Self-Reffing Expansion

[JJayyFeather]

Topic

We're kind of completely dependent on a small handful of users (like 1) to ref all of ASB. I mean, look at gyms and see how many of them aren't being reffed by Toon right now. Of course, we can all say that we'll ref more and pull our own weight if we have to, but historically this has not been the case.

Since this isn't really a sustainable long-term strategy, why don't we expand self-reffing to cover more serious matches to lessen the need for outside refs? It wouldn't be mandatory by any means and we wouldn't let inexperienced refs/battlers do it, but if 2 long-term users want to do a gym fight without being slowed down by the need for a ref, it could be an option.

The player who orders second will also ref the round.
All RNG will be done through public rolls in Discord.
Subjective referee interpretations and questionable combos must first be approved by a third-party, designated before the start of the battle, or the committee responsible for that type of match.
UC will be divided between the two players at the end of the round.

With the decline of flavor, reffing's become more and more objective, to the point where aside from RNG rolls and rare instances of rulings disputes, outside refs aren't necessary. It's just a thought.

With reffing speed/quantity an ever-present concern in ASB, this suggestion has arisen from those concerns as a way to possibly patch the hole. Raises a couple concerns and whatnot, but that's with any major suggestion.

This is an open discussion, so all users of ASB may feel welcome to add their input.

Current Focus Questions
1) What are the pros to this suggestion?
2) What are the cons to this suggestion?

 

[Exclaimer]

I'm not sure how I feel about this suggestion; I completely agree that reffing has become a problem in recent history but I don't like removing that unbiased third party from matches; it feels even worse to lose to RNG when your opponent rolled it, even if you're 100% for certain it wasn't malicious. I imagine a lot of people would feel the same.

I think maybe the lack of reffing has a much deeper problem that this doesn't necessarily fix. I don't know what that problem is (Maybe it's just super boring? Maybe UC isn't an adequate reward? This point isn't relevant just felt like projecting my thoughts), but this would be a patchwork solution for a small portion of ASB.

 

[JJayyFeather]

1) What are the pros to this suggestion?
Only real pro that I like from this suggestion is that it does speed up the process of ASB a little bit, but that doesn't really negate the issue of johns anyways.

2) What are the cons to this suggestion?
- I don't like the lack of the unbiased 3rd party
- I don't think that any endgame material should be eligible to be self-reffed at all
- There's some nice flavor to having an overseer of the match
- More pertinent for me is ruling bias though. Discrepancies in rulings and interpretations aren't that common, and even less common when the ref has to establish the precedent, and I do not want to see matches that could potentially result in those types of decisions self-reffed and as such contaminated by any biases the player has

 

[zarator]

I don't think this is a good idea, as it gives a significant advantage to the ref when he orders second - even if he doesn't "rig" the RNG, he's still working with a significant degree of foresight.

(Though I'd love the idea of using this to self-ref my own raids :-P But I'd rather safeguard the integrity of ASB as a whole first)

 

[ZhengTann]

Like everyone above, I'm wary of potential bias and perception of bias, which in itself is enough to cause toxicity and divide within the community, and I agree that this merely mitigates the problem of us lacking reffing resources, doesn't resolve it. Too many ways to go wrong for a potentially limited help to the community. Know that I vote no as a Council Member, but as this is still a Discussion thread, 24 hours before moving to Voting, unless majority of Council Members vote no with me by liking this post (to uh, skip the process. I'm learning how to lean at work)

 

[Birkal]

To expand on this, I never understood why ASB doesn't use fully automated (and public) rolls for all matches. If we could set something up in Discord / on the forums / whatever that would give rolls for a round of reffing, that would be ideal. We'd set up an order of events for which rolls go where, and entire matches could be reffed off of that. If we had public rolls like this, it would increase accountability and allow pretty much anyone to referee any match. This would solve a lot of the problems ooraloo mentioned in the OP.

 

[JJayyFeather]

The issue with how we select who can ref what isn't specifically tied to RNG. And that concern can be completely circumvented using a third party ref.

Like we could try to automate the process but that is altogether too much work for something that is achieved by just having a third-party do it and saving us all the trouble

 

[ZhengTann]

As far as I can tell, Oora's proposal is based on the foundation that ruling disputes, flavour story-telling, and subjective interpretations are close enough to zero that public automated rolls are all the battlers need to make a non-biased reffing. While that is close enough to the truth, there are still gaps that occur when desperate players ass-pull subjective interpretations or when lack of maintenance in updates result in disputes that require at the very least a trusted-enough member of the community (the referee) to resolve at their discretion.

Can we maybe have a small tournament where the organisers play God and enforce the rules written by Oora in OP (specifically the "Subjective referee interpretations and questionable combos must first be approved by a third-party, designated before the start of the battle, or the committee responsible for that type of match."), to playtest them in a controlled (?) environment, to see how this idea works in practice?