Losing in Pokemon

Banedon

Not sure where to put this, this seems the most appropriate.

To begin: I don't think anybody likes losing. Half the people who play Pokemon everyday lose. If you are a good player you can win much more often than you lose, but - and this is rather an oddity to Pokemon, to be honest - you can lose even if you are better and haven't made any obvious mistakes. I recently played this game which left a deep impression on me. It's a battle fought in UU, where I do my battling.

Turn 1. Player A sends out Froslass, Player B sends out Uxie. Froslass uses Trick, losing Choice Scarf and gaining Light Clay, while Uxie U-turns out to Cresselia.

Player A has no reason to be unhappy - by removing Light Clay, Uxie is crippled for the match. Player B must have predicted a Taunt that didn't come. At least though he gets a free switch in.

Turn 2. Player A sets up Spikes, Player B uses Thunder Wave.

Since Player B switched in a renowned wall into Froslass, Player A has good reason to suspect a Sub / CM set. Still he's not worried because he's got a Milotic (as yet unrevealed, but we'll see him later). So he sets up Spikes. Player B's Cresslia is actually another Dual Screener (again, we'll see later), so presumably he still expected Taunt and used the move that wouldn't give away his moveset completely - Thunder Wave.

Turn 3. Player A sets up Spikes (2 layers), Player B uses Light Screen.

Without Sub / CM Player A has free rein to lay Spikes so why not? Player B puts his own plans into motion and puts up the first screen.

Turn 4. Player A sets up Spikes (3 layers), Player B uses Reflect.

Similar to the last, except now Player A knows his opponent is running two Dual Screeners so he can expect lots of stat uppers. Nonetheless he has Milotic, who's naturally bulky, so he doesn't have to worry (yet) and besides there's nothing wrong with setting up more Spikes. Screens are up, nothing he can do but stall them out after all. Player B is of course content to put up the other screen.

Turn 5. Player A switches out to Arcanine, Player B switches out to Ambipom. Ambipom recovers with Leftovers.

With 3 layers of spikes and both screens up neither side has any reason to stay in, hence the double switch. Now both sides take stock of the situation. Without entry hazards up Player A has by far the easier time to switch around, giving him a fairly large advantage. Ambipom has Leftovers, and since Player B took the time to Dual Screen Player A can expect Ambipom to be some stat-up variant. Player B's Ambipom is actually a full Baton Passer, so his switching in was a natural choice.

Turn 6. Player A switches out to Cresselia, Player B uses Agility.

Player A must have predicted a Fake Out here - reasonable, since almost all Ambipoms use Fake Out on the first turn. Player B uses the first of the two moves he's going to Baton Pass. Agility first is obvious since it's vital to be faster than the opponent when Baton Passing.

Turn 7. Player A switches out to Milotic, Player B uses Taunt.

Player A, aware of the danger now, goes to Milotic to Haze. Player B, probably expecting a Sub / CM Cresselia as well, uses Taunt to stop it. Instead he ends up Taunting Milotic, which is great for him since Milotic can't Haze now.

The clock is ticking on the dual screens, only 3 / 4 turns left for Light Screen and Reflect respectively ...

Turn 8. Player A switches out to Arcanine, Player B uses Nasty Plot.

Unable to Haze Player A switches to Arcanine. Good choice, since if Player B passes to some mixed sweeper it'd at least suffer Intimidate. He might also be able to bluff Roar, wasting one more turn of the dual screens. Player B, secure in the knowledge that Milotic can't hurt him seriously, makes the obvious move and sets up.

Turn 9. Player A uses Flare Blitz, dealing ~28% damage. Player B uses Nasty Plot. Ambipom is now +2 speed and +4 SpA.

Just in case of the Taunt, Player A gets some damage onto Ambipom. No point switching out to Milotic again, since Player B can just Taunt ... Player B risks Roar, correctly surmising that since Player A has Haze, he's not likely to have a second phazer.

Now heavily buffed, Ambipom is a huge threat to Player A. Still, the screens are fast expiring.

Turn 10. Player A switches out to Milotic, Player B uses Baton Pass to Porygon-Z.

