Near-Universal Moves

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Its_A_Random

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This thread will be moderated to keep discussion focused.

Near-Universal Moves

Basically, there apparently is a common belief that outside of UC spamming, most Pokémon in general take "too many matches" in order to become good, assuming the Pokémon was fresh. Usually, it can take a good 5-6 battles on average from my count to get some 3-Stage Pokémon from fresh to fully evolved with DW Ability Unlocked, & by then it is not uncommon to see such Pokémon only have a movepool count to be roughly 9-10 more moves on average than what it had fresh. One of these factors mainly comes down to the fact that you can usually only have enough MC to buy 1-4 moves a battle with each of your Pokémon, & then you have the choice of either buying important attacking/non-attacking moves to boost your fire-power, or invest in staples such as Protect, Substitute, etc. to give your Pokémon some sort of defence & the ability to screw up plays. This is a dilemma that needlessly contributes to slow development, & not everyone has the UC, or wants to ref battles, just to accelerate development.

Deck Knight came in during the first of the many counter-farming debates on #capasb, & was more struck by this argument about Pokémon taking too many matches to become good. He drafted up a solution to this problem:
I was more struck by the argument that it takes mons far too many matches to be good. I was talking in IRC and came up with a solution to that, so that new players can jump in with at least some semblance of a tool box. When I think of "good" or "battle-ready" Pokemon, I think of Pokemon that have the proper defensive skillset to evade or mitigate incoming attacks that have at least a few options against if put to Sleep or Disabled.

Basically the proposal is to add a portion of the "always available" BW TMs and Tutors to the starting moveset of each Pokemon (provided they learn the attacks). This list would consist of the following:

Near-Universal BW TMs:
Double Team
Frustration
Protect
Return
Round
Substitute

Near-Universal BW Tutors:
Sleep Talk
Snore

For reference the following moves have been excluded:

Facade: Extremely easy to abuse for several Pokemon.
Hidden Power: The idea behind this proposal is to give a basic skeleton of fallback attacks. Hidden Power is an integral coverage move and would bias towards special attackers a great deal.
Rest: Combined with Sleep Talk on every Pokemon would prolong a great deal of matches. You can certainly use Rest as a starting selected TM for the combo.
Swagger: While a minor status, it is also sufficiently powerful and disruptive.
Toxic: Major status, very powerful.

Attached to this I might also change the Rarity Cost of anything that doesn't get these TMs/Tutors from two (2) to one (1) to compensate, and also increase the power of Sleep because pretty much every Pokemon will be able to attack during it to some extent, but those are not yet resolved, I want feedback on this.
There were mixed views on this proposal, but if there was anything that would be agreed on, that was that this proposal needed a discussion. That is why we are here — To discuss this proposal as to whether this is a good idea or not, any alternatives, any improvements, etc.

Discussion should focus on the following questions:

  • Would the idea of giving Pokémon near-universal moves for free be a good idea?
  • Could this proposal be improved? How?
    • What moves should or should not be given away for free & why?
  • Is there a better way to help accelerate development other than this idea?
  • Any other issues in a similar vein to this proposal that can be raised?
...And any other things I forgot to mention... Which is likely...


At any rate, keep on topic & keep discussion civil. Otherwise, time to discuss this proposal.
 
I fully support this proposal for two main reasons.
First, it will help new players with the handling of defensive strategies, changing freshmon matches from the usual move spam until the one with type advantage/better moves/higher stats wins to something with at least an approximation of strategy.
Second, removing a part of the MC load needed to get the fundamental defensive moves will help with the perceived issue of counterfarming.
The defensive moves proposed make sense, but I'm kinda iffy on giving free, high powered STAB moves to Normal types. This doesn't make a great difference, but it's a difference nonetheless, and I feel that for such a proposal to be effective it should give equal treatment to all mons who can benefit from it. On that matter, mons who gain access to the moves upon evolution should get the moves for free when they evolve.
I believe the proposal is fine as it is, only with Return, Frustration and Round removed from the list.
 
OK, there hasn't really been much discussion on the general idea. It seems that most people agree that some form of this proposal should be implemented. However, it might be worth further discussing which moves should be on the proposal. Failing that, I'll put up a voting thread in which we vote separately for each move.
 

ZhengTann

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Yeah, I agree that giving those moves isn't a bad idea, since Normal-types aren't really good offensively in ASB, even thought the proposed moves have pretty universal distribution, as stated. But if the main problem is:

Deck Knight said:
I was more struck by the argument that it takes mons far too many matches to be good.
Then why don't we give freshmons a bigger jumpstart? Maybe we can bump freshmons to have more than 3 Egg and TM/Tutor moves (say, 5, maybe) to offer them more versatility. Lupus might be correct about breaking Normalize Skitty, though - so maybe the Council can vote on allowing Attacking Moves (Round, Return, Frustration) and Non-Attacking Moves (the rest on the list) separately.
 
