Proposal Make forced infinite PP stalling through trapping or last Pokemon 1v1 scenarios trigger EBC

aerobee

Pure Hackmons
is a Community Contributoris a Contributor to Smogon
This is fairly minor from a competitive standpoint but I wanted to make sure this was addressed.

Currently in all (Balanced and Pure) Hackmons metagames, running the same move on more than one moveslot is permitted, and this allows for a workaround for the Endless Battle Clause. When a Pokemon with two of the same move in its moveset is PP stalled, it can still use the move the Pokemon has multiple copies of, though clicking said move doesn't accomplish anything other than preventing the Pokemon from having to use Struggle. This does mean that two Pokemon that are either trapped against each other (through Arena Trap/Magnet Pull/Thousand Waves) or in a last Pokemon 1v1 scenario can force an endless battle, even with Endless Battle Clause active. Here are test battles that show that infinite battles can still be forced in a metagame with Endless Battle Clause implemented.

As far as I know this isn't competitively viable in Balanced Hackmons at all. However, in the 2014 Gen 6 Classic Hackmons ladder the likes of Magnet Pull Mega Metagross were used to instantly trap opposing Imposter Chansey on turn 1 (this was a metagame without Team Preview). This means that, for Pure Hackmons at least, the engineering of an infinite battle through the use of innate trapping (Magnet Pull/Arena Trap) to prevent an opposing Imposter user, as well as the Pokemon Transformed into, from switching out is within the realm of possibility. Additionally, PP stall wars among Wonder Guard users in a last Pokemon 1v1 are not rare, meaning if both Wonder Guard users were running two of the same move an endless battle would be forced. While running a move on multiple moveslots may have only fringe viability in Pure Hackmons, this is a mechanic that the Pure Hackmons council finds unenjoyable and unhealthy for the metagame, and given that this is a workaround for a clause that should already fully prevent endless battles I would like to propose that steps be made to make forced infinite PP stalling through two trapped Pokemon having the same move on more than one moveslot trigger the Endless Battle Clause.

I believe that patching this workaround around Endless Battle Clause in a way that is not abusable is the only feasible solution.

This option gets to the core of the problem while also preserving the metagame's premise of anything that's directly hackable onto sets and usable in local battles being legal. Directly banning anything from Pure Hackmons is something that I am strongly against, as maintaining the integrity of the format is crucial enough as to be the groundwork for its existence. While I certainly can't speak for Balanced Hackmons, I think that there would also be confusion in pursuing a ban of moves on multiple moveslots, as self-PP stalling doesn't seem a problematic part of the metagame, at least from an outside glance.

This would have to be done in a way that's impossible to abuse for players in a long losing battle. I propose that Endless Battle Clause be triggered after 5 turns of permanently trapped Pokemon facing each other are fully "PP stalled" and are forced into clicking the move with multiple copies, and the special message returned when this scenario happens ("But there was no PP left for the move!") is triggered for both players. This way the only way that Endless Battle Clause would be triggered from infinite PP stalling with the same move on multiple moveslots would be in scenarios where the battle would truly be dragged on indefinitely. Coding-wise the devs would obviously know much better than I do but I'm fairly certain that implementing this solution wouldn't require significant effort to be put in.

e: no real reason for why I decided to address this issue now and not some other time, berry had made an initial suggestion here
 
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