Sleep Clause in Generation 8

[ABR]

Hello,

If you are not yet aware, sleep clause has been removed for gen 8 OU. Before I delve further into this, I would like to make a few key points.

1) In terms of how this occurred: I thought something should be done and tagged chaos if it could be done. It was intended as more of a suggestive message rather than a command, but that was miscommunicated and that is something I apologize for. There should have been more public discussion prior to a site-wide change occurring.
2) This is not some irreparable damage, and if there is good reason / support to reverse this then I imagine that will be done quickly. Alternatively if it is decided that sleep clause should be reinstated until this is settled then that's fine too.
3) This should, IMO, be treated as a fresh discussion of "what's the best way to handle sleep in generation 8" rather than "should we keep sleep clause" as it is a new generation and nothing should be here because of history alone.
4) I still support what was done from a policy perspective and will defend it as such and I hope people attempt to make genuine counterarguments limited to the scope of the policy itself and not what was done in the past.
5) I am NOT arguing that sleep itself is now totally balanced. I am arguing that if it is broken, we should take methods alternative to the previous sleep clause (such as just banning sleep moves).

Now, let me get into the reasons why the old sleep clause should be done away with. Everyone knows that Smogon tiers are a certain degree removed from cartridge. Everyone also knows that some changes have to be made to preserve competitiveness. Now, the real questions lie somewhere in the middle, and where we draw the line to maintain these ideals. We have accepted pokemon bans, move bans, species clause, etc. Generally, we stay away from altering the game mechanics - we either preserve something or remove it. Sleep clause is different in this sense because it outright alters game code to become possible (you can not, in any way, get this to occur on cartridge). For stuff like pokemon bans, the theoretical application and justification for this is that you can merely have two players agree to not use something, which is less removed when compared to a modification to the game's code. Additionally, there is no real significant metagame harm in removing the freedom of one time sleepers (think Amoonguss in past OUs), as it is not a huge or core component of a tier's makeup. This is also tackling gen 8 as a new stage, not changing something that has already existed like a past gen.

I won't be able to cover all of the arguments wanting to preserve sleep clause as it is not my stance, but I will try. I believe the arguments can be summed up as some combination of "this is something that has been around for a while, if it's not broke don't fix it" and "we should fully value competitiveness over any semblance of being closer to cartridge." I would counter these by saying that it is broke because it crosses a certain threshold of distance from cartridge via code modification, and that in order to retain legitimacy you need to be similar to cartridge in some sense, and that where the line is drawn is difficult but must be done at some stage.

Again, I apologize for the method in which this occurred but I hope we can all focus on arguing the policy itself at this point and come to an agreement about what is best for the tiers we all value. Cheers.

 

[obii]

This thread really should've been made earlier but better late than never. But the decision should be reversed and it should be up to you to prove why it should be removed. Removing the clause and then asking the community to argue for its reinstatement is.... anyway

I wanna preemptively tackle a lot of the arguments I've seen in the Smogtours discord which I believe are lacking in foundation or drawing illogical equivalencies:

1. "Sleep Clause isn't the only clause that alters game mechanics"

ok true, the hp clause, pp counter, etc etc are not part of the game but they are objective time savers. I don't think its fair to compare these things built into the simulator to the sleep clause which LITERALLY affects the dynamics of the game. It is not possible for a sleep move to fail if a mon is already sleeping in the game and this drastically alters how we battle on the simulator.

2. "We agree to change stuff all the time. Tiering is the same as making agreements to not bring x mon to a battle"

Yes true but the team builder restricting you from bringing ho-oh to an ou game is different from when you're in the game itself and you click a move that would normally be legal but is not on the simulator. There is no agreement.

3. "People can just agree to not sleep a second mon."

It's baffling to me that people don't see why this doesn't work. If we are battling and agree to not bring ubers mons, showdown enforces that in the team builder. If we are battling and agree not to sleep a second mon, showdown enforces that by altering how a battle plays out. Teambuilder restrictions are 10000000000% incomparable to literal dynamic changes that directly affect a game.

