Grinding in ASB revisited

[Its_A_Random]

Moderated thread.

One of the topics that arose as a result of new user concerns from State of the Game pertained to the time it can take to have a developed team ready for some of our endgame content. The major proposal brought up in that thread was the idea of doubling counter gain (From a battler's perspective, idr if referee's perspective as well) by Texas Cloverleaf. Discuss whether it should happen or not, or if there are any other avenues we could explore to reduce grinding times in this thread.

For a quick roundup from that discussion, please start reading from this post.

Discuss.

 

[Vanillish Wafer]

I have a strong opinion on this subject. I read through the State Of The Game discussion while developing my opinion and eventually stumbled upon a post by Silver_Lucario42 that almost completely much sums up my feelings on the subject.

Silver's post

I'd like to say that I thoroughly agree with the sentiments in this thread. As a candidate frantically training up Pokémon for the upcoming Ground Qualifiers, there's nothing I'd like more than a way to halve the flashes or UC I have to put into training.

At the same time, though, there's a memory I have from the time I joined ASB. All I had were 3 LC Pokémon: Krabby, Rufflet, and Duskull, each bursting with flavor every time they entered a battle. If they evolved after just two or three battles and unlocked their Hidden Abilities just as quickly, then although this sounds strange, I'd feel a bit underwhelmed.

Let me use an analogy: the main series Pokémon games. You play through one for the first time, and you might take a few stops along the way, such as using Pokémon Refresh in Sun and Moon, or checking out a few buildings along the way. If you wanted to, you could trade in a Level 100 Charizard (idk) from another game and completely destroy all the trainers you come across, but you wouldn't do that, even if the Charizard didn't disregard your every order. No, you want to get the experience, the challenge.

After you beat the game, let's say you want to complete the Pokédex. So you grab that Charizard, get five freshly caught Pokémon from the PC, and head right back to the Pokémon League to evolve them. This time around, you want the challenge to go as quickly and painlessly as possible, because you've been through all this before. It's not a new experience anymore, but it is one you'll have many times in the future if you ever want a shot at completing that Pokédex.

Basically, our aim for newer players is to provide a fun challenge in training up their Pokémon in 3v3 LC Singles against other new players, but we should also try to streamline the experience for people in a hurry to get a badge or a legend.

My proposal is to make moves twice (or more) as easy to get. Here's why:

If you're training your mons through flashes, then it shouldn't be too hard to evolve your Pokémon. Assuming 3 evolution stages, in a pinch, you can use Lucky Egg to get a ~25 move FE in five flashes. Exp. Share will allow the Pokémon to have ~45 moves upon evolution. It allows new players to have many experiences with their Ralts without being stuck with Magical Leaf and Confusion in case they messed up their initial claim.

That said, maybe we could buff Heart Scale to double all counters. This would popularize Gyms (although they might not need it) but force new players to go with the original system. Another idea might be to have Heart Scales sold for, say, 50 UC. This would encourage people to ref.

Just my two cents.

A big part of ASB, for me, is flavour. I don't want my Pokemon to evolve and have their AC unlocked in two battles, I want to get to know them. The more I battle with them while they're growing, the more developed their character is. I'll try to convey what I mean with a metaphor.

Say you're reading a story. The main characters are all weak at the start, and they have to go through many trials to gradually improve. You like this story, the pacing is good, the characters develop in a fun way throughout the story, and they get stronger as time goes on. There was also some transformation at important points in the story.But what if the author decided to throw pacing out of the window, and just gave the characters all of their transformations instantly and rushed through the story just to end the "development" early? You hardly know these characters, and the progression was so fast it barely felt like progression. I feel doubling all counters would break this nice pacing we have with regards to evolution and hidden abilities.

But, I do believe that being forced to play regularly for several years before you can fully enjoy the game is wrong, so I think doubling MC is a good call. I have two reasons for this.

1) As I stated above, the progression would be much less satisfying if evolution and ability unlocking were so fast.
2) The main problem with training is the fact that an average decently trained Pokemon will use around 40-80 MC to get its important moves. By the time you get that much MC, you'll be fully evolved and have an unlocked ability anyway. Moves are the main problem of grinding and if you feel that increasing EC and AC gain will help in any way, I disagree very strongly. It's all about MC.

 

[zarator]

If we want to increase MC payout in some way (something I do not actually support, to begin with), we should increase UC payout by a similar rate. Even as it is, reffing hardly pays as much as battling. Consider flashes, for example. In a 1v1 flash between FE mons with their hidden abilities unlocked, each battler gets 1 CC plus 3 MC, plus 1 MC from XP share (or even 2 from heart scale). Meanwhile, the ref gets 3 UC. Each battler spent approximately 1 minute for orders in most cases, while each round reffed takes generally 5-10 minutes.

If we increase MC payout even more, without touching ref payout, what's the incentive to ref in the first place? Sure, you could say UCs have versatility, and you can spend them on whichever mons you need when you see it more fitting. But in a world of flashes and self-reffing, that does not count anywhere as much as you might think. Even now, self-reffing flashes is honestly more rewarding than reffing other people's flashes. How is it going to be, should you increase this gap even more?

Really, if it were for me, I'd just leave the whole counter system as it is and tell newer players to "ref more". Reffing flashes takes 20-30 mins at most, and it's a good source of income for beginners, who also get to learn more about ASB in the process. But if we nonetheless decide to increase MC payout, please, PLEASE do not just increase that and leave ref payout untouched. Finding reffers is hard enough as it is <.<

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Yet again, "ref more" is not sufficient to make the time horizon in this game an appropriate one

In any case the original proposal did settle on doubling (or scaling in some way) UC rewards as well.

EC and AC can be ignored they are trivial for training

 

[JJayyFeather]

Yet again, "ref more" is not sufficient to make the time horizon in this game an appropriate one

Prove it.

Sorry to seem completely confrontational here, but reffing provides a huge source of counters, counters that can, might I add, be used where you desire, to fill in whatever gaps in training you may have. There is no reason to increase the total amount of counters out there if effectively 50% of them aren't being capitalized upon.

 

[TorterraX]

Prove it.

