On Sleep Clause

D4 Repertoire

goin' fast
is a Tiering Contributor
Excal said:
I'm of the viewpoint that we should keep as many core mechanics intact as possible unless they are severe handicaps on competitive play.
D4 Repertoire said:
This implies that banning sleep is preferable to modding it. Lack of sleep does not handicap competitive play.
Excal said:
How could that be the case if my entire post is about keeping the status quo (modding it)? Lack of sleep can handicap competitive play depending on the tier.
My point was not denying that your post clearly supports sleep clause. I was pointing out that the "viewpoint" you gave to justify your position actually justifies removing sleep clause: I was saying that "keep core mechanics intact" = no mods.

As for the point about handicapping competitive play, you have not attempted to justify this claim at all in either post. The lack of mechanics cannot really handicap competitive play, only the presence of uncompetitive mechanics can. That is, regardless of how useful sleep is in a given meta, removing it doesn't make the meta uncompetitive or "handicapped," it's just different. And at the point where your definition of "handicapped" tries to include lacking the presence of something, it long ceases to be close to sufficient reason to mod the game.

There are a lot of arguments related to these statements*, but all of these arguments are assuming that we operate under your personal viewpoint rather than the tiering policy framework, so it's not particularly worth going over all the arguments stemming from this. I just wanted to point out the immediate contradiction.
Whether modified sleep or no sleep is more true to "core mechanics"
Whether sleep ban, mod sleep, no sleep restriction, etc "handicap" competitive play
What reason--if any--is sufficient to mod the game under this framework
The distinction between banning sleep inducing moves and removing the status condition sleep entirely (rest exists)
Excal said:
If anything, getting rid of the clause (assuming sleep is banned as a result) feels even less like you're playing on cartridge
D4 Repertoire said:
This is a poor way of framing things considering under this standard the noticeable lack of Kyogre, double team, and sheer cold are problematic. The concern is and should be whether the simulator's mechanics match that of cartridge, not of the fact that tiering things to be competitive makes things feels different than when they aren't tiered to be competitive.
Excal said:
Sleep has been a part of competitive pkmn since the very beginning. This is a bad faith nitpick and misses the point of what I was saying.
This is a completely different argument (and given that it's just another way of saying "status quo good," it has already been throughly addressed in my post that you refuse to read).

The point of what you were originally saying was how simulator feels compared to cartridge, not how simulator feels to old simulator. There's nothing "bad faith" nor nit-picky about my previous explanation of why your original argument is not and should not be considered justification for how the simulator runs. I lay out examples of your proposed consideration (to maximize feeling like playing on cartridge) currently being ignored that people generally agree with (because this is a clear and concise way of showing why the argument fails) and then give the underlying argument afterward anyway.

We care about the tiering policy framework, not your opinion of the "feel" of the game; and even if we did, "one of the fundamental statuses" is not more impactful to the feel of the game than "one of the fundamental stat stage changes (evasion)", an entire category of moves (OHKO), or one of the Pokemon on the cover of the cartridge games.

Excal said:
Everyone knows about sleep clause
D4 Repertoire said:
You clearly haven't worked your way through low ladder in a while.
Excal said:
The learning curve is clearly not very steep. I was an 11-year-old playing wifi battles on cartridge and I immediately understood sleep clause.
This is a much more accurate and fair statement than your original. Now that your argument is more than a 5 word false statement, I will point out that, as I discussed in my first post, the issue with sleep clause and the playerbase is not that it cannot be understood but that it is a mod, and the fact that it is a mod is what is objectionable both from a tiering policy perspective and from the perspective of a newcomer.

Excal said:
no one complains about its in-game implications
D4 Repertoire said:
Hello? This thread (like its many predecessors) is literally just that.
Excal said:
I exaggerated, but other than the minority that want sleep as a mechanic banned, the majority of tournament players seem to be fine with sleep clause as is.
This too is a much fairer statement than your original. (I'll just assume this is true without polling data as the anti sleep clause case does not require this to be false)

The short version of why to still get rid of sleep clause mod despite it not currently bothering most tournament players is all of the active reasons to change sleep clause that I laid out in my previous post (reasons #1 and #5). The problems that it creates are still problems regardless of if they mindfully bother the majority of the general tournament playerbase. Also, I point out in my first post that sampling sleep clause opinion/impact on the population most accustomed to it is biased (someone is way less likely to become a tournament participant in tiers with sleep clause if they dislike sleep clause) and ignores many of the problems with sleep clause (reasons #1 and #5).

Finally, in general, the popular opinion should be able to justify their opinion with valid arguments in debate/discussion beyond just citing the popularity of the opinion.

Excal said:
and debating about sleep policy has never gone anywhere productive in the last 10+ years.
D4 Repertoire said:
At every opportunity the posts in this thread continually clarify that this discussion is for gen 8 OU (or maybe 9 instead of 8) and then would be the default for future gens. No one is advocating that each gen cannot deal with sleep individually.

And if you actually read the posts in the thread, you would find that the discourse is generally progressing and becoming more focused over time, not getting further derailed (for example we have moved past discussing the viability of sleep under sleep clause in lower tiers and are on the edge of moving past discussion of different formulations of sleep clause).
Excal said:
My point this responded to is correct. It's hard to parse this incomprehensible response devoid of any relevant information.
The statement that previous discussions have not resulted in sleep clause changing is true.

