[] Gym Battlers Open

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

Results look lopsided? How is that? I attended to make the neutralized score to prevent this thing from happening - since it is more lopsided without the system. The neutralized score system prevents a group of people to be listed as the same against each other. In the official scoring system, four people are tied for forth place, among a tie with two people in third. In the neutralized system, there is only two tied at two different places on the bottom.

Bleh, lopsided was the wrong word. And I don't think I fully understood the layout. But your last post made much more sense =p

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

Coming from an unbiased source (since I am not an active participant of this tournament), I agree much more with the neutralized scores than the official ones. Most of them aren't even that much different from the original - they just show the advantages and disadvantages that certain Pokemon play in battle. I believe someone is much more skillful if he or she can defeat five out of nine enemies all whose type is strong against his or her type, rather than someone with the same record and defeats Pokemon only average against his or her type. It's a much harder battle with a type disadvantage!

Oh, of course. No arguing that! The reason I even made the tournament the way it is is because I wanted to do something other than a normal tournament. It kept things interesting and, I think, caused more people to become interested in future tournaments I will eventually setup.

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

But the neutralized system was pretty easy to do this time around. If the next tournament uses two types of Pokemon, the equations will be much more complex. That's where I come in. I'm simply addicted to math, and doing these kinds of problems. If you accept the neutralized system, Kairyu, I promise I will give you more accurate results regarding the actual skill level of every gym leader that plays in this tournament. In essence, Kairyu, I want you to make me an official unbiased 'referee' of the next tournament.

I might adopt your score keeping system under the condition you stay active often enough to do so =o. Or at the very least swap IM contact info so we can talk more about this in detail.

Indeed, it is a very clean and fair system. Yet the downside is the huge amount of work one would have to do to keep it updated. Not something I myself want to play with. But if you want to do it for the next tournament then I say go for it!

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

The actual number of dragon Pokemon is quite small. Many of them are legendary Pokemon, and both you and I agree on either not allowing them or restricting them so they may only be used to balance things out. There are four fully evolved dragon type 1 Pokemon to choose from that are not legendary.

Hm, just Altaria, Dragonite, Flygon, Garchomp, Kingdra and Salamence if I'm not mistaken. The rest are either legendaries or lower evolution versions of the mentioned Pokemon. Not sure what kind of limits I could impose on players for using the BL variations though. Like what you and Crash already said, too many rules does kill the fun in the game.

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

If this hasn't been made a rule already, it should be. Allow only one Pokemon of a particular species to be put on a roster. In essence, you couldn't have six Dragonites defeat everybody but the ice trainer. (Also - I simply think that dragons are overrated, I personally would not pick them myself if I could participate in this event myself.)

Well it was a rule for other tournaments actually. But I decided not to include it this time since some of us were extremely limited on choices. Doesn't look like any of us actually broke the rule anyway. So I'm not too worried about players goofing around by making a team of only Blisseys and Bronzongs =D

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

While I do not particularly disagree with the idea of the rule you stated later in the second paragraph, I think these tournaments are becoming excessively ruled by their rules themselves. I think a major skill in Pokemon is the ability to choose Pokemon that can have variation in their attacks - and removing or limiting this would be destroying a core foundation of this skill.

Yeah, I know, just brainstorming. I wasn't exactly too keen on the idea either but I want to at least voice it out for everyone to see. But yeah, we could be thinking too hard about this. I wouldn't mind try a "normal" doubles tournament for once. I don't think I've ever been in such a tournament either (not counting the failed Gamestop doubles tournament =/.)

Additional Spam:

Originally Posted by Black Mage

Sorry about my sudden disappearance, guys. I've been on the road these past six days relocating to Washington from New York for the summer. I can see that today is the last day for matches, so I'd be more than happy to entertain what battles I can. And sorry to those of you who had PM'd me, I wasn't ignoring you!

I'm now in Pacific Time, it being 5:30pm right now. I'll try to be available from now to the end of the night, but there may be some periods where I have to take off to get some supplies. We're still in the process of moving in after all!

Sorry again for any troubles, and be sure to let me know if and when you guys are free today.

Dammit BlackMage, I was about to cross your name off the list xD.

You have until midnight to get as many matches out of the way as possible! According to my timezone you have 9 hours, starting now .

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

No problem man. I'll just accumulate the totals anyway and see how everyone placed. Sane Brain missed a few reports so I had to double check! I'll post the results later~ today =D

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Alright, I'm back and ready to battle for 4th place =p.

The odds are stacked against me but with any luck I might be able to pull out a miracle or two .
Expect a PM from me soon, Black Mage.

edit:
Ok, Black Mage conceded his match with me since his internet is kind of not there at the moment. So that leaves me with radcliff13 to fight.
I'll PM you in a bit for one 6v6 battle.

