Data State of the Game (07/04/14)

[Objection]

How much of a role does HP play for a Pokemon? Additionally, how much of a role does Weight Class play for a Pokemon?

I know people bring up Snorlax and Pyroak as examples of high HP Pokemon that are really good, but really the only reason they can use their high HP is because they have good defence and special defence ranks. Compare Snorlax and Pyroak to, say, Honchkrow and Hariyama.

As for weight, there are Pokemon who can use their weight to good effect, and I think this is a good thing. If we go solely with how the cartridges use weight, then overall heavier Pokemon get shafted. Lots of Pokemon get Low Kick and Grass Knot to use against the heavyweights, but not many of them get Heat Crash or Heavy Slam, which aren't even that strong against a middleweight unless your name is Aggron.

(Frosty) Are you having fun in ASB? Why or why not?

Being completely honest? Not as much fun as I used to have. I think the reason for this is connected to creativity (or perhaps, depending on which aspect you look at, the lack thereof), but I can't quite put it into words yet. I guess maybe I wish we were more willing to experiment with game mechanics in controlled environments like arenas for friendly matches.

(Pwnemon) Is the game basically good as is or does it still require a lot of changes?

For the most part, it is good as is. I won't claim that it is good as is entirely because we may yet discover that certain things are horribly overpowered or horribly underpowered, I believe that we are smart enough to work out a way of balancing both of these, and I believe that we should not shy away from doing so.

I am still slightly worried about justifying the strength or weakness of a particular move or ability based on which Pokemon get said move or ability, given that we have arenas where which Pokemon get said move or ability can change dramatically. It'll certainly be interesting if other people also become concerned about it if we do, say, an Unown Soup tournament.

What are your thoughts on the registration system of Generation 6? In particular, for newer users joining in Generation 6, did you find the process too complex?

Which amendment would "too little experience with the situation to comment" fall under? Because I wish to plead that amendment.

 

[Stratos]

Aside from weight and hp, the game doesn't require much changes. If we fix that, the game will be balanced enough to keep it stable somewhat. There is Endeavor and Pain Split, but nothing too concerning.

The "problem" (because it may be not be a problem) is that people will want to change stuff regardless. For reasons other than balance strictly. While that does prevent the game from being stale, I really question the need for said changes. We should focus on trimming the reffing process, registration and the display of data, as well as RPs as a whole and the Gym League. If you create more ways for people to have fun battling you won't have the need to keep changing stuff I think.

Indeed, this is what I was getting at with my question. my question couldn't really give a single fuck as to what reforms you're looking to see—just, are you still looking to see any. When I first joined ASB in early 2012, it was basically a balanced game. Yet we are still now tweaking effects of moves and items—and introducing more moves and items—to achieve some perfect ideal or because someone's pet pokemon isn't quite as viable as Sableye. Perhaps because I have always believed in playing by strength, I find it ridiculous that we should keep introducing so many edits. All we can hope to accomplish with these is to turn Pokemon that people bought and invested fucking hours or days into, into useless garbage and a wasted investment (see: how mad I will be if pyroak is simultaneously supernerfed by cutting its hp to 110 and its stabs to 12 bap.) Some people see these edits as inherently good; I see them as inherently bad because you are basically giving a massive middle finger to the time I put into these Pokemon. Unless something is OBVIOUSLY borked (fake out spam, parental bond) or can be shown to be beneficial to the game mechanics without affecting certain pokemon specifically (such as the introduction of the damaging prio move subclass) I instantly oppose it. We can never have a perfectly balanced game. Our current one is stable and fair, and a wide variety of pokemon are absolutely viable.

As I said to Texas, I think that this question must be made because sometimes I feel that people are overgearing to face something that won't come. After the initial euphoria, I only see people really having fun on Raids and Tournaments. And some on Gyms as well. But I am not sure people have fun on serious matches, as they usually take too long and you, in no time, get to the point where you just want "the slot back"... and the same on RPs for the exact same reasons.

