Is Team Preview Healthy?

[OldKeith]

Before posting this, I asked one of the developers if there are technical possibilities for this to be implemented some time in the future. Apparently, there are ways to create it.

 

However, this needs to be discussed, so that we can decide if it makes the battles more strategic, or if people prefer to not reveal their teams before starting a duel.

 

Here is a short introduction of Team Preview.

 

For short, Gen 5 added another important step before battles, which allows you to plan the way you play, instead of going blindly versus an opponent that can surprise you with "dirty tricks"/ "team counters".

 

In my view, this can make entire games more tactical, trappers less of a problem, and skillful players can have less of a problem when they are scouted and surprised. For example, you can plan a solid core of 3-4 pokemon and if you know your opponent's team and are tactical enough, the win is easier to come.

 

What do you guys think?

[RysPicz]

Wasn't team preview the most important tool because of drizzleswim and weather teams to become a super powerful force to be reckoned with?

Senile, pls respond

[DoubleJ]

Beneficial to work around trap-based teams as stated. This is a good thing.

 

But does it promote skill though?

[OldKeith]

I think it does promote skill, because it adds another step to playing, and removes the "blind play" we currently have. Today, the duels get really interesting after both teams are revealed, and that is when people can make tactical predictions rather than blind ones.

[DoubleJ]

I can support the above statement. Maybe it would help relieve the challenge we have been having overcoming walls too (~45 minute long matches, etc)

[flavajabari]

i personally do not enjoy team preview, maybe if they add it as an option.

[DoubleJ]

The only downfall I can see to this is that it would not promote the use of gimmicky late-game sweeping tactics. For example, Belly Drum Linoone, Flail Pinsir, Reversal Medicham, among other things that don't have an effective standard set in OU.

 

On the other hand though it does promote the use of surprise tactics by commonly used pokemon. Pokes with large movesets will be more commonly used to avoid the rigors of simply being scouted during the preview.

 

How long do we allow the team preview to last though if it were implemented?

[JonazDK]

I am very curious about this with the offensive meta we have atm i think team preview would be a very good thing... Once i thought it was skilled to be able to force the oppoent switch between all his pokes and that way scout his team during the battle, but in my eyes it is only a skilled thing in more deffensive meta's like we had before we got choiceband now is physical walls which counter all physical sweepers is not really a thing anymore... In this offensive meta we have alot of blind plays like keith also mentioned which could be avoided in some way with team preview, also team preview would be a more viable reason to have trappers implementet like we have atm..

[Toast]

Beneficial to work around trap-based teams as stated. This is a good thing.

 

But does it promote skill though?

I think yes, imo being able to see your opponent's team can increase prediction because if you know pokemon sets well enough, you can predict switches that they might be going into, then possibly doing a double-switch on your side. That's just my opinion when I've played showdown. It could be different here idunno.

[OrangeManiac]

Haha I thought of making this thread a bit back.

Anyways, I'm totally for team preview. First of all, I personally think it promotes skill. Here's my reasoning. I think it's not really "prediction based" gameplay to find out the last Pokemon of your opponent's team is the one destroying your remaining Pokemon. Yes, I know there's always that mindgame that when you should have your alarm bells ringing when opponent gives a "favourable" trade for something just knowing their last Pokemon absolutely destroys your last ones. But the thing right now with this offensive meta is that you cannot safe scout your opponent's team. You gotta make the play. This is what easily leads this very situation - not being able to scout your opponent's team to keep the momentum. The worst example of this is a dedicated physical/special wall like Skarmory or Blissey. Now when you know your opponent's team you just won't "go with the flow" and take down an opposing Pokemon when you have to. You'll have to make strategies to keep your certain Pokemon against something and your opponent knows you think that way. That is when the mindgames begin and that's what competitiveness should be all about - making the correct plays and winning for those.

I know not seeing team has that "be smart to figure out the missing link of someone's team" but seriously it's not like this game works like "1 spec sweeper, 1 phys sweeper, 1 phys wall, 1 spec sweeper" or anything that sorts of formula. Any experienced comp players knows that. So the remaining Pokemon are always gonna be surprises, unless scouted of course. And if anything, removing the scouting element is good.

 

I personally think the team preview was implemented when actually GameFreak cared about any sorts of "competitive PvP battling". The only reason why I think we don't have it gen3 is because Pokemon's selling point never was the multiplayer, therefor not really needed to implement it.

Edited February 11, 2015 by OrangeManiac

[Barrage]

There is a really long answer to this question and I'm sure Senile will come in here and talk about it (hue) so I will just give the summary.

 

Team preview is meant to mitigate the effects of having a very fast-paced and punishing metagame. Gen 5 introduced team preview to give players a chance to react better to powercreep occurring from that generation, creating a potentially hyperoffensive meta that would be too punishing without team preview.

