Pending Have randomized genders reflect in-game gender ratio of Pokemon

[Xoopmitch]

It seems showdown teams where each Pokemon's gender is set to "Random" are 50/50 male-female, which doesn't necessarily reflect a Pokemon's in-game gender distribution. Many are 50/50, but starters, for instance, are 87.5/12.5 favoring male.

This is somewhat petty, but it does have actual competitive, albeit niche, implications. Abilities exist that have gender-dependent effects, like Cute Charm and Rivalry, for instance.

Showdown not reflecting in-game gender distributions means the viability of certain abilities differs from cartridge, thus impacting, even marginally, the accuracy of the simulator.
edit: poor wording on my part.

Here are a couple replays illustrating 50/50 distribution for Pokemon that have an 87.5/12.5 male-to-female gender ratio:

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ubers-1551710233-7to944sjfoagimwow7vosi2jhvfkjumpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ubers-1551712765-vpojmcpa7xih9b03ndm9in29rvxd2jfpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8ubers-1551717211-mig19tjrzuldokzfpvsx5lsny7bevshpw


Thanks

 

[DaWoblefet]

We already store gender ratios in our data, so this seems fine to me.

I do also want to comment on this:

Showdown not reflecting in-game gender distributions means the viability of certain abilities differs from cartridge, thus impacting, even marginally, the accuracy of the simulator.

I'm not convinced that uneven distribution of randomly assigned genders is a simulator inaccuracy, because there's no cartridge impossibility present. Just because Sylveon is 7/8 male doesn't imply that the simulator not having randomly assigned Sylveon genders be a 7/8 distribution is a bug, because in this case there are still just two options: male and female. If a player picks the Sylveon's gender on PS, you can choose whichever you want. If a Latios could be female, or if a Pokemon with an event move had a gender that was impossible, then that would be a bug. You could make a very similar analogy with Shiny Pokemon. As you correctly identified by posting in this subforum, this is a suggestion, not a bug. But I do think it's a neat suggestion and a nice touch.

Related: whenever team-locked bo3 support rolls around, I'd want randomly assigned genders to be consistent throughout the best-of-three. That is, if a Pokemon can be male or female, but is female in game 1, it should be female in games 2 and 3 as well.

 

[Xoopmitch]

We already store gender ratios in our data, so this seems fine to me.

I do also want to comment on this:


I'm not convinced that uneven distribution of randomly assigned genders is a simulator inaccuracy, because there's no cartridge impossibility present. Just because Sylveon is 7/8 male doesn't imply that the simulator not having randomly assigned Sylveon genders be a 7/8 distribution is a bug, because in this case there are still just two options: male and female. If a player picks the Sylveon's gender on PS, you can choose whichever you want. If a Latios could be female, or if a Pokemon with an event move had a gender that was impossible, then that would be a bug. You could make a very similar analogy with Shiny Pokemon. As you correctly identified by posting in this subforum, this is a suggestion, not a bug. But I do think it's a neat suggestion and a nice touch.

Related: whenever team-locked bo3 support rolls around, I'd want randomly assigned genders to be consistent throughout the best-of-three. That is, if a Pokemon can be male or female, but is female in game 1, it should be female in games 2 and 3 as well.

Fair enough. Probably not the best wording on my part, thank you!

 

[Yoda2798]

This is a bad change. As long as both male and female are available for the given set, the natural cartridge distribution is irrelevant. The way to imagine PS's randomised gender option in-game is that you have a copy of both in a box, then before each match flip a coin for which one you use. You could equally use any random distribution of the two that you like, 99% male, 99% female, 69% male, whatever, as long you have a copy of each gender. If you want to argue "nobody would actually bother swapping them out like that though", I'd say that kind of convenience is already part of PS in numerous places, but also that it equally applies to using an in-game gender distribution, instead of forcing users to set a gender for each of their Pokemon.

