Evasion: Test or Ban?

[TheMaskedNitpicker]

the point being, we would have to run totally different move sets to what we run currently draco meteor? too inacurate hypnosis? no way fire blast? megahorn? stone edge? focus blast? all these moves will be useless as they wont hit enough meaning running weaker variants and imagine if a subber got DT going and you miss that ONCE it gets another and another then starts setting up and sweeps you, sounds like a possibilty to me

I'm going to reply to this because it's a perfect example of what I'm talking about. What you're saying is that you don't want to have to alter your team to deal with a new threat. That's your opinion about how the metagame should be. If you aren't willing to use moves like Yawn to get through DT or Encore/Taunt to get through Substitute, then you're opening yourself up to the Double Team/Sub strategy. Similarly, if you aren't willing to use Pokémon with Insomnia or a Sleep Talker, you're opening yourself up to sleep-inducing moves. If you're not willing to use a Steel-type, you're opening yourself up to being swept by Outrage.

Besides, Double Team and Substitute constitutes half of your moveset. What are you going to put in the rest? Chances are good that those two moves can be walled. Please read X-Act and Dragontamer's posts before arguing that Double Team is too powerful.

EDIT: Phalanx, please, please use periods as a personal favor to me. Maybe I'm just dense, but it took me a while to puzzle out where all the punctuation should have been in your post.

 

[Dragontamer]

the point being, we would have to run totally different move sets to what we run currently draco meteor? too inacurate hypnosis? no way fire blast? megahorn? stone edge? focus blast? all these moves will be useless as they wont hit enough meaning running weaker variants and imagine if a subber got DT going and you miss that ONCE it gets another and another then starts setting up and sweeps you, sounds like a possibilty to me

A subber + DT? There is a pokemon that resists every single 2 attack combo in the game. (Ground/Dragon == Skarm. Ground/Ice == Bronzong. Fire / Dragon == Heatran. Bolt/Beam == Magnezone / Lanturn. Water/Normal == Empoleon. etc. etc.) No matter what the 2 attacks are, I can guarentee a resist.

The only "exception" is HP Fight or Aura Sphere / Shadow Ball... but Blissey walls the most powerful users of this combo. Lucario, Togekiss and Mismagius require Calm Mind, Nasty Plot, or Choice Specs to break Blissey, which means you either lose DT, or you lose Subsitute. Mixcario with Sub/DT is walled by Bulky-Gyara... and has better sets than Close Combat / Shadow Ball anyway.

So... please tell me a specific pokemon that gets both Subsitute and DT that isn't totally walled. While I'm certain DT sets would exist, they certainly will not exist on an offensive sub+DT varient. Maybe there will be an offensive set that actually manages to scare away its counters (only to be countered by X pokemon who resists your 2-attack combo...)... but it certainly won't exist on everything.

Obi: I'll respond later. You bring up a few good points and I'd rather be more careful and redo my calculations a few more times. I generally focus on 1, 2, or 3 stat ups because frankly... if you get 6 free turns onto a pokeon you deserve to lose. The lower number stat-ups are more typical in my experience.

 

[TheMaskedNitpicker]

Imagine I am in a tournament and I am matched up against someone I consider to be a better player than myself. On the average, they will beat me. Therefore, I have to take advantage of the short-term nature of battles. The best way to do this is to inject luck into the equation. I don't have to make a team that wins on the average, I have to make a team that gives me the lowest chance to lose. If they are a better player than I am, the best way to do this is to increase the level of luck.

...

If the argument that is keeping it banned is "It increases luck by an unacceptable degree.", then the proper response to that is to either deny it increases luck or to claim that the degree of increase is an acceptable amount. You could also argue that increasing luck isn't a bad thing, but that is an incredibly difficult argument to make. The only way I could even consider following this line of reasoning would be if we were to change the foundations of tournament play, as I mentioned above.

I think this point is a very important one. Pokémon is a game that does not lend itself well to single-elimination tournaments. Even without Double Team, there's enough luck in the game that the most skillful player will rarely ever win such a tournament.

In an ideal world there wouldn't be single-elimination tournaments featuring games with this degree of luck. However, I think it's perfectly acceptable to ban Double Team and Minimize in such tournaments (when other tournament formats would be impractical) while allowing it in casual and ladder play.

 

[Odinwolf]

Here's the issue that we're really dealing with here...

