Programming Private Server with Mechanic Modifications

[Vexatious]

Alright guys, I've looked into this idea frequently and have come to a decision to attempt to learn how to do this. I have a fair knowledge of programming as it is (taking 4 years of it in high school) but am not familiar with PO's scripts as of yet.

*this is not me asking for help, I'm going to do this on my own or not at all unless people would like to collaborate. this is merely my asking for your thoughts on the ideas I would like to incorporate

*also, if this is not possible to do please give me a detailed response as to why so that I can save my winter break for more fruitful endeavors, but seeing as smogon has the ability to ban pokemon/moves/abilities ect, the idea does not seem impossible to me

Every player here is familiar with hax and unfair situations in their matches. It is something, unfortunately, we have become very accustomed to. However, I would like to change this.

The idea is to create my own server (which I already have done, but am working on learning the proper scripting in Java so it's not really a functional server yet) and modify the actual mechanics for the game to encourage a more balanced and strategy oriented meta-game more like Chess. Below I'm going to list the changes I hope to implement and I would appreciate any comments, being either support or protest against them, about them. Also, if the changes are possible to even modify would be a big help for me to understand.

RNG

The first thing to go is the RNG. Many times in matches, you take 45% damage and decide that you can roost away the damage and stall the opponent out, this is a winning situation. Suddenly he nails you for 55% damage and you die. While rare, these drastic RNG rolls do occur. More frequently, one could average 45% damage and attempt to hit a pokemon at 44% health but you roll low, hit for 38%, and die in return. You made the right decision but the game told you that you lose anyway.

For this reason I intend to force an average roll only. If the range is 40%-60%, you're doing 50% each and every time. This is something you can now rely on and use strategically rather than losing when you should have won.

Criticals

Criticals have been around since Gen I and have, many times, shut down an opponent unfairly. For instance, a correct play could have been to take a 50% hit and retaliate for the KO, but a critical changes this. Despite making the right decision and right move, you lose the situation because of pure luck. This is not right to me.

The argument against this would be moves like curse and cosmic power. In my opinion, if you need to rely on a critical to save your match, you don't deserve to win in the first place. The opponent utilized a strategy effectively and you did nothing to prevent it. Yes, this would centralize the use of Phazers but over-centralizing the meta-game is not my concern as the meta-game will change drastically with the changes I intend to make. We have rapid spinners for stealth rock, so if your team has problems with curse users, or similar types, then you should have a way to handle it.

At the same time, this might make moves that have high critical chance useless. For this instance, and taking into account the lack of an RNG, I would want to implement a specialized RNG roll for crits instead. Say, (god forbid this exists ever) a move has 50% to critical. When that 50% is activated, instead of dealing double damage, your damage will take a roll. For example, we'll say 25%-75% if your average damage was 50% until I can work out the precise numbers I would like to use. The reasoning for rolling low is that using a high critical chance move has no risk for its reward. You would have attacked anyway, the critical is just a free added bonus. Adding this penalty to it, I feel, would balance the idea of moves with criticals and abilities like super-luck.

Sleep

Something we've all been upset about in Gen V is sleep mechanics. Obviously I would intend to return to Gen IV mechanics, but with a twist. To make sleep like rest in all instances and lasting a consistent 2 turns. This will let you know exactly how long you will be asleep and realize how to work around it. It also eliminates someone trying to stay in and rolling the dice to wake up early. This is something I would like input on as I'm not sure if this would be broken or not. I have no issues with Gen IV mechanics, but I want to try something different and reliable.

Paralysis and Confusion

It can be very frustrating to get paralyzed or confused four times in a row. I'm not entirely sure of what I can do to keep them in the game yet make it less hax-oriented. I've thought about making it a consistent Paralysis/Confusion every other turn, or having it cure after 4 turns (like how it can cure in the TCG, just obviously not in one turn) What are your thoughts on paralysis and/or confusion? I want them to stay in the game for obvious reasons, but they need to be changed.

Freeze

At first I wanted freeze to be removed, but after some thought I considered treating it like sleep where you wake up after two turns. However, when we get to secondary status effects, it might have to be removed entirely to coincide with the changes down there.

Secondary Effects

Alright this is the big one. No one likes being burned by flamethrower, but we use Boil Over over Surf for that chance to burn. This is why it's hairy. I'd obviously want to remove all secondary effects, except those that have purpose, but at the same time a 30% chance to burn is still a lucky burn. My thoughts on this were to increase the percent chance but lower accuracy of those moves.

