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Old 02-23-2014, 03:43 PM   #1251
Talon87
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Probably not worth arguing anachronisms. It's bad enough that Smogon has rewritten so much of the narrative of Gens 1 and 2, examining those metas through the biased lenses of Gen 4 and Gen 5 players and convinced people that things back in 1997 where very different from how they really were.

The ad hominems have already started to fly, so I'll probably duck out of the thread soon since I don't care to waste my time on angry, insulting strangers. Honestly, if the staff ends up listening to the angry mob and flat out bans either Swagger or Prankster, I think it will be a huge blow to Smogon's reputation. People are on edge these days regarding Smogon's incessant stream of bans -- it would have been better to ban ten things all at once than two or three at a time with no breaks in between -- and I don't think that banning a Gen II move or a Gen V ability from OU is going to earn them much respect. I can live with the likeliest ban to happen -- the ban on the specific combo of Swagger + Prankster -- but even that I don't think should be the direction the staff takes the community in. More and more, I feel like Smogon is trying to shove our adult-sized feet into our shoes from childhood. And they simply don't fit. Times change. Things change. What worked beautifully in 2007 may not work in 2014; and what was ignored in 2007 may be the belle of the ball in 2014. Do I want to find some move on my team to delete for Safeguard? No. Do I want to drop someone on my team to add a Safeguarder? Yes because DIANCIE HRNGHHHHHHHHH No? ¬_¬; But I'll do it if that's what it takes to keep up with the OU metagame.

No one listened to me when I complained about Stealth Rock in 2007.

No one listened to me when I complained about Terrakion in 2011.

What makes this situation any different?
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Old 02-23-2014, 04:25 PM   #1252
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It's funny all this complaining about SwagPlay. Any competitive player worth their salt when faced with a Liepard shouldn't bother trying to outdamage it. No SwagPlay pokemon can win against the likes of Blissey.

With 0 attack IVs, Blissey hits a mighty 22 attack, which is used in Foul Play's damage calc. At +6, Blissey's confusion damage comes to a max of 3.3%...which is healed up by lefties. Meanwhile, STAB Foul Play does...17.3% max. That's a 9HKO factoring in lefties. Meanwhile Blissey can happily stall the prankster out of PP, healing with Wish when necessary, and with +6 FP being a 9HKO factoring in STAB, and 11.7% without, there's not much concern for the fat blob who thanks to paralysis and confusion hitting itself, means against said cat, Blissey is losing about 14% a turn factoring in lefties, which gives enough leeway to Wish up while saving PP in stepping on her own toes.
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Old 02-23-2014, 04:33 PM   #1253
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Just jumping by here to say I agree with Talon for the full 100% percent. I already think Smogon is getting way to trigger happy when it comes to banning. And I have a feeling it's only the tip of the iceberg :/
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Old 02-23-2014, 05:13 PM   #1254
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>Smogon talk about banning SwagPlay
...
Ok this is why I don't comp. Here is a strategy that is pretty unique compared to the mindless SWORDSDANCESWEEP, but because it requires luck it must be banned!!11! What? Seriously, this was a thing last gen. Sableye, Murkrow and Liepard (iirc) could all run this. But they're banning it now why? Because they want all their precious birds and bugs and washing machines to run rampant?
Urgh. Brb finding another move set for Prankster - oh wait it could be banned outright. Then again, we can't have Liepard dirtying up our brilliantly offensive OU now can we? /sarcasm
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Old 02-23-2014, 06:16 PM   #1255
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They're debating... banning... Swagger.

... Fucking hell. How do you even take that seriously?
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Old 02-23-2014, 07:01 PM   #1256
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Riolu made it in OU last gen with Mimic+Roar and entry hazards, and once it got going you had better hope that you had something with priority or else you would almost never win. I've faced my fair share of Liepard and Klefki, and they aren't all that difficult to deal with. Yes, they can take down physical sweepers easily, but as shown above even psychic typed special sweepers don't have too much of a problem. I just switch to Volcarona or Florges, and laugh at how little foul play does while I Bug Buzz/Fiery Dance/Moonblast/HP Fire away.
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Old 02-23-2014, 07:08 PM   #1257
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Also safeguard is a move. Just use that to counter this stuff.
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Old 02-23-2014, 07:35 PM   #1258
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The deal with Prankster Parafusion + Foul Play being a big deal is that it takes skill out of the game and makes the game come down to luck. This discussion is happening for the same reason why Moody and OHKO moves are banned. I have no problem with the discussion, but I think outright banning anything is sort of dumb. I'm a fan Talon's suggestion of 3+ Prankster 'mons on a team being a no-no, but my gut feeling is that they'll probably ban Prankster, Swagger, and Foul Play on the same set.
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Old 02-23-2014, 07:38 PM   #1259
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>takes skill out of the game

...like so very many OU sweepers then!
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Old 02-23-2014, 08:03 PM   #1260
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If this is really about an archetype that requires absolutely no skill to win, let's compare it real quick with Dragon Rulers (Yu-Gi-Oh!).

Parafusion Pranksters: While the team is fairly self-explanatory, you do need to have a decent battling sense to pull it off properly. Knowing when to go for paralysis (Thunder Wave), when to go for confusion (Swagger), and when to scout or shield yourself from harm (Substitute) isn't about luck: it's about skill. Skilled predictions that less skilled players will bungle. I'm not saying it's a whole lot of skill, but to act like there's absolutely zero skill involved is false.