What do competitive pokemon players want from the game? It is entirely possible that DT could be effectively implemented into the competitive game without becoming "over"centralizing. The game would simply shift, with more phazers, sleep inducers and no-miss moves becoming more common. The game might shift to adjust to the new moves available and still be playable.

The question is, would the game be BETTER for it? Just because you CAN do something without "breaking" the game, doesn't mean its more fun or more competitive to include it. You can't argue that more luck won't be injected into the game by including these moves. What (holy crap, I'm about to agree with Obi) the more reasonable opponents are arguing is that more luck makes the game less competitive and thus its something we should subjectively decide to avoid. Sure, pokemon is a game that includes lot of elements of chance, but that doesn't mean that the community can't decide that certain luck elements that are easily able to be removed (or continued to be banned) from the competitive metagame make the game less fun, competitive or worth playing.

Look at OHKO moves. Why are they banned? It's not power that's REALLY the issue. It's the luck factor. It turns the game into Pokemon Coin Flip. If they were included, players could learn what OHKO moves are used on particular pokemon and make decisions to counter those. If Hippodon becomes a common Fissure user, players can predict the attack, switch in something with flying to dodge it and then threaten back. It might not even end up being "overcentralizing." But does it make the game better? Probably not.

Not everything needs to be tested. Numbers and statistics are not the only way to determine the value of something in the competitive game. Sometimes pure objectivism makes a more complete and less valuable (in terms of fun, community growth, etc) game and some subjective decisions need to be made. If the general competitive community feels that increasing luck elements degrades the competitive game, then expect players to continue to reject evasion moves, Wobbufet, OHKO, etc...

 

[Captain Falcon]

While I agree to a certain point with your above post, Odinwolf, that it has to be about what people want from the game, I think that the game has to stay relitavely true to the actual game it is based on. At the end of the day, shoddybattle is a pokémon simulator, which means that it is meant to simulate the commercially produced games by nintendo.

While certain aspects of the game have to be changed or removed for competitive play (to make the game balanced and fun), the game should not be unduely different from the handheld games. If you change the way that the game is played too much, then it becomes a new game, not Pokémon.

As to whether evasion moves should be allowed, I am personally not sure, but I think they deserved to be tested. Saying that they look "too powerful" on paper is all very well, but you can only see all the aspects of the argument if you take it out of the realms of theory.

 

[RaikouLover]

I don't think its theorymoning at all when all of us against evasion are people who throw their damn nintendos accross the room when we lose to a n00b trainer the battle tower! Yeah, so it may not happen often, but in order to combat the enormous amounts of hax in the tower, you have to change your teams drastically, thus "overcentralizing." Most of the teams that make it far make use of No Guard Machamp, Sturdy abilitied pokemon, Focus Sash Destiny Bond users, Thunderdancers, Hail Blizzard users, etc. If the whole damn metagame is shifted just because double team is introduced, I think that is way too overcentralizing.

Haze - sounds like the most convenient way to combat this, and the 5 or so hazers will be on every team. But what if I'm using a Double Teaming Zapdos? I can easily take down Vaporeon, Blastoise, Dragonite, etc. with little trouble.

Roar / Whirlwind - Can miss just like everything else. I've lost a Hippowdon to Garchomp before because I tried to roar it from behind it sub and it missed 3 times. Granted this won't happen all the time, but it's just bullshit and makes the game less fun.

WHY SHOULD WE IMPLEMENT A 100% LUCK COMPONENT INTO THE GAME WHEN WE WANT TO MAKE IT AS SKILL-BASED AS POSSIBLE????? That is the argument here. I see no justification for allowing it, as it doesn't improve the game in any way, and will cause a shift in the metagame.

 

[Evisu]

Yes it may be broken, but that doesn't change the fact that it hasn't been tested and I'm sure many people would be willing to test it just like they were willing to test Wobbufet.

 

[Blu]

I don't think its theorymoning at all when all of us against evasion are people who throw their damn nintendos accross the room when we lose to a n00b trainer the battle tower! Yeah, so it may not happen often, but in order to combat the enormous amounts of hax in the tower, you have to change your teams drastically, thus "overcentralizing." Most of the teams that make it far make use of No Guard Machamp, Sturdy abilitied pokemon, Focus Sash Destiny Bond users, Thunderdancers, Hail Blizzard users, etc. If the whole damn metagame is shifted just because double team is introduced, I think that is way too overcentralizing.