For instance Boiling water has 100% and 30% chance to burn. Will-o-wisp has 75% accuracy and 100% chance to burn. I feel that if Boiling water dropped to 75% accuracy but got a boost to 50% burn chance, it would be more fair. You're taking the risk you take with wisp with half the burn chance removed in favor of doing damage with the move. This change would occur with moves like discharge, rock slide (flinching) and any other significant percentage effects.

In the case of serene grace I would treat it differently. The ability would be changed to reset the attacks to their original stats. For instance iron head will still be 30% flinch and 100% accuracy, however once returned I would institute a Protect like mechanism. Since 60% flinch IS a reliable option and less hax worthy, it should remain in the game. However flinching 10 times in a row is not. That is why, once you flinch once, the odds of it working would decrease like protect decreasing. Yes protect can hit twice in a row, but you cannot abuse it. This eliminates flinch locks, but can retain paraflinch as a strategy (if para is alternate, you go for the flinch when they can attack, and switch your move when they cant) while limiting it to 4 turns of lock if para turns out to cure itself. This allows paraflinch to become a legit strategy instead of luck based.

Conclusion

So far, this is what I have down in my head. I'd really appreciate any comments you have about this, whether or not it can work or if you would want to see something like this, whether or not my ideas are fair or broken, ect. Keep in mind I do not want to keep the spirit of Pokemon, I want to recreate Pokemon into a more competitive and strategic game where luck is not involved, or at worst very influential. Hopefully I don't get flamed for this, and actually spark some interesting debate over the mechanics and possibilities to create this.

 

[domeface]

I disagree on your 'secondary effects' changes; while I agree that flamethrower burns and such are haxy, Boil Over or Discharge are generally designed to be used multiple times until the secondary effect occurs. Yes, you may get a lucky burn now and then, but generally if you want to burn your opponent you just repeat. For this reason, I feel the best way to deal with secondary effects is to just scrap all 10% chances, except perhaps those on AncientPower and its clones, since that is what makes those moves what they are (perhaps even increase it to 30%?). Past that, I'd just keep all other secondary effects. The 20% flinch chance on Dark Pulse, Waterfall and Dragon Rush may be slightly haxy, but it happens often enough that it's probably fair game. You may wish to play around with them a little, though.
As for Serene Grace, I completely disagree with your suggested course of action. It is unnecessary to add a Protect-like scaling of the flinch chance; a 60% chance of a flinch seems very high, but used over multiple turns (creating the 'flinch locking' effect), being constantly flinched is actually very unlikely. What's the longest run you've used Focus Blast for without it missing? Not very long, I'd bet. You're more likely to move at least once over two turns when being Air Slash'd or Iron Headed than not. The huge runs of constant flinching are the exception, not the rule. They're actaully very unlikely.
On the subject of Paralysis, I'd say you should keep the speed drop and remove full paralysis altogether. For confusion, I'd say you should keep it as it is now, but make it always last exactly two turns. That way, on average, you'll move once out of those two turns, and there's no hoping and guessing when you'll snap out of confusion.
For Sleep, I'd say 2 turns is too short if we're using the Gen 4 mechanics; a flat 3 turns seems the most balanced option, IMO.
I also think your crit idea is terrible. If you get a crit, your attack should hit stronger than usual, never lower. Stone Edge and Cross Chop have already payed the price of having shitty accuracy, while Night Slash etc have crap power. The best way of dealing with crits and high-crit moves, IMO, is to just make all high-crit moves Leaf Blade clones (except Spacial Rend and Aeroblast; make them EQ clones), and just ignore the crit chance. I'm not sure what to with Super Luck, though; if it turns out that all SL pokes have another ability option, just use that and pretend SL doesn't exist.
Also, I'd suggest correcting some accuracy issues on certain moves. Focus Blast really needs 85% accuracy, as do Hydro Pump and Blizzard. Thunder is trickier because it has a 30% paralysis chance, but if you decide to remove that it too should be boosted to 85% accuracy. If not, I'm unsure; Thunder still has great use on Rain teams. All sleep moves other than Dark Void and Spore should be boosted to 75% accuracy, since there's no real reason for the various different accuracies since they all do the same thing. DV and Spore are the exceptions because of their very limited distribution and the fact that their users rely on the moves to function and would be severely damaged by an accuracy drop. Will-O-Wisp should be increased to 90% accuracy, in line with Toxic.
That's all I can think of now. Good luck with this.

 

[TEA_DEMON]

With paralysis, I don't think anyone actually uses it for the full paralysis chance but rather the speed drop, so you could probably cut out the full paralysis bullshit from it. You could also just cut out confusion entirely, since it's not really that common anyway.

 

[Plusle]

You Cant make that Many mechanic changes with scripts, you need to edit the clients as well. These are made in C++ by the way.

 

[rav3n_zero]

Agreed on the RNG. Shouldn't have to really give a reason why.