Against a team that is ill-prepared for Parafusion Pranksters, the win rate approaches 100%. Well sure, that certainly seems unfair! :o

But against a team that is well-prepared for Parafusion Pranksters, the win rate approaches 0%. Well that's the opposite of concerning!

Many ways to deal with the team exist. Some are crude but broad (e.g. Electric types' immunity to Thunder Wave). Others are narrow but highly effective (e.g. Safeguard). Some can easily be squeezed onto existing teams at the cost of only one creature slot or move slot (e.g. Safeguard).

Is the team unfair? Well, fundamentally the team is unfair in that Pranksters are assured to go first ... but by that logic, the entire premise of priority is unfair! Ban priority! And from there, the entire premise of losing a speed war is unfair! Ban differences in speed! Fundamentally, Pokémon is already an unfair game: someone always gets to go first and someone else always has to take a punch to the face first before he gets to punch back. That's just how it is. Prankster cuts ahead in line ... but that's about all it does. And only for non-damaging attacks too. So you're only ever going to get statused or seeded or something before you get your chance at firing off a Safeguard to shield your team for the next five turns.

Dragon Rulers: The deck plays itself. No, seriously: in my very first game with Dragon Rulers ever, even with me having no idea what was going on, I just followed the instructions on the cards -- the order hardly mattered, as proved by one point where Doppel chastised me for doing things in a suboptimal order -- and I crushed one of UPN's best player's best decks. The deck is fucking broken. And anyone can pilot it.

Against a deck ill-prepared for Dragon Rulers, the deck's win rate speedily approaches 100%.

And against a deck well-prepared for Dragon Rulers? The deck still enjoys an awesome win rate. (Armchair numbers: 80%! )

The worst odds you'll ever have with a Dragon Rulers deck ... is when you're facing a fellow Dragon Rulers deck, where the odds approach 50%. Gee.

There are many ways to deal with Dragon Rulers ... but none of them are very effective. Even with a tricked-out deck, you're still hugely disadvantaged. And God have mercy on you when you go up against non-DR decks! Then you're sunk!

My point is this: while I agree that Parafusion Pranksters is annoying and while I honestly wouldn't be all that sad to see it go, I do not believe that Smogon should ban it. Just because it annoys (say) 35% of players and curbstomps 40% of popular teams does not mean that it should be banned. If anything, this game sorely could use some fresh play styles to invigorate the fanbase, promote creativity in team building, and promote a diverse meta. If Parafusion Pranksters end up doing the opposite -- i.e. if everyone begins to either run them or their counters and that's it -- then they should be banned for these very same reasons. But if they diversify the meta, if they make it so that we see a triangle evolve where PFP beats hyper offense (HO), HO beats stall, and stall beats PFP, then it should totally stay.

Dragon Rulers was banned because it was an autopilot deck that was nigh-on unstoppable even if you did gut your deck to be a dedicated anti-DR machine. I don't feel that Parafusion Pranksters is anywhere near on the same level of warranting a ban.
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Old 02-23-2014, 08:10 PM   #1261
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I think my YGO approximation of PFP is the best though. It's like Empty Jar. Empty Jar pushes one strategy, and has great potential. However, it has its counters and checks, and then Dark World. Plus its not consistent. It would be consistent with three Morphing Jar. Same with PFP. 4 or 5 PFP is just too consistent. 1 or 2? That's perfectly fine.
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Old 02-23-2014, 08:25 PM   #1262
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Originally Posted by blazeVA View Post
I think my YGO approximation of PFP is the best though. It's like Empty Jar. Empty Jar pushes one strategy, and has great potential. However, it has its counters and checks, and then Dark World. Plus its not consistent. It would be consistent with three Morphing Jar. Same with PFP. 4 or 5 PFP is just too consistent. 1 or 2? That's perfectly fine.
Oh, I'm not saying that PFP approximates DR! I'm specifically comparing a patently broken deck (DR) with a speculatively broken team (PFP) to illustrate that when Smogon keeps harping on and on about how the deck requires "zero skill" to pilot, I feel like we're comparing a puppy with a grizzly bear. I'm saying, "If you want a deck that requires zero skill to pilot, check out Dragon Rulers!"

I'm not familiar with Empty Jar, but I read your post on the Smogon forums and I got the general idea of what you were saying.

