Pokemon without luck.

[Mantishuffle]

Luck. Forces that are out of our control. While some may understandably consider luck an undesirable aspect of a game when playing competitively, I think it is what makes Pokemon fun to play. Still, I'm sure we have all had bad games in which the RNG basically decided every turning point of the game. During such times I have wondered what would Pokemon be like if there was no luck.

So I figured for the sake of playing true to the video game after players agree to avoid using anything that brings chance into play (accuracy, secondary effects, that sort of thing) there are 2 things that remain constant; damage rolls and critical hits. I searched to see what moves would be left available and found that there would be a lot less options. Think about it, if we were to consider playing a tier in RBY (I know RBY has the 1 / 256 inconsistency and 20%+ critical hit rates but bare with me here) that was created to minimize luck, no Electric, Fire, Ice, Poison, or Psychic Type attack moves (except Dream Eater) would be allowed because of the secondary effects. This means that the only way to be statused is by using Rest. With the few moves left to use some types would be heavily buffed. In the case of RBY I found that pretty much the only good attacking moves left are Double-Edge, Explosion, Earthquake, Surf, Drill Peck, Seismic Toss, Night Shade, and Slash. Lesser moves would include Strength, Tri Attack, Mega Drain, Solar Beam, and Double Kick. Even less Pokemon then in OU would be viable, and different Pokemon with the same moveset would be more common.

With less and now more predictable options, I think the game would be pretty boring. Prediction would probably also be more important. Think about chain switching and using moves like Substitute and Counter. Also, if recovery moves are allowed, Pokemon like Starmie and Chansey would be very tough to take down.

So what do you think if there was no luck in Pokemon? Would it be interesting to try playing with conditions that minimize luck? If so I would consider playing Gen2 since there are no such thing as abilities that would make some Pokemon illegal, the critical hit rate is low, all stats are set, and personally I prefer that it is simpler than future generations. The most extreme rules would dictate that each player know each other's Pokemon and moves after agreeing to battle but before the battle starts. This leaves no hidden information. Both players would also need to have all different Pokemon than one another in order to avoid speed ties. It would be even more extreme if the two teams were pre-made, each team having a designated lead Pokemon, and players decide who will use which team. Kind of like how you don't get to pick your pieces or how to arrange them in chess. The bad thing is that this would remove team building which is the aspect that pretty much makes Pokemon battling what it is; players get to choose who to fight with.

All in all I like the luck. That is why I play RBY. Still, I think it is interesting to think about how different the game would be with minimized luck. To completely remove it would not be true to the game (think Hackmons with everyone having Battle Armor for an ability; it prevents critical hits), but it still seems interesting to consider as well. I think, with the pre-made teams idea that I mentioned above, that the game would be very stally. It would probably play better with no moves that can restore HP, but even than I think prediction would be very important. Also the teams would need a ton of planning as to not give the player with the fastest Pokemon too much of an advantage. There could also be several pre made battles, with some being faster or slower paced than others. No need to repeat the same battle over and over again.

I look forward to your thoughts.

[Ortheore]

I'm of the opinion that luck elements need to be considered very carefully before being introduced into a competitive environment. It is extremely difficult to create a situation where luck is relevant but at the same time cannot favour one player or the other. If there is luck to be had, it must be expedient for players to play enough games that their results consistently average out, and even then there will be clutch situations where luck rather than skill determines the winner. If a game is decided by luck rather than skill, that undermines its worth as a competitive game. Not that it's impossible to be competitive or anything, it's just not beneficial imo.

Basically, I think that in a competitive game luck should never determine the winner, and that the best way to achieve this is by not incorporating, or at least minimising, luck elements.

Arguments that I've seen are that luck introduces more variety into a game and tests players' ability to adapt. I question whether the variety is necessary- in a healthy metagame simply playing against opponents really should be enough. As for testing players' ability to adapt, I don't think it's worth it if it devalues skill. There are ways it could be implemented of course, but in general I don't think it's done right.

How does this apply to pokemon? It doesn't. Pokemon has been designed from the ground up to incorporate luck. By banning all luck elements you basically destroy the game. The alternative is to create a mod for the game. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with creating a mod, it's just I can't see that kind of thing ever taking off

Playing rby gives us an interesting perspective on the role of chance in games, since far more than any other meta the game we play is about manipulating the odds of beating your opponent, rather than simply just beating him. Personally, I find that far too many of my matches are determined by the rng than is ideal. However something I don't think as critically about is how effective I am at creating opportunities for the luck to go my way- maybe if I had a clearer picture than that I could shape my perspective a little more.

So yeah, I don't think luck should be part of the game, but for pokemon it already is and removing it would have severe negative implications

[kristoph]

Randomness is really useful for fighting against solvability.  If you look at Pokemon, there are probably tons of endgames that would be really easy to solve without any RNG.  Which means, that's exactly what top players will end up doing, every single time such an endgame emerges.  It'll never be as bad as Chess, since at least Pokemon has other hidden information, but if you never had to worry about missing, full paralysis or crits, that really increases the amount of 'beancounting' you have to rely on.  That can be good or bad depending on how much you enjoy planning out a detailed strategy turns in advance.

