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Ladies and gentlemen, I am going to propose a somewhat radical change that has nothing to do with the UC discussion that's been going on so far.
Proposal: Make the recoil damage from recoil moves based on how powerful the move is regardless of the damage the target takes.
Rationale: The idea came up as a result of the fact that, if you hit a substitute with a recoil move, you don't take recoil damage. This does not make sense though - you're still putting the same effort into the move. If a substitute is made of matter that withstands blows as well as the pokemon that created the substitute, then surely any pokemon that attacks the substitute should get the same feeling as they would get upon hitting the real pokemon - including significant pain for hitting with recoil moves.
But then I realised something else - the recoil damage from a recoil move actually increases when the target is less resistant to the move. Let's say a pokemon with weight class 2 and rank 4 attack uses Flare Blitz on an opponent with rank 3 defence and no weakness to the move. The recoil damage would be (10+2+6-4.5)/3=4.5. However, if the opponent has only rank 1 defence and has a weakness to the move, then, with no change in how Flare Blitz is executed, the recoil damage inexplicably increases to (10+2+6-1.5)*1.5/3=8.25. Once again, this does not make sense - how does performing a move twice in the exact same way yield consistently different results?
This accurately reflects the power that the user of the recoil move puts behind the move while not being skewed by any other factors (as I understand them, critical hits are hits that just so happen to hit the opponent's weak spot, so they are based on the opponent so are not included in this formula). Recoil Fraction is the fraction of damage stated in the move's description (eg, 1/2 for Head Smash). In the Flare Blitz example, the recoil damage would be (10+2+6)*1/3=6 against both opponents.
Dodge would be fine without the limit on dodge rate, that's p.much it.
RE: Recoil
Supported - It's ridiculous that trying to Double-Edge an Aggron would hurt LESS than Double-Edging a Muk. One's a huge beast of steel and rock and you would crunch as you hit it, one's squishy and would absorb the impact. OFC, codifying something like that would be obscenely complex, and your solution works, and is very balanced.
RE: UC & CC
Prop #1: I support this, however I'd round UP rather than down. This would mean matches like 4v4s retain a UC closer to the current value, whilst leaving a 1v1 singles at 2 UC. The only matches that would decrease in UC payout with this that is larger than a 1v1 is a 4v4 singles [11 to 10] and a 5v5 Singles [13 to 12]. This would further promote the reffing of larger matches, including complex formats often advoided.
Prop #2: Once #1 is sorted, or even if not, this is fine.
Prop #3: I suggested it, most people like it. Coincidence?
Prop #4: Move 2v2 singles to the 2 CC pile and I'm OK with that.
Oh, and waterwarior, when the time between signing up for a facility and actually getting a ref and starting is as long as it is, that's a pretty good sign that it needs more refs. just saying
EDIT:
so I did a little bit of research to back up my previous statement.
The following are the people at the top of the queue for each facility, and how long it has been since they joined the queue:
Arcade: Objection has been waiting for a subref for 30 days
Subway: IAR has been waiting for 2 days
Hall: Up to date
Pike: Pwnemon has been waiting for a subref for 7 days
Some of those aren't that bad, namely the hall and the subway, but in my experience, and I'm sure others can testify, queues can be much longer.
now, let's compare that to the battle tower (aka "regular" matches).
since there isn't a queue for the battle tower, it's hard to tell, and I may be wrong, but the only one I see that doesn't have a ref has been up for about 5 hours.
Excluding the hall, the wait for the other facilities right now is considerably longer than they should be. 2 days doesn't seem long at all when it's compared to 30 days, but it's still a pretty long time.
Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is that it's completely unfounded to say that "the old people are working just fine, and have no need for new refs"
also, I like how you mentioned that people shouldn't be impatient. If you had to wait (for a subref, no less) for a month, would you not start to get impatient?
also, on a kindasorta related note, the battle tower should have a queue so people don't get buried.