Sorry to seem completely confrontational here, but reffing provides a huge source of counters, counters that can, might I add, be used where you desire, to fill in whatever gaps in training you may have. There is no reason to increase the total amount of counters out there if effectively 50% of them aren't being capitalized upon.

I know the following is not the situation of all people but as I think it is at least the situation of some people (including me), here's my two cents:

I barely have time to ref. I like it and would love to do more, but that just isn't possible. It effectively requires me to sit in front of my computer for 20-30 minutes straight and more, which most of the time I can't manage. Whereas, if I flash, I can sneak in orders in a few minutes (even seconds sometimes).
Reffing requires us to sit in front of our computer all the while, but we can think of orders while we do other things.
Some of us just have a truckload of homework/work/whatever else fills our life, and even if UC is a very valuable resource that isn't capitalized upon, we just can't manage to ref as much as we'd want

Of course, this isn't the sutuation of all people, but I think for that reason we shouldn't treat UC as "counters that everyone should work towards/use" because that possibility sometimes isn't there.
Not to say people that don't have time to ref should have an advantage or anything (they definitely shouldn't imo), but let's just take this into consideration before talking about counters.

Just food for thought

 

[zarator]

TorterraX there are more things that you can ref than just flashes. Battle Halls, Battle Tower matches, gym matches (at least Singles) all take around 15 mins or less to ref per round, and if can provide you with a steady stream of UC. Just because you are only rewarded at the end of the challenge does not mean you are not being actually rewarded on a daily basis, too.

Furthermore, part of why we need to keep reffing on an equal foot with normal training is because players who battle more than they ref are - to put it bluntly - a drag to the system. I'm not saying that they shouldn't exist. Their existence is what allows some other players to live on fat UC gains, and I believe we should allow that as a possibility. However, right now, I believe the system is verging on a very delicate imbalance. Most facilities - tournaments, gyms, RPs - all suffer from periodic lack of reffing manpower. If we want to prevent the situation from going any worse, we need to make sure that putting time into reffing that stuff is at least roughly as rewarding as "sneaking in orders in a few minutes". If this end up hamstringing a few players who really do not have the time to play more than a couple minutes at a time, then it's still an acceptable price to pay - a price, I might add, just about any other multiplayer online game is frequently paying, so nothing new under the sun.

Besides, you may be able to "sneak in orders in a few minutes" when ordering in a flash. But what about gym battles? Tournaments? TLRs? Raids? It takes far longer to order there, and it is not something you can do "in your head", while doing other stuff. You need to scan through the opponent's movelists, run calculations, and this is all time you need to devote to ASB than to other stuff. If you don't have more than the few minutes/seconds to flash at your disposal, how can you hope to compete in those arenas? And if you don't have the time to play well in those competitions, what do you need those extra counters for, anyway?

 

[TorterraX]

TorterraX there are more things that you can ref than just flashes. Battle Halls, Battle Tower matches, gym matches (at least Singles) all take around 15 mins or less to ref per round, and if can provide you with a steady stream of UC. Just because you are only rewarded at the end of the challenge does not mean you are not being actually rewarded on a daily basis, too.

Furthermore, part of why we need to keep reffing on an equal foot with normal training is because players who battle more than they ref are - to put it bluntly - a drag to the system. I'm not saying that they shouldn't exist. Their existence is what allows some other players to live on fat UC gains, and I believe we should allow that as a possibility. However, right now, I believe the system is verging on a very delicate imbalance. Most facilities - tournaments, gyms, RPs - all suffer from periodic lack of reffing manpower. If we want to prevent the situation from going any worse, we need to make sure that putting time into reffing that stuff is at least roughly as rewarding as "sneaking in orders in a few minutes". If this end up hamstringing a few players who really do not have the time to play more than a couple minutes at a time, then it's still an acceptable price to pay - a price, I might add, just about any other multiplayer online game is frequently paying, so nothing new under the sun.

Besides, you may be able to "sneak in orders in a few minutes" when ordering in a flash. But what about gym battles? Tournaments? TLRs? Raids? It takes far longer to order there, and it is not something you can do "in your head", while doing other stuff. You need to scan through the opponent's movelists, run calculations, and this is all time you need to devote to ASB than to other stuff. If you don't have more than the few minutes/seconds to flash at your disposal, how can you hope to compete in those arenas? And if you don't have the time to play well in those competitions, what do you need those extra counters for, anyway?

I agree with that, and I'm not arguing that it should be otherwise. There are resources that we don't capitalize on. But here's the deal: your last paragraph is exactly what I mean. When I have time to put into ASB, I order into RPs, Tourneys, etc. That, as you said, can take a considerable amount of time. So when I'm over doing that, I have very little time left over to ref anyhting.
That being said, I agree that we should encourage people to ref (and with most of what you're saying). We need those and it allows you to learn a lot. All I'm saying is that, before talking before the pay system as a whole, we need to take into consideration every element.

EDIT: Ok, rereading myself that doesn't seem clear so here's my point:

I definitely agree with Zara and other peeps that UC payouts are not high enough. It takes much more more effort than just flashing and gives less counters. If it was increased, there would be more incentive to ref, which would probably help the ref shortage as well as increase counter payoff, reducing training time. I believe if we are to touch the counters system we have to adjust UC too.

But, as I said, we can't actually try to solve the problem without taking all elements into account. Yeah UC is nice and all, but for some people it's just not possible to pour a lot of time into reffing and UC dump their mons. All I'm trying to say is that it might be a bit more complicated than just saying "Ref more, problem
solved". Though I also agree we must strive to encourage reffing, as it's a big part of what keeps the community alive.

 

[EndlessAge]

This might become a wall of attempted Stylized text, so please bare with me. Fighting the flu as we speak.


The first things we need to ask ourselves when we are talking about so aptly called "grinding" in asb is: What is a "high-level" pokemon, how long should it take one to get a "freshmon" to a "high-levelmon" and what avenue do we want users to take in order to do so.

