Discussing the Complications of Simulating ADV Deoxys

[Inspirited]

Hello. This thread has been a long time coming and probably should have been brought up sooner now that we have the means of implementing things like gen 3 Deoxys correctly. The goal here is not necessarilly to change things, but to clear up why we are simulating Deoxys the way PS currently does or possibly make changes if that is the will of the player base. Deoxys is rather complicated in nature and some of the PS crew may also have things to say about it since it could require quite a bit of effort to correctly simulate this one off case in an unfortunately niche set of formats.

Here's an overview of ADV Deoxys form constraints: Deoxys is locked into one of its forms depending on which cartridge it is currently on. If Deoxys currently exists in Ruby or Sapphire, it will be normal; if Deoxys currently exists in FireRed, it is always Attack; if Deoxys currently exists in LeafGreen, it is always Defense; and if Deoxys currently exists in Emerald, it is always Speed. In link battles, an opponent's Deoxys will always show up as normal cosmetically but will keep the stats of whatever form it is actually in (thank you Plague von Karma setting me straight on that).

Currently, Deoxys is simulated by showing the opponents form as it comes in which is incorrect and undocumented in mod / clause list.

There are many ways to potentially fix this with a large range of effort between them. I will list a few of my own that players in the ADV Ubers discord have proposed and DaWoblefet's suggestion. I will do my best to amend the list as we gather more suggestions players who see this. I plan to give my own thoughts on these.

1. Assume all ADV should be played on Emerald.
This is what PS is erroneously attempting to simulate anyways but would effectively ban all other Deoxys forms except Speed.

2. Simulate Deoxys accurately with no outside information.
All opposing Deoxys would appear as normal but could be any form. Shrödinger's Deoxys.

3. Deoxys Clause / Deoxys Clause Mod are added to the clause / mod list.
Players that use Deoxys are expected to reveal their Deoxys form as it enters battle... or just slap "Mod" on the end and save the explanation. This would allow ADV Ubers to be played as it currently is.

4. Remove the assumed player partition.
This would allow each player to see eachother's vividly colored game cartridge which would tell each player the only type of Deoxys they could potentially be using. On PS, this could be interpreted as a label somewhere in the player sidebars that is selected by the Deoxys being used should it be present. If a player isn't using Deoxys, it could either be generated randomly or players could select it in the teambuilder or something.

 

[Plague von Karma]

To preface, ADV is like, my least played competitive gen, next to Gen 4. Yes, I have committed a cardinal sin, I apologize for my crimes against humanity. As such, take all opinions I have with a grain of salt, and feel free to disregard them. The main reason I'm here is because my name was dropped and I want to share some of the research I've done on the topic.

Also, this entire debacle gives me Team Preview Urshifu vibes and I hate it.

Research
In the case someone wants me to do a video demonstration on how Deoxys works in-game, I can do that. I was gonna sort it but this thread came up a touch earlier than expected and I'm having a right time getting a save file sorted. There isn't much video documentation on this, though Serebii has some notes with a nice GIF, so let's use that unless someone wants a video.

For those who can't be arsed to view the page, here's your abbreviation: the GIF and what Serebii says about ADV Deoxys in Link Battles. Circa...2005ish, I believe.

They are perfectly usable in Link Battles. However in the third generation, there is a snag to doing this, when Battling lets say FireRed to LeafGreen both with Deoxys. The following will happen:

First, on your opponent's screen, no matter what game you are using or what form you are using, it will look like a Normal form. However, the stats for the Deoxys would equal the game so if one person is using an Attack Deoxys...it will stay as one stat wise, even if someone is using Defense Deoxys in battle against you...It would truely be Attack Deoxys VS Defense Deoxys...you just would be unable to see it. This even happens on Pokémon Colosseum! This factor is no longer present during the fourth generation

EDIT: Someone told me that the weird grammar here makes the mechanic hard to understand, which in turn makes my next paragraph seem random. In hindsight, I get it, so I'll sum it up for you: the Deoxys in each version of ADV uses the same data entry in each game, just with different stats. To make the funny forms™ work, they just make the game take the literal stats of the opposing team. So essentially, you can fight the funny forms™ regardless of version, you just won't know what it is unless you know what the opponent is playing (MacChaeger explains an in-game method perfectly here).

To be clear, this mechanic isn't actually uncommon: DPP takes the literal stats of the opposing team, so you can use a Giratina-Origin against Diamond and Pearl teams, for example. I'm not 100% on the inner-workings here, but it seems to be the gist of it, at least from what I've heard. DaWoblefet verified my claims here with some screenshot examples here, so check those out!

Opinion
Anyway, this is a PR thread, so I guess I should give my opinion. For those who want to disregard what I have to say on the basis of me not being an ADV player, which is perfectly fair, I've put this in a spoiler. Feel free to skip. I don't think my take is particularly good, either.