This is something I've been harping on forever, but I never even realized that a solution was in reach until you brought it up. I agree, the only matches in ASB where I ever really have fun are gyms, tournaments, and involved roleplays. And the issue can be traced back to counters. Even as long ago as the counterfarming debate, I said something needed to be done—really done—about counter reform, because our current counter system was overly awful for the game. It removes all the fun from BT matches which could instead be used for flashmatches. At the time I said that the only thing stopping me from proposing something radical was that counters were needed to motivate refs to, well, ref. But what if we were able to largely eliminate refs? The benefits to ASB would be huge—battles would progress faster and we could finally do something about counters. The functions refs currently serve are: roll, write flavor, determine legality, and do grunt work. IRC already does the third better. Players can do the fourth. The things stopping us are the first and second. If we could determine a fair, visible way to roll then matches where the players don't care for flavor can go so much faster. I can already see many holes in this proposal, but I am excited for what I'm thinking of so far. If i had more time i'd elaborate but gtg

 

[youngjake93]

Indeed, this is what I was getting at with my question. my question couldn't really give a single fuck as to what reforms you're looking to see—just, are you still looking to see any. When I first joined ASB in early 2012, it was basically a balanced game. Yet we are still now tweaking effects of moves and items—and introducing more moves and items—to achieve some perfect ideal or because someone's pet pokemon isn't quite as viable as Sableye. Perhaps because I have always believed in playing by strength, I find it ridiculous that we should keep introducing so many edits. All we can hope to accomplish with these is to turn Pokemon that people bought and invested fucking hours or days into, into useless garbage and a wasted investment (see: how mad I will be if pyroak is simultaneously supernerfed by cutting its hp to 110 and its stabs to 12 bap.) Some people see these edits as inherently good; I see them as inherently bad because you are basically giving a massive middle finger to the time I put into these Pokemon. Unless something is OBVIOUSLY borked (fake out spam, parental bond) or can be shown to be beneficial to the game mechanics without affecting certain pokemon specifically (such as the introduction of the damaging prio move subclass) I instantly oppose it. We can never have a perfectly balanced game. Our current one is stable and fair, and a wide variety of pokemon are absolutely viable.



This is something I've been harping on forever, but I never even realized that a solution was in reach until you brought it up. I agree, the only matches in ASB where I ever really have fun are gyms, tournaments, and involved roleplays. And the issue can be traced back to counters. Even as long ago as the counterfarming debate, I said something needed to be done—really done—about counter reform, because our current counter system was overly awful for the game. It removes all the fun from BT matches which could instead be used for flashmatches. At the time I said that the only thing stopping me from proposing something radical was that counters were needed to motivate refs to, well, ref. But what if we were able to largely eliminate refs? The benefits to ASB would be huge—battles would progress faster and we could finally do something about counters. The functions refs currently serve are: roll, write flavor, determine legality, and do grunt work. IRC already does the third better. Players can do the fourth. The things stopping us are the first and second. If we could determine a fair, visible way to roll then matches where the players don't care for flavor can go so much faster. I can already see many holes in this proposal, but I am excited for what I'm thinking of so far. If i had more time i'd elaborate but gtg

Refs determine legality of combos and rp actions as well!
But tbh making a RNG that both battlers could log into and see the results would take all of about 5 minutes and I could also combine it with my primative reffing calculator. Actually, the first time I reffed random.org was down so I made an RNG script. But it wasn't "true randomness" like random.org so I only used it the one time. Not sure I feel like figuring out how to pull data from random.org or makin a more sophisticated rng though.

 

[akela]

Forum games, by their nature of being forum games, take time to complete. Joining a forum game and expecting any part of it to be as fast as a video game is an unrealistic expectation. If you do not have the patience to wait 1 day to 2 weeks for results, forum games are probably not your cup of tea.

I do not believe lessening the impact of referees on the game will improve the speed of battles. Many times as a referee I have spent days waiting on the BATTLERS to order. DAYS! For something that took me 20 minutes to ref, including the formatting to make the reffing look nice. We have members from all over the world. Some live in Australia and others live in a timezone 12 hours away. Removing referees and making matters automated won't solve the issue of battlers waiting for the other guy/gal to wake up and post.

I foresee battlers wanting increased pay for their matches if they were to calculate the results of the battles and have a third party look over them. After all, the battlers are now dividing up the work of the eliminated referee party. They are doing that job of another person, they should be paid for doing that job. How do we make this pay balanced?

