Done Revert the level changes to Hackmons Cup

platinumCheesecake

platinumCheesecake

Two days ago, a pull request was made to alter the levels of Hackmons Cup Pokemon. It might seem like something silly to rally a community around, but Hackmons Cup is a relatively popular format with a dedicated community around it. This was made without any input from our community (which is understandable, since many people wouldn't think that such a community exists). For once this is something I can truly call myself and expert in, and alongside my community I want to ardently support the reversal of this change. I am the owner of an unofficial Hackmons Cup discord server and the author of the Strategy Guide to Hackmons Cup, here to rally for the levels to remain as they were.

For a bit of context, here is the message attached to the pull request.

The old formula was, to put it lightly, terrible. This new formula, besides actually calculating stats correctly, uses logarithms and compares stats more directly to each other instead of just adding them all up, and thus better representing what the stats actually do. The other big change this makes is actually taking the IVs, EVs, and nature of the Pokemon being level balanced into account instead of just assuming some average values for all stats. A consequence of this is that Pokemon within a species can now be different levels from each other, with wider variance the higher its average level is. Because of this variance, while the balancing still compares stats against the weakest possible Pokemon, that benchmark is given average IVs and EVs to prevent the level balancing from skewing too low for everything else. As such, the actual weakest Pokemon (i.e. a 0 IV 0 EV Wishiwashi in Hackmons Cup) won't be any higher level than the average Pokemon of the same species, but that should be rather rare, and the old formula was even more heavily biased against low BST Pokemon anyway.
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In effect, now if a pokemon has more EVs, its level gets lowered. So an Azurill with a total of 210 EVs might be level 97, whereas an Azurill with 780 EVs might be level 84. This means the higher the raw stats of a pokemon, the more they'll get their level nerfed.

Seven reasons why this is a change for the worse:

1) This makes every mon very samey. Their stats are now further adjusted so every mon is more or less basically identical. All stats now fall within a similar range, and it doesn't feel like anything special when I have a pokemon like Groudon. I had an Accelgor just earlier today fail to outspeed a rookidee; something that should realistically never happen. An Accelgor SHOULD be fast. A Groudon SHOULD be strong. Which brings me onto point #2.

2) It's harder to tell what stats you're up against. Before, you could assume a mon had statistically roughly 15 IVs and 128 EVs in any given stat; which mattered a whole lot for Speed stats especially. Speed values are just about the only thing you can ever get a gauge for in Hackmons Cup, and now they're ridiculously burdensome to play around. You really can't calculate now if you're going to outspeed. Try asking the average player to infer a logarithmic curve based on a pokemon's level to reasonably guess whether the bulk of a mon's EVs are weighted into Speed.

3) This one is possibly the most impactful for the day-to-day enjoyment and balance of the tier. With this change, Mons are now way bulkier. Randbats is known for being slower than OU, since all mons have neutral natures and 84 EVs in any stat. Gen 2 is even worse than that, and is often cited as a chore to play because everything is so bulky and recovery is so strong. Any top HC player will tell you right now that the two strongest things in the format are chip damage and recovery. It was never about the stats of the pokemon you get; it was always about the moves they carried. With a bulkier metagame, recovery moves and entry hazards are now even more oppressive. Before, if you had Toxic Spikes against a player with no way to remove them, you basically auto-won. Toxic Spikes did not need a buff. Games will now be more imbalanced than ever in favor of players who get chip and recovery, lessening the individual abilities of a player to be skillful in combatting a challenging matchup.

4) The biggest, basically only relevant Hackmons Cup tournament, Random Battles Team Tour 4, is a week away from signups and players who devoted time to learning the format have to adjust hard to these new changes. RBTT is a cherished tournament and regularly pulls several hundred applicants. HC is a staple of the tournament, and is the one place HC players really get to show off their skills. If you read my guide, you'll know that a huge part of HC is knowing your stats and how to use them. I used to be able to tell at a glance if my Pokemon was good based on what stats I saw. I could even tell you based on damage rolls just on feeling if the opponent had an ability that halved my damage. These were skills I acquired from over 3000 games of HC experience with which to guide my decisions. Now, I'm going into all HC games as blind as a player who never bothered to learn those crucial skills.