I was speaking idiomatically.

Kairyu vs Radcliff13 - tiebreaker match

battle report (6v6):

One match to decide it all =p.

Long story short, I won but not without taking some serious damage. Radcliff's Fire team has a lot of fire power but was lacking in support setups. Except for Sunny day, which caught me off guard. And Pan, poor guy.

First to come out was, of course, my rock tosser happily named Pan. Rad sent out the quick Arcanine. Noticing my obvious setup routine he immediately withdraws him and sends out Typholsion. I of course use Stealth Rock to punish swappers :3. No damage was dealt yet but we both knew the situation was about to get violent. Typholsion being the faster one, calls up a Sunny Day while I EQ'd without OHKO'ing it. Damn you, Intimidation!

Drawing first blood, I wondered what Rad had up his sleeve. But I had a pretty good idea what he was about to do. And of course, I get blasted by a one turn Solar Beam! Due to Pan's higher than normal Special Defense and a non-STAB'd Solar Beam, Pan amazingly survives~ I then immediately repeat and wipe out Typholsion with another EQ. Thank god!

From there my memory gets a little hazy. I remember Pan getting snuffed out with a blunt Flamethower attack from Arcanine. But I sent out another EQ'er, Tartarus. My Sandstream plus Stealth Rocking didn't leave much room for Rad's Fire team. Especially after witnessing his Charizard take 50% damage by simply sending it out, wow.

From there it was basically a huge ground shaking sweep for me. I survived with 3 pokemon and plenty of sand =D.
Good game Rad! If I hadn't survived that initial Solar Beam you probably would've swept my team instead!

Match Summary:
Kairyu Wins!
Kai lost 3 pokemon
Rad lost 6 pokemon.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

Oh, no.

This is what I feared.

The secret rules that I did not tell you two implied the number of KO's with type advantage.

See, ground attacks does twice the amount of damage they would normally do on fire Pokemon. Since Kairyu is the ground Pokemon gym leader, he has the most amount of ground attacks. Fire attacks do not have this advantage; they only do what is normal for their attacks to do, on ground Pokemon. And since radcliff13 is the fire gym leader, he has the most amount of fire attacks.

My system was set-up so every KO was worth 1 point. Since Kairyu had the advantage of his Pokemon doing double the damage they would normally do, I had to take that into account into the scoring; I did this by reducing the amount of points he gets per KO in half. Therefore, Kairyu would receive only a half of a point for every KO, while radcliff13 would still retain a point per KO.

Since Kairyu KO'ed all six of radcliff13 Pokemon, he earns three points, but since radcliff13 KO'ed three of the six Kairyu had, he earns three points as well.

In other words - it's a stalemate.

Therefore, there must be an ultimate tie-breaker. Sudden KO showdown.

Kairyu will select one of his Pokemon to face against radcliff13, but radcliff13 will select two of his Pokemon to face against Kairyu. (Assuming that this is possible) And the rules are clear this time: whoever wins this match goes on to the next round.

Good luck to both of you!

Wait, that was your secret rule? And now you want me to go 2 against 1 against radcliff's pokemon? Going by a score set based on "projected" type advantages and disadvantages is one thing. Basing it on the number of pokemon you can use is another. It's not always correct to assume that. Think about it, would it not be unfair if me and Rad agreed to battle under those conditions? I may have the attack advantage with ground attacks but it's not impossible for Rad to avoid ._.
Coupled with his speed advantage and a flying type, I can see myself already taking a loss that way.

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

If I had known this would have been a tie, I would suggested a two on one match to Kairyu and discarded the secret rules to begin with.

I was just trying to keep things fair. If you think that goal is unnecessary - or garbage, and proceed this tournament on without a fair fight, then we are not representing a tournament that is deciding who is truly the best Pokemon gym leader.

This is especially so with radcliff13. Many of his loses came before he even had his full team ready to battle. And after that, he started winning.

Crash, you faced against Chaotic and Sousuke, and won both. Tell me, did it take more skill and planning to defeat Chaotic than it did to defeat Sousuke? Was Chaotic harder to beat because of his type rather than his skill? If you can honestly say no to both of these questions, I will concede to your point.

However, neither you or I is the creator of this tournament. Ultimately the decision goes to Kairyu.

Sigh, it's kind of odd that I'm both a player and coordinator of this tournament. I really wish it wouldn't have to come to this.

Personally, and I think I speak for most of the players involved in this thread. We need to end it already. We have our data, the top 4 placing and I did win the tiebreaker decision despite me having an attack advantage against fire. Besides, shouldn't the victory itself count for more rather than the amount of pokemon KO'd?