The current options for gender on PS are the three optimal distributions: 100% male, 100% female, and 50/50. The cases for a set gender are specific and speak for themselves, but why is 50/50 optimal? It's because against gender-dependent effects, it's what's known as an unexploitable strategy, no matter what gender distribution they have on their Cute Charm/Rivalry user, it's always at worst (and best) a coinflip for a favourable matchup. If PS used the in-game gender ratio instead, that would be an exploitable strategy, for example, to counter 87.5% male Pokemon they can set their Cute Charm/Rivalry user to (100%) female and have a favourable matchup 87.5% of the time, which is obviously worse. 50/50 gender distributions are clearly preferable for avoiding gender-dependent shenanigans, so provide a competitive edge over using the natural gender ratio instead. Now to get around this, you could still manually coinflip and set genders before each game, but PS should just do that automatically for you, as it does currently. Adding an option to use the in-game gender ratio (or a custom one) instead wouldn't do any harm (though would still only have minor benefits for a tiny number of people), but replacing the current random gender option with a competitively inferior one should be out of the question.

All that said, in formats with randomised sets (Challenge Cup, arguably RandBats) it could make sense since the sets aren't fully competitively optimised (assuming this isn't the case already). What DaWoblefet said about gender being consistent throughout team-locked sets is fine as well.

TL;DR - It's not inaccurate, and 50/50 randomised gender is optimal, so this just downgrades people's teams for no good reason.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

The way to imagine PS's randomised gender option in-game is that you have a copy of both in a box, then before each match flip a coin for which one you use.

I imagine it as just not specifically selecting for one gender over another, since that's the thought process of almost everyone who "chooses" to give their Pokemon a random gender (by "choose" I mean "not put any thought into gender and just use Showdown's default option"). If you just pick any random Arcanine on cart to use in competitive, you're three times as likely to pick a male one than a female one, and when playing on cart, roughly 75% of all Arcanine you'd face in PvP will be male.

If you wanna go through the trouble of flipping a coin before every battle, there's nothing stopping you from doing so.

 

[Yoda2798]

I imagine it as just not specifically selecting for one gender over another, since that's the thought process of almost everyone who "chooses" to give their Pokemon a random gender (by "choose" I mean "not put any thought into gender and just use Showdown's default option"). If you just pick any random Arcanine on cart to use in competitive, you're three times as likely to pick a male one than a female one, and when playing on cart, roughly 75% of all Arcanine you'd face in PvP will be male.

If you wanna go through the trouble of flipping a coin before every battle, there's nothing stopping you from doing so.

Regardless of it being an active, conscious decision or not, that's still a "choice" to determine its gender by the in-game ratio (75/25). You could go by that to determine gender, just as you could go by random IVs instead of defaulting to all 31. PS defaults to what most generally is going to be optimal, then you can change it from there. With regards to gender, unless one is more optimal in a given metagame for some reason (bluffing an event move, avoiding female Flatter for genies, etc.) - in which case you should change to be (100%) that gender, then you should default to a 50/50 random split. Any different gender ratio is arbitrary and offers nothing over a 50/50 split or 100% one gender. Meanwhile, if you cannot use a 50/50 split then you're left open to counterpicking gender games. For example, you use a a 87.5% male Pokemon on an otherwise genderless team, run into somebody with Attract/Rivalry, and they set their gender to counter you. Now you can go down the rabbithole of you setting your gender to counter them, and them to counter you, and so on, without the option to just use 50/50 and avoid mindgames about selecting genders. From the perspective of the player, it only makes sense to use either a 50/50 split or 100% one gender, regardless of what the natural in-game ratio is or ratio of what players on cartridge are using. Changing the distribution of PS's random gender to reflect in-game gender ratios is a poor reason.

Why should you need to manually implement 50/50 distributions but not in-game gender ratios? I'm not saying that they can't both be options, but removing the existing and more optimal distribution (or at least, making it more inconvenient to implement than before for no good reason) shouldn't be done.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Any different gender ratio is arbitrary and offers nothing over a 50/50 split or 100% one gender. Meanwhile, if you cannot use a 50/50 split then you're left open to counterpicking gender games. For example, you use a a 87.5% male Pokemon on an otherwise genderless team, run into somebody with Attract/Rivalry, and they set their gender to counter you.

Back in the days of Pokemon Online (and maybe also Shoddy Battle, my memory of that is very hazy) there was no random gender setting. Pokemon that had the capacity to be male were male by default. This led to gender strategies being much stronger than they would be on cart, as by setting a Pokemon to female, they could infatuate a vast majority of opposing Pokemon.

