Is there any good reason to not finally start testing clauses as planned all along?

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In every era of competitive Pokemon I've witnessed, the number one complaint of nearly every great player in their prime has related to the amount of luck in the game. It's not something we're ever going to remove completely - it's far too entwined in the game we play - but it's something we can limit with policy, and these two clauses are perhaps the simplest ways to do that. Both clauses are composed of moves that are heavily RNG based and have no other effects that earn them a place in the metagame(like, say, Ice-type attacks and RBY freeze), so it is simple to keep them out of the equation to satisify those elite player types and keep the "better" player winning as much as possible. As such, it's not terribly surprising that the divide among users in this topic is largely splitting the people who take the game less seriously and play more casually, if at all anymore(who don't seem to mind these clauses/think it might be some refreshing fun) vs. the people who do play our more competitively inclined, officially supported metagames, who largely fit the scenario I described in my opening.

When you are putting the amount of effort into practice and team creation that is necessary to be truly competitive on our biggest stages here at Smogon, nothing is more frustrating than losing because of luck. I'll be the first to admit many players bring it upon themselves by rolling the dice too many times, but most of us have a very love/hate relationship with this game because there already a huge amount of dicerolls in this game. The first lesson players learn once they start getting better is that sometimes no matter how well you play - how good your predictions are, or how well you maximize your odds - the improbable will happen. It's just a fact of this game we play - there are so many matches and so many dicerolls that weird stuff will happen sometimes, often in important tournament matches and in other important and embarassing situations.

It is the job of the players to put themselves in as good of a position as possible, but there's some amount of help we can and should give them as rulemakers. We've made it pretty clear we think our job here is to make the most competitive game possible, rather than trying to stick to allowing the maximum options - that's why we banned Salamence, Garchomp, the Lati@s, and Manaphy, and why we have an Uber clause at all in these days of Ubers finally having a real metagame of its own. It'd be awfully inconsistant of us, and frankly irresponsible of us, to then introduce an element that inherently makes the game less competitive by taking more power out of the players' hands and putting it into the cold, digital hands of the RNG.

In regards to the main issue of whether or not we should test, there's a huge impracticality in this divide among posters. I suspect that the rather overwhelming opposition by "people who actually play the game competitively" is a good sign that testing would be futile, were it to come about. Let's be realistic, no one will start playing on suspect and discover "oh WOW, I only lost 2 games every 10 I should have won instead of 3, this is MUCH better than I thought!" These same people saying they don't want to test are going to be the people who have the credentials that earn them a spot on the council, or at worst, suspect voting rights, were we to take a step back. What value would the uproar then have?

I feel somewhat guilty encouraging that there not be a test here, since unlike many of the posters before me I was around when the testing order was decided and I just figured I'd deal with it later(though like many others, I may have opened my mouth if I'd known just how much later that later was going to be). However, I'm really not sure what benefit we will gain from doing the test, and I certainly see detriments - I think there's a very noticable and undesirable lack of permanence and legitimacy in a metagame while it is being tested, and after years of tests in Gen 4, I think it is time to let it finally be what it is until it is supplanted by Gen 5. If there is some overwhelming need to test it either now or later I'd rather get it out of the way now, but considering the type of players who will play(and have played in the previous tests) enough, and well enough, to be voting on these clauses when the time would come, I can't imagine there's a whole lot of benefit to bothering with this. I think it's probably time to just let things be.

Sorry, Jump.



I can't quote properly because I'm writing on my phone at work and pre-typed the post in my word processor so bare with me on the replies and typos/spelling errors/etc. until I get home, please.


Firestorm - Two things about the VGC reference:

I do not think I can emphasize enough how different the doubles and singles metagames are, and as such, how strategies and rules that are good/bad/broken in one are often not at all so in the other. Plagues in singles like Stealth Rock and Outrage are subpar to awful in VGC, and as such I'd say this is an extremely faulty comparison. It is interesting that you post this after using DT + Psych Up in VGC yourself, though. I guess managing to lose so frequently with it is a good way to support your point... perhaps if you were to counteract that by winning under standard rules you'd really show us how that shitty Double Team was the difference!

Point 2 being that I seem to recall that, in spite of both Evasion and OHKOs being weaker in doubles than singles, I seem to recall Japan's National VGC champ rocking a resttalk Sheer Cold Suicune. Can you imagine the uproar if that were to happen in one of our big annuals like the Smogon Tournament or the Tour finals or whatever? Even when it is at its weakest it is gamebreaking.

I realize I'm being unnecessarily abrasive here, but I think even doing so on purpose I didn't quite catch up to the opening line of your first post. I'll do better next time, I promise.


Deck Knight - I enjoy the part of your post that mentions the Lapras/Blissey anecdote, because I think it does bring up a good point in that there certainly are intelligent ways to use OHKOs - it's not like I'd just expect teams of 6 scarfed OHKO users, or whatever. The problem to me comes on the other side of the field - the opponent has already made a mistake by giving Lapras a free switch, but the options s/he now has are a little too limited.

Hopefully s/he switched immediately unless it's running something silly to counter this type of set, like Sub or Toxic and pray or something, but let's assume it's a standard Blissey for the sake of theorymon. The odds are horribly against it if it stays in, so what does it switch to?