Player A picks the best time to switch to Milotic. There's only one turn left on Light Screen, and if Ambipom had stayed in and Taunted it would've probably taken two Surfs. But Player B decides he's had enough of stat upping and passes to a sweeper. Porygon-Z is massively buffed while Milotic is naturally very bulky, especially on the special side. Will Milotic survive?

Turn 11. Porygon-Z uses Tri Attack, Milotic faints (100% damage). Player A switches in Cresselia, Porygon-Z recovers with Leftovers.

Ouch. This is very bad for Player A, who's facing a Porygon-Z sweep. Cresselia is the only Pokemon left on his team who can hope to survive a +4 Tri Attack and retaliate. Thunder Wave would neuter Porygon-Z and allow the rest of Player A's team to take it out ... if Cresselia gets it off.

Turn 12. Player B uses Substitute. Player A uses Thunder Wave (and fails).

Rest of the game isn't very interesting.
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Whose fault is it that Player A lost? At every point he made a reasonable move, given what he knew of the other guy's team and his own. In fact on turn 1 he even got a large advantage, and he can't complain about Player B letting him set up three layers of spikes unimpeded. But he lost. And he can't blame anyone but himself, because he's the one that picked 6 Pokemon and 24 moves. There wasn't hax in this game either. Maybe he can blame everyone else for letting Porygon-Z land in UU, or for not using Baton Pass Ambipom enough so he wasn't expecting it (not sure what he can do though, in view of Taunt) ... but that's rather stretching the bounds of reason.

This game shows that you can not make a mistake but still lose. This makes Pokemon a rather brutal game. It certainly puts me under a lot of pressure when I play it. I'm competitive by nature and don't just 'don't like' losing - I actively fear it. It's not that bad if I lose a game because my opponent played better than me, or if I get badly haxed, but to lose a game when there's nothing I can do better is just ... troubling.

There once was a time when I played chess competitively. Here I at least had the reassurance that if I don't make a mistake I can't lose, but it still didn't stop competitive chess from being highly stressful. For me, Pokemon increasingly resembles chess. The pressure is also getting worse. When I first started playing I could blame my own lack of knowledge (which also caused me to make bad teams). But as I learned more and more, this excuse for losing became untenable. These days I fear losing enough that I check out the ratings of all my opponents when I play them, my pulse races especially if I'm facing someone highly rated, I play maybe two games a day, and I delayed making this topic for over a week hoping not to reveal my team to other UU players.

How does everyone cope with losing and the pressures of playing?

PS: In case anyone wonders, I'm the one who swept with Porygon-Z in this game. My opponent, who I'm not going to name, was rated well above 1600 on the UU ladder. I can't read his mind, but I can make an educated guess of what his thought process went.
 
These things happen.
Someone can have the best Hyper offense team ever and still lose to an abysmal stall team even when they play correctly. No team is unbeatable and you just have to accept that. In some cases a team will just happen to be perfect for beating your team even of your opponent makes mistakes.
If it helps carry a stress ball so you can vent if/when you need to.
 
I've spoken to TAY among other people about this. In the discussions we came to the conclusion that Pokemon is basically all luck. Sorry to tell you but there is almost no skill to this game. While the art of team building is perhaps the most skilful aspect of pokemon once you have your team your in the hands of the gods. First though, a note on the skill of team building. The best teams are a manifestation of all the metagame's fears, in OU the lead choice clearly exemplifies this: Azelf popularity rose, followed by a rise in Metagross usage, followed by a rise in Heatran usage, then sleep leads such as Smeargle and Roserade came into use and then the cycle continued by Metagross using Lum Berry. If you've played pokemon you'll realise just how important the first two turns of the battle are and the 1 pokemon you pick can not give you the best scenario every time. In other words you've done everything you can do to ensure you win the lead matchup, but you can never do enough. The same can be said for the middle part of the battle here you can build a team but you can't handle those anomaly teams you'll face that use out of the ordinary tactics. Like a Sub CM Missy vs a Stall team (this used to rape standard stall), the other thing you cant account for is the move sets of your opponents. For instance their Celebi could run Earth Power for Heatran, and so you make the right move switch in Heatran and lose your Celebi counter again you did the best you could, but that could lose you the match as you lose your SD Scizor counter. Even though this is true we should not be paranoid, instead the best thing to do is use gimmicks of your own. The best teams use them so so should we for an example of this see "Sugarless Girl" in the archive.

