RBY OU Make Rby great again

[Heroic Troller]

Hi everyone, i am here to discuss on the possibility of resetting Rby as it used to be before Crystal's shocking discoveries for Rby 1U. Why am i doing this proposal? I think Body Slam's change kind of ruined the tier, or at least, even if i still enjoy playing made it way worse. This is not the Rby we used to love, and the main reasons are:

1- The legendary 4 attacks Snorlax unable to switch properly on Tauros, because he have to boom anytime soon and trade at best while he used to scare the shit out of Tauros with the para chance. Not even the Rest Reflect one is not really comfortable when we talk of switching in, to stay alive you need to setup your Reflect (assuming on crits yet), and you are at 50ish%, then you have to Rest (and leave Tauros without a scratch) or attacking and giving Tauros the chance to crit in the next two for the ko, a really bad situation

2- Similar thing for Rhydon, he used to be way more threating for Tauros, now he is pretty much food, Rhydon can only throw his Earthquake, it is ok, but damaging Tauros without killing at the cost of your last mon slot sucks

3- Chansey able to switch on Snorlax and even having a decent chance of winning Tauros in 1v1 when not para, that's atrocious, and wait before insulting, i'm not saying "Chansey is broken" (thing i adamantly supported when it was time to decide his future in 1U), but still, this is not healthy, it was way better when Snorlax used to be really threating in an offensive way and not just by using Rest and staying to ppstall

4- Snorlax is kind of broken, too many moveset, everything is an unreliable answers. When Body Slam was able to para him, there wasn't time and space to try Reflect or Amnesia, and he did not even need to, he was threating Chansey and Tauros with Body Slams, and it was all we needed.

5- The most obvious one, the Tauros mirrors, they used to decide the game only in the end, because doing in the middle was fair, the chances of one out of two Body Slam to par both was about that good. The victorious Tauros is now a pain in the ass (especially if you rewatch the first two points)

6- Psychic dropping the speed if you are para is bullshit, and gives bad ways to overcome any Psychic resistors, especially in late game, Exeggutor can fight to kill Alakazam and Starmie just by spamming attacks, this not supposed to happen

7- Slowbro's potential, despite his lower usage now, i can't stop thinking about how wrong is it now, Amnesia outspeedding anyone if both para is just another piece of shit today, to be honest, that's an uncompetitive mechanics (uncompetitive=/=asking for ban)

That's why i hope you could take a look and maybe changing your mind, i know this is almost impossible, and probably nobody wants to go this far against the cartridge, i still like a lot of Rby OU, my favorite tier without a doubt, but i used to love it more at the start. In order to take back our best tier at his golden age we have to sacrifice something (cartridge), but i think it is worth it, at least for me.

That's all, peace.

 

[Sceptross]

This thread comes at a great time - I asked in the PP Discord Server, I think yesterday, if it wasn't a good idea to open a thread about this, considering the post marcoasd wrote in the Zapdos analysis. I want to write something more complete, but I'm a bit busy right now, so I'll leave that for later. TLDR (of something that hasn't been written yet): I think we should vote this, but there are lots of implications and consequences involved that must be discussed beforehand.

 

[Disaster Area]

I'm kinda bothered by the Tauros dittos still being so decisive but other than that I don't really mind the changes.

Anyway I'd love there to be a "Classic RBY OU" or something on the PP server. I'm like 50% sure I spoke to Enigami about this already. Hopefully he will add it to his list of stuff to do, but that list is long as it is and there's important things (like salvaging code for the server so we can do a proper restart + update or reviewing bugfixes which are now broken) that he still needs to do so I'm not promising anything soon.

Obviously this won't replace the standard meta but we can definitely have some tournaments for it whenever it becomes playable.

