All Gens Proposed Changes to Monthly Spotlight Tiers

Diophantine

Banned deucer.
I always get excited whenever Rage does a mass ping in the RoA server in hopes that I will be able to play some niche old gen tiers. Many people vote on the tiers and there seems to be a lot of enthusiasm about them, yet when the ladders come out, they seem desolate. During the RS200 ladder, I got three games over the entire month, two of which were in the same day. During the GSC NU ladder, I got two games in total. It's frustrating to get excited about something and barely be able to play it. So I thought about how this could be changed.

Change 1: Introduce monthly forum tournaments alongside or replacing the ladders for the spotlight tiers.
Reason: Tournaments give all participants guaranteed games. Tournaments for niche tiers such as these typically see more games played than ladders. If you want to keep the monthly ladders up, that is fine. More chances to play. Room tours are not enough - people don't really have enough time to prepare for them.

Change 2: Reduce the amount of spotlight tiers per month.
Reason: Currently, there are three spotlight tiers per month. If we keep the ladder format, it means that interest in the tiers is thinly spread. If we are to keep the ladders, I believe it would be best to funnel all interest into one ladder.

Feel free to discuss below. Would love to hear other people's opinions, and perhaps maybe we can improve the monthly spotlight tiers.
 
2019 October
Rotational UU/Ubers Ladder: BW Ubers, 1407 battles
Community's Choice Ladder: ORAS Monotype, 378 battles
Staff's Pick Ladder: DPP LC, 203 battles

2019 November
Rotational UU/Ubers Ladder: ORAS Ubers, 3062 battles
Community's Choice Ladder: ADV 1v1, 357 battles
Staff's Pick Ladder: BW RU, 184 battles

2019 December
Rotation Ubers/UU ladder: RBY UU, 1057 battles
Community's Choice ladder: GSC 1v1, 111 battles
Staff's pick: ORAS NU, 183 battles

2020 January
Rotational UU/Ubers: GSC UU, 212 battles
Community Choice Ladder: GSC NU, 330 battles
Staff Pick: SM Mix N Mega, 8888 battles

2020 February
Rotational UU/Ubers Ladder - ADV UU, 964 battles
Community's Choice Spotlight Ladder - DPP 1v1, 745 battles
Staff's Pick - RBY OU (No Reflect, Harden, or Defense Curl), 79 battles

2020 March
Rotational UU/Ubers Ladder: DPP UU, 2117 battles
Community's Choice Ladder: SM Monotype, 41638 battles
Staff's Pick Ladder: GSC Ubers, 667 battles

Based on these statistics, the rotational ladder is usually the most popular, so we should keep that one if we want to keep only one ladder.
 
Do people really just pick up random metas just for fun? I'm pretty much only interested in rotational ladders because of the opportunity to play g2-7 ubers. Like when the last rotational thing got voted on I didn't give two shits what gen it was so long as it wasn't rby, I'm only looking for ubers, but I'm fine with any ubers (except g1, g1 ubers is cancer). The idea that having parallel ladders for g2 ubers and some crap like g6 pu would lead to them detracting from each other just seems strange to me

I really like the idea of running parallel forum tournaments, but please for the love of god don't make these tournaments some single elim cancer. Opportunities to play these tiers without having to organise it yourself are rare, so if this rare opportunity amounts to playing 2/3 games then being eliminated (which it will for half of all entrants) that would really suck. I'd go so far as to suggest something like Hipmonlee's exhibition series, which I think is a fucking awesome concept. I just want to play lots of good games in the formats I actually care about, and single elim doesn't facilitate that. Theoretically the ladder would, but we all know there are no QUALITY matches to be found on ladder
 
Do people really just pick up random metas just for fun? I'm pretty much only interested in rotational ladders because of the opportunity to play g2-7 ubers. Like when the last rotational thing got voted on I didn't give two shits what gen it was so long as it wasn't rby, I'm only looking for ubers, but I'm fine with any ubers (except g1, g1 ubers is cancer). The idea that having parallel ladders for g2 ubers and some crap like g6 pu would lead to them detracting from each other just seems strange to me

