Percentage Clause - Add a Decimal Place?

bludz

a waffle is like a pancake with a syrup trap
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Hello. I intended to make a post elsewhere, asking for PS to increment percentages on HP bars further (i.e. 12.5% instead of 13%), but I did some research and heard that the way it's done is part of the Percentage Clause and that the right place to take it would be the Policy Review forum. So I'm here to make a case for adding a decimal place to percentages.

"HP Percentage Clause - Whenever your opponent's pokemon's HP changes, you are told its percentage HP, rounded up to the nearest whole number, and then replacing 100% with 99% if it is not at maximum."
- Source (if there's a newer one I'm sorry but I looked and could not find it)

The idea of showing percentages rather than actual HP is that it prevents players from discovering their opponents' EV spreads easily, while still giving a better indicator than how much the HP bar moves (like in game mechanics). Adding a decimal place to the percentage value isn't going change much in this regard - this amount of extra information does not amount to a new variable which could allow you to discern EV spreads. This means there isn't really much of a downside, like giving too much information.

On the other hand, adding a decimal place could be very helpful for decision making. The time this comes most into play is with hazard damage. If PS shows an opponents' Pokemon as having 13% HP, there is no strong indication whether it can still live another switch-in to Stealth Rock or Spikes. However if its shown as 12.7% you will know it can switch in one more time. This still leaves the limitation of 12.5% being ambiguous, but you have a much stronger indication most of the time.

Given the nature of how the game is approached on PS! - damage calcs, percentage shown already - I don't see this as breaking from the norm very much. I could envision a counter-argument that claims some level of uncertainty is part of the game - but then why do we show percentages in the first place? Where is the line drawn? Personally I think having more granulated information just allows the players to make more informed decisions and can improve the level of play.

As a final point, I think 2 decimal places is not really necessary. Despite resistance to Stealth Rock doling out 6.25%, the information of 6.2% or 6.3% can qualify a strong guess (much moreso than 6%), especially if we know how the numbers will round.

Anyway, I'm curious to hear the thoughts of others on this.
 

Aberforth

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IIRC the reason for not using decimals is that it would give too much information. Knowing when your opponent will or will not die to stealth rock damage for example, which you cannot ascertain in the game no matter how accurately you measure it, gives too much information to a player. Accounting for possibly not nabbing that KO with spikes is part of skillful play.

Dont really care either way, but that's the reason we dont already do it and I'd like to hear more about why we should ignore in game mechanics more than we already do before implementing this sort of change.
 

FlamingVictini

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Accounting for possibly not nabbing that KO with spikes is part of skillful play.
To me this is the most important point of discussion where it regards the issue of "skillful play." Ideally we want to promote the most skillful play, and we already take measures to do this. For example, the percentage clause gives players much more information than a green bar that forces you to estimate the health of the opponent, and damage calculators give players information that could be necessary to make an informed decision and likely raise the level of play.

Now regarding the issue at hand, is players knowing precisely when a pokemon will faint to or survive hazard damage going to decrease the level of play, or increase it? Theoretically this should only concern the player who does not have the pokemon in question (because the player with the mon can see the actual hp and use that to calculate if it will live or not, granted though this can be annoying and not possible in time-crunched situations). If i were in this situation, figuring out a gameplan that would win both if the opponent dies to hazards or if they don't (the latter generally being more important, although the former could be beneficial to the user with the mon in question at times) would certainly force me to think at a deeper level and potentially develop a more complex gameplan - in other situations, it would force me to guess and hope for the best (if there are no reasonable routes that accounts for both possibilities). I'd like to compare this situation to taking a test, where the teacher either tells you what will be on the test or gives you limited information about what will be tested (representing the hp information given to us), and your score on the test represents the level of play. If the teacher tells me what I need to study, I can appropriately prepare with a clear goal in mind and try to execute that plan cleanly - this improves the chances of me to perform well. If the teacher does not tell me as much information, it forces me to account for the possibility of being tested on things that are obscure or unlikely to appear, for example. While this may force me to learn more (or cram more, which is bad!) in order to prepare for the test, it does nothing to improve how I can do it, and in some cases may also make me do worse. Like bludz, I see no good reason to withold the more detailed hp information and see a benefit in giving that to players (allowing the skill of play to rise), so I am in favor of bludz's motion.
 

Bughouse

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This was decided in 2013 with the agreement of just about everyone. Don't know why this needs to be done again, but whatever.

It's all about how much information your opponent should have. On cartridge, you cannot tell for sure if your opponent's Pokemon are in the range of dying to entry hazards. This alone should be enough of a reason to say no.

But here's more. You also can't tell the exact damage that's being done, which is good. With more and more accurate HP percentages, you can learn sets just by mashing buttons.