 

[Peasounay]

I've never played the paraslam days so I won't say that the game is worse or better now, but I will say that you liking the paraslam rby more is fine as it is an opinion, but you have to keep in mind you "shouldn't" have been able to play it in the first place since it's simply not the game simulators wanted to recreate. It shouldn't have been this way on simulators in the first place, and I think guys like you or marco give credit to that format because you were used to it and played it for a long time. If we had always played post-crystal rby since 1999, the suggestion of making body slam para normals would be answered with "wut"

I won't answer all your points individually but if a mechanic makes your life difficult during a game, then adapt your playing accordingly. If you think snorlax is too good, asking for a suspect is the thing to do rather than changing the mechanics because of it. It seems to me all the things you say are "wrong" or "uncompetitive" (define those terms) are just the mechanics i've been playing with since I started and I've never seen what was wrong with them. I accepted them and played accordingly. If i'm bothered by 20% crit chances I have other gens/games at my disposal

I'm not opposed to having the possibility of playing paraslam on the pp server (and i'm actually supportive of it) but I don't think it should be given more credit than a tier like stabmons.

The last thing I want to address is:

6- Psychic dropping the speed if you are para is bullshit

It's not bullshit, it's how the game works, where's the line between a good mechanic and another one that's "bullshit" ?

and gives bad ways to overcome any Psychic resistors, especially in late game, Exeggutor can fight to kill Alakazam and Starmie just by spamming attacks, this not supposed to happen

saying things like "this is not supposed to happen" makes 0 sense in a heavy rng-influenced game like pokemon. If it has odds to happen, then it can happen

 

[marcoasd]

I 100% agree on the Body Slam stuff, while I don't fully support the attack to the stacking glitch: it might be necessary in Slowbro's/Amnesia's case, might be fine to allow it via Psychic drops.
This is what I guess, we obviously need a lot of work before making a decision.

if a mechanic makes your life difficult during a game, then adapt your playing accordingly. It seems to me all the things you say are "wrong" or "uncompetitive" (define those terms) are just the mechanics i've been playing with since I started and I've never seen what was wrong with them. I accepted them and played accordingly. If i'm bothered by 20% crit chances I have other gens/games at my disposal

Well, I did adapt my game, had success (I think I can state I know how to play both games), and I came to the point where I realized that RBY OU SUCKS right now . Maybe it's because I was lucky enough to get to play a superior game (RBY OU pre-2015, obviously); we've been lucky to get that chance, so why just throw it away?
I put it the other way: what if Crystal_ just minded his own business?... I mean, what if his business was something else?

As long as I didn't feel like I got a full grasp on it, I didn't go all out on the subject - I feel like time has come.
We (me and Troller I guess) are not bothered by CHs, I would be bothered in case they would disappear because the game would be flat, and that's what happened when Body Slam tragedy came out: the game became flat.
We all should know that paralysis is the best way to mitigate matchups and create more strategy and diversity.
Troller's examples actually depreciate this concept, as we start discussing them (or at least thinking about them) and whether we like them or not, making it subjective - it really isn't.

Obviously this won't replace the standard meta but we can definitely have some tournaments for it whenever it becomes playable.

The better thing for the game should be the standard; at this point, RBY OU isn't all that superior to RBY Ubers.
It would be awful to see the current mechanic disappearing, nonetheless.

If you think snorlax is too good, asking for a suspect is the thing to do rather than changing the mechanics because of it.

You just don't fix things by banning Snorlax, so you need to ban Chansey, then you need to ban Starmie and Lapras and so on. Those pokemon are all meant to be OU (Mews aren't), but normal-types just feel like below Mews and above the rest at the moment (yeah, let's compare them to HP Raikou/Zapdos in GSC).
There's no coming back from Body Slam tragedy, or at very least we have not discovered it yet.
I tried my best and failed, other options suck (read, ban stuff for no reason until everything is banned), I think this should be very alarming.

If somebody was to ask for Body Slam to paralyze normals out of nowhere, he would've been a genius (banning HP only on Raikou/Zapdos in GSC was a wise decision at worst, a stroke of genius at best).*
*I'm not competent enough as a GSC player to tell whether I like the HP legend or the HP legendless version better - I'm just applauding the effort.*

Where's the line between a good mechanic and another one that's "bullshit" ?

