Contest Competitiveness

So it's been brought up in TC on Discord, but just making a thread to record well thought out responses and jazz.

Issues:

1. Collusion. When someone knows they are going to loose 4th/5th round, they can play favorites and determine who gets 1st/2nd, ie. possible collusion. (Other areas of collusion [as in overall collusion] have also been brought up and fall under this.

2. Ties. Either 4-way ties for normal/supers(/all), 3+ ties banned for Hyper/Master, 2-way ties for Hyper Master. Is there a possible tie breaker that isn't unfair/does change core mechanics of the game? Are they fair/should be accepted in general?

3. Copy moves. Are these too powerful? How can they be nerfed?

4. Nervous move. Goes along with #3; a counter to copy moves, but can screw up others/are annoying. Goes along with other Nervous Clause conversations and issues.

 

This is a huge issue, and I have no suggestions.

2 way ties are too common to ban, and 3+ pose no progression issue in Normal/Super Contests. New players potentially missing out on their first Normal/Super due to a 3 way tie is a huge potential issue.

There's no one answer to this. They're absolutely too powerful at the lower levels, but can be played around in the upper levels. Even in the upper levels, however, they made several moves (like Natural Gift) largely irrelevant.

There's significantly more issues than just that it's "annoying". To quote myself from TC months ago:

1) It's the only "reliable" RNG in contests. Morning Sun and the like can win the contest, but their chances are closer to freeze and flinch chances from battles, whereas nervous is closer to zap cannon hitting.

2) You can't play against it in round 1.

3) It "counters" combos after you, but doesn't target them any more so than regular appeals, unlike Beat Up and the like do for combos before you.

4) Getting Nervous locked is annoying and unfun.

5) Becoming nervous puts you in the most likely position to become nervous next turn unless someone else gets startled into a negative score that round.

6) Condition stars don't hard counter nervous, they only reduce the chances of it affecting you.

 

As for ties, make it 3/3/2/2.

 

Why do you think 4 way ties shouldn't be allowed in Normal and Super rank contests? They could deny a newbie their first ribbon the same way a 3 way tie would.

 

No one performed better or worse than the others. It's like no one won or no one lost.

 

They all won in the sense that they proved that they were of an equal skill level, and at the Normal and Super rank newbies might not always be willing to redo the contest in the event of a tie. Not only that, but we've only had one four way tie ever, so extra ribbons from 4 way ties have a miniscule effect on eligibility, which is the issue at hand.

 

Maybe you're right, I am not an expert.

 

You don't get to shrug off off a 4 way tie as a "once ever" and a 3 way tie as "oh I've only seen a few in hundreds of contests" like I saw on Discord the other day, and use it as an excuse to push your argument yet belittle the counter argument.

You say that a 4 way tie has only ever happened once, so I think it's near impossible for it to happen to a newbie concidering they will have no contest knowledge and competing against those with atleast a little knowledge. In ties, there is no clear winner, and it seems a little unbalanced to have all 4 contestants (or even 3) to earn a ribbon at any rank imo. It's a prize for winning, but a 3way or 4 way tie isn't winning, and is distributing 3 rewards where there should only be 1.

I'm happy to accomodate a 2 way tie, but that should be an exception to the concept of the "1 reward" concept. Ribbons shouldn't be getting handed out left and right, imo.

Quite frankly, if according to yourself and others that 3/4 way ties are so rare, why are you so concerned about a potential newbie being affected by it. As I mentioned, they're least likely to be affected as they don't know how to score well in an environment where at least one other person would have a clue. And honestly, if you said to someone "oh, this won't award a ribbon bc too many people tied." Even a newbie can understand and appreciate that, imo.

On that note, it would be nice if people stopped belittling Normal and even Super ribbons as these dumb useless ribbons that no one needs and everyone has. I don't contest often and I don't even have that many of normals and supers, and only one hyper to my name. When you all talk as if the only important ribbons are hyper/master, you cater to the higher end of people who do contests all day, and completely disregard the average player.

 

I don't know if the idea got much airtime, but I liked the suggestion of going to 4/3/2/1 for allowable ties at a given rank.

It makes sense for the most competitive tier to require a player to definitively win. In theory, if four people are doing a Master contest and end up in a tie, they can immediately re-do the contest since no-one would have "graduated" out of the tier.

On the flip-side, it also makes sense that players at a Normal rank should be able to "prove themselves worthy" just by being able to end the contest with the highest score, even if it is shared by everyone.