The sleep clause is in no way or form an agreement to not sleep a second mon. It is a hard restriction placed by the simulator and is something that you can't ever emulate in game.

I think it boils down to 2 main points:

1. You accept that sleep clause is an actual mechanic alteration unlike any other alteration and be ok with that (mostly everyone is)
2. You accept that sleep clause is an actual mechanic alteration and are NOT ok with it and thus want simulator battles to more closely resemble in-game battles (abr camp)

I don't really feel strongly either way since we're on a fanmade site with fanmade rules so steps should be taken to ensure competitiveness and fun. I think keeping sleep clause as it is, is fine but hate the arguments mentioned above. I think if sleep clause is removed, sleep moves should be banned. Obviously the clause was created to restrict sleep moves so i'd imagine they'd be broken without any limitations. All in all, this is pretty similar to the BP Ban discussion. Slowly limiting the number of mons / boosts allowed is severely breaking game mechanics so we decided to ban the move altogether. I don't see an issue with removing the clause and then banning sleep moves altogether.

So yeah in summary, no strong opinion either way but we should be deciding between:

1. Keep sleep clause as it is
2. Remove the clause and ban sleep moves (maybe effect spore too??? idk)

e: before its mentioned, i think timer and cancel button are also huge game changing mechanics but each of these should be approached case-by-case anyway

 

[Lionyx]

Generally, we stay away from altering the game mechanics - we either preserve something or remove it. Sleep clause is different in this sense because it outright alters game code to become possible (you can not, in any way, get this to occur on cartridge). For stuff like pokemon bans, the theoretical application and justification for this is that you can merely have two players agree to not use something, which is less removed when compared to a modification to the game's code.

I have not played competitive gen 8 yet as I'm waiting to finish the game first, so I do not really have an opinion about whether sleep is broken or not and if it needs to be limited/banned or not. However I do agree that playing the game without altering its mechanics too much is what's closer to actual simulation. Were sleep clause to be kept, wouldn't it be a good compromise to simply have sim devs make it so that sleep-inducing moves cannot be selected, as long as one of the opponent's Pokémon that was put asleep by the player, is still asleep? This way, it appears more of a "rule we play with" than a mechanics alteration to me.
Similarly to how, on cartridge, you can repeatedly switch out and back in until your opponent thaws/wakes up in games not allowing multiple freezing/putting asleep, not being able to select the move sounds like the best way to maintain sleep clause to me, if it needs to come back. It does not change how the move works, it simply forces the player to follow the rule, which has no flaw since anyway if a player broke a rule (by violating the terms that were agreed on, like not putting more than 1 Pokémon asleep at any given time) they'd be disqualified from whatever tournament they partake in.

 

[keys]

I feel like the biggest issue with this is not if we should or shouldn't keep sleep clause, instead I'm trying to understand why was it removed so abruptly and with this egregious lack of communication/discussion. Sleep clause has been around for generations now, whether you like it or not, and for a handful of people to simply "suggest its removal" and for it to happen so swiftly is extremely baffling to me. Sure, feel free to make your arguments and try to get it changed, but you shouldn't just change it and expect people to argue for it to come back, thats not how mechanics/clauses should be dealt with (the onus should always lie on the side trying to bring about the change). For the status quo to be altered, there has to be a substantial pull in favour of the side that is proposing the change, not the other way around. Once again, I'm not saying we should or should not keep sleep clause as is or even change it, all I'm saying is that it shouldn't be something that a single person or small group of people put in motion successfully and then communicate it to the rest of the community after the change has already been made, especially when it comes down to something that has been a staple of competitive Pokemon for so long now. I feel like this was an entirely executive decision and I just don't see why this decision was made this way in the first place. I'm more than happy to see discussion and people going back and forth about it and ultimately having a decision being made, be it keeping sleep clause if there isn't an overwhelming amount of support to get rid of it or getting rid of it if there is, but to just have the "norm" change so suddenly and for no apparent reason is extremely confusing to me and to a lot of other people, I assume. I understand that ABR apologised for just "making it happen" but I don't feel like this should stay at all: it should be reverted back to how it was and if there is a solid backing behind this decision, only then should you switch it to how it supposedly is right now, because that's how you should handle massive changes to the status quo, especially when there is seemingly no major change to the game itself to warrant this.