I was responding to the argument that this fact supposedly justifies not discussing it again.

I seems highly unlikely to me that you genuinely cannot understand what I said and very likely that you are just saying this to dodge responding to the arguments themselves because you cannot rebut them.

However, on the small chance that you are being honest, I will ignore the (in my opinion inaccurate) characterization of my previous response and attempt to just explain myself better. To reword the three arguments,

1.) You saying to not discuss this attempts to prevent the discussion from being productive. If every time this is discussed, someone comes along with a similar post, then it makes sense why it would have repeatedly not been productive.

2.) If the same proposal to change something keeps coming up regardless of how many times it is rejected, there's probably some problem that needs to be fixed.

3.) As long as there is a well-defined problem (inconsistency with cartridge mechanics), discussion of how to fix the problem should be allowed regardless of whether previous discussions succeeded in fixing the problem. New discussions may bring new arguments or ideas that succeed where previous ones could not.

I can somewhat understand not finding 1.) or 2.) super "relevant" (though I would disagree), but 3.) is directly arguing why your point does not follow from your stated fact. Hence, your point that this responded to is not correct.

From my perspective, this is the first discussion of sleep clause that I have participated in (2020 join date); and I laid out a thorough case in favor of removing sleep clause in my first post in the thread. Nobody has responded to this post or its arguments in opposition (outside of the "change the implementation of sleep clause" arguments, which are not up for debate at this time), so I (I think understandably) believe that my post needs to be addressed for the policy to be justifiably decided to not change. I understand that, from the perspective of users who have seen previous iterations of this debate, going through the same discussion again can be tiresome and undesirable. However, those users can either a) not participate in the discussion or b) be helpful in making the discussion as productive and on-track as possible by using their previous experience. It is not helpful to dismiss the discussion as incapable of being productive. For example, if someone previously made the same arguments as I, and someone else refuted those arguments in a previous discussion; then directing me (and others viewing my post) to those posts or giving the arguments yourself would be helpful rather than refusing to read my post in the first place.

As far as I can tell, previous opposition to change stands on the same unsound ground as the "keep status quo" points that I have thoroughly addressed. If previous users with my same position failed to argue the position as well as I have, that should not be cause to just ignore my points.

Excal said:
I think this thread is way too flashy for the intention to be purely competitively-minded. I generally dislike threads with such an unnecessarily massive scope to the point where it becomes a derailed mess. I find them significantly less productive and encouraging of unqualified people to spout nonsense that no one wants to read. As a disclaimer I haven't read almost all the posts itt, so I'm not calling out anyone in particular. But I think we should leave it up to each gen to deal with sleep individually as opposed to neutral administration making a thread about sleep clause in all gens.
D4 Repertoire said:
At every opportunity the posts in this thread continually clarify that this discussion is for gen 8 OU (or maybe 9 instead of 8) and then would be the default for future gens. No one is advocating that each gen cannot deal with sleep individually.

And if you actually read the posts in the thread, you would find that the discourse is generally progressing and becoming more focused over time, not getting further derailed (for example we have moved past discussing the viability of sleep under sleep clause in lower tiers and are on the edge of moving past discussion of different formulations of sleep clause).
Excal said:
The OUTL essentially said to screw off (in a nice way), so the cg part is not relevant. I was responding to the OP which swept all gens in one.
First, the OP from the outset was not making the argument you're rebutting.

From the OP's first post:
Lily said:
Before anyone asks, no this shouldn't automatically apply to every tier across every gen.
The OP's clarification in their second post:
Lily said:
this wouldn't apply to your gen unless you want it to, it's not a direct response to something randomly being broken now, it's a proposal to change an antiquated part of tiering for this gen & further gens to follow so that we can have a ruleset that makes more sense than the current one. it shouldn't shake up past gens unless their tiering councils agree with it.
Second, even if the first post in the thread originally included old gens, ignoring the fact that the thread since agreed against this and pointlessly rearguing this point on the basis of the thread being "too flashy" (lol) is the only thing leading the thread to a "derailed mess" or "nonsense that no one wants to read."

Third, the part of the OUTL post justifying not banning it as a luck element is not relevant; and fourth,
Finchinator said:
From there, there was brief discussion of the procedural side of things and how shifting the restriction of the clause to a ban outright would perhaps line-up more with a cleaner future ruleset, but ultimately this differences was regarded as negligible given the long history of sleep clause as a seemingly successful rule and not enough to change the status quo either.
outlines the exact argument that my first post thoroughly addresses (and that no one opposed has responded to).