I am not saying that people should not try an automated system that removes referees from ASB. I am only pointing out other issues that can chip the gears of those plans.

 

[Frosty]

Since this thread is about discussion (I assume) I will elaborate on stuff.

Let me know if I am derailing something.

I know people bring up Snorlax and Pyroak as examples of high HP Pokemon that are really good, but really the only reason they can use their high HP is because they have good defence and special defence ranks. Compare Snorlax and Pyroak to, say, Honchkrow and Hariyama.

As for weight, there are Pokemon who can use their weight to good effect, and I think this is a good thing. If we go solely with how the cartridges use weight, then overall heavier Pokemon get shafted. Lots of Pokemon get Low Kick and Grass Knot to use against the heavyweights, but not many of them get Heat Crash or Heavy Slam, which aren't even that strong against a middleweight unless your name is Aggron.

Regarding HP, maybe we should change the boundaries for rank increase. Merge Ranks 6 and 7 (since 7 is snorlax and two other pokemon nobody use (alomomola and wailord)) and reduce 5hp on rank 5 and onwards. That way Pyroak is 115 (same as colossoil), snorlax is 120 (same as hariyama and krillowatt), which are manageable numbers, assuming we also adjust weight moves.

It is like I said before: the changes on hp aren't the reason alone Snorlax and Pyroak are as good as they are. Weight is also part of the problem. But since both are the reason, both should be adjusted imo.

As for weight, I am against deadfox081's proposal of making it a non-factor, for the reasons you said. I like weight being a factor as it spices it up our metagame.

I just feel that the formulae needs to be adjusted and caps be distributed (maybe 15?) so I don't have 4 or 5 mons capable of firing off 15+ BAP moves freely. I mean, if you put a cap on 15 and make wood hammer/flareblitz/brave bird the same formula as double edge (resulting on 14bap wood hammer), I would be a happy frosty man. Again: not a big change by itself (only a minor tweak), but should be enough coupled with the hp change, considering that we are dealing not with one thing breaking mons, but with a system working together breaking mons.

Indeed, this is what I was getting at with my question. my question couldn't really give a single fuck as to what reforms you're looking to see—just, are you still looking to see any. When I first joined ASB in early 2012, it was basically a balanced game. Yet we are still now tweaking effects of moves and items—and introducing more moves and items—to achieve some perfect ideal or because someone's pet pokemon isn't quite as viable as Sableye. Perhaps because I have always believed in playing by strength, I find it ridiculous that we should keep introducing so many edits. All we can hope to accomplish with these is to turn Pokemon that people bought and invested fucking hours or days into, into useless garbage and a wasted investment (see: how mad I will be if pyroak is simultaneously supernerfed by cutting its hp to 110 and its stabs to 12 bap.) Some people see these edits as inherently good; I see them as inherently bad because you are basically giving a massive middle finger to the time I put into these Pokemon. Unless something is OBVIOUSLY borked (fake out spam, parental bond) or can be shown to be beneficial to the game mechanics without affecting certain pokemon specifically (such as the introduction of the damaging prio move subclass) I instantly oppose it. We can never have a perfectly balanced game. Our current one is stable and fair, and a wide variety of pokemon are absolutely viable.

I completely agree with this. Sure, I am advocating for a tweak on weight and hp, but I do that because I think those two together make it "obviously borked". And when I brought it up I even said that this may or may not have a negative effect on the metagame (I think it does, but if the majority thinks otherwise, I will be more than enough to abide by that decision and continue to use my snorlax, pyroak and colossoil which had countless counters invested on them).

We shouldn't change stuff because we can. We should change only the stuff we must change to make the game balanced.

Forum games, by their nature of being forum games, take time to complete. Joining a forum game and expecting any part of it to be as fast as a video game is an unrealistic expectation. If you do not have the patience to wait 1 day to 2 weeks for results, forum games are probably not your cup of tea.

I do not believe lessening the impact of referees on the game will improve the speed of battles. Many times as a referee I have spent days waiting on the BATTLERS to order. DAYS! For something that took me 20 minutes to ref, including the formatting to make the reffing look nice. We have members from all over the world. Some live in Australia and others live in a timezone 12 hours away. Removing referees and making matters automated won't solve the issue of battlers waiting for the other guy/gal to wake up and post.