Well, it knows Sheer Cold is coming eventually, so how about Sturdy?
Only a small amount of Pokemon even have it, which almost necessitates overcentralization in itself, and the problem is made even worse by the fact they're all basically three types. Lapras, Articuno, and Suicune are all going to beat up Ground/Rock sturdy mons easily, while Steel Sturdy mons are going to either have to try to survive without Leftovers against these guys, who can use more conventional special attacks awfully well, or risk being crushed by the Magnezone you can expect OHKO oriented teams to carry. Even ADV OU throwback Dugtrio could do a lot of damage in support of these teams, since even if it doesn't get the KO it shouldn't have any trouble making sure it knocks shit down low enough for his buddies to finish it off and remove the OHKO absorber from the field - that is, assuming your opponent isn't using something stupid like Donphan that has Sturdy but can't actually fight any of these Pokemon anyway.

Point is, there are always going to be a decent amount of opportunities to slide those OHKO users in, and then the other side of the field has to play the odds and hope a few times. OHKOs are just flat out going to work sometimes - they're incredibly at odds with the general flow of play, normally revolving around type differences and switching and predicting incoming mons... there's not enough prediction in just dealing up another hand and hoping for that blackjack. That, to me, is the difference between Sheer Cold Lapras(less so Fissure Hippowdon, who is ever so slightly less absurd because I can use Levitate/Birds) and Fire Blast Infernape - I can feasibly predict Fire Blast like any other move and let my Suicune laugh off the damage. If you'd Earthquaked with HIppo I'd be able to laugh that off too, but with Fissure there's that 30% you just killed your "counter", even though conventional mons would say I just made a good switch. That isn't a healthy change, to me - the idea of a hard counter is dying, but the game doesn't work when it's completely dead.

Writing this reply makes me think of times I've sprung resttalk Sheer Cold Lapras and DT Sub Sheer Cold Articuno on unsuspecting players who clicked the clauses incorrectly, though. Hehe... sometimes luck is fun. Though there isn't much satisfying about winning with that sort of thing, either.

As an addendum in response to a more recent post, I don't think OHKOs being available to both players really changes the skill argument, which is based on the person who clicks the right button more often winning rather the person who wins RNG slots coming out on top. I think if the metagame were to ever get to the point where, even if it were somehow the best move for both of them, two skilled players were firing off OHKOs on both sides of the field in a big event we'd have failed in this role we seem to have adopted as guardians of the metagame. There's not much competitive about relying on the RNG to that extent.

Also, er, didn't SD Garchomp get banned?


Blame Game - I wanted to reply to you because of how many times you've posted, but I'm having trouble finding anything that you actually said. You keep complaining that other people aren't developing their arguments, but I can't find anything from you beyond "see other people's posts," "grrr! your opinion doesn't count because I don't agree with it!," and "we should test because somehow the metagame might magically improve because of it, but I'm not actually going to try to explain how"? Am I missing something here?
 

Jackal

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There are already enough instances where major tournaments are decided by speed ties / critical hits / what have you. And there is always a riot of people complaining about "hax" and "im still better than you are" etc.

Would anyone really be happy if on the last turn of a tournament game it was an Articuno against a CB Tyranitar and in a normal situation Tyranitar has this won (barring a freeze, something we cannot control), but all of a sudden Articuno has a 30% prayer and uses it, and it wins?

If this situation would make you happy, I know for a fact you have never tried to win a tournament, never put in the hours to make the "perfect team" and take the roller coaster ride that is making a name for yourself as a competitive battler.

If this situation would make you happy you really have no business arguing anything about trying to make this game competitive.
 
Synre said:
Blame Game - I wanted to reply to you because of how many times you've posted, but I'm having trouble finding anything that you actually said. You keep complaining that other people aren't developing their arguments, but I can't find anything from you beyond "see other people's posts," "grrr! your opinion doesn't count because I don't agree with it!," and "we should test because somehow the metagame might magically improve because of it, but I'm not actually going to try to explain how"? Am I missing something here?
It's not that they aren't developing their arguments, it's that the extent of their arguments is "this move really bothers us when it is used in a match; therefore, there is no reason we should allow it in the metagame." Well, yes there is: the metagame could be directly or indirectly improved by their presence. And I don't really understand your "you didn't give any examples of this happening" comment. I didn't give specific examples of probable improvements, sure; I don't have enough experience playing in the current metagame to make any of those, as you have been so kind to point out. I did say "well the metagame could be balanced out by their presence," which as far as I'm concerned is strictly true regardless of whether I support it with elaborate, well-reasoned theorymon.

And I'm sorry if it seems like much of the content of my posts is just me pointing out how absurd I find 'your' arguments, but I really think this is a result of the fact that "man, these moves have no explicit effects that are not probability-based. Therefore, the only impact they could possibly have on the metagame is to make it less skill-based, regardless of any indirect effects that they could have" is just blatantly non sequitur. I don't really know how else to put it, or reason through why it doesn't make sense. Some slightly-more-reasonable people seem to revise that argument to "the most apparent impact these moves have on the metagame is also the only important impact for us to consider." This argument at least has the potential to make sense; you are at least admitting that moves can have indirect as well as explicit impacts on the metagame. Except everyone has just left it alone to speak for itself instead of supporting it. So again, the ridiculousness of this argument is really self-evident to me: no, there is no reason to believe that the immediately-apparent impact of moves is inherently more important than any indirect effects that they may have, much less the only impact that should be considered. You need some actual external justification as to why the explicit impact of the moves is the only one that should be taken into account.

So far, there are three arguments that have tried to do this.