Remember that even though there's no such thing as "Everyone wins" in battles, there's also no such thing as "Nobody wins." Since contests involve ties by their very nature, I think we should be conservative about taking them away until there is a reasonable tiebreaker process in place.

 

On nervous and copy

This isn't an original viewpoint, but I think nervous is required as the best solution to copy (and yeah, better than an outright ban, so I'll eat my words from that other TC thread). It might solve a lot of our issues w/r/t competitiveness, and probably, it should be viewed as something to implement with urgency. We just have to find a more acceptable solution to the original Nervous odds, which were broken, than banning them outright. The "ban the best thing, then ban the next best thing" concern over banning copy was probably initiated by banning Nervous in the first place, and upsetting the Nervous/Copy relationship.

Some Nervous clauses were tested a while back, and I don't know if any of those were satisfactory. I didn't get to play with many of those as well, although iirc, many of them seemed a little too complex. Honestly, I just think slashing the original Nervous odds in half accomplishes everything we need it to, and I wish I'd been involved enough to suggest it during the testing period.

Most of Gray's points, which are really good, are mitigated by the drawback in Nervous odds towards the contester -- it's not unfair to any single person, and probably isn't OP in the aggregate. You don't need counterplay as much if the odds are the same as, say, an Air Slash flinch, and getting Nervous becomes a lot less frustrating when you know it's less likely happen in the big picture. It increases the risk to the user that they don't get the result they want.

On ties

In a vacuum, I don't want to hand out three or four ribbons under any circumstance -- it allows for too much progression gained from one single event. One line of thinking is that you won by tying; another line of thinking is that nobody won. And that's purely interpretative, so the big-picture thought that you don't want three people moving on to the next rank wins out here.

Any reasonable new person should be able to pick themselves up if they don't get a ribbon from a tie, and I won't stress myself out over someone who reacts irrationally. The system should be fair to people. People also have to be fair with themselves.

That said, I can live with normals and supers handing out three ribbons in a tie, if only because if it happens as rarely as y'all say, then it's not so bad. I usually compare these things to a rat in the dining room: if it happens once, it's happened too often. Three-way contest ties are not as bad as a rat in the dining room. Given this kind of pushback, sure, whatever. Keep it in normals and supers, idc.

 

In Judge chat, I suggested another possible nervous clause alteration that addresses points 2, 4, and 5: if you get Nervous'd, you get bumped up as though you had used a "Move First" attack. This would prevent situations where you get nervous'd turn one and are then perpetually stuck behind people using nervous moves for the rest of the match.

I don't like the idea of lowering Nervous odds because as annoying as they can be, they serve an important mechanical function. If you decrease the likelihood of Nervous moves working, then you just aggravate the copy problem.

 

My thoughts on ties:

Unfortunately with contests, they are the type of competition that can merit ties. There is only one type of competition like this is URPG (contests), so there is no equivalent to compare to; however, there are competitions like contests outside the URPG: in the Olympics. I'm specifically talking about a competition in where there is a long process, that is completely objective, with a hard stop finish. Foot races and swim races are the best examples. People compete, try for first, and sometimes two (or more) end up with the exact scores/time and both are rewarded; there are no people judging who is the prettiest/most thought-provoking, there are no statistics that influence how well someone performs, it is completely in the competition.

There are no tie breakers because of the hard stop (you cannot just pull the finish line back a few feet to see who gets to that new spot first during the race, or in contest terms, you can't add another round due to the strategies people play in Round 5). Other tie breakers would then be subjective (who had condition stars/who performed best in #x Round/who has better stats, etc). That's why tie winners are still rewarded. A good example of this is Simon Manuel's (and some Canadian's [sorry Canadians, I don't remember her name]) tie for gold in Rio 2016's summer women's 100 meter butterfly event.

This is why I'm in favor of allowing 2-way ties for Master and Hyper contests. Due to there only being 4 competitors per contest, a 3-way tie for these higher ranks is a bit superfluous as it is now more than half of the competitors, as well as the point being that people who generally compete in Hyper/Masters are likely to contest again and continue contesting.

I could agree in banning 4-way ties overall. They are rare, but there is a point in the fact that all four competitors get rewarded a ribbon is a bit much. I don't think it would dissuade any new members from doing more contests if they tied with everyone else and didn't receive a ribbon. This too, would prevent any, albeit hypothetical and extraordinarily difficult, collusion between four people to win 4 ribbons in one contest.