I foresee battlers wanting increased pay for their matches if they were to calculate the results of the battles and have a third party look over them. After all, the battlers are now dividing up the work of the eliminated referee party. They are doing that job of another person, they should be paid for doing that job. How do we make this pay balanced?

I am not saying that people should not try an automated system that removes referees from ASB. I am only pointing out other issues that can chip the gears of those plans.

I am aware of that. But there is "long" and there is "8-months long".

Making it easier for the ref doesn't turn ASB into in-game as far as matches go. But it makes tournaments something viable that won't last a year to be finished (Factory will complete 14 months ongoing this month).

I am not saying that ASB is slow compared to games in general. I am saying that ASB is slow compared to most if not all Forum games I've seen. If we manage to reduce that time even a little and have ASB be as time-consuming as other forum games, I will be more than happy.

For example, there is this game I've played for many years called AWBW (a browser built-in Advance Wars). We had the same problems as far as ordering goes. But still each match took at most a month or two to be finished (average to big matches!). And that was more than enough to make viable tourneys, ladders, leagues, world cups and all the kinds of fun stuff (with double elimination sometimes!) you can imagine.

I know that there are other factor involved and I believe we should tackle those too. But I need to make it clear that ASB is slow if compared to similar games. To the point of being frustrating sometimes...

 

[Pallas Athena]

I side with Frosty on a lot of issues, but I will post some of my own takes on them.

I think that HP could use a slight overhaul, but I do not favor particularly dramatic action. It is important to note that HP is singularly different than any of the other stats in that regardless of a user's own stats, the relative boost of HP never changes. A Pokemon with high physical bulk will find that its strongest selling point is totally ignored by a special attacker, and vice-versa for special walls. A high-power physical attacker can be shut down by the appropriate physical wall in most cases. Regardless of what the opponent's stats are, HP will retain roughly the same advantage and boost bulk against any kind of attacker. Sure, average HP mixed walls exist but this requires them to have two very good stats instead of just one. Additionally, if a somewhat weaker Pokemon wants to boost attack they can do that with their nature. High and low HP stats cannot be changed by their trainer. It is foolish to treat HP as if it was the same as other stats in my opinion because of this. It is better inherently and could use a slight downward boost to reflect this. Deck and Frosty's proposals are perfectly reasonable for this.

Weight is more of an issue due to the fact that Weight-based moves (the real problem of the debate) skew right and naturally have higher damage than GF gave the base moves. They also start strong at base, so a very heavy mon can dish out really powerful attacks. Part of this is sheer laziness that we can rectify very easily by making the damage more in-line with actual in-game use instead of needlessly buffing certain attacks and Pokemon with no canon precedent. And then defending that precedent like it is the word of Arceus instead of some system we made up rather arbitrarily once.


Now for something completely different.

As for the question on liking the game, I will admit that at times I really have not. Reffing is often tedious and battling gets stale. The rise of flash match culture kind of killed a lot of the fun for me, and apparently other people. I think that giving increasing rewards for longer matches or reducing them again for shorter ones would help on that front, but that's a long-shot proposal that I expect to go nowhere. I feel like reforming and creating high level challenges for old players is the way to go. In my opinion, the RP Committee in particular should be looking for ways to incorporate unconventional challenges that have the potential to enhance the experience of older users.

EDIT: Yeah, thread-wrecking post was uncalled for. Ignore that portion.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

I'ma do this in two parts, controversial stuff later (like later later. Not just later. later later later. k later.)

-Data Concerns (re: starwarsfan)
The system is currently designed that all information can be located between the ASB Handbook and the NDA, with Beginner info located in the Beginner's Guide. I'm not convinced that there is any problem based around locating information based on this, but I do think that this needs to be emphasized more heavily. As far as revamping the OPs of the PCT/BT/RRT/RPAC, they could potentially use updates but I'm not convinced they need complete revamps as long as the Handbook and NDA are recognized as the sources for any and all information. That being said if a user or group of users want to take it upon themselves to revamp those threads I'm sure we'd be welcoming of that. One potential remedy is to remove the OPs of the threads as they currently stand with redirects to the ASB Handbook as the source for information, removing specific information and leaving only that which effectively outlines the intent of said thread.