With a default 50/50 gender split even on Pokemon with uneven distributions, gender strategies are weaker than they would be on cart. The only Pokemon they aren't a coinflip against are Pokemon who are locked to a specific gender. If someone wants to abuse the knowledge that the majority of Pyroar are female by running a male Pokemon with Attract, they should be able to do that. If the Pyroar user in turn wants to safeguard from that strategy by specifically using a male Pyroar, that's a good thing.

Above all else, Pokemon Showdown is a battle simulator. It's supposed to simulate, as accurately as possible, the conditions of cartridge battles. The player is just given the tools to customize a specific Pokemon with ease. Defaulting to random IVs or natures would theoretically be more accurate, but in both cases

1. the default setting is rather obvious and unobtrusive (there are five natures that just do nothing, and setting IVs is usually a pretty brainless process so might as well automatically set them to 31 or 0)
2. the default option is something concrete and possible to replicate on cart. A Pokemon with a Serious nature has a Serious nature, and a Pokemon with 31 Speed IVs has 31 Speed IVs. That's just how they are, until you use mints or bottle caps, in which case whatever they have after the fact is what they have.

Automatically setting gender to male or female like Pokemon Online doesn't work because of the first reason, because neither is inherently the default. It's not like natures where there are five vanilla ones and then twenty other ones with different flavors. Neither the PO nor current PS method work for the second reason, as detailed in the first few paragraphs. They don't accurately reflect cartridge play, and the current PS method is as far from concrete as you can get (a single Pokemon that randomly flip-flops its gender between battles just isn't something that cartridge mechanics allow for unless your name is Azurill).

The optimal solution would be to randomly choose male or female based on gender ratios, and then lock that in for all future battles until the player decides to change it, so that it both accurately reflects cartridge trends and is also concrete, but since that would likely require a lot of changes to set notation and the teambuilder interface, the next best option is to default to randomly setting gender based on gender ratio. It may not accurately simulate an individual Pokemon on cart, but it accurately simulates the overall trend one would observe battling on cart.

 

[Yoda2798]

Back in the days of Pokemon Online (and maybe also Shoddy Battle, my memory of that is very hazy) there was no random gender setting. Pokemon that had the capacity to be male were male by default. This led to gender strategies being much stronger than they would be on cart, as by setting a Pokemon to female, they could infatuate a vast majority of opposing Pokemon.

With a default 50/50 gender split even on Pokemon with uneven distributions, gender strategies are weaker than they would be on cart. The only Pokemon they aren't a coinflip against are Pokemon who are locked to a specific gender. If someone wants to abuse the knowledge that the majority of Pyroar are female by running a male Pokemon with Attract, they should be able to do that. If the Pyroar user in turn wants to safeguard from that strategy by specifically using a male Pyroar, that's a good thing.

Above all else, Pokemon Showdown is a battle simulator. It's supposed to simulate, as accurately as possible, the conditions of cartridge battles. The player is just given the tools to customize a specific Pokemon with ease. Defaulting to random IVs or natures would theoretically be more accurate, but in both cases

1. the default setting is rather obvious and unobtrusive (there are five natures that just do nothing, and setting IVs is usually a pretty brainless process so might as well automatically set them to 31 or 0)
2. the default option is something concrete and possible to replicate on cart. A Pokemon with a Serious nature has a Serious nature, and a Pokemon with 31 Speed IVs has 31 Speed IVs. That's just how they are, until you use mints or bottle caps, in which case whatever they have after the fact is what they have.

Automatically setting gender to male or female like Pokemon Online doesn't work because of the first reason, because neither is inherently the default. It's not like natures where there are five vanilla ones and then twenty other ones with different flavors. Neither the PO nor current PS method work for the second reason, as detailed in the first few paragraphs. They don't accurately reflect cartridge play, and the current PS method is as far from concrete as you can get (a single Pokemon that randomly flip-flops its gender between battles just isn't something that cartridge mechanics allow for unless your name is Azurill).

The optimal solution would be to randomly choose male or female based on gender ratios, and then lock that in for all future battles until the player decides to change it, so that it both accurately reflects cartridge trends and is also concrete, but since that would likely require a lot of changes to set notation and the teambuilder interface, the next best option is to default to randomly setting gender based on gender ratio. It may not accurately simulate an individual Pokemon on cart, but it accurately simulates the overall trend one would observe battling on cart.

