Community Thoughts on Staff Situation + Expanding Beyond Tournaments

[Ortheore]

Hey all I just wanted to post about PP as a whole because I think there's some stuff worth talking about. However, I've got to preface this post by saying that I'm out of the loop in terms of what happens on Discord- it's never been a platform I've paid a great deal of attention to, and I've now abandoned it entirely and I don't see myself returning to it. So because I'm not active there, I may be off the mark with some things. Also idk if the title is misleading, but these are really two separate issues

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The first thing is that the forum's leadership has really been a bit tumultuous, as DA and Sceptross have both stepped down in the past year or so, while although I haven't formally quit my position, I am on something of a hiatus. I'm honestly unsure where we're at now, and I think something needs to be done to address that. But the real issue as I see it is burnout- Sceptross cited this as the main reason they left iirc, while that's also been a massive factor in my decision to step back from the site.

So what can be done about burnout? I think we need to do a better job spreading jobs amongst ourselves. Prior to me stepping back from things I was a season host, in charge of the tiering project and also one of the more senior staff members on the site. We need to separate things as much as possible imo, in terms of both jobs and platforms- I think Discord should be treated as separate from the forums. Additionally, season hosts should be separate from any tiering stuff, and should also be separate from global tours as much as possible, and if there's anything discussion-specific, that should be separate too. Any "exec" position that assumes responsibility for the whole site I think should not have any direct responsibilities, instead only providing decision-making where required.

Admittedly, when it comes to these kinds of things, people will naturally tend to pick additional things up, whether through circumstance or because they don't foresee any issues with an additional role. This is fine, we should not stop people from contributing, but we MUST plan for people only doing one thing at a time, and we MUST provide some way for people to signal in advance that they might've bitten off more than they can chew. Additionally, maybe making a post somewhere about warning signs for burnout/overload and stuff, though as always it becomes a question of whether people will actually read it or not

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Another point I'd really like to bring up is the question of how we can fuel discussion, rather than just running tournaments. I feel like this has always been a weak point of the site, but as someone who loves just talking about competitive pokemon I feel like we could do more here, especially when it comes to things like VR threads. As it stands, VR threads that aren't RBY 1U just don't receive that much discussion, and even with RBY 1U, discussion has been a bit erratic and hasn't really lead anywhere- my recent attempt to resolve things got almost no response. I like to consider our RBY VR thread authoritative but I think it's needed an overhaul for months now, but again, discussion has lead nowhere.

Unfortunately, I haven't got any good solutions here. What are your thoughts on how we can improve discussion?

 

[Lojh]

Quantity

 

[FriendOfMrGolem120]

I don't think we should treat discord that differently from the forum as a forum banned player would also be banned from discord, at least in the cases I have seen. Season hosts announce new rounds/signups on discord (and often talk to players there to remind them about scheduling).

 

[Disaster Area]

I would like to say although I left of my own accord for reasons unrelated, I was feeling and am feeling quite burnt out with Pokemon / Pokemon Perfect. Part of it is being more busy irl - got my first job out of uni at the start of November - and part is an increasing interest in Yu-Gi-Oh (goat format or nova) - and part of it is seeing, well, I've really tested the limits of what I can make happen and accomplish. Grow a forum, create a hub away from smogon, create and get others to create advanced analyses, revamping the medal system, establish a meaningful tournament scene - I've managed with the help of all of you to achieve these things. Creating a tiering system, well, I think in some ways I've been successful but I ultimately have felt hampered by:
- It takes a lot of times to reset things and things at the boundaries are often up in the air. Also hard to agree on a non-arbitary initial banlist or lack there-of and to agree on what makes something either broken or banworthy.
Plus boosting any non standard meta to be taken as seriously as it should be is difficult and requires so much effort. Also making the PP server into what it could be is not something I have the skillset for, tutoring was a dud, haven't really had the best ideas for unique team tours, and the more interesting ideas never made it to execution or sucked because the forum wasnt really ready for it. The youtube ideas I had never panned out because they're a lot of effort and not really my forte. Keeping spreadsheets up to date is a lot of effort - it's cathartic but few people ever really learnt how to do it. And there's probably more I forgot to talk about...