That's really not the way to solve this kind of thing. you tell them to talk to you on irc, but is this not what this thread is for? Finding issues and trying to fix them? People find this an issue because they have no idea what's going on. Whether or not the payout is justified or not, we can't just rely on the word of the only people who actually receive said payout
IAR said:
the majority of us, including me, have no idea how to ref a raid, & how the AI works
shouldn't the fact that it comes up so much be a testament to the fact that people have a problem with it? I'm not saying they don't deserve it, I'm saying we should know why
IAR said:
Singles will always be played more than Doubles or Triples, because of how easy it is to ref a singles match compared to a Doubles+ match
Like I said earlier, that's the same amount of UC for one round of a raid as a whole singles match. Yes, some singles matches are over in just a few rounds. some last many more. Sometimes a round takes five minutes to ref. sometimes it takes much longer. Adding flavor (good, well written, flavor) can add to that time significantly. We don't know if it's justified if we don't know anything other than the refs saying "it's hard." If I said that reffing a singles match was hard, would you believe me just because I said so?
IAR said:
Just ask zarator or Engineer, they will tell you why Raid refs are paid so high
Something tells me they'd just say, "it's a secret. just believe us, now shut up"
Rediamond said:
they're so complicated with numerous factors to consider with every action that only a madman would realistically want to put the time in. Other facilities have the same thing going to a lesser degree, and tend to get backlogged, which is why they pay a bit more in some cases.
ok, a few things to adress in this one. first, other facilities really don't have the same thing going for them. Yarnus said that they are the exact same thing as battles except with a few more RNGs in there, and until I see any evidence otherwise, I completely agree. There are a few RNGs (which, I will remind you take like five seconds) to determine the pokemon, the arcade board thingymajig, or the pike room, but other than that, they're just reffing a battle and acting as one side at the same time, which is pretty easy considering the pokemon they are given, the fact that they only have to wait for one person, and how incredibly simple the battle is. if there are other mechanics (besides the subway rng thing, which is basically just changing the threshold for stuff when rng'ing, which in my opinion isn't a big deal) that I'm not aware of, tell me, but to me it seems pretty damned simple.
second, as I said in my previous post, there's a pretty simple fix to keep it from getting backlogged: accept more refs. Reffing a facility really need not be as exclusive as it is **coughcoughmonthlongwaitscoughcough**
waterwarrior said:
Plus, facility reffing isn't as 'exclusive' as you think. Take the Hall for example. How many people are Hall refs, you may ask? 26.
How many of those people do it on a regular occasion?
In the past month, the following people have accepted hall challenges:
The Royal Guard
EndQuote
waterwarrior
TheWolfe
Maxim
BM Zeo
Typon77
Rickheg
Elevator_Music
(that's 9)
Ok, I think that's all the counterarguments I have in me for now, but there is something else I want to talk about that I've been thinking a long time. I don't think that we should make anything give more UC. I think that's insane. UC is too incredibly good (if not over-powered) already. Am I the only one that thinks that to train your pokemon you should, well.... train your pokemon? Yes, reffing takes a lot of effort and time, but it shouldn't be a substitute for using your pokemon in battles in order to make them better. Be honest. on average, what do you think the ratio is for the amount of UC you spend on your pokemon to the amount of EC/DC/MC you use on them? for me? it's pretty damned high (just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean I'm not going to take advantage of it). Now, I'm not saying we should make UC useless (refs still deserve a good reward for what they've done) but it shouldn't be able to do literally everything. Honestly, I don't know how to fix it, but it's a big problem, in my opinion.
EDIT: I know that last part is causing quite the kerfuffle (I try to use that word whenever the opportunity presents itself). Just understand that that's how I feel. If everyone else feels differently, cool. I'm fine with that. I was just putting it out there
I'm going to stop talking about this as it really isn't worth it, but I have one final question: What makes raids reward so special that the formula is hidden?
I mean, really, what the fuck difference does it make?
That's all.
Nyt out of that argument.
As for objection's proposal, sure, although it might muck up balance, I agree that universal recoil would be nice to have.
That's really not the way to solve this kind of thing. you tell them to talk to you on irc, but is this not what this thread is for? Finding issues and trying to fix them? People find this an issue because they have no idea what's going on. Whether or not the payout is justified or not, we can't just rely on the word of the only people who actually receive said payout
I talked with Nyttyn on IRC when he asked the same. Your standard raid reffing involves reffing 10 actions - and although I'm not a perfect source from what I gather there are multiple additional calcs/rng rolls to determine the moves the bosses use. On average your raid ref would ref about the equivalent of a 1v1 per round whilst factoring in specials, and threat. So your raid ref is statistically underpaid - it only seems otherwise because the payout is only in large chunks [Meaning dedication is needed], and because there is generally speaking always raids going on.