 

None of the elements that spurred the need for this exist in the PokeMMO meta, so it isn't necessary.

 

EDIT: NOR IS IT OBJECTIVELY BENEFICIAL.

Edited February 11, 2015 by Barrage

[Senile]

You have to keep in mind why Team Preview was added in gen 5. As generations progress, more and more viable pokemon are produced, as well as the massive power creep. Seeing your opponent's team in later gens is a big deal, because it means you can analyze their team and determine what you need to keep to deal with their threats. In Gen 6, you CANNOT afford to try keep a majority of your team alive and healthy, and unless you're running full stall (and sometimes even then), you really can't have a good answer to every threat on a team. So, knowing your opponent's team lets you know what pokemon you cannot afford to lose. Otherwise, it's very easy to lose your answer to something and have a third of your pokemon disappear, especially if your opponent has 2 sweepers with very similar answers.

Of course, the cost of this is that scouting suffers and so does surprise factor, but these later gens have massive movepools. Most top pokemon have no less than 3 distinct sets, even Talonflame, a pretty move barren poke, has like 5 different sets. Because of this, there is still scouting as a component of the game, it's just of something else. Pokemmo doesn't have this, most sets are different by a few moves. There are super versatile pokemon, but they're the exception rather than the rule, and that's on top of our comparatively low amount of viable pokemon and heavily centralized metagame. Most surprise factor in this game comes from the pokemon themselves, as opposed to later gens when it's items and moveset. Team preview would kill most midgame scouting, an important part of the game. Because of this, I really don't think it fits, and team preview would be detrimental.

Tl;dr: pls no

[sweendog]

I feel like either way it is fair to both players and they should make it as an option.

 

I am all for it if they do decide to though.

[Robofiend]

I'm not as against this as Senile but he brought up the two main reasons why Team Preview became necessary in later gens:

 

1. Power creep: pokemon in gen 5+ are incredibly powerful, enough so that you absolutely need to have a check for them or else they'll cut right through your team. If you didn't have team preview, players would sack something like Heatran/Tyranitar only to get bulldozed by the surprise late game Talonflame or Charizard. Since PokeMMO doesn't have loads of massively stronk pokemon there's not an express need to pre-scout opponents teams since it's unlikely they'll have a huge surprise waiting for you at the end of the battle (if they do it's probably named Heracross).

 

2. Lack of diversity. Even with preview, would it really give you any valuable information? "Oh, this guy's running Dragonite/Metagross/Slowbro/Snorlax/Gengar/Arcanine, damn that Arcanine is kinda a surprise."  We just don't have the options that later gens have. In 6th Gen, for instance, not knowing your opponent was running a rain team could totally rekt you from turn one. Similarly, knowing for a fact that your opponent has a full stall team is necessary to winning due to the fact that lots of walls/tanks can actually dish out reasonable damage in 6th gen. In pokemmo you find out these things naturally and slowly, since the metagame is less fast paced.

 

I don't really think Preview would wreck anything about the MMO meta, but it's mostly unnecessary.

[Vaeldras]

 

I don't really think Preview would wreck anything about the MMO meta, but it's mostly unnecessary.

 

Magneton?

 

You guys brought up some good points: while having all your pokemon already scouted makes the game more "competitive" it also limits the choices you have when building a team.

I guess the same could be said of an hypotetical "moveset preview" system.

Maybe as an option, but i'm not sure if i want this right now or maybe later.

We don't really need it right now, it would make the game boring as fuck.

Oh wait.

Edited February 12, 2015 by Vaeldras

[bl0nde]

How long do we allow the team preview to last though if it were implemented?

If you mean how log it is on the screen it does not matter because I would print screen it and paste it in paint even if it's up for only 2 seconds. It doesn't matter if I say it or not because as much scouting n coaching n blah blah bologna that goes on to win in this game I'm sure everybody and their dog would be doing it by the afternoon of day one. You might as well leave it on the screen until the player presses confirm so everyone gets a fair chance to write down what they want.

[OldKeith]

Nice to see some fair points being brought up on either side of the conversation. Even in gen 6, there are long debates to whether team preview should exist or not.

[DoubleJ]

 

Fuck yo' bunny

 

I really didn't like that rabbit

 

 

And it really doesn't matter whether you screen shot it or not, what matters is how long it's going to be accessible. Would be a serious pain in the ass to wait one to two minutes for your opponent to simply look at six pokemon. 

 

Do we intend to have the option of swapping leads?

[Kizhaz]

I dont mind having team preview. I feel it puts much more effort into building a well balanced team whereas alot of people seem to change their teams alot to prevent scouting. However the lack of diversity on the pokemon we have does leave me more on the 'keep it away' side of the argument

[PandaJJ]

My personal feeling about team preview:

 

Pros:

-Removes the necessity of scouting your opponent in an earlier round in a tournament. While most people switch their teams between rounds, there are still unfair situations where one player knows his opponents team, but not the other way around.

