UC Rewards Leveling

[Mulan15262]

I agree on a pentalty, but how about just subtracting the number of pokemon sent out at a time (on one side) if it is 4 or greater.

 

[Frosty]

Le bump. We need more discussion here. I will see if I can figure out something.

 

[Saleem S]

no to change, i feel this is pointless as penalizing brawls will result in more flash battles, or what ever is the next best thing in terms of time-effort.

 

[Its_A_Random]

no to change, i feel this is pointless as penalizing brawls will result in more flash battles, or what ever is the next best thing in terms of time-effort.

Why is this a bad thing though? At least penalising brawls and reducing their efficiency can prevent people from easily gain 50 UC from just three hours of refereeing a 9v9 brawl. At least 3v3 Triples and lower are standard formats, brawls are not really that standard.

 

[Saleem S]

Why is this a bad thing though? At least penalising brawls and reducing their efficiency can prevent people from easily gain 50 UC from just three hours of refereeing a 9v9 brawl. At least 3v3 Triples and lower are standard formats, brawls are not really that standard.

For battles whose format is larger than triples or battles involving more than two players, this amount is capped at 50. This does not include the Bonus UC.

This was added for a reason? if you reduce the cap to 30, 6v6 would be preferred. if you decide to reduce based on format, you might as well remove the brawl format.

basically, you are reducing growth in looking for a cure, rather than a preventive measure.
reducing the growth of a virus does not prevent further infection, rather it just slows the death rate and allows evolution to find a new way.

If you want to discourage brawls and encourage standard formats, then cap them at 10 or pay them 10+Pokemon per side. A penalty will just give way to the next best thing.

 

[ZhengTann]

IIRC the reason Brawls were capped is because we want to encourage the quality of the reffings more than anything, not that we want to be biased against any formats. We would not want referees doing sloppy reffings of a 9v9 Brawl just so they can get their 50 UC in 3 hours even though their work is obviously full of errors.

Solution 1: Cap/Penalty
IMO if we do caps it solves the problem partially, since peeps will just take the highest XvX Brawl under cap and still slop ahead, unless we impose a very heavy cap, like 25 UC to block anything higher than a 5v5 Brawl. At least in a 4v4 Brawl, the referee/battlers can still spot glaring mistakes and fix them - hardly true for a 15v15. Penalties on the other hand wouldn't solve people going sloppy 13v13 in 4 hours for the not-as-much-as-100-but-still-alot-for 4-hours UC. EDIT: I do agree with IAR as below that penalties would stop referees from reffing Brawls sloppily, because most referees would stop reffing Brawls at all due to less incentive.

Solution 2: Alternate UC formula
Only if people are willing to submit and work on a formula. I think Saleem has some starting ideas on the crunches, though I can't think of a different formula

Solution 3: Approver's Veto
Burden on the approver is a no-no. Referees should be able to check themselves, not bitch about being police by others.

So supporting caps. Heavier ones.

 

[Mulan15262]

I think a good idea would be keeping the same cap, but enforcing a pentalty on it in addition to the cap could work. This way, brawls are capped at 50 UC, but penalized to reduce the UC payout. I think a penalty of twice the amount of active pokemon per side in a match with 4+ pokemon sent out per side, applied after the cap, would work. A 9v9 Brawl would only pay 32 UC while an 8v8 Brawl pays 29 UC(about equal to a 6v6 Singles).

 

[Its_A_Random]

Last time people had a low cap, people complained about a dreadful pay for brawls. Now people are complaining with regards to high caps. What makes any one of you think a UC Cap on Brawls will still work???

I beg the council to please pass my brawl penalty formula I have staunchly supported come voting time. 9v9 Brawl rewards ~18 UC, 20v20 Brawl rewards ~35 UC.
No cap that makes a 20v20 brawl cost the same as a 9v9 brawl and large brawls do not have a ridiculous pay relative to the amount of work you would need to do (in round one anyway) (which is why this is brought up in the first place); respectable enough that they are not completely disincentivised for the referees. Everyone wins basically and we would also eliminate issues of "next highest bidder" to an extent.

Of course the global 100 UC cap still exists but you have to referee like a 53v53 brawl to get that much under my system and who in their right mind would referee one of those?

And Saleem S: As I have stated in an earlier post, throwing a cap onto shit is a shitty way to sweep an issue under the rug; you think you have solved the issue but it is still there.

 

[Gale Wing Srock]

IIRC the reason Brawls were capped is because we want to encourage the quality of the reffings more than anything.

I also thought we wanted to encourage standard formats with flavor as opposed to quick brawls?

I agree that Approvers shouldn't be burdened, but if we want to improve the quality of reffing, then the reffing has to be checked by someone. And if faulty reffing is found in a completed battle which is being claimed then penalty should be applied on that claim, so as to encourage better quality in reffing.