My point exactly, although you were somehow using this to argue that we shouldn't be asking about it
We know enough without even looking at ref AI to be able to talk about it, so there is no need to press further into a system that is to be kept quiet about.
shouldn't the fact that it comes up so much be a testament to the fact that people have a problem with it? I'm not saying they don't deserve it, I'm saying we should know why
Not only can refs post a specific battle and ask people to accept it, they are also picky. I like singles because singles get refs fast. Which may contribute to why flashmatches are generally singles.
Like I said earlier, that's the same amount of UC for one round of a raid as a whole singles match. Yes, some singles matches are over in just a few rounds. some last many more. Sometimes a round takes five minutes to ref. sometimes it takes much longer. Adding flavor (good, well written, flavor) can add to that time significantly. We don't know if it's justified if we don't know anything other than the refs saying "it's hard." If I said that reffing a singles match was hard, would you believe me just because I said so?
OK, THIS pisses me off. Yes, they can't bloody go into the intricate details of how raids are reffed, but they CAN give a general overview of what they do, or you can see above for something someone who doesn't ref raids can say. There is no need to try Ad Hominem attacks to make your point unless it's either based on misinformation or outright wrong.
ok, a few things to adress in this one. first, other facilities really don't have the same thing going for them. Yarnus said that they are the exact same thing as battles except with a few more RNGs in there, and until I see any evidence otherwise, I completely agree. There are a few RNGs (which, I will remind you take like five seconds) to determine the pokemon, the arcade board thingymajig, or the pike room, but other than that, they're just reffing a battle and acting as one side at the same time, which is pretty easy considering the pokemon they are given, the fact that they only have to wait for one person, and how incredibly simple the battle is. if there are other mechanics (besides the subway rng thing, which is basically just changing the threshold for stuff when rng'ing, which in my opinion isn't a big deal) that I'm not aware of, tell me, but to me it seems pretty damned simple.
Most facility reffing, whilst only a single battler being involved makes them faster to ref, are generally paid equally, less [Hall in paticular can pay 16 UC less for a full run than you'd get reffing the same number of 1v1 singles - although in reality the drop in UC rarely exceeds 8 UC for reaching battle #10]. Even if there's a minor pay increase, the presence of RNG rolls, as well as having to battle at an INCREDIBLY high level with Pokémon often weaker than your opponent makes it a fair trade.
second, as I said in my previous post, there's a pretty simple fix to keep it from getting backlogged: accept more refs. Reffing a facility really need not be as exclusive as it is **coughcoughmonthlongwaitscoughcough**
Again, stop attacking facility refs. We have lives - things like exams, coursework, jobs, family. There is no way in hell anyone should put ASB in front of any of them. Adding more refs is only a temporary solution to the permanent problem of impatient people.
How many of those people do it on a regular occasion?
In the past month, the following people have accepted hall challenges:
*snip*
Perhaps some people are at their reffing quote. Perhaps some people are reffing slower challenges, although they haven't taken anything. Also consider that we want to maintain a high quality of battling and reffing in facilities - when I've reffed facility in the past, I've spent multiple hours trying to figure out orders to give the slightest percentage chance of victory. Most people lack the time to do that, or the motivation.
Ok, I think that's all the counterarguments I have in me for now, but there is something else I want to talk about that I've been thinking a long time. I don't think that we should make anything give more UC.
Considering I haven't seen any arguments to increase UC payout that's a bit of a bold thing to say, especially if you need to retract it.
UC is too incredibly good (if not over-powered) already. Am I the only one that thinks that to train your pokemon you should, well.... train your pokemon?
So you're saying that players shouldn't be able to differentiate between "Fast but hard route" and "Slow but easy route"? Since that makes no sense to me.
Be honest. on average, what do you think the ratio is for the amount of UC you spend on your pokemon to the amount of EC/DC/MC you use on them? for me?
