February this year, TPCi announced Pokemon Scarlet and Violet for a late 2022, presumably November, release date.
As is our custom, we'll be updating BBP to include the new Pokemon, moves, and other game pieces introduced in the new games at a leisurely pace. This pace is mainly dependent on Smogon's own mechanics research, conducted with every game release in threads such as this one. This generation of games seem to be shaping up to be ordinary entries in the series, and they don't look to introduce anything that would cause us to deviate from this pattern.
However.
Since the launch of Generation 8 BBP and the surprising (but much appreciated!) surge of activity among the playerbase, the age of the game and the less rigorous nature of its creation have been sorely felt by its players. Many times a day, there is a rules question asked in Discord or in private messages with no clearly written answer. Here are some examples from the BBP Discord general channel, all of them quite recent:
The primary way BBP is played, emphasizing specifically the act of playing a match rather than the work of reffing or other book-keeping, is that a player sits down and explores the possible interactions in the round in front of them. The player weighs different move options, and how they interact with possible enemy moves, the abilities and field status of Pokemon in play, and envisions the results of those actions. When the interactions between game pieces is unclear, and the process of building out situations while ordering is frustrating, the game just literally doesn't work at a basic level. This is one of the root causes, I suspect, of the cycles of activity and burnout that BBP often undergoes--the game as it currently stands actively fights attempts to play it.
So, scheduled to release with the coming Generation 9 BBP Update, your moderation team has the following initiatives currently under construction:
The BBP Glossary
Collecting a list of game terms, defining them, and storing them in a single place goes leaps and bounds to help resolve interactions between two niche game pieces. Creating a tool like this allows players to plan their turns with greater confidence.
Getting every player on the same page, calling game pieces and rules by the same names, is a big stride towards ensuring players can help one another resolve complex situations and understand the implications of their own orders. Cutting through dubious interactions should make both ordering and reffing faster and easier, as well. However, a glossary alone would be of little use if moves, abilities, and other pieces continued to use slapdash and seemingly random terminology in their text.
Which segues nicely into the next initiative.
The Great Effect Text Update
To help streamline and clarify the dozens upon dozens of interactions and edge cases that occur daily in BBP--to say nothing of options considered by players when planning their orders but not chosen--the newly defined terms need to be applied to the text of BBP's moves, abilities, and other pieces. This process would have to be done manually, and painstakingly by the same user at that, to ensure consistency. Which goes a long way in explaining why no one's done it in all of BBP's history.
Until now.
These snippets are selected from an ever-growing document containing every move, ability, and item in BBP; as well as many rules rewrites to use the new terminology. Consider the following examples of (highly tentative!!) revised move text:
The attentive reader might notice that stat stages have a duration specified in turns in the above move descriptions, implying changes to the existing stat stage decay mechanic.
Which, again, segues into the last major overhaul.
The Support Rework
Among longer-time BBP players, the general sentiment is that the current state of the game is an improvement over its past versions. Pokemon stat ranks now matter at all, moves and effects are generally clearer and better defined than they once were, combinations have consistent logic instead of being entirely at the whim of the referee, and posting first against a full movepool Pokemon isn't an utter crapshoot. However, there's always room for improvement, and a particular concern rises when players are pressed for details: the stat ranks of Pokemon matter more than anything else about them, and rubbing stat-blocks against one another can get a little dull.
The cause, as determined by your moderation team, is the action inefficiency of support moves and the strategies around them, compared to simply attacking the enemy. By design, stat stages have always been hamstrung in the game to distance ourselves from in-cartridge sweeper-centric gameplay. In addition to this, though, most forms of team support are highly niche or simply not very usable at all. Consider the last time you saw Reflect or Light Screen used in a serious match, except as filler for an anti-Protect substitution.
Many Pokemon in the Pokedex are designed to wield these moves as their main function, to set up the battlefield and weaken opponents in order to set up their allies for success. But, because their moves of choice are simply weak, trying to use these strategies in a serious battle would be the same as simply letting the enemy hit your Pokemon for free without fighting back.
Most supportive moves have come under review in the scope of this update work, to sculpt them into options that may tempt players away from the raw damage race. In addition, the rules themselves are up for revision, such as the following:
Boosting up, whether it's offensive or defensive, would have all the risks it's associated with in-game: yielding momentum, missing out on a favorable matchup, and the possibility of being forced out for no reward. However, with the chance to efficiently deal high damage to multiple opponents, or to weather and contain the offense of a troublesome opponent, boosting and weakening moves should be a staple in every trainer's arsenal.
