Achievements and Ladder Division on Showdown!

[Pocket]

Others and I would like to have Showdown! implement achievements if it is feasible. The purpose of these achievements are to improve the quality of the ladder by awarding players for playing well.

To further this goal of improving ladder quality, we also propose a division in our ladder (maybe just OU ladder for now) - players will all start out playing on the "beginner" division, while good players will be promoted to the "advanced" division. This division would encourage players to play well to enter the better ladder. Antar could also provide better usage stats by collecting data solely from the games played on the "pro" division, thus removing shitty gimmicks out of the equation.

Others and I are still brainstorming ideas for this ladder division and achievements, so any input to flesh out these ideas would be much appreciated. Feel free to add or shoot down new and old achievements / conditions for promotion or demotion of ladder players

Ladder Division - how exactly do we want this to work?

- establish a rating of 1650+ to be promoted (with a min of 10 rated games)
- promoted individuals will not have to face the players in "beginner" division under ANY circumstance (complete insulation)
- Antar would collect samples solely from the advanced division
- should there be a condition for qualified players to drop back into beginner ladder for unintentional / intentional bad performances? Say if their ladder rating dropped 200 points AND falls below 1600?
- One account's placement in the division will not affect the placement of future alts - every fresh alt must start from the beginner division
-???

Unrated Ladder Option - have an unrated mode for ladder for testing teams, etc

- how would people be matched up in this case?
- obviously no points are awarded or lost, so people would be matched randomly?
- I assume regular ladder players wont face unrated players?

Achievements - this is easier; let's come up with Achievements!

- Grandmaster - Peak #1* (in any ladder? separate achievement for each official ladder?)
- Peak #3 - unnecessary?
- Ladder Elite - Peak #5
- The Grind - Peak #10
- Pikachu - Peak #25
- Top Percentage - Peak #50
- Hall of Fame - Landing on a Leaderboard
- Peaking with a weatherless team
- Peaking with a stall team
- Unstoppable - 100-win streaks*
- Winning Storm - 50-win streaks*
- Winning Streak - 25-win streaks*
- Don't Stop Me Now - 10-win streaks
- On a Roll - 5-win streaks
- 3-win streaks
- Peaks in All Official Ladder
- Peak in an Official Ladder + "OM of the Month"
- A Winner is You - Graduating the "newb" ladder
- First of Many - Winning the first game
- Massive Los-seis - Winning without losing a single Pokemon
- Undaunted - Winning after a 3-mon Deficit (or more)
- Comeback Kid - Comeback victory with your last mon (this mon must KO 3 mons or more)
- Master of Fate - Winning after suffering a 10% hax (fire blast burn, ice beam frz, thunderbolt para, draco miss)
- Just a Flesh Wound - Winning after losing a mon to a CH (the knocked out Pokemon must survive the same hit without a CH to count)
- Giant Slayer - Defeating an opponent whose team is composed of solely top 10 mons
- Reaching 2000+ Rating
- Reaching 3000+ Rating (is this even possible without a "glitched" account?)
- 5:1 battle ratio after 50 games
- 5:1 battle ratio after 100 games
- Seen It All - Win 1000 games in total*
- Hardened Veteran - Win 500 games in total
- First of Many - Winning the first game
- Loud and Proud Obtained Voice from Ladder Challenges
- ???

- Thoughts on stackable achievements? For instance certain (not all) achievements can be won multiple times. I think this is most appropriate for the more challenging achievements like 100-win streaks; if a player accomplished this more than once he or she would want to show that.
- I put an asterisk (*) before achievements that we want stacked
- Achievements with Expiration Date - Perhaps allow some non-stackable achievements to expire over time, so people will find challenge in maintaining their achievements?

What if achievements could state how recently they happened and they would "fade" (gold/silver/bronze/rust ect) if you had them for a while without reearning them?

 

[verbatim]

Please note that at this moment, the Pokemon Showdown staff has not made any concrete decisions on wether or not to implement either of these decisions, but that may change at a later date. For now please treat this thread as a sounding board that may be used by PS staff to determine what successful implementations of these idea('s) will look like.

