Clauses on Pokemon Showdown

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tehy

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Dre89 said:
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 agree completely, and that's why I'm proposing we kill Sleep Clause entirely. This sentiment stands for itself. Go play RBYplus.

To build off what Golden Gyarados is saying... I mean, Sleep Clause itself is an ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCT. Nowhere in RBY does it exist. Know why it exists on PS/PO? To make the game way less broken and way more fun;playable, essentially. Clauses are a set of rules everyone agrees makes the game far more playable and enjoyable. Does anyone want to play in a metagame where a misclick can get you dropped? Does that make the game more fun? And all to prevent one strategy in any case.

Yes, a lot of people have been saying that a misclick can cost you a game. But still, a game is usually decided on more than one mistake. If you've already made too many mistakes, a misclick can push you over the limit, or it can make it so you have much less breathing room. But that's in combination with other errors. What other misclick automatically ends your game? And all so what, you can't keep sleeping the same pokemon? Again:Switch the hell out. If you allow your only counter to be slept that's bad playing by you and should be punished accordingly. Not to mention this entire strategy of re-sleeping will fail eventually due to missing.
 
is there any possibility of using stadium mechanics? or is it a foregone conclusion that it'll be at least heavily based on cartridge because "that's the way it was always done"

because honestly, stadium fixed a lot of shit that was a glitch in gen 1; some of it was a no-brainer (making focus energy work properly) and some has a huge impact on the metagame (hyper beam mechanics). it also had freeze and sleep clauses implemented in the game. i understand the desire to play how it's been since pre-Netbattle days, though.
 
Royal- But in that case eggy was only in a good position is because he was exploiting something too, which is the fact that an illegitimate mechanic allows him to spam powder safely without getting DQ'd. In both cases there is an exploit, it's just that one doesn't alter the game.

Evasion and OHKO clauses aren't mechanical, it's just banning moves. It's possible to have those clauses in the games.


Steeler- One misclick can cost you a battle, in the sense that one misclick can take you from an advantageous position to a bad one. That would probably happen more than DQ misclicks.


Stadium has different mechanics to RBY, some of which noticeably affect the meta. The big two being that hyper beam always requires a recharge, even after a KO, and that's subs block status. The former hurts tauros a lot, and the latter makes zam a monster. It's a different meta, and most people want to stick what they're used to.

I think it'd be nice if we at least got a Stadium tier alongside the cartridge one, but cartridge should be the priority as its a lot more popular. A lot of people still played on NBS when PO only had Stadium.
 

Royal Flush

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Huh Evasion and OHKO were stupid rants of mine sorry lol, I never realized PO actually removed those things. Back on the old days of NB, you could actually use it even with the Clauses on, but they would always fail (essentially the same mechanic altering). I don't follow PO's community, but I suppose it's only banned on paper now. No clue how it works on PS, I suppose they don't let you start the match. Best solution I guess.



But I still prefer the current sleep clause harming the mechanics a bit instead of an awkward autoloss situation. If the PS programmers want a 100% accurate sim so badly, I suppose it's the best solution tho (the manual thingy), but im personally against.



And please no Stadium RBY lol. Custom option at best.
 

Jorgen

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I agree completely, and that's why I'm proposing we kill Sleep Clause entirely. This sentiment stands for itself. Go play RBYplus.

To build off what Golden Gyarados is saying... I mean, Sleep Clause itself is an ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCT. Nowhere in RBY does it exist. Know why it exists on PS/PO? To make the game way less broken and way more fun;playable, essentially. Clauses are a set of rules everyone agrees makes the game far more playable and enjoyable. Does anyone want to play in a metagame where a misclick can get you dropped? Does that make the game more fun? And all to prevent one strategy in any case.

Yes, a lot of people have been saying that a misclick can cost you a game. But still, a game is usually decided on more than one mistake. If you've already made too many mistakes, a misclick can push you over the limit, or it can make it so you have much less breathing room. But that's in combination with other errors. What other misclick automatically ends your game? And all so what, you can't keep sleeping the same pokemon? Again:Switch the hell out. If you allow your only counter to be slept that's bad playing by you and should be punished accordingly. Not to mention this entire strategy of re-sleeping will fail eventually due to missing.
Where exactly do you stand? The first and third paragraphs seem to support removal of clauses, but your second paragraph says that implementing them makes the game more playable. I mean, with that middle paragraph, it's like you're asking us whether we'd prefer a more enjoyable game or a more accurate one, and if that's the case, I'd prefer the former.
 