The other thing about pokemon battles is that regardless of crits and all the effects of team building we can't account for there will inevitably be those 50/50 situations where it is pure luck who chooses the correct move. These situations commonly decide the fate of the match.

The only way to consistently win is to be on the pulse of the metagame, study it and abuse it to your own ends. The other thing to realise is that the game is 50-60% luck so don't be disheartened by losses understand why you lost and try, if you can, to learn from this. Perhaps something is fundamentally wrong with the game imo pokemon isnt actually competitive in a 1 battle situation. The skill however would dramatically increase if it was a best of three game, see Blame Game's post in PR and LN's new tourney the ultimate cup. In this way pokemon becomes more like chess in the final two battles as we have info as to how we can beat our opponent or how to prevent them beating us, the game suddenly becomes a lot more tactical, however the game still remains exciting with its aspect of luck.

Finally as long as you win the majority of your battles you should be satisfied with your play and your team. It is wrong to assume you can win every battle, and this will make you more frustrated then anything. The other thing to realise is that the opponents loss against you in the grand scheme of the ladder, countless matches providing an estimate of proficiency, is almost irrelavant especially as your team is fairly unorthodox. However if your teams popularity increased then he would be to blame if he lost as then he should have measures in place to prevent its success. Its worth pointing out here that if this did happen you would lose more matches as your team is likely bang on 50/50 in a mirror match, in that case you would adapt it accordingly, showing skill in one of the only ways i believe you can other than picking the right move, through your team building.
 
I agree mostly with what iKitsune has said. At the start of every battle, I know there's as good a chance I will win as there is that I will lose. I don't think the best of the best can deny this; it's just the way it is.

In RSE OU I was much more comfortable, and I am sure there are plenty of users (goofball, husk) who will testify that it usually came down to how you played. Sometimes it was more difficult to win against a certain team, but you could still play your way through to victory; it came down to who played each turn better.

While I feel the boundries for skill level and knowledge from the best to the worst is relatively the same since Gen 3, I believe the margin between victory and defeat has significantly shortened since the introduction of Gen 4. Why? Vairety, and we know this. We know that it's impossible to account for every threat in the OU metagame. This, and the fact that the wide array of possibilities available to us gives us all a better chance of victory, as it does defeat. This, I think, means that the better players can lose easier than what they could have done in Gen 3, and the poorer players have a greater chance to win.

For this, I excluded '"luck" because it has no barring on the message I wanted to get across.

Very rarely, if ever, have I lost to a player, looked back and said: "Man, there was no way I could've won this game". At sometime in the match, incorrectly predicting, luck or a mechanical mistake will have cost me the game. But I know that if I took a different approach, I could have won against my opponent. This shows how teams are so expandable when it comes to breaking down the oposition's team.
 
First ill just say that i get the exact same tension before matches. Similarly i am incredibly competitive and hate losing to someone who i think i should beat (though i think its important always to remain gracious in defeat). I also check my opponents rating before each match.
I think Player A lost the match because of two things; his bad start and indecision. He started bad, not to say that his lead is sub-par or that his team is built badly (though i happen to think it is) , im just saying that he found himself in bad match-ups. Cresselia vs Froslass without Taunt is not a good place to be. From there you could say that the match was planned out barring any critical hits and other hax, i would say that he further reduced his chances when he didnt quite know what to do about ambipom. He switched around alot and got caught hazing; if his team really had no way to beat it he should realise that and just attack with the best he has hoping for a crit. Arcanine could Flare Blitz/Extremespeed just before Ambi switches to maximise chances of a kill.

In a way i agree with iKitsune and Taylor. The game is largely about luck but not in the most obvious way (crits, defense drops etc). The luck aspect is what you opponent has chosen. You can know 5 members of the opposing team and with what you know see that heatran cant do much to them, to sacrifice him only to see them bring in SD Scizor as their 6th. Because so many decisions are made with perfect knowledge, luck or chance always plays its part.

But i disagree that you should think of it as a game of luck. Even if luck is 50-60% of the game, it still means that a degree of skill (probably teambuilding) can differentiate between players, and that is what i play to maximise (the skill differential). If you are a better player than someone esle, it is because you are more skilled and not more lucky; luck evens out, it is the skill that makes the difference. When you get unlucky, just take it on the chin, it will probably even itself out. As Kitsune said, try to be ahead of changes/ trends in the game and be innovative if its viable.

