This topic is just a grab bag for general rules changes that didn’t really fit anywhere else. First, I’ll address an issue that came up while I was gone—making it impossible for people to post in the forum until they had successfully been granted a team, for example, or otherwise verifying that people had read the rules before they could start playing.
It actually probably wouldn’t be too difficult to implement something where people would need to reply to a certain thread or read the rules to get instructions on how to join a certain forum group in order to have access to the ASB boards. First of all, I’ll say straight out that I’m against anything that would prevent people from at least being able to view all of the ASB forums. I think people should be able to poke around and get an idea of what they’d be signing up for before actually doing so, so totally masking the forums the way, say, the Coughing Cupboard used to be masked for people outside the usergroup, is out. Now, if it were something more like players would only be able to post in ASB Central and could be added after they had their account all set up, I would be more inclined to agree. Even just restricting posting to a single thread until they had been approved doesn’t sit well with me—I’d want people to be able to post questions in the rules thread or say something in the attack guide before actually joining up, for example. If they weren’t given that option, yes, people could PM me with questions or something, but ultimately, if it was a stupid question resulting from not reading the rules, they wouldn’t likely think of that and would just go and post it in whatever thread was open to them or, worse, over in Forum Help. I don’t really see that as solving the problem, just passing it off to other areas of the forums.
In the end, it isn’t really a big issue for me. There’s been the occasional user who’s been a nuisance by posting WTF things with no clue of the rules, but they’re few and far between, and they usually either get a clue or go away fast enough after someone tells them what’s what. I’m pleased with the ability of people here to read and comprehend the rules, actually, especially when I consider some of the idiocy that I’ve seen newbies commit in other ASB’s. If other people are getting annoyed, though, I can talk to Butterfree about what might be possible after she’s finished installing all the hacks and skins and so forth that she wants to finish recovering from the board wipe.
Okay! That turned out longer than I thought. Just a couple more little things: first, I’m pulling a one-eighty on my policy and saying that from now on people will be able to dump their accounts and restart whenever the choose. Additionally, I seem to recall someone asking for a complete list of inherent pokémon abilities, like vaporeon’s ability to vanish in water, that are used in this ASB. I was thinking it might be best to split up the rules into “basic” and “advanced” versions, with the basic thread covering stuff like how battles work, how to get your team up and running, and so forth, and the advanced thread talking more extensively about things signature move creation, phasing and, hypothetically, special pokémon abilities.
In Serebii’s ASB league, there’s actually a thread that defines inherent abilities for pretty much all the pokémon. Something like this is possible, but I’d be more than a little leery about creating a similar listing here. There’s complexity creep to consider, where in order to add more features to the game you’re just requiring people to memorize and consider more “stuff” whenever they play. Certainly, it would be a pain for refs to need to either know off the tops of their heads or need to go and look species characteristics up for every battle. Then there’s the fact that putting attributes down like that would, at least for some people, suggest that pokémon aren’t capable of anything outside what was defined by the rules. There’s no possible way I could remember every attribute of every pokémon and translate them into game terms—that kadabra causes headaches for anything around it for a long period of time I might remember, but that it causes the malfunction of electrical appliances I might not, so if someone were to try and harness that ability, people might take issue with the fact that that wasn’t in the rules. Also, I feel that experimentation and creativity are important in battling, and sometimes leaving things undefined can encourage people to think more outside the box. For example, sure, it doesn’t say anywhere in the rules that scyther goes berserk upon seeing the color red, but anyone who can remember that, apply it in battle, and sell the ref on it, clearly possesses not only ingenuity but an extensive knowledge of pokémon, both qualities that I think mean they deserve to have that advantage and qualities I feel that the system should reward, as I’m sure anime-Oak would agree that they are important qualities of a master trainer.
But enough of that. Long story short, rules split might be happening, but you’ll need to do some convincing if you want me to make any extensive addition to my definitions of what pokémon are capable of.
