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Tournaments RBYOMPL II - Commencement Thread

Yash Vortex

Yash Vortex

:rb/Pinsir: • :rb/Tauros: • :rb/Dugtrio: • RBYOMPL II • :rb/Exeggutor: • :rb/Staryu: • :rb/Wartortle:

Hosted by Murphy Lawden and Yash Vortex ​

Welcome to 2nd Edition of RBYOMPL. Use This thread for tournament discussion Be respectful In this thread And stay on Topic. Memes are fine Have a Happy Posting.

This Year Team
:Gengar: Aurafarming Jinwoos - Hayburner + Mana :Gengar:
:Weedle: W i l d b u n g i s W e e d l e s - WildCard782 + Gerbungis :Weedle:
:Charmeleon: Charmeleon Chokeslam - Zpice + King Billu :Charmeleon:
:Shellder: Supersonic Shellders - Soda_Eesti + Theycallmephil :Shellder:
:Mankey: Mickey Mankeys - gastlies + Tree69420 :Mankey:
:Lickitung: The Luckitungs - ButtGallon + THE_CHUNGLER :Lickitung:
 
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Look at this sleepy shellder.
Doesn't this make you wanna send me replays of zu,su,lc and stabmons
 
I strongly advise the hosts to not include draft at all in this tour. RBY does not have an established draft format and a discussion thread for the format literally opened today. Nothing has been thought out in advance here and there isn't even an official draft board and we're not even sure what the format will be (I learned yesterday that it's going to be multi draft?). Every other format in this tour has been played and tested before the tour began, so creating a brand new tier for this tour does not seem like a good decision.

Maybe next year if Draft becomes established and played so we actually know how the format will work as opposed to not even knowing what the format even is one week before the tour begins. I have nothing against a general inclusion of Draft in RBYOMPL if/when it actually establishes itself but for this specific instance having a completely unestablished Draft tier does not seem like a good decision.
 
i will not sign up until draft is confirmed in, but a few opinions:
as sabelette mentioned in the thread, a draft board has already been made. it is not the fault of the format that some people woke up and decided to post nonsense
draft with an unsolidified draft board is still less unviably nonsense than nintendo cup and other such tiers
draft also was played in the Cosmic Battle Tower, meaning theres historical precedent for this board and its not like 20 point starmie is going to randomly be so insanely 1v9 broken like the 25 point starmie suggestion would indicate
tldr: its definitely not that bad but also even if it was that bad this tour features worse
 
violet river said:
i will not sign up until draft is confirmed in, but a few opinions:
Click to expand...
That's fine, but it's a lot easier for the hosts to determine if we have the numbers for Draft, and Stadium Rentals, if you and folks in the same boat as you do sign up. We can't tell what the interest level is if people don't put their names down. If Draft, or Rentals, doesn't make it, you'll be given a heads-up days in advance so you can edit or delete your signup. You can also just sign up for the tier(s) you want to play and lock out of the rest if you really want to be safe. I'm personally targeting around 100+ signups with around 10+ unique signups for each tier before I'm comfortable expanding the tournament. These are rough numbers though, not solid targets.

I plan to work on a Draft Board this weekend, basing it on previous boards that we've seen in tournaments like that of Cosmic Battle Tower (please DM me that board by the way), as well as other similar projects like Ratiomons. I anticipate releasing the board and announcing the included tiers around Monday or Tuesday night, EST.

tl;dr: Please sign up even if you're only interested in Draft and/or Stadium Rentals so we can accurately gauge the support for their inclusion by the time we announce them around Monday.

Thanks!
 
Nintendo Cup 1997 Rule UPDATES:


It should be noted that during the event at Space World ’97 (also known as the Nintendo Cup 1997 tournament), contestants only had access to Pokémon Red (Jap), Green (Jap), and Blue (Jap).


With that being said, the Red, Green, and Blue games in that tournament did not have access to the move Struggle.


Struggle was not part of the link-cable battle mechanics if any PP Up was used on a Pokémon’s existing moves.
If PP Ups were applied, the trainer was forced to switch out when all of their Pokémon’s PP were depleted.