Joim

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If we are being so bold as to want cartridge accurate clauses, let's play with Mew and Mewtwo. RBY in PS intends to be as close to cartridges as possible but competitively. This needs for VERY small mechanical changes in form of Sleep Clause and banning Ubers.

If you want it to be pure, Custom Game with no clauses will always be available. But for those of us who want a competitive ladder, we need a competitive OU metagame with clauses.
 

Jorgen

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Just a nitpick, but banning Ubers isn't really a mechanical difference. If you want to play without Ubers, you just don't bring Ubers. If you want to play with Sleep clause in-cart, though, you can't just prevent the second sleep for convenience, you have to agree on some rules to either DQ the person who inflicts a second non-Rest-induced sleep or to switch around to wake that mon up.
 

Lavos

Banned deucer.
why is not having freeze clause ok to some of you? as i stated earlier, it may be statistically improbable that a player gets 2 or more freezes in a single battle but as long as the possibility remains it's pretty clear that we should be enforcing the clause. the game is already tilted enough when one player gets a freeze, 2 or more would be absolutely gamebreaking and i know people who would just go run a jynx-articuno-starmie team to maximize their chances of getting multiple freezes to abuse the lack of a clause protecting such an event from occurring. c'mon guys
 

Joim

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Spamming Ice Beams is a subpar tactic, you will also lack paralysis and sleep spread, while your rival can paralyse your whole team before you get a single freeze in.
 

Jorgen

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Nah, if you're spamming Ice moves you aren't switching around enough for your opponent to para your whole team. Blizzard spam with lead Jynx is actually a really good strat, odds are pretty good you end up sleeping their sleep absorber and freezing a Chansey. Add to that the fact that your own Chansey can also spam IBs to hope for another freeze, especially without that other Chansey threatening to freeze you back. Without an active Freeze Clause the possibility of multiple freezes definitely can be abused to great effect in RBY.
 

tehy

Banned deucer.
Where exactly do you stand? The first and third paragraphs seem to support removal of clauses, but your second paragraph says that implementing them makes the game more playable. I mean, with that middle paragraph, it's like you're asking us whether we'd prefer a more enjoyable game or a more accurate one, and if that's the case, I'd prefer the former.

Sorry, I felt this was pretty clear:

The first paragraph is total sarcasm. From what Dre's saying, he's really advocating Sleep Clause's nonexistence, if you take it to the (Totally) logical extreme. After all, it doesn't exist in the cartridge. Sleep Clause basically exists on-cartridge as a "gentlemen's agreement", where two players agree to not sleep >1 pokemon. That's how it exists online as well. So if you're trying for purity, you would basically just kill Sleep Clause entirely.

Like I've been saying: the whole reason Sleep Clause exists in the first place is to make the game more fun. What the hell is fun about automatically being dropped by accident?

Alternate idea: On PS, mods now ban for stuff like timestalling. If spamming sleep moves on a sleeping move is so abhorrent to a majority of the Smogon RBY community... you could approach mods and work it out so that's banworthy behavior as well (Well, give a warning first.) This idea does have some problems with it but it theoretically prevents auto-drop and sleep spam.
 

Joim

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Nah, if you're spamming Ice moves you aren't switching around enough for your opponent to para your whole team. Blizzard spam with lead Jynx is actually a really good strat, odds are pretty good you end up sleeping their sleep absorber and freezing a Chansey. Add to that the fact that your own Chansey can also spam IBs to hope for another freeze, especially without that other Chansey threatening to freeze you back. Without an active Freeze Clause the possibility of multiple freezes definitely can be abused to great effect in RBY.
Well, lead Gengar can outluck and sleep Jynx, problem solved :p

Alternate idea: On PS, mods now ban for stuff like timestalling. If spamming sleep moves on a sleeping move is so abhorrent to a majority of the Smogon RBY community... you could approach mods and work it out so that's banworthy behavior as well (Well, give a warning first.) This idea does have some problems with it but it theoretically prevents auto-drop and sleep spam.
Sorry, but we would never enforce that.
 