Maybe, Approver assistants? Who would be paid the penalized amount of UC from the ref's pay, if they find faults. But this is a big thing to incorporate in our approval cycle and not sure if it is worth the effort.

I like IAR's system of pay and it is a stricter version to what Mulan is proposing too.

But the question I have is, What is our main goal with this cap/penalty?
Are we trying to encourage standard formats with flavor?
Are we trying to make brawls less frequent?
Are we trying to improve the quality of reffing in brawls?
Or are we trying to improve the overall quality of reffings?

*I haven't had the chance to read previous discussions on UC caps for brawls. Will read them when I have some more time.

 

[akela]

Number of Pokemon per side divided by number of participants. Have fun with the ultimate "We don't want brawls or melees" formula.

 

[Its_A_Random]

Are we trying to encourage standard formats with flavor?
Are we trying to make brawls less frequent?
Are we trying to improve the quality of reffing in brawls?
Or are we trying to improve the overall quality of reffings?

1) You cannot encourage "standard" matches like 3v3 singles by altering referee pay. The issue is with the battlers and that is not the topic of discussion.
2) Not necessarily but the idea is to fix the pay for it which is absurd; the reason why we are having the discussion.
3) We cannot improve brawl refereeing quality by reducing the pay or whatever.
4) We cannot improve refereeing quality in general by fixing pay and whatnot. The idea of rewarding UC for flavour was floated but the sheer subjectivity of the whole thing renders that unfeasible.

The whole issue we are trying to deal with is the issue of a broken pay system that inherently favours brawls because of the number of counters gained for each of the three parties relative to the amount of time spent.

 

[Gale Wing Srock]

1) You cannot encourage "standard" matches like 3v3 singles by altering referee pay. The issue is with the battlers and that is not the topic of discussion.
2) Not necessarily but the idea is to fix the pay for it which is absurd; the reason why we are having the discussion.
3) We cannot improve brawl refereeing quality by reducing the pay or whatever.
4) We cannot improve refereeing quality in general by fixing pay and whatnot. The idea of rewarding UC for flavour was floated but the sheer subjectivity of the whole thing renders that unfeasible.

The whole issue we are trying to deal with is the issue of a broken pay system that inherently favours brawls because of the number of counters gained for each of the three parties relative to the amount of time spent.

Thanks IAR, now I totally understand. But in that case, instead of working on a penalty, shouldn't we revisit the pay system, ie the main formula that decides the ref pay for battles? and if Yes. Then as I mentioned, I like your formula for ref pay. I will probably look deeper into it. But if you can post/link it here, it might be helpful for our discussion.

 

[Avnomke]

(Thanks ZhengTann for linking to the threads that need to be wrapped up.)

Okay so far we've all agreed that brawls are ridiculous and need to be nerfed. I personally like IAR's fix, but there are other options. The best alternative that I can see is replacing the current UC formula with a round-based one, but the previous council just voted on that and said no, so that might not be the best way to go.

In any case, this needs more discussion and a good voting slate so that we can take care of this issue.

 

[Frosty]

I like IAR's suggestion too. Or rather, I like the results of IAR's suggestion. Would prefer a simpler formula so you can do calcs without the need of a calculator or more than 10 seconds. But eh, that is kind minor.

If there isn't any other proposal, I guess we can always put only it on the slate.


What I feel we should have in mind is:
a) Brawl UC pay isn't fine.
b) We tried caps before. They failed. Let's try something else.
c) Council voted for no alternative UC formula before. Unless you feel like overturning that on a new vote (takes time and isn't that recommended albeit it is possible?), I suggest we just try to figure out a extra penalty that either subtracts from the original value (Mulan suggested something like that), or divides it by some number.

Personally I would go with something simple/silly like "brawls are payed a 1/3 than usual matches" although that is a stupid solution for like 4vs4 (would be payed half than 3vs3 triples). In terms of sheer "fairness", something like IAR's is probably the best. We would just need to define rounding and suck up the calcs part. I suppose we can survive somewhat?

 

[Avnomke]

IAR's proposal isn't too hard to calc, tbh. Literally everyone in ASB has access to a calculator (CDXCIV the irc bot or the ones that come installed on every computer or Excel or Google or something), so that's not an issue.

And if you're reffing a brawl, I really doubt you're doing that without a calculator. HH EQ+EQ combos are pains without them.

