State of RBY(2K10), Future of 2K10, Evaluation
Sept 13, 2013 10:44:37 GMT -8
Post by Isa on Sept 13, 2013 10:44:37 GMT -8
Hey all of you!
Since the Founding Fathers (WaterWizard and t3h Icy) left us, I've been quietly overlooking 2K10 for roughly half a year now. I haven't made anything to show it off though, partly because I wanted to take a more hands-off approach to the forums (in contrast to the more active moderating done by Icy and WW), and partly because I didn't have any ideas on how to take 2K10 forward. It did allow me to take a look at what RBY2K10 would become if left without moderation, though.
Here's where we stand.
As far as I know, there's four major forums for RBY players these days. RBY2K10, Smogon, Pokemon Perfect and Pokemon Online. Each of them have their own USPs (Unique Selling Points).
RBY2K10 has by far the most information out of any of these communities. No other community has the same level of detail in their guides on how to play an individual Pokémon, and if you want to use a BL/UU/NU in OU, odds are that we have the best guide on that as well (Hitmonlee and Gyarados are examples). The downside is that we have little ongoing forum discussion and no tournaments.
Smogon has the biggest userbase overall. They are also the oldest community by a vast amount, and they have their own simulator, which is the biggest one overall. The strongest RBY players also reside on Smogon. The downside is that the RBY section is very small, shared by GSC/ADV/DPPt, and the strong players aren't active in RBY discussions.
Pokemon Perfect is currently running a lot of successful tournaments. They are the youngest community, with a very active leadership by Lutra, and have high strength players in their tournaments. The downside is that that's all there is on Pokémon Perfect - tournaments. There's no discussion at all.
Pokemon Online have the second biggest overall player base, but by far the biggest RBY player base. Compared to Pokemon Showdown, their simulator has the better RBY mechanics, allow for other tiers than OU to be played and is more user-friendly. The downside is that although there's a lot of RBY players, they do not have any discussion going on.
Overall, RBY is in a good shape, even if 2K10 necessarily isn't as healthy as it once was. Since 2011 when I joined, we've finally moved on from the good old days of NetBattle, and can now play on Pokémon Online without any issues. There's active forums running tournaments, there's an active ladder (by older-gen standards) to test your skill against, there's forums for discussion and there's still new faces showing up within our communities to play RBY.
However, RBY2K10 is, as said, not too healthy. We are not by any means dying, and I have absolutely no plans to put this place to rest. Instead, I want to bring activity back to RBY2K10. This news post is my second step towards that goal - the first was allowing guests to post in the chatbox (yes, it's a very minor step).
The third step is to start hosting tournaments again.
I am very impressed by the work Lutra has done with Pokémon Perfect - he had a very limited community and managed to bring activity to it through his tournaments, which have grown to become very successful. In an ideal world, I'd like to see a merge between RBY2K10 and Pokémon Perfect - 2K10 has the bigger (albeit somewhat sleeping) userbase, the vast amounts of information and is a natural place for discussion, whereas PP have their successful, strong tournaments and an active leader. However, just like I am not giving up on RBY2K10, I do not think that Lutra is willing to give up on Pokémon Perfect. The second best alternative, in my mind, is to emulate what Lutra has done to a degree.
If there is interest from the current RBY2K10 community, I will start hosting tournaments here once again.
These tournaments will be traditional RBY2K10 tournaments - there's no seasons or bigger goal to strive towards, the only goal is to win the tournament you're currently playing in. There'll be no pressure to join specific tournaments in order to achieve some other goal. These tournaments will all be independent of each other.
The format is not set, but I am leaning towards a 16 player single elimination, Bo3/Bo5 tournament. There's currently probably not 16 active RBY2K10 members that'd join, so for this to be achieved, new faces will be brought in.
I will start off with OU tournaments, but depending on interest, I will probably look towards mixing it up with other metagames (BL, NU, LC, no Psychics allowed...), similar to how RBY2K10 was in 2010/2011.
Also like the old days, these tournaments will probably be monthly.
If you are interested in playing in RBY tournaments on RBY2K10, please write a reply to this news post.
