Over the course of the next few days, I will be making an effort to do some cleanup work around this forum, mostly to send Gen 5 out and usher in Gen 6. What need to know from you guys, the users, is the features and topics you want to see.

Please leave your suggestions, comment, and concerns here.

Planned Features

* A new Rate My Team thread, with new raters and a new format
* A new Battle Request thread
* A new Friend Code thread

I updated the Battle tower rules page a bit ago, viewtopic.php?f=27&t=31218 as the one by Tiger10x is outdated and full of broken links.

Also made a thread with links to PO and Showdown that could be sticked. viewtopic.php?f=27&t=31221
and a new Battle request thread that could be built off of and stickied to replace the old one. viewtopic.php?f=27&t=31219

TL;DR Sticky my crap plz.

I'm all for a new RMT format, as long as it's not the same thing as the last two gens, otherwise it will be doomed to fail.

A while ago I was researching how player rating systems work in competitive activities (an example being Pokemon battles) and I was thinking maybe we could implement internal Psypoke battler ratings. It would work the same way as Wi-fi ratings or Pokemon Online ratings (being based off of the Xbox TrueSkill system) but would reflect only results from battles conducted within the community.

How I envision this might work is that when starting a tournament, the host would declare whether or not it is a 'Rating Tournament' and then outcomes of all battles conducted in such a tournament would affect a player's rating. No other battles would affect your rating. A new player would have a rating of 1500 and then after every rating battle the rating would be mathemagically increased or decreased depending on if you won or lost. I suppose I'd post updated ratings when a tournament ends or dies or maybe even mid-tournament if it is a long one.

Traditionally the purpose of such ratings was to be able to identify players of similar rank, with which a game would be more enjoyable because of the even matchup. In our case it could also be a fun way to see how we stack up against each other and possibly also be used in future tournaments to set matchups or even give stronger battlers byes if an awkward number of players signed up for a tournament.

What do you guys think?

I'm for it so long as it can be kept updated or if the site itself can keep it active. (Say I can press a button in ChillBill's profile that says I lost a battle with him so he'll gain points/ I'll lose points. Less points I have the less he wins etc.) Still have to run on a bit of honor system though.

I like that idea. As to the honor system issue, as long as both participants post or the other is contacted to confirm, that shouldn't be an issue. Mind you, I don't really believe that anyone would try to lie just for the sake of a few points.

The ratings would be maintained in a sticky or announcement post in the battle tower. There are far too few members that participate in tournaments here to make implementing a new user profile feature worthwhile. Also, as Dare said, I don't think we will have a problem with people lying about battle outcomes.

We could do a trial run based on the results of ChillBill's tournament that is ongoing now.

Oh and EvilPenguin and I are indeed working on the other suggestions that were made in this thread and elsewhere .

I'd be interested in participating in this score program. Something like Mason's idea may want to be kept in mind, but for now, it probably won't be necessary, although I do agree with it. I doubt that Psypokes will be reaching Smogon's level as a battling community in the near future, but if more people are drawn in to participate…? I share Mason's worry about the scores being manually updated, as it relies on someone to do the calculations and updates themselves, and something similar to this has been seen before in the Shiny Collector Thread, who's list hasn't been updated since 2007.

Maybe having a program on the main site that you log in to, input your opponent's name and the result of your battle, and it outputs your win:lose:tie ratio, as well as your score, but (maybe) doesn't officially update until your opponent does the same? And then you keep the output in your signature or something? Maybe allowing a line next to your location under the avatar? I don't know how difficult something like that would be to write, though, but it's a suggestion.

An even more basic solution would simply be to have a calculator on the main site that allows you to do the calculations yourself, either with your current score or your win-loss ratio, and each individual person keeps track of their own record, and displays it as they see fit. As this would be between Psypokes members, it probably wouldn't be too hard to hold players (at least the ones who are interested in the community) to an honor code.

Other than that, I can't really think of what I'd want to see in the Battle Tower…I might like to see the team rating tread reopened and revamped (for competitive and battle facility related teams), but that's a matter of finding consistent raters who know what they're talking about as well, isn't it?

So about that Battle Request thread...

All that ever happens in there is once every few weeks or so a new member pops in asking for a battle. Do any of you Battle Tower regulars actually respond to these requests? I'm pretty sure the poster is long gone by the time the next new member comes along and responds to a request, if they respond at all.

If my suspicion is correct in that no battles actually result from posts in the Battle Request thread, then the only purpose of the thread is to keep idle requests contained in one place. In that case, the thread should be rethought or just closed.

I was thinking maybe just keeping a list of users who wouldn't mind being PM'd by others with battle requests or something like that.

Comments? Suggestions?

I think the same . Ya if anything comes of this put me on the list.

I really don't think any battles come out of it. Personally I haven't responded to a battle there since HGSS.

We could remake it, but I doubt it would stay functioning for yery long. I did have an idea of deleting and remaking it seasonally so the list isn't intimidating to look thru. But even that would likely fail.

We could make a thread similar to the Friend Safari Thread, in which members post their FCs and we add people who want to battle and challenge them whenever we happen to see them on in-game.

And perhaps a separate thread to post battle results and have them affect their Psypoke ratings.

I agree with Mason, just make a thread like the FC thread. I think that would work better.

Also for the rating thread..maybe lock it or something after like a week or something, let the raters rate the teams posted in that time, then reopen for people to post. The thing i found with the last one was that it kinda took awhile(which is understandable, ) for the rate to be posted, or that some people were being overlooked(At no fault of the raters, things just moved kinda fast at some points). OR something so that everyone has a fair chance to get rated.

I would, howver, be AGAINST, ANYTHING like what smogon has for ratings....that format doesnt work AT ALL. Seriously 300 views for my team, no reply, no Mod telling me if something was wrong.

This could probably be updated now to say Gen VI.

^Rebumping this since XY has been out for eight months.

As dead as it's been I fully agree with this. Would rather have the occasional spam pre-E4 team than no posts for over a month.

So like a sub-forum where we can post competitive teams, and avoid being drowned out by other teams vying for a review as well? I could go for that.

I'm indifferent as to the team rating system, but I have an idea regarding battle requests. While it may be a challenge to implement, perhaps some sort of status bar could be added under each user's profile to indicate whether or not they were up for friendly matches. For example, a user could go into their User Control Panel and check or uncheck a 'battle ready' box. If checked, an icon of some sort would appear near their name for all of that user's posts if they are currently online. A prospective opponent could then click on it to send an automated/prewritten PM to that user requesting a battle. Of course, this would depend on both players having an accessible Friend Code, maybe even attached to the user ala gender or location.

I would like to see your well updating for this forum.
I have enjoyed with this forum. Thanks.