Clauses on Pokemon Showdown

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It was mentioned in the Showdown thread that there might be a discussion about what clauses would be enabled when the RBY ladder finally gets set up, as there are currently no clauses. So this thread is to basically get that started.

The two main contentious ones are sleep and freeze clauses. I think most people can agree that there needs to be a sleep clause of some kind, the question is whether it should be mechanical, or whether you should simply be DQd for a second sleep.

I personally think it should be the latter, as mechanical SCs didn't exist in the cartridge games. A mechanical SC also allows you advantages that you aren't afforded on cartridge, namely being able to spam sleep moves to catch a pokemon as it wakes up, without worrying about getting DQ'd if they switch to another pokemon instead. You can just simply choose not to use sleep moves after you've landed a sleep, or you can use them at your own risk.

I also think there doesn't need to be a freeze clause. Something that has 10% chance to happen on a pokemon that is unstatused or not an ice type, and still alows it limited uses (PP stalling, relieving spc drops, sac etc.) is far less game-breaking than a lot of other stuff that happens in RBY that actually have higher chances of happening (eg, tauros blizzard KOing rhydon with a crit rather than freezing it). As Hipmonlee said in the other thread, it's not as if RBY suddenly becomes non luck based with a FC. Also too, FC was originally created by Nintendo for 3v3, and have only implemented it in the 3v3 games.

So what do you guys think?
 
What? No. You shouldn't be DQ'd if you attempt to sleep a second Pokemon, the move should just miss and that's it. Imagine a missclick or something like that.

namely being able to spam sleep moves to catch a pokemon as it wakes up, without worrying about getting DQ'd if they switch to another pokemon instead. You can just simply choose not to use sleep moves after you've landed a sleep, or you can use them at your own risk.
What you are suggesting will only cause a few matches to end in a DQ which is stupid. Sure, people won't risk that unless they are 100% sure about themselves. But what if it happens? After all, you don't expect your opponent to predict you in literaly the riskiest prediction ever, so you go ahead, but then the random switch-out happens and all of a sudden you are DQ'd. And what if the sleep move misses? You are still in play then, not DQ'd to a 25% chance? Doesn't make sense to me. The risk of being DQ'd due to mispredicting / misplaying / missclicking just shouldn't be part of the game.
 
We shouldn't alter game mechanics to compensate for misclicks. You might as well put a clause that prevents you from exploding of they switch in gengar.

We shouldn't alter mechanics so that people don't need to take risks, that's silly. If they take the risk then they must accept the consequences.

We don't have a clause that stops you from burning starmie with fire blast, and it would be stupid if we did. People lose games by picking the wrong move all the time, I don't see how this any different.

If you think something so trivial justifies altering game mechanics, then I can think of a million things we could change, and then it wouldn't be real RBY anymore.

No one ever answers that question. If we're going to alter mechanics so it's not real RBY anymore, why not fix things like focus energy and counter? Why not make ghost moves hit psychic types? If you make changes, where does it stop?
 

Joim

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First of all, Sleep Clause mechanics have been discussed often, so when it's added it'll be working the same for all tiers :p That's why it's not an RBY discussion, it's a Policy Discussion for the whole sim.

Then, I have no problem implementing the clauses to gen 1, but we need to get enough userbase to have an OU ladder or at least available by challenge. I can struggle to get it for challenges by now.
 
It depends on what you mean by 'enough'. Most of PO's RBY userbase will switch over to Showdown if you implement proper wrap mechanics, and just proper mechanics in general.

You kinda need at least an OHKO clause and an evasion clause if you want the ladder to genuinely competitive.
 

Hipmonlee

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What? No. You shouldn't be DQ'd if you attempt to sleep a second Pokemon, the move should just miss and that's it. Imagine a missclick or something like that.
We played like this for years. Give people the chance to play on if they want, then they can switch til it wakes if they feel generous.

Note: if you dont let your opponent switch til your second sleeping pokemon wakes you are a dick.

Hmm.. actually if you do that, you might as well block the sleep anyway I guess..

Yeah, ok I am cool with it either way.

Still, dont be so precious, misclicks will cost you games whatever rules we set up.
 

Joim

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It depends on what you mean by 'enough'. Most of PO's RBY userbase will switch over to Showdown if you implement proper wrap mechanics, and just proper mechanics in general.

You kinda need at least an OHKO clause and an evasion clause if you want the ladder to genuinely competitive.
Wrap mechanics are correct besides the fact that when using the last PP, it blocks you on Struggle and does not roll over to max pp (that's something I need to fix before getting a ladder). The only other "important " mechanic that needs fixing is Counter.
 
