WAR SEASON II: Discussion

[Felly]

I'm not sure if this is already being discussed by the WAR Leaders since all I'm seeing through a bit of reading in this thread, the Phoenix Battalion thread, and the Awesome thread is that the merge between Awesome and Phoenix Battalion has been called off because some of us, myself included, were against that because of how heavily skewed it would be towards the larger teams and therefore leave Magma, JMC, and Yoga Bears (assuming we can even get 5 at this point) struggling to keep up. I apologize if this is already being discussed and I'm just wasting my breath here, but I'm not seeing anything that's telling me otherwise, so I'm just going to express my concerns in case it's not being discussed.

I understand Awesome and Phoenix Battalion aren't merging anymore, but I still feel as if there's an imbalance in this. At the time of posting, the current team numbers are as follows:

Team Trainer: 20
Prism Legacy: 16
Phoenix Battalion: 9
Awesome: 8
Magma: 6
JMC: 5

There's also Yoga Bears, but at the moment, we're currently sitting at a total of 3 members and still need 2 more to become an official team, so for the purposes of this post, I'll leave them out.

Even excluding Yoga Bears, however, there's still a heavy imbalance towards the larger teams. Assuming JMC gets no more members, they have to do four times as much work to even stand a chance against Team Trainer, who has 20 people. You can say that all 20 of those people on Trainer may not participate, but how do you know that? How do you know that all 20 of those people won't participate in WAR at some point during the course of the event? You really don't.

This event is heavily skewed towards teams with greater amounts of people. The more people you have, the more of a chance you have of winning because there's more people on that team that can participate in events. I noticed last year that it seemed like the more people you could have entering a specific event, the greater your odds were in winning points for that week. That put more strain on smaller teams to do more work because they had to basically do the work of several people by themselves for one section in order to have any chance of scoring points. In a way, I feel like I'm being punished if I join a smaller team; I'm not getting an infraction or anything of that sort, but I feel as if I'm being punished because now that I've joined a smaller team, I have to do four times the work as a larger team in order to feel like I'm not useless to my team. It's a figurative punishment, if you will. Why should I have to do four times the work as another, larger team because I'm on a smaller team? Why should I feel like I have to pull out a brilliant, beautiful, amazing piece of work to be put up against work from five people from the same team? Don't get me wrong, I understand I'm going to have to put some effort into things to stand a chance, but I shouldn't have to put in more effort than other teams to stand a chance at getting a positive result.

Before anyone tries to say that I'm only saying this because I'm a part of Yoga Bears - a team that still lacks 2 members to become an official team and a team that if it gets those two members, it'll have to do four times the work as larger teams - I'm not. I'm saying this because I can see that there's an imbalance in the teams, and if Yoga Bears does get through, I'm going to feel discouraged to participate in non-URPG events because of how much more work I'm going to have to do in order to even stand a chance against everyone else. Even with my team not a real team yet by WAR standards, I feel very discouraged to participate in non-URPG events as a result of this imbalance. I can't say if I'll join another team or not if Yoga Bears doesn't make it to 5, that's something I'll have to decide later, but at the moment, I still feel discouraged, and I shouldn't have to feel this way before the event even starts for real.

I don't want to make this long post with no suggestions, but unfortunately, I don't have much in terms of that because it's hard to suggest something that doesn't go against the spirit of WAR either. My only suggestion is that the WAR Leaders ask the larger teams, in this case Trainer and Prism, if they would have any members that would be willing to switch to a smaller team to create at least some sort of balance; members would not be forced to switch teams, they'd do it of their own free will. This probably isn't going to be a very popular suggestion at all, but it's all I've got. I understand people want to be able to play with their friends, and that's totally fine. However, there should also be some sort of balance as well, and I'm not really seeing that.

[HKim]

Mmmm, maybe the solution isn't to reduce the size of the bigger teams, but to increase the size of the smaller ones.

For The Prism League, I've been focusing recruitment on people outside of PXR, essentially those who have never participated in the War before. Since a large portion of the team are comic artists (including the leader, Neko), asking fans of these comics has proven to be a good way of reaching out.