Criticals should have a risk, but not the same as the reward, if following through with your idea. Something on the line of 40%-75% on a 50% damaging move. Specially because of what Dome said about them having lower accuracy, sometimes just because of that higher critical chance. Dome's idea of scratching them completely seems good too.

And I agree with the Protect-like decreasing with Serene Grace users. The idea is to make it more than just unlikely, it's to make sure that they don't happen at all.

Paralysis should drop the chance of full paralysis completely. In my mind, this chance alone is what makes paralysis absurd comparing it with other statuses. The speed drop alone makes it equal to the likes of Burn. But if you don't feel the same way, you could code it to never fully paralyze twice in a row. Better yet, if the full paralysis chance is 25%, make it so 1 out of 4 turns, the Pokémon is fully paralyzed.

Confusion could last 2 turns, as Dome said. But it could also be like this: it lasts for as long as the Pokémon doesn't hit itself. When it does, it snaps out of the confusion.

As for sleep, I have to agree with Dome. 3 turns should be the basis, not 2, considering IV gen sleep mechanics.

I'll keep thinking.

 

[Vexatious]

Alrighty got some good responses here, excellent.

@Dome: On secondary effects, I had this discussion with a friend of mine who suggested a reverse scaling system where the more you use the move, the more likely the ability was to activate to make up for the accuracy drop in the moves instead of upping the percentage that the ability hits. My intent would be to remove anything under those 30% chance entirely. Also, the point of getting rid of them IS because they are "slightly haxy". I'm trying to create a metagame where there is entirely no hax whatsoever.

I have on multiple occasions used all 8 Focus Blasts successfully, had a 7 long protect chain, and killed a magnezone with 21 iron head flinches in a row. It's not that these events are unlikely, it's that they're possible. I do not want things like this to occur, whether or not it is me on the giving or receiving end of things.

I thought about the full paralysis removal, but I wasn't sure how people would handle that seeing as it is a huge nerf. I like your confusion idea a lot though, that could work out nicely. As for sleep, being asleep for a guaranteed 3 turns seems like a lot to me. That, to me, means that pokemon needs to come in three separate times to tick down it's sleep timer which for most pokemon is a hefty 36% health loss from stealth rock which is incredibly common. That, to me, makes sleep a 3 turn elimination and 1/3 damage move.

My original intent was to remove criticals all together, but I didn't want to eliminate the use for moves such as cross chop and night slash whose only redeeming factor is their crit chance. To not have something in a criticals place will make these moves useless.

As for accuracy on moves, I was considering making all sleep moves including spore 75% accuracy regardless of what they previously were along with stun spore, will-o-wisp, and toxic. As for Focus Blast and the like, I also considered dropping their power and creating EQ clones for every move type.

@Teademon: Paralysis only halving speed seems to be a popular idea here doesn't it? I could definitely see that being fair if it becomes a common consensus. As for confusion, the sole reason it's in there is pretty much for Dynamic Punch users. If confusion is eliminated, Machamps use against Roobushin becomes a lost cause and he'll become possibly NU.

@Plusle: The funny thing is, you couldn't have given me better news. C++ is the only programming language I actually know and is what I studied in school. I actually had some ideas of how the code would would in C++ and was wondering how I would translate it into Java but hey, this works to haha.

@Raven: That could still work. Another friend suggested I eliminate the low roll all together and just leave the cap at 75% and roll in-between those two numbers on every attack rather than when it would have crit. Better or worse than before?

Exactly my point with serene grace

So far everyone really wants Paralysis eliminated, so I might just do that. As for one in four or not being able to be paralyzed twice in a row; both attribute a form of luck, imo, as to when that initial paralysis is to occur. For confusion, I like the idea but at the same time it's poor luck for it to activate and cure. I really want the status's to be predictable and planned for so that they can be played around.

Sleep for three? I really would like to go in depth on sleep, so when comparing 2 turns to 3 turns do either of you have any significant reasoning? Not that I'm discounting them, but sleep has the potential to be to nerfed, to over powered, or just right.

 

[rav3n_zero]

I didn't quite understand your friend's suggestion. Are you saying this roll would be for those specific moves, or for every roll of every move? If the second, that would just be creating a second RNG. So definitely worse.

For the paralysis, yeah, just remove the full paralyzed deal altogether. Honestly, in a metagame where speed is so important, just the speed drop is enough. Having a 1/4 possibility of doing nothing at all is overkill. But the one in four could be completely predictable. The first turn you receive the status, you're fully paralyzed (or if you would act first, in the next action). So if you move first, deal some damage, get the status, the best idea would be just to switch, as that would count as the first turn of paralysis, where you couldn't do anything anyway.

