Species Clause

[jrrrrrrr]

Whether or not Species Clause overcentralizes the game or not based on individual pokemon usage really doesnt matter. The real impact this would have is making the game almost entirely based on luck.

It has been said numerous times by many well-respected battlers that d/p teams can not possibly cover everything. If this clause was removed, instead of having to build teams that can counter a broad range of pokemon, you have to just pray that your opponent isnt using multiples of the pokemon that your team can't handle. A team utilizing 2 or more Bronzong to deal with Garchomp gets murdered by team Magnezone. It makes it a guessing game (even moreso than it already is) and removes almost all of the skill that pokemon requires to be good at.

Item clause also necessarily decentralizes the use of items.

This is pretty irrelevant to this topic though, not to mention a no-brainer. Items aren't centralizing, since I personally can't think of any two pokemon that NEED to share a particular item. The "every defensive pokemon needs leftovers" argument really isn't valid since all of the usable walls in d/p have a recovery move except for Bronzong, which learns Explosion anyways. Not adhering to Item Clause is not an argument against adhering to Species Clause.

 

[obi]

If the argument is that species clause doesn't need any consideration because it necessarily creates some amount of decentralization (or at the very least, no difference), then that same logic applies to item clause.

 

[Cathy]

There are all sorts of rules that could be adopted to promote diversity. For example, there could be an Alphabet Clause that you can only have one pokemon on your team that starts with a given letter of the alphabet. Want to use Gengar and Garchomp both? Tough luck. This rule inherently promotes diversity... but it's a stupid rule.

For deciding which rules to adopt, criteria other than centralisation have to be used. Simplicity of the rules is one such criterion. (When I say "rules" here, I mean everything except the ban list.)

 

[Hipmonlee]

I wouldnt say that species clause necessarily promotes diversity, I could definitely imagine a pokemon that would be very uu but becomes more useable when you allow 2 of the same pokemon on a team.

But what I would say is that with the pokemon that do exist, it would greatly reduce diversity.

And I dont think a rule like your G rule wouldnt inherently increase diversity either.

Have a nice day.

 

[Dragontamer]

Indeed, the alphabet rule may centralize the game around Azelf, Blissey, Skarmory, Garchomp, Cresselia, by removing Gyarados and Gengar from the game in favor of whoever turns out to be the best. Assuming we have faith in the ladder useage statistics, you'd be phazing out major threats in favor of the single strongest one.

Bronzong vs Blissey, Salamence vs Skarmory and Starmie, and so forth. We can expect the more popular one to phaze out the less popular ones, especially in the case when they gather around different roles.

 

[Cathy]

You'd need to put something else in the spot that used to have one of your two pokemon of the same letter. That spot just doesn't disappear.

Whether Alphabet Clause promotes diversity or not certainly isn't obvious, but one thing is clear: it's a stupid rule. That is the reason for not adopting it. My post was meant to shift the discussion to listing some possible reasons for adopting a given rule. It can't be as simple as the rule decentralises the game, for the reasons I gave in my first post in this topic. If the game is centralised, why is adding a new rule superior to banning the pokemon responsible for the centralisation? I don't think you can really argue that the rule is better, or that banning is better, without some exterior criteria to centralisation.