For a non-official tournament it is a bit complex. Remember we're just doing this for fun.
Honestly, we're pretending to fight gym leader style. This puts us at huge disadvantages at times (look at DarkMageOzzie's predicament.) And in other times it gives certain players an edge over someone else. None of it was done on purpose since the selection process was random. And in my opinion that was the fun of it. Everyone should have known beforehand that you may not get the most useful type. It's really a test of how resourceful you are with pokemon.

Anyway, I'll stand by my decision and agree that the top four place is:
Crash
Icy
Josiah
me

edit:
lawl, Josiah has a point with that idea.

How ya doing, buddy?

Originally Posted by ^-^

I don't know if I should be doing this, mainly because I'm more of a spectator for this than a participant this time...

C'mon, this isn't how you run a tournament. Hiding rules from an entrant? How is that fair for any of the opponents? In a Gym battle setting, you are going to have to put up with knowing if you have an advantage or disadvantage. The point in this scenario is that you have to put up with one specific type, meaning that you have to work WITH your type (not around it) to beat all of the other types, even if it is a weakness.

From what I'm reading, I'm kinda glad I couldn't enter this..

Sorry Kairyu.

No offense taken, mini-face.

I blame myself for letting the rule mongering get too out of hand. One thing's for sure, I need to discuss ideas with Sane Brain more if I intend let him/her be a neutral referee for future tournaments. I got a lot of bright ideas from him (or her) though. But it's best not to retrofit everything onto this tournament. Again, no offense to you, Sane Brain.
I hope this doesn't deter you from participating future tournaments!

Anyway, as for the top 4 that are here. What do you guys want to do? I only suggested that the top 4 battle each other only to determine a clear winner. Seeing that Crash and Icy won most of their matches I see little reason to continue the battles.
Unless, of course, one of you feel that you can take the gold *looks at Icy's team*

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

Originally Posted by Josiah

I personally feel kinda "battled" out, so to speak, so I'm content with just saying I got third and that's that. Nothing against Crash, but battling him again sounds like masochism.

Yeah, me too. I need a break from battling really. In the mean time I can continue thinking about what the next tournament should be.

And because everyone else is doing it. I'll post my team too, most you know my strategy anyway :3

Kai's Gym Team:

Spoiler:

Mains:
Sandslash (Pan) - He throws things.
Hippowdon (Tartarus) - Main wall + weather controller.
Garchomp (Farragut) - lol Sand Veil
Swampert (Charon) - Sweeper that's not too good at sweeping.
Quagsire (Triton) - Haze-o-matic
Mamoswine (Enyo) - Dragon Slayer

Alternates:
Nidoqueen (Olympia) - Poison trap
Rhyperior (Challenger) - Another sweeper that seriously benefits from sandstorms.
Toreterra (Orion) - An extra tank that barely saw any action.

It's a fun team

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Oh hey, what's going on in here?

Originally Posted by Sousuke

I got an interesting idea for the top four last night, if you guys are interested. An 'Elite Four' challenge, if you will. Simple rules would apply, just like the tournament, but with a couple small modifications:

From first page:

RULES:

• Battles will be done at the lv.100 preset in 6-on-6 format.
• No Legendary Pokémon and Wobbuffet. Gym leaders are too awesome for that.
• Sleep Clause: At any one time only one pokemon on your opponent's team can be put to sleep by you.

However, I'd imply the following as well:

• Elite Four: Make a team of SIX, from your Gym Leader team. Choose your 'best' six.
• Challengers: Make a team of SIX, out of your absolute best Pokemon. Keep in mind that there's no Legendaries or Wobuffet.
• Once the battles are started, rosters and move pools may not be edited. You can, however, change the order of your roster, allowing you to open with a different Pokemon if you wish.

From there, the challengers would battle the Elite Four, in order, just as they would in-game. This is just a suggestion to 'challenge' the winners in a different fashion. I think it could be fun, just to see if the winners teams can stand up against a broader team. That, and because we sort of cut the tourny short.

Thoughts?

So more or less an open-ended tournament or challenge for anyone thinking they can take on Gamingforce's E4? I like that idea

Only question I have is, and assuming it is an ongoing thing. Do we let anyone go at it? Or will there some requirements before they can pursue the Champion title? Like collecting badges across the forums or having a certain amount of victories.
Now that I think about it. It almost sounds like an RP'ing idea than a tournament. Still sounds fun though. I'm up for it if the other top 4 players are willing to continue using their team. I certainly don't mind, it's a blast trying to overtake players using my ground types.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I was chatting to Sane Brain over the gym leader idea a little while ago. The idea is sound but it would take a lot of work and more participates for it to get started. And the way things look at the moment we would be lucky to get 8 players involved. Personally, I don't think it will work.

So, unless Crash and Josiah backs out of the Elite 4 idea I wouldn't mind at least setting that up (not the Gym leader part!)

How ya doing, buddy?