Now, on to the game of RBY.
I want to bring up a topic that's rarely discussed in Pokémon. It's frequently seen in all high-level matches, yet get overlooked and often dubbed as "prediction". I'm talking about evaluation, how to correctly evaluate a situation and how to respond to it.
To make this concept somewhat simple, I'll start with defensive evaluation and bring you this example:
Your opponent has a 1% Golem up against your paralyzed, 100% HP Chansey. Your opponent will boom in this situation, and you have no Gengar/Rock type on your team living. What do you use to tank the boom?
The answer to the above example is of course heavily depending on the situation. You can't always say "Lapras" or "Exeggutor" and be right 100% of the time. This is where evaluation starts to run inside our heads and we ask ourselves questions.
First instinct might be:
What Pokémon on my team is currently the least useful?
This is a seemingly simple question, but is often difficult to answer correctly. Sometimes it might seem as the answer is simple - "my sleeping Jynx" or "my 5% Exeggutor", for example. However, allowing a sleeping target to be boomed upon means that unless you're paralyzed enough or have killed opposing sleepers, you run a high chance of getting reslept, and you lost a Jynx that did a good defensive job by activating Sleep Clause. Even though Exeggutor might not have a lot of HP remaining, it's still threatening a boom on my opponent. If you can get Exeggutor in on a Chansey, or a paralyzed Alakazam, your 5% HP Exeggutor did a lot of offensive work.
What does my opponent have that's still alive?
This question greatly helps answer the above question, but we can break this down even more.
Does my opponent still have a sleeper? If yes, do I have any tools to prevent him from resleeping?
Does my opponent have a good Pokémon for revenge killing living? If yes, it might be good to let your least valuable Pokémon soak the boom and die. If not, it might be a good idea to let something useful take the boom and survive, then switch out to a general sponge. For example, if your opponent is in a position where he can only revenge kill Starmie with Jolteon, you can let it take non-Snorlax booms, switch out and come in later and Recover.
Does my opponent still have a premier late game sweeper? What Pokémon do you have living that can battle Tauros, Zapdos, Rhydon or Dragonite?
Does my opponent have a Pokémon alive that walls one of mine? Rhydon/Zapdos, Chansey/Starmie are the most pressing examples, but there's also weaker walls like Exeggutor/Alakazam (as well as Alakazam/Exeggutor, depending on movesets!) to consider.
It is dangerous to just routinely let your tankiest Pokémon soak Explosions, just like it's dangerous to let your sleeping mon do it, or your almost-dead mon - always evaluate.
Those are all effective questions to ask yourself when you're about to take a hit. However, what about offensive evaluation? Don't worry, there's good things to ask yourself there as well.
A while ago, I battled Dre, and I was in a good position. I had my full HP BoltBeam-Starmie in versus his Victreebel at 12% - enough to live a TBolt but it obviously dies to Blizzard. Dre had Cloyster at ~80%, Dragonite at full HP and paralyzed Alakazam at 46%. Everything is 2HKO'd by me if I predict successfully with either TBolt or Blizzard.
In this situation, I decided to go for Blizzard. The reason was that for me, the worst-case scenario with Blizzard was as follows: I use Blizzard, and it connects with his Cloyster. He cannot kill me with Explosion, so he has to switch out, but I go for Thunderbolt just in case. It hits his Alakazam, who is barely outside KO range from a Blizzard. However, I have two attacks and one potential FP to kill his Alakazam - and that's my worst-case scenario. Meanwhile, if I use Thunderbolt, anticipating a Cloyster switch, the worst case scenario is taking a Stun Spore from Victreebel and then being Wrapped until I die from a Razor Leaf. Meanwhile, if I predict correctly with either Blizzard or Thunderbolt, the most likely result is that either Cloyster or Victreebel dies. Both are very good options for me.
Dre ended up staying in with Victreebel, predicting me to predict a Cloyster switch. However, I didn't need to predict in order to come up with Blizzard as my move of choice.