Argument number one is Aldaron's argument, which is that "most of the top players really, really hate those explicit effects. The very notion of a OHKO or Evasion move being used successfully, in any context, instills these players with such blinding fury that any positive effects the moves could have, such as an overall balancing of the metagame, are rendered invisible to them." Obviously I'm paraphrasing his statement that "most of the good, active players don't think it is worthwhile to even test (we don't care about the magnitude of significance evasion / ohko would have)." This argument does not address the potential effects of OHKOs/Evasion at all; it just says that we should bend to the will of the top players because it's important to keep them happy, and that's all. I don't really know how to respond to this argument other than that it is severely inconsistent with the entire Suspect Test process up until now. As for whether it is really that important to pander to top players, in a way I totally support that mindset, but it's certainly a debatable point. I won't make any other statements on that.

Argument number two is whistle's argument that "sure, OHKOs/Evasion moves could have an indirect impact on the metagame that may or may not be positive. We shouldn't care about that, though, because we know for sure that their explicit effects are negative. Why introduce something that we know will cause problems, when we aren't certain of any of its potential improvements? It is difficult to evaluate those indirect impacts anyway, so testing them might not even help us learn much of anything." Half of this is stuff I'm probably just extrapolating from his posts, so sorry if I've misinterpreted anything. Anyway, this argument actually gives me a reason to consider that maybe the most apparent effects of OHKO/Evasion moves are the only ones that we should bother talking about, which is good. Like the first argument, though, it isn't consistent with how we've been operating this process for years now. No Suspect has been banned just for having some particular ill effect on the metagame--it had to be "net negative," if not outright broken. And the definition of Suspect is "Any Pokémon, move or clause that respectively may benefit competitive standard or uber battle if moved or implemented elsewhere," which clearly leaves room for an Evasion/OHKO test regardless of whether we're "certain" of some of the moves' ill effects.

Argument number three is Jackal's argument regarding tournaments. "Yes, the metagame as a whole could somehow improve as a result of introducing OHKOs/Evasion moves. That does not matter though, because tournaments are the most important aspect of competitive Pokemon; luck already has a huge impact on which player is deemed the 'best' in a tournament format (you can lose one match by 'hax' and be eliminated in the finals of a tournament), so it would be ridiculously irresponsible of us to increase its effects even more, regardless of any widespread potential improvements." Honestly, part of me likes this argument because I think tournaments should one day become the centerpiece of this community. On the other hand, we have never decided against classifying something as a Suspect simply because of its potential effects on tournaments--for one thing, I think Deoxys-S would have been put to rest a lot sooner if tournaments were ever considered an important factor. Also, I can think of no reason to use the limitations of our tournament format to shape our banlist. Shouldn't it be the other way around? I would maybe be able to agree with this if our current format weren't so abysmal--if tournaments were reasonably consistent and competitive, sure, it would be a pretty big pain to say "huh, so we're going to unban some moves nobody really likes. This will ruin tournaments, but whatever, we'll just reconfigure everything afterwards." That isn't the case though. You are just saying that this currently-awful form of competition would be made even more awful, and it's like, "yeah, I guess you're right?"

Even if we were to pretend for a moment that tournaments were the most relevant form of competition on Smogon, though, I don't think this argument would necessarily prove that testing shouldn't be done. I don't think it's entirely obvious that the reintroduction of Evasion/OHKOs would harm tournament competition, especially since many people who argue against these tests (and certainly many who argue for it) don't even believe that OHKOs and Evasion are effective tactics. I understand that some high-level players believe that these moves could indeed be effective, and therefore harmful in high-level tournament play, but not everyone feels that way, and I mean, that seems like something we have tests for.

I don't know how to end this post, so, whatever.
 
I'm glad you expanded in that post, Blame Game, because I definitely think it's the best you've made in this thread and I think I understand your side a little better now, but that "can't theorymon probable improvements due to lack of experience in the metgame" is a roadblock, I think. You and aldaron can pass the burden of proof garbage back and forth all you want, but since your opposition here is basically "the voters," I think you're going to need to convince us we're wrong at some point to get what you want, and I'm not so sure I understand the way you're going about it.

Whether you agree with the premise or not, as the anti-clause side has stated, allowing those moves in the game will increase the amount of battles and potential battle situations where (im)probability trumps good decisionmaking. This isn't theorymon - it's fact. There's some theorymon in my previous post(though it was half-sarcastic), but there's almost none in the rest of the thread; there's a fairly concrete argument going against you. You're not going to get anyone to change their minds about that by saying "well somehow OHKO users/evasion users existing will positively change the metagame." Some theorymon may be required(I actually would argue there are next to zero positive changes right now, theorymon or no, though there would certainly be changes), but you've gotta give something - these unmentioned, ambiguous changes that might occur maybe are kind of the long hand version of just writing "Nuh-uh!" Somewhat ironically, without thinking about some probable, positive changes might occur you're just hoping this test happens to luck into positive change. I'm not so confident this will occur.

I think you'll find most of your opposition takes exception to your response to Jackal's argument, as well. Flawed or no, you may want to remember you're on a competitive Pokemon website. Most of us play this game "seriously," and most of us do so in tournaments. The essence of "eh tournaments suck anyway" is not a very convincing retort.
 
I don't understand why I would ever need actual theorymon to support a test here. That part seems to be "covered" by the actual test. I shouldn't have to convince you that Evasion and OHKOs will improve the metagame, just that they feasibly could. Again, we're talking about a test here; it's not like I'm (actively) advocating that we merely unban the moves and let everyone run wild.

