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Revamping PokeBase tournaments (opinions wanted!)

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Hey everyone. It's been a long time since I said anything about this (and I'm sorry about that), but I want to get things started on a new tournament suggestion system to replace the current one.

The reasons I'm interested in this are as follows. The new tournament system should fundamentally solve each of these problems.

  • The current system (voting on suggestions in the same place they're posted) relies solely on PokeBase's voting system, which favours old suggestions that have been exposed to more people, and suggestions posted during upswings in PokeBase's activity.
  • The thread is filled with old suggestions with many votes, which makes it difficult for new ideas to actually reach the top and get selected within a reasonable time frame.
  • Generally, the people who voted for a particular suggestion won't ever play it. People who are no longer active have the most say on which suggestions are chosen.

All of the above are long-term issues that will not be fixed by re-posting the same thread right now. So, we need a new approach. I am asking for your ideas on how we should approach this.

Possible solutions

You should read this post and the current suggestion thread for some context. I'll repeat some of the ideas from the first post here – please expand upon them and suggest your own!

  • Some sort of polling system, which repeats before each tournament, would ensure the present userbase (i.e. the people who will play the tour) has final word on which suggestion gets picked. There would need to be a system in place to decide which suggestions are included on the poll.
  • It may be good enough to re-post the current tournament suggestion thread every couple years, and not make things any more complex than that. There would need to be a robust grandfathering system for this to work.
  • PokeBase votes are not so great for picking the tournament to run, but they might be OK as a "cutoff" for which suggestions will be considered (or placed on a hypothetical poll).

Any solution we go with will likely involve closing the current tournament suggestion thread and posting a brand-new one, which would have a cleaner format and up-to-date rules. People would be encouraged to re-post suggestions they like from the original thread (even if they didn't post them originally).

Please go as in-depth as you'd like suggesting a new system for the tournaments. You can post a comment, answer, etc.

Extra topics

I'd also like to get some responses to the following questions regarding the systems behind PokeBase tournaments.

  1. Do you think seeding would be a positive change for our tournaments? If so, how do you recommend that seeds are determined, noting that each tournament is very different from previous ones? How do you suggest we track the statistics relevant to a player's seed?
  2. Our current format involves only one battle per matchup. Do you think this should be increased? First-to-two and best-of-three are interesting options.
  3. Should tournaments occur on a strict schedule? Should they happen more often than they are currently?
  4. Should there be an approval system in place for tournament hosts? There would be a list of approved tour hosts, and they would decide who among them hosts each tour.

Thanks for reading!

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I like the polling idea! It gives a fair chance to all tournaments to be chosen and lets us have a more accurate vote.

I think that the first-to-two and best-of-three are solid ideas, but ultimately it should probably  be up to the host on which one they want.
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I like Polling. Because half the votes in the old thread are now stale, this'll give a chance to have a tournament which the current playerbase wants.

1. I'm dum so I'll need some time to read about seeding :S
2. I like BO2 tbh, this would make the tournaments more competitive, and we'll get to see more fun in the form of teams and fites.
3. Imo they're fine as it is. We *can* increase it by a little though.
4. I agree with this. This might make the process smoother.

E: I kind of agree with sumwun in the last point. They put it correctly tbh, the current system, per se, is very smooth and fine.
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edited by
I think the current suggestion thread is not nearly as problematic as you say it is. Out of the top 12 suggestions right now, 6 of them were posted after 2016, and the other 6 are still pretty good suggestions despite being old. Doing a poll right before each tournament is probably a good idea so that the people in the next tournament get to decide what the next tournament is. The options in the poll should probably just be the top 4 suggestions in the thread, and maybe include a less popular suggestion if it was made for a specific event and would not make sense to wait for it to get more votes. (yes this is a shameless promotion) But I think posting a new suggestions thread will not do much good and is not worth the effort.
One minor change that people might like is, when multiple suggestions are tied for the most votes, always playing the newest suggestion in the tie.
I think the hosting system works fine right now and should not be more complicated.
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If anything, I like just reposting the tournament thread.  Any old answers with x number of votes could be carried on to the next thread.  I personally think that this would be the cleanest solution that doesn't screw the older solutions.