I'll use Electivire, where roughly 2/3 of his MC came from reffing, during a period where I reffed a metric shitton (with flavour, before you pull another ad hominem).
it's pretty damned high (just because I don't agree with it doesn't mean I'm not going to take advantage of it).
Firstly, nice false assumption. Secondly, I believe that when something takes up 90% of my time on one mon and only contributes roughly 66% of the mon's value, it's perfectly fine.
Now, I'm not saying we should make UC useless (refs still deserve a good reward for what they've done) but it shouldn't be able to do literally everything. Honestly, I don't know how to fix it, but it's a big problem, in my opinion.
There are 4 things UC can go to: MC/EC/DC/CC. You block off any of EC/MC/DC and you are unfair to new folks trying to catch up to vets who may spend less time on ASB. You block out CC and nobody will really notice since I don't think anyone uses UC as CC since the latter is easy to obtain.
Look, I don't wanna get into this any further, as it's obvious it's going nowhere, and I sure as hell am not getting on irc right now. the arguing is just getting out of hand. all I came to say is can we get the arena compendium added to the list of stickies? I feel like it's a lot easier that way. who knows, maybe it'll even lead to less matches at the boring old standard arena
EDIT: also, a link-list in the OP for each author's post. There are 51 posts, which makes finding the one you're looking for a hassle
Am I the only one who's noticed that there has been an intense amount of hostility in this thread recently, mostly between veterans and newbies? I think that the benefits of a few of these proposals are things that newer player can't appreciate, along with the skill required to ref a raid. I would rather ref a 1v1 singles than a round of a raid even if I knew what I was doing, but that's not the point. I just hope that people can discuss these things in a more civilized manner, and try to see where the opposing party as coming from, as opposed to calling requests and ideas insane.
I realize that it's hard to stomach, considering all you see are the calculations, but drop it. Pwnemon and anybody else that wants to talk to me about this, shoot me up on IRC when I'm around and I'll happily respond regarding this; I can't divulge the specific mechanics, but I can give you a general sense of what I need to do. Just shut up about it here. It's irrelevant.
This shows that your first set of points is taken completely out of context—I asked you to stop talking about it in this thread, since it was completely irrelevant to the proposals on hand; now if you want to make a proposal for reducing raid referee compensation, by all means go ahead. If that happens, then it will finally become relevant and I won't ask you to stop talking about it here anymore.
This also shows that your assumption in response to IAR's post is patently false.
Now that this is done, I'll point out what I've done in terms of changes right now. In general, UC payout for standard battles is roughly the same, with the exception of Singles battles in formats of 4v4 or higher; for some reason, they got a +2 bonus in the current system, which makes no sense to me for reasons stated. I've changed or will change 2v2 Singles to award 2 CC, but I'm wary of increasing it any more. If you guys have any more constructive criticism, I'll be happy to take it into account.
@Aweshucks: The Arena Compedium has been Stickied in the past, and it did not have any significant effect on the amount of Arenas being made (I think there was an increase of 5?) or use of Arenas. Besides that, the Arena is on the first page of the (Data) prefix. The OP link, on the other hand, is a decent idea, but I don't think a moderator/person with editing powers would be willing to put in all that work (Anybody can prove me wrong at any stage).
On UC Changes:
There was an idea that I had a while back (before... this) when considering subreffing and how a ref can put in 8 Rounds worth of reffing and receive a minimal amount of UC while a subref going for 2 Rounds can earn the worth of a full reffing. My suggestion is a Loyalty Bonus; something like +1UC for every 3-to-5 Rounds reffed. This, I believe, lends itself to more encouragement to larger, longer matches.
I agree with this move completely. On average, a 2v2 Singles match lasts 5-8 rounds. 1 CC for 1v1 is good, but under your system, 2v2 Singles was underpaid, & would have less incentive to play than 1v1 Singles. So 2 CC for 2v2 Singles, I can agree with.