I makes more sense to me to have sleep moves miss instead of DQ-ing a player, or "force" players to wait until the second mon wakes up or whatever. I mean, to me, it looks easier to just make the second sleep miss, it looks better and cleaner in every way.

How does sleep clause work in the newer gens on Showdown anyway? I was assuming it works like on PO that sleep clause just makes the second sleep move miss, but I dont know.
 

Joim

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Current Showdown Sleep Clause just makes the sleep miss and says "Sleep Clause activated".
 
We shouldn't alter game mechanics to compensate for misclicks. You might as well put a clause that prevents you from exploding of they switch in gengar.
False analogy between a misclick and a mistake.

Also, a disqualification rule is a form of altered game mechanic.
 
I makes more sense to me to have sleep moves miss instead of DQ-ing a player, or "force" players to wait until the second mon wakes up or whatever. I mean, to me, it looks easier to just make the second sleep miss, it looks better and cleaner in every way.

How does sleep clause work in the newer gens on Showdown anyway? I was assuming it works like on PO that sleep clause just makes the second sleep move miss, but I dont know.
It only seems odd to you because you're used to playing with the illegitimate mechanic. We could alter mechanics for plenty of things, the fact that it is for a sleep clause is purely arbitrary.

If you're going to suggest changing the mechanics for one thing in particular, and not other things (there are plenty of other things that could be changed with the same logic) you really need to justify why it is so important.

You still haven't answered the question? Why not not fix things like counter and focus energy too?

It's not worth making the game illegitimate just so you can remove the possibility of getting DQd for a purely voluntary action.

Magic- A misclick is still a mistake. More battles would be lost my wrong-move misclicks than by sleep DQ misclicks.

And no DQs are not a mechanical change, I have no idea where you could get that from. It's possible to play with DQ rules in the cartridge games, that's how the first tournaments held by Nintendo were actually played. You can't play with mechanical clauses in the games, so it's not legitimate RBY if you do.

That's another thing people aren't realising. The freeze clause was originally innovated by Nintendo for 3v3, and they only ever implemented it in their 3v3 games. It was also originall a DQ clause too because there was no mechanic for it in the cartridge games. A second freeze is much more game-breaking in 3v3 than 6v6.

As Hipmonlee said before, it's not as if no FC suddenly make sthe game non-luck based. I can think of a lot of scenarios where I'd rather take a second freeze than some other form of hax that is has a higher chance of happening than a freeze.
 
If you use traditional Sleep Clause (Venusaur used Sleep Powder.... But it failed) you should add team preview and change Hyper Beam mechanics.
 

Joim

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I intend to have RBY as similar to old Link Play as possible. Back then there was no Sleep Clause (in cartridges), so this is a difficult thing to decide, but I worked so hyper beam, etc, worked correctly, so we'll go for mechanics as accurate as possible.
 
I definitely respect those who want to play as close to "pure cartridge" mechanics as possible. But I think there is an important distinction to make that clauses aren't really about mechanics. Clauses are competitive-level restrictions that are essentially outside of a "mechanical" discussion.

Some competitive-level restrictions are mechanic based, some aren't. Sleep Clause and Freeze Clause "alter" mechanics, but things like Species Clause, and Move Bans (OHKOs) don't. Even Tiers qualify. Dre wanted to know where we "draw the line" on running amuck with mechanical changes, and the problem with that line of thinking is that clauses aren't about "fixing mechanics." They're about creating a new layer of rules to competitive play.

In that sense, then, we have a Sleep Clause for the same reason we have Tiers and Species Clauses. The anecdote goes that the first RBY Nintendo tour was won by a team of 6 Chanseys, each specializing in a different special attacking set with a Counter set on one of 'em. So they made the Species Clause. No one is calling for "fixing" mechanics here in a never-ending rabbit hole.

All tournaments in any game or any sport have additional rules beyond the simple basics, whether we're talking Pokemon or Smash Bros or basketball. It's a function of the fact that when we play Pokemon now, we're playing it competitively. A ladder system is kind of like a never-ending tournament. There are rules that are placed on tournaments/competitive play in literally any arena that go beyond the scope of the literal technicalities of what is or isn't possible in the base rules.