He also states that the council can change their decision given direction from "above":
Finchinator said:
We are also absolutely not the sole deciders of sleep. I made it a point to go out of my way in my post to state a tier leader vote or whatever administration decides is fine by us.
and continually restates "status quo" as the justification for the policy while admitting that the OU council does not have sole jurisdiction on this issue.
Finchinator said:
However, we also dug deeper and discussed why we felt it was not necessary to change the status quo for our metagame, which involves sleep clause restricted sleep.
Finchinator said:
If you sense a trend in my phrasing, it is intended -- we are the SS OU council and our scope is limited to the SS OU metagame. You are asking us to discern the pros and cons of a clause that has been around much longer than any of us have played which we have grown accustom to.
Finchinator said:
Finally, I do not subscribe to your belief that sleep clause fundamentally contradicts tiering policy given their longstanding coexistence. At a point, you have to accept it's place and we largely have. This goes hand-and-hand with my point before about the OU council and other current generation tiering figures largely being ok with the cause because of it carving out its own place in our tiering history.
Finchinator said:
And if you feel the issue is this fundamental that it boils down to contradicting the tiering guidelines, then the person in charge of that is the tiering administrator. Tiering councils, such as the OU council, are meant to enforce those guidelines in order to maximize competitiveness, but seeing as we have had this clause in place for longer than any of us have been around, it is pretty clear to see why we have embraced it, which again boils back to the string of posts I alluded to on the first page, and why I am confused as to why your dissatisfaction is geared specifically towards the OU council when we stated we were fine deferring to higher-ups given the procedural nature of the issue rather than the metagame specific nature of it.
So even if the OU Council will not hear rebuttals to its unsound justification for its decision, the arguments made in this thread thereafter are meant to be heard by the tiering administrator and others with proper jurisdiction anyway.

Also, claiming that this would start gen 9 rather than gen 8 because the OU council already decided doesn't respond to any of the actual arguments in the first place. Saying "cg part is not relevant" when none of the arguments I'm making are specific to gen 8 and apply equally to gen 9 is pointless.

Excal said:
we're at a point with all the modifications our simulation gives us where small exception cases like sleep clause (which are mentioned in tiering policy) shouldn't be inherently bad. Let's not fix what isn't broken.
D4 Repertoire said:
See my previous post. There is a well-defined problem with a clear solution.
Excal said:
I think your response to my post was quite bad, so I won't be doing that.
If you refuse to follow the rule for posting in these threads of reading the previous discussion (as to not derail argumentation into unnecessary circles of restating previous points), then do not post in this thread.

Stating that there isn't a problem on the grounds that you refuse to read what the problem is actively hurts the discussion.

Be better.

But to spoon-feed you the general idea, saying "let's not fix what isn't broken" is not a valid argument when I outline 5 reasons that it is "broken" (under #5) in my first post and also detail why "but it's the status quo" is not a defense (under #2 and #3) in that same post.
 

peng

fuck xatu
is a Community Contributoris a Forum Moderator Alumnus
Be better.

But to spoon-feed you the general idea
There's zero need to be this condescending, especially about a topic that does not have a simple or clean solution.
edit: actually reading back the full convo you're both being p rude, sorry to single out but yea lets not get riled up over something which is, in its nature, subjective

-----------------------------------

This thread pops up all the time (remove or fix sleep clause) and there's obviously not a clean solution or else it would have been taken already.

On the point of "true to cartridge":
I can understand the argument behind this of course because we do strive to simulate the cartridge games as closely as is reasonably achievable. That said, we do not strive to recreate the games exactly 1-to-1 and this is evidenced through multiple quality of life upgrades:
  • Percentage bar display.
  • Unable to accidentally "leave pokemon behind" at Team Preview.
  • Nickname mods.
  • BIG ONE: removal of 20min total battle timer on Gen8 which limits number of turns on cartridge.
and so on. Even with Sleep Clause removed, Showdown is still not close to a 1-to-1 recreation of cart mechanics nor is it likely to ever be - there's no serious audience for that especially since the introduction of the universally-despised 20 minute battle timer on cartridge. Showdown is inherently going to be a modded version of the game, and so it should be - Pokemon games on cartridge are woefully unintuitive and I would like to think Showdown lowers the barrier for entry significantly through several of these mods.

Note that I do not mean to say "Showdown is already a mod so lets add 50 more mods and remove crits and completely change the game". What I mean is that reversing Sleep Clause, which has stood for 20+ years, in an attempt to make an inaccurate simulator a fraction of a percent more accurate, seems like a needless change without clear evidence that it is flawed, either in terms of competitiveness or accessibility.

On competitiveness:
A major discussion point is to alter Sleep Clause so that Spore etc cannot be clicked if a Pokemon is already slept, which intuitively feels like it would be more cart accurate. Not only is this interpretation still not cart accurate (you would be unable to sleep a pokemon that woke in the same turn, catch switches vs Natural Cure mons etc), but it also creates headaches with regards to Encore / Torment / Choice-lock / trapping + Sleep Move which have the potential to leave an opponent with no legal moves left to play, either enabling opponents to be cheesed into auto-losses by triggering sleep clause OR requiring an additional mod to account for this situation (does the player struggle? move fail?). This is a rare situation but is actually more game-breaking than anything that can be achieved with current implementation of Sleep Clause - I guess in these situations we'd mod so that Spore would "fail" if its the only legal move that can be used but thats just current Sleep Clause with extra complications. The only way to be fully cart accurate here is to just remove the clause altogether and have multiple slept mons be legal, then individually assess Sleep inducers but I don't think anyone actually wants this.
edit: heard points about just allowing a sleep move to be usable if you're locked into it, cos if the opp switches then its self-inflicted 2nd sleep and therefore deserved - think this oversimplifies complicated gamestates re: covering the opponents move, being forced out by residual damage, unlikely situation but red card also would break this. Its a super messy implementation no matter how you frame it.