And the confusion, although lasting two turns, still has a luck factor. That being will you hit yourself or not, or are you implying that you WILL hit yourself those two turns?

About the sleep, the problem here is: 2 turns would mean the equivalent of Rest, making Rest itself a little worse, and there are Pokémon that have abilities to half this, aren't they? So It would be a one turn Sleep, rendering it less useful. Sleep status in V gen is completely crazy (became way too powerful), so the part of getting it back to IV gen is cool. Other reason is, as far as I know, the hidden number applied to sleep is something in between 1 and 5, making 3 the average.

 

[Vexatious]

It would be for only moves such as Night Slash and Cross chop. All other moves would have no critical formula whatsoever.

Perhaps maybe, when you are paralyzed then you cannot act the same turn you are paralyzed? Like how taunt works if you had chosen to use Stealth Rocks.

Yes, but that would make those pokemon's abilities that much better. Rather than just insomnia/vital spirit to counteract sleep, that gives many more counters to the condition. Also, rest is fine as it is, making sleep last less only makes it as good as rest, not nerfing rest.

 

[domeface]

I think it'd be a bad idea to reduce Spore and Dark Void to 75% accuracy; Spore has such low distribution that the few pokemon who have it really rely on it to function, without being broken or too hard to beat. Breloom's low speed and relative frailty would usually spell doom on a normal pokemon, but with Spore, Loom is able to be a top-tier OU. I would definitely discourage Spore being decreased. Also, since Darkrai will almost certainly be Uber anyway, I'd also discourage dropping DV to 75%, as Dark Void and to a lesser extent Nasty Plot is more or less all that's keeping Darkrai from being totally outlcassed by Mewtwo in Ubers, so a DV nerf is IMO unnecessary. However, I definitely agree with the other sleep moves being improved to 75%.
I also think it's a better option to increase WoW to 90% along with Stun Spore (and possibly reduce Twave?) rather than decreasing Toxic to 75%. Toxic, Paralysis and Burn aren't as crippling as Sleep (well, they can all be crippling on the right target, but there are larger groups of pokemon who don't mind each status too much than with Sleep).
On crits, I think a solution where you edit all the high-crit moves to Leaf Blade clones (90BP/100%/15PP) is the fairest solution, as that basically improves all of them bar Leaf Blade itself, making up for the high-crit-chance loss. The exception to this would be Spacial Rend and Aeroblast, since they're legendary signature moves, and should be made EQ clones IMO.
On Sleep, another option is to implement a similar system to the Poison status, with normal Sleep, then Deep Sleep. Normal sleep would be inflicted by Spore and last 2 turns, while Deep Sleep would be inflicted by the less accurate sleep moves and last 3, as a way to balance Spore's higher accuracy. This would still allow Breloom to function properly, but without hugely crippling the opposing pokemon, and would make Sleep Powder and the crew a little better.
For editting moves in general, I think EQ clones of every type may get a little unnecessary, but Fire Blast clones for most types should be acceptable (certainly, Focus Blast, Blizzard, Hydro Pump, Dark-type equivalent, Ghost-type equivalent and maybe Thunder if the paralysis chance is removed). Also, some moves should be tweaked a little in other areas IMO; Dragon Claw, Dark Pulse, Shadow Ball and Waterfall should be increased to 90BP (Waterfall, Dark Pulse and Shadow Ball lose a secondary effect, and DC is just unnecessarily weak), Double Chop to 45BP(x2), Aqua Tail should be increased to 100BP (to make up for the 90% accuracy). Dragon Rush should be increased to ~85-90% accuracy, as it too loses a 20% flinch). The elemental punches and fangs should be powered up a little to make up for their lost side-effects, as should tri-attack (I suggest 80 for the punches/fangs, 90 for TA).
In general, the kind of moves that seem inexplicably crap without better options (unless said better options have crap distribution, ie Aura Sphere) should be improved to a usable level. You don't have to use my suggestions exactly, but I would urge you to look generally at moves that are much worse (or much better) than they should be.

 

[Astruvis]

I know quite a bit of information is stored in the db text files. You can change a lot of things by editing these and then copying them over to both the server and the client. One person made hydro cannon a multi-hit move with this, so it should all be possible.

Some things that would be a bit more difficult would be changing mechanics like sleep, but it you look in the git repository you should be able to look at old commits to go back. Also scripts don't really change the effects of moves.

 

[Curtains]

Can't wait to play this . Hope this becomes a real metagame. Any date you have in mind.