In summation: clauses aren't about fixing mechanics. They're about defining a set of additional rules to enforce standards of competitive play. Species Clause, Species Banlists (Tiers, essentially), OHKO Clause, Sleep Clause, Freeze Clause, and Evasion Clause may or may not be about altering mechanics, but they all serve the same function: to keep play at a competitive level beyond what you could get by just link-cabling with a buddy and going nuts. In that respect, every one of the existing standard RBY clauses make sense, and I say we keep them.
 
Dre I'm not going to discuss with you because I know I won't change your mind, but you are taking the purity thing too religiously. PO Sleep Clause is a lot more practical than what you are suggesting. Implementing any kind of sleep clause is altering the mechanics in some way and you can't negate that. There was nothing in catridge game that DQ'd or automatically killed all Pokemon of a player for putting a second Pokemon to sleep.

Dre, that freeze clause you are talking about is a total mess from my point of view. So after you freeze something, everytime you use a freeze move again, you'd have 10% chance of automatically losing? You've said it, if Nintendo didn't use the freeze clause that we are all using nowadays, is because it was not possible. I don't know if you are suggesting that kind of freeze clause as an option, but in case you are, no.
 

Lavos

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implement the clauses like they are on PO. for sleep clause, just make it so that you can't sleep more than one pokemon of your opp's, if you try it says "sleep clause prevented the move from working" or something of that nature. for freeze clause, same thing - if you already froze their chansey and your ice beam that just hit their zam would have also frozen, then "freeze clause prevented the freeze from activating" etc. and i don't want to read any more bullshit about how freeze clause isn't necessary, are you kidding me? freeze already changes the dynamic of an rby game enough, imagine if you could freeze two or more pokemon...it'd be utter chaos. the unlikelihood of such an event is no reason not to implement a freeze clause.
 

tehy

Banned deucer.
Dre89 said:
We shouldn't alter game mechanics to compensate for misclicks. You might as well put a clause that prevents you from exploding of they switch in gengar.

We shouldn't alter mechanics so that people don't need to take risks, that's silly. If they take the risk then they must accept the consequences.

Y hello there, cancel button. And how are you this fine day? (by the way, could you cancel in RBY? I feel like you couldn't and I don't remember being able to)

Even forgetting misclicks, sometimes people forget. I'll grant you that a player of RBY is not your average ladderer but I've seen plenty of that happen. I've made this mistake once or twice myself, not really paying attention, my mind elsewhere "Oh i'll sleep him" and whoops. I've also played on my dad's laptop, which is a touchpad mouse with no buttons that compensates by being incredibly sensitive. I've had plenty of misclicks here too.

Literally dropping someone from the game just for-at worst-attempting to put a pokemon to sleep again-is pretty foolish. It's a risky enough move in the first place:You're basically giving up the freest switch possible, and you're giving the pokemon a way to burn sleep turns for free. I'm not entirely sure of RBY sleep mechanics (Do you wake up at the start of the turn?), but assuming you wake up right before you move, re-sleeping could result in a T-wave or hard hit to the face.

Edit: And did I mention there's still either a 40% or a 25% chance (Depending on the move) that you'll miss?
 

Joim

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I'm in favour of current Sleep Clause, but I find Freeze Clause pretty much useless, so while I wouldn't add it, I don't care if we add it.
 

Royal Flush

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Biggest issue with "manual" sleep clause is your opponent actually exploiting it.
Well geez Eggy is the common sleeper and he's slower than a lot of stuff, so there should be situations where he can try to predict the enemy waking up and spamming sleep powder to keep him asleep, since you do nothing when you wake up on this gen. But if a second sleeping mon meant instant loss, then your opponent could potentially switch when he realizes what you are trying to do.


Freeze Clause is kinda whatever: it's 10% to instantly lose a mon, but would hardly happen twice. And well if you are letting Chansey to spam Ice Beam, you are just asking for this.
 
Yeah we don't need FC.

I could possibly understand altering the game to make it completely competitive, but the reality is the game will still be incredibly luck-based anyway. It's just not worth making it illegitimate RBY when its competitiveness hardly changes.

Royal- Well that's the risk you take. You didn't have to choose that move, and they just outsmarted you. You can lose battles by exploding onto the wrong pokemon. With freeze clause, you can even lose a battle by freezing the wrong pokemon. We shouldn't be altering the game just to accommodate people's poor decisions. More battles are probably lost in one turn by picking the wrong move than by sleep DQs.

I think because we should keep the game as genuine as possible, perhaps the ladder should start without mechanical alterations. The game is just as competitive without the alterations, but if there really is a massive uproar about genuine RBY then you can change it.
 