In a similar vein, I think it's possible for other teams to employ this tactic, especially Team Magma. After all, ORAS just came out, so the "land-creating" team will be rather fresh and popular in people's minds. A good place to start might be DeviantArt. Could search the term "Team Magma" and then sort by Newest results. Artists who have drawn artwork of Team Magma may be inclined to join said team for the War. If you send each person listed a note (say 30 or 40 of them), you'd probably get a good number joining. (http://www.deviantart.com/browse/all...5&q=Team+Magma)

Of course, it's a little harder for JMC and Yoga Bears. The... "joke team" concept is a little more difficult to pitch to some people and tends to draw mainly from the URPG (because URPGers are all crazy). I'm not saying that recruitment is impossible for them, just that the teams might need to try different tactics. Members of these teams may know of Pokemon fans outside of PXR who participate in various Pokemon communities. It might be possible to reach out to them that way for the War event. Alternatively, I suppose JMC could check if anyone in Red Dwarf communities might be interested.


The truth is, there is still a lot of time until the War begins. Teams will change, grow, merge, or fall apart. I think that the time is a good opportunity to take the chance to build up. And I found that simply messaging random people, as silly as that sounds, works pretty well.

[bronislav84]

Harry Neo says he tried that on Serebii. He got infracted for VMs (Maybe he should have done PMs), to friends no less. Really are the staff that petty to care about conversations between people?

My take on this is that teams should be free to do whatever the heck they want. Mergers shouldn't need permission from the organizers, nor should people complain. It's the business of the teams themselves what they want to do. Just my honest opinion, though.

[Neo Emolga]

I'd like to extend a word of caution about recruiting outside of PXR. I tried that on Serebi and got infracted for it. Not every site is ok with people trying to pull their members away to another site.

I also think it might help if the teams with more members encourge the people trying to join them to consider the other teams to even out the playing field.

[purple umbreon]

Hmm.... It does seem like an issue. If it is getting too unbalanced maybe a cap of how many members of a team can enter a section works.
I understand why someone would want to join a big team but I rather join a smaller team. It seems more fun that way. I also don't think those big teams need help anymore which also makes me steer away from them. I dunno, I just feel that way.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

Numbers aren't that important (says the girl from trainer lol). Seriously though, Team Awesome won last year with 10 members. Obviously they are awesome, but they also prove it's not numbers that matter. Trainer had 22 and didn't even get 2/3rds the amount of points of the top two teams.

We talked about these issues before the war. The idea of drafts and team number caps was brought up but that would make things less fun for a lot of people who want to be on a team with their friends or be able to pick what team they join for themselves. And the war is supposed to be fun over everything else, not just winning. Some people find it more fun to be on a small team where their achievements clearly stand out or where they feel like the team is close-knit. Others like to be on a larger team where they are with a bunch of friends or can meet new friends and maybe have less pressure since there are other members to pick up the slack. Others pick a team based on the background and story behind it. A range of teams means there is something for everyone. Personally, I know if I was on a team without my friends or one I didn't feel strongly about, I would feel less motivated to participate.

Unfortunately it's just how war has always worked, to my knowledge. Starting a team is hard, you have to have recruiting power, whether that's on the site or off. It also helps to get the thread up as soon as possible and ask people early before they have joined other teams, since team switching is kind of looked down upon. There are honestly still plenty of members who have not joined a team nor even been asked. I have stopped asking people to join trainer because I know people are getting a little annoyed about how many members we have, but it is bugging me a little that no one is asking these people and they are getting left out. If you want members go and VM someone without a team, tell them about WAR and ask if they would like to try! 90% of people will be very happy to be included and willing to give it a shot. If you want more members, go and get them!

If anyone has suggestions, then we are very open to hear them for next war!

In the end though, this is supposed to be fun. It is a friendly competition on a Pokemon forum. PXR never has drama, this is weird.

[purple umbreon]

Oh, you have a point there. It would indeed be less fun if you are in a team you are uncomfortable with. Well, I hope the Yoga Bears find lmore members so they can join the war.

[Suicune's Fire]

I can see what people mean about numbers...truth be told I had a really hard time choosing. I was first recruited by a team who also doesn't have enough numbers to properly compete, which was sad because it was a cool concept to me to join a team where I knew practically nobody and the team was new. I ended up not joining because of this. =/

Does anyone know how many people Aqua had on it? xD I probably should know, but I don't.

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

14. I checked it all yesterday. xD

[Suicune's Fire]

Oh coolies. xD Well, nevertheless, I'm looking forward to it!