5) Levels are on average lower than they once were, making Ohko moves even stronger. They did not need a buff.

6) Perhaps most important to the casual players out there, most of the fun of hc was in getting that one sick synergy that works. Stuff like the Steam Eruption Inteleon I got last week, or my fabled Anger Point Power Trip Zweilous that won me an RBTT2 game. Yes, the level change doesn't impact how moves are rolled, but it does impact the efficacy of any offensive-leaning set. By slowing the meta down, fun strats and strong STAB moves are a lot less impactful. Who cares if I have a fun Focus Energy + Sniper Pokemon if its level 55 and worse off than just having something with Spikes?

7) And like I said before, this was made without input from the broader HC community. This has been an overall trend in past development cycles where HC gets messed around with without the input of people who truly care. We asked for Item generation changes when TRs flooded the format and got shut down. Gmax moves got added without our input, and then silently removed. This is the worst offender yet. All our experience with stats and levels gets thrown out the window. Our metagame becomes slower, and the most overpowered strategies have gotten stronger. Hackmons Cup is not as luck-based as you might think. We have players with GXEs in the mid 80s. But the more skewed towards chip and recovery the format becomes, the more winning games comes down to whether or not you roll those moves.

Hackmons Cup may seem like a joke format to a lot of people, but there are many of us who really care. Please don't ruin this thing we love.
 
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While I've never been a regular Hackmons Cup player, I've always been a big fan of Challenge Cup formats, and host an annual Challenge Cup team tournament. The level formula used in the two formats is the same, and these changes impact our community as well. platinumCheesecake is more articulate in expressing the issues surrounding this change than I would be, and he hit the important points in the OP. These changes are a step in the wrong direction for both formats, and I support reverting to the previous leveling system.
 
I also wholeheartedly support reverting to the previous system. A large portion of higher-level Hackmons Cup is managing the information that you reveal to your opponent, and this new system is objectively detrimental to that level of strategy and therefore reduces the strategy required to play the format well. Before, it was possible to hide how "good" your Pokemon's stats were until you used the stat proper, but now if a player is savvy to the level system, they will be able to easily determine the Pokemon's stat spread and therefore its general ability. This is, of course, in addition to all of the points previously stated in the thread.
 
I'm also here to say that I support reverting this back. While I wouldn't consider myself a top HC player or a top player in general, I definitely agree with the points made in the OP. This did nothing to really help the chaotic meta that is HC/CC and like Platty said, buffs a ton of strats that were already super good(hazards, ohko, bulky recovery) along with the other mentions. Please change this back, this is NOT the way to go.
 
platinumCheesecake said:
This was made without input from the broader HC community. This has been an overall trend in past development cycles where HC gets messed around with without the input of people who truly care. We asked for Item generation changes when TRs flooded the format and got shut down. Gmax moves got added without our input, and then silently removed. This is the worst offender yet.
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Speaking as someone who was not involved in any of these decisions:

It seems to me that people, when asked about a change they didn't ask for, will usually vote for their tiers to stay the same.

On one hand, this is completely normal. Of course if OU asks us for something it's because they wanted it, and if we force something on them they didn't ask for, they would prefer not to have to deal with it.

On the other hand, it's not like we force changes on people for fun. This basically only happens as a result of newly-researched mechanics. Researchers discover a mechanics difference between PS and the cartridge games, PS fixes the mechanic, and then the playerbase hates the change and petitions for a clause to make the game play like they're used to.

Which, sure, I sympathize with that. But let me tell you, some researchers hate this. It makes them feel like they don't matter, or worse, that players don't want them to exist, when they're doing all this work to better understand the game. VGC is basically our only tier that doesn't get into fights with researchers (because they use PS to practice for irl tournaments), which is kind of insane if you think about it. Our current research lead is a VGC player, which is probably for the best.

Obviously this doesn't apply to the level-balancing formula. But it does apply to TRs and Gmax moves, which were changed based on research we received.

