Its_A_Random
A distant memory
Moderated Thread.
Basic discussion regards to Legendary Pokémon and Ultra Beasts and whether or not RP's can have access to some as well. Also as another topic, TLR as a format and its issues. I'm just quoting a bunch of posts here because it's easier.
For the first topic, look at the first page of this thread.
Go nuts.
Basic discussion regards to Legendary Pokémon and Ultra Beasts and whether or not RP's can have access to some as well. Also as another topic, TLR as a format and its issues. I'm just quoting a bunch of posts here because it's easier.
For the first topic, look at the first page of this thread.
TLR Length:
Today (and really, for the last few months), TLR length has been a topic of discussion. It's no secret that TLRs are really damn hard, and that's as they should be-legends should not be given away (looking at you DNA and TPF). However, the main problem with TLRs from my point of view is how incredibly long they take. An average TLR run can take a solid six months of good execution, and that can all go to waste in one poor round (save points don't really help mitigate this tbh). TLRs shouldn't be easy, but their length creates annoying artificial difficulty that most users agree we could do without. The counterargument to this is that TLR length is an essential part of their difficulty, as it allows TLR refs to wear down challengers over the course of the TLR. This discussion has been had before, but I think with the amount of TLRs coming out now this problem is becoming even more apparent-catching a decent amount of legendaries will take years, even with absolutely perfect play. If we shortened TLRs I'd be all for making them even harder. I think it's fine to demand perfect planning and execution in TLRs...so long as one slip doesn't set you back three months.
As someone not involved as much time as a lot of people who participate in this game (and I respect you all for managing to keep this game running) I think that there is maybe a tad too much time inbetween starting, and really being able to participate in major parts of the game, as someone with a bit of survivor bias, I'm totally into this game and don't see myself stopping unless everyone else quits and there is no one else to keep the game running with me, however that's not the point. The point is, I think that this has been grumbled about, and as a newer player who isn't already into the sunk cost fallacy of spending years in the game which might make people more resistant to change, I feel like there are ways to speed up the initial training process. I've been playing the game about the month and am no where near ready to do anything serious game-wise. Sure, you can argue that I could have always been on irc and constantly flash battling, or being like Toon and reffing literally everything in existence like a fricken boss(to the extent of a basic ref) and I'd be fine, but even then, having 6 pokemon who are ready for serious competition is probably not possible within a month, even by only using "Meta-mon", but I could be totally ignorant.
I know little about the TLR mostly because I wouldn't get very far in any of them, though I plan on seeking them out soon. However, my point mostly is, that even if we as a community want to speed the process up for whatever reason, whether it be newbie retention, personal stress levels, because you think it's more fun, whatever. I think either increasing the number of counters received or something to that effect is going to be the only way to effectively speed the "time-frame" of the game up without causing more of a man power issue than there already is. I believe Frosty's proposition to expand the self-reffing list to more people would be a big benefit, we could focus those who want to ref more towards gym battles, TLR, tournaments, Battle Hall, Pike, etc. without stressing out other training/flash/common BT matches, which generally speaking are simple enough to allow for most to ref with little to no problem. And it would probably speed up the other aspects more, because less work on people's plates.
All in all, much like most things I post about, I don't have the perspective of a grizzled veteran nor the time that many my opinion isn't as well liked, understood, or respected as many other members of the community, however, we're all in this together and I've seen nothing complained or commented about more than: How long it takes to train a mon to reasonable level, and that the community is getting smaller. I think that because we are the masters of our own destiny in the sense of game mechanics, it's worth talking about the "length of progression" from beginning to the suppose "end-game" of gym leaders/TLRs/future content, 2-2.5 years sure. Even more if you suck at battling and can't complete the gyms (quicker training =/= better at the game) or we increase the difficulty of the TLRs to decrease the length(I'm not apposed at all) and they become more of a challenge if we're going to make it easier to achieve status to actually attempt them. Thanks for taking the time to read this slight wall of text, and generally ramblings, but I'm just doing my duty of providing my opinion, as honestly we all should be.
There are quite a few things I believe this post is confused about, especially when it comes to the comparison between TLRs, raids, and gyms, so I will try to address them.
1) Gyms have a fixed amount of challenges - TLRs and raids don't: Aside from the uncommon circumstance of Gamefreak creating new types (something which insofar happened only two times in over 20 years), the number of gyms is set in stone. Even if it takes, say, 2 months per gym (3 years to finish all 18 gyms, or more realistically 2 years to finish as many gyms as needed to get the main rewards), a player can rest easy knowing that, in a certain sense, he's not "racing against the game". He can spread his effort throughout many years, and yet he is not going to risk falling behind new content.
