them - who're still equipped well enough to eventually break the GL's rating. This entire vicious cycle must be broken somehow.
 
kaxtar are you seriously saying that a "neutral" matchup is fair because i'm about to piss myself laughing.

perhaps you forgot the concept of dual types, idk. But i can tell you right off the bat that you are vastly underestimating gyms. I'm screwed vs cmfp's Steel gym - and I brought a Gliscor, a Colossoil, and a Pyroak. B8P3 means that while in concept the challenger can counterteam the gym leader, in practice it's the gym leader counterteaming the challenger. Add onto this the advantages provided by home turf and winning with any team without superior knowledge and roids on your mons is nigh on impossible.
 
Pwnemon, you are misunderstanding Kaxtar. What he meant to say is that, sometimes, a strong Pokemon with neutral matchup with the Gym can yield surprising results, even moreso than supposedly advantaged types. For example, when I battled with Kaxtar, a strong player of my team was Haxorus. Despite not having any real type advantage vs Kaxtar's Fighting-type, his sheer power put a lot of immediate pressure on his front-line and gave me enough time to cripple his most troublesome sweepers.
 
Adding onto what zarator said about the cost of a gym battle, very few people actually will challenge a gym because there are very few users that actually have the potential to win a gym battle. I think this is very understated. To support this, I'm going to break all active users in ASB up into 3 groups:

Group A-The elite. This is the group that can challenge, and sometimes defeat, gyms. This group is almost entirely composed of GLs, soon-to-be-GLs, and users that could be GLs but aren't for some reason or another. This makes up around 20% of users in ASB.

Group B-The middle class. This group would like to challenge gyms, but most users here are smart enough to know that they don't really stand too much of a chance. This group is composed of users that have been in ASB for a while, but haven't done anything extraordinary. This probably makes up about 40% of active users in ASB.

Group C-Beginning users. Even if this group wanted to challenge gyms, the gym committee would ban them from challenging regardless. The users in this group are generally either new to ASB or just stupid. This also makes up about 40% of the active users in ASB.

So only about 20% of the users in ASB will challenge gyms. Note my use of the word challenge instead of defeat-I'm fine with only the top fifth or so of ASBers being able to get badges. But many more users could conceivably challenge gyms if the cost of preparing and making a gym challenge wasn't so high. If we want to increase the amount of activity in the gym league, we need to make gyms more accessible to more challengers.
 
I agree with Zarator.

Conditions are too brutal for challengers. The 8x3 system coupled with some broken gyms we have here make it extremely hard to get one badge. Let alone 12.

I mean, even though all challengers thus far were terrific players and brought good trained pokemon with type advantage, they lost. The only four that won (IAR vs Dogfish, Zarator vs Kaxtar, Rediamond vs Kaxtar and Dogfish vs Jasnumbers) were gymleaders (or extremely good gym candidates) whose types have great advantage against the gym's type. And even them had problems defeating the leaders.

Some may think that that is the intention, but I wonder: what would happen if the players that won thus far challenged neutral gyms? Would Rediamond or Zarator (for example) defeat, say, Engineer Pikachu the same way they did with Kaxtar? Even though they are terrific players with terrific pokemon, my guess would be no (or they will need to outsmart their opponent a lot), simply because they will start the battle with an humongous disadvantage to overcome, thanks to arena and other conditions.

If you want to defeat a gym (aside from being a great player of course) you need to raise 3/4 pokemon with a great type advantage to almost completeness. 3/4 pokemon per gym. That is a lot of pokemon and that alone takes a shitload of time to accomplish. Add the time you'll need to have the battles and we are looking at at least one year (I may be exaggerating, but that is my guess) to have a chance at reaching elite four, assuming you don't lose much (highly unlikely).

What I am trying to say is: Reaching Elite four is an extremely hard, almost impossible and time consuming task. It is simply not worth it. It is much worser than the Frontier, since you'll also need to raise your team from zero (almost one team per gym) AND play one-month-long battles.