The above can be described by risk:reward. It wasn't until I had played this battle that I really appreciated what it meant - when I was somewhat new to RBY back in 2011/early 2012, I did a lot of high risk:medium reward predictions. Most worked out, but when they did not I was heavily punished. Using Blizzard in the above situation is in my mind a low risk:medium-high reward, whereas using Thunderbolt is a high risk:medium-high reward.
The questions that you should ask yourself is mostly the same as for defensive evaluations but reversed:
What does my opponent have that he can use to take a hit with?
What can I do if I remove a specific threat the my opponent has?
etc.
These are just guidelines - there's a lot of different questions you can ask yourself in order to come up with your answer, and most situations aren't forcing you to react 100% defensively/offensively. However, these questions get the ball rolling. More importantly, though, is that if you can evaluate a situation, you don't have to try to predict your opponent or force yourself to rely on luck. In a recent battle I played, I had a low-HP Chansey in versus a Tauros at 70%, paralyzed. His remaining Pokémon were sleeping low HP Jynx and paralyzed Chansey at 65%. I had a low HP Exeggutor, low HP Snorlax and full HP paralyzed Gengar. I realized that I did not actually need my Chansey to live to secure the win - I just needed my Snorlax to be in a position where it could kill his Tauros. It could not take a hit but it'd attack first against everything he had and OHKO it, as long as I got Tauros into Hyper Beam range. So, I decided to use Ice Beam on him instead of Softboiled. I ended up killing his Tauros with Chansey due to FP hax, and he sent his Jynx in. His Jynx would be 2HKO'd by Thunderbolt so it was tempting to go for that move. However, I knew that he had been asleep for 5 turns, so if I use TBolt and he wakes up, he'll sleep me and potentially sweep. I went for Thunder Wave instead, using it until he woke up. When he woke up he got instantly paralyzed. He slept me the following turn, but it did not matter - I sent in my 1% Exeggutor on his Blizzard as a sacrifice to get Snorlax in without taking damage, and it cleaned up from there. These two plays were basic, safe plays, but they show that it's important to take a step back some times and guarantee a winning position, rather than to risk something and see "if I go to Snorlax here I can sweep woooo oh no he woke up I'm dead".
Since the Founding Fathers (WaterWizard and t3h Icy) left us, I've been quietly overlooking 2K10 for roughly half a year now. I haven't made anything to show it off though, partly because I wanted to take a more hands-off approach to the forums (in contrast to the more active moderating done by Icy and WW), and partly because I didn't have any ideas on how to take 2K10 forward. It did allow me to take a look at what RBY2K10 would become if left without moderation, though.
Here's where we stand.
As far as I know, there's four major forums for RBY players these days. RBY2K10, Smogon, Pokemon Perfect and Pokemon Online. Each of them have their own USPs (Unique Selling Points).
RBY2K10 has by far the most information out of any of these communities. No other community has the same level of detail in their guides on how to play an individual Pokémon, and if you want to use a BL/UU/NU in OU, odds are that we have the best guide on that as well (Hitmonlee and Gyarados are examples). The downside is that we have little ongoing forum discussion and no tournaments.
Smogon has the biggest userbase overall. They are also the oldest community by a vast amount, and they have their own simulator, which is the biggest one overall. The strongest RBY players also reside on Smogon. The downside is that the RBY section is very small, shared by GSC/ADV/DPPt, and the strong players aren't active in RBY discussions.
Pokemon Perfect is currently running a lot of successful tournaments. They are the youngest community, with a very active leadership by Lutra, and have high strength players in their tournaments. The downside is that that's all there is on Pokémon Perfect - tournaments. There's no discussion at all.
Pokemon Online have the second biggest overall player base, but by far the biggest RBY player base. Compared to Pokemon Showdown, their simulator has the better RBY mechanics, allow for other tiers than OU to be played and is more user-friendly. The downside is that although there's a lot of RBY players, they do not have any discussion going on.
Overall, RBY is in a good shape, even if 2K10 necessarily isn't as healthy as it once was. Since 2011 when I joined, we've finally moved on from the good old days of NetBattle, and can now play on Pokémon Online without any issues. There's active forums running tournaments, there's an active ladder (by older-gen standards) to test your skill against, there's forums for discussion and there's still new faces showing up within our communities to play RBY.
