capefeather
toot
I honestly never thought I'd make a thread like this. Mostly, this is because I've believed that it would be fruitless. However, I feel that people are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the banning process for one reason or another. Most of it, I think, is because the banning process is very inconsistent and open to power shifts, compromises, and the whims of whoever happens to be in charge. The banning process does not seem to be as set in stone as many in the upper ranks would have us believe.
The situation that I'm seeing is that there are, roughly speaking, two opposites in conflict with each other. One side calls for consistency and simplicity in the ruleset, with strict adherence to game mechanics; this view won out in the past by fiat from Philip7086 in the wake of a discussion on regulating critical hits. The other side calls for engineering the ruleset until there's a better sense (even if it's slight) that the resulting game is a strategy game that rewards team building and "battle sense" (e.g. making the right calls). Each side fancies itself the pragmatic, common-sense view and condemns the other as hopelessly idealistic, masochistic, hypocritical, and irrational. Individuals who I've otherwise come to know as reasonable come to silly blows with each other, not accepting the fact that it is simply a fundamental disagreement.
The reason I am posting about this here is that I wanted maximum exposure and potential for discussion. I think that the competitive community as a whole deserves to have a say in this, especially since I have no intention at present to get any kind of binding agreement out of this. This is just for the sake of discussion. I firmly believe that discussion and experimentation for their own sake are valuable, even if they don't lead to any tangible revelation (example: BW Suspect Test Round 1). There's also no point in denying that I have put myself on one of these "sides", largely because of the attitudes I've carried over from other competitive communities. This video is pretty representative of my view on luck-based elements of competitive games. At the very least, though, I can understand where the other side is coming from, and I'm not going to pretend that there is some kind of logical proof that exonerates me and condemns everyone who disagrees.
There are some questions that I'd like to ask to both sides of the fence. I think it would be interesting to see the disagreements sprouting out from within each side. After all, like the U.S. political parties, it's not like these groups consist of people who think exactly alike or even agree all that often. I would also like to think that I can trust DST at this point to be able to hold an intelligent discussion, going by some of what I've read in DST and the DST mods' insistence that the quality of discussion has improved since the suspect testing era.
I apologize that this post is so long. I wish there were a really clean way to split this into seven or eight threads...
Consistency/simplicity/adherence:
-> What do you think about battle-behaviour clauses (e.g. Sleep Clause, maybe Freeze Clause), complex bans, and bans of elements other than Pokémon?
Sleep Clause is one of the rules that I think is a long-standing compromise brought about by the excessive difficulty in implementing it in a way that satisfies everyone. Sometimes I have to wonder whether it's even worth discussing. Maybe sleep-inducing moves should just be banned altogether (excluding Relic Song). I just think it's bizarre that we ban entire Pokémon on the premise that banning them in parts somehow would be a headache, and yet we put up with the headache that's right in front of our faces.
Concerning the other bans, I would think that this side would mostly prefer Pokémon bans, at least in this generation with "Team Preview". Simply put, as soon as you initiate a battle, you know without even doing anything whether your opponent is not respecting a Pokémon ban. However, bans of other elements and complex bans would presumably come into play if it means avoiding a significant number of Pokémon bans. How do we even know this, though? And what about previous generations, where only a designated lead is shown off the bat?
-> There's a limited amount of time to contemplate and question aspects of the ruleset. What is most important to scrutinize? How do we even determine this?
This is probably the biggest sticking point in many of the tiering considerations that have come up. The tiering systems we have been using seem to impose a certain risk factor in any modification to a rule. It's as if we can't go back if we mess this up (and this is true quite often). It seems to me that a tiering system based on ideals directly agreed upon democratically would be superior to the current system, which is based on specific rule modifications and results in the same philosophical arguments over and over again. Such a system would, unlike specific rules, be able to be carried over into other metagames/generations, largely eliminating the constant time pinch that we feel when tiering.
-> What roles do/should glitches play in competitive Pokémon?
This is where I think a lot of controversy will be stirred up. Technically, the rules you see in any tournament OP or other designated webpage are not complete. Secretly, we have rules against the mimic/transform/rage glitch, the acid rain glitch in Platinum/HeartGold/SoulSilver, and possibly others. The problem? They're glitches that potentially have a great impact on the game. However, I think that, in the name of consistency and simplicity, the status of some element of the game as a "glitch" should have no bearing on whether it's excluded from play.