As for the minor edits to given threads, that can be done at a later date, or at a mods prerogative. As an extra aside, the Beginner's Guide should be edited to make it apparent where CC costs are, as well as the starting berries. Perhaps also a small edit to direct people to the registration tower.

-Stickies (re: Ute)
I do periodic checkovers for stickied threads, removing what is no longer relevant. The current level is acceptable and necessary for the relevant amounts. Note that the factory threads will conclude soon.

-A Fourth Battle Slot
This has been proposed a number of times in the past, and the last time even Deck was warming to the idea. The initial reason for restriction was to protect referees from overwork and queues from oversize. I've come around to support this initiative at this point. Having a fourth battle slot restricted specifically for large matches would be beneficial I think. I'd see these restricted to a certain number of mons in a match total, perhaps 10 or 12, but this is worth looking into.

-Weight-Based Moves
I'll talk about this more later but one thing I want to do immediately is to standardize the damage and energy formulas. Everything should be x/1.5 imo.

 

[Gerard]

Pwn, regarding your argument about making people mad with nerfs, how do you think I felt when I lost Darm, say whatever you want about it on my gym but I had work hard on her, invested counters and lot so time for her to be a powerful member of my gym, and yes, I hate to lose her, but you know what, I got over it, even though I didn't think it was broken and some people agreed with me, the majority of them though it was, which is the exact same thing that is happening with Pyroak. If most people think it's broken it's because there's something there that needs to change.

Regarding and standard formula for weight based moves, I think that while a good idea, at least it's worth noting how many moves have lighter a users that others, specifically Brave Bird and Volt Tackle, some of their best a users have weight classes of 2 or 3 while Wood hammer's average is 4+, so while a blanket formula for all of them sounds ok in practice this differences should be accounted for

 

[ff7hero]

How much of a role does HP play for a Pokemon? Additionally, how much of a role does Weight Class play for a Pokemon?

I don't feel like I'm experienced enough to weigh in on this. I will say I don't see either stat as make or break on any Pokemon, but I don't ignore them either.

(Frosty) Are you having fun in ASB? Why or why not?

I do wish battles could go faster, but I am definitely having fun. Not only is the game well balanced and fun, but the community is very open and accepting.


(Pwnemon) Is the game basically good as is or does it still require a lot of changes?

I enjoy the tendency to tweak little details that some call the "Buff/Nerf Culture." I'm looking forward to trying out the Charged Stone, for example. The sheer number of options for each Pokemon is really great.

However, it's not perfect yet. I liked the idea that youngjake93 recommended as far as community reffing goes. I see the Prize Claim as a small scale example of how this would work, when someone had a chance they could make a post saying "reffing" and then edit the actual reffing post in. I'm thinking this might increase the number of prize claims per battle which might increase the workload of our approvers...

What are your thoughts on the registration system of Generation 6? In particular, for newer users joining in Generation 6, did you find the process too complex?

I made my profile less than 2 months ago, I can speak to this well :). I did actually miss that I needed to get my profile approved and almost got myself into a battle with unregistered pokemon. I went to IRC and got help correcting my mons and got approved, it was great.

 

[Birkal]

I'd like to talk about the best proposal brought up in this thread: self-refereed training matches. This is freaking awesome, for a multitude of reasons. First of all, think about what is important here in ASB. What are the ultimate goals? What are our primary attractions? From my mind, they are as follows:

The Legend Run
Tournaments
Gym League
Battle Facilities
Developing new RPs
"Just for Fun" Skirmishes
​

In my mind, flashmatches and large training matches don't fit anywhere here. You need to get counters to participate in the above activities, which is a huge bummer. It's true that someone like youngjake93 can come in and start a TLR after a few months of participation, but to what end? When you're a new user, it's zero fun having to beg for flashmatches and nagging referees to get your stuff updated. As the primary flashbattler of the past year, I'm saying that this needs to end. No one likes to referee flashmatches, period. Having to work for your counters is important, but having that work be funneled into begging for referees is not optimal.