The thing is, I may not much care for YGO ... but one thing I really, really envy about the YGO community, as a competitive Pokémon player, is just how diverse their metagame appears to me to be. Maybe that's because I'm a low-ranked player on Dueling Network, but I feel like I see all manner of decks on DN:
  • aggro weenies with gimmicky powers
    • my Fire Fists!
    • Bujins
    • Inzektors
  • aggro enormous dudes cheated out
    • Mermail
    • Dragon Rulers
  • stall
    • Exodia
    • burn
    • many others
  • combo decks
    • frogs
    • Madolches
    • spellcasters
    • Dark World
    • swampert's munchkin monsters whose name I'm forgetting
    • many others
  • lockdown decks (not to be confused with stall that counters as opposed to locking down; lots of overlap)
    • Gravekeeper's
  • other
    • Doppel's StarDust Stun
See, that's the thing. YGO has got such a colorful array of popular decks that you often see when battling. You never know what you're going to be up against! Gen 5 OU and now Gen 6 OU has not felt that way much at all. Gen 5 OU was for much of its run 1) Rain, 2) anti-rain, or 3) people dicking around doing their own thing and losing. Gen 6, from what little I've gotten to see, looks like it's little more than 1) offense/hyper offense and 2) people dicking around doing their own thing and losing. Stall seems to be pretty much dead given the power creep of successive generations. Weather's been nerfed due to its impermanence. It feels like you just keep running into the same team(s) over and over and over again right now. And that sucks. If Parafusion Pranksters would reel that in somewhat, giving offensive teams like my own! ;_; a hard time and giving stall teams a raison d'ętre once more, it could at the very least inject the minimal fun of a three-way triangle into our meta. And from there? Who knows where the winds might take us.
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Old 02-23-2014, 08:57 PM   #1263
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[*]swampert's munchkin monsters whose name I'm forgetting
Ghostrick, good sir - a deck I should really go update with the newer cards out
*Sorry for the off topic but the topic of banning Prankster SwagPlay annoys the stuffing out of me so...*
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Old 02-23-2014, 10:03 PM   #1264
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So apparently my views are so controversial that one of the moderators, Chou Toshio, went back through and deleted two of my seven first posts on Smogon. Copying and pasting their guts here so you can decide for yourself whether they needed to be deleted or not ...

Deleted Post #1:
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The following reasons are general reasons and need not apply to the current discussion alone. They're things to consider whenever you're about to ban something. They should be weighed alongside all of the reasons to ban something.

Reason 1. Variety
The more play styles there are, the less boring it becomes to face off against random challengers. Right now OU is suffering from a dearth of viable play styles. (Game Freak certainly isn't helping stall any with ever-increasingly powerful creatures and attacks ...) If new play styles evolve that give offense/hyper offense teams a run for their money, and if you're the sort of person who is tired of playing the same teams over and over and over again, then perhaps you shouldn't be so hasty to ban everything that threatens offense/hyper offense.

Reason 2. Personal preferences of style
Some people prefer aggro. Some people prefer stall. Some like combos that revolve around Dragon Dancing or Shell Smashing. And some people probably enjoy winning in weird ways like this (Parafusion Prankster teams). If you've ever played a TCG like Magic: the Gathering or Yu-Gi-Oh!, you can appreciate that not everyone likes to run the same deck -- and that the more deck archetypes you allow, the more you empower players to find which deck suits their interests best. Banning an entire archetype of play (or crippling it to the point of unusability) would be like banning an entire TCG deck archetype. To use YGO as the example, it would be like banning all burn decks or all Exodia decks. To use MtG as the example, it would be like banning all mill decks or all goblin decks. If an archetype is breaking the game, then it should be banned. If it is merely inconveniencing certain kinds of decks while easily falling to others, then that's the nature of things: no deck is well-suited to beating every other deck. (Indeed, decks which are tend to be huge suspects for bans!) And no Pokémon team should be expected to beat every other Pokémon team.

Reason 3. Personal preferences of creature
Similar to the above, but the idea here being that someone's favorite Pokémon in the whole wide world is the one you're about to cripple. While this shouldn't stand in the way of bans that need to happen ("Sorry, kid, but Mewtwo's gotta go!"), anyone with a shred of humanity in their heart should pause before voting to ban something that will turn an otherwise-trash Pokémon back into a trash Pokémon. Everyone's suggestions to ban Swagger + Foul Play, Swagger + Prankster, etc, would pretty much cripple Liepard. I don't care for Liepard myself. But I also acknowledge that some people do. I respect that they probably enjoy that their favorite Pokémon, so frequently labeled a shitmon by hardcore players, has finally found a chance to shine in the upper tiers.

Reason 4. Promoting creativity
When you keep banning everything left and right that threatens the status quo, you stifle innovation and growth. This can result in a stagnant meta where only the most superficial elements change from generation to generation. A new type combination here. A new type applied to an old attack there. But nothing really new. No new play styles, no new challenges. It's just the same old, same old. When you allow the challenges introduced by new generations of games to remain, you invite the community to evolve, to adapt, to grow. New challenges are inevitably met with new solutions; these new solutions can bolster fans' ongoing interest in the meta, making the meta feel fresh and uncharted.

Reason 5. Answers, counters & checks
The more ways a threat can be dealt with, the less likely it should be banned. The better something can be dealt with, the less likely it should be banned. Blissey has many counters. Entry hazards have only a small handful of ways to deal with them but at least two of them work very well. Both are therefore good examples of powerful elements which have suitable answers.