I don't know how to reignite discussion, I've tried my best to make things happen but u can only lead horses to water. If u really nag people to do things on here that can make things happen, but someone has to be willing to be an annoying mofo like yours truly

 

[Ortheore]

I don't think we should treat discord that differently from the forum as a forum banned player would also be banned from discord, at least in the cases I have seen. Season hosts announce new rounds/signups on discord (and often talk to players there to remind them about scheduling).

Oh I was just talking strictly in terms of who assumes responsibility. Punishments should definitely transfer over. Speaking personally, I'd rather not touch Discord altogether, even as someone who has hosted a season, but I guess for most people it's too important to overlook so idk, I guess if it's within that role its ok.

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DA those are some pretty good points you bring up in that a lot of them I hadn't even considered. Youtube and maybe Twitch are pretty obvious things for us to do, but tbh I hadn't even considered them. I've actually been quietly contemplating starting up a personal youtube channel that would probably cover stuff that might otherwise appear on PP, but even if I were ready to commit to it, there's a ton of issues, such as my lack of video editing skills (I was planning on picking this up as I went along), the fact that the only OUs that I feel qualified to comment on are 1 and 2, as well as the fact that my take on things would have a very specific dynamic that's not really universally suitable (I cannot for the life of me get hyped about watching matches, but I think I can do a pretty decent job providing in-depth analysis). It would need to be a multi-person project.

Spreadsheets are another thing worth noting, but that's ideally something to be automated, rather than being an ongoing role (the WCoPP one was cool, but too much work due to manual inputs).

Tutoring should unfortunately be left by the wayside, it was a nice idea, but I guess we'd need to be much bigger to pull it off. I actually haven't logged on to the PP server in ages (basically since I stopped playing tours) so idk how it's faring, but it and our non-OU tiers are things that I think are worth pursuing, even if they might be in a bit of lull.

All of these projects are fairly ambitious goals that'll require a committed collaborative effort. In my view they're in a similar position as my earlier point regarding general discussion, with the primary difference being that discussion is far from an ambitious goal. Either way, there's not a whole lot that can be done on your own, we need to get people interested, I just don't know how. Maybe I'm just out of touch lol, like I love talking about pokemon and I love the idea of pursuing alternate tiers, but I don't get the sense that heaps of other people are, or at least that they're interested to the same extent that I am

 

[Chrysalis]

I'm trying not to be cynical in this post for once, I promise. Even though I predicted over a year ago that this exact situation would happen, and I will tell you the same things I said back then. Take this as a response to both Orth's OP and G7's thread.

PP needs to downsize in order to survive, and by that I mean severely downsize. Tutoring died because there was no functioning system, and players subsequently started tutoring each other on Discord instead. Retiering has been dead since it started. Side tiers never functioned on a regular schedule because we made the mistake of letting unexperienced people run it and the playerbase never cared enough to play out whole seasons. It's fine that PP has all these options, but if the administration doesn't devote the adequate attention, they will go nowhere, and if the players don't have enough passion, they turn into subfests where no one has any sense of competition whatsoever and the person that wins the tour is the one who actually gets all their games done.

PP needs to stop separating itself from Smogon with a toxic elitist mindset. Our nominal admin is 80% involved in RoA rather than PP, and I assume he would be happy to bring the two sites closer together. This whole separation seems to stem from a personal grudge of some former leaders years ago, and there is literally no point in continuing it. PP has always thrived off of recruiting Smogon/RoA RBY players that wanted to get better (with the main goal of winning important Smogon tours), and don't forget about the ADV situation where the seasons are mostly a training ground for veterans with the occasional invitational.
We should no longer view ourselves as a community that extracts members from RoA. Because we've never been. Most people stayed Smogon players first and foremost. Instead, we should collaborate and view ourselves as just another training institution, without any sense of competition against big bad Smogon.