The Plague Take™

So as far as I know, Pokemon Showdown's policy has it currently simulate Emerald. I believe that some kind of exception or policy change would be ideal for "fixing" the Deoxys simulation, because as it stands, ADV has been simulated "wrong" for many years. However, while it's "wrong", it also "isn't", since the only thing that makes it "wrong" is the arbitrary nature of the simulation and the handling of the sprites. Since it is perfectly possible to use the other Deoxys forms in a Link Battle - just in a weird way - it makes no sense to pluck Emerald out of the air and make it the only game simulated. So, let's say we extend this simulation to cover all of the ADV generations, and thus Deoxys at the same time.

As such, my opinion here would vibe the most with Option 4.

4. Remove the assumed player partition.
This would allow each player to see eachother's vividly colored game cartridge which would tell each player the only type of Deoxys they could potentially be using. On PS, this could be interpreted as a label somewhere in the player sidebars that is selected by the Deoxys being used should it be present. If a player isn't using Deoxys, it could either be generated randomly or players could select it in the teambuilder or something.

This is a rather cumbersome Client change, to say the least. Perhaps under the team, there could be a little label that says the game simulated. Could be a nice little aesthetic change if you make it look like the type markings or something, possibly. I'm one of the worst excuses for a pixel artist to ever exist, but here's a "Ruby" mockup with horrible scaling;

I like the idea of this being randomly generated if the player doesn't have a Deoxys while being pre-determined if the player does. I think forcing a player to have to pick a cartridge even if they don't have Deoxys on their team is a stupid idea, so having the simulator do it for you sounds better. At the same time though, you could ask: why not just use the sprites if the cartridge tells you? Well, viewing the opponent's cartridge is borderline effortless and can even be done on accident unless you use duct tape or something to cover it, so this can be taken as a rudimentary form of team preview. Even if you keep the sprites, a cartridge symbol would probably be warranted in some form as a form of pre-preparation. After all, an experienced player can possibly deduce how likely it is for someone to have a Deoxys on the opposing team. Team structure is a thing.

I went over this next bit in the researcher Discord with SnorlaxMonster, SadisticMystic and pyuk. It should be mentioned that on GBA SPs, it's difficult to see the cartridge from a Link Battle perspective, due to them loading from the bottom. Game Boy Players can also be cumbersome if you're crazy enough to have two GameCubes, etc with a link cable connecting them. Micros and standard GBAs work fine though. Regardless, you can tell who's playing by the overworld sprites and stuff, though. One way around all of these semantics is to just say "on cartridge, reveal the GBA cartridge being used" or something like that.

The second option I vibe with, which is the easiest, is Option 2.

2. Simulate Deoxys accurately with no outside information.
All opposing Deoxys would appear as normal but could be any form. Shrödinger's Deoxys.

This is the least ideal - especially from a user perspective - but the easiest-to-fix option. This would also match cartridge to a T if the PS policy changes to work with any GBA cartridge. All this would consist of is switching all the front sprites of the Deoxys sprites on PS's archive to the "Normal" form, which would then load during a battle and thus "fix" the problem. By maintaining the back sprite, you would still see the form on your end, which is the correct simulation.

In hindsight my take here was fucking awful btw, steelskitty gives a good case for a Deoxys Clause where you just reveal the form yourself. Change the "simulate Emerald" policy to encompass all cartridge games and plop that clause in, good as new.

 

[HoeenHero]

Only from a technical POV:

1. Assume all ADV should be played on Emerald.
This is what PS is erroneously attempting to simulate anyways but would effectively ban all other Deoxys forms except Speed.

2. Simulate Deoxys accurately with no outside information.
All opposing Deoxys would appear as normal but could be any form. Shrödinger's Deoxys.

These are doable yes, but there are other less restrictive options that are feasible.

3. Deoxys Clause / Deoxys Clause Mod are added to the clause / mod list.
Players that use Deoxys are expected to reveal their Deoxys form as it enters battle... or just slap "Mod" on the end and save the explanation. This would allow ADV Ubers to be played as it currently is.

This isn't a bad solution, its also not hard to do at all.

4. Remove the assumed player partition.
This would allow each player to see eachother's vividly colored game cartridge which would tell each player the only type of Deoxys they could potentially be using. On PS, this could be interpreted as a label somewhere in the player sidebars that is selected by the Deoxys being used should it be present. If a player isn't using Deoxys, it could either be generated randomly or players could select it in the teambuilder or something.

This is a bad idea. First, it would require a change to the client to support showing these cartridges, and only for gen 3. This can have unintended side affects. For example, suppose the cart defaults to Emerald unless a Deoxys is involved. Having a cartridge that isn't emerald instantly reveals you have a Deoxys (atk, def, or normal), which is a leak of information. Now you could argue that the cart shown should be random unless otherwise needed, but I still feel this is a bad idea. Especially when a player is known to use Deoxys or anything like that. Basically, I don't want the risk of possibly revealing information in advance of when it should be.

So our information on what form Deoxys is must be tied to Deoxys. Now we could find a way to add some kind of color indicator to Deoxys HP bar for the cartridge, but I have a much simpler idea. Instead of showing a cartridge and having the player infer the form, just show the form name as Deoxys' name (eg: Deoxys, Deoxys-Attack, Deoxys-Defense, Deoxys-Speed) to indicate the form. The sprite can be forced to always be normal in gen 3 if desired, or it could just also show correctly as another indicator (eg: the do nothing tech wise option).