So in answer to your question "how to cope?" i would say; dont get annoyed at losing if their team had a clear team advantage against you. Dont necessarily get annoyed even if they didnt have a team advantage if they took you by surprise and the match is in that way an "anomaly" (i would only get annoyed if i clearly made a poor move which lost me the match). Instead remember, your ladder rating isnt about 1 game, if Player A finds Player B on the ladder again they will know what's coming and could beat them the next 3 or 4 times, and thats the way he's got to think about it.

I dont know if any of that is helpful, i hope it is.
 
Pokemon (as it's usually played) is a game of imperfect information. It's also a game in which both players must take their action without knowing what the other player takes.

Those two facts mean that Pokemon is a game not so much of luck in the usual sense, but of prediction and guesswork.

You could play with pre-disclosed teams, making it a game of perfect information. But even then, the fact that you choose your move without knowing the other player's choice will mean predicting or guessing your opponent's actions will still play a major part.

I wonder if people have tried playing chess in the same manner. Each player writes their move and passes it to the umpire, who carries out both moves together. I suspect such a variant of chess would have much of the prediction element we see in Pokemon. For example, if your Queen is threatened your instinct would be to move it away. But the opponent could predict that and not bother attempting the capture, but instead make a move elsewhere. Then you counter-predict and leave your Queen put, and then it just degenerates into guessing.
 
Significant luck is only involved on the ladder when you're facing a new team for the first time. After that, you should be mostly aware of the moveset and general strategy of the team. The next time Player A faces off against Player B, he would know that his opponent has a baton-pass oriented team with two screeners, two or three passers (presumably), and one or two sweepers (presumably). Player A be able to immediately go to something that can slam Ambipom or Porygon-Z hard (they share the same typing, so this shouldn't be hard), or go to a setup sweeper on the screening turns and, since this individual does not seem to be passing defense boosts, slam the final recipient very hard (or if he BPs to a defensive passer, slam that really hard). As someone mentioned, Pokemon is a game of imperfect information because you can never know what team your opponent is using the first time you play him, but on the ladder you'll often face the same people multiple times, and they'll typically have only one or two teams that they use. At that point, the game becomes much more skill-based, as both sides will be able to plan their strategy to counter the opponent's. This is why I like the ladder format, and best-of-three tourney formats, over the traditional single elimination tourney format (which can be much more volatile as far as skill requirement in a match goes, and, thus, inaccurate).
 
It always annoys me when people say that no skill is involved in battling. Yes there is a large luck element, but in any game as complex as pokemon there is going to be a large skill element as well. Obviously things like bad team matchup, hax, and other bad luck can cause a good player to lose to a shitty player, but the best players are able to consistently execute their intended strategy even when the odds are stacked against them. This is why not everyone can just copy a good team and get high on the leaderboard.
 
Banedon said:
This game shows that you can not make a mistake but still lose.
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I actually think Player A made three separate "mistakes" in the battle that resulted in his loss.

1) Did not take proper heed of Ambipom's Leftovers
2) Did not take proper heed of the implications of the information gained via his own Turn 1 Trick
3) Did not adjust his strategy to the flow of the battle until it was too late

First, in my opinion, realizing that Ambipom is a Leftovers variant should tip a smart player off that, underneath the screens, there is no way Ambipom is going to use Fake Out even if it knows it. The only Ambipom variant that commonly has Leftovers is a Baton Passer that does not have Fake Out. Second, Player B (you) very obviously is running a full-fledged Dual Screen/BP team given the Light Clay Uxie lead. Even more, your time is going to run out three turns faster than you had originally wanted, which reduces the number of turns Ambipom has to set up and therefore virtually emilinates the chance that Fake Out is coming. Both should have factored in to an attentive battler's subsequent strategy.