Reason 6. Solutions proportional to the problems they solve
Sometimes a particular ban is much too drastic to solve the problem that needs solving. A well-known example is the blanket ban of Blaziken to Ubers instead of just banning Speed Boost Blaziken. If a solution would be disproportionate to the problem it's meant to solve, that's one good reason not to implement it. Relevant to this conversation, people are talking about some pretty drastic ban proposals, including:
  • banning Swagger
  • banning all non-damaging confusion-inducing moves
  • banning Thunder Wave
  • banning Prankster
  • banning Klefki
I would even say that the proposals to ban Swagger + Foul Play, Swagger + Prankster, or Swagger + Thunder Wave overstretch. I've outlined in earlier posts in this thread that I think it would be best to limit the number of Parafusion Pranksters a person can have on their team (e.g. 2 max) as this way you don't ban an entire creature, you don't ban an entire status condition, you don't ban an entire staple of the metagame (Thunder Wave), but you do address the problem people are complaining about with these all-Prankster teams.

These are six general reasons that should factor into your decision to ban or not ban ____. Even if you do end up deciding to ban _____, it should only be after considering these issues and assessing that the severity of the problem is too great to ignore.

Deleted Post #2:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by DasAsch
Reason 3. Personal preferences of creature
Really? Do you know how many fanboys cried out in pain when Garchomp was banned in DPP? Did that stop Smogon from enacting the ban? Of course not. If someone loves Liepard,too bad. It doesn't matter who likes the Pokemon or strategies we ban, if they deserve to be banned. Thundurus, Sableye, Murkrow, etc already have viable ways to use them. Regardless, if people want to use an unviable Pokemon, they can do so- in NU. That's why we have tiers. This argument is not an argument. We are here to foster a competitive environment, not pander to 10 year olds who want to use their favorite Pokemon even if it contradicts our goal. Your former two reasons were legitimate reasons to avoid a ban, they just didn't apply to Swagplay. This reason, however, is terrible.
First, what part of "While this shouldn't stand in the way of bans that need to happen" did you not understand? There's no need for you to repeat what I've said, let alone present it as some sort of devastating rebuttal to this particular talking point. What Reason 3 merely says is that you should not ban creatures willy-nilly because you're banning someone's favorite every time you do. In itself, this is a cruel thing to do. It should be done for the greater good, obviously, if the Pokémon is ruining the metagame. But in the particular case of Liepard, there's a very easy fix. Nobody had any problems with Liepard in Gen 5. Liepard has been running Prankster @ Thunder Wave | Substitute | Swagger | Foul Play for at least a year now: she's a well-recognized fixture of the Random Battle circuit and anyone who's laddered in RandBats knows her moveset inside and out. She never penetrated OU in Gen 5 -- not to great success, anyway -- and the suggestion that she and her moveset be banned from the game would have gotten you laughed out of the forums not but five months ago. Nothing has changed for Liepard since the release of X and Y. All that has changed is that she has enough functional copies now (in the forms of Murkrow, Tornadus, Klefki, and so on) that it has been recognized that you can essentially run a 6x Liepard team to modest effect. The Pokémon isn't the root of the problem: it's people dodging Species Clause as the Parafusion Pranksters are functional clones of one another. Rather than spay the cat and ruin her for people who enjoy her, you can satisfy both the people irritated with Parafusion Prankster teams and the people who want to keep on using Liepard as she is by instituting a ban on the number of Liepard-like creatures you can run on one team (which is what this problem is about) instead of banning core elements of her moveset and rendering her useless not just in OU but in every tier.

If it were the case that Prankster Liepard @ Thunder Wave | Substitute | Swagger | Foul Play were, all on her own, a devastating Pokémon that tears through teams like a tornado, then absolutely Liepard should be banned. It's called Mega Blaziken. It's called Mega Kangaskhan. Liepard is hardly in that position. And so I'm saying that out of compassion for her fans I'd rather not see her or her best moveset banned. That the moveset is frustrating when it occurs three, four, hypothetically six times in one team is undeniable. But all on its own, it's just another legal moveset. It's just another legitimate way to morph an otherwise crappy Pokémon into something with real chops.

Second, you incorrectly suggest that Liepard can return to NU. That's simply not going to happen. If Swagger + Prankster is considered banworthy for OU, it is going to be banworthy for UU, RU, and NU too. Thus, a husk of Liepard may return to NU: but not the Liepard that her fans knew. That's kind of the point in considering alternative measures to correct a problem before resorting to creature bans.

The sad thing is that not only did two people like the first post before Chou Toshio deleted it -- but the reason he gave for deleting it was the condescending:
Quote:
Reason: Post is baseless, and clearly ignorant of tiering philosophy..
Yeah okay.

So the next time you want to say, "Man, so-and-so on UPN sure does abuse his position of power!", whether it's some LO in the ASB, whether it's some mod in FB, whether it's some personal friend of Kuno's, whomever: just remember that we don't make a habit of deleting people's posts and leaving insulting messages for them to read when they go back later wondering what happened to their post. Pretty sure that shit would not be tolerated here. But it's great to see that Smogon is such a warm and caring environment for opinions of all kinds.
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Old 02-23-2014, 10:17 PM   #1265
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...
Fucking... what. What. What what what what what what *Whimsy has encountered an error and needs to close*

Ok, cool, yep. You just carry on Smogon. Keep "Creating that Comp Environment" consisting of the same team of Talonflame/Rotom-W/Genesect/Whatever for the rest of Gen VI. Ignore us "10 Year Olds" who want just a splash, just a taste, just a little bit of diversity, creativity and, DARE I SAY, FUN when we start laddering.
See, sometimes I think I should start learning a bit more about comp but then this reminds me why I like to stay ignorant of the metagame as a whole.
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Old 02-23-2014, 10:50 PM   #1266
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That really doesn't make any sense. The thread shouldn't be labelled Discussion, but instead "Let's Talk about why we should ban Liepard and Company!"

