Proposal: Increase the UC Payout to Referees (All Discussion Welcome)

[Texas Cloverleaf]

So I'm minding my own business in the shower, mulling over the current state of ASB as usual when a thought happens across my mind that referees receive a disproportionate amount of compensation per reffing than battlers do, for arguably more effort required. This led to a consideration of the ongoing concerns about lack of refereeing in ASB and the initial arguments for limitations on UC given for reffing, and led me to come to the following conclusion and reasoning.

Proposal: Increase the UC yield for reffing to 3x, where x is the number of Pokemon per side with a brawl cap of 20 UC.

The reasoning for this proposal is threefold:

1. We want to encourage players to ref.

There has always been concerns over ref shortages for those not willing to put in the effort. Increasing the UC yield alleviates part of that problem, increasing the allure of reffing.


2. We want to encourage NEW players to ref.

It is a given that in today's ASB most players have hugely built rosters. It is therefore difficult for new players to catch up to something of a benchmark. Increasing UC yield encourages new players to ref as a means of training their Pokemon, which aslo benefits the game by increasing the overall supply of refs in the system.


3. Having tons of UC no longer puts you ahead of the curve, it merely catches you up.

In the past there were concerns that a few players would take tons of matches and get significant UC pools, pushing their abilities far ahead of the common curve of ASB. That is no longer the case. In today's game, with maxed movepool Pokemon running around commonly, having large quantities of UC cannot push you above your peers, the best it can do is catch you up to them. Indeed, it is almost necessary to have large quantities of UC in order to be on par with the majority of players. Furthermore, should some player desire to and be capable of reffing large quantities of matches he/she should certainly be rewarded for his/her efforts.


I brought this concept up in IRC and there was the expected mixture of support and opposition, so this thread will aim to see the community's thought on the matter. There are two discussion points at hand:

a) The concept: Should we or should we not increase UC compensation to refs.

b) The value: What formula or methodology of granting UC to refs should we use? Should we consider ref effort in our formulas?


I welcome all opinions from people (preferably those who do ref)!

itt Texas highlights people he wants to hear opinions from in this thread: Birkal Deck Knight Objection Dogfish44 Frosty Engineer Pikachu

 

[Objection]

I should point out now that a lot of my opposition to the proposal given above is the worry of overvaluing flashmatches. If a 1v1 match ends in 2 rounds, I cannot see how it is worth more than 2 counters for reffing. This is why, in response to question b in Texas' post, I believe that UC payout should scale with ref effort, for which the best objective definition I can find at the moment is battle length. Whether we should measure this length in rounds or actions, I don't know. However, this should address any problem of a 2-round 1v1 and a 6-round 1v1 being treated the same even when one is a steal and the other is a rip-off.

If, somehow, it turns out that certain matches actually overpay refs, then making an effort-based payout system will rectify this too.

 

[akela]

I think we can fix a lot of problems with overpaying and underpaying refs by removing the restriction of KO bonuses. Have KO bonuses affect every format and size of battle. 1 v 1 will bring in 3 UC, 2v2 singles will bring in 6-7 UC...

 

[Dogfish44]

OK, things to note:

• Increasing UC at this point is probably OK, especially with a soon to be influx of new purchases coming in thanks to the new generation - and the likelyhood of the number of 3 MC moves being more prevalent again.
• If this excludes KO Bonus, then we have a problem - one of the defining advantages of the current payout numbers is that we have the bonus for big match reffings, which encourages them. If this includes it, then great!

To be honest, I feel that we can do this a nice and simple way:

• Abolish KO Bonus
• Adopt a standardised payment system for matches - I personally feel that triangle numbers (1,3,6,10,15,21,28), starting from 3, give nice convenient values similar to what we have when KO Bonus is factored in - with only 4v4s taking a potential hit to their max value. This isn't a large incease, but it'll be noticable on the lower battle sizez.

 

[Frosty]

I will post here what I said on the other thread, then elaborate on some specific points.

