RBY Self-KO Clause

Alright yeah so looks like the issue is with the sims and not with our clauses :S the 'clause' will be unmentioned on PP from now on, except in the context of Stadium.

 

Hang on, are you saying it's being removed or that it'll be implemented without being mentioned as Marco and I said? Because the scenario in which we said that has been proven wrong by Crystal and Marco himself.

As I thought.

I agree with Isa that making it not zero-sum creates perverse-incentive issues in tournaments where you actually accept the result rather than replay it; I'm reminded of the "bonus point" shenanigans in cricket a while back. You could call it a draw under the sophistry that you get half a point for your own screen showing a win and half a point for the opponent's screen showing a loss.

 

We're saying that the sim will do what is done on cart w.r.t. these endgame scenarios, no need for any sort of clause by the looks of things.

If both players 'lose', then it's a tie.

 

While I agree, it should probably still be put to a vote as Self-KO Clause was originally implemented for other reasons than Marco's mistaken one (avoiding draws and punishing last-mon Explosion).

Of course, given that I now vote "no", Marco's changed his vote to "no", and it sounds like you're also changing your vote to "no", I have my suspicions about which way that vote's going to go. But it's the principle of the thing.

 

I think maybe we should just review this once we have a sim that does stuff correctly in the first place, lol.

 

A History of Japanese Competitive Pokemon - 1996 and 1997 - The Canalave Library - Nugget Bridge - Premier Competitive Pokémon VGC Community
KyleCole brought this interesting article to my attention.

[03:28:40] Golden Gyarados: "Nintendo Cup 97 Rules : A player automatically loses if their last Pokemon uses Self-Destruct or Explosion. "
[03:28:53] Golden Gyarados: This. I see no reason why "whatever the cartridge displays as winner/loser" matters if you want this clause
[03:29:05] Golden Gyarados: if you're the 'ref' of a tournament, you can say, 'if you do this, you lose' and it doesn't matter at all what the cart says
[03:29:18] George S. [Disaster Area]: yeah, we tend to follow the cart though, but
[03:29:25] George S. [Disaster Area]: it's interesting Nintendo went with that rule
[03:29:30] George S. [Disaster Area]: however the format's pretty different
[03:29:47] George S. [Disaster Area]: 1, 3v3, 2 blizzard 30% frz, 3 no evasion clause
[03:29:54] George S. [Disaster Area]: 4 lower levels
[03:30:20] George S. [Disaster Area]: I mean I guess that
[03:30:23] George S. [Disaster Area]: if you want precedent
[03:30:23] Golden Gyarados: But I mean, whatever the cart displays doesn't matter in a rule like this. It's a rule about essentially disqualification. The cart SAYS I can bring in 6 Chanseys, but the tournament ref says I can't. The cart SAYS I tie if I self destruct, but the tournament ref says I lose. I really don't get why what the cart displays matters at all for that rule. In other words, I support self-KO clause
[03:30:26] George S. [Disaster Area]: for changing what happens there
[03:30:44] George S. [Disaster Area]: then I guess it's precedent

So basically, this is where the precedent for changing what happens in this end-game scenario comes from. Should we follow it? That's up to us. But at least there's a precedent, i.e. Nintendo having done it before. Kind of a big thing for us to miss before.

I still prefer staying with what the cart does, with Nintendo not being the be all and end all who knows everything, the large differences between our formats anyway, and it seems to me that following what the cart does covers all possible cases whereas I'm not sure that's the case when involving this clause. But I don't object with people who want to follow what Nintendo did here, be it using it as an excuse to implement this rule or otherwise.

Is there any support for following what Nintendo did there? If that's the case we ought to discuss it further and possibly conduct a vote.