Honestly, you were voicing your opinion, and a good one at that. Clearly your opinion was too good, though, since that mod couldn't have any prankster haters converted.

This is exactly why I use my Platinum Team and everything like it. No one has any right to come at me and say "X is cheap and broken!" since only one pokemon on the team is OU, and that's Mamoswine (Froslass is BL though). The rest are newly added UU's (Porygon-Z and Togekiss) or RU (Tangrowth and Gallade).
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Old 02-23-2014, 10:58 PM   #1267
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Okay before we all get our panties in a twist, let's look at why Smogon bans things.

Too powerful: Pretty self-explanatory.
Overcentralizing: So prevelant that your team has to prepare for it or you're going to have a bad time.
Skill-related: An ideal metagame is one where the more skilled players wins more often. Taking things that rely way too much on luck go here, Moody, OHKO, Evasion Clause go here. Also Endless Battle since that's not skill-related.

Talon, going off your first deleted post Reasons 1-4 have absolutely nothing to do with the above three things. Five and Six relate. Your second post had some more relevant points, but at the end of the day it sort of came down to "no don't ban Liepard's best moveset because feelings will be hurt." While Chou probably could've been a bit nicer with his message, he's not entirely wrong. Your other posts before concerning the banning of three or more Prankster Pokemon on the same team were good because they related to the luck vs. skill aspect of the banning philosophy. But the two deleted had reasons that would involve Smogon catering to certain playstyles/Pokemon just because you say so.

Lol swampy you're acting like some kind of heinous crime has been committed. "Down with Smogon! They're not about having fun!" Well if you feel so strongly about the subject maybe you could actually present relevant arguments as to why Prankster Parafusion shouldn't be banned rather than bashing Smogon for deleting posts with arguments that have nothing to do with the reason for why things are banned. Yeesh.

Basically, I'm sick of all the bitching and moaning that people do about Smogon when often the moaners are often in the wrong.

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>Red

There is no agenda to ban Prankster Parafusion. There are tons of posts in that thread, I'm sure that you can find some that are for keeping Klefki and friends around that have actual reasons that pertain to the banning philosophy. The OU Council really doesn't care about people's favorites. They care about creating the healthiest metagame, and that's why there's a community discussion going on about something that could be banned under the general classification of "luck over skill."
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Old 02-23-2014, 11:35 PM   #1268
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Originally Posted by phoopes View Post
if you feel so strongly about the subject maybe you could actually present relevant arguments as to why Prankster Parafusion shouldn't be banned
Except if he did that his post might be deleted.

I've already presented reasons in the Smogon thread why Parafusion Prankster should not be fully banned from the server. I've already explained why it would be a good idea to restrict the number you can run from six down to two. (Or, if they really want to be sticklers about it, one. One would be enough to satisfy most people.) Unfortunately, these ideas were not only ridiculed by fellow regular members but were dismissed out of hand by two moderators who backed each other up with the view that the best solution is to ban the combination of Prankster + Swagger.

At this point, a suspect test is all but inevitable. All Haunter appears to be probing for is what exactly he should be suspect testing. Should it be Prankster + Swagger? Should it be Prankster + Thunder Wave? Should it be Swagger + Foul Play? Should it be Prankster + Swagger + Foul Play? What oh what should he be testing for? That seems to be the purpose behind this thread: polling the community to establish the most popular or best element to conduct the suspect test for. But the test itself seems a done deal. It seems to me that enough insiders are determined to see this gimmick eradicated from the meta that the suspect test will happen and, barring a miraculous vote afterwards, something is going to get banned. The only question is what.

I think that if people want the ban to fail (for better or worse), it will be up to them to provide copious amounts of battle replays in order to persuade the voters and the staff alike that ___ shouldn't be banned. If people won't listen to reason, perhaps they will listen to cold, hard facts. If Parafusion Prankster teams can be easily circumnavigated with the appropriate measures, then this really will have been proven to be Stealth Rock 2.0 and it's time for the denizens of OU to man up or shut up. Vice versa, if the evidence points to Parafusion Prankster being broken, part of me will undoubtedly shout "GOOD! " and be glad to be rid of it, even though I have hardly encountered it for lack of OU laddering in recent months. Despite my devil's advocacy, I really am not a fan of annoying gimmicks like Parafusion Prankster, and while I will fight to preserve the mechanic for individual creatures like Liepard or Klefki, I have no qualms joining forces with the ban movement when it comes to seeing the all-Prankster teams go.

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Basically, I'm sick of all the bitching and moaning that people do about Smogon when often the moaners are often in the wrong.
Lumping swampert, Red, myself, or anyone else here in with the Verlisify fiasco -- if that is indeed what this comment is alluding to -- is unkind and unfair. I've written and withheld a number of posts on this matter over the past few days. I guess since I had decided against posting the latest such post, now is as good a time as any to post this relevant excerpt from it:

Quote:
Problem #2: Peer Pressure
For the most part, I like Smogon's rules. For the most part, I enjoy their encyclopedia of competition-worthy movesets. There's enough that I dislike or am skeptical of that I hesitate to label myself "pro-Smogon," but I find that I align more with the pro-Smogon side than the anti-Smogon side, generally speaking.