 

[Mekkah]

You could consider adding a gauge of sorts to secondary effects such as Lava Plume. You can have it start at 0, for example, and every time Lava Plume is used, 30 is added. Once the gauge hits 100 or goes over, a burn (or other side effect, depending on what move is used) occurs. The number would be known to both players, and therefore factored in ("on this Lava Plume I better switch in Blissey rather than Dragonite").

If that is too complicated, I recommend just eliminating the small extra side effects like Flamethrower burn, and let Lava Plume keep its 30%. Or give it a 100% chance to burn something the first time it's used in the game, and then eliminate it?

For confusion, you could make it last for one turns, where on one of the turns the Pokémon hits itself, and on the other they go through it, and only randomizing which of these is on the first, and which of these is on the second. Or just eliminate all chance-based behavior from it in some other way, but then it won't be anything like old confusion.

I think Critical hits should either have that gauge system, or not exist at all. You can just make power/accuracy adjustments to high crit moves, or give them a 100% side effect of piercing defense boosts. Keeping that part of crits in the game might just be healthy, even if something like Curse Snorlax is no longer a relevant threat.

I'd up all moves with 90% accuracy or more to 100% so pretty much every type has a move that hits all the time. There's other options for misses, such as the gauge system, but I think I'll leave it at this. I hope you'll pull this off.

 

[Vexatious]

Alright so looks like this is mostly client based that I'll be working with, I'll have to look into working with the client more then.

I don't have any date in mind, just that I'm a college student of winter break with a lot of free time to learn how to do things...haha Hopefully sooner than later, my friends are on my ass about making a server without all the hax.

That was an original idea my friend had actually. With the % set to 30% it would climb after every use until eventually it would activate, but I like your idea of a counter. I'd probably want to make it the third hit though, as spamming a move four times in a row I'm not to sure about.

Confusion is really frustrating to decide on. I really want the chance removed, but it severely nerfs the status in general. So far the best I think we have is to let it work as it does but have it cure once you hit yourself or four turns goes by.

I like that idea about piercing defenses. My original intent was to eliminate crits completely, but my friend had worried about crit moves; this solves that issue. So far as I'm concerned, that's what I'll do with crits. I think it's the fairest solution for the crit moves while being able to remove crits from the game completely.

As it stands, moves will be the last things to change if I change them. I don't see anything horribly wrong with the established moves in the game, but there are some that I would like to change so that they become real moves like Focus Blast and Stone Edge.

 

[Innocent Criminal]

I think this is an interesting idea, but since you're willing to change the mechanics, then you shouldn't be afraid to go all the way and completely suppress randomness. I didn't participate in the debate about whether or not we should make mechanism changes, but I'm on the strict simulation side. However, if we are willing to make an alternate metagame, then we should make it as competitive and skill-based as we can. The modifications you announced are already pretty big, so there is no way players will simply switch from Smogon's server to yours and play as they used to be anyway.

 

[Delta 2777]

This is an interesting concept and I'm sincerely glad that someone is willing to put in their time to make something like this possible.

Some suggestions
-Remove secondary effects with a chance of 20% or less of happening altogether. This includes the Ice Beam freeze, the Waterfall flinch... Pretty much all of these things being removed wouldn't make much of a difference.
-Remove critical hits altogether. Players that use items such as Scope Lens use them for the sole purpose of getting hax, which is what you're trying to get away from. However, I would actually advise you to make it so that critical hits are possible if the opponent attempts to boost their defenses; possibly make the % chance of a critical hit 0, and then increase it by 1.5% for every Defense boost the opponent has?
-I like Mekkah's idea of using a gauge system for secondary effects. This can be useful not only for stuff like confusion, Lava Plume's burn, and flinches, but also for moves such as Hypnosis and Will-O-Wisp. However, you should make the move dependant on its actual accuracy for its first use, so that players can't say "ok, I know Hypnosis will hit the first time I use it".
-Make confusion have a 0% confusion rate. Players that use Confuse Ray do it only for the hax chance, which is an unreliable strategy anyway. The only thing that really takes a hit from this is Machamp, and there are many other Fighting-types that would otherwise outclass it if not solely because of Machamp's hax move.
-Make Sleep moves last 2 turns 100% of the time.
-Make moves with imperfect accuracy their base power * their accuracy, and give it 100 accuracy. For example, Hydro Pump would have 96 Base Power, and Fire Blast would have 102 Base Power. This should be used for [almost] all attacking moves. This should be acceptable since you plan on removing RNG, an actual aspect of the game, from the game itself anyway.
-Make all high-crit ratio moves Leaf Blade clones. Make Zap Cannon have 0 accuracy (if you listen to my above method).

 

[Smurf.]

As someone who just got BS'd by 12 Jirachi flinches to defeat my Metagross 1-on-1, I wholeheartedly support this concept. You make all the right moves only to be bested by the rng, not the opponent. With a protect-esque declining flinch rate, this issue is curbed.

