Species Clause

[Mekkah]

When posting in the uber definition topic I remembered this thread about the question why Species Clause is still enforced. I don't think it is a very necessary rule, especially not in DP where doubling up on one Pokemon with exactly the same defensive problems (whichever it is) leaves you vulnerable to even more things. I think the pros (surprise value between for example Mixmence and Specsmence) are compensated if not overridden by the cons (massive Ice weakness, in this case, as well as Stealth Rock etc). I would personally enjoy Species Clause being removed from Ladder Play as well as tournaments in the future, because I see no really convincing reason to keep it.

 

[Lee]

My only problem would be that if the opponent were to pack multiple Garchomps, then I'd feel the need to pack multiple Garchomp counters.

Let me expand...I use Bronzong to "counter" Garchomp. In taking down Garchomp, he usually has to blow himself up, 3HKO with Gyro Ball or put him to sleep, all of which usually involve taking Swords Danced Fire Fangs or multiple Outrages. I have no problem if Bronzong dies in this mission, because that is his sole reason for being in my team.

I'd be pretty pissed off if I exploded my Bronzong to take down Garchomp, only for the opponent to immediately send out another Garchomp.

It's not as easy to apply that principle to other Pokemon, as others are a little easier to counter, but that is my only problem with the rule.

Even if it were removed, I wouldn't expect people to change their teams because of it. Maybe the odd fanboy would get another Lucario, but that's about it.

 

[Jumpman16]

I would love to test or at least play without Species Clause for a while just to see if you're indeed right, Mekkah. I think you may be in the end but it'd be fun to see conclusive evidence (if such a thing is possible).

To repaste my idea from that thread:


"Lucario@Sash
Adamant
EVs: 4HP/252Atk/252Spd
~Swords Dance
~Extremespeed
~Close Combat
~Crunch

leads, does not care about SR. I actually created this set over a year ago before we realized how lame SR was, kept it under wraps to ultimately no avail, fuck you SR =(. this also does not care about a lot of leads, SDing against most leads like Gyarados, Tyra and Hippo, crunching the Gengars etc, knowing it has great support in its Sash and the CBed ES of its cousin.

Lucario@CB
Adamant
EVs: 4HP/252Atk/252Spd
~Close Combat
~Extremespeed
~Stone Edge
~Crunch

insurance against fast stuff that "should" sweep a six luke team, like scarfchomp

Lucario@LO
Adamant
EVs: 4HP/252Atk/252Spd
~Swords Dance
~Extremespeed
~Close Combat
~Bullet Punch

further insurace and fun as hell

Lucario@Specs
Modest
EVs: 4HP/252SpA/252Spd
~Aura Sphere
~HP Ice
~Vacuum Wave
~Dark Pulse

standard special threat

Lucario@Salac
Adamant
EVs: 4HP/252Atk/252Spd
~Sub
~Reversal
~SD
~Crunch

fun stuff

Lucario@Scarf
Hasty
EVs 176Atk/252Spd/80SpA
~HP Ice
~Close Combat
~Rock Slide
~Shadow Ball

so garchomp, heatran, gyarados and gengar respectively, don't run rampant, EVs are pretty random cause even at 350 SpA HP Ice can't OHKO a full HP garchomp but whatever"



Feel free to theorymon against (or for, to make it better) this "team", which I actually spent more than a few minutes thinking up. As is the aim of this forum, this forum gives a posts like that a better chance to be examined and discussed by our more experienced heads.

 

[obi]

About the Garchomp argument, as I said in that thread, if a Pokemon is only held in check by letting you only have one of them on your team, then perhaps the problem is the Pokemon, not the lack of species clause. We don't currently see teams of Garchomp, Dragonite, Salamence, and 3 random Pokemon.

 

[Mekkah]

Indeed, you would now be able to wear down the counter of a Pokemon with one and then come in with another, which would seriously help Exploding Metagross a lot among others. However, that comes at the price that everything Metagross cannot handle has now be handled by 4 Pokemon rather than 5, which I think perfectly compensates.

