So admittedly, I'm not an AAA main, but I do enjoy playing the metagame and I'd like to bring something up that's always kind of baffled me as we're on the eve of Generation 8.
Why is Ability Clause allowing 2 abilities?
Now, realistically, there's no reason it should be 2 as opposed to 3, 4, 5, or 6, other than to reduce the passive recovery on a team or to reduce the net offensive power of a team to the point where it's unwallable. But where was it decided that 2 is fine? What makes 2 any better than any of the other numbers, other than having less of it?
Don't get me wrong - I know that 3, 4, 5, or 6 abilities on the same team could be ridiculously uncompetitive. Tinted Lens is already a very scary ability, and having to deal with the possibility of 2 users is terrifying. But why is it 2?
I think the ability clause should be changed, preferably to one ability. The reason is that 2 promotes endless battles - If you have two Regenerator Pokemon and your opponent has 2 Regenerator Pokemon, or if you have a Pokemon that cannot outdamage your opponent's Regenerator, etc... These are all endless battle situations. And from what I've seen, there's really no reason an Ability Clause should be at exactly
2, which seems to just be arbitrary. Now, I can see the counterpoints coming, and I'll do my best to address most of them.
1) If we limit Ability Clause to one ability per team, it doesn't stop people from creating endless battles.
To which I reply - Since when has the ability to cause endless battles been a result of one thing in particular? Stuff like Funbro, Leppa Berry stall, and other concepts have all been dealt with in an attempt to axe endless battles, and yet it's still an issue. The point of this proposal isn't to axe endless battles entirely, but reduce the likelihood of it happening.
2) There's legitimate uses for dual abilities on a team.
I'll admit this is true. Weather teams, terrain teams and teams which opt to run dual Tinted Lens, Adaptability, etc. will be hit hard by this. However, it's my belief that reducing the abilities on endless battle clauses has the ability to promote creativity, skill, and competitiveness. When you have two weather setters on a team, you can play fairly relaxed most of the time as you only really need to keep one of them alive if your wincon is dependent on having weather up, while your opponent has pretty much lost the matchup as once they've dealt with one setter, they have to deal with the next as well. And weather teams, which are generally offensive in nature, will probably have won the game by then unless they're playing stall (in which case I
hope they've won the game, because stall is aids.) With a change in the ability clause, it'd promote more careful playing in the battle, while also making it a lot more taxing to put an ability on a Pokemon, as once you've put that ability on a Pokemon, you cannot use it on the same team. This would also increase the opportunity cost of running broken threats such as Terrakion, Kartana, and other things (though honestly, they'd still be broken and probably still be banned.) You'd have to decide which Pokemon deserves Tinted Lens or Adaptability more, which is a really large decision to make and would overall make building easier defensively, since the overall threat level of the meta would decrease as a result of there being less threatening Pokemon on the opponent's team.
3) Endless battles aren't actually a thing on the ladder because of the turn limit, and there's policies in place in tournaments to deal with the scenario of an endless battle.
While this is true, the 1000 turn limit isn't a great solution. For this, I'm going to reference my battle vs
Chloe in the first edition of OM Snake Draft - While it's in Camomons, I believe the concerns I have with the 1000 turn limit still apply here. In that game, my browser started lagging and I kept disconnecting throughout the game, which made getting back into the battle a difficult experience and consistently reduced my timer. It turned the battle into a competition not of skill or positioning, but of who could last the longest, who had the most free time and who had the better Internet and computer. This isn't something a Pokemon game should come down to. The goal of every meta should be to promote skill and competitiveness. I believe nerfing the Ability Clause is an important step in this direction, as it reduces the amount of means by which this endgame can be achieved.
In tournaments, it's true that the general idea is to replay a game if an endless game is achieved. However, if an endless game is achieved and you
do have to replay, then you have more limited time to prepare, as your previous preparation pretty much just went down the drain. One could argue that this situation has never arisen - But why risk it? Why have people play a metagame where this is a very real possibility instead of acknowledging the potential problem before it becomes a problem?
Now, I'm aware that most of the points I've brought up here are related to only AAA really, but I do think this plays a part in BH too as well as smaller OMs (since they're kind of forced to take this clause on), so I think that if a decision is made, it should be with the interest of all of the affected tiers.
I'd like to get the AAA council's input on this, as well as the OM Leaders as they have a hand in policy as well. Since this will also impact BH, I'll tag its leader (although he's also an OM leader, I believe input from him both as an OM leader and a BH leader is important.) I will also be tagging players who have played the metagames in OMWC and AAA & BH Open Semifinals, since those are the two most recent showings and I'm far too lazy to go through the rest. Also tagging
motherlove because that guy's hella smart.
Note that if I did tag you, you're not obliged to chip in, and if you're not tagged then your input is just as welcome as the rest. The tags are just so people who play the metagames affected can see this.
(sorry in advance for the tagspam!)
e:
regirock wanted a tag