Replicating the trends observed in what players use in cartridge play is NOT the primary aim of PS. As you said it's a battle simulator, not usage simulator. It absolutely aims to replicate the mechanics, but nudging players to align their gender ratios with that of what cartridge players would use, despite being unoptimal, is not part of that.

The perfect example of this is how PS automatically tries to minimise Attack IVs when not needed, to minimise Foul Play/confusion damage. Always having those minimised definitely isn't "accurate" to trends of what players use on cartridge, and so inarguably makes strategies around those weaker on PS than they would be in-game. Is that a bad thing? No, PS aims to try and help players have their teams be competitive as possible, artificially trying to replicate trends observed in-game is irrelevant. Removing this feature, and PS subsequently making the player's team worse, in the name of making those moves stronger, would be ridiculous. Gender, like everything else in the teambuilder, should be optimised in the player's favour as much as possible. In battle gender is static and gender-based effects work as they do in-game (at least to the best of PS's capabilities, IDK the details), there is NO inaccuracy based on what gender players choose to bring.

Using strategies based around gender/confusion can very much still exist (and still do in the case of e.g. gender-locked Pokemon), but PS should not disadvantage the player to increase the viability of these strats. Having a Pokemon which flip-flops gender between battles at a 87.5/12.5 ratio is no more "accurate" than one flipping at 50/50, while only disadvantaging the player. Changing gender between battles (which you could still do anyways by manually setting it back and forth) is also as replicable as changing anything else about a set so that's not really an argument for anything.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Changing gender between battles (which you could still do anyways by manually setting it back and forth) is also as replicable as changing anything else about a set so that's not really an argument for anything.

Why can't anything else be randomized then?

You're building a team, and one of your mons has a free moveslot that can be filled with a lot of useful moves: Taunt, Wisp, extra coverage, etc. Why can't you set it to randomly choose between those moves for the last slot? Not being able to randomize them only disadvantages the player, and changing moves between battles (which you could still do anyways by manually setting it back and forth) is also as replicable as changing anything else about a set so that's not really an argument for anything.

Oh yeah, I remember why you can't do that. Because it's up to the player to build A Pokemon. Not a list of possibilities for the sim to randomly draw from. This is why the optimal solution would be to remove the random gender button altogether and have the selection start on a random gender (determined by gender ratio). Failing that, the random gender button should accurately reflect the long-term cart results of not actively selecting for gender, because that's what it is. The random gender button indicates the lack of active choice. It should not itself be an active choice, or else you get into the "randomizing everything else" bit I began this post with.

 

[jawsome274]

Why can't anything else be randomized then?

You're building a team, and one of your mons has a free moveslot that can be filled with a lot of useful moves: Taunt, Wisp, extra coverage, etc. Why can't you set it to randomly choose between those moves for the last slot? Not being able to randomize them only disadvantages the player, and changing moves between battles (which you could still do anyways by manually setting it back and forth) is also as replicable as changing anything else about a set so that's not really an argument for anything.

Oh yeah, I remember why you can't do that. Because it's up to the player to build A Pokemon. Not a list of possibilities for the sim to randomly draw from. This is why the optimal solution would be to remove the random gender button altogether and have the selection start on a random gender (determined by gender ratio). Failing that, the random gender button should accurately reflect the long-term cart results of not actively selecting for gender, because that's what it is. The random gender button indicates the lack of active choice. It should not itself be an active choice, or else you get into the "randomizing everything else" bit I began this post with.

I mean yeah, I don't see anything wrong with that besides the fact that it would take lots of resources to implement that when I think most players wouldn't even use that.

 

[A_Wild_Noob_Appeared!]

Why can't anything else be randomized then?

You're building a team, and one of your mons has a free moveslot that can be filled with a lot of useful moves: Taunt, Wisp, extra coverage, etc. Why can't you set it to randomly choose between those moves for the last slot? Not being able to randomize them only disadvantages the player, and changing moves between battles (which you could still do anyways by manually setting it back and forth) is also as replicable as changing anything else about a set so that's not really an argument for anything.

There's nothing wrong with having an option to randomize a moveslot, the only reason it's not implemented is because very few people actually want that. The different options for a moveslot do not play equally at all, and it's usually a conscious decision to pick one option over the other. On the other hand, there is pretty much no strategy in picking gender (unless you're using Rivalry or Cute Charm) so having genders randomized 50/50 is the optimal strategy for 99.9% of players, which is why it's useful to allow players to do it automatically.