In summation: clauses aren't about fixing mechanics. They're about defining a set of additional rules to enforce standards of competitive play. Species Clause, Species Banlists (Tiers, essentially), OHKO Clause, Sleep Clause, Freeze Clause, and Evasion Clause may or may not be about altering mechanics, but they all serve the same function: to keep play at a competitive level beyond what you could get by just link-cabling with a buddy and going nuts. In that respect, every one of the existing standard RBY clauses make sense, and I say we keep them.
I don't even play RBY but I'm going to address this since it technically could apply to every generation (incl BW).

Sleep clause is either mechanical or rule-based depending on how you were to enforce it.

If it is mechanics based (as seen in Stadium, Stadium 2, Colosseum, XD, PBR) you can spam sleep moves all you want but you will never put a second PKMN to sleep. It's automatic, and all of those games have a team preview.

If it's rule based as seen in Wi-Fi/Link matches then you basically have to go by your opponent's word that they don't put more than one Pokemon to sleep. If they do, the match carries on but they just broke a pre-established rule. (Similarily, "no Ubers"/"no luck items"/"monoteam only"/"underused" are all rule-based, violatable clauses). At that point in the match feel free to disconnect or turn the power off since that person obviously wasn't playing fair.

Showdown/PO have it mechanics based. That's cool and all since it's way easier to enforce but technically you should add a team preview (and change all move mechanics to Stadium) if you have that type of clause. The reason being that there are situations that we are "emulating" that could never actually occur in the cartridge games.

Situation 1) Like people mentioned, a viable strategy in mechanics based sleep clause would be to direct sleep powder at a faster, sleeping opponent (if you're slower) and sleep them again if they were (un)lucky enough to wake up. If you were to attempt this in a Link match and the opponent switched out you would potentially break sleep clause and force yourself to lose the match even though this is a viable strategy in Showdown.

Situation 2) PP wars. PP is actually pretty important in RBY (Yes?). I suck at RBY but I've spammed Hypnosis for no reason before just to kill turns. Can't do that in link battles or you can violate the clause.

It gets more complicated in third Gen+. For example, in BW you can have Wobbuffett use Encore, take a sleep move with Lum, be put to sleep again.... since they're stuck with Shadow Tag you can switch out to anything else and force the opponent to violate sleep clause. In fact, if your opponent has a sleep inducer you can create this "check-mate" situation by putting Wobbuffett on your team in Wi-Fi matches. This has never been addressed and we keep using "mechanics-based" sleep clause on the simulators even though such a mechanic doesn't even EXIST in Black, White, Black 2, or White 2 but now I'm off topic.
 

Royal Flush

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Yeah we don't need FC.

I could possibly understand altering the game to make it completely competitive, but the reality is the game will still be incredibly luck-based anyway. It's just not worth making it illegitimate RBY when its competitiveness hardly changes.

Royal- Well that's the risk you take. You didn't have to choose that move, and they just outsmarted you. You can lose battles by exploding onto the wrong pokemon. With freeze clause, you can even lose a battle by freezing the wrong pokemon. We shouldn't be altering the game just to accommodate people's poor decisions. More battles are probably lost in one turn by picking the wrong move than by sleep DQs.

I think because we should keep the game as genuine as possible, perhaps the ladder should start without mechanical alterations. The game is just as competitive without the alterations, but if there really is a massive uproar about genuine RBY then you can change it.
Well geez, let me put another and detailed example:

You have only Exeggutor left, your opponent have a sleeping Starmie and any slower mon than eggy.
Eggy tho, is on the KO range of Blizzard, but hey, Starmie's asleep and will do nothing on the turn it wakes up because that's how sleep works in RBY.
So your only and legitimate way to win is by hitting it once (or twice if you feel like taking the risk) with Psychic then keep spamming Sleep Powder so you will keep Starmie under your feet and will eventually kill it (unless powder fails duh). But when your opponent realizes that he can simply switch to his other mon and pray for the sleep to hit so you automatically lost. You DID have to play that way and had some odds to win, but you would lose 75% of the time to an exploit.

In my honest opinion, it's just not worth for a "correct" simulation of the cartridges. Nintendo itself started with those Clauses for the first Stadium to begin with, so there should be a good reason behind it (aka they realized Sleep was broken). If I recall correctly, while most of the clauses were made to the 3x3 meta of stadium, you could still play with the same clauses on a standard 6x6 match on that Free Battle thingy. And well Stadium was made to be focused on, well, maybe not competitive, but a more "fair", balanced PvP.
 
