On chance, banning moves and the Garchomp problem

[Chou Toshio]

I notice how it's all the skilled players who don't want added luck . . . lol

 

[Aint No Sunshine]

Posting to agree with Iggy and Aeroblacktyl.

 

[Ancien Régime]

I notice how it's all the skilled players who don't want added luck . . . lol

Obviously; as I pointed out, the addition of luck disproportionately hurts more skilled players because

1: Skilled players tend to need less luck than non-skilled players (and the luck that they do get is less likely to determine the outcome of the battle)
2: Skilled players are less likely to use moves/strategies that rely on luck.

 

[yayece]

Actually no, there's a 30% per turn of losing, so it's not -always- losing. You guys are being overdramatic with the percentage thing. You can possibly survive and have all 8 OHKOs miss, or get hit by all 8. Stop being drama queens.

I was wondering what the odds of that was, so I ran a simulation. If someone used a OHKO move 8 times, here are the odds of them hitting x number of times. The odds of 7 or 8 hits is pretty negligible but I guess you can roll that into hitting 6 times.
Hits 0 times: 5.8%
Hits 1 times: 19.7%
Hits 2 times: 29.6%
Hits 3 times: 25.4%
Hits 4 times: 13.5%
Hits 5 times: 4.6%
Hits 6 times: 1.0%
Hits 7 times: 0.1%
Hits 8 times: 0.006%

 

[Chimera]

Skilled players don't want more luck...why do you make that sound bad? What if, during a football game, every 10 minutes the game stopped and 2 quarters were filpped. If both were heads, the home team got 7 points automatically. What we're talking about is rather similar in terms of odds, and that would be 6 occasions, entirely possible for OHKO moves in a game.

People would freak. But the teams who would be most vocal are ones that have seen a lot of success.

Unskilled players may say its better to have OHKO and evasion moves, but they should just be trying to become better. This community can only improve if the number of skilled players increases. And increased luck hurts ALL players, because it will reduce a player's desire to become better, and it really makes playing COMPETITIVELY worthless.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

First of all prediction =/= random guessing. Should "you just guess" when CB garchomp uses outrage or lose anything that isn't a steel? If so, does that mean it should be banned? You have to predict around it. Secondly this is a huge overexaggeration of what OHKO moves do. They are not "turning the entire match into a guessing game" any more than choice users already do, if you refer to prediction as "guessing." They are just adding an element to the game.

Prediction is still guessing. And for the record, yes, that's exactly why I think Garchomp should be banned. Forcing the player to counter individual moves intead of the pokemon does in the ways that OHKO moves do turn the match into a guessing game. Are you really going to switch your Sturdy Probopass/Aggron/Magnezone etc into my Gliscor for fear of Guillotine, knowing full well that I could EQ you?

Also for the record my main reason for wanting to allow OHKO moves is not "you should just guess when OHKO moves will be used." It is that A) nothing extremely defensively sound gets them (if cresselia got sheer cold, my opinion would be completely different), B) they are all extremely counterable with any sturdy user, and in addition a ghost (for horn drill/guillotine), or any levitator (for fissure), and can be predicted around, C) they would increase variety and give previously unused pokemon a use, D) They are not any more luck-based than many other moves/items that are currently allowed in the metagame.

Lots of defensively sound pokemon get them, thats the whole point. Defensively sound pokemon take no risks when using these moves that give a very high reward. I just switched my Gliscor into your Heracross, guess what? Something on your team is probably going to die.

I was referring to the less-bulky OHKO users that Syberia was talking about, which lapras and walrein would obviously not be a part of.

While a really fast OHKO move is really dangerous, a Sheer Cold coming from the defensively sound Lapras (hi Suicune, thanks for the free OHKO attempt!) is probably even more dangerous.

I'll just send in my genagr, forretress or magnezone (and use magnet rise). If I must send in starmie, I'll do it. I'd rather go with the 70% odds than the 30%. The majority of the time, I will be thinking that I am glad you didn't earthquake starmie.

Really? You would rather take a 70% shot (how many times have you lost to a Hypnosis miss? Its happened to me quite a bit.) at staying alive instead of just being able to Recover for free or get a free KO? Heh, good luck with that (you'll need it).

That is no different from saying "if you take away certain moves, you are not playing pokemon anymore." Again, for the record, I do not support banning of OHKO moves in any way, I just said lapras in that post to clarify my point.

It is different. You can't ban one move on one Pokemon. If a Pokemon has one item move or moveset that makes it broken, the pokemon is broken...not the move. At least, that has been the philosophy up to this point in time. You either ban all OHKO moves or none of them at all.

I said I am against (or at least neutral) allowed double team, and there are enough viable sturdy pokemon that it isn't overcentralizing.