However, RBY2K10 is, as said, not too healthy. We are not by any means dying, and I have absolutely no plans to put this place to rest. Instead, I want to bring activity back to RBY2K10. This news post is my second step towards that goal - the first was allowing guests to post in the chatbox (yes, it's a very minor step).
The third step is to start hosting tournaments again.
I am very impressed by the work Lutra has done with Pokémon Perfect - he had a very limited community and managed to bring activity to it through his tournaments, which have grown to become very successful. In an ideal world, I'd like to see a merge between RBY2K10 and Pokémon Perfect - 2K10 has the bigger (albeit somewhat sleeping) userbase, the vast amounts of information and is a natural place for discussion, whereas PP have their successful, strong tournaments and an active leader. However, just like I am not giving up on RBY2K10, I do not think that Lutra is willing to give up on Pokémon Perfect. The second best alternative, in my mind, is to emulate what Lutra has done to a degree.
If there is interest from the current RBY2K10 community, I will start hosting tournaments here once again.
These tournaments will be traditional RBY2K10 tournaments - there's no seasons or bigger goal to strive towards, the only goal is to win the tournament you're currently playing in. There'll be no pressure to join specific tournaments in order to achieve some other goal. These tournaments will all be independent of each other.
The format is not set, but I am leaning towards a 16 player single elimination, Bo3/Bo5 tournament. There's currently probably not 16 active RBY2K10 members that'd join, so for this to be achieved, new faces will be brought in.
I will start off with OU tournaments, but depending on interest, I will probably look towards mixing it up with other metagames (BL, NU, LC, no Psychics allowed...), similar to how RBY2K10 was in 2010/2011.
Also like the old days, these tournaments will probably be monthly.
If you are interested in playing in RBY tournaments on RBY2K10, please write a reply to this news post.
Now, on to the game of RBY.
I want to bring up a topic that's rarely discussed in Pokémon. It's frequently seen in all high-level matches, yet get overlooked and often dubbed as "prediction". I'm talking about evaluation, how to correctly evaluate a situation and how to respond to it.
To make this concept somewhat simple, I'll start with defensive evaluation and bring you this example:
Your opponent has a 1% Golem up against your paralyzed, 100% HP Chansey. Your opponent will boom in this situation, and you have no Gengar/Rock type on your team living. What do you use to tank the boom?
The answer to the above example is of course heavily depending on the situation. You can't always say "Lapras" or "Exeggutor" and be right 100% of the time. This is where evaluation starts to run inside our heads and we ask ourselves questions.
First instinct might be:
What Pokémon on my team is currently the least useful?
This is a seemingly simple question, but is often difficult to answer correctly. Sometimes it might seem as the answer is simple - "my sleeping Jynx" or "my 5% Exeggutor", for example. However, allowing a sleeping target to be boomed upon means that unless you're paralyzed enough or have killed opposing sleepers, you run a high chance of getting reslept, and you lost a Jynx that did a good defensive job by activating Sleep Clause. Even though Exeggutor might not have a lot of HP remaining, it's still threatening a boom on my opponent. If you can get Exeggutor in on a Chansey, or a paralyzed Alakazam, your 5% HP Exeggutor did a lot of offensive work.
What does my opponent have that's still alive?
This question greatly helps answer the above question, but we can break this down even more.
Does my opponent still have a sleeper? If yes, do I have any tools to prevent him from resleeping?
Does my opponent have a good Pokémon for revenge killing living? If yes, it might be good to let your least valuable Pokémon soak the boom and die. If not, it might be a good idea to let something useful take the boom and survive, then switch out to a general sponge. For example, if your opponent is in a position where he can only revenge kill Starmie with Jolteon, you can let it take non-Snorlax booms, switch out and come in later and Recover.
Does my opponent still have a premier late game sweeper? What Pokémon do you have living that can battle Tauros, Zapdos, Rhydon or Dragonite?
