R.I.P. Leads and Scouting

[Anthony Von Hertzon]

I'm very glad I read this thread, because, at first, I always viewed this change as bad as something that would lower the amount of skill and prediction in competitive battling. Now, however, I see I was wrong and that it is just another change in the way we play Pokemon and that whether we like it or not, it is upon us and we have to accept it.

[ShadesOfSolomon]

Originally Posted by Fat Display

Really? That is unfortunate. However, seeing as how PBR is generally not widely used in the first place, this still doesn't provide much evidence that its system is a good one, and, even if it did, it still wouldn't prove that simulators should try to force you to look at the opponent's team.

It doesn't need to. The reality is that competitive play outside of simulators is going to be predicated on the fact that both players will be aware of each others' teams, by simple virtue of the fact that it has been made an aspect of gameplay in the 5th generation. Simulators should 'force you to look at the opponent's team' because Pokemon now forces you to look at the opponent's team, and the purpose of simulators is ultimately to actually simulate what happens (or can happen) in the game. Restrictions and additions to the game's rules are made on the basis of what is and is not humanly enforceable, and this is not.

The reality is that if Smogon does not enforce the change, it will in no wise remain the internet's premier Pokemon battling academy. The large Wifi community out there is simply going to ignore Smogon's rules, banlists, and suggested movesets, simply because they will have been developed under a metagame that cannot be reproduced for them, and which has no relevance to their own battling experience.

[TPM]

I personally like this change.
As someone who spent quite a bit of time on the LC ladder, a ladder on which it is common to battle the same person twice, I can that a battle where the people knwo eachothers teams is really quite intense. You now know how they can respond to your movs, and it becomes a lot more about judging risk vs reward in the long term, ie "should I keep in my current frail Pokemon who threatens his team or make the safe switch to someone who can take hit" becomes even more intense because now you know what they can do even later and make more informed decisions.
This change will greatly highten the amount of turns you can predict forward.

(and for those of you who thinknowing the what the opponent can do will make the game boring and dumb; chess)

[Disposable Puppets]

I was thinking about how simulators would go about handling this and I think I came up with a simple way of doing this.

In shoddybattle/Pokemon Lab, your pokeballs are displayed showing your team members. Usually until they're revealed they show "???". Instead of the "???" it could just be changed to show the Pokemon on each other's teams.

I think this is a really good way to implement this because it doesn't slow down ladder matches by showing the two players their teams and people who don't want to look at the opponent's team aren't forced to. Meanwhile, we're still accurately simulating the game because both player's teams are revealed.

Anyway, just an idea I had while thinking

Edit: Just realized that you don't pick your lead until after you see your opponent's team. Well we can just have the same screen pop-up when you switch a pokemon at the start of the battle. It'd be no different than switching in a pokemon, you're just picking your lead.

[Melfice_Cyrum]

Originally Posted by Fat Seven Deadly Sins

The reason this isn't a "godawful change" is because it makes the game significantly more skill-based as opposed to "guess the opponent's whole team before you do anything" luck-based. It doesn't diminish skill, it doesn't make legitimate surprise (not gimmicky bullshit like using bad pokemon for the sake of it) inviable, it just changes the way the "first section" of the game is played.

A lot of the backlash here is completely unfounded and based on playing a metagame that very few people have actually experienced. Having experienced said metagame, I can say with absolute certainty that this change definitely emphasizes skill, and definitely doesn't make "surprise" a thing of the past.

Again, I concur. I believe that GF implimented this feature because of the fact that this is the standard setting used in their official tourneys and on PBR, which is also considered standard fare. They're not doing this for us, this is for the rest of the demographic this game is targeting.

Originally Posted by Fat ShadesOfSolomon

It doesn't need to. The reality is that competitive play outside of simulators is going to be predicated on the fact that both players will be aware of each others' teams, by simple virtue of the fact that it has been made an aspect of gameplay in the 5th generation. Simulators should 'force you to look at the opponent's team' because Pokemon now forces you to look at the opponent's team, and the purpose of simulators is ultimately to actually simulate what happens (or can happen) in the game. Restrictions and additions to the game's rules are made on the basis of what is and is not humanly enforceable, and this is not.

The reality is that if Smogon does not enforce the change, it will in no wise remain the internet's premier Pokemon battling academy. The large Wifi community out there is simply going to ignore Smogon's rules, banlists, and suggested movesets, simply because they will have been developed under a metagame that cannot be reproduced for them, and which has no relevance to their own battling experience.

...And Shades kinda made my point for me, only more eloquently. We have to accept that the metagame has changed, whether it's a good or bad thing doesn't matter, it's a change.

That said, I'll be quite disappointed if Shoddy decides to simply ignore this feature. We've seen it proven that only IR-battles hide teams, and IR battles are quite tight in their ruleset (Level 50?). It makes no sense for Shoddy to emulate what we would consider the "ideal" manner of playing, when the purpose of Shoddy is to emulate the games themselves. Otherwise what's the point?

Someone earlier commented about the fact that you're not blindly guessing, you have whatever knowledge you have of movesets and counters to work with, thus making it less blind guessing...but again, I don't think that's the point. You could still lose a match because you guessed your opponent's mon or movesets incorrectly, and that still stinks of luck. Since you only have two options: right or wrong.

Yes, seeing the opponent's team eliminates the scouting and risk-management stage, but I don't see this as a purely negative development. I mean really, if everyone here is only using the same leads and/or same archetypical Pokemon, with the same standard movesets, and the same standard strategies...then the metagame is stagnating. It shouldn't be so repetitive. I think this, plus the new DW abilities, will give the metagame the breath of fresh air it needs, because you won't be able to relay on the same concepts and moves every game.

[Charon]

Originally Posted by Fat Misty Swims

Zoroarc just took a big hit from this too... I don't like it.

How?
I like this way more o.O

-you dont know your opponents pokes and they have zoroark
unless they switch into stealth rock as the wrong poke or something stupid you won't know which one is a zoroark until you attack it with something
so you have to keep in mind "maybe this is a zoroark" everywhere against anyone and theres basically nothing you can do except guess until you know, and most of the time your opponent wont even have one.
It's an additional pointless (because it doesnt help) mindgame until its revealed

-you know your opponent has a zoroark from beginning
you KNOW they have it and you can predict when they would switch it in as what to do what. If your opponent is really smart on this, you have to be really good to outpredict it.

Try imagining how certain parts of battles would look and how people would act on both sides, to get a picture of what this change means, before you go and post stuff like "this is BS and makes the game stupid"

[pyrzi]

Good game Trick Room teams. One glance and you can tell what it's based on.

However, I'm loving this because of the latter. This opens up tons and tons of possible strategies and mroe and more mind games.

EDIT:: In my opinion Pokelab and/or shoddy should make these changes, because won't Smogon want to give strategies to both WiFi battlers and Computer battlers?