To go beyond whining, my suggestion is: trust your leaders more. The fact that they got the position means that they should be great battlers with great pokemon, so that should be enough to create a good-enough challenge. Also, every type has tons of subtypes that can be used to atone the disadvantage (and if you need 8x3 to make it easier to do so, then I see no problem). There is no need for the broken arenas to give the leaders even more advantage. If you want to give a twist to the battle, just make it like Athenodoros and Korski did: create an arena that changes the flow of the battle without giving a big advantage only to the gym leader (give it to both or to none). In other words, to sum it up: Keep it 8x3 (or x4), but remove the broken arenas that only (greatly) benefit the leader (not that they need it).


Also, considering what Zarator said about the 50% win-rate, I would to add something to my suggestion. Say that a gym leader didn't reach 3 wins in 5 battles and got kicked. Now we have a vacant spot that will be filled with the runner up of the selection process. So, unless a better player comes out of the blue (or the selection process is screwed), the future gym leader is, in theory, worse than the previous one. And that doesn't make any sense, in my opinion.

My second suggestion is to make it possible for regular players to challenge the gym leader for their gyms and not for badges in normal battles. That way a late player that wasn't around when the selections were hold also has a chance of being a gym leader. Surely only challengers deem ready (and with 5 FE pokemon of said type) would be given the opportunity to become gym leaders, but that way we assure that the gym leader is the best around (which will also increase the difficulty of gym battles without broken arenas).

just my 2 cents.
 
Few notes on a variety of topics:

W/L Ratio: I agree with all of these comments. That was a starting point from a hell of a while ago, and I agree that it should be revamped, or entirely removed. It places too much pressure on GLs, hurts the challengers overall, and will only end up with a worse batch of GLs over time.

Arenas: I think these are actually at roughly the correct power level imo, aside from a few (Athen's needs to get modified because of the type restrictions placed on the challenger, Korski's was more complicated than difficult, though he is inactive atm so w/e). However, if we want to go a step further, we could write up a list of codifications that all arenas must adhere to to ensure that no GL creates an arena that never gets tackled by the Gym Committee or the community. I think this would satisfy you guys while giving challengers a (slightly) more standardized ruleset to help them prepare teams and plan for major battles. For starters, I think this would be fair, with different arena elements favoring GLs being given a "point value," and letting GLs choose any elements they wish that sum up under a given allotment:

-Altered weather conditions, restrictions on weather conditions, new weather (C$FP's shrapnel, for example) conditions, or starting weather conditions (2 Points)
-Permanent, unchangeable weather (3 Points)
-BP reduction on moves SE (or specified but limited move class, such as Sonic moves and Seismic moves) against the GL's type (1 (base) Point plus 1 for each BAP point reduction, maximum of 3 BAP reduction, can only be used on one type)
-Unique items or unique intractable arena elements (not water/grass/fire/snow/rocks, but things such as vats of acid and nuclear weapons that explode after taking a certain amount of damage) useable on in the gym (1 Point)
-Restriction on specific moves which are not dependent on the environment (1/2 Point per move, liable to be overridden by Gym Committee, maximum of 8 moves outright restricted)
-Restrictions on moves that require natural elements (Surf, Rock Slide, Grass Knot) (1 Point)
-Highly unusual battle conditions (Simultaneous singles, Atheno's current Arena, Korski's arena) (2 Points)
-Boost to BAP of GL's type (1 Point per BAP boost, maximum of 3)
-Slight boosts or reductions to non-attacking moves or status effects (+10% burn chance, -5% Accuracy on Dark type moves, Light Screen lasts an extra 2 actions, Dig gets lowered priority, Leech Seed recovery doubles, Reflect always broken at the end of a round) (1 Point per boost, maximum of 3 boosts)
-Automatic Status changes (Pokemon begin Leech Seed'ed, Magnet rise always in effect, Pokemon automatically can use Charge) (2 Points per modification)
-Slight modifications to Game and mechanics (changing Nature Power types, Tri Attack changes to 10% Freeze, 5% Burn, 5% Paralysis) (1/2 Point per modification, up to 4 mechanics modifications allowed)

And a grand total of 5 (five), 6 (six) or 7 (seven) points allotted to the GL's for the construction of their arenas. This should (hopefully) standardize arenas and keep them a bit more simplistic (maybe, but not the focus of the point system). I want some feedback to see if you guys would want a system like this (will be modified and expanded) and how many points would be a good benchmark.