On another note, I'd like to see the CC payment for melees changed/standardised. Melees are notorious for being long battles & take a while to finish. I have just finished reffing one, a 2v2v2v2 Singles, with 13 Rounds in 65 days, & when I found out that the players only got 2 CC for it, I was disappointed. How could a match that takes that long reward the same rewards to players as a 2v2 Singles. So, I would like to propose a standardised payout for matches involving three or more players with the following formula:
[BOX]CC= CEILING ((#PLAYERS * #POKEMON PER SIDE) / 3)[/BOX]
This, I feel, while so minor, should incentivise melees for palyers, & give a far more respectable payout, considering how long they normally take. A 2v2v2v2 Match gives 3 CC, a 3v3v3 gives 3 CC, a 2v2v2v2v2v2 gives 4 CC, a much better payout. Anyone else agree?
Yeah, in general that increases CC without much of an impact in the smaller matches, but enough to discourage CC hoarding. I dislike that brawls - incredibly fast things - would get equal CC for what's normally from experience less effort, but that's an incredibly small detail.
Lately I've saw some people being critic towards the current standards for raid payout. On one side, I think I have the fault for never making raids as clear and known as they could be - especially when it comes to reffing. I think that, besides me, Engineer Pikachu, deadfox081, Destiny Warrior, Athenodoros, and a couple other veteran raiders (I'm thinking to you too dogfish^^), people don't actually have any idea about how raids work in their inner aspects. And so, they don't know the time required for reffing even one round of them.
In order to shed some light on it, I'll break down the reffing of a raid I'm recently reffing, the Frozen Vault Hard Mode featuring Dogfish and Maxim. Now I'll explain you every little step I went through to put the Round 1 up.
1) You need to organize the sprites of each mon (including minisprites for the calculations), with the sprite of each held item, their HP, etc. This is actually relatively fast, you can do it with ease in 3-4 minutes or so. At this stage you can also start figuring out the order in which each Pokemon will act.
2) Since Weavile and Froslass are faster than any other Pokemon in DF and Maxim's party, they get to act first. Let's start with Weavile. With no Pokemon holding threat against him, I need to roll 1-8 to determine which Pokemon will be the target of the weasel's wrath. I get 8/8, which means Probopass is the selected target. Now, I need to lay out the attack slate which will be used to roll which attack is chosen against him. Let's take a look at Weavile's attacking list!
Aerial Ace
Assurance
Bite
Blizzard
Brick Break
Crush Claw
Cut
Dark Pulse
Dig
Double-edge
Double Hit
Dynamicpunch
Facade
Faint Attack
Focus Blast
Frustration
Giga Impact
Headbutt
Hyper Beam
Ice Beam
Ice Punch
Icy Wind
Iron Tail
Low Kick
Low Sweep
Metal Claw
Mud-slap
Night Slash
Payback
Poison Jab
Punishment
Pursuit
Protect
Retaliate
Return
Rock Smash
Scratch
Shadow Ball
Shadow Claw
Slash
Strength
Swift
Thief
X-Scissor
Now it's time to determine which attack does the highest damage against Probopass. Due to the fact Probopass is pretty heavy and is 4X weak to Fighting, my guts suggest me that Low Kick may be a reasonable choice. Further calculations confirm that, with a massive 29 damage output (got from (13 [BP] + 1 [Stat Dif] - 1 [Sturdy]) * 2.25), Low Kick is the strongest move Weavile has against Probopass. Naturally, that's not the only Fighting-type move (or Ground-type, since Ground is 4X effective as well) Weavile learns. But since only attacks that deal 75% or more damage, compared to the best one, will make it to the slate, I figure out only Dynamicpunch does enough damage (23, to be correct).
At this point, I'm ready to roll to see which attack I will actually use against Probopass. I get 1/2, so Dynamicpunch it is. Weavile has a 34% Accuracy bonus, further compounded by Probopass's 10% Evasion penalty for his nature, so it has a 6% chance to miss. I roll and obtain 276/10000. A miss! It must be Dogfish's lucky day.
Time to comply this step, on average: 10-15 minutes.
2) Now it's time to see what Froslass does. Again, no one has threat against her, so I roll 1-8. 8/8. Probopass again! Maybe it's NOT his lucky day, after all. Now, let's take a look at Froslass's attack table
Froslass has only one Fighting-type move, Wake-up Slap. It would do only 9 damage. That's pretty weak. Not persuaded by the fact that there aren't better attacks to use, I start calculating various attacks, until I find out that Thunder (10 damage) and Thunderbolt (8 damage) work too. I roll 1/3 and get 3/3. Wake-up Slap. Time to roll for crit and move on.