A possibility could be to give a better headstart for the mons someone gets as their first mons when they register their ASB team.
 
I really think that applying this to a new users starting mons is the way to go, it will give new players a leg up, while not power (move?) creeping i guess. Although I think that Double Team is a plenty powerful enough move to be excluded from this list, it will wreck other starter mons that don't have a spread move.
 

Texas Cloverleaf

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I'm actually liking Zheng Tann's idea here, buffing the number of starting moves to something arbitrary seems like the way to go here. Giving freshmons something like 3 Egg mvoes and 6 TMs or 4 Egg moves and 4 TMs over the current 3/3 seems like a nice clean way to make fresh mons more viable and take a lesser time to build.
 

Deck Knight

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One problem I don't want to introduce is centralization on the starters, because if we make the policy change only effect starter mons then new Pokemon still have to crawl through that process. The bit about Double Team is duly noted though. If you think Return and Frustration are problems simply because they do have the capacity to be 10 BAP attacks, they might also be worthy of chopping from the list. I don't think Round and Snore have the same problems, and I like Round because of its interesting priority effect in multiple battles.

In general I think this should apply to all Pokemon like it does Lv25 and below moves. If the Pokemon can learn them, they will have them without expending any MC. If we remove DT, Return, and Frustration from the list I think this will be balanced. Round and Snore might both be special attacks, but they never hit for SE and under normal situations simply don't have the power to be threatening for a large base of Pokemon. All of the Pokemon that would want to use special normal attacks already either get a better attacking option in something like Hyper Voice or Tri-Attack, and the FE ones of course get Hyper Beam. There are only 5 normal types that even break Rank 3 SpA and they are Porygon-2/Z, Togekiss, Aria Meloetta, and Arceus. Skitty and Delcatty are both Rank 2 SpA.

This would essentially cut the list down to:

Near-Universal BW TMs:
Protect
Round
Substitute

Near-Universal BW Tutors:
Sleep Talk
Snore

- - -

Which I think is a decent basic skillset that gives each Pokemon the ability to adequately defend itself in normal battle conditions, and fallback attacks if disabled/asleep etc.
 

ZhengTann

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With the edited list above by Deck, I think it looks good enough not to require 2 votes for Attacking and Non-Attacking Moves. Anyway, thus far people are agreeing to the extra startup moves proposal I made, so I'm formalizing it now:

Registration Tower said:
Moves:

Each of your starting Pokemon begins with every level-up move they learn from every generation up to Level 25. Veekun is the best repository for this information, just search for the Pokemon. For CAP specific information, go to the bottom of this post. Then, select three of their Egg Moves and three Fifth Generation TMs to round out their starting attack list.

Pokemon without Egg Moves: If your starting Pokemon is Genderless or simply has no Egg Moves to choose from, it will obviously not have any Egg Moves to select from. Instead, you may choose three Tutor moves from any generation to teach it.

Pokemon without TMs: If your starting Pokemon does not have any TMs to choose from (e.g. Magikarp, Beldum, Wynaut), it can instead select up to 3 attacks from Move Tutors and Special Giveaways from any generation. This only applies to Pokemon who simply do not have any TMs to choose from; you may not choose to allow Pokemon who do have TMs to take Tutor moves instead.
Proposed changes (in bold underlines) said:
Moves:

Each of your starting Pokemon begins with every level-up move they learn from every generation up to Level 25. Veekun is the best repository for this information, just search for the Pokemon. For CAP specific information, go to the bottom of this post. Then, select five (5) of their Egg Moves and five (5) Fifth Generation TMs to round out their starting attack list.

Pokemon without Egg Moves: If your starting Pokemon is Genderless or simply has no Egg Moves to choose from, it will obviously not have any Egg Moves to select from. Instead, you may choose five (5) Tutor moves from any generation to teach it.

Pokemon without TMs: If your starting Pokemon does not have any TMs to choose from (e.g. Magikarp, Beldum, Wynaut), it can instead select up to five (5) attacks from Move Tutors and Special Giveaways from any generation. This only applies to Pokemon who simply do not have any TMs to choose from; you may not choose to allow Pokemon who do have TMs to take Tutor moves instead.
I picked 5 to replace the original 3 simply because I think 5 is a good arbitrary number - feel free to scale it either way. But I think having slightly more than 3 would already suffice in allowing much more diversity than what we had previously. If we were to allow, say, 10, that might be a bit too much, in my opinion, especially if we're already allowing about 5 free moves to freshmons as per Deck's proposal.