1.  I don't think seeds would be necessary.  I feel it would make things too complex with everything to track.  
2.  I think that this can be decided tournament to tournament.
3.  The current way the tournaments are scheduled is fine with me.  
4. Approved hosts would be nice, but I agree with sumwun.  The current system is fine.
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I approve of the polling system. Seeding would be pretty cool, i think it should be determinted by elo.
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I like the poll idea, and I feel like it could be done with a question open for only a few days before the tourney and it’s just the top 5 or 6 answers on a standard tourney idea question, even old ones. And then you upvote the ones you like.
1. I don’t see how this would be done, and I think our current random matchups are good.
2. This should be determined tournament to tournament.
3. I honestly think this is fine the way it is. We could stand to have them a little more often.
4. As long as there’s some way for the list to get longer over time, I would be ok with this.
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Before a tournament is scheduled to begin we should have a google form with all the non-downvoted suggestions on it. We should also remove all suggestions after a tournament ends but you can put your old suggestion back if you wish. The rules on elimination will be decided by  the person who made the suggestion. The host will be the person who made the suggestion but if they cannot host we will use the old hosting rules. The host should be able to participate in the tournament. We don’t have to do them on a strict schedule but I would like to see them much more often. These are just my ideas and I hope you agree. Everything else should be more or less the same.
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The poll should have at most 6 options on it. Too many options causes different people to vote for different options, and we would end up playing whichever suggestion was lucky enough to get 2 votes.
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I think there should definitely be a new thread, as many of the top voted formats are old and/or a bit gimmicky. People could easily copy paste answers from the old thread, even the ones that they didn’t make themselves but thought were interesting, basically reorganizing the tournaments based on how many active users want them. Then, maybe the top 5 voted ideas are put into a poll where people vote on which one to do. Making a themed tournament on a specific date also works.
I also think tournaments should have an approximately 1 month wait in between the end one of tournament to the signups of another one instead of a monthly/seasonal thing because tournaments can be different lengths.

The UU mini-tour was pretty cool, and I think there should be more of these tournaments that use normal smogon rules. Imo the best way to do this is to alternate between thread ideas and normal formats, and having people vote from 5 options in a poll, like current gen AG, OU, UU, Monotype, and LC. Maybe even stuff like NFE and Hackmons can be put in the mix.

1. I think normal format tourneys (OU, monotype, etc.) that have a ladder associated with them on showdown could be seeded based on elo. However, anything else that changes normal rules should be random matchups because it’s hard to easily measure skill in something like that.
2. I like the idea of Bo3 (which is the same as first to 2 for those unaware) and double elim
3. I think it’s fair to give a few days of extra time, but not much longer than that. And one month waits is my vote on scheduling.
4. Yeah this seems like a good idea
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I think that polling is definitely the way to go, and the poll thread should have at most three options. It might even be worth it to do polling in rounds, where round 1 has all current suggestions and every subsequent round has less options:

For example, round 1 has 25 tour options which are voted on, from which the top 8 proceeds to round 2 and are also voted on, which the top 2 or 3 Proceed to round 3 and the most voted in this case wins. :P

Elimination/Best Of should be decided on a tour to tour basis.

I’m also for having some “Default” options pop into tours every once in a while (Like Gen 7 OU Double Elim or Gen 8 Random Battle Best of 3). :P

If seeding is ever implemented it would likely involve comparing the Elo of whatever format the tour is based off of for each competitor (and if there isn’t much data/etc than the host should look into the competitor’s competitive experience via other formats and past tour experience). I personally don’t care for seeding and think that random fights are fine, however…

I would like to suggest ‘official’ brackets to be arranged- mostly for these reasons:

- It would be less confusing and easier to visualize- for both host and players
- bye rounds can be scheduled more intelligently- byes can be planned to be taken but less (or more) experienced players
or can just be known since the beginning at which round byes will be given and guarantee nobody gets 2 byes
-It retains the ability to easily be adjusted if someone quits round 1

The frequency of tours isn’t bad rn, if we do them more frequently or not doesn’t matter too much to me. :P

I don’t think a host approval system is necessary, but a tour council would be an interesting idea. They could do things like decide who gets byes and organize seeds (if absolutely necessary) but mostly manage the tour suggestion thread and picking tours for the polls/organize the polls themselves, and then updating the winners thread, although these things will probably be done by staff anyways. :P
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Also, what about a prediction and data thread for a Tournament? People like me who don’t have any life, we can make Usage Statistics after some rounds, Viability Rankings and Sample Teams and all.
Idk tell me something ty.
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1 Answer

2 votes

Thanks for all your input so far guys. I'm going to use this post to collect the "popular opinions" from this thread, and based upon that, give an idea of what we could do.