Time to comply on average: 10-15 minutes.
3) Now that Froslass and Weavile acted, I can start looking at DF and Maxim orders. Especially for the first round, since no solid threat has been built by anyone, it's more cautious to build the threat list alongside calcs. So I get the sprites up for both calcs and threat list and start counting. Fiery Dance, Flamethrower, Aura Sphere... while updating the Threat List with the respective values. Since Weavile's special is based on his %HP, I calcs the HP standings for bosses at the end of round 1.
Time to comply on average: 15-20 minutes.
4) Now, after Crustle attacks, it's time for Weavile and Froslass to move again. However, this time, I find out Crustle has aggro on both. Let's start with Weavile. The first thing that comes to my mind is that, due to Shell Smash, Punishment must do tons of damage now, so I candidate it as the most damaging move (it does 18 overall). Later I find out that Iron Tail does 18 as well since it's SE. Moreover, Ice Punch and Payback (Crustle is faster now) are valid alternatives as well. Crustle has Light Screen, so I don't even look at Special attacks due to Weavile's lackluster SpA. Time to roll! I get Iron Tail. I forego the crit roll due to Crustle's ability, and roll only for the Def drop. I also apply Pickpocket.
Time to comply on average: 12-17 minutes.
5) It's Froslass's turn now. Despite the fact that Crustle has Light Screen, I realize some special attacks will inevitably come in play, due to their high BP and Crustle's hefty Defense. Plus, there's no SE attack to look at (Water Pulse deals only 9 damage... I'd even be surprised if it ended up on the slate). So I resign myself to go through the attack slate and test almost every reasonably powerful Special Attack. The final slate turns out to be:
A quick roll confirms Ice Punch to be the move of choice. Some further rolls fuck Crustle over with a freeze as well! Luckily, the Lum Berry saves him.
Time to comply on average: 15-20 minutes
6) Now I can finally take care of the other Pokemon. A lot of wide ranged attacks (3 Heat Waves and a Rock Slide) also means some extra work to take care of, both for the rolls and for the threat list. Moreover, I need to roll for Cursed Body pretty often. But in the end I finalize the second round as well.
Time to comply on average: 20-25 minutes
7) Now it's time to update status for the round end. HP, Energy, screens, items used/disabled, stat boosts/drops... this kind of stuff
Time to comply on average: 5-10 minutes
8) And now... flavor text! I make my best to convey the actual battle, despite the fact I can't wait for this to be finished and the fact I'd be lucky if 50% of my readers actually looked at it because of my relatively bad grammar and English knowledge.
If you do the math, you can see this reffing can easily take up to 2 hours or more. And this calcs do not factor in any kind of interruptions you may incur in: IRC chat, that battler calling you for a WC match, Facebook, WoW, other IRL aspects... all sorts of stuff. For all this, I get paid 4 UC. And note that all the stuff listed above still doesn't count the fact that:
1) I generally have to ref about 6 raids at once, just to not let the queue grow up - how many other RP facilities with just 1 referee do you see that can withstand this kind of activity without any significant drop in the ref speed?
2) When you pick a raid, you don't simply ref a round and be done with it. It's not something like: "Hey, I need 6 UC, let's go ref two quick 1v1!" It implies committing yourself to spend 1-2 hours each 1-2 days, for each raid, for 20 or more days (for any single raid). And if you ask around, you'll see that, aside from last September (1 week holiday) I never actually stopped reffing raids. This translate in an average 4-6 hours I have to spend each day - just to keep up with the ongoing raids. All of this while having to deal also with the aforementioned obligations.
3) What said so far still doesn't count for all the non-paid stuff I have to do to keep raids running. Developing raids, looking for cool images/sprites, advertising raids on IRC to keep interest high enough and keep people aware of any news about them, updating quests/reputation standings... the list goes on and on.
Now, if you find that, for just 2 UC/hour, you're willing to basically devoting your entire time to this kind of effort (note that even my co-referees still need to spend 1.5-2 hours each day, it's not a walk in the park for them either... and probably they don't know each boss's movepool as thouroughly as I do to determine attack slates this fast), to the point you can barely afford to play other battles / RP (god forbid reffing them)... then be my guest.
