PKMN.NET Forums
General Category => PKMN.NET => Topic started by: Richard and Blaziken on February 05, 2014, 10:35
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I don't think it's any secret that I'm a fanatic about competitive battling. It's also no secret that the competitive scene here isn't very large either. We've tried things such a Gym League, Tournaments, I've got a competitive Pokemon trade stand going (which is starting to see some active trading!), but after thinking about it... all of these things only cater current competitive battlers doing some competitive battling, and usually in short-term, gimmicky ways.
I've had an idea for what I call a Competitive Mentorship Program. It's as simple as it sounds: Are you someone that has had an interest in competitive battling but feel like it's too hard or complicated to understand alone? Do you ever feel confused about what makes a "good team"? Do EVs confuse you (especially complicated EV spreads)? Have you tried battling before, only to find that "better", more experienced players ripped apart all of your hard work without much effort?
If you can answer yes to any of those questions, wouldn't it be nice to have someone that has real experience in competitive battling and knows what they're talking about to teach you the ropes? That's exactly what I'm proposing: one-on-one time with a competitive battler that will teach you in a patient, non-aggressive manner at your own pace.
Obviously, this raises some concerns and problems:
-Who's to say who is good enough to become a "mentor"?
-What happens if the mentor loses interest?
-Time zones can make things difficult for some people
-Is this even something that this community wants or needs?
So let's start a discussion, open to every member of PKMN.net; What are your thoughts about such an idea, even if you have no interest whatsoever? Would you be interested in something like this? What potential solutions to the above problems could be presented?
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Personally, I think it's a brilliant idea.
I wouldn't know how to address the issues you raised, but if there's enough interests (on both sides of the spectrum), then details can be hashed out right?
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honestly, I feel that if people want to know more about competitive battling, there's more than enough resources available. They can upload replays from showdown and link them for advice, or if they have particular questions, they can ask them in the respective boards. We also have great articles/guides on competitive battling under the games tab on the actual website. Rather than creating a mentorship program, it may be better to update and point out stuff that's already here.
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honestly, I feel that if people want to know more about competitive battling, there's more than enough resources available. They can upload replays from showdown and link them for advice, or if they have particular questions, they can ask them in the respective boards. We also have great articles/guides on competitive battling under the games tab on the actual website. Rather than creating a mentorship program, it may be better to update and point out stuff that's already here.
i learn better when someone tells me what is what instead of signing up to like 20 places to ask things that i'll probably never check though, tbh.
i'd benefit from this as a student, maybe try to help out in any way i can once/if i pass.
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honestly, I feel that if people want to know more about competitive battling, there's more than enough resources available. They can upload replays from showdown and link them for advice, or if they have particular questions, they can ask them in the respective boards. We also have great articles/guides on competitive battling under the games tab on the actual website. Rather than creating a mentorship program, it may be better to update and point out stuff that's already here.
Thans for the feedback! I am actually working on writing a new "Introduction To Competitive Battling" for 6th gen, so that will be coming soon! The main problem with articles, however, is that the wall of text can often feel overwhelming (I seriously don't think a single person has read all of the first Introduction To Competitive Battling article I wrote), and that can cause people to give up because it seems like too much to take in all at once. Maybe I'm wrong about this though, but that's my thoughts on it anyway.
i learn better when someone tells me what is what instead of signing up to like 20 places to ask things that i'll probably never check though, tbh.
i'd benefit from this as a student, maybe try to help out in any way i can once/if i pass.
This is what I was thinking, and I wonder if more people don't feel this way. It's a lot easier for some people tro learn when they have someone that is actually helping them one-on-one, and some people learn better on their own.
Does anyone else have an opinion on the matter? I urge you to speak your mind about it because I am genuinely curious to see what people think.
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Thans for the feedback! I am actually working on writing a new "Introduction To Competitive Battling" for 6th gen, so that will be coming soon! The main problem with articles, however, is that the wall of text can often feel overwhelming (I seriously don't think a single person has read all of the first Introduction To Competitive Battling article I wrote), and that can cause people to give up because it seems like too much to take in all at once. Maybe I'm wrong about this though, but that's my thoughts on it anyway.
This is what I was thinking, and I wonder if more people don't feel this way. It's a lot easier for some people tro learn when they have someone that is actually helping them one-on-one, and some people learn better on their own.
Does anyone else have an opinion on the matter? I urge you to speak your mind about it because I am genuinely curious to see what people think.
