A wild plot appears

[indigo_league]

WELCOME PLAYERS.

DO YOU HAVE WHAT IT TAKES?








What is all this then?

Hello, welcome to this early plotting post.

This September we’d like to organise an event that we’ve very much been wanting to do for a while (well, Dees mostly, she’s been rattling the bars on her mod cage for ages) and we think we’ve finally come up with a way to make it all work!

So presenting!

A Victory Road Otherworlder Battle tournament!

Have you ever wondered who would be the best battler in VR? We certainly have plenty of characters dedicated to gathering badges and even taking on the Elite Four, but who among them would be the best?

Well, why not find out? And perhaps win some very cool prizes in the process.

Oh boy! How will this work?

Putting our cards on the table, there are two big issues with organising any sort of tournament – 1, how to judge things in an unbiased manner, and 2, how to get results out in a timely manner.

What we have come up with is this.

ICly, the tournament (along with a wider Battle Convention) will be held on Oct 1st and 2nd. So from your character’s perspective, the battles will take place on these two days, with the majority of the preliminary matches happening on the first, and the finale matches happening on the second.

OOCly, people will be submitting their strategies for their matches throughout the month of September. This means this event will have several hard deadlines throughout september. Though we cannot yet say exactly when these deadlines will be (as it depends very much on how many people end up signing up), the schedule may end up looking something like

Sept 1st - Receive information on who your character is battling.
Sept 6th - Deadline for submitting your battle strategy.
Sept 7th - Receive the result of the battle, as well as your next match, if you won.
Sept 12th - Deadline for submitting your next battle strategy

And so on.

Our goal is to always give you several days to work on/submit a strategy, and if we have to extend a bit further into October past IC date of the tournament, that is fine, but because we do not want people to have to wait weeks for the end result of a tournament, there will be some degree of time limitation.

As for judging who wins and loses in a particular match – this will be determined by our mod team. We’ll use the same sort of reasoning we use for judging badge challenges or Elite Four attempts, just rather than judge your provided strategy against an NPC, we’ll be judging it against the strategy provided by another player. Obviously, the mods doing the judging will not be involved in the actual tournament, so they won’t have a dog (pokemon) in the fight.

How will the tournament be structured?

It’ll be a single elimination/knock-out style tournament – or in other words, if you lose, you are out. The winners of each round will face off against each other until there is one last trainer standing.

The number of rounds and matches will obviously depend on exactly how many people sign up, which is information we hope to get to you ASAP after the sign-up stage ends.

But won’t players with level 100 pokemon be able to easily sweep newer players?

Ordinarily yes, but this tournament will have a few special rules.

Any person entering in this tournament will do so with three pokemon. You will use the same three pokemon for each match in the tournament (obviously, there will be healing in between). Your pokemon will not be able to evolve during the tournament or be swapped for another pokemon, so choose your three pokemon wisely.

Second, every pokemon entering in the tournament will be fitted with a special device courtesy of the Pokemon League. This device will artificially put every pokemon at Level 60 while they are wearing it. So if you enter the tournament with a level 5 Weedle, the moment the device is put on them, they’ll become a level 60 Weedle. If you enter with a level 100 Garchomp, they will become a level 60 Garchomp.

Important to note however is that while this device artificially alters the level of your pokemon, it does not alter their movepool. Meaning that your level five Weedle that got bumped to level 60, will still only know the moves a level five Weedle does. And similarly, a Level 100 pokemon will not lose any of the moves it knows. Related to this, your pokemon will also still have any moves it learned via tutoring or TM/HM even while fitted with the device.

Of course, once the device is taken off, your pokemon will immediately revert back to their normal level, no worse for the wear!

(except that Level 5 Weedle who just had a taste of power)

How about items?

Another good question!

Players will be limited to one held item – by which we mean, only one of their pokemon will be allowed a held item. This item must be declared at the start of the tournament and cannot be changed. If the held item you have chosen is consumable (such as a berry), it can be replaced after the battle with the same type of consumable if used, but it cannot be otherwise changed.

(i.e. if your pokemon is holding a Chesto Berry and uses it during a match, after the match, you can replace it with a new Chesto Berry, but you cannot suddenly give them an Oran Berry)

This also means, there will not be any healing or using revives during these matches. It’s a tournament, after all, and nobody wants to watch a three hour stall match between two opponents. Healing done by pokemon moves or through your one held item is allowed, but nothing else is.

This also means it is not possible to cure your pokemon of any status effects except by using a move that cures them, or by hoping your pokemon shakes off the status condition themselves (which, while judging, we will deem possible but not common so don’t stake a strategy on that)

Will Mega-evolution be allowed during this?

