Policy regarding game mechanics of older generations

[Destiny Warrior]

We've decided that we'll be following game mechanics strictly in Generation 5, while in Generation 4, we decided to give ourselves some wiggle room. This topic is not about either of those decisions.

It regards the first three generations, about which I never really saw any policy discussion. More specifically, it concerns Generation 1.

The million-dollar question is: Should we follow game mechanics strictly in RBY?

Now this may seem like a no-brainer. "Look, unlike later generations, we don't have any acid rain/team preview etc. to worry about! The answer is so obvious!" However, there is a very important factor of RBY that is often ignored: Freeze Clause.

I don't think it can be disputed that in RBY, we require a Freeze Clause of some sort, due to freeze being very "broken", due to lack of natural thawing. However...this comes at the cost of violating game mechanics. This potentially can open up a whole can of worms, such as trying to make minor fixes to mechanics in RBY, which are somewhat "weird" from a current player's point of view, such as the Toxic + Leech Seed increased damage mechanic, which some regard as a glitch.

If we were to strictly follow game mechanics however, our current Freeze Clause cannot be used. Worse still, we cannot even use a Sleep Clause-esque clause akin to the one debated about last Generation, since freezing is a totally random event that the user cannot control at all.

This topic also serves to discuss possible ways to create a cartridge enforceable Freeze Clause in RBY, if that is even possible.

Do note that I am unaware of any battling glitches in GSC and ADV, so if any exist, this topic can be used to mention and discuss possible ways of handling them.

 

[Mekkah]

Just leave those poor old gens alone :(

Sorry for the short post but that's just how it is for me.

 

[Synre]

Since I have a sneaking suspicion most people aren't going to know what actual game mechanics are in this case...

Pokemon Stadium has Freeze and Sleep Clause, which is where both rules originated. The main problem with this solution is that Stadium doesn't use the same Hyper Beam recharge mechanic as RBY does and obviously it's a metagame defining move(in the carts Hyper Beam has no recharge if you land a kill with it which isn't true on Stadium).

Some other Stadium changes that are mostly less relevant to competitive play:

Game Mechanic Changes
Pokémon Stadium features a number of changes to the battle system. Many of these fix glitches present in the first generation games.[1] [2]
General changes include:
The duration of sleep is reduced to 1-3 turns.
If a Pokémon defeats an opposing Pokémon with a recoil move, the Pokémon does not suffer recoil damage.
An immobilized Pokémon can still select an attack.
Consecutive moves such as Wrap end when the target switches out.
All status ailments and HP-draining moves have no effect against a Substitute.
If a Pokémon is fully paralyzed during the invulnerable turn of Dig or Fly, the move resets.
When a paralyzed Pokémon's Speed is modified, its Speed reduction is no longer nullified.
After a move which causes self-inflicted confusion (e.g. Thrash) ends, the game will display a message stating that the target is confused.
The variable that determines the last damage dealt is reset whenever a Pokémon switches, is fully paralyzed, or uses a two-turn attack.
Recovery moves no longer fail when the difference between a Pokémon's current and maximum HP is 255 or 511.
In the Japanese version, the stat modifiers for accuracy and evasion were changed.

I see very little value in trying to posthumously apply this sort of logic, regardless. The rules are kind of cherrypicked but what do you really gain from changing them at this point? While it's subjective changing stuff to fit the actual mechanics of one of the games is pretty blatantly going to result in a worse game imo, since Freeze Clause is rather essential in RBY with Freeze Wars being common already - I don't think intentionally adding even more RNG kills is a good idea competitively. Losing Hyper Beam would probably be the better trade-off, but it's so iconic I'd say that'd be a mistake, too.

 

[Mario With Lasers]

User Deaga asked me to post this for him, as he has no PR access:

Freeze Wars in RBY generally happen when both sides have no solid way of dealing with Chansey (maybe their counters got KO'd or they just suck), so their best bet against opposing Chansey is freezing it. After either Chansey gets the freeze, there's really no way the freeze war is going to continue. After your Chansey gets frozen, chances are there's no point for either side to keep gambling for a freeze. There's really no other Pokémon that can afford to try a freeze war (maybe Starmie or Lapras, but they just get Thunderbolted).

Even though the other side still has their Chansey, chances are it'll kill or status any non-Chansey Pokémon before a freeze. Remember, she gets base 105 Special in RBY, which is quite strong and will KO the likes of Starmie, Lapras, Zapdos, Slowbro (before it gets one million amnesias, and even then, you're better off trying to crit it rather than freezing it), Exeggutor, Rhydon and Golem before scoring a freeze, most likely. Against stuff like Tauros and the aforementioned Zapdos and Starmie, ThunderWave is a better option. The point is, even though freezewars are common, freeze clause is generally pointless, because it's getting the freeze on the opposing Chansey that really matters the most and is actually likely to happen. Surely enough, there's case of "bs hax", in which you could get about half of your team frozen or shit like that, but that would be a problem even in newer gens, honestly.

