Why do we even *allow* "best of one" tournaments?

[Seven Deadly Sins]

The thing I never understood about the Crystal Ball Cup is why it was ever changed back to one battle. I think that the tournament would have been MUCH better if it was best of 3 with one swap per match (not cumulative, meaning you could only have one pokemon swapped at any given time). Since you both know your opponents' teams (minus one mon) before the battle, the "element of surprise" is just as present in the first match as it is in the last. That was one of the things that really irked me about the later rounds of that tournament.

 

[Earthworm]

Basically the tournament had already been delayed significantly during Round 1 because matty didn't have the time to run it, and a significant number of people were complaining about it being best of three at the time when I decided to change it (they claimed best of three with the same teams is a waste of time if I remember correctly). I guess they figured that due to team matchups there wasn't any point in playing a losing battle again. Anyway this is not really the most relevant topic so if you want to discuss it more you can PM me.

 

[lilyhollow]

I think it's perfectly relevant. The fact that members of our community would make such baseless, wrong complaints about the rules of a tournament that they joined of their own free will pretty much screams "relevant," both to this topic in particular and the state of the community as a whole.

As for your post Hip, I honestly just don't know how to respond anymore. I don't want to sound like an asshole but there simply isn't enough substance to your argument (there isn't any) for me to reason against it in any serious manner. you're insisting that the way you think things should be is simply correct because you, hipmonlee, deem it so; that somehow, because apparently the notion of a "contradiction" has some inherent, inexcusably terrible quality to it in Hipmonlee Land, that I'm supposed to be able to take that as some concrete excuse to completely shit all over the notion of a "competitive Pokemon tournament." well... i'm not

 

[Hipmonlee]

Ignore the fairy bit. The point there was that tournaments can have a purpose and that the official tournament has a purpose and that the purpose of that tournament is what I explained. I get to be the fairy because the purpose of a tournament is essentially an arbitrary decision, and I am important enough here to be the arbiter. If you want to make a tournament that has a different purpose then make one. You can be a fairy too!

If the purpose of the official smogon tournament was something else then I would make a second official tournament with the purpose I just explained, because I think there ought to be an official tournament serving that purpose, and I am in a position to make it.

You havent made any convincing argument that there is anything inherently more competitive about best of three battles than best of one. You reduce the impact of luck, but increase the impact of team advantage. You decrease the value of surprise and in doing so you centralise the game around what is standard. None of this makes the game more competitive, it just makes the game different. It's arbitrary change.

It is completely ridiculous that tournaments would not be allowed to use the set of rules that are used in all other pokemon battling. Even if the fundamental purpose of tournaments is something other than what I said (and you havent made any suggestion as to what it would be) that doesnt necessarily mean there shouldnt be allowed to be tournaments for the purpose of what I suggested. And as far as I know, that is what smogon's official tournament is.

If best of three was genuinely more competitive, then your argument ought be that the standard method of battling in all contexts should be best of three.

If your gripe is really with RNG influenced battles, then the best solution is to change the format of tournaments so that their outcomes are less RNG influenced without actually changing the rules of battling. Its just very hard to do that in a practical way.

Also to me it seems like the fact that people felt that best of three was a waste of time is less indicative of the state of the community but more indicative of the fact that best of three is a waste of time..

Have a nice day.

 

[lati0s]

There are a few reasons best of three may be less preferable than single battle tournaments. The biggest reason is, in my opinion team building. As any player can tell you a pokemon match where you know your opponent's team, so in a best of 3 tournament each player would either have to build 3 separate teams, which would be a huge burden in many tournaments that require special team requirements, or game-play would be affected by previous knowledge of your opponents team. Note that I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing, but there are cases where it might be less preferable. another possible concern with them are time concerns, especially if both players are running stallish teams.

All in all, I don't think best of 3 matches are bad, there are certainly some cases where best of 3 is superior, for example I think it would have been good if the crystal ball cup had remained best of three, especially since my loss to IPL was partly due to an unfortunate stone edge miss. However I also feel that there are situations where one battle games are preferable.

I think another thing that should be considered is increasing the number of non-single-elimination tournaments. double elimination/swiss tournament styles help curb the effect of luck without increasing the effect of team match ups, they also make it less likely for good players to be eliminated early on while worse players advance because of lucky opponent choice.