 

[pyuk]

I was actually asking about this the other day on Discord. As it turns out, one more thing to consider is that you can actually tell which game someone's playing based on their trainer sprite in-game, but this comes with some restrictions based on which game you yourself are playing.

• In Ruby/Sapphire, every trainer has the same sprite, so you can't tell at all.
• In FireRed/LeafGreen, you can tell Kanto trainers from Hoenn trainers, but you can't tell between R/S and Emerald
• In Emerald, you can still tell regions apart, but you can also tell Emerald apart from Ruby or Sapphire.
• In no version can you tell FireRed from LeafGreen.

In a real-life link battle, someone with a GameBoy Advance SP could easily hide their cartridge from view if not required to show it by the rules, so accounting for these version differences might be your only chance at determining which Deoxys your opponent could have. The problem, of course, is what to do if someone doesn't have a Deoxys on their team. If you assume they're Emerald to give them the most information about Deoxys users, then any other Emerald players can tell immediately that they don't have a Deoxys that isn't Deoxys-Speed. You would also have to give all spectators a Ruby/Sapphire perspective, since it would otherwise be incredibly trivial to just copy/paste the battle url into a private window to get an Emerald perspective if you're running a Deoxys-Attack, for instance.

Code-wise, it's a pretty big ask to incorporate the option to choose your game version, at least as part of a team. The sim isn't at all prepared to handle data about a team that isn't tied to any specific Pokemon, so if we did implement something like that, it would most likely be in the form of an option like inviteOnly, and if I know Zarel, he would most likely insist on an actual GUI for that instead of having to use chat commands.

Edit: I probably shouldn't speak for Zarel, so let me just say that in my own opinion, an option like that might as well not exist if it's limited to a hidden chat command; most players wouldn't even know it existed. After all, how many people do you think know about /itemsearch? Hell, there are loads of users who don't even know you can use commands with a / instead of a ! because they've only learned how to use commands by seeing other users broadcast them.

Edit 2: Rather than reply to the post below with a one-liner, I’ll just clarify here that the information leak from trainer sprites happens at the start of the battle so simply revealing the Deoxys forme would in some cases actually be less informative than properly simulating the trainer sprite mechanic.

 

[steelskitty]

We should definitely favor the option that's as cartridge-accurate as possible while still letting us use all the Deoxys formes. ADV Ubers is a radically different metagame without Deoxys-Attack and -Defense, and I reckon an effective Deoxys ban would be wildly unpopular among the player base. To give you an idea of how much of a metagame staple the Pokemon is, look here and here. In Most Wanted 2, a Deoxys-Attack found its way onto at least 12 out of 24, or 50% of teams. In the most recent Ubers Premier League, we saw a Deoxys-Defense or -Attack on at least 37 out of 62, or 60% of teams. That means that, combining the data from the two biggest Ubers team tours — two of the only places where ADV Ubers gets representation — we saw one of Deoxys-Attack or -Defense on more than half of all teams. In our ADV Ubers Viability Rankings, Deoxys-Attack sits in S Rank, with -Defense in A+. These two Deoxys formes are, as you can imagine, a huge part of the tier. They're Pokemon you always need to account for in the teambuilder and in gameplay. Removing them from ADV Ubers would shake up an ancient metagame with relatively niche interest already and should be avoided at all costs. If there is a cartridge-legal way to use all the Deoxys formes and we omit them from the tier, it would go against one of the core tenants of our most updated articulation of Ubers tiering philosophy — having "the least amount of bans needed to maintain a playable tier competitively." Getting rid of the Deoxys formes when there's a way to use them on cartridge in link battles would be a de facto ban with little to no documented demand. We should care about being cartridge-accurate, because otherwise we're playing a fanfiction format. But we should also care about doing everything we can to preserve old, competitive metagames such as this one.

If you're unfamiliar with ADV Ubers, you might be wondering why I haven't mentioned Deoxys-Normal yet. It's one of our two D-Rank Pokemon, the other being Wynaut. In every Ubers metagame, this rank is reserved for Pokemon with no metagame niche that are only Ubers by tiering. Deoxys-Normal's assumed 0% usage in a sample set of 86 teams in the last two major ADV Ubers-inclusive tournaments should give you a more empirical idea of its viability. Simply put, there's no reason to use it over one of the other three formes. This means we should avoid option 2 at all costs — though it would let us use all Deoxys, given that Deoxys-Normal is not used, it reveals no useful information about the opponent's Deoxys. Not knowing what Deoxys the opponent has is actually pretty uncompetitive. It turns a good deal of Deoxys counterplay into a stupid, high-risk guessing game. As a hypothetical, let's say your opponent leads Deoxys-* and you lead Latios. Being in the lead slot, you expect it to be -Speed and you click Dragon Claw to avoid it getting three layers of Spikes. Instead, it reveals it's Spell Tag Deoxys-Attack and Shadow Balls you for the OHKO. You just lost your Kyogre check and Ground resist because you saw the alternative as the opponent getting away with setting up max Spikes. Another hypothetical: your opponent has a balance team and they make a nice double into Deoxys-*. You assume it's -Attack to revenge kill Calm Mind Pokemon and you go to your Groudon to check it. Instead, it reveals it's -Defense, and it gets max Spikes on your Groudon and knocks off your Leftovers to boot. The volatile guessing games continue even when both of you have Deoxys-* in. Let's say you're running Petaya Deoxys-Attack and you think your opponent has Deoxys-Defense. You can't touch this and it can Seismic Toss you to take a good chunk out of your HP, so you switch out, only for a surprise Deoxys-Attack Pursuit to OHKO you. We can't have Shrödinger's Deoxys, because the three formes of it are all very viable and have drastically different counterplay. This option would reward the better player less by rewarding high-risk plays and substandard teams more.

