PAX Pokemon League

though the token gathering idea sounds cool, when you think about putting it on on a grand scale, it doesn't work so well...

at PAX 09, there was the challenge button game. everyone got 2 buttons in their swag bags, and had to play some sort of game against other people with buttons to with a button from them. The thing that happened was very quickly people ravaged the swag bags and such. Now I know in your scenario, you'd be having the handheld people handing them out, but they already have enough to do. not to mention, people can just request annother bag, etc. etc.

One thing that we have to keep in mind is how abuseable the system is. In a perfect world, everyone would know what's going on, and what the rules are, and obey them. But in reality, some people won't know the rules, or what's going on, and be left out, or accidentally (or intentionally) break the rules.

Yeah, we can think that everyone at PAX will follow Wheaton's Law, but in actuality, there will always be some that don't. And the innevitability is that we have to plan for those who don't.

valid points.

so... the easiest option to uphold would be the two leagues?

The idea was not two leagues, but two teams that are fighting each other while gaining widgets that let them fight the Gym Leaders. It's so that fighting the leaders isn't the only thing to do, thus lighting the load.

The simplest solution is to have the emblems not handed out by the handheld lounge, but something you must earn through finding a rocket grunt or something. Since there would probably be plenty of grunts around, they could just give an emblem if you go up to them and talk to them - but only one per person per time they're spotted. This would add a filter to how fast people can challenge leaders, which will really relieve the pressure without much additional burden.

Yes, it's more manpower, but it's not any additional work for them if they're already planning to show up as a Rocket. All they'd have to do is have a bag of badges with them, and if we need to, we can just make armbands for the Rockets that do not wish to dress up. Simple and efficient, and the only work that needs to be done is getting the emblems made and passed out.

Instead of NPC rocket grunts, why not have the other players in the league fight each other and hand out the emblems to people they get beat by? Then there's no additional manpower needed as the people playing handling the distribution, and everyone gets to play more.

If your worried about people cheating, these types of games are always honor system anyway. I thought having 2 teams would do a little self policing, because you would need emblems different from your faction badge. Also, Trainers would get to chase down Rockets (or vice versa) and that's gotta be fun. You'd have mini Pokewars breaking out all over! And Turf! ("Let's cross over behind the Ubisoft booth, and be careful, this is Rocket territory...")

As far as money for getting things made, throw up a [url=http://www.chipin.com/7u6]Chip In[/url7u6] so everyone can get together and split the cost.

If your going to do it this way, I think your going to bump into another classic problem in these types of games, lack of NPCs. Even if you only require 3 emblems to fight a leader, you'll need a good number to people so players aren't running to the same person every 3 minutes for the 42 tokens they need. Considering most people are there to PVP against lots of other people anyway, setting them upon themselves clears up a lot of logistical issues.

As for the extra work, I don't think it's much to ask people to swing by the Handheld Lounge and pick up a pocket full of buttons. The whole point of this was to take some of the burden off the Leaders and spread it amongst the 50 or so people playing.

I pretty briefly scanned this thread, so I'm not going to get knee-deep into a discussion about the ideas you guys have presented, but based on what I'm seeing it looks like this would just get way, way too complicated. The league is fun, and having it move smoother will of course be fun, but adding factions and tiers and emblems and whatever just sounds like it would overcomplicate things. Some people were overwhelmed just by the idea of finding leaders out on the floor, I don't think adding all of this stuff will attract more people- rather, I think it will alienate more casual challengers.