Haze - sounds like the most convenient way to combat this, and the 5 or so hazers will be on every team. But what if I'm using a Double Teaming Zapdos? I can easily take down Vaporeon, Blastoise, Dragonite, etc. with little trouble.

Roar / Whirlwind - Can miss just like everything else. I've lost a Hippowdon to Garchomp before because I tried to roar it from behind it sub and it missed 3 times. Granted this won't happen all the time, but it's just bullshit and makes the game less fun.

WHY SHOULD WE IMPLEMENT A 100% LUCK COMPONENT INTO THE GAME WHEN WE WANT TO MAKE IT AS SKILL-BASED AS POSSIBLE????? That is the argument here. I see no justification for allowing it, as it doesn't improve the game in any way, and will cause a shift in the metagame.

It's amazing how you only wrote 2 moves.

Here's a couple more that you guys might consider as a counter to it:

Attack moves: Vital Throw, Aura Sphere, Aerial Ace, Faint Attack, Swift, Shockwave, Shadow Punch, Magnet Bomb, Thunder in rain, Blizzard in Hail(I think there's more that I missed)

Support moves: Haze, Psych Up, Odor Sleuth, Foresight, Gravity, Defog, Lock-on, Mind Reader, Yawn

Ability(ies): No Guard

Nothing wrong with testing DT, really.

Edit: For Minimize users, Stomp might be worth a mention.

 

[Captain Falcon]

WHY SHOULD WE IMPLEMENT A 100% LUCK COMPONENT INTO THE GAME WHEN WE WANT TO MAKE IT AS SKILL-BASED AS POSSIBLE?????

For starters, its a game so a bit of luck adds interest to it. Also, you would have to ban moves like fire blast or draco meteor, which would change the metagame by severely changing the movepools of certain pokémon. Then there is the Critical Hit factor. Critical Hits are an important part of the game becuse they stop long stall wars and make for a more offensive game.

Another factor is prediction. Say you have your Skarmory in against my Specsmence. My specsmence is on low health, so if you whirlwind it out (or if I'm forced to switch out), I will die from stealth rock damage when I come back in. My options are either to flamethrower you, and risk that you switch to something like starmie, or to Draco Meteor the switch (to kill or heavily damage whatever is coming in) and risk that you stay in and whirlwind. In this scenario, I would have to predict what you will do and neither option seems more likely than the first
so I will have to take a guess. Even if Draco Meteor had 100% accuracy, it would still come down to luck about which one I guessed.

 

[kamikaen]

For starters, its a game so a bit of luck adds interest to it. Also, you would have to ban moves like fire blast or draco meteor, which would change the metagame by severely changing the movepools of certain pokémon. Then there is the Critical Hit factor. Critical Hits are an important part of the game becuse they stop long stall wars and make for a more offensive game.

Another factor is prediction. Say you have your Skarmory in against my Specsmence. My specsmence is on low health, so if you whirlwind it out (or if I'm forced to switch out), I will die from stealth rock damage when I come back in. My options are either to flamethrower you, and risk that you switch to something like starmie, or to Draco Meteor the switch (to kill or heavily damage whatever is coming in) and risk that you stay in and whirlwind. In this scenario, I would have to predict what you will do and neither option seems more likely than the first
so I will have to take a guess. Even if Draco Meteor had 100% accuracy, it would still come down to luck about which one I guessed.

It's been said before in this thread, the object is to minimize luck. It's impossible to remove it completely, but we can take what measures we can to minimize it. Moves with imperfect accuracy (Draco Meteor), would only be "bannable" if there was no perfect accuracy alternative (Dragon Pulse). In the Draco Meteor-Dragon Pulse case (and all similar ones), the more powerful, but more inaccurate move can perform a different function than the less powerful move. Besides, we want the ban list to be small, so banning all such moves would be impractical. And would we want to upset the metagame again?

@Blu: Most 100% accurate moves are too weak to do much to a DTer like Cresselia, so they'd be rendered useless. Blizzard in Hail just about requires Abomasnow, which is very centralizing. Aura Sphere, the only decently powerful option, is weak against Cressie, anyway. There are a decent amount of tanks that resist fighting, anyway. Aura Sphere's availability is also extremely limited. Psych Up just leaves things up to luck. And none of these options of "countering" DT counter the argument against increasing luck in the game.