So option one is out because it effectively bans everything but the Deoxys forme that only had 10% usage in our last two ADV Ubers tournaments, and option two is out because it needlessly increases the volatility of an already inaccessible and archaic metagame. All technical considerations aside, I'd prefer adopting option three, adding a clause that reveals the Deoxys forme as it enters battle. This is the most similar to what we have now, it lets us use all Deoxys formes, and it's much more intuitive than having players memorize which Deoxys forme corresponds to which game cartridge. Honestly, yeah, I am scared of change here — the only thing ADV Ubers might ever need to change from a metagame standpoint is the legality of Ingrain+Baton Pass chains, which is a very different topic from this. Please don't fuck up one of the more interesting Ubers generations on the basis of a technicality.

 

[Marty]

I thought everyone knew about this quirk. It's intentional that the real forme is shown because it's the least annoying solution both for players and sim devs. You already need a judge to tell your opponent your HP percentages at any given moment, so it's not a stretch to also have them tell your opponent which cartridge you're using when your Deoxys switches in. The correct sprite being shown is just for convenience, and if a Clause is necessary to make this obvious, then fine. The mechanical differences between games in Gen 3 are totally irrelevant to competitive play so there's no point to assume everyone is using Emerald. The alternative is completely unreasonable for everyone.

Relatedly, the reason I haven't personally implemented "you can't put multiple formes of Deoxys on one team" is because Species Clause handles it in Ubers, so it's very low on my to-do list.

 

[Master Chief]

Steel put it in a better and more verbose form but I just wanted to echo the sentiment that option 3 with the deoxys clause or w/e is the cleanest and best option in my view. Being able to distinguish deoxys forms is a huge part of adv rn and i don't think the tier will be playable if the deoxys form is unrevealed especially since deo-a fits on a lot of offensive but also on quite a few fat teams to act as a good rker with prio but on some teams if it's deo-d that leads to pretty different ways of playing around it. Deo-a already leads to quite a few guessing games as to what its set will be (band, stag, petaya etc.) so adding another element in the mix will just make adv real messy. While I understand the view that we want to keep it as close to the cartridge as possible, it'll be sucky and near impossible to play without a deo clause. Deoxys is also a really really good mon and as an offensive mon keeps a lot of dumb shit in check without being tooo overbearing. So rather than fuck things up, just introduce a clause and keep a nice, stable metagame as is. Clause 4 also to me gives away too much info. Like if the cartridge shows leafgreen, u can bet ur ass there's gonna be a deo-d on their team and that's huge info almost as good as team preview and is huge when ur thinking about how to set up and win or whether or not ur facing spikes. tl;dr go with the deo clause and leave adv ubers as is

 

[pyuk]

Ok I was going to leave it at just an edit on my first post, but after this triple-ignore I feel the need to reiterate.

I was actually asking about this the other day on Discord. As it turns out, one more thing to consider is that you can actually tell which game someone's playing based on their trainer sprite in-game, but this comes with some restrictions based on which game you yourself are playing.

• In Ruby/Sapphire, every trainer has the same sprite, so you can't tell at all.
• In FireRed/LeafGreen, you can tell Kanto trainers from Hoenn trainers, but you can't tell between R/S and Emerald
• In Emerald, you can still tell regions apart, but you can also tell Emerald apart from Ruby or Sapphire.
• In no version can you tell FireRed from LeafGreen.

In a real-life link battle, someone with a GameBoy Advance SP could easily hide their cartridge from view if not required to show it by the rules, so accounting for these version differences might be your only chance at determining which Deoxys your opponent could have. The problem, of course, is what to do if someone doesn't have a Deoxys on their team. If you assume they're Emerald to give them the most information about Deoxys users, then any other Emerald players can tell immediately that they don't have a Deoxys that isn't Deoxys-Speed. You would also have to give all spectators a Ruby/Sapphire perspective, since it would otherwise be incredibly trivial to just copy/paste the battle url into a private window to get an Emerald perspective if you're running a Deoxys-Attack, for instance.

