On cartridge-accurate HP reporting

[Cathy]

One other thing I'd like to address is this "tournament player" argument. I put this in a separate post because it is somewhat distinct from the merits of the overall issue.

I've never played competitive pokemon, but I have played the in-game for past generations. With gen 5, I haven't even played the in-game. So why should I care about this issue? Surely only what "tournament players" want matters? I care about this issue greatly because it goes to the heart of why I've found developing pokemon simulators fun. Part of the challenge is neatly replicating all of the quirks of the game, while providing a better UI, a better internal design, and networking features. It's just plain fun to correct each new subtle incorrect interaction or longstanding bug -- and to have people argue against fixing bugs sucks a lot of the enjoyment out of this activity for me. That is why I got involved with arguments like Sleep Clause and RNG-validation in the past -- because they affect why I develop pokemon simulators.

Pokemon tournament players aren't the only relevant audience here. People participate in this project for various reasons, and for me, part of that is the fun of neatly emulating obscure in-game features. I don't even think of this a "policy" issue. It's more like: am I able to work on what I find enjoyable, or am I going to have to argue with people over every bug fix?

 

[Aldaron]

Here is how I view this: simulating cartridge mechanics is obviously (yes, obviously) the best practice.

However, we have finite resources / time; we could easily justify delaying the fix of this bug to the end of the priority list and take care of all the other issues first.

This allows people who want to absolutely stick to every cartridge mechanics to be happy and keeps the "tournament crowd" satisfied. Since no sim has ever been perfect, this would probably mean we never have to deal with this issue again. A win-win for both sides.

I'm aware that your longstanding response to this, Cathy, is that "I am the programmer, and I will make that priority list have whatever order i deem necessary." Sure, fair enough, you're the one doing work on it.

Still, it's supremely disconcerting to see that even after nearly 2 years, you care more about prioritizing fixes that will infuriate a large percentage of people than not. Are you seriously telling me no other bug fix was more appealing to you than this one? That you absolutely had to "fix" this "bug" over all the other pressing matters Showdown currently has?

I don't buy it; you're smart enough to understand basic cause and effect. You knew perfectly what type of reaction this fixing this bug now would merit, and you chose to do it anyway.

The cost:benefit analysis here is seriously curious to me. Is there any benefit to fixing this bug first over all the others? No, there isn't. Fixing this bug over another doesn't improve anything more. There is a huge cost to fixing this bug over another, non controversial bug however...that being this reaction from the community.

I mean honestly now, you are the programmer, you have the right to work on whatever you want, but no one buys you didn't know what your actions would cause.

 

[capefeather]

It's kind of funny how "tournament player" continues to be an excuse to ignore what I think are legitimate concerns. That being a tournament player somehow makes your arguments more logical and make more sense. Yet, the immaturity of some tournament players was a huge part of why policy is decided by smods+ now. Please, let's not resort to these tired ad hominems. Both sides of the issue have their concerns, and both are legitimate due to one side being relevant to tournament battling and the other side being relevant to the actual simulator maintenance.

You don't have to be more than a casual policy observer to realize where this topic is going to go. The whole thing is overblown. Everyone will move on, and whoever actually cares more about and invests more into this tiny tiny detail (hint: it may not actually be you!) will win out. Quite frankly, I'm more afraid of programmers leaving the PS! project (something that has happened many times to Smogon's detriment) than tournament players going to PO in protest (something that has happened many times to no one's detriment). I can't believe people actually cared about legendary IVs...

 

[Cathy]

Still, it's supremely disconcerting to see that even after nearly 2 years, you care more about prioritizing fixes that will infuriate a large percentage of people than not. Are you seriously telling me no other bug fix was more appealing to you than this one? That you absolutely had to "fix" this "bug" over all the other pressing matters Showdown currently has?

As Zarel mentioned in the first post, he was the one who corrected this mechanic in the server (not me; I wasn't even directly asked if he should change it). Sure, I supported it, but I would have left it alone if left to my own devices. (It was me who made a client UI change to show HP as pixels, but we agreed that showing approximate percents is better -- so it was changed back to that within an hour or so --, and I'm not defending my UI change in this thread.)

Now that the mechanic has been fixed, however, I am opposed to reintroducing the bug for the reasons given in my posts above. I don't claim this is my decision to make, but it is something I feel strongly about, hence my posts.

 

[Aldaron]

OK, so now that it's hard to justify a reversal, can we do this instead.

