On Combos

[Metallica Fanboy]

So, you may or may not have noticed this particle in the current ASB Rules section on combos:

(NOTE: The combo mechanics described in the next few paragraphs are pending revisions. For now, the old system described therein is being used, but take note that it will most likely be updated sometime soon.)

... "Soon" has been nine months and counting so far, alas. Still, it's been bugging me that whole time, and some of the cracks in the system do show from time to time. It probably doesn't need the kind of absolute overhaul that was lurking in my head when I put that note in there, but there's a number of problems that the ol' league perished before it could fully solve, and there's frustration over how this oft-used mechanic declined over the years to reach the point where it's not used or acknowledged whatsoever unless you have a foe that you want to finish off by splapping together a low-power priority move and, I dunno, Giga Impact. Not that it's anyone's idea to start telling people when and how exactly they can or have to use combos, of course, but the disuse and the potentially broken uses are deep-reaching problems of the current setup.

So, without further ado: I'd like to discuss what can be changed about the combo mechanic in order to improve its usability and enhance it as an element of ingenuity in ASB. Of course, any complaints and/or suggestions that are brought up will be seen and accounted for, but, some of the topics that have already been floating around include:

• Whether the combo's off-action should obligatorily be the one immediately following it or any action of the trainer's choice in the same round. The former was the official policy for a long time, but the latter became increasingly common in more recent times, somewhere between players/referees who preferred it that way and players/referees who were just mistaken about it.
• Late in the previous tenure of ASB, there was some talk of making it so a combo of two moves of different priorities has the priority of its strongest move, so that the [low-power priority + high-power finishing move] type of combo will no longer pan out. I wouldn't mind bringing that talk back up.
• There's also some general annoyance about combos being done simply to dish out high-BP damage in a single action and nothing more interesting or creative than that. All in all, is it necessarily an interesting ideas for combos to have additive BP by default?
• This isn't quite a point of discussion, so much as it's something I'm already intending to go through with and am just mentioning ahead of time so I can let everyone speak now or hold their peace until whatever post-implemetation point in time that they'd like to object in, but anyways: one thing I see a lot in battles lately is that players often make a combo of just saying "use these two moves, but as a combo", implicitly tasking the referee to figure out how the combo's supposed to work -- when the referee's job isn't of coming up with actions for the battlers, but exclusively that of delineating the consequences of those actions. In the spirit of the mechanic, just ordering a combo without explaining how it's supposed to be pulled off should almost always automatically lead to a failed combo; it's the player who has to make it work. And the bottom line is, I want that to be a thing that reads loud and clear in the combo rules and actually gets enforced.

[Superbird]

I may as well try to start off some discussion then.

Originally Posted by Metallica Fanboy

Whether the combo's off-action should obligatorily be the one immediately following it or any action of the trainer's choice in the same round. The former was the official policy for a long time, but the latter became increasingly common in more recent times, somewhere between players/referees who preferred it that way and players/referees who were just mistaken about it.

To make an attempt to justify the latter side. Yes, a combo is tiring, but I figure that trying to pull something like that off (and combos are very costly, anyway) is something that might get adrenaline flowing, or something like that. I can see it as possible to pull off a weaker attack after the combo, perhaps for a little more energy than usual due to the strain, and then take the action off to recover.

Originally Posted by Metallica Fanboy

Late in the previous tenure of ASB, there was some talk of making it so a combo of two moves of different priorities has the priority of its strongest move, so that the [low-power priority + high-power finishing move] type of combo will no longer pan out. I wouldn't mind bringing that talk back up.

I think chaining a priority move to a more powerful move should be possible no matter what, but one is going to have to outweigh the other. Now, if the priority move is stronger, than it actually would raise the attack's priority - for example, Extreme Speed and...let's say Fire Punch. But that wouldn't give as much of a power boost as most combo moves do, to offset the priority advantage. Meanwhile, weaker priority moves could still be chained to stronger attacks (I want to say Shadow Sneak + Shadow Punch, but a more apt comparison might be Shadow Sneak + Shadow Force) and rather than increasing priority, they would lead to a slight increase in power as well as more physical knockback from the attack, due to momentum. In the existing combo rules, it does imply that they can be used for either raising an attack's priority or for providing extra oomph, right?