So yeah, that's the feedback loop. We discover how switching actually works in Gen 3, Gen 3 players vote to stop playing Gen 3 and start playing a fake game in which switching works like how they're used to. We discover how Counter actually works in Gen 1, Gen 1 players vote to stop playing Gen 1 and start playing a fake game in which Counter works more like how they're used to.

Sadly, Hackmons Cup doesn't have tier leaders capable of voting. Its rules are too simple: "generate everything randomly, except level", there's nothing to vote on. But that means that when researchers discover something that changes the tier, there's no one around on the other side of the table to say "hey wait, let's not". I can imagine that sucks, if you're a player. But I don't know if it sucks more than adding lots of rules to a format that could previously be summed up in five words.

Once again, this doesn't apply to the level balancing formula. I'll intervene to make sure we get a formula everyone's happy with. But it does apply to the other changes. Currently TI makes the rules, and he rules that the rules should not be changed, and I don't think that's worth me stepping in for.
 
The level changes are also DRASTIC. The average level is now in the low 60s. LC Pokemon are often much, much higher than this in the high 80s. This is not only detrimental to the speed and playableness of the format because almost no Pokemon can get a stat above 200 anymore (ESPECIALLY in Atk/SpA); level also makes a direct and significant difference in the amount of damage dealt by pokemon, but not the damage received. This means that it is significantly more difficult to KO any Pokemon with most Pokemon obtained, even with high-powered moves. Therefore, getting recovery in Hackmons Cup, even draining moves like Drain Punch, can be game-winning just due to how little damage everything deals at any time. This also has the inverse effect for the now much higher-leveled Pokemon (many of which have extremely minmaxed stats, e.g. Gastly, Abra, Arrokuda), as their damage is not hampered anywhere near as much.

As an example of what I'm talking about, please view this replay in which my Grimmsnarl survives way too many would-be high-powered hits with Drain Punch recovery, a Lunala does quite literally nothing with a high-powered Special move, and I proceed to clean with a Level 85 Arrokuda with 137 Attack.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8hackmonscup-1240574102-h79ps9eaneys68pycbofgp7rrj07g6vpw

Lucario used Pollen Puff!
It's super effective!
(The opposing Wynaut lost 37% of its health!)

Virizion used Meteor Assault!
(The opposing Pancham lost 49% of its health!)

https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen8hackmonscup-1240587071 in which a steely spirit behemoth bash lopunny does less than a 116 atk 106 defense glacial lance whismur.
 
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Zarel said:
On the other hand, it's not like we force changes on people for fun. This basically only happens as a result of newly-researched mechanics. Researchers discover a mechanics difference between PS and the cartridge games, PS fixes the mechanic, and then the playerbase hates the change and petitions for a clause to make the game play like they're used to.

Which, sure, I sympathize with that. But let me tell you, some researchers hate this. It makes them feel like they don't matter, or worse, that players don't want them to exist, when they're doing all this work to better understand the game. VGC is basically our only tier that doesn't get into fights with researchers (because they use PS to practice for irl tournaments), which is kind of insane if you think about it. Our current research lead is a VGC player, which is probably for the best.
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Well said, and I appreciate and respect your candor in this answer. The majority of HC players understand that we operate within the realm of whats able to be hacked into the game. Gmax moves were pretty obviously added and then removed because of conflicting evidence over their legality. I did not mean to imply fault on researchers, merely that such changes happen without our input.

On the issue of TRs, the concern with them was twofold. There were arguments that they either shouldn'tve been added to PS in the first place, or that every item, including Antidotes and Rare Candy and Tin of Beans, should be added to PS because that's what HC stands for. The community didnt object to saying that these items shouldnt be in the format, we were frustrated that their inclusion to PS made our format less interesting. We werent mad at researchers or programmers, but we did suggest that the formula with which items are distributed in HC be changed, one that decentivised useless items and future-proofed HC against a potential new wave of useless items coming out. I believe there was a suggestion post awhile back about this in which I commented (but am away from my PC and cannot easily reference at this time).

