Evasion: Test or Ban?

Luck will cause somebody to win or lose a battle.

Skill will cause somebody to win or lose a war.

I see a lot of complaints of "minimizing" luck in the game. Face it, folks. In RBY, every accuracy-checking attack in the game had a 1/256 chance of missing. Critical hits followed a formula that was laughable and unbalanced at best. Pokémon isn't Chess. The arguments being presented aren't holding a lot of water in the face of these things-- hell, even Street Fighter has randomness in whether or not knockdowns are caused during certain attacks.

If we were arguing whether or not to ban it immediately, I could see the logic in being so strongly against such a "huge" (arguable at best) change, but we're not. The issue is whether or not to test it. It's just like Wobba and Deoxys. If you think that Evasion is too shitty to be acceptable, then the testing period is your time to shine. Make a team with all Double Teamers. Kick the shit out of everybody. If it's such an unstoppable strategy, prove it. If it's that centralizing, we'll all see it clearly when every single team carries a Machamp and Nasty Plot/Swift/Technician Persian to deal with it all. Trying to argue the concept of testing it only shows that you're afraid of being proven wrong.

Otherwise, you could just jump on the test server, and while the opponent's trying to stack DTs you can go right on ahead and get a free SD with your Garchomp and his Earthquakes that will still have at LEAST 60% accuracy (which is statistically most of the time) depending on when you decide to actually attack.

Honestly, think about your favorite (or most used) Pokémon and try to imagine how you could use them if they only had 3 attack slots instead of 4. Until you've used DT/Minimize 4 or more times, that's what will be happening. If you're good enough to be able to kill people consistently with only those 3 moves, then holy SHIT I want to learn how to battle from you personally.

In the end, the changes won't be that big. DT hax may cause some people to win in the short term, just like any hax events do. Proper planning and prediction will cause those who are amazing to keep winning just like they always have, whether they are lucky or not. Until we have a way of tracking how insanely unlucky you are, shut up and keep playing. If we do find a way, and you really are unlucky enough that it's being a detriment to your playing, well, maybe you should find a new game to play.
 
Man, you guys keep posting these tl;dr papers regarding testing this, centralization that, shifting here, blah blah blah.

The bottom line comes strictly to this:

Allowing Evasion is increasing the need to manage probability. If this is not an issue, we test.

If it is an issue, we don't.

The question shouldn't necessarily be whether or not to test or ban Evasion, but what our philosophy as competitive battlers is. Should we emphasize team building and in-battle skill, or relent to the whims of the laws of probability and simplify the rules?

Up to you guys, though if you want my opinion, I'd much rather minimize the effect of the laws of probability. Then again...I'm actually a GOOD battler, who tries his best to win while minimizing the need to manage probability, but hey, I guess mediocre players need their luck too!!!!

The following paragraph is off topic, so please don't respond, I just need to get this out there:

On a less facetious note, I find the analogy to Poker to be hilarious. It is a wholly incomplete analogy...Poker's hand is determined by the laws of probability (the "hax" measurement in Pokemon), and the consequent betting and calling is determined by judgment based on those laws and judgment based on the opposition (the in-battle skill, so to speak). That is just 2 parts of what competitive Pokemon is.

Competitive Pokemon also includes team building / preparation (according to many of the top battlers I have spoken to, the main factor in the DP generation, assuming basic in-battle ability at least), a facet completely missing from Poker. What a ridiculously immature analogy...Ghandi and Hitler were obviously comparable due to the fact that they were both leaders of men, right? Let's just ignore one huge facet of Ghandi...God, stop this retarded analogy. You can't minimize the effect of probability in a standard game of Poker, just as you cannot change the ch rate, the accuracy or the side effects of moves. However, what you can do is eliminate certain moves to minimize probability.
 
There is no real short answer to this, and yet I've seen a lot of people posting them in this thread. That's odd. If it really were that simple, we wouldn't have this discussion.

We've seen in the past that we cannot possibly predict Pokemon merely with theorymon. As always with these discussions on Stark, there's people overlooking either side of the coin, only wanting to look at the other. Yes, Gyarados will win 25% of the time where it wouldn't have otherwise with one Double Team, and those odds will change more if it continues to Double Team or Dragon Dance next turns. But it is also filling up a moveslot, and using turns that ~75% of the time would be spent better. It isn't that simple.

An argument Hip provided in a previous discussion has also returned in this thread, and it directly links to a pet peeve of mine that I have with a lot of discussions about moves. You can't put Swift or Perish Song on one Pokemon and expect to counter Double Team. You don't counter moves with moves, you counter Pokemon using moves with other Pokemon using moves. Indeed, a Double Teaming Brightpowder Gyarados is taken care of by a Shock Wave Porygon2, but a Double Teaming Tyranitar will require a different counter.