In the past two months, one of the most fun things I did in ASB was a new roleplay coming out called Gem Caves. It was so refreshing to do something new. Not only was it a fun roleplay that I enjoyed trying to crack, but it was arguably even more fun to provide feedback to make it a better RP. I liked focusing energy on something that wasn't just counter farming. The point here is that I couldn't've participated in this higher level sort of ASB play without ridiculous farming. When a game takes 6+ months to get into the primary attractions, something is up.

So what's the solution here? Let users self-referee their own training matches. No one cares about WL ratios anymore, so what's the issue? We have self-refereeing all the time here at ASB, from Battle Hall to TLR. It's arguably an even better way to get used to your Pokemon in battle, since you're the one running their calculations. It prevents ASB from being a bog at the start, and puts the ball in the court of the player. Please let's move forward with this.

 

[akela]

OK. I win you lose. Now give me the 3 KOC. I did asb right?

Birkal, when you first joined, how well did you understand the damage formula? Other mechanics? Why do you believe newbies will know the formula and mechanics instantaneously upon approval?

 

[Stratos]

Birkal never said you HAVE to self referee: he said leave it as an option. You would get no counters for playing the part of the referee.

Being a butt aside, what are your objections to that proposal?

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Integrity of players with RNG rolls.

An RNG visible to both parties was suggested as a solution but this ONLY works with flashmatches where both players are on at the same time; time differences and life make it infeasible long term.


Akela's objection regarding new players not knowing how to ref properly is also valid. Half of the supporting arguments for this proposal are that it speeds up training for new players so they absolutely MUST be competent enough to ref.

12:29 akela I'm more worried about 2 newbies battling each other and not understanding the formula and mechanics
12:30 akela magically having each hit of a multi-hit attack be calculated as individual hits

 

[akela]

Integrity of players with RNG rolls.

An RNG visible to both parties was suggested as a solution but this ONLY works with flashmatches where both players are on at the same time; time differences and life make it infeasible long term.


Akela's objection regarding new players not knowing how to ref properly is also valid. Half of the supporting arguments for this proposal are that it speeds up training for new players so they absolutely MUST be competent enough to ref.

12:29 akela I'm more worried about 2 newbies battling each other and not understanding the formula and mechanics
12:30 akela magically having each hit of a multi-hit attack be calculated as individual hits

As a newbie (including the ones that don't understand the formula or mechanics), you get two options:

Option (A): You have someone else ref your battle and it takes 3 days to 1 week.
Option (B): You ref your own battle and have it take 1 hour.

Which option would you choose? If I was a newbie, I'd take the one that didn't make me wait. To hell with having it done right. I get paid NOW! YAY!

 

[ff7hero]

One other role that refs serve is to create the topic. This helps to prevent counter-teaming, so even with self-reffing, we would still need a third party to create the thread.
With this in mind, what if the topic creator was considered a "Supervising Referee" (Super-Ref for short :)). After the players ref their own round, he could post with something like "looks good" or "you forgot the Para chance on Thunderbolt." If an error was made, the Super-Ref would either post a corrected reffing or have one of the players do so.
Just a thought that could probably use some expansion.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

To be clear I'm in objection to this proposal at the moment because I think it has some serious drawbacks that haven't been analyzed effectively yet. That said I'm in support of making life easier on the referees and ff7hero's post gets at an earlier proposal I'd like to see more discussion on. I'd like to see what can come from player's taking over part of the referee's duties such as formatting, leaving only calculations/rolls and flavour to the ref.

 

[AWailOfATail]

It probably would be easier to have self-reffing. But also,

Birkal, when you first joined, how well did you understand the damage formula? Other mechanics? Why do you believe newbies will know the formula and mechanics instantaneously upon approval?

Most people won't. I understand the formula okayish and can tell how much my attack will do, but there's still things I don't know. But what if you had to wait until you had at least 5 battles to do it? And even then, if you didn't understand, there's IRC.

Of course I couldn't come in, ready to self-ref. But why couldn't there be a kind of test that you have to pass in order to get your "license" to self-ref?

Also, to not let people abuse self-reffing, maybe it has to be after the DQ time for the ref. You could do it then for UC, but if you chose to do it before, no UC for you.

ff7hero's idea is a good one, too. Just eliminates some problems.