Now, I actually think we should keep both freeze clause and RBY Mechanics (not Stadium ones). It's been many years and nobody ever had any problem with that. However, in the last years, people got quite used to bitching about how Sleep Clause is implemented incorrectly in the simulators and that changes everything and blablablabla and Freeze Clause is evil because it doesn't exist in the games! So I guess we could get rid of it just so that everyone gets happy.

tl;dr Freeze Clause should stay because nobody ever had any problem with it, but if people actually DO have any problem with it, just go ahead and take it away, because it doesn't matter.

 

[locopoke]

A new generation has just begun, can we please not bother ourselves with gen ONE?

 

[Aldaron]

I voted stick to game mechanics simply because that is our philosophy.

However, this is largely entirely irrelevant because we have neither the time, interest, or player resources to set up policy for the first generation anyways.

I can't speak for Philip7086 obviously but, while the "right" decision is correct mechanics, it doesn't matter because it will never come to the table for formal policy discussion / implementation.

I'm sure we all have something better to do...

 

[makiri]

No, absolutely not. Keep RBY/GSC/ADV how they are, there is no reason to go back and change anything EVER. They are frozen metagames that only a small percentage of the Pokemon playing population even plays. If you want to adhere to strict RBY rules, NetBattle has a built in option to play with Stadium changes, a real Freeze Clause, Sleep Clause, Hyper Beam mechanics changes, fixed Focus Energy, etc. I believe this option should be included in all sims, and I would love to see a DP option for gen 4 sims (Hypnosis 70% accuracy, etc).

But there is literally no reason to ever go back and change anything involving any metagame that isn't the current metagame. We spent years developing rule sets and tiers for past generations and while they aren't perfect, they were fine for the people who played during those generations.

 

[gene]

making any changes to previous gens at this point is incredibly stupid. this also goes for potential bans in case someone thinks its a good idea to kick that shitstorm up.

 

[Seven Deadly Sins]

I'm going with Option C: Who gives a shit?

Seriously, is it really worth the time and effort required to even work on this? The only times these are played is between SPL and random battles between a handful of people. We've got way more on our plates with gen 4 wrapup and gen 5 work, and this is a resource sink that has very little payoff.

 

[Colonel M]

Let's just not beat the dead horse and leave things as is. We have Generation 5 on our plate.

 

[cim]

sure we could go back and change that and unban HP legends in GSC (yay stupid ban)

but why bother tbh

 

[obi]

People seem to think that they can control what other people put effort into. "Who cares" isn't a response, because imagine a situation in which someone who could program did care: Do we allow changes that differ from "old simulator" but are accurate to the game? Whether we should actively seek out programmers to do this is a separate question of what we solicit, but the question of policy is what we allow.

I think that this question is more nuanced than most of the posts in this thread have indicated, though. If we decide not to follow Gen 1 mechanics, do we follow NetBattle, IRC bots (which one?), Porygon's Big Show, or something else entirely? Most people would probably pick NetBatte, but then do we strictly adhere to those mechanics (1024 turn battles end the game, for instance), or do we modify those where appropriate? If we modify those, then what do we use as our standard?

 

[eric the espeon]

If you don't care about a policy in PR, please just stay out of the thread discussing it.

The only people wasting effort on something they don't mind about are you. The argument that "no one cares" is absurd, it does not mean there is not one option better than another, and it does not mean that those who do care (I'm not counting myself among them on this specific topic, but they obviously exist) should not be allowed to debate. Past gens are effectively dead, and we're not going to change that in the near future, but when someone comes up with a perfectly reasonable and important (for RBY at least) policy question which has not been discussed and decided on Smogon as far as I am aware (and I've read a hell of a lot of old threads) they should not be met with this kind of attacks.

While I obviously have not played RBY competitively, my instinct would be to pick either Stadium or cart mechanics, whichever would result in a batter game. Stadium appears to have less "bugs", but it should be up to whatever community of early gen players exists which is the primary set of mechanics, if the opportunity and choice (a programmer asking for advise on which is more important) is presented.

And again, if you can't be bothered with something, stay out of it and leave it for those who can. I don't have a strong opinion on this topic, but seriously, think about what you're posting. This is PR.

 

[Aldaron]

Quick question for the previous two posters...didn't only panamaxis use the word "care?"

The most important argument that I'm seeing here is justifying spending time, player resources, and leadership resources for setting policy on old gens.

Now, unless the previous two posters are volunteering to lead all formal work on old gens, I'm not willing to support Philip7086 in allocating our resources as such.