Royal Flush

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I honestly wouldn't mind playing without Freeze Clause. RBY is all about capitalizing every chance you have to luck, otherwise the game would be too slow paced.
Every crit, every para make things happen. So does a freeze. Being lame or not, it's just 10%.
Sleep is 75% to pretty much make a game 6x5. Better odds I can say.
Even OHKO moves... if they were allowed, I wouldn't think twice to use Fissure on Rhydon's 4th slot. 30% to take Eggy without doing anything is pretty big.
 

Carl

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Regarding Sleep

Of all the generations, I think RBY is the style of play that most needs sleep clause for its competitive health. The lack of viable counters and the difference in mechanics relative to future generations makes sleep arguably at its most powerful in RBY. Not that anyone is debating this but just wanted to emphasize that if any generation needs to enforce a sleep clause, it is this one.

Now, how to go about enforcing it? Personally, I see no real issue with how it's been done in the past. Put something to sleep and the move no longer functions when you try to put something else to sleep. The only mechanical difference over how the game actually functions is that you can PP stall, should the situation arise, using a sleep move and not get an automatic loss. In my opinion, this is a minor, at best, benefit to the stalling player and does not significantly affect the outcome of games in a negative manner. In other words, you can still accurately play a game of pokemon. While not 100% true to the cartridge, I think this is an acceptable concession for a simple way of handling things.

In a tournament setting, you could arguably remove this mechanic and use a "gentleman's agreement" knowing full well that if sleep clause is broken, the person running the tournament can enforce things. For a ladder setting, nobody is going to oversee things and I would much rather play out games 100% of the time with a slightly altered mechanic, rather than running into rare occasions where there's auto losses, or worse, no enforcement at all.

Regarding Freeze Clause

When I have the option, I will most definitely enact freeze clause. It's in my best interest to remove my odds of getting frozen twice, no matter how small those odds are, because I'd rather the RNG not bail out my opponent whenever possible. That said, I think freeze clause isn't a necessary mechanical alteration in the same way sleep is and we'd survive without it.
 
Nah, if you're spamming Ice moves you aren't switching around enough for your opponent to para your whole team. Blizzard spam with lead Jynx is actually a really good strat, odds are pretty good you end up sleeping their sleep absorber and freezing a Chansey. Add to that the fact that your own Chansey can also spam IBs to hope for another freeze, especially without that other Chansey threatening to freeze you back. Without an active Freeze Clause the possibility of multiple freezes definitely can be abused to great effect in RBY.
I agree. And, you know, saying "going for multiple freezes isn't a legit strat" is entirely theorymon. If suddenly you're open to as many freezes as you can get, teams can start building around it, with a lead Jynx followed by a Chansey, Starmie, etc. You wouldn't need to switch - just Ice Beam spam until it's frozen or you're dead, and repeat. THAT'S theorymon too, of course. But we can't discount new strategies around it without actually suspect testing it out.

Anyway, my original stance still stands. Mechanical purity be damed, clauses are about enforcing standards of competitive play. The lack of clauses invite abuse - and whether that abuse is successful or not, it isn't FUN. I'd love to play on Showdown, but I'd be hesitant to make the jump without those standards enforced.
 

Hipmonlee

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Unlike later gens, switching until a wake is a perfect simulation of sleep failing. It would reveal up to two other pokemon on the sleep user's team however.

You might as well add it.

And freeze clauseless RBY was suspect tested for years. People would try for freezes, and sometimes they got two. Especially Cloggerdude. I dont remember ever seeing three.. But, it definitely didnt break anything.

RBY is more aggressive than it was in those days, mostly because there are fewer shit people playing it. You will find it hard to rely on freeze to win you games. Besides, if you are looking for freezes, usually one is enough.
 
I'm not saying we don't have a sleep clause, I'm saying that it shouldn't be mechanical. It should be a DQ for the second sleep.

Hipmonlee- The issue that I have with the switching idea is that you wouldn't be able to enforce it on the ladder, unless the sim started shuffling your team automatically. The other issue is that they're might be specific scenarios where someone may intentionally land a second sleep for whatever reason, whereas with a DQ there will never be a competitive intention to land the second sleep.

