Presently, when viewing a replay, you can only see information that both players would know at that point in time. For example, if you hover over a Pokemon on turn one, it doesn't tell you any of the moves that that Pokemon knows. In Random Battles, this is particularly noticeable as unrevealed Pokemon also stay hidden in replays.
My suggestion is to enable full-information replays such that after the battle has ended, a spectator can see all the Pokemon on each team as well as what moves, stats, abilities, and items they had.
There are a few motivations for this:
1. After I play a Random Battle, in order to reflect on the choices I made, I'd like to be able to see the other unrevealed Pokemon I had left if I don't remember what they were.
2. I'm interested in studying other people's battles and choices, but I can't put myself in their shoes if I can't see what information they had at that time since it's hidden to me.
I can think of two drawbacks to this suggestion:
- Implementing this would require that the server stores each entire team for every replay rather than just a log of moves.
- If someone was trying to keep parts of their team secret in a competitive setting.
If the first drawback is a deal-breaker, I can think of two alternatives:
- Allow full-information replays for only the players in the battle, this way the client would just have to store the team until that battle was closed and the server wouldn't have to store it post-game. This would still satisfy motivation #1 even though it wouldn't satisfy motivation #2.
- The server could store full team data only for replays that had been used recently and forget the team data for old replays to save space.
My response to the second drawback is that people who want part of their team to be secret, generally want their entire team to be secret. As a separate feature, implementing private battles such that no non-participating user can view the replay would satisfy that use-case without blocking this feature.
I think implementing this suggestion would be a great idea and I'm happy to explore alternatives if there's something wrong with it.
My suggestion is to enable full-information replays such that after the battle has ended, a spectator can see all the Pokemon on each team as well as what moves, stats, abilities, and items they had.
There are a few motivations for this:
1. After I play a Random Battle, in order to reflect on the choices I made, I'd like to be able to see the other unrevealed Pokemon I had left if I don't remember what they were.
2. I'm interested in studying other people's battles and choices, but I can't put myself in their shoes if I can't see what information they had at that time since it's hidden to me.
I can think of two drawbacks to this suggestion:
- Implementing this would require that the server stores each entire team for every replay rather than just a log of moves.
- If someone was trying to keep parts of their team secret in a competitive setting.
If the first drawback is a deal-breaker, I can think of two alternatives:
- Allow full-information replays for only the players in the battle, this way the client would just have to store the team until that battle was closed and the server wouldn't have to store it post-game. This would still satisfy motivation #1 even though it wouldn't satisfy motivation #2.
- The server could store full team data only for replays that had been used recently and forget the team data for old replays to save space.
My response to the second drawback is that people who want part of their team to be secret, generally want their entire team to be secret. As a separate feature, implementing private battles such that no non-participating user can view the replay would satisfy that use-case without blocking this feature.
I think implementing this suggestion would be a great idea and I'm happy to explore alternatives if there's something wrong with it.