For the last half year or so, I personally have viewed PP mostly as that - a training ground with regular MTs in RBY, ADV and maybe GSC, an active Discord server with a lot of unofficial tutoring going on, and two major team tours per year that attract outsiders in the same vein as POWC/POCL/EGL. This is one functioning identity for the site, and in order to succeed, we should limit ourselves to that.
I didn't have enough time or motivation to keep my involvement going beyond 2018. But if I had done that, my main goal would've been to set up a bot that automatically parses signups to create and post MT brackets. That reflects the direction I think we should be going. Scrap the 12 player BW tours that have 8 actcalls in the first round. Scrap the retiering, or put it into a "side projects and games" subforum that is clearly marked as such. Scrap the attempts to get new, creative stuff done. Small experimental tours from time to time are cool, but we shouldn't expect them to get more than the usual 8-10 signups. PP is amazing at the few things it does well, and if we - both the administration and the playerbase - focus solely on these, there is no question it will keep succeeding as a site and as a community.

 

[Ortheore]

I'm trying not to be cynical in this post for once, I promise. Even though I predicted over a year ago that this exact situation would happen, and I will tell you the same things I said back then. Take this as a response to both Orth's OP and G7's thread.

PP needs to downsize in order to survive, and by that I mean severely downsize. Tutoring died because there was no functioning system, and players subsequently started tutoring each other on Discord instead. Retiering has been dead since it started. Side tiers never functioned on a regular schedule because we made the mistake of letting unexperienced people run it and the playerbase never cared enough to play out whole seasons. It's fine that PP has all these options, but if the administration doesn't devote the adequate attention, they will go nowhere, and if the players don't have enough passion, they turn into subfests where no one has any sense of competition whatsoever and the person that wins the tour is the one who actually gets all their games done.

PP needs to stop separating itself from Smogon with a toxic elitist mindset. Our nominal admin is 80% involved in RoA rather than PP, and I assume he would be happy to bring the two sites closer together. This whole separation seems to stem from a personal grudge of some former leaders years ago, and there is literally no point in continuing it. PP has always thrived off of recruiting Smogon/RoA RBY players that wanted to get better (with the main goal of winning important Smogon tours), and don't forget about the ADV situation where the seasons are mostly a training ground for veterans with the occasional invitational.
We should no longer view ourselves as a community that extracts members from RoA. Because we've never been. Most people stayed Smogon players first and foremost. Instead, we should collaborate and view ourselves as just another training institution, without any sense of competition against big bad Smogon.

For the last half year or so, I personally have viewed PP mostly as that - a training ground with regular MTs in RBY, ADV and maybe GSC, an active Discord server with a lot of unofficial tutoring going on, and two major team tours per year that attract outsiders in the same vein as POWC/POCL/EGL. This is one functioning identity for the site, and in order to succeed, we should limit ourselves to that.
I didn't have enough time or motivation to keep my involvement going beyond 2018. But if I had done that, my main goal would've been to set up a bot that automatically parses signups to create and post MT brackets. That reflects the direction I think we should be going. Scrap the 12 player BW tours that have 8 actcalls in the first round. Scrap the retiering, or put it into a "side projects and games" subforum that is clearly marked as such. Scrap the attempts to get new, creative stuff done. Small experimental tours from time to time are cool, but we shouldn't expect them to get more than the usual 8-10 signups. PP is amazing at the few things it does well, and if we - both the administration and the playerbase - focus solely on these, there is no question it will keep succeeding as a site and as a community.

This is a very fair point regarding downsizing. I can agree that we need to prune many of our projects. I think everyone agrees tutoring hasn't panned out. As for the tiering project, I disagree that it was dead as soon as it started, we had some success with it, most notably the first run-through of RBY, but I do agree that it's currently dead. I'm not sure I'll ever give up on it, just because it's something I'm really passionate about, but at the same time, I'm not going to try and run stuff if no-one's interested... so I don't know if it'll ever be rebooted. Tbh my personal philosophy is becoming increasingly more ban-averse to the point where I honestly don't know if I'd want to deviate from ubers, except for RBY (RBY ubers is baaad, and I don't see much point running mewbers) and DPP (why the fuck is arceus banned lmao). I'd even consider just running ubers tournaments, which would be far more popular than a "tiering project", but as you say, we need to move away from where we've overextended, so I'm in no rush even if I do commit to this path.