EDIT @ Deck Knight below: Oh yeah, I forgot about the likes of Eelektrik and Metang. Alright, here's an addendum to my proposal (sheesh why do I have to pull this one from a different thread >_>)

Prize Claiming Thread said:
Pokemon without TMs or Tutor/Special Moves and Move Selection: If your starting Pokemon does not have TMs, Tutor Moves, or Special Moves to access, it will instead start with 9 MC to be used when it evolves.
Addendum to the Proposed changes (again said:
Pokemon without TMs or Tutor/Special Moves and Move Selection: If your starting Pokemon does not have TMs, Tutor Moves, or Special Moves to access, it will instead start with 15 MC to be used when it evolves.
Again, 15 is proposed to replace 9 based on the scaling from 3 to 5 in my proposal. Should we decide to use another arbitrary number, then we should adjust accordingly.
 

Deck Knight

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Expanding initial Eggs/TMs means its an even stronger disadvantage for mons that start off without Eggs/TMs. Unless it's combined with a proposal to have MC in lieu of those counters I think it would even further disadvantage things like Caterpie/Weedle etc.
 

Dogfish44

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Let's revive this:

I think we're close to being able to set up a voting slate at last. However, to make this simpler and actually more balanced...

[box]Proposal:

The moves listed below cost 0 MC, and may be claimed as part of a mon purchase in addition to the usual selection of 3 TMs, 3 Egg moves and all Level 25 and below egg moves.

[box]Double Team
Facade
Frustration
Hidden Power
Protect
Rest
Return
Round
Sleep Talk
Snore
Substitute
Swagger
Toxic[/box][/box]

Firstly, you'll note that I've included every possible universal TM - Council Members will vote on each move individually. This also allows new Pokemon who haven't developed as far to purchase these moves.

One final question to discuss I reckon:

Should well-trained pokemon receive a refund on the moves they've purchased?
 

ZhengTann

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dogfish44 said:
... Council will vote on each individually.
Erm, honestly I think its not the most efficient way to use our resources. It's been observed that there's a pretty solid consensus on which can be in, and which should be out. Maybe if we just group them into 3 categories (Attacking moves, Non-Attacking Moves, Disruptive Moves) where "Disruptive Moves" include the 5 listed in Deck's proposal (read: Facade, HP, Rest, Swagger, Toxic) it would be faster than voting for 13 individual moves. (In case I didn't made it clear, I support the two hyperlinked posts.)

As for FEs who already bought those slated moves - I'm leaning towards no refunds. For one thing, they might need the MC for another move. For another, we never did refund those who bought Training Items after their prices dropped from 20 CC to 6 CC. The basic premise behind this proposal and discussion thread is to give freshmons a better headstart. Since non-freshmons are already able to hold their own most of the time, I don't see why we should refund the MC.

I do, however, support the notion that any mons without the Allowed moves of the slated list after Council voting to get them for free. No sense to deny them from older mons who did not have them when you give them out to every fresh LCs.
 
I haven't actually spoken up much here and it may be too late but I'm actually against handing out these moves to anyone and everyone. RestTalk, Protect, Double Team, Substitute and Toxic are actually some of the more useful and often times necessary moves in ASB. However at the same time they are often neglected by people when building up their Pokemon's moveset. A 30 move mon is far from guaranteed to have these moves as often trainers focus on coverage and other support moves before buying them (especially something like Sleep Talk) and not having these moves can be detrimental in battles and greatly restrict options. Handing out these moves to everyone takes away the risk vs reward when building a Pokemon.

As I said it might be too late but I don't support the idea of handing these moves out to new Pokemon mostly due to their high level of usefulness in ASB.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
I'm with df081, there are ways to speed up building a pokemon and this is not it. Having a 54 move gallade in a tournament battle try to protect against an extremespeed combo only to discover it doesn't have the move protect is an essential, and i think beneficial, part of asb
 

Its_A_Random

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Yeah, I kinda have to agree with deadfox on this matter. I mean, we could give them out to "Starter Pokémon" only, but even then that is not a good idea. All the universal moves thing would do is result in essentially baby-sitting the fresh mons & allowing the player to just focus on developing coverage. I mean, it is not too difficult to shell out a couple of MC just for these essentials, & it has never really been a problem, so to speak. Also, no refunds — too much work to worry about, & what if said FE was maxxed?