"Until philosophers are kings, or the kings and princes of this world have the spirit and power of philosophy, and political greatness and wisdom meet in one, and those commoner natures who pursue either to the exclusion of the other are compelled to stand aside, cities will never have rest from their evils..."

Well, I think it falls under the competence of the #1 RBY community.

 

[Disaster Area]

No, the standard should be the most cartridge accurate that the playerbase is willing to tolerate.

 

[marcoasd]

No, the standard should be the most cartridge accurate that the playerbase is willing to tolerate.

I guess it reads pretty much the same when a good part of the elite players is fed up to the point of being willing to challenge such heavy biases like "we have to stick to the cartridge". Hopefully more will join the cause.

 

[The Idiot Ninja]

100% with Peasounay. The game works in a certain way, whatever you're doing to make it different is changing how the game works and should be an Other Metagame. Same level as RBY LC.

There's ways to play this gen competitively while remaining 100% accurate to cartridge. If this no paraslam thing is so insufferable and you think Snorlax is too good, go ahead and make this ban chain start. Additional bans make much more sense than literally changing how the game works. You have to ban 4 mons? 5? 6? 10? 20? I don't care. Balanced states exist at lower levels (I've played 3U and 4U extensively and I like both of them much more than I like 1U, and I know there are a lot of 5U enthusiasts out there) and if we cannot achieve a proper level of balance with the "everything but Mew and Mewtwo" banlist, we'll just try out different ones.

Paraslam is an arbitrary restriction. If we're allowing arbitrary restrictions, why don't we just nerf Snorlax's Attack by 10 base points? Or try lowering his HP? Removing Self-Destruct from his movepool? Or maybe we buff up everything else? If you consider something completely arbitrary like Paraslam as an option, you have to consider all these other ones. And there's probably better ways than Paraslam to balance the game out if we're playing god mode.

Of course there's the argument of tradition. You'd pick Paraslam above all the other arbitrary options because "that's how the game was played". But you're still fundamentally twisting the game in a way that no tiering philosophy has ever considered to be legitimate.


If 1U's current state is so tragic, change it like everyone has always gone about changing any tier in Pokémon. Ban a pokémon, if the metagame is still unbalanced do it again, and again, and again. No one has ever balanced things through arbitrary changes to game mechanics - removing Hidden Power from legendaries in GSC was the only similar attempt in history afaik but even then you could just count it as a complex ban. There are numerous tiering policies in place and twisting cartridge mechs has never been one.

Paraslam makes sense as a legacy tier. Like playing DP without the Pt and HGSS, or playing XY without the ORAS. You can do it, and it's nice to have the option to do it, but there is no reason for it to be the main metagame. It's outdated and as such should absolutely not be the main tier.


If people truly feel that the current state of 1U is terrible and something needs to be done about it, stop being lazy with paraslam proposals, and start theorymonning about which bans we would need to carry out to reach a satisfying state. I'm convinced that if we get through a few cancers (Snorlax, Chansey, the super good sleepers and some super good psychics, etc) we will easily find a state that feels more balanced and more fun to play for most people. You just need to actually make an effort for this to happen, because Paraslam is not happening.

 

[Lusch]

Okay, firstly, I wanna say that I fully agree with Peasounay and The idiot Ninja about the Body Slam mechanics and PAR/BRN stacking glitch. Removing those is completely arbitrary and it is hard to draw a line. Any other mechanics that we wanna change while we're at it? Wanna change the way wrap works? Hey! Agility negating par speed drop is not intended, let's get rid of that too! Base speed dependand crits? what BS, scratch that! Where is the line? All of that is what RBY is, wether you like it or not.

