>>19719124>So if allowing good players (or at the very least, players that can get a high ladder rating within the span of a couple weeks) is bad cause people just act in their own interests, then go ahead and suggest a system where that can't happen. You need a group of rulemakers who are independent of the results of individual tournaments. This is basic to any competitive game. If a certain ranking of football team got to change the rules between competitions, football as a sport would be universally derided. You will literally not find any serious sport or tournament-based competition that works like that.
What kind of people should these independent designers be? They should have a vested interest in how many people play. A truly competitive game is not just a circlejerk of a few associated people, you need new blood and that means making the game enjoyable. If these people are paid to do the job of maintaining the game's rules, their continued employment will depend on how attractive they make the rules so that more people buy into the game (in this case, pokemon cartridges) and play in tournaments. This is also good because the parent company can hire in professional game designers who have experience in setting up and maintaining other tournament-based games, rather than having hobbyists with little to no accountability do the work.
None of this is to say that the advice of players can't be taken into account; Malifaux is one of my favourite games and when the designers were setting it up for competitive tournament play, they had a long beta test where they accepted player comments and battle reports. The designers, as independent arbitrators and the owners of the game, had the final say.
In short, you need a group of people whose only interest is promoting the game and making it enjoyable and balanced to play, and who are held directly accountable if they fuck up, preferably professional and experienced. Smogon isn't that.
