Alright guys, I've looked into this idea frequently and have come to a decision to attempt to learn how to do this. I have a fair knowledge of programming as it is (taking 4 years of it in high school) but am not familiar with PO's scripts as of yet.
*this is not me asking for help, I'm going to do this on my own or not at all unless people would like to collaborate. this is merely my asking for your thoughts on the ideas I would like to incorporate
*also, if this is not possible to do please give me a detailed response as to why so that I can save my winter break for more fruitful endeavors, but seeing as smogon has the ability to ban pokemon/moves/abilities ect, the idea does not seem impossible to me
Every player here is familiar with hax and unfair situations in their matches. It is something, unfortunately, we have become very accustomed to. However, I would like to change this.
The idea is to create my own server (which I already have done, but am working on learning the proper scripting in Java so it's not really a functional server yet) and modify the actual mechanics for the game to encourage a more balanced and strategy oriented meta-game more like Chess. Below I'm going to list the changes I hope to implement and I would appreciate any comments, being either support or protest against them, about them. Also, if the changes are possible to even modify would be a big help for me to understand.
RNG
The first thing to go is the RNG. Many times in matches, you take 45% damage and decide that you can roost away the damage and stall the opponent out, this is a winning situation. Suddenly he nails you for 55% damage and you die. While rare, these drastic RNG rolls do occur. More frequently, one could average 45% damage and attempt to hit a pokemon at 44% health but you roll low, hit for 38%, and die in return. You made the right decision but the game told you that you lose anyway.
For this reason I intend to force an average roll only. If the range is 40%-60%, you're doing 50% each and every time. This is something you can now rely on and use strategically rather than losing when you should have won.
Criticals
Criticals have been around since Gen I and have, many times, shut down an opponent unfairly. For instance, a correct play could have been to take a 50% hit and retaliate for the KO, but a critical changes this. Despite making the right decision and right move, you lose the situation because of pure luck. This is not right to me.
The argument against this would be moves like curse and cosmic power. In my opinion, if you need to rely on a critical to save your match, you don't deserve to win in the first place. The opponent utilized a strategy effectively and you did nothing to prevent it. Yes, this would centralize the use of Phazers but over-centralizing the meta-game is not my concern as the meta-game will change drastically with the changes I intend to make. We have rapid spinners for stealth rock, so if your team has problems with curse users, or similar types, then you should have a way to handle it.
At the same time, this might make moves that have high critical chance useless. For this instance, and taking into account the lack of an RNG, I would want to implement a specialized RNG roll for crits instead. Say, (god forbid this exists ever) a move has 50% to critical. When that 50% is activated, instead of dealing double damage, your damage will take a roll. For example, we'll say 25%-75% if your average damage was 50% until I can work out the precise numbers I would like to use. The reasoning for rolling low is that using a high critical chance move has no risk for its reward. You would have attacked anyway, the critical is just a free added bonus. Adding this penalty to it, I feel, would balance the idea of moves with criticals and abilities like super-luck.
Sleep
Something we've all been upset about in Gen V is sleep mechanics. Obviously I would intend to return to Gen IV mechanics, but with a twist. To make sleep like rest in all instances and lasting a consistent 2 turns. This will let you know exactly how long you will be asleep and realize how to work around it. It also eliminates someone trying to stay in and rolling the dice to wake up early. This is something I would like input on as I'm not sure if this would be broken or not. I have no issues with Gen IV mechanics, but I want to try something different and reliable.
Paralysis and Confusion
It can be very frustrating to get paralyzed or confused four times in a row. I'm not entirely sure of what I can do to keep them in the game yet make it less hax-oriented. I've thought about making it a consistent Paralysis/Confusion every other turn, or having it cure after 4 turns (like how it can cure in the TCG, just obviously not in one turn) What are your thoughts on paralysis and/or confusion? I want them to stay in the game for obvious reasons, but they need to be changed.
