Random Battle overhaul

[Relados]

If we're going to be removing things that are useless on teams, why don't we get rid of the obvious Rotom-s with Air Balloon? That's been more of a pain than NFEs or same type teams to me.

 

[Queen of Randoms]

QoR, you're still basically just arguing for an "intermediate" randbat, between the one I propose and Challenge Cup. You think Challenge Cup is too random, but the Random Battle I propose is not random enough.

I argue that this should really be the biggest difference between Random Battle and Challenge Cup. In Challenge Cup, you have wildly varying sets, but so does your opponent. On the other hand, in Random Battle, the idea is that both your teams are "good". I think Randbat OU is too restrictive, and honestly I think randbat minus NU NFEs makes a pretty good compromise.

In other words, in Challenge Cup, what team you have and how good it is are both random, but in Random Battle, what team you have should be random but how good it is shouldn't.

You're arguing that Random Battle needs to have "bad" teams to be fun, but I really don't agree with this. I argue there's a need for the exact tier I describe: "what team you have should be random but how good it is shouldn't", and I think splitting a tier over the one issue of the inclusion of NFEs seems unnecessary.

No, in CC you don't have "sets". You have fucking Attract, Tail Whip, Base 29 Hidden Power Steel, and Follow Me. I am arguing for a balance between CC and what you're suggesting: what we have. I like it. I don't understand why this is a negative thing. It's not "intermediate randbat", it's Randbats as I have come to know it.

Randbat OU is too restrictive. But it's what you want if you want a both teams to always be "good". When you dish out random Pokémon, they can never all be "good". It is the reason we have tiers: not all Pokémon are "good". I'm not arguing that you need "bad" Pokémon to make it fun, I'm arguing that they add another fun element of strategy to the game. The fact that all Pokémon are different inherently means that some are "better" than others. Removing NFEs doesn't add to the balance at all. There is no balancing Randoms without it being "too restrictive". You get Exploud, Luvdisc, Unown, etc. and you're at a disadvantage to your opponent who got Mewtwo. You're not fixing anything by removing NFEs, just limiting the pool of available Pokémon. Part of the fun of Randbats is being able to make good use of the Pokémon that are undesirable, and there are aways undesirable Pokémon, so I'm not seeing why NFEs should have to leave.

It's not about having "bad" teams. It extremely rare you actually get a "bad" team. You have weaker elements to your team that you have to overcome/figure out how to use effectively. You act as though removing NFEs eliminates the potential for someone to get a terrible team, and it doesn't at all. When you remove NFEs and you're shit out of luck when you get a team of terrible NU mons, you're in the same exact position as when you get a team of NFEs, sometimes worse, as there are NFEs who perform better than shit like Luvdisc for sure.

I'm saying that you shouldn't remove NFEs because you're fucking with something to achieve a goal when it won't achieve your goal. the OU Randbats I described is the only way to reach your goal, which from my understanding is to eliminate the luck factor in what Pokémon you get and make it more like competitive battling. Removing NFEs does nothing to aid that at all. It's still the same randbats minus part of what made it fun and a multitude of good Pokémon that it's cool to get a chance to use effectively.

"If it's not broken, why fix it?" does fit perfectly here, and it's certainly not a bad argument at the current moment. When the wheel was invented, there was the problem of trying to transport things/people more quickly. Fire was a lucky find that increased the quality of life; nothing was broken there. You're speaking of Randbats as though it is broken and needs fixing, and your suggested "fix" does nothing to repair the "problem", making it a fix on something that isn't broken, whereas modern medicine works to fix illness and the things that are improved without being broken actually achieve their goal of making the thing better (i.e. agriculture>gathering). Again, I think you just don't like Randbats. It's like trying to repair your perfectly working car when in reality you just want a motorcycle. This is why I suggest a different tier. I'm not saying, "I need NFEs in my Randbats, so make a new tier." I'm saying, "I like NFEs in my Randbats, and your ideal Randbats is not created with their removal, so make your ideal Randbats, don't overhaul mine."

Relados is right; what's going to make Randbats better is making sure everything has a good set. Removing NFEs (especially now that some of them will get to utilize Eviolite!) is pointless in achieving your goal of a more balanced game. Everyone is failing to realize that your opponent has an equal chance of getting NFEs, so even if they were utter shit, it's not like they only screw you over. This is how I can tell the argument against them is people upset over those few times they got Caterpie and Metapod on the same team. If they were worthless, I'd say fine, go ahead and remove them, but they aren't, and I repeat, their removal does nothing for you, so why remove them? All it does is open more room for creativity.