I mean, yeah, you're probably right that it would "behoove me" to pick the game back up, come up with some solid theory, and post some specific examples of potential metagame improvements. My primary concern is presenting an argument that logically justifies testing the moves, though, and nothing more. If people really need me to go above and beyond to convince them personally that this test would be a pleasant and fruitful experience, I consider that "their problem."

The essence of "eh tournaments suck anyway" is not a very convincing retort.
I think it's very convincing in the face of potential widespread metagame improvements, a claim that Jackal seemed to have no issue with. The fact of the matter is that if "somehow" the metagame were improved by the reintroduction of these moves, our incredibly flawed tournaments falling victim because of how incredibly flawed they already are to begin with seems like a very silly reason to preserve the status quo.
 

Eo Ut Mortus

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No Suspect has been banned just for having some particular ill effect on the metagame--it had to be "net negative," if not outright broken. And the definition of Suspect is "Any Pokémon, move or clause that respectively may benefit competitive standard or uber battle if moved or implemented elsewhere," which clearly leaves room for an Evasion/OHKO test regardless of whether we're "certain" of some of the moves' ill effects.
If this definition were to be taken literally and without exception, then everything in Ubers should be tested, as they could, like OHKOes and Evasion, "positively benefit the metagame". We can theorize the full effects of unbanning Mewtwo, but we wouldn't for sure know what they were without testing. If you claim that we don't test these Pokemon because they are "outright broken", then I argue that Evasion / OHKOes are "outright uncompetitive" based off of the Characteristics of a Desirable Metagame. We can forecast the effect of Pokemon based off of the Characteristics of an Uber; I don't see why we can't draw an arbitrary line when it comes to OHKOes/Evasion.
 

Syberia

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I, like Aeolus and many others, am fundamentally and philosophically opposed to allowing evasion and OHKOs into the metagame at all for reasons already stated - they say nothing about skill, and everything about luck. No matter how small their impact, the fact remains that introducing them is simply introducing luck at the expense of competitiveness.

As for species clause, I would not be opposed to testing it*, were it not for the practical consideration that it creates an entire new metagame, one in which the outcomes of all prior suspect tests are likely null and void, and thus must be repeated. With gen 5 knocking at our doorstep, this is simply not practical.


*Though in all fairness I can see numerous issues arising with any metagame in which it was not present, namely the fact that battles ultimately come down to a crapshoot of what both players brought with them, as no team can realistically hope to even have a chance against all others, even with perfect playing/prediction, when you figure that the number of possible team combinations increases exponentially.
 
I, like Aeolus and many others, am fundamentally and philosophically opposed to allowing evasion and OHKOs into the metagame at all for reasons already stated - they say nothing about skill, and everything about luck. No matter how small their impact, the fact remains that introducing them is simply introducing luck at the expense of competitiveness.
This is not true. Evasion and OHKO moves are strategies, and like all strategies they have good ways to be used and poor ways to be used. I think a lot of people have this slanted opinion that the only way you could ever be successful with OHKO's or evasion moves is if you hax your opponent, While it is true that if all luck is against you any strategy relying on OHKO's or evasion will fail and that these strategies will work best with lots of luck on your side. But the same can be said about any strategy involving fire blast or stone edge or any other move with a non-guaranteed side effect or imperfect accuracy. However just like a good player is capable of using imperfectly accurate moves even when they fail sometimes and being successful most of the time a good player should be able to use evasion and OHKO moves in such a way that he will succeed most of the time.

There are many elements of pokemon that we could ban in order to reduce the amount of luck in games, such as moves with less than perfect accuracy. However we allow these, presumably because we think that the increased variety in potential strategies outweighs the cost of increased luck involvement in battles. I do not know if this would be the case for OHKO's and evasion moves, but I think that preforming a test is the only good way to find out.

possible team combinations increases exponentially.
there are currently 480 non-uber pokemon, of them rotom has 6 forms and wormadam has 3, thus the number of ways to choose 6 pokemon for an OU team with species clause enforced is is C(471,6)+6*C(471,5)+3*C(471,5)+3*6*C(471,4)= 1.64244e13
without species clause enforced the number would be C(485,6)=1.75241e13 only about a 6.7% increase
 

Matthew

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there are currently 480 non-uber pokemon, of them rotom has 6 forms and wormadam has 3, thus the number of ways to choose 6 pokemon for an OU team with species clause enforced is is C(471,6)+6*C(471,5)+3*C(471,5)+3*6*C(471,4)= 1.64244e13
without species clause enforced the number would be C(485,6)=1.75241e13 only about a 6.7% increase
The problem is not the increase is team diversity, it's about how in this generation it's hard enough to counter one pokemon, let alone several. Can you say that creating a non gimmick team you'd be able to beat a team of 5 Kingdra with RD Bronzong? Hell no, Kingdra is hard enough to stop in the rain, let alone five of them. No, removing species clause would be horrid for the game, and I object to it completely. I also don't like the idea of testing OHKO clause at all. It adds a complete element of chance to the game, if I switch my Bronzong into a Tauros normally I would be completely safe, but now there's a chance my solid counter is now ruined by a 30% chance? Hell no. I have no opinion on evasion clause, but it seems that a lot of people don't see any benefit in testing these clauses at all.
 

cim

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The problem is not the increase is team diversity, it's about how in this generation it's hard enough to counter one pokemon, let alone several. Can you say that creating a non gimmick team you'd be able to beat a team of 5 Kingdra with RD Bronzong? Hell no, Kingdra is hard enough to stop in the rain, let alone five of them. No, removing species clause would be horrid for the game, and I object to it completely. I also don't like the idea of testing OHKO clause at all. It adds a complete element of chance to the game, if I switch my Bronzong into a Mamoswine normally I would be completely safe, but now there's a chance my solid counter is now ruined by a 30% chance? Hell no. I have no opinion on evasion clause, but it seems that a lot of people don't see any benefit in testing these clauses at all.
So you object to testing something to see how horrid it is for the game on the grounds that you think it would be horrid? Isn't that what the test would find out?

