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the_plateau2022-10-07 12:33 am
indigo_league) wrote in the_plateau2022-10-07 12:33 am
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Battle convention result!
Gather around, because it is time to find out who is the best battler in the entire game; who is the person who persisted round after round, defeating one opponent after the next to become the Victory Road (game, not location) champion?
And the winner is....!
Riku!
It wasn't an easy final fight, both opponents giving it their all, trading blow for blow, clever strategy for clever strategy, but when the dust settles (and the tricks run out), it is Riku who stands victorious, with Dirk Strider in second place!
And what about third?
The battle for third is no less hard fought between Emporio Alnino and Jean Kirstein. However in the end, and aided by a truly lethal Dragon Dance combo, it's Jean Kirstein who can lay claim to third place in this tournament. Congratulations Jean on being the highest ranking player who isn't an Aurora League champion!
But, of course, the accolades and applause doesn't just go to these three players. As the results are revealed (which includes a supercut of the tournament's finest moments), there is a big applause for every otherworlder who entered this tournament. Even those that didn't win, showed just how far they've come and how much they learned to understand about pokemon since coming here! And that too is worth some cheers.
Oh, but you didn't think we forgot about the prizes, right?
Additionally, anyone who entered in the tournament will receive the TM Superpower, as well as a honourary badge, which lists your final ranking in the tournament.
Which concludes our first battle tournament in Victory Road in... nearly a decade? And at its conclusion, we'd love to share a few of our thoughts.
Because truly, we have been looking forward to running a tournament like this for a very long time! It's pokemon! Entering in tournaments and becoming the best (that ever was) is one of its corner stones. And yet, for a roleplaying game, such things can be very hard to organise in a both timely and fair matter.
What we want to say is that you've all truly blown us away with the level, as well as the creativeness of the strategies you submitted week after week. This was an event that took a lot of OOC time and effort, but you all came out with verve and made it one hell of an event to run. Running this sort of event, not only brought us so much joy and marvelling about how creative you all are, it also thought us mods a lot of things about pokemon we truly didn't know before!
Like, did you know that Substitute is truly the worst move ever? With how often its parameters have changed across the various generations, trying to find out what it does and doesn't block was truly a battle we did not expect to be fighting.
Also, did you know that non-damage dealing moves and status moves are not affected by type immunities? Because we sure didn't! Starting this tournament, we were certain a Dark type pokemon couldn't be hit by Hypnosis. Or that a ghost type pokemon would obviously also be immune to a normal status moves. Turns out... NOPE. Those can still hit and affect pokemon just fine! The things you learn while thirty tabs deep into Bulbapedia and Smogon matches to check what does and doesn't work.
In any case, we've learned a lot, both in terms of how creative you all are, how absolutely crazy pokemon rules are, and what little things we'd like to do different when we run another tournament like this in the future (such as setting everybody's pokemon to level 100 from the start, which really makes calculations so much easier). Because we'd certainly like to do this sort of event again in the future. And sooner than ten years, this time!
But first, we need a long, long break from Bulbapedia.
Still, what we'd love to hear is if you guys, especially the people who entered in the tournament, have any feedback for us. We have no idea when we'll be able to run something like this again (there is truly so much we want to do!) but when we do, we'd love to take everybody's ideas into account. So if you have any idea, feel free to drop them on this post.
And beyond that, please let put together another congratulations to Mega (Riku's player), Raile (Dirk's unfortunate host) and Otter (Jean's keeper) for becoming the best that ever was!
And the winner is....!
It wasn't an easy final fight, both opponents giving it their all, trading blow for blow, clever strategy for clever strategy, but when the dust settles (and the tricks run out), it is Riku who stands victorious, with Dirk Strider in second place!
And what about third?
The battle for third is no less hard fought between Emporio Alnino and Jean Kirstein. However in the end, and aided by a truly lethal Dragon Dance combo, it's Jean Kirstein who can lay claim to third place in this tournament. Congratulations Jean on being the highest ranking player who isn't an Aurora League champion!