Confusion is something else that annoys me immensely. You get +4 kingdra - the win condition - and get 2 confusions that KO yourself. Perhaps a similar methods to that above can be used, with the counter reset to zero upon a successful attack

 

[Innocent Criminal]

-Make moves with imperfect accuracy their base power * their accuracy, and give it 100 accuracy. For example, Hydro Pump would have 96 Base Power, and Fire Blast would have 102 Base Power. This should be used for [almost] all attacking moves. This should be acceptable since you plan on removing RNG, an actual aspect of the game, from the game itself anyway.

But then, Hydro Pump is just Surf with less PP, and Fire Blast completely outclasses Flamethrower. Currently, there are two categories of strong moves : those with a good secondary effect but bad accuracy (Hydro Pump), and those with perfect accuracy but a bad side effect(Flare Blitz, Close Combat). Perhaps we could grant perfect accuracy to every move, but add a side effect accordingly.

For example, the Hydro Pump / Fire Blast / Thunder family could get perfect accuracy, but lower SpA one stage : even at -1, Hydro Pump still has 90 BP but if you mispredicted, your coverage moves won't hurt enough. This is still a choice between reliability and power, so it would make Thunder viable without outclassing Thunderbolt.

Every move with 90% or more accuracy should simply get perfect accuracy, and I think WoW should too, as hoping for a miss is definitely not a viable competitive strategy.

About sleep moves, maybe we could have different "sleep strengths", with Spore sleeping 3 turns, Sleep Powder/Dark Void/Rest 2 turns and Hypnosis/GrassWhistle only one. One-turn sleep is very situational, but it can still replace Substitute when forcing switches, is definitely better than praying with 60%, and cannot be abused ("Gengar used Hypnosis! Luvdisc is fast asleep! Luvdisc switched out! Gengar used Protect!" and you get sleep clause protection and a status-immune Luvdisc that will act immediately when you switch it back in).

Stone Edge could follow Earthquake's example and exchange is high crit rate for perfect accuracy, as SE's accuracy's only competitive "use" is SubRoost, which still beats it anyway.

Multi-hit moves could always hit three times, buffed up to five with Skill Link.

 

[rav3n_zero]

I liked Yoki's idea with Hydro Pump etc. It fits GameFreak initial design, meaning that it won't just erase those moves, giving more options for sets.

Mekkah's idea of criticals' secondary effect is just perfect. Eliminates RNG completely.

After reading the last posts and thinking about it a little, sleep should be just 2 turns. Vex, you are right. Making this change to sleep won't make Rest weaker at all. It's pretty much unrelated.

And I like Yoki's idea for sleep "strengths", but they should be more like: 2 turns for those that already had perfect accuracy (or maybe going until 75%, just so spore isn't the sole move to have 2 turns) and 1 turn for the rest of them. I support his idea for multi-hit moves too.

And I still think Confusion should remain until the mon hits itself (or 4 turns passes on, sounds fine too, but I think less would be better... 4 turns just sounds too long). Confusion isn't hax, it's an effect. But, as it is right now, it's haxy. It makes absolutely no sense to hit yourself and still be confused.

For last, as far as the counter for secondary effects, just bump them to 35%. It wouldn't make them broken, and they would hit 100% on the third time.

 

[domeface]

I must say (for the third goddamn time after my browser wiped my post twice >_>) that introducing a -1 SpA drop for the 120BP crew is a terrible idea. Thunder/Blizzard may see more use on Choiced pokemon, but they also lose their weather niche, and Focus Blast is of limited use since its most common users don't usually use Specs sets (Infernape and Gengar work better with a LO, Botsu/Darkrai use Nasty Plot etc). Also, Fire Blast, Hydro Pump and Power Whip get completely crippled. Almost all users of these moves (including Specs users) would find an accuracy increase to 85% far more useful; an 85% accuracte move will miss on average 1.2 times out of its 8PP; this means that over the 8 uses it has a cumulative base power of 120*6.8 = 816BP. Compare this to a move that drops SpA one stage after each use. Even assuming the user uses it only twice each time before switching out, the cumulative base power is only 800. The former has a larger CBP and the user is never forced to switch out when using it. The fact that Fire Blast is almost always used over Flamethrower currently shows you that 85% accuracy is a fair trade-off for the extra power.
Also, I'd like to point out that it was actually me that first suggested the idea of different strengths of Sleep for different moves (though I do think a better system would be 2 turn sleep for Spore, 3 turns for everything else, with all sleep moves with <75% being boosted to 75%)
Also, even if we do retain the defense-piercing effects of crits, I still urge you to change all high-crit moves to 90BP/15PP/100%; in other words, Leaf Blade clones (again though, Spacial Rend and Aeroblast should be EQ clones). Stone Edge and Cross Chop could stay at their current power and be boosted to 90% accuracy though, as that's statistically exactly as good as Leaf Blade.
In general terms for moves, I still think it would be a good idea to perform small revisions on moves that seem unnecessarily weak and/or inaccurate. Obviously I'm not referring to Ember etc, but rather the things I talked about in my last post - Dragon Rush/Claw, Shadow Ball, Dark Pulse, elemental Punches/Fangs, etc etc.
I dislike the idea of a secondary effect 'counter', as it makes it too predictable IMO; a move like Bounce being effective relies on the fact that nothing really wants to switch in on a 30% paralysis chance. Similarly, if you know exactly when a Boil Over burn or whatever is going to occur, it's much easier to counter since you can just switch in your special attacker or status absorber. This subsequently makes these moves much less effective, so I'm definitely in favour of keeping them as just a 30% chance.