As for minimizing luck, I agree with lots of people here - there's plenty of luck, but promoting skill over luck should be pursued, and yet it is not clear-cut that Double Team promotes merely luck, just as it is not as clear-cut that Wobbuffet would overcentralize or that evasion promotes a stall metagame.
 
Up to you guys, though if you want my opinion, I'd much rather minimize the effect of the laws of probability. Then again...I'm actually a GOOD battler, who tries his best to win while minimizing the need to manage probability, but hey, I guess mediocre players need their luck too!!!!


Sorry, but you're talking as if you can't counter Double Team. Or probably as if you DON'T WANT TO.

You have various counters to Double Team. Just as if you deserve to lose if you get swept by a Heracross if you don't have anything to counter it, you deserve to lose if you get swept by a DDer if you don't have anything (don't WANT, actually) to counter it.

If you are REALLY a good battler, you minimize the need to manage probability by ACTUALLY COUNTERING DOUBLE TEAM.

The problem of countering a single Pokemon depending on the set it runs already exists. SpecsLucario can be countered by Blissey somewhat, but CBLucario can't be countered by Blissey.
 
Aldaron said:
Competitive Pokemon also includes team building / preparation (according to many of the top battlers I have spoken to, the main factor in the DP generation, assuming basic in-battle ability at least), a facet completely missing from Poker.
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I know you said don't respond but I really have to because it's just silly. Obviously poker doesn't have team building -_- but team building isn't the discussion here. Evasion is about luck versus skill and the poker analogy encompasses that aspect.

I suppose we can compare it to a trading card game (lol) which has deck building. Even if you get bad draws (bad luck), a good player should still be able to make up for it overall by having a well made deck and knowing the right cards to play through experience.

What it comes down to is: since when have we started to ban things solely because they make us manage probability more?

We're just so immersed in our own metagame by "banning this and that" and "promoting skill over luck" that we are unaware of what's really out there. When it comes to real tournaments we're just unprepared because we've never really experienced it inside our little bubble with all these clauses.

I see no harm in at least testing it out and opening up new strategies to the metagame.
 
Lol DUH X-Act, OF COURSE I DON'T WANT TO COUNTER DOUBLE TEAM.

That's been the ENTIRE point of my posts, lol.

I don't want to introduce a factor that will assuredly increase my need to manage probability, as I feel that that factor of competitive battling should be minimized.
 
We're just so immersed in our own metagame by "banning this and that" and "promoting skill over luck" that we are unaware of what's really out there. When it comes to real tournaments we're just unprepared because we've never really experienced it inside our little bubble with all these clauses.
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Who are you speaking of, lol. Smogon did pretty well at Nintendo tournaments last time I checked. Just because we're trying to optimize our own rules does not mean we cannot adapt to playstyles like 2v2, Double Team and ubers allowed.
 
I have no objection to DT being tested, I just think it'll be royally miserable and stall teams will go nuts. ^^

Although... with DT umbreon may actually see much more use... (Mean Look, DT, Baton Pass)
 
If we accept "probability management" as a skill, then we have to accept that dealing with DT is also a skill, using it is a skill, and that statistically, it's not even that good. How many times does it have to be proven that unless you've got 6 of them, Cosmic Power is better than DT? Theorymon proves it's not broken, at least to the best of its ability.

Will it make the game more "centralized?" This needs to be tested.
Will it make us "manage probability?" Of course. But we already do that anyway (Surf over Hydro Pump, Fire Blast over Flamethrower, using high-crit moves, using Togekiss/Dunsparce, &c.)

The only reason I can see for not testing it is if we have some sort of threshold of probability management that for some reason we are exactly at right now, but DT would cause us to exceed it. And if that's the case, then it makes sense and I'm fine with it, but we need to figure out exactly why we have that "probability threshold."
 
Shine said:
If you think that Evasion is too shitty to be acceptable, then the testing period is your time to shine. Make a team with all Double Teamers. Kick the shit out of everybody. If it's such an unstoppable strategy, prove it. If it's that centralizing, we'll all see it clearly when every single team carries a Machamp and Nasty Plot/Swift/Technician Persian to deal with it all. Trying to argue the concept of testing it only shows that you're afraid of being proven wrong.
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It's not my argument, nor is it the argument of a large portion of the people on the other side ("don't test") that Double Team is broken. Therefore, you cannot tell them to just use Double Team during the test to prove that it's broken. I have said before that I wouldn't be surprised if Double Team causes little-to-no centralization. My argument isn't that it's too good.
 