I feel the main objection would be whether or not it's a fundamental departure from how we define "Pokemon" as a game, rather than "are we going to theorymon it as broken or not".
 

TheMaskedNitpicker

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It adds a complete element of chance to the game, if I switch my Bronzong into a Mamoswine normally I would be completely safe, but now there's a chance my solid counter is now ruined by a 30% chance?
Mamoswine doesn't learn Sheer Cold and Fissure won't hit your Bronzong.
 

alex

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well I don't know how much is really left to be said but I'm belatedly throwing my weight as a player behind not testing Evasion or OHKO Clause!

while I could comb through the thread and summarize for you all (yet again) the myriad insightful and delightful arguments put forth by my brothers in arms, I will instead provide you with a relatively simple bullet-pointed list attempting to elucidate my by now redundant thought process! without further ado,

- we, as a competitive battling website, presumably want to maintain - to the best of our ability, of course - the competitive spirit we've striven to create here.

- in order to keep the game competitive, we ought to want to minimize - again, to the best of our ability and to a necessarily subjective and arbitrary extent we deem "reasonable" - the impact and role of lady luck and random chance in any given battle. after all, the more of the game we turn over to a silly roll of the die, the less competitive and skill-based it becomes!
- note that this means even if when viewed in isolation Double Team and Acid Armor are essentially rather similar over thousands of battles, that is not at all the case in the short term. especially not in a term as short as a single tournament battle, the likes of which can often times be rather important (as anyone who has participated in one would hopefully know), which Jackal noted above. extensively.

- as virtually every single active player to show his...username in this thread agrees, Evasion and OHKO moves without even the most remote hint of doubt increase the role chance plays in an individual battle, taking away more and more of a player's dominion over winning his own matches and handing it gleefully and irresponsibly over to a harsh, cold (supposedly) random number generator. does this make the game less competitive? yes.
- could unbanning these moves cause other changes, like the rise of Lapras and the fall of something that doesn't like Lapras?! sure. is this good or bad? uhh... no?
- basically, if the result of removing Evasion/OHKO Clause is that luck runs EVEN A LITTLE BIT more rampant than it already does and some pokemon see slightly more use and others less, that is a net negative. really, I can't think of any SURPRISE positives that would outweigh increasing the role of chance. neither can anyone else I've asked. no one's saying the SINGLE SOLITARY EFFECT that these moves would have on ~The Metagame~ is to make it less competitive, but that is the most prominent, most troubling, and naturally most relevant one to us as a would-be competitive community. ultimately (this bears repeating), it just doesn't matter how effective either "strategy" is. whether or not Evasion and OHKOs are broken is, to us, wholly immaterial. almost nothing is worth making the game we play - competitive Pokemon - even more luck-based than it already is.

- the status quo makes it convenient to draw the aforementioned line in the sand (our "arbitrary" luck limiter, so to speak... i.e., by how much we should mitigate the role of chance) right at these two clauses. testing them wastes people's valuable time and resources and is highly unlikely to reveal any mysteries regarding Evasion and OHKOs that we can't reason or haven't already reasoned out ourselves. we're talking about playing Pokemon, not curing cancer. it's not a science and it's not that complicated. just about everything about it is subjective.
- moreover, as has been noted, most of the "voting pool" of your typical suspect test is almost all on one side of this issue, and it's not because they all spontaneously came down with some sort of remarkably contagious "whiny baby syndrome," as Firestorm so pointedly (my feelings!) put it. there's simply very little reason to bother. they're done testing - let them play!

there are lots of other reasons why we shouldn't test, most if not all of which have already been mentioned and covered in detail, so I'm going to stop there with what I think is the most important line of thought and the one that was most worth going over again. the short of it, for those hard of reading: Smogon = competitive, more competitive = good, more luck = less competitive = bad, Evasion and OHKOs = more luck and little else = bad, bad = bad. QED? or something.

might edit in some responses to other people later.

+1
 

Hipmonlee

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Ok, here is my much anticipated post on the subject. I havent read every post in this topic. I skimmed them, but the discussion seems to be about something other than what I want to say.

I would have liked to have put this in a new thread, because it isnt strictly on the subject, but in the past when I have done that I have felt it didnt get the attention as effectively.

I want to recommend that we dont test species clause. Not for philosophical reasons but just because I just cant imagine it could possibly pass. And if it did pass, it would destroy our tiers, and basically everyone would have to remake every team they own. It's just too big a departure. A 6 Azelf team would cut through the metagame as it stands with hilarious ease. I mean, we didnt need a test to see that arceus is broken, I dont think we need a test for species clause.

OHKOs I think are broken. I'm not 100% on that, but I am confident enough that I wouldnt bother.

