[FEEDBACK] Competitive Feedback 2.0

[croissant]

Greetings everyone,

So you might remember @Black117 making a similar post a few weeks ago, and while we received good advice that we appreciate a lot, I feel like most of the feedback was oriented towards the content created by the mods and others, such as write ups. Now I will personally be doing more write ups, like movesets, due to being less busy, and I'm sure others will also make more, but this is not going to be the focus of this post.

While our movesets section has grown a lot due to the great contributions we received, I noticed that, besides RMTs, the Competitive Discussion Forum was a little dry to say the least. To try to revive it, the mod team will try to make more interactive threads, such as this thread, to encourage participation and also tournaments. However, we would like ideas for threads like this or even tournaments. I feel like having threads that encourage competitive discussion will help beginners get into the game by learning things from the experienced battlers, and experienced battlers can enjoy these threads by sharing opinions and others things with other battlers. As for tournaments, we can obviously stick to standard formats like VGC and OU, but if you want us to organize another tourney with a different format, feel free to make a thread for it or talk to any of the competitive mods (@"Elly" @Black117 @"Squeab") to get help with it.

For my part, I will try to make more movesets in the future and to keep the teambuilding competition thread alive. Another tournament is planned in another very fun format and will be announced soon.

Bref, if you guys have any suggestion as the what we can do to stimulate discussion or threads ideas, feel free to either post it here or to PM us. Suggestions can be brand new ideas or old threads that could be brought back. If you need help organizing anything, feel free to PM me either here or on the Discord since I'm pretty active and willing to help for those things.

With that being said, thank you for reading and hopefully replying, we truly appreciate feedback. I probably messed up grammar and stuff, I just woke up and can't English properly. Sorry.

[GingerxPug]

I like your taste for bringing back the competitive side of this forum, keep it up!

Going along with your idea of having competitive discussions, what if we have a thread where there's a single pokemon and anyone can create their own sets for it and also give feedback to others?

[Justin]

I think that constant meta updates would help a lot, even if nothing changes.

we could start making a "weekly meta thread" that discusses what's happening and suggests a team. Nothing super serious or in depth.

we should also be linking to the team builder whenever possible. It's such a great tool that can help players understand how their team is shaping up.

[croissant]

(Feb 26, 2017, 10:20 AM)GingerxPug Wrote: Going along with your idea of having competitive discussions, what if we have a thread where there's a single pokemon and anyone can create their own sets for it and also give feedback to others?

That's actually a great idea, if you want to post it yourself, feel free to do so. I can also post the thread if you wish. Thanks for the feedback :]]]]]]

(Feb 26, 2017, 10:21 AM)Justin Wrote: I think that constant meta updates would help a lot, even if nothing changes.

we could start making a "weekly meta thread" that discusses what's happening and suggests a team. Nothing super serious or in depth.

we should also be linking to the team builder whenever possible. It's such a great tool that can help players understand how their team is shaping up.

Noted, a weekly meta thread is a great idea though it'll be somewhat harder to manage. Thanks boss

[Justin]

(Feb 26, 2017, 10:32 AM)Elly Wrote: Noted, a weekly meta thread is a great idea though it'll be somewhat harder to manage. Thanks boss

Yeah, haha weekly probably a lot to ask, but it does seem like there could be valuable info to cover every 2 weeks with minimal effort. maybe a wrap up about a tournament, and a currently popular pokemon. nothing too special. also, maybe it's just a terrible suggestion, and i should jump out of my window. 

[Black117]

I can see potential discussion where people discuss current trends in both the VGC and Smogon formats via surveying individual Pokemon sets, cores, or overall teams which become spotlight on the respective ladders tours. If there's one thing we should "avoid", its attempting to justify certain mons or weird ideas which "work". Like to be fair, lately I've seen more discussion based on people trying to say "oh this Mon is great" or "this strategy is SO OP", since its usually baseless without any elaborations to back them up. Will attempt to drive more talking points about the current VGC scene given things has slowed for temporarily.

Honestly weekly metathread is asking for much as especially for the singles side, so probably suggest monthly at least to keep things steady. We can also discuss certain IRL/Online tournaments that happen such as the Pokemon Invitation, or the Melboune Challenge which did receive a notable interest in the VGC community. Would be fun to discuss what happens in these tournaments as well as what mons/teams that caught our attention.

[Marcusube]

I don't know if it's been suggested, but a tri-monthly or bi-monthly round up of the VGC metagame and the BS Singles/Smogon Singles metagames would be nice. What I've come to understand is that a good amount of the community doesn't really play by the VGC/Smogon format, but on the BattleSpot Doubles and Singles ladders. Now I say every 2-3 months because (1) Metagames don't change much in the space of a week or a month (2) Its easier to round up information over 2-3 months and there will be more unique content to discuss

Another suggestion is a "Break This Team" prefix where users can challenge forum members to theorymon ways to break through a team. If the prefix idea is too vast, we can turn it into a bi-weekly forum game hosted by the Competitive Discussions Mod team and Kahunas

An idea that came to me is to have a sort of "Waiver Wire" series where each week a member of the Mod team will post a thread about a Pokemon that has the potential to thrive in a metagame of their choice. The thread will be a theorymon thread that breaks down how that Pokemon may influence the meta and it may even include battle videos of the Pokemon in action

While we encourage users to join tournaments, we have to acknowledge that (1) Not everyone wants to play VGC/Smogon (2) Not everyone is on the same level of competitiveness and may find users intimidating or not worthy of battling. To mitigate this, I suggest we have more creative tournaments. These can range from Anything Goes and Balanced Hackmons to tournaments similar to the Battle of Hoenn

This point isn't much of a suggestion but more of a shameless plug. Look out for the Pokemon Forever Bloc (PFB) Draft League coming up in the summer. We're inviting all players who want to build a foundation in playing draft league. There is no interviewing stage either, all we require is that you be active and dedicate to the entire season

[Black117]

(Mar 2, 2017, 06:36 AM)Marcusube Wrote: I don't know if it's been suggested, but a tri-monthly or bi-monthly round up of the VGC metagame and the BS Singles/Smogon Singles metagames would be nice. What I've come to understand is that a good amount of the community doesn't really play by the VGC/Smogon format, but on the BattleSpot Doubles and Singles ladders. Now I say every 2-3 months because (1) Metagames don't change much in the space of a week or a month (2) Its easier to round up information over 2-3 months and there will be more unique content to discuss

Honestly there's going to be a bunch of VGC tournaments occurring literally week-by-week, including two regional this weekend, an Intercontinental Tour, and Battle Road Gloria (pretty much largest grassroots online tour in Japan), so I'm quite excited to cover the results of the tournaments and share them with you all if you are interested. Definitively can see your reason that making a roundup of the VGC metagame can be challenging for a monthly basis, so will start with this March. Can't really do an overall review of the format, just note the latest trends, cores, and notable Pokemon that've become popular.