 

[GatoDelFuego]

From previous discussion, aimed at concerns over deciding whether a team is "stall" of not

During the defense of the titans project, alexwolf and others worked out a very nice definition for a "stall" team. However, some people did think it was kind of limiting, and I wouldn't really be expecting everyone to peak with the full stall team as we defined it (almost zero offensive prescence). I was referring to antar's stalliness metric, which he worked out before the metagame analysis was completed, and it can take one team's data and determine on a scale how "stally" it is. It's results are kind of in a grey area, but it gets results rather than just a subjective decision.

This would definitely be done best with people submitting their teams when they reach #1, because that could then get checked by something that can easily check if a team is weatherless or the usage statistics of it. To avoid problems with the stall thing, you could suggest people run their teams through the stall calculator to see if they qualify first, though I'm not sure antar ever did provide the program/code to everyone. At that point, it does seem a bit stretching for one achievement.


Also another idea, making the top 10/5/1 with "dark horse" pokemon/multiple pokemon under a certain usage? There could be varying scales of this, such as an achievement for using a team with pokemon all outside the top 10 in usage, and then another that has half the team under the top 20% of usage, and then another for using one pokemon defined as a "dark horse" under the traditional rulings for it.

 

[ryan]

Personally, I don't see the point, but then again, maybe that's just me. I haven't accomplished a whole lot on that list, but there are some that I have.

Even still, I feel like having a ladder with the top 100 alone remedies the need for this. You can already see the top 100 players (well, alts) within any given tier.

Also, if you're laddering, don't you want to play inexperienced players? Free points.

Also, we have 1850 stats. If you wanted tiering to be based around the teams of higher ranked players, we pretty much have that in the weighted usage statistics.

I don't know. It all seems trivial to me, but I suppose if the bulk of the playerbase wants it, there's nothing wrong in implementing it. It just seems like the people who would develop these things have a more pressing things to tackle at the moment.

 

[oSeasons]

This is a very interesting proposition. Maybe we can also have unlockable avatars for achieving certain goals. That would be quite interesting..it'd be quite similar to the badge system on the forums.

 

[Woodchuck]

Also, if you're laddering, don't you want to play inexperienced players? Free points.

Actually, continually running into lower ranked players can be irritating when laddering. The matches against them are uninteresting, you don't get many points from them at all, and they can drop your deviation too quickly. Also, if you get lucked by a bad player, the drop in points is really frustrating.

 

[Level 51]

This is a very interesting proposition. Maybe we can also have unlockable avatars for achieving certain goals. That would be quite interesting..it'd be quite similar to the badge system on the forums.

I'd really like this, but unfortunately simulators aren't allowed to have any RPG elements at all. This would break that rule.

As a whole, I think Achievements would be an interesting system, if a bit superfluous on a simulator. I'd happily gather them for weeks on end and rage at noobs who break my 99-win streak though :)

 

[blarajan]

Just for the record, most people don't only ladder with a single team...at least I don't. What would happen with some of these achievements if an individual laddered to the top or whatever with a stall team some games and then a HO one?

Likewise, with the ladder split, if there is a "pro" and "noob" one...I would hope that any IP address that made it to the "pro" ladder at least once would never have to be subjected to the "noob" one again?

 

[haunter]

I believe the ladder position would be tied with a given account. The IP thing is not feasible imo since not everyone has static IPs.

 

[Pocket]

Just for the record, most people don't only ladder with a single team...at least I don't. What would happen with some of these achievements if an individual laddered to the top or whatever with a stall team some games and then a HO one?

Duly noted; I stroke out the achievements that are team-dependent.

I also added an asterisk under a 50-win and 25-win streaks, because both of them are impressive feats that should be quantified. Is there other achievements that should be stackable?

I'd also like to re-emphasize the purpose of implementing this in the first place. Most competitive players are unhappy with the current state of competition of the ladder, because it's poor. Unlike the old days when people laddered on Shoddy Battle, where peaking high was actually considered significant, now people could care less (or at least MUCH less) about whether your team peaked #1 now.