Refs work way more than the battlers. How come they are payed less? I mean you will get (assuming no DQ, Fully Evolved Mons and only exp. shares available so its easier to calc):

Singles
1vs1: 2UC vs 3-4MC+1CC+0-1KOC---------- 2 x 4-6 (200-300% for the battler)
2vs2: 4UC vs 6-8MC+2CC+0-2KOC---------- 4 x 8-12 (200-300% for the battler)
3vs3: 7UC vs 9-12MC+2CC+0-3KOC--------- 7 x 11-17 (157-242% for the battler)
4vs4: 13-16UC vs 12-16MC+3CC+0-4KOC--- 13-16 x 15-23 (115%-143% for the battler)
5vs5: 17-21UC vs 15-20MC+4CC+0-5KOC--- 17-21 x 19-29 (111%-138% for the battler)
6vs6: 20-25UC vs 18-24MC+4CC+0-6KOC--- 20-25 x 22-34 (110%-136% for the battler)

(please remember that for every UC added due to a KO on the winner's side, the minimum counters a battler can get is also increased by 1, so there is no way a ref gets as much as a battler)

Doubles
2vs2: 4UC vs 6-8MC+2CC+0-2KOC------------ 4 x 8-12 (200-300% for the battler)
3vs3: 7UC vs 9-12MC+2CC+0-3KOC----------- 7 x 11-17 (157-242% for the battler)
4vs4: 11-12.5UC vs 12-16MC+3CC+0-4KOC---- 11-12.5 x 15-23 (136-184% for the battler)
5vs5: 14.5-16.5UC vs 15-20MC+4CC+0-5KOC-- 14.5-16.5 x 19-29 (131-175% for the battler)
6vs6: 17-19.5UC vs 18-24MC+4CC+0-6KOC---- 17-19.5 x 22-34 (129-174% for the battler)

Triples:
3vs3: 7UC vs 9-12MC+2CC+0-3KOC ----------- 7 x 11-17 (157-242% for the battler)
4vs4: 10.3-11.3UC vs 12-16MC+3CC+0-4KOC -- 10.3-11.3 x 15-23 (145-203% for the battler)
5vs5: 13.7-15UC vs 15-20MC+4CC+0-5KOC ---- 13.7-15 x 19-29 (138-193% for the battler)
6vs6: 16-17.7UC vs 18-24MC+4CC+0-6KOC ---- 16-17.7 x 22-34 (137-192% for the battler)

Bottom Line: in no situation the ref gets more counters. More often than not it gets half of what the battler gets. And they work a lot more <_>;. I mean c'mon, refs are essential to this and are payed for the work done, while battlers are paid to have fun. We ask "can you please ref this, no one wants to" WAY more often than "can you please battle me, no one wants to".

Now on the new stuff:

1) Regarding Flashmatches: saying that increasing the ref payout means that flashmatches are overvalued is a fallacy. Or more specifically it is blaming the wrong problem, simply because the players get precisely the same counters regardless of the size of the match. Hell, flashmatches exist because players get well payed, not refs. Refs only ref it because they are either making a favor or they were promised to have flashmatches themselves. Raising the payout for refs just gives the ref as much incentive as the players to do them, balancing the system. In other words, the problems are with flashmatches themselves, not ref payout.

Also, Refs work precisely as much in flash matches as in regular 1vs1. They will have to ref as many moves, roll as many RNG and since no one flavors, that really doesn't make the difference. ALSO, a flash ref can't leave, can't do the stuff later, can't do other battles properly while the flash match is up. And that, good sir, is a drag crappy enough to compensate for the less time you will have to wait to get paid. Heck, players usually make shitty not-thought out orders on flashmatches (aka do less) and still gets their 3-6 counters (are payed the same way), while refs work as much and get pais as much. Doesn't make much sense.

2) Regarding UC's value: Maybe it is just me, but I can't see why people overrate UC's value so much. They are only valuable if you turn them into EC, and even then 1-2 EC must come out of real battles. Also, they will only be that useful when you don't have enough fully-evolved mons to play with, since when you do, you can level your new mons with only EC without much trouble.

Turning UC into MC is...eh, not that big of a deal, because every match gives mostly MC for the mons you want to train for minimal effort (if you go "mental effort is bigger for battlers" on me I will direct you to ruling, flavors and, mostly, the fact that physical effort is as much of a drag and the counters are meant to pay you for the trouble, amongst other (not that relevant) stuff). Also the fact that you can choose the mon that will receive the MC with UC is nice and all, but since losses don't actually make you lose anything (since nobody cares for W/L other than me), nothing stops you from simply battling with whatever mon you want to train, making that point mostly moot. In other words, there is not that much of a difference between getting UC and turning into MC for the mon you want and getting MC for the mon you want. With the difference that with the latter option, you get more counters to work with.

Turning UC on CC is simply silly. For new players it may be a good idea, but if you check the older players, most of them have the 3 expert belts they need and have plenty of CC. Sometimes more than they can spend (which leads people to burn 100 or so on TLRs or buying all the pokemon in the dex).