So when anti-Smogon players complain about Smogon's rules, it's easy for me to furrow my eyebrows at them and ask, "Well if you don't like it so much, what's stopping you from not using them? " No one's holding a gun to their heads, after all, I reason. No one's being forced to use Smogon's rules.

Except that they are. That's what I've discovered recently. It's by no means a majority of players, but I have observed time and time again the following complaint by anti-Smogon players:
(paraquote) "I try to battle with people online ... but nobody wants to battle any other way than the Smogon way. My old friends are never online (in-game). Passersby who I challenge to a battle will quit the instant they see that I am using Pokémon Smogon considers über. 'A win's a win,' you might say, but I want to battle, not waste my time setting up a battle only for it to end before it even began. And as for trying to make new friends on Twitter, nobody wants to play anything but Smogon rules."
Now, obviously it's not the case that nobody else wants to play the way they do. Of course there have got to be some people. There's an entire contingent of these players who tweet about how much they hate Smogon and Smogon rules, so it's not like any of these people are the last sane man in an insane world. But the problem is one of networking and peer pressure. It's all but impossible for these players to hook up with one another when they are (it would seem) in the overwhelming minority. And it's discouraging to even try when they get shouted down, insulted, and ridiculed by immature pro-Smogon players.
For the most part, I side with Smogon and the VGC community in this shitstorm. I certainly don't side with Mr. Verlisify. (I couldn't even finish his Mega Lucario video. >_<) But I do sympathize with the disaffected fans who want a competitive experience different from the one Smogon offers yet are having a hard time finding it.
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Old 02-24-2014, 12:06 AM   #1269
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Originally Posted by Talon87 View Post
I've already presented reasons in the Smogon thread why Parafusion Prankster should not be fully banned from the server. I've already explained why it would be a good idea to restrict the number you can run from six down to two. (Or, if they really want to be sticklers about it, one. One would be enough to satisfy most people.) Unfortunately, these ideas were not only ridiculed by fellow regular members but were dismissed out of hand by two moderators who backed each other up with the view that the best solution is to ban the combination of Prankster + Swagger.
Unfortunately, you happen to be in the minority in a large community. I didn't look but I'm sure the sort of "complex ban" (if you want to call it that) that you support would be ridiculed by some because as the size of the population gets larger, the number of assholes gets larger also. I maintain that Chou was in the right though. While your posts had some intellignce to them unlike a lot of the crap in there they were centered around reasons like people's feelings getting hurt if their favorites got nerfed, which doesn't pertain to the banning philosophy.

Quote:
At this point, a suspect test is all but inevitable. All Haunter appears to be probing for is what exactly he should be suspect testing. Should it be Prankster + Swagger? Should it be Prankster + Thunder Wave? Should it be Swagger + Foul Play? Should it be Prankster + Swagger + Foul Play? What oh what should he be testing for? That seems to be the purpose behind this thread: polling the community to establish the most popular or best element to conduct the suspect test for. But the test itself seems a done deal. It seems to me that enough insiders are determined to see this gimmick eradicated from the meta that the suspect test will happen and, barring a miraculous vote afterwards, something is going to get banned. The only question is what.
The attitude behind the thread is definitely skewed in the direction of "something needs to be done" rather than "should we do something." This is because a large part of the community being sick of their games being determined on the coin flip of Prankster Swagger since it makes the game more about luck than skill. I know Haunter pretty well and he'll stay neutral on just about everything. You're right however about a lot of "insiders" (mostly tournament players) wanting the gimmick gone though, which is why it seems like the test is an inevitability. All comes down to what the community wants at the end of the day if this follows the normal procedure of getting reqs to vote.

Quote:
Lumping swampert, Red, myself, or anyone else here in with the Verlisify fiasco -- if that is indeed what this comment is alluding to -- is unkind and unfair.
It wasn't directed at you, only at swampy. And then it also applied to red. You actually provide intelligent discussion. Sorry to be blunt, but swampy's post was all about boo hoo Smogon ruins everything and Red's was a conspiracy theory post about how the mods will delete anything that doesn't fall in line with their viewpoints. It's the same uninformed whiner mentality as Verlisify, granted, not nearly as much or as bad though.

Quote:
For the most part, I side with Smogon and the VGC community in this shitstorm. I certainly don't side with Mr. Verlisify. (I couldn't even finish his Mega Lucario video. >_<) But I do sympathize with the disaffected fans who want a competitive experience different from the one Smogon offers yet are having a hard time finding it.
I do feel some sympathy for people who don't like 6 vs 6 Singles Smogon rules. Smogon is so omnipresent in the competitive battling scene that it can be tough to find anyone doing something different. I know Pokemon Online and a few other communities have their own tiers, so there's them I suppose. Smogon does also support VGC, GBU Singles, and other stuff (though it's obviously not as big) so we do try to accommodate a bit. With Custom Game on Pokemon Showdown, you can try your own stuff with friends online. But yeah, admittedly, options other than Smogon are a bit lacking. While I do somewhat agree with our "Don't like our rules? Fine, play somewhere else" mentality, it can be difficult for everyone to find something they like.
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Old 02-24-2014, 03:50 AM   #1270
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>swampy
>Coherent arguments
Yeah, I'm no good at those. Sorry Phoopes.
Most of my "arguments" are based off my feelings at the time which was where my issue with Smogon came in - the rather... blunt way that some Smogon members basically shoot down ideas leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth. I mean I can get where they are coming from but I guess I'm too... unwilling to be serious about the competitive meta and as such the serious nature of the users clashes with me.
It's why I hate the Skype chat when it dissolves to comp discussion which ends with arguments about Talonflame/Genesect/Mega Luke etc which basically resort to "No this is bad and this is correct and you are bad for playing that when you should be playing this." That's not really my thing.