 

[ZhengTann]

While I can see the reason behind IAR's numbers (even the 3 at the end?!), the issue I have with his penalty proposal is the severity. See:

• 6v6 non-Brawls: (7*8)/2 = 28 UC
• 6v6 Quadruples: (7*8)/2/(4/3) = 28/4*3 = 21 UC
• 6v6 Full-on-Brawls: (7*8)/2/(6/3) = 28/6*3 = 14 UC
• 4v4 Triples: (5*6)/2 = 15 UC

Some very weird off-topic stuff

While I agree that a cap merely turns farmers to the next-highest-bid (eg. restoring 25 UC cap would only result in 5v5 Brawls happening more often than 13v13 Brawls), too harsh a penalty is a huge turnoff for referees who actually want to do so for the sake of it, not for farming. As I've replied to Zar in the past thread, referees should neither be punished nor encourage to do Brawls.

So I am here to propose something to be done with Brawls that does not have to do UC rewards for Tower matches (off-topic, sorry):

Remove Brawls as a Tower format, and place them under Roleplay / Tournament Committees. This can be done a la RP Facilities (appoint a manager, get some ground rules going, and start qualifying referees and crunching the numbers), or will have to be approved on a case-by-case basis (such as E_D's old Adventure Battles before it became a certified Beta RP, Glacier's Ultimate Showdown, and what Red may be doing right now)

Pros:

• Limited access as referees will have to be qualified, whether subjectively or not.
  
• A separate UC rewards formula for referees can be devised without changing that of Tower matches again.

Cons:

• Someone has to do the QC (either one of aforementioned committees, or the one approved to manage them).
  
• Subjectivity to a certain degree.

Will elaborate if hidetags get some tentative support. Until then, thank you.

Brawls Pay = Non-Brawls Pay * 2 / 3 , Floored

 

[Pallas Athena]

I would like to pop in here to say that one of the functions of the newly approved (but topic pending) PokeStar Studios will be to facilitate RP heavy "event" brawls and melees. People who really hate themselves enough to do a flavor heavy brawl or melee with tons of Pokemon can work out payment through that.

This doesn't remove the issue of smaller, conventional brawls done for flavor reasons and not for profit, but it does mean that discussion of experimental or RP-heavy brawls or melees with a high number of contestants can be treated differently, meaning that this topic can focus more on text-minimal "counter farming" brawls or small (less than 9 v 9) ones without worrying as much about behavior at high values.

 

[Its_A_Random]

I think ZhengTann's idea wrt brawl penalty will not fix the problem of brawl-spam like what mine is intended to do. What it will do is encourage 10v10 or 11v11 brawl spam because they are not that big a step up from 8v8 or 9v9 spam and still offer high amounts of UC over three hours of work. The severity I put with mine is deliberate to turn the scaling effect for higher matches into a linear effect and make trying to get 50 UC in three to four hours not feasible due to sanity among other things. Also I do not agree that what I proposed is too severe either because this is not like 2013 where a 20v20 brawl and an 8v8 brawl are worth 15 UC, least the reward is respectable enough so that people can play brawls and the referee does not get an obscene number of UC from it.

Compare my proposal for brawls to ZhengTann's (results rounded normally)

IAR - xvx - Zt
14 - 6v6 - 19
15 - 7v7 - 24
17 - 8v8 - 30
18 - 9v9 - 37
20 - 10v10 - 44
21 - 11v11 - 52

Yeah I think it would be more sane to go with my own version.

Also 6v6 brawls being worth less than 4v4 triples is not really an issue because 4v4 triples do not last less than 3 rounds while a 6v6 brawl often lasts less than 3 on average. Also there is a correlation between field size and match length; the larger amount of Pokémon is on the field at a time, the shorter the battle will be.

Alternatively we could just remove brawls like mentioned in his hides but I do not have an opinion on it.

 

[Frosty]

so uh slate:

a) As is (50UC Cap)
b) IAR's Proposal: Take the number of active Pokémon per side at any given time, divide it by three, then divide the normal pay by that amount to get your final pay.
c) Zt's Proposal: Non-Brawls Pay * 2 / 3 , Floored
d) Mulan's Proposal: A penalty of twice the amount of active pokemon per side in a match with 4+ pokemon sent out per side, applied after the cap
e) Gale's Proposal: 3/4 the regular payment
f) Geodude's Proposal: (no cap) X<6: (X+1)(X+2)/2. X>6: 28+3(X-6)
g) Keep Brawls Banned and allow them only for specific situations like Pokestar Studios

Akela needs to clarify his proposal, if he wants it to get into the slate.

72h warning before booth. May be postponed if people discuss stuff.

(tbh the ban the brawl is looking sexier by the minute. I don't particularly miss them <_<).

 

[Geodude6]

Would like to re-slate my proposal from the original UC cap thread. The idea was to use the standard formula for 6v6 or smaller, and beyond that increase by some linear amount. 6 as the amount was chosen arbitrarily as an example, but after crunching the numbers I feel 3 is a good amount to increase payout by.