And turning UC on DC is useless most of the time (unless on those rare situations where the DW ability is actually useful).

End result? UC are only as useful as people make it be when you consider that the player that is using it is new or close to that. And guess what, those are precisely the people we want to attract to the reffing world! So it happening is actually a good thing.

Don't get me wrong, UC are more valuable than EC/MC/DC for convenience reasons alone. But they are surely as hell not as useful as people paint them. Hell, take a 1vs1 match: With either the KOC or a Lucky Egg/exp. share/amulet coin you can get 2 counters anywhere (any place of any mon) + 2-3 extra counters for arguably less work. Why would anyone in heaven's name prefer to ref a 1vs1 than playing on it?

3) Let's remind that KO Bonus are there to make people ref the longer battles (it is there as a payment for waiting longer...go ask your business/economics professor for the reason that makes sense). If you wish to abolish it/extend it to all matches you will have to replace it with something similar.

4) I am against making ref payment rely on work done. That is subjective and also: player counters still aren't reliant on work done (they can play 100% shitty and will lose only the KOC). If change ref payment, you will have to change player payment AND for simplicity reasons I HEAVILY advise against that.

5) I don't have any proposal other than "bump UC rewards up". Specific numbers can be tweaked properly only on a trial-and-error way. Personally I prefer the simpler way of making rewards proportional to 3(3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 instead of 2, 4, 7, 9, 12, 14) + keeping KO Bonus . It even makes the formula for it easier.

my 2.5 cents

 

[Pallas Athena]

I personally believe that increasing UC payouts should be done for reasons stated far more eloquently at an earlier point in the thread. I think that while rewarding on "work done" is subjective, longer matches require longer ref commitments, which is often a major part of difficulty in finishing matches. As such, I support proposals that pay out proportionally more for larger matches, possibly along the lines of

2+3.5(X-1) where X is the number of Pokemon engaged in the battle. This makes flashmatches, by far the easiest to ref due to the time commitments involved, less rewarding while still dramatically scaling up rewards. Of course, I'm bad at the entire proposal and formula business (and don't ref) so someone else could probably do this better.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

We also had a discussion about this topic for a period of time on irc, yielding some positive outcome.

We came to the conclusion and concrete agreement that flavour is impossible to quantify and should be left out of any sort of valuation of reward for referees. Flavour styles are so vastly different and are entirely subjective and thus should not be considered in the UC formula.

We agreed that flavour should be encouraged at every possible point and came to the following summary as a guideline for flavour benchmarking:

[03:14] <@Texas> Gyms / Other spotlight matches: full flavour mandatory; RPs: per facility decision; Standard matches: minimal flavour at minimum, average flavour encouraged; No flavour only when both parties agree; Extreme flavour only when both parties agree (Extreme flavour=Leethoof / USUD level)

Minimal flavour should be considered one sentence per action with only nominal bells and whistles. No flavour should only be acceptable when both battlers convey to the referee that they do not desire flavour (i.e."Nice, but not necessary.")

We supported the proposal (that may already be in place) that a referee who takes a match and completes only 1 round before being subreffed is not eligible for any counters from the match (preventing a recent phenomena known as "the geodude effect").


Please continue to discuss the possibility of increased ref payout as well as the above proposed ideas.

 

[Geodude6]

2+3.5(X-1) where X is the number of Pokemon engaged in the battle. This makes flashmatches, by far the easiest to ref due to the time commitments involved, less rewarding while still dramatically scaling up rewards. Of course, I'm bad at the entire proposal and formula business (and don't ref) so someone else could probably do this better.

This seems fair. But maybe we could make it round down, since we don't really want players (read: not approvers) to have half of a counter, and making it round up would overinflate the amount of UC that refs get.

Just some numbers:
(Currently-->Under Red's proposal)
1v1: 2-->2
2v2: 4-->5
3v3: 7-->9
4v4: 9+KO bonus-->12+KO bonus
5v5: 12+KO bonus-->16+KO bonus
6v6: 14+KO bonus-->19+KO bonus
etc.

We came to the conclusion and concrete agreement that flavour is impossible to quantify and should be left out of any sort of valuation of reward for referees. Flavour styles are so vastly different and are entirely subjective and thus should not be considered in the UC formula.

Yes.

We agreed that flavour should be encouraged at every possible point...

Yes.

