02-24-2014, 10:31 PM | #1301 |
Foot, meet mouth.
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...I don't see how proving that Blissey is a suitable answer is a good idea. It's only proving that you _need_ a Blissey to counter Liepard. And Blissey has no place in any offensive team, and Jeri, hyper offense is literally the only reason some people play Pokemon at all.
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02-24-2014, 11:05 PM | #1302 | |
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However, if in addition to Blissey this strategy is also devastated by Safeguard ... and Rotom-W ... and Electric or Ground types primed to counter ... so on and so on and so forth, then I would say that perhaps the mechanic is less broken and more "a new facet of life in Gen 6." Or at least, what would be life in Gen 6 if Smogon wasn't busting out the hunting rifle at first sight of an Indian elephant. I dunno. I find this new life form intriguing, even if I personally find it annoying to play against. It's much like how I find many of Muyo's best YGO decks annoying to play against yet marvelous at the same time. I love how clever Muyo is and how well his decks work ... but good God do I hate playing against most of them as they make me feel like a fly caught in a spider's web. >_< These Parafusion Prankster teams feel much the same way to me. They're not for me to use, and they're not my cup of tea to have to beat either ... but they're neat. They represent a niche that wouldn't have even existed two generations ago, and that's kinda cool to me. Aside: While I'm here, Posts 9 and 10 because WHEEE PROBABLE DELETION TALON U R SUCH A REBEL. Spoiler: show
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02-24-2014, 11:50 PM | #1303 |
Foot, meet mouth.
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But Talon, I think the question is, doesn't forcing things to run Safeguard or specific versions of pokemon- which, by the way, are very open to being countered themselves- give you a pretty valid argument for overcentralisation in itself? It's a little like how Salamence got banned in DP despite not being too overpowered- granted, that was mostly because of Salamence's different movesets with no way to predict which it was running- but I think the point still stands that if you have to run something, especially multiple layers of counters, just to deal with one threat, it's not good for the metagame.
And the thing is, with Swagger/Foul Play, you have to make sure multiple pokemon can stop it. Because there's a very good possibility you can't attack at all, even with walls. I think that's one of the big problems, because a 50/50 chance is really too huge.
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02-25-2014, 12:15 AM | #1304 | |
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If we want to dichotomize the meta, there were two dominant playstyles in late Gen 4: aggro (a.k.a. offense & hyper-offense) and stall. Gen 5 witnessed the decline of the latter and the full dominance of the former. Things only amplified in Gen 6 with the emergence of megas, powerful priority hitters (like Aegislash), and powerful speedy hitters (like Talonflame). Many of the key players in stall -- Blissey, Skarmory, Gliscor -- have found themselves out of a job in Gen 6 as they are now too fragile to complete their old jobs and yet too incapable of doing anything else better than other Pokémon can. So if we want to trichotomize the meta now, imagine that players discover the following:
... is Pokémon StarCraft. And that's a right deal better than what we currently have which is one archetype (HO) ruling the roost with no one else allowed to be good. I say this as a fan of offensive play styles. I say this as someone who has hated fighting against enemy Blisseys for over ten years. I am neither a stall player nor a SwagPlay player. But I do believe that if the prevalence of the one would ensure the rebirth of the other and together they would give us a meta that is more archetypically diverse and robust, then we should be welcoming the new play style with open arms rather than shooting it on sight. If you don't want to think of it like StarCraft, think of it like YGO. Does YGO ban every single deck type out there except for aggro decks and Exodia decks? No. YGO allows for God knows how many deck archetypes, and each of them has its own unique strengths and weaknesses against other decks. Does the fact that Archetype A loses to Archetype B 90% of the time mean that Archetype B needs to be banned? No. I'm sure Archetype A players would love it, but no, it does not mean that. You can also think of it like the ecosystem if you like. "Talon," you say, "isn't it true that coyotes eat deer and rabbits? So shouldn't we exterminate coyotes if we want a more diverse forest?" Yeah, you do that: and then watch as the deer and rabbit populations spiral upwards out of control, all of the edible vegetation is devoured, the land becomes barren as the harsh winds erode the topsoil, leaving behind only nutrient-poor sand and clay, and now no animals can survive here save a few bugs. Sometimes it's for the best for everyone -- including the prey -- to have a predator in the ecosystem. It keeps things in check and allows every species to prosper. Mind you, these thoughts all hinge upon the validity of the assumption that SwagPlay is a) a whole new archetype rather than some trite little gimmick and that it is also b) the predator of HO teams and the prey of stall teams.