I'm aware we should strive to simulate cartridge mechanics on the simulator. However, that is simply on the portion of the simulator we decide to that on. For example, the team building area of the simulator is where we simulate what we might have in game, not how to actually get the pokemon.

Can we have an option to display the percentages somewhere on the battle screen and then state this is simply simulating calculating the percentages ourselves? If we have to, we can have an info page that describes how 95% of the battle screen is the portion where we simulate the cartridge battle, and the 5% or so that has other "random" information is just an ease of use thing the simulator provides the user, independent of the cartridge.

It's essentially a service to simulate the gathering of that information, like building Pokemon from scratch is simulating the gathering of those Pokemon.

EDIT: Note what I'm suggesting isn't necessarily for this specific instance (as far as I'm aware this was kind of reversed anyway), but for any issues where we come across about providing more information than the cartridge gives us. I'm essentially asking why we can't consolidate the battle screen to include both the part where we simulate the cartridge and a services portion that saves the user from gathering information himself.

 

[Cathy]

Can we have an option to display the percentages somewhere on the battle screen and then state this is simply simulating calculating the percentages ourselves? If we have to, we can have an info page that describes how 95% of the battle screen is the portion where we simulate the cartridge battle, and the 5% or so that has other "random" information is just an ease of use thing the simulator provides the user, independent of the cartridge.

In case there's any confusion on this, what we currently show in the client is percentages rounded to the nearest 1/48th. You can hover over the percentages in the log to see "x/48 pixels". I believe this is what we plan to maintain. If we add a feature to show health as pixels, it would be optional and off by default.

In other words, we do display percentages on the battle screen and there isn't a plan to change that. (As I mentioned, the display was briefly changed (by me) for an hour or so but we agreed that showing percentages is better and plan to keep it that way. The reason I changed the display was for greater consistency with the mechanics change, but it turned out not to be such a good UI change, so it was not maintained.)

 

[Zarel]

1.) Alternative metagames. Dream World, CAP, and Balanced Hackmons are all impossible to play on a cartridge legally, and yet they are accepted as legitimate. This is because, in spite of not following the rules of the cartridge, these metagames are still recognizable as competitive Pokemon. They use real, established Pokemon, and the real, established battle mechanics. This is "playing Pokemon" as far as I'm concerned, and I loathe it when people trivialize and dismiss these metagames by saying that they are not "real Pokemon".

Actually, DW and Balanced Hackmons can both be played without even hacking the game itself - a hacked GTS is enough.

And the entire point of CAP is to make new pokemon for existing metagames. And a lot of people oppose CAP precisely because it doesn't follow the cartridges exactly.

Because of this, I and others are certain that players will begin to use PO specifically for tournament battles, because they will have more information at their disposal on PO. This directly hurts PS, and as such I feel that 48ths fall under the first division of the second category I laid out. Furthermore damage percentages are an outstanding case, as they have been employed by simulators for the entire history of competitive simulated Pokemon (as far as I know, feel free to dispute this with relevant simulators that did not if you know of them, and I stress relevant), and as such will have far more resistance than any other case I can think of. Because of this, I feel that the fidelity to the cartridge 48ths grant are not worth disgruntling the userbase for.

There's something very relevant that I haven't mentioned yet: a number (yes, more than one) of researchers and developers are considering quitting if we decide not to be accurate to the carts, because if we're not going to listen to them about how the cartridges work, what's the point?

So honestly, the question I have to answer is: are these researchers more important to me than tournament users? And so far, the answer is yes.

I and others are certain that players will begin to use PO specifically for tournament battles, because they will have more information at their disposal on PO.

So you consider yourself a pokemon master, but you're not willing to actually play pokemon?

Tournaments are pretty irrelevant, anyway. I can make exact HP an option in custom games, so this is mainly about the other tiers.

 

[Eo Ut Mortus]

Percentages out of 100 can be simulated in in-game play.

Just have an impartial judge go to each person's DS, check each Pokemon's HP stats, calculate the % remaining, and report the result to both parties.

edit: I see this was already alluded to; as to why it would be preferable to any other form of HP display, I would say not only because is a long-standing precedent that has satisfied most people, but also because it can be simulated in-game, unlike the aforementioned Spikes glitch.

 

[Tobes]

There's something very relevant that I haven't mentioned yet: a number (yes, more than one) of researchers and developers are considering quitting if we decide not to be accurate to the carts, because if we're not going to listen to them about how the cartridges work, what's the point?