One of my favorite articles, and one of the main reasons I got into competitive battling, was the one on prediction by Havak. A 6th gen version of that would be cool, you know, since you're writing a lot anyway :P
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I could look into that as well. The problem with teaching prediction is that prediction is an adaptive thing; you can get a feel for your opponent's risk vs. reward mindset and predict based off that, but they can also predict your prediction and eventually it can become guesswork, depending on the circumstances.
His article really is fantastic, and I could easily teach the basics of prediction, but I personally feel that prediction is something that comes with knowledge of the current metagame, experience in battling, and your presence in whatever battle you're currently in (if you begin with a strong lead, most opponents begin taking defensive measures and playing more cautiously, but it depends on the player and circumstances). Prediction is, in essence, educated guesses at best, and random button clicking at worst. It's not at the top of my list to teach, since experience will do that for anyone interested in battling. I do teach people to keep the opponent's team in mind and weigh each turn's decision heavily, and that in itself will teach prediction I think.
I am enjoying this discussion though, it is certainly bringing some questions to my mind about what it would mean to teach a person to battle competitively, and what people should expect, should this come to fruition. c:
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I'd be interested in mentoring if possible. Although i'd probably only be able to give the basics, then have to hand you off to someone more experienced.
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I'll preface this by saying that although I find the competitive side of Pokémon interesting and I enjoy spectating and hearing about it, I don't have much of an interest in playing it because I already play enough competitive games that take up a lot of my time.
This sounds like a pretty fantastic idea, since the wall of entry into comp. is pretty high in my opinion. Like, sure, EVs/IVs are pretty simple, but understanding the synergy between teams, like what makes a team good, how do you make a Pokémon worth a slot in your team, stuff like that, is pretty deep and especially as a more casual fan I couldn't explain it to anyone. I'm the kind of guy who goes 6 sweepers and hopes I can K.O them all faster as opposed to this support/wall stuff kids do.
I agree that stuff like prediction is something that has to be learned through experience, but having someone to keep new players about synergy and the meta and stuff could be really handy, and also the basics like EV training, IV breeding, which although there are plenty of guides around, perhaps a newer player may consider it a bit daunting and having it explained by a mentor may help them ease into it.
So yeah, although I'm personally not particularly interested in it (at least right now), this is a pretty fantastic idea and I think it could be a fantastic resource for players looking to get into comp. Pokémon.
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I think this a brilliant idea, but one problem i can see is the lack of peopl who ar both good enough at competitive AND good at explaining. Off the top of my head, i can only think of JSM, Spriter & Yourself (no offence to anyone i may have forgotten xD) and i don't know where theyd stand on the explaining sideof things.
Still, i guess it would be possible to have some people allocated to more basic things (Breeding, how to EV effectively etc.) whilst leaving the 'better' battlers to teach things like synergising. That way you could have more tutors without compromising the quality of the teaching.
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Ugh, Richard you're so full of good ideas haha.
This is a fab idea. I've tried to get into competitive before and have failed because I've been looking at online guides that don't answer any questions I have. To be able to speak to someone live would be brilliant and would make things so much easier to grasp.
If you pull this off we may end up with a site full of rabid competitive battlers. I would be one of them.
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Well it seems like a lot of people are onboard with this idea already, but what about the issues I brought up in the first post? Who would decide who can be a mentor? I surely couldn't do it by myself, but I don't know how fair it would be for me to pick and choose who I think is mentor material, you know?
Feel free to keep discussing things, especially people who haven't posted on this thread yet, I want as many opinions as possible about this idea.
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Not including myself (because that's rude), here's the list of who I think is the best for mentoring, top being the highest:
Richard and Blaziken (obvious)
JSM
RubyRobin
That's so far who I have, mostly since I don't know how many of you are. I think the mentors could be decided by popular vote.
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People could nominate mentors and then if we get loads I guess we can just vote so there's about 5 or something. Then you can always take others from the nominees if you need more.
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this is a great idea. ive gotten into competitive battling just recently (started messing around on ps to get back in the pokemon mood in the weeks before x/y released) and tbh im not that good :P so this would definitely be something id like, as a student.
as for the issues raised in the first post, ive only been here since november and dont know all of you that well, so id have no idea who would make a good mentor (rich and jsm have both been mentioned here so ill assume theyre both pretty good xD)
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I think it would be nice to have a mentor from each 'popular' time zone in our community! So we could have maybe JSM mentoring GMTers, Richard&Blaziken mentoring GMT-6ers and so on rather than each person being given a random mentor or something, so that replies are more efficient.
