R.I.P. Leads and Scouting

I'm not really quite sure what to think of this at the moment seeing I've never actually played in this fashion. However, both you and your opponent have to deal with the disadvantages and advantages of this system so I think it's still fair
 
Going off of your definition, if you HADN'T have scouted the entire team, then there would be more prediction by not knowing what pokemon they had.
No, read the definition. If you haven't scouted, it's not prediction, since you don't have any prior knowledge. Scouting =/= predicting. It's sending a hard counter to gain knowledge. That's not prediction.

Your hypothesis is once you know their entire team, you posit that it requires less prediction. I disagree. It requires the same or even more prediction, because you can make educated guesses now. Prediction.
 
Unless you know your opponent well, you can't always know what they'll do. There's still 50-50 decisions and at the moment it seems to me that there's more of those 50-50 decisions to be made. However I cannot say this definitively, not having ever played this way myself.
 
Frankly, as I thought about this whole things reading every responses, All I could think about is how much more interesting it will be to putting a team together.

My friends and I had our own little tournament, mono-type, and We tried desparately to try and get the other person to tell us what was on their team before we made our own. Well, DUH, we needed to counter. In making my team I ended up using more well-rounded pokemon and so did my friends because we had done research about who we'd send out and so on.

It's going to make Team-Building rediculously more important, and flexibility of the team members too. You might need to create the team that can double or triple cover each others weaknesses (yeah, try doing that... lol), and not focus on Offensive tactics 210% of the time.

I think this 5th Gen was made to change everything, Look at the base stats as an example, in an overly-aggressive/overly-speedy metagame, we got Slowpokes on steroids. This change is another overhaul to recreate the metagame.

I enjoy change, besides, I wanna know when people are using Shadowtag.. Ugh.. lol
 
No, read the definition. If you haven't scouted, it's not prediction, since you don't have any prior knowledge. Scouting =/= predicting. It's sending a hard counter to gain knowledge. That's not prediction.

Your hypothesis is once you know their entire team, you posit that it requires less prediction. I disagree. It requires the same or even more prediction, because you can make educated guesses now. Prediction.
You're splitting hairs, really, if you ask me. They're both prediction. One is made with more information, which essentially changes the risk/reward levels based on how you use that information. I can understand the appeal of both.
 
i love the element of surprise and ambushing my opponent.

i will fucking hate it if this is in fact true for FC battles.

i'm sure i'll come to terms with it eventually, but bitterly.
 
This drastically lowers the effectiveness of certain strategies to the point of them being unusable. I won't speak for whether its overall impact is positive or negative, but an option to turn it off is very important.
 
There is still prediction, there is still a game, it's just a different game. Here's an article that describes how prediction works in games where you know all of your opponent's options. It's still an interesting game, it's just different from the previous 4 generations.

This change obviously kills scouting, but I think the bigger change is that Sweepers will be a lot more powerful, because you know exactly which Pokemon you need to eliminate in order to secure a safe sweep. Of course your opponent knows this too and can keep their checks to your Sweeper out of the battle, and that's where the Yomi layers come in! Yomi layers that didn't exist much in previous gens. So maybe don't call it dumb or terrible until we actually play with it.
 
for people saying it takes away surprise and therefore some skill, remember it adds a lot of skill because if you had say an azelf on your team (assuming azelf stay's a common lead) that is a really a mixzelf wallbreaker, your opponet will lead with metagross. Realizing this, you lead with swampert/zapdos/skarm/whatever. See, there is mindgames and skill, and I for one, can't wait to fake people out with this ;)
 

cim

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Let's not jump the gun here. Shoddy Battle simulates link play. Has anyone at all proven that this happens in link play?

Also, it's easy to rationalize not having to do this for a simulator. One could easily mandate that in an "official" scenario, you need to choose your lead in advance and give it to a Judge who mandates that you pick that Pokemon as your lead. Thus for a simulator we can just say that the server is that "judge" and that leads are pre-picked according to our rules. This is much the same as using blind character selection in a fighting game; just because the game has both players select characters at the same time doesn't mean it can't be blind. There is no reason we have to play that way on our server; it's not a game mechanic.
 
You're splitting hairs, really, if you ask me. They're both prediction. One is made with more information, which essentially changes the risk/reward levels based on how you use that information. I can understand the appeal of both.
THIS!

CWW, If you still dont realize it, it wont get as obvious as this. In the current gen, based on what you bring out, outside of leads, I can still predict what you might have. The sense of prediction in pokemon, and competitive pokemon in general, is different since we play in a organized and rather set in stone environment where prediction has a different definition. When it comes to this game, prediction is still just an educated guess. When your predicting in a match, your still guessing, be it going off of infromation gained in match or previous knowledge. Usually, in this game, previous knowledge comes into play, meaning prediction, or guessing, is just as prevelant if I hadn't scouted their team.
 
What this does is it's going to change how prediction is going to work. Instead of "I think my opponent will send in a water type so I will use Thunderbolt in hopes of catching a Pokémon that may or may not exist on this team" to "Now is the perfect time for my opponent to send in his Vaporeon, so I will use Thunderbolt to hopefully hit it." You still don't know what moveset the other guy's Lucario is using until he actually sends it out. You still have to guess if Heatran is going to use Fire Blast or Explode on you.

Prediction is still there, it's just that everyone will now have more information to work off of. It will lead to great battles, just look at the battles on the Warstory archive where the two players knew the opposing team beforehand. Did knowing what the other guy have beforehand make for a less intense battle? Of course not. I'd even say those warstories have very high caliber prediction in them.

