A few things: one, I am WHEEZING at calling Raile "Dirk's unfortunate host". IT'S TRUE BUT YOU SHOULDN'T SAY IT
Two, I was thinking that potentially, for future tournaments, maybe it would be best to restrict TM/HM moves from being used. (AND I'M NOT JUST SAYING THIS BECAUSE CLAUDE LOST TO A TM MOVE - ) They add a really fun element to strategy and open up a lot of options for players to make movesets for their pokémon that can provide widespread type coverage, not to mention reward player investment and strategic foresight, and those are good things!...but also, on the flip side, TMs are affected by time of year, IC finances, how long a character has been in the game, whether the character puts IC focus on battle strategy, etc. I feel like it's going to give a character like, say, Claude - who's been in the game for awhile and has been through seasonal cycles of TMs(and in fact was in-game before TMs began seasonal cycling), has tons of money from Pay Day farming(we all remember the 2 million pokédollar Dreepy), who's intensely strategic, and who's beaten multiple gyms and earned their HMs - a huge and not necessarily fair advantage over a character like (picking an example out of the air) Zack Fair, who recently joined the game and hasn't had the chance to gain the IC money or access to TMs/HMs to match him. (I have similar concerns about pokémon not knowing moves above their level even if they're leveled up for the tournament or the obvious disadvantages of unevolved pokémon from new players being unable to compete, but I think that's a little less easy to make provisions for within the in-universe logic of the game.)
Restricting the movepools might also just simplify a lot of things for modding these events, while also incentivizing players to construct more inventive and convoluted strategies based on the moves they know 100% their opponents have, without having to construct theoretical strategies based on "well if they know THIS TM move then my pokémon does THAT" when their opponent may not even have that move and it's ultimately a waste of time to make provisions for that. :|a While, of course, also making these tournaments more newbie-friendly by giving older players fewer advantages against them they couldn't possibly have leveled the playing field on yet!
My final thought is this: I definitely saw a bit of rumbling from players who aren't big into pokémon battles about this tournament, around how there was not a whole lot for them to do and feeling kind of excluded as a result. Obviously not every event's going to appeal to all players under any circumstances, but events like these are tailored very hard towards a specific subset of the playerbase - those who are really into battling - while leaving those who aren't in the lurch. And when we have players actively divided into classes like Trainer and Breeder by the game mechanics, with Breeders usually being players who aren't big into the competitive aspects of pokémon, it does feel a little rough to leave them out in the cold.
Maybe tournaments could be a sort of dual-part event in the future? On the one side you'd have the tournament itself, and then simultaneously there could be a mini-event running that's for people who want something less competitive to do in the meantime? And then players could just decide which aspect to engage with. (Obviously I'm sure tournaments are VERY involved for the mod team, so adding even more to that workload is a tough sell, but maybe a single mod - or, perhaps, lower-level mods, like ones who maintain lists and the like? - could oversee the much lower impact non-competitive side of the event. I'd hope it wouldn't take nearly as much oversight.)
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Two, I was thinking that potentially, for future tournaments, maybe it would be best to restrict TM/HM moves from being used. (AND I'M NOT JUST SAYING THIS BECAUSE CLAUDE LOST TO A TM MOVE - ) They add a really fun element to strategy and open up a lot of options for players to make movesets for their pokémon that can provide widespread type coverage, not to mention reward player investment and strategic foresight, and those are good things!...but also, on the flip side, TMs are affected by time of year, IC finances, how long a character has been in the game, whether the character puts IC focus on battle strategy, etc. I feel like it's going to give a character like, say, Claude - who's been in the game for awhile and has been through seasonal cycles of TMs(and in fact was in-game before TMs began seasonal cycling), has tons of money from Pay Day farming(we all remember the 2 million pokédollar Dreepy), who's intensely strategic, and who's beaten multiple gyms and earned their HMs - a huge and not necessarily fair advantage over a character like (picking an example out of the air) Zack Fair, who recently joined the game and hasn't had the chance to gain the IC money or access to TMs/HMs to match him. (I have similar concerns about pokémon not knowing moves above their level even if they're leveled up for the tournament or the obvious disadvantages of unevolved pokémon from new players being unable to compete, but I think that's a little less easy to make provisions for within the in-universe logic of the game.)
Restricting the movepools might also just simplify a lot of things for modding these events, while also incentivizing players to construct more inventive and convoluted strategies based on the moves they know 100% their opponents have, without having to construct theoretical strategies based on "well if they know THIS TM move then my pokémon does THAT" when their opponent may not even have that move and it's ultimately a waste of time to make provisions for that. :|a While, of course, also making these tournaments more newbie-friendly by giving older players fewer advantages against them they couldn't possibly have leveled the playing field on yet!
My final thought is this: I definitely saw a bit of rumbling from players who aren't big into pokémon battles about this tournament, around how there was not a whole lot for them to do and feeling kind of excluded as a result. Obviously not every event's going to appeal to all players under any circumstances, but events like these are tailored very hard towards a specific subset of the playerbase - those who are really into battling - while leaving those who aren't in the lurch. And when we have players actively divided into classes like Trainer and Breeder by the game mechanics, with Breeders usually being players who aren't big into the competitive aspects of pokémon, it does feel a little rough to leave them out in the cold.
Maybe tournaments could be a sort of dual-part event in the future? On the one side you'd have the tournament itself, and then simultaneously there could be a mini-event running that's for people who want something less competitive to do in the meantime? And then players could just decide which aspect to engage with. (Obviously I'm sure tournaments are VERY involved for the mod team, so adding even more to that workload is a tough sell, but maybe a single mod - or, perhaps, lower-level mods, like ones who maintain lists and the like? - could oversee the much lower impact non-competitive side of the event. I'd hope it wouldn't take nearly as much oversight.)