Heyo it's your friendly SwSh Pure Hackmons leader Ransei here bringing you a new announcement regarding the policies of this metagame. Earlier this year it was reminded to us that in the cartridge version of Pokemon Sword and Shield, Eternatus-Eternamax cannot be behind a Substitute without the game crashing. As a result, beginning in PHPL, a ruleset was added to form the complex ban of Eternatus-Eternamax + Substitute in order to make the metagame playable.
I didn't think much of this at first and it made sense but although I do not have Pokemon Sword or Shield, I've come to realize that this complex ban cannot work.
A case example is this PHPL battle against lag= bad:
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8anythinggoes-2320881018
Preventing Eternamax from using Substitute does not prevent allies from using Substitute on their own and combining it with Baton Pass in order to pass Substitute to Eternatus-Eternamax, making this complex ban effectively redundant to its purpose of avoiding the crash scenario. From here, we are stuck with a few alternative options:
1) Ban Substitute
2) Ban Eternatus-Eternamax
3) Free Substitute on Eternamax and return the metagame back to its previous state.
Banning Substitute would prevent the crash scenario from being simulated on Pokemon Showdown, but it comes with the issue of preventing all Pokemon in the metagame from using Substitute just for what's at the fault of one Pokemon. This would also defy the concept of Pure Hackmons, as you can still give hack any Pokemon to be given Substitute and use Substitute normally in the game without any form of repercussion. Additionally, Smogon tiering frequently promotes the idea that if the problem is strictly one Pokemon as opposed to the move, the Pokemon itself is to get banned. It would make more sense to ban Eternatus-Eternamax than to ban Substitute from all Pokemon due to Eternatus-Eternamax as the sole problem.
Edit: Banning Substitute + Baton Pass as a whole would prevent other Pokemon from subpassing into non-Eternamax, filtering out more than what's necessary to avoid the crash. Similar problem to banning Substitute.
Banning Eternatus-Eternamax would be banning a full on Pokemon, and the issue with this in a Pure Hackmons metagame is much more obvious...
Therefore we are left with the third option, being to free Substitute and return the metagame back to its previous state. This option still technically falls within the concept of Pure Hackmons, anything directly hackable onto a set and is usable in local battles is allowed. One can still technically hack Substitute on Eternamax and use it in local battle. The core issue lies in an unintentional effect coming from the interaction of Eternatus-Eternamax and Substitute. Assuming the game runs as normal, Eternatus-Eternamax would be able to run Substitute and use it normally without the game breaking and the battle carries on from there.
This third option is left more plausible because no matter how hard Pokémon Showdown tries to replicate the cartridge as much as possible, it is still fundamentally its own game with its own differences that aren't replicated on the cart. Pokémon Showdown does not replicate perfectly, 1:1. Features such as Endless Battle Clause and HP % Modifiers are primary examples of this, but there's also other visual differences such as Gen 7's CFZs being shown in name and animation despite this not being the case on cart, and Pokémon Showdown's tooltips. We also have the lack of implementation of pre-status in Generation 1 formats, the lack of implementation of glitches such as Acid Rain in Gen 4 formats, and even in some cases, decisions made entirely to run the PvP battle scene in a way that's objectively more playable. Earlier this year, Pokémon Showdown moved from utilizing the RNG of main series games to running on its own RNG due to exploits found that could seriously impact all competitive play for the worse. See:
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/on-rng.3758023/
With all that being said, the only way to make Generation 8 Pure Hackmons still playable while being kept as Pure Hackmons is to unban Substitute and to embrace one of Pokémon Showdown's core purposes. Pokémon Showdown is designed to replicate main series battles and then enhance on them for an even better battling experience! This is the reason all of these aforementioned differences between Showdown and the cart exist! We can simulate Gen 8 Pure Hackmons battles and play them in a way where Substitute
is used as intended and does not cause the game to crash.
tl;dr and overall announcement: Because the Eternatus + Substitute ban is redundant to its purpose of preventing Eternatus-Eternamax from being behind Substitute, no alternative ban can be made without ruining the concept of Pure Hackmons, the Substitute crash is of an unintended consequence, and Pokémon Showdown has proven to support
some diversions in cart accuracy either to make Pokémon more playable for everyone or to enhance the experience of Pokémon battling,
as a nice and lovely Christmas present, I am giving an honorable plushie to our great purple dragon Eternatus-Eternamax. Merry Christmas to Eternamax and to all of you reading this post.
Substitute + Eternatus-Eternamax is now unbanned from Gen 8 Pure Hackmons.
How does this affect the metagame? Well uh, everyone can use this 112-0 team from
aerobee again!
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/are-you-feeling-lucky-pure-hackmons-112-0.3720560/
...............................No Guard (S), Shadow Tag (S-), Wonder Guard (S-), Mold Breaker (A)
...............................Prankster (S-)
..............................Huge Power (A+), Wonder Guard (A-)
..............................Wonder Guard (A+), Huge Power (A+), Mold Breaker (B-)
..............................Magic Bounce (A+), Prankster (B-)
.............................Mold Breaker (A)
............................Mold Breaker (B+)
............................Impostor (B+)
............................Prankster (B+), Mold Breaker (B-)
..............................Wonder Guard (B), Shadow Tag (B), Mold Breaker (B-)
.............................Scrappy (B)
..............................Wonder Guard (B), Magic Bounce (B), Mold Breaker (B)
..............................Wonder Guard (B)
..............................Mold Breaker (B), Magic Bounce (B), Wonder Guard (B-)
..............................Magic Bounce (B)
..............................Shadow Tag (B-)
..............................Magic Bounce (B-)
..............................Wonder Guard (B-)
..............................Magic Bounce (C), Weather Setter (C)
..............................Magic Bounce (C)
..............................Shadow Tag (C)
..............................Mold Breaker (C), Magic Bounce (C)
..............................Mold Breaker (C)