There are 4 current OU pokemon that have the "Sturdy" ability. 3 of them always lose to Lapras, the other one (Magnezone) only loses most of the time. There is no way to just force Sturdy users into the game without being pretty centralizing...mostly because the Sturdy pokemon all suck (especially in OU).

So what can OHKO walrein do to forretress or magnezone (among others including probopass, etc.) then? Hp Fire? Then you still can't do anything to probopass. Anyway, forcing a walrein to use hp fire is enough to call something a counter.

Earthquake. Unresisted STAB Surf. Walrein doesn't even have to think about using HP Fire. You're really just grabbing at straws here since anyone who has actually taken 10 seconds to look at Walrein's movepool would realize that HP Fire isn't needed.

There you go, thats another counter, along with substitute, which is even better.

Substitute does not counter OHKO moves. 1) You cant switch in. 2) Even if you do switch in, if the OHKO user is faster then you have a 51% chance of being OHKOd anyways. The odds would be against you. 3) You still have a 30% chance of being OHKOd even though you are trying to counter the pokemon.

It's just plain silly to think that banning a move or pokemon somehow makes it so that you aren't playing pokemon anymore. Hell, Pokemon Stadium had clauses, Mewtwo was banned. In the wifi tower you can't have multiple items, and some pokemon are banned from there.

How is putting a blanket ban on OHKO moves or adding Sleep Clause violating the game mechanics at all? Its just an extra rule, not a change of "fundamental" game mechanics at all. Banning a Pokemon and banning a move fall under the same category, but banning one move on one pokemon does not. If one move makes a pokemon broken, that is evidence of the Pokemon being broken, not of that one instance of the move since there are still pokemon that would suck even if they could use OHKO moves. I was talking about banning sheer cold on just lapras/just walrein etc. If there is one move that breaks the game, ban it on everything and only use that one clause instead of confusing the player by making an "OHKO ban list".

If you look at those facts, it means that Nintendo realizes that this isnt' a perfectly balanced game, and introduced some measures to bring a bit of balance to some areas. We are completely allowed to ban things in order to make the game more balanced, which is all clauses are meant to do.

We only stop playing pokemon when we change the fundamental mechanics. If Shoddy suddenly put SpDef and SpAtk back together in 4th gen play, I'd say they weren't playing pokemon. Not allowing players to use Horn Drill or Minimize doesn't change the game we're playing, just the metagame.

Purists annoy me a bit sometimes. Nintendo doesn't care about competitive play, and nintendo can't take my game cartridge away because I battle on wifi with evasion, ohko, sleep, and self ko clauses on. So as far as I'm concerned, since I can do all that without an external device, I'm playing pokemon.

Who cares what Nintendo thinks about competitive battling? This is Smogon's version of the OU metagame, not Nintendo's.

 

[Chimera]

dude, if you actually read you'd see that the post of mine you've quoted is calling out purists who took the last page to argue that we were somehow wrong and not playing pokemon by adding rules.

 

[jrrrrrrr]

dude, if you actually read you'd see that the post of mine you've quoted is calling out purists who took the last page to argue that we were somehow wrong and not playing pokemon by adding rules.

...and I didn't say anything that disagreed with you....did you even read my post? lol

I agreed that adding rules doesn't change the game, but adding rules that are specific to a certain pokemon do change the game for reasons I've already outlined.

 

[Baldafor]

To be honest, I don't really understand why we ban any moves at all.

This isn't Pokemon anymore, anyone who can pick up a cartridge and play can tell the difference between Shoddy and legitimate pokemon. It's not the same. It doesn't make sense to me.

The game is designed and balanced (poorly, but still) with the moves that you have chosen to ban in mind. They designed the game so that pokemon like Pinsir can and should be usable next to a pokemon like Heracross just because they have one move they don't, and they especially designed some of the more frail pokemon (Cacturne) to have abilities that take advantage of evasion moves like Double Team and Sand-Attack.

I could go on about this forever, but really, Shoddy is Shoddy, and will never be sanctioned or approved of by Nintendo, Game Freaks, or anyone else who cares enough to learn from what you are doing. It's like playing Blackjack but you can't play an Ace as a 1 or 11 because that's "imbalanced" and "makes the game based too much on luck" or some nonsense.

It's a kid's game, and you are alienating the real competitive playerbase by adding extra rules that just make the game more complicated and pidgeonholed.

 

[Syberia]

It is the "real competitive playerbase" who wants and plays by the added rules which, quite simply, make the game more competitive.

 

[the_artic_one]

All pokemon-related events (and games for that matter)that Nintendo wants to be competitive have additional rules. Why? Because even they recognize that what is balanced for a single player RPG is not the same as what's balanced for a two player strategy game.