 

[Cynara]

Ive never agreed with how sleep moves have been handled via the sleep clause on the simulator, since it feels like a hacky work around, it literally alters how cartridge pokemon works. Traditionally, the sleep clause was to prevent players putting more than one foe to sleep and if you broke this agreement on cartridge you forfeited the series under the smogon ruleset, because it implies it is a loss. The simulator however has the alteration which in my honest opinion is wrong. Technically several hundred tournament games should have been forfeited by various players throughout the years if the clause was implemented the way it was intended.

We should just be consistent and ban sleep moves exactly like the OHKO or evasion clause do, if sleep moves are shown to be uncompetive in smogon tiers. I feel like its time we admit the sleep clause was a mistake and be more streamlined in how we handle clauses and tiering policy.

 

[Charmflash]

I'd be lying if I were to say that I cannot see the benefits of sticking to mechanics possible on cartridge. Your arguments are sound, and I do think that there is a lenghty discussion to be had here.

Traditionally, the sleep clause was to prevent players putting more than one foe to sleep and if you broke this agreement on cartridge you forfeited the series under the smogon ruleset, because it implies it is a loss.

The solution Cynara claimed to have been used on cartridge in the past seems less than optimal to me, there are situations where the optimal move is to Spore a potentially waking Pokemon, losing if your opponent decides to switch out is ridiculous.

Nonetheless, I do not agree with how this came to be. The clause should not be removed at one man's discretion, the burden is ON YOU to convince us why this is a good change, not on anybody else to do the opposite, they have the history of it being a successful addition to Smogon tiers for years on their side, while your concept is unproven.

As for our obligation to stick to happenings possible on cartridge, I do not think there is one. Sure, it would be nice if we could do so, but ultimately Smogon tiers are mostly played on Pokemon Showdown!, and improving them as best as we can should be the end goal. I understand that this can lead to arguments about other hacks like introducing moves, or Pokemon that dont exist to metagames, but ultimately I think that it should simply be at the tier leader's discretion, who in turn must also do their best to represent the wishes of the larger community, not their own.

 

[Zarel]

Man, back in the BW days I spent like four thirty-page threads in PR arguing for Sleep Clause to be implemented in a way that didn't need a mod, before finally backing down.

(The implementation that doesn't need a mod is one where instead of making sleep moves fail, you just agree not to use sleep moves if your opponent already has one sleeping Pokémon.)

And now it's just gone, with no discussion. What a time to be alive. I'm too tired from implementing and fixing Gen 8 to know if I should be angry or happy.

 

[blank]

idk why all the above posts except zarel's are so long.

just make it so that the sleep clause is not a mod: if your opponent has a pokemon that is slept, moves you have that would put their pokemon to sleep are greyed out in battle, preventing you from even picking them.

this makes it an "agreement" rather than a mod, just like everything else smogon bans / makes clauses for.

 

[obii]

idk why all the above posts except zarel's are so long.

just make it so that the sleep clause is not a mod: if your opponent has a pokemon that is slept, moves you have that would put their pokemon to sleep are greyed out in battle, preventing you from even picking them.

this makes it an "agreement" rather than a mod, just like everything else smogon bans / makes clauses for.

except this doesn't work for reasons charmflash mentioned already. sometimes the optimal move in a scenario is to spam sleep on a sleeping mon as it wakes up and sleep it again. sleep turns are random too so you cant implement it properly. its also a pp issue so

 