The first thing I want to address however, is what some members of the community are stating as their solution to the "problem" that exists. Simply ref more. Now I think this is not a great solution, and have plenty more colorful words to describe how I feel, however, I believe that this statement is flawed in many senses and I'd wish to point that out to you:
1.) Newer members of the community will take longer to ref. At the current pace I'm at, I'm spending 45 minutes to ref a round of a 2v2 LC doubles match that will net me 6 UC at the end of it. Currently about to enter round 3 of Actions/reffing. Now, what I think the problem is, is that some of the older members of the community potentially see "Oh, well, if he's only spending under 2 hours to get 6 UC which can effectively be 3 new moves, then that's pretty good". However, the way I see it is, "If I can only commit and hour-hour and ahalf a day to the game, I just spent half my time doing one thing" for those 6 counters.
2.)Maybe this is a logical fallacy, and I'm more than willing to get called out on it as such, but I think there is a reason you see the same 5-8 people reffing absolutely everything. I think it's honestly because a lot of people don't see it to be worth their time. Personally I think reffing can be fun in small doses, but it is time consuming and at least in lower level training battles were move pools are smaller and the stakes are a lot lower, it's longer than ordering does, and also from just battling in a match with a FE pokemon, I can receive 4MC (with a training item) for a lot less work than doing a bunch of math and making sure everything is right, and seeing as we're discussing newer players, again remember this is something that takes longer for us than it does for you veterans.

So with those two points in mind, regardless of whether you agree with them or not, I hope that gives some slight insight into how I feel about the current situation of the game from a newer player's perspective.

So what do I actually propose that we do? I think most simply this
Counters:
EC and AC: No change, I believe this deals with people saying it would ruin the flavor of their mons, and also it's no problem to have 9 battles with any pokemon, even with a doubling of move counters or any change we'd propose or pass.
MC: Double current count, Now here I'd like to explain that a little bit more. Lets take Gardevoir, everyone complains about her being good enough right? Gardevoir actually only has 102 moves according to the "Every-move-ever dex, so examples such as Gallade(133) or Dragonite(122) might be more appropriate but Gardevoir has 102, so that's fine. And another pokemon like... Greninja, who only has 77 moves.

A freshmon currently gets every move pre-lvl 26 and 5TM/HM plus 5Egg moves. For all pokemon that means you need 20 less MC than max due to the egg moves and TM moves.
Gardevoir also get 14 moves from pre-lvl 26 including 1 from Kirlia so that's another 14 she doesn't need. However, this leaves 102 - 34 = 68 more moves for her to learn
out of those 68 moves, 9 more of them are from level-up. which means 59 moves are from anything but level up, so they're 2 MC
73 x 2 = 146MC
9 x 1 = 9MC
= 155 MC

So to max out Gardevoir it would take you 155 MC, and for one of the strongest pokemon in the game that's not awful, right guys? Doing strictly battles she'd gain 3MC for the first 9 battles(with ExpShare) and 4 after(ExpShare)
First 9 = 27 total MC, 128 total to go
128/4 = 32 battles

Now, before you go and say "41 battles isn't that much to get a maxed out Gardevoir" even if you did a flash a day, it would still take you a month, and then multiply that by 6 and you would still take 6 months to effectively enter the stage of being prepared to do major content with a team of 6, or have a diverse enough group of mons to do various things with. My argument is, that a lot of us here all love our flash battles, but lets be realistic, it would be a lot nicer if we didn't need to clutter up the battle forums with all of our flashes, which is the only reliable way to max a pokemon out in this length of time. Saying that "do the battle hall, do ASS, do reffing" is going to be good as having everyone on irc just come up with a triangle group and do nothing but that, you're out of your mind, and honestly that's not any fun to me, and I don't think it should be any fun to anyone else.

So lets say you do a triangle, so you ref a battle. That's an extra 3 UC every battle. and we just found out that you need to do 41 battles with Gardevoir and pre-evos to obtain a maxxed out one. 3UC is 1 move effectively for 2MC but every two battles it's 2 moves, so lets work with that metric to make it easier.

2 Triangles consist of 4 battles and 2 refs
Lets just assume you have a gardevoir maxxed EC/AC and so you only need 146MC to max it out, as we determined earlier.
4MC per battle (Exp share) and 6 UC(3 moves)
4 x 4 = 16(8 moves)

so basically on average every 4 battles you'd get 3 extra moves than you normally would, for 11 total moves in two triangles, 5.5 for each triangle, and 2.75 for each battle.
Reffing that battle did a little bit in terms of getting my gardevoir up there a little bit, but it also took me probably an 45 minutes/1 hour to complete the triangle, so even at 5.5 a triangle we're still looking at (146/5.5 = 26.55) days of triangles. Which is an improvement from 41 days of battling, but the time also added up too, and that's really what I'm getting at.

Triangles are absolutely the de facto way to train your pokemon, and for new players honestly they should be the only way that you're going to reasonably get from new pokemon, to at least ready to begin learning the finer nuances of battling far more skilled trainers. The RP's due to the time it takes to complete one depending on your ref + your schedule, are sprinkles on top for sure, and will maybe cut that month time down. But odds are many people are like me, and don't have an hour or two every single day to sit down and do a triangle, on top of the hour of reffing they need to do, on top of ordering in RPs, you fall down the slippery slope of requiring 3/4 hours a day of this game to be able to become a "full-fledged" member, and quite frankly that is going to choke newer players out, especially when their best option is honestly doing boring ass triangle battles for a month straight just for one pokemon. it would take (26.55 x 6 = 159.27) days to get a full team of 6 for anything ready. That's to fight one gym leader, or to fight one TLR, or to do anything. In case you didn't realize, that 47% of one year. ONE YEAR, and you expect people to be thrilled with that because "you did it" or "you just need to ref more" and spend more daily time to make up for length and I quite frankly find that a little ridiculous.

To address zarator about the upping of reffing token to match any changes in MC, I agree completely. Reffing needs to be incentivized, because apparently not enough people want to do it now, and honestly I understand why, reffing is vital, but yet fairly underpaid for the time imho, which is kinda what I've been on about for this whole post. Also in regards to your part of the post about "sneaking everything in" when you have to do TLR/Gyms/anything real ... that's kinda the point. That stuff is the whole point of the game. When I'm committing the 1-2 hours a day to doing what the game is all about, and potentially reffing another gym battle or a BT battle or maybe an RP like BH, which adds another half hour, how much can I really commit to training more pokemon, not a whole lot. The point is that this game is very intensive in the back half of it, it's why those people don't ref stuff, they have limited time to do it. So I think it's unfair to force some people into the position of committing more time than they otherwise would because no one else wants to do the shit besides Toon/Jay/Exclaim/Phoenix/Someone else/probably someone else I'm offending and I'm sorry.

