Hosted by 35Q71N | Approved by A Cake Wearing A Hat
Questionable temporary logo by me
Welcome everyone to the debut of a new project in this community: the Random Battles Ladder Achievements Project!
As we all know, grinding for hours and hours on ladders is one of the favorite activities of the people in this community and it's finally time to have a dedicated project that hopes to create something cool and fun for everyone involved.
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PROJECT AND OUR GOALS
Historically, the Ladder Achievements Project (or LAP to keep things simple) has been a successful event run by multiple communities like ADV OU, SS OU, SV RU etc. to increase the popularity of a specific ladder on Pokemon Showdown by giving some fancy prizes to all the challengers who are able to clear some tough challenges that require skill, determination, originality and... luck!Questionable temporary logo by me
Welcome everyone to the debut of a new project in this community: the Random Battles Ladder Achievements Project!
As we all know, grinding for hours and hours on ladders is one of the favorite activities of the people in this community and it's finally time to have a dedicated project that hopes to create something cool and fun for everyone involved.
A SHORT HISTORY OF THE PROJECT AND OUR GOALS
The classic structure entails Metric Challenges, where the players need to climb and achieve noteworthy records on the ladder and Fun Challenges, which are more oriented towards creating unique teams to fulfill very specific requirements.
For every achievement, there are different ranks you can get depending on how good your performance is. It's by reaching the highest rank in every challenge (Platinum) that you can unlock the most coveted rewards. There is no deadline to complete these permanent challenges, so people can always give it a shot whenever they want to.
As you can easily guess, Random Battles are drastically different from tiers. You can't pick your teams, change investments and movepools as you please, so this means the achievements we are going to propose need to be adapted to randbats. We chose Spotlights Ladders to kick off this project because they are temporary and the Spotlights selected are always pretty different from each other, which makes it for unique experiences for the challengers.
We really hope the achievements can motivate people to try out and have fun with these formats, while aiming for some material rewards in the process. Therefore, the main goal remains from other LAPs but we'll try to achieve it in "our" way. How? Let's start by taking a closer look to the structure!
THE STRUCTURE
The Random Battles Ladder Achievements Project will have a structure that is quite different from the one you might have seen in other LAPs. Two of the main reasons for this change are the following:
- Spotlight Ladders only last two months and they can't be balanced right away, so it's probably wiser to wait for the ladder to stabilize before starting the event
- For the same reason, but also to provide a more dynamic and interactive experience to the challengers, we decided to rotate the majority of the achievements and stretch it over the course of multiple weeks
Below, you can see a graph that reports the structure of the LAP and the explanation of what is going to happen every week:
The first month is entirely dedicated to monitor the stabilization of the ladder in order to define the parameters for the standard challenges better and to think about possible changes for the fun challenges and side quests we want to offer.
Week 5
It's the first week of the LAP. From now on, people can submit their results to prove they have cleared the Standard Achievements. This week will also have tailor made Fun Challenges and Side Quests that will change in the next two weeks.
Week 6
It's the second week of the LAP. Standard Achievements are ongoing and there are new Fun Challenges and Side Quests to complete.
Week 7
It's the third week of the LAP. Standard Achievements are ongoing and there are new Fun Challenges and Side Quests to complete.
Week 8
The LAP is over and we announce the winners and the prizes they receive.
THE CHALLENGES
We have strongly taken inspiration from the other LAPs and we have thus created three main categories of achievements/challenges:
1) Standard Achievements > they practically correspond to the "Metric Challenges" that you could find in previous LAPs. The continuity with the past and the fact they are supposed to remain unchanged are the reasons why these achievements are "standard". Last but not least, they are centered around a classic player activity like climbing the ladder, trying to break some records in the process.
Example of Standard Achievements: reaching a certain rank/elo/gxe/win streak on the ladder
2) Fun Achievements > clearing the Fun Achievements is less about being a ladder fiend and more about playing multiple matches and get lucky enough to find certain pokemon, items, moves or to witness certain rare events in the battles. Yes, most of the time you'll be asked to win matches, but sometimes just reporting a very special occurrence will be enough.