I certainly wont fight the programmers and researchers if they eventually say they want to add all x items and camping items to PS! (And consequently HC). After all, those are legally obtainable items that can be held by pokemon. I do wish, however, on the day they are implemented, that our suggestions on *distributing* those items would be considered. Like weighting down useless items, for instance.

You are absolutely correct that researchers shouldnt be vilified for their work. I apologize for insinuating it, when that was far from my intention.

I merely wanted to illustrate that the HC community is willing to work within what researchers know about the game, while also proposing a framework for that knowledge for better metagame implementation. I think I speak for my community when I say that we wish to be a part of discussions, such as being notified that gmax moves will be added/removed for x reason, or TR implementation, or whatever new future changes come to the format.

Thank you for your time.


Edit: here's the link https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/add-every-item-for-challenge-cups-1v1.3656057/post-8549100
 
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I have played cc1v1 as a main tier of enjoyment since Rbtt2 a few years ago. This tier is something I have invested much time and energy into, and even going as far as putting together and co-hosting a Challenge Cup team tour, that many were apart of and enjoyed. It was such a joy to be able to bring some light to this tier that is a bit more casual but can lead to some really fun games.

I would first like to say that as a member of the CC community, I can advocate for Platty being the voice or reason of the HC side of this. As he stated, he is a discord owner and guide author. The dude knows the tier inside and out, and while I'm not nearly as knowledgable on that side of things I fully trust and vouch that he is.

I would like to first off push the first point Platty makes. While I can see the logic and reasoning behind this change I personally do not think it is working in practice as it was intended to on paper. I think that taking into account IVs/EVs when calculating level is a valid thought and idea but I think that if you take that into account you really have to go all in with it.

Movesets are currently not being calculated into this process in any way, as far as I can tell from the small synopsis I've been given of the changes. I think that in an effort to use the stats given to mons to calculate levels, you cannot just leave other things out. This seems like an all or nothing change to the formats.

I've made a fresh alt to test to just spam and see what kind of teams I can come up with. I managed to land a ~level80 rhyhorn with Horn Drill while my opponent had mostly level ~50 mons and only one mon who was even close to being a higher level than my horn drill mon.

This means:
It's almost always a bad idea to not pick the OHKO move mon, depending on the team they roll with plenty of mons rolling levels ranging in the 50s and 60s. This seems like an unintended outcome of these fixes, but one that I find to be slightly unfortunate and could cause further balance problems. I'm sure this isn't a super common occurrence in CC1v1, but I can only imagine that it would be a much larger balance problem for HC players.

I would also like to note that, while there probably isn't a "Challenge Cup" community, if there was I'd say that CCC players make up most of it. We ran a tour where many many CC1v1, CC2v2, and even Gen1CC games were played and not once had I heard any complaints or comments about level balancing not making sense. I found part of the fun of cc1v1 being trying to take down the beasts on the other team with a lesser mon on your team. The atmosphere surrounding that feels gone considering all the mons basically have very same stat lines now.

A core aspect of CC1v1/HC is to given mons randomized sets and stats to see how you can best work around them. There's always going to be very good and very bad mons and the fun of it is getting wins with those very bad mons, or figuring out ways to work around the very good ones. Do the changes made not just make this tier kind of... irrelevant as far as its niche is concerned?

FROM THIS POINT UP ALL COMMENTS WERE TYPED AT THE TIME THIS WAS POSTED. THE REST OF THIS POST WILL BE MADE WITH UPDATED DISCUSSION IN MIND.

I would say that overall I can agree that something, if needed, could be done with balancing changes. I personally, as many other might agree, don’t find them to be in the slightest bit necessary for such a niche tier, but if there’s need for it I feel there are better way to go about it.

As Cake pointed out, basically everything is just low leveled now. All the stats across the board are generally the same given that mons have a spread of about 40 levels in total which leads to some heavy imbalance in place of the balance that I believe was truly intended.

It seems that the changes were made to make bad mons better, when in reality it just made every mon just lukewarm. There’s no more thrill of seeing that 1/someodd thousand chance that you pulled a loaded team while your opponent’s best option is a Whimsicott with Absorb.

This was all part of the thrill and uncertainty of the formats. That’s the atmosphere that we were able to create when hosting a tier and building a community within such a small area of the site.