A final point, we can not control our own lives, we can not control the lives of our battle partners in Raids, we can not control the lives of our refs, or our opponents, to decrease the time in this game, however, what we can do is increase counters or find some other creative method to do such, so that the game can be enjoyed by all in a reasonable amount of time, which I believe is currently not the case, and quite frankly training matches are very boring, even if you're playing to win. Even still, triangles/flashes you name it, will not stop existing, they will always be there but I don't think they need to be there as much as they are now in our game, and I think that this is the very obvious solution to that.

Thank you for your time, I hope to enjoy civil debates with all of you and I really want to figure out what the community wants and achieve that for all of us. In the end, this is a game but it's also a community, and I think we should all be grateful we have a great community like this, not a lot of people do these days.

Edit: I'm an idiot and you get 5/5 which only gives you 4 moves so 8 MC you don't need to spend extra, which only changes it by like 2 Triangles.

 

[TheBisharpKing]

I've been waiting for a while to speak about this one since like many other newer players this affects me a lot. I was actually planning on putting out my thoughts in the SotG but as we speak now I am still formulating my fullest and most honest opinion I can give on the subject. I read through each and everyone's post about the topic pretty thoroughly and been sitting on them for quite some time now just thinking about each outcome of them.

Before I begin with my current opinion on the subject let me be clear for a moment. This may sound naive/not really well thought out/stupid/etc. and the reason for that is definitely because my opinion probably is all of the above. As you are reading this I'm probably still thinking about my whole-hearted opinion. Like I said before, this is my opinion and not trying to discredit anyone involved here because I believe each of you have honest and respectable views.

1.) General Opinion on the counter system as is.
I have to say in my couple of months of playing, not once can I say I have ever been displeased with how the counter rewards are as of now. I sometimes think of this game not so much being related to the Anime as much but more less being closer to the cartridge games. In the games, there are sometimes places where one needs to stop and grind their Pokemon up in order to reach the next phase of the game, which can take a long time if you don't sit down and take the effort and you know, take 30-45 minutes and actually grind. That's how I feel it is here. If you don't take time out to invest in the game you are not going to get anywhere with it.

2.) Opinion on doubling the counters.
Now, I get that sounds rough but I believe that is how it is. I also understand that you all probably have busy lives much like myself, hell probably way more than mine is, and it may be hard to try to do the things you want to do in this game so training, at some levels, is the hardest fucking thing to put time into when there is no time to give into it. But IMO, doubling the counters won't change much if you cannot put the time into training in the first place. Sure, it will decrease the amount of overall battles, flashes, triangles you will have to do but if you don't put the time in the place you want to be at will just be just a tad bit further away.

3.) What we should do from my POV
This doesn't mean I'm not opposed to doubling the counters at all, I just feel it is more or less a rake-it-under the rug strategy. The real root of the problem IMO is not that the counters are low to the battlers, its that there is, like some have already said, not a real incentive to ref. It should be made clear that reffing is the nuts and bolts to this game. It is the oil and lubrication to the machine. It is what keeps the game alive and running and without it you do not have the game. IMO we should not double(increase) battle rewards we should probably reward the refs more. Reffing as said multiple times in this thread alone, does take considerably more time out of one's daily actions. If it's not correct first time around that takes even more time away from everyone who is involved's, day. If the compensation for reffing was more it would give more people an incentive to ref matches, meaning more battles, flashes, triangles and whatever training methods will occur. Also since UC is so valuable it in turn also can be used to train up the ref's mons at the same time also allowing them to progress further while at the same time learn even more about the game. Not saying that will actually happen but that would be my theory on it and I know damn well I would ref more if it was more rewarding to put that sort of time in.

Overall I'm not trying to be condescending to anybody in any way because of their situations or inability to put time in because as already stated by many, no one can control other peoples, lives, situations, emotions or any other factors of the sort that lead into this games progression or content. I understand not everything will go the way we want but if you really wanna get farther in not only this game, but anywhere in life. It's not just going to be handed to you on a silver platter.

As stated numerous times above this isn't IMO the best answer or most reliable post on this thread. This is just my current view on the topic as of now. So take it with a grain of salt please. And if you read all of that, thank you because this was single-handedly the most difficult topic to discuss for myself. So cheers :)

 

[ZhengTann]

Woo diggity dig time. Responding to some lines from some of the posts above.

First off, I agree with Zar. If we want to increase counter rewards, then rewards from reffing should definitely be prioritized if not increased along rewards from battling, simply because the act of reffing benefits the community instead of just the player itself, and that reffing consumes more time than ordering in battles. However, I am agreeing with Tex that telling new players to "reff more" does not solve the problem. Jayy wants proof so he said. Let me give an example:

Reffing versus ordering

Take a recent flash match = http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/train-angels.3593846/

Disregarding time required to make an OP. Accurate to the minute only.
0852 - OP up
0855 - 1st order
0856 - 2nd order
0859 - R1 reffed
0901 - 2nd order
0904 - 1st order
0907 - R2 reffed
0908 - 1st order
0909 - 2nd order
0911 - R3 reffed

Battler 1 spent 7 minutes.
Battler 2 spent 4 minutes.
Referee spent 8 minutes.

This match actually happens when all battlers and referee are on IRC, so it's safe to assume minimal downtime here. So on a best case scenario (i.e. you're reffing as fast as Toon, using a minimal format), a battler spends an average of 5.5 minutes to get 5 counters, before Training Items. The referee spent 8 minutes to get 3 UC. Versatility of the UC still pales in comparison to the time investment efficiency, IMO.

And that's the best case reffing scenario.