Garchomp may also be put to uber for all we know so he may not even be a viable argument in the future (though the chance of that seems rather slim looking at the majority of the people rather unbanning things than banning, or leaving it as it is). But let's not get into that.

 

[Phuquoph]

If you had both Choice Band Salamence and Choice Specs Salamence on the same team, the idea of outpredicting them kinda goes out of the window. You work out the first one has Choice Band, so you send in Hippowdon to absorb the Dragon Claw. You have no way of knowing that the Specs version is actually sent out, so your Hippo dies to Draco Meteor. It is a similar situation with Band/Specs Lucario, or to a lesser extent, Tyranitar.

 

[Aeroblacktyl]

Tournament idea anyone?

 

[Jibaku]

Arceus

Basically, a team with 6 pogeys with incredible unpredictability, huge power and limited counters would dominate in a species clauseless environment. Some candidates for this job would be Gengar, Lucario, Infernape and Garchomp. All of these do not have straightforward counters, and seeing as how a team usually only carries one or two counters to this these things, it is tough for them to beat down say, a mono Gengar when their only "counter" to it are Blissey and Weavile. And of course, as Phuquoph stated, it is impossible to tell which is which, unless they have different sprites, nicknames and damage bar (won't come in handy until the later parts of the game).

My opinion on this matter cannot be set until testing has been done. For one, it could make things a bit boring and really annoying, (and at the same time, this causes more "luck" to happen since this is really a guessing game now, not prediction anymore), but at the same time, it can be fun when both users are allowed to do this. And the obligatory mention of "shared weakness"


Personally,I believe that without species clause, the metagame can be a bit more offensive to say the least. The word "counter" now burns into dust...

 

[Jumpman16]

Except that in the above scenario, Phuq, an observant battler would notice that the non-Leftovers Salamence magically has recovered 6.25% or 12.5% of the HP it had once lost. Granted, that's a "counterteam" to a specific argument you made, but I feel that the prevalence and possibility of Sand Stream, Stealth Rock, Spikes, Toxic Spikes and pokemon taking active damage on the switch or on the turns during which they start the turn on the field are high enough to discount that annoyance.

I wonder if there's anything at all to be said for just why Nintendo/Game Freak makes species clause default for everything but link battles. If our competitive battles are indeed supposed to mirror the environment of link battles, then I don't see a reason why we should factor in the Species Clause of their Official Tournaments and Stadium Mode stuff, because in these venues Item Clause is also enforced and I'm pretty sure our general stance on enforcing Item Clause is "lol". PBR definitely doesn't enforce either Item or Species Clause, and actually instituted a way that you can set your own rules with friends.

I honestly see no reason why Species Clause is accepted by default besides "that's the way it's been forever". Now, obviously, we clause ubers and DT and OHKOs, but these have actually been tested over the course of different generations of play (and we're constantly tweaking the definition of "uber" lately anyway). And obviously no one will really have a problem with it if things stay the way they are (by this I mean no one is arguing against not being able to use 6 Garchomp on one team). But when you think about it logically there's no reason not to test this out, when you consider that it actually is NOT the default in the mode of competitive pokemon we're trying to emulate. Granted, it may prove that a team of six Lucario or 6 Garchomp may prove broken as hell, but at least we weill have arrived at the conclusion of enforcing Species Clause via empirical evidence instead of assumptions.

 

[Surgo]

Species clause is an RBY artifact that has no reason to exist anymore. Having two Tauros on your team doesn't make it significantly better anymore. It should be fine to finally let it go.

 

[Bologo]

Well, it doesn't seem that it'd be too much of a problem to remove species clause, but it still needs to be an option that people can check off, if they wish to do so. Right now species clause is like sleep clause. It needs to be more like freeze clause, because people can pick that, but is not mandatory.

