[X] My Assistant

[Praetor]

Hey everyone, Praetor here

I've posted a few of these topics since the GTS+PL closed a while back, but I finally think I have workarounds to the issues that shot down the GTS+PL revival.

Gym Leader Inactivity
Near the end of the GTS+PL, the main issue from a general Member perspective was simply the Gym Leaders not checking their Gym threads. I had posted applications to every open Gym at the time (which was somewhere between 5 and 7), and only one of them responded back. The others didn't accept or deny the request, and there were also requests months before and after mine that they hadn't responded to either. This can't necessarily be directly fixed from the stance of Moderators or whoever may be in charge of the Gyms. For the most part this can only be combated by Gym Leaders themselves remaining active, and possibly having consequences for not tending to their gym, such as the Gym Leader being removed from their position.

GPX+ Pokemon Reward
Suggesting a new novelty for defeating each gym as one of the first ideas I had to combat the "more people are interested in GPX+ than GTS+" problem. Although there's a few issues with that:

• If a gym closes down, it's impossible to get that novelty Pokemon again
• Suggesting new novelty Pokemon is simply against GTS+ rules

So instead of a novelty Pokemon, why not offer them a shiny Pokemon that the gym has? For example, let's say the fire-type gym consists of Charmander, Charmeleon, Charizard, Vulpix, Ninetales, Growlithe, Arcanine, Ponyta, Rapidash, and Magmar. There are two ways to offer a shiny, as far as I can tell. They are:

• If the main Pokemon/mascot of the gym is Charizard, they get a perfect IV shiny Charmander as their prize
• They can choose a shiny of any of the Pokemon: shiny Charmeleon, shiny Vulpix, shiny Arcanine, etc.

GPX+ Item Reward
Instead of rewarding the victors with a Pokemon reward, we may try rewarding them with some sort of item reward, whether it's

• Some preset denomination of Points or Pass Orbs to spend in the Shop
• Various Evolution Items, Evolution Stones, or Miscellaneous Items

Multiple Generations capable of wi-fi battles
One of the most legitimate reasons that Gym battles wouldn't work, is that there are several non-compatible generations of Pokemon that could be used for Gym battles. With the wide variety of non-compatible games and non-compatible generations, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to find games that everyone interested in gyms has. For example; DPPt/HGSS, BW/B2W2, XY, and ORAS are not cross-compatible, whether is be because they're cross-generational such as DPPt and BW, or added new Pokemon such as XY and ORAS.
One way around this is to have all Gym Battles over Smogon's Battle Simulator. It's a simple way to let all members participate in Gym Battles. However then we lose the aspect of Gym challengers (and Gym leaders) training their own Pokemon to the point where they can

Rules, taking into account everything above
[list][*]Most things from the original GTS+PL would stay the same; challengers would have to post their team in a thread, and have to choose from among that team when challenging Gyms.
[*]If holding Gym battles over Smogon's Battle Simulator, it may become imperative to have a rule nerfing perfect-IV teams coming through. I personally suggest setting "total IV max", to say 150 (31 IVs in each stat would be 186 IVs total). This limits them the way that that EVs are limited to 510. Users would note their EV totals in their team post, and this could be confirmed, however tedious, by using Smogon's Damage Calculator in conjunction with in-battle events, such as damage done/taken.

[The Majestic Mr ...]

I like the idea. I might join if it does get revived. Only problem is that I've never been able to get Showdown to work... Granted that was on my old laptop, and I haven't tried it on this one. But yeah I'll keep an eye on this thread.

[Cycloneblaze]

My immediate thoughts on this:
- Gym Leader inactivity isn't its own problem (well, not usually). It's a symptom of the larger problem of general inactivity. We don't have nearly as many users as we did before and we really don't have enough to support an entire GPX+ Pokémon League. Also, having a Gym Leader removed from their position for inactivity isn't much of a penalty, since they're already not there (though it does allow you to replace them).
- GTS+ doesn't even exist anymore. Talking about this in the context of a site separate to GPX+, or competing with it, is a bit outdated. If you're going to have a Pokémon League it's going to be for the GPX+ community - that's the only one we have.
- I don't see shiny Pokémon being given out as prizes, and certainly not max-IV Pokémon, which are so rare that we don't even know if any exist. Novelties, maybe, more likely that one Novelty could be made and the only way to get it be beating one / all the Gyms. Items, probably the most likely, this could even be some way to award an item you can't get elsewhere, in the same vein. The problem with all those is then you need to nag moderators to actually award the items.

Using Showdown is actually a great idea, because it makes battling easy. Which is kinda the crux of the issue - if we have to set up Gyms and Leaders and rules and rewards, we need lots of people to put effort into it, and we don't really have that. I don't want to sound overly pessimistic but I just don't see that happening.
Much better would be to organise more casual battles on Showdown between GPX members. That's probably doable. (Although, regarding Showdown, I don't get your second rule. Why are we limiting IVs?)

[Lord Raven]

I'm not trying to be a dick or really speak for staff, but based on our past experiences with a significantly more active community, this isn't as viable as you may think. Having human competitors has issues with times, people getting replaced constantly, and people losing interest. Our experiences in the past make me hesitant to give anyone a green light behind this idea especially when we have stuff like prizes on GPX on the line.

You're free to make your own independent one but I wouldn't be willing to support this again considering the lack of enthusiasm when I tried to revive it and the lack of order/direction when it was first suggested. I also highly doubt this is something that can be fixed by learning from mistakes, too.

[Praetor]

Yeah, you make a good point. Thanks for the response anyway guys!