Code-wise, it's a pretty big ask to incorporate the option to choose your game version, at least as part of a team. The sim isn't at all prepared to handle data about a team that isn't tied to any specific Pokemon, so if we did implement something like that, it would most likely be in the form of an option like inviteOnly, and if I know Zarel, he would most likely insist on an actual GUI for that instead of having to use chat commands.

Edit: I probably shouldn't speak for Zarel, so let me just say that in my own opinion, an option like that might as well not exist if it's limited to a hidden chat command; most players wouldn't even know it existed. After all, how many people do you think know about /itemsearch? Hell, there are loads of users who don't even know you can use commands with a / instead of a ! because they've only learned how to use commands by seeing other users broadcast them.

Edit 2: Rather than reply to the post below with a one-liner, I’ll just clarify here that the information leak from trainer sprites happens at the start of the battle so simply revealing the Deoxys forme would in some cases actually be less informative than properly simulating the trainer sprite mechanic.

It’s one thing to add a mechanic that reveals extra information that wouldn’t be available in-game in order to make the format playable, but it’s another thing entirely to deliberately leave out a real game mechanic that would reveal “too much” information. No matter how hard you try to hide your LeafGreen cartridge, you can’t stop an Emerald, FireRed, or other LeafGreen player from seeing your Kanto trainer sprite at the start of the battle.

Hide

Thinking about it further, I think it doesn’t even make sense to assume Emerald by default because with Deo-N being outclassed, playing Emerald rules out your having the aforementioned two most viable formes, while playing on a Kanto game only realistically rules out Deoxys-Speed. That is, until someone takes advantage of that and plays Ruby/Sapphire to make their Kanto-playing opponents plan around them not having Deo-A only to be caught off guard by Deo-N.

 

[DaWoblefet]

To be clear, this mechanic isn't actually uncommon: DPP "literally" interprets the stats of the opposing team, so you can use a Giratina-Origin against Diamond and Pearl teams, for example. I'm not 100% on the inner-workings here, but it seems to be the gist of it, at least from what I've heard. If someone more well-versed in these games can give a better explanation, please do!

I'm getting sort of off-topic, but that's correct; you can see here that the sprite of Giratina-O and Spiky-Eared Pichu exist on the top picture (SoulSilver) but not the bottom (Pearl). They have to use the same stats, otherwise a desync would occur.

Spoiler

You can see a similar effect in Black/White vs Black/White 2; notice Landorus-T and Kyurem-W on the top picture (White 2) but not the bottom (White).

Spoiler

We didn't start to have direct incompatibilities between versions with different Pokemon until XY and ORAS, where you are not allowed to bring something like Primal Groudon, Mega Salamence, or Dragon Ascent to a match at all.

Here are my brief thoughts as it pertains to Deoxys:

• If you allow non-Speed Deoxys in ADV, then you are assuming any Gen 3 cart may be used when playing ADV. Typically speaking, Showdown only simulates the most recent game of the generation (in this case, Emerald). I do not know how differences in mechanics between Gen 3 cartridges are resolved. Is it determined by the host cartridge in a Link Battle? Does the most recent game take priority?
  • I know hardly anything about ADV and cannot test any Link Battle mechanics on cartridge, so I don't even know if there are mechanics differences. I'd be shocked if there wasn't something out there, though.
  • If there are differences, should Showdown simulate those differences per-cartridge? i.e. if both players have Deoxys-Attack, should they play by FireRed's mechanics, not Emerald's? (again, assuming there actually are battle mechanics differences)
    • Minimally, I think we want to say that we want to simulate Emerald unless a Deoxys forces us to simulate another game.
• The starting trainer sprite of a Link Battle seems unavoidable. Unless there's an alternative method of starting battles between cartridges that avoids this problem, the trainer sprite is a partial information leak. If I understand correctly:
  • The headbands for Ruby / Sapphire vs Emerald are different colors, and Emerald knows this difference. FireRed and LeafGreen don't have any difference in trainer sprites. So:
    • Emerald knows if they're fighting Ruby/Sapphire (Normal), Emerald (Speed), or Kanto (Attack OR Defense)
    • FireRed / LeafGreen knows if they're fighting Hoenn (Normal OR Speed) or Kanto (Attack OR Defense)
    • Ruby / Sapphire don't know which Deoxys they could be fighting.
• I think the argument of "your cartridge would be physically identifiable!" doesn't hold water, because you could just as easily physically cover it up with a cloth or your finger or something on a GBA SP. It's also pretty hard to tell when it's set on a flat surface. Here's a few pictures of my GBA SP with FireRed in it; you can see how easy it is to obscure the cartridge.

Spoiler

 

[doipy hooves]

For what it's worth, Pokemon XD has a clause that lets you just show Deoxys formes so there is precedent for it.

 

[Lasen]

My post is coming from the perspective of an Ubers player and an ADV one at that. As Rabbit and steel skitty have both brought up earlier, Deoxys is a very crucial part of the metagame that can play a variety of different roles and has had a big impact on the metagame, with certain Pokemon who would otherwise wouldn't get a second look, such as Dusclops, being run with their primary role being able to check Deoxys-A. The mind games of whether someone is even running Deoxys and if they are, what its form is, is one of the long term thoughts one must have while playing the metagame.