Allowing Evasion is increasing the need to manage probability. If this is not an issue, we test.

If it is an issue, we don't.
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Well, while it would certainly prove useful to test for overcentralization... it would be useful to in addition test for "funness". Again, I prefer to look at this issue from a Game Designer's perspective. We ultimately are debating whether or not we should test a game mechanic... perhaps if we instead played with the game mechanic and then discussed what happens as a result, we'd get further.

The problem is that "testing" seems to correlate with "gather pokemon statistics". I'd personally test for "innate fun" in the metagame (which I believe would be pointed out by pokemon statistics such as overcentralization and all of that good stuff). From the battles with my RL friends back when we played Pokemon D/P... Double Team wasn't that bad in the day to day battle. Hax sucked of course (hypnosis missing like 2 times in a row, and me waking up on the next turn on the 3rd hypnosis), but Double Team in a typical battle was no worse than anything already in Pokemon.
 
The problem with testing for fun, though, is that the people who absolutely hate any types of evasion are most likely going to be the most vocal about its inclusion. Regardless of whether the average person has more fun, there will always be people who are furious/quit over the inclusion of something they're so against. It's the same way Deoxys and Wobb don't see the play they should on the ladder, because of the people who simply refuse to use them. A lot of people wouldn't use DT/would quit against anyone who did, and battles would get a lot less fun if I tried to DT and my opponent just said "cheater" and quit.
 
Perhaps. But by then, it should be obvious who has the stronger argument. At least to those who participated in the test... there will be a general concensus as to which arguments are idiotic, which strategies are actually effective, and finally whether or not DT decreases the amount of "skill" in the game. (I argue it increases it... but I know I won't "know" until a gameplay test). If we test the game with these questions in mind, then surely we'll move faster than all of this Theorymon stuff.
 
Yeah, true, the question a test it or not, not keep it banned or unbanned. So we may as well test it, because it would be a lot faster than having a raging debate over it. I dunno, maybe this thread should have been a poll? Seriously, this topic is going to go back on itself until a mod or two get bored, lock the thread, and choose themselves to test it or not.
 
Obi said:
It's not my argument, nor is it the argument of a large portion of the people on the other side ("don't test") that Double Team is broken. Therefore, you cannot tell them to just use Double Team during the test to prove that it's broken. I have said before that I wouldn't be surprised if Double Team causes little-to-no centralization. My argument isn't that it's too good.
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I pretty much agree with this, that it wouldn't really change too many things. As for "fun testing," try it if you like. I don't really think it'll alter the funnitude of the overall game by much if at all.

I usually play WFC battles with slightly different tiers but pretty much anything goes (short of Sleep Clause). Double Team is very rare and usually a humorous last-ditch effort to make Volbeat live long enough to Tail Glow a few times to sweep otherwise OU teams.

I think there's too big a deal being made about this. I say we follow Dragontamer's Ready, Fire, Aim notation, test it, and that way we can actually get something done. What's to be gained by not testing?
 
Pokémon with Double Team and Minimise is a different game to Pokémon without. It just depends on what game you'd rather be playing. I should think the sensible thing to do is to keep it banned - this is a competitive play forum, and relying on luck to win has never been a competitive strategy.
 
Mekkah said:
Who are you speaking of, lol. Smogon did pretty well at Nintendo tournaments last time I checked. Just because we're trying to optimize our own rules does not mean we cannot adapt to playstyles like 2v2, Double Team and ubers allowed.
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I'm just saying generally. It actually does mean we will find it hard to adapt to different play styles because we lack practice. The majority of the players here focus on the single battle OU metagame and I bet most are unfamiliar with advanced 2v2 strategies. A lot probably have little experience with ubers and are only just getting to understand it with the new ubers ladder on shoddy. The same argument applies to double team because we have never played against it. We will lack the experience and knowledge on how to effectively counter it when we inevitably come up against it as it's a part of the game itself.
 
I honestly see Double Team a lot like Hypnosis. You use Hypnosis once, you have a 70% chance of really hurting your opponent and a 30% chance of wasting a turn and potentially getting screwed over. You use Double Team once and you have a low percentage chance of screwing the opponent over and a high percentage chance of getting severely injured. The only difference between these two is that the usefulness of the moves change inversely to each other; Hypnosis gets less useful the more its used (and once it hits, it worthless with the sleep clause) while Double Team gives a greater chance, but at the same time, you leave yourself open to more damage.

