[Non-Official Discussion] Timer Rule

[caioxlive13]

On our metagaming, we had a timer limit for the battles for 60 minutes. This rule was supposed to avoid long matches on PvP. However, what we see is a abuse from stallers. It was related by my friend KeldeoCrowned, currently top #42 OU, that players was with the match basically lost, but they stalled until time is over, and won just because he has more mons than you.

And the problem intensifies after Gallade's ban: Previously on OU he was present and he was the only mon able to hold Gliscor, Amongus, and Mienshao(the three regen/poison heal users) at same time. No other mon was able to do that. Now with him gone, no mon was able to counter all of them, they can go at maximum 2 without huge sacrifice. So they're dominating now and this problem become more common.

All of that happening, and we're still with risk of more problematic mons coming, such as Alomomola, and Slowbro. A solution has to be done right now, and the solution to avoid this abuse on every tier(read this part munya before closing this thread and say to me go to a specific discussion request thread), but mainly on OU is the follow:

1st step: Remove the time rule and cap the matches at 200 turns(even with intense stall matches lasting one hour cannot reach at 175 turns on MMO). The tiebreak criteria will be applied ONLY on tour matches. If was in ladder, the match will be a Tie.
2nd step: Add a option to propose tie, with each player able to propose only one tie per match. If both players seems that they can't progress, is better to them tie the match(Both retain same elo and gain 225 BP), but to avoid matchmaking manipulation, the option would be avaliable only if match has reached 50 turns or 20 minutes.

Edited July 24, 2023 by caioxlive13

[OrangeManiac]

Enough with the Gallade arguments. It is banned, our game doesn't need it and our game is far better off without it. Also teams defensively have far more leeway to build their cores with less Pokemon because you don't have to bring so many defensive mons just trying to beat every Gallade set at once. Also there are plenty of Pokemon that can beat your aforementioned Gliscor, Amoonguss, Mienshao core. Defensively speaking that core is actually pretty weak, it is twice weak to Ice, Flying and Psychic. Yeah sure, you can patch those weaknesses with other Pokemon but stall teams have always existed and will always exist. People will find ways to stall, that's Pokemon. For the record, I do think Regenerator Amoonguss was a mistake in OU but Gallade was a far bigger mistake.

 

But now about the timer rules, the topic this should be about. First of all, when there are any timer rules then timer becomes a win condition and it allows a player that "shouldn't have won the battle to win the battle". It doesn't matter what arbitrary rules you will set, it will always remain the case. Whether it is a turn counter or a time counter, a player may start to play in the way that focuses them on reaching that cap to win the game rather than winning by 6 KO's. I kinda like the time counter more because I know immediately how long do I need to suffer through if I had to play this to the PP stall. Especially tournament wise if you have a turn cap that is too high and stalling players are taking maximum time every turn, it is also absolutely obnoxious for the other players not to know how long they have to wait. If the turn cap is too low, then the chances that a player wins that wasn't supposed to increases. So I think we're fine where we are at right now, although I could see the argument of lowering the maximum time by a bit especially in tournaments because your stalling isn't ruining just the day of both of you but everyone else in the single elimination bracket. When laddering, it's just two players wasting each others' time anyways so I don't think that itself needs a change.

 

I'm not necessarily against Tie option in stalldowns to allow both players to move on with their day on ladder, I just don't think it's going to be utilized much. If players know what they are doing, then one player definitely should feel like they have a better chance of winning in the end and not accept to the tie anyways.

[Aleventinove]

Wouldn't it be easier to just leave the 60 minutes timer and the winning team is the one that has dealt overall more damage through the match? (Regardless of how many Pokemons still alive each team has).

This could stimulate overall a more offensive playstyle and the behaviors mentioned by the OP wouldn't be effective to win and climb the ladder

[Bertolfoso]

There is no need to change anything in the time limit rule. As long as both players are aware of this win condition, both can formulate an appropriate game plan and play to win. It's fair to both players.

 

Offer tie button doesn't have any negative effect I can think of but it isn't a priority (unlike Weather/Screens turn counter, etc.).

[caioxlive13]

8 hours ago, OrangeManiac said:

Enough with the Gallade arguments. It is banned, our game doesn't need it and our game is far better off without it. Also teams defensively have far more leeway to build their cores with less Pokemon because you don't have to bring so many defensive mons just trying to beat every Gallade set at once. Also there are plenty of Pokemon that can beat your aforementioned Gliscor, Amoonguss, Mienshao core. Defensively speaking that core is actually pretty weak, it is twice weak to Ice, Flying and Psychic. Yeah sure, you can patch those weaknesses with other Pokemon but stall teams have always existed and will always exist. People will find ways to stall, that's Pokemon. For the record, I do think Regenerator Amoonguss was a mistake in OU but Gallade was a far bigger mistake.

 

I'm fine with gallade ban. I've mentioned it because when it was on Metagaming, those regens on OU was under control and we wasn't see the stalling problem much often. But on timeframe after the ban, the problem we had in the timewindow beetween the Regen's release, and Sharpness Gallade's Release, was returned, that are people abusing from regen/poison heal cores and if the match is unwinnable for regular methods, they use the time to win.

And i'm not mentioning they use all at same time, they need only one or two in a team with enough longevity to create chaos. The problem was neither of the mons. The problem is the timerule, that was there to stop long matches, became a win condition.