 

[lilyhollow]

@Hip

Best of 3 is inherently more indicative of skill ("competitive") than Best of 1 for the same reason that choosing to play multiple ladder matches is automatically more indicative of skill than just playing one; the fact that it also happens to result in a change in strategy/teambuilding to some unknown extent is a secondary characteristic that has only been theorized about as of yet. I'm not going to address your theories specifically, 1, because the potential changes are mostly unknown (with the exception of those which are the primary causes of this thread in the first place), 2, because I think any "worst-case-scenario" where the results of a tournament really are less indicative of player skill after Best of 3 than they would have been before is entirely unfathomable, and 3, because even in such a scenario I would be very unlikely to consider simply "reverting back to Best of 1" as the ideal next step.

What I'm basically saying is that I pretty much feel these reasons you give for Best of 3 "not necessarily being more competitive" are really scare tactics that probably aren't very factually true in the first place, but even if they were, they wouldn't matter, and even if they did, that wouldn't matter because what we have right now sucks ass and we should be trying to progress in some way and this is the ideal first step.



Best of 3 in the context of a ladder is a totally different animal from Best of 3 in the context of a tournament, because ladders and tournaments themselves are different animals and I'm still not convinced they shouldn't remain different animals. The fact that you can already play as many matches as you want in ladder competition makes Best of 3 exactly what you suggest it is in the context of tournament competition-- "not more competitive, just different."


And if you really want me to change the title of this thread to "Why do we not *strongly discourage* "best of one" tournaments?" I could... it doesn't make a difference to me as long as the vast majority of tournaments are not Bo1. The fact is that just saying, "hey everyone... Best of 3 tournaments are pretty cool" is not an effective way of actually progressing, but i'll happily accept any "politically correct" manner of making Best of 3 tournaments the standard of this community as long as it actually works

 

[Hipmonlee]

Best of 3 in the context of a ladder is a totally different animal from Best of 3 in the context of a tournament, because ladders and tournaments themselves are different animals and I'm still not convinced they shouldn't remain different animals. The fact that you can already play as many matches as you want in ladder competition makes Best of 3 exactly what you suggest it is in the context of tournament competition-- "not more competitive, just different."

The function of the ladder is to rank players according to their abilities as a pokemon player. As such, the rule set used in ladder battles is what is considered standard for pokemon battling, as what is standard is what defines pokemon playing ability.

The function of the official tournament is to test players abilities as a pokemon player. As such, the rule set used in the tournament is what is considered standard for pokemon battling, for the same reasons as the ladder.

So by their very natures, the ladder and our official tournament should use the same rules. If they dont, then one of them is failing to achieve its fundamental purpose. If we changed tournaments to best of three, then it would probably be the tournament, but I mean that would really depend on the community.

Also I have battled people multiple times over with identical teams a hell of a lot. So when I say surprise sets dont work as well the second time, it isnt some shit I'm just theorising, it is about as well supported as almost anything said about pokemon ever is. And if surprise sets dont work nearly as well, then the obvious result of that will be to not use them as much. Which effectively means using what is standard more. This isnt just speculation, I mean I can see how theoretically that could be false, but I cant imagine it practically..

So now some more delving into the depths of my vast pokemon experience. I have noticed about rematches that the second match is more likely to be won by the worse player than the first. Because the game becomes one of more complete knowledge, actions are a lot easier to evaluate. Plus they have an idea of the likely outcome of one set of actions already.

So based on this experience, I really do think these changes actually will make pokemon less competitive. In the way that paper scissors rock and tic tac toe are non-competitive despite having no RNG influence whatsoever.

I think our key difference is that I think you underestimate how different a best of one game is to a best of three. And you think the opposite of me.

I also dont think our current tournaments suck ass. Though I do kinda question the ratio of tournaments with weird rulesets to more standard ones. But that is an entirely seperate issue..

If you want some advice about how you could convince people to make tournaments best of three instead of best of one, you could just ask the hosts when you sign up. Or you, aldaron and tangerine could host some yourselves.

As for non official tournaments, I really dont care at all, only it would seem very weird if we strongly recommended best of three when our official tournament was best of one..

Have a nice day.

 

[Earthworm]

what we have right now sucks ass

How many people actually think this? I don't, it doesn't look like Hipmonlee does either, and none of the tournament directors have attempted to change what we have already so I assume they don't either.

I realise now that I should have just made it optional whether the loser wanted to complete the best of three or just finish with one loss in the Crystal Ball Cup, or alternatively (more likely) allowed the players to decide beforehand giving preference the the people that wanted to play best of three. It was just annoying because people were making mistakes and getting DQed for it as well...

I think a similar system would work well in some or most tournaments, where the participants decided before their match(es) whether it would be best of three or just a single match, perhaps (I'm not so sure about this) giving preference to best of three with the choice to change teams completely between matches. Do you think this would be a good step towards your idea of 'increasing competitiveness', Blame Game?