I never said encouraging players to invest more time in the game is a bad thing - no sane game developer would say that. However, I'm with Tex that an average player should be able to access endgame content with an adequate (read: not insanely long) amount of time investment. If you look back to Tex's example, his proposal allows a new player to have a 15-mon profile after investing 192 (read: ONE HUNDRED AND NINETY TWO) hours of flash-matches into this game. And that's after doubling counter rewards. Anyone that tries to say "reff more" one more time had better prove that you can achieve 15 mons with 60 moves each, under the current system, in much less than 400 (read: FOUR EFFING HUNDRED) hours spent at this game.

Sure, spending 20 hours a day means you achieve that in 20 days instead of Tex's 12 months. But you're still spending 400 (read: FOUR EFFING i give up) hours.

Regarding the sweep-under-rug increase-reff-payment argument

I think no matter how high we increase the counter rewards, we'll always have the mob unsatisfied and wanting more. Abolishing the counters system is partly my sarcastic knee-jerk reaction to the call in SotG, I admit. Calling for higher incentives solely for reffing will still not encourage referees out of people who, like Tort, simply do not have a big-enough block of time to reff, and in the end it may only grant an unbalanced advantage to the referee - creating a metagame where people have to actively reff all the time just to stay competitive with their peers.

Again, I admit guilty to not having the numbers to back my claim. So I invite you to prove me wrong. With numbers.

* * * * * * *​

IMO the real question here is: How many hours should an average (read: not fully optimized) ASBer invest into this game in order to access endgame content?

Now everyone can define this question differently. Some may say having 3 Gym Badges (and the Heart Scales) is the threshold of "endgame access", for example. Some may disagree and say "15 mons with ~60 moves each". Heck, some might even factor new things into the time investment variable. All I'd ask is that you define them, and leave it to the rest of the community to judge whether your ballpark is realistic.

Otherwise I'm really finding myself ambivalent on this issue, and I'll probably personally write off any arguments against/for increasing counter rewards as emotional and non-rational.

 

[JJayyFeather]

Alright, I'm going to adjust my stance slightly on this now, given some discussion in ASB. I don't think battling counters need to be increased at all. However, counters for reffing are actually way below what they should be.

Examples

1v1
- Each battler gets 1 CC, and either 1 EC/2 MC/1 AC or 3 MC for their Pokemon, +1 KOC if they win, excluding training items. That's 4-6 counters to the players before the training item, and add 1 for most users when a training item is applied, since less people have Heart Scale than don't.
- The ref gets 3 UC.

2v2
- Each battler gets 1 or 2 CC depending on format, and then 1 EC/2 MC/1 AC or 3 MC for each of their Pokemon, +1 KOC per KO they score, and still excluding training items. So in a 2v2 Singles with LCs where the match ends 1-0 and both players use training items, they get 13-14 counters total.
- The ref gets 6 UC. Maybe more if the match runs a bit long, but probably not, since everything hits hard now

3v3
- Each battler gets 2 CC, and then 1 EC/2 MC/1 AC or 3 MC for each of their Pokemon, +1 KOC per KO they score, and still excluding training items. So in a 3v3 Singles with FEs where the match ends 1-0 and both players use training items, they get 18-19 counters total. 15-16 if you remove the training items and make this a serious match.
- The ref gets 10 UC, and very rarely does a 3v3 actually run long, since FEs are almost all beatsticks nowadays.

4v4
- Each battler gets 3 CC, and then 1 EC/2 MC/1 AC or 3 MC for each of their Pokemon, +1 KOC per KO they score, and still excluding training items. So in a 4v4 Doubles with FEs where the match ends 1-0 and both players use training items, they get 22-23 counters total. 18-19 if you remove the training items and make this a serious match.
- The ref gets 15 UC, and doubles matches will only run long if it is 2apr.

— Point worth noting, 3v3s and 4v4s constitute the majority of what ASB takes part in.

The Point

Being a ref is highly undercompensated in ASB. For each of the most common battle forms, the ref is paid much less than the players, although the ref does more work than the players, and the ref is actually essential to making it happen. I didn't account for time investment, but when you think about it, people say they don't ref because of the time investment needed, never heard that one for battling tbh.

Suggestion

Taking a vein from an IRC discussion today, I don't think the larger battle payouts are the problem. It's the smaller ones, aka the ones I broke down above. To fix this, I want to address two different points.

1v1s - 4v4s
For these, I would like there to be a minimum to the amount they can yield, like say 4*[Mons Per Side]. It's a minimal increase that realistically only amounts to about 1-2 extra moves per match of this size, but over time with more reffings builds up and shows great rewards.

1v1 - 4 UC | 2v2 - 8 UC | 3v3 - 12 UC | 4v4 - 16 UC

EDIT: credit to acidphoenix for suggesting the idea in IRC :>

Singles vs Doubles (and Triples I suppose)
Seriously, why does a Doubles match pay out the same as a Singles match? And similarly for Triples to either of them. The amount of time, effort, double-checking, and really strange mechanics that can come up while reffing anything larger than Singles means that matches larger than Singles should actually be worth more to ref, not on par. My idea, applying a multiplier based on the format. This can be addressed regarding brawls if those become an issue again. Initially I think a multiplier of *(1.25 + (0.25 * [Mons per Side -2])), rounded up, would be a good start. In simpler terms, regular (*1) for singles, *1.25 for doubles, *1.5 for triples.

Singles - Base | Doubles - CEILING(Base * 1.25) | Triples - CEILING(Base * 1.5)

Why?
I know this discussion started because people were worried about battling counters not being good enough. However, if we make these changes with battling in mind moreso than reffing, we're going to further shift the attention of the ASB community into battling rather than reffing. Very seriously, a small portion of ASB refs a very large portion of what happens in ASB. Toon recently edited his sig: "If I can ref 10 Tours, 6 Halls, 9 Normal Matches 1 Raid and 5 Gyms so can you :P!" EDIT: he changed it again o.o That's ridiculous. One member of the community with more than 30 reffings, and he doesn't even battle that much. Reffing needs to become more widespread within the community, because ref shortages are always possible when you leave all the weight on a small selection of the community. All it really takes is it everyone else reffed just a little less than half of what they participated in, minus some for the times when people like me and Toon will just want to ref more, or when other members of the community actually just want more UC for themselves. In short, I want to see reffing more spread out within the community, at least as best we can, to remove the workload from so few people and also increase the distribution of UC across the community to see if that's the supplement they have been seeking to solve their training woes.