The first issue with banning glitches is that we have no universal way of telling what the intent of the developers was. It's true that the glitches mentioned above are very likely to have been unintended, and it's easy to see what probably was intended to happen there. But what about the Sheer Force Life Orb glitch? I bet some of you didn't even know that that wasn't intended. Word of God had to put that question to rest. (Actually, Word of God isn't even always reliable; Square once claimed that the Vanish + Doom tactic in Final Fantasy VI was completely intended, only to make it stop working in the GBA port.) Game Freak probably screwed up in ways we haven't even imagined yet, or at least are only really known by meticulous sim developers like aeo. If we can't decide the borderline cases, what justification do we have to judge the "obvious" ones?
The other issue is that glitches can alter the game so completely and unavoidably that it's hard to tell whether the effect is positive or negative. Take Final Fantasy I, for example. If everything worked as intended, magic would be a lot stronger (and Black Mage would not be outclassed by Red Mage), physical attacks would be weaker in the endgame for not critting so much, etc. Namely, it would be a completely different game, to the extent where we'd know that it's more class-balanced than it's supposed to be, but otherwise we would have no idea of if it would be "better".
Engineering proponents:
-> What is your opinion on adhering to game mechanics?
The other side, I think, is pretty much unanimously for adhering to game mechanics. I suppose what I'm asking here is how far we're willing to go to engineer the game that we're playing. Should we engineer the game as-is, or should the game itself be subject to modification? Note that whatever you answer here will have a profound impact on what happens below.
-> How do we ensure that we give consistent treatment to all aspects of the game? Does it even matter?
A good chunk of the current ruleset has been grandfathered from past generations. Additionally, there are a lot of other rules that we could have had if certain events had played out differently. For example, I sometimes see people complaining about the removal of Freeze Clause, asking who in their right mind would allow the game to freeze more than one Pokémon. The thing is, critical hits have a nearly identical impact on this metagame and probably the last three generations of metagames as well. Both freeze and crits were very, very different in RBY. Crits were a controllable factor in that it depended on base Speed, and they were pretty crucial for landing KOs, while freeze was practically a death sentence, nearly equivalent to OHKO moves.
Had RBY run under different mechanics, we may well have had a Critical Hit Clause where you could only be critted once, or a ban on crits altogether, while freeze would have been an accepted part of the game. I think it almost certain that this Critical Hit Clause would have persisted throughout the five generations; people would be glad it was in place, shuddering in horror at the thought of being screwed over by two (or more!!!) critical hits. In fact, there would probably be a lot of verbal battles in PR about whether to make the CHC adhere to actual mechanics, and how to do so... just like Sleep Clause.
The ruleset as it stands now is steeped in history. It is the result of a truckload of outdated reasoning, resulting in confirmation bias and inconsistent treatment of the various effects in the game. Should we really just accept this state of affairs?
-> How do we ensure that the ruleset is independent of hypothetical small changes to gameplay? Does it even matter?
I've heard it said that certain things have a "right" to work. These things include 100% accurate moves and revenge killing a sweeper. I'll address the former here. Imagine for a moment that every move has a chance to miss. Even the most accurate moves like Ice Beam have 99% accuracy. The game is now so slightly different, barely anyone would notice a difference between this game and the IRL one. A miss is an amusing anomaly; maybe it would cost a game in a tournament or something. But suddenly, moves no longer have a magical "right" to work guaranteed. I'd wager that evasion abilities like Sand Veil, and even evasion moves, might be accepted a lot more because, after all, every move has a chance to miss, anyway.
The reasoning behind this analogy is twofold. For one thing, RBY actually does work like this. Every move has at least 1/256 probability of missing. For another thing, simulators have tried excluding the OHKO and Evasion Clauses, and the resulting metagames have been virtually identical. Removing the Freeze Clause has also had a negligible impact on the metagame. "Rights" that we apparently hold so dear can be so easily revoked, and yet still result in pretty much the same game. So do they really matter that much?
-> How do we even know if we're actually improving the game? What do "fun" and "skill-based" mean, anyway?
People love to say that they know what makes Pokémon fun. And perhaps they do know better than most other people. The problem is, "fun" is subjective, and more than that, the metagame is so intricate that even if you know more than other people, you really don't know a whole lot. I personally think we still know very little about the game we're playing. A lot of this has to do with lingering biases (especially confirmation bias from winning so much) and misconceptions. Even some of the best players seem to have little clue even as to how to EV their Pokémon, at least in cases where it could get really complicated.
We try to claim that we're just trying to make the game depend less on luck, and making it more likely for players to be rewarded for good plays. The fact is, though, every single move hinges on luck. Pokémon is not chess; it is more like poker. Imagine the frustration of a pro poker player who made all the right reads and all the right moves, and yet still lost because his awesome hand was slightly worse than the opponent's. Quite frankly, I think that it's fruitless to try to eliminate every luck factor, being in agreement with the video I linked earlier.