 

[Hipmonlee]

We never used to have freeze clause in RBY. It's not necessary, and it shouldnt be part of the rules.

This isnt a matter of changing RBY rules, this is just a matter of having been lazy about what clauses we have used on nb.

Also rby is the one gen you actually can get away with sleep clause, because switching until something wakes up has no actual impact on the state of the battle.

Have a nice day.

 

[obi]

The tone of many posters in this thread is to not even discuss the topic because nobody cares and we shouldn't waste our time. However, if people do care (as some do), then it seems we should set a policy. Saying that things should be a certain way doesn't mean "Use all of our resources now!", but rather, when we are coding Gen 1, we attempt to be as accurate as possible (or not). It's basically saying that if we had a repository set up for the simulator, and someone wrote a patch that fixed a mechanic to be more like the cartridges, do we accept or reject that change? There is no middle path there, and no one puts in extra effort either way.

 

[6A9 Ace Matador]

@Ete "<ete> I would like all the comments which do not contribute to the topic at hand removed, yes." how can you complain about panas comment not contributing when you pretty much just posted to call him out, admitted you had no experience in RBY but commented on it anyway, then proceeded to call him out some more? you could've just PMd him instead of being a hypocrite.

Panas post was likely just mis-interpretted anyway, from what i understood of it he was saying there's simply more important issues to deal with in 5th gen (which there is) and that if the RBYers didn't care about it -- which they evidentally don't, it should be left alone. In fact the metagame revolves around manipulating the luck to an extent, so changing this would change the metagame a lot.. but i digress, there was simply no point to overreact and call him out like that.

and this thread really does look like destiny warrior was just looking for a reason to post a topic lol..

 

[coyotte508]

In my opinion it would be better to use Pokemon Stadium rules which fix a lot of bugs even if it removes the hyper beam glitch and include useful clauses, but that's only my opinion...

Also I don't know if there are any gamebreaking bugs left in Pokemon Stadium, I suppose there's none?

 

[6A9 Ace Matador]

In my opinion it would be better to use Pokemon Stadium rules which fix a lot of bugs even if it removes the hyper beam glitch and include useful clauses, but that's only my opinion...

Also I don't know if there are any gamebreaking bugs left in Pokemon Stadium, I suppose there's none?

focus energy jolteon

 

[lilyhollow]

There's no real "slippery slope" argument for our (sort of) made-up 1st/2nd/3rd gen mechanics, because (hopefully) no one is interested in "improving" those metagames at this point. We also don't care about being consistent with official tournaments (and obviously never did until 4th gen). I also can't conceive of, like, a bunch of new players being even remotely affected by (or even noticing) a Sleep Clause that "only exists in Stadium" or whatever. I can't really imagine too many new players showing up specifically for older gens period.

So I mean, if the people who actually care about those gens would be bothered by it, I don't see much reason to adhere to authentic game mechanics. If I'm wrong about any of the above assumptions, though, then we should probably remain consistent.

 

[cim]

after reading what obi said my opinion is that i agree with dw and we'll fix it if we have to i guess / cart rules and freeze clause are mutually exclusive

 

[coyotte508]

There's no real "slippery slope" argument for our (sort of) made-up 1st/2nd/3rd gen mechanics, because (hopefully) no one is interested in "improving" those metagames at this point. We also don't care about being consistent with official tournaments (and obviously never did until 4th gen). I also can't conceive of, like, a bunch of new players being even remotely affected by (or even noticing) a Sleep Clause that "only exists in Stadium" or whatever. I can't really imagine too many new players showing up specifically for older gens period.

So I mean, if the people who actually care about those gens would be bothered by it, I don't see much reason to adhere to authentic game mechanics. If I'm wrong about any of the above assumptions, though, then we should probably remain consistent.

Even if you don't adhere to authentic games mechanic, you still need to choose what kind of mechanics you want (RBY, Stadium) and if you want to remove any bugs in specific or not.

 

[lilyhollow]

Even if you don't adhere to authentic games mechanic, you still need to choose what kind of mechanics you want (RBY, Stadium) and if you want to remove any bugs in specific or not.

We would just go with whatever we went with on Netbattle (I don't buy Obi's argument that there is any serious "nuance" behind this. 1000-turn battles end automatically, okay who cares).

 

[Destiny Warrior]

We do not require fully blown Policy teams for older generations. Their playerbase is fairly limited, and they are pretty much fully "set" aside from a quirk or two like game mechanics. These can be decided fairly easily by a vote, as long as its only one or two issues. We obviously cannot go on a full blown policy review of these generations, but we can at the very least sort out the loose ends left behind.

 

[Hipmonlee]

RBY uses cart rules, we are not about to suddenly start playing RBY stadium after 12 years..

Have a nice day.