Does my opponent have a Pokémon alive that walls one of mine? Rhydon/Zapdos, Chansey/Starmie are the most pressing examples, but there's also weaker walls like Exeggutor/Alakazam (as well as Alakazam/Exeggutor, depending on movesets!) to consider.
It is dangerous to just routinely let your tankiest Pokémon soak Explosions, just like it's dangerous to let your sleeping mon do it, or your almost-dead mon - always evaluate.
Those are all effective questions to ask yourself when you're about to take a hit. However, what about offensive evaluation? Don't worry, there's good things to ask yourself there as well.
A while ago, I battled Dre, and I was in a good position. I had my full HP BoltBeam-Starmie in versus his Victreebel at 12% - enough to live a TBolt but it obviously dies to Blizzard. Dre had Cloyster at ~80%, Dragonite at full HP and paralyzed Alakazam at 46%. Everything is 2HKO'd by me if I predict successfully with either TBolt or Blizzard.
In this situation, I decided to go for Blizzard. The reason was that for me, the worst-case scenario with Blizzard was as follows: I use Blizzard, and it connects with his Cloyster. He cannot kill me with Explosion, so he has to switch out, but I go for Thunderbolt just in case. It hits his Alakazam, who is barely outside KO range from a Blizzard. However, I have two attacks and one potential FP to kill his Alakazam - and that's my worst-case scenario. Meanwhile, if I use Thunderbolt, anticipating a Cloyster switch, the worst case scenario is taking a Stun Spore from Victreebel and then being Wrapped until I die from a Razor Leaf. Meanwhile, if I predict correctly with either Blizzard or Thunderbolt, the most likely result is that either Cloyster or Victreebel dies. Both are very good options for me.
Dre ended up staying in with Victreebel, predicting me to predict a Cloyster switch. However, I didn't need to predict in order to come up with Blizzard as my move of choice.
The above can be described by risk:reward. It wasn't until I had played this battle that I really appreciated what it meant - when I was somewhat new to RBY back in 2011/early 2012, I did a lot of high risk:medium reward predictions. Most worked out, but when they did not I was heavily punished. Using Blizzard in the above situation is in my mind a low risk:medium-high reward, whereas using Thunderbolt is a high risk:medium-high reward.
The questions that you should ask yourself is mostly the same as for defensive evaluations but reversed:
What does my opponent have that he can use to take a hit with?
What can I do if I remove a specific threat the my opponent has?
etc.
These are just guidelines - there's a lot of different questions you can ask yourself in order to come up with your answer, and most situations aren't forcing you to react 100% defensively/offensively. However, these questions get the ball rolling. More importantly, though, is that if you can evaluate a situation, you don't have to try to predict your opponent or force yourself to rely on luck. In a recent battle I played, I had a low-HP Chansey in versus a Tauros at 70%, paralyzed. His remaining Pokémon were sleeping low HP Jynx and paralyzed Chansey at 65%. I had a low HP Exeggutor, low HP Snorlax and full HP paralyzed Gengar. I realized that I did not actually need my Chansey to live to secure the win - I just needed my Snorlax to be in a position where it could kill his Tauros. It could not take a hit but it'd attack first against everything he had and OHKO it, as long as I got Tauros into Hyper Beam range. So, I decided to use Ice Beam on him instead of Softboiled. I ended up killing his Tauros with Chansey due to FP hax, and he sent his Jynx in. His Jynx would be 2HKO'd by Thunderbolt so it was tempting to go for that move. However, I knew that he had been asleep for 5 turns, so if I use TBolt and he wakes up, he'll sleep me and potentially sweep. I went for Thunder Wave instead, using it until he woke up. When he woke up he got instantly paralyzed. He slept me the following turn, but it did not matter - I sent in my 1% Exeggutor on his Blizzard as a sacrifice to get Snorlax in without taking damage, and it cleaned up from there. These two plays were basic, safe plays, but they show that it's important to take a step back some times and guarantee a winning position, rather than to risk something and see "if I go to Snorlax here I can sweep woooo oh no he woke up I'm dead".
