CC and Pokemon Showdown

What should PS's CC be like?

  • "Pure CC" - exactly like PO, purely random

    Votes: 54 41.5%
  • "Improved CC" - random, but with useless things removed (e.g. Spit Up without Stockpile)

    Votes: 76 58.5%

  • Total voters
    130
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Zarel

Not a Yuyuko fan
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No fuck no outclassed moves. A ton of the fun of CC is having a moveset of Tackle / Scratch / Body Slam / Strength. It's just amusing, which is all CC is supposed to be--amusing. Plus as was stated before, there is some strategy behind it. Spam tackle / tackle and then trick them with a Return or something. Regardless though, we don't need to fuck with CC. CC is meant to be funny, silly, and plain ol' dumb sometimes. That's what it is. Leave it how PO currently does it (one attacking move, and it CAN be Snore or something).

We don't need to make a competitive game out of an inherently uncompetitive metagame. Just leave it ridiculous.
Engineer Pikachu and blarajan capture my sentiments best regarding move selection. Having to work with suboptimal movesets is one of the draws of CC, and part of what makes it uniquely interesting and fun. It just wouldn't feel right to not be able to sweep a team with DoubleSlap or Round.
So are you guys okay with me removing the "at least one attacking move" rule, or are you guys a bunch of hypocrites? :P

Traditionally, CAPs have appeared in randbats since their implementation to Pokemon Showdown!. They were pretty powerful upon release, so aeo nerfed them down to Lvl 74. He also turned down their frequency (I think) since they use to show up a lot.
Their frequency was always intended to be low, but for a long time there was a bug that made them have the same frequency as everything else; I recently fixed this.
 

Great Sage

Banned deucer.
I'm perfectly fine with the one-attack rule being removed. It does not come into play excessively, and as I said previously, there are some non-attack moves that are worth a hell of a lot more than certain attack moves.
 
The idea behind the at-least-one-attacking-move is to prevent struggle wars when players are down to their last pokemon, neither of which has an attacking move (which is why they are their last pokemon).

It was in this spirit that I widened the scope in CC4Wifi to include all damaging moves (i.e. include Toxic and damaging weather).

I should probably go ahead and do some empirical calculations of just how often movesets lacking attacking moves are generated if we DON'T use this rule.

Edit: Looks like CC4Wifi generates movesets with no "damaging" moves (by my definition) approximately 2.2% of the time (approximately 1 team in 8*).

Edit 2: *which means the scenario I'm describing would happen once in every 64 battles. That doesn't sound like a lot until you consider the fact that we have ~400 CC battles a day.
 
If the player is smart, they will get rid of a Poké without damaging moves quickly so they don't have to fall back on it later (if at all possible). Pure CC sounds good to me, at least to attempt for a while
 

Great Sage

Banned deucer.
Antar, the scenario you describe (two Pokemon with no attacks as the last Pokemon) is actually not particularly likely. Suppose that players A and B each have two Pokemon, and each player has a Pokemon with no attacking moves. If player A were to kill the one Pokemon player B has that has damaging moves, player A would still in general have his Pokemon with damaging moves. To result in the Struggle face-off, you'd have to have status damage or weather or something of the sort in there.

It's rather difficult to explain, but here's the bottom line: think about the ways in which a battle could even end up such that the last two Pokemon both have no damaging moves. You will find that this situation is surprisingly difficult to construct.
 

sandshrewz

POTATO
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The only way for 2 Pokemon with no attacking moves to face each other is for the second last Pokemon in both teams to faint within the same turn (or residual damage etc you get the point). Like what Great Sage said, this scenario is quite impossible to achieve. So we could probably do away with that one attack thing.

I don't really like the idea of altering CC to any extent at all because CC is about making do with what you have and trying to win in different scenarios. Improved CC sorts of spoil this. Though having useless moves often limits your options, that's how CC forces you to think and consider your options. (Lol I sound so serious). What Engi said is pretty valid too. An improved CC might not necessarily make CC more fun or better. CC is just for fun and just admitting to whatever team RNG gives you. Not really worth the trouble of having to write out what moves are considered outclassed in what cases. Just leave CC as it is because having Spit Up without Stockpile is just part of the fun x) no one should complain or anything when you get a useless move because you have to admit you're going to rely on some luck anyway if you're playing CC.

Removing the one attacking move rule might be for the better :) sorry if I sound too serious or anything x)

Edit: also thank you for implementing CC in future :)
 
I would prefer to have a completely random CC to go with randbat. They would offer completely different types of matches so there is a higher chance they will both be played enough.
 
Whether or not we remove (or modify) the "at least one attacking move" rule (and the people who pointed out the flaw in my argument were exactly right), I *would* like to address the issue of useless moves and combos:

  • Moves that do nothing: Teleport, Splash, Substitute on Shedinja
  • Moves that will never do anything without another move on the same set: Spit Up and Swallow without Stockpile
  • Moves that will almost never do anything without moves on the same set: Dream Eater / Nightmare without sleep-inducing move (opposing poke could have been put to sleep by another poke / itself); Snore / Sleep Talk without Rest (you could always be put to sleep)
  • Doubles/triples only moves: Follow Me, Helping Hand, Wide Guard(?), Ally Switch--if we agree to remove these, I'd like something put into the code that would put them back in the movepools for Doubles/Triples battles once they're implemented into PS

Edit: my hope is to reach some sort of consensus on these issues by late this week, when I will have a TON of time to code this up.
 

