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Resource BBP Bug and Feedback Thread - Generation 9 Edition!

Fort Colorcastle said:
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With how safari works right now according to 9.8a, you can't catch a mon you already own, because you can't order a capture order on it. Intuitively that sounds like an artifact from some previous variant of the facility, or else someone who owns all the mons in a trek mechanically cannot proceed in it.
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i think the pokemon is meaningfully distinct from the species it belongs to here. like if you have a level 4 seismitoad chillin out and you encounter another seismitoad on safari, the wild seismitoad is distinct and is not a pokemon you own
 
Fort Colorcastle said:
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With how safari works right now according to 9.8a, you can't catch a mon you already own, because you can't order a capture order on it. Intuitively that sounds like an artifact from some previous variant of the facility, or else someone who owns all the mons in a trek mechanically cannot proceed in it.
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it's "Pokemon they don't own", not "Pokemon of a species they don't own".
 
Feedback: Boast Suggestion
Generic Boast, 2 Points:
Predictable
"Challenger is always first to order"

New Concept:
"When this boast is coupled with (No Switching), increase Boast level by 1"

Nothing complicated, ordering first is widely regarded as a disadvantage. Makes for a good boast. The New Concept is a pitch because one bonus of ordering first is the ability to switch. Always ordering first means you always get to switch, so removing that with (No Switching) makes it even harder and it would be cool if together the boast value went up.
 
If the challenger is always first to order that would mean the ref can't initiate switch phases. Including switching out after they trap you. With the right team that could make your challenge actively easier, since now there's no need for you to do matchup control.
 
Could add wording like "After the Switching Phase, the Challenger is first to order"
For example rounds 1 and 2 vs Ash Ketchum would be:
[Sim Information]
Ash Sends out Pikachu @ Item, Challenger to order 1st

Round 1
-Challenger order 1st
- Ash orders 2nd
- Round is Reffed, at the bottom:
Ash to declare switches
Challenger to order 1st
Ash to order 2nd

Round 2:
-Ash switches to Charizard (2.5d Manual Switching)
-Challenge can stay in, but orders 1st because of boast. Or counterswitch (2.5e). However if they double boast and have No Switching, this battle is way way harder because Ash can position into a favorable matchup every round, with no opportunity for counterswitching.
No matter what,
- Challenger orders 1st
- Ash orders 2nd
- Round is reffed, at the bottom:
Ash to declare switches
Challenger to order 1st
Ash to order 2nd

and that's the whole game, in a way that allows the realgam trainer to switch.
 
Getting feedback that the Frisk revision (making you name items) basically doesn't change its function when sending second.

I have an idea for a fix, but wonder if people would rather do less reading not have things changed so soon in succession?


Edit: I went ahead with the change in this case, but I'd still like to ask the above.
The user can quickly identify the items held by opponents, and potentially sabotage them.

The user is unaffected by Natural Gift and by Fling.

At the beginning of battle: they may name up to three (0-3) different item names to be noted on this ability; after which, scheduled posts resume.

The effects of items, that were noted on this ability, are ignored.
(For each instance of Frisk on your team, you may name the same items or different items.)
You can also find this updated text in the DAT or the patch, next to its other two versions.
 
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I think this change makes sense for exactly the reasons mentioned, but the cadence does feel quite fast if there are too many small tweaks to fix things that are not broken but could be improved.
 
I was just looking over the last patch post again and noticed this:

"Battle Tower changes:
Entry Cost: 2 JC -> 1 + Team Size JC.
Referee Pay: 6 JC -> 2 + Team Size JC, or 8 JC, whichever is lesser."

But it also says that Battle Tower is intended to be net neutral for most team sizes.
Is the ref pay intended to be 2+2N?
 
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DAT, Vacuum Wave's contest description has a "The" typo'd as "Th".
 
Since I'm trying to go a little longer between balance adjustments (we're still watching for them, they just go in a list now unless they're urgent), I'm turning my eye to mechanical polish, because I have a genetic compulsion to do some kind of game-maintaining work

So far, the thing I'd like to follow up on the work described in this post: clarifying triggers that occur from "crowded" game events. The moment a Pokemon enters play, and the moment a Pokemon is hit by an attack, are both "crowded" in the sense that there are many, many trigger effects in the game watching for those events.

A Pokemon entering play could trigger some number of hazards, their own abilities, their held items, the abilities of opposing Pokemon, and more; all in one go. This leads to players running to check the sorting rules (2.10) for even very mundane rounds. Making these interactions more intuitive on their face would let us save 2.10 for resolving only the most tangled interactions.