 

I just think "what the cart does" doesn't matter for a rule that essentially boils down to a matter of disqualification. Like I said above, what the cartridge says is inconsequential if it's a matter of the player's agency conflicting with a tour referee's ruleset. For instance, I could play an entire battle in a tournament and keep a fourth move on one of my mons hidden. At the last second, I reveal I had Fissure. I technically beat my opponent. The cartridge says I win. The tournament referee says I lose because of a OHKO clause. I had agency to use that move according to the cartridge, but I'm disqualified according to the tournament rules.

Same situation. I play an entire battle in a tournament until it's just one on one. I explode. I "draw." The cartridge says my opponent loses. But the tournament referee can just say my opponent wins because of Self-KO clause. I have agency to use that move according to the cartridge, but I can be disqualified according to the tournament rules. The cartridge says that it's okay, a tournament host says it isn't.

Self-KO clause, if you want to use it, has nothing to do with mechanics, it doesn't alter mechanics, and ultimately, it doesn't matter what the cartridge says. Species clause, Evasion clause, OHKO clause, and non-mechanical Sleep and Freeze clauses all operate under the same principle.

I think Self-KO clause should be argued based on the merits of the rule in the context for facilitating tournament battles (Do we want our tournament to allow ties, or should every battle have a winner one way or the other? Should kamikaze be discouraged by penalizing the strategy, or encouraged by rewarding it? etc), but not argued based on cartridge text displays. I just don't see how it's truly relevant.

 

Fully support this

 

Yeah, I might as well say now that GG is spot on in terms of whether this is a case where we should adhere to cartridges- there's no reason why we'd have to. Personally, my stance when I posted last was that cartridge support just forms a nice basis for the ruleset. Like if we are arbitrarily deciding something, that makes it slightly less arbitrary, but in this case it's not a strict requirement at all.

Basically I just want to acknowledge that GG has a good point and explain my perspective on the issue given that my last post is at odds with GG's more recent one.

As for nintendo tours and potentially setting precedent, it's the same kind of deal. It's nice to have as justification, but ultimately there's no real imperative to implement it that way. Things have come a loooong way since then and the format is very different

More and more I'm thinking that rather than looking for some random basis for a decision, we ought to just decide for ourselves based on what we think is fair and what's in the interest of our tours

 

I think it's time to start discussing again. This rule ruins bo1 tours and cups where is more important to get as more wins as possible.

 

Also, even though if rule is currently settled (that Self KO Clause is not on), we need to explicitly define what that means for all tournaments. Right now, I believe the enforcement works like this:

In a "Best of X" format, where the goal is to reach a certain number of wins threshold, a Self-KO finish results in a tie which nullifies the game. No one won, and the game doesn't "count."

In a "Play X Games" format, where the number of games that must be played is set in stone, a Self-KO finish results in a tie which awards .5 points to each player. Neither a win nor a loss, the tournament counts the battle as worth half of a win.

If we write that down somewhere, or add similar boilerplate text to all tournaments, it can avoid confusion.

 

It does not ruin those tours. Maybe Bo1, yes. In those cases the game should not count, like in any other best of X. But not Cups like Vermillion. Awarding .5 points to each player is fair in such a scenario. In Link battles if u KO ur last mon and ur opponent's last mon, it's a tie...
I'm with Golden Gyarados that those rules should be written down somewhere, but the rules themselves are completely fine.

 

@GG - the reason I cared what the cartridge does is because I'm in the camp where draws are okay, but I'm not invested enough in their existence to force them over cartridge.

@Pie - please confirm that your post on April 1 was not an April Fools' Day joke. Only then will I discuss its ramifications.

 

It wasn't an April Fools' Day joke but I don't really think anyone wants to follow it, what cart does matters more to us than what Nintendo says anyway.

 

Sleep Clause and the garbage Freeze Clause are counterexamples.


This isn't Freeze Clause tier BS, as DQs are, as GG correctly pointed out, possible in real play (I seem to recall an "RBY plus fisticuffs" post I made a while back). That said, I feel like it's something of a complex ban and an in-play ban rather than a team ban, which both kinda rub me the wrong way.