This topic always seems to find its way into other threads in some form, so I figured there should be a seperate thread that isn't ages old.
Anyway, reading the other PR threads, the Scald one in particular, I noticed that one of the main arguments for banning the move is that some things, ie Ferrothorn, are not able to switch into water types reliably even though they should be. This might seem natural at first, but where exactly does this idea come from? If Scald had existed since Red/Green or if Black/White were the first games in the series, would people still be saying that Ferrothorn "should" be able to counter water types? Should flying types not also counter ground types, if not for those annoying rock moves? This got me thinking about other recent discussions (why aren't sun/bp allowed to rely on good matchups?) and bans in general (why is keldeo ok but not thundurus?), because the line always seems to be drawn wherever people felt like drawing it.
A somewhat seperate issue is what people have to say about RNG, as there seems to be an agreement that too much RNG is bad, but everyone has a different idea of where the limit is and what to do with things that rely solely on it. Evasion and OHKO moves have usually been pretty one sided, but what about things like Attract and Confuse Ray? Scald/Lava Plume/etc also fit into this because the only thing that sets them apart from Surf etc is the RNG aspect. A common argument is "pkmn is a luck based game", but why doesn't the ruleset seek to minimize this when we're trying to play it competitively?
Of course there are always justifications like things being "broken", "uncompetitive" or "bad for the metagame" but asking 10 people what that actually means will get you 10 different answers. In the end it seems like whether something is banned simply depends on whether someone says "I don't like this" and gets enough people to agree with him; you just wouldn't know it by the way people argue.
This leads me to the main question(s):
Is "I don't like this" enough of a justification to consider banning something?
If not, what is?
Also, how do RNG-based elements have to affect the game to be considered for a ban?
Feel free to ask if something is unclear.
Anyway, reading the other PR threads, the Scald one in particular, I noticed that one of the main arguments for banning the move is that some things, ie Ferrothorn, are not able to switch into water types reliably even though they should be. This might seem natural at first, but where exactly does this idea come from? If Scald had existed since Red/Green or if Black/White were the first games in the series, would people still be saying that Ferrothorn "should" be able to counter water types? Should flying types not also counter ground types, if not for those annoying rock moves? This got me thinking about other recent discussions (why aren't sun/bp allowed to rely on good matchups?) and bans in general (why is keldeo ok but not thundurus?), because the line always seems to be drawn wherever people felt like drawing it.
A somewhat seperate issue is what people have to say about RNG, as there seems to be an agreement that too much RNG is bad, but everyone has a different idea of where the limit is and what to do with things that rely solely on it. Evasion and OHKO moves have usually been pretty one sided, but what about things like Attract and Confuse Ray? Scald/Lava Plume/etc also fit into this because the only thing that sets them apart from Surf etc is the RNG aspect. A common argument is "pkmn is a luck based game", but why doesn't the ruleset seek to minimize this when we're trying to play it competitively?
Of course there are always justifications like things being "broken", "uncompetitive" or "bad for the metagame" but asking 10 people what that actually means will get you 10 different answers. In the end it seems like whether something is banned simply depends on whether someone says "I don't like this" and gets enough people to agree with him; you just wouldn't know it by the way people argue.
This leads me to the main question(s):
Is "I don't like this" enough of a justification to consider banning something?
If not, what is?
Also, how do RNG-based elements have to affect the game to be considered for a ban?
Feel free to ask if something is unclear.