 

[Destiny Warrior]

To those arguing against a certain counter being used to decide when a move like Boil Over should burn, let me introduce you to something.

The way the game actually checks for side effects is not random, as anybody with a little knowledge of the RNG knows. However, what most people neglect that the in battle RNG CAN be abused ingame, because of how seeds work.

For example, if you use a move like Seed Bomb, the RNG seed advances by 1, as its only side effect is to critical hit, whereas Boil Over advances the RNG by 2, since it can also burn.

How Boil Over's burn effect works is like this:-(A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J are ten seeds in a row)

ABCDEFGHIJ are ten consecutive seeds, with 3 of them(say C, E and G) provide Boil Over burns if Boil Over is used when that is the active seed. For example, if the player uses Boil Over with Tentacruel from any of those 3 seeds, it is a guaranteed burn.

The RNG is pushed by both players, meaning that this system very similar to your proposed system of inbuilt counters determining RNG effects. In fact, you'd be closer to game mechanics than the actual PO Smogon server!

What this means is that you *can* implement something on your server that picks a random seed from 1-100, and announces it in the log, so that hax essentially becomes nonexistent, because every person will know when misses, confusion damage etc. will happen roughly, because they can prepare for such a thing to happen, meaning a lot of hax is removed, leaving only things which are influenced by your opponent. Frankly, I think this minimizes almost all effects of luck without needing overly complicated changes like altering BP etc.

Thoughts?

 

[Curtains]

To those arguing against a certain counter being used to decide when a move like Boil Over should burn, let me introduce you to something.

The way the game actually checks for side effects is not random, as anybody with a little knowledge of the RNG knows. However, what most people neglect that the in battle RNG CAN be abused ingame, because of how seeds work.

For example, if you use a move like Seed Bomb, the RNG seed advances by 1, as its only side effect is to critical hit, whereas Boil Over advances the RNG by 2, since it can also burn.

How Boil Over's burn effect works is like this:-(A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J are ten seeds in a row)

ABCDEFGHIJ are ten consecutive seeds, with 3 of them(say C, E and G) provide Boil Over burns if Boil Over is used when that is the active seed. For example, if the player uses Boil Over with Tentacruel from any of those 3 seeds, it is a guaranteed burn.

The RNG is pushed by both players, meaning that this system very similar to your proposed system of inbuilt counters determining RNG effects. In fact, you'd be closer to game mechanics than the actual PO Smogon server!

What this means is that you *can* implement something on your server that picks a random seed from 1-100, and announces it in the log, so that hax essentially becomes nonexistent, because every person will know when misses, confusion damage etc. will happen roughly, because they can prepare for such a thing to happen, meaning a lot of hax is removed, leaving only things which are influenced by your opponent. Frankly, I think this minimizes almost all effects of luck without needing overly complicated changes like altering BP etc.

Thoughts?

no wonder hax is much more prevalent on pokemon online than in wifi. Its not coded to game mechanics.

 

[Sceats]

The reason hax seems to be much more prevalent on simulaters is becuase the games are so much faster. The more moves you make the higher chance of a crit and if you play 10 games on pokemon online in half an hour and then play 2 on wifi in the same amount of time then of course you are going to be haxed alot more on simulaters.

In relation to the whole secondary effects thing, mekkahs idea of having boil over burn the first time and then act as a normal move from there seemed solid. Personally i am not to interested in playing this, however i am interested in how it turns out. Good luck!

 

[Chomper The Sharptooth]

i know pokemon online has more critical hits. Ive actually got crits 3 times in a row.Its actually taken me more than 5 moves times to paralyze a pokemon with serene grace body slam.Never in my pokemon career have i ever had on average seen 5-6 crits every battle.