So honestly, the question I have to answer is: are these researchers more important to me than tournament users? And so far, the answer is yes.

...This is something you didn't mention earlier why exactly? This is a very important factor that hadn't been widely known as far as I know.

But are they really going to quit over this single issue? Do percentages really matter that much to them? I have a hard time believing that, because to be blunt it just sounds petulant. Don't get me wrong, I greatly respect and appreciate their efforts and don't want them to quit, and I certainly understand why they want things a certain way, but I don't really see them up and leaving over this lone incident.

So you consider yourself a pokemon master, but you're not willing to actually play pokemon?

Just because players might prefer to have percentages does not mean that they aren't "playing Pokemon". In fact I find that to be a rather disingenuous rhetorical question. And no, with the exception of VGC, I do not play "actual" Pokemon. I play simulated Pokemon. Just like many, many users on this site.

 

[alexwolf]

Just posting to say that we should cut the drama and the hyperboles no matter what the outcome. Let's talk about things how they are. Also Eo is perfectly right, and using percentages instead of pixels is absolutely possible to be done irl, so i don't see any bug here, just conviniencies that help the gamers.

So here are some questions. Would some people leave from PS and go to PO if we change to bits? Possibly, as percentage is a much easier value to work with than the thing with bits, and this is esecially true for new players and players that value infromation a lot, aka tour players.

Would researchers and developers quit from Smogon if bits are not implemented? I highly doubt this. First, it is such a minor thing that is not worth losing a position that you worked for hard and i assume that you also like enough to spend all those hours for. Second, aren't those people supposed to be calm and rational? Does quitting your position because bits weren't implemented sound like a responsible and serious thing to do, if you are really into your position (researcher/developer)? Imo no. So if some developers/researchers leave for this reason, they were never serious about their job to begin with, so it is fine. I know that this may sound rude, but this is how i see it, and i could be proven wrong.

Finally, i don't really get why we should change something so trivial, that doesn't even affect the gameplay, just for theoritical reasons, and zero practical reasons.

 

[lilyhollow]

Actually yeah, what's wrong with that "impartial judge" workaround? I feel bad for not considering that myself.

 

[Cathy]

The impartial judge argument has merit, but in my view it doesn't really justify a deviation from the default in-game situation. It establishes that it's possible to do so if we consider judges to be within the game, but it doesn't establish why it's worth introducing judges just to avoid a game mechanic which is actually not problematic other than that it's different from how most simulators traditionally were (Shoddy Battle 2 (i.e. Pokemon Lab) actually reported damage as pixels, but it was only widely used for a few months; Shoddy Battle 1 reported to the nearest 1/100th because I wasn't aware of the issue.)

I've also had some doubts lately about whether introducing complex workarounds involving judges is really acceptable in terms of in-game fidelity (even though it was basically me who pioneered "impartial judge" arguments on this forum). The only other thing it's necessary to justify is the cancel button, and we could avoid introducing judges by having a client-side cancel instead (i.e. a few second delay before a move is sent to the server), or by removing cancel. I haven't really decided how I feel about that yet...

 

[lilyhollow]

But it seems that 'impartial judges' are necessary no matter what, whether for canceling, Pokemon bans, certain Sleep Clause implementations, or hyper-exact HP reporting. If you're simply distinguishing between 'complex' workarounds and 'simple' ones then fine, but either way there's no question as to the fidelity of a game which does in fact correctly simulate the mechanics of the cartridge.

In other words, if you're saying that certain 'impartial judge workarounds' should not be implemented in official Smogon rulesets because they could be impractical in the real world, then what you're describing has nothing to do with cartridge fidelity and everything to do with simple practical consistency between online and offline play. Practical consistency between online and offline play is a concern that deserves its own attention, but all I'm saying here is that cartridge fidelity is neither here nor there in this case. That's because it is very literally possible to hold offline tournaments, using cartridges, in which each player is given HP percentages of their opponent's Pokemon in denominations of 1/100. Yes, it would take a long time, and nobody actually wants to do anything like that at the moment. No, that still does not have anything to do with cartridge fidelity. I only repeat this because it seems that what you're mostly honing in on here, and what you've often focused on in the past, is cartridge fidelity.