The situation that I'm seeing is that there are, roughly speaking, two opposites in conflict with each other. One side calls for consistency and simplicity in the ruleset, with strict adherence to game mechanics; this view won out in the past by fiat from Philip7086 in the wake of a discussion on regulating critical hits. The other side calls for engineering the ruleset until there's a better sense (even if it's slight) that the resulting game is a strategy game that rewards team building and "battle sense" (e.g. making the right calls). Each side fancies itself the pragmatic, common-sense view and condemns the other as hopelessly idealistic, masochistic, hypocritical, and irrational. Individuals who I've otherwise come to know as reasonable come to silly blows with each other, not accepting the fact that it is simply a fundamental disagreement.
The reason I am posting about this here is that I wanted maximum exposure and potential for discussion. I think that the competitive community as a whole deserves to have a say in this, especially since I have no intention at present to get any kind of binding agreement out of this. This is just for the sake of discussion. I firmly believe that discussion and experimentation for their own sake are valuable, even if they don't lead to any tangible revelation (example: BW Suspect Test Round 1). There's also no point in denying that I have put myself on one of these "sides", largely because of the attitudes I've carried over from other competitive communities. This video is pretty representative of my view on luck-based elements of competitive games. At the very least, though, I can understand where the other side is coming from, and I'm not going to pretend that there is some kind of logical proof that exonerates me and condemns everyone who disagrees.
There are some questions that I'd like to ask to both sides of the fence. I think it would be interesting to see the disagreements sprouting out from within each side. After all, like the U.S. political parties, it's not like these groups consist of people who think exactly alike or even agree all that often. I would also like to think that I can trust DST at this point to be able to hold an intelligent discussion, going by some of what I've read in DST and the DST mods' insistence that the quality of discussion has improved since the suspect testing era.
I apologize that this post is so long. I wish there were a really clean way to split this into seven or eight threads...
Consistency/simplicity/adherence:
-> What do you think about battle-behaviour clauses (e.g. Sleep Clause, maybe Freeze Clause), complex bans, and bans of elements other than Pokémon?
Sleep Clause is one of the rules that I think is a long-standing compromise brought about by the excessive difficulty in implementing it in a way that satisfies everyone. Sometimes I have to wonder whether it's even worth discussing. Maybe sleep-inducing moves should just be banned altogether (excluding Relic Song). I just think it's bizarre that we ban entire Pokémon on the premise that banning them in parts somehow would be a headache, and yet we put up with the headache that's right in front of our faces.
Concerning the other bans, I would think that this side would mostly prefer Pokémon bans, at least in this generation with "Team Preview". Simply put, as soon as you initiate a battle, you know without even doing anything whether your opponent is not respecting a Pokémon ban. However, bans of other elements and complex bans would presumably come into play if it means avoiding a significant number of Pokémon bans. How do we even know this, though? And what about previous generations, where only a designated lead is shown off the bat?
-> There's a limited amount of time to contemplate and question aspects of the ruleset. What is most important to scrutinize? How do we even determine this?
This is probably the biggest sticking point in many of the tiering considerations that have come up. The tiering systems we have been using seem to impose a certain risk factor in any modification to a rule. It's as if we can't go back if we mess this up (and this is true quite often). It seems to me that a tiering system based on ideals directly agreed upon democratically would be superior to the current system, which is based on specific rule modifications and results in the same philosophical arguments over and over again. Such a system would, unlike specific rules, be able to be carried over into other metagames/generations, largely eliminating the constant time pinch that we feel when tiering.
-> What roles do/should glitches play in competitive Pokémon?
This is where I think a lot of controversy will be stirred up. Technically, the rules you see in any tournament OP or other designated webpage are not complete. Secretly, we have rules against the mimic/transform/rage glitch, the acid rain glitch in Platinum/HeartGold/SoulSilver, and possibly others. The problem? They're glitches that potentially have a great impact on the game. However, I think that, in the name of consistency and simplicity, the status of some element of the game as a "glitch" should have no bearing on whether it's excluded from play.
The first issue with banning glitches is that we have no universal way of telling what the intent of the developers was. It's true that the glitches mentioned above are very likely to have been unintended, and it's easy to see what probably was intended to happen there. But what about the Sheer Force Life Orb glitch? I bet some of you didn't even know that that wasn't intended. Word of God had to put that question to rest. (Actually, Word of God isn't even always reliable; Square once claimed that the Vanish + Doom tactic in Final Fantasy VI was completely intended, only to make it stop working in the GBA port.) Game Freak probably screwed up in ways we haven't even imagined yet, or at least are only really known by meticulous sim developers like aeo. If we can't decide the borderline cases, what justification do we have to judge the "obvious" ones?