Competitive battling is choosing a team full of the best Pokémon all running sets that compliment each other with type, offensive, and/or defensive synergy, all of whom fit inside a certain tier and where the mons too powerful for that tier are banned. You cannot emulate that without it being super restrictive. You will never, ever get a teams of random Pokémon Uber-NU to always be competitive. People will always get screwed, people will always complain, and you will be ultimately unsuccessful in your endeavor to make all the teams the same level of "good" (pretty subjective).

 

[Joim]

...

QoR, I respect you, I'd like if you could discuss without abusing ad hominem argument, also you sound a tad offensive in this thread.

Randbats is the tier I played most. I'm no pro, but I have a couple of battles played: 277-191-1 (add in another 500 before ladder resets) with an acre of 1678 and a glicko2 of 1724 ±33. For me it's not funny that you get 2 crapmons Caterpie-like even if your opponent gets them too. Btw, I'd like you to discuss with Great Sage about your opinion on OU and Ubers on randbat. He is basically the randbat beacon and I think he differs a bit.

 

[Zarel]

Randbat OU is too restrictive. But it's what you want if you want a both teams to always be "good". When you dish out random Pokémon, they can never all be "good". It is the reason we have tiers: not all Pokémon are "good".

Level balance is enough for all pokemon above PU to be good. It's pokemon like Caterpie that will be bad no matter how much they're level balanced.

It's not about having "bad" teams. It extremely rare you actually get a "bad" team. You have weaker elements to your team that you have to overcome/figure out how to use effectively. You act as though removing NFEs eliminates the potential for someone to get a terrible team, and it doesn't at all. When you remove NFEs and you're shit out of luck when you get a team of terrible NU mons, you're in the same exact position as when you get a team of NFEs, sometimes worse, as there are NFEs who perform better than shit like Luvdisc for sure.

It's true that there will still be bad mons with NFEs removed. Removing NFEs does remove a lot of them, and at least those mons have a chance to be better. Caterpie can evolve into Butterfree. Unown really doesn't have a choice.

I mean, it's a bit mindboggling that these NFEs are there in the first place. If I give you a Caterpie and tell you to train it to its maximum potential, are you gonna come back with a level 100 Caterpie or a level 100 Butterfree?

"If it's not broken, why fix it?" does fit perfectly here, and it's certainly not a bad argument at the current moment.
When the wheel was invented, there was the problem of trying to transport things/people more quickly. Fire was a lucky find that increased the quality of life; nothing was broken there. You're speaking of Randbats as though it is broken and needs fixing, and your suggested "fix" does nothing to repair the "problem", making it a fix on something that isn't broken, whereas modern medicine works to fix illness and the things that are improved without being broken actually achieve their goal of making the thing better (i.e. agriculture>gathering).

Okay, see, that's because you're using an inconsistent definition of broken.

Modern medicine "fixes" a previous lifespan of around 40 years, but arguably there's nothing "broken" with a lifespan that long.

The entire problem with the claim "why fix what isn't broken" is exactly that: obviously I think it's broken and you don't. Saying it isn't going to change that, it's only going to piss me off.

And we can apply it the other way around: Randbat used to not have NFEs, and I liked it. Then a bunch of people added NFEs and I don't like it anymore because they fixed something that wasn't broken.

So I'm going to turn it around on you: Why fix what isn't broken? Why don't we leave it at "no NFEs" like it was before?

Again, I think you just don't like Randbats. It's like trying to repair your perfectly working car when in reality you just want a motorcycle. This is why I suggest a different tier. I'm not saying, "I need NFEs in my Randbats, so make a new tier." I'm saying, "I like NFEs in my Randbats, and your ideal Randbats is not created with their removal, so make your ideal Randbats, don't overhaul mine."

Here's the problem: I used to like randbats, before some other people added NFEs to it.

In other words, I had a perfectly good motorcycle before some people replaced it with an SUV with horrible gas mileage, and I understand some people like gas guzzlers because they want to wave their dick around, but now I want my motorcycle back.

See, that's really the thing. I could understand if randbats always had NFEs and I always didn't like randbats. I would be interfering with a tier that was never mine to begin with. But randbats was mine to begin with. And if you'll notice this thread, a lot of people want NFEs gone, it's not just me. It just so happens that the opposition is loud.