 

[Yagami Light]

I agree that the defensive problems of doubling up exceed the benefits of surprise. If you have two Salamences, for example, you've just gotten 2 4x Ice Weaks, 2 Rock weaks (SR) and 2 Dragon weaks in exchange for your opponent being surprised when it is sent out(Until a mence loses HP, that is).

 

[Cathy]

I'm not sure species clause can actually be tested empirically. Well, it can, but this gets into a particular philosophy of science argument. The way we would interpret data on species clause depends on assumptions we make in advance, but those assumptions are what we are trying to test.

Here's an example. Suppose Lucario (to use Jumpman's team) is really so good without species clause that after a while most people have a team of six Lucario. Now the statistics are going to show that the game has dramatically centralised, so that only one (!) pokemon is viable. But we are left with the question of how to interpret this. It could be that species clause is necessary, or it could be that Lucario is broken. We can only conclude that Lucario is broken if our background assumption is "the Species Clause-less game is not broken" but we can only conclude Species Clause is necessary if we assume Lucario is not broken.

A more compelling reason for removing Species Clause is that it makes the rules simpler, which I think should be a priority.

 

[Aeroblacktyl]

The issue imo wouldn't be actually facing a team of 6 of something, but maybe like 3 of them and then the other 3 to counter everything the first Pokemon couldn't handle, which would in fact be a lot more dangerous than a team of 6 something. I don't see why wouldn't abuse spieces clause if it didn't exist, so that makes it pointless to have that "well I only have one Poke to counter that one Poke" argument. I mean, I would never use a 6 Lucario team in fear of facing a 3 Garchomp team etc.

So with all that said, if we remove Species Clause rule, make it a limit to where you're not allowed to have more than a certain number of a Poke while breaking Species Clause. It could be fun, who knows, we're just theorymoning here!

 

[Hipmonlee]

Honestly, what does removing species clause add to the game. Surely the only effect would be to increase centralisation.

I for one would almost certainly double up on pokemon whenever I could. And I certainly wouldnt double up on a pokemon that wasnt top tier..

Have a nice day.

 

[makiri]

Agreeing with Hip here, removing species clause doesn't add anything but has the potential to centralize the game. I've only really seen species clause being broken in ADV but when it was it was never any fun. Of course I never planned my team to handle 3 Gengars but I feel thats beyond the point. No species clause will turn Pokemon into a guessing game, "Will my opponent have 3 Salamence or 3 Lucario?" And then from there it becomes "Well if my opponent has 6 Dragonites, then my 6 Weaviles won't have a problem, but if my opponent has 6 Metagross I am screwed."

Doubling up on Pokemon like Lucario and Salamence will cause many prediction problems like Phuq said, so I am against dropping Species Clause.

 

[Blue Kirby]

I'm also against dropping Species Clause. As mentioned previously, it doesn't enhance the quality of the metagame to any degree. The very possibility of the metagame becoming over centralized as a result of removing the rule is enough to put me off. Although it may not turn out that way in practice, I'd much rather ruling the possibility out altogether.

Also, I don't really see how removing it makes the rules more simple to a large enough degree to warrant any sort of argument - having one species per team really isn't a hard concept to follow.

 

[Aldaron]

Actually, when it comes to centralization, testing isn't even required for Species Clause.

The concept of Species Clause inherently promotes variety. While removing Species Clause might not centralize the game any more, it definitely will not make it more varied and it definitely could make more centralized.

It's either 0 gain or negative gain, from a centralization perspective...is that even worth testing?

 

[Dragontamer]

Actually, when it comes to centralization, testing isn't even required for Species Clause.

The concept of Species Clause inherently promotes variety. While removing Species Clause might not centralize the game any more, it definitely will not make it more varied and it definitely could make more centralized.

It's either 0 gain or negative gain, from a centralization perspective...is that even worth testing?

I agree.