I would just like to add that I appreciate that this tier was even LOOKED AT with changes. The idea that people are actively working to make these tiers the best versions of themselves is amazing as a player and a fan of the formats. I make this post simply to offer the perspective of someone who has poured many hours into this format, in hopes that we can come out of it with the best rendition available.

Thank you for the time, if you read through all this garble and I hope to CC1v1(and hackmons of course) continue to expand and develop.

-MBD
 
platinumCheesecake said:
Two days ago, a pull request was made to alter the levels of Hackmons Cup Pokemon. It might seem like something silly to rally a community around, but Hackmons Cup is a relatively popular format with a dedicated community around it. This was made without any input from our community (which is understandable, since many people wouldn't think that such a community exists). For once this is something I can truly call myself and expert in, and alongside my community I want to ardently support the reversal of this change. I am the owner of an unofficial Hackmons Cup discord server and the author of the Strategy Guide to Hackmons Cup, here to rally for the levels to remain as they were.

For a bit of context, here is the message attached to the pull request.



In effect, now if a pokemon has more EVs, its level gets lowered. So an Azurill with a total of 210 EVs might be level 97, whereas an Azurill with 780 EVs might be level 84. This means the higher the raw stats of a pokemon, the more they'll get their level nerfed.

Seven reasons why this is a change for the worse:

1) This makes every mon very samey. Their stats are now further adjusted so every mon is more or less basically identical. All stats now fall within a similar range, and it doesn't feel like anything special when I have a pokemon like Groudon. I had an Accelgor just earlier today fail to outspeed a rookidee; something that should realistically never happen. An Accelgor SHOULD be fast. A Groudon SHOULD be strong. Which brings me onto point #2.

2) It's harder to tell what stats you're up against. Before, you could assume a mon had statistically roughly 15 IVs and 128 EVs in any given stat; which mattered a whole lot for Speed stats especially. Speed values are just about the only thing you can ever get a gauge for in Hackmons Cup, and now they're ridiculously burdensome to play around. You really can't calculate now if you're going to outspeed. Try asking the average player to infer a logarithmic curve based on a pokemon's level to reasonably guess whether the bulk of a mon's EVs are weighted into Speed. [mod edit for phrasing: Cake also says this.]
A Cake Wearing A Hat said:
I also wholeheartedly support reverting to the previous system. A large portion of higher-level Hackmons Cup is managing the information that you reveal to your opponent, and this new system is objectively detrimental to that level of strategy and therefore reduces the strategy required to play the format well. Before, it was possible to hide how "good" your Pokemon's stats were until you used the stat proper, but now if a player is savvy to the level system, they will be able to easily determine the Pokemon's stat spread and therefore its general ability. This is, of course, in addition to all of the points previously stated in the thread.
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3) This one is possibly the most impactful for the day-to-day enjoyment and balance of the tier. With this change, Mons are now way bulkier. Randbats is known for being slower than OU, since all mons have neutral natures and 84 EVs in any stat. Gen 2 is even worse than that, and is often cited as a chore to play because everything is so bulky and recovery is so strong. Any top HC player will tell you right now that the two strongest things in the format are chip damage and recovery. It was never about the stats of the pokemon you get; it was always about the moves they carried. With a bulkier metagame, recovery moves and entry hazards are now even more oppressive. Before, if you had Toxic Spikes against a player with no way to remove them, you basically auto-won. Toxic Spikes did not need a buff. Games will now be more imbalanced than ever in favor of players who get chip and recovery, lessening the individual abilities of a player to be skillful in combatting a challenging matchup.

4) The biggest, basically only relevant Hackmons Cup tournament, Random Battles Team Tour 4, is a week away from signups and players who devoted time to learning the format have to adjust hard to these new changes. RBTT is a cherished tournament and regularly pulls several hundred applicants. HC is a staple of the tournament, and is the one place HC players really get to show off their skills. If you read my guide, you'll know that a huge part of HC is knowing your stats and how to use them. I used to be able to tell at a glance if my Pokemon was good based on what stats I saw. I could even tell you based on damage rolls just on feeling if the opponent had an ability that halved my damage. These were skills I acquired from over 3000 games of HC experience with which to guide my decisions. Now, I'm going into all HC games as blind as a player who never bothered to learn those crucial skills.