Now, not that I personally feel that current RBY 1U needs to change, but IF people wanna balance it, I personally see 2 theoretical ways:
1. Include Mew. Mew makes for another weapon against the brokenSnorlax and Chansey and adds diversity to the tier, imo balancing shit out.
or
2. Ban Snorlax, then again, you cannot ban Snorlax without banning Chansey (obviously imo), so ban Chansey as well, so then you ban Starmie, Lapras and Alakazam. See what comes out and if something stands out as broken, ban that too. But I think banning those would be enough. (at this point Legendary Birds number one and three look dangerous af, but both are still managable due to RBY still having a lot of good water types that may get a chance is the spotlight once Chansey and Starmie are gone)

But agian, I'm not requesting anything here, just saying what I think might lead to a "better"/more balanced metagame (without arbitrarily changing game mechanics of course), but I don't think it's necessary.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not opposed to a Paraslam-Mode being implemented on the Showdown-Server. But This Mode should definitely not replace the standard, and should be treated as everything else like Mewbers or something along those lines.

 

[marcoasd]

Anyway, I don't get how people who didn't play the good old RBY OU aren't even curious about getting to know it, but maybe it's just me - at the end of the day, that's exactly how I got into all this.
The thing that amazes me the most is that you guys keep bringing up counter-examples that make zero sense, because things you are mentioning (base stats, OMG Selfdestruct OP, Wrap; Mew not being around and luckily so) have never been shaping the tier that was healthy until 2015.

Of course there's the argument of tradition. You'd pick Paraslam above all the other arbitrary options because "that's how the game was played". But you're still fundamentally twisting the game in a way that no tiering philosophy has ever considered to be legitimate.

I've been playing the current RBY OU for 3 years right now... I don't need three years of intense play to get eaten alive by nostalgia, I honestly feel the game was better back then - I was around.
Tiering philosophies used for new generations don't work well in a tier with 150 pokemon, and it's daylight clear that most of them can't make the cut and never will.

Throwing Mew into the mix is even more confusing, we've got Mewbers for that purpose (and leaving Mewtwo out is arbitrary again).
The discussion is about how to make RBY OU healthy again, I wish veterans were still around.
There's no need to rush decisions on mechanics other than BS, repetita iuvant.

If people truly feel that the current state of 1U is terrible and something needs to be done about it, stop being lazy with paraslam proposals, and start theorymonning about which bans we would need to carry out to reach a satisfying state. I'm convinced that if we get through a few cancers (Snorlax, Chansey, the super good sleepers and some super good psychics, etc) we will easily find a state that feels more balanced and more fun to play for most people. You just need to actually make an effort for this to happen, because Paraslam is not happening.

Drawing a line on where to stop banning stuff is even more arbitrary than resetting Body Slam mechanic to the recovery point (let's say, Christmas 2014).
If you want to ban Chansey, Snorlax, Starmie, Lapras, Alakazam and possibly even more, you'd better just play 2U and waste no time.
Paraslam happening or not depends on what the community will ask for, or possibly what the politicians of this game will enforce in case the community won't speak loud enough.

I backed down from my 2 main theories:
- things will get better by banning sleep-inducing moves
- things will get better by banning Reflect, and possibly some combination of Rest and/or Amnesia

- 1U, Chansey banned didn't work

Looks like we made the effort you're asking for and everything we tried ended up being disappointing, I wonder where have you been...
You won't solve problems by banning/erasing stuff over and over again, this is what these three experiences taught me: the current RBY OU is most likely the best you can get out of current mechanics.
Again, we got lucky enough to get a great ruleset for RBY OU by chance (that is different from arbitrary - that's heaven-sent and timely luck), there's no reason to spit it out after failing on every attempt to make the game better under the current state of mechanics.

 

[Heroic Troller]

guys like you or marco give credit to that format because you were used to it and played it for a long time. If we had always played post-crystal rby since 1999, the suggestion of making body slam para normals would be answered with "wut"