(actually, concerning Shadow Sneak and Shadow Force, thinking more about it, I would ref that as a 1% power increase and just swap Shadow Sneak's priority things for a high crit ratio for the resulting move. That makes a lot of sense flavor-wise.)

Originally Posted by Metallica Fanboy

There's also some general annoyance about combos being done simply to dish out high-BP damage in a single action and nothing more interesting or creative than that. All in all, is it necessarily an interesting ideas for combos to have additive BP by default?

One thing is, I feel like that's somewhat self-balancing. Most pokémon have at least a few high-damaging (100-120 BP) attacks themselves, and the most powerful moves are generally too strong and exclusive to be able to chain together. I think the base power of a combo attack should always be less than the base powers of the ingredient attacks combined (e.g. I like the BP of the stronger ingredient plus half the BP of the weaker ingredient, as a general benchmark), and if that's followed through with it makes it very difficult to create an attack that's that different from another strong attack. Recently I reffed Frustration + Slash as adding half of Frustration's 90 power to Slash's 70, equaling 120, and adding Slash's propensity for critical hits. The resulting attack happened to be equivalent to Double-Edge in base power, something that many pokémon do already have access to, only slightly stronger due to its lack of recoil and high critical hit ratio.

[Eifie]

Originally Posted by Superbird

To make an attempt to justify the latter side. Yes, a combo is tiring, but I figure that trying to pull something like that off (and combos are very costly, anyway) is something that might get adrenaline flowing, or something like that. I can see it as possible to pull off a weaker attack after the combo, perhaps for a little more energy than usual due to the strain, and then take the action off to recover.

I think this is actually much more a balance issue than a flavour issue. Like, as combos presently stand, you could pull off a powerful, lower-priority combo on the first action of a round and immediately follow up with a priority move to finish off an opponent who still has a decent amount of health before they get much of a chance to do anything, even if they're faster than you. That's something major that can be accomplished only if you can choose the rest action of your combo, and I don't think it's such a great idea to have that possibility around. I mean, regardless, being able to choose your rest action only makes combos more powerful, and I don't think anybody would argue that further empowering combos is something we need to do. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

Originally Posted by Superbird

One thing is, I feel like that's somewhat self-balancing. Most pokémon have at least a few high-damaging (100-120 BP) attacks themselves, and the most powerful moves are generally too strong and exclusive to be able to chain together. I think the base power of a combo attack should always be less than the base powers of the ingredient attacks combined (e.g. I like the BP of the stronger ingredient plus half the BP of the weaker ingredient, as a general benchmark), and if that's followed through with it makes it very difficult to create an attack that's that different from another strong attack. Recently I reffed Frustration + Slash as adding half of Frustration's 90 power to Slash's 70, equaling 120, and adding Slash's propensity for critical hits. The resulting attack happened to be equivalent to Double-Edge in base power, something that many pokémon do already have access to, only slightly stronger due to its lack of recoil and high critical hit ratio.

If combos are reffed properly, then yes, trying to combo two powerful moves together should be balanced in that way. But like, do you think being allowed to use a (generic physical beatdown move) + (generic physical beatdown move) combo actually enhances the game? I feel the point of combos is to do interesting things, not to just do more damage in a shorter amount of time because you need to. I think the game has been straying from this point for a while now.

[ultraviolet]

Personally, I think the way we have combos set up makes it difficult to justify a lot of combos - most of the ones that people try and get through are like 'strong move + stronger move' or 'strong move + low-priority move' or something else just so they can hit the damage cap or sneak in an extra couple points of damage. I think this is kind of unnecessary! Pokemon generally have a few high base-power moves anyway and they're usually already balanced pretty well, so it seems off to try and combine Giga Impact and Extremespeed (or something). The strong moves have drawbacks so they're balanced, so it seems a bit counter-intuitive to try and get around that by combining it with another move. On top of that, when people do try and combine really strong moves without any indication of how they should work, it makes it a lot of work for the ref to try and figure out.

Instead, I think it would be far more interesting, creative, and maybe easier to implement if the focus was instead of making new moves from existing ones. We have a database that helpfully breaks down the components of a move for us: type, special/physical, power, energy, accuracy, priority, whether it's blocked by substitute, priority, duration, etc. - so I think it would be much more interesting when if you were combining two moves, there would be a system for what components of each move you wanted, as well as energy, base power, etc.