Besides stage-changing moves, however; many other supporting moves exist. Screens, manual weather, manual terrain, Gravity, most forms of major status, and more moves besides need a hard look to bring them into relevance. Consider the following (highly tentative!!) reworked supporting moves:
Most of the current powerful meta Pokemon--the stat-block types that currently see the most play--enjoy some benefit from these changes. Metagross and Dragonite can easily set screens for themselves to cushion a troublesome combo, and Garchomp or Togekiss both threaten setup using powerful offensive boosting moves if they're given free turns. But there exists a large number of Pokemon who have the majority of their power budget allocated to these types of moves, such as Blissey or Ninetales-Alola, or Fidgit, who are unusable in BBP because their main contributions to teams is weakened in this game compared to cartridge play. In addition, the entire archetype of "disruptive" Pokemon, including old standbys such as Weavile, Whimsicott, Kitsunoh, and more stand to benefit from their preferred prey re-entering the meta, giving these kinds of Pokemon a new lease on life as well.
Backing up your powerful attackers with appropriate support, and attacking your opponent's support Pokemon with appropriate disruption, should be as much of a consideration in teambuilding as type synergy.
***
These three initiatives are no small undertaking. They may in fact, taken together, be the largest single update to occur in BBP (perhaps bigger than the progression rework of Generation 8).
In this thread, I would love to see discussion centering on the following topics:
[/quote]
As is our custom, we'll be updating BBP to include the new Pokemon, moves, and other game pieces introduced in the new games at a leisurely pace. This pace is mainly dependent on Smogon's own mechanics research, conducted with every game release in threads such as this one. This generation of games seem to be shaping up to be ordinary entries in the series, and they don't look to introduce anything that would cause us to deviate from this pattern.
However.
Since the launch of Generation 8 BBP and the surprising (but much appreciated!) surge of activity among the playerbase, the age of the game and the less rigorous nature of its creation have been sorely felt by its players. Many times a day, there is a rules question asked in Discord or in private messages with no clearly written answer. Here are some examples from the BBP Discord general channel, all of them quite recent:
- Stealth Rock has --- Accuracy, and sets hazards even if the target is in the middle of evasive Dig. Does it cause a combo to hit a Digging foe?
- Many abilities and items mention Secondary Effects of moves, but they don't agree on what those are. What is a Secondary Effect?
- Pursuit states that it "strikes before the opponent acts". If the target uses Fly enhanced by Gale Wings, would an ally's Quick Guard protect the flier from Pursuit?
Where is the definition of a charge move? The answer is nowhere--the game has no rigorous definition of the terms it uses, which just creates friction with how players interact with the game at a basic level.
The primary way BBP is played, emphasizing specifically the act of playing a match rather than the work of reffing or other book-keeping, is that a player sits down and explores the possible interactions in the round in front of them. The player weighs different move options, and how they interact with possible enemy moves, the abilities and field status of Pokemon in play, and envisions the results of those actions. When the interactions between game pieces is unclear, and the process of building out situations while ordering is frustrating, the game just literally doesn't work at a basic level. This is one of the root causes, I suspect, of the cycles of activity and burnout that BBP often undergoes--the game as it currently stands actively fights attempts to play it.
So, scheduled to release with the coming Generation 9 BBP Update, your moderation team has the following initiatives currently under construction:
The BBP Glossary
Collecting a list of game terms, defining them, and storing them in a single place goes leaps and bounds to help resolve interactions between two niche game pieces. Creating a tool like this allows players to plan their turns with greater confidence.
Getting every player on the same page, calling game pieces and rules by the same names, is a big stride towards ensuring players can help one another resolve complex situations and understand the implications of their own orders. Cutting through dubious interactions should make both ordering and reffing faster and easier, as well. However, a glossary alone would be of little use if moves, abilities, and other pieces continued to use slapdash and seemingly random terminology in their text.
Which segues nicely into the next initiative.
The Great Effect Text Update
To help streamline and clarify the dozens upon dozens of interactions and edge cases that occur daily in BBP--to say nothing of options considered by players when planning their orders but not chosen--the newly defined terms need to be applied to the text of BBP's moves, abilities, and other pieces. This process would have to be done manually, and painstakingly by the same user at that, to ensure consistency. Which goes a long way in explaining why no one's done it in all of BBP's history.
Until now.
These snippets are selected from an ever-growing document containing every move, ability, and item in BBP; as well as many rules rewrites to use the new terminology. Consider the following examples of (highly tentative!!) revised move text:
The new format segments a piece's flavor text, any special costs and requirements for use, and its effects from one another. If an effect on the game piece has a specific timing or trigger condition, it is now separated from the effect's result with a colon to clearly indicate what happens, when. Combined with the elimination of certain repeat-offending ambiguous terms (begone, "secondary effect" and "can't be used") in favor of multiple more specific terms, and the interaction of even several overlapping effects should be much easier to parse for both players and referees.