 

[phalanx]

we can use yawn etc but that means remaking a WHOLE TEAM , i shouldn't have to do that, i personally dont want to end up in 30 minutes games because everyone evades each other, its just boring and pointless

 

[cim]

As I said before, I have no opinion on this other than keeping the status quo of having the optional evasion clause. This is not an argument for either side, just a point.

Who says we are trying to eliminate luck? I, for one, like the luck factor. Accuracy's risk/reward system is important and a good idea. Having less than 100% accurate moves is fine with me. If we are trying to counteract luck entirely, say goodbye to Serene Grace Body Slam, "hax" effects, critical hits, missing... I don't like the sound of it already.

If you want a 100% skill based game, go play chess. Pokémon will inevitably have luck in it.

 

[phalanx]

luck that way is fine, it doesnt slow the game down to a crawl, thats what i see evasion doing as everyone uses weaker moves to get more accuracy and we spend 20 mintues running out of PP...

 

[obi]

I've never relied on critical hits as my strategy to break stall. If this is your only way to stop a stall, you may want to rethink your team.

 

[Miao]

I have pretty much no objection to DT/Minimize, both are get aroundable, and can be handled within the limits of the game, with appropriate counters etc.

There is one catch, and it's the thing that kills it for me, when placed on sufficiently sturdy walls it stretches the game into a nightmarishly long stall war. On fragile sweepers double team would be a fun and interesting move, a risky strategy to take out the opposition (gyra etc fall into this catagory too) but when placed on things such as blissey, or skarmory, or cres, it makes them obscenely tedious to take down. Will you take them down eventually? Of course, but the long time inbetween to kill them is irritating.

Now, if it was a requirement to be more fragile and not more sturdy to get DD/Minmize? I'd say test it, but as it is, all you have to do is play through battle tower a few times, when you realize you've been playing for an hour against that minimize blissey and want to break your ds, and it's nowhere close to dying anytime soon, it's maddening. Those matches usually end with said blissey struggling itself to death, it's a sad sight.

I'm not for minimizing luck, I like it, it adds some interest and risk to the game, an unpredicable quality that means "maybe it'll go wrong". But part of why I play pokemon is it's one of the few games I can play when I don't have much time, and getting in a quick battle or two is rather thrilling. Making battles randomly take a half hour (or more if it's nothing but a heavy stall team with lots of doubleteamers) is just horrible. And yes I know hazers etc can counter it, and that's great. But forcing through a heavy stall is bad enough without making it worse.

 

[phalanx]

doesnt blissey get Minimize? that would really suck to fight that it comes in on a special and minimizes, then again on switch..

 

[ODDish]

luck that way is fine, it doesnt slow the game down to a crawl, thats what i see evasion doing as everyone uses weaker moves to get more accuracy and we spend 20 mintues running out of PP...

Oh if we're banning stuff on the basis that it slows the game down to a crawl can we start with Stallrein please ... I had to sit through twenty minutes of that fat ass earlier tonight.

 

[phalanx]

that is a pokemon built to stall, having evasion moves makes everything stall

 

[ODDish]

Really?

How many pokemon do you actually think will be running Double Team?

How many can actually afford to expand a moveslot on a move that ultimately offers no guarantees?

 

[Aldaron]

Obviously there is no legitimate "brokenness" reason to ban evasion moves other than the precedence set in previous generations, but I still want to keep them banned.

Why? Because while the proponents of Evasion are looking at this from a "broken" or "centralization" perspective, I am looking at it from a "gamer's mind." I recognize 100% that Pokemon has luck involved, but I also recognize 100% that we as the players of this game can attempt to minimize luck, and thereby maximize skill.

Critical hits are unfortunately an inevitable part of the game, as are the initial accuracies and side effects of moves. There is nothing I, as a gamer, can do about those aspects.

What I can do is ban entire moves that I see are shifting the luck factor in the positive direction. Note I simply say shifting, and I do not mention by how much or if this has any positive or negative effect on the centralization of the metagame. It is merely assuredly going to increase the luck factor involved, and I am against this, because as a gamer I enjoy a game that maximizes skill.

Again, I'd like to reiterate that I 100% realize that Pokemon has "luck," and that it can be viewed as a game of managing probabilities. Still, I would "like" to think that Pokemon is predominantly a game of skill, where team building and preparation and the insights I gain in-battle about my opponent all assist me and affect the outcome of the battle more than the laws of probability.