For example - let's say you wanted to poison the target, but there's a sandstorm going on and you know that Poison Powder will blow away and be completely useless, and you're sure that'll happen if you use Toxic as well. So, you resolve to combine Power-up Punch and Poison Powder, by coating your fist in poison powder and then socking your opponent in the mouth. So from this, Power-up Punch has 40 BP, 100% accuracy, and raises attack by 1, whereas Poison Power gives no damage but has 75% accuracy and has a 100% chance to poison. The reason why you're combining those to is to make Poison Powder more accurate, so it stands to reason that you'd get a move with 100% accuracy, 100% chance to poison, 40BP, but lose the attack bonus. Or, you could also combine Poison Powder and Power-up Punch to make a 40BP poison-type punch move that gets an Iron Fist bonus but doesn't have a chance to poison, or you could have a move that has a 50% chance to poison, a 50% chance to give you an attack boost, but only 20BP. Please note that the numbers are probably a bit off - I'm not a ref - but the theory is really important here.

If we split a move into its parts, and then reassemble them in a balanced way, I think forming a system from that wouldn't be too hard, plus it would be easier for battlers and refs to both understand. The other advantage to this system is that it actually encourages battles to think about what their moves should do - this isn't the games, so just saying 'combine poison powder and power-up punch' is not going to work, because you need to clarify what you're actually going to do. Are you going to spray poison powder in a cloud and then punch it? Are you going to grab the powder in your fist, punch someone, and then spray it in their eyes? These differences would change how the move actually functioned, while also taking a bit of work off refs who have to struggle to figure out how two moves would even work together. By setting a clear objective for what the player wants the move to actually do, it makes it easier for everybody, and will probably make it more apparent when you're trying to do something that's a bit overpowered.

The other advantage to this idea is that it's ultimately a lot more creative and interesting than just combining moves together in the hope that you'll land more damage. You could combine moves in multiple ways to your strategic advantage - let's say you only have access to a low-BP super-effective move in your movepool, but you can add it to something with low-priority, or the arena conditions just aren't compatible with the move you want to pull off, but you can combine it with something else to make it viable. For this to work we'd have to establish the costs of benefits and disadvantages so we can have some kind of formula so this is practical, but I don't know if it would be much harder than the process of approving sig moves/attributes.

tl:dr; we should be rewarding creativity and strategy rather than someone's ability to curbstomp

[JackPK]

I don't have much new to say, but I do want to poke my head in to vigorously agree with ultraviolet.

My two cents: I rarely use combos, and that's because the rules on them are juuust vague enough that I have little to no idea in a particular situation whether a ref will (A) agree with the logic I use to explain the combo's execution, (B) allow the combo to go through at all ("no comboing beam attacks b/c they're executed the same way," for instance, is a tenet that can be applied very broadly or very narrowly), and (C) calculate things in a similar way to what I was expecting.

For instance, in the recent battle where I commanded Slash + Frustration, I wasn't sure if Superbird would ref it as I intended (which he did), not ref it at all under the "two beams" principle (two generic beatdown attacks being too similar to combo), or ref it in some way differently to what I intended. Meanwhile, even something with as broad a movepool as Diglett doesn't have a ton of attacks that are far enough apart not to potentially trigger the "two beams" principle without being so far apart as to be implausible on the other side of the coin, like, say, Double-Edge + Charm.

I definitely think, at the very least, that more specific guidelines on what can and can't be comboed and why would be very encouraging to creative combo usage, at least assuming anyone else has the same hesitancy to try combos as I do and for the same reasons.

(I typed this on my phone real quickly without going back and looking at what I'd already written, so if I make no sense please ignore me)

[Eifie]

I'd like to write a useful, long post, but really what I want to say is just a few sentences, so:

I like the idea of what uv is saying in theory, but then I think it brings up the issue of like... in that example, it is not really worth the use of a combo to poison your opponent. I think that generalizes to a lot of the more interesting combo ideas: having to take a rest action to use your cool combo tends to be too much of a drawback to trying to do something fun and creative. I don't know what we'd do about that. I mean, we can't eliminate the rest action entirely, for obvious reasons (I think). Maybe if a combo meets certain criteria (like no more than one damaging move is involved, or something) there could be a lighter penalty like decreased priority the next action or something... I dunno.