I'm up for the discussion, but not about this point, i can't take a "because you used to", i have waited two full years to make this post this is not just a "i don't like because it's different", i'd like if at least this point is understood, can i prefer something old without getting the "you are nostalgic" answer? As for "adapt yourself", i am 100% adapted to this one, if i think old was superior, old was superior, nothing about adapting, bitching, or not being able to stop something now (all i said is, it was more balanced before, don't threat me as someone not able to play this one and then complaining). About the "Body Slam par was a mistake, because the real game IS the cartridge", i'm gonna answer: yes, you are right and i never denied that (i called at least three different times what i was asking with super cartridge breaking). My point was: even if not Cartridge-Rby, even if not the real, it was way more balanced (again at least in my vision of things, i'm not the voice of the truth and i can admit that without a problem) and a bit less match-up based (yes you heard me, i said match-up in an Rby thread), so i tried to propose.
"If we had always played post-crystal rby since 1999, the suggestion of making body slam para normals would be answered with "wut"" of course we do, it is just because we know what are we talking about, isn't this the right way to talk?
"Bullshit thing": If something is bullshit, it is bullshit, and being the right mechanics doesn't make it less bullshit, my personal definition of bullshit mechanics is one that disturb the balance of the tier (fast example Exeggutor an already strong enough Pokémon being able to overcome Starmie his "best counter" in 1v1 just my throwing the resisted STAB without losing anything in the moveset) (also probably i had to avoid this word, it sounds so rude when rewatching, but i didn't mean to be so aggressive my bad).
A wall of text just for Peas, great.
I will try to stay short because i'm tired of writing already, what i was talking about is NOT theorymon @tin @ Lusch, it was something tried already and well known so Mewbers/Nerfed Lax are absolutely out of the context, this "arbitrary restriction" is a real special and unique case in the history of pokémon, you can't threat is as "well i just woke up let's change something to see what happen", this is not, we know what are talking about already because we played and IT was the real Rby of tournaments before Crystal, way different from just making theorymons. I get your visions but i still don't agree, peace. I forgot something, i will answer later, now i'm too tired.

 

[Isa]

Id love to play rby again without paraslam immunities. Sign me up

 

[Golden Gyarados]

I am so busy this week I can't wade into this too much and I'm not going to come down on one side or the other right now, but I want to point out something I think is important when debating this here. I think some people here are debating completely different points. I see a: "RBY was fun before, let's go back to that" side and I see a: "If RBY isn't balanced now, look at suspects and bans to make it competitive" side (obviously there are more sides and nuances throughout this thread, but bear with me for a sec), but those aren't really talking about the same things.

Even if we did an overhaul and "rebalanced" 1U, it still, simply, wouldn't be RBY pre-2015.

It's like if you had a hamburger, and you're like, "Damn I love this hamburger." And then someone said, "I'm gonna take that hamburger. Here's a salad though." And you said, "This salad is not as good as a hamburger. Can I have my hamburger back please?" And that person said, "Well, if you don't like the salad let's change it. Do you want me to take the tomatoes out? I could add bacon in, would that make it better?" And you're like, "Well, that might make it a better salad but I'm talking about wanting a hamburger."

We've had plenty of topics addressing balance in the tier. Viability rankings, no Chansey suspect tests and votes, etc. All of that stuff is good to talk about, and those conversations belong in those threads. This is specifically about playing pre or post paraslam and I think it's important not to get sidetracked/take the conversation in a direction the OP isn't intending to actually discuss.

 

[ThriceElite]

If a change makes a tier better, do it.

 

[Enigami]

If it changes cartridge mechanics, don't do it for a generation unless there is a very good reason. I personally will absolutely not implement any changes to the server that moves the simulator away from what actually exists in the games, except as a 'mod'.

Now, if all you want is a mod to relive the glory days, that is something I can do. Just give it a name and what changes you guys agree on, and I'll set you up with it.

 

[Disaster Area]

I am so busy this week I can't wade into this too much and I'm not going to come down on one side or the other right now, but I want to point out something I think is important when debating this here. I think some people here are debating completely different points. I see a: "RBY was fun before, let's go back to that" side and I see a: "If RBY isn't balanced now, look at suspects and bans to make it competitive" side (obviously there are more sides and nuances throughout this thread, but bear with me for a sec), but those aren't really talking about the same things.

Even if we did an overhaul and "rebalanced" 1U, it still, simply, wouldn't be RBY pre-2015.