I am going to acknowledge that this isn't a completely positive change. There are teams that rely heavily on surprise factor and gimmicks to work, and this is a huge blow to them. Pokémon that have really only one good set will be disadvantaged. But hey, 4th Gen brought us new playstyles stuff that disadvantaged teams and certain Pokémon. (Nice to meet you, Stealth Rock. Yes, I always did want to know what it was like for a metagame to revolve around a single move.) Ideally, there should have been an option to turn this on or off, because giving people choice is always a good thing. But this isn't the big metagame killer that so many people are saying it is. But, like every generation shift, styles of play come and go, always have, always will. Circle of Pokémon, or whatever you want to call it.

And if you don't like it, DP will still be here.
 

TheMaskedNitpicker

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Let's not jump the gun here. Shoddy Battle simulates link play. Has anyone at all proven that this happens in link play?
We've had several people who have claimed it does in this thread.

Also, it's easy to rationalize not having to do this for a simulator. One could easily mandate that in an "official" scenario, you need to choose your lead in advance and give it to a Judge who mandates that you pick that Pokemon as your lead. Thus for a simulator we can just say that the server is that "judge" and that leads are pre-picked according to our rules. This is much the same as using blind character selection in a fighting game; just because the game has both players select characters at the same time doesn't mean it can't be blind. There is no reason we have to play that way on our server; it's not a game mechanic.
That's some strong rationalization just to avoid a change in game mechanics. Furthermore, it's a game mechanic that I've found promotes skill over luck. It would be very odd for Smogon, a site with a reputation of trying to minimize luck in favor of skill, to bend over backwards to remove such a rule.
 
This is in my opinion plays better on the side of the more skilled player who can predict opponent's moves and team's strategy. I don't think it takes aways the element of surprise completely though as you can still use gimmicky or unpredictable movesets/items, so it can work both way. Either way, I am all for it even though I liked to run gimmicky pokies for the surprise factor.
 
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So, those are two teams from the RMT-Archive (reyscarface & vashta)

Let's say those two battlers face each other - just in the moment you see those 12 Pokémon - what kind of strategies do you let go trhough your minds if youre in reys position? do you start with heatran, when you know, that 50 % of vashta's team is weak to lava plume? or do you start with jirachi, risking to see vashta surviving the first fire punch to let one layer of spikes layed? or do you start with flygon to scout the enemy team with uturn and counter possibly skarmory or swampert?

there are so many possibilities - why are you people so negative about it? its a great advantage for the beginners to practice the mindgames and predicting and everything - i dont see any contra in that mechanic
 

TheMaskedNitpicker

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For those of you who like gimmicks: I am with you. Rest assured, this change does not herald the death of gimmicks. Chances are good that if you use an unusual Pokémon, your opponents will be less likely to know what it's going to do than if you use a common Pokémon. For the 5% of players that do figure out the obscure strategy you're using just from looking at your team, good for them. You'll surprise the other 95%.
 
Does it show movesets, nature, and things of that kind? cause if not I don't know what this nuclear clusterfuck bawwwing is all about. gamefreak has always trolled competitive battlers hardstyle, I dunno why everyone is so surprised at this.

Prediction of the unknown?

It takes away guesswork, not prediction...
True. You may know what pokemon they have (you don't have to guess anymore) but you still need to PREDICT what they will send out and when, what moves they will use, etc. If anything it amplifies prediction because if your opponent has a pokemon that appears to be a counter they can play mind games and send in something else, or take advantage of their team being viewable by constructing a team that appears to function a certain way at first glance, but perhaps does something entirely different.

So yeah, don't get your panties in a bunch everybody. Its just a different style of prediction. If you think its going to take skill out of competitive battling then I don't think you had much skill to begin with.
 

Firestorm

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Over local wireless it also shows you the opponent's Pokemon. Have tested with niche.
Thanks, this is what I wanted to know most.

Anyway, those saying this takes away the skill in Pokemon have absolutely no idea what the word skill even means. This merely takes a different type of skill to play than the one you're used to. Start embracing this change. It's probably one of the largest ones that is going to happen this gen and I'm looking forward to it. That goes double for VGC. I'm hoping we'll be able to see the opponents 6 Pokemon before we choose our 4 if we're doing 2v2 doubles. If it's 6v6 triples I guess it doesn't matter too much =P
 

cim

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That's some strong rationalization just to avoid a change in game mechanics. Furthermore, it's a game mechanic that I've found promotes skill over luck. It would be very odd for Smogon, a site with a reputation of trying to minimize luck in favor of skill, to bend over backwards to remove such a rule.
How is this any "stronger" than any of the rationalization for blind character selection in any fighting game? Since the battle hasn't started yet, it is a completely human-controllable game mechanic.

Unlike actual mechanic changes (software sleep clause, eliminating crits) it is completely simulatable in real life.
 
I've heard a few players with a lot of experience in previous generations express some disapproval for the 4th gen meta because, since there are so many Pokemon with so many different options at their disposal, the game sometimes feels more like a blind shoot-out than a game of strategy. I think something like this change could help keep that feeling in check somewhat, especially since BW is going to add a lot of new devastating tools to the pile.
 
The only thing I see as potentially negative about this change for my personal preferences is that it may further emphasize pokemon with diverse movesets past a point of my liking, since so many of my favorites are weaker ones that have one or two sets at best. However, I'm in no position to even pretend I have the experience to guess at the level of impact this would have in that direction.

In spite of my earlier post, I am in favor of more informed predictions, personally speaking.
 
This is much the same as using blind character selection in a fighting game; just because the game has both players select characters at the same time doesn't mean it can't be blind. There is no reason we have to play that way on our server; it's not a game mechanic.
I don't understand this part, could you explain it more?
 

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