Has anyone ever tried a DotA-style tournament?

[Ruscour]

Hey Smogon, just throwing out a weird idea here.

DotA's competitive scene revolves around team selection in a rather unique way. In DotA, there are many heroes, as here there are many Pokemon. A captain from each side proceeds to ban heroes, back and forth until there are eight bans. Then, the captains pick their heroes. There are five on a team, and the person who had first ban gets first pick. The pick sequence goes 1-2-2-2-2-1.

Now I'm wondering how this would go with competitive Pokemon. The reason I think of this is because it would be very interesting to see how players counterpick based on what the opponent has chosen. It would implement strategies such as picking a common lead, forcing your opponent into picking a lead that counters your lead, and then last-picking a lead that dominates theirs and using your first lead choice in a different role. When you can see what someone is picking, it opens the way for you to not worry about typical checks, and be more unpredictable.

The logical reason this has never (probably) been attempted is because the games are completely different, and matches start straight away, where you'd have to allow for 10 minutes for players to setup after the picking phase.

It would create a completely different metagame, and while I completely disagree with the idea for regular play, I think it'd be really fun to see a single tournament of this style
played to see how it turned out.

What do you guys think about this idea?

 

[Athenodoros]

A large amount of the talent in Pokemon is picking teams, so that is a vital part of tournaments. It would also logistically be a problem, because everything would take so long: picking, team building, and then everything else would make everything take ages. You could try in the tournaments section though, because they often have twists to the standard formula Tourneys like this.

 

[Treadshot A1]

Interesting, though in still think we need the tiers like now, because you can't ban all the Ubers with 8 bans. However, i would love to ban things I don't like.

Try in the tournements section.

 

[PenguinKnight]

Being a dota clan war player myself, I support this idea!

 

[Ruscour]

I'd be more inclined to keep the ubers out, but include those who were in OU, and suspects and the like (eg, Manaphy). It allows you to fool the opponent to first-pick an obviously "overpowered" 'mon, and you to subsequently counter it, as that was your plan all along, muahaha. But seriously, it adds a bit of depth by allowing for 'too strong for the metagame' 'mons (if they're unbanned), but at the same, still keeping out the 'too strong no matter the meta' 'mons.

I'd really like to see how players adapt to the "first-pick" mentality. A lot of strategy revolves around forcing opponents to make bans. I remember when I was leading a DotA clan (and we were young and noobish), and it was really hard in the banning phase when others had first-pick, because they'd pick non-stand-out-heroes that they didn't want to see, forcing me to ban the overpowered ones in fear of an enemy firstpick.

Just a concept for now, if there was to be a tournament, I'd like to see it primarily for ex-DotA players, or higher-end players to see how they adapt to the pre-game strategy.

I was just going to post here to gauge the general interest in the idea before heading to the tournies section.

 

[Brammi]

if you do this with standard it would make a very interesting tourney idea.

 

[His Eminence Lord Poppington II]

Yeah, tried it; I'm a veteran DotA player as well. Did it as an experiment with a friend, we selected a pool of 12 pokemon each, had the two ban phases and two pick phases, the pokemon pool was defined with a theme, in this particular case ours was pokemon with a BST below 480. It worked out alright, it would need a LOT of tinkering to become competitively viable.

 

[Shy Glizzy]

A format similar to this is PokemonDraft, where player pick individual pokemon from "packs" that are passed around. Although it is more similar to MTG than DTOA.

 

[Lone_Prodigy]

How would you deal with movesets?

 

[Zacchaeus]

So am I the only person who can't figure out what DotA stands for?

 

[Comet]

I once tried this style tournament with, like, 7 of my friends in a mini-tournament. It worked out pretty well, but I don't think this style would comply really well with large tournaments. And seeing how 128-man is pretty much the standard, bar Round Robin's, DotA would probably be among Round Robin tournaments in commonality.

So am I the only person who can't figure out what DotA stands for?

Death of the Asshole, I think.

 

[Ruscour]

Defense of the Ancients, a popular Warcraft III mod. A quick Google would have told you the answer, therefore derp.

When I have some time, I'll write-up a thread in the tournaments section and see if anyone would like to organize it, I would, but I'm really busy at the moment with stuff and I'm Australian, thus not in the common time zone.

As for movesets, they would be completely open. Perhaps someone could use a ban to ban a particular item or move, for example, ban Leftovers if you don't plan to run stall, or something. You could ban Dragon Dance, Baton Pass, Protect, Wish, stuff that would dent your planned strategy, if there isn't a particular Pokemon that you'd think would give you trouble.

Good to see that people are open to the idea, I was kinda expecting to get shot down.

 

[lordkira]

this sounds interesting
though luck is something that plays a huge factor
but sounds awesome

 

[Juice!]

This actually sounds really cool. I'd be in if someone ran a tournament like this.

 

[smashlloyd20]

Sounds cool. Make a tournament for this and I'd totally be in!

 

[ck49]

I would try to do this like the draft on the irc live. If you could write up a script for a bot to do this like they did it would be very smooth.

 

[Ruscour]

An IRC bot would make this flawless. I personally don't have the expertise, and it's likely that it'll just be a single tournament and that the style of draft would never be played again.

After thinking it through a bit, I think it should be standard OU metagame, 6 bans (three each), which can pertain to non-Uber Pokemon, moves, and items.