-Prevents typical magneton/dugtrio strategies. There is a dugtrio discussion going on, and while some people find it uncompetetive, most people realize it's not at all overpowered. However, there is a very annoying way of abusing these trappers - in combination with the point above, you can find out whether your opponent has blissey/snorlax or skarmory/forretress and lead with something that is countered by said pokemon. You can then immediately switch to the appropriate trapper and get rid of that pokemon immediately. With team preview, this is less likely to happen.

-Your opponent can not hide a pokemon in the back that plows through all but one or two of your pokemon, i.e. it is possible to find your win condition before it is too late. Currently it is impossible to know which pokemon you can't afford to lose untill you have lost it and is being swept.

 

Cons:

-Less pokemon might be viable for use. Without team preview, you can use a pokemon for its surprising effect, which is impossible with team previrew.

 

The points above all promise a more strategical metagame, at the cost of getting rid of some of the more obscure pokemon that are rarely seen anyways. I would really like to test team preview out, I think it has potential, but it remains to see to what degree it prevents diversity in teams.

 

The only downfall I can see to this is that it would not promote the use of gimmicky late-game sweeping tactics. For example, Belly Drum Linoone, Flail Pinsir, Reversal Medicham, among other things that don't have an effective standard set in OU.

 

On the other hand though it does promote the use of surprise tactics by commonly used pokemon. Pokes with large movesets will be more commonly used to avoid the rigors of simply being scouted during the preview.

 

How long do we allow the team preview to last though if it were implemented?

 

Then again, is the loss of flail pinsir a big loss? Can you ever imgine your opponent saying "wow, well played" after being swept by a flail/reversal pokemon? I would rather say it's healthy that these stategies are reduced.

 

As for how long the preview should say it is not really relevant, since you do note down your oppoents team before playing anyways.

 

2. Lack of diversity. Even with preview, would it really give you any valuable information? "Oh, this guy's running Dragonite/Metagross/Slowbro/Snorlax/Gengar/Arcanine, damn that Arcanine is kinda a surprise."  We just don't have the options that later gens have. In 6th Gen, for instance, not knowing your opponent was running a rain team could totally rekt you from turn one. Similarly, knowing for a fact that your opponent has a full stall team is necessary to winning due to the fact that lots of walls/tanks can actually dish out reasonable damage in 6th gen. In pokemmo you find out these things naturally and slowly, since the metagame is less fast paced.

 

I'm convinced that the current lack of viable pokemon is somewhat related to the lack of bans. Your suggestion of a team is a collection of the strongest pokemon in the current meta, many of which totally prevent the use of a lot of otherwise usable pokemon. Again, I'm interested to see how team preview would actually work in practice, but perhaps wait untill the initial OU tier has been determined.

[Robofiend]

I'm convinced that the current lack of viable pokemon is somewhat related to the lack of bans. Your suggestion of a team is a collection of the strongest pokemon in the current meta, many of which totally prevent the use of a lot of otherwise usable pokemon. Again, I'm interested to see how team preview would actually work in practice, but perhaps wait untill the initial OU tier has been determined.

 

So you're saying we should ban things to make the metagame more diverse? You obviously haven't read the compelling arguments aginst the "chain ban" in this thread.

 

[spoiler]

joking ofc

[/spoiler]

[MisterHide]

Team preview could be nice to improve the strategic side of the game, but most of late game sweepers and trap-kill pokemons (dugtrio, magneton etc) will be far less effective.

 

Would it be possible to preview only 5/6 pokemons, keeping the pokemon on the 6th position of every teams hidden?

[PandaJJ]

Team preview could be nice to improve the strategic side of the game, but most of late game sweepers and trap-kill pokemons (dugtrio, magneton etc) will be far less effective.

 

Would it be possible to preview only 5/6 pokemons, keeping the pokemon on the 6th position of every teams hidden?

 

That completely defeats the purpose of team preview. Some people think that trappers, late game sweepers and reversal/flail users are uncompetetive. Not because they are overpowered, but because they can be exploited by hiding them from the opponent. Viewing only the first five pokemon is pretty much the same as not team preview, because you will generally switch between a core of 2-4 pokemon to hide these pokemon in the back anyways.

[KingBowser]

Looking at how offensive the uu tier will be, team preview could make it a far healthier/skill base tier. Teams will need to play more off typings than a strong core, which team preview would allow. Not consistently guessing or playing blindly if your opponent has more threat or trappers for your immunity/resistance plays.

[BurntZebra]

Looking at how offensive the uu tier will be, team preview could make it a far healthier/skill base tier. Teams will need to play more off typings than a strong core, which team preview would allow. Not consistently guessing or playing blindly if your opponent has more threat or trappers for your immunity/resistance plays.

I agree with this although I can't imagine they would only enforce team preview in UU and not in OU