Because battling is so hugely important in the new system—it’s now actually a requirement to evolve pokémon, rather than just one path to obtaining the money to do so—it’s important that I try to increase the number of battles that go to completion and the rate at which they are completed.
First off, Referees will no longer receive a weekly stipend. Instead, they will be paid purely per reffing, as well as receiving a bonus upon the completion of a battle. Thus, completing one reffing every two weeks could never be as profitable as completing several within that span of time, as was possible under the old system.
Referees would be bound by the same DQ time as the combatants had agreed to. Emergency reffing bonuses would be significantly increased. The intent here is to encourage referees to commit long-term to battles with the intent of seeing them completed in a reasonable amount of time, for fear of losing out on the reward by letting it go to an ER while at the same time encouraging people to perform emergency reffings. There might also be a penalty to the referee for dropping the battle, although there’s a real fine line here between discouraging laziness and punishing people for legitimate real-life things that do tend to get in the way of ASB. I guess what I’m going for is people not taking battles unless they’re willing and able to put in the time to get them done without huge gaps between reffings.
Sub attacks or “if clauses” will be more strictly regulated. This is partially to make reffing easier and partially because I feel some attack commands get unrealistically complicated. If you actually took enough time on the battlefield to yell out five different possibilities for each action to your pokémon, it would get beaten up by the time you finished detailing your plans. I recognize that substitute actions are virtually a necessity to offset the disadvantages inherent in ordering first, and I’m not talking about removing them entirely. Rather, I think there should be some clear punishment for ordering too many alternate commands, and currently I’m debating as to whether two or three alts should be the maximum number possible without penalty.
Last of all, I’m looking into making some small tweaks to my damage and energy scales, which are currently the “default” ones for the League. First of all, I’m looking to decrease energy costs across the board to reduce the number of battles that are largely determined by energy consumption rather than health concerns. Second, I’m looking at possibly considering pokémon’s base stats a little more in reffings.
This is tricky, as what makes ASB appealing (and which is far more important now that people will need to battle with lower evolutions much more often) is that “weak” pokémon are on a much more equal footing with the big boys than they are in the games. At the same time, ignoring base stats does remove some of a pokémon’s flavor. Consider that in ASB, most referees would have a shuckle’s rock slide do as much damage as one coming from a rampardos, while that shuckle would be taking as much damage from a surf as well, which is contrary to the nature of both pokémon. Shuckle, of course, is an extreme example with its crazy stat distribution, but I hope you see where I’m coming from.
The best solution I’ve come up with so far is to base statistical modifiers not on a comparison between pokémon, but rather between a pokémon's own statistics. Let’s take pidgeot as an example. It has 80 base attack, 75 base defense, and 70 each of special attack and special defense. Because attack is its highest stat, under my system pidgeot would receive a 2% damage bonus for the use of physical attacks. Its second-highest stat, defense, would confer a 1% damage reduction from physical attacks. Because special attack and special defense are tied for lowest stat, both would receive a -1% modifier. Thus, in battle, pidgeot would indeed have more power behind its physical attacks than its special ones, but it would not be any way inferior to staraptor (at least in terms of stats), which would receive the same bonus distribution.
I feel that this system would better reflect individual pokémon’s strengths and weaknesses on the battlefield without putting pokémon with low stat totals at any sort of disadvantage. Unfortunately, it does have the downside of making reffing more difficult, what with bonuses to keep track of for each pokémon. This alteration is really more of an, “In the future, look out for…” thing; I wouldn’t consider making this the standard until I had actually managed to finish the reffing calculator that I’ve been talking about for like a year and a half but you know I might actually get around to that someday. Also, I will probably be using it in my own matches, although not considering it in the approval process, so if you have any thoughts on it, feel free to voice them, though I haven’t really finished testing the system yet.
Also, note that all referees will automatically be reinstated with their former positions once the game opens again, regardless of what changes happen—I’ll be tweaking the approval system slightly, but referees will not need reapproval.
First off, Referees will no longer receive a weekly stipend. Instead, they will be paid purely per reffing, as well as receiving a bonus upon the completion of a battle. Thus, completing one reffing every two weeks could never be as profitable as completing several within that span of time, as was possible under the old system.
Referees would be bound by the same DQ time as the combatants had agreed to. Emergency reffing bonuses would be significantly increased. The intent here is to encourage referees to commit long-term to battles with the intent of seeing them completed in a reasonable amount of time, for fear of losing out on the reward by letting it go to an ER while at the same time encouraging people to perform emergency reffings. There might also be a penalty to the referee for dropping the battle, although there’s a real fine line here between discouraging laziness and punishing people for legitimate real-life things that do tend to get in the way of ASB. I guess what I’m going for is people not taking battles unless they’re willing and able to put in the time to get them done without huge gaps between reffings.
Sub attacks or “if clauses” will be more strictly regulated. This is partially to make reffing easier and partially because I feel some attack commands get unrealistically complicated. If you actually took enough time on the battlefield to yell out five different possibilities for each action to your pokémon, it would get beaten up by the time you finished detailing your plans. I recognize that substitute actions are virtually a necessity to offset the disadvantages inherent in ordering first, and I’m not talking about removing them entirely. Rather, I think there should be some clear punishment for ordering too many alternate commands, and currently I’m debating as to whether two or three alts should be the maximum number possible without penalty.
Last of all, I’m looking into making some small tweaks to my damage and energy scales, which are currently the “default” ones for the League. First of all, I’m looking to decrease energy costs across the board to reduce the number of battles that are largely determined by energy consumption rather than health concerns. Second, I’m looking at possibly considering pokémon’s base stats a little more in reffings.
This is tricky, as what makes ASB appealing (and which is far more important now that people will need to battle with lower evolutions much more often) is that “weak” pokémon are on a much more equal footing with the big boys than they are in the games. At the same time, ignoring base stats does remove some of a pokémon’s flavor. Consider that in ASB, most referees would have a shuckle’s rock slide do as much damage as one coming from a rampardos, while that shuckle would be taking as much damage from a surf as well, which is contrary to the nature of both pokémon. Shuckle, of course, is an extreme example with its crazy stat distribution, but I hope you see where I’m coming from.
The best solution I’ve come up with so far is to base statistical modifiers not on a comparison between pokémon, but rather between a pokémon's own statistics. Let’s take pidgeot as an example. It has 80 base attack, 75 base defense, and 70 each of special attack and special defense. Because attack is its highest stat, under my system pidgeot would receive a 2% damage bonus for the use of physical attacks. Its second-highest stat, defense, would confer a 1% damage reduction from physical attacks. Because special attack and special defense are tied for lowest stat, both would receive a -1% modifier. Thus, in battle, pidgeot would indeed have more power behind its physical attacks than its special ones, but it would not be any way inferior to staraptor (at least in terms of stats), which would receive the same bonus distribution.
I feel that this system would better reflect individual pokémon’s strengths and weaknesses on the battlefield without putting pokémon with low stat totals at any sort of disadvantage. Unfortunately, it does have the downside of making reffing more difficult, what with bonuses to keep track of for each pokémon. This alteration is really more of an, “In the future, look out for…” thing; I wouldn’t consider making this the standard until I had actually managed to finish the reffing calculator that I’ve been talking about for like a year and a half but you know I might actually get around to that someday. Also, I will probably be using it in my own matches, although not considering it in the approval process, so if you have any thoughts on it, feel free to voice them, though I haven’t really finished testing the system yet.
Also, note that all referees will automatically be reinstated with their former positions once the game opens again, regardless of what changes happen—I’ll be tweaking the approval system slightly, but referees will not need reapproval.