To me, this has nothing to do with "fun" or with "brokeness." It is simply a matter of why I play Pokemon competitively: I play to win, and I am more assured of my game plan to win if I do not have to worry about the large luck factor in the game.

This is why I'm even against a testing of evasion. I'm not saying it will be broken, and I'm not making any qualms about "fun." I just do not want to introduce anything that increase the influence of the laws of probability in this game. I enjoy that team building and preparation and opponent "managing" are both the main factors towards securing a win, and not managing probability (though it is still a significant factor).


(btw, please don't mention that we currently allow other moves or items that increase the luck...while this may be true...it has nothing to do with the current evasion topic!)

 

[Syberia]

I'm all for banning BrightPowder, but let's be careful not to go down the slippery slope. Once we ban one item that increases luck, then we'll eventually want to ban ANY item that increases luck, such as:

Focus Band
King's Rock
Lax Incense
Lucky Punch
Razor Claw
Razor Fang
Scope Lens
Stick

I assume that we're level-headed enough to not let it get that far, but it doesn't mean that we shouldn't keep that in mind.

I'm all for the banning of all of these. Anyone who's ever played battle tower knows that they're capable of changing a game completely around, and there's nothing even the most skilled player can do about it.

At least personally, I don't want competative play to end up just like the battle tower, where your best hope of winning is to hope your opponent doesn't hax you to high hell.

 

[Slice n Dice]

The evasion boosting moves like Double Team and Minimize make battles rely on hax. Hax is what sucks the skill value out the game. Not worth testing.

 

[ODDish]

Don't moves with high critical hit ratios introduce an element of "hax" to the game?

What about abilities like Snow Cloak, Sand Veil, and Super Luck?

Where does one draw the line at what constitutes hax?

 

[jrrrrrrr]

Obviously there is no legitimate "brokenness" reason to ban evasion moves other than the precedence set in previous generations, but I still want to keep them banned.

Why? Because while the proponents of Evasion are looking at this from a "broken" or "centralization" perspective, I am looking at it from a "gamer's mind." I recognize 100% that Pokemon has luck involved, but I also recognize 100% that we as the players of this game can attempt to minimize luck, and thereby maximize skill.

Critical hits are unfortunately an inevitable part of the game, as are the initial accuracies and side effects of moves. There is nothing I, as a gamer, can do about those aspects.

What I can do is ban entire moves that I see are shifting the luck factor in the positive direction. Note I simply say shifting, and I do not mention by how much or if this has any positive or negative effect on the centralization of the metagame. It is merely assuredly going to increase the luck factor involved, and I am against this, because as a gamer I enjoy a game that maximizes skill.

Again, I'd like to reiterate that I 100% realize that Pokemon has "luck," and that it can be viewed as a game of managing probabilities. Still, I would "like" to think that Pokemon is predominantly a game of skill, where team building and preparation and the insights I gain in-battle about my opponent all assist me and affect the outcome of the battle more than the laws of probability.

To me, this has nothing to do with "fun" or with "brokeness." It is simply a matter of why I play Pokemon competitively: I play to win, and I am more assured of my game plan to win if I do not have to worry about the large luck factor in the game.

This is why I'm even against a testing of evasion. I'm not saying it will be broken, and I'm not making any qualms about "fun." I just do not want to introduce anything that increase the influence of the laws of probability in this game. I enjoy that team building and preparation and opponent "managing" are both the main factors towards securing a win, and not managing probability (though it is still a significant factor).

(btw, please don't mention that we currently allow other moves or items that increase the luck...while this may be true...it has nothing to do with the current evasion topic!)

Thank you Aldaron, I was under the impression that this was common sense but I guess I was wrong. This post underlines, bolds, italicizes and caps locks everything that Obi, myself and numerous other people have been trying to say.

So what if there is a chance to counter evasion, why the hell would you WANT to? I haven't ever seen so much math conjured up to argue for something that is so obviously harmful to the game. Who cares what your statistics can show if conceptually they remove the most basic aspects of why you play a game to begin with?

 

[Aldaron]

Oddish is bringing an irrelevant point into this discussion.

We already know there are other elements of "hax" in this game, and we are not claiming that we have an established line at all.

We are merely stating that we have a status quo at the moment, and introducing Evasion would shift our status quo towards more luck, which is anathema to skillful players.