Last of all, I had been considering putting tags on various battles to indicate who won, who lost, and who the referee had been. I thought that people might perhaps want to follow the reffings of a particular person, or see what battles someone had won or lost. However, there has already been omg tag drama, so I might just forget about thisor do it without asking. Just a final little detail I thought I'd mention.
It actually probably wouldn’t be too difficult to implement something where people would need to reply to a certain thread or read the rules to get instructions on how to join a certain forum group in order to have access to the ASB boards. First of all, I’ll say straight out that I’m against anything that would prevent people from at least being able to view all of the ASB forums. I think people should be able to poke around and get an idea of what they’d be signing up for before actually doing so, so totally masking the forums the way, say, the Coughing Cupboard used to be masked for people outside the usergroup, is out. Now, if it were something more like players would only be able to post in ASB Central and could be added after they had their account all set up, I would be more inclined to agree. Even just restricting posting to a single thread until they had been approved doesn’t sit well with me—I’d want people to be able to post questions in the rules thread or say something in the attack guide before actually joining up, for example. If they weren’t given that option, yes, people could PM me with questions or something, but ultimately, if it was a stupid question resulting from not reading the rules, they wouldn’t likely think of that and would just go and post it in whatever thread was open to them or, worse, over in Forum Help. I don’t really see that as solving the problem, just passing it off to other areas of the forums.
In the end, it isn’t really a big issue for me. There’s been the occasional user who’s been a nuisance by posting WTF things with no clue of the rules, but they’re few and far between, and they usually either get a clue or go away fast enough after someone tells them what’s what. I’m pleased with the ability of people here to read and comprehend the rules, actually, especially when I consider some of the idiocy that I’ve seen newbies commit in other ASB’s. If other people are getting annoyed, though, I can talk to Butterfree about what might be possible after she’s finished installing all the hacks and skins and so forth that she wants to finish recovering from the board wipe.
Okay! That turned out longer than I thought. Just a couple more little things: first, I’m pulling a one-eighty on my policy and saying that from now on people will be able to dump their accounts and restart whenever the choose. Additionally, I seem to recall someone asking for a complete list of inherent pokémon abilities, like vaporeon’s ability to vanish in water, that are used in this ASB. I was thinking it might be best to split up the rules into “basic” and “advanced” versions, with the basic thread covering stuff like how battles work, how to get your team up and running, and so forth, and the advanced thread talking more extensively about things signature move creation, phasing and, hypothetically, special pokémon abilities.
In Serebii’s ASB league, there’s actually a thread that defines inherent abilities for pretty much all the pokémon. Something like this is possible, but I’d be more than a little leery about creating a similar listing here. There’s complexity creep to consider, where in order to add more features to the game you’re just requiring people to memorize and consider more “stuff” whenever they play. Certainly, it would be a pain for refs to need to either know off the tops of their heads or need to go and look species characteristics up for every battle. Then there’s the fact that putting attributes down like that would, at least for some people, suggest that pokémon aren’t capable of anything outside what was defined by the rules. There’s no possible way I could remember every attribute of every pokémon and translate them into game terms—that kadabra causes headaches for anything around it for a long period of time I might remember, but that it causes the malfunction of electrical appliances I might not, so if someone were to try and harness that ability, people might take issue with the fact that that wasn’t in the rules. Also, I feel that experimentation and creativity are important in battling, and sometimes leaving things undefined can encourage people to think more outside the box. For example, sure, it doesn’t say anywhere in the rules that scyther goes berserk upon seeing the color red, but anyone who can remember that, apply it in battle, and sell the ref on it, clearly possesses not only ingenuity but an extensive knowledge of pokémon, both qualities that I think mean they deserve to have that advantage and qualities I feel that the system should reward, as I’m sure anime-Oak would agree that they are important qualities of a master trainer.
But enough of that. Long story short, rules split might be happening, but you’ll need to do some convincing if you want me to make any extensive addition to my definitions of what pokémon are capable of.
Last of all, I had been considering putting tags on various battles to indicate who won, who lost, and who the referee had been. I thought that people might perhaps want to follow the reffings of a particular person, or see what battles someone had won or lost. However, there has already been omg tag drama, so I might just forget about this
