Tournament 2018 Battle Spot Singles Circuit Feedback Thread

chemcoop said:
- RE: Devilican's post. Yeah I agree that qualifying for cart shouldn't be as easy as it was this year, hence my two big paragraphs above. That being said, I don't really like your implication that "I got 1760 in less than a day" so cart laddering is too easy. Getting 1760 in a day isn't that unreasonable if things continually go your way across the laddering session (or if you're getting to that point over 12 hours worth of playing in a day lol). I've certainly had seasons where I start 25-2 and cruise to the 1850s thanks to good matchups/bad opponents/favorable hax but I wouldn't say that's typical of cart laddering. It's easy enough to hit a good streak like that and rocket up the ladder, but it's also just as easy to hit a streak of misfortune and plummet 100+ points. If you play 100 or so games in a season and end up at 1750, then there's a good probability that your luck averaged out and that that rating accurately correlates to your skill as a player/teambuilder.
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It could have been a lucky streak, I only lost three games and played less than 30 total. My implication was theoretically I could have qualified for invitationals with three more wins or so, which could have easily come down to luck but would have taken a total of less than four-five hours of gameplay over an entire year. If I have a "lucky streak" and care not for cartridge laddering, why would I just not stop at 1820 to qualify for invitationals and call it a day? The reason that guys like GE and 11oyd struggle on the ladder is because they want to reach some arbitrary number that will prove their effort and skill at the game. You can just stop in the middle of a season and collect your point total, I've done it before on showdown ladder where I've just kept my main at 1500 points as it was when I first laddered to that point. Meanwhile you can see 11oyd is at 1280 points or so because he keeps grinding. Does that mean I'm better at the game or more deserving than 11oyd? I could be but I'd argue not.

The current system, yes it is easy (at least in terms of time) to get on some lucky streak and get very close or into qualification, but also it's kind of cruel to those that want to push themselves. GE should just stop at 1915 and cash in his chips to play the system, but that kind of goes against the spirit of playing pokemon and goal of people like himself and 11oyd to push themselves further within a season. I guess the question is, is the point of playing pokemon on cartridge ladder just to qualify for this tournament? If it is, then the current system is fine. I'll be happy to plop a high score in next season to make sure we see some memes next invitational and call it a day. Saves me having to play tours where it is far harder to get qualification due to the higher amount of competition and beating players who could qualify on cart in one season in their sleep (essentially I'd have to get multiple deep runs in tours which I could get but would take far more effort). But I get the impression from the leaders of the tier that it is the opposite way round, that this qualification is supposed to encourage people to get into cartridge play. If that's the case, then I guess it's just a shame the system is the way it is because it does the opposite of encouraging people to play more and to push themselves to their limit.
 
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You could have qualified if you had three or four more wins and parked it there, yes. The ease at which you claim to have done so is more a result of there being hardly any players who ladder on cart compared to the number of qualifying slots, as I've mentioned multiple times already. Whether or not players would or would not park their rating to guarantee points has negligible effect on how easy it was to qualify.

Also not entirely sure why 11oyd's laddering experience is used as an argument against end-season ratings when he has been getting higher end season ratings when he didn't park his rating, which speaks to his ability as a player for overcoming the difficulty of keeping out of tilt and going into a losing streak to lose all progress, and has been rewarded appropriately. GE went on tilt and wasn't able to come back to where he was.
 
Just thought I would contribute an idea regarding helping new players etc. Ika has pointed out that we aren't always a very helpful community when new players show up looking for help. I also feel like this is something we can improve on too. Obviously growing our community needs to be a priority for us and we are going to fail if new users come and leave because they got no help from our room. What I was thinking we could do is declare some available time that we normally have each week where we around to answer questions from new players. What do you think?
 
Does that happen often? People leaving ‘cause someone wasn’t helpful that is. For me the most common reason that’s been communicated to me is simply not liking the rule set (read: glalie) after trying the format out in a room tour or on the ladder.
Besides, I get pms from new users asking questions about bs often, and I can assume that’s the same for the other auth (especially as I get questions about doubles redirected to me).
We should always generally be available to answer basic questions. And I think we’ve been good about this. Having a scheduled time for q&a is something only the regulars are really gonna know about through familiarity with the room. Also, I can only imagine that a new user popping into the room and seeing it mentioned in the intro would ignore it and just ask what they were gonna anyway, or ask a question about the q&a instead.
 