Ok, and onto evasion.

So, for every pair of players, one of the two is more likely to be the winner in any battle (including team building/selection) between them, and for the sake of this argument I will call that player the better of the two.

Introducing luck into the game means making it more likely that the lesser of the two players will win.

I dont think this will happen much. I think what people really are afraid of, is that they will be in a situation where they have no decisions to make, but only attack and hope they hit, and they wont hit. And I can empathise, cause I know that that is frustrating as hell. And DT draws this out over turns and turns. Aesthetically it's crap. But it's not really adding luck into the game that wasnt there already. So competitively, nobody should care.

Now, I am not entirely certain DT is not broken. I have not actually used DT in DP at all since shoddy began. I am gonna do the maths and post it here, just because it is a chance to actually use my newly university trained programming skills, and see how it goes.

Firstly hail mary DTing is useless and removes more luck from the game than it adds.

Like, a counter has to be able to switch in and beat the pokemon in question. Assuming no recovery, because if the counter can recover off the damage, a DTer is definitely not adding luck into the game (unless it manages to stall you out or something). So the counter has to be either faster and kill with one less attack than they get killed, or if they are slower they have to ko with 2 attacks fewer.

If they 2HKO you and you OHKO with a faster poke, they are marginally more likely to pass your counter by double teaming. It turns a 6.25% chance into a 7.42% chance. IE DT helps them 1.171875% of the time. However this means they have to attack with a 75% chance of dying without doing anything, whereas had they just attacked, they can switch if they didnt get the ch they needed. Also they could have attacked twice and used bright powder. This way they have a 15.63% chance of beating your counter by just attacking, using bright powder and double team actually reduces your chance of beating the counter to 12.21%.

Infact DT doesnt beat just brightpowder and attacking unless the DTer 4hkos the counter and then it is only by using brightpowder and double team together.

If you 2hko and your opponent 4hkos you. Then DT with leftovers is marginally better than just using brightpowder and attacking. If its 1hko and 3hko then they are equal (roughly, but its extremely close).

Fair enough, DT doesnt require you to use your item. But I think it's a bit disingenuous to say that DT is adding luck to the game, when it is just giving people the choice to take an option that generally removes luck from the game (compared with brightpowder) but lets them keep their item, in exchange for losing a move.

The other thing here though is that the dter 4hkos the counter.. That poke could just rest off any damage you do to it anyway.. I cant think of a pokemon that is actually used, that doesnt 3hko its counters (only counts if they or you cant recover as well), or couldnt do so if you gave it an extra moveslot. In which case brightpowder is better.. Yeah there will be cases where Blastoise will DT and beat you, but it is still much shittier than Suicune. And if the argument is, I deserve to beat Blastoises if people are stupid enough to use them, I think that is a little sad..

Also chance of winning by dting on the switch against a poke that 2hkos you and you 4hko is just over one in fifteen, and that is the only time DT starts to have better odds than bright powder. And it's only better 1 in 100 times..

So yeah, hail mary DTing does not add luck to the game.

Now for real DTing. Jesus Christ what is this post going to turn into.

DT passing!

Now this is something I am not certain is rubbish. But I want to make a special mention of Ninjask. Yes Ninjask can use DT to help it pass Swords dances and Speed, but consider that they could be using Gliscor (with sand veil). Sure you dont pass the evasion, but whatever, Gliscor is just miles and miles better.

Haha, I just redid all my dt passing maths, cause I screwed it up.. Yeah, OK, dt passing requires full set support. I had actually scared the crap out of myself. I had a 33% chance of getting two misses on with your recipient (IE 4 misses total) just by dting in the face of a psuedohazer..

For DT passing to be effective, it requires passing more than 1 dt. Like, its just not worth 2 moves on a pokemon to make something have a 25% chance of being missed. If you pass to a pokemon with full health, leftovers, that takes no damage from the current pokemons attack and forces it to switch, and the incoming pokemon is slower than the receiver, then you only get an expected return of 2.1 misses. When you used 2 turns setting it up in the first place.

Ok, so it is bad, but yeah, but there is still the chance of the freakish luck occurring. For example, there is about a 33% chance the receiver will get missed 3 or more times (if it comes in, forces you to switch and subs, when there is no entry hazards and it is recovering with leftovers). This is assuming though, that the passer itself was guaranteed to be successful. If you switched in a tricker, a taunter, a pokemon faster than the passer that can ohko or a roarer, as the passer double teamed then the chance of this happening drops to just over 8%. This again may sound bad, but if you compare it with just putting bright powder on any pokemon with substitute, and passing nothing to it. You have a just under 10% chance of being missed three times or more or more. This is a slightly unfair comparison since I considered the chance of the recipient being hit on the switch in in the dt example, but I never considered the chance of the passer being hit before DTing so it seems fair to me. Honestly, passing one DT is not worth it, and passing more than one is going to be really hard, unless the opponent really has no way of upsetting your passer at all, but in that case, wouldnt you rather be passing CMs or Swords Dances?

Now onto straight Sub + DTers.
If you dont consider the loss of the moveslot, these are better with DT than with bright powder. I seem to have broken my miss calculating programme as well. I didnt change anything so I dunno what that is about. Probably some memory thing.. Basically, the advantage of the extra chance of being missed, and the recovery of leftovers makes up for the cost of the turn spent double teaming and then some. But I would say, that generally, the much better option, is to use thunderwave. Arguably raising your evasion has benefits like it remains if you faint your opponent and it works against everything but machamp, but thunderwave has a huge advantage in this case in that it lowers your opponents speed. And you need to be faster to keep your sub up. If you can use thunderwave for this type of set, I always would. Either way, DT isnt really adding any more luck into the game if it is being used in the place of thunderwave. Yes it means more pokemon can use this strategy, but is that actually introducing luck? What if they used Attract, or ConfuseRay instead?