[03:14] <@Texas> Gyms / Other spotlight matches: full flavour mandatory; RPs: per facility decision; Standard matches: minimal flavour at minimum, average flavour encouraged; No flavour only when both parties agree; Extreme flavour only when both parties agree (Extreme flavour=Leethoof / USUD level)

Yes.

Minimal flavour should be considered one sentence per action with only nominal bells and whistles. No flavour should only be acceptable when both battlers convey to the referee that they do not desire flavour (i.e."Nice, but not necessary.")

Yes.

We supported the proposal (that may already be in place) that a referee who takes a match and completes only 1 round before being subreffed is not eligible for any counters from the match (preventing a recent phenomena known as "the geodude effect").

I'd say yes just because it's named after me, but it's already in place, if not in so many words.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

This seems to have stalled somewhat so I'm going to prepare a tentative slate and encourage more discussion on the topic.

What should be done to the UC reward for reffing?
- Keep the current payout the same
- Increase the payout to 3x number of Pokemon per side, capping Brawls at 20
- Use triangle numbers for payout (1,3,6,10,15,21,28), starting at 3 UC and abolishing the KO Bonus
- Change to UC payout = Number of Counters total given to the winner
- Do not change the system, but return to the drawing board in search of a different revision

This would be using an IRV vote system. I can potentially add something about KOC but that hasn't seen much support. If this goes 48h without discussion I'll put it up to a vote.

 

[Birkal]

I've always felt that referees should get paid more than battlers. That's why I'm not a huge fan of any of the systems proposed; in all of them, it's still more advantageous to be the battler (unless my math is off). We could do this the excruciatingly simple way and state that referees get an amount of UC equal to the total number of counters that were gained within a match, excluding counter boosts from training items and KOC. For example, a flashmatch would reward 2 MC, 1 DC, and 1 EC, meaning that the referee would earn 8 UC total (4 x 2).

This probably could use some sort of nerf, which is fine by me. Regardless, my thought process pretty much lines up with that of Frosty. Anything that bumps up referee payout is a good thing.

 

[Frosty]

I don't think we need to boost the payout THAT much. That will bring us other kind of problems: People prefering to ref rather than battle. I mean, if you paid twice as much as battlers, why the hell you will battle? Which bring us to a paradox, since battles ARE the game.

The payouts require a fine tuning. Right now Refs ARE underpayed (VERY underpayed), but we can't simply boost ref payouts out of the wazoo, or we will have other kinds of problems.

I feel that battlers and ref should get the same payout. Refs work more, but they can ref as many battles as they want. In the other hand, Battlers can get the job done in 5 min and flashmatches are a thing, but the number of battles is limitated and battles are what matters imo. So it balances out.

Considering that UC is a liiiiittle better than the other counters (only a little) I think the x3 proposal is close to same payout. Since it brings the following results:

First Column: Number of UC the ref can get
Second Column: Number of Counters (EC+MC+DC+CC+KOC) the player can get

Singles:

1vs1: 3 x 4-6
2vs2: 6 x 8-12
3vs3: 9 x 11-17
4vs4: 16-20 x 15-23
5vs5: 20-24 x 19-29
6vs6: 24-29 x 22-34

Doubles
2vs2: 6 x 8-12
3vs3: 9 x 11-17
4vs4: 14-15.5 x 15-23
5vs5: 17.5-19.5 x 19-29
6vs6: 21-23.5 x 22-34

Triples:
3vs3: 9 x 11-17
4vs4: 13.3-14.3 x 15-23
5vs5: 16.7-18 x 19-29
6vs6: 20-21.7 x 22-34

(The triangle propoosal also gets very close to what I want IMO, but I prefer this one for simplicity alone).

Seems good for starters. And if this doesn't work, we can always change it once more without risking the entire system.

 

[Dogfish44]

First note: 8 UC for reffing a singles is bloody obscene.

</rant>

I believe that my proposal before (Triangle Numbers from 3, i.e. 3/6/10/15/21/28) is perfectly simple - mainly since it removes the complexity of KOC Bonus (I'm not sure on what we should do with doubles/triples though, most here seem happy to adopt a system which is universal - this system favours doubles and triples matches compared to 3x). But like Frosty, I'd be happy with either 3x or with Triangles.

However, I do hold that UC are inherenty more valuable than standard counters (UC goes into MC a lot of the time for various reasons - like the need to have a move or two quickly, for say a raid or gym match where the coverage is wanted). Of course, this isn't the issue at hand.