5) Levels are on average lower than they once were, making Ohko moves even stronger. They did not need a buff.

6) Perhaps most important to the casual players out there, most of the fun of hc was in getting that one sick synergy that works. Stuff like the Steam Eruption Inteleon I got last week, or my fabled Anger Point Power Trip Zweilous that won me an RBTT2 game. Yes, the level change doesn't impact how moves are rolled, but it does impact the efficacy of any offensive-leaning set. By slowing the meta down, fun strats and strong STAB moves are a lot less impactful. Who cares if I have a fun Focus Energy + Sniper Pokemon if its level 55 and worse off than just having something with Spikes?

7) And like I said before, this was made without input from the broader HC community. This has been an overall trend in past development cycles where HC gets messed around with without the input of people who truly care. We asked for Item generation changes when TRs flooded the format and got shut down. Gmax moves got added without our input, and then silently removed. This is the worst offender yet. All our experience with stats and levels gets thrown out the window. Our metagame becomes slower, and the most overpowered strategies have gotten stronger. Hackmons Cup is not as luck-based as you might think. We have players with GXEs in the mid 80s. But the more skewed towards chip and recovery the format becomes, the more winning games comes down to whether or not you roll those moves.

Hackmons Cup may seem like a joke format to a lot of people, but there are many of us who really care. Please don't ruin this thing we love.
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Let's get something out of the way: the old formula for balancing levels was, as I said, terrible, but I didn't explain exactly what was wrong with it, so let me make this perfectly clear. The old code was incorrectly calculating stats other than HP as if their EVs were 400 points higher than they actually were they had 31 IV and 484 EV, and the new code doesn't do that. I should not need to defend that change, as the old code was blatantly wrong. It also just added all the stats together and compared that total against a baseline that, because it had also been incorrectly calculated, made no sense. Furthermore, the raw additive total of all six stats is a terrible metric for comparing how strong two Pokemon are to each other. A Pokemon with 150 Defense and 50 Special Defense is not equally strong compared to a Pokemon with 100 Defense and 100 Special Defense because the former takes 33% less damage from physical attacks as the latter does, but takes 100% more damage from special attacks. More than that, a Pokemon with 200 HP, 100 Defense, and 100 Special Defense is significantly bulkier than a pokemon with 100 HP, 150 Defense, and 150 Special Defense, because extra hit points are, essentially, twice as valuable as points in either Defense or Special Defense are. Because the baseline stats (in Hackmons Cup, an utterly average Wishiwashi) have similar physical and special power/bulk, I needed a formula that could handle stat lines with very disparate bulk, such as Steelix's, just as well as it could lines with more even distributions, and that's what the new formula is.

Onto your individual points:

1) An Accelgor getting outsped by a Rookidee isn't something that should realistically happen in-game, but this is Hackmons Cup. Everything in this meta is unrealistic. I bet it didn't hit you with a Brave Bird, did it? Realistically, does Accelgor even stay in on a Rookidee? No, because in a realistic meta they'd never face off in the first place. After all, Accelgor has over twice the BST of Rookidee! As a consequence of using levels to balance stats, Pokemon with lower BSTs get higher levels to help compensate, and as a consequence of that, the differences in their base stats become more exaggerated. Another factor is that, due to the way stats are calculated, IVs and EVs have a relatively larger impact on the stats of Pokemon with low base stats than they do Pokemon with high base stats, and higher levels exaggerate that even more. This means that a level-balanced Rookidee will have a much higher speed variance than a level-balanced Accelgor will, and as such I would certainly expect Rookidee to be faster sometimes. Let's also not pretend that your Accelgor's speed was somehow lower than any of its other stats except maybe HP. An Accelgor is still very fast, compared to its other attributes. A Groudon is still a very strong physical attacker and defender, compared to its special power/bulk and speed. They're just not guaranteed to be way stronger than "weaker" Pokemon now, which I can't imagine you would call less balanced than before.