But, of course, the accolades and applause doesn't just go to these three players. As the results are revealed (which includes a supercut of the tournament's finest moments), there is a big applause for every otherworlder who entered this tournament. Even those that didn't win, showed just how far they've come and how much they learned to understand about pokemon since coming here! And that too is worth some cheers.
Oh, but you didn't think we forgot about the prizes, right?
 For coming in First, Riku will receive an Additional Mega-evolution stone of his choice. This stone will not count towards the normal limit (two for trainers, one for breeders) giving him even more options when it comes to mega-evolving his pokemon. (like he needed even more power!) In addition to his extra Mega-evolution stone, Riku will also receive P75.000. Don't spend it all in one place! Or do! Don't let us tell you what to do. |
 For coming in Second, Dirk Strider will receive an EXP-Share, as well as P50.000 to spend as he wishes! |
 For coming in Third, Jean Kirstein will receive an Multi-use TM of his choice as well as P25.000 to spend as he wishes! Also an invitation from the Elite Four to hurry up and come challenge them already! |
Additionally, anyone who entered in the tournament will receive the TM Superpower, as well as a honourary badge, which lists your final ranking in the tournament.
Which concludes our first battle tournament in Victory Road in... nearly a decade? And at its conclusion, we'd love to share a few of our thoughts.
Because truly, we have been looking forward to running a tournament like this for a very long time! It's pokemon! Entering in tournaments and becoming the best (that ever was) is one of its corner stones. And yet, for a roleplaying game, such things can be very hard to organise in a both timely and fair matter.
What we want to say is that you've all truly blown us away with the level, as well as the creativeness of the strategies you submitted week after week. This was an event that took a lot of OOC time and effort, but you all came out with verve and made it one hell of an event to run. Running this sort of event, not only brought us so much joy and marvelling about how creative you all are, it also thought us mods a lot of things about pokemon we truly didn't know before!
Like, did you know that Substitute is truly the worst move ever? With how often its parameters have changed across the various generations, trying to find out what it does and doesn't block was truly a battle we did not expect to be fighting.
Also, did you know that non-damage dealing moves and status moves are not affected by type immunities? Because we sure didn't! Starting this tournament, we were certain a Dark type pokemon couldn't be hit by Hypnosis. Or that a ghost type pokemon would obviously also be immune to a normal status moves. Turns out... NOPE. Those can still hit and affect pokemon just fine! The things you learn while thirty tabs deep into Bulbapedia and Smogon matches to check what does and doesn't work.
In any case, we've learned a lot, both in terms of how creative you all are, how absolutely crazy pokemon rules are, and what little things we'd like to do different when we run another tournament like this in the future (such as setting everybody's pokemon to level 100 from the start, which really makes calculations so much easier). Because we'd certainly like to do this sort of event again in the future. And sooner than ten years, this time!
But first, we need a long, long break from Bulbapedia.
Still, what we'd love to hear is if you guys, especially the people who entered in the tournament, have any feedback for us. We have no idea when we'll be able to run something like this again (there is truly so much we want to do!) but when we do, we'd love to take everybody's ideas into account. So if you have any idea, feel free to drop them on this post.
And beyond that, please let put together another congratulations to Mega (Riku's player), Raile (Dirk's unfortunate host) and Otter (Jean's keeper) for becoming the best that ever was!
no subject
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.)
no subject
But as a result, I didn't have any way of participating in the event at all, and the folks who aren't into battling to begin with were in the same boat. So I agree with Callie that it would have been cool to have something else going on concurrently that the non-battling characters could do, and that wouldn't require any mod overhead so y'all didn't have more work to do on top of all the tons of work you were already doing (and kudos on that because I can only imagine how complicated something like this was to run!).
And I don't really have much to add on the TM point except that I agree with everything Callie said. (Including the part about Dirk's unfortunate host. 😂)