The same is obviously not true with TLRs and raids, however. Every 3-4 years, a new generation is released, and with it, at least 6 or so legends (often as much as double that number). Similarly, new raids come out as time passes, with a new expansion coming out every 2 or so years (depending on how lazy/aggressive top raiders are, ofc^^). Which means that, in regards to TLRs and raids, the risk of falling behind new content (and being unable to experiment all of it - or even a good portion of it) is a reality for most players. Whether this risk is considered acceptable or not is ofc controversial, but it's there, and it makes the comparison with gyms more tenous than ZhengTann assumed.
2) Gyms and raids do not mostly hold rewards which can greatly affect ASB play - TLRs do: Most of the prizes on the Gym ladder are luxury goods, such as counters and whatnot, which you can get somewhere else anyway. The only rewards which are more exclusive are:
1) TLR rewards, which of course only matter if one is interested in TLRs themselves (and indirectly in the rest of ASB, of course, but this is more of an issue with TLR themselves, not Gyms)
2) Raid Heirlooms, most of which can be obtained within the first 8 badges and which only matter if you are actually interested in raids - and besides, as I've stated many times, no Raid Boss has ever been designed (or ever will) with Heirlooms in mind
3) Heart Scales, which can be obtained as soon as the 3rd badge (not an unreasonable effort, by any means)
4) Victini
Out of these rewards, only Victini stands out as having a direct impact on your ASB performance AND being quite inaccessible for a long time. But it is just one legend, so I'm pretty sure that unless you are a Victini enthusiast, you can live with that.
As for raids, the only rewards you get from raids which you can use outside raids are, well, normal counters. CC, EC, MC, AC, KOC... People who play raids do it because they like raids, not because they are forced to in order to obtain a reward they need for something else. Again, in this sense, they are nothing like TLRs (or even Gyms, really).
TLRs, naturally, are the culprit here. They have a very exclusive set of rewards - legendaries. Most of them can only be obtained in said TLRs - except for occasional tourneys which generally do not reward you the legend(s) you are looking for specificially. This means that what TLRs do, how they are organized, is much more of an "other people's business" than raids (or even Gyms) could possibly be.
3) Flexible endgame content should have compensating mechanisms: This ofc does not touch gyms because (as noted in point 1), there is a fixed number of gyms available. But it does concern TLRs and raids, and it's interesting to show how the two RPs handled these issues differently.
The problem with raids is pretty self-explanatory: for every new expansion which comes out, it becomes harder and harder for new players to experience it. The fact each expansion has tougher bosses, which require better artifacts, means a new player has no hopes of "jumping in" and experience end-game content right off the bat. It is a similar issues many other MMORPG out there face (such as the (in)famous World of Warcraft my RP is inspired to), so it is nothing new or unexpected.
So, unsurprisingly, I decided to handle this issue in the same way they have. Basically, as each expansion comes out, I introduce "compensatory measures" which makes game progression faster than it previously was. For example:
1) Stormrage Mountain raids now drop Badges of Justice (which used to be exclusive to Isles of Lost Relics raids)
2) Previously locked bosses (like Regigigas) can now be accessed and fought even if you have not completed the previous requirements
3) Extra raids and quest have been added (such as Raging Shore) with the sole reason of speeding up the process of getting to Revered/Exalted reputation and get useful artifacts for the next expansion
4) Several IoLR bosses on Normal mode have been nerfed upon releasing the next expansion, in order to allow newer player to have a better shot at them
All these measures serve a very apparent purpose. As the number of raids increases, having players finish them all becomes less and less realistic. At the same time, newer players who find themselves cut out from the possibility of experiencing the newer content may feel discouraged from playing altogether. So, I sacrifice the "old difficulty" of these bosses in order to give newer player a fairer chance at experiencing the same content veterans do.
Now, what about TLRs? Of course, to some extent, the issue is a bit less dire with them, because without artifact progression, you can take on TLRs in whatever order you choose to. However, it would be a mistake to believe that this means TLRs do not pose this issue, at all. Think, for example, of the number of legendaries the veterans have. I personally have seven legendaries (all acquired through TLRs), and a few people who've been around for as long as I have can boast similar numbers. But a person who just joined, say, 1-2 year ago, has absolutely no hope of catching up (unless the old vets stop playing or something I suppose?). Sure, you may be able to catch all the legendaries I currently have, for example. But by the time you have, I will have caught many more. It may take a decade or more before the initial difference no longer matters much.
