I started playing RBY OU for quite some time now, and as any Pokémon player, I read a lot of topics and people talking about differences in cartridge and PS. Some things really make me confused. At the end, I show my personal thoughts and propose some changes.
Freeze Clause and Sleep Clause
This was implemented in Pokémon Stadium, but we use them in RBY OU. We also divide the RBY scenario in "OU" and "Stadium OU", but use these rules in both. This is really strange.
Right now I'm not discussing here the importance of each competitive rule, I'm just showing how things are done to adjust what some people think is better. If we would stick to what we are really saying, "play the game as faithfully as possible to the cart", it just makes no sense since no rule of any kind exists in the cart.
Do you know what other rules didn't exist in the cart?
Desync Rule, Cleric Rule, Species Clause, HP Percentage Mod, OHKO Clause, Evasion Clause and Endless Battle Clause
Ok, now we stumbled upon some really important things. These rules didn't exist but we implemented them to simply make the game playable.
The Desync Rule is absolutely essential to RBY meta. And if we would stick to "as faithfully as possible to the cart" the game would have countless matches ended without a result because Counter is a very prevalent move and can cause desyncs.
If we would stick to the cart, every match would start with Chansey paralyzed or burned to not get frozen and a lot of absurd and stupid things. That's why the Cleric Clause exists.
I read a rumor that there was a tournament in Nintendo Cup where a team consisted of 6 Chanseys, and I really think that it is perfectly possible. Not game changing or anything, but what about substituting the last Poké to another Tauros? Or Persian? Or maybe 2 Chanseys on a team can be good too. Imagine 2 Slowbros? It is definetely stupid.
Horn Drill and Double Team is where things get really childish. To use them means zero skill, despite Pokémon being a game which involves skill AND luck. These two rules nulls dumb luck and child play.
The Endless Battle Clause for me is 100% self explanatory.
But the confusion still gets further.
The HP Glitch
We corrected the game to be playable with Desync, Cleric, OHKO, Evasion Clause and more, but we can't do that to that simple mistake of programming that says "if a Pokémon received 255 or 511 damage it can't heal with any recovery move", because the cart has it.
That made possible the infamous Lv. 85 Chansey, which used 3 Seismic Toss on enemy Chansey/Slowbro to block them from using Soft-Boiled/Rest. This is hilariously stupid!
I've watched a match one time where Tauros decided the game once more, by using Hyper Beam on a Chansey and when she used Soft-Boiled it failed. Why?
Tauros Hyper Beam vs. Chansey: 442-520 (62.8 - 73.9%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
Possible damage amounts: (442, 444, 446, 448, 450, 452, 454, 456, 458, 460, 462, 464, 466, 469, 471, 473, 475, 477, 479, 481, 483, 485, 487, 489, 491, 493, 495, 497, 499, 501, 503, 505, 507, 509,
511, 513, 515, 517, 520)
Look at 511 damage right there (I think it did 72% damage... Idk).
The game already involves luck and there's nothing we can do about it... We do everything to lessen the effects of luck (what characterizes the definition of "skill" in Pokémon), but not fixing this bug only adds more luck to the meta. Everyone complains about the luck and all that, but the meta doesn't correct this bug to "remain as close as possible to the cart"... At the same time, we implement OHKO and Evasion Clause and that's ok. :)
HP Percentage Mod and more
One thing I see as the most important thing in competitive Pokémon is the percentage. The most important turns in any match are those in which you calculate if you can do that positioning to finally use this attack that is guaranteed to KO this specific Poké. But if we played "as faithfully as possible to the cart" this would be impossible.
The only game that lets you see the opponent's HP is Stadium (and some other spin-offs), and isn't in %, is in full numbers.
This would change the meta. If it was "as faithfully as possible to the cart", any calc would not be possible because in Link Battles you only see the opponent's health bar, not number nor percentages. You know what other thing could change the meta, even the slightest?
Using moves like Wrap. In the cart, you use it and it starts attacking. If the opponent stays in, you don't know if the next turn the attack will continue. You have to click on "Battle". I don't know if the move has ended and you click on "Battle", you'll be able to choose other moves (which would show to you that the move has ended) and if you click in "Battle" and immediately the turn goes on, it would show that the move continued. If it is so, the existing mechanic in PS is perfectly done because it just saves time.
If this is not true, this would change the way Victreebel, Cloyster and others are played.
Another little detail that is non-existent in the cart that we always used is the option to cancel a move we did. Did you miss-click a move? That's it, you basically lost a turn.
The last one I'll bring is the enormous commodity of seeing opponent's moves used with PP, status, HP, and everything else with the mouse. This is something very important that doesn't exist in the cart but if it wasn't implemented, we would write it all down on paper (which I always did when I played competitively in my region years ago); with the clear exception of HP.
Conclusion
We want to replicate the cart mechanics exactly, but we don't want to replicate the cart mechanics exactly. That's the divided and mad meta that is RBY today.
My personal opinion
If you want to play with exact cart mechanics, why do you play on PS? Play in the cart. Why have all the trouble to maintain a lot of errors the devs didn't have the time and/or capacity to correct 20+ years ago in a game in which we can do it nowadays? It just boggles my mind thinking like this.
Ah, if you'd play on the cart you'd need to travel the world to play with people, right? Bring your GameBoy or GameBoy Color and Link Cable... I know. That's yet another motive for you to forget about this 20+ years old cart. We can do things better today; to cling to the cart, for me, is very, very, very absurd and illogical.
But I would agree if this "Cart Meta" existed as a separate meta, not RBY OU. I don't know about "OU" and "Stadium OU", though.
In Pokémon Stadium a LOT of errors that didn't mean to be in the cart were fixed, that's true. I never played Stadium OU, but I wouldn't mind starting to play it if RBY OU didn't exist.
I know that there are people that play this thing for ages and don't want to change, but that only says a thing about them, not me or all the players.
Now, I'm certain that Freeze Clause, Sleep Clause, Evasion Clause, OHKO Clause, Desync Clause, Cleric Clause, HP Percentage Mod and Endless Battle Clause are the rules that need to stay in order to maintain the competitiveness in the game, and increase the odds of skill impacting the game more than luck does.
We really need to discuss these things because they are fundamental to the development of the meta. First, the most important question:
Who is the person or group of people that dictates today what rules should exist in Pokémon RBY?
Because if we can't reach them to change or at least have a civilised conversation and hear their motives to maintain certain things, we could create our own meta. Which meta? That's the second important question:
Are we sticking with cart mechanics or "fixed issues OU"?
What would be fixed? Everything that was a bug that Stadium fixed. Stadium didn't fix the sleep mechanics, be careful: it just changed them. But they did fix Substitute mechanics. There is a big difference between fixing and changing; that's why we use two different words.
After answering these 2 questions, the meta would finally have SOME direction in its crazy life.
I definitely want to hear what you all think about this.
emma edit - moved to SQSA