I know I probably won't be taken as seriously as some of the other ASBers because I'm new (and idk if my ideas would be good or not), but in my opinion, we really do need a newbie's judgement.

 

[Ute]

As nice as it could be, I don't think that we can ever have truly self reffed battles due to the integrity of the RNG as well as opening posts preventing counter teaming.

If we want to attempt truly self reffed matches, my suggestion is to expand on the idea of a 'license' AWailOfATail proposed. I'd propose that a user must participate in the Referee Training Program mentioned in the opening post or get approval from one of the trainers before they are allowed to self-ref. Unfortunately that could create an environment where those without this license are ignored in the Tower, so I'm not sure it's the best plan.

ff7hero also made a great suggestion in potentially using supervising refs in 'self reffed' matches as their duties will be kept to a minimum (such as opening post, RNG rolls, and proofreading), but I see no way to enforce it. Of course many users already do calculations to decide their orders so if users share their calculations with their referees it would be one less thing for the ref to write up.


As much as I'd like to see some change to speed up reffing I don't think we can really enforce any of these methods without driving a greater rift between new users and veterans or overworking the approval staff. All I can suggest is that battlers should communicate better with their refs, whether it's to check how the ref would interpret a combo, to share any calculations they might do, formatting a mon for ref posts, or whatever they can do to help.

Personally, I'm going to add a section to the profile of each of my mons that a ref can just copy and paste to their posts.

 

[smashlloyd20]

Hi, something I'd like to see clarified is how 'strong' the data audit is with respect to how it can be overridden. At various points I've seen the data audit overridden by Deck, committee members, projmods, and everywhere in between. I think it should be clarified under what circumstances users can override the NDA; it doesn't make much sense for the 'supreme resource for data' to be able to be overridden under such numerous and somewhat confusing circumstances. For the record, I think the data audit should basically never be able to be overridden during a battle, unless it is blatantly in error.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

What in the world are you talking about

 

[Birkal]

Aren't we trying to support having more referees in ASB? If you want to do that, you need to practice refereeing. And if you give someone the option of having a battle that is completed on their time table, they will likely put forth the effort into reffing. It also has the advantage of taking away all this time we spend reffing flash matches and invest it in the stuff ASB is all about (roleplays, gym, tournies, etc). Notice that I'm only supporting self-reffing for training matches. If we wish to put a definition on that (e.g. 1v1s or 2v2s only), then that lowers the learning curve and commitment considerably. If we want to get new users reffing, this is absolutely the best way to get them in the fold.

In terms of RNG integrity, I don't think it's a huge issue. Why? Hardly anyone cares about WL ratios of normal matches. If you're serious about ASB, the wins you care about are gyms, TLR, facilities, and tournaments. If you really want to cheat on a freaking flashmatch, then go for it, in my opinion. But when Gym Leadership / TLR Heads / Facility Management are looking for referees, and a user applies but has a strong record of RNG abuse (it's not that hard to tell), they should be denied access. RNG rolls matter the most in the things we care about in ASB. Relaxing our integrity rules for training matches doesn't seem to be nearly as detrimental, in my opinion. It's one of those things that I'd like to imagine users would be on their best behavior (similar to Hall Refs / Tourney Refs / etc), but you can never be 100% sure. If it becomes a serious issue, moderator discretion is always an option.

Definitely think the advantages outweigh the disadvantages here.

 

[youngjake93]

I really like a lot of the ideas to speed up reffing, but it seems that practical matters will cause some snags and have been brought up. I just want to point out that we can always just go with the least extreme options first. The community reffing option seems less extreme than self-reffing, self-reffing small training matches seems less extreme than all matches and restricting self-reffing from beginners or having refs retain a supervising/approval role also seems less extreme.
I just don't want people to get hung up on "well not every part of the idea will implement perfectly." If it comes down to it, the least extreme options being offered(not forced) as an alternative could still turn out to be an improvement.

 

[smashlloyd20]

What in the world are you talking about

Basically: how legal are precedent rulings overriding something in the NDA

 

[Geodude6]

I wouldn't think they would be.

 

[Frosty]

Depends on who makes them. If someone with power to alter the NDA makes it (read: mods, ze Deck), then it does overrule it and a change must be made accordingly on the spreadsheets.