Concealing its form also isn't ideal as Nintendo themselves have taken this into consideration and are we really gonna be playing with less information than a side game just for the sake of being "as close to cart as possible" in a very minor scenario that doesn't express skill but rather, guesswork? I firmly believe that "Deoxys Clause/Mod" is the best scenario for everyone involved, there is absolutely no reason for a change to happen and no one even seems to want one.

 

[Marty]

No matter how hard you try to hide your LeafGreen cartridge, you can’t stop an Emerald, FireRed, or other LeafGreen player from seeing your Kanto trainer sprite at the start of the battle.

The starting trainer sprite of a Link Battle seems unavoidable.

Easily taken care of as part of the same clause:

Problem

Solved

In the Cable Club room the judge can just walk you into position

I'm all for turning metagames on their heads with newly discovered mechanics over a decade after they were the latest thing, but this isn't new, isn't an unavoidable battle mechanic, and realistically isn't an issue. No modding the game required here!

 

[Nix_Hex]

I'm going to be a major pedantic buttmunch here but I wanted to make sure how exactly the proposed "Deoxys Mod" or trainer sprite or impartial judge (or whatever solution helps the metagame remain static) would work with removed species clause. There are two reasons this might matter: a hypothetical ADV AG meta, or custom format tours. Since ADV is almost 20 years old, I doubt AG will ever be a thing barring some crazy mechanics discovery that makes a certain Pokemon super broken, but you never know. As for custom format, I run meme tours in the Overused room at low activity hours, and I wouldn't be opposed to running ADV Ubers w/o Species Clause, or even a "Deoxys Only" format just for kicks. If you want to adhere to cart mechanics completely, then you should be restricted to a single Deoxys forme if you are using multiple Deoxys on your team. Again, it's a niche situation but I just wanted to make sure that this is how it would work. Thanks for reading this rambling paragraph.

 

[Inspirited]

To be clear on my own stance, I am biased towards just adding a Deoxys Clause to document why it is being simulated this way (option 3). I personally wasn't super fussed about the whole thing until Fc brought up that he was using multiple forms on one team in an RoA spotlight (I think) tour. The ADV Ubers discord server began discussing the mechanic internally afterwards and I got the idea that no one in there knew why it was being simulated this way and apparently DaWoblefet had no idea either given what his response to the bug report was. For me, this exists as a way to clean that up and add appropriate documentation (it is one of my favorite metagames to play and I don't necessarilly want to change it radically if at all). What Marty has presented works.

Now for the other solutions presented from yet another player standpoint:
1. If this gains traction the I personally wouldn't be super opposed to it. I only know of one player who likes this solution better than the others so far though. steelskitty has already posted why I think this would be a problem otherwise. To help put your mechanical fears to bed DaWoblefet , I asked pret if there were mechanical differences between specifically FRLG and Emerald before making this thread and the answers I got were all no. Also, if what caetano93 says is correct (and if this gen is in any way similar to later gens), then the GBA with the newest game cart handles the link battle computing while the GBA with the older cart acts as an interface and datacenter for the newer to pull from and push to.

2. Shrödingers Deoxys is something nightmares are made of and while I think it could be adapted to by us players in the long run, I really don't like the idea. Some of the nastiness you could pull off with this thing is just not ok in my mind and quite a few other players given their responses. While this would be cart accurate (should we employ the judge to play until the lead mons a sent out) and I am usually for this kind of accuracy, this would effectively reset the metagame which is something I and many other players are not exactly fans of.

4. I agree that this is a lot of effort to be put in for such a niche set of formats and while this would take the judge out of the game more and more (something I am usually a big fan of), I get it. This probably isn't getting through given the responses.

 

[Earthworm]

I came here to say that this is a non-issue for the reasons that Marty already gave. It would be crazy to me to do anything other than a Deoxys Clause / Impartial Judge covers trainer sprite clause (which is basically just the status quo), but I do agree that it would be good to acknowledge this in our rules.

 

[pyuk]

Easily taken care of as part of the same clause:

Problem

View attachment 314390

Solved

View attachment 314391

In the Cable Club room the judge can just walk you into position

View attachment 314392 View attachment 314395

I'm all for turning metagames on their heads with newly discovered mechanics over a decade after they were the latest thing, but this isn't new, isn't an unavoidable battle mechanic, and realistically isn't an issue. No modding the game required here!

Wow, you really solved it, but I don’t think this goes far enough. DaWoblefet recently broke their GameBoy Advance SP and while the screen obviously doesn’t work anymore, it can still run games and the sound even still works. This is clearly the much more sensible way to solve this issue; just have the judge cover the entire fucking screen for the whole game.

Seriously, “a judge puts a piece of paper over both players screens at the start of a battle” is the most batshit insane excuse I’ve ever heard to not simulate a game mechanic. A very similar mechanic was found recently in gen 8 that reveals if your opponent brought Xerneas, Zacian-Crowned, or Zamazenta-Crowned to battle after team preview because their mini sprite in a menu changes. Are you going to suggest banning opening that menu after team preview? Maybe we should get a judge to put little stickers on everyone’s screens to prevent them from seeing the minisprites?