[Charmflash]

except this doesn't work for reasons charmflash mentioned already. sometimes the optimal move in a scenario is to spam sleep on a sleeping mon as it wakes up and sleep it again. sleep turns are random too so you cant implement it properly

This was my initial reaction as well but in the world we implement this that scenario is removed entirely on all systems by default, therefore it cannot be the optimal play because it doesnt exist (would nerf sleep even further than our current? previous? mod, but not even an unreasonable amount)

 

[Zarel]

except this doesn't work for reasons charmflash mentioned already. sometimes the optimal move in a scenario is to spam sleep on a sleeping mon as it wakes up and sleep it again. sleep turns are random too so you cant implement it properly. its also a pp issue so

Past me is facepalming at me getting into arguments in PR again, but whatever.

This feels like such a minor issue. The tiering council considers outright lifting sleep clause a valid option. In comparison, not being able to spam sleep against sleeping mon seems really minor in comparison. Like, sure, it does affect strategy, but much less than Sleep Clause as a whole does.

 

[obii]

This was my initial reaction as well but in the world we implement this that scenario is removed entirely on all systems by default therefore it cannot be the optimal play because it doesnt exist (would nerf sleep even further than our current? previous? mod, but not even an unreasonable amount)

you're right but again the initial point of it "being an agreement" is moot. at this point, it's become a severe mechanic altering change since you're limiting options in gameplay. and at that point, the original sleep clause is a lot better (in my opinion) since it's less limiting in options

Past me is facepalming at me getting into arguments in PR again, but whatever.

This feels like such a minor issue. The tiering council considers outright lifting sleep clause a valid option. In comparison, not being able to spam sleep against sleeping mon seems really minor in comparison. Like, sure, it does affect strategy, but much less than Sleep Clause as a whole does.

i'm not defending the decision to lift sleep clause nor am i saying that this is a major issue.

my point is summarized in my initial post: we either keep sleep clause as is or remove it and ban sleep moves

 

[Tony]

I've been enjoying the quality of the discussion so far, but I did want to address points raised about following how the cartridge does it. The simulator already offers so many luxuries compared to how gameplay is on the cartridge. We have a timer that replenishes and covers disconnections, we have a cancel button, we can hover over our opponent's team to check at what percentage they're at, not to even mention the fact we can even see those percentages in the first place. PS! offers those luxuries and we've grown so accustomed to them that I'm 100% sure that if we'd take any of them away there would be a massive wave of complaints about it.

Also, what kind of rabbit hole are we going down if we ban sleep moves outright? If anything sleep has become less broken compared to older generations, especially compared to BW. Banning sleep moves in this generation as opposed to banning it in those where they are much stronger feels off to me, while pursuing a ban in older generations shouldn't even be considered. Can't we just apply "don't fix what ain't broke" here?

 

[Zokuru]

Just wanted to show public support to ABR, I don't think his either right or wrong on this topic. If I'm being totally honest, his reasoning is good, his methods are a bit rude but if you don't act on this website nothing happens, so I can understand that.

I'm not sure if getting rid of the sleep clause is a good thing, competitive wise, being true to the cart is something important, but less than being competitive, time will tell I guess. However I'm glad people take the time to think about stuff like this, and they have the balls to take action to make stuff going somewhere, even if we still don't know where, things can be turned back anyway.

So yes, support to ABR, I often disagree with a lot of tiering policy, but I think this one has some merits.

 

[UltiMario]

Mostly commenting to point out more quirks if people want to implement Sleep Clause through "can't press the button if it would cause you to put two Pokemon asleep." Some of this stuff might just be a refresher, but if its not brought up every single time, people will inevitably forget about them.

except this doesn't work for reasons charmflash mentioned already. sometimes the optimal move in a scenario is to spam sleep on a sleeping mon as it wakes up and sleep it again. sleep turns are random too so you cant implement it properly. its also a pp issue so

This leads down a rabbit hole of: Should there be exceptions to ensure that "correct" gameplay patterns aren't broken?