 

[zarator]

EndlessAge I am fully aware that reffing is not exciting - well, not most of the time. Also, I'm aware that it takes longer for newbies than for veterans. But, in regards to the latter point, the only way to get faster at reffing is, well, to ref in the first place.

As for the former, trust me - it's as unexciting for you as it is for everyone else. I spend hours reffing raids and whatnot, and it's mostly just grinding through calculations, numbers, links, etc. It's definitely not what passes in my vocabulary as fun. But I understand that the players I'm reffing for ARE having fun (well, maybe not Dogfish44 and Maxim right now, but you get the idea), and that what I do is important for the community. Your idea of "it's unexciting so I don't rly want to do it much", as understandable as it is, goes against the very spirit of ASB. Or in other words, if we ALL reasoned like this, ASB would not even exist.

The point is that, if you want to stay in this game, you need to do for the community at least as much as the community does for you. There's no way around it. If we really want to reduce overall time spent, we could increase both MCs and UCs by a certain amount I guess. But the ultimate goal should always to have most people spend roughly as much time battling as they do reffing. Whether or not you like it, that's what keeps ASB alive.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

Compromise thought, increase ref compensation as indicated above while also increasing MC rewards by a value less than the original proposed 2x. Perhaps 4 MC as default to ensure that any given match will yield two new moves.

 

[acidphoenix]

Compromise thought, increase ref compensation as indicated above while also increasing MC rewards by a value less than the original proposed 2x. Perhaps 4 MC as default to ensure that any given match will yield two new moves.

edited for tex: while i do agree that mc increase should happen, disagree at this point with matching it to the uc increase. imo we should make the 4 uc change and then make any additional changes with that as our baseline

edit2: also i would be in serious consideration of making that number 5 uc(the number where the ref gets as much counters as the winner in training=on battles, which is basically fair compensation for a match and if you're not playing items=training then the ref is doing relative extra work anyway). i would be 100% opposed to a number greater than 5 or lower than 4 though

 

[EndlessAge]

Don't really have a lot of time to respond right this second, but zarator, I completely agree with you so I don't really know why you're trying to call me out. It doesn't help the conversation because I agree. I also agree with the sentiment that we need to make reffing more enticing because there are plenty in the community who ref less than I do while not on LOA, and that i try to do. So again, don't really get the point of the call out, maybe actually read what I say next time.

Just because I said something is boring and I understand why people don't want to commit their time to it doesn't mean I don't or think people shouldn't. It's a commentary on how maybe the system's rewards for the work aren't working. It's basic economics.

 

[zarator]

The first thing I want to address however, is what some members of the community are stating as their solution to the "problem" that exists. Simply ref more. Now I think this is not a great solution, and have plenty more colorful words to describe how I feel, however, I believe that this statement is flawed in many senses and I'd wish to point that out to you:
1.) Newer members of the community will take longer to ref. At the current pace I'm at, I'm spending 45 minutes to ref a round of a 2v2 LC doubles match that will net me 6 UC at the end of it. Currently about to enter round 3 of Actions/reffing. Now, what I think the problem is, is that some of the older members of the community potentially see "Oh, well, if he's only spending under 2 hours to get 6 UC which can effectively be 3 new moves, then that's pretty good". However, the way I see it is, "If I can only commit and hour-hour and ahalf a day to the game, I just spent half my time doing one thing" for those 6 counters.
2.)Maybe this is a logical fallacy, and I'm more than willing to get called out on it as such, but I think there is a reason you see the same 5-8 people reffing absolutely everything. I think it's honestly because a lot of people don't see it to be worth their time. Personally I think reffing can be fun in small doses, but it is time consuming and at least in lower level training battles were move pools are smaller and the stakes are a lot lower, it's longer than ordering does, and also from just battling in a match with a FE pokemon, I can receive 4MC (with a training item) for a lot less work than doing a bunch of math and making sure everything is right, and seeing as we're discussing newer players, again remember this is something that takes longer for us than it does for you veterans.

You may agree completely with me, but I still don't agree with this quoted part. "Ref more" is not flawed because "it's boring", or because "it's longer than ordering does". Ref is generally boring, and it is ALWAYS longer than ordering, even when bigger movepools are involved. Of course we would all rather be battling than reffing, but it's something which needs to be done. That was the gist of my message. Furthermore, while you also said that you agree that ref is underpaid, your bolded message was to double MC, which I do not agree with. I'd rather see UC gain doubled and MC gain kept the same, to be honest. At least, it would allow us to tell newer people to "ref more" without having them pointing out (rightfully so, at the moment) that it's underpaid. Because that's about the only complain I find even remotely legitimate among the ones you listed.

Whether it's boring, or long, or w/e, it doesn't rly count. It is, yes, and it is for everyone - both vets and newbies. But it must be done. As I said many times by now, if you're not willing to ref as much as you play - that is, to contribute to ASB community as much as it contributes to you - then you (according to me, at least) are not welcome in ASB in the long term. It may sound blunt, but I'd also like to remind you that I and others were here when ASB started. None of us were vets, by definition. And yet, we started reffing from the same day we started battling. And back then, the game was a LOT messier than it is now, with "roleplay actions" and uncodified stuff everywhere. This sort of "silky attitude" towards newbies we seem to have nowadays in regards to "how long before they can be expected to ref" is getting ridiculous.

EDIT: Sorry if the tone sounds overly confrontational, as it is not my intention to start a flame war or anything. But you were apparently under the persuasion that we were on the same page and I was criticizing you despite you fully agreed with me. So, I tried to stress why we are not on the same page as much as you think, which is why the whole post may sound more confrontational than I would have wanted it to be.

 

[EndlessAge]

And what I'm saying, despite your confrontational and near ignorant understanding of what I'm trying to say, is that I'm trying to say, is that fine. I think that creating an environment where you're telling people to be like toon and such who ref significantly more than they battle is bullshit, and honestly that's what I gather from some comments from this thread. Yes people should have an equal level regardless of boredom. It's a part of the game. But this idea that "well just ref a bunch" is gunna solve the issue without any counter manipulation is something I find to be survivor bias driven. The fact is, no this game shouldn't be handed to you on a silver platter like Bisharp stated, and I'm not saying that either. But I am in the camp that something needs to change. I agree that ref payouts may be the answer. Treat it like a labor market, employees need incentives to work, if that doesn't happen then they don't work. Right now we are over working some and some aren't working at all and some are working just enough. I think a small bonus to the incentives is the answer without an MC increase. It's all up for discussion but honestly the at least perceived personal attack and conferntational shit isn't needed

 

[JJayyFeather]

Alright both of you are pissing and missing the toilet.