And lastly to address why I am separating Normal/Super contests from Hyper/Master is simply because Hypers and Masters are more important than Normal/Supers in the sense that they provide contesters with more money and CC as well as a potential legendary mon. Normals and Supers are important as well and shouldn't be patronized nor belittled, but it is an objective fact that Hypers and especially Masters, are more important for those reasons stated and should be treated as such.

 

I agree with everything Liam said. The only thing I have to add is that DPPt, while largely irrelevant, is possible to have a tiebreaker round in. Appeal order barely matters, and there's no finishing moves. The net gain in points over your opponents in DPPt (assuming everyone is maximizing their appeals at 4/round) is solely from the mind games of choosing a unique judge.

 

I agree that we can't just introduce an arbitrary tie breaker, we're not here to mess around with mechanics and balance. I just feel that even a 3 way tie is just too rewarding for a one hour game, especially when both progress to higher contests and berry store qualifications are attached to it.

Also, I understand that Master and Hyper ARE more important than Normal or Super, but I've anecdotally experience an attitude of "its just a normal/super who cares its not important" and i feel that will be reflected here by some.

 

I agree, and that's why I think 3-way ties for Hyper and Master shouldn't be rewarded with ribbons. However, because Normals and Supers are less important than Hypers and Masters, a 3-way tie should be acceptable.

I completely understand, and would like to resonate the importance of Normal and Super contests; they are important and we shouldn't disregard them.

 

The perspective to take here may not be that normals or supers are unimportant (which is definitely a held belief here, but is also wrong), and moreso that any damage done to the big-picture progression structure within Contests is relatively limited, since ties don't happen that often... and normals / supers are, yeah, less important to that structure.

 

Hypers/Masters give bigger rewards. They allow you to buy higher-ranked Pokémon and Masters can get you a Legendary.

EDIT: There's no Pokémon Contest equivalent to becoming Champion. The closest we got is winning the Grand Festival in the anime.

 

I'm holding our coordinators to follow the trust-based system all of URPG functions in to not engage in any form of collusion. Someone who knows they'll place last and goes on to play kingmaker and favoring another contestant (by startling others, for instance) is fine with me IF THEY ARE NOT ACTIVELY CONSORTING OR ARRANGING IT; i.e. they have decided it upon themselves, and solely by themselves, without influence from the other coordinators, to do it. Most do this anyway in an attempt to place better than last.

I personally still see this as a non-issue. 3+ ties rarely happen. Anyway I thought most were already agreed on having the tie rule (no ribbons for 3+ ties) being changed to affect only Hypers and Masters??? @Ash K.;

My thoughts on this are exhausted in the previous thread where a ban to them was asked for. Excuse the curtness, but it's about time people learned to play around them.

Gray has outlined pretty much what Nervous moves, as they currently are, do to be detrimental to contests.

 

I don't contest much, but I agree with Morru on copy moves. We have a thread for it, and it's been beaten to death that they're enabled by playstyles more than anything else. It'd be nice if discussion for that was taken to the thread intended. C:

 

This seems distinctly uncompetitive, and I don't really see how it is fine at all.

Other players possibly playing "kingmaker" takes away from the actual strategy of using moves and predicting others' optimal moves during Contests and places emphasis on popularity or infamy with the people you are Contesting against (not to say that this is the largest factor in deciding Contests, of course). When guaranteed no ribbon, if I opt for a startle move to intentionally screw over Player A, at the cost of my own score and placement, so that my friend Player B can win, that is me completely throwing strategy and competitive integrity aside so that my friend can earn a reward (or so I can spite Player A out of one). Skill, preparation, and inevitably a little RNG (because this is Pokémon we're playing) should obviously be the main factors in who wins a Contest.

No one should be able to beat a person they're neck-to-neck with because a friend opted for an intentionally sub-optimal and self-detrimental strategy for their sake. No one should have to predict these sub-optimal, targeted strategies from someone who dislikes them. This shouldn't be relevant to winning Contests at all, especially considering that this a section striving to find its footing as a serious, independent, competitive section of its own that offers its own serious and competitive rewards.

I've been hesitant to share this, but I do have screenshots of what I believe to be an example of this phenomenon. Of course, it can never be proven for sure, but I'd be willing to show them to Staff or Head Judge if they're interested in seeing what I'm trying to explain here in action. I don't think that this is something that should be condoned in the slightest, though, admittedly, it's a tough problem to solve. The first possible solution that comes to mind is anonymizing all the trainers in a Contest, but it would still be ridiculously easy to identify everyone's sends at higher ranks, as only certain 'mons are eligible for those at all.

I don't really have any comments on the other issues, and I'll let those with more Contest insight discuss them.