2) It's literally easier now to guess a Pokemon's stats because its actual, real stats affect its level instead of an assumed 31 IV and 484 EV. If you're guessing a Pokemon's speed based on a 15 IV and 127 EV assumption, it's a 50/50 whether the real number is higher or lower than that.

(side note: The whole point of balancing levels around the actual stats is to make higher level Pokemon just as good/bad as lower level Pokemon, so seeing a Pokemon with a low level does mean it has good IVs and EVs, but if the level balancing is doing its job, then it doesn't mean that Pokemon's somehow better than it would be if its level were higher. Furthermore, as Platinum already explained, most players can't reverse engineer the logarithmic formula in their head to "easily" determine even one stat, much less a whole spread. It can't simultaneously be too easy to guess stats and too hard at the same time.)

3) If it seems like mons are bulkier, that's because half the Pokedex was getting walloped by the other half because they weren't nearly as strong. OU isn't faster than Randbats simply because the individual sets are less min-maxed. OU is faster because players are allowed to choose to min-max, and if most players prefer faster games, they can and do choose teams and sets that make games go faster, and if their games are faster then they can start new games more often, and thus more games on ladder are fast games. The fact is that most of the Pokemon you can get in Hackmons Cup aren't Kartana or Accelgor. They're Goomy and Sinistea and all kinds of early-to-mid-story Pokemon that have stats that aren't supposed allow for OHKOs in either direction. If half the Pokemon on a team are too weak to compete, that will certainly make games go faster, but it will also make the games feel more like bring-6-pick-3.

4) This, I understand. It's really important for high level tournament play (such as it is) to involve people who actually know what they're doing, and I really just never remembered there was a big tournament coming up when I noticed how wrong the old code (which, by the way, I also wrote) was. I'm more or less fine with reverting this change for the tournament, but I cannot accept the old code sticking around much longer after that. If the broken code happened to be right twice a day, I would like to work out what exactly it did right so we can fix what was broken without breaking what wasn't any more than necessary.

5) There's nothing really to be done about this, short of actually lessening the frequency with which OHKO moves appear. Is it possible to account for OHKO moves while level balancing for stats? Yes. Is it worth the extreme amount of effort, both in writing/testing and run-time processing power usage, it would take to actually properly account for this on a mathematical level? Hell no. As a matter of fact, I intentionally made the baseline stats which all other stats are balanced against much higher than the actual worst possible stats (0 IV 0 EV Wishiwashi) because the levels would have all been between 35 and 60. Now, they're all mostly between 45 and 75, which is a sacrifice I was willing to make for poor Wishiwashi, Blipbug, and the other shitmons of old.

6) Those really cool synergies you mention only actually worked on Pokemon with high enough BSTs and/or sufficiently lucky IVs and EVs. By actually balancing the meta with a formula that, you know, works, those synergies should depend less on the BST of the Pokemon that gets them. I get that that makes them less special, but shrinking the level ranges makes OHKO moves less special, too.

7) While it's true that I didn't ask the community at large about this change, I can't imagine their input would have been very useful? Judging by the response I'm getting now, I imagine most people would have simply rejected the very idea of this change without even trying to understand it, much less playtest it. Now that you've all been forced to confront it though, and since we're reverting it for the tournament, maybe urkerab wouldn't mind hosting these changes on his server so the community can do some kind of organized playtesting over there? I can't say how well the feedback loop is going to go, though. Unless somebody writes their own balancing algorithm, it might just boil down to arguments over how heavily power, bulk, and speed should individually be weighted. Currently, power (a combined comparison of Attack and Special Attack) has a weight of 2, bulk (a combined comparison of HP, Defense, and Special Defense) also has a weight of 2, and Speed has a weight of 1. Speed is, frankly, the part of the formula I'm least confident in. Sure, modifiers to Speed are all multiplicative, but to say that 100 Speed is to 50 Speed as 200 Speed is to 100 Speed is a little ridiculous as Speed is more about just being higher, even if just by a little bit, but that's what the formula does. This is also probably a partial culprit as to why the meta is bulkier now, as lots of tanky mons tend to be very slow, and the formula thinks that, between two Pokemon with similar power, a Pokemon with 40 Speed should be ~25% bulkier than a Pokemon with 60 Speed as compensation. Now that I think about it, this problem could be lessened by squaring the Speed stats before comparing them so as to increase the perceived benefit of having a high speed and, more importantly, decrease the perceived detriment of having a low speed.