If you all are seeking to minimize luck, why are you using moves or Pokemon that also rely on probability? Why is Body Slam used over Return instead of being banned? Return's a stronger move, isn't it? Why use Crunch on a predicted switch, hoping for the defense drop on that Swampert that's coming in against your Tyranitar? Why allow people to partner Garchomp with the Sandstreamers? Why aren't Absol, Honchkrow, Kingdra or Drapion banned? What about Air Slash Togekiss? Why do people prefer Dynamic Punch Machamp over Cross Chop? Both moves do the same amount of damage, but Cross Chop has the potential to do more!

The point of those questions is to show that everyone's being rather selective over what 'hax' is acceptable or not. The 25% chance of full paralysis is about equivalent to one turn of Double Team, so if you Thunder Wave your opponent, it's a similar situation for them. And regardless of how 'annoying' it is to play against, that's no reason to ban anything. The only reason a move or Pokemon should be banned in my opinion is if it proves itself to be overpowered, which Double Team has thus far proven not to be. This whole minimizing luck thing is bullocks; if you want to do that on your team, go ahead, but I should have the right all availible options. You don't have to use Double Team or minimize. You don't even have to alter your team to defend against it. There are even chances your team will fare no differently against a team with DT than it would otherwise, and there's the chance that you would lose horribly.

The only clauses I support are species clause, sleep clause, timed battles, and double KO. I also support item clause as an optional clause.
 
Aldaron said:
Lol DUH X-Act, OF COURSE I DON'T WANT TO COUNTER DOUBLE TEAM.

That's been the ENTIRE point of my posts, lol.

I don't want to introduce a factor that will assuredly increase my need to manage probability, as I feel that that factor of competitive battling should be minimized.
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But you're saying you want to ban Heracross because you don't want to counter it, where you have the exact means to counter it.

You're still talking in an RBY and GSC mindset, where Double Team was virtually uncounterable, and hence banning it made sense. It's not anymore uncounterable, and hence should be unbanned, just like we unbanned Deoxys-S because it's not anymore uncounterable.
 
Bliksem said:
I honestly see Double Team a lot like Hypnosis. You use Hypnosis once, you have a 70% chance of really hurting your opponent and a 30% chance of wasting a turn and potentially getting screwed over. You use Double Team once and you have a low percentage chance of screwing the opponent over and a high percentage chance of getting severely injured. The only difference between these two is that the usefulness of the moves change inversely to each other; Hypnosis gets less useful the more its used (and once it hits, it worthless with the sleep clause) while Double Team gives a greater chance, but at the same time, you leave yourself open to more damage.
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The only thing here I want to point out is you don't have a small chance to randomly negate their Double Team the way you can wake up from Sleep. Once Double Team is up, you either have to Haze them, minimize the evasion with stuff like Gravity, or kill them. Phazing isn't all that viable considering all the phazing options can miss.

Bliksem said:
If you all are seeking to minimize luck, why are you using moves or Pokemon that also rely on probability? Why is Body Slam used over Return instead of being banned? Return's a stronger move, isn't it? Why use Crunch on a predicted switch, hoping for the defense drop on that Swampert that's coming in against your Tyranitar? Why allow people to partner Garchomp with the Sandstreamers? Why aren't Absol, Honchkrow, Kingdra or Drapion banned? What about Air Slash Togekiss? Why do people prefer Dynamic Punch Machamp over Cross Chop? Both moves do the same amount of damage, but Cross Chop has the potential to do more!
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Because its fucking stupid to pick apart the game in tiny areas like that. We want to minimize luck, but not at the expense of tearing a huge chunk of moves out of the game. Just imagine what a pain in the ass it would be to manage this in game. We have to live with some of the luck, thats just the way the game was designed. That doesn't mean we have to put up with all of it though. Double Team and Minimize are a very easy thing to control.

Bliksem said:
The point of those questions is to show that everyone's being rather selective over what 'hax' is acceptable or not. The 25% chance of full paralysis is about equivalent to one turn of Double Team, so if you Thunder Wave your opponent, it's a similar situation for them. And regardless of how 'annoying' it is to play against, that's no reason to ban anything. The only reason a move or Pokemon should be banned in my opinion is if it proves itself to be overpowered, which Double Team has thus far proven not to be. This whole minimizing luck thing is bullocks; if you want to do that on your team, go ahead, but I should have the right all availible options. You don't have to use Double Team or minimize. You don't even have to alter your team to defend against it. There are even chances your team will fare no differently against a team with DT than it would otherwise, and there's the chance that you would lose horribly.
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I pointed this out above. There are things we have to live with, things we don't. You're also missing a few points with your hax comparisons, you can't straight up compare things like paralysis to DT. Stacking and status effects are slightly different. If I get paralyzed, sure I can get screwed over by full paralysis, but I also can now be used to absorb status effects. Double Team doesn't really give the opposition any advantage other then a turn to try to do something, but this is an issue that Calm Mind, Bulk Up, Nasty Plot and such have and you still see those used a bunch.