(On that note, we could have Return/Frustration being randomly selected if we want to spite Ditto)

 

[DaWoblefet]

There's enough discussion and pushback here that I have changed the status from "approved" back to "pending". Please feel free to continue to offer reasons for and against implementation of in-game gender ratios.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

There's enough discussion and pushback here that I have changed the status from "approved" back to "pending". Please feel free to continue to offer reasons for and against implementation of in-game gender ratios.

How hard would it be to remove the random gender option altogether and automatically start on either male or female based on gender ratio? I've been working under the assumption that it would necessitate drastic changes to both the teambuilder and set notation, but set notation wouldn't actually need to change. Not specifying a gender would just mean it randomly picks a gender when it's copied into the teambuilder.

Basically, when you make a new Pokemon in the teambuilder, instead of it starting as

Pokemon
Ability: Ability1

it would start as

Pokemon (?)
Ability: Ability1

with ? being either M or F.

 

[jawsome274]

How hard would it be to remove the random gender option altogether and automatically start on either male or female based on gender ratio? I've been working under the assumption that it would necessitate drastic changes to both the teambuilder and set notation, but set notation wouldn't actually need to change. Not specifying a gender would just mean it randomly picks a gender when it's copied into the teambuilder.

Basically, when you make a new Pokemon in the teambuilder, instead of it starting as

Pokemon
Ability: Ability1

it would start as

Pokemon (?)
Ability: Ability1

with ? being either M or F.

Well, it would take time and energy. Would it take a lot of energy? Probably not. Would it take a lot of time? Probably not. Would it probably make people confused? Yes. Could that time/energy be used elsewhere? Yes.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Well, it would take time and energy. Would it take a lot of energy? Probably not. Would it take a lot of time? Probably not. Would it probably make people confused? Yes. Could that time/energy be used elsewhere? Yes.

Considering most people rarely touch the section of the teambuilder that houses the gender option, and fewer still ever touch the gender option itself, I doubt many people would be confused by the change, or even realize it happened. And even once they notice the change exists, there's still nothing about it that's confusing. There are two options, and one of them is selected by default. At least as far as user experience is concerned, it's extremely simple.

 

[jawsome274]

Considering most people rarely touch the section of the teambuilder that houses the gender option, and fewer still ever touch the gender option itself, I doubt many people would be confused by the change, or even realize it happened. And even once they notice the change exists, there's still nothing about it that's confusing. There are two options, and one of them is selected by default. At least as far as user experience is concerned, it's extremely simple.

I moreso meant that people would be confused as to why they'd make the change to begin with, because again; it's not a common problem most people have.

 

[Wigglytuff]

The discussion about randomizing moves (?), cartridge gender distributions (?), and reimagining how pokepastes work (?) is off base and mostly debatelord shenanigans. There is only one salient point to be answered:

Showdown not reflecting in-game gender distributions means the viability of certain abilities differs from cartridge, thus impacting, even marginally, the accuracy of the simulator.

This isn't reflexively correct. You're not obligated to catch and use every single Pokemon you encounter, so there is every possibility, even if marginal, that a mon with an 80/20 ratio in the code will have a 50/50 distribution on the field by random chance. While it's likely to trend towards 80/20 the more mons you generate (by Law of Big Numbers), that doesn't necessarily mean it will happen. Add in any number of complicating factors (not least of which the fact that each player can generate an infinite amount of mons and then select which ones they bring...), and there is no grounds to say that ratios in the code are necessarily reflected in distribution on the field.

In other words, so long as you're not crossing over into the realms of impossibility (eg Male Latias), you can't definitively state that the viability of gender-based abilities are being affected at all.

The current 50/50 randomization odds for any non 100-0/genderless mon should stay. It is competitively more optimal (even if marginally) and completely acceptable in its accuracy to cartridge.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

In other words, so long as you're not crossing over into the realms of impossibility (eg Male Latias), you can't definitively state that the viability of gender-based abilities are being affected at all.

A Pokemon randomly swapping genders between battles seems pretty impossible to me.

Seriously, this whole thing is asinine. I'm 100% sure that the vast majority of players assume that the random gender option already abide by gender ratios, so having it do that is basically a bug fix. And I'm pretty sure nobody but Yoda is using random gender for strategy purposes. This is a case of insane mental gymnastics involving flipping coins vs "it's how the game works".