Having said that, in theory there should be a niche for us as a regular tournament scene for all past gens (hell, I don't see why it wouldn't work with current gen stuff as well). Clearly, other gens haven't quite worked out and I honestly don't know why, as I've not been involved with them. But I honestly feel like our core niche (tournaments) should be broadly relevant, so I think it's well worth potentially covering these things... so long as we're able to.

Regarding the whole separation from smogon, I've never been deliberately anti-smogon, and I've never sought to "extract" players from smogon. However, my actions might be a bit mixed in this regard, because to me, if we're just running tournaments and not really doing a whole lot else, things just feel hollow, like we're merely a proxy for smogon. It should be noted that I think it's here that my aversion to chatting on PS and Discord is most pronounced- I basically stick to forums so I'm likely missing out on a lot of the community aspects. In any case, I feel like there are plenty of ways to have our cake and eat it too- as long as we're providing consistent OU tournaments for however many gens is feasible, I think we're free to do whatever else that might differentiate us, if we can actually get it off the ground and so long as it doesn't compromise the OU tournament thing. At the very least, discussing the games isn't unreasonable, and something we should be trying to facilitate as something that develops these forums as more than just tournaments.

I agree with the idea of putting any side projects in their own subforum. Regarding the experimental tours, if you're meaning the tournament structure itself, I don't mind dropping most of them, but I'll never stop searching for a feasible format to supplant the cancer that is single elim.

I'm on board with the idea that we should be focusing on our core tournaments. However I'm at something of a loss when it comes to ways of being more active in developing them, aside from the obvious stuff- make sure they run smoothly and everyone has a good time. However while I agree with shelving stuff that can be considered a "project", whether permanently or until they become feasible, I do think we should aim to become a major discussion hub.

 

[Ortheore]

Hi, so I'm officially stepping down as forum leader and I wanted to share a few more of my thoughts on what I think Pokemon Perfect should do going forward. As stated though, I'm not sure of the best way to improve what we currently already do. Maybe changing tournament format because I'm adamant that single elim is terrible, but for all my experimentation in that regard I haven't found anything that runs as efficiently. Every alternative I've tried has been plagued by inactivity, although small sample size may also be something of an issue, and there is still room to trial things.

Come to think of it, I feel like there ought to be some means of improving how we handle activity, whether it be by some technical solution (not likely, but it's an idea), improving the transparency of evidence (discord is a pain in the ass here), or even some tweaks to the rules. A rule tweak is especially notable for non-elim formats, which I am generally strongly in favour of, since in such formats players that aren't blatantly inactive can slip through the cracks and cause issues across multiple rounds. Maybe explicitly requiring an activity post in thread to avoid DQ would be viable in such cases. That might be a little harsh, and it might catch some people off guard despite activity, but in such formats such a restriction may be necessary, and it's not as though it's not something that can be adapted to.

tldr for my ramblings on tour formats- use formats that at least start out as non-elim, with greater demands on players to prove activity is something that we should be trialling

In any case, most of this post will focus on areas for PP to cover and expand to. Not all of these will be feasible right now, and it probably won't be possible to cover all of them anyway, but I just want to throw them out there.
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I think we need to clearly define what we should be focusing on and what we should deliberately set aside, especially in the context of our relationship with smogon. Regarding smogon, we need to identify what areas we can focus on to differentiate ourselves, and which areas we'd just be competing against a much larger forum without really offering anything more. Hell, I think an official partnership could be good, but I suspect that's not a realistic prospect.
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Obviously, there's tournaments, where we're already going strong Past gen OUs are going alright, though idk what happened to ORAS. Could consider current gen maybe, but the issue with both that and ubers is that I feel like they're separate sub-communities on smogon, with most of our playerbase being RoA, which means I think it's somewhat difficult for these kinds of things to develop on PP. That's unfortunately the comparison that must be made, because the majority of people who come to PP will already be familiar with smogon and/or the various rooms on PS.