Freeze
At first I wanted freeze to be removed, but after some thought I considered treating it like sleep where you wake up after two turns. However, when we get to secondary status effects, it might have to be removed entirely to coincide with the changes down there.
Secondary Effects
Alright this is the big one. No one likes being burned by flamethrower, but we use Boil Over over Surf for that chance to burn. This is why it's hairy. I'd obviously want to remove all secondary effects, except those that have purpose, but at the same time a 30% chance to burn is still a lucky burn. My thoughts on this were to increase the percent chance but lower accuracy of those moves.
For instance Boiling water has 100% and 30% chance to burn. Will-o-wisp has 75% accuracy and 100% chance to burn. I feel that if Boiling water dropped to 75% accuracy but got a boost to 50% burn chance, it would be more fair. You're taking the risk you take with wisp with half the burn chance removed in favor of doing damage with the move. This change would occur with moves like discharge, rock slide (flinching) and any other significant percentage effects.
In the case of serene grace I would treat it differently. The ability would be changed to reset the attacks to their original stats. For instance iron head will still be 30% flinch and 100% accuracy, however once returned I would institute a Protect like mechanism. Since 60% flinch IS a reliable option and less hax worthy, it should remain in the game. However flinching 10 times in a row is not. That is why, once you flinch once, the odds of it working would decrease like protect decreasing. Yes protect can hit twice in a row, but you cannot abuse it. This eliminates flinch locks, but can retain paraflinch as a strategy (if para is alternate, you go for the flinch when they can attack, and switch your move when they cant) while limiting it to 4 turns of lock if para turns out to cure itself. This allows paraflinch to become a legit strategy instead of luck based.
Conclusion
So far, this is what I have down in my head. I'd really appreciate any comments you have about this, whether or not it can work or if you would want to see something like this, whether or not my ideas are fair or broken, ect. Keep in mind I do not want to keep the spirit of Pokemon, I want to recreate Pokemon into a more competitive and strategic game where luck is not involved, or at worst very influential. Hopefully I don't get flamed for this, and actually spark some interesting debate over the mechanics and possibilities to create this.
*this is not me asking for help, I'm going to do this on my own or not at all unless people would like to collaborate. this is merely my asking for your thoughts on the ideas I would like to incorporate
*also, if this is not possible to do please give me a detailed response as to why so that I can save my winter break for more fruitful endeavors, but seeing as smogon has the ability to ban pokemon/moves/abilities ect, the idea does not seem impossible to me
Every player here is familiar with hax and unfair situations in their matches. It is something, unfortunately, we have become very accustomed to. However, I would like to change this.
The idea is to create my own server (which I already have done, but am working on learning the proper scripting in Java so it's not really a functional server yet) and modify the actual mechanics for the game to encourage a more balanced and strategy oriented meta-game more like Chess. Below I'm going to list the changes I hope to implement and I would appreciate any comments, being either support or protest against them, about them. Also, if the changes are possible to even modify would be a big help for me to understand.
RNG
The first thing to go is the RNG. Many times in matches, you take 45% damage and decide that you can roost away the damage and stall the opponent out, this is a winning situation. Suddenly he nails you for 55% damage and you die. While rare, these drastic RNG rolls do occur. More frequently, one could average 45% damage and attempt to hit a pokemon at 44% health but you roll low, hit for 38%, and die in return. You made the right decision but the game told you that you lose anyway.
For this reason I intend to force an average roll only. If the range is 40%-60%, you're doing 50% each and every time. This is something you can now rely on and use strategically rather than losing when you should have won.
Criticals
Criticals have been around since Gen I and have, many times, shut down an opponent unfairly. For instance, a correct play could have been to take a 50% hit and retaliate for the KO, but a critical changes this. Despite making the right decision and right move, you lose the situation because of pure luck. This is not right to me.
