I wouldn't mind if the clause were re-added, but I also think that if making individual Gen 1 Randbats matches more balanced were a priority, there are a lot of other changes that would have a bigger impact than Freeze Clause. Caterpie, for instance.
Aside from what LibertarianMaster said
The fact that caterpie sucks doesn't justify freeze clause removal.
I would also like to remember that getting mons like caterpie on your team on a random battle usually means at least 4 mons from the rest will be either ou or uber (and I only said "usually" because I don't know the actual code, but anyone who plays this seriously knows this) so having
some balance in gen1 randbats is a priority.
there's a huge amount of RNG variance in each game, so if you want to enjoy it you have to focus on maximizing your odds over dozens of games instead of what happens in each individual one. Freezes are just another small factor in that, whether it's limited to one per game or not.
On every format you play the most effectively when maximizing the odds, no one here is focusing on what happens in each individual game. RBY in itself already has a huge variance, just look at how many tours have bo3/5s with in comparison to other gens. The argument here shouldn't be how big rng in general already is, but rather how big unrestricted freeze is. And the fact that something can revert or create winning positions in one or two turns of unskilled play isn't a small factor in any balanced meta. Notice I said unskilled play, I think going for the freeze is a valid strategy, I just don't think anyone should be rewarded with basically a free ko (getting hit by a fire type doesn't happen 99% of the time) more than once in a battle, even less when it just happens instead of being played for. Also notice how other rng related things aren't as likely to happen on a given turn and/or aren't as impactful: Crits don't mean a free ko ; 1/256 misses are basically an unexpected turn of full paralysis ; having caterpie gets you a top tier rest of the team ; ohko moves don't hit faster mons (and only mew is a fast user and you can paralyse it) 30% acc and has the cost of not doing anything that turn if you miss, while chosing an ice move deals damage while having 1/3 chance of having the same outcome of an ohko move (so such moves have effective counterplay, where the number of sets that have ice moves is much higher than the number or ice type mons in a team, which means there's not much you can do most of the time to prevent or mitigate an ice-spam strategy).
So imo freeze is actually a big factor and should be treated likewise. It's not that it's outright uncompetitive but it's unhealthy to the meta
my PR wasn't meant to target a single randbats gen specifically, so I shouldn't be treated as if it was. At the end of the day, it's just a pretty inconsequential rule.
I think it's clear that if I find freeze to be a big thing, then I don't think this was an inconsequential rule lol but I didn't really mean to treat the ruling as if it was meant to target a single randbats gen. I just think we all agree that a balanced meta is a thing we should always favor before other things like consistency across tiers and if the community finds something is unhealthy to the metagame, then it's removed/nerfed. If in the end there's not enough support to warrant a change back to the clause (be it people disagree that it's unhealthy or aren't interested enough in the discussion or if I was wrong and rules consistency is valued over a balanced meta in case of not so popular formats) then i'd be ok with keeping it. I just decided to open up the discussion about this topic, because I didn't find any specific discussion about this and to me it's a big enough issue to be discussed about.
And as far as arguments about consistency go:
That being said, Gen 1 OU has self-ko clause while randbats does not. Where's the consistency here?
Gen1 OU doesn't have self-ko clause on ps main server, where most (if not all) gen1 randbats games are played in the ladder
I don't think that we should make a big deal out of this
I'm sorry, this post turned out bigger than i thought it would :c
