Posting this on
Ajwf's behalf:
So let's talk about Stealth Rocks.
There are two types of competitive games. Games that force a defender and aggressor, and games that give an advantage to aggresion. Games that give an advantage to aggresion have a common characteristic of 'starting on even ground'.
Defender v Offender games are less common in 'truly competitive games', however CS:GO gives us a real taste of what that kind of balance has. TIME neccesistates victory in a specified period because otherwise the defender would always lose. Therefore with the condition of aggression being forced upon the attacker and the defender having to hold out for a specified period, these games don't give advantage to the aggressor but give a period where aggression can be had. Instead, players are rewarded for 'performing their roles optimally'. Economy in CS:GO, Ult Charge in Overwatch and Killstreaks in COD all emphasize this. Even if the last isn't competitive, it still shows the same roots.
Hypothetically, pokemon is one of these 'even start' games. Often games like these give an advantage to 'who goes first', showcasing this truth.
-Tic-Tac-Toe, while certainly not competitive, showcases this perfectly. The first one to move (Aggressor) cannot lose if played perfect. The worst they can do is tie. Four square is known to be the same.
-In Chess, your reward for aggression manifests in board control. Board control leads to pawns advancing to higher unit power.
-Checkers has this. If you want a king, cross the board. There are few defensive strategies in checkers that won't eventually result in you moving to an area where you get slaughtered.
-In league of legends, neutral objectives such as dragon/baron are your reward for aggression. This is true in similar MOBAs Even though league doesn't necessitate an even start (drafts can give wildly different power levels to begin with), it plays like this.
We consider pokemon this way too because pokemon may have different comps but at the beginning, you have 100% power turn 1.
If you're looking at this going "well what does this have to do with anything", you're probably not alone. However some people will probably have figured this riddle out already. That is "Pokemon possesses ONLY the time factor, as an equal start game." This is present in cartridge, not in the Smogon metagame, and is only there because they lack something similar to an auto-forfeit move timer that smogon has. For anyone wondering, games are topped to an hour max in pokemon.
This timer isn't MEANT to be a wincon in the same way pokemon isn't really meant to be a competitive game. Smogon's adjusting it to make the game competitive. And certainly, this timer doesn't exist in smogon. But the designers of pokemon did understand something when they implemented it:
There are a lot of cases where you are better off not attacking for multiple turns, just by cost/benefit analysis. The timer limits HOW LONG that can exist because eventually the game will run out. I am not sure of the exact specifics of a timer's determination to winner (whether it's by % health or numerical health) but the general jist of it is the following: At the end of an hour, if a conclusion is not met, the game is ended and whoever has more health (by % or total) throughout all remaining mons is declared the winner.
It is COMPLETELY inelegant. Specifically consider stall v offense where the stall team is just a winconless amount of bulk. If the attacker cannot break through because of the bulk, he suddenly finds himself in a Defender v Offender situation in a game that's 'even start'. If the stall team's recovery comes from rest/wish/heal bell, good luck having either of higher % health or higher total health. Nigh impossible. And claiming Setup sweepers can neccessitate this need for aggression is somewhat true. However I claim an arena moba like DOTA2/League have this with hyper carries. They may win eventually, but certainly find it hard to get to that point in a constrained time period. In this scenario, consider if stall has uanware, or just a mon that counters your wincon. This isn't exactly rare, and we're dealing in a general sense of the word for examples.
Same goes for stall v stall but in this case it's worse. Neither team WANTS to attack if they're lacking hazards. All they're doing is burning any chance at momentum, doing effectively no damage and wasting PP. Realistically a winconless stall would come down to turn 99 and which team could inflict the most damage on that last move. Fair? Not even close.
This isn't to say there aren't other measures to 'encourage aggression'. You can't crit if you don't attack, don't get scald burns without attacking, similar and so forth. However RNG is RNG and isn't exactly the most useful way to encourage aggression.
So yes, pokemon isn't competitive, smogon attempts to solve that. Turn timers with Decaying time allowances grab the original purpose of a timer, or that the game not stall because of an AFK. This reasonably pushes out the "Defender v Offender" that the game setup in cartridge. However it right away sets up for the initial problem, an ABRvTele kinda match.
Smogon does not add game mechanics. Well, turn timer.... normally accepted because someone who afks like that isn't really within 'the spirit of the game'. However outside of this, Smogon's job has always been to limit what already exists. So smogon currently does not have a way to incentivize attacks other than to tell a person to have a wincondition.
This is the first place stealth rocks come in. They represent the 'win for aggression' in pokemon. In fact they, along with spikes, basically are the only true ways to ALWAYS encourage aggression. What do I mean by this? Well it's rather hard to explain but think for a moment of SR as a 'neutral objective'. It isn't really that hard, we mostly think of SR as something that has to be down, and in itself is an objective. This objective has ways to activate and deactivate it (setting/clearing) and conditions for usefulness (switches over it and turns in play) as well as most importantly being more activtely controllable by an aggressor.
But then lastly, it ENCOURAGES aggression on the stealth rocked's part by it's existence. We can even prove this with cost/benefit analysis. First off, your cost on a neutral field is as follows:
//the move that your opponent takes + the move you COULD'VE made instead (next best option, somewhat subjective but perfectly measurable retroactively) + the opportunity your opponent has next turn due to prior moves
The benefit of a move on a neutral field:
//the effect of that move * any resistances/weaknesses that a mon has to that move + the opportunity you have next turn
Notice that naturally, you supposedly get an advantage for attacking (switching gives you ONLY the opportunity you'd have next turn).
However there are cases where your next best option in cost is negative. Making a move does have costs. Immunities, low damage, PP waste, possible loss of pressure ALL exist here. Which means that if your next best option (not switching) is negative, you are incentivized harder TO switch. It's crazy to think about but then you consider ABRvTele or stall v stall and you see that it's not unusual for ALL OF THESE to exist on a hazardless field.
Now rocks doesn't do a lot to this formula. The cost of switching is:
//the move that your opponent takes + the move you COULD'VE made instead + opportunity your opponent has next turn due to prior moves
+ SR damage of your switchin
But notice something important. The cost of NOT SWITCHING is:
//the move that your opponent takes + (the move you COULD'VE made instead - SR damage of your switchin) +
opportunity your opponent has next turn due to prior moves
Really rocks are only factored once because you don't apply both these simotaneously.
However you're still incentivized to attack by a factor of your next best option's damage taken from stealth rock.
And over time, this becomes important:
//the effect of that move * any resistances/weaknesses that a mon has to that move + the opportunity you have next turn + [Σ(SR Base damage * type damage multiplier)]
Where sigma's conditions are i starting at 0 to a hypothetical infinity. This is because hazards can be cleared before they have benefit (cleaerer comes in that turn). However because of this, over time this is the formula of incentives you have to attack. That damage stacks up over switches and encourages aggression on the side's part who cannot CONTROL the objective of SR. Because SR's damage potential is infinite, it means that it will eventually cause the game to end by itself.
Smogon has shown that it cares about endless battles at least twice. The implementation of a timer and the exclusion
of funbro style strategies demonstrate a policy that intervenes to expediate the game or give the game a chance to
conclude in a reasonable time. This is good game design. So when SR is talked about, THIS is the factor that needs to be considered.
1.) How does smogon REPLACE the contrictions on a game's time that SR applies? We call this 'pressure' in game.
2.) What exactly is broken about the application of an objective with decent/good distribution that allows this?
3.) What's more unhealthy: A strong possibility of a 0 incentive attacking game or SR's existence.
These are not loaded questions, nor are they ones I hold an answer to. However the work above demonstrates a part of the argument that MUST be considered.