I haven't read this thread beyond skimming but I've always had a soft spot for BSS and as cant say/dw could attest, always something to say about the state of the community. I'm just going to respond to the OP and give light thoughts on other stuff. I apologize in advance for the very likely scenario of me just rehashing someone else's post. As far as cartridge stuff goes, I don't entirely support it being such an important part of the circuit. Yes, it offers the highest level of competitive play, though with an asterisk I'd add that it doesn't support in-community play very much. It's just you vs the faceless ladder. This to me doesn't seem like anything that would grow the community, which appears to be a main focus of bss atm. If there was a way, you could always include the ladder to a lesser extent. Put more emphasis on the tournaments and events here. If you do that, you can at least say you're moreso targeting the audience here on smogon. If you're putting laddering on such a pedestal, I feel like it isn't targeting anyone new and solely is an exercise participated in by current bss residents. In regards to tournaments here, I think keeping them single elim and simple is the play for now. I'd definitely welcome unique formats such as like, other team tournaments. That being said, you have tournaments going pretty much year round already. The only issue to me seems like visibility. I don't think including past gens in the current major tournaments is a great idea if you're looking to grow the community. It's cool for the people already here and versed in battle spot, though just further alienates people who don't have a much of a clue about battle spot to begin with. On the points system, if the intent is to keep cart formats involved, go to the point format from season 1. Just place less of an emphasis on cart compared to tours here. This year, as uninvolved as I was, I noticed people having two seeds and stuff. I was definitely not a fan of this, and just seemed like even more of a way to limit the field. It definitely isn't exciting seeing user x lose to user y, just for user y have to play user x again in literally the next round. Fwiw, don't think this will largely affect community growth. The thing I have always felt BSS needs is outreach and visibility. Get people to bring in friends. I've tried to in the past and it worked out decently. The 'other circuits' situation is annoying sure, though there definitely could be more done in terms of advertising to the wider community. Have smogon tweet out tournaments, have more established community members bring in new blood, have more advertisements on ps. You could even try hosting some variation of tours in the general 'tournaments' category, such as some OMs and other various tiers do that don't entirely fit into circuits. I gtg so I apologize for the terrible formatting and lack of direction. I just wanted to quickly give my thoughts on this. Anyway, I really do wish you folks luck, it isn't easy to bring people in on a site where 3v3 is in the extreme majority, but I know leadership has been diligently trying for awhile to do their best.
 
11oyd I'm not going to make a "contributor timesheet" for staff to answer questions lol. People are volunteering to do this because Pokemon is a hobby, not a job, and by extension I cannot enforce a timesheet like your boss at your workplace :pikuh:. That is of course if we are actually seeing a lot of people leaving because they feel ignored, which like Jhon said might not necessarily be the case.

I do see however is that with forums, PS, and discord our community is stretched out a little thin. The community is the most active on discord but admittedly newer players are more likely to first interact on PS and forums which are less active. Thats more a community discussion point instead of a circuit discussion point (which this thread is) so I won't go any deeper here.

Regarding cart play Nat you do raise an interesting point regarding community integration/growth. I'll have to think about it more tomorrow.
 
I really like chemcoops suggestion of somehow linking amount of qualifying slots to how many people participate (=reach more than 1700 once?). Just limiting it to three would further reduce the incentive to compete, as it would be much harder to get a slot this way.

I play quite a lot of Pokemon, but I'm not very flexible with my time, so I prefer laddering to playing tournaments. When playing ladder I can squeeze in games whenever it's somehow possible and can also always take a break. I also think BSS is much more prone to hax than formats where games last more turns, so laddering is in some way a better indicator of skill because the luck can average out.

I also have two suggestions for getting more players:

1.) It should be much easier to find this community in the first place. When I started to play competitively I used the Smogon Pokedex as a resource to get good builds. But I did not know about Battle Spot Singles, so the first month or so I just bred OU mons that were legal for cart play. Maybe it's possible to get a link on the Smogon start page where the different formats are explained and with links to the different discord servers and smogon forums? I mean there is this link: In-Game Guides & Resources and if you then click on Battling and then on Introduction to Smogon Metagames you will find some information, but this could be much easier to find and could use some hyperlinks to the actual communities.

2.) Maybe start a thread in the BSS forum for helping new players to get good teams on cart? That could be used for trading breedjects or giving away 6IV Ditos or just explaining what the different ways of obtaining perfect mons are.
 
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