Well geez, let me put another and detailed example:

You have only Exeggutor left, your opponent have a sleeping Starmie and any slower mon than eggy.
Eggy tho, is on the KO range of Blizzard, but hey, Starmie's asleep and will do nothing on the turn it wakes up because that's how sleep works in RBY.
So your only and legitimate way to win is by hitting it once (or twice if you feel like taking the risk) with Psychic then keep spamming Sleep Powder so you will keep Starmie under your feet and will eventually kill it (unless powder fails duh). But when your opponent realizes that he can simply switch to his other mon and pray for the sleep to hit so you automatically lost. You DID have to play that way and had some odds to win, but you would lose 75% of the time to an exploit.

In my honest opinion, it's just not worth for a "correct" simulation of the cartridges. Nintendo itself started with those Clauses for the first Stadium to begin with, so there should be a good reason behind it (aka they realized Sleep was broken). If I recall correctly, while most of the clauses were made to the 3x3 meta of stadium, you could still play with the same clauses on a standard 6x6 match on that Free Battle thingy. And well Stadium was made to be focused on, well, maybe not competitive, but a more "fair", balanced PvP.
Well if you're eggy got put in that position then the other player probably deserved to win. There are a million scenarios where someone can lose 'unfairly' in RBY, I don't see why we should change the game to remove one of those and not the others.

I've actually lost a battle once because I accidently paralysed a chansey with my starmie's thunderbolt, but there shouldn't be a clause that prevents secondary effects when I want them to. It's silly to get clauses to allow people to avoid disadvantageous situations.

The sleep clause was actually first implemented in official Nintendo cartridge tourneys, but they obviously weren't mechanical. These were 3v3. Nintendo has only ever implemented the mechanical clauses in 3v3 games. Note that the first tourneys actually predate Yellow version, yet Nintendo decided not to implement mechanical clauses, despite implementing tourney-style battle modes.

If we're going to use Stadium mechanics in cartridge RBY then we might as well fix things like focus energy and counter, and basically just give it Stadium mechanics. Picking and choosing what we alter and don't alter is silly. You might as well just give the pokemon natures and abilities because it's not real RBY anymore.

If you want to play 'fixed' RBY that's what mods like RBYPlus are for, or even Stadium RBY. The default option for the ladder should just be to not change the game, and we shouldn't change it because someone personally likes it with a slight alteration. Keeping it genuine is the most neutral and objective option.
 

Royal Flush

in brazil rain
is a Past WCoP Champion
Well if you're eggy got put in that position then the other player probably deserved to win. There are a million scenarios where someone can lose 'unfairly' in RBY, I don't see why we should change the game to remove one of those and not the others.

I've actually lost a battle once because I accidently paralysed a chansey with my starmie's thunderbolt, but there shouldn't be a clause that prevents secondary effects when I want them to. It's silly to get clauses to allow people to avoid disadvantageous situations.

The sleep clause was actually first implemented in official Nintendo cartridge tourneys, but they obviously weren't mechanical. These were 3v3. Nintendo has only ever implemented the mechanical clauses in 3v3 games. Note that the first tourneys actually predate Yellow version, yet Nintendo decided not to implement mechanical clauses, despite implementing tourney-style battle modes.

If we're going to use Stadium mechanics in cartridge RBY then we might as well fix things like focus energy and counter, and basically just give it Stadium mechanics. Picking and choosing what we alter and don't alter is silly. You might as well just give the pokemon natures and abilities because it's not real RBY anymore.

If you want to play 'fixed' RBY that's what mods like RBYPlus are for, or even Stadium RBY. The default option for the ladder should just be to not change the game, and we shouldn't change it because someone personally likes it with a slight alteration. Keeping it genuine is the most neutral and objective option.
I don't see any reason to the other player being "deserved" to win. If Eggy had a shot to win by doing this, then it's anyone's game. If by "unfairly" you mean luck, then well, losing to the RNG and losing to an exploit are on whole different levels. And the current Sleep Clause barely harms the game mechanics.

I do get your point on making the sims 100% accurate though, but at what price? Clauses were meant to "alter" the game mechanics by definition. With that same mindset, are you up to unban Evasion Clause? Because Double Team shouldn't fail, should it? Are you up to unban OHKO moves for the sake of genuine simulation? Are you? Would you? Should you?
I'd rather play "simulated" pokemon where I can actually find some balance instead of a cartridge twin where I can just Sleep your 6 mons to death or grab a random kill spamming Fissure. But maybe it's just me.

Anyway that's my 2 cents, not going further.
 
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