 

[Celever]

In teambuilt formats this creates occasional bad 50/50 mindgames where, for example, your Haxorus loses to Primarina 12.5% of the time:

252 Atk Haxorus Poison Jab vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Primarina: 244-288 (81 - 95.6%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 Atk Rivalry buffed Haxorus Poison Jab vs. 0 HP / 4 Def Primarina: 306-360 (101.6 - 119.6%) -- guaranteed OHKO

The proposed non-50/50 gender bias creates a significant incentive to run Rivalry over something like Mold Breaker which doesn't do much for Haxorus, opening up the possibility of this type of set, since in competitive Pokémon we make a lot of plays that have a 12.5% chance of failing or worse, and you have to take the risk. But then the meta would get to a point where Primarina is selected as female in the teambuilder among good players to counter this strategy. So then good Haxorus select female to counter it too, and maybe get the jump on Hatterene. So then Primarina would want to choose male manually instead. Which means that it's a 50/50 mindgame in the teambuilder what the right gender to pick is for your tournament match, all spawning from Primarina usually being male if people don't bother to manually select a gender at all.

Showdown has always been a simplification of creating your own team on cartridge, and that's one of its strengths. 50/50 gender ratio is an element of that. It's competitively optimal to have it randomised 50/50. This change is completely irrelevant in 99% of scenarios, but where it is relevant it's solely harmful from a high-level competitive standpoint, and to a somewhat significant degree. And in that high-level competitive play, Yoda is actually pretty correct; top players would bother to have a version of their Rivalry Haxorus in either gender, and either try and scout the opponent's team to see what gender their Primarina is or make a judgment based on that player's reputation and tournament track records whether they themselves would bother to breed a perfect female Primarina just to counter the strategy. Then, they would pick the correct gender Haxorus from their box according to their decision. ATM, when it requires two coinflips landing correctly, it's not a problem because those odds are too low to entertain.

So this would be a bad change.

 

[Wigglytuff]

This is a case of insane mental gymnastics involving flipping coins vs "it's how the game works".

Since we're on the topic of insane mental gymnastics...

Is the issue with simply leaving the 50/50 split as is that:

With a default 50/50 gender split even on Pokemon with uneven distributions, gender strategies are weaker than they would be on cart.

or is the issue that:

Why can't anything else be randomized then?

or is the issue that:

I'm 100% sure that the vast majority of players assume that the random gender option already abide by gender ratios,

?

All of these arguments are disjointed and underdeveloped because responses aren't engaged with (ex: mine); instead, the next point is thrown out with the hopes that it'll stick to the wall where the other ones didn't. My apologies for the acerbic tone, but it is rather annoying to deal with and while I won't accuse you of wasting anyone's time, it is an unproductive and rather asinine way to advance your opinions in the free marketplace of ideas. It's created the appearance of controversy where none actually exists - as far I'm concerned, Yoda's most recent post has established why the 50/50 split should stay and no compelling counterargument has been provided.

But to respond to your latest points:

I'm 100% sure that the vast majority of players assume that the random gender option already abide by gender ratios, so having it do that is basically a bug fix. And I'm pretty sure nobody but Yoda is using random gender for strategy purposes.

Rest assured that Yoda is not in fact the only one who uses random gender for strategic purposes. When I build my teams, I also randomize that shit for the same reason.

 

[DrPumpkinz]

Sorry for getting so heated and scattered in all this.

Since we're on the topic of insane mental gymnastics...

Is the issue with simply leaving the 50/50 split as is that:


or is the issue that:


or is the issue that:

?

All of these arguments are disjointed and underdeveloped because responses aren't engaged with (ex: mine); instead, the next point is thrown out with the hopes that it'll stick to the wall where the other ones didn't. My apologies for the acerbic tone, but it is rather annoying to deal with and while I won't accuse you of wasting anyone's time, it is an unproductive and rather asinine way to advance your opinions in the free marketplace of ideas. It's created the appearance of controversy where none actually exists - as far I'm concerned, Yoda's most recent post has established why the 50/50 split should stay and no compelling counterargument has been provided.

But to respond to your latest points:

Rest assured that Yoda is not in fact the only one who uses random gender for strategic purposes. When I build my teams, I also randomize that shit for the same reason.