Level 51

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I was in the HGSS Battle Factory lately, and I found a Burmy with Snore but not Rest or anything:

15 | Burmy | Adamant | Sitrus Berry | Bug Bite | Tackle | Snore | Protect | HP/Atk

If Pokemon like this (albeit just one) were implemented into an actual ingame minigame, I don't see why it would be necessary to prohibit it from CC.
 

Great Sage

Banned deucer.
Right now, PO CC frequently has situations where you have utterly useless moves. It's not particularly bothersome, and not worth coding for.
 
My personal feeling is that usually-useless moves (namely the sleep-related ones) are par for the course, but that the always-useless ones (doubles/triples, spit up without stockpile and the do-nothing moves) should be removed.

Note that Magikrap will still get Splash, since it only has access to four moves.
 

jrrrrrrr

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as an avid CC player I love the "useful mon" generation of PS. It makes me feel like every team has a chance of winning, even if some ridiculous team matchup comes up (Limi had Drain Punch/Ice Punch/Bulk Up Hitmonchan against my team of slow Dragons and Flying types with no flying stab the other day, for example). Instead of being stuck with crap like Wynaut without Mirror Coat and Counter, or unSTABbed Facade being my only useful attack on a team. Maybe its not "pure" CC but it's a heck of a lot more fun IMO.

The only thing that the "useful mon" generation can screw you over with is when one person gets a really good uber with a great moveset, its much more common than in pure random cc. That's an acceptable risk though.
 
Purely random with at least one attacking move (not Snore or similar) seems the most fun to me. Spit Up without Stockpile is fine. Tackle and Strength in the same moveset is also fine. This is how it was in NetBattle. It should be noted that CC in NetBattle originally didn't have the "at least one attacking move" restriction - it was implemented thanks to community suggestions. Actually, NetBattle had at least one STAB attacking move, but I don't think that's required.
 
So I've begun the work of porting Challenge Cup to Pokemon Showdown, and I ran across a problem in the level balance algorithm.

The algorithm that PO uses to calculate level balance is found here. How is basically works is that it finds the pokemon with the lowest "baseStatSum" (Sunkern), sets that pokemon to Lv. 100, and then changes the level of everyone else so that they have (approximately) the same "baseStatSum."

On first glance, "baseStatSum" appears to be pretty straightforward: the stats of a pokemon at Lv. <level> given neutral nature, 31 IVs and 85 EVs in each stat, with Atk and SpA being further multiplied by <level>, since attack power is (roughly) proportional to level (yes, I realize this isn't actually the damage formula, but it's close enough for our purposes).

Okay, so here's the problem, that *should* become apparent on second glance at that "baseStatSum" function: it's wrong. Namely, that 85 should be a 21 (85/4). The rest of the formula seems correct, at least based on the premise of the algorithm (it can be argued that Atk and SpA should not be further multiplied by <level>, since bulk is the product of HP and Def). Here's the problem: if we make the correction, the corresponding level balance skews in favor of weaker pokemon: given 31 IVs / 85 EVs in each stat, neutral nature and given moves of equal base power (and no type advantage), Lv. 100 Sunkern will--barring a crit--always win against Lv. 50 Arceus.

However, Arceus will outspeed, and it *does* have greater bulk. And it should be noted that using the PO algorithm, Lv. 60 Arceus will always win against Lv. 100 Sunkern.

So here's the deal: for now, I'm going to program CC4PS with the CORRECT algorithm (21 instead of 85), and we're gonna see how you guys feel about the new level balance.

Eventually, I'd like to move Challenge Cup's (and Randbat's) level balance system over to using a modified version of X-Act's BSR. But this isn't exactly a huge priority--the glorious thing about battles with random teams is that any imbalances are made somewhat moot by the fact that each person has the same chance of getting each team.
 
Since over 40% of the voters wanted the utterly random, random battles, would it be possible to have a separate metagame for pure random battles along with the random battles with the pure CC in Showdown?
 
I programmed CC to follow the same guidelines as PO CC, with the exception of the at-least-one-attacking-move-per-set rule. It will at some point be live on the server and coexist alongside Randbats.

Aside from any 1v1 or Doubles/Triples metagames, these will be the only random-team battles supported on the server.
 
Possibly two different CCs; a ranked one that is random with the useless things removed, and an unranked one which is completely random.
 
I thinks some 1v1 challenge cup would be fun. i have never played it personally but just reading about it on the thread is really interesting and fun.
 
I think you should use the term unable to function properly instead of useless; just to differentiate between moves that are basically useless like snatch and moves that really don't work, like spit-up without stockpile.

Improved CC should only (imo) be changed enough so moves that are unable to function properly don't happen unless you randomly get them together.

The "at least one damaging move" (toxic, hail and the like included) is good too.
 
This issue is settled.

CC4PS has been programmed as "fully random," including useless moves and not requiring movesets to have at least one offensive move.

I'm locking this thread. I'll start a new one to discuss CC4PS level balance once CC is live on PS.
 
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