On accessibility:
There's been comments raised that Sleep Clause raises the barrier for entry to newer players. To that I have to say, Pokemon already has a ridiculously steep learning curve and Sleep Clause in its current form is easily one of the simplest rules we have. There may be young people on ladder who do not understand the Sleep Clause prompt and repeatedly try and Spore a second Pokemon, but I firmly believe these are in the extreme minority and we should not be introducing sweeping changes to established tournament rulesets (whether old gens or future generations) to cater for this minority. For every person who quits because they cannot understand Sleep Clause, there are probably 20 more who avoid Smogon rulesets because of "but Blaze Blaziken" and "they ban everything that beats stall" arguments yet we don't bow to these opinions for inclusivity - there is a difference between having a game that is accessible to as many people as possible, or catering to unpopular opinions from non-competitive folk at the expense of our tournament ruleset. This isn't even mentioning the fact that Sleep Clause in this exact form has been utilised by multiple cartridge games including Stadium and Colloseum and yet I can't recall any evidence that the presence of Sleep Clause in any way turned players away from these games.

tl;dr I am pretty certain that if Sleep Clause did not exist to this point then we would not choose to implement in its current form and would likely look at Pokemon or move bans to limit the power of Sleep instead. However, it is a mod that has stood for a significant period of time and its current implementation makes for an elegant and consistent workaround for the issue of Sleep, far more intuitive than the proposed modifications which would all need context-dependent modifications to not break the game. Considering how far other aspects of Showdown have drifted from cartridge mechanics, along with the fact that Game Freak themselves appear to have zero interest in catering for the 6v6 community anymore (20m timer lol), I see no reason to alter our current, long-standing and elegant phrasing of Sleep Clause for the sake of cart-accuracy.
 
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R8

Leads Natdex Other Tiers, not rly doing ndou stuff
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National Dex Leader
  • Percentage bar display.
  • Unable to accidentally "leave pokemon behind" at Team Preview.
  • Nickname mods.
  • BIG ONE: removal of 20min total battle timer on Gen8 which limits number of turns on cartridge.
Apologies for the short post, but just wanted to point out that the "true to cartridge" argument is specifically about mechanics that actually affect what happens in each turn (in other words, how Pokemon interacts with the game). Even taking into account those mods, excluding sleep clause, any game on cart happening under, for example, the SS OU format's rules, can happen on cart, granted the timer doesn't run out. It is no coincidence if only the sleep and rby freeze clauses are mentionned in the TPF. EDIT: i worded it poorly, but i wanted to clearly mention that i'm talking about turns taken individually rather than games as a whole.

Pretty much no one that wants to rework/delete the sleep clause wants to implement the in-game timer on smogon formats ; while it is true that you cannot play a smogon format on cart with PS!'s timer, the actual game mechanics stays the same.

The possibility of leaving a Pokemon behind was not implemented probably for the same reason it is not possible to not have max PPs on PS!: because, assuming each player wants to win, they have no reason to not bring their 6 Pokemon / max their PPs. Since the PS staff approved the implementation of non maxed PPs specifically because of the potential strategic interest in it, you can be certain that the ability to "leave a Pokemon behind" would be implemented if there was an actual reason to do that.

The only actual exception aside from the sleep clause is the HP Percentage bar display mod, since that do give you an information unobtainable in game. In my opinion this is way less of an issue (if an issue at all)than sleep clause because, as i said in the first paragraph of this post, this clause do not alter the actual mechanics of the game. I GUESS some people could make an argument against the HP Percentage mod for that reason, but comparing it with sleep clause is just an exaggeration imo.

The uncompatibility with cartridge is the only valid argument against sleep clause. Sleep in its current state is not broken, and the sleep clause is not hard to understand at all. As it was stated earlier in the thread this thread is restricted on the question "Keeping sleep clause vs banning sleep", i won't develop this much, but i wanted to invite the community to think about how we could possibly balance sleep without the need to mod PS!. I honestly don't care what the alternative would be, as long as we can reach a consensus about it : just make game turns possible on PS! also possible on cart, and hopefully we will figure out a way to make what isn't broken into something that is neither broken and outdated if we ever get a thread about sleep clause again. This debate will truly end only every possible other alternative is disqualified.
 
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peng

fuck xatu
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don't want to derail the conversation with timer talk but i do think it is an important point to raise considering it is by a distance the most significant difference between cartridge and simulator SS / BDSP.

its basically impossible to play a game over like 25 turns on actual sword and shield or bdsp cartridges. I don't know what the average # of turns for an SS OU game is but I imagine most games would be completely impossible to play on an actual cartridge within the allotted time limit.

The idea that we can get close to cartridge mechanics with a Sleep Clause removal is focussing on a discrepancy that affects a tiny % of games, compared to a mechanic alteration that makes sim SS completely unrecognisable from cartridge.