 

[Hipmonlee]

I was thinking about whether best of three would make pokemon less competitive, I decided you could build a team while intending to have three options at key points (like turn 1, against various likely leads). I mean, this sort of thing could add a little depth to the game, that might make up for what is lost by having the second and third battles.

But it occurred to me that in gimmicky tournaments it doesnt matter. Like, once we establish that best of 3 is different to best of 1, then it is just up to the hosts to decide between them. The fact that one is less RNG influenced and (for the sake of argument) inherently more competitive is irrelevant. Similarly randbat is more RNG influenced and inherently less competitive than standard but we dont disallow randbat tournaments.

Basically, playing best of three is not more indicative of skill at playing best of one pokemon. If you want to have a tournament that indicates skill at best of one pokemon you should be allowed to.

Have a nice day.

 

[lilyhollow]

So now some more delving into the depths of my vast pokemon experience. I have noticed about rematches that the second match is more likely to be won by the worse player than the first. Because the game becomes one of more complete knowledge, actions are a lot easier to evaluate. Plus they have an idea of the likely outcome of one set of actions already

This doesn't make any sense, how far have you delved into the Best of 3 format and why didn't you mention this earlier if you had apparently experimented with it deeply enough to render the verdict that it somehow makes the game shallower? If you haven't actually done any of that and this is just rhetoric, I basically just default to the same response I gave to Panamaxis' comment up there somewhere. "Making actions easier to evaluate" doesn't say anything about the game's depth until you come to a point where you can identify what constitutes "too easy." And I think you'd need considerable experience playing DP under a Best of 3 ruleset in order to do that.

And I have no problem accepting that Best of 3, at least without team changes, could be considered a significantly different test of skill than Best of 1. What I don't think is that the difference in rulesets is significant enough to cause someone accustomed to the ladder to feel seriously out of place in Best of 3. They don't have to learn anything new, they just have to make the same decisions they did before, under somewhat different circumstances. But in the end, and I'll keep going back to this over and over and over again if I have to, even the "worst case scenario" sees a situation where yes, tournaments are perhaps vastly different from ladder play. But everyone says "so what" because the format is a better test of skill than the previous one and there is little if any problem with keeping two distinct forms of competition distinct.

How many people actually think this? I don't, it doesn't look like Hipmonlee does either, and none of the tournament directors have attempted to change what we have already so I assume they don't either.

You are telling me that two people and overall community passivity amounts to popular support when "popular support" isn't a valid argument to begin with, nor one that Smogon has ever stood by in the past without consideration of the actual facts surrounding a particular topic. I think myself, Tangerine, Aldaron, Colin, Jabba, and SDS is a pretty ok list anyway (I won't speak for them thinking that the current system is terrible but the point is that it could stand to improve), and for what it's worth I can think of no other respectable competitive community that would even fathom using a Best of 1 format in tournaments for a game like Pokemon, except for, well, as a gimmick.

I think a similar system would work well in some or most tournaments, where the participants decided before their match(es) whether it would be best of three or just a single match, perhaps (I'm not so sure about this) giving preference to best of three with the choice to change teams completely between matches. Do you think this would be a good step towards your idea of 'increasing competitiveness', Blame Game?

yes, but I hate compromises, especially when it comes to something like this

 

[diinbong]

In my opinion it should be the descision of the tournament host like it is now. The only real change I see happening is just "strongly suggesting" or making the standard best of 3 for anything non-specific. Aldaron was right in that there's an "ideal" and a "sensible"; although it would be really nice if in every tournament everyone made 3 teams, played 3 matches, and still got their matches done on time, it's never going to happen. Especially in some tournaments where the theme is changing every round and making 3 teams really isn't worth the wait. But I think the bo3 with a single team really takes away from the battling considering surprise and strategies are revealed (even though the better player will likely still win).

I guess I'm just saying this because I find a majority of tournaments right now to be "only Water-types" or "this egg group" tourneys and therefore more "just for fun". In more competitive tournaments however, I think that this should become the standard.

 

[Seven Deadly Sins]

I really like the idea of "Best of 3, any teams", since it is the most competitive and generally the least influenced by luck. It also removes the issue of knowing the opponent's team once you have battled them once.