By adding achievements and ladder "filter," we are offering incentives for ladder players to improve their performance, which would directly improve ladder quality. Accomplished ladderers would be acknowledged by their achievements displayed on their user profile for other Showdown! users to view. Mediocre players would strive to play harder and better to win more challenging achievements and to play on the "pro" ladder. These incentives will certainly shift people's perspective of our current ladder from "a place for casual play," to "a place to put my skills to the test." At the end of the day, our ladder will gain some extra layer of significance that the current ladder lacks.

This entire mission is to make our ladder(s) taken more seriously within our community again.

 

[Pikachuun]

- establish a rating of 1650+ to be promoted (with a min of 10 rated games)
- promoted individuals will not have to face the players in "newb" ladder under ANY circumstance (complete insulation)

If anything at all is implemented, please let it be this. It's infuriating when you try to ladder, get luckhaxed, then drop somewhere around 6-8 points, while you only gain 3-4 per victory. Also, the achievements idea sounds interesting; it definitely makes me want to do more on PS.

 

[Level 51]

Has anyone here actually gotten a 100-win streak? That's pretty... intimidating o.O

That said, I decided to contribute a few ideas n_n ~!

:o

I'm assuming we're giving achievements by account and not by like IPs right?
- Have a 5:1 or better w:l ratio after 100 battles
- Win 1,000 games in total (not sure if this would help to achieve the goal?)
- Have 3 battle windows open at once... and win all 3 battles [rated only] (ok I'm quite sure this wouldn't actually help)
- Get Randbats voice reqs
- Ditto for NU, RU, UU, Ubers, LC... maybe even some OMs lol

Basically, I feel that the achievements should really be achievements and not easy stuff like "Win a battle" (although I guess that could do to alert new users to the presence of the achievements system? I don't know about that, I think a tab at the side saying "Achievements" under the Ladder tab would do pretty well.)

While I'm here, I may as well ask (at the risk of sounding silly): are we going to be giving these achievements names? That'd add a fun atmosphere to the achievements system as well as give the achievements snappier reference names and make them easier to reference (eg "Giant Slayer" vs "that achievement which needs you to defeat an opponent whose team is composed of solely top 10 mons").

Just my two (arguably less, if we're gonna take that literally) cents' worth <_< >_>

 

[GatoDelFuego]

For the team dependent ones, it could be something like reach the number 1 spot with a certain team, then spend the next X matches above X rank to qualify as "peaking"? Just a thought.

 

[StarmanXL]

One thing I would suggest is trying to keep the names the ladders as neutral as possible. I'm thinking "regular" and "advanced" gets the point across nicely. For one, you don't want to give the idea that skill is a dichotomy--that you're either a top tier player or you're garbage, no in between. Sure, it may give incentive to some, but others may gain an inflated ego and labeling players who don't have super high ratings as "newbs" could come off as condescending. Maybe it won't, but doesn't hurt to take into account.

 

[Pocket]

I added your achievements, Level 51 - thanks! I toned them down, though (5:1 win ratio in 50 games; 100 wins total)

I also liked your name for one of the achievement, so I added that, too, in bold. I agree that we should name all or most of the achievements, but I have trouble coming up with them :X If you have more name suggestions, please share it with me!

StarmanXL, I edited the name of the two ladders to "beginner" and "advanced."

 

[alexwolf]

We must carefully organize everything before setting up the the two ladders...

There are many potential issues that could occur. For example a bad player could spam accounts 'till he gets lucky and reaches the threshold, thus getting the ticket to the advanced ladder. Then if we allow the users that get permission to the advanced ladder to stay there for ever, little by little the advanced ladder with start filling with bad players. So we should definitely have some requirements even for players that reside in the advanced ladder. But we should be careful about those reqs, or otherwise good players might end up getting thrown out of the advanced ladder due to hax or bad mood or whatever and then needing another 10 battles to get into it again. So the reqs should make sure that the players of the advanced ladder all have a ranking of X (insert requires ranking) or higher for a certain amount of time. For example, let's say that i enter the new ladder and then lose 5 battles (due to terrible hax let's say and bad match-ups) and thus i get lower than the threshold required to be in the advanced ladder. This means that i would get kicked by the advanced ladder and then what? My account on the regular ladder will still be above 1650 rating, assuming no decay, and even if we take decay into account it will still be kind of easy to get into the advanced ladder again. Anyway here are some suggestions that i want to put here in an organised way as this whole thing is gonna be very complicated:

-Once a player gets from the regular ladder to the advanced, reset its ranking on the regular account.