As for all those other changes, though, I haven't been around for most of gen 8, so I really didn't have anything to do with that. It's not that I think you're attacking me personally on those, but I can't claim responsibility for them. I do personally wonder what the deal is with that one 100 BP Max Flare floating around? It's the only max move that doesn't have 10 BP (there is also a 10 BP Max Flare, and they're both physical) and I don't get why it's the only one of its kind. I can explain why TRs were added to the sim at all, though, which is their unique interaction with fling. When TRs are flung, Fling gets the base power of the move the TR teaches, or 10 if it doesn't have one. In gen 7 and before, the strongest item for use with Fling was Iron Ball, but that of course came with the negative effects of grounding Pokemon and halving their speed. TR43 and TR71, which teach Overheat and Leaf Storm, tie Iron Ball's 130 BP without any drawbacks to the holder, so it makes sense for them to be added, at least to the simulator. I wonder if no one would object to the rest of the TRs that don't have unique Fling BPs as items with no other effect being removed.


I didn't make this change because I think of Hackmons Cup as a joke meta, and I certainly wasn't trying to ruin it. I love Hackmons Cup and play it often, but I love it for being a meta about making use of all the combinations of Pokemon, moves, abilities, and items that don't get to shine in other formats because they're impossible to obtain legally or because they're just outclassed or downright bad, and I did notice that the high BST titans were much, much more likely to do well than low BST shrimps. When I saw that was because the level balancing formula that I myself had written was blatantly not doing what it was intended to do how it was intended to do it, I felt it had to change, and I still do.

Krisedit: Removed impolite sections
 
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MacChaeger Hey for one I can at least clarify on the Max Flare! It’s actually miscoded into the game incorrectly by Gamefreak as the only Max move with a non10 bp move so following the normal guidelines of showdown it is coded as such!

Also, I would just like to point out that it seems a little unprofessional and counterproductive to respond in that way :/ Saying things like “Your little buddy Cake” and “Why don’t you just @ me next time” seems counter productive to the conversation we’re all just trying to have.

I can only truly speak for myself, but I’m sure Platty would attest, we’re coming from a place of love for the formats. We in no way are trying to go behind backs or make you feel any type of way about your changes. Like I mentioned in my post I APPRECIATE that someone is willing to go in and take a look at this!! I know a big concern was that a tour was coming up, so at least that being reverted is an immediate solution and we’re all super thankful for that.

I hope that on all sides we can all stay purely civil and come to understand each other’s sides of this. If you weren’t aware there would be a player base that would care like that I totally get that. We in the same way weren’t aware changes like this were going to be thrown out either so these are just our immediate response to what happened!

Personally, I’m down for a play test! I’d love to get something like worked because as I said, I want these formats to be the best they can.

EDIT: Typed this up before the mod edit, sorry. My points still stand on the rest though!
 
For what it's worth I do think that the change to the format is quite logical and there could be a change for the better. However, I think this change isn't the right one. It follows a logical path but in terms of effectiveness it falls flat.

If we can achieve a nice balance between the old and new format then that would be great but as it stood before the revert, the Pokemon levels were too spread out and creates a more power imbalance between high BST and low BST. For example, Zygarde-Complete can be lvl 49, which is hardly higher than what Eternamax was, even though its HP is just double of what regular Zygarde is. This makes him do absolutely nothing in damage back due to lower Atk and lower level but other lower BST pokemon can do a lot more damage making it seem like some high or average BST seem really bad. I do think if the levels can be closer together that this situation wouldn't be too extreme of a change.

I'm not making this post long but making it so where the format becomes more stally will push more people away than invite them. In this situation I think it is best for all sides to listen to each other and come to a general agreement because in the end this format is mostly for fun.
 
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