I've read the argument of counterpicking every time is was presented, but coming from my viewpoint as a non-tournament / non-high-leve player, it... really doesn't seem like that big of a problem? Like yeah, it would lead to counterpicking gender. That seems like something that's just supposed to happen in a meta where a viable Pokemon has Rivalry. I don't see how it's fundamentally different from any other counterpick. I didn't engage with the argument and instead kept throwing things at it at the hopes that one of them would break through because I did not (and still don't, though not for lack of trying) understand the argument, and thus I was unable to provide any meaningful critique of the argument beyond "this makes no absolutely no sense".

In any case, I'm much more concerned with the common user. The ones who have been running Rivalry on the ladder because they've been working under the assumption that the random gender option is weighted by gender options. Or even if they aren't actively trying to abuse the mechanic, they (like me, who only learned about how it actually works on Tuesday) still assumed it worked like the games. Because honestly, why wouldn't they assume it to work like that? Showdown has an overarching problem with conveying its features to its users (see all the suggestions that are rejected because the feature is buried in some obscure chat command) but if the person originally making the suggestion had to present empirical evidence that the mechanic isn't working as assumed, that indicates that the mechanic isn't just being communicated poorly, it's not being communicated at all. So either the mechanic should be changed to reflect how people expect it to work, or something should be done to communicate how it actually works.

That is my core argument. No more flailing around trying to point out perceived absurdities in purposefully ignoring gender ratios. This is it. If it is not sufficient, then so be it.

 

[Celever]

Sorry for getting so heated and scattered in all this.


I've read the argument of counterpicking every time is was presented, but coming from my viewpoint as a non-tournament / non-high-leve player, it... really doesn't seem like that big of a problem? Like yeah, it would lead to counterpicking gender. That seems like something that's just supposed to happen in a meta where a viable Pokemon has Rivalry. I don't see how it's fundamentally different from any other counterpick. I didn't engage with the argument and instead kept throwing things at it at the hopes that one of them would break through because I did not (and still don't, though not for lack of trying) understand the argument, and thus I was unable to provide any meaningful critique of the argument beyond "this makes no absolutely no sense".

In any case, I'm much more concerned with the common user. The ones who have been running Rivalry on the ladder because they've been working under the assumption that the random gender option is weighted by gender options. Or even if they aren't actively trying to abuse the mechanic, they (like me, who only learned about how it actually works on Tuesday) still assumed it worked like the games. Because honestly, why wouldn't they assume it to work like that? Showdown has an overarching problem with conveying its features to its users (see all the suggestions that are rejected because the feature is buried in some obscure chat command) but if the person originally making the suggestion had to present empirical evidence that the mechanic isn't working as assumed, that indicates that the mechanic isn't just being communicated poorly, it's not being communicated at all. So either the mechanic should be changed to reflect how people expect it to work, or something should be done to communicate how it actually works.

That is my core argument. No more flailing around trying to point out perceived absurdities in purposefully ignoring gender ratios. This is it. If it is not sufficient, then so be it.

There are sort of 2 responses to this post.

The blunt one is that showdown is a simulator first and foremost designed for competitive Pokémon. The policy of competitive optimisation therefore takes precedence insofar as it is reasonably accurate to cartridge. The current 50/50 gender ratio is that, and so the fact that noobs or long time casual players may not know that that’s how it works is kinda just, irrelevant. Also far fewer people assume the gender ratios fit in-game ratios than you think IMO, when I started out on showdown I assumed it was universally 50/50.

The second response is you’re fine if in the teambuilder instead of “gender —“ it’s marked “gender 50/50” so casual players know how it works? Because if so the whole discussion was pointless but hey it’d be resolved.

 

[CringeMeta]

I don't think it would be coherent to try to simulate probabilistic scarcity for ONLY this mechanic, and not for e.g. IV distribution, or whether a given user account has access to all of the games and hardware to trade certain obscure past-gen sets into Sword/Shield, etc. Perhaps the one difference is that while almost all other probabilistic scarcity mechanics in (competitive) Pokemon are completely horrible luck and grind-based gatekeeping, natural gender ratios are arguably kind of strategically interesting. However, this is a VERY subjective and weak distinction that I don't think is worth opening such a can of worms over.