@ Crash:
Ohh, drafting was a format I've been wanting to try but one thing kept bothering me. Wouldn't the person choosing afterwards know what the first guy grabbed? I would think so if the point of the selection is to make sure everyone uses different Pokemon. Therefor everyone would effectively choose counter types.

Now, this isn't exactly a bad thing since the cycle continues all the way back to the person that made the first selection. But if there is a way to mask selections and yet still allow for everyone to choose a unique team then I'd say we're ready to try this out =D.


@ Sousuke:
Yeah, was thinking the whole 'best of 5' idea might have been a bit draining for some. I know it was for me on the final 3 battles or so. But I did that to get more accurate point totals and to reduce the chance of subsequent tie ups.

As for your question to when we should start another tournament or sign up thread. I'd like to give everyone one week to relax, debrief, announce some opinions (if any) and collect some new ideas. Like what we're doing now.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Hmm I wouldn't spend a month just to let everyone prepare for the tournament. I say a system like this might work a little more efficiently:
- Sign up roster remains open for one week. Remind players to already have a selection in mind before signing up.
- After the sign up week have each player PM you (or post, I suppose) their first three, then last three, just like Crash's method. Time limit for this phase is 3 days.
- After that, give everyone about a week to week and a half to prepare and level up their team.

And please, don't even try to IV train for the perfect pokemon. Unless you have absolutely nothing to do (which I don't think applies to anyone here.) We don't want to push the prep time longer than necessary. If it's TMs and certain rare pokemon you want it is faster to PM someone for a quick trade. I believe there are a couple players here that have ARs so you don't have to spend X amount of days on one thing.

Also, I don't mind you taking charge of the following tournament, Sane Brain =). Just be available to do the work!

Originally Posted by NinjaguyDan

As for the 6 vs 3 teams, maybe just make it 2 v 2 if someone wants a 6 v 6, and 1 v 1
on 3v3s. that way things would go much faster with combined team attacks.

I would definately be interested in playing the next tournament.

I honestly don't agree with that method of battling. Doing so would greatly affect the battle progression since certain strategies work much better in a doubles match. And therefor skew results. So my answer is either stick with Singles or Doubles for the length of the tournament.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I'm convinced with Crash's idea. I can't beat pie. So, when can we start? =D

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

Kairyu, I do like your ideas for the time restraints, except for the drafting phase. Three days? If this tournament gets as many people as the last one did (10), pretty much no matter what you do, it’s going to take more than three days to do the draft.

Ah, I forgot to explain how I would handle the drafting process. I'll try to summarize it as much as possible.

Ok. So this starts as soon as the sign up roster is closed. Except for the last person as he would list all six pokemon, roughly what everyone would do is PM you their first three choices~ all at once. From there you will, in order from lowest placing, filter through every reply and draft each selection that way. You will of course reply back to each player to let them know if their selection was accepted. If someone has chosen an already drafted pokemon you will have to ask them to choose something else.

Once that is done, you post the list of drafted pokemon and instruct everyone to PM you again for their final three choices. Except for the guy that got to pick six. Then just rinse and repeat until everything is said and done. And that's it.

I can still see it taking more than three days, like you mentioned. I should have thought about that more. Though doing it this way should cut the drafting process by a good margin. If all participants reply back in a timely manner. The only undesirable effect I see is that it becomes slightly more of a private draft than a public one.

But I made the idea before seeing Crash's recent post on how the process would occur. And I kinda like that more, despite it possibly taking longer to work through.

It's your call.

Most amazing jew boots

Spoiler:

Hmmmmm.

No sir, I don't like it!

Now why do you believe allowing the change of movepools will add strategy to game? I'm 99% sure this will cause headaches and lots of whining from all sides ._. I'm with Sousuke in the fact that you're not really adding more strategy to the tournament. Rather, you're removing some of it by letting everyone flip their strategies depending on who he or she is fighting. It takes strategy to work with what you have.

Hold item adjustment are fine. They were allowed in the last tournament and no one made a fuss. I think I should made it more clear in the rules; sorry about that, Josiah.

Originally Posted by Sane Brain

After winning the tournament, the champion will receive a custom-made avatar and signature combo designed specifically for him or her done by the very talented artist, Kairyu.

What. No I'm not :U

I don't do prizes for these kinds of tournaments. If there weren't so many undetectable ways of cheating I probably would've added the extra incentive in the last tournament. Let's try to keep the ulterior motives to a minimum and just play for fun.

FELIPE NO

Bah, I liked the original one-line sleep clause explanation . So, just to be clear Sleep Clause v2.0 basically means stuff like Hypnosis can only be used successfully once per battle and not once per round (I assume 3 battles against the same person equals one round.) Meaning, if me and Crash were fighting I can use Yawn once every battle. Not once out of the three battles.

I ask because everyone seems to be interchangeably using the words battle, match and round in these tournaments.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?