Third, Player A deciding to keep setting up after it was obvious with Cresselia out what your strategy was is troublesome—it was like in Advance when Skarmory would switch in and Spike absentmindedly on Ninjask leads that have Subbed instead of using Roar/WW, dooming them to lose almost instantly to Spore/Ingrain/Sub/BP Smeargle that could use either of the first two moves to basically seal the deal right there with at least +1 speed (which granted it virtual invincibility in a generation without Choice Scarf or reliably priority). Why would you care about entry hazards when you could outspeed and kill virtually everything in one shot and perhaps not have to take any hits?

It's possible that Player A did not have the means to properly combat your DS/BP strat, but that still has more to do with skill than luck. Arcanine was his best bet against Ambipom and he actually had it out against Ambi and didn't use it, realizing three turns too late that firing away with Arcanine was the way to go.

iKitsune said:
I've spoken to TAY among other people about this. In the discussions we came to the conclusion that Pokemon is basically all luck. Sorry to tell you but there is almost no skill to this game.
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I remain endlessly amused by this argument postulated supposed top players. You and TAY likely win 70-75% of your battles, or more. According to your argument, you are simply ~25% luckier than everyone else. Would you rather the rest of us call you on the bullshit of your argument and have you show a little respect for a metagame the rest of us call "competitive", or stop considering you skilled, top players and instead modest luckboxes?
 
Banedon said:
Not sure where to put this, this seems the most appropriate.

To begin: I don't think anybody likes losing. Half the people who play Pokemon everyday lose. If you are a good player you can win much more often than you lose, but - and this is rather an oddity to Pokemon, to be honest - you can lose even if you are better and haven't made any obvious mistakes. I recently played this game which left a deep impression on me. It's a battle fought in UU, where I do my battling.



Whose fault is it that Player A lost? At every point he made a reasonable move, given what he knew of the other guy's team and his own. In fact on turn 1 he even got a large advantage, and he can't complain about Player B letting him set up three layers of spikes unimpeded. But he lost. And he can't blame anyone but himself, because he's the one that picked 6 Pokemon and 24 moves. There wasn't hax in this game either. Maybe he can blame everyone else for letting Porygon-Z land in UU, or for not using Baton Pass Ambipom enough so he wasn't expecting it (not sure what he can do though, in view of Taunt) ... but that's rather stretching the bounds of reason.

This game shows that you can not make a mistake but still lose. This makes Pokemon a rather brutal game. It certainly puts me under a lot of pressure when I play it. I'm competitive by nature and don't just 'don't like' losing - I actively fear it. It's not that bad if I lose a game because my opponent played better than me, or if I get badly haxed, but to lose a game when there's nothing I can do better is just ... troubling.

There once was a time when I played chess competitively. Here I at least had the reassurance that if I don't make a mistake I can't lose, but it still didn't stop competitive chess from being highly stressful. For me, Pokemon increasingly resembles chess. The pressure is also getting worse. When I first started playing I could blame my own lack of knowledge (which also caused me to make bad teams). But as I learned more and more, this excuse for losing became untenable. These days I fear losing enough that I check out the ratings of all my opponents when I play them, my pulse races especially if I'm facing someone highly rated, I play maybe two games a day, and I delayed making this topic for over a week hoping not to reveal my team to other UU players.

How does everyone cope with losing and the pressures of playing?

PS: In case anyone wonders, I'm the one who swept with Porygon-Z in this game. My opponent, who I'm not going to name, was rated well above 1600 on the UU ladder. I can't read his mind, but I can make an educated guess of what his thought process went.
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OP, I may not be used to playing online battles or battling against Pros, but one thing is for sure, the moment he abused Nasty Plot and you cannot cancel it, you could've had a huge advantage if you had a Pokemon with Punishment for a possible OHKO due to that amount of stats bonuses it already has:
With +2 speed and +4 SpA.

And the solution of Punishment which is:
Base Power =
60 + (20 × (No. of stat increases - No. of stat decreases))
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You would've abused Punishment.

Also, it already appears that he knew you were going to use Spike in the first place
Hence your downfall.
 
I used to lose constantly, without end. Perpetual defeat wreck me to no end. Then, one day, I decided to stop trying to throw around and upgrade my team. Instead, I saw that Gliscor and Blissey complemented each other extremely well. Then, on paper, I drew out more and more of that team. I began adding more pokemon until I had a team of 6 on the page.

After that, I fixed up the exact sets and put that team on Shoddy. Now I've been put on a long win streak and the only thing I've changed was one attack after studying which of the two would be better.