As for being good enough to be a mentor, I think people who've been battling recently and have a good overview of how the battlefield goes are pretty good to start off with! Though if I had to choose between having a person who battled steadily over a year or two and a person who's just picked up on it one or two months ago to mentor me, I'd choose the former; correct if I'm wrong here, but they'd be the ones with the most experience of how the field develops, right?
If the mentor loses interest, I think it would be best for the mentees (is that a word?) to move on to another mentor, if they want to or are able to.
Now I'd love to sign up for this, but I just need to get Pokemon X first!
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hm. i had an idea but i'm not sure how it would get implemented.
like at the end of each course or when the mentor thinks their student is ready, they battle using the knowledge they've gained and see how well they fare, maybe? or perhaps like a tournament to see what they've learned. kind of like an exam sort of thing but not as stressful because you can take it however many times. or maybe it could be a part of the courses instead of an end result, i guess?
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I think it would be nice to have a mentor from each 'popular' time zone in our community! So we could have maybe JSM mentoring GMTers, Richard&Blaziken mentoring GMT-6ers and so on rather than each person being given a random mentor or something, so that replies are more efficient.
As for being good enough to be a mentor, I think people who've been battling recently and have a good overview of how the battlefield goes are pretty good to start off with! Though if I had to choose between having a person who battled steadily over a year or two and a person who's just picked up on it one or two months ago to mentor me, I'd choose the former; correct if I'm wrong here, but they'd be the ones with the most experience of how the field develops, right?
If the mentor loses interest, I think it would be best for the mentees (is that a word?) to move on to another mentor, if they want to or are able to.
Now I'd love to sign up for this, but I just need to get Pokemon X first!
The problem with this is that almost no one else on this site is GMT-6, so that'd limit me to teaching myself everything I know. xD
I am up at odd hours anyway, and usually catch most of you online, but I definitely agree that we need people from different time zones doing this if it has a chance to be successful.
It seems like popular vote would be a good way to determine who should be a mentor, but we could potentially run into the problem of people being voted in that don't have enough experience to teach someone how to do this. Being good at battling is one thing, but the ability to teach it can be frustrating for some people. For example, I consider RubyRobin to be one of the best battlers on the site (when he's not using something gimmicky, which is almost never =P), and we're great friends, but he himself has expressed that he doesn't think he would be able to effectively teach what he knows. So that would be a main concern of mine.
I have added a poll to the original post, to get a better gauge on how interested people are in this. Please vote! And please, continue the discussion! I want to hear as many opinions as possible, even if you're just agreeing with someone that has been said! :>
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Perhaps you could link it with the pokemon gym league we have going on here and have gym trainers under every leader or something? just a suggestion
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I would totally be happy with helping anyone. I might need to get my head into 6th Gen a lot more, but if anyone wants to go back to 5th Gen OU / UU / RU / NU and even Ubers...I'd be happy to help. 6th Gen is a mess right now if I'm honest, so that's why it's complex for me.
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I think Spriter's just come up with how to do this. Gen 6 metagame is so fluid right now, as people try to figure out what works, what should be banned, what is suddenly not as game changing etc. For teaching team building and prediction, i think working with an established meta game will be more useful than one that is as undefined as gen 6
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I agree. We either wait until the 6th gen metagame is settled, which could be months. Or use gen 5 for now, which is likely our best option
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#BoycottGen6UntilGaleWingsIsBanned
...was that too long?
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^ I think aqua jet Azumarill wreaks gale wings talonflame
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talon outspeeds it still iirc, and not if your azumarill is dead!
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+2 252+ Atk Life Orb Talonflame Brave Bird vs. 252 HP / 0 Def Azumarill: 491-578 (121.5 - 143%) -- guaranteed OHKO
Regardless, I... somewhat agree, though I question whether or not that's a good idea. Learning an older metagame isn't always helpful; there's a lot of conflicting information between generation 5 and 6, and some things that were viable one generation ago are no longer seen so much.
