Critical Hits (and other such sources of "hax")

if we're going to fuck around with nintendo/game freak's mechanics, then obviously we should get rid of critical hits. they suck.

but since we shouldn't be doing that, i voted no. this couldn't be any clearer to me.

Heysup said:

The point was not to start changing the foundations of Pokemon just because we made one small change. Critical hits have been proven to not be a glitch or mistake by GF, they have been implemented in every game. The Acid Rain glitch is quite obviously a glitch because it makes no logical sense and was only apparent in Platinum.

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the weather mechanics were not changed from platinum to heartgold/soulsilver, suggesting it was not a glitch.

The fact that this is even seriously brought up concerns me. I am fucking embarrassed to have this thread in Policy Review, and frankly, anywhere except firebot.

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this i agree with

Well, it seem like the general consensus is that this thread took things way too far. With a commanding 92% vote on "No", I think it's safe to say that this topic really doesn't serve anymore purpose. There are more important issues to discuss, so please focus your efforts elsewhere. Closing.

Why I voted yes

I'm disappointed with this thread. There is no reason to belittle your opposition in a debate.

As many have noted, I voted "yes" in this poll, in favor of banning critical hits. My vote was a genuine vote. This is my reasoning:

If we have decided that it is our policy that game mechanics are not the most important factor in determining rules (in other words, if we've decided that we can change the mechanics of the game), then there are parts of the game that I would like to change. One of those parts would be critical hits. I would favor a game with fewer elements of chance in it.

Some claim that voting not to strictly following game mechanics doesn't imply this. They say that only obvious glitches that ruin the game will be banned by that, things such as acid weather and classic sleep clause. We won't use it for anything else, so they say.

But we will. Based on discussion results, we already have. Cartridge sleep clause does not break the game, and it is not a glitch. Acid rain, by all accounts I've heard from people who play WiFi, is pretty underwhelming. These bans are not based on logic and competitive spirit -- they're based on fear and 'consensus'. Fear seems like an unlikely motivator in Pokemon, but it's a fear of change and a fear of the unknown.

Rationally, we recognize how difficult it is to know what a 'glitch' is. Is it a glitch when Thunder hits through Protect in the rain 30% of the time or intended behavior? A frozen Pokemon using Sacred Fire or Flame Wheel defrost themselves when they use the move, and then they hit the opponent. If a frozen Pokemon is confused and uses Sacred Fire or Flame Wheel, however, then it has a chance to hit itself in its confusion while still frozen and fail to defrost. Is this a glitch?

A sleeping Pokemon that uses Outrage, Thrash, or Petal Dance is not locked in and won't become confused, unless that Pokemon's Shed Skin activates, in which case the user is locked in. A sleeping Pokemon that uses SolarBeam, Razor Wind, Skull Bash, or Sky Attack is forced to remain in the turn after charging up, and unless it wakes up that turn, will fail to do anything. Which of these are intended behavior, and which are glitches? What would the intended Ice Ball / Rollout mechanics be with sleep? Should Hyper Beam recharge if you KO a Pokemon with it?

These questions, among others, may seem minor, but I would say that they are more likely to come up than some of the objections people bring up in other topics against being strict mechanics supporters. Lum Berry Wobbuffet being faster than your Pokemon with a sleep move, switching into it, and then using Encore and switching out to get a win? This is the proof that cartridge sleep clause is flawed?

We rationally recognize how difficult glitches are to determine, yet still rationalize mechanics changes based on the idea that they're obvious. We say the exceptions will be few, only in extreme cases of obvious glitches, yet change things that are neither exceptional nor glitches.

My position still is and has always been that we should strictly follow game mechanics. However, if we have decided not to do so, then we cannot use adherence to the rules of the game as a reason to block changes designed to make the game more competitive. Removing critical hits would make the game more competitive, therefore we should remove them, and that is why I voted "yes" in this poll.

I think what this poll reveals is that people aren't actually for changing the game's mechanics. Nearly no one who voted "no" in the mechanic poll voted "yes" here. No one's putting their money where their mouth is, except, oddly enough, obi, who has been a very strong proponent of cartridge adherence.

I think people fear change more than they fear the very, very minor consequences of things like Sleep Clause and Acid Rain. I've seen some people whose entire PR posting history consistently argues for changing as little as possible, no matter what reasoning they have to follow to do that. But when it comes down to it, people want to play a game that's more or less just like Pokemon.

The vote on the policy, if stuck with, goes from a clear and concise "line" with regards to implementation to a significantly blurrier line, where we will have to argue and debate about hundreds of "glitches" for eternity. Is being able to still win when someone trapped your Scarf Smeargle really worth all that? Seriously?

I feel as though the vote to choose whether or not Smogon Policy should strictly follow in game mechanics and adhere to the cartridges was largely skewed because the vast majority of the users who voted "no" did so under the premise that if they didn't vote "no" we would have no definitive way of dealing with Sleep Clause. That is unfortunate when you consider that Sleep Clause on Wi-Fi isn't actually a problem.

If we have decided that it is our policy that game mechanics are not the most important factor in determining rules (in other words, if we've decided that we can change the mechanics of the game), then there are parts of the game that I would like to change.

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Simply because we have decided that following mechanics with perfect accuracy is not the be all and end all in policymaking does not give us free reign to edit mechanics at will. I believe that the vast majority of those who voted on the poll, as well as the poll's writer, intended the winning option to mean something very different from "we can change mechanics whenever we think it will be good for the game". And that almost no one who voted for the winning option thinks that Adherence to the games is unimportant, or should be overruled in such a huge way because of a preference for avoidance of luck based elements.