My advice is, if you try your hardest and keep failing and know it's your team that's failing you, start from scratch, building your team around two pokemon that complement each other. However, even if your team and skills are perfected, Pokemon is still a huge game of luck, sadly.
 
ILoveLiza said:
These things happen.
Someone can have the best Hyper offense team ever and still lose to an abysmal stall team even when they play correctly. No team is unbeatable and you just have to accept that. In some cases a team will just happen to be perfect for beating your team even of your opponent makes mistakes.
If it helps carry a stress ball so you can vent if/when you need to.
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I agree, reminds me of the first time i battled my nephew, With all his Pokemons of 100(my highest was 75), i was able to end the match with me losing and him only one Pokemon, I repeated such feat with some guy yesterday despite the fact that most of his Pokemons were edited with a PokeSav.
 
Banedon, I know what you mean. I feel your pain! Well, not exactly. I have two other friends who I talk/play Pokemon with all the time. Both of them get extremely frustrated (visibly very upset) when they lose. They play well, we always review plays and strategy after battles and make sure we understand mistakes and imperfect plays (We mainly tackle Battle Factory).

Over the course of my Pokemon gaming, I've noticed a lot of ways that the game is programmed to appeal mostly to the players who buy the games the most (the casual crowd) and I find that it sometimes severely hinders the gameplay experience of competitive players.

This game, more than any other video game I've ever played, has caused the most frustration, disappointment and anger I've ever experienced.

On the other hand, I've clocked up well over 1000 hours combined in all my Pokemon games, and it truly has given me the most enjoyable gaming experience of my life and I can't blame the game for doing what it does so well.

I hope this helps alleviate some stress.
 
This will happen as variety increases with each generation and there are more and more threats to be prepared for. In Nintendo's metagame, there is the added strategy of seeing all 6 of the opponent's Pokemon and selecting your own 3 based upon your predictions of what they will use. Love it or hate it, this does eliminate a lot of the surprise factor and adds another element of prediction and strategy, since you're trying to predict what they will pick and counter accordingly.
 
FlareBlitz said:
Significant luck is only involved on the ladder when you're facing a new team for the first time. After that, you should be mostly aware of the moveset and general strategy of the team. The next time Player A faces off against Player B, he would know that his opponent has a baton-pass oriented team with two screeners, two or three passers (presumably), and one or two sweepers (presumably).
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Do people really memorise other people's teams on the ladder? I guess if your rating is stable and high you will face the same opponents a lot. But unless you take notes, I can't see it being practical to memorise a significant number of opposing teams at all but the very top of the ladder.
 
After a loss, upon reflection there is usually something you realise you could've done better. Granted, the 'mistakes' made by Player A in this example are more subtle than most, but they are still there. Ofcourse luck can be blamed in certain situations of massive 'hax' (that doesn't mean something like one Critical Hit or an untimely one-turn Freeze from an enemy Ice Beam,) but in most cases there was some fault on the side of the losing player. Skill is not only involved in battling, though, and team building also plays a crucial role in all matches; understanding of team mechanics, metagame analysis and personal invention are very important and these are most definitely skills in their own right. Where one might say player A had a team that was effective against 90% of the metagame (I really couldn't comment, I haven't played UU in months,) and that he unluckily fought an obsucre team, it is also possible that he should've made an out to that style of team somewhere in the 24 moves for 6 different Pokemon that he has access to. Very few losses can be blamed on luck alone. 50-60% luck seems like an entirely 'random' guess, and although I too have no way to say more accurately, I would be willing to bet that it is considerably less.
When I personally lose, I do tend to blame luck straight after. I'd love to say that I analyse where I went wrong exactly and knew better for next time / improved my team to fix the issue after every loss I suffer, but I'm human; we can't all be perfect. However, this is the best way to improve skill as a battler, not ranting about a Belly Drum Charizard that swept you 6-0 to everyone else in the Shoddy Battle chat.
 
There is a difference between not making clear mistakes and playing well. Player A did not make any clear mistakes, yet he did not play well. He team was seemingly unprepared for dual-screen baton pass, and he did not efficiently use his resources to stop it from setting up.

I 100% agree with jumpman.
 