The metagame is unstable at the moment, but I think once the current suspects are banned (2/3 of them are almost a given), things will even out a bit more. One thing that newcomers should be taught is that you adapt to the metagame, not the other way around. If you plan on being a competitive battler, you've got to use what works in the current metagame to win, and/or use what counters the Pokemon that are currently popular. The metagame will settle down, but I think it'd be counter-productive to teach gen 5 for multiple reasons:
-It's no longer going to be a relevant metagame, so not everything you'd teach would translate to gen 6
-Gen 5's weather wars made for the worst metagame we've ever had, and Game Freak seems to have realized this
-It would be a waste of time teaching a metagame that is already dead, as most of the best players from generation 5 have moved on already, and you'll never get a feel for how good you are, since the pool of players you're facing is much smaller than what it was, and what it is for gen 6.
The basics of competitive battling don't change much from generation to generation anymore, but teaching some very important new things (Fairy, for example, has changed a lot in the moves that Dragon types can safely run, and how they have to work around them when they weren't even existent before) that are applicable to the generation we're currently in seems like the most effective way to draw people in. In addition, many people are going to want to raise Pokemon in their X and Y games, and getting competitive Pokemon is much easier to accomplish now.
All that said, what is the general consensus? If a majority of you want to learn a now outdated metagame, I'd be fine with teaching it... it just seems counter-productive to me.
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I understand what you mean. Actually, I didn't imply that Gen 5 should be taught, but sticking with Gen 6 would be good. In fact, using Gen 6 would be easier, because some of us would have to relearn Gen 5 before teaching it.
As soon as Mega Luke and Genesect go up, things should be fine.
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I'd be interested but I think one of the biggest issues most people have with competitive battling isn't so much that they're confused but that using their favorite Pokemon doesn't really yield worthwhile results. It's hard to construct a good competitive team of your favorite Pokemon when they're only useful in certain situations.
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Teaching how to effectively use favorites in lower tiers is possible, but I can't really do much about the issue you're talking about; not everyone's favorites are viable in OU. Hell, some of mine are Uber, and some of them are NU, but that's not what real competitive battling is about. Like I said before: you adapt to the metagame, not the other way around.
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Teaching Gen 5 does seem counter-productive. But i'm still good at it for anyone who's interested.
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Honestly, the subtleties of the differences between gen 5 and gen 6 dont really matter when it comes to teaching the very basics of competitive battling. I'd say just go and try to teach the current metagame to the best of one's knowledge and correct it if anything major changes.
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About the lower tiers, you could possibly help out and teach how to use someone's favourites in lower tiers as NU is so large (there were 206 in there at the end of Gen 5), and almost anything has a chance of doing alright in there. Heck, stuff like Skuntank, Samurott, Haunter, Alomomola, Articuno, Audino, Cacturne and even Golbat did nicely last gen. Most battlers do know that using favourites isn't a good idea, but you could base a team on a favourite and get the right support for it.
Ignoring that, we'd need a good amount of battlers to actually make this work well.
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I just need someone to really explain how things work to me in terms I understand. It does seem a little easier this gen (I grasp the idea of how Super Training works far more than I ever understood how to caluculate what EVs go where and how many of x pokemon I had to battle to get the desired results and woah maths my head hurts just thinking about it) so this is probably the best chance I'd ever have of getting into the competitive side of it. That said, for me it'd just really be for fun; I don't ever really see myself entering tournaments or whatever, I'd just like to be able to battle with friends and folks here without fear of totally embarassing myself. Also I work really irregular hours so I might not always be around at the same time as a mentor would be. :/ I guess it depends how such a thing would be implemented. Also I understand that things like prediction and effective movesets will probably just come naturally with experience. It's just the technical side I don't really get. D:
(also this seems really familiar to me somehow. wasn't something like this suggested ages ago, like back in the gen 4 days???)
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I may be able to help with that. ^
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Chloe, it helps a lot that horde battles have been introduced. That takes the number of battles required down to about 10 to fully EV train something for a simple spread.
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Alright, well we have a small amount of people interested and a smaller amount of people that could probably do this, but I think that's a good start.
I have opened topic where people can apply to be a competitive battling mentor (http://pkmn.net/forums/index.php?topic=105417.0), which will be followed by a poll where you, the community, will vote on who you'd like to teach! Once we get a consensus for how many tutors we'll have, and how many people they'll each take on to teach, we'll decide how many tutors we actually need, which can be increased in the future if we have enough willing applicants.
So... get hyped! If you were one of those that showed an interest in being a student in this program, this decision effects you as well, so I urge you to keep an active interest and continue to voice your opinions here!