There are people in this thread who claim to seriously care about cartridge accuracy - I expect these people to want a 25 turn cap to be introduced to SS OU after SPL. I imagine they won't want that and will say that because old gens didn't have timer then we can play a hybrid version of SS OU with old gen's lack of timer. To which the counter-argument is, well thats exactly what we do when we adopt colloseum sleep clause.

this looks like whataboutery but we can't seriously sit here and talk about cartridge accuracy when we so blatantly just ignore the fact that current SS OU is impossible on cartridge for wayyyyy more significant reasons than sleep clause. If you are that passionate about cartridge accuracy, please ask yourself why sleep clause is always the one talked about when it has legitimate competitive value, and why you never kick up a fuss about simulating SS timer.

if you would actually prefer blanket sleep ban over sleep clause for competitive reasons then thats valid but this desire for cartridge accuracy is a myth, anyone who says they actually want it is lying. convenience+competitiveness is king and timer / sleep clause are in the same boat

edit: Also it looks like people are considering sleep clause removal for current + future gen but not removing it from old gen, which if anything is completely upside down. Old gens would actually be cart accurate with sleep clause removal whereas SS and BDSP are literally never going to be. The whole discussion is ridiculously inconsistent with the apparent aims of being "cart accurate"

edit 2: in response to below, not gonna argue further re:timer because its off topic but i think it says a lot when you can only viably get to a good turn count with either no thinking time (the idea you can think during turn is partially flawed because you cant see the future) OR by exploits / custom firmware. By same logic so much more shit would be legal in other gens ifyou were allowed to blatantly break the game in your favour. This is also nothing to do with programming, as I refuse to believe SS Ou would implement timer even if it was possible - its the fact that playerbase do not want it despite it being a fact of playing on cartridge and people conveniently ignore that mech for their own enjoyment
 
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Lalaya

Banned deucer.
Old gens would actually be cart accurate with sleep clause removal
fyi every main and side game until Gen4 had an actual instance of Sleep Clause, with the implementation varying between some games where Rest counted/did not or most tournament giving you an autolose if you Sleep two Pokémon at once - of course not in normal play, but for the sake of clarity every generation up until the 4th had a implementation of a official Sleep Clause in competitive, so if anything they should be able to decide whether to keep the Clause or not REGARDLESS of what this thread, or the next series of threads, will bring
since Gen5 outright banned Sleep moves anyway because Sleep as a mechanic is just stupid broken there, this discussion should only matter to Gen6/7/8 tiers and the eventual Gen9 and successors.
 

Zokuru

The Stall Lord
is a Tiering Contributor
its basically impossible to play a game over like 25 turns on actual sword and shield or bdsp cartridges. I don't know what the average # of turns for an SS OU game is but I imagine most games would be completely impossible to play on an actual cartridge within the allotted time limit.
Not willing to argue for any side of the sleeping debate, but I'm just gonna point out a blatant misinformation. It is indeed possible to play games that are longer than the average number of turns in SS OU using the cart. It is indeed painful to organize, I won't go into the details but it's technically possible to play under the 10m per players, no global time limit ruleset, which if you use an average of 5 seconds to pick a move ( That's a lot since you can think during the animations on cart, most of the time you will use less than 2 seconds, and we're pretending you don't need to calc, or just once or twice during the game ). Anyway, with 5s per turn your 10m timer will touch 0 after 120 turns, which is well over the SS OU average number of turns.
 

DaWoblefet

Demonstrably so
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I've seen a few posts about timer in SwSh and its implications for battle mechanics. This is unfortunately too ambitious of a project to implement on Showdown. Documenting the duration of all animations, including from moves, items, abilities, when those animation durations can vary by situation, is just too great a task, and it'd be necessary to implement a cartridge-accurate timer. A turn cap isn't a viable alternative either, as the amount of turns available in a particular battle will just vary way too much; mashing Sleep Talk to have a move instantly fail is a different story from actually playing a set.

However, if you want to talk theory, you can use Live Competition exploits to swap to a 10-minute Your Time, no total time match (example). With 2-second mash times, this gives you theoretically 10*60/2 = 300 turns to work with, which should be plenty of time for the average game of OU (edit: lol Zokuru beat me to this). This exploit can still be done in the latest version of SwSh without custom firmware. You could also use custom firmware to hack in a custom ruleset without timer, then turn off the custom firmware and play a regular game with anyone you want, online, without timer.

In general, the arguments for "Sleep Clause should be kept because we ignore other cartridge mechanics" don't hold water. The primary reason we don't implement SwSh's timer is because it would be too hard to implement, not because we're ignoring it. VGC formats would absolutely love it if we had proper timer to practice with, for example. It would not be nearly as difficult, relatively speaking, to implement a "you can't select a sleep move if the opponent already has one Pokemon you put to sleep, except when there are no alternatives". I wonder how many players have actually tried to play with Sleep Clause on cartridge in this thread; that's exactly how'd you would play it. If your opponent's Pokemon has slept two turns, on cart you just can't click another sleep move because it risks the opponent switching out and you breaking the clause. Whether or not any particular gen of OU should adopt this variant of Sleep Clause is something I can't pronounce on, but I think you have to say that's how Sleep Clause on cart must be played in its current form.
 
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D4 Repertoire

goin' fast
is a Tiering Contributor
As an overview, your overall argument is that:
1.) The simulator differs from cartridge in more ways than sleep clause mod.
2.) Sleep clause mod has been around for a very long time.
3.) Hence, sleep clause mod not matching cartridge is not as big of a problem.

Yet, you agree that other mods beyond sleep clause make the simulator incrementally worse.
Peng said:
Note that I do not mean to say "Showdown is already a mod so lets add 50 more mods and remove crits and completely change the game"
Just like everyone can recognize that further mods make the simulator incrementally worse, the existence of sleep clause mod makes the simulator incrementally worse than the simulator without it (whether or not it differs in other ways, necessarily or not). Your points (1) and (2) may make sleep clause mod not as bad as it would otherwise be, but the simulator with sleep clause mod is still comparatively worse than without it, and lessening the degree of this does not reverse the direction of it.