There is an interesting fact made out implicitly in your post however. There can only be a negative gain if in fact several pokemon are overcentralizing. Therefore, would it not be a proper test to remove Species clause, see which pokemon get a spike in usage, and then have a declaration of Uber based on the results?

I should note that I am against direct testing on the ladder. An alternative server would be best IMO.

 

[Havak]

Yeah, I have to agree Hipmonlee, Zerowing, Blue Kirby & Aldaron.

Although I'm one for keeping the majority of the rules the same as what Nintendo/Gamefreak try to implement, Species Clause is just the most stupi thing both ways. I believe it will add nothing if we remove it, bar possibly fucking everything up and centralizing the metagame even more than it already is.

Aldaron is right when he says that Species Clause main goal is to promote variety. We don't have enough variety as it is with Garchomp and Blissey etc on basically every team, so removing it will destroy this aspect of the game even more so.

Also, I agree with Phuq on his post, that would be fucking ridiculous.

I kind of have to agree that people can't really have the answer without testing, so test it if you want, but despite this I still think it'll be a waste of everyones time. I say we keep Species Clause, nothing lost, nothing gained, just another thing out of the way.

 

[obi]

Remember that if we do test something and don't like what it leads to, we can always add the clause back.

I believe that one of the goals of rules should be that they are as simple as possible.

 

[Havak]

In the greatest regard, how would removing Species Clause make the Standard Rules any simpler? I mean, come on, it's pretty straightforward. It doesn't exactly simplify things, it's just one less Rule not to list if we rid of it.

In terms of actually playing the game, I think it's simpler with Species Clause.

 

[Aldaron]

I don't really understand what Havak is getting at by saying the addition of a rule makes the rules simpler lol, but I'm glad he agrees with me for the original point.

I'd like to stress that testing isn't even required for Species Clause, at least from the centralization perspective. I'm not saying anything about it in terms of making the game more "fun" or adding an "unnecessary rule" or that "having multiple species isn't broken." All of that would require testing.

My entire point is that revoking a clause such as "Species Clause" inherently promotes centralization.

So the the real question is about measuring the significance of "diversity" in our treasured OU metagame. This of course is a subjective matter, so if we can perhaps prioritize what is more important, diversity or "brokenness," then we can decide whether or not testing Species Clause is even worth it.

As for Dragontamer's other point, that point shouldn't just be implicit in my paragraph, it should be explicitly shouted out to all!

THAT is EXACTLY how the Ubers Tier SHOULD have been determined. The most practical method for obtaining as empirically sound a Ubers Tier as possible would be to declare all Pokemon viable for OU, and then choose an arbitrary amount of time for the intervals at which we would check our "centralization" statistics. Then, whatever caused whatever we define as "centralized," we would ban accordingly.

The removal of Species Clause and the establishment of a Ubers Tier go hand in hand.

 

[obi]

Item clause also necessarily decentralizes the use of items.

 

[Dragontamer]

THAT is EXACTLY how the Ubers Tier SHOULD have been determined. The most practical method for obtaining as empirically sound a Ubers Tier as possible would be to declare all Pokemon viable for OU, and then choose an arbitrary amount of time for the intervals at which we would check our "centralization" statistics. Then, whatever caused whatever we define as "centralized," we would ban accordingly.

The only problem are when Niche pokemon like Abomasnow might be used twice on a team. 2x hail starters ought to be very nice, and Abomasnow is flexible enough to run two different sets. (he has a surprisingly big movepool). At least... if species clause is removed, I might use Abomasnows.

Item clause also necessarily decentralizes the use of items.

In all honesty, I don't think too many people are worried about the leftovers / Choice Band / Life Orb / Specs monopoly at this point. We've accepted that the items are centralized.

However, it appears that we (for whatever arbitrary reason) would like to have a balanced metagame with respect to Pokemon. Perhaps items are just not innovative enough to catch our eye.