In order to keep the playing field as level as possible, there will not be any mega-evolution allowed during this tournament.

How do we sign up?

We have a sign-up post over here.

The comments on this post will be screened. This will be done to give players a chance to be secretive about any strategies they might have in mind.

When you sign up, please note that it is extremely important that you provide a list of all moves and the ability your pokemon will have at the start of the tournament. If your character is still training their pokemon, it is all right if they do not currently have all these moves yet, just as long as they would reasonably have them by Oct 1st.

Please know that it is very important that during the tournament you are only allowed to use moves that you submitted to us in advance. This is to prevent people from retconning their pokemon knowing a move that just happens to be super effective against the random opponent they matched up against.

When judging the matches, we will be cross-referencing your provided strategy against the move-pool you submitted.

However, know that while we as mods may have access to the information on what moves and abilities your pokemon has, your opponent will not! (unless they can somehow justify knowing said information)

What is the sign-up deadline?

The deadline to sign up is Sunday the 28th of August, at 23:59 EST.

This will give us a few days to get everything finalised, before we start the OOC part of the tournament on September 1st. This will be when you receive the name of your first opponent, as well as the deadline for when you need to submit your strategy.

What parameters will you use to judge which strategy is the winning one?

When determining which is the winning strategy, we’ll look for three things to determine the winner.

Pokemon Basics - This is the simplest part. We’ll be looking at the pokemon type match-ups, seeing what weaknesses and strengths might play a role there, as well as possible abilities or held items that could affect this. Mind you, having an effective match-up is by no means a guarantee for a successful battle! At this level, much can be done to compensate for a weakness.

Strategy - Here we basically look at what kind of strategy you are implementing to defeat your opponent. What moves are you using against your opponent? How successful are they? Are you doing anything to power up your moves? Or to ensure your moves will always hit and that sort of stuff.

Counter Strategy - Here we will look at what preparations you’ve made for dealing with what your opponent might inflict on you. How much are you able to anticipate what strategies your opponent might be using against you? And what steps are you taking to counter those strategies? For example, if you believe your opponent might switch around out their pokemon during a battle, are you using any moves to prevent that? Or to deal added damage to pokemon coming onto the field?

At the start of each match, the only information you will receive is what pokemon your opponent is using, but nothing on their abilities, held item or moves. So try and anticipate as much as you can!

Of course, once the tournament progresses, you’ll be able to use information from previous matches your opponent had to fill in some blanks for yourself, but you’ll have to get there first!

What happens if someone doesn’t submit a strategy?

If a strategy is not submitted for a certain match (regardless of reason why) by the deadline, that means that the other player automatically wins.

In the event that both players don’t submit a strategy, the match will end in a draw and neither will advance to the next round.

ICly, when the tournament is actually happening, there is some wriggle room in deciding how this plays out. Your character might not show up for the match at all. Or they will show up, but they are so unprepared they are unable to win. That’s something we’ll leave up to the players to decide.

If you can’t submit a strategy, it is not held against you on any OOC level. We understand that sometimes life gets in the way, or deadlines get lost in the mix. It just means that ICly your character wasn’t able to advance.

Can we thread out any battles?

We will only judge the outcome of these battles based on written out strategies.

However, if in addition to that you want to thread out certain moments that happen during the tournament, including the battles themselves, that can of course be done on the mingle log that will go up at the start of October.

Who can join in the tournament? My character is a breeder, can they still participate?

Every outworlder who has three pokemon can join in the tournament. You won't need a certain number of badges or even need to be a trainer at all! If you want to prove you are the best, you can do so.

My character is not into battling, can I still participate?

If your character doesn’t have a huge interest in battling, this event is not really geared towards them. However, there will certainly still be things to participate in even if you are not actually entering in the tournament (or if you enter and don’t get very far)

The tournament will be happening during a Battle Convention. Essentially an event for battle enthusiasts to come together and hang out. So, there will certainly be a big mingle log. Additionally, there will also be other things happening in between the battles, such as strategy showcases, a market geared towards battle items, workshops for learning about the best way to treat any battle injuries. Characters who are a member of the Aurora League will even have the option of hosting their own workshop or battle display. We'll give more information on this closer to October first.

Even if your character has no interest in battling, there will still be plenty to see and do. And, of course, there is always the option to just come by and cheer on your friends. Celebrate their victories! Commiserate in their defeats! Or just laugh at an enemy’s poor showing. And if none of this is to your liking, that is fine too.