 

[Sapientia]

The problem with bo3 any teams is that a lot of tournaments are gimmicks and noone wants to build 3 good teams he'll never use again. Also there is still a big amount of luck, if two good players face each other, because usually it still will be close (this still happens if you play bo9 or any other bullshit).
But of course it can protect good player to get lucked out be worse ones, but usually there isn't a big difference if you don't play bo3 (on german sites every tournament is bo3). Another thing is that it reduces the influence of team matchups, what is quite high in DP. But if someone knows another ones team, if he battled him once, the other guy does something wrong. You should have more than 1 competetive team you can use in a tournament.
I wouldn't play bo3 in gimmick tournaments, but I think in tournaments with serious modes (ubers tourney, ground uu tourney, pound for pund...) it should be an option.

 

[lilyhollow]

I guess I'm just saying this because I find a majority of tournaments right now to be "only Water-types" or "this egg group" tourneys and therefore more "just for fun". In more competitive tournaments however, I think that this should become the standard.

I really believe the idea that "gimmick" tournaments are somehow automatically less competitive than "standard" ones is misguided and just false. At the very least, to say that the fact that they happen to use unorthodox rules is what primarily makes them less competitive is totally baseless, and I'd argue any day of the week that Best of 1 rules are more to blame for that than all of the other reasons put together. I mean I understand that "Brown Pokemon Only Tourney!" is just begging for some people to join the tournament purely for the hell of it, and I have nothing against those people, but that doesn't mean there aren't plenty of people who are serious (some of whom did join "purely for the hell of it") and it certainly doesn't mean that this thread doesn't or shouldn't apply to those tournaments, just like, say, Low Tier tournaments in certain fighting games don't suddenly get subjected to pointlessly uncompetitive rulesets simply because "they're just for fun" (if anything the only reason for that to happen would be that those tournaments, unlike our own, are held along with multiple other events with which they can potentially interfere, but I still don't believe that this sort of thing happens with any regularity). I'm obviously not suggesting we implement something like Bo3 with team changes for every little tournament though... just that we don't write these tournaments off in every situation just because their rules are different.

 

[diinbong]

I really like the idea of "Best of 3, any teams", since it is the most competitive and generally the least influenced by luck. It also removes the issue of knowing the opponent's team once you have battled them once.

Yes, I agree with this.

Honestly though, Blame Game, I don't see how you can say gimmick tournaments are just as competitive as normal tourneys. I guess it's the fact that the skills you use in those tournaments aren't applicable to real battling that makes me apprehensive to agree.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Once you have decided what your tournament is going to be for (ie what rules you have for battling), then you should strive to make it as competitive as possible. Regardless of how gimmicky it might seem.

Anything else is bad tournament hosting. And shouldnt be allowed.

Best of three with changing teams is a great way of doing this, if you can actually get it to work..

Have a nice day.

 

[Seven Deadly Sins]

At the same time, I don't see how you can say that gimmick tournaments are any less competitive as normal tournaments, other than the obvious randbat ones. As long as the objective is to have more skilled players win more often, it's "competitive".

EDIT @ Hipmonlee:

Best of 3 with changing teams is actually the easiest to police, since there's no "you must use the same team" thing. If anything, Bo3 with different teams is easier to "get to work" than something like Sideboard or No Change.

 

[Hipmonlee]

Even randbat tournaments are competitive. They actually do use best of three as well..

Have a nice day.

 

[lilyhollow]

I don't see how you can say gimmick tournaments are just as competitive as normal tourneys.

I never said that.

Once you have decided what your tournament is going to be for (ie what rules you have for battling), then you should strive to make it as competitive as possible. Regardless of how gimmicky it might seem.

Anything else is bad tournament hosting. And shouldnt be allowed.

Best of three with changing teams is a great way of doing this, if you can actually get it to work..

Have a nice day.

I agree


edit: diinbong, the key word was "automatically," but you seem to understand what i was getting at now so whatever.

 

[diinbong]

I really believe the idea that "gimmick" tournaments are somehow automatically less competitive than "standard" ones is misguided and just false.

Yes, you did?

mhm, actually Hipmonlee is right. I guess I automatically think making restrictions makes the game less competitive because I'm too ladder-minded (where restricting the Pokemon you use purposely to stay in theme is uncompetitive), but I understand what you mean now.

 

[chaos]

This hasn't been touched in a while, so I'll put some perspective.

People have argued for BO3 in the past for the official tourneys, and back then we came to the decision to make it single-elim. Why? It was hard enough to get people to complete their matches on time, and BO3 would have made it even harder. This may no longer be an issue because our community has gotten much bigger and the competition to get into ST has most likely increased.

People get burnt out after that many battles. It's understandable. Hard enough when the tournament has 256+ people, but when you multiply lg 256 by 3? I can imagine tournaments will become less popular. But what do I know? My perspective dates from when I was very active in Smogon Pokemon. Perhaps things have changed.