I mean if you want me to try and make a valid argument about SwagPlay then I can't really bring anything new to the table - I mean my current argument for it is basically like thus:
Looking back at Moody, the other luck based strategy, the issue was the ability itself, not the movepool. And it was more pronounced the minute it was released that it was easily exploited. Thus you could shove any old stalling moves onto the user and the game would then slow down to the coin flipping. Whereas the issue with SwagPlay isn't so much the ability (because this is perfectly possible with others, just... not as immediate) but the combination of moves. The problem is that this has been possible to run for a while now, and it's only just reached the limelight for banning. Was SwagPlay an issue through the previous parts of Gen V/VI? I don't really know, but it seems like it's suddenly become popular now. I guess this means that what started off as a gimmick has now become an actual threat. I mean, this does sound like it's becoming too good, however I'd be more inclined to ban the use of the two moves together, instead of banning them in conjunction with Prankster. Sure, Prankster gives you more reason to run them due to priority, but Prankster Swagger/Prankster Foul Play on their own seems a lot more bearable and beatable than the two together.
And I'm pretty sure that's been done before.
Also, from what I've heard, most teams these days are basically the same few pokemon stapled together. I guess that's what OU has always been, but I'm more for risky creativity than useful reliability so...

Now, please note that this is coming from someone who doesn't really have much comp experience (and prefers stally gimmicks like SwagPlay even though he's never used it) and anything I say must be taken with a huge keg of salt.
In fact, yeah this was a bad argument and I'm sorry for getting worked up, I was just venting really.
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Old 02-24-2014, 06:53 AM   #1271
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Wasn't trying to pull together a conspiracy theory, I promise ^_^

I happen to like Liepard quite a bit, and used her last generation in most of my teams. I also use her in the ForFun metagame, and we have no problem with her their either. I'm just tired of things being banned left and right, though I can understand your logic in moving forward with this. I just don't want to see her banned outright. Klefki, awesome. Sableye, sure. I do not want a previously NU pokemon banned though, even without my liking towards Liepard. Sorry to sound like I was just throwing out insults without thinking.
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Old 02-24-2014, 06:57 AM   #1272
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Swagger should only be banned in the Battle Maison. In Smogon, I don't think so just because I never saw anyone complain about it last generation with Liepard :/
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Old 02-24-2014, 12:33 PM   #1273
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I don't have a healthy opinion of Smogon mods anyways, especially since one encounter with one basically drove me away(bitch gave me a Kush snark PM x 1000 when I politely disagreed with her on one fucking point.) But if you guys don't want it banned, come up with a good reason not to ban it and be done with it.

There is a reason I compare it with Empty Jar. Yes, both EJ and PFP need skill to play, but they are solitaire strategies. They require little to no input from your opponent in order to work. I dislike those kind of strategies. They are only fun from the perspective of the person using them, that's the problem.

(I was actually going to suggest a Foul Play + Swagger ban though, but it seems it came up. People are dumb anyways and can't see that Foul Play is what's breaking the set, but isn't broken itself.)
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Old 02-24-2014, 12:59 PM   #1274
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Double post because yeah.

IS THAT SOME MEGA LATIAS I SEE THAR??????

I was very surprised by this. From the info we know, it likely won't be as powerful as Soul Dew Lati@s, and its kinda butt-ugly too, but it gives Latias and Latios a nice boost.

This match goes from terrible hax on my end and a potential Delphox sweep to me completely turning it around. I'M not even sure how it happened. O.o
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Old 02-24-2014, 01:47 PM   #1275
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Wrote up a post. Don't want it to go to waste but also don't want to post it on Smogon only for some asshole to delete it again or for people to ridicule it and continue to witch hunt for Liepard. (I don't even know why I'm defending this creature so much when I really don't care for it! ^^; I guess it just bugs me to see the lynch mob persecuting the wrong culprit.)

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Prankster Liepard @ Swagger | Foul Play | Thunder Wave | Substitute has been a fixture of the Random Battle circuit for a long time now. Few have ever felt that she is broken there and needs to be banned. And keep in mind that this is a format where:
  1. She enjoys superior speed and defense relative to what she enjoys in OU owing to the Random Battle format's leveling system. Pokémon with lower BSTs tend to be upgraded while Pokémon with higher BSTs tend to be downgraded. With a BST of only 446, only sixty-seven fully-evolved Pokémon forms have lower BSTs than Liepard.
  2. Players have absolutely no control over the makeup of their teams. Creatures are randomly assigned and their pre-written movesets are also randomly assigned. While the format has creatures and moves which enable players to counter Swagplay strategies, receiving one of these is completely out of one's hands.
  3. Creatures can be banned or modified if it is felt that they are too overpowered for the format, i.e. that they tend to make the format a coin toss where whoever is lucky enough to be assigned that Pokémon wins the match (all other things being equal).
Despite this, this particular Liepard has never been banned to my knowledge. Granted, RandBats is RandBats and OU is OU. I am merely pointing out that despite her relatively high level and effective moveset, Swagplay Liepard hasn't been banned from a format where players have no opportunity to prepare adequate counters for her.