(We also promise that while this event is very much focused on our battlers, we’ve got some ideas kicking around in our mod hats for some spotlight on our breeders too in the near future.)

I have some other questions or concerns.

That’s what this post is for! We understand this sort of event will generate a lot of questions and require some plotting, which is why we are starting early!

Comments

[prayreturn]

Okay, so. Just some questions I had:

1) What if our chosen opponent drops during plotting? Or between the battle results and the IC stuff?
2) What if there are an odd amount of sign-ups? Will Youngster Joey sneak in and be a free win for somebody--
3) Has the location for this event been decided? The weather? [Because if it's raining for example that'd change things for some Pokemon.] If a character hasn't been to the location before, would they get transport?

[indigo_league]

1. If they drop before we have fully drafted up the match-up scheme, they'll be removed from the list. However, if they drop once September is already in full swing, we won't be able to adjust the matches anymore, in which case, they'll just default on their match and their opponent will proceed to the next round, much like when a strategy is not submitted. ICly, characters can assume that their intended opponent did not show up.

2. Both Raile and Dees will be signing up with their characters as well, but with the full understanding that if the numbers do not match, some of their characters will be withdrawn. We've got three characters between the two of us, so that should be enough to somehow balance the scales.

3. The location has not yet been decided fully (but will most likely be Viridian), but as with any big event, transport will be provided through Ubirds for all characters. As for the weather, we'll make sure that that day has, essentially, nothing weather, so the battle conditions will be standard.

(Unless, of course, you alter them during the battle using Hail/Rain Dance/Sunny Weather etc etc.)

[angewiesen]

When will our characters learn about this tournament ICly?

Asking because I could use something to post about!

[indigo_league]

We talked it over, and seeing as we want people to also have IC time to prepare, we've decided that starting today, characters will be able to find advertisements and features on the upcoming Battle Convention, and the chance to sign up for one of the tournaments (there is a special tournament reserved for Outlanders)

[angewiesen]

NEAT, thanks!

[seacub]

So checking in on this per the idea of 'pokemon reasonably learning moves by Oct 1', but there are some TMs listed under the Autumn options that I was thinking of having Emporio specifically go for for his team. Can we reasonably use these, or would you rather we not since it's OOCly still autumn?

(And yes okay technically it's not Autumn until the 22nd of September or something like that buT THATS STILL NOT OCTOBER...)

[indigo_league]

We specifically put up the autumn list of TMs early so people can use them for their tournament entries. As these TMs become available on September first, ICly, your characters would have every chance to use them.

[crystalmaster]

Would characters owning restaurants be able to cater the event? Food and drink would surely be needed!

[indigo_league]

Unfortunately due to the size of the event, and the number of people attending, this is not the sort of thing that could be catered by a single restaurant. This of this like a mega-convention! Of course, for us the focus will be on the elements the Outlanders can participate in, but the convention itself is much much larger in scale.

The Pokemon League has already taken care of all the logistics, so for characters, all that remains is to show up and have fun.

[songstressedout]

Just a little confusion on my end... when we sign up with our character's team and movesets, do we also have to provide our strategy? Or do we provide that later when the tournament actually begins?

[indigo_league]

You do not need to provide any strategy until the tournament actually begins. At which point, you'll get to know who your opponent is and can tailor your strategy to them.

[heartofalioness]

The question you asked Callie actually brings up a good point; I had thought only the starting Pokemon could hold the held item. If we can choose which of the three holds it, are we allowed to select which Pokemon holds it each round as long as it's just one Pokemon? Or is that locked into place for the whole tournament as well?

[indigo_league]

You can choose which one of your pokemon holds the item, and you can change this between rounds. The only thing you cannot change is the nature of the item.

[heartofalioness]

Excellent! Thank you so much, mods!

[seacub]

Question while working on strategies, but should we be considering PP while planning these?

[indigo_league]

To some degree. Obviously, some allowances will be made because you won't know how many of those moves will actually happen, so we won't be expecting an exact count of how often a certain move has been used, but if you have a move that is very limited in PP, you cannot spam it endlessly. And if your strategy was built around that, that will count as a point against you when deciding who is the victor.

[machismost]

If a move was not listed on my entry to the competition, but it's a move my Pokemon learns naturally by level up and the Pokemon has reached that level, can that move still be used or am I restricted strictly to what I submitted? If more specifics are needed, please feel free to contact me or screen my comment.

[indigo_league]

In the interest of fairness and consistency, any moves missed this way will unfortunately have to remain "off" your Pokemon's known move list for the tournament!