This could use a trapped/last mon check, since it would be impossible to break sleep clause in this circumstance.

...unless in the trapped circumstance, the target Sleep Talks U-Turn/Volt Switch. Do we want a "hard" rule to prevent this from happening, or a "soft" rule so that gameplay patterns are preserved, but at the cost of edge cases like these where you'll end up with multiple mons asleep.

Another scenario: You could add a check to let the user spam Sleep moves against sleeping Natural Cure mons... but how do you implement that check? When do we declare the "information" of Natural Cure to the game? You wouldn't have this information before a Natural Cure Pokemon has actually healed itself, so you shouldn't be allowed to spam sleeping moves on it. But once Natural Cure is revealed, you should theoretically be allowed to use sleep moves against sleeping Natural Cure Pokemon again, because the sleep user now knows that can't cause two of their opponent's Pokemon to be asleep. How hard would it be to implement sleep clause checking for something like this? While we're here, do we even know if something like Neutralizing Gas effects how Natural Cure works? If it does, how do we factor that in?

I personally believe that if we were to implement a rule that is in the spirit of "an on-cart agreement between players to not sleep two Pokemon," we should take into account these edge cases, because on-cart it would reward players for keeping track of these possibilities and utilizing sleep moves on turns that a "hard" rule wouldn't allow them to. "Unfortunately" on sim this layer of skill is removed since PS will just tell you, but if the idea is to make rules that align with cart gameplay, it's an acceptable drawback to that implementation.

 

[DragonWhale]

One important element to the discussion that hasn't been brought up, is that with dexit a LOT of sleep abusers are gone in SwSh, like Amoonguss and Breloom.

Here's the list of mons that are available to use with sleep moves:

Spore (100):

Lovely Kiss (75): NONE

Sleep Powder (75): Eldegoss

Hypnosis (60): Rapidash-Galar, Orbeetle, Mr. Rime

Sing (55):

(Yawn):

Point is most of these Pokemon aren't exactly the best (and even the ones that are suffer from 4MSS), so sleep might not be gamebreaking even without the clause this gen.

 

[Legitimate Username]

except this doesn't work for reasons charmflash mentioned already. sometimes the optimal move in a scenario is to spam sleep on a sleeping mon as it wakes up and sleep it again. sleep turns are random too so you cant implement it properly. its also a pp issue so

I really don't get this argument? Assuming we have cartridge gentlemanning sleep clause where you forfeit if you sleep two opponents, sleep spamming would be a terrible play because you need to make the right guess on what turn sleep will run out and the right guess that they won't switch out and cause you to instantly lose. The fact that sleep clause mod allows for this potentially optimal play that would never be optimal in a cartridge scenario is exactly the problem.

Likewise, if you gray out sleep moves, you're not allowing players to take this risk and potentially guess the situation correctly and resleep an awakened opponent on the same turn, but that strikes me as a hell of a lot more realistic than just letting players spam the sleep move again without risk or impunity. I haven't played the game in a while and never with cartridge sleep clause, so forgive me if I'm getting this wrong, but imagining a potential guessing game of wanting to potentially make an otherwise suboptimal switch to trick the opponent into making a sleep clause forfeit sounds pretty improbable and kind of silly to balance the game around as opposed to just not giving players the option to make a move that could potentially cause them to risk an instant forfeit (probably the realistic play in most scenarios anyway).

Graying out sleep moves certainly isn't a perfect solution in a situation where a perfect solution doesn't exist, but it strikes me as a hell of a lot closer to realistic cartridge play than sleep clause mod is and this gameplay difference between them shouldn't be seen as a point in favor of sleep clause mod.

 

[A Cake Wearing A Hat]

Hey just hopping in to say that if we go through with the grey-out clause, there will have to be a caveat with it in which the move should not be greyed out if it is the only move usable (e.g. encore, pp issues), and it also is reasonable (hopefully) to also not gray it out in a last-mon-on-opponent's-team scenario or a scenario in which the slept foe is trapped. These are realistic situations that could be abused or otherwise impacted if a blanket clause is instated.