Things we've established: counter changes need to happen
Things you've talked at each other about: reffing

What Zara said is that people do need to be giving back to the community. Reffing as much as Toon is not a good example, because Toon is an altruistic person, who doesn't even battle much at all. The proper math for this is that you need to ref 1 battle for every 2 you participate in on average. At that point the load is distributed very well.

 

[acidphoenix]

k so since this thread is devolving to the point where people are basically just saying "screw you you don't ref" (which imo is an unhealthy attitude, albeit people should still ref more) please actually answer the three important questions that have been raised asked

Q1. Should the ref:battler counter ratio be increased? If so: set a minimum of 4*UC, set a minimum of 5*UC, rehaul the formula entirely, or <propose other option to replace this wildcard>

imo this should 100% happen, although i'm not sure on which(4*MC is equivalent to winners' rewards without training items, 5*MC is equivalent to winners' rewards with training items(and the loser usually will just have 1 less than the winner)) given that it is stupid, frankly, that currently a ref gets less rewards than a battler. i'd also be opposed to a ref getting significantly more out of important matches, however(hence not suggesting 6 at all)

Q2. Should the amount of counters per battle be increased?

at this point i think it's fair to say there's a consensus that if we do so we should increase ref payout proportionally

i say yes on this one for reasons i've already stated but not going to do a full writeup(rn anyway)

Q3. Should payout for doubles be increased?

i don't have strong opinion on this one although it's probably telling that i avoid doubles reffings like the plague because they are in fact that much more painful

 

[ZhengTann]

Agreeing with phoenix above. Starting with Q2:

Should the amount of counters per battle be increased?
Yes. If only to allow newer players to get to fully enjoy the game faster. This change will not affect older players much, and if any, such affects will not be negative to game experience.

However, IRC talk had me inferring that we should at least keep a measure of the counter progression systems. So I'll drop the whole "abolish it" idea and throw support behind Tex's "+1 MC per battle" proposal. This way, an NFE gets 1 AC, 1 EC, 3 MC. With an Exp. Share, it can go to 4 MC. FEs usually battle without Training Items, and still get a nice round 4 MC. This does a lot to help EM overcome his OCD-ness. Also also, going by Tex's schedule, we can cut down the hours by at least 20%, which amounts to Tex's 80+ hours less.

As for referees, I agree that a similar smaller increase should be implemented to align with a battler's rewards. Battlers are getting 4 or 5 counters per mon per battle without Training Items, so referees should be getting the same amount of counters - and the UC's flexibility being accounted for the amount of community work put in.

Current base formula: (X+1)(X+2)/2, where X equals half the total number of Pokemons that actively battled in the match.
1st proposed formula: (X+1)(X+3)/2, rounded up
2nd proposed formula: (X+2)(X+2)/2, rounded up

1st proposed formula

1v1 = 4 UC,
2v2 = 8 UC,
3v3 = 12 UC,
4v4 = 17 UC,
5v5 = 24 UC,
6v6 = 32 UC.

2nd proposed formula

1v1 = 5 UC,
2v2 = 8 UC,
3v3 = 13 UC,
4v4 = 18 UC,
5v5 = 25 UC,
6v6 = 32 UC.

The "triangle" (IDK if it's the right word) formula is still there to account for referee's long-term commitment in larger matches. Bonus formula will still stay under the proposal.

Does this sweep stuff under rugs? You bet - and you can bet further that this issue will be revisited before the year is out :P

 

[Someoneelse]

ZhengTann's formulas don't work with the hide tags, but you can see them here:

CEILING((X+1)(X+3)/2)

1v1: 4UC
2v2: 8UC
3v3: 12UC
4v4: 18UC
5v5: 24UC
6v6: 32UC

CEILING((X+2)(X+2)/2)

1v1: 5UC
2v2: 8UC
3v3: 13UC
4v4: 18UC
5v5: 25UC
6v6: 32UC

(Note that the second formula is simply adding 1UC to every odd-number battle)


I'll start by saying that I agree with the increase in MC by 1 with our current system at least. However, I strongly disagree with both propositions for UC formulae. I don't like the first, in the new system especially, since it doesn't fix the issue of the referee being underpaid. They're still getting less per battle, particularly for flashes, than the battlers. Even in the current system, the ref still gets less than the losing battler including CC (or regardless up to and including 3v3 with training items), and less than the winning battler regardless (up to 3v3 with training items, 5v5 with training items excluding CC (yes I know that most people don't have that many training items, but the numbers aren't particularly relevant to my point)). Arguments about the versatility of UC don't really mean very much when you could be battling with the Pokemon you'd train anyway for less effort and being able to multi-task in the process. Now, I'm proposing that the referee gets at least as much UC as the battler gets in MC plus 2 (without training items). That means 5UC+ for a 1v1 in the current system, 10UC+ for a 2v2, et cetera. This sounds like a lot, but it's only slightly more counters than the battlers would get (or the same amount, considering KOC), for the person in the setup who is doing the most work, taking the most time, and jeopardising the ability to do something else at the same time.

With regards to the second, whilst it has the same shortcomings, there is another major problem with it which was also evident in acidphoenix and JJayyFeather's proposal, that being that the rewards scale downwards at points in the formula. Now, reffing four 1v1s will get you more UC than reffing one 4v4, except that it requires less commitment and less time since they can be done concurrently. That begs the question, why would you ref a 4v4 rather than four 1v1s? I don't know what the answer is, but it's not for UC gain. We should not be disincentivising the reffing of larger battles in favour of smaller ones. For that reason, I am proposing that all further proposed changes to UC should scale upwards as the format grows. I don't think there's a problem with 1v1 and 2v2 having the same format:UC ratio, but above that I believe that it should be increasing.