I think I've heard what Sceats has about the PO's RNG giving how much hax it is supposed to over a large number of turns. I think the problem is what Curtains is saying, it's a different RNG. It seems like Pokemon's seeding makes small hax happen just as often over time but makes it spread out over time to prevent the sort of larger haxes (full health magnezone flinched to death by scarfrachi, Skarmory killed by Hippodown's Ice Fang after being frozen) because they are all determined individually of each other.

As for actually seeing more crits as a whole, I'd say psychological effect.

Edit: Forgot to actually talk about the idea. It would require more knowledge of RNG but I think showing the seed would be the best. By changing more than a few actual mechanics the game becomes almost an entirely different entity which I'd think would make getting a large following for hard.

 

[ChaosNebula]

Ban hax all together. Paralysis, Burn, confusion all of that crap should be removed. Sure a couple of pokemon will drop, but hax is really effing annoying. Whether it benefits you or not, it will always screw you up one way in the other.

Destroy it in whole and we will all have a good time.

 

[Aldaron]

I have always supported projects such as these, because I feel we have enough intelligent users to actually make competitive Pokemon a game that far more values team preparation and information utilization over probability management, the last of which tends to mark competitive Pokemon as "unskilled" by various gamers.

A few years ago, I made this topic: http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44433

It is similar to yours and shows that a hax reduced servers are well thought of. As is the case with most modded projects, that specific endeavor hit a wall, specifically a technical one.

It seems like we have a few capable programmers here, so I'd just like to say I would love to advise and provide guidance on setting up and completing this project.

Anyway, in terms of project organization, I think we have to view this in terms of "obvious" and "test based" changes, with the test based changes taking practical concerns like viability of mass testing and data collection into account.

Let me respond to a few of the points in the OP:

Damage Range

Regarding the RNG, I agree. I was considering lowering the range, but ultimately, it's better to have an "average damage value" simply because the concept of EVs and natures introduces enough damage variance.

I'll get to crits later because the proposition is a bit controversial.

Removing critical hits in most normal instances and making the damage range an average value are obvious I would say.

Altering accuracy and secondary effects are all controversial changes that should be introduced gradually and based on testing experience.

Paralysis and Confusion

Regarding paralysis and confusion, my quick poll from a lot of players came to this conclusion: just remove the full paralysis chance, and make paralysis reduce Speed to 1. For confusion, just remove it altogether. Confusion is a strategy that relies solely on probability management, and is ultimately not in the direction we want to go in.

Freeze

Regarding Freeze, most players said remove it, but I kind of like your idea of having a set amount of turns you are frozen.

Sleep Mechanics

Regarding Sleep, we came to the same conclusion you did. 2 full independent turns of sleep; it can be put up for debate whether or not switching should reset the counter, because that isn't probability management since it is a set, 100% event.

Accuracy

Regarding Accuracy, the idea was to to simply reduce the effect misses had by using a clever system. Say, for example, Focus Blast with 70% accuracy. The first turn it is used, it has 70% accuracy. If it hits, the next turn is 70% again. If it misses, the accuracy for any move the Pokemon will use is the probability of hitting once in two turns with both move's accuracies considered. For example, if you missed with Focus Blast and used it again, the accuracy to hit on that turn is 91%, or the chance of hitting Focus Blast once in 2 turns. If you used, say, Hydro Pump at 80% after missing Focus Blast, the chance of hitting with Hydro Pump would be 94%, or the chance of hitting one of Focus Blast or Hydro Pump in 2 turns. The accuracy issue was where we compromised removing hax for reducing hax, in order to keep the "Pokemon flavor."

Secondary Effects

Regarding secondary effects, the main problem we ran into was not completely neutering what people perceive as Pokemon. Which is why the thought was to simply reduce the amount of probability in secondary effects. (We had decided to remove the Serene Grace ability altogether btw). There would be no burn / paralyze / freeze chance on 100% accurate moves like Flamethrower / Thunderbolt / Ice Beam; Lava Plume / Boil Over remain the same, and Fire Blast / Blizzard retain their accuracy but don't have their secondary effects. Basically, reducing the amount of probability. That solution was the only reasonable one we could come up with that still kept the "Pokemon flavor" in the game.

WoW

Regarding Will-O-Wisp specifically, we said just make it 100%. Why? Because Burn isn't game breaking by any meanings and at 75%, you "expect" it to hit and your opponent "expects" to get hit.

Sleep Moves

Regarding sleep moves like Sleep Powder / Grasswhistle / Dark Void / Hypnosis, we were unable to come up with a conclusion. 100% Sleep is strong, and ultimately we felt the alterations to the accuracy system were enough.