This work would probably involve the following:
User-Entry Triggers: Moving any triggers "When the user enters play" to a templating closer to "Once per [term for entering play], at the start of the Battling Phase:". P2X7 gave me several workable keywords that nonetheless would have sent even veteran players reaching for the handbook, trying to figure out "how the hell do I manifest an ability". After thinking about this for a while, I'm convinced that it'd be better to make a new keyword that names "the time you spend in play, each time you enter play".
  • The goal of this templating is to continue to prevent "revolving-door" switches involving abilities that trigger on switch—such as sending a Drought Pokemon after a KO, then trying to immediately initiate a switch to get "free" Sun.
  • Possible names for "an uninterrupted stretch of time spent in play" include a "fielding" (uncommon), a "send-out" (shared with other vocab), a "deployment" (has flavor baggage), a "session" (?), and a handful of other, longer or vaguer terms.
Other Entry Triggers: There's a cleaner event that game pieces like held items can watch for: The end of the Switching Phase.
  • Whether entry hazards trigger at the end of the switching phase (unlikely), or continue to observe the now less-crowded "when a Pokemon enters play" event (likely), will depend on how punishable we decide switching should be. We already have a wealth of feedback from players regarding hazard strength, so please keep feedback focused on rules clarity and not "please buff/nerf hazards" assuming you want your post to stay up :zonger:.
  • Once all the entry-triggering effects are uncluttered, we won't need to have the Switching Phase be a "closed event" anymore, and we can be rid of this confusing piece of terminology.
On-Hit Triggers: Uncluttering this space will be much harder. There's a wealth of effects that need to be tied to move success, like Knock Off; and many of the intended counters (Protect, Substitute, Razor Wind) to effects that trigger on-hit already correctly interact with these effects. That is to say, changing a bunch of on-hit effects to instead watch for some other event would cause a lot of unwanted balance repercussions... Much in the same way the "closed event" Switching Phase did.
  • Some moves like Bug Bite only work properly when trigger sorting allows them to. Having to check Effect Trigger Sort rules to see if Bug Bite or Pluck even work is maybe the biggest thing we want to correct.
  • Tangentially, it might be time to have a harder look at the sheer number of "on round start" Berries, which completely invalidate most Berry counterplay besides Unnerve; but that doesn't have much to do with this work.
Trigger Priority: I'd like to find two intuitive words or phrases for "this trigger goes before/after other triggers that watch the same event", much in the same way rule 1.2 Numbers currently uses "base" and "final". I feel like being able to simply say on Knock Off, "On-hit, with low trigger priority" (but with a clearer phrase) would immediately solve most players' confusion that comes up in chat.
  • This would introduce a new step before "Component Trigger Sort", but I don't really think anyone will complain.
  • This also would force me to rewrite the trigger-sorting example, and you can rest assured that I will complain about this.
  • We'd have to find phrases that are pretty clearly referring to trigger sorting, though. Saying "On hit, quickly:" is maybe even worse than current sorting rules.
That's what I've been thinking about in the absence of designing Contests. while putting off data pages

The most useful feedback on this would be which rules, pertaining to switching and to triggers, are currently clear or unclear. Feedback as to useful, specific keywords phrases for the above features are also helpful.
 
I'll probably have some other thoughts later, but I've seen a different game use First for what you have as "quickly". So I'd suggest First On-hit and Final On-hit as the timings for the above.
 
Oh right I never posted my thoughts on trying new spore.
Its really really hard.
I lost 2 pokemon by the end of phase 2 and then conceded after clearing that phase.

I think if you treat it as a pinacle or high boast where you bring 3 perfect pokemon because you want vocations then it should be very doable but I expect practically every leveling team to die.
That said I did find the design more interactive. It made me use subs which I mostly wasn't on previous raids. So while I am not sure about the tuning I do think the general redesign is good. I think Keriel said it was easier and more fun to ref as well.

Context: I played with shiftry su, braviary-h ag, rapidash-g pro.
  • Rapidash ability is really crazy and braviary can stab se the whole raid so those were in my favour.
  • I did not have access to helping hand and I should have taken blackguard instead of psychic as things that made it harder.

Specifics:
  • There is a lot of piercing moves, 2 of the phases can choose to throw out piercing moves every single turn, which seems a bit much in terms of limiting abiliy to do cool things. I was trying soverign magnificence to split damage and it did very little outside of phase 2.
  • Phase 3 seems pretty ludicrous. Unless you take no chip (which I don't think is possible since raid mon attack even if under 0 life) he is just going to 1 shot a pokemon every round on top of his other actions. Even if you do take 0 chip he might still 1 shot a mon every round unless you kill very fast.
  • Phase 2 tuning is very high given the lack of good aoe at level 1. The key highlights are if you don't bring safe guard your ag is probably going to get spored at some point to lose you a round and +10 giga drains healing 10 on top of dealing +10 damage is a hell of a lot of numbers.
  • In general the new mechanic I was least keen on was getting 0 value for killing things. Having a -100 hp breloom chunking me repeatedly felt bad. Maybe they could do half damage or something?
 
Thoughts on things I find unintuitive in the current game.
Bide
Bide keeping the biding status after second activation was completely unexpected to me since it feels like once you have done your big return attack you are done... that was your big punch. I probably won't forget about it in the future since it caused me to bide 3x in a row but I would never have got the intuitition check for that ruling correct.

Switching Phase/Entering Play
I think this one is already being watched but the whole "yes all the pokemon did enter play, but unless they were there doing the 'did they enter play' check phase that only look at the battle field then they might as well not have"is something I have to check comp rules for every time a situation with swaps, counter swaps, rocks, weather setting etc comes up.