If you have complaints about these propositions, speak up about it. I'm happy to discuss and think about your solutions, not just discard your opinions (that are just as valid as mine). I'd prefer to discuss these propositions before creating a new UC system at the moment, so I'll withhold thoughts on that in the meantime.

I'll leave another thought here: if you have a triangle every day, getting 5MC for each (that's either 3MC + Exp. Share + KOC, or 4MC + Exp. Share), plus 5UC, you get 15MC a day. By my calculations, you can get a team of fifteen 50-move Pokemon in two months, or 60-move Pokemon in about 2.6 months. If you now think that that's too short, speak up. If you think that's too long, speak up. Basically, everybody should pitch in.



ZhengTann: "Does this sweep stuff under rugs? You bet - and you can bet further that this issue will be revisited before the year is out :P" has a similar feel to "I'll probably personally write off any arguments against/for increasing counter rewards as emotional and non-rational" - it'd be fantastic if you pointed out what you believe we're sweeping under rugs, and if you were clear about what your plans to replace the current counter system with if we were indeed going to abolish it. We're not going to get anywhere without clear proposals. Just like with everyone else, I'd truly appreciate it if you could articulate your thoughts in a fashion less like "this is wrong, end of discussion", and instead more like "this is wrong, let's start a discussion".

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

I'll leave another thought here: if you have a triangle every day, getting 5MC for each (that's either 3MC + Exp. Share + KOC, or 4MC + Exp. Share), plus 5UC, you get 15MC a day. By my calculations, you can get a team of fifteen 50-move Pokemon in two months, or 60-move Pokemon in about 2.6 months. If you now think that that's too short, speak up. If you think that's too long, speak up. Basically, everybody should pitch in.

Please show your calculations and make sure they scale to the rate metrics I posted before (2h/day, 4d/week), consideration must be taken that playing ASb every single day isn't realistic for life in general.

 

[Someoneelse]

Texas Cloverleaf: Admittedly I was using the metric of 1h/day, 7d/week, but since that's less playing time I'll continue with your metric:

Triangle takes 1h, get 1CC/5MC per battle (i.e. 4MC + Exp. Share), get 5UC per reffing, and assume that all UC goes to MC eventually
(5*2+5)=15MC per triangle, which is the same as 15MC per hour
8 hours per week, 15*8=120MC per week
Assume 28 days per month i.e. 4 weeks per month
In one month, 120*4=480MC
In two months, 120*4*2=960MC

For 50-move Pokemon, each requires 30 moves to be bought, for a total of 60MC
For 15 Pokemon, that's 15*60MC
Divide by 480MC/month to get number of months
15*60/480=1.875 months

For 60-move Pokemon, each requires 40 moves to be bought, for a total of 80MC
For 15 Pokemon, that's 15*80MC
Divide by 480MC/month to get number of months
15*80/480=2.5 months

 

[ZhengTann]

Zam - I apologise for being irrationally fatalistic, which is not appropriate. Knee-jerk reaction to what seems like the n-th time we tried revisiting the counter rewards, and again, I apologise.

To make it fully clear - the sole logical reason I tried proposing "let's abolish the counter altogether" is that I believe no matter how high we scale it, people (strangely enough this include veterans) will never be able to get the mons they want fast enough. Taking myself for an example - right now I want at least 3 and at best 7 Rock-types for my Gym, and I want them NOW. Whether it's new peeps who wanted the best metagame Pokemons to participate in a tournament, or if it's veterans who want to score on a TLR/Raid - when they find themselves in those situations, their need is in instant gratification.

And under our current counter system, or any reasonable scaled variation, instant gratification is not possible. I might be a tad pessimistic, but when the instant gratification is not possible, people will always whine for it, crying for "faster gratification". Even if we give referees 5 UC per mon per battler, and scale MC rewards to allow learning 2 new moves per battle, I think sooner or later some people will say "this is not enough, I need more and I need it faster - in fact I need it NOW!"

That, is what we're sweeping under the rug. Everytime someone cries "I want more counters" or "new players aren't getting into this game fast enough", we argue, (maybe) scale up the rewards, and go about our businesses until the cycle repeats itself. It had repeated itself a number of times now. So, the "abolish counter rewards system" proposal is here for exactly that - instant gratification, and removing the things under the rug. And there won't be a replacement, because that is also part of the premise of the proposal.

When new ASBers join in, they may (or may not) be mandated to complete the Starting 101 course, to integrate themselves into the learning curve. After an arbitrary period of time (used to complete 101 course or otherwise), they, as with all already experienced ASBers, will have the right to prize-claim any Pokemon of any evolution stage and/or movepool size. Once they've prepared the corresponding full mon profile, they post it in the PCT and await the due claim approving process before they can use it.

There will be NO need for any replacements to the counter rewards system. The game experience progression will (very likely) be replaced with the (likely mandatory) Starting 101 program. Join ASB > participate in Starting 101 > pass the course in a few (~3) months while acclimatising to the game environment > full access to any desired endgame content, including further tutoring, full-blown RPs, and tournament-ready teams

For us who are already veterans, full access to any desired endgame content, including further tutoring, full-blown RPs, and tournament-ready teams, with significantly less downtime spent in training battles.

In terms of time, I have not contacted Ooraloo about her expectations, but as Starting 101 is supposed to be tailored to the tutee's timeline, I expect that the tutees will be ready to explore and expand their horizons by the end of the program, regardless of Texas' requirements on time-investment.

In terms of manpower, this will be leaning most heavily on approvers, since claims with multiple large mon profiles will be the norm, but on the other hand, it'll be a fire-and-forget thing - 1 mon normally only need to be claimed once. We can dedicate time to become approvers instead - less training battles mean reffing manpower need will be (slightly) reduced, and can be transferred towards approving claims. Tutoring manpower may need to increase as well, but (I think) not too much, given our slow influx of new players.

Pros: Streamlined process, fast gratification, not much needed in terms of manpower shift
Cons: Backlash over loss of feelings of growth and progression inherent to the counter rewards system

tl;dr This is a post solely made to put forward the arguments for abolishing counter rewards system. No replacements will be needed, everybody can get the mons they want/need in a single prize claim.