Challenger's fright: Just take a chance and fight the GL, please! Worst comes to worst, you lose, can't the challenge the Gym League for another week, and you get a few extra counters for your Pokemon. There is not reason not to do it, none! Hopefully, a reward system can change the current mindset of potential challengers to "I'm scared about my W/L ratio" to "Why the hell not do, worst is counters from an extra battle, best scenario is an awesome prize!"

Finally, please keep discussing the other topics of the thread, namely prizes (which ones and y/n), the GL's bench size, what else could increase Gym activity, and the contents of this post. Thanks for your opinions, please keep them coming!
 
i think that special arenas could be abolished altogether. i mean seriously, most of them are absolutely asinine, and are made to give the gl benefits when they already will usually have a better type matchup thanks to the b8p3 build. As is, i'm looking at which gyms to challenge based not on which types i hit for SE on most, or i would be challenging df, but rather which arena is the least stupid. i guarantee if you make gym matches in asb arena, most GLs will still win (except vs the other as smash said "elite players") and that the Average Joes will actually be able to get a badge every once in a while instead of only challenging to circumvent the "3 ongoing battles" rule. Try it, see how it works.
 
Kaxtar opinions on allowing exclusive RP Pokemon to be used in gyms? That's one of the major reasons gym challenging is lower than it could be; TLR is simply more appealing than a gym challenge in the short term and has a much higher chance of actually getting you something. I know for one I would go make a gym challenge right now (and probably would have over a month ago) if I could get my Aggron and Bronzong out of my TLR.
 
Gyms have no exclusivity issue, that is only the TLR atm iirc. Take it up with Deck, I have no power over TLR, please stop asking (though I do support all Pokemon being free in ASB, but it helps keep TLR numbers down and Deck is Deck). Please stop discussing this issue in this thread, and get back on topic.
 
I do kind of like Kaxtar's suggestion of a points system for gym arenas. However, I'm wondering how certain special aspects of a gym would work. I realize the list will be expanded, but I worry we may stifle creativity if we're not careful.

For instance, my proposed arena is rather...atypical to say the least. The best I can come up as far as point values for it is thus.

Constant Gravity (2/3 Points)
Type resistant berries for all (?)
Rotation battle rules (1 Point, it is atypical, but not to the extent that Atheno's is)
Type advantage multipliers (Most likely 3 Points...although given the chart above I might have just busted the bank)
Item's cannot be taken away (2 Points)

Eh, Gravity'd probably get the axe, but I think you can figure out what I mean. A unique arena like this might simply get axed because it doesn't go into the bounds of the (likely) point system. The only way to fix that would be to make a small committee to deal with discrepancies...but then we run into problems of subjectivity and inactivity (RP Proposals thread hasn't had the committee approve or unapprove anything for about a month. No offense meant).

As for Rewards...that's a bit of a tricky question. However, I believe I heard rumors on IRC about people spriting badges? If so, we could use that to our advantage as basically trophies on our profiles. Of course, we should probably have more tangible rewards as well. Honestly, I'm not sure what those would be exactly, as I think giving out a Master Ball early on would be a bit too much. I was thinking, perhaps we could allow for tiered rewards based upon how many badges you've gotten so far.

Here's a rough list of what I'm thinking of (I'm rather horrible with rewards though, so this will almost certainly need tweaking)

1 badge: 2 UC
2 badges: 5 UC, Two/Three packs of free pokeballs of choice (excluding Master Ball)
3 badges: 7 UC
4 badges: 10 UC, Free Battle item of your choice (10 CC or below)
5 badges: 12 UC
6 badges: 15 UC, Free item of your choice (excluding unobtainable items)
7 badges: 18 UC
8 badges: 20 UC, Master Ball
9 badges: 20 UC
10 badges: 20 UC, TLR Shortcut (Can reach a certain legend much quicker by jumping to-say- the first guardian)
11 badges: 20 UC
12 badges: 20 UC, Ability to challenge Elite Four, Master Ball
13 badges (Bonus): 25 UC, Minor special reward
Elite Four 1: 20 UC, Special reward
Elite Four 2: 20 UC, Special reward
Elite Four 3: 20 UC, Special reward
Champion: 50 UC, Hall of Fame, Unique reward, Massive bragging rights.