For what it's worth, Pokemon XD has a clause that lets you just show Deoxys formes so there is precedent for it.
View attachment 314332

Is there any real reason not to just say we simulate Pokémon XD with that rule turned on? It even comes with a built in Sleep Clause Mod so we don’t have to say ironic shit like “no modding the game required”.

 

[Inspirited]

Wow, you really solved it, but I don’t think this goes far enough. DaWoblefet recently broke their GameBoy Advance SP and while the screen obviously doesn’t work anymore, it can still run games and the sound even still works. This is clearly the much more sensible way to solve this issue; just have the judge cover the entire fucking screen for the whole game.

Seriously, “a judge puts a piece of paper over both players screens at the start of a battle” is the most batshit insane excuse I’ve ever heard to not simulate a game mechanic. A very similar mechanic was found recently in gen 8 that reveals if your opponent brought Xerneas, Zacian-Crowned, or Zamazenta-Crowned to battle after team preview because their mini sprite in a menu changes. Are you going to suggest banning opening that menu after team preview? Maybe we should get a judge to put little stickers on everyone’s screens to prevent them from seeing the minisprites?

Is there any real reason not to just say we simulate Pokémon XD with that rule turned on? It even comes with a built in Sleep Clause Mod so we don’t have to say ironic shit like “no modding the game required”.

The way I imagined Marty's scenario is that the judge takes both GBAs as soon as the link is established and gets both consoles to where the leads of both trainers are out on the field and then hands the GBAs back and starts the timer for both players. This is a lil out there ngl but it works and should be considered.

The reason why we don't simulate XD is due to the Max HP of both players being shown and team preview being a thing. This would drastically change things which is something I would rather not have happen if we don't have to. It would be be a tier reset similar to the effects of option 2 only not quite as harsh imo.

 

[Nix_Hex]

I thought "impartial judge" was just a pretense for sim conveniences like being able to cancel moves? Why the heck would you need one to implement a Deoxys "mod?" This discussion of covering things with paper or stickers or whatever is super convoluted when we can just say that the player reveals what Deoxys they're using when they first send it out. The sim can replicate this formality by just displaying the name as Deoxys-A/D/S/N and be done with it. I swear sometimes I think this forum exists for people to look important and gain clout (see the Zamazenta-C tiering thread for more on useless debates).

 

[Inspirited]

I thought "impartial judge" was just a pretense for sim conveniences like being able to cancel moves? Why the heck would you need one to implement a Deoxys "mod?" This discussion of covering things with paper or stickers or whatever is super convoluted when we can just say that the player reveals what Deoxys they're using when they first send it out. The sim can replicate this formality by just displaying the name as Deoxys-A/D/S/N and be done with it. I swear sometimes I think this forum exists for people to look important and gain clout (see the Zamazenta-C tiering thread for more on useless debates).

The issue with this was the trainer sprite problem. Emerald players get so see what version everyone is using due to Emerald having data for all 6 in battle player sprites. FireRed and LeafGreen players get to see whether other FRLG carts are present as opposed to RSE.
When this happens, you can rule out forms of Deoxys before they ever hit the field. If you are playing on FRLG and see that you opponent is also using a Kanto player sprite, Deoxys Speed and Normal can never be on your opponents team (nothing like this is being simulated currently). The problem is very annoying because most Deoxys are Attack or Defense anyways (both are tied to Kanto player sprites) so one could argue that the problem is pretty invalid. Those extraordinarily rare cases where non-lead Speed Deoxys or standard Deoxys are used are what is mucking things up at the moment and require some out of the box thinking to solve unfortunately.

 

[Plague von Karma]

Getting a bit off-topic, but I want to emphasise that GoD is not an alternative. At all.

The reason why we don't simulate XD is due to the Max HP of both players being shown and team preview being a thing. This would drastically change things which is something I would rather not have happen if we don't have to. It would be be a tier reset similar to the effects of option 2 only not quite as harsh imo.

GoD has some significant mechanic differences that are simply too unreasonable to use for the sake of preservation. I would argue that you aren't actually preserving anything at all, you're just making a brand new metagame. Not to mention that this deviation from the policy would be a bit odd; why switch from mainline games to side games for the sake of Deoxys? It feels like a smack in the face to what Smogon has built itself up to be.

For instance, Sleep Clause counts Rest, which I tested earlier to ensure I had my facts straight. Here's a video of this on original hardware, featuring my decade-old LeafGreen save file.

pls ignore my pre-HRT voice I am sorry also how nice of GoD to provide me with a Shadow Parasect so I can test this uwu

For those confused on what this means, in any of the "Stadium" spin-offs, as long as you can get a Rest off as soon as possible, you can just invalidate any and all Sleep moves. It's really uncompetitive and basically says "use a sleep lead or don't use sleep at all". This makes Stadium 2, in particular, a hot mess. For Colosseum and GoD, there are also things like Sleep Talk which work a bit differently as well, but I wanted to address the elephant in the room. With Inspirited's details here along with these facts, I think you can see why this proposal would simply not work.