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02-25-2014, 02:30 PM | #1305 | |
Volcano Badge
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Also that thread... I don't understand how anyone is that stupid... to want to ban parafusion + Prankster. really? |
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02-25-2014, 04:44 PM | #1306 | ||
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Quote:
fool. Quote:
It's actually kind of funny and sad how many Pokémon would be fixtures of OU or UU if Smogon were to unban certain things. For example, I didn't quite remember what Keen Eye does so I had to look it up. In older gens, it prevented accuracy drops; but in this generation, it also ignores evasion boosts. Can you imagine? Pokémon who are unable to be Mud-Slapped or Double Teamed on. In a meta where Double Team was a thing, this would be a pretty amazing ability to have. And just look who gets it! Drapion ... Braviary ... Meowstic ... Skarmory ... Can you imagine? Can you imagine what that meta might look like? I'm not saying that I love the idea of somebody winning because they spammed Double Team six times ... but honestly, how is that any different from somebody winning because they spammed Dragon Dance three or four times? People talk about how it's your fault if you get Dragon Danced on but it's beyond your control if somebody does a Double Team sweep of your team. How is it any less or more my fault one way than the other? I switch in something that can prevent him from running away with DD. Done. I switch in something that can prevent him from running away with DT. Done. But because Smogon is so infuriated by luck-based victories and defeats, we don't live in a world of Braviaries and Ninjasks in OU. We instead live in a world of one beatstick after another, with Braviary and Ninjask oddly relegated to lower tiers, forced to wear shoes that don't fit their feet. Honestly, I'm not sure what to make of the Smogon situation myself sometimes. While I really yearn for a more diverse meta on the one hand, I really do hate having to fight stall, evasion, or gimmick teams on the other. It's such a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation for me. In many ways, the Gen 5 and Gen 6 meta is all I ever dreamed of. A meta where weather is actually popular? A meta where almost everyone is running teams just like mine, filled with fast, hard-hitting attackers and special attackers? A meta where almost every fight feels fair provided they're not running too many Suspect Test legendaries and megas? All I know is, if YGO were nothing but people playing Six Sam, Bujin, and Fire Fist decks, I would have quit before we even got past Round One of the tournament. What makes YGO so appealing is the diversity, the range of play styles in the decks. I want that same diversity for Pokémon.
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02-25-2014, 05:52 PM | #1307 |
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I wrote up this post that I feel is important ... but in the time it took me to write it, the thread moved ahead by three to four pages. I felt that posting it now would be seen as flamebaiting (when that's not the intent) or trying to derail the conversation, so my options were either let it go to waste or share it here. I hate to pester you with these posts, especially since some find this Smogon drama suffocating, but hopefully you can find this post enjoyable (whether you agree or disagree with what I have to say) and perhaps it will even make you want to offer a reply of your own.
Spoiler: show
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02-25-2014, 06:25 PM | #1308 |
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In other news ... Blaze and I have wrapped up our play testing. (Or at least our first round of it, should we decide to do more. @_@) I don't want to bias you guys one way or the other, so I'll just go ahead and provide the replays below and let you watch the ones you'd like to watch.
Team Electrode = Talon, Team Gen 3 Heroes = Blaze: Match 1 (21 turns) Match 2 (64 turns) Match 3 (13 turns) Team Electrode = Blaze, Team Gen 3 Heroes = Talon: Match 10 (55 turns) Match 11 (145 turns) Match 12 (30 turns) Team Klefki = Blaze, Team Gen 3 Heroes = Talon: Match 4 (82 turns) Match 5 (48 turns) Match 6 (49 turns) Team Klefki = Talon, Team Gen 3 Heroes = Blaze: Match 7 (69 turns) Match 8 (71 turns) Match 9 (42 turns) Team Klefki = Talon, Team Gen 3 Heroes = Blaze, Swagger replaced by Confuse Ray: Match 13 (60-odd turns) Team Klefki = Blaze, Team Gen 3 Heroes = Talon, Foul Play replaced by suitable standard moves: Match 14 (60-odd turns) Team Klefki = Blaze, Team Gen 3 Heroes = Talon, Team G3H upgraded to Gen 6 standards and Team Klefki given non-PFP movesets except they do still have Swagger since we want to examine if Swagger alone is too broken: Match 15 (33 turns) I'll offer my own thoughts later, but for now I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. For those who simply want the W:L data, I'll provide that below inside the spoiler tag. Spoiler: show I realize that the sample size is small but these games took quite a while to complete.