Bias alert- following suggestion isn't the most objective
I think ubers tours are worth expanding to- although they would remain small, I think it would be possible to attract a decent group of core players. One thing to note is that they shouldn't be made part of a tiering project- ADV 1U actually had a really promising start because it was literally adv ubers, but it all went downhill when we tried to ban Kyogre. That said, ubers tours do suffer from all of the issues described above. I only brought up ubers because we've at least experimented with it, and I'm also just really biased- I like most ubers formats and think they're the way the game ought to be played, rather than arbitrarily banning multiple pokemon with zero evidence. Also while I'm at it, free DPP Arc and GSC Ubers. Don't bother with RBY though.

That's basically what we're working with atm, now for ideas for future expansion
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Discussion hub and learning resource. This is what I think our next goal should be.

To me, I think PP should ideally be a centre of discussion for all things past gen ou. At present, I think neither here nor smogon covers this particularly well. I also think simply talking about the game is something that's pretty easy to do, so this feels achievable. That said, all I've got in mind is for a core group of staff/users to just be active in generating discussion. That could work, depending on who's involved and all that, but I suspect that may not be the most effective solution- there needs to be something more, maybe some system in place to help keep things going, idk. At the very least, simply brainstorming ideas for discussion starters is helpful rather than waiting until you think of something you feel like posting about.

So why have I lumped learning resources in this section? Simple- they're great starting points for discussion, and they're also something we can do better than smogon (we already do better in RBY, in spite of our analysis subforum not being too lively). The specific things I've got in mind are VR threads, but I also think we should repurpose the analyses forum so that the threads aren't just analyses that people talk about briefly then never look at again, but also discussion threads relating to that pokemon. Analyses are still helpful, but I think it's a missed opportunity to have them purely as a learning resource. I should also add that we shouldn't require an analysis for someone to start a thread, discussion is more important imo- we can always just add the analysis later, or start a new thread or something.

Hell, even the analysis format could probably use tweaking, especially because sticking to it is a little rigid. They outline the basics of how to use certain pokemon, but often don't really go into the nuances of it. Even if we have a follow-up post in the thread for "deep dives" to separate the basics from the more advanced stuff I reckon that'd be useful and fun to talk about. Another key factor is that once an analysis is written, there's no cue to go back and revisit it, even though there may be plenty of new stuff to talk about. And lastly, creating learning resources is something we can easily do better than smogon. Admittedly, their set dex has a much better UI for this and is more well-known, but I think everyone here knows that in terms of content it's just not that great, especially for old gens (e.g. RBY Lax has Reflect listed in OO rather than being the standard set, while their RBY M2 page is blatant theorymon)

tldr- vr threads are great for discussion, but analyses should be repurposed to also function as discussion threads
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Tiering

I know I literally just posted about shelving this for a while, but the status of lower tiers on smogon is currently up in the air, with it looking likely based on that PR thread that they'll be locked indefinitely, barring a major issue arising. To me, this seems like a void that our own tiering project could fill, since I think static tier lists are just silly, and they'll inevitably appear as such eventually. I also believe that there are people who will want to play non-OU tiers and actively develop them in a dynamic environment, rather than dusting them off once a year so a handful of players can get a dose of nostalgia in xUPL. However, as discussed previously, this should still be subject to whether or not we're actually in a position to run it. I just think it's an area worth noting.

There is one thing worth noting though. Our current tiering policy promotes ubers as a starting point, which doesn't correspond at all with anything on smogon... which is relevant, because the reason I'm noting this is that smogon locking these things creates a niche for us to occupy. Personally, I think starting with ubers is the way it ought to be, since OU is a totally arbitrary format and is therefore not really competitive, with this of course setting the foundation for any lower tiers. Pragmatically though, this is something you may want to review. After all, if we're to capitalise on a niche left by smogon, but our tiers don't correspond with those that they're killing off, we're probably not capitalising on that as best we can. Starting from OU is likely to be more popular, for all that OU is a sham tier, so again, it's something worth reviewing, although ofc I strongly disagree and think that we should be starting from ubers.