This needs to happen so that players getting kicked out of the advanced ladder don't simply get back by winning 2-3 battles, and instead should play again 10 battles and get the required ranking.

- Set a certain ranking that each player in the advanced ladder should have at the end of a fixed period of time. This period should be long enough to allow people to make up for losses caused by hax and/or bad match-ups

Here is an example. At the end of every week, every player not having X ranking on the advanced ladder will be kicked out of the ladder. Also one week is enough for players that got unlucky (due to reasons mentioned above) and lost ~5 games in a row and thus got below the necessary threshold for staying in the advanced ladder, to make up for it with the necessary amount of battles. I said 5 games because i feel that it is not so hard to lose ~5 games in a row due to hax / bad match-up / tilt, and thus would be unfair for players who suffered those things to get kicked out before getting the time to make up for it. Finally, one week is just a random example.

- When getting to the advanced ladder with one account, only this acount gets access to it

This is a pretty simple rule. Let's say that we determined that the period of time that drops from the advanced ladder happen is every 3 days. And let's say that a really bad player got lucky and got into the advanced ladder after 10 games. Do we want this player to spam bad teams with new alts for three days? No. It's not as if it isn't easy for good players to get into the advanced ladder with a fresh acount in 10 games. It's a hustle for sure, but it is better than allowing noobs to spam bad teams with new alts on the advanced ladder.

Also if we end up linking any PS account that has a Smogon account with the Smogon account we could use some ways to judge if a player should get free access to the advanced ladder as long as it manages to get there just once. I don't know what those ways will be, but i am sure we can find some, so that well known good players don't have to play 10 shitty games each time they want to battle with a new account.

That's all for now, i am sure more issues will come up later, but for now let's discuss those stuff. Do you like those rules, or you don't, and in each case why? If you don't like them what are some better rules that you can think of?

 

[Pocket]

alexwolf, you got this mixed up - and other may be confused, too, so thanks for bringing it up.

These are not two different ladders - it's simply a division within one ladder. Thus, your rating carries over from one division to the other. If you move up to the advanced division, then your ranking starts from 1650 or whatever rating you had in the beginner division before moving up. If you drop into the beginner division due to shitty performance, then your rating doesn't reset, but you simply leave off with your last rating.

I also don't think we need to give special permissions to Smogon users in our forum, since they should be able to get past the beginner division by skills alone.

I agree that one account's performance should not determine the placement of alts made by the same person, so I'll add that in.

 

[alexwolf]

Ok, nice that we cleared this up! However, i believe that the second rule i mentioned still has value. Do we want a player that just got to the advanced ladder to get kicked out of it because he lost his first game? This could become a very frustrating proccess where players that get into the advanced ladder struggle to maintain their position there for more than 1-2 battles (not necessarily due to lack of skill, as hax, match-up, and tilt are all factors to consider when laddering). Is it necessary to force players to endure this possibly frustrating situation? By setting a certain amount of time, at the end of which, players with ranking lower than 1650 will leave from the advanced ladder, we still manage to keep the bad players to a minimum (for example if we make PS refresh the ladders at the end of each day) while giving to good players the chance to make up for battles that were lost (due to factors irrelevant to skill) the instance they got into the advanced ladder.

 

[Pocket]

I am sure that I set the criteria for a demotion quite lenient - if people lose 200 points or if they drop below 1600 rating, then they probably deserve to fall back to the "beginners" division. If you think that these conditions are too strict, let me know a better criteria.

I don't think your suggestion is necessary to implement - just makes things more complicated and confusing

 

[Rhys DeAnno]

I am sure that I set the criteria for a demotion quite lenient - if people lose 200 points or if they drop below 1600 rating, then they probably deserve to fall back to the "beginners" division. If you think that these conditions are too strict, let me know a better criteria.

I don't think your suggestion is necessary to implement - just makes things more complicated and confusing

The lose 200 points thing is tricky. You could climb to 2200, then fall to 2000, and go back to the beginner ladder. If this happens, how do you even get back to the advanced ladder again? I think setting a 1600esque threshold is probably sufficient.