What to do with the old thread

Most people think the tournament suggestions thread should be re-posted, so we'll do that. (I agree some of the old suggestions are fine, but the point stands that they received most of their votes from inactive users -- and if people still like them, they'll be re-posted and voted in the new thread.)

The original thread will be closed (not hidden) and there'll be clear directions toward the new thread. We won't re-post all the suggestions from the original thread, but if you like one of them, you can re-post it even if you didn't come up with it originally. (The original person should still get credit for the idea.)

Polling

Polling sounds like a popular option for the tournaments, so I think we'll start doing it and then keep doing it if we think it's working well. I agree that a careful limit should be put on the number of ideas on the thread -- I don't expect the poll to get more than ~15 votes each time, so I think there should be at most five options on the poll.

The poll would happen via Google Forms, and you'd need to state your PokeBase account to stop spam voting. The host would probably make the poll (but we'll make some instructions on setting it up so it's formatted the same every time).

I agree that if we introduce the complexity of polling to our system, then the rules for the poll should be simple. I think putting the top five voted suggestions from the thread onto the poll is the best balance -- it doesn't totally fix the problem that votes are skewed toward old suggestions in the long-term, but it does add good control for the current userbase, and it's easy to understand.

I had a couple of ideas that could make the poll better, at the cost of making it more complex. Give your opinions on them (and suggest others if you like):

  • If there is a draw on the poll (likely situation), then we'll go with whichever suggestion is newer. This should be an extra nudge to help new suggestions get selected quickly while they're popular.
  • To introduce more variance on the poll, perhaps we could make it so the bottom-placed suggestion on the poll is excluded from the next one, possibly allowing a different (more popular) idea on the poll.

I'm also hearing those of you who want "official" formats to get selected. My initial reaction to this was to say "suggest them on the thread and see if people vote for them", but perhaps the poll could solve this problem too. What do you think of the following:

  • A question is added to the poll that asks whether you'd prefer an "standard" tourney instead, and for those who say yes, an extra question appears with options for present-gen AG, Ubers, OU, UU, RU, NU, and PU.
  • It would not be possible to suggest the above formats in the tourney suggestion thread. Variations of the above formats (e.g. past-gen OU or "Monotype UU") can be suggested on the thread, as can formats like Hackmons and Monotype. (Should different formats be on the poll?)
  • If a majority of people vote "yes", then a majority of people would vote on the question that chooses which "standard" format to play. This should be enough to get a leading vote. If there's a draw, we'll go with the format that has been picked the least times... suggest what to do if there's still a draw after that. :p
  • Should the "standard" formats be Bo3 by default? Same question for double elimination.

We could also have a simpler system, where we alternate between a poll with suggestions from the main thread and a poll with "official" formats to force a 50/50 split. Is this what you'd want?

People also seem interested in including any seasonal ideas on the poll, so maybe we could make that an occasional sixth option. There'd be at most one seasonal idea on the poll.

Format

One month between tours seems like the popular idea, so we'll go with that. I think a formal system could be:

  • One month after the previous tour finishes, the tourney poll goes up.
  • After four days (?), signups open for the tourney that receives the most votes.
  • After signups have been open for seven days (?), the tourney begins.

There was mixed reception to seeding. My personal opinion is that seeds for most of our tournaments (which have creative twists and unique rulesets) would be low-quality because they have no ladder, and therefore wouldn't be worth the effort. However, I think we should at least consider the following system for tournaments that follow the exact same ruleset as a ladder format:

  • When players sign up, they provide a link to their highest-rated Showdown alt in the given format (like this). If they lie about their account, they get DQ'd.
  • Seeds are decided based upon each player's Elo when sign-ups end. If a player doesn't link a Showdown account (or doesn't want to) then they'll get a bottom-placed seed at random.
  • There will be pre-defined brackets for seeded tournaments.

I still don't know if this is worth the effort -- leave your opinions below. I think the idea of official brackets is interesting and possibly still worthwhile for random tournaments, since it would take a little bit of the randomness out of Round 2+ (and as Staka mentions, gives a clear avenue for dealing with DQs and byes). What do you think?

Having a select group of tournament hosts sounds like it's surplus to requirements, so we'll keep going the way we're doing it (organise "on the fly", with the requirements in sumwun's thread).

We can also have predictions, etc. Maybe the host can post an answer on the tournament thread for such purposes, which people can then comment their predictions on.