That said, this is subject to us actually being in a position to run these things. Also it'd be nice to offer separate tiers, one for OU, one for ubers, but lol, as though that's realistic

tldr- if smogon locks lower tiers, this becomes an obvious niche for us to occupy, however our approach is probably worth reviewing in relation to that, while this should also be subject to actually being in a position to handle such a project... so probably not now, but maybe in the future

 

[Lilyhollow]

A problem I want to mention with setting Ubers as the baseline for 1U is that you're courting two completely different mentalities there. Since it's the 'main tier,' the greater scrutiny means people are generally more likely to want to ban stuff than in a traditional Ubers environment. But you'll also pretty much always have people who want traditional Ubers, and those people will want 1U to stick to that standard. It's harder for them to walk away from 1U if they get frustrated because 1U is likely to be so similar to Ubers that Ubers almost doesn't have a niche anymore. So they're more likely to stick around, but be unhappy. You almost prefer them to either stick around and be happy, or just not stick around.

So for example, in 4th gen you had a situation where Smogon was going apeshit with suspect tests in OU, and I could just retreat over to Ubers and deal with way less whining about stuff. I was still sad about OU being constant whining about Skymin and Stealth Rock (lol), but I didn't necessarily have to deal with that because I could still find Ubers matches just fine.

I am guessing this is what would make Gen 3 1U very difficult to define. If you're literally banning just one Pokemon, and it's not something like Gen 1 Mewtwo that just towers over everything else completely, you're going to have the people who are like, hold on, people have been playing gen 3 Ubers for years and dealt with this just fine. And the response is, 'sure, but we're operating under a different standard for what is banworthy here.' And it's like, okay fine, but now Ubers itself has an even smaller niche and the people who wanted Ubers all along are more likely to sit down and just complain all day.

I could see this being an issue for hypothetical DP 1U also. Like, people loved DP Ubers, but the standard for what was considered acceptable centralization was just not even in the same ballpark as what was expected of DP OU. So you can take this metagame that people loved, but the second you make it the 'main thing,' you're going to have people wanting to ban stuff that has objectively been just fine for years and years.

Gen 2 might be an exception there... everything I've heard about Gen 2 Ubers indicates to me that people would like it just fine without any bans. People accepting that as the 'main tier' seems extremely unlikely for historical reasons though.

 

[Ortheore]

A little belated but Lilyhollow you hit the nail on the head regarding starting with ubers and making changes from there. I guess I pursued it because I'm fairly adamant that that's the way it ought to be, and a couple of other people were on board with it, but nowhere near enough for it to really work. At this point though, I'm fine with just rolling with ubers, though as always I exclude g1 and 4 from that due to OU being p much spot on in g1* and the g4 Arc ban being stupid. At this point I'm so reluctant to ban anything that for me there's no point trying to be different. But yeah, trying to be a variation of ubers basically targeted none of the existing players for any given format, so it makes sense that it never took off

The trouble with g2 is that no-one plays it. Idk why, maybe because only five pokemon are considered uber, so people don't really consider it a true ubers tier? The impression I get is that when it comes to past gen ubers, it's not the old gen crowd that handles things, but the ubers crowd, and they just don't play gsc ubers for whatever reason. Pretty much the only thing old gen players seem to focus on is OU. Which is a shame really, as I think GSC Ubers is a really cool format.

*The only change I'd consider making is allowing tradebacks. Although I like RBY the way it is, I don't think there's any good reason to ban tradebacks. That said, I'm far from settled on that and I'm not going to be pushing for it anytime soon

 

[magic9mushroom]

Unfortunately, I haven't got any good solutions here. What are your thoughts on how we can improve discussion?

LADDER.

The impression I get is that when it comes to past gen ubers, it's not the old gen crowd that handles things, but the ubers crowd, and they just don't play gsc ubers for whatever reason.

Probably has to do with the fact that while later-gen Ubers have a number of things in common (e.g. Kyogre and its rain, Calm Mind), GSC Ubers is missing most of those things.

RBY Ubers is kinda a special case because it's both the first gen and infamous due to Mewtwo, so people try it for novelty.