 

[Ojama]

watching you all argue about details like greying out the move or scenarios where the difference between the cartridge and the simulator is too big makes me realize how hopeless this community is.

anyone supporting the removal of sleep clause and participating to the debate regarding whether or not we should make the simulator as close to the cartridge as possible is nothing but a hypocrite. you all have been playing on a simulator for years, with an access to everything the cartridge game has to offer without moving a damn finger, with features that are not on cartridge, and without a bunch of stuff that make the cartridge games so boring, but all of a sudden you guys become ardent supporters of the cartridge mechanics? which level of hypocrisy is this exactly? if you wanna play with the cartridge mechanics, here is a tip for you: play on cartridge.

smogon and the various simulators we have played on were created to play a game we enjoy playing competitively because we despise the cartridge games. we literally created the competitive aspect of this game, pokemon wasn't meant to be played competitively in the first place, never forget that. we created tiers and rules that are not on cartridge in order to limit the random factors of this game and make this game as competitively playable as possible, but now we wanna remove a good clause to make more games decided over things we cannot control as if we didnt already have too much games purely decided by rng.

your pointless scientific discussions are leading nowhere besides making things a lot more complicated than they are in reality. we have been playing with sleep clause for as long as i can remember and no one has ever complained about it. this community has a lot of issues to deal with already.

[edit: removed personal attack]

 

[teal6]

I genuinely do not see an intrinsic merit in sticking to cart mechanics whenever / wherever possible so I think we should just leave it alone.

 

[dekzeh]

I don't know how simple it would be to implement this, but there's a simple way of mixing the 'greying out' Sleep Moves after you've Slept something while still permitting people to click Sleep moves vs a sleeping mon, albeit with a risk.

You make the move greyed out, or better yet with red colors, a little warning on it, if you click it a small popup box with something like "Youve already put an opposing Pokémon to sleep, inflicting sleep to another Pokémon will cause you to lose the battle due to Sleep Clause. Do you wish to continue?".

I honestly see no drawbacks to this if it's possible to be implemented. Yes, it would cause some losses to Sleeping two mons but really if you want to keep clicking Sleep Powder vs a sleeping mon and have no risk of sleeping something else what you want to play is a completely different game that only exists right now for god knows what reason.

 

[Quite Quiet]

Sleep Clause was added to OU, until this thread reaches a conclusion. Don't take this in any way that this topic has been decided, it is still entirely up for discussion. I'm just posting here so everyone can stop with the "it's already gone" rants I keep seeing.

 

[Ezrael]

First, pretty sure ABR isn't a poison.
Second, this position--simulators should be like the cartridge as much as possible--doesn't seem unreasonable to me, on face. I'm not sure that removing sleep clause is worth the trouble it creates, but I think that it's worth considering at least.
Let's talk about the principle of staying close to cart, and then the question of whether sleep clause is worth straying from cart. Staying close to cart is a key principle of smogon and battle simulators, and is done in every instance when possible. When the critical hit nerf in gen 7 was discovered, it was implemented. When the body slam interaction with normal types in gen 1 was discovered, it was implemented. In each place, there were reasonable reasons to keep it as it was (it had been that way for so long, had determined tournament matches, etc.), but they were changed. Same with a bunch of other mechanics; sleep in gen 5 was given the same mechanic as on cart, and not changed. Similarly, Freeze in gen 1 wasn't nuked, or given different mechanics, but freeze clause was implemented. Freeze clause is a particularly big change to coding, but freeze clause was preferred to simply changing the way freeze worked.

Also, when gen 7 was released, but pokebank wasn't, OU didn't have all the old mons with the appropriate base stats; it had only the mons that were legal on cart.

What i'm saying is that there are a ton of mechanics that could have been changed earlier, or not changed in the way that Pokemon changed them, but simulators copied them, because it seems like the foundational goal of simulators is to copy the cart. We could all play balanced hackmons, but we don't, and I'm pretty sure it's not because we think it's a less intelligent format; it's because it doesn't emulate the games.