Timing Clause Subs
I keep wanting to write things like "when I am hit, use payback" and this fails because it needed to be "when I am hit, if able, use payback."
I feel like things with a timing clause maybe shouldn't need the implicit if able? They don't have the same legibilty problem as "use payback" which is I understand what we were originally trying to avoid.
 
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I'm pretty spoiled in terms of unintuitive things / landmines due to being a new player and doing events with another (Lucky)

Action Groups are rather unintuitive as a whole. Stuff like Drain Punch not being a HP Recovery Move is wack and could be clarified in the quick link reference since it does recover move. Similar with Crush Claw not being an Attack-Raizing Move (and, under this umbrella, Power-Up Punch do falling into it could also be worth a mention as well)

Disable and the ramifications of Sealed are wack. The "At start of step THEN use Blizzard" failing because it doesn't have "If Able" is rather silly and against the anti-pedant rule.

----

Unrelated, but could we have some bad starter vocations for raids? Raids need to be balanced around you having vocations but you need to win raids to get vocations, making Raids a bit too restricted for new players to jump in.

Having starting vocations would let like how we have new players start out with Wise Glasses / Oran Berry / etc. Something like "+1 Atk & Special Attack" for AG - something anyone with real vocations would never use but for newer players building their collection it'd be really handy. For example, right now I wanna fight Unloyal Trio but I don't have vocations for it, meaning I first want to beat Guzzlord for them.

And even when I do beat Mascator, I wouldn't use Blackguard because it conflicts with my protector's ability Stamina! Having starting vocations would smooth this up so much - it would mean I don't need to fight Mascator, it means if I did fight Mascator to use Bodyguard and Rearguard I wouldn't go vocationless on the AG and it means I would have a smoother time vs Mascator.

This is all issues that only affect a new player, greatly harming the new player experience. New players trying to get into raids:
  • Have a smaller pool of mons to pick from, greatly reducing how much they can plan their Raid runs
  • Are generally less skilled / more prone to mistakes than veterans, meaning their Raids are more likely to go south
  • Don't have the vocations, meaning they're mechanically worse than veterans even for level 1 content
Adding starting vocations doesn't solve 3 fully but it does help mitigate it a lot. Having the raids intended for beginners be "Can a beginner beat this with the starting vocations" rather than "Can a beginner beat this with no vocations" makes it much easier to make beginner-friendly raids as well, alongside serving as a nice tutorial and welcoming gift to new players.
 
Attacking the "if able" problem above from a different angle, "If able, use Blizzard" should really default to start of turn instead of start of step.
(The current default timing rule of "start of step if no state clauses, start of turn otherwise" could change to "start of step if any action clauses and no state clauses"). I've seen this catch out people a few times and it's pretty unintuitive imo.

I agree on starter vocations. Random ideas off the top of my head:
1) Protector has Sticky Hold. (Actually grant the ability so Piercing Knock Off still beats it.)
2) Supporter starts the battle with a Quick token.
3) Aggressor has +1 offense ranks, yeah.

Will try to think if there's any other landmines that come to mind.

In the meantime, have some new player progression thoughts:

I know that it's explicitly a goal to desync people's starting Pokemon levels, but it seems like it'd easily frustrate people to end up with a level 0 after their first battle (unless you're explicitly trying to steer them to Tree/Safari?), so it might be worth explicitly telling people to sign up for two Beginner Battles ("you can do multiple things at the same time", after all, is also a BBP lesson new players need).
Past that, I think it might be worth extending the new player rewards into a sort of tutorial quest system; imagine something like this (obviously all numbers are just for illustration.)
First Beginner Battle - +20 JC
First Casual Game - +4 TC, +4 RC
First Facility Loss - +8 JC, +1 Lo-Exp Record
First Facility Win - +8 TC, +1 Exp Record
 
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How do people feel about the current rules on past round discussion in staked matches? At least how it is being interpreted by some people I talk to it seems to completely shut down all discussion until weeks after people forget the context. For example "what do you think of your opponents orders last round" is being interpeted as seeking or offering strategy advice on previous rounds.

Do people think that interpretation is correct? I don't see how asking that question is offering strategy, and it certainly can't be seeking it if I am not part of said battle.

If this interpreation is correct, I personally feel the social cost is greatly outweighting the lack of competitive integrity caused by such questions, which seems minimal.
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LouisCyphre said:
The most useful feedback on this would be which rules, pertaining to switching and to triggers, are currently clear or unclear. Feedback as to useful, specific keywords phrases for the above features are also helpful.
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I think the the fact that players can't simultaneously switch and Terastallize could be clarified a little more. The handbook's Switch Phase summary at the start of section 2.5 makes several references to players' choice to manually switch or Terastallize in a way that can just as easily be interpreted with the logical OR as with the exclusive OR, and they appear before the (possibly new?) Switch Phase order of events in 2.5d that describes Terastallization as an option only for Pokemon that haven't been manually recalled, which means that they'll appear first when searching in-page.
 
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