Wow, I didn't know people take my response so seriously, when I didn't even mean those stuff in the first place.
This is categorically false and the equivalent of saying the AI cheats.
This is also false. There is no need to disparage other players' teams based on your own inability to play the game.
To GG Unit:
I dont know how you derive that is the only conclusion to what I said. Because it is very simple that there is evidence that the team generated (e.g. multiple different sets of pokemon, and the pokemon that will pop up), is based on some parameters of your battle.
For instance, (at least based on what I heard) you never encounter legendary until you get over 40, you rarely get full ev pokemon until over 30, but you will almost get a lot more cheesey sets pre-30.
All those are pointing to the obvious conclusion that the programmers of pokemon did think about the team formation and the overall difficulties they want to make to the players. If so, then this is not totally random.
So I don't know exactly what parameters they take into account, but I do notice that overall the rules above is pretty much true.
But feel free to disagree since maybe someone did met a legendary pre-40, who knew?
Trainer sequence does change based on my team though, how that translate to AI cheatin?
If you have done a lot of coding, you will understand that most successful game programmers when they have to build something with peusdo random levels that has good game balance, you wouldn't do completely random, because 1) it is almost impossible to make 2) you can't allow players to have some expectations 3) you can't add custom stuff to it to guide into direction you want the tree to give the right experinece to a large amount of players with variety however
We can first talk about trainer sequences:
I can clearly say that based on my many teams in the last beating the tree, in the process (I didn't document this) I noticed a general pattern.
A lot of time when I use team A with pokemon and with those movesets, significantly more sightseer (almost all the time) will come up early post 20 to 30, or another team I will see more breeder post 20 to 30 without much sightseers, even another team I will see the old grandpa and grandma will show up more, it is interesting to see those patterns to show up for a particular team.
I will use one team, beat tree 20+ times, and almost consistently seeing patterns like this.
Let's talk about pokemon moveset sequences:
This is a bit hard to notice since there are so many pokemon I fought in the tree, but I do noticed that especially post 20, if you have a team weak to rock, you will get a lot of pokemon that is weak to your team in typing but has movesets that super effect you all the time.
And that goes hand in hand with the trainer sequence I mentioned above, as based on serebii, you get a trainer catelog and you see all the pokemon they could have, based on the pokemon team and their typing, you will get different distribution of trainers because of their pokemon typing and moveset. Also, I can't give you a specific example or even let you reproduce specific scenario, but this is what I noticed.
Maybe I interpret your responses wrong, but I'm simply claiming that the game is not completely random, and react based on some parameters that includes your team's pokemon.
I'm not here to say AI cheats, in fact, I prefer to take this as a challenge, because if you can predict AI's general movement, you can counter it easily. I prefer AI to not be completely random, that will kill the fun for team builders like me.
I do respect people like you who spent a lot of time thinking about your team. Without people like you, there is no me. I simply can't fathom the vast amount of time you have to sink into this to get a team that works.
However I am open to critique, as I'm wrong a lot of times.
Of course not specifically to me. You were referring to
all players who switch teams after the early battles when you argued that they should be removed from the leaderboard, or at least should have the battles deducted from their streaks (with overtones of this being "a grey area" close to cheating), and more-or-less subtly suggested that they are less apt/creative at team-building or Tree-playing. I merely happen to have stumbled across how a syllogism is supposed to work, one time. (And a few more times, I've employed quantifiers.)
To boot,
Pencilcheck has gone even further than that in claiming (without even one concrete calculation or argument regarding specific teams and specific set1/2 threats -- which I find incredibly arrogant to people who actually spend hours on planning, because they enjoy it) that switching teams amounts to essentially cheating one's way past the first 20 battles, because the second team supposedly could never have gotten past that initial ceiling. Incidentally, I believe it was him who brought up that Durant cannot possibly win against Garchomp-1 and that the computer specifically draws sets that can counter one's strategy (an admirably optimistic stance about machine learning -- or human diligence!).
There are, in fact, games whose deviously subtle decision-making algorithms choose randomly most of the time, but spot/target simple weaknesses on occasion (such as FTL on Hard difficulty, which I've heard has been discovered just recently -- by disassembling the source, the only way to actually
prove this stuff), but that requires some effort to design. The lack of Battle Frontiers since gen5 despite e.g. the Factory being demonstrably a matter of 1-2 hours to code (given the framework of what's already in the game) makes me doubtful that Pokémon Sun/Moon are among these; design goals seem to differ between what I want from Pokémon and what the developers want. I've griped about that elsewhere. It's not quite sound reasoning, of course.