Which sorta brings me to my main point.

It's easy to notice when double team is used and something extraordinary happens awhich of course it will eventually. What is hard to see is when double team is used and that use saves you from some other luck such as a poorly timed CH because they were using DT and not attacking. Which of course will also happen.

But when you look at it, DT has niche uses, but they are obscure enough that, I expect you will need to be a very skilled battler to use it effectively. Because of this I cant imagine that legalising DT is going to result in me losing to crappy players more often than I already do. It's part of the nature of DP that a lot of battles are extremely close, and come down to the outcome of a couple of crucial turns, even against poor players. So when I look at double team, I think like, yes, sometimes I will lose because bad players will get lucky with this. But I already lose to bad players, and more often than DT would cause. I really believe that bad players using DT is most often going to help me win. And if that is the case, then it's not increasing the luck in the game.

It's late and this post is too long to proofread now, but I am going to put it out there, and tomorrow go through it and make changes. This took me a lot of time to do, though it was good programming practice!

Sorry if I change who I refer to with you and they a lot. The post took a long time to put together, so I lost track of who was who I think..

Have a nice day.
 

TheMaskedNitpicker

Triple Threat
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This thread has convinced me that OHKOs and Evasion-raising moves should not be tested in Smogon's standard metagame. Thanks to a lot of the arguments in this thread, particularly Synre's excellent post, I've come to realize that it would really be a waste of time. Like Aldaron pointed out, most of the experienced players think testing is a bad idea and they would therefore vote against it.

I don't play Smogon's standard metagame with any degree of regularity, and I am not and never have been a top player. So why am I posting and why should you take my opinion into account? I don't have a stake in this metagame. I do, however, have a large stake in future Smogon metagames, specifically the double battle metagames that will arise when Smogon adopts an official simulator that supports double battles (Shoddy 2). I am currently in the middle of drafting a proposal for Smogon's initial double battle rules and just as Firestorm doesn't want these clauses automatically grandfathered into Gen 5 metagames, I don't want them to be automatically built into doubles.

Let's go back to Aldaron's claim that almost all people that play the standard metagame avidly and well oppose these tests. I am completely willing to believe that this is true, but I've been asking myself why it's true. That's a strong correlation and I think we should consider the possibility of causality that goes along with it. One obvious theory is that they don't want these moves unbanned because they play the current metagame well. In other words, they like being on top and don't want to rock the boat. I think that's a rather cynical theory and I don't personally subscribe to it.

There's another theory that I think is much more likely. The players who play the game well do so in part because they play frequently. You can play the game a lot and not play it well, but you can't play the game well without playing it a lot. Why do they play the game a lot? Because they find it enjoyable. The skills they need to be competitive in the standard metagame are skills that appeal to them and that they enjoy practicing and putting to use. They like a game that's centralized enough so that you can build one team and, through effective play, counter every single threat that any team can throw at you; a game where you can still cover all your bases. They strive for a game where the best player doesn't just win most of the time; they win every time. Putting OHKOs and Evasion into the game throws a wrench into that whole system, so naturally these avid players are against it. I don't criticize them for that. It's very reasonable.

There are other players who value other skills. Broad knowledge of Pokémon, probability managemnt, and creativity, to give some examples. These players soon become bored with Smogon's standard metagame and stop playing regularly. I don't criticize them either, but they're certainly not earning a spot on a voting council to determine what should and should not be in Smogon's standard metagame.

The real takeaway from this post is that there's a whole bunch of Pokémon players out there that Smogon's metagame isn't even trying to cater to. And I'm not talking about casual players. I'm talking about competitive players that play to win, but enjoy different aspects of the game. I'm talking about players who revel in the sheer variety that the game can offer, players who enjoy probability management, and players who strive to create strategies that nobody has ever created before. I strongly believe that Smogon should start taking these players into account, but drastically transforming the standard metagame isn't the way to do it. Any metagame that attempts to cater to both camps will leave everyone unhappy. Instead, other metagames that cater to these skills should be created. Luckily, the doubles metagames are by necessity going to be a strong departure from standard play.

Synre said the game doesn't work when the idea of a hard counter is completely dead. I'd like to revise that and say that Smogon's standard metagame doesn't work when the hard counter is dead. In doubles, hard counters never existed. Does that mean that doubles is broken by default and that competitive double battles are simply impossible to achieve? No. It just means that the game plays very differently. We need to remove ourselves from the mindset that a Smogon-style metagame is the only possible kind of competitive metagame. I've been playing a counter-free game for years now and it's marvelous. Remember how it was theorized in early DP that the game would now be about executing a strategy well rather than countering your opponent? Well that's how doubles actually is. OHKOs and evasion-raising moves don't have a big impact in such a metagame in part because probability already plays a larger role and there need to be other rules in place that mitigate luck on the whole (such as mandatory best 2 out of 3 matches).

So, yeah, I realize this was quite the tangent. I feel it was a better place than most to bring up these issues, though. All I ask is that you keep an open mind concerning other types of competitive metagames and not assume that what's good for the goose is necessarily good for the gander.
 