Here's a parallel problem: I made randbats, I made most of the set generator AIs that make it less shitty than CC. And now that I have the time to improve the AIs, nooo you guys want sets that are less shitty than CC but not too unshitty, you like a bit of shit in your battles and I don't think it should be my job to figure out what kind of shit you like and what kind you don't like.

I'm very appreciative for the work GreatSage, iss, TheImmortal and others have done to tweak level balance numbers (that I made), to tweak viable move lists (that I compiled), and all that, but I don't think those achievement's on the same level as writing the AIs that make the foundation of the tier.

I think the best thing I could do is make randbat in my own image, and you guys can make your own OM tier with only the AIs you like from it.

Seriously. It's obvious that some people would prefer randbat+NFEs and some people would prefer randbat–NFEs. This thread is here as a courtesy, since there might be some obvious reason to keep NFEs that I'm missing (I haven't heard one yet). Telling me it's a matter of opinion and my opinion's wrong is not constructive, because opinion's split pretty close to 50-50, and as the person who made randbat possible, I think it's fair for me to cast the deciding vote.

Relados is right; what's going to make Randbats better is making sure everything has a good set. Removing NFEs (especially now that some of them will get to utilize Eviolite!) is pointless in achieving your goal of a more balanced game. Everyone is failing to realize that your opponent has an equal chance of getting NFEs, so even if they were utter shit, it's not like they only screw you over. This is how I can tell the argument against them is people upset over those few times they got Caterpie and Metapod on the same team. If they were worthless, I'd say fine, go ahead and remove them, but they aren't, and I repeat, their removal does nothing for you, so why remove them? All it does is open more room for creativity.

Yes, your opponent has the same chance of getting a shitty team as you do. That's true of any metagame: two players of equal skill will always have a 50-50 shot of winning no matter how unbalanced or shitty the meta is. That's no excuse for a shitty meta.

The goal of having skill be a greater factor in win rate, and having luck be a lower factor in win rate, is something I definitely want in randbat. And I know it'd be even better by getting rid of a bunch of shitty NU/PU mons, but right now I consider removing NFEs to be a pretty good tradeoff - every evolutionary line is represented, and most of the absolute worst mons are removed.

 

[Great Sage]

Zarel, you are, of course, entitled to do whatever you please with randbats, considering this is, after all, your program. Certainly, you are allowed your due since you put a significant amount of work into programming it, and you are permitted to pull it in the direction you want.

However, I cannot but feel that you are intent on shoving your personal principles down everyone else’s throats, and I am definitely not alone in this. As such, I am closing this thread, since you have made clear that you will dismiss any objections that do not conform with your personal principles, rather than principles of reason. There is plainly no purpose to keep this thread open for public comment. You have conjured imaginary statistics and offered baseless claims explicitly constructed to be unfalsifiable, and you have attempted to push your own highly debatable opinions as if they are objective fact. More insultingly, you seem to not recognize, or actively refuse to recognize, that you are not the only one with a stake in randbats; you worked a lot on it, but so have so many other people who have adjusted the algorithm or provided and edited movepools to make randbats a popular and fun format. To continue to allow public comment in this thread, to perpetuate the farce that you have any willingness whatsoever to listen to the many opposing arguments that have been presented, is unconscionable. You may change randbats however you want, but you will not pursue this reprehensible action with the fig leaf of a veneer of transparency and openness.

 

[Zarel]

For the record, I didn't exactly ignore the rest of you:

I'm very appreciative for the work GreatSage, iss, TheImmortal and others have done to tweak level balance numbers (that I made), to tweak viable move lists (that I compiled), and all that, but I don't think those achievement's on the same level as writing the AIs that make the foundation of the tier.

My statistics aren't imaginary: I actually surveyed PS lobby chat to get the 60-40 estimate.

I've made it clear all along that I am in favor of removing NFEs, and I made it very clear in my initial post: "Unless there are very strong objections, I'd like to remove NFEs from Random Battle." I'm not hiding that I will be difficult to sway, but I think the fact that I've been hesitant to make this change (I've been mulling over this change for around a month) shows that I'm doing this in good faith.

I've never denied that this change is a matter of opinion, that there are people who want NFEs and there are people who don't, and which one is better is a matter of opinion. And of course some of the things I've claimed are unfalsifiable - that's why they're a matter of opinion.

I consider your post's content to be affected by your strong bias against the removal of NFEs, Great Sage, because you've made a lot of baseless accusations here.