EDIT: Just one last thing... some people (even some seasoned raiders) asked me why I don't make the threat formula public. That's because, in all honesty, I want it to not be up for any discussion on its smallest details. I have tested and tweaked it multiple times, it's fine as it is, and having it up on the General Thread would most likely just raise confusion and arguments... there's no need for that.
Let me just pull Word of God here and say that I trust the facilities manager and RP creators to compensate the people who work for them fairly based on realistic mechanics. Having made one myself I know a ridiculous amount of work goes into a Raid, and I've never even tried reffing one. I'd probably be able to calculate the most effective moves quickly, but applying the threat matrix and randomization is the real time eater.
In general ref compensation is a tricky issue because we want refs to be heavily incentivized to take their time reffing a load they can actually manage. Make it too high and the reward compared to the generally lower attention needed when battling gets outsized, and subsequently too many battles are taken on for the ref to manage effectively. Make it too low and you remove the incentives of UC.
Brawls perfectly encapsulated this balancing act because each player got crazy amounts of progress on their Pokemon and refs had to do only a few rounds of heavy lifting to be very well compensated, so it was capped. They can still do larger brawls, but the cost of doing the work outpaces what they'd get if they were actually in the Brawl.
RE: Altering Ref payments:
I'd like to keep the cap on Brawls because they're far too easy, but I'm open to streamlining the way compensation is handled. We now have a core of very good refs who can handle more complicated formats, and have enough experience to make better judgements than I can.
I like Engineer Pikachu's proposals, but I would make this addendum: The ref is compensated an additional UC for each individual Pokemon KO'd, divided by the match format. The reason for this is to incentivize Singles matches. You can almost be assured that 10-11 Pokemon will be knocked out in a 6vs6 Singles match, and that such a match will take much, much longer than a 6vs6 Doubles or Triples Match. Rounding would follow normal rules.
Thus:
6vs6 Singles with 10 Mons KO'd: 14 + 10/1 = 24 UC.
6vs6 Doubles with 10 Mons KO'd: 14 + 10/2 = 19 UC
6vs6 Triples with 10 Mons KO'd: 14 + 10/3 = 17.33 (17) UC
6vs6 Brawl with 10 Mons KO'd: 12 + 2 + 10/6 = 15.66 (16) UC [15 Capped]
In general I like the subref payout scheme and the increased CC proposal. Make them so.
RE: Recoil
We're following strictly in-game mechanics here. More damage dealt = more recoil taken, Mons don't take recoil damage (or drain) against Subs unless they combine into spillover on a combination.
And now, here's a fun fact about KOC brought to you by Objection:
If, all in the same action, a Krilowatt burns a Stratagem with Scald, then an Ampharos hits it with Discharge, and then at the end of the action, Stratagem is KO'd by the burn, the KOC goes to Ampharos despite the burn from Krilowatt's attack being the cause of KO.
Now think about that for one moment.
That does not make sense! Why would the pokemon whose effect caused Stratagem to faint not get the KOC, while a pokemon that merely came close would?
As far as I can understand, the reason for the system as it currently is is simplicity and impossibility to abuse. However, after discussing this with Glacier Knight, I feel that this is an oversimplification that sacrifices logical sense for ease of use.
That said, ease of use is vital to any component of a system, especially in a game as complex as CAP ASB. Therefore, I would like to propose a system that strikes a balance between simplicity and sensibility.
If a pokemon is knocked out by damage caused by another pokemon (whether direct or passive), then the pokemon whose move caused that damage gets the KOC.
If a pokemon is knocked out by passive damage and, in that action, is subject to multiple forms of passive damage, calculate the passive damage on the pokemon based on in-game effect order. In the event of an effect priority tie, whichever effect was inflicted first is calculated first. Go through each form of passive damage until the pokemon faints. The last effect you reached is considered the one that knocked out the pokemon.
If a pokemon is knocked out by damage caused by an arena effect (including a pokemon that is only there as part of the arena) or if a pokemon knocks itself out, then treat the effect before it as the one that knocked out the pokemon.