Edited July 24, 2023 by caioxlive13

[razimove]

Caio, ill offer to buy your gallade at the breeding cost of a 5*31 genderless if you just shut up about it, literally play the game instead of just spamming stuff you lack knowledge of, if its cause you cant recover the yen you spent on it, ill buy it so that you stop. 

 

Im fine with the timer as is, stall is a legit strat, and there is probably a handful of players in the entire community that play it properly, if you lose, you can blame yourself most of the time vs the common player. 

[caioxlive13]

1 hour ago, razimove said:

Caio, ill offer to buy your gallade at the breeding cost of a 5*31 genderless if you just shut up about it, literally play the game instead of just spamming stuff you lack knowledge of, if its cause you cant recover the yen you spent on it, ill buy it so that you stop. 

 

Im fine with the timer as is, stall is a legit strat, and there is probably a handful of players in the entire community that play it properly, if you lose, you can blame yourself most of the time vs the common player. 

I'm not with this thread to question ban's gallade. This have passed. 

With timer question, i was with my concerns, but i bring the thread after Keldeo on BladeDarnkess's discord sayed that was against the rule because some players used it as wincon.

[caioxlive13]

I think the major problem is people using timerule as wincon, and i think the easiest way to solve this small issue: The tiebreak criteria will be applied ONLY on tour matches. If was in ladder, the match will be a forced Tie. With that, players that was going for 60 minutes instead of winning a lost match, would be tying them. Not that affects unofficial tours because we all know that people there play with no time limit. But this affect a bit ladder so it avoid people wasting your time. And also with the tie option, people on a match where is possible to reach 60 minutes can realize at some point that the match will end with no winner since the time is not enough to one side run out of PP, and can tie it instead of let end the time and draw at same way. effectively avoiding both wasting time.

Edited July 25, 2023 by caioxlive13

[DoubleJ]

@Munya get 'em

[Frag]

8 hours ago, caioxlive13 said:

I think the major problem is people using timerule as wincon, and i think the easiest way to solve this small issue: The tiebreak criteria will be applied ONLY on tour matches. If was in ladder, the match will be a forced Tie. With that, players that was going for 60 minutes instead of winning a lost match, would be tying them. Not that affects unofficial tours because we all know that people there play with no time limit. But this affect a bit ladder so it avoid people wasting your time. And also with the tie option, people on a match where is possible to reach 60 minutes can realize at some point that the match will end with no winner since the time is not enough to one side run out of PP, and can tie it instead of let end the time and draw at same way. effectively avoiding both wasting time.

The major problem is that you're bad, nothing else.

[caioxlive13]

7 minutes ago, Frag said:

The major problem is that you're bad, nothing else.

At least i'm able to read. 

 

11 hours ago, caioxlive13 said:

With timer question, i was with my concerns, but i bring the thread after Keldeo on BladeDarnkess's discord sayed that was against the rule because some players used it as wincon.

(It was not only me, other player is against this rule and this other player is currently top rank. You're just being toxic posting that Frag, nothing else.)

[powerdrib]

20 hours ago, caioxlive13 said:

I but i bring the thread after Keldeo on BladeDarnkess's discord sayed that was against the rule because some players used it as wincon.

Can you please show us where its stated that using timer as a wincon is against the rules

[Offlliner]

11 hours ago, caioxlive13 said:

At least i'm able to read. 

 

You might be able to read but you're not capable of gathering any knowledge from what you read, you just accept to be this insanely stubborn guy.

[caioxlive13]

On 7/26/2023 at 5:38 AM, powerdrib said:

Can you please show us where its stated that using timer as a wincon is against the rules

There is nothing stated, but is pretty obvious that the rule wasn't supposed to be used on that way, there is a reason to matches either on MMO(Via time limit) or Smogon(Via turn limit) have limits on matches, is to a match not last unnecessarily long and one side play until opponent gets forced to leave. The problem is there is tiebreak on ladder, that i think devs just applied to all matches instead of just tours to "save time coding", and for tours it's pretty obvious the reason the tiebreak is there, is to force one of two players to pass to next round. However people are abusing it in many ways to take the matches onto limit and win when if the matched continued, they wasn't supposed to. For example, if you had a plan to trade some mons to get good oods for one in specific wins, for example let the opponent with one special wall alive to raise chances of a Volca sweep, but opponent pushes until the limit, you could've loss by having 4 mons against 5 of opponent, even with the reality that if the matches continues, chansey would ran out of PP on like, 3 more uses, and nothing could stop volca anymore.

Or the time is up when all you have left is a scizor(that was left alone on 57') but you have the chance to push 3 swords dance, playing well, or your scizor is band and all your opponent mons dies to bullet punch, you taked the entire match to reach on this scenario, and if you manage to do so on a PSL for example(the remaining mons of opponent cannot stop scizor from sweeping) you won because you opponent cannot do anything to stop it, but in a official tour, if it's prior to quarterfinals, the opponent  can just wait two minutes and half to play a single move, and the time's up, the opponent has more mons, he won when clearly you was supposed to win.
To not say this is exaggerated, you can imagine the scenario: On minute 54 you killed the last wall of opponent able to stop scizor, losing your third last mon for that, and in minute 56'30'' you gambited your second last mon to scizor comes in , let's suppose there was hazards on field that if scizor touched it it would die and you gambited your mon to clean it away, or you gambited a chansey to a wish + seismic toss dmg / thunder wave paralysis to ensure scizor would come and sweep. On a PSL your opponent can resign or wait to he see him losing. But in a tour, stalling for 150 seconds, and then making your move, makes you in a unfairly way, the winner.

Edited July 29, 2023 by caioxlive13