 

[Birkal]

I don't think we need to boost the payout THAT much. That will bring us other kind of problems: People prefering to ref rather than battle. I mean, if you paid twice as much as battlers, why the hell you will battle? Which bring us to a paradox, since battles ARE the game.

I don't think this will ever be the situation. People come to ASB to battle (and create flavor). That is the entire point of this forum. Honestly, I bet if you increase rates five times the UC rate we have now, we will still not have immediate reffing. The process of being a referee is arduous and time consuming, and yet it is entirely necessary to the process. Of course people would still have battles if we increased UC rates up the wazoo. People come here to battle.

This is the mindset I think we need to be working within when attempting to revamp how much we pay referees. Sure, my numbers are pretty shocking, because it's pretty far removed from what we have currently. I'm not necessarily advocating that we use that system exactly, but the point I'm trying to make still stands. It doesn't make any sense why referees are paid less than their battlers. They're the ones doing all the grunt labor, and they're absolutely necessary for ASB. I don't think it's unreasonable to at least stay on par with the highest counters of the winning battler. We could even adopt that as our system straight up: UC payout = Number of Counters total given to the winner, but in UC. Something like that will at least bring referees to equality. But these payouts being proposed (triangle / triple) are still pussyfooting around this issue. Sure, they're making referee payout better. But that's not enough. What we really need to do is get to the underlying problem of why we somehow have this ingrained belief that referees should get paid less. Once that's addressed, then we should be proposing a system.

 

[Deck Knight]

The most fascinating thing I find about this lovely system is that having progressive building of each Pokemon leads the game into a lot of different cycles. I think we're now at a point in the cycle where there's enough people with maximized Pokemon that if they really want to build new ones, it isn't that much of a problem as their marginal advantage is no longer so steep.

Right now reffing availability is an issue, so if you believe altering compensation to make up for this is the correct way to address it, I support the move. There are so many players now at a mature end-phase that I think the benefits outweigh the costs, as each Pokemon is like its own project and takes its own amount of time and dedication to build.

Incidentally I would like there to be an element for ref effort. I'm not sure if you could make an objective system for it, but refs that do calculations should get a base pay, and refs that write good flavor as the reffing goes along should be compensated at a greater rate. The issue here is, how do you judge and enforce it. Do we create a story critics panel that awards that compensation at the end of each match? I really want this to also be a way for people to improve their writing and storytelling skills.

EDIT: Apparently there was a whole thread on this, and it came to the conclusion that there's no objective way to handle flavor. So, nothing concrete monetarily. I do however still think it should be encouraged culturally.

 

[CorruptedCheese]

The most fascinating thing I find about this lovely system is that having progressive building of each Pokemon leads the game into a lot of different cycles. I think we're now at a point in the cycle where there's enough people with maximized Pokemon that if they really want to build new ones, it isn't that much of a problem as their marginal advantage is no longer so steep.

Right now reffing availability is an issue, so if you believe altering compensation to make up for this is the correct way to address it, I support the move. There are so many players now at a mature end-phase that I think the benefits outweigh the costs, as each Pokemon is like its own project and takes its own amount of time and dedication to build.

Incidentally I would like there to be an element for ref effort. I'm not sure if you could make an objective system for it, but refs that do calculations should get a base pay, and refs that write good flavor as the reffing goes along should be compensated at a greater rate. The issue here is, how do you judge and enforce it. Do we create a story critics panel that awards that compensation at the end of each match? I really want this to also be a way for people to improve their writing and storytelling skills.

EDIT: Apparently there was a whole thread on this, and it came to the conclusion that there's no objective way to handle flavor. So, nothing concrete monetarily. I do however still think it should be encouraged culturally.

I was also thinking about the amount of flavour I've seen used in battles on the sight and ways to support refs who use more of it. If there is a slightly increased payout for flavour at a standard rate, the battles would seem more "anime-styled" because the refs should want the extra payout. However, because of the flaws in the system (one sentence flavour), it should only be a minor bonus (1 UC extra?)

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

The finalized slate is as follows:

What should be done to the UC reward for reffing?
- Keep the current payout the same
- Increase the payout to 3x number of Pokemon per side, capping Brawls at 20
- Use triangle numbers for payout (1,3,6,10,15,21,28), starting at 3 UC and abolishing the KO Bonus
- Change to UC payout = Number of Counters total given to the winner
- Do not change the system, but return to the drawing board in search of a different revision

Voting thread up shortly. Good discussion!