Your arguments as a whole fundamentally fail to answer the fact that the proposal is an incremental improvement independent of other considerations. Whether sleep clause mod is a small, medium, or large problem and whether there are other problems with the simulator, removing sleep clause mod makes the simulator better and more consistent with the tiering policy framework and does not have drawbacks on competitive play, accessibility, legitimacy, playerbase size, simulator purpose, or non-arbitrary rules (in fact, it offers improvements with respect to many of these areas).

Peng said:
edit 2: in response to below, not gonna argue further re:timer because its off topic
I am not exactly sure what you intend your position to be at this point. You used the timer as a central pillar of your arguments and then go on to say that it's off-topic while still making further arguments regarding the timer and still ostensibly maintaining your original position, which you largely based on the timer. Because of this, I must respond to the timer arguments.

1.) A timer mod existing does not reverse the fact that further mods make the simulator incrementally worse. Your timer arguments can at most establish that the harm caused by sleep clause mod is less than it would be without a timer mod.

2.) DaWoblefet's post. An in-game timer along with in-game animation timings is simply not a feasible option. This means that any timer on PS! must be different from the in-game timer, so complaining about this difference when there is no alternative is pointless. (Also note that sleep clause mod is not necessary)

3.) As for consistency, whether SS OU would've implemented the timer in some hypothetical world is separate from whether they ought to implement the timer. You can't construe my advocacy on that issue to match what you assume would be the majority opinion and then claim that the stance you decided that I'd have contradicts the stance that I'm advocating on this policy. You're just assigning me arguments.

Furthermore, suppose that there are actually multiple problems with the status quo. Any policy review thread will (with good reason) seek to address one of these at a time. This means that there will be other problems that have yet to be addressed when addressing the first problem, but this does not make the thread seeking to change things one step at a time inconsistent. Pointing out "what about this other potential problem" does not refute the arguments made about this problem.

In general, just because someone hasn't yet managed to get Smogon to change every aspect of the simulator to be as accurate to cart as possible doesn't mean I necessarily support the discrepancies and can't argue against them one at a time. (In fact, the OP specifically asked to not talk about timer and QoL improvements because those are separate issues that have their own discussions and the discussion is meant to be focused on sleep).

4.) Even without all other considerations, those hypothetically advocating for PS! timer in SS OU in a world where the in-game timer is as "bad" as possible (20min limit w/o workarounds) and accurately coding the in-game timings and timer into PS! were possible would have the strong argument that this difference is permissible due to the hinderance the in-game timer would put on competitive play. People who oppose such a timer would state that reducing the ability to calc and to play out games to conclude via KO rather than timer are both substantial hinderances on competitive play. (To be clear, I do not necessarily advocate this and point out that the timer win-con and the skill in foreseeing and memorizing relevant calcs have a lot of competitive merit--see Wolfe Glick's VGC career.) The point is that this justification of timer does not exist at all with sleep clause mod because, as I already stated, the lack of sleep is not a hinderance on competitive play. With the "worst case" timer changes, SS OU as it exists now becomes unplayable; with sleep clause mod removed, SS OU as it exists now is just as playable as ever.

5.) As R8 points out, the timer is categorically different from the mechanics of the battle itself. There need not be the exact same policy regarding these different things even if it were possible to not have a modified timer.

6.) Zokuru and DaWoblefet's posts
Peng said:
  • Percentage bar display.
  • Unable to accidentally "leave pokemon behind" at Team Preview.
  • Nickname mods.
To start, the same arguments about timer mod not being particularly relevant apply to these as well. But as an aside,
1.) Change to pixels or however it actually works (if possible).

2.) Allow this. It has very niche strategic utility. For example, you could only bring one Pokemon to prevent being phazed out or you could leave a Pokemon behind that is potentially bad in a certain matchup because if it gets phazed in, it would let in a opposing Pokemon to regen. (These benefits are probably essentially always not worth the drawbacks but could theoretically be.) Plus, there's not a problem with players needing to choose to bring their whole team manually even if it's always optimal.

3.) I'm pretty sure all the nickname mods can be implemented on cart with the impartial judge workarounds. Also, I'd be totally fine with making this cart accurate anyway if it were really a concern.

Peng said:
Even with Sleep Clause removed, Showdown is still not close to a 1-to-1 recreation of cart mechanics nor is it likely to ever be - there's no serious audience for that especially since the introduction of the universally-despised 20 minute battle timer on cartridge. Showdown is inherently going to be a modded version of the game, and so it should be - Pokemon games on cartridge are woefully unintuitive and I would like to think Showdown lowers the barrier for entry significantly through several of these mods.
My previous points already sufficiently rebut this, but I will add:

Here you're arguing that the sim should have quality of life improvements to increase accessibility: this justifies quality of life improvements, not sleep clause mod (sleep clause mod does not increase accessibility).

Also, just because some aspects of the sim are infeasible to replicate cart directly doesn't permit blatant modding of mechanics, which you recognize when opposing any other mod that isn't sleep clause.