[Metallica Fanboy]

Apologies for taking a long time to get back to this, it's been a hectic couple of weeks.

Originally Posted by Superbird

To make an attempt to justify the latter side. Yes, a combo is tiring, but I figure that trying to pull something like that off (and combos are very costly, anyway) is something that might get adrenaline flowing, or something like that. I can see it as possible to pull off a weaker attack after the combo, perhaps for a little more energy than usual due to the strain, and then take the action off to recover.

Originally Posted by Eifie

I think this is actually much more a balance issue than a flavour issue. Like, as combos presently stand, you could pull off a powerful, lower-priority combo on the first action of a round and immediately follow up with a priority move to finish off an opponent who still has a decent amount of health before they get much of a chance to do anything, even if they're faster than you. That's something major that can be accomplished only if you can choose the rest action of your combo, and I don't think it's such a great idea to have that possibility around. I mean, regardless, being able to choose your rest action only makes combos more powerful, and I don't think anybody would argue that further empowering combos is something we need to do. Please correct me if I'm wrong here.

It's definitely much more a matter of game balance than one of flavor (considering, particularly, that most low-power combos will generally cost much less energy than some high-power moves that don't force the user to take a rest action, so "it's tiring" isn't really the best flavor explanation for combos costing two actions anyhow). As far as the game balance goes: if you have a good reason to try a combo, you generally also have at least one particular action in the round that you don't particularly need to be moving in, so getting to pick and choose the off action tends to make the off action a very weak limitation.

Originally Posted by Superbird

I think chaining a priority move to a more powerful move should be possible no matter what, but one is going to have to outweigh the other.

That's actually more or less the principle of it, which I guess I worded poorly.

Originally Posted by Superbird

One thing is, I feel like that's somewhat self-balancing. Most pokémon have at least a few high-damaging (100-120 BP) attacks themselves, and the most powerful moves are generally too strong and exclusive to be able to chain together. I think the base power of a combo attack should always be less than the base powers of the ingredient attacks combined (e.g. I like the BP of the stronger ingredient plus half the BP of the weaker ingredient, as a general benchmark), and if that's followed through with it makes it very difficult to create an attack that's that different from another strong attack. Recently I reffed Frustration + Slash as adding half of Frustration's 90 power to Slash's 70, equaling 120, and adding Slash's propensity for critical hits. The resulting attack happened to be equivalent to Double-Edge in base power, something that many pokémon do already have access to, only slightly stronger due to its lack of recoil and high critical hit ratio.

Originally Posted by Eifie

If combos are reffed properly, then yes, trying to combo two powerful moves together should be balanced in that way. But like, do you think being allowed to use a (generic physical beatdown move) + (generic physical beatdown move) combo actually enhances the game? I feel the point of combos is to do interesting things, not to just do more damage in a shorter amount of time because you need to. I think the game has been straying from this point for a while now.

That's pretty much the crux of that particular question. Even with regards to the particular Slash + Frustration combo -- no offense to anyone who was involved in that, but, I can't imagine that working in any particular way. It's, like, you slash but you're also really mad about it? You can slash and be really mad about it without using a combo or gaining any benefits on it. So, even if you really are just comboing for massive damage in a short window of time, I think people should at least be looking to combine moves in a way that you can actually analyze and think "so this is why it deals so much damage!".

Originally Posted by ultraviolet

oh snip

Originally Posted by JackPK

snip it to the beaver

This is definitely an interesting idea, and one I could try to implement. I'm not sure we necessarily need to bind it to formulae, either; just the change of principles alone is worth considering.

Originally Posted by Eifie

I like the idea of what uv is saying in theory, but then I think it brings up the issue of like... in that example, it is not really worth the use of a combo to poison your opponent. I think that generalizes to a lot of the more interesting combo ideas: having to take a rest action to use your cool combo tends to be too much of a drawback to trying to do something fun and creative. I don't know what we'd do about that. I mean, we can't eliminate the rest action entirely, for obvious reasons (I think). Maybe if a combo meets certain criteria (like no more than one damaging move is involved, or something) there could be a lighter penalty like decreased priority the next action or something... I dunno.

