np: Anti-Hax - It's your lucky day...

[haunter]

No one has ruined anything. This formula is only being tested and I'm sure that if Doug, Jumpman and the others who created it had feared that it was going to alter some key game mechanic, then they would have not introduced it.

Personally I've had no battles with an outcome modified by the hax-clause, though I've had some of them with some little hax involved.

Anyway, my point is that I really do not understand why so many people are complaining for a formula whose only purpose is to make the game more skill-based than it is at the moment. Also, Jumpman said that maybe we'll have a vote on it, so, actually we should just test it and reach an informed opinion about it.

 

[Panthera]

No one has ruined anything. This formula is only being tested and I'm sure that if Doug, Jumpman and the others who created it had feared that it was going to alter some key game mechanic, then they would have not introduced it.

Personally I've had no battles with an outcome modified by the hax-clause, though I've had some of them with some little hax involved.

Anyway, my point is that I really do not understand why so many people are complaining for a formula whose only purpose is to make the game more skill-based than it is at the moment. Also, Jumpman said that maybe we'll have a vote on it, so, actually we should just test it and reach an informed opinion about it.

Because to a lot of people, it doesn't make the game more skilled, it actually takes away from the skill factor by removing the ability to take calculated risks because now you don't know how they'll pay off with the hax clause. If I (somehow) have a Focus Sash Hypnosis user out against a Salamence, I might consider that using Hypnosis is a risk worth taking to put out of action a dangerous threat. However, with the hax clause, I can't make that decision properly. What if the other team has a Heal Beller/Aromatherapy user and has healed off several sleeps from this Hypnosis user already? At what point is it no longer worth it to try to use Hypnosis because a hit would put me further back due to the hax clause than a miss would due to the being dead part? We can't know, which means we can't make a proper decision, which means I may be forced to switch and let Salamence get its Dragon Dance in even though I had something out with better than even odds of shutting it down. Pokemon has always been a game like poker where managing the odds is a critical aspect of skill. You use less accurate moves KNOWING that some day they might miss repeatedly because when they hit they offer you more than their accurate counterparts. Taking away the ability to take calculated risks strikes me as the opposite of encouraging skillful play.

 

[Balb]

I have a big problem with this "anti-hax" clause. I played a fairly good game with someone on ladder with no critical hits. I believe I won 2-0 and I was surprised that it gave the other person the win. He explained to me what the "anti-hax" clause is and I was pretty astonished. I believe he only missed one draco meteor (which wouldn't have affected the outcome of the game), and the server decides that my play wasn't good enough to warrant a win?

I think it's time for people to acknowledge the fact that Pokemon doesn't translate to chess perfectly, and luck is always a factor. We might as well bump up all accuracy to 100% so people don't feel hurt when their 60% accuracy move misses, crying "hax hax hax!!!!!!!" in the process. It's one thing to proclaim that someone won by luck, but to actually GIVE the victory to the other person because of it? For Christ's sake, give the victory to the winner.

I feel like this is just another one of those things that are happening more and more these days, a "let's make the loser feel good about him/herself" mentality. Denying someone a win by an arbitrary formula when they clearly knocked all six of the opposing person's Pokemon is just strange to me. There's no way for a formula to assess whether or not someone still could have won if he/she didn't get lucky with a critical hit or miss or whatever. I know this because any move in my game that could have been considered "luck" had no influence on the result of the match. Latias missed a draco meteor against me which wouldn't have mattered, and I burned a metagross after using flamethrower (that counts as hax, really?) but the metagross exploded the next turn anyway. Other than those two things, I don't know of any other move that could have possibly triggered the "anti-hax" rule. Anyway, I hope it gets taken out of the ranked ladder matches. Time to let winners be winners again.

 

[Annhialator Zero]

I haven't played with this as my computer's Java is screwed up, but I don't really like the idea. If it still gave you the win/loss you deserved but edited the amount of points you received on the ladder it would be better inmy opinion.

I also agree with all the points the top/bottom end damage should only be taken into account when it actually effects whether a Pokemon is KOd or not, although I'm not sure it's possible to get the formula to do that.

 

[Chozo]

Anyway, my point is that I really do not understand why so many people are complaining for a formula whose only purpose is to make the game more skill-based than it is at the moment.

http://forums.sirlin.net/showpost.php?p=2427&postcount=47

You guys should slow way down on what is "obvious."

Faust has random items and GGXX is a better game with Faust than without Faust. It would be a worse game if Faust could control which items he gets. He's a character where you have to take advantage of whatever situation you get, in the moment. Sometimes you have to gamble. I have throw an item in anti air situations on the hope that I get a hammer and I have supered to throw 4 items in those same situations to increase my chance of getting the anti-air. Sometimes that is a smart thing to do. Also, sometimes I combo into his swimming super because banking on the 75% chance it will deal damage is worth it in the situation. There is counter example 1 that "all randomness is bad in competitive games."

Next up is Magic: the Gathering. You can't get much more random than shuffling up cards and drawing. Kai Budde won something like 12 tournaments in a row all around the world. I once read an MTG article about how then only got 2nd place at the next tournament. It was newsworthy that he ONLY got 2nd place in a game that is designed entirely around randomness. Counter-example 2 that "all randomness in competitive games is bad."

Finally, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo. Dizzy points are random. Damage has a random scaling on it. When you are behind a round, you have a random chance to deal more damage (or not!) and the amount of boost you get is also random. When you do a combo with a Sonic Boom (just an example), the hitstun from projectiles slows down the game. During the slowdown, your input frames are dropped meaning combos with two Sonic Booms tend to fail literally randomly about 50% of the time (lucky for us, because the game would be broken otherwise). Also, the faster the game speed is set, the more frames are dropped in general, so it's possible for your reversal dragon punch to just not come out because of random factors (can be mitigated by piano method). Anyway there's a lot of randomness and even more than I mentioned here. Isn't it possible that some of this lead to closer tournament matches and added to the excitement? Awfully coincidental that the SF game with probably most randomness is also one of the best. Counter example 3 that "all randomness in competitive multiplayer games is bad."

Emphasis mine.

And while my last ladder match was...uh...a year or more ago, I don't remember the ladder rankings having huge dramatic shifts on a daily basis: the people at the top tended to stay at the top (unless they made alts which they ran up to the top), the middle people hung around in the middle, the low in the low. Not really a compelling argument that Pokemon isn't skill-based even with the inherent randomness.

And while I'm certainly not a 33-year old with a doctorate in math, I can say with a fair degree of certainty that the process for determining how much hax = too much hax was a line that they drew in the sand themselves, rather than something they derived from a completely objective mathematical formula ("meaningful hax" cannot occur if the winner wins with 4-6 Pokemon remaining, according to the PR thread? Lol, okay): if they did, why the Hell aren't they busy designing an algorithm that can never lose at chess rather than dicking around with protecting people's fragile egos on a Pokemon ladder?

 

[haunter]

And while my last ladder match was...uh...a year or more ago, I don't remember the ladder rankings having huge dramatic shifts on a daily basis: the people at the top tended to stay at the top (unless they made alts which they ran up to the top), the middle people hung around in the middle, the low in the low. Not really a compelling argument that Pokemon isn't skill-based even with the inherent randomness.

I didn't say that at present the game isn't based upon skills, I just said that the purpose of this formula is to make it more skill-based.

 

[Balb]

I didn't say that at present the game isn't based upon skills, I just said that the purpose of this formula is to make it more skill-based.

Yeah, at the expense of a big factor of Pokemon battling, aka risk vs reward. Sorry, Pokemon battling isn't like Street Fighter Third Strike, and it never will be.