Peng said:
Note that I do not mean to say "Showdown is already a mod so lets add 50 more mods and remove crits and completely change the game". What I mean is that reversing Sleep Clause, which has stood for 20+ years, in an attempt to make an inaccurate simulator a fraction of a percent more accurate, seems like a needless change without clear evidence that it is flawed, either in terms of competitiveness or accessibility.
Minimizing how different sleep clause mod is from cart is entirely inaccurate. The difference is huge, especially compared to whether HP is displayed as pixels or percentages or what nicknames are allowed. The major difference that you cite is essentially impossible to fix/implement and in fact not actually very different as Zokuru and DaWoblefet point out.

Furthermore, the clear evidence that is is flawed is because it is a mod, competitiveness and accessibility are not the only arguments. And if you mean accessibility to encompass the fact that people choose to not play due to mods rather than are unable to understand the mods, then it is clearly flawed in that respect as well. See my first post.

Peng said:
On accessibility:
There's been comments raised that Sleep Clause raises the barrier for entry to newer players. To that I have to say, Pokemon already has a ridiculously steep learning curve and Sleep Clause in its current form is easily one of the simplest rules we have. There may be young people on ladder who do not understand the Sleep Clause prompt and repeatedly try and Spore a second Pokemon, but I firmly believe these are in the extreme minority and we should not be introducing sweeping changes to established tournament rulesets (whether old gens or future generations) to cater for this minority. For every person who quits because they cannot understand Sleep Clause, there are probably 20 more who avoid Smogon rulesets because of "but Blaze Blaziken" and "they ban everything that beats stall" arguments yet we don't bow to these opinions for inclusivity - there is a difference between having a game that is accessible to as many people as possible, or catering to unpopular opinions from non-competitive folk at the expense of our tournament ruleset. This isn't even mentioning the fact that Sleep Clause in this exact form has been utilised by multiple cartridge games including Stadium and Colloseum and yet I can't recall any evidence that the presence of Sleep Clause in any way turned players away from these games.:
As I already clarified, the argument is not that it's hard to learn but that mods deter players (see OM popularity vs OU). The existence of necessary differences on a sim does not change that each additional unnecessary mod further limits the playerbase.

Also, you are talking about ostensibly necessary components of tiering policy to keep the game competitive deterring some players. This is true, but does not change regardless of sleep clause. Sleep clause mod is also completely different because it is an unnecessary violation of tiering policy rather than a necessary pillar of it. The "blaze Blaziken" camp is lost regardless, but sleep clause mod is separately deterring the "anti mod" camp, who are entirely justified in their opinion as opposed to complaining about stall in a uninformed manner and can be gained as players without compromising the competitive integrity of the game.

Peng said:
I am pretty certain that if Sleep Clause did not exist to this point then we would not choose to implement in its current form and would likely look at Pokemon or move bans to limit the power of Sleep instead.
YES, and comparison between states of affairs should be independent of which is currently reality.

Peng said:
However, it is a mod that has stood for a significant period of time and its current implementation makes for an elegant and consistent workaround for the issue of Sleep
How "elegant" you find it doesn't change the fact that it's a mod. And even if that mattered, simply banning sleep is just as if not more clean and consistent.

Peng said:
far more intuitive than the proposed modifications which would all need context-dependent modifications to not break the game.
Not sure why you're debating against the different formulations of sleep clause when this has clearly been terminated as a proposal under consideration.

Peng said:
Considering how far other aspects of Showdown have drifted from cartridge mechanics, along with the fact that Game Freak themselves appear to have zero interest in catering for the 6v6 community anymore (20m timer lol), I see no reason to alter our current, long-standing and elegant phrasing of Sleep Clause for the sake of cart-accuracy.
Intended to be a summary of previous points so these are already addressed.

Peng said:
desire for cartridge accuracy is a myth, anyone who says they actually want it is lying
There's not a whole lot productive to say here cause it's just an obviously false accusation; but I will reiterate that just as you recognize mods beyond sleep clause as problematic for this reason, many people regard sleep clause as problematic for this reason. The fact that the simulator may have some ways in which it cannot exactly replicate cartridge does not mean that people cannot want it to be accurate to cartridge in all of the possible ways.

Peng said:
convenience+competitiveness is king and timer / sleep clause are in the same boat
They are not the same at all. Timer is necessary and sleep clause is an unnecessary violation of tiering policy.

Peng said:
Also it looks like people are considering sleep clause removal for current + future gen but not removing it from old gen, which if anything is completely upside down. Old gens would actually be cart accurate with sleep clause removal whereas SS and BDSP are literally never going to be. The whole discussion is ridiculously inconsistent with the apparent aims of being "cart accurate"
No, this thread is not about old gens one way or the other. When we say that this would not necessarily apply to old gens, we are not agreeing that old gens should preserve it, we are saying that such debate is not within the scope of this discussion.

The second part is already addressed in all the timer rebuttals.

And once again, it is not inconsistent to advocate to become more cart accurate one proposal at a time. We can only debate what is within the scope of the proposal without derailing the discussion into every other policy that you've brought up. More cart accurate is better where possible, and trying to claim that nothing matters once one thing is different completely contradicts your (correct) stance against introducing countless other mods.

Peng said:
This is also nothing to do with programming, as I refuse to believe SS Ou would implement timer even if it was possible - its the fact that playerbase do not want it despite it being a fact of playing on cartridge and people conveniently ignore that mech for their own enjoyment
Already addressed this above, but I'll explicitly quote it here as well and repeat the response:

First, it is an issue with programming. So whether you assume there would be opposition to it on other grounds, that programming issue is still sufficient justification.