Jumpman16 said:
I remain endlessly amused by this argument postulated supposed top players. You and TAY likely win 70-75% of your battles, or more. According to your argument, you are simply ~25% luckier than everyone else. Would you rather the rest of us call you on the bullshit of your argument and have you show a little respect for a metagame the rest of us call "competitive", or stop considering you skilled, top players and instead modest luckboxes?
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I shouldn't have said that. I should have instead said a large proportion of the game is luck which I believe it is. You may have missed this or I may not have said it clearly enough but i think the skill is in team building (off the battle field) when you during the battle the game has been pretty much decided by this, to a degree. So in a way a good player make his own luck by building a good team. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

I do have a great deal of respect for the top players especially as i don't think i'm all that good. I also think there is a definite curve to on in battle skill, ie decision making and once you have reached this there is not all that much you can do to improve. Once again I'm sorry if my comments offended you or anyone else. Just to clear this up a bit further, I still think there is skill especially when a better player plays a worse player but in a game between Earthworm and Krack or Panamaxis or any other renowned battler Luck is the deciding factor. Yes i've changed my stance but this is the message i originally wanted to convey.

And so my original statement should have read:


"I've spoken to TAY among other people about this. In the discussions we came to the conclusion that Pokemon is basically all luck. Sorry to tell you but there is almost no skill to this game once you reach a certain level."
 
I am still new to the legit pokemon game but maybe that provides new insight?

What I love about pokemon is that there are literally hundreds of them, and they all know how to do something. Ya, some pokemon are better than others, no one takes hit to the plush quite like Bliss but you know, if you really want, you can make it work and work well without her.

The thing I notice you guys saying the most is how specefic sets beat specefic sets. Well that is how life is, it's imperfect, you rob a guy and he has a gun and you have a knife chances are you lose. Pokemon teams go the same way. It happens that luck is involved with who you get paired against, but that same thing happens to other players. You both went in with the knowledge that your oppenent could have a team that OHKO every pokemon you have because that is what he is running. And since you both know I think it's fair.

On comments about the metagame and how to manipulate it and it's impact on fairness I would like to see that seems to be where the competitive pokemon community is most shallow. Yes there are some tried and true methods no one will ever argue how good Salamence is at beating stuff up, but it seems like there aren't too many players (comparatively) that look at EVERY pokemon and look for it's niche in a team. It seems like people just want all pokemon to do everything, and when something different shows up who did find that lonely pokemon in the bottom of the ranks and figures out what they can do it jumps to the top and becomes the new metagame. It just feels overly generalized to only include what people know how to use.

TL;DR version
This game is cool, it has lots of pokemon
Both players build teams, with full knowledge that there is a perfect counter, and as in life, we must accept this is as fair as it gets.
Lots of battlers only focus on the top pokemon not enough originality makes the metagame boring and seem "unfair"

This is all just food for thought, my thoughts are only here so you can pry them apart agree and disagree and have a good time catching our pokemans.
 
Stylish Interval said:
Mind explaining what skill is presented in the battle at lower levels that is absent from the top?
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I think he might mean that at the highest levels, both players are so skilled that the additional skill one has over the other only makes a tiny amount of difference to the outcome of the game.
 
This game is mostly based on probability. You try to make the best move for the current situation and then adjust accordingly. For example, Blissey has come in twice on my specs Latias. It wouldn't be unreasonable to expect it to come in again, therefore i might trick. The logic and reasoning that players employ is what makes a good battler in my opinion.

As for coping with losing, at the end of the day, you have to take a step back and say "its pokemon." Does it make a real difference in the long run if you got haxed by that Scarfrachi?
 
undisput3d said:
As for coping with losing, at the end of the day, you have to take a step back and say "its pokemon." Does it make a real difference in the long run if you got haxed by that Scarfrachi?
Click to expand...

This. In my last couple of battles over the past few days, hax has played a HUGE part in the games. You really have to take a step back and look at it retrospectively.

As for this topic, I think it relates very much so to DougJustDoug's recent topic in Policy Review. What do we want our metagame to look like? We need to know what exactly we are looking for in order to find it. Do we want a metagame where it encourages winning and competition? Do we want a metagame where it truly shows who the best players are? There are many different possibilities.
 
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