It's like if you had a hamburger, and you're like, "Damn I love this hamburger." And then someone said, "I'm gonna take that hamburger. Here's a salad though." And you said, "This salad is not as good as a hamburger. Can I have my hamburger back please?" And that person said, "Well, if you don't like the salad let's change it. Do you want me to take the tomatoes out? I could add bacon in, would that make it better?" And you're like, "Well, that might make it a better salad but I'm talking about wanting a hamburger."

We've had plenty of topics addressing balance in the tier. Viability rankings, no Chansey suspect tests and votes, etc. All of that stuff is good to talk about, and those conversations belong in those threads. This is specifically about playing pre or post paraslam and I think it's important not to get sidetracked/take the conversation in a direction the OP isn't intending to actually discuss.

The argument is more about whether it's okay to have it as a main metagame.

Some people want to change the mechs back to pre-2015 to "fix" RBY, others say that if you want to try and "fix" RBY, if you think it is in fact broken, then do suspect tests, because we don't change cartridge mechs if we can possibly avoid it for our 1U metagame. Noone has any problem with the old metagame being playable on the PP server or anything. I think you're missing that that's the core of what's being argued about: should we make pre-2015 RBY our standard?

 

[marcoasd]

Now, if all you want is a mod to relive the glory days, that is something I can do. Just give it a name and what changes you guys agree on, and I'll set you up with it.

Nobody wants to relive the glory days: until now, nobody even looked for a mod allowing us to play the glory-days-RBY, as we were caught up in the current RBY.
We're just taking issue with paraslam immunities and that's why GG pointed out we're not getting the former RBY back as more things changed (stacking glitch, Hyper Beam + Sleep and possibly Counter mechanics).
Those things don't even need to change as long as they don't prove to be harmful.

I think you're missing that that's the core of what's being argued about: should we make pre-2015 RBY our standard?

GG is right, as Troller is the only one guy that attacked stacking glitch directly - which is an awful strategy if your concern is to get rid of paraslam immunities.

If it changes cartridge mechanics, don't do it for a generation unless there is a very good reason. I personally will absolutely not implement any changes to the server that moves the simulator away from what actually exists in the games, except as a 'mod'.

Got it, nobody is asking to disallow the current, cartridge-observing, version of RBY; I'd like to point out that tiers are kept alive by tournaments, though. Both versions (possibly three) should be kept alive, so we can save the massive job we did with individual analyses and things like that (and rightfully so).
Hopefully, getting something new to work with.

 

[DarkCyborg]

My opinion:

"Should we make pre-2015 RBY our standard?": Nope. I think that RBY 1U should stay close to RBY original mechanics (the only thing I think that should be reconsidered is desync glitch, I think it should be modded to never happen).

"Should we have a pre-2015 RBY mod on our psim?" Of course!

Now, if all you want is a mod to relive the glory days, that is something I can do. Just give it a name and what changes you guys agree on, and I'll set you up with it.

Name... it could be "RBY 1U pre-Crystal" or something like that?

Probably the changes would be:

- Paralysis as side-effect will work in any Pokémon, regardless of its type;
- Stats changes will never affect the drop of Attack/Speed cause by Burning/Paralysis, except if it is caused by a move which affect that stat in your turn (ex: a paralyzed pokémon using Agility).

I think it's that. RBY2k10 also had a ban on partial trap moves, I don't know if you guys want that as well, but I have no opinion about it.

 

[Enigami]

For that matter, should Dig/Fly and Psywave be made legal again? I don't recall the glitches with those moves being part of the pre-Crystal era, so if we're making a pre-Crystal mod Dig/Fly/Psywave could be lumped in with the changed mechanics.

 

[marcoasd]

For that matter, should Dig/Fly and Psywave be made legal again? I don't recall the glitches with those moves being part of the pre-Crystal era, so if we're making a pre-Crystal mod Dig/Fly/Psywave could be lumped in with the changed mechanics.

Both things were definitely legal (and fixed) back then, nobody used them though. Pre-Crystal mod is almost-exclusively for OU purposes, and it's pretty safe to state that Dig/Fly/Psywave won't matter.