Perhaps you are interested in mechanics that are consistent with what happens to be 'practical' in offline competitions, rather than what is simply 'possible' using a Pokemon cart. That's just fine, and I think you continue to make valid arguments in favor of us supporting consistency there. But it's much less black-and-white than 'should the simulator be accurate to what is possible using a physical Pokemon cart,' a question to which this community has provided a clear and consistent answer ("yes") and an issue that is much easier to police ('is the simulator accurate? yes/no').

Considering that there is no established precedent as to whether this community particularly cares one way or the other about the real-world practicality of certain rules/mechanics; considering that the act of evaluating the real-world practicality of certain rules/mechanics is itself a likely deterrent to caring about it in the first place; and considering that one of the mechanics that could potentially be on the table as 'too impractical to continue implementing' is an objective and unquestionable improvement to the average user's experience with the program (the 'cancel' button), I don't think there's likely to be any resistance to the 'impartial judge with a calculator' workaround. Or any 'impartial judge' workaround at all, for that matter.

 

[TheFourthChaser]

This was probably mentioned already but I'll say it anyway. For tournament play most players stick to PO and removing exact percentage creates a greater push towards it. I don't really care about the more perfect simulation argument, I care about getting our tournament players to care about the official simulator. VGC players don't seem to care about having exact percentage either and they actually go out and play the damn cart so I think it is perfectly acceptable to have them in play.

 

[Earthworm]

The judge argument in this case differs from the one used for the cancel button in that extra information is provided to both players in this case and there is no justification for doing that other than as an excuse to keep the HP bars as showing hundredths of HP.

This new feature / bug fix seems like a low impact change that doesn't warrant much discussion (I doubt anyone would even have noticed this if it weren't for the /48 thing) and I think whoever has the final say should just implement their preference.

As for the discussion of other cart-display-related things (PK Gaming's post), my opinion is that the simulator should be permitted to display anything to increase convenience that could have been recorded on a piece of paper by the player.

 

[Nix_Hex]

(I doubt anyone would even have noticed this if it weren't for the /48 thing) and I think whoever has the final say should just implement their preference.

As for the discussion of other cart-display-related things (PK Gaming's post), my opinion is that the simulator should be permitted to display anything to increase convenience that could have been recorded on a piece of paper by the player.

I was away from a computer all day yesterday and didn't have time to post but I did have all day to mull this over and straighten up my thoughts on this matter. To start, I'll say that I agree heartily with both of these points. Whether it is /48 or /100 (both rounded down, to the nearest integer and hundredth, respectively), a convenient damage display is a function of HP, not the other way around. The damage received from percentage-based attacks/boosts like Stealth Rock, Choice Band/Specs, etc. is not an exact percentage at all, but instead an integer (rounded down). Cathy has clarified this (although you all should have known this already) that the exact percentage isn't shown at all.

My view is that we should stick to exact game mechanics by showing the amount of HP next to the bar for YOUR OWN Pokemon (actual mechanics) and showing the amount of pixels / rounded percentages on the side (simulator convenience). This will only show for your side of the field and wouldn't have to appear on replays or be seen by spectators. This is really where Showdown! falls short, not because it does or doesn't display "exact" percentages, but that it doesn't show your exact HP. Conversely, the opponent's HP bar SHOULD NOT reveal percentages at all. Pixel count MAYBE, since I guess someone desperate enough playing a cart could count the amount of pixels if they really wanted to, but no percentages.

tl;dr:

• percentages or pixels are an estimation of the actual damage
• do not show opponent's percentages

 

[Zarel]

As for the discussion of other cart-display-related things (PK Gaming's post), my opinion is that the simulator should be permitted to display anything to increase convenience that could have been recorded on a piece of paper by the player.

This is exactly how the simulator works, by the way.

Things like boosts and opponent teams aren't sent from the server; they're reconstructed from the battle log. If you ever get a boost without the corresponding message, the boost shown will be wrong. And if the opponent has an Illusion mon, their team list won't tell the truth, because it's reconstructed from the battle log. That's the point.

PK Gaming's post surprises me, by the way, because he was the main person pushing for accurate Illusion mechanics. PS does it right in a way PO never can (I've talked to them, they've given up on it since it's too much work for them), because of PS's insistence on sending only the information that's displayed on the screen in cartridge games and letting the client reconstruct the rest.

Don't get me wrong, PO is a great simulator, but PS was made with a lot of visions of how to improve on the status quo, and one of them was to have more accurate game mechanics, and I'm very grateful to all my contributors for making this possible (especially Marty, for tirelessly testing the cartridge and PS for differences, to a level of detail that I'm very impressed by).