As for freeze clause, I fail to see how a 10% chance off two attacks, against an unstatused, non-ice type pokemon, after another freeze has already happened (which is a low chance on its own) is somehow so much more game-breaking than any of the other hax in the game that it warrants a ban. There's a lot of cases where I'd rather take the freeze over other hax, like a tauros freezing my rhydon rather than KOing it with a crit, which actually has a higher chance of happening.

If you're going to have a freeze clause, you might as well remove crits, because they are far more game-breaking than freezes seeing as they happen a lot more often, and can actually cause worse consequences than freezes (ie. KOs).

Let's not forget as well that a pokemon can only get two freezes on average if it runs both blizzard and ice beam. Jynx is the pokemon with the most freeze potential, as it it can get 4 freezes on average if it runs both those moves plus ice punch, but that's a stupid idea.

But honestly, if you're letting you're opponent's pokemon sit there and consecutively get off that many ice attacks you're probably either bad or were in a losing position to begin with.


There's no doubt there will be games with multiple freezes, the question is how is this hax so much more game-breaking than other types of hax that happens nearly every battle.
 
Sleep clause isn't the same as OHKO/evasion/Mewtwo clause. The thing with the later three is that they are enforceable (yes, they are).

"Dude, no OHIO's/DoubleTeam/Ubers, K"

"I won't"

If they bring Mewtwo then DC on that bird or be like "bro, are you retarded I said no. Mewtwo " and then play it out. Philosophically theoretically humans can do that.

You can't alter 60 or 75 percent chance game coding telepathically and make it zero tho.

Mostly this is trivial but actually I think you could just add a reminder on Showdown that sleep clause violation loses you the match. "Would you like to continue?" In gen 3 and up you might have to slightly alter the rules since Wobbuffett means you automatically win if your opponent uses sleep basically. Maybe it does't count if it was forced with the move encore though. Iunno.

Iirc that's what Japanese ppl do when they hang out and aren't playing stadium. I think I even heard they write their mons on paper and just have to3 man fights, presumably with a hipster mentality and a knowledge that this game is kind of like rock/paper/scissors. Those matches are always so "what you got, son". It's pretty real, imo.
 
Yeah a reminder every time you go for sleep would be a good idea actually.

I'd like to see how these people who advocate mechanical clauses would actually play RBY tourneys on cartridge. They'd probably either have to do what me or Hipmonlee are suggesting, or simply think that you can't play competitive RBY on cartridge, which is obviously stupid.
 

tehy

Banned deucer.
Actually, I'm pretty sure there's a really simple way to enforce it, and I'm glad you brought it up. (By the way, you are saying it it shouldn't exist. You just don't realise it.)

Basically, it goes like this: In a tournament setting, the first time that an 'accident' happens, you both switch back and forth until it wakes up and is in the same position as before. If it switched in, the ideal situation is it awake and what it switched in from in. If not, it's awake against the sleeper. If the pokemon you switched in was unrevealed before, you can also ask to see your enemy's best counter/check to X pokemon. (If he blatantly lied you can auto-win.)

Now I hear you say "They got to see your counter! And prediction strategy!" Sure, but you see a pokemon of your choice (It could also be randomized easily), and on the downside, he risked a totally free switch-in for that.

Now, what about stat changes? If your opponent accidentally sleeps a set up pokemon, obviously you can't switch around without penalty. In this case, he's forced to switch around and hope to bring his sleeper back in, unless he has a totally ineffective move and you allow him to do it;if he doesn't have his sleeper in as you wake up, he has to switch to it and accept whatever you do. If he's had a drop, then you get a free hit on him no matter what.
If your entire team is burned, poisoned, or toxic'd, you get in a free hit. (Don't ask me how that happened.)

If it's done once, no penalty. More than once, each time you have the choice to auto-lose. If it's clearly done just to abuse it somehow, auto-lose as well. If he does it more than twice in the entire tournament, he can be forced to auto-lose.

Edit: How so? It's pretty simple. The more complex stuff is just in case of unlikely eventualities. The "X pokemon counter/check" is a little overly complicated and dumb, but I felt like randomised still gives a little bit of an advantage and I wanted to avoid that. The only place this fails is with Drops and Boosts, and when a misclick happens in either scenario it's usually pretty suspect anyhow IMO. Most of the time, it's clearly possible to enforce in-cartridge about as well as sleep clause is.