I really like the idea of running parallel forum tournaments, but please for the love of god don't make these tournaments some single elim cancer. Opportunities to play these tiers without having to organise it yourself are rare, so if this rare opportunity amounts to playing 2/3 games then being eliminated (which it will for half of all entrants) that would really suck. I'd go so far as to suggest something like Hipmonlee's exhibition series, which I think is a fucking awesome concept. I just want to play lots of good games in the formats I actually care about, and single elim doesn't facilitate that. Theoretically the ladder would, but we all know there are no QUALITY matches to be found on ladder
I can't speak for everyone obviously, but I do like picking up and trying a bunch of random metas for fun. Everyone has their own style and mine is to get a wide breadth of knowledge in many tiers rather than a deep one in a main tier (prob not the best style bc I'm not that good at any tier but I digress). That being said, I think the exhibition series idea is a great one to drum up some actual support for these tiers during the month they are available. Single elim tourneys (and even double) would lead to a lot of early exits, especially among less skilled players. It's no secret that the ladders are dead and I'm lucky if I get one match usually in a 15 minute period of waiting, so something has to change bc as the OP says, there is interest in these tiers
 
Maybe have a week with a spotlight ladder and multiple weeks without one? That way the players can play as many games as they want within a limited time.
 

Diophantine

Banned deucer.
Do people really just pick up random metas just for fun?
Yes. It can be fun to mess around and theorise in something you've not looked at before. Adds a breath of fresh air.
Maybe have a week with a spotlight ladder and multiple weeks without one? That way the players can play as many games as they want within a limited time.
I don't think that this solves the problem at hand.
I'd go so far as to suggest something like Hipmonlee's exhibition series, which I think is a fucking awesome concept. I just want to play lots of good games in the formats I actually care about, and single elim doesn't facilitate that. Theoretically the ladder would, but we all know there are no QUALITY matches to be found on ladder
Great point and idea. Perhaps something like this could be done.

It would be good to hear the thoughts of the moderators of Ruins of Alph Earthworm Lutra FriendOfMrGolem120 kjdaas Rage.

I get that you can play Room Tours, but that relies on you being online at a certain time that you can't decide and also the quality of such games aren't usually that high because it's just people using the same sample teams. This is because they don't have time to build them as they don't expect to play it.
 
Monthly forum tournaments are a nice idea (I also had mentioned the idea of making ladder tours in the past similar to the ROA Room Championship but I think there is not enough interesting to make ladder tours work).

I am not sure if the proposal would lead to a significant increase in activity for the remaining ladder(s). There are always 2-3 different gens featured and I don't know how much the playerbase of those overlaps or how many users would play in gens/tiers they otherwise would not just because it's the only spotlight ladder. If we have only one ladder, many users would just not play if it's a gen/tier they aren't interested in. Some others would give it a try. I believe having only one ladder would lead to a decrease of the overall number of battles but also an increase of the battles per ladder.

One option that was briefly discussed on discord was removing the staff's pick ladder and leaving the other two. Maybe we should then make the community choice gen also rotational.
 
Three ladders are fine. The problem is that the staff pick is usually terrible. And this is something I've expressed to RoA staff as well.

2019 October
Rotational UU/Ubers Ladder: BW Ubers, 1407 battles
Community's Choice Ladder: ORAS Monotype, 378 battles
Staff's Pick Ladder: DPP LC, 203 battles

2019 November
Rotational UU/Ubers Ladder: ORAS Ubers, 3062 battles
Community's Choice Ladder: ADV 1v1, 357 battles
Staff's Pick Ladder: BW RU, 184 battles

2019 December
Rotation Ubers/UU ladder: RBY UU, 1057 battles
Community's Choice ladder: GSC 1v1, 111 battles
Staff's pick: ORAS NU, 183 battles

2020 January
Rotational UU/Ubers: GSC UU, 212 battles
Community Choice Ladder: GSC NU, 330 battles
Staff Pick: SM Mix N Mega, 8888 battles

2020 February
Rotational UU/Ubers Ladder - ADV UU, 964 battles
Community's Choice Spotlight Ladder - DPP 1v1, 745 battles
Staff's Pick - RBY OU (No Reflect, Harden, or Defense Curl), 79 battles

