Illegal Orders

[ZhengTann]

Again, count on IAR to officialize, clarify, and polish a Policy proposal until it shines. *thumbs up*

Personally, though, I'd avoid the "definition" part right on top, since everything else below describes what counts as an illegal order better. Shoud I meet you again on IRC, IAR and we happen to have finished studying, then I'll be happy to help out.

As to what Yarnus brought up - well, if we'd want to go the whole "nice and kind and drags out long" approach, practically anything illegal warrants a reorder - Substitution, syntax, etc. I'm not in favour of that though - it drags a match, and is very tiring for the referee (even the battlers as well, who would had to check both sides of the equation). Personally, I think we should tackle this from a referee's point of view - decision on this would be nice if it is made to ease the load of the referee. Battlers who don't dedicate their time to meticulously check their orders - well, if they lose, they can't exactly blame anyone, can't they?

If a battle loses due to legality issues, I'm currently leaning towards the opinion that it's their mistake to make. Accept it, move on, be better for it. But if every illegality uncovered warrants a reorder, such a trend spoils the battlers - who don't need to care about checking legalities, or who could - stress on "could", not that I've seen it happened yet - maliciously attempt to exploit it. On the other hand, it heavily strains the referee, who had to triple-check, walk on eggs while reffing, only to have another facepalm reaction as it was called out to be illegal and the whole round had to be reordered all over again. Speaking from personal experiences, it makes referees think that the match is a waste of time - try spending an hour reffing a Doubles, showing all calcs and statistics, writing up flavour, only to discover an illegality when you decided to double-check. You'd feel like you want to flay someone.

Of course, you could say that "it is the referee's responsibility, so he/she should accept that when he/she accepted to reff". I say nay. A referee shouldn't be there to babysit battlers through their failures and shortcomings at his/her own expense. A referee is there to ensure that the match is carried out in all fairness, while writing up a good read for spectators if possible. Again I will say, that it is our job, as the battler, to make sure we are not fucked up in any of our matches (yes, even Tower). Should we fail in that regard, we deserve whatever consequences that come out of it (aka we deserve to get fucked up), and either we'll learn, or we won't.

@ Engi's question: Yes, I asked dogfish on IRC, he personally confirmed that the Pokemon would Struggle instantly instead of spending one action of doing nothing. He had taken it into account, and he is still standing by it. If one wants to differentiate, though, I suppose "Retain current trend" would include "Doing nothing before Struggle". Not sure about Pwne and Frosty, though.

 

[Objection]

Its_A_Random, your definition is good but it's missing one situation (and in fact it's a situation that has not been considered at all in this thread so far):

WHEN THERE IS NO LEGAL MOVE AVAILABLE

Examples of this include being affected by Encore and Torment at the same time, or being Encored into a non-damaging move while Taunted. In-game precedence tells us that, when a Pokemon is affected by Encore and Torment at the same time, it uses Struggle on every action after it used its Encored move successfully (which works out to every other action). From this, I would infer that, any time a Pokemon is in a situation in which, regardless of its own orders, there is no legal move it can make, we ignore all other rules about how to handle illegal orders and impossible-to-perform moves and the Pokemon uses Struggle.

 

[Frosty]

I have absolutely no idea of how to create a ballot out of this, so consider this an old-fashioned...

BUMP.

 

[Its_A_Random]

Yeah I kinda forgot that I was working on the illegal order definition due to exams & shit... -.-'

So consider this me putting this back on my to do list.

 

[Its_A_Random]

Nah I have not had the time to work of definition, so just discount it -.-'

 

[ZhengTann]

Alright, discussion has been off for more than a week, so I guess we should adjourn and proceed to voting as soon as possible. The slate is as follows:

Retain the current method
Use Dogfish44's method
Use Frosty's method
Use Pwnemon's method

• If an order is made illegal during the round (eg. Taunted A1 before you could Toxic A2 and Reflect A3), then the Pokemon spends an action doing nothing and subsequent actions Struggling.
• If an order is illegal before reffing (as in, you are Taunted last round but still reorder Toxic this round), then a reorder is mandated (I'm saying "mandated" and not "allowed" because I wish to avoid discretion issues where people will start arguing back and forth to protect their own interests).
• Substitutions that are made unavailable in-match (as in, you are already Taunted but still subbed for Taunt in case of an opponent's Toxic) will activate, and replace the subbed move with doing nothing, then Struggle.
• Illegal substitutions (in other words, substitutions that would not have worked whatsoever in battle) are automatically discounted.

Orders which cannot be performed are replaced by Struggle. All substitutions that are of a legal syntax activate, those which call a move which is illegal.

1) When the illegal order is given by the player ordering last, the ref has to determine a reorder.

2) When the illegal order is given by the player ordering first and the ref or the player ordering last notice and point out it before any other orders, the player ordering first has to reorder

3) When the illegal order is given by the player ordering first, and any other orders were given after that the ref will warn the player at the first time and let him/her reorder. On the subsequent times the illegal order will become struggle.

OBS1 - If the illegality of the order is questionable, to the point of having to ask for an official ruling to a Council Member or Deck Knight then a reorder must be held.

OBS2 - If the player that posted the illegal order was warned for that on other battle less than 1 week before the illegal order and has more than 5 battles finished then the ref will change the action with struggle right away

OBS3 - On Gym Matches or Highlight Matches, when OBS1 doesn't apply, the ref will replace the illegal action with struggle right away. The player should pay 100% attention on those.

OBS4 - If the player is caught maliciously abusing illegal orders when ordering first, not only will it become struggle, but also the player is subject to a formal warn, losing the match or even worse punishments depending on the case and always with the agreement of one member of the council or a mod.

• In matches tagged "Ongoing," in the case of an illegal order, the player that ordered illegally is allowed to reorder (unless it is otherwise specified in the original Battle Tower posts). Illegal subs will be ignored. (Unless otherwise stated in the original Battle Tower posts)
• In matches not tagged "Ongoing," in the case of an illegal order, that action is replaced with Struggle. In the case of an illegal substitution, that substitution is ignored. The creator of a roleplay has the right to determine whether more 'lenient' or 'harsh' illegal order rules will be used.
• If the illegality of the order is questionable—to the point of having to ask for an official ruling to a Council Member or Deck Knight—or if the order itself is questionable—and thus interpreted by diktat of a Councillor or Deck Knight—in a way that causes it to be illegal, then a reorder must be held.

To the dear peeps who submitted your proposals, you may edit your proposal for the last time. To everyone else, I'm sorry we didn't manage to get in-depth to Zar and IAR's idea about going in-depth into the classification of illegal orders. But circumstances as it is, we'll just have to play the hand we're dealt with. If there is no other discussion spark-plug turned on within the next 36 hours, then this Discussion may be adjourned. Savvy?

 

[Dogfish44]

Just fixing my proposal up, I think I forgot a word or 20.

Orders which cannot be performed are replaced by Struggle. All substitutions that are of a legal syntax activate, those which are of an illegal syntax or those which call a move which is illegal do not - but they still count towards the substitution limit.