Suggesting tournaments

I agree that formats like Bo3 and double elimination should be decided on a per-tournament basis. So, we will include that in the list of requirements for people suggesting tournaments. Those could be as follows:

  • Name of the tournament
  • Brief introduction to the idea
  • Full rules list
  • Single or double elimination?
  • Bo3 or Bo1?
  • Specify timing if seasonal

Give your thoughts on the above, and keep bringing up things I haven't considered yet :)

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I think the best way to do polling is to start with your idea where people vote whether to do thread ideas or normal rules and pick a tournament accordingly. If there was a big enough difference between thread vs. normal, we should continue using that process and if it's relatively even we do the 50/50 thing (so it isn't really close in one direction every time or something like that) and we could reset the process every year or so. I think using current gen AG-PU is a good idea for voting on the normal formats, maybe we could start the top 5 most popular ones from smogon usage statistics and then switch the least popular out for another one next time as you suggested. Also, I think it might be a good idea to open the poll earlier, maybe even right after the previous tournament ends (just recently the highest voted tournament changed between the wait duration and we stuck with the original so it would stay consistent). To make the polls more secure, I think people should have to say somewhere with their db account that they voted to prevent people from pretending to be someone else (they could probably leave a comment on the meta post with the google form somewhere).

I think double elim and bo3 would work as defaults for the normal ones because they are the most competitive and we wouldn't run into problems with them unlike some of the thread answers. I also think the seeding and bracket systems (and everything else that I haven't mentioned) is good.
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I totally disagree about Seeding now that I have an inkling of what it is.

> When players sign up, they provide a link to their highest-rated Showdown alt in the given format (like this). If they lie about their account, they get DQ'd.

I never ladder because ladder is full of people who're having fun, so decay almost always gets me. A better way would be using the GXE, which, by far, is a better way to get to know a player's seed or whatever.

> After four days (?), signups open for the tourney that receives the most votes.

Four Days seems nice to be yes. It would give people time to vote and consider everything.

> After signups have been open for seven days (?), the tourney begins.

5-7 Days. But five might be too low :hyperthink:

I'll comment on the other things later.
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I prefer elo > gxe for seeding because gxe is too easily to manipulate imo. Like it’s really easy to use a bunch of alts and try to tear through low ladder so you can get a higher gxe than your normal account. Also I forgot to mention this, I think it would be a good idea to make people use the accounts they post for their ladder stats in the actual tournament battles to ensure they’re not cheating.
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GXE is not calculated that way, in low ladder, even if you don't lose a single battle, your GXE will stay at 70%ish. It can't be manipulated easily, the only way to make it better is to ladder, get some high ELO, and a comfortable GXE.

And cheating in the sense?
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If we take the top 5 ideas in the thread and multiple ideas are tied for fifth, we should also break the tie by taking the newest idea(s).
It would be simpler if polls and signups are both open for 7 days. Also why are we not doing 4 tournaments per year anymore? Who wanted more tournaments?
I probably should have said this before, so I'll say it now. I don't think seeded tournaments are better than what we're already doing. If everyone else wants seeding, fine, but I personally think it's not worth the effort.
Also I want to suggest having Fizz sign up for more tournaments.
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ELO is more of your general ladder experience (and used for placement) and GXE is more of how you are doing right now compared to your experience. Your GXE can tank and rise faster than your ELO just by having a “good” or “bad” day, while your ELO represents your overall skill in a more tangible way.

I still think the polling system needs to be smarter than “the top 5 voted”. We could do something like taking the top 3, 1 option for “do a regular format”, 1 spot for a host’s choice (like, whichever suggestion the host thinks the participants will want), and a reserved spot for a seasonal tournament. :P

Having polls close to the start of the tour makes more sense since the current userbase and tour participants are reflected better than it was a month before. If posts pass each other do to votes, it shouldn’t matter because the votes should be current and there are multiple poll options anyways.

Furthermore, we should have a rule on the new tour thread to only vote if you plan on playing in pokebase tournaments (although we can’t really enforce this). :P
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I like the ideas of opening a new tournament thread and holding polls.
I’m against the idea of seeding in general, but I would be willing to try it out for one or two tours, at least.
I like the idea of alternating between “official” tournaments and our regular, more unique rulesets. I feel like giving an equal focus on these formats could attract a more competitive audience. On that note, would we want to include VGC as one of the official formats?
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