Everything except sleep clause in the current gens is representable on cart. I'm not sure that that means that Sleep clause should be changed, or that sleep moves should be banned instead, but it does send out a big red flag when everything else can be checked on cart except for this one clause.

PS: thanks for not banning me, sorry for having my first post be a troll

 

[Zarel]

it baffles me how the psychological rigidity of one person and his obsession with rules and policy raised a supposed issue that has never been one in two decades. watching you all argue about details like greying out the move or scenarios where the difference between the cartridge and the simulator is too big makes me realize how hopeless this community is.

There's a lot to unpack here...

I'll leave the unpacking for someone else, though. I just want to point out "never been an issue in two decades" is an interesting way to spell "we've had arguments on and off for our entire history, peaking six years ago with the adoption of PS as our official sim, at which point we had like four different 30-page threads arguing about it, all of which ended up inconclusive, and since then we've had smaller flare-ups here and there".

anyone supporting the removal of sleep clause and participating to the debate regarding whether or not we should make the simulator as close to the cartridge as possible is nothing but a hypocrite. you all have been playing on a simulator for years, with an access to everything the cartridge game has to offer without moving a damn finger, with features that are not on cartridge, and without a bunch of stuff that make the cartridge games so boring, but all of a sudden you guys become ardent supporters of the cartridge mechanics? which level of hypocrisy is this exactly? if you wanna play with the cartridge mechanics, here is a tip for you: play on cartridge.

Basically every feature the sim has is something that you would also know on cartridge if you had good memory, good eyesight, and didn't click on moves until you were sure.

Sleep Clause is literally the only actual departure from cartridge mechanics (HP Percentage Mod mostly matches cart mechanics as of 7th gen, you just need really good eyesight to deduce a percentage from an HP bar).

You can also turn off the "convenience features of things you would know if you had good memory", it's called Hardcore Mode and it's a checkbox in Battle Options. PS was designed to be useful for people practicing for VGC, after all.

smogon and the various simulators we have played on were created to play a game we enjoy playing competitively because we despise the cartridge games. we literally created the competitive aspect of this game, pokemon wasn't meant to be played competitively in the first place, never forget that. we created tiers and rules that are not on cartridge in order to limit the random factors of this game and make this game as competitively playable as possible, but now we wanna remove a good clause to make more games decided over things we cannot control as if we didnt already have too much games purely decided by rng.

I think as sim creator, I have a unique perspective on what the sim was created to do.

And let me say, I don't despise the cart games. I really like them, actually. I don't think I would have gotten into Smogon quite this far if I'd hated the Pokémon games. I certainly am not into Pokémon for the anime, which I really don't like.

You don't have to hate something to spend a lot of effort making it slightly better. I think way more often, you have to like it a lot.

Pokémon was, I think, originally designed to be playable competitively. I think there's a reason there's no multiplayer Digimon, or multiplayer Final Fantasy, or anything else. And Pokémon fills a niche for a turn-based competitive game; now that card games like Hearthstone have taken off, it's not alone, but it used to be unique, and it still has its niche.

Anyway, our philosophy has always been "play Pokémon, ban a few things to make it more fun, but try to stick to cart mechanics". Partly because people do play by our rules on cart sometimes (when I was in college, I was in an inter-collegiate cart tournament that used Smogon rules), partly because it's a useful default if we're having disagreements on what the rules should be (can you imagine the arguments about what Lando-T's stats should be if it were up for grabs?)

 

[Zarel]

a supposed issue that has never been one in two decades

we have been playing with sleep clause for as long as i can remember and no one has ever complained about it

I can't find my own threads on it with forum search, but this has been a constant issue for even longer than I've been around:

I feel Philip made the correct decision in "Putting My Foot Down". The PR forum was becoming a cycle of arguments with an indefinite end