I think it's this commitment to accuracy that's allowed PS to attract researchers as dedicated as Marty. You have to remember: they don't get paid. They do research because half the time, when they tell me about a discrepancy between PS and the cartridges that they spent an hour figuring out, I fix it within ten minutes.

I've seen people wonder about why Smogon has trouble keeping programmers. It's the same for any other online community: this sort of argument can be really discouraging.

To that end, I've thought about it long and hard, and I've decided: I have to stand by my researchers and everyone else who helped make PS great. I know I've said I give my users a high priority, and I do, but the damage it would do to the PS team would be far worse for the users. I think Tobes is underestimating how important accuracy is to a researcher (surprise, surprise, it's pretty damn important).

Regardless of the outcome of this thread, I've decided that by default, PS will display HP using accurate mechanics.

For tournament players, we'll introduce a new Custom Game with legality checking, which will display exact percentages (as will any other Debug Mode format, including regular Custom Game).

I'm going to leave this thread open in case you guys want to talk about using PO or policy for some future sim or something. :P

 

[jrrrrrrr]

Much of the allure of simulators is that the UI is more user friendly. It kinda bums me out that people are already trying to make the issue real Pokemon vs. some sort of fake Pokemon bullshit. We already do a ton of stuff on our sim that makes playing the game far more convenient than on the cartridge. Using exact percentages is one of those things that people generally prefer on their Pokemon sims for that reason. It's just much easier to work with in a competitive environment without really changing a mechanic that's crucial to how Pokemon functions as a game.

EXACTLY..

The cartridge doesn't let you see all 6 pokemon at once unless you open a new menu. We should simulate cartridge mechanics by forcing you to open a new tab when you want to check your bench pokemon's stats. This is big in VGC where battles are timed. We should simulate cartridge mechanics by removing the battle kick timer and not giving you a loss if you disconnect. We should simulate cartridge mechanics by introducing a timelimit that mimics the DS's actual battery life and ends your battle when its over, or else we're not really simulating playing pokemon on a cartridge, are we?

Where do you people draw the line with such an unreasonable concept? I should stop giving you guys ideas XD

To that end, I've thought about it long and hard, and I've decided: I have to stand by my researchers and everyone else who helped make PS great. I know I've said I give my users a high priority, and I do, but the damage it would do to the PS team would be far worse for the users. I think Tobes is underestimating how important accuracy is to a researcher (surprise, surprise, it's pretty damn important).

Can you give some examples of a situation where the simulator giving less information would benefit research? I'm honestly curious, it sounds interesting. Every situation I can think of is helped by having actual data instead of guesswork, even when ranges of HP are involved.

In a tl;dr, you have to decide: are we playing Pokemon or not?

Is this a serious post? You really think that a difference in a couple of pixels determines what game you're playing?

This is looking at it the wrong way. We don't need a reason to fix a bug in the simulator. ...Bug fixes should not require debate.

When the "bug" is seen by 99.999% of users as a benefit, and when "fixing" the "bug" has noticeable affects on tournament play, a debate is perfectly healthy. PS! is now noticeably worse than it was before, and it gives serious players less information to work with. I'm sure you'll understand why a user would be turned off to see "x did 100% damage! y has 2% hp remaining!" when they are trying to make a serious prediction or calculation.

It's very discouraging to hear arguments that certain bugs should not be fixed. If making changes to the game is acceptable, we should engage in a wholesale rebalancing. It makes no sense to modify just something this trivial.

How is anyone accepting this as a line of reasoning? Making the game more convenient for us does not and will never mean that we are destroying the game to make our own fake metagame. The logical jump needed to go from "we have damage calcs so our displays should match those" to "let's rebalance the whole game" would make Superman blush.

 

[alexwolf]

I thought that we already established that the percentage thing is not a bug as it can be done irl too, so where is the problem? We allow a shitton of stuff that make the game more convenient but don't alter the gameplay so why should this one be removed, especially when it has been this way for years and is the way that the majority of the community wants it to be. I absolutely fail to understand how you guys are willing to let people leave from PS! and go to PO when there is zero reason to do so.

