See? I post about how pointless this argument is, and the pointless continues to ensue for another landslide of tl;dr saying the EXACT SAME CRAP over and over again/
We all post here because we think it is worth it. The least you could do is respect that opinion from both sides of this debate. Anyway, I trust that the moderation team knows the right time to kill a thread. I've stated before my reasons for not going ahead with a test: I do not have the time nor the resources right now to lead a test tournament
Uh, in Wi-Fi, Evasion is a clause that should be mentioned. I thought Wi-Fi goes by Smogon rules.
I guess this might be worth discussing for tournaments and whatnot, but there's no reason we should blanket ban/unban something or even get rid of Evasion Clause because "it's like a blanket ban". If anything, that line proves that no one wants an unban.
For me, this is the debate about removing the DT clause in the Shoddybattle ladder (eventually, once it is tested and all that).
Thats what we've been doing that since the begining of the fucking franchise. I don't believe that the game has changed enough to allow Double Team to suddenly 'be in check' and now be allowed into normal play.
And I don't believe you can make that kind of conclusion without a playtest.
Oh yeah, and individuals do decide what is competitive or not. It is completely unrealistic to want this to change. The game designers can do it, and if they fail then the competitive community does. Those are people making decisions.
I agree 100% actualy. We need to keep this in our minds as we discuss IMO. We are picking up after the game designers here as we change the rules (IE: Ubers, DT, etc. etc.) we need to understand that we are fundamentally changing the game.
I simply don't agree. You're not mitigating damage with Double Team, you're removing the chance of taking any direct damage and dodge status effects. It isn't like you can come in and Toxic the thing I am Double Teaming with, because I would have the ability to Double Team once on the switch and again if Toxic misses (and it already has a good chance to miss as it is). Double Team also helps remove weakness. Garchomp can't die to ice moves that never hit him.
The problem with DT is that it is in no way a modifier of any actual stat the Pokemon already has. Pokemon have different defense, different special defenses, which alters the effectiveness of stuff like Cosmic Power (which isn't learned by nearly as many things as Double Team). Double Team is equally effective for whatever uses it regardless of stats.
If you're really worried about Toxic, Substitute blocks it 100% of the time ya know. Everyone who learns DT can learn Substitute. Second: if you think every pokemon can double team effectively... then lets see DT Dugtrio vs DT Garchomp and see which one comes out better.
An offensive DT will only work if you manage to have enough attack and BP on your attacks that it becomes difficult to wall you. (IE: Garchomp). Further, bulky defenses are amplified by DT. While Garchomp is still OHKOed by Ice Beam, things like Close Combat or Surf may take several turns to kill Garchomp, while they'll easily OHKO Dugtrio.
As stated before: you cannot just slap DT on anything and expect it to work. DT works better on some pokemon than on others.
Show me the skill involved with Double Team. It takes skill to counter that move like the skill it takes to counter almost any move (even though more "luck" may be needed in most circumstances to overcome it), but does the user of the move demonstrate skill? The move inherently adds "randomness" or variance to the equation. Is there a logical strategy that can be used in which Double Team is a vital component?
More importantly: you should prove to me that increasing luck always decreases skill. We all know examples where luck decreases skill... but in the case of Pokemon, luck is
central to the complexity of this game.
Take AI for example. Chess is the best example? Take this: computers have been using the same algorithm, the same program for the past 50 years to play Chess. It is essentially: look ahead as far as you can, and then select the move that correlates to the best board position on some random heuristic.
You can't do that in Pokemon. Lets ignore the fact that the teams are hidden and also ignore that there is some secret information involved. The equivalent of the previous algorithm would be to look as far ahead as you can... and then select the move that correlates to the best
set of possible positions.
Whats the difference? To look forward say 1 moves in chess, you only need to play out 1 moves on every choice. Granted, there are maybe ~35 choices per move per player in Chess and only 9 per move per player in Pokemon... but to look forward one turn in Chess requires you to only analyze your 35 choices and then make the move. If both players move (say we also look at the opponent's possibilities), then that is some 1225 board positions per move.
On the other hand... it is far more difficult to look ahead in Pokemon. Because of the randomness in damage, you can rarely rely on a 2-hit or 3-hit KO, because there is usually a chance that you'd 3 or 4 KO instead. And with so many secondary effects on attacks... some of which matter a lot (Specs Seed Flare Shaymin can break a Blissey if it gets a defense drop)... and of course the chance of a critical.
So lets say you use a hax effect and your opponent doesn't. Assuming both pokemon have a chance of 2-hit KOing (or 3-hit KOing) each other... and the other guy isn't using a hax effect, then the number of future positions are < 2592. To fully comprehend every possible effect, you'd have to look at < 2592 states. (It may be an upper bound, but I'm pretty sure it is reasonably close to the upper bound)
Where did I get this number? Well, first like chess, both players have a chance to move. 9 possibilities for both players (5 pokemon to switch to, 4 attacks to choose from). There may or may not be a critical hit, there may or may not be a "hax" (defense drop, burn, or whatever), and you will have a various amount of damage. (which I'll simplify into 2 different cases: Guaranteed 2-hit KO, or still a chance for 2/3 hit KO). Your opponent gets the crit and damage chance as well. Multiply them together, you get that many states.
Where am I going with this? It is simple: luck makes it far more difficult to simply brute force your way to victory. In fact, it is very difficult to look into the future in Pokemon, whereas in a game like Chess it is actually quite easy. That is what makes Pokemon so fun to play. The very
existence of luck is what makes this number so large.
What does double team have to offer? For a skillful player, it offers one more thing to take into consideration: the hit/miss chance. This doubles again the upper bound of number of positions to < 5184, making it even harder to see into the future.
From an AI perspective, this is the branching rate of the "game tree" that an AI has to unfold to figure out the best move in a game. Simple games like Connect4 only require you to see some 81 boards each turn, Chess is in the Thousands, and "Go" is in the hundreds of thousands. It is generally considered that a larger game tree correlates to a more difficult game.
It is this skill: the skill of predicting the results of your choice in Pokemon. The skill of finding the optimal strategy each turn despite it getting more and more difficult as these various chances come in. This is what double team adds to the game at the core mechanical level. Another challenge to keep in mind as you battle.
EDIT: A little history if you don't mind: it was the shrinking of this game tree that made me not like Wobbuffet as much. Wobbuffet greatly shrinks the branching of the game tree because it prevents the opponent from switching. Further, the game simplifies into a 3-choice version of
matching pennies, which is an absurdly simple game. (Special attack, Stat Up, or Physical attack vs Mirror Coat, Encore, or Counter). Yeah, I know that argument is done and over with... but I figured this might clarify my point I'm making above.
