Tie Conditions
 

A "bug" was recently brought up in Pokemon Showdown:

My reply:

So I misremembered how the DS handles Gen V battles, but the point remains valid: there is no reason why we should be playing by Nintendo's rules for 6v6 Singles battles. We already enforce sleep clause and evasion clause and form our own banlists. Why should we go by Nintendo's rule of what constitutes a victory?

This is definitely not a trivial issue: not only does it affect our simulators and their ladders, but I would imagine this would be an issue as well for non-VGC Wi-Fi tournaments.

So what is the Smogon policy on what constitutes a victory and what constitutes a tie? Should we be aiming for 100% accuracy with our simulators, or can we use our better judgement?

My personal feeling is that we should play by "PBR" rules: a battle ends in a tie if neither player has any remaining pokemon at the end of the battle, UNLESS one player has used a move such as Explosion or Destiny Bond to achieve this effect ("Self-KO" clause).

We haven't used self-ko clause for a while now (at least in tournaments).

I think our win condition scenarios should be the same as the cartridge. If something results in a tie in gen 4 and results in a win in gen 5, those results should be properly implemented on our sims. This is is a fundamental aspect of Pokemon that we really shouldn't be deviating from.

Yea, we implemented Team Preview for the first time in Gen V in order to emulate the cartridge(?) play. Not simulating the win conditions of the cartridge seems absurd to me. We only enforce Sleep & Evasion clause, because it harmed competition, but this is not the case here.

Before making a major change to the game mechanics, especially something as crucial as victory conditions, we really need a solid reason why. This seems more like a "why not?" to me. If these victory conditions are somehow breaking the metagame, perhaps we can consider a new clause. For the time being, I see no reason not to replicate cartridge mechanics to the best our ability.

I don't see a pressing reason to deviate from the cartridge and would rather that it is emulated properly. These kinds of ties are extremely rare to begin with, and it could easily be argued as strategic to force a situation in which you would win rather than tie when both the last Pokemon faint. Additionally, this mechanic doesn't break the game or make it any worse, so while it would be an option to do so (we can easily make up rules without changing game mechanics in this case), I don't think there is really an argument to clause the behaviour.

I agree with Earthworm completely.

I agree with Earthworm and Jabba. Frankly, I don't understand why this is an issue of debate. Clauses do not change the mechanics oh what constitutes a win/tie/loss; they have nothing to do with game emulation. In this case, by changing the definition of what is a win versus what is a tie to something that does not match the WiFi mechanics, we no longer emulate the game. We must emulate the game at all times. Otherwise, we aren't actually playing Pokemon.

The only reason to ever use Self-KO clause is in time sensitive tournaments like the Tour. Otherwise, a tie on cartridge should be a tie in any sense of the rules.

SDS, apparently there are no longer ties in cartridge play in Gen 5. That's why this got brought up :P

SHOWS WHAT I KNOW

How do cartridges handle it then? Because that's what we should be using.

Can we get a full list of changed win conditions? We have LO recoil (and I assume the same rules apply to attack recoil) and perish song. Who wins when the last mon explodes? What about Destiny Bond? And any others I'm missing.

In the games, it comes down to "who lost all 6 Pokemon first".

You kill the opposing Pokemon first, then you take LO / attack recoil killing you. Your opponent lost all 6 Pokemon first, he loses.

You kill the opposing Pokemon first, then hail / sandstorm damage kills you. Your opponent lost all 6 Pokemon first, he loses.

You kill yourself to explode first, then you deal damage with explosion which kills your opponent. You lost all 6 Pokemon first, you lose.

The opponent killed you, then Destiny Bond activates and takes the opposing Pokemon with you. You lost all 6 Pokemon first, you lose.

I'm not exactly sure what happens in the case of Perish Song. I BELIEVE that the faster Pokemon dies first in the battle log, so the faster Pokemon would lose.

I just need to point out that there is some ambiguity to these victory conditions.

Way back about a year and a half ago, I was battling someone over Wi-Fi. We were each down to our last pokemon, and I had my Accelgor go for Final Gambit. Accelgor faints first, and the battle video shows me as the loser.

HOWEVER, while we were actually PLAYING the battle, and that final "win/lose" screen came up, it declared me the WINNER.

I'll try to re-create these conditions and make a recording, but the point is, it's not clear that Nintendo even knows how they feel about this (IIRC, there's something in the pal pad that records whether a battle with an opponent was a victory or a loss, so I'll try checking that, too).

Edit: Confirming this, although still need to make a video.

Player 1's Accelgor uses Final Gambit to deliver the final KO. The victory music plays only for Player 2, and Player 1 is notified that he/she lost. BUT THEN on the summary screen, it says "0/0," then "Player 1 win" and "Player 2 lose." This appears on BOTH players' screens. Note that this is on BW.