pholtos' Rando Pokemon Tourney IV - Final Round

[pholtos]

Would love to see those but I don't dropbox and can't download them.

[Telamon]

Be glad to rehost them if someone can suggest a different host. Didn't realize it was such a pain, unfortunately.

[pholtos]

mediafire or mega would be better.

[Telamon]

Added mediafire links.

Lord what a pain. Remember to just UPLOAD, folks!

[GlitchedGhost]

GlitchedGhost vs. Animita

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-317212970

1-0

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-317249917

1-1

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-317253475

1-2

Man, our battles are always really close. I love close battles.

God, it took me a good six tries to get that third round to actually upload so I could get the url. :l

[Animita]

We also had a bonus match where one of us loaded the wrong team.

[GlitchedGhost]

We also had a bonus match where one of us loaded the wrong team.

/raises hand/ lol

[Xirix]

Oops, didn't realise dropbox was finicky for some, sorry about that, but at least your rounds are viewable now. ^_^ (Though Round 3 is a dupe of Round 1 on the other link)

[bbbrrr_it_cold]

bbbrrr_it_cold vs Wolfolotl

Round 1: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-317623990

0-1

Round 2: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-317626595

1-1

Round 3: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-317630207

1-2

Victor:

Wolfolotl

Wow. Just wow.

Was not expecting to win that second round, but Knighty Night did his job quite admirably. And that third round was so tense. I wonder what would have happened had I tried to Drain Punch instead of Bulk Up. I doubt it would have KO'd, so I doubt it would have mattered, but oh well.
Now that I think of it, I wonder if I could have done something better with El Chapo that last round too...? Eh, live and learn.

Great games, Wolfolotl. That was quite enjoyable.

[ohmato]

Round 1: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-317668633

Winner: ___arabsalmon___

Round 2: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-317671763

Winner: Compound Fraxure

Round 3: http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/ubers-317675175

Winner: ___arabsalmon___

[Compound Fraxure]

That Avalugg really wrecked my team with 3 of my attacking Pokemon being weak to ice. Also, I did not expect to win the second round, but Reuniclus pulled it off.

Good games, arabsalmon. It was fun.

[Zephyr_DragonLord]

So.. we had our matches.

I did good this time.

The matches were really packed with heat, and had a good amount of fury to them. Stantler was a power player, which made me really happy, and Dragelge... was a savior. Because he always is. Also, there was stray particles of luck here to remind us that we were playing Pokémon, not DOTA or some other boring thing.

And you know what? Those battles were a good time. I'd like to have some more sometime...

[Vinyl]

Replays

Today just isn't my day.

[pholtos]

Today just isn't my day.

I saw your comment about the sets. If you think some of them aren't that good, please talk to sedron about possible improvements.

Also it's a few days past and uhh... there's still three matches that have yet to be played. :/

[Vinyl]

Today just isn't my day.

I saw your comment about the sets. If you think some of them aren't that good, please talk to sedron about possible improvements.

Also it's a few days past and uhh... there's still three matches that have yet to be played. :/

It's not that they're not GOOD, because they're good by Smogon Standards.
I just like to meme a lot.
And by meme I mean do extremely unconventional things, like Ancient Power Baton Pass Togetic and Choice Band Hitmonchan.

[Ivy]

or everyone's favorite, battle armor acupressure knock off resttalk drapion

[Zephyr_DragonLord]

or everyone's favorite, battle armor acupressure knock off resttalk drapion

...I've actually used something very similar to that. I love using that at opportune moments. I love acupressure in general.

....Why the heck haven't I raised an acupressure Tentacruel yet?

[Ivy]

not as reliable; sturdy acupressure resttalk rollout shuckle is just as epic

[pholtos]

I ponder maybe next time allowing people to make their own movesets and such for their pokemon or just using the sets that are given but that might be broken unless in that instance you get less pokemon to pick from to make a team or something.

[Telamon]

I'd be really overwhelmed if I had to make my own movesets, honestly.

[pholtos]

I'd be really overwhelmed if I had to make my own movesets, honestly.

That's why I considered having both options, where you could either get 16 pokemon and use the movesets already in place or get like... 10 pokemon and be able to make whatever moveset you wanted.

[Zephyr_DragonLord]

I ponder maybe next time allowing people to make their own movesets and such for their pokemon or just using the sets that are given but that might be broken unless in that instance you get less pokemon to pick from to make a team or something.

I also have an idea of somewhere in between those two...
We get dealt random Pokémon as normal... but we have up to 2 points to allot per Pokémon. One could be used to either change a move, change the nature, IVs, and EVs, or change the held item.

This, while it keeps some parts rigid, can also be used to really change what a specific Pokémon would do.
For example.... let's take Thundurus, who has three Electric moves. We could change one of those moves to Hidden Power, and change the IVs to make it an Ice type move. Suddenly, it has a far different role than it once had.

Not that this is the best idea. Just something to consider...

[spittySynthyHands]

The movesets so far have been decent. They've never quite been what I would do, but they've been good enough. They real problem is that they sometimes don't quite mesh well as a team, or fail to cover an option that could be available if only I could change a move. For instance Baton Pass/Quiver Dance Masquerain with no one else to pass the boosts to, or 3 sticky web users on a team that so incredibly slow it couldn't really use it.

That said, part of the fun of random battles is having to use the hand you're dealt with, and being able to arbitrarily change movesets kinda screws with the premise. Especially when there's pokemon that can easily excel with multiple movesets, like Lucario, or Salamence, or so gimmicky/awful it doesn't really matter what they actually do, like Luvdisc.

In other words, being able to change stuff makes things more fair, but not being able to change anything makes things more fun, in my opinion, because you kinda have to deal with what you've got.

[pholtos]

The main reason I'm thinking about this and potentially future gimmicks is it seems like there's been a lot more delays this time around and I'm wondering why.

Maybe 16 is too many choices to pick from or something.

[sedron]

Some thoughts (partially from a conversation I was having with pholtos on Skype.)

I've been very hands-off for this tourney, since very little was changed and pholtos basically has it under control. That said, I have noticed, as he has, that it's been very slow in comparison to previous tourneys. I'm willing to chalk that up to real life (we did just get out of the holiday season and winter break, after all,) and maybe a bit of boredom (we've collectively done a LOT of Pokemon battling in the last year with these four tourneys.) If there are other reasons more related to difficulty in choosing teams and such, it'd be great to get some feedback on that. I believe part of it can also be attributed to not eliminating players, but that's just something we need to deal with.

As for more teambuilding options, I'm personally against that. The point of Randomons is mainly to, as Synth pointed out, dealing with what you're given. We try to offer some more flexibility to avoid scenarios where your tourney run just ends because you ended up with too much garbage, but it's not so much that it defeats the point. To be fair, the Choose-16 system is also so you can try to build around oddball mons more frequently. For example, you might end up with the means to make a weather-based team, or you might set up a BP mon with a good recipient. Of course, that does add some challenge insofar as learning which mons to disregard. In Synth's example with the Masquerain, you'd want to look at the other 15 mons and decide whether Masquerain could work with them.

I talked with pholtos a bit about possible options moving forward. While I'm against more teambuilding options in the context of a Randomons tournament, I'm not against the idea of a more standard tournament format. That could take the form of an OU, UU, whatever-tier or level-balanced tournament where you just make your own team and use it for every battle. If we have interest in that it's a possibility, and that might shake things up in a good way. pholtos was also considering running both a random and standard tourney simultaneously, but that's totally up to him.

So, thoughts?