I was going to start typing up another obnoxiously long response but then I read this
I think this address's your main concern Applepieftw, because (at least judging from our conversation) your main point was that regardless of what happens later in the game, it is still "uncompetitive" (for the lack of a better word) in the turns that you are trapped. I don't disagree this point, but my point is that whatever happens in each turn cannot simply be extrapolated to the whole game level (coming back to my "causal" and "global" argument).
and realized we are done here. This is literally all I was trying to prove with my exchange with you. Yet here it is, straight from the horse's mouth, that during those trap turns Shadow Tag is uncompetitive.
We've got a zero tolerance policy on uncompetitive elements otherwise we couldn't call Ubers a competitive metagame. I'm not going to bothering responding to any bullshit
special pleading and lol at Tag in past metagames, didn't stop Swagger Clause. I've got what I wanted, thanks for the chat.
Okay, I think we've come to a relatively good understanding through our conversation on IRC, but I'll clarify this.
Firstly, we've agreed to use the (shitty) OU council definition of uncompetitive, so I'll just bring it up again:
Uncompetitive game aspects (or strategies) are those that take away autonomy (control of the game's events), take it out of the hand's of player's decisions--and do so to a degree that can be considered uncompetitive.
As you can see, the word "uncompetitive" appears twice in that definition. The first usage of the word gives a meaning to word, the second time attaches a condition. The circular logic in the definition makes it difficult to define properly, but the way I see it, both of these have to be true (both the meaning AND the condition) for something to be truly considered uncompetitive.
Okay, as you're not wrong in pointing out, I acknowledged that during the turns in which you are trapped, that it is "uncompetitive". I meant this in the first usage of the word in the definition only, ie I'm only acknowledging that it takes away (a certain amount of) autonomy during the turns that you are trapped. However, if you've followed everything else I have said, in no way do I agree that the second part is true. So basically, in that quote, it can be summarised to:
Do I think that S-tag takes away autonomy? Yes, to a certain extent during the turns that you have an unprepared Pokemon trapped.
Do I think that that it's to a degree that it can be considered uncompetitive? No
I'm pretty sure you've read my reasoning many times on why I don't believe that 2nd condition is true, I don't think I need to repeat it again.
This is also what I found so jarring and confusing about your "zero tolerance" statement in relation to the definition above, which you're using. Focus touched on this in his post, but I really want to reinforce this point. Do we have a "zero tolerance" on uncompetitive game elements (in the sense of "removing autonomy" only), or "zero tolerance" on uncompetitive in both the meaning AND condition in which has to be true? There are plenty of things in the game that "take away your autonomy" which we are perfectly fine with (eg phazing as from Focus's post). Do you mean we have a zero tolerance on those things (things that only fulfill the "removing autonomy" section of the definition), or do you mean we have a zero tolerance on things that fulfill both conditions (ie things that take away autonomy to the point where it can be considered uncompetitive)? Like Focus highlighted in his posts, there's a difference between "uncompetitive elements" (I'll add here in the sense of taking away autonomy) and an uncompetitive metagame (presumably due to uncompetitive element X).
