Posting on behalf of
xDesch. We both were involved with testing the original endless battle clause and found a way around it in the past:
Before I show my own solution to this problem, I'd like to start with what I think we should not do here.
* I do not think adding a button that will tie the match if both players agrees/presses it will be enough by itself, as this can already be achieved in regular play by both players leaving simultaneously, and one of the players can simply choose not to accept the draw and carry on with the match for as long as they or the opponent are able to.
* I also do not think that whatever solution we end up with should choose a winner based off some arbitrary factor, such as # of Pokémon left or total HP/PP or whatever. If you can't beat your opponent, you should not win, like in chess, whereas even if your time runs out, your opponent will not win if they have insufficient material to win with. The match should tie, as neither player has any real advantage in a scenario where they both constantly switch in order to not waste PP.
Now, if we examine the original Endless Battle Clause we can see that it was designed not to include these scenarios where either the endless battle is not forced, as in these cases either player can technically choose to waste PP to end the battle, although usually losing in the process. My approach to this would be to extend the Endless Battle Clause in order to cover these situations, but how do we do that? Personally, I think there need to be some sort of limit to how many double switches you can do before the system should do something about it, like the "shot clock" or the "chess-like repetition rule". Now, it has been argued against this kind of solution before, as it seemingly limits the psychological aspects of the game and i.e. doesn't allow you to analyse your opponent’s switching pattern. But what if we still could? What if we find a way to not only have the system detect these endless battles, but also force ties when needed while still giving both players room to analyse, and strategise in the battle?
I suggest that if both players doubleswitch 8 times in a row (this number can be adjusted), both currently active pokes will get +1 confinement and make it so whenever PP is used, it will reset all Pokemon's confinement to 0, unless a Pokémon has gained a Leppa Berry it did not originally start with. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the clause, when a Pokémon gets +2 confinement, they become half stale, if not already half stale, and stale, if already stale. If both/all active Pokémon are stale, the game will end, and if either of the team started with one of their Pokémon holding a Leppa Berry, that team will lose, if both or neither of the teams started with Leppa Berries, the game will tie. This is all how the original clause works, but now with two more factors that take care of these kinds of situations.
So how will this solve anything? Well, for starters, the system will pick up on this pattern, regardless if the players are aware of it or not, and it can even be modified to tell the players if and when they are about to enter an endless battle that will forcibly end if nothing changes. This means that the players can't "mindlessly" doubleswitch for eternity in order to try to out-tire their opponent. On top of this, it also gives both players a chance to continue the battle for a very long time (which could be both good and bad), in case they believe they still have a chance of winning. At first it may seem like they only have to use PP every 7th turn to avoid confinement, but +1 confinement won't do anything in itself, as it will reset to 0 if either one of the players decide to use PP, effectively giving that player an additional 15 turns before you'll start to stale, at the cost of 1 PP. In a battle where both players constantly switch, finding an opportunity to waste one single PP in order to continue analysing your opponent's switching pattern is pretty easy to do in 15 turns. You can easily get 50 turns for the small prize of 4 PP, and if you think you can't win, you can simply stop using PP at any given time, and let the system take care of the rest.
So would there be any downside with this? My extension to the clause allows both players to continue the battle if they so wish, by investing PP. And by using PP, the battle WILL progress. If for some reason the player who has used any PP no longer thinks he can win, he can simply choose not to do so, and the battle will end shortly, if less the opponent starts prolonging the game. The biggest issue I can see with this, would be that one of the players can still attempt to draw out the game for as long as they're able to, by only using PP once every 15th turn, and if they have a lot of expandable PP, this can take a very long time to end. For this reason alone, we can change the number of doubleswitches needed to get the +1 confinement down to 7, 6 or 5, but at that point, it'll get increasingly harder for players who believe they can win to analyse switch patterns and so on. Keep in mind that this is just a general idea, the specific parts of it can be tweaked if necessary. All in all, I think this should work, and it doesn't seem to clash with the pre-existent clause.