The attentive reader might notice that stat stages have a duration specified in turns in the above move descriptions, implying changes to the existing stat stage decay mechanic.
Which, again, segues into the last major overhaul.
The Support Rework
Among longer-time BBP players, the general sentiment is that the current state of the game is an improvement over its past versions. Pokemon stat ranks now matter at all, moves and effects are generally clearer and better defined than they once were, combinations have consistent logic instead of being entirely at the whim of the referee, and posting first against a full movepool Pokemon isn't an utter crapshoot. However, there's always room for improvement, and a particular concern rises when players are pressed for details: the stat ranks of Pokemon matter more than anything else about them, and rubbing stat-blocks against one another can get a little dull.
The cause, as determined by your moderation team, is the action inefficiency of support moves and the strategies around them, compared to simply attacking the enemy. By design, stat stages have always been hamstrung in the game to distance ourselves from in-cartridge sweeper-centric gameplay. In addition to this, though, most forms of team support are highly niche or simply not very usable at all. Consider the last time you saw Reflect or Light Screen used in a serious match, except as filler for an anti-Protect substitution.
Many Pokemon in the Pokedex are designed to wield these moves as their main function, to set up the battlefield and weaken opponents in order to set up their allies for success. But, because their moves of choice are simply weak, trying to use these strategies in a serious battle would be the same as simply letting the enemy hit your Pokemon for free without fighting back.
Most supportive moves have come under review in the scope of this update work, to sculpt them into options that may tempt players away from the raw damage race. In addition, the rules themselves are up for revision, such as the following:
With this in mind, consider the following (highly tentative!!) updated effect text, as examples of what's to come:
The hope is that these stage changes breathe life into the movepools of Pokemon across the entire game. Changing stat stages is one of the pillars of the Pokemon design, and vast swathes of the game are dedicated to it. Hundreds of moves, and dozens of abilities and items, are devoted to changing stat stages. Bringing those pieces up to viability and streamlining the process of tracking their duration should make them both easier to use in a match, and more impactful when used. If these changes land their mark, the decision between attacking and offensive boosting should represent a careful choice of greater risk for greater reward.
Boosting up, whether it's offensive or defensive, would have all the risks it's associated with in-game: yielding momentum, missing out on a favorable matchup, and the possibility of being forced out for no reward. However, with the chance to efficiently deal high damage to multiple opponents, or to weather and contain the offense of a troublesome opponent, boosting and weakening moves should be a staple in every trainer's arsenal.
Besides stage-changing moves, however; many other supporting moves exist. Screens, manual weather, manual terrain, Gravity, most forms of major status, and more moves besides need a hard look to bring them into relevance. Consider the following (highly tentative!!) reworked supporting moves:
This list is NOT exhaustive, and this rework is the furthest from completion. Furthermore, many existing forms of lingering support, such as entry hazards, Tailwind, and moves such as Memento and Parting Shot, are quite good already.
Most of the current powerful meta Pokemon--the stat-block types that currently see the most play--enjoy some benefit from these changes. Metagross and Dragonite can easily set screens for themselves to cushion a troublesome combo, and Garchomp or Togekiss both threaten setup using powerful offensive boosting moves if they're given free turns. But there exists a large number of Pokemon who have the majority of their power budget allocated to these types of moves, such as Blissey or Ninetales-Alola, or Fidgit, who are unusable in BBP because their main contributions to teams is weakened in this game compared to cartridge play. In addition, the entire archetype of "disruptive" Pokemon, including old standbys such as Weavile, Whimsicott, Kitsunoh, and more stand to benefit from their preferred prey re-entering the meta, giving these kinds of Pokemon a new lease on life as well.
Backing up your powerful attackers with appropriate support, and attacking your opponent's support Pokemon with appropriate disruption, should be as much of a consideration in teambuilding as type synergy.
***
These three initiatives are no small undertaking. They may in fact, taken together, be the largest single update to occur in BBP (perhaps bigger than the progression rework of Generation 8).
In this thread, I would love to see discussion centering on the following topics:
- Effects and rules that are currently unclear or contradictory.
- Game terms that are confusing or undefined.
- Moves, Items, or entire Pokemon that are under-served despite having clear intended strengths (Fidgit, not Unown.)
- Potential users and abusers of stage-based strategies.
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