Pokemon players tend to be really self-conscious about how much luck is in their game.  Sirlin does a good job of addressing the stigma randomness has in competitive games, and why it's a valid tool for a designer.  


www.sirlin.net/articles/solvability?rq=randomness

[Agent Syrup]

Randomness is actually a big reason why I've cut down on Online Pokemon play. It's not that I think the games would be better off without unexpected elements, but I rather I would be a lot more satisfied with the game if measures were put in place to keep chance from favoring either player too much. Like imagine if there was a code put in that made sure a paralyzed Pokemon wouldn't go more than 4 or 5 turns without getting an FP but also wouldn't be able to get multiple FPs in a row. If all the chance based elements had normalized measures like this I think the game would be more fun on a consistent basis.

Of course this would require altering code, so ideas like this will probably be reserved to my Pokemon Card Game that I'm eventually going to finish.

[Ortheore]

Those Sirlin articles are absolutely fantastic. It seems I hadn't paid much attention to the one linked because I completely forgot about it. However I think my perspective on luck still holds some validity, since within the context of video games, practically zero games have a pure solution. All competitive games that I can think of are either real-time (practically impossible to play perfectly even if a pure solution existed) or possess hidden information in some way (often both). Even if pokemon had no luck elements, it still has a mixed solution, as an example. Virtually any game with any kind of customisation system has a mixed solution, and in my view that's a huge appeal to games, regardless of whether it's a pure or mixed solution- there's a degree of personalisation involved.

Definitely I think if there were limitations to how luck is implemented to stop it from being unbalanced similar to what Agent Syrup described that would be ideal. However there is no getting around the fact that the rng can and will discriminate, which is something I have difficulty accepting.

I am beginning to accept that the stance I held as little as a couple weeks ago (that chance is utterly abhorrent) was a little extreme. However I still find the notion of luck-free games alluring, and I think that if you're not going to carefully consider the impact of luck on the game, chances are the game shouldn't include luck. So it's ok, but only if you really know what you're doing.

[Isa]

I have a preference for perfect information games (I have played chess for 15 years), but random elements can still be featured in a good game (all card games).

For Pokémon, I think it would grow somewhat stale without randomness.

You should check this out though: www.smogon.com/forums/threads/skillmons-playable-on-joims-lab.3524601/

[kristoph]

Apr 27, 2015 4:01:00 GMT -8 Ortheore said:

Those Sirlin articles are absolutely fantastic. It seems I hadn't paid much attention to the one linked because I completely forgot about it. However I think my perspective on luck still holds some validity, since within the context of video games, practically zero games have a pure solution. All competitive games that I can think of are either real-time (practically impossible to play perfectly even if a pure solution existed) or possess hidden information in some way (often both). Even if pokemon had no luck elements, it still has a mixed solution, as an example. Virtually any game with any kind of customisation system has a mixed solution, and in my view that's a huge appeal to games, regardless of whether it's a pure or mixed solution- there's a degree of personalisation involved.

It's not just about whether the game itself is solved, though; even real time games can have situations where the next immediate moves (as opposed to the entire game) are more or less 'solved' ahead of time.  In real time games it's usually not a big deal, but if a designer feels like they want to reduce those kinds of 'decisions,' luck is a good way of doing that.

Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo is maybe the most respected 2d fighter to date, and it's one of the only fighters with random damage (similar to Pokemon's damage ranges).  ST has no problems being a 'solved game' of course, but one thing that's great about the random damage is that it drastically reduces 'bean-counting'-type decisions.  Without random damage, there are situations where I can probably count out the damage I need to win.  I'll know exactly how much damage Vega's flip kick combo does every time, so maybe in a match I'll be in a position where I know that one flip kick combo and one sweep will be just enough to close out the round.  Having random damage obfuscates this and forces me to care about multiple contingencies.  One way of saying this is "it forces players to be more adaptive," but what I prefer to focus on is the reduction in bean-counting. Random damage isn't the only way to do that, but it's a very effective way.

[marcoasd]

Yeah, with no luck there would be a lot more stale. And we like RBY as it doesn't get too much stallish, don't we?

[peabody]

the problem with pokemon (well, rby at least) is that even if you removed all elements of luck, many games would come down to guessing correctly.  take away the luck and you're left with games that come down to whether or not you predict a switch, for example.  

[magic9mushroom]

peabody touches on something that Ortheore missed, IMO.

Global mixed Nash equilibrium implies a luck element in high-level play whether or not one exists in the mechanics.

No global mixed Nash equilibrium, given the length of RBY games and the number of available moves, means it's solvable and you get draw death (and a really boring draw death at that since it's just a mirror game).

Pick your poison.

(As an aside, pulling all the luck out of Pokemon would involve modifying speedties to have both sides act at the same time, so that spore vs. spore means they're both asleep and twave vs. twave means they're both guaranteed to be paralysed.)