Anyway, though, I proceed under the assumption that the RNG is not biased because the outcome is ultimately quite the same: both in team-building and playing, I have to insure myself against low-probability events that are bound to happen sooner or later. If the actual chance of QC activating was indeed 75% for the computer from battle 120 onward or whatever, this chance would still be nearly-indistinguishable from 20% over a sufficient number of battles battles if a certain such activation would spell doom to my team.
In fact, the people who have spoken out against team-switching have apparently not realized that -- due to them also being interested in
peak and not
average performance of any team (otherwise, you would have scrapped your teams that got defeated several times before reaching 40; your premature conclusion about the Quick Claw also suggests this) -- even a team that struggles terribly against the likes of Bronzong-1, but razes the entire roster from battle 21 onward (obviously an exaggeration), only needs to overcome those supposedly critical early battles
once to still achieve its streak all the same. Thus, in fact, a "blitz team" still achieves nothing but saving time under those assumptions, because surely it can't be
that unlikely to draw 60 manageable set1/2s with horrible IVs, and proceed to sweep everything else.
I'll speak from my own perspective and experience because those are the only ones I have. When I think something is wrong, I'll say it -- and expect to get the favour returned when I'm wrong about something.
It's been said, but you're misunderstanding probability -- and perhaps don't realize that your video and suggested test precisely fit under "anecdotal evidence".
QC activating 3 times in a row occurs once per 125 battles on average. It's actually more unlikely that an event of this probability doesn't occur once during your leaderboard streak. You'd need to record the outcome of all RNG-based events across a meaningful number of battles (1 is not meaningful) and compare this data against the expected probabilities. Which is not quite as easy to test, but excellent results tend to require some work.
Yes, I don't know if you were on discord channel, but I did talked with GG Unit and learned and understand how to use the team a bit better now. I realized I was still learning, and probably made some very arrogant statements since I was frustrated. So I would apologize to those people who actually spent the time to build the team and can workaround threats or more like cheesy strategy like this when I didn't know what to do.
In my comments, sometimes I was half joking. As it is mostly speculation.
I do appreciate all the hard work that those people in leaderboard has sink their time into, as I am almost doing the same thing as well, thinking very hard. But I'm still at the novice level so that's why I can't get that far.
So I don't know the full extend of that the durant team can do, as I prob didn't spend as much time as you all, but I think we are still mixing two things together.
One is that i believe I was not saying that the team shouldn't get the glory it deserved if it was part of the battle tree streak, but I'm saying that the leaderboard phrased it in such a way that it seems like those people on the leaderboard use only one team to get to those streaks.
And yes, I don't have any evidence to say that each person might be using multiple teams to achieve that, as they probably don't even track of those themselves, but the fact that people do switch teams, and battle tree allows it, makes it really hard for them to really claim that unless a better mechanism to proof is in place.
I'm also not asking that, since I recognize the hard work. I can't say for others, but all I'm saying is, if you use multiple teams, please list out all teams you used in the streak. If you really use only one mono team? Awesome! Say it out with proud but you do realize you need further proof if you want people to be convinced, if you don't care then you know, don't care.
However I do believe people here in this thread care about those stuff, that's why the leaderboard was created.
If the teams on the leaderboard lack credibility, then I wouldn't try to find rental team, or try to recreate the teams on the leaderboard, since it means very little if that is the truth.
The issue I have with the leaderboard, let me say it in another way, is that there is a probability (doesn't matter how small) that the teams on there is merely the last team they use before they lose. So in 90+ streak, that team posted might just be contributing to the last 10 battles.
I'm not claiming that is true, but the mere possibility, makes it hard for people like me, to really take this thread seriously. And I don't want that to happen.
That's why I'm still here, that's why I still willing to share my results and foster a good community to break the battle tree together.
I hope that explains my stands a bit better.
Also thanks to all the veterens here. Worldie posted some cool battle tree guides.
http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/battle-tree-mechanics-and-guide.3613222/
That looks really comprehensive, looks like a must read for new comers to overcome their weaknesses in the tree.
MOD EDIT: Please don't double post.