And don't tell me about the ''developers and reasearchers will leave'' thing as i already explained why this is not a serious decision to make and has no logic behind it whatsoever, so i don't see it happening. Why would those people leave for? Because we didn't fix something that doesn't need to be fixed (it is not a bug as alrdy stated and is just something done for convenience)? Or because they are not grown-ups and serious with their jobs and are willing to throw everything away for a trivial matter that didn't take the course they wanted it to? People leaving to PO is a totally logical thing that can and will happen, as many of them are noobs that don't care about serious battling as long as the game is more convinient to them, play tourns and want the extra info, or are just straight up stubborn and not mature enough to get over it. Why do we have to accept their bad attitude and not the bad attitude of researchers and developers? Because they are not obliged to be responsible and mature, while the other group of people are, and this is one of the reasons that they have their positions.

 

[lilyhollow]

Their jobs? Wow, I don't think I've seen a more brazen post ever in the history of this forum. Are you paying them, alexwolf?

sorry to 'derail' or whatever but just wow, you actually just directly insulted a group of people who are spending hours of their day to help you play Pokemon on the internet, for free, maybe think about that dude

 

[alexwolf]

Wrong word sorry. I meant their duties. Of 'course nobody is paying them, but they chose to do this, and as i already said they earned it because they have certain traits, and maturity and rationality is surely one of them. Why did they work so hard to get this duty/postion if they are willing to throw it away for something so trivial and unimportant, that doesn't even have real merit? This is why i think that no serious developer and programmer will leave from the site if we don't go with the pixels.

 

[RBG]

You are still characterizing it wrong. They programmers and researchers are not obligated by any stretch of the word to find out what accurate mechanics are or to make a simulator for them. They are doing it because it is something they find fun and enjoy, and part of why they do it is because they, the programmers have set their final goal as being a simulator that does the battle mechanics perfectly. By that goal, anything that doesn't match the game mechanics correctly IS a bug, regardless of how beneficial it is to the battlers.

 

[PK Gaming]

PK Gaming's post surprises me, by the way, because he was the main person pushing for accurate Illusion mechanics. PS does it right in a way PO never can (I've talked to them, they've given up on it since it's too much work for them), because of PS's insistence on sending only the information that's displayed on the screen in cartridge games and letting the client reconstruct the rest.

I will always appreciate that time when you basically went on a limb to help me(when no one would) when I asked you to fix Illusion. On the other hand, if you've decided on trying to follow the cartridge games as closely as possible then you need to go all of the way. That means revisiting Sleep Clause, implementing a pokeball system (because they determine what moves certain Pokemon have, etc.) and doing everything else I outlined in my post.

That said, i'm fine with keeping any information that can be written down (so basically EW said).

 

[alexwolf]

You are still characterizing it wrong. They programmers and researchers are not obligated by any stretch of the word to find out what accurate mechanics are or to make a simulator for them. They are doing it because it is something they find fun and enjoy, and part of why they do it is because they, the programmers have set their final goal as being a simulator that does the battle mechanics perfectly. By that goal, anything that doesn't match the game mechanics correctly IS a bug, regardless of how beneficial it is to the battlers.

I never said that they are obliged to. My point is that their position requires responsibility and rationality, both of which don't support the ''if i can't get things how i like i leave from the site'' stance that was mentioned before. This is like saying that a QC member will quit its position because an analysis skipped the QC phase for special reasons. You don't quit a position you worked hard to get for such minor things, that are not even real issues as Eo showed.

 

[Lavos]

i don't like the switch. we've been using percentages instead of hp bits for how long? i dunno but basically since the first sim was created. now suddenly make a change? kinda obnoxious imo especially since you didn't consult the community first, just did what you wanted to. and i know it's your program and you work hard on it etc., i respect that. but you have to think of the public playerbase needs as well as your own.

the whole tournament players argument is kinda bad, i'm a tour player myself and i don't care a ton about the switch. the only real pain in the ass will be games on showdown where you really need to calc stuff and can't tell what exact % your opponent is at, which is the main reason i'm opposed to this other than the didn't ask thing. however if someone comes up with a calc that works with the whole hp bits thing that would be great and i wouldn't mind the switch nearly as much.

back to the "why even do this" point though...seriously, why even do this? you just went and pissed off a whole ton of people, as evident by this thread, in exchange for some super minor appeal to people who prefer the cartridge look? the cartridges aren't even created for people who play this shit competitively. the only reason nintendo even still does vgc on ds instead of an actual computer sim is because they want to advertise their products. they have to hire refs and all other sorts of official persons just to have a competitive experience on the handheld, we just hit sleep clause and freeze clause and species clause. if the whole sim experience is about making things simpler, easier, and more enjoyable for the player, as nixhex said, then this change shouldn't have happened.