And I'm a big opponent of Evasion namely because it makes the game suck. I don't care how badly you want to win, if you're not having fun with it then winning won't mean shit. No one plays Pokemon because they like to win, they play Pokemon because they like to win at Pokemon under a certain rule set. I've dicked around with Evasion stuff before, it isn't any fun. Obviously not in a large scale test, but it still sucked the fun out of the game. So call me crazy, but I don't see why being incredibly fucking annoying isn't a good reason to ban something. Especially since it hasn't proven itself to not be broken either.
 
Lord Alchemy said:
And I'm a big opponent of Evasion namely because it makes the game suck. I don't care how badly you want to win, if you're not having fun with it then winning won't mean shit. No one plays Pokemon because they like to win, they play Pokemon because they like to win at Pokemon under a certain rule set. I've dicked around with Evasion stuff before, it isn't any fun. Obviously not in a large scale test, but it still sucked the fun out of the game. So call me crazy, but I don't see why being incredibly fucking annoying isn't a good reason to ban something. Especially since it hasn't proven itself to not be broken either.
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Can you give me the details of "dicking around with Evasion"? Was it against humans, or was it against computers? Etc. etc. Was it in the D/P environment or what?
 
Lord Alchemy said:
So call me crazy, but I don't see why being incredibly fucking annoying isn't a good reason to ban something. Especially since it hasn't proven itself to not be broken either.
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Cause we have a precedence that says annoying isn't a good enough reason. Wobbuffet.

Mathematically it's proven to be typically less effective on the defensive end than CP. I suppose the major difference between DT/Cosmic Power is that a lot more pokemon learn DT than cosmic power. Besides, that's a poor premise. "Don't even consider testing it for brokenness, because it hasn't proven itself to not be broken and I don't want to."
 
I've lurked for a while, but I couldn't help but respond to this thread.

I feel the argument to keep evasion banned to be a sort of ego-centric one. A number of the people in opposition of evasion have pretty much said that it hampers their ability to win based on their level of skill.

Or is it a lack of skill? Isn't your skill dictated by how capable you are of overcoming your foe? I think using Double Team is just as viable a battling strategy as any other. A risky one that I wouldn't try to use, but one nonetheless. I think the evasion clause is unfair, and incredibly elitist.

Yeah, it annoys you when someone steals a win when you'd clearly wipe the floor with them from the start. It happens all the time, just under different names. You say you want to minimize the effect of luck, but why? Do you need to win THAT bad?
 
Mathematically it's proven to be less effective on the defensive end than CP. I suppose the major difference between DT/Cosmic Power is that a lot more pokemon learn DT than cosmic power.
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Just to clarify: it has been proven to be typically less effective than Cosmic Power. Considering how close the percentages are... I'd assume something between a 30% to 40% of the time... DT is better than Cosmic Power due to the inherent luck in the game. (Critical hits and Move Accuracy).

Of course, when a move is 60% of the time better than another move, you should choose the one that is better twice more often than the other guy :-p (BTW: I pulled those numbers straight out of my ass. So don't treat them mathematically)
 
Cooltrainer Jim said:
...snip...

Yeah, it annoys you when someone steals a win when you'd clearly wipe the floor with them from the start. It happens all the time, just under different names. You say you want to minimize the effect of luck, but why? Do you need to win THAT bad?
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Thanks for registering and posting. The point is, this is a competitive pokemon community. The goal is to play to win and to highlight the best players as often as possible by a game packed with probability options. It's not about an individual's desire to win SO badly, its about developing a competitive, fair and fun battling experience.

The better trainer SHOULD win. This doesn't happen all of the time because of things like critical hits, one-turn sleep, etc... the argument is that by introducing more random variables, the results of matches will have even greater variance in results. Even if there are viable ways to counter this, its counter-intuitive to the nature and purpose of this community.

It is entirely possible that DT won't necessarily overcentralize the game and its entirely possible that even if it centralizes the game to some extent, we'll still end up with some kind of balanced game to play. However, will it be *better* than what we've got now? The general consensus is no. It will either introduce wild variances in match outcomes or the "balanced" version of the game will be so boring and/or frustrating that competitive players won't be interested in playing that way.

As a competitive community, you have the ability to act as secondary game designers and tweak a game to become the best possible competitive environment. You can't add things that do not exist, but you can restrict things that will make the game imbalanced, unfair or just plain no fun to play with. That's for the community to decide and so far the community has rejected evasion.
 
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