The other issue is that glitches can alter the game so completely and unavoidably that it's hard to tell whether the effect is positive or negative. Take Final Fantasy I, for example. If everything worked as intended, magic would be a lot stronger (and Black Mage would not be outclassed by Red Mage), physical attacks would be weaker in the endgame for not critting so much, etc. Namely, it would be a completely different game, to the extent where we'd know that it's more class-balanced than it's supposed to be, but otherwise we would have no idea of if it would be "better".
Engineering proponents:
-> What is your opinion on adhering to game mechanics?
The other side, I think, is pretty much unanimously for adhering to game mechanics. I suppose what I'm asking here is how far we're willing to go to engineer the game that we're playing. Should we engineer the game as-is, or should the game itself be subject to modification? Note that whatever you answer here will have a profound impact on what happens below.
-> How do we ensure that we give consistent treatment to all aspects of the game? Does it even matter?
A good chunk of the current ruleset has been grandfathered from past generations. Additionally, there are a lot of other rules that we could have had if certain events had played out differently. For example, I sometimes see people complaining about the removal of Freeze Clause, asking who in their right mind would allow the game to freeze more than one Pokémon. The thing is, critical hits have a nearly identical impact on this metagame and probably the last three generations of metagames as well. Both freeze and crits were very, very different in RBY. Crits were a controllable factor in that it depended on base Speed, and they were pretty crucial for landing KOs, while freeze was practically a death sentence, nearly equivalent to OHKO moves.
Had RBY run under different mechanics, we may well have had a Critical Hit Clause where you could only be critted once, or a ban on crits altogether, while freeze would have been an accepted part of the game. I think it almost certain that this Critical Hit Clause would have persisted throughout the five generations; people would be glad it was in place, shuddering in horror at the thought of being screwed over by two (or more!!!) critical hits. In fact, there would probably be a lot of verbal battles in PR about whether to make the CHC adhere to actual mechanics, and how to do so... just like Sleep Clause.
The ruleset as it stands now is steeped in history. It is the result of a truckload of outdated reasoning, resulting in confirmation bias and inconsistent treatment of the various effects in the game. Should we really just accept this state of affairs?
-> How do we ensure that the ruleset is independent of hypothetical small changes to gameplay? Does it even matter?
I've heard it said that certain things have a "right" to work. These things include 100% accurate moves and revenge killing a sweeper. I'll address the former here. Imagine for a moment that every move has a chance to miss. Even the most accurate moves like Ice Beam have 99% accuracy. The game is now so slightly different, barely anyone would notice a difference between this game and the IRL one. A miss is an amusing anomaly; maybe it would cost a game in a tournament or something. But suddenly, moves no longer have a magical "right" to work guaranteed. I'd wager that evasion abilities like Sand Veil, and even evasion moves, might be accepted a lot more because, after all, every move has a chance to miss, anyway.
The reasoning behind this analogy is twofold. For one thing, RBY actually does work like this. Every move has at least 1/256 probability of missing. For another thing, simulators have tried excluding the OHKO and Evasion Clauses, and the resulting metagames have been virtually identical. Removing the Freeze Clause has also had a negligible impact on the metagame. "Rights" that we apparently hold so dear can be so easily revoked, and yet still result in pretty much the same game. So do they really matter that much?
-> How do we even know if we're actually improving the game? What do "fun" and "skill-based" mean, anyway?
People love to say that they know what makes Pokémon fun. And perhaps they do know better than most other people. The problem is, "fun" is subjective, and more than that, the metagame is so intricate that even if you know more than other people, you really don't know a whole lot. I personally think we still know very little about the game we're playing. A lot of this has to do with lingering biases (especially confirmation bias from winning so much) and misconceptions. Even some of the best players seem to have little clue even as to how to EV their Pokémon, at least in cases where it could get really complicated.
We try to claim that we're just trying to make the game depend less on luck, and making it more likely for players to be rewarded for good plays. The fact is, though, every single move hinges on luck. Pokémon is not chess; it is more like poker. Imagine the frustration of a pro poker player who made all the right reads and all the right moves, and yet still lost because his awesome hand was slightly worse than the opponent's. Quite frankly, I think that it's fruitless to try to eliminate every luck factor, being in agreement with the video I linked earlier.