The argument against this would be moves like curse and cosmic power. In my opinion, if you need to rely on a critical to save your match, you don't deserve to win in the first place. The opponent utilized a strategy effectively and you did nothing to prevent it. Yes, this would centralize the use of Phazers but over-centralizing the meta-game is not my concern as the meta-game will change drastically with the changes I intend to make. We have rapid spinners for stealth rock, so if your team has problems with curse users, or similar types, then you should have a way to handle it.
At the same time, this might make moves that have high critical chance useless. For this instance, and taking into account the lack of an RNG, I would want to implement a specialized RNG roll for crits instead. Say, (god forbid this exists ever) a move has 50% to critical. When that 50% is activated, instead of dealing double damage, your damage will take a roll. For example, we'll say 25%-75% if your average damage was 50% until I can work out the precise numbers I would like to use. The reasoning for rolling low is that using a high critical chance move has no risk for its reward. You would have attacked anyway, the critical is just a free added bonus. Adding this penalty to it, I feel, would balance the idea of moves with criticals and abilities like super-luck.
Sleep
Something we've all been upset about in Gen V is sleep mechanics. Obviously I would intend to return to Gen IV mechanics, but with a twist. To make sleep like rest in all instances and lasting a consistent 2 turns. This will let you know exactly how long you will be asleep and realize how to work around it. It also eliminates someone trying to stay in and rolling the dice to wake up early. This is something I would like input on as I'm not sure if this would be broken or not. I have no issues with Gen IV mechanics, but I want to try something different and reliable.
Paralysis and Confusion
It can be very frustrating to get paralyzed or confused four times in a row. I'm not entirely sure of what I can do to keep them in the game yet make it less hax-oriented. I've thought about making it a consistent Paralysis/Confusion every other turn, or having it cure after 4 turns (like how it can cure in the TCG, just obviously not in one turn) What are your thoughts on paralysis and/or confusion? I want them to stay in the game for obvious reasons, but they need to be changed.
Freeze
At first I wanted freeze to be removed, but after some thought I considered treating it like sleep where you wake up after two turns. However, when we get to secondary status effects, it might have to be removed entirely to coincide with the changes down there.
Secondary Effects
Alright this is the big one. No one likes being burned by flamethrower, but we use Boil Over over Surf for that chance to burn. This is why it's hairy. I'd obviously want to remove all secondary effects, except those that have purpose, but at the same time a 30% chance to burn is still a lucky burn. My thoughts on this were to increase the percent chance but lower accuracy of those moves.
For instance Boiling water has 100% and 30% chance to burn. Will-o-wisp has 75% accuracy and 100% chance to burn. I feel that if Boiling water dropped to 75% accuracy but got a boost to 50% burn chance, it would be more fair. You're taking the risk you take with wisp with half the burn chance removed in favor of doing damage with the move. This change would occur with moves like discharge, rock slide (flinching) and any other significant percentage effects.
In the case of serene grace I would treat it differently. The ability would be changed to reset the attacks to their original stats. For instance iron head will still be 30% flinch and 100% accuracy, however once returned I would institute a Protect like mechanism. Since 60% flinch IS a reliable option and less hax worthy, it should remain in the game. However flinching 10 times in a row is not. That is why, once you flinch once, the odds of it working would decrease like protect decreasing. Yes protect can hit twice in a row, but you cannot abuse it. This eliminates flinch locks, but can retain paraflinch as a strategy (if para is alternate, you go for the flinch when they can attack, and switch your move when they cant) while limiting it to 4 turns of lock if para turns out to cure itself. This allows paraflinch to become a legit strategy instead of luck based.
Conclusion
So far, this is what I have down in my head. I'd really appreciate any comments you have about this, whether or not it can work or if you would want to see something like this, whether or not my ideas are fair or broken, ect. Keep in mind I do not want to keep the spirit of Pokemon, I want to recreate Pokemon into a more competitive and strategic game where luck is not involved, or at worst very influential. Hopefully I don't get flamed for this, and actually spark some interesting debate over the mechanics and possibilities to create this.