Eliminating the off action entirely might not be such a bad idea. If we make it so the point is obtaining a single move that's no better or worse than a regular move and just happens to work better in the specific circumstances, then, the off action becomes kind of a pointless restriction. We could definitely make it so combos tend to have a different kind of disadvantage compared to regular moves (eg costing more energy, not being able to increase to the BP beyond a certain (dynamic) limit...), but off actions get to be a kind of excessively heavy-handed restriction in this context. And hell, for what it's worth, it makes the most flavor sense, too.

[Eifie]

I was literally just talking about this like yesterday or something, but would it be a huge problem to somewhat steal from Smogon lmao because I liked this thing that I saw there and I thought maybe we could apply it to combos (or recharge moves because I think not having (re)charge actions is somewhat unbalanced, but that's a separate issue):

Originally Posted by Smogon ASB

In the cartridges, a Pokemon that uses Hyper Beam has to recharge on the following action. In ASB, a Pokemon that uses a combo has to recharge on the following action. Since even powerful moves like Hyper Beam are generally weaker than combos, it would be kinda lame if using Hyper Beam in ASB carried the same penalty as using a combo. Instead, a Pokemon that uses a move like Hyper Beam or Giga Impact in ASB becomes Sluggish.
While a Pokemon is Sluggish, it will be unable to use any move that deals direct damage if the energy cost of the move is more than 5. It also cannot use any non-damaging move with an energy cost of 9 or more, as well as Protect, Detect, evasive Agility, evasive Teleport, Dodge, Bodyblock or Take Cover, regardless of the energy cost of those moves. Modifiers to the energy cost such as STAB and the consecutive use penalty are not factored in when determining whether or not a move costs too much energy to use, with the exception of Technician and Skill Link due to how they interact with multi-hit moves.

[Metallica Fanboy]

I've had thoughts similar to those, but I figure they'd mostly really be solutions for Hyper Beam and the like, unless they're applied to, like, an actually exhausting combo. uv's hypothetical Power-Up Punch + Poison Powder could totally fly without something like that. Although... it might just be a worthy trade-off for high power combos, if we set it up so it prevents a Pokémon who just did a powerful combo from following it up with a high-priority attack.

But, on a note less related to the above: as a preliminary measure, I've prepared a rewrite of the first paragraph in the combos section of the ASB Rules. As such, what currently reads as this:

It is also possible to chain attacks together to create unique and powerful effects. For example, Horn Attack stabs the opponent for moderate damage, but what if you used Quick Attack to put more speed and force behind the attack? When two actions are performed simultaneously or in extremely rapid succession, the result is a combo. Combos can be tricky to pull off, as not all attacks can be used together, and they cost a little more energy than normal due to how difficult they are to perform, but when used properly, the effects can be spectacular. When ordering a combo, the tilde (~) that ordinarily separates actions is traditionally replaced with a plus sign to indicate which actions are being combined, like so:

Thunder Punch + Comet Punch ~ Light Screen

Will be reading as this:

It is also possible to chain attacks together to create unique and powerful effects. For example, Horn Attack stabs the opponent for moderate damage, but what if you used Quick Attack to put more speed and force behind the attack? When two actions are performed simultaneously or in extremely rapid succession, the result is a combo. However, pulling off a combo takes a little more than just calling two attacks out: a player who is issuing a combo command must provide a clear explanation as to how the combined moves are intended to chain together; the referee won't be tasked with figuring out a trainer's own combos for them, and will only make a final decision on whether combo can work in the circumstances of the battle with nothing less and nothing more than the instructions given. Furthermore, combos often cost more energy and deal less damage than the sum of their separate composite moves would have. However, a combo that works can have spectacular, even whole-new effects, such that they could make a deeper impact in battle than two separate moves would ever have.

When ordering a combo, the tilde (~) that ordinarily separates actions is traditionally replaced with a plus sign to indicate which actions are being combined, like so:

Thunder Punch + Comet Punch ~ Light Screen

I'll be tinkering with it some more whenever I set about laying down the foundations to something a little more like uv's idea, but, this should clear some of the more immediate issues and confusions, so I'll go ahead and make it official in a few days unless anybody has objections to make.