It is therefore hard to believe that so many OU players, many of them veteran members of the community, are convinced that the problem is with this one moveset rather than with the de facto dodging of Species Clause. That's really what Parafusion Prankster teams boil down to: abusing Smogon's narrowly-defined Species Clause by taking advantage of the functional clones that Game Freak has produced across different species over the past two generations. No one complained about the moveset in Gen 5, I suspect, largely because few people ran teams of 3+ Parafusion Prankster Pokémon in Gen 5. It wasn't unheard of, but it wasn't remotely common either. The problem has become a nuisance now not because the moveset has suddenly transformed from legit to OP -- it hasn't -- but because players have recognized how easy it is to copy+paste the moveset three, four, six times over and win games with it. We can philosophize about "skill vs. luck" and "fair play" until all sides are blue in the face, but at the end of the day I don't think anyone would be taken seriously if they tried to argue that a Swagplay Liepard or a Swagplay Murkrow, all by itself, was a nigh-unstoppable force devastating OU. The problem isn't the set: it's the number of times the set can be legally run on one team.

While dismantling the moveset is certainly one way to address the immediate problem of Swagplay abuse, I worry that this is only a temporary solution to a greater problem. I worry that in several months' time the community is going to be right back here again, discussing ban proposals for other Prankster-based strategies which rely on an element of chance. Prankster + Substitute + Thunder Wave, Prankster + Copycat w/ Roar, etc. The thing is, players adapt. If you ban Swagplay, they're not going to quit taking advantage of the Prankster movesets that so many in this thread seem to despise. They'll simply move from Plan A to slightly inferior Plan B. As has been pointed out many times, the same luck-based criticisms that apply to strategic use of confusion apply to strategic use of paralysis and sleep as well. Paralysis has the added bonus of reducing the affected Pokémon's speed, but we've all known battles where we inflicted paralysis not for the speed drop but instead 1) for the chance that our opponent would not get to act that turn or 2) for the chance that we phaze our opponent out precisely because we make him worry too much about #1. Likewise, when you put an enemy Pokémon to sleep and your opponent chooses to leave it on the battlefield, you're each gambling on a chance: he hopes to wake up in the next two turns while you hope he stays asleep for at least two turns. I bring these examples up to illustrate that if you ban Prankster + Swagger, people will simply keep on using Prankster in conjunction with other moves that incapacitate the opponent and rely on chance. If you don't hold these combinations to be broken all by themselves, then I ask how you can hold Prankster + Swagger all by itself to be broken. (If the problem is specifically with Prankster + Swagger + Foul Play, then ban all three together. Don't crudely ban incomplete combinations of two and set poor precedents for future disgruntled battlers to point to when they want to push for other bans of elements of chance.) If you hold them to be broken when they appear three, four, six times on the same team, then you're not really upset with the movesets themselves: you're upset with people effectively dodging the limitations imposed by Species Clause, and thus the ban you're pushing for should match what you really want.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Reasons not posting this on Smogon:
  1. Attacks that comparisons with the Random Battle format are invalid.
    • While I agree that Random Battle isn't OU ...
    • ... it's kind of like the Navy Seals to OU's National Guard. If players feel that something isn't a victory-guaranteeing creature in RandBats where they have zero control over their team, then it's preposterous that OU players can bitch and whine that something is broken when they have full control over their team's makeup
  2. Attacks that I'm invoking slippery slope logic with paralysis and sleep.
    • Honestly, this accusation is polluting and should not be bandied about casually. When you accuse people of this, it's "guilty before proven innocent" in the minds of most readers and you distract from the more important discussion at hand, forcing this person to waste time defending themselves. And the more they defend that they're not doing guilty of the slippery slope logical fallacy, the more people write them off as a windbag.
    • The comparison with other chance-based status afflictions that can be lent priority via Prankster is apt. People don't like it because it illustrates the ridiculousness of their witch hunt, but the fact of the matter is that any arguments against Swagger's role in a fair play meta apply just as strongly to Thunder Wave or Spore. With all three of these incapacitating statuses (confusion, paralysis, sleep), the inflicter is banking on the victim being affected while the victim is hoping to break through. In all cases, it's a game of chance. Confusion shares in common with sleep that it wears off eventually. Paralysis doesn't even have that going for its fairness: all it has is that inaction occurs 25% of the time vs. 50% of the time (?) with confusion.
  3. General ridicule of the theory that it's Species Clause being dodged that's the problem.
Honestly, I'd probably have posted this despite all of these concerns were it not for Chou Toshio's asshole actions last night. But deleting my posts coupled with leaving disparaging remarks for me to read when I went back to find why they'd been deleted ... yeah, fuck that shit.
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