 

[Pocket]

Good point, Rhys DeAnno - I changed the conditions for demotion to losing 200 points AND falling below 1600 ACRE. This way a player who just got promoted cannot move back down after a losing streak that costs him or her 50+ points, for example.

 

[Level 51]

I added your achievements, Level 51 - thanks! I toned them down, though (5:1 win ratio in 50 games; 100 wins total)

I also liked your name for one of the achievement, so I added that, too, in bold. I agree that we should name all or most of the achievements, but I have trouble coming up with them :X If you have more name suggestions, please share it with me!

StarmanXL, I edited the name of the two ladders to "beginner" and "advanced."

I really meant 1,000 games in total, across all ladders you've played on; otherwise, most of the achievements end up as quite short-term things. Separate achievements for 100, 250 etc could do though.

Also: I'd like to suggest an achievement for have a rating in at least 25 different metas. ;)

names

Unstoppable - *100-win streaks
Winning Storm - *50-win streaks
Winning Streak - *25-win streaks
Don't Stop Me Now - 10-win streaks
On A Roll - 5-win streaks
> 3 wins in a row is a bit low imo
First Of Many - Winning the first game
Comeback Kid - Comeback victory with your last mon (this mon must KO 3 mons or more)
Master of Fate - Winning after suffering a 10% hax (fire blast burn, ice beam frz, thunderbolt para, draco miss)
Giant Slayer - Defeating an opponent whose team is composed of solely top 10 mons
Hardened Veteran - Win 500 games in total
Seen It All - Win 1,000 games in total

More to come

Finally, the last achievement on the list should be like
- Obtained Voice requirements on a Ladder Challenge (I meant get the requirements, not the Voice. Most of the challenges are already over.)

 

[Emerld Shuckle]

First post on this forum, so here it goes.

I think the entire point system needs reform. I think laddering should be an achievement, not something you can do in an afternoon. Not only that, but it's a bit silly that after a few losses, you're pretty much screwed in terms of laddering. The way points are given at the end of battles needs to be more standardized.
I propose an entirely new system of PS.

Instead of 2 ladders, you have 6.
0-499, 500-999, 1000-1499, 1500-1999, 2000+
Once you make it to a ladder, you stay there. If you keep losing, you stay at the lowest possible rating in that ladder. The points would be distributed Max gain 50 min 15, Max loss 50 min 15. This way you could always ladder no matter how unlucky you've been, but you still wouldn't be able to blitz through to the top tier. This would also prevent the need for people to make multiple accounts (unless you want to, but you would have to start from the bottom).
Of course, this would only be done for OU,UU,RU,and NU as they would be the only tiers that would have enough people to pull this off.
I get that it would take a long time to reach 2000+. That's the point. Again, this should be an achievement. Everyone on the 2000+ would be displayed on a leaderboard in order of rank, which will give players incentive to get good enough to have their name up there someday.

Also, on a bit of an off note, as long as we're discussing ladders, I would like to suggest a "test" ladder for each tier, where people can play unrated matches testing their teams before they take them to the ladder (or just have fun).

Thank you for listening.

 

[ryan]

Instead of a test ladder, you can just hop on an alt. The issue with a test ladder is that many people use alts for this anyways, and I don't feel like this would change if new ladders were added. There's this, and then you also have to consider that the scroll down menu for tiers is already fairly cluttered looking--although a lot less so now that the tiers are categorized. Adding an unrated option for every tier would amplify this significantly.

 

[Soul Fly]

I really really like this idea.

This will give even seasoned veterans an incentive to ladder if they can be assured of facing properly skilled foes and bragging rights.

I have more grief with the alt farming system actually. I hope this mitigates that. 90% of the showdown alts are dead ladder rejects, this skews up the ladder populace stats..

EDIT: I wouldn't also like to see any 'game-play style' based achievements, because the definitions of stall/HO/balanced are meta at best and constantly evolving as we move ahead and carve out new strategies, cores and niches.

On the other hand i would love to see achievements the provide incentive for the usage of pokemon in the bottom % of the usage rankings of a given tier or any pokemon from the tier below.
this can be implemented in a number of ways (cracking a certain ACRE/Glicko with said pokemon in a team.. etc etc)