hey all,
it's been a long time since smogon tournaments have been plagued with an excessive amount of focus on "prep", which is, in my opinion, not a very adequate form of measuring skill. i think this is fairly obvious when we take into account things like the mazar or bloo incidents of yore. the amount of influence that comes with knowing what your opponents are gonna bring is so powerful that those players were able to single-handedly win a team tournament on their own and reach the finals of the most prestigious tournament on the site, respectively.
when we take this into account, there is really only one aspect of what those players did that really differentiates their actions from what regular "prep" is: certainty. being certain of what your opponent is bringing puts you in an extremely advantageous position before the game even starts. that's why we so harshly punished actions like the ones practiced by those two players, but also leaks before the match happens, otherwise you could end up with egregious results that are clearly not a measurament of skill whatsoever. for example, if we had a finals match between abr vs niko and people were allowed to place bets on who's gonna win under regular circumstances, abr would probably be the favourite to win by a 100% margin. if we added the hypothesis of niko knowing all of abr's sets before their match, that bet would probably drop to like an 84% in favor of abr, which just goes to show the power of knowing your opponents' teams before a match happens.
so what i'd like to put into question is this: does this individual element or certainty really hold that much of a difference compared to regular "prep" to a point where we permaban users who obtain those unfair advantages by knowing their opponents' teams but do nothing about the regular tournament playerbase who simply preps as part of the "skill" in the game?
i think we can draw a pretty easy parallel here. if a user wants to play a tournament on smogon nowadays he needs to invest enormous amounts of time, aside from the time involved in scheduling and actually playing the match, just to break even. if you're facing an opponent who has prepped over 10 hours just to face you, knows all your teams by heart and knows what moves you're likely going to click on sucker punch 50/50s... are you really playing an even game? is your skill really determined by losing because you didn't use a scouting tool and became aware of every single set on the teams your opponent is bringing?
back in my day we had the most skillful and successful players reuse their teams constantly throughout the same run. themselves and their opponents simply could not know what each one was bringing into a match, so sticking to what they were good at was a much more solid strategy. and even if you did recognize their teams, you wouldn't have had numerous amounts of tools to break down each set and prevent you from being caught off-guard during a match. the amount of skill that takes making reads under this scenario is truly where the most beautiful part of the game resides.
with all that said, i think we as a collective should look into finding ways of at least "nerfing" the power of "prep" in some way. and even though locking teams during signups (like it's done in vgc formats) is a good idea in itself, there is still the underlying problem that your opponents are still gonna be able to look into all your replays and figure out exactly what each pokémon on your team does.
i think the ideal way to tackle this issue would be introducing a system of trademarking teams. if you are the first player to bring a combination of 6 pokémon to an official match, you should be able to trademark this team for yourself and no one else should be able to use it, up to a limit of around 5 teams per player. if another player brought your trademarked team to an official match, they'd be officially eliminated from the tournament they brought it in and also infracted.
even though this solution seems harsh, it actually comes with a lot of benefits. firstly, this would even the playing field immensely, because now everyone would be limited to bringing their trademarked teams to competitive matches, meaning "prep" would be much more accessible to players with less time investment to put into this skill-less aspect of the game, while also not completely killing it to the "prep" abusers. secondly, you would also not have to worry about random players stealing your intellectual property anymore, which is a huge plus for avid teambuilders like ojama, eternal spirit, omari p, and all the germans. thirdly, we would be able to track more efficiently the skill of each individual player per match.
i'll say it again, i know this seems drastic at first glance, but the more i think about the more i feel like this is the proper way of bringing our tournaments back to their glory days, so i felt like it was my duty to at least spark the debate.
it's been a long time since smogon tournaments have been plagued with an excessive amount of focus on "prep", which is, in my opinion, not a very adequate form of measuring skill. i think this is fairly obvious when we take into account things like the mazar or bloo incidents of yore. the amount of influence that comes with knowing what your opponents are gonna bring is so powerful that those players were able to single-handedly win a team tournament on their own and reach the finals of the most prestigious tournament on the site, respectively.
when we take this into account, there is really only one aspect of what those players did that really differentiates their actions from what regular "prep" is: certainty. being certain of what your opponent is bringing puts you in an extremely advantageous position before the game even starts. that's why we so harshly punished actions like the ones practiced by those two players, but also leaks before the match happens, otherwise you could end up with egregious results that are clearly not a measurament of skill whatsoever. for example, if we had a finals match between abr vs niko and people were allowed to place bets on who's gonna win under regular circumstances, abr would probably be the favourite to win by a 100% margin. if we added the hypothesis of niko knowing all of abr's sets before their match, that bet would probably drop to like an 84% in favor of abr, which just goes to show the power of knowing your opponents' teams before a match happens.
so what i'd like to put into question is this: does this individual element or certainty really hold that much of a difference compared to regular "prep" to a point where we permaban users who obtain those unfair advantages by knowing their opponents' teams but do nothing about the regular tournament playerbase who simply preps as part of the "skill" in the game?
i think we can draw a pretty easy parallel here. if a user wants to play a tournament on smogon nowadays he needs to invest enormous amounts of time, aside from the time involved in scheduling and actually playing the match, just to break even. if you're facing an opponent who has prepped over 10 hours just to face you, knows all your teams by heart and knows what moves you're likely going to click on sucker punch 50/50s... are you really playing an even game? is your skill really determined by losing because you didn't use a scouting tool and became aware of every single set on the teams your opponent is bringing?
back in my day we had the most skillful and successful players reuse their teams constantly throughout the same run. themselves and their opponents simply could not know what each one was bringing into a match, so sticking to what they were good at was a much more solid strategy. and even if you did recognize their teams, you wouldn't have had numerous amounts of tools to break down each set and prevent you from being caught off-guard during a match. the amount of skill that takes making reads under this scenario is truly where the most beautiful part of the game resides.
with all that said, i think we as a collective should look into finding ways of at least "nerfing" the power of "prep" in some way. and even though locking teams during signups (like it's done in vgc formats) is a good idea in itself, there is still the underlying problem that your opponents are still gonna be able to look into all your replays and figure out exactly what each pokémon on your team does.
i think the ideal way to tackle this issue would be introducing a system of trademarking teams. if you are the first player to bring a combination of 6 pokémon to an official match, you should be able to trademark this team for yourself and no one else should be able to use it, up to a limit of around 5 teams per player. if another player brought your trademarked team to an official match, they'd be officially eliminated from the tournament they brought it in and also infracted.
even though this solution seems harsh, it actually comes with a lot of benefits. firstly, this would even the playing field immensely, because now everyone would be limited to bringing their trademarked teams to competitive matches, meaning "prep" would be much more accessible to players with less time investment to put into this skill-less aspect of the game, while also not completely killing it to the "prep" abusers. secondly, you would also not have to worry about random players stealing your intellectual property anymore, which is a huge plus for avid teambuilders like ojama, eternal spirit, omari p, and all the germans. thirdly, we would be able to track more efficiently the skill of each individual player per match.
i'll say it again, i know this seems drastic at first glance, but the more i think about the more i feel like this is the proper way of bringing our tournaments back to their glory days, so i felt like it was my duty to at least spark the debate.