At the moment, developers are working on adjusting PP Ups in the simulator. Until this is completed, Pokémon Showdown and its derivatives apply all PP Ups to selected moves by default.


Therefore, the Nintendo Cup 1997 Rules have been updated to ban Struggle and force a forfeit if it is used in accordance with this functionality.


Since this is being implemented in the tier's existing tournaments, I believe OMPL should respect this and follow suit.


Furthermore, the Mimic simulation bug has been fixed, and this move should now be allowed in OMPL, as it no longer incorrectly triggers the Underflow glitch as it did previously.


Please refer to this bug report:
On Struggle
zalarye

Mechanics Thread '[Nintendo Cup '97] Struggle is never usable'

What type of bug are you reporting? Mechanics

What is the bug?
It is possible to use Struggle in Nintendo Cup '97.

Cart demo
NC97 was an official tournament played on Red, Green, and Blue, but not Yellow. These versions feature a glitch which prevents Struggle from occurring if any of a Pokemon's moves have a PP Up applied to them (which is forced by PS!). Instead, the Fight menu opens, and picking a move opens the "no more PP left for this move" text box. In this situation, the player's only options are to switch, or to forfeit the match. It's important to note that...
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Mimic
https://github.com/smogon/pokemon-showdown/actions/runs/21763019674/job/62791334874
 
I'm not advocating for or against banning Struggle in NC97 for RBYOMPL II, I just wanted to make it clear to those not familiar with NC97 that unlike the Mimic ban due to PS bug (which is now fixed as mentioned above) there is not yet a clear consensus on how to proceed regarding Struggle on PS.

If playing on original Japanese releases of the game, players would still have the option to not use PP Ups and allow their Pokemon to use Struggle, so banning Struggle isn't a clean fix since the issue is that the sim doesn't give us options and a Struggle ban doesn't create the other option, just attempts to enforce what would happen in the case of one option playing out over time.

More importantly, it's notable that the IRL Japanese scene plays on the Japanese Yellow version of the game that keep the Japanese mechanics (30% Blizz freeze) but does not have the Struggle bug. So really the question of Struggle ban or not is a question of trying to simulate historic NC97 play or simulate a ruleset that's actually played IRL on cart in the modern day. There's a lot appeal towards simulating historic play, but accuracy of the simulation of rules will remain questionable as we do not know if there were time controls used in regionals and there hasn't been an attempt to simulate the 10 minute game time limit used in finals. So there really isn't a clean-cut answer as to which rules to use.
 
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I do not think that the struggle ban is necessary. Maybe we can do like, an enforceable gentlemans with it? If both players agree and say so at the beginning of Game 1, one side struggling counts as forfeit, akin to breaking sleep clause. If its the option of having it in full or having it not at all tho, i say not at all.

As noodle said, when doing stuff like this we need to ask ourselves whether we are trying to simulate the tournament, or the metagame. I am neutral to either approach, and support it getting coded properly, but thats not how the tier is actually played on cartridge nowadays. There is merit to both approaches, even if we go hard in the way of simulating the tournament.

HOWEVER, until it is coded on sim, adding unnecessary hurdles into learning the tier (especially if the game isnt gonna tell you when you fuck up and rather relying on your opponent to call it out), in the frankly very shallow pool we have this year, is not a good idea in my opinion. I love weird mechanics that can fuck you over, its one of the reasons i play rby, but struggle clause isnt a mechanic, its a rule trying to enforce a mechanic, and im against that. We gain absolutely nothing from enforcing this clause besides getting an ego boost from being "accurate" to nc97 (its still very inaccurate), and putting more responsibility on the players of the most complicated tier to build for/learn in the tour.
 
2xNoodle said:
More importantly, it's notable that the IRL Japanese scene plays on the Japanese Yellow version of the game that keep the Japanese mechanics (30% Blizz freeze) but does not have the Struggle bug.
Click to expand...

The IRL Japanese league used Yellow Version and was a fan made collective not an official sanction event.