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02-25-2014, 08:45 PM | #1309 |
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"I GET IT, OKAY!?" (Random Battle; 38 turns because of PP stall but it really ended on Turn 19 or so)
The battle is unremarkable but for my opponent's final message following a battle of almost total silence, punctuated only by a command he accidentally typed aloud on Turn 9 and my engaging the battle timer on Turn 17 because he refused to pick a move for over a minute. But that final message ...! Weird. (And for the record, he didn't leave instantly. I responded within one second of seeing his message and he then sat there for a good three to five seconds before leaving the room without saying another word.)
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02-25-2014, 09:13 PM | #1310 | |
プラスチック♡ラブ
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Oh no, you have to change your playstyle to adapt to changes in the meta! Oh no, you can't use the same old tired cookiecutter team you've used for 3 months straight! This is my biggest problem with the Smogon format. There's this overarching sentiment behind every ban - be it justified or not - that things should be banned because it interferes with the current playstyle, not because it's balancing. In some cases, like with the ban of Mega Mom, it's one in the same, since Mega Mom overwhelmed Hyper Offense by being so hyperoffensive she tore through the frail teams. But in this case, it just makes Smogoners who are clinging to their Azumarill/Greninja/Talonflame/Rotom-W/Tyranitar/Aegislash teams look petty because they've been outmaneuvered. This is the reason why I play VGC. Even if it is centralized around a set of Pokémon, there's enough factors outside of one or two major offensive players that allow a much wider stock of threats to be viable. |
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02-25-2014, 09:16 PM | #1311 |
head head bitch
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02-25-2014, 10:44 PM | #1312 | |
Foot, meet mouth.
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I'm pretty sure that's not what you're going for. When someone comes into pokemon, are they really going to want to make a stall team? No. They're going to want to make an offensive team, and yes, because they're not experienced at that point they ARE going to slap together some Smogon team at first. And they are going to win against people who've made a team that can't handle one or more of those smogon threats. But they're also going to lose against most people who know how to create a proper team. If they only lose, that's going to disillusion them from continuing. But in a perfect meta, they would win some, lose many, then think "Hey, I wonder if I could make a team that's better..." The entire point of what Smogon is trying to do- to balance the metagame- is to make sure it's enjoyable for everyone. But that's going to be almost impossible, so they settle for trying to make it enjoyable to the most people possible, and a lot of those people are serious hardcore players, so obviously it has to be balanced. If you are forced to run multiple counters for one pokemon- if an entire playstyle, whether complete stall, or hyper offense- is wiped out, then that's not going to happen. That is what you need to sit back and look at. Liepard may not be a threat to you- but you only need to look at countless replays to see it is a huge threat. Yes, if everyone played stall you wouldn't have to. But this is pokemon, not Starcraft, not rock paper scissors. A stall team can very well defeat a hyper offensive team, a Prankster team can very well defeat a stall team, and a hyper offensive team SHOULD be able to defeat a Prankster team if its bases are covered. And that's the point. That's why this isn't Dragon Dance. It's because however many bases you cover, there's the element of chance that isn't there with Dragon Dance. If you let a Gyarados DD up once, you will always know exactly what can outspeed and OHKO it. But once you get Swaggered- you can't possibly know for sure. A 50/50 chance is too huge. For some people, they say "Chance is part and parcel of Pokemon." But then some people say "I don't want this much hax in my Pokemon." That's why the base is divided.
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02-25-2014, 10:54 PM | #1313 |
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If they don't want hax, they can play a different game, as far as I'm concerned.
EDIT: The amount of mouthbreathers in the Smogon thread is just staggering. There are people calling for the ban of Foul Play and Foul Play alone.
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Last edited by Jerichi; 02-25-2014 at 11:06 PM. |
02-25-2014, 11:07 PM | #1314 | ||
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As for people picking up Pokémon the Game Freak story mode video games for the very first time ... ehhhhhhhhhhh, I would tend to agree with you that 99.9% of people who pick the games up for the first time go for a linear aggro playstyle, but that's just a combination of human nature and what the game encourages. I mean, the game is designed from the bottom up to punish -- severely -- those players who opt for a stallier approach. You can beat Brock in under an hour if you power through ..................... or you can beat him in eight hours if you treat every single battle along the way like it's a 60-turn Toxic Stall death match. The game design is not kind to players who may otherwise wish to play more defensive or combo-heavy playstyles. Quote:
I hate to break it to you, Rangeet, but Pokémon is totally Rock Paper Scissors. Rock Paper Scissors with lots of bells and whistles, oh sure. But at the end of the day it's still Fire beats Grass, Grass beats Water, Water beats Fire. Pokémon is essentially Rock Paper Scissors meets Tug of War, with each player vying to be in control of the match. If you don't want to play a Rock Paper Scissors variant, then Pokémon really isn't the game for you. ^^; It's one reason why competitive Pokémon is such a hard sell to professional game enthusiasts: because everyone knows it's a simple game hiding underneath many layers of rules. In this respect, it's the inverse of Go: a complex game with very few rules.