Okay so I guess the UC inflation is a bit insane, as are some of the items, but I think my point is clear.
 
I'm on for a bit (yay, i have found a pocket of free time!), so i though i'd say some things.

Rediamond said:
I think the big problem at the moment is that there is a limited number of trainers who have 3 well built Pokemon with a type advantage and lots of experience to beat a gym. If the difficulty was toned down to the point where more trainers could realistically hope to win, it might be easier. I'm not saying make all gyms easy, but possibly scale the difficulty.

For example, in the first gym the leader would have to use the ASB arena PM three Pokemon. With each successive badge, the gym leader could have more Pokemon and use a more "broken" arena. I think this would encourage more challenges if players could realistically get a tangible award.

Obviously, the later gyms and Elite Four would need to be scaled up to accommodate for the decrease in difficulty, but I feel that having an easier introduction into the league and a lower threshold for entry would encourage more participation, as there are simply too few people capable of earning badges at the moment.
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AOPSUser said:
I think that as an alternative to Red's proposal, we could have the users themselves decide in which order to challenge the gyms. What I mean by this is that the Gym Leader uses Pokemon at a certain level based on the number of badges the challenger has. So you can decide to challenge Bug or Rock or Ground or Water first, and the relative difficulty of the Pokemon goes up as you win more badges.

Of course, this isn't all about the Pokemon. That's why I think that having two teams of Pokemon, one "weak" and one "strong" for each Leader would be good. The rest could be adjustments in the battle itself, such as going from B3P3 for the Leader to B4P3, like Red suggested.

While there's no real in-game precedence for this, I don't think any of the Gym Leaders like being placed as the first Gym because they're apparently the worst of the Leaders.
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I like these ideas, to an extent. I mean, the gyms are supposed to be a challenge, but even the games start their way slow and then work their way up to more difficult gyms, which i think is a good idea. Like some people have said, the gyms are kinda scary. Who wants to face IAR and dogfish44's full movepool pokemon? Only the most trained asbers will want to take them on. and if all the gyms are like that, you come with the problem of hardly anybody taking on gym challenges.

I have a proposal that is similar to red's idea, only a little different. If we had his idea implemented however, i believe one of the negative factors that would arise quickly would be that the beginning gyms would be very busy, and might even be held up due to battle traffic (if we still are using the 2 gym battles per leader rule that is implemented at the moment). I like the idea of having easier gyms, then working your way up to the harder gyms, but in a different way.

My Proposal:
3 tiers of difficulty

Easy Tier:
Bug
Grass
Fire
Dragon
Ice

Earning 3 of 5 badges unlocks...

Medium Tier:
Flying
Rock
Normal
Dark

Earning 5 of 9 badges unlocks... (note: you could have 3 badges from the easy tier, and 2 from the medium to unlock the hard tier)

Hard Tier:
Poison
Psychic
Water
Fighting

Earning 12 of 13 badges unlocks... (Note: as with the previous note, you could have a mixture of badges to unlock the next tier)

Elite Four:
Ground
Electric
Steel
Ghost

Now, these tiers are just examples (I just put a random type into a random tier, thats not how i think they should be or anything). A Trainer wishing to take on the gym challenge starts by being able to challenge any of the 5 gyms in the Easy Tier. They cannot challenge a gym that is put into an upper category unless they have obtained a certain amount of badges.

i like this idea because it allows some order to the gyms (you can't just battle any gym of your fancy, you have to work your way up), but at the same time you won't be caught having only one or two gyms to battle.

Also, i like aopsuser's idea of having the gym leaders have a "weak" team and a "strong" team. we could definitely make that work. But red;s idea of scaling the gym's difficulty is something i agree with. it would make the gyms more doable. of course, this is if you want EVERYONE to challenge the gyms. Like people have stated, only the asbers who are really trained and have been here a while challenge the gyms atm (for the most part). that might be how we want it actually, to have only the best and the trainer try for the ultimate goal. But, remember the games: we all start out tiny and as beginners. its the gym battles that make us stronger. I think if we try to mimic in game gyms and how they work, that might help us reach our goal of having the gyms become used more regularly.
 
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