Example of Fun Achievements: getting a certain number of kills with a specific pokemon, spotting unique groups of pokemon on the ladder, witnessing an event with very low odds of happening etc.
3) Side Quests > they are bonus challenges that are usually quite different from the other achievements (hence the slightly different name). They are so unique that some of them could involve multimedial projects while others might not even occur on the ladder! They are present in limited number and each one of them will give a specific prize.
Example of Side Quests: This is a surprise for now but you'll see them soon :p
HOW TO SUBMIT RESULTS
In general, the standard way to submit your results will be by leaving a post under the weekly LAP thread with a replay, screenshot, video or anything that can demonstrate without any doubts that you have cleared a specific challenge. We also advise to quickly leave a new post every time you complete a challenge because we could look into the date of submission in case of ties, giving the edge to those who have posted earlier.
Due to the nature of our challenges (this is especially true for the Side Quests), sometimes the results might need to be submit in private either on Discord or through a Google Form and then they will be announced by the host(s) along with the final standings.
Here are some general guidelines we have reprised from other LAPs and adapted to the current project:
- All battles must take place on the Spotlight Ladder on Pokemon Showdown.
- Please give proof that you completed the challenge to validate your achievement (mostly screenshots of the rating reached/you owning the account a la Suspect Test and replays).
- You can get several achievements from the same battle/account, unless explicitly stated otherwise. I'll like your post once I've taken it into account.
- Achievements can be submitted in PM to me if you want the account you used to remain inconspicuous; I will be posting them in the thread (giving your Smogon username) myself. Please only do it as little as possible though; it's less fun.
- Past performances will not be counted; any submission needs to be verifiable on the server (by checking at the rank, WL, and such) at the moment they are posted. I.e. if the LAP starts on August 4th, you can't send a screenshot of you topping the ladder on August 1st to claim one of the Standard Achievements.
- You are obviously allowed to update your posts to showcase you have improved your records on the ladder (this is especially important for the Standard Challenges but it could also involve other challenges) as long as you do so before the deadline.
- Naturally, don't try to cheat, for instance by submitting an achievement with an account that's not yours and yours alone. In addition to that, don't mass forfeit games on the ladder just to speed up the process of obtaining the achievements. If caught doing so, you might get exposed and made fun of (but also infracted of course).
- Achievement levels may be subject to change at host's discretion.
THE PRIZES
As of now, we have thought of the following prizes to give for clearing the challenges:
- The person with the most Standard Achievements won is going to get room prize winner in the Random Battles room for one month. In case of tie, that reward will go to the person who has registered the highest peak elo.
- The people who clear all the Fun Achievements of a specific week will gain a certain amount of tokens to spend to request a room tournament. If no one clears all the challenges, the tokens will go to the person who has cleared the most achievements more quickly in order to avoid ties.
- For the Fun Challenges, the idea is to have a predetermined set of unique prizes that will be randomly assigned to the winners of the challenges. People won't know these prizes in advance but they will have to wait for the last week, when the results of the roll will get publicly announced.
LAST CONSIDERATIONS, FUTURE STEPS AND... COMMUNITY CHOICE!
We want to reiterate that this is a pilot and it's pretty much inevitable that we are going to make some adjustments in the future. This obviously means we are absolutely open to receive your feedback in order to optimize the project and make sure everyone can enjoy it. If you have anything you want to say, don't hesistate to do so down below!
As stated above, this thread will be open to gather your feedback until the end of the cycle. On August 4th we will officially open the thread for the first week of the LAP, followed by the new threads every week over the course of the project.
Last but not least, we had a specific idea for this cycle. In order to foster a discussion in this thread and in order to stress the importance of the players who represent the protagonists of this project, we want one of the Side Quests to be a... Community Choice! Share us your idea(s) for this achievement and we'll pick the one that gets supported the most!