Toothache

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Evasion clause is a tricky one. By the nature of the design of the game, there are already abilities that give certain Pokemon an evasion boost in a certain weather (Sand Veil and Snow Cloak users). Some of those have no alternative choice for ability, as in the case of Garchomp. The occasional miss chance can occur in the right conditions, and there's nothing we as players can do to stop that happening. It can be sometimes the difference between a win and a loss. But that is the nature of the game, it is less of a game of chess (although tactically there is that element) and more a competition of random number generators. In a similar vein, the occasional critical hit can be the difference between a win and a loss, and again there is nothing we can do to prevent that from occurring (outside of the use of abilities like Shell Armor).

On the subject of Acupressure, which was never banned despite having the chance of raising evasion by 2 stages, the low odds of getting that evasion boost and it actually helping can also make a huge difference. Acupressure has at no stage that I am aware of been considered for a ban, even though it has low odds of giving that evasion boost and relatively low odds of said boost being helpful in avoiding attacks. It is a crapshoot move in that respect, but potentially very helpful. High risk, potentially high reward.

Now we must face the prospect of allowing a test for moves that raise evasion by 1 stage. The natural extension of this would perhaps be an increase in stall teams, or stallish tactics designed to rely on avoiding attacks that evasion provides. I do not think anyone has brought up the fact that Double Team/Minimize has a moveslot problem - for each Pokemon that wants to use the move, one other useful move has to be sacrificed. In many cases, that use of evasion raising moves is a waste of time - you may as well have put Splash in that moveslot for all the good it did. Double Team has the advantage of being able to be learned by pretty much every Pokemon, the same list as Toxic in fact, with the notable exceptions of things like Wobbuffet or Unown with fixed movepools. This does give it a problem that it can be used by almost any Pokemon, even those which are frail and would not survive the hit that you are trying to avoid.

I can bring two cases of metagames where evasion raising moves were never banned. In Wifi battles, restrictions are made on an honour system, which usually works fine in the case of things like Sleep Clause. It is possible for a player to unwittingly or deceptively add evasion moves without the other player being able to stop him (other than quitting the battle). There are very few players on wifi that use evasion moves that I have come across, and those that do tend not to be very good (and you would not be if you tended to rely on luck rather than anything else). Another case where evasion moves were never banned is in the Japanese metagame. Of course, battles are very different in that corner of the world, and Double Team is once again a rare move that is used by few, from my admittedly limited understanding of how things work.

In summary, my stance is that allowing evasion raising moves means that few would actually use them, for either being a waste of time, a waste of a moveslot and often being a hinderance rather than a help, and even a crutch for players. The allowance of evasion moves would not cause a big impact that I can see in 4th generation battling, those people who actually wanted to win would choose something else to use over Double Team. Of course, there is an annoyance in a loss that comes about from missing a move that should have hit, but there are luck complaints in Pokemon that exist from many other sources.

On the subject of OHKO moves, I feel they should not be tested. As many have attested before, it removes an element of Pokemon that many teams should be designed to face. OHKO moves, when they work, can be a huge game wrecker that removes a level of tactical play that exists at the very heart of competitive Pokemon. Again, OHKO moves have a similar problem to Double Team/Minimize - they take up a move slot, and are often a waste of time and a crutch for bad players. If you evade a move once, it will not necessarily be a huge game breaker, where as if a OHKO move hits once, it will be. Of course, there are many ways around OHKOs built into the game - Sturdy ability, immunities, faster subtitutes - but that might often create an unnecessary bias towards teams that can deal with OHKOs easier.
 

Bologo

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For Evasion clause, I was wondering whether it would be an option to just test Minimize and not Double Team as opposed to testing them both.

The reason I say this is that although they do the exact same thing, Double Team is learned by everything that can use TMs, yet Minimize is learned by 7 pokemon, most of them not having enough room on their moveslots to use it effectively. One of the arguments is how ridiculous Evasion + Baton Pass would be, but with Minimize only, Drifblim is the only one capable of pulling this off. In addition, a lot of the users of the move are slow, meaning that they have to take a hit or force something out before they can even use it.

I realize that there may be the argument of this still putting another aspect of luck into the game, but does it really matter when so few of the Minimize users can even put it to effective use?
 
double team and minimize are competitively equivalent. Banning one and allowing the other is equivalent to banning certain pokemon move combinations (like swords dance garchomp), which is something that I believe the community has previously decided would be too much of a hassle.

but that might often create an unnecessary bias towards teams that can deal with OHKOs easier.
I do not see why this would be a problem. Every powerful strategy in the metagame creates a bias towards teams that can beat it.
 

Toothache

Let the music play!
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Note that I used the qualifier "unnecessary". It is natural for teams to be redesigned to deal with new threats, but not if they become the main focus. I suppose this is the difference between considering a threat in team building and that same threat being overcentralising.
 

Firestorm

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I just wanted to post one last time to apologize for how I started my first post. I didn't mean to be insulting like that. I'm sorry.

I think I've made it clear what my idea of a competitively played game is. I've also made it clear that I really have no stake in what happens with Generation IV and don't care one way or another. When it comes to Generation V, I would love it if we could start without a ban on these moves like we were going to at the beginning of Generation IV.
 

Aeolus

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Ok Jump and I talked we are not going to test these clauses for Gen 4. We'll cross the Gen 5 bridge when we get there.
 
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