Also, can we please not imply that we are going to implement this? Why not just simple "Should we do something to this/what proposal should we implement if at all" vote first? Having a single vote on "What moves should we make cost 0 MC" is a terrible idea, since it makes the implication that we will implement this, even though there is noticeable opposition.

And with that, any final words before I or another council member forms up a slate?
 

ZhengTann

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Why did you revive it with bias dogfish :x
If people disagree with the basis behind Deck's proposal then

Proposed changes to Reg Tower (in bold underlines) said:
Moves:

Each of your starting Pokemon begins with every level-up move they learn from every generation up to Level 25. Veekun is the best repository for this information, just search for the Pokemon. For CAP specific information, go to the bottom of this post. Then, select five (5) of their Egg Moves and five (5) Fifth Generation TMs to round out their starting attack list.

Pokemon without Egg Moves: If your starting Pokemon is Genderless or simply has no Egg Moves to choose from, it will obviously not have any Egg Moves to select from. Instead, you may choose five (5) Tutor moves from any generation to teach it.

Pokemon without TMs: If your starting Pokemon does not have any TMs to choose from (e.g. Magikarp, Beldum, Wynaut), it can instead select up to five (5) attacks from Move Tutors and Special Giveaways from any generation. This only applies to Pokemon who simply do not have any TMs to choose from; you may not choose to allow Pokemon who do have TMs to take Tutor moves instead.
Proposed changes to PCT (in bold underlines) said:
Pokemon without TMs or Tutor/Special Moves and Move Selection: If your starting Pokemon does not have TMs, Tutor Moves, or Special Moves to access, it will instead start with 15 MC to be used when it evolves.
Or change the numbers (5 and 15) to any other arbitrary number, depending on community feedback in the thread and Council voting.
 
I think ZhengTann is onto something with that post. Presumably the 15 MC thing would apply to Tynamo as well (since technically Tynamo doesn't fall in that category - in fact, no pokemon does iirc, which is why the rule was replaced with one specifically for Tynamo).
 

Its_A_Random

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Yeah, Tynamo is a special case. How about with the bonus 15 MC thing, applying it to some of the 1 CC Bugs as well? Like Caterpie, Weedle, Wurmple, etc., since there is, iirc, nothing with no TM's/Tutor's/Special Moves (Though I might be wrong with this).

But yeah. We have a special case for Tynamo. How about applying it to other Pokémon in a similar boat if applicable?
 

ZhengTann

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About the 15 MC part of my proposal - it was added in when Deck brought up the issue concerning LCs like Weedle and Caterpie (just in case you guys really skipped the last 20 posts and jumped to the bottom). If what Obj and IAR said is true (I hadn't joined ASB yet during the implementation of that Tynamo addendum), then perhaps we can go ln a case-by-case basis, to be voted by the Councillors.

Or we can set a threshold for that, for future's ease of access - any freshmons purchased that has less than 10 TM's/Tutor's/Special Moves may be given 15 MC instead of free moves, to be spent as they wish upon evolution. The reason behind this is that I looked up Marriland, and apparently even Tynamo learns Magnet Rise from Tutors now, so we now have no freshmons at all that would legitimately fall under that category. If we wanted to improve the viability of Caterpies (and Beldum, too, but never mind) I think this would be a good way to go about it. Lastly, such a rule sets a standard for future generations - meaning we don't have to update the damned list every time a new game is released (inb4 Pokemon X equivalent of Weedle comes along).
 

Its_A_Random

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I guess I should throw up a pre-emptive slate for this as well.
[BOX]Should we make reduce the cost of some near-universal moves to 0 MC?
Reduce the cost of some near-universal moves to 0 MC
Do not reduce the cost of some near-universal moves to 0 MC

Should we increase the number of TM/Egg Moves given to new Pokémon?
Increase the number of TM/Egg Moves given to all new Pokémon
Increase the number of TM/Egg Moves given to starter Pokémon only
Do not increase the number of TM/Egg Moves given to all new Pokémon

Should we add a special +X MC clause to certain Pokémon other than Tynamo?
Add a special +X MC clause to certain Pokémon other than Tynamo
Do not add a special +X MC clause to certain Pokémon other than Tynamo[/BOX]

And anything else I missed. Imperfect slate is imperfect, but we need to get something about this done ASAP.

This thread will stay open for a maximum of 48 hours, or less if nobody has anything else to add within 24 hours. If nobody has anything else to add, this will be the slate that the council will vote on.
 

Its_A_Random

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Okay, seems like there are no real objections, so let us just use the above slate, & if either option gets implemented, we will work from there. See you all in the vote!
 
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