I've already had a PS mod reject one of my ideas, but you could also make it mechanical tourney-style. Basically, if a second pokemon is slept, you can call a mod to ban if you want, or you can work something out with your opponent.
 
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.
There is no mechanic causing me to lose if I sleep a second 'mon. You might yell at me but you can't actually make the game consider me to have lost.
 

Texas Cloverleaf

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Actually, I'm pretty sure there's a really simple way to enforce it, and I'm glad you brought it up. (By the way, you are saying it it shouldn't exist. You just don't realise it.)

Basically, it goes like this: In a tournament setting, the first time that an 'accident' happens, you both switch back and forth until it wakes up and is in the same position as before. If it switched in, the ideal situation is it awake and what it switched in from in. If not, it's awake against the sleeper. If the pokemon you switched in was unrevealed before, you can also ask to see your enemy's best counter/check to X pokemon. (If he blatantly lied you can auto-win.)

Now I hear you say "They got to see your counter! And prediction strategy!" Sure, but you see a pokemon of your choice (It could also be randomized easily), and on the downside, he risked a totally free switch-in for that.

Now, what about stat changes? If your opponent accidentally sleeps a set up pokemon, obviously you can't switch around without penalty. In this case, he's forced to switch around and hope to bring his sleeper back in, unless he has a totally ineffective move and you allow him to do it;if he doesn't have his sleeper in as you wake up, he has to switch to it and accept whatever you do. If he's had a drop, then you get a free hit on him no matter what.
If your entire team is burned, poisoned, or toxic'd, you get in a free hit. (Don't ask me how that happened.)

If it's done once, no penalty. More than once, each time you have the choice to auto-lose. If it's clearly done just to abuse it somehow, auto-lose as well. If he does it more than twice in the entire tournament, he can be forced to auto-lose.
This is really really stupid.

I've been reading along and I feel that Carl's points are the most well-reasoned. I think in regards to clauses health of metagame is more important than staying true to the mechanics. Slaving yourself to the original product is not beneficial in this case.
 

Mr.E

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Online mons has never been 100% true to cartridge mechanics anyway. (At least not RBY.) And it was Nintendo itself that made mechanical sleep clause, that's kinda why we've been using it ever since. These days all official efforts are on Level 50, Stadium-style doubles (i.e. VGC) but the precedent has long been set and I don't see why it should be changed.

Same for freeze clause actually, except freeze clause doesn't actually make much difference either way because the odds of multiple freezes are so low. I think they just added that one into Stadium because they were all like "yeah freezes suck and if we can mechanically alter the ability to freeze like we can sleep, why not?"
 

Hipmonlee

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The ladder can simulate switching between pokemon while the sleeping pokemon wakes by enforcing sleep clause as it has done for years.

The results are identical. It could reveal two pokemon randomly if need be. Tough luck for the culprit.

The victim will at most have to switch to one other pokemon, and is guaranteed to have a revealed pokemon to switch to because of the nature of sleep clause, it will never cost the victim anything.
 
There is no mechanic causing me to lose if I sleep a second 'mon. You might yell at me but you can't actually make the game consider me to have lost.
Well in a monitored tourney, the referee would DQ you. On a simulator, you would be automatically DQ'd. The point is you can play with these rules on cartridges, but you can't play with mechanical clauses. Everyone else understands this which is why no one else is making the point.

Mr. E- Nintendo made the clauses for 3v3, which is why they've only ever been implemented in the 3v3 games.

Texas Cloverleaf- RBY is imbalanced and luck-based with or without the clauses. If you want to make the game competitively balanced, there are a million other things you need to fix.

If you're going to chance the game, you might as well fix things like counter, focus energy, ghost moves not hitting psychics etc. You might as well just fix everything seeing as it isn't real RBY anymore and it's just a mod.

Hipmonlee- The victim should never have to pay a penalty for a second sleep. They should never have to switch, because they may have a boosted pokemon. There would be specific scenarios where the culprit could abuse a second sleep to their advantage. What if the culprit is down to his last pokemon and sleeps a boosted slowbro? The culprit can't switch, and the slowbro shouldn't have to switch out and lose its boosts due to its opponent's mistake.

I think it should just be an outright DQ, that way there is never any competitive motivation to land a second sleep, and the victim can never be punished for it.
 
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