So your argument towards using their example as a precedent is less valid than using Nintendo’s official tournament setting.
 
I understand your points, but I strongly disagree with the idea that the struggle clause is unnecessary. Here’s why:

1. Faithfulness to the original tournament matters
The purpose of Nintendo Cup 1997, and by extension its “metagame,” is to replicate the tournament’s format and rules as closely as possible. The struggle clause wasn’t arbitrarily tacked on — it enforced a very real game mechanic under the hardware constraints of the time. Saying it’s “just a rule trying to enforce a mechanic” misses that distinction: without it, the simulated tournament cannot faithfully reflect how the original games were actually played.

2. Gentleman’s agreements are not sufficient
Relying on players to self-enforce the clause is inherently unreliable. Unlike a sleep clause, which is indicated by the game in certain contexts, struggle is not something the cartridge enforces. Leaving it up to an honor system effectively changes the game — it’s no longer replicating the tournament. In a competitive setting, especially in a small player pool where every match matters, we can’t afford ambiguity.

3. Accuracy over convenience
Yes, this tier is complicated, and yes, learning it is difficult. But that is the point of replicating NC97. Simplifying rules or removing struggle because “it’s hard to learn” undermines the purpose of the metagame. If the goal is true historical simulation, we accept that some rules will be tricky. Convenience alone cannot outweigh historical fidelity.

4. It’s not about ego
Adding the struggle clause isn’t about getting an ego boost from being “accurate” — it’s about accurately modeling the interactions and restrictions that existed in 1997. Without it, certain Pokémon can do things in simulation that they couldn’t do in the tournament. This isn’t theoretical; it affects team-building, strategy, and outcomes.

5. IRL Japanese Fan Made Tournaments
The fan made tournaments and meet ups of Historia Cup are by no means official. They occurred when the DS reintroduced Pokémon Red, Green, Blue and Yellow. I do not know the reason for them deterring from the original rules, but I can only speculate that they truly did not know that struggle was unusable because it was patched in Yellow.

This is my last comment on this issue.
We play Nintendo Cup 1997 to represent the historical tier.
If one wants to play NC97 with Pokémon Pikachu (Yellow Version) then one just went against a set of banned Pokémon such as Amnesia Golduck, and Flying Charizard which are not allowed in NC97 at all.
In short, one just created a new tier which is as entirely different from NC97 as NC98, NC99 or other future iterations are.
 
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PKMN Master™ said:
The IRL Japanese league used Yellow Version and was a fan made collective not an official sanction event.

So your argument towards using their example as a precedent is less valid than using Nintendo’s official tournament setting.
Click to expand...

I never claimed it took precedent over the official Nintendo settings from 1997. I'm saying that offline play in the modern day (Historia Cups and otherwise) is played on Yellow. One set of rules for OMPL is only more valid than another after it's determined if we want to prioritize simulating historic play or prioritize simulating modern IRL plays since they don't play on a game version with Struggle bug in Japan anymore.

I list no personal preference, but
  • Struggle Clause should be used if prioritizing simulation of historic rules
  • Struggle Clause should not be used if prioritizing simulation of modern IRL offline play
At the end of the day, NC97 is an actual IRL tournament format and we are in this tournament playing a simulation of it. Some may wish to simulate the experience of playing in the first ever major Pokémon tournament, some may wish to simulate the experience of getting to go to Japan to play in the next IRL offline meetup in 2026. There are other factors in play due to the nature of PS/playing on sim that I and Soda mentioned above, but ultimately I think the biggest factor is preference rather than there being an objective right/wrong.
 
I strongly believe Nintendo Cup 1997 should emulate the mechanics of the original Red & Green. It's in the name of the format.

If people want to use Yellow IRL for convenience (which is what the Japanese players do) then they should do so, and accept that they are playing a slightly less accurate version of the metagame.

(also, subjectively, disincentivizing PP stall is a good thing for the format)

While I will not insist on any particular decision for OMPL, I do want to see correct RG mechanics implemented for NC1997 on Showdown as soon as possible.
 
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