Cartridge sleep clause does not break the game, and it is not a glitch. Acid rain, by all accounts I've heard from people who play WiFi, is pretty underwhelming. These bans are not based on logic and competitive spirit -- they're based on fear and 'consensus'. Fear seems like an unlikely motivator in Pokemon, but it's a fear of change and a fear of the unknown.

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The changes to mechanics for Acid Rain and "classic" rather than ingame Sleep Clause are, as far as I am concerned, made to simplify the ruleset or avoid changing the potentially forcible win conditions (trapped forced sleep, endless loop caused by Acid Rain). If they had a huge competitive impact, they would not be changed unless it was absolutely necessary for a playable metagame. They explicitly are not aimed at having a large competitive impact. Glitches should not be removed because we think they are glitches, only if they are harmful to the game in some notable way.

Removing critical hits however is an enormous change to competitive Pokemon. And one which, other than the idea that current levels of luck are harmful to the metagame as a whole (which I dispute. You cannot expect the better player to win every game, but skill shows in reliability and adaptation to poor luck.), is utterly unjustifiable.

i absolutely agree with everything obi said - we're either playing pokemon or we're not. i don't understand how people can think there is an "in between" where if we tamper with the game only a little it's still pokemon. it isn't.

i didn't vote no here because i think removing critical hits is "going too far". i voted no because i refuse to accept that we should change the game mechanics in any way. if people are going to misquote me on that, i would prefer to have voted yes.

can we just reverse the decision of the last poll?

edit: thank you rbg for editing my vote to yes

The last poll was for minor changes (i e conveniences made possible by using a simulator) and not changes like that. It was clearly said.

And let's not discuss again here if it's still pokemon, that belongs in the other thread ^^

See, the thing with critical hits specifically is that banning them has zero predecent. Stadium games have had mechanical restrictions on sleep and freeze, but there is no format anywhere in any official Pokemon environment where critical hits have been removed. We didn't pull Sleep and Freeze clauses out of our rear ends because Sleep/Freeze are broken, but because there has been a longstanding Nintendo precedent in their officially released games that mechanical restrictions can be placed on these. They have also inspired most banlists with their entry restrictions in things like Stadium Poke-Cup.

If we were to ban critical hits (and it is clear from the poll results and Phil's statement we are not, but this is central to our philosophy) we would no longer be playing Pokemon, because nowhere would we in any official event or tournament have any reasonable expectation that our metagame decision would be catered to. The utter lack of precedent and even the mechanical *impossibility* of implementing our preferences anywhere but a simulator is what makes this suggestion in particular absurd and damaging.

Umbreon Dan said:

i absolutely agree with everything obi said - we're either playing pokemon or we're not. i don't understand how people can think there is an "in between" where if we tamper with the game only a little it's still pokemon. it isn't.

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Because most people here are rational enough to realize that not everything is a Black and White issue (heh), and most of us aren't pedantic ideologues who demand philosophical consistency even in the face of making the game we all play less enjoyable.

The main reason why people voted to not strictly follow game mechanics was so that we can have discussions like this in the first place, not so that we can ban everything that is a minor annoyance. We voted that way so that we could make informed decisions in case something like Acid Rain happens again, so that we don't have to waste our time figuring out how it works and implementing it instead of implementing the new generation of pokemon and losing tons of people because we're stuck trying to program a dead metagame.

Umbreon Dan said:

can we just reverse the decision of the last poll?

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...no.

jrrrrrrr said:

so that we don't have to waste our time figuring out how it works and implementing it instead of implementing the new generation of pokemon and losing tons of people because we're stuck trying to program a dead metagame.

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We do not need to "waste our time" implementing any mechanic at the expense of another if we don't want to. We don't need to make an official statement saying that "this community does not have to support triple battles if it doesn't want to" in order to hold off for a while on triple battle implementation in favor of more pertinent things. We just hold off, and that's it.

Deck Knight said:

If we were to ban critical hits (and it is clear from the poll results and Phil's statement we are not, but this is central to our philosophy) we would no longer be playing Pokemon, because nowhere would we in any official event or tournament have any reasonable expectation that our metagame decision would be catered to. The utter lack of precedent and even the mechanical *impossibility* of implementing our preferences anywhere but a simulator is what makes this suggestion in particular absurd and damaging.

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Then you seem to be suggesting a policy that strictly limits us to mechanic alterations that have a Nintendo-set precedent. Sounds like it would bother the anti-Acid Rain people, though?

Blame Game said:

We do not need to "waste our time" implementing any mechanic at the expense of another if we don't want to. We don't need to make an official statement saying that "this community does not have to support triple battles if it doesn't want to" in order to hold off for a while on triple battle implementation in favor of more pertinent things. We just hold off, and that's it.


Then you seem to be suggesting a policy that strictly limits us to mechanic alterations that have a Nintendo-set precedent. Sounds like it would bother the anti-Acid Rain people, though?

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They coded Acid Rain in, didn't they? If you were to go to a tournament, it would in theory be possible (but unlikely and a poor strategy basis) to pull it off, yes? Then we should have it in, as stupid or glitchy as it appears. It's not an issue in this Gen though because they fixed that, and this is a PR Forum for 5th Gen Policy (or at least this topic).

Or in other words until we find something like this, it's irrelevant. Part of this is because I like the general idea of the "removing the burden of rulemaker" thread. It's one thing to set our tiers, and another to ban specific moves like Sheer Cold and Double Team. It's another to leave out vast tracts of game code basically because Pokemon isn't Chess but we wish it were. Why for example can't we change all the moves with effects like Attack or Defense lower with Base Powers 65 or less to 100% effect chances? I'd like 100% Attack lower on Aurora Beam please (Secretly I want 100% Acc reduction on Octazooka)