Potential Contest Reforms Feb 2014

As you probably know if you have ever participated in an RSE contest or festival, nervousness is kind of broken and, more often than not, a potential game breaker. Despite us sticking to the system which the games have used (ha, something you can't blame the contest section on!), we feel that it's worth asking your opinions on how it works. Currently it works as follows:

With no condition stars, there is a 60% chance a Pokemon is too nervous to perform after a nevousness move is used.
With one star, this is reduced to 50%.
With two stars, this is reduced to 40%.
With three stars, this is reduced to 30%.

The main option we're considering is nerfing the percentages to 25%/20%/15%/10% (or potentially 5% higher for each) to bring the standard chance on par with the PAR chance or flinch chance in battle. This allows it to be used as a somewhat riskier tactic for those performing the move, and should result in more balanced and fair contests.

What we are not currently considering is the addition of a nervous clause as it further breaks the balance of the game by allowing combos to be performed 100% of the time.

That said, we're open to feedback on the new system and are open to any suggestions on the subject. Hopefully, this should make RSE festivals a lot more interesting.

 

Re: The Problems With Nervousness

Personally I'd leave it to follow game mechanics, but I agree that in the interest of balance, lower percentages is the right way to go. A nervous clause is definitely not a good idea.

 

Re: The Problems With Nervousness

I feel the problem is mainly with festivals more than regular contests. Perhaps the mechanics could differ between festivals and contests, with reduced percentages for the former and game mechanics for the latter? Not really sure how well that'd work in practise, but it seems viable.

 

Re: The Problems With Nervousness

No to a Nervousness Clause. That wouldn't really solve anything because it then takes a valid strategy away from, as SLC said, breaking combos and stuff.

However, I completely agree that reducing the chances is needed. I recently Judged a 10-man Festival, and for four turns in a row, a good half of the participants couldn't move. Granted, several of them were going to be Nervous regardless because of not sending, but if they'd been present they mostly wouldn't have been able to act. In large-scale Festivals, it might be easier on the Judge to not have to score half the moves used, but it makes it so much less fun for those taking part when they're forced to not move for several turns.

The percentages SLC listed are a bit low imo though. I'd go with bumping them all up 5% (30/25/20/15). Whether we go with the first or the second, though, the rates DO need to be lowered. It's either that or start banning Nervousness, which I've already said I'm against.

 

Re: The Problems With Nervousness

I think personally that yeah, it's better to keep nervousness in regular contests, but change them for festivals. Combos are way better in regular contests, while making opponents slip up is better in the festivals when there's more of them and more of a reward for doing so.

 

Stats Mechanics and a Proposal

So after a discussion, there seems to have been several points brought up around contest stats and their effect on the game. For the most part, several points kept popping up.

-Stats aren't inherently interesting.
-A contest with everyone having maximum stats is no different than a contest with everyone having no stats at all.
-Stats, when used, are directly buying a point advantage over non-statted players, compared to buying moves or items which for the most part grant more versatility but aren't comparatively 'required' for good performance in battles.
-Completely removing stats would be unfair to those already invested in them, especially with the lack of ease of refunds now that a store log has been completely lost with Pe2K's branch.

And several other things I didn't remember. During this discussion, I started forming up a theoretical ruleset to replace the current use of stats. The ideas I had here were to a) make stats actually influence the contest itself, b) make stats interesting both to use and to play against, and c) not significantly penalizing non-stat users while making a reason to use stats anyways.

So far, I have come up with the following. Note: the following proposal removes the Primary Round of Contests entirely, came off the top of my head so may not be balanced in any sense of the word, and was only designed for RSE contests, as there were more interesting mechanics to work with (and the fact I have barely no experience in the other two contest types...).

Each stat, instead of giving points in a round before everyone starts acting, is given an effect instead.

---

Smart-Increase the gain of hearts from a combo move by 1-per-100 points (and 1 more for max). Makes the user (X/255*50, rounded up to the nearest 1)% more likely to be nervous while under Combo Standby status.

Cute-Opponents in Combo Standby take 1 more heart per 100 points (and 1 more for max) in damage from your moves, but opponents not in Combo Standby take 1 heart less damage at 150 points (2 hearts less at max total).

Cool-Increase the change in crowd/judge voltage (both up and down) by 0.5 per 100 points (and 0.5 more for max. Track crowd/judge voltage through half points instead of just full points). Increase the penalty for repeating a move and give a penalty for going against the current attribute of the contest by 0.5 hearts per 100 points (and 0.5 more for max).

Beauty-Gives up to a 10 heart boost at the start of the acting round, 25 per heart.

Tough-Lowers heart penalty for flinching by 1-per-100 points (and 1 more for max), to a minimum of 0. Lowers bonus from maximizing crowd/judge voltage by 1-per-50 points, to a minimum of 0.

Luster-Makes the user slower in the first round of acting.

 

Re: Stats Mechanics and a Proposal

I'm all for this idea, seems interesting and makes it a lot more strategy based. If anyone has any changes, feel free to suggest them. What I mainly want to know is if this would encourage stat buying, so even just posting to answer is appreciated.

I was also considering making the components of Pokeblocks 50% (not a final value) cheaper if used to create Pokeblocks rather than berries. For example, if you bought 4x2k berries for battle, it would cost 8k. If you bought 4x2k berries for blending, it would cost 4k. Opinions on this would also be welcomed.

EDIT: Used my supermod powers to merge the suggestion threads together as they do somewhat interfere with each other. While we're at it, if there's anything else you want fixed then just go ahead and post a suggestion.

 

Stuff from the Festival I did today for lowered Nervousness rates (lazy so this is copied from the log):

Anyways, important stuff! This was the first of (I'm assuming) several trials to test out new possible rates for Nervousness. I tested the 30/25/20/15 model with this Festival, and I have to say, it works MUCH better than the old model did. It's still viable, but not nearly as broken. I'll include all the rolls in a spoiler since this is pretty important info to have logged somewhere.

Spoiler

*First Nervousness: Whimsicott moving 2nd used Worry Seed - 66 44 9 29 62 89
*Second Nervousness: Scizor moving 2nd used Baton Pass - 25 33 20 90 37 33
*Third Nervousness: Lilligant moving 1st using Worry Seed - 26 60 12 65 12 68 74
*Fourth Nervousness: Gallade moving 1st using Mean Look - 44 70 58 36 60 28 44
*Fifth Nervousness: Cofagrius moving 2nd using Mean Look - 89 13 51 46 49 59

As you can see, the new rates work a lot better than the old ones. If we'd been following the old rates for this Festival, there'd have been over twenty instances of people not being able to move. In only seven turns, that's WAY too many missed moves. This time though, we only had nine missed moves, and a few of those don't count because the Mon in question wouldn't have moved either way (thanks to having to leave early). I really hope we end up going with these rates because I have a feeling they're going to work out very well in the long run.

Fun fact: Those two Mean Looks were used the same turn lol.