For example, let's say Torn-T switches in on Keldeo
252 SpA Keldeo Secret Sword vs. 96 HP / 0 Def Tornadus-T: 84-99 (26 - 30.6%) - AV set onsite w/ Timid
252 SpA Keldeo Secret Sword vs. 0 HP / 0 Def Tornadus-T: 84-99 (28 - 33.1%) - LO set onsite

OK so a bunch of rolls overlap. Even though 48ths are "better" at disguising information from the opponent, with rounded percentages it's pretty much impossible to guess which is which assuming you get a roll that works for both sets, which happens a bit more than half the time.

But what do we learn about Tornadus-T from this percentage if really exact percentages are presented?

The roll is:
(84, 84, 85, 87, 87, 88, 90, 90, 91, 93, 93, 94, 96, 96, 97, 99)

Which as "exact" percentages to the nearest tenth of a percent are:
26.0, 26.0, 26.3, 26.9, 26.9, 27.2, 27.9, 27.9, 28.2, 28.8, 28.8, 29.1, 29.7, 29.7, 30.0, 30.7 for AV
28.1, 28.1, 28.4, 29.1, 29.1, 29.4, 30.1, 30.1, 30.4, 31.1, 31.1, 31.4, 32.1, 32.1, 32.4, 33.1 for LO

So even though there's a significant amount of overlap here, many rolls that are possible against both sets now become obvious one way or another with two seconds checking a calculator against the expected dex spreads. I bolded these for your convenience.

Should the Keldeo user really be able to learn that information just because it used Secret Sword against a Torn-T? Let's say he's got a Clefable at 80%. If he successfully learns it's LO from a more exact percentage point, now he knows he can't safely switch into 2 Hurricanes. If he learns it's AV, he learns he can.

I think the answer is a pretty clear no. Might as well just show your opponent your exact EV spreads so they can calc attacks with certainty.
 

Zarel

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The idea of showing percentages rather than actual HP is that it prevents players from discovering their opponents' EV spreads easily, while still giving a better indicator than how much the HP bar moves (like in game mechanics). Adding a decimal place to the percentage value isn't going change much in this regard - this amount of extra information does not amount to a new variable which could allow you to discern EV spreads. This means there isn't really much of a downside, like giving too much information.
Pet peeve: People who somehow manage to be sure about things they don't understand.

This amount of extra information is enough to discern EV spreads. Every level 100 pokemon has over 100 HP. None of them have over 1000 HP. Adding a decimal place will tell people exactly what a pokemon's HP EV is, in one move or at most two.

Actually, percentages themselves already give 1 more bit of information per attack than the games themselves, but adding a decimal place would give over 4 bits per attack, which is a lot more.

Given the nature of how the game is approached on PS! - damage calcs, percentage shown already - I don't see this as breaking from the norm very much. I could envision a counter-argument that claims some level of uncertainty is part of the game - but then why do we show percentages in the first place? Where is the line drawn? Personally I think having more granulated information just allows the players to make more informed decisions and can improve the level of play.
We show percentages because people want percentages because people prefer to think in percentages.

Giving easier-to-understand information (which is what HP percentages are) is at least somewhat defensible. Giving more information is very much against Smogon's principles. We're here to simulate Pokémon, not to make whatever game players want.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
ive already posted this twice in 2016 alone but heres a third time:

i know this flopped before but 48ths rounded up is how in-game does it... everything in mons can be expressed in terms of 48ths (sand? 3/48. SR? 6/48. Two layers of spikes? 8/48. Two layers of spikes + sr + sand + burn on a kyurem-b? 3/48 + 12/48 + 8/48 + 6/48). And since all residual damages are rounded down, you can always tell if they'll kill. If the game shows as 3/48, sand will kill. If it shows as 4/48, it won't. Due to down-rounding error, when effects begin to stack, it's less perfect, but...

No matter what, I don't like going more precise than the ones place because it's easy to reverse engineer an opponent's spread. For example, is that Talonflame bulky or not? well, after sand, it went to 94.0%. Offensive talon can have 94.0% HP (279/297), but defensive can't (either 337/359 = 93.9 or 338/359 = 94.2).

For the record, I myself actually prefer 48ths. For one, because that's how it's done in-game, and for two, so you never get the 8% sand. I think the reason it failed last time is because it was implemented really stupidly and unintuitively (displayed as losing 14 pixels of hp instead of 14/48 HP iirc, and then switched to a percentage range which was even less intuitive since it was some bullshit like 42.3-44.6% of HP). But on the whole, the system is fine. It would only require a very minor change to the damage calculator for it to be able to match up and I imagine that we'd get used to it very quickly.
 
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bludz

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Hmm ok. I did read through some old threads but I didn't find some of the information that was brought to light here, maybe it was buried in between the whole argument with WiFi stuff. I probably should've realized how much extra information a decimal place gives. I still believe that performing the calculations that Bughouse showed mid-game can get you in trouble if battling someone not using standard EV spreads, but the fact that you can even do that is a little concerning. My initial reaction to Adherence arguments was that percentages already gave extra info, but given the amount more decimal places give, I understand.
 

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