Here's an idea that the devs may or may not have already thought of, but it seems really useful for the competitive scene:
We need a standard way of finding battles that satisfies the following two conditions:
1. Lets players easily congregate to casually and/or competitively battle
2. Supports the possibility of future "ranked PVP" in game
Why not create a "portal" in the upstairs of Pokemon Centers that sends players to a central "Battle Hub" where it's quick and easy to find a match with another player? With the addition of Hoenn, there is a split between the map, leaving some players congregating in Viridian and some in Mauville to find casual battles. If, for instance, the women upstairs in Pokemon Centers gave players the option of teleporting to a Battle Arena then this problem would be eliminated.
Along with this could come features in the Arena that allow for Ranked PVP (something players have long requested) with possibility for Battle Point payouts that could be spent on event moves, competitive items, etc. Possible ideas include:
1. Automated Tournament support
2. Automated PSL support
3. Ranked PVP/Ladder support
In any of these cases, it would be important to protect against player exploits that could be used to illegally gain heinous amounts of BP through match-fixing, purposeful match throwing (to accumulate baseline amounts of BP for participating) or other scams. The current ladder system could simply be placed inside the Battle Arena to faciliate both casual and ranked/competitive play. In particular, I would like feedback on ways that such a system could guard against exploits, since that is the largest barrier to something like this. Here are some preliminary suggestions to get the brainstorm going:
1. Daily BP limits: This protects against excessive PVP grinding and/or match throwing to gain tons of battle points. If players did find a quick and dirty way to abuse other rules, this would be a first line of defense that would help to limit unforeseen exploits.
2. Diminishing rewards for repeat match ups: If I play the same player more than twice, for instance, the payouts for both of us should approach zero to prevent scenarios where two players take advantage of the system by repeatedly playing and throwing their matches. Even though competitive players should (in theory) want to protect their standing on the ladder, alt characters could be used to grind points/match-fix, allowing players to hold their higher position on the ladder.
3. BP payouts that scale with ladder position: This also helps to eliminate alt-exploits. The developers could make a system where you cannot receive BP payouts for battling someone with a ELO score (or whatever ranking system we use) beneath a certain threshold. This would require players to first acheive a certain ranking in order to benefit and second maintain or improve that ranking in order to benefit from using the feature. Even if a player grinded an alt up into the top 100 (or whatever) of rankings and started throwing matches to friends, they'd soon be out of the rankings again and unable to exploit the payouts. This system also provides an intuitive advantage: that beating better players should reward you more than beating an average player.
4. Developer oversight: Developers could devote time and energy to spectating matches for possible abuse in the early stages of this feature in case something slips under the radar.
5. Server load options: Maybe it would be wise to limit this feature to times when server volume is high enough to support an actual environment. So when there are only 500 people in game (or whatever) it's not possible to gain BP payouts from ranked/competitive play. This option isn't that great, however, because in theory you'd want to be able to use the feature at any time, which would limit its actual usefulness to players.
Final thoughts:
We also need a way for casual players to find out about this feature or accidentally stumble upon it. It seems like there are a couple of ways this could go down:
1. Have the upstairs in PC's immediately link to the Battle Arena, so casual players would inevitably stumble upon it just by exploring the game.
2. Have NPC's that tell players about the feature after beating the Elite 4 in their region. It might also be wise to prevent players who haven't beaten the story line to use the feature to prevent players from switching to new alts all the time in order to either mask their true identity or gain a competitive advantage by starting anew and eliminating their previous poor ranking.
3. Make an in-game news section that shows up on the login page. This could have info about Ranked Play/Battle Arena, upcoming tournaments, special in-game events and anything else the devs felt like advertising (credit to CatioN).
Feedback pls! This seems like something that would be very feasible and massively beneficial to the game's competitive community!
Question
Robofiend
Here's an idea that the devs may or may not have already thought of, but it seems really useful for the competitive scene:
We need a standard way of finding battles that satisfies the following two conditions:
1. Lets players easily congregate to casually and/or competitively battle
2. Supports the possibility of future "ranked PVP" in game
Why not create a "portal" in the upstairs of Pokemon Centers that sends players to a central "Battle Hub" where it's quick and easy to find a match with another player? With the addition of Hoenn, there is a split between the map, leaving some players congregating in Viridian and some in Mauville to find casual battles. If, for instance, the women upstairs in Pokemon Centers gave players the option of teleporting to a Battle Arena then this problem would be eliminated.
Along with this could come features in the Arena that allow for Ranked PVP (something players have long requested) with possibility for Battle Point payouts that could be spent on event moves, competitive items, etc. Possible ideas include:
1. Automated Tournament support
2. Automated PSL support
3. Ranked PVP/Ladder support
In any of these cases, it would be important to protect against player exploits that could be used to illegally gain heinous amounts of BP through match-fixing, purposeful match throwing (to accumulate baseline amounts of BP for participating) or other scams. The current ladder system could simply be placed inside the Battle Arena to faciliate both casual and ranked/competitive play. In particular, I would like feedback on ways that such a system could guard against exploits, since that is the largest barrier to something like this. Here are some preliminary suggestions to get the brainstorm going:
1. Daily BP limits: This protects against excessive PVP grinding and/or match throwing to gain tons of battle points. If players did find a quick and dirty way to abuse other rules, this would be a first line of defense that would help to limit unforeseen exploits.
2. Diminishing rewards for repeat match ups: If I play the same player more than twice, for instance, the payouts for both of us should approach zero to prevent scenarios where two players take advantage of the system by repeatedly playing and throwing their matches. Even though competitive players should (in theory) want to protect their standing on the ladder, alt characters could be used to grind points/match-fix, allowing players to hold their higher position on the ladder.
3. BP payouts that scale with ladder position: This also helps to eliminate alt-exploits. The developers could make a system where you cannot receive BP payouts for battling someone with a ELO score (or whatever ranking system we use) beneath a certain threshold. This would require players to first acheive a certain ranking in order to benefit and second maintain or improve that ranking in order to benefit from using the feature. Even if a player grinded an alt up into the top 100 (or whatever) of rankings and started throwing matches to friends, they'd soon be out of the rankings again and unable to exploit the payouts. This system also provides an intuitive advantage: that beating better players should reward you more than beating an average player.
4. Developer oversight: Developers could devote time and energy to spectating matches for possible abuse in the early stages of this feature in case something slips under the radar.
5. Server load options: Maybe it would be wise to limit this feature to times when server volume is high enough to support an actual environment. So when there are only 500 people in game (or whatever) it's not possible to gain BP payouts from ranked/competitive play. This option isn't that great, however, because in theory you'd want to be able to use the feature at any time, which would limit its actual usefulness to players.
Final thoughts:
We also need a way for casual players to find out about this feature or accidentally stumble upon it. It seems like there are a couple of ways this could go down:
1. Have the upstairs in PC's immediately link to the Battle Arena, so casual players would inevitably stumble upon it just by exploring the game.
2. Have NPC's that tell players about the feature after beating the Elite 4 in their region. It might also be wise to prevent players who haven't beaten the story line to use the feature to prevent players from switching to new alts all the time in order to either mask their true identity or gain a competitive advantage by starting anew and eliminating their previous poor ranking.
3. Make an in-game news section that shows up on the login page. This could have info about Ranked Play/Battle Arena, upcoming tournaments, special in-game events and anything else the devs felt like advertising (credit to CatioN).
Feedback pls! This seems like something that would be very feasible and massively beneficial to the game's competitive community!
Edited by RobofiendLink to comment
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