If there is no resolution here (and I don't want to make an arbitrary decision when both sides have good arguments) I think the discussion should be brought to the public. However, I will say this: unless there is _overwhelming_ support for an additional restriction, I feel the best option is to go with the path of least resistance (tourney hosts pick the rules).

It would help if someone could summarize the points made in a post for both sides. Here are some common arguments against BO3:

- Takes more time; less turnaround for tournaments.
- Harder to get people to follow through.
- Removes element of surprise (w/o sideboard)
- Sideboard unlike normal battling.

Please don't underestimate 1) and 2).

 

[lilyhollow]

I would sort of lump most of the oppositions to Best of 3 tournaments, at least in this thread, into two main arguments.

Argument number one, which probably has the most presence here, is that tournaments would no longer perfectly mirror ladder gameplay. "There's no more element of surprise," "the game devolves into mindgames," and "sideboards totally change team-building" all fall under this, but the simple fact that ladder and tournament play might become different tests of skill at all can be considered an attack against "community harmony," and therefore harmful, under this argument.

Argument number two is that Best of 3 takes up too much time and energy, which could result in less turnout, or even less competitiveness due to tournaments taking up so much time and energy that they merely become tests of "who has the most time and energy." I don't think argument two was that well-represented in this thread, but it probably will be when given a pool of players who are a bit more casual about the game.



There are two main objections to both of these arguments. The first objection is that, depending on the specific ruleset we choose to employ within a given tournament, the difference between ladder play and tournament play would hardly be significant anyway. I think this objection sort of accepts that "there's no pleasing everyone," because the people who really think surprise is important will always complain about Bo3 (no team changes), and they might be satisfied with Bo3 (sideboard) but then the people who think teambuilding has to be identical to ladder play will have a problem and so on and so on. Even the option that sort of appeases the "purists" of argument #1 (Best of 3 with team changes) basically runs straight into argument #2.

The second objection is basically just "who cares?" There's nothing wrong with a complete overhaul of the system, even if it means players will be forced to strategize differently. The current Best of 1 system is so awful that even if some people decided to stop entering tournaments, the new ruleset would make up for it entirely from a competitive standpoint, so forcing players to expend more effort isn't that big of a deal either, even in a worst-case-scenario (one that is completely avoided should we opt out of Bo3 with team changes). As for "Community harmony," it probably wouldn't be affected, and even if it would, nobody can say whether that change would be negative or not; there's really no reason that it can't be a good thing to separate these two distinct forms of competition to a certain extent.

The two objections sort of meld together in that it's somewhat apparent to most of the people supporting Bo3 that the potential strategic changes to the game are probably being overstated, but are also largely positive in the first place ("so who cares").


I'd like to think that the relative difference in length of my portrayals of the two sides isn't a product of my own biases but of the relative straightforwardness of most of the arguments against Best of 3 (which you already summarized fairly well in your post). Anyway, that's how things went down from my perspective, but if anyone, particularly from the other side of the argument, has anything to add, maybe that would be helpful.

 

[Hipmonlee]

I cant see any relevant difference in strategy between best of three with changing teams (not sideboards, but complete changes) and the ladder (aside from the flaws in the ladder, which I am about to make a new thread to discuss). Nobody in this thread has suggested any either, so the only (reasonable) opposition to best of three with changing teams is argument #2.

Also, just for interests sake, earlier on I mentioned how I couldnt find where we discussed the purpose of the official tournament, but since then I have realised it is mentioned in the philosophy article.

Smogon's major tournaments will almost always use the standard ruleset, which is more than enough to encourage most players to play by them regularly.

It doesnt say why, which is a pity..

But yeah, the argument #1 isnt so much about community harmony, as it is about the fundamental purpose of tournaments.

What is the standard method of battling should be the best method of battling (with whatever definition of best we can come up with), because this is the method we expect people to play the most. It is essentially like a product, and it's the product our community is based on, and the strength of our community comes from the strength of that product.

When we host a tournament, the purpose is to present that product in a formal setting. If our tournaments arent working, then we should look at changing the tournament, or if the problem isnt with our tournament system but with our product itself, finding a better product (and if it is better, then it would become the standard ruleset). Not creating a new product customised specifically to present in tournaments.

So the argument #1 is that you are missing the point of most of our tournaments.

The argument against #1 is that the difference is so negligible it shouldnt matter. OR that our tournaments ought to serve some other purpose (which I honestly dont understand at all) and that we should either prevent or strongly discourage people from hosting tournaments that do serve that purpose.

Have a nice day.