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02-25-2014, 11:07 PM | #1315 |
Barghest Barghest Barghe-
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>ban of Foul Play
Just about the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
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02-25-2014, 11:14 PM | #1316 |
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ugh the first page of the thread has people wanting to ban confusion god smogon is full of idiotic children.
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02-25-2014, 11:16 PM | #1317 | |||
Foot, meet mouth.
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Quote:
Quote:
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Now this I'll agree with that banning Foul Play is completely and utterly ridiculous. (If anyone wants to know my views on the matter it's that only one pokemon with Swagger and Foul Play in a team should be allowed. I never have had any problem with complex bans.)
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02-25-2014, 11:17 PM | #1318 | |
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Quote:
But hey. If you've got a bag of popcorn ready, search the thread for posts submitted by users Suisho and blazeVA and follow along from there!
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02-25-2014, 11:26 PM | #1319 |
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That's another major problem with Smogon; debates tend to devolve into shouting matches between ignorant newbies and arrogant regulars and each side ends up taking a more and more extreme position. And, of course, a number of the arrogant regulars are part of the OU review board.
idk I don't know why I even care anymore. Smogon has always been a massive shitshow and I don't even play OU. EDIT: And to clarify I'm not against some sort of complex ban (Swagger + Foul Play + Prankster would be my choice, since there's not a lot of application outside of troll sets), but all this ridiculous simple banning is totally silly.
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Last edited by Jerichi; 02-25-2014 at 11:32 PM. |
02-26-2014, 12:13 AM | #1321 |
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So much poisonous drama. :'D This will hopefully be the last post I have to worry about crossposting here anal-retentively. Either the mods are going to delete it in the next couple of hours ... or else some guardian angel on the staff (and not you, phoopes! Don't get your wings sooty on my account! ) is going to upvote my post and that's going to hopefully put an end to trigger-happy mods deleting my posts.
Spoiler: show And the sequel! Spoiler: show Yes, I'm being a bit of a pedant in the second post, but fuck 'im: he asked for it. If he's just going to keep writing off my points with childish "YOU'RE WRONG! "s, I've no expectation of being heard fairly in this debate any longer. It's a hung jury. The verdict's already been decided.
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02-26-2014, 04:13 AM | #1322 |
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Wherein Hawlucha unburdens it all. (Random Battle; 32 turns)
A fun battle to watch, I hope, despite the moderate length. Speed Boost Ninjask, enemy Choice Scarf Ditto, and much more made this an interesting match from start to finish. But the pivotal turn was definitely Turn 25. I think we were both surprised! Spoiler: show
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02-26-2014, 09:02 AM | #1323 |
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The playback glitched out when Ditto was sent out for some reason and made a HUGE DITTO instead of the transformed Pokemon.
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02-26-2014, 05:58 PM | #1324 | |
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Welp, it happened. I don't know why it took this long, but it happened. And it was even more ridiculous an example of censorship than I could have imagined.
The deleted post: Spoiler: show The culprit? ginganinja. The reason provided? Oh, you're going to love this: Quote:
And B, proving my very point that Smogon has been taken over by HO fanatics who see any threats to HO as anathema to the metagame. Seriously, how insecure do you have to be to not only resort to a straw man accusation like this but to delete my post, hiding it from view, for fear that it might persuade others against your unrighteous cause? But yeah ... sorry, phoopes. Respect for the Smogon forums officially dead. I received a warmer welcome on 4chan than I have in my less than one week here on Smogon. Not a single staff member has offered thanks for my input nor offered cordial greetings. In fact, no fewer than two different staff members have deleted posts of mine from view, one of them (today's) on entirely baseless grounds. Not only have I failed to receive a welcoming welcome ... I have received the most unwelcoming of welcomes! The only way they could possibly be any less welcoming would be to ban me! Honestly ... UPN ... Tecmo ... Apolyton ... TrekBBS ... BMG ... Neotaku ... HongFire ... and so many other communities where I have signed up for their forums? This has to be the single worst welcome I've ever gotten. Censorship left and right, open hostility and disrespect, and disparaging remarks left in private ... just insane.
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02-26-2014, 06:02 PM | #1325 |
Barghest Barghest Barghe-
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*twitches at the sound of ginganinja*
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