Now, some of you may think "Who cares if newer players can never catch up?" Then tell me: why have we NEVER applied this same philosophy in ASB as a whole? Maybe some of you have not noticed but, since ASB's inception, we have introduced a HUGE number of measures with the specific intent of making it easier for newer players to catch up. Here's a sample (I'm not even sure if I can list them all):
- We have increased the number of starting Egg and TM moves to 5 for freshmons, up from 3 each
- We have reduced the MC cost of past gen TMs/tutors, Egg moves, and event/anime moves to 2, down from 3
- We have abolished the extra CC cost for buying single-stage Pokemon, as well as making nature changes cheaper in comparison
- We have released held items outside the Battle Subway and other RPs which originally had exclusivity over them
- We reduced the CC cost of training items to 6, down to 20, and eventually gave a free set of them to new players
- We took a more favourable stance towards flash matches, whereas we used to frown upon them as an excessively cheap way of training mons
And the list goes on. The combined effect is that players entering ASB today can actually hope, within 1-2 years at most, to build a roster comparable to the ones of old veterans (excluding the veterans' legends, of course!). Which brings me to the question: Why would legends not count at all in this philosophy?
I can understand that legends are supposed to be "special", "exclusive", or whatever. And I fully agree that some legends are so powerful that they could dramatically alter the ASB metagame if a lot of people owned them. But it is hard to advocate for the former concern when we are speaking of legendaries which have been available (both in generational and TLR-release-time terms) for years, and that are so weak that most of them are C-viability rating, at most. I am talking, here, of stuff such as Articuno, Zapdos, Moltres, Raikou, Entei, Suicune, and so on.
I'm not asking, here, to give them out for free. Nobody would want that. And I'm not asking to give them out in an easier challenge than TLRs, either. But, we could consider giving them out in a less time consuming way (while still keeping them available in TLRs as they used to be), so that people can obtain them while still pursuing the newer, or more prized, content in TLRs. I'm pretty sure this is something we can all agree on - and not just in regards to UBs.
One last word about content going neglected. I speak here as the developer of the Raid Zone, so cut me some slack for possibly sounding a bit haughty. The truth is, I spend a lot of the time designing, playtesting, and personally reffing the content I make for players, without anybody helping me in any shape or form. I do care about the stuff I design. But I have the common sense of understanding that, as time passes, some of the content I have designed will be eventually "forgotten", in that nobody will ever play it again (well, at least, not unless overgeared).
Among these "neglected" raids there are some I personally loved to design and play, such as Eye of the Storm and Shrine of the Old Gods. Heck, some of the raids have not even been played in both modes, despite the fact I did spend hours playtesting each mode (which means hours over hours of my work still are, and prolly will forever be, useless). And yet, you don't see me whining about this all over the place, or putting my designer petty needs over players' enjoyment. It is sort of like being a Dungeon Master in a Dungeons&Dragons group: in order to be prepared for everything, and offering real choices to your players, you end up designing a lot of stuff which, one way or the other, will go unused. This happens even in professional game designing. A lot of what designers do does not make it to the final product. Or it does, but it becomes forgotten after a few years of new content. But that's part of the job. If you cannot accept it, frankly, you should quit designing job altogether. Not TLR design, but design PERIOD.
EDIT: Incidentally, Endless's post above me pretty much sums up my point about newer players quite damn well
I'll make it known.
I am in the camp that agrees that TLR needs an overhaul. The current format I argue is broken. The format is far too taxing on the players because of the sheer length and the insanity of some encounters. Yes there might be a tangible prize at the end, but most of the time, the reward isn't worth it. The format is far too taxing on the referee because they must play as the "house" and are consistently under pressure to make sure that the player has a hard time. The format is far too taxing on designers because of the amount of encounters you have to think about, the length, scenario amounts, flavour, etc, etc, etc, and you wonder why it takes a long time to design one. And this does not take into account play-testing which designers aren't obligated to do.
And then you wonder why TLR challenges take a long time to complete. And no, trying to make it shorter by adding a DQ time does not fix this. Instead, it sweeps the issue under the rug and adds unnecessary time pressure on the players, making TLR's much harder to win because the player now has to worry about how much time they have to order and this is kinda why i am even considering abolishing tlr dq times.
TLR should be shorter, much shorter. I saw zarator say something about reducing TLR to a three-part challenge while viewing IRC logs for the first time in a while half an hour ago. I feel like this is a good starting point, taking out unnecessary fluff that artificially extends time and making challenges take less time to complete. This also has the added bonus of reducing the difficulty of TLR's which I feel is a good thing because it encourages more people to play the RP and also helps deal with the "Hard TLR, Bad Legend" "Easy TLR, Useful Legend" that this RP tends to have. There are probably other solutions that can help, but the point is that TLR is far too long and far too brutal that I feel that the format needs to change.
Another point I saw on IRC was the possibility of allowing lesser legends in other RP's and ending TLR monopoly. I am in favour of this, and if TLR for whatever reason maintains status quo, this absolutely needs to happen; there is no way people are going to spend four months to catch a Raikou. In terms of difficulty for other RP's awarding them, they should definitely be challenging but not impossible, like, you don't want to give away a legendary like it's a closing sale, but you don't want to make it too hard that it will crush the motivation of people.
My five cents for all they are worth.