Let's just talk about the core issue: Deoxys.

 

[Marty]

Wow, you really solved it, but I don’t think this goes far enough.

I had no intention of posting in this thread a second time, but you implied that I and two other people ignored your post, so I replied to it. If it makes you feel better, I didn't read anything except the OP before posting my thoughts the first time.

Seriously, “a judge puts a piece of paper over both players screens at the start of a battle” is the most batshit insane excuse I’ve ever heard to not simulate a game mechanic.

As others pointed out, the paper gimmick is not literal, it's a stand-in for any possible explanation via judge. It's also a reference to counting HP pixels with a scrap of paper, which I actually did when researching every gen for that classic series of PR threads about HP pixels VS percentages. I guess you felt insulted by this, but that was not the intent at all.

A very similar mechanic was found recently in gen 8 that reveals if your opponent brought Xerneas, Zacian-Crowned, or Zamazenta-Crowned to battle after team preview because their mini sprite in a menu changes. Are you going to suggest banning opening that menu after team preview? Maybe we should get a judge to put little stickers on everyone’s screens to prevent them from seeing the minisprites?

Maybe do some research before insinuating I don't give a shit about implementing things correctly. I implemented that a month after the games came out when I saw no one else had yet, couldn't figure out how to unhide them immediately after Team Preview, and it got reverted pending someone actually dealing with that part. You should know all about PS development hell by now.

If you'd like to reply to me please do it outside this thread. Sorry for derailing, Inspirited.

 

[eden]

Isn’t this just semantics? Whole lot of super convoluted stuff being suggested, for something that works fine as is; even if this is implemented: isn’t the end result the same to the player?

They’ll know what deo form is being faced unless for some bizarre reason you choose to go w the option where it’s essentially unknown exactly what forme it is initially, so at best you relay the same information while having a clause written that effectively changes nothing or you change a well established metagame over semantics that people who actually play the tier probably don’t care about

people who probably don’t play this tier in tour are the loudest about wanting to be cartridge accurate or whatever when we are playing a heavily modded game anw, adv switch prio mod being an example of a major mechanic we just patch out for convinience sake

if you’re not a major stakeholder hating on status quo as is sounds like being contrarian for no real reason imo

 

[pyuk]

I wasn’t going to reply to this thread anymore either, but it occurred to me that the argument for not simulating the trainer sprite information leak because it upends a 20 year old metagame is completely bonkers. First of all, Pokémon Emerald wasn’t released internationally until May 1, 2005, so ADV didn’t even have Deoxys-Speed in it until about 16 years ago. Second, Pokémon Showdown wasn’t released until 2011, so the Pokémon Showdown version of Gen 3 Ubers isn’t even 10 years old. But most importantly, Pokémon Showdown has never been a perfectly accurate simulation of Gen 3 battle mechanics except where modifications are chosen by the Smogon community; it’s constantly changing, even for purposes not expressly related to balance. After all, the core mechanic of Gen 3 where a Pokémon fainting immediately ends the current turn has only been fully implemented on PS since December of 2017, and wasn’t even implemented for moves other than Explosion and Selfdestruct until January of 2015. As I see it, the simulation of the in-game trainer sprite information leak would be just another in a long line of bug fixes intended to correct our 10 year old simulation of a 16 year old metagame.

 

[Vileman]

Before this thread gets any more cringe:
Claiming that someone could hide their game is silly. If it makes all purists happy then as said previously a deoxys clause stating something along the lines of "Both players must specify which game they're playing in case they reveal a deoxys" with the current implementation should do it.
That's it. That's all. Is there really anything more to it?

 

[Zarel]

I thought everyone knew about this quirk. It's intentional that the real forme is shown because it's the least annoying solution both for players and sim devs. You already need a judge to tell your opponent your HP percentages at any given moment, so it's not a stretch to also have them tell your opponent which cartridge you're using when your Deoxys switches in. The correct sprite being shown is just for convenience, and if a Clause is necessary to make this obvious, then fine. The mechanical differences between games in Gen 3 are totally irrelevant to competitive play so there's no point to assume everyone is using Emerald. The alternative is completely unreasonable for everyone.

Relatedly, the reason I haven't personally implemented "you can't put multiple formes of Deoxys on one team" is because Species Clause handles it in Ubers, so it's very low on my to-do list.

This is my stance in its entirety. We assume you can see your opponent's cart, and if we need a clause to make that clear, we need a clause to make that clear.

I think there's an argument that it would be nice if you could see your opponent's cart/trainersprite at the beginning of the battle (to narrow down which Deoxys your opponent has), but considering the amount of dev work necessary to implement that accurately, I'd prefer the judge workaround.

I agree that the "judge covers up the screen" workaround is kind of awkward. If people are open to the change, I'd definitely prefer the change. Team storage shouldn't be too hard to adapt.