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Are tournaments a format for casuals?

12-XVI

12-XVI

So bans are often based on tournaments, not ladders. And lately I have been thinking why tournaments need to ban things that are no problem on ladder. And I think I know why.


Many recent bans (at least in Gen 9 NatDex Doubles) are not on strategies that are too strong, but on strategies which are considered to be matchup fishing. But matchup fishing is a problem caused by the tournament format. The tournament format encourages matchup fishing because each battle matters a lot and you know in advance who your opponent will be. You can watch what your opponent likes to use and then matchup fish for that, hoping you get lucky in that one battle you need to win.

But on the ladder matchup fishing is unviable. You generally have no idea who your opponent will be. The only way to try to matchup fish successfully is to have a team that is generally good so that most matchups will be in your favour. But then you are not matchup fishing, you are just using a generally good team. If you really matchup fish then you will get a few easy wins and a lot of losses and you will be stuck on low ladder. Ladder teams need to be consistent. Matchup fishing on the ladder is only good for low ladder trolling.


I think that a similar problem occurs with luck. Luck-based strategies would not really have a big impact on ladder even if they are allowed because of the law of large numbers. If you e.g. depend on Quick Claw to win then you might knock a better player out of a tournament due to you getting that 10% activation at the right time, but you generally won't knock the top ladder player out of his top spot for long because for each loss you give him you (or others) also give him 9 wins.


Tournaments are good for hype and drama because each game matters and because everything is personal but ladders are better for measuring skill. I think that a lot of Smogon bans are necessary only because Smogon favours tournaments over ladders.
 
12-XVI said:
So bans are often based on tournaments, not ladders. And lately I have been thinking why tournaments need to ban things that are no problem on ladder. And I think I know why.


Many recent bans (at least in Gen 9 NatDex Doubles) are not on strategies that are too strong, but on strategies which are considered to be matchup fishing. But matchup fishing is a problem caused by the tournament format. The tournament format encourages matchup fishing because each battle matters a lot and you know in advance who your opponent will be. You can watch what your opponent likes to use and then matchup fish for that, hoping you get lucky in that one battle you need to win.

But on the ladder matchup fishing is unviable. You generally have no idea who your opponent will be. The only way to try to matchup fish successfully is to have a team that is generally good so that most matchups will be in your favour. But then you are not matchup fishing, you are just using a generally good team. If you really matchup fish then you will get a few easy wins and a lot of losses and you will be stuck on low ladder. Ladder teams need to be consistent. Matchup fishing on the ladder is only good for low ladder trolling.


I think that a similar problem occurs with luck. Luck-based strategies would not really have a big impact on ladder even if they are allowed because of the law of large numbers. If you e.g. depend on Quick Claw to win then you might knock a better player out of a tournament due to you getting that 10% activation at the right time, but you generally won't knock the top ladder player out of his top spot for long because for each loss you give him you (or others) also give him 9 wins.


Tournaments are good for hype and drama because each game matters and because everything is personal but ladders are better for measuring skill. I think that a lot of Smogon bans are necessary only because Smogon favours tournaments over ladders.
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Let's go shuckles said:
In yugioh, the cards "Self Destruct Button" and "Victory Dragon" are both banned despite the fact both cards are absolute dogshit due to their ability to disrupt tournaments. Clear proof that tournaments are not bringing out the best in competitive.
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Not to tier bash but

IMG_1891.jpeg
 
Let's go shuckles said:
In yugioh, the cards "Self Destruct Button" and "Victory Dragon" are both banned despite the fact both cards are absolute dogshit due to their ability to disrupt tournaments. Clear proof that tournaments are not bringing out the best in competitive.
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Exactly!

Another problem of real time tournaments specifically is that it favours making the game simple for quick matches that cannot vary much in how long they take (measured in absolute time). For example, VGC games are made to be short. They have no strategy, no planning, no thinking, no tactics beyond the 7 turn gameplan. You just make a simple tactic, hope for the best, and after 5 minutes you either have won or lost.

True skill is shown in long battle that are complex and involve a lot of strategy and tactics. I have had a lot of truly great strategic regenerator battles where the best player (me) won. But VGC only allows degenerator battles and must be like that because it is constrained by being used for real time tournaments.

Granted, the 1000 turn limit that PS enforces does mean that even the ladder cannot have truly epic battles anymore. But it can still have great battles. 1000 turns may not seem like much but they can contain a lot more strategy than VGC battles can.
 
The issue here is the idea that comp Pokémon, or any game really, should be maximally competitive. A game requiring more skill or strategy or execution does not make it a better game. For example, the corrupt and incompetent Other Metas mods cruelly rejected my submission of "Pokémon but when you win you also have to play a game of chess and if you don't win that it goes back to team preview." Just because a game is objectively more skillful or strategic doesn't mean it's more fun or worthy of attention. (That statement was not relevant to my OM submission. I lied when I said it was an example.)

Many other games feature a tradeoff between high-sample-size and high-stakes events. (US) Baseball and Basketball, for instance, feature an absurdly long regular season combined with a fairly short final tournament. Baseball teams play 160 fucking games in a regular season. Of course this is because baseball consists mostly of standing around and making faces at each other; if you tried to run an NFL season like that everyone would die. But the point stands that both formats can be beneficial for the game as a whole. Spectator attention, narratives, prestige, and the pressure to play at the highest level all produce positive effects. Once someone has topped the ladder a few times, they really don't have any incentive to make the best team or play the best they can. This is why you regularly see RMTs like "Reaching Rank 1 in Gen 3 OU with a Slaking" or "Top 20 in Gen 9 OU with five Pokémon." Those are cool, but they aren't really an honest display of peak competition.

Luck is also a weird one. You're right that Quick Claw is going to be ass on the ladder but sometimes worth it in tournament. That doesn't mean tournaments are casual though, it's just a quirk of the format. Obviously Quick Claw is stupid and just randomly winning 10% of the time has no place in a competitive game. But whether or not it's a practical problem is contextual! And you can't really draw a firm line around what is and is not stupid. Everything exists on a spectrum from "now calc it vs Fissure" to "Accupressure is broken bc for one move slot you can boost anything you need." Smogon has a long history of byzantine rules and bylaws trying to marry some notion of objectivity to a democratic system where we make decisions via a literal opinion poll asking whether something feels "too good" or not. It doesnt work great, but it works well enough to stop anything better coming along.

In conclusion, Pokémon is a land of contrasts. Please look forward to LCotM next month, which will be my upcoming format "Chessketballmons."
 
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Meanwhile, in the NFL, you can have a phenomenal regular season but then put up 1 stinker in the playoffs and you're out.
 
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