(no cap)
X<6: (X+1)(X+2)/2
X>6: 28+3(X-6)

This would mean that a 7v7 would be worth 31 UC, compared to 36 under the current system and 15.4 under IAR's proposed formula. A 20v20 would be worth 67 UC, compared to 70 UC under the old system (capped at 25?) and 231 under the current system (capped at 50) and 34.6 under IAR's. This system has the benefit of rewarding refs that ref large matches, while not having potential for abuse as far as I can see, even if we remove the 100 UC cap. This is because my formula is linear as opposed to exponential like the current system or rational like IAR's. To get 100 UC under my formula you would need to ref a 30v30, which is possible but not feasible due to sanity among other factors. I feel that this is reasonable without being extremely generous like the current system or harsh like IAR's.

Another idea I had was when you claim UC for a match larger than triples, the approver docks you UC for each mistake they find equal to the number of Pokemon sent out at a time per side (applied after whatever cap in place). I'm not as confident about the strength of this proposal, because you should be the one responsible for the matches you ref, not the approvers. Still, it was a thought I had, so I thought I might as well throw it out there.

I don't really want to ban brawls because, well, other users have already said it better.

Maybe I'm being too blunt, but why are we even allowing stupid stuff like 7+ Brawls? They just look like a massive counterfarming to me <.<

I remember that someone (I think it was Emma?) said that there's something awesome about sending out a ton of Pokémon and having an all-out war. Yes, there's a ton of counters being awarded, but that's not the only reason people play brawls.

We should not punish any format seen in the Anime and Manga. Lest we forget this is ANIME Style Battling and not Video Game Style Battling With Words.

Putting a cap on how many Pokémon can be brought to a format…does nothing to solve the issue concerning UC under the normal format (We want to satisfy a majority of the crowd here, not just the one user!), & is a pathetic attempt to sweep the issue under the rug.

 

[Frosty]

updated the slate.

anyone else wanna pitch in?

 

[Frosty]

Brawls are dealt with for now.

Now for the last step, this is merely a discussion at least for starters.

Do you think the payment for reffing tournament battles, gym battles and RP Facilities (ones not named Raid, TLR and AB) is proportional to the importance of reffing said matches and the work involved?

Keep in mind that the rewards are:

Gym: Normal prizes + 0.5 per pokemon
Tournament: 1.5x Normal Prizes + Bonus UC IF the battle wasn't subreffed.
RPs: Usually Base 3 + Normal Prizes per battle.

Keep in mind that the council is not the place to decide those matters (at least at principle. If people insist on voting that we can I suppose). This is just for discussion as to finish this off handling all kinds of battles (TLRs and Raids got a boost some time ago and AB is undergoing changes so I suggest we don't touch them)

 

[Gale Wing Srock]

I think Gym battles need to pay in par with Tournament battles, if not more. As Gym battles are more regular, more time consuming and a bit of a routine is involved.
Tournament battles are dependent on theme, so they move faster or slower due to various reasons and having to ref different teams every time make them a little more interesting, factoring in variety.
Role Play battles need to pay more, atleast 5 UC base or an exponential increase with 3 UC base, since ordering for the Facility and Reffing them requires more effort compared to just reffing two battlers. [Eg: 3 UC (base) + 1 UC (Intermittent Stage) + 1 UC (Final Stage) ]

Summary:

• Regular long term commitment.
  
• Standard Teams and Play Styles(Changes for Challenger though).
  
• Efficiency and Timeliness matters most.
• Need to Equal if not exceed Tournament Pay.

• Happens once in a while, Not as regular as Gym Battles.
• Different Teams, Different Players, Different Theme for each round in a tournament.
• The above point means reffing them is interesting every time, That is an incentive in itself.
• Most players take their time here, even the Seniors. Not because they want to delay the battle, but to give best orders because they will not get another shot at the Prize. Efficiency and Timeliness by the Ref matters, but not as much as Gym Battles or in par with Gym Battles at best.
  
• The Current pay is good.

• Happens Regularly, most of the time there is someone on the queue in every facility.
• Variety is more than Gyms and Less than Tournaments.
• The most delayed battles, ever, can be seen here. The reasons are varied and it is mostly, procrastination.
  
• The current pay needs improvement, the time commitment and the amount of work involved as the Ref here is more as the Ref has to double up as a character in the Facility.

The feedback is purely based on my own perspective of the battles that I have reffed and is open for discussion.

Edit: Lol, the summary is larger than the content itself. But you get my point right? Who reads walls of text?

 

[ZhengTann]

My lazy answer to Frosty's question 2 posts up is: Yes.

Also, since the Council already has no power to change the payment, then I'd say we only need to bring this up again if the public outcry is vociferous enough. As it is, personally I am not complaining (except maybe Halls), and I am not hearing others complain.