If a pokemon knocks itself out before taking any damage from another pokemon's effect, that pokemon gets 1 less MC at the end of the battle.
If the pokemon has a maxed out movepool but does not have both a full EC and a full DC, it instead has its prizes reduced by 1 EC and 1 DC (to a minimum of 0). For this purpose, an absent EC for single-stage mons and an absent DC for mons without a DW ability count as full.
If the pokemon has a full EC, a full DC and a maxed out movepool, it instead does not give the usual CC bonus for having full counters and movepool (eg, a maxed out Electrode would not give its 5 CC bonus).
This would mean that, in the example I gave at the top, since Stratagem was knocked out by passive damage and the only passive damage was from the burn and the burn was caused by Krilowatt's Scald, Krilowatt would get the KOC.
In another example, let's suppose that a Honchkrow was burned by a Charizard's Fire Blast on action 1 and badly poisoned by a Tomohawk's Toxic on action 2. On action 3, Honchkrow is brought down to 3 HP by direct damage, then takes 3 damage from the combination of bad poison and burn. Since bad poison and burn have the same effect priority, we calculate them in the order that they were inflicted. Charizard burned Honchkrow first, so Honchkrow takes 2 burn damage, bringing his HP to 1 - not quite enough. Tomohawk's Toxic then brings his HP down to 0, which is enough to knock Honchkrow out, so Tomohawk gets the KOC. If Honchkrow only had 2 HP, then Charizard's Fire Blast's burn would've finished him off and Charizard would've gotten the KOC.
Alternatively, if the bad poison was the result of an arena effect rather than Tomohawk's action, then even though the bad poison would've knocked him out, there would be nobody to give the KOC to, so we look at the previous effect, which is the burn, which was caused by Charizard, so Charizard gets the KOC. If both the burn and bad poison were caused by arena effects, then the KOC would be given to whoever inflicted the last damage on Honchkrow.
The last rule is there to put people off of abusing first-turn Explosion and the like.
Hmm... I've been told that if a pokemon dies of residual damage (of any kind, no matter how they acquired it), the KOC goes to the last pokemon to attack it, which would have been ampharos in your first example. I guess I've been doing it wrong. :I
Hmm... I've been told that if a pokemon dies of residual damage (of any kind, no matter how they acquired it), the KOC goes to the last pokemon to attack it, which would have been ampharos in your first example. I guess I've been doing it wrong. :I
20:35 Jesseus there's something thats been bothering me about melees for ages, which is how to dal with conflicting subs
20:35 Jesseus and i realised the perfect solution
20:36 Jesseus which is: no subs
20:36 orcinus conflicting subs should be outright ignored...
20:36 dogfish44 Conflicting subs are ignored
20:36 orcinus oo. erm. interesting?
20:36 orcinus yeah see sometime i order with
20:36 orcinus counter-counter (If HJK is NOT used, then surf)
20:36 orcinus to avoid contradicting subs
20:36 Jesseus hahaha thats clever
20:37 dogfish44 it's also illegal
20:37 orcinus what, seriously?
20:37 dogfish44 You have to sub for a move being used
20:38 dogfish44 not for a move NOT being used
20:38 orcinus that doesn't make sense
20:38 orcinus it's the same thing
20:38 dogfish44 but it's illegal nonetheless
20:38 dogfish44 :\
It makes perfect sense; that sub basically says "If he uses any move other than Hi Jump Kick, use Surf", which means you're subbing for a lot more than two moves.
Counter -> Counter
If Force Palm, then Surf.
If Protect, then Surf.
If Detect, then Surf.
If Aura Sphere, then Surf.
If Bone Rush, then Surf.
If Dig, then Surf.
If etc, then Surf.
Counter -> Counter
If Force Palm, then Surf.
If Protect, then Surf.
If Detect, then Surf.
If Aura Sphere, then Surf.
If Bone Rush, then Surf.
If Dig, then Surf.
If etc, then Surf.
surf-surf, if hjk then counter means:
If Force Palm, then Surf.
If Protect, then Surf.
If Detect, then Surf.
If Aura Sphere, then Surf.
If Bone Rush, then Surf.
If Dig, then Surf.
If etc, then Surf.