Second, whether SS OU would've implemented the timer is separate from whether they ought to implement the timer. You can't construe my advocacy on that issue to match what you assume would be the majority opinion and then claim that the stance you decided that I'd have contradicts the stance that I'm advocating on this policy. You're just assigning me arguments.

Third, I will reiterate once again that even ignoring the first two points, those advocating for such timer policy would have the grounds that timer is far more important/necessary to competitive play than sleep clause mod. They would argue that removing time to calc and the ability to play out all battles are substantial competitive hinderances; whereas the absence of sleep is not a major competitive hinderance.
Lalaya said:
fyi every main and side game until Gen4 had an actual instance of Sleep Clause, with the implementation varying between some games where Rest counted/did not or most tournament giving you an autolose if you Sleep two Pokémon at once - of course not in normal play, but for the sake of clarity every generation up until the 4th had a implementation of a official Sleep Clause in competitive, so if anything they should be able to decide whether to keep the Clause or not REGARDLESS of what this thread, or the next series of threads, will bring
since Gen5 outright banned Sleep moves anyway because Sleep as a mechanic is just stupid broken there, this discussion should only matter to Gen6/7/8 tiers and the eventual Gen9 and successors.
This is not true if my understanding is correct. Sleep clause existing in Stadium doesn't make it accurate to Yellow to separately slap on sleep clause. Stadium OU is its own tier and the hybrid (current RBY OU) is not cart accurate to Pokemon Yellow. (If my understanding is wrong please correct me). To be clear, I'm not saying that past gens should change, I'm just pointing out that the Stadium sleep clause is not present in the main series games and this is still a case of adding a mechanic from one game to another, just within the same generation.
 

Plague von Karma

Banned deucer.
If you say RBY three times in the mirror, I will appear in your house while playing comfort jazz music.
This is not true if my understanding is correct. Sleep clause existing in Stadium doesn't make it accurate to Yellow to separately slap on sleep clause. Stadium OU is its own tier and the hybrid (current RBY OU) is not cart accurate to Pokemon Yellow. (If my understanding is wrong please correct me). To be clear, I'm not saying that past gens should change, I'm just pointing out that the Stadium sleep clause is not present in the main series games and this is still a case of adding a mechanic from one game to another, just within the same generation.
This is correct: it isn't accurate, and I largely agree with your point.

For some extra context, though, as I mentioned in my post prior, it was added when research on the Stadium series of games was underdeveloped and with the pretence they would keep being released. People just assumed it was mostly identical at the time if I recall correctly, I know Stadium 2 was until Beelzemon 2003 and a few others showed off a bunch of research last year. Anyway, back in the early days of RBY, Focus Energy was modded to work properly on simulators like NetBattle, some mIRC bots, and (iirc) early versions of RBY on Pokemon Online. Hell, I'll do you one better: here's an old Jolteon analysis that even factored this in! It is not accurate, but with the way the generation developed online, it makes sense, no? It's a relic that was kept because it worked. RBY is an ever-changing generation because it's got lots of funny mechanics that make it a logistical nightmare to make rulings for.

I will point out that the Sleep Clause imported isn't picture-perfect accurate though, and "hybrid" feels like too heavy a word to apply to the situation. Sleep Clause Mod still does not count Rest, which the Stadium games do. In fact, they all do, even Battle Revolution, I believe. Basically, if a Pokemon uses Rest, the opponent cannot inflict sleep, while the player can still self-inflict with further Rest uses. Smogon's Sleep Clause Mod removed this quirk. Regardless, current OU on PS is the most accurate RBY sim of all time, "hybrid" is such a misleading and arguably bad faith notion.

Anyway, that's enough of a history lesson, I think I veered off-track too much.
 
The possibility of leaving a Pokemon behind was not implemented probably for the same reason it is not possible to not have max PPs on PS!: because, assuming each player wants to win, they have no reason to not bring their 6 Pokemon / max their PPs. Since the PS staff approved the implementation of non maxed PPs specifically because of the potential strategic interest in it, you can be certain that the ability to "leave a Pokemon behind" would be implemented if there was an actual reason to do that.
There's at least one such reason, which would have been handy to keep in mind while BW was busy banning Assist. To wit, the offending team there was one that used Prankster Liepard and the rest of the team was constrained to use only Whirlwind plus moves on the Assist exclusion list, thus guaranteeing a positive priority Whirlwind to (hopefully) shuffle the the opponent over hazards. The big catch was that their team couldn't actually have any hazard moves because those aren't on the exclusion list and would spoil the guarantee of getting Whirlwind, so instead all they could do was cynically prey on the near-ubiquity of hazards on other teams, by looking for a potential hazard setter to come in (forcefully phazing it in if necessary) then switching to Ditto to be able to use their moves temporarily.

Someone who knows how that team works, and who sees Liepard + Ditto on team preview, would then be able to react by leaving their hazard setter behind if it would otherwise be such a bad matchup, then all Liepard can do is uselessly waste its PP spinning the wheels in a fruitless hope to force out a Pokemon that was wisely left at home. Or rather, they could, except that Showdown hasn't implemented the option.
 

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