2020 March
Rotational UU/Ubers Ladder: DPP UU, 2117 battles
Community's Choice Ladder: SM Monotype, 41638 battles
Staff's Pick Ladder: GSC Ubers, 667 battles

Based on these statistics, the rotational ladder is usually the most popular, so we should keep that one if we want to keep only one ladder.
This is just recently. If you go back, the staff pick is even more niche formats with plays as bad as the RBY OU (No Reflect, Harden, or Defense Curl). Clearly there is a demand for certain formats, like Ubers, or pretty much any SM format at this point.

I suggest keeping the three ladders, but changing the system as follows:

1) Rotational Ubers ladder
2) Staff pick lower tier (i.e. any official tier below OU)
3) Community vote

Throw in Random formats like CC1v1 or those niche ideas into community voting, alongside OMs and whatever else. If the community wants it, it has potential to be active. Maybe change up the process to allow users to nominate. Tournaments as well is a good idea for ladders 1 and 2. Perhaps even communicate with the sections, like if BW UU is the staff pick, maybe coordinate with UU regarding the tournament.
 

Rage

is a Community Leaderis a Community Contributoris a Battle Simulator Moderator
RoA Leader
I’ve been fairly busy this week but I think removing staff pick entirely could be an idea that works. If not what the Immortal says is fine by me (although for RBY as an example there isn’t much else to choose from that is official). FOMG mentioned making community choice rotational as well generation wise, that’s something I’m also open to trying.
 
I like the idea of moving towards a community choice featured tier of the month alongside a set rotational tier of the month. I don't think the staff pick is really needed and it would likely be a burden to have three featured tiers.

I envisage that RoA staff could host swiss-style tournaments for the two featured tiers. Not opposed to two week ladder challenge into a single elim tournament for top placers either.

I have occasionally tried to set up discussion threads for the tier of the month (for GSC Inverse OU and GSC NU) but time (and lack of interest in other tiers) has not permitted me to do this consistently. I do have time to host swiss tours during the covid19 lockdown though.
 

Iguana

formerly mc56556
Hello, all!

I'm a bit late to the party here, but as someone who loves RoA and the monthly Spotlight ladders, I thought I'd join the conversation. These ladders can be wonderful ways to introduce users to new and potentially very fun tiers, so I'm glad to see a discussion happening about how to improve upon them and hopefully encourage more participation in them. Just as a brief example, I had not played DPP UU before it was an RoA Spotlight ladder last month, but it introduced me to what a fun and enjoyable tier it can be!

I like the idea of forum tournaments based on the ladders. As it has appeared to me the couple of times I've paid attention to them, ladder tournaments where top placers at the end of a week qualify for a round-robin style format of playoffs encourage more participation in the ladders. I think this is definitely something that would be worth considering, and what's lovely about this is that it's a great venue for what TI suggested, which is to bring the tiers' specific communities into the process as well. Just tossing around ideas in my head, this could take a few forms: One thought I had regarding this is that if a tier's chatroom would like to do so, it could set up a repeat to broadcast and advertise info about the Spotlight ladder in that tier, and perhaps this could include other relevant info (like about a tournament if applicable) or links (more on that in a moment).

Perhaps my favorite suggestion mentioned in here is Earthworm's idea to set up discussion threads on the specific Spotlight ladders. I think this is a phenomenal idea and one I wondered about last month. What better way to actively encourage participation in a tier and deep thinking and collaboration regarding it than to set up a specific venue to discuss it, share resources like teams, and more. I would love to see this idea enacted, and it would be simple enough to advertise through repeats in RoA and perhaps some tiers' chatrooms should they want to participate/be involved in the Spotlight ladders.

Just briefly, I personally do not like the idea of a rotational Ubers ladder at all. I think that these ladders should be up to the discretion of the RoA community and its leaders, and anything that limits the options each group can choose from, such as via one ladder automatically defaulting to a specific tier, isn't a tremendous idea.

Thanks for reading, and let's keep up the good ideas!
 

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