URPG Abuse

What is URPG abuse?

Is it cheating, or getting "undeserved" money, or both?

Mlouden abused the system, and was punished.

People who abused the original National Park were punished.

People who used permabasics for "easy" money abused the system, and were somewhat punished by payment modifications for basics.

What about people who abuse permabasics with Pickup? That seems pretty similar to abuse imo. "I'll help you with basics since I may have something undeserved(?) to gain."

Are 2v2 battles abuse?

Are 2v2 battles still allowed?

Are 2v2 gym battles still allowed?

What FFA rules are banned exactly?

When were these things changed and why were people not informed (if they were in fact changed)?

I'm a bit confused seeing "abuse" and "not allowed" thrown around so freely.


@Monbrey ;

#urpg real talk

 

I hope this addresses your concerns.

 

Ya, I am under the opinion that a lot of rules get announced but rarely added to the rules, which is very confusing. Especially because whenever there are conflicting statements in a battle scenario, refs are instructed to follow the URPG Refpedia. This creates a bit of a clash. I can't think of any of current rules off the top of my head atm, but I can think of a situation about a month ago. I was holding an FFA in which a participant sent a move with a random target, but when I went to ref the turn, an official in chat told me not to allow that as it was against the rules. However there was no such rule expressly stated in the rules, it was just a sort of word of mouth thing. When I brought this up I was told to still void the move. (this rule was then edited into the rules) But the player didn't break any stated rule. So why were they punished? I think an issue the URPG has is a lack of seriousness ( word choice) when adding rules. They are rarely publicly announce and sometimes are just thrown into the URPG chat thread, and instantly buried. I think changes should definitely be edited into the URPG rules 100% of time, and more publicly announced, which is something that I have noticed with mlouden ruling and the other notice. I recognize this is being done to some degree, but I think it needs to be the standard in order to be effective. This also means, in my opinion, members shouldn't be held accountable for the plethora of rules Pidge made and never really announced. That is unless they are all publicly announced in the future.

Abuse is a very difficult term to judge on, but I think through council and a wide array of opinions in the officials/mods, the urpg does a decent job of defining it.

Summary, make rules easier to find / more public knowledge and people will be less likely to break them.

 

All good points, I'll work on making sure battle rules and others that are clearly yes/no situations are better documented. However this can't apply in all cases - there will always be situations where people ignore the honor code or try to find situations that aren't expressly stated as being illegal, but common sense would say otherwise.

I have no idea who told you to void a move that is MEANT to have a random target (eg Outrage) but they were completely wrong. Sorry for that.

 

I remember that FFA, pretty sure the move was Discharge. Whatever it was, it wasn't normally random target but the trainer sent it "on random".

 

Why is sending a move at a random target not allowed anyway? Sure, it's not what happens in game, but it was allowed for so long and then changed suddenly. Good for people teamed with everyone!

 

I didn't make the rule, so I can't say for sure. Personally, I don't like allowing it because it's essentially a cop-out, a method of being non-competitive while still attacking.

Pidge, I believe, wanted to make FFA's a little more competitive. Not to the extend that they were serious, but just so they were a bit less of a complete joke.

 

That was exactly the problem. People who were in large teams would just spam random and then jump on anyone unlucky enough to be screwed over in a dice. That's not behaviour indicative of a "Free for All".

 

Why would people in a team target randomly when they have a chance of hitting their teammate? Also, your post is a little unfair... Teaming is what makes that scenario not indicative of a "Free for All", not the attacking a random target. But regardless, this isn't the point of the thread so let's not derail it.
@Monbrey;

You're right, I wasn't really referring to a situation in which the member was knowingly doing wrong, but rather another situation that could be defined as abuse. I think that in certain situations, users can be punished for things that aren't expressly written anywhere, which is, in my opinion, unfair. As far as people who are intentionally abusing a system, I'm unsure if there should be punishments for people who aren't really breaking any clearly written rule. I mean the other side of this coin is that the URPG, by having something in its rules like "URPG is subject to punish any member who is abusing the rules," has the right to punish anyone whoever they see fit. Personally, I can't really think of a situation in which there has been a poor handling of this kind of situation. I think I've heard of one instance when basics were first abused that was handled poorly but that was years ago, if I remember correctly.

 

>Implementing being teamed with everyone is a good thing.

If you're teamed with everyone and you want to attack someone, stop being a coward and end your alliances. Don't try to hide behind "Oh, sorry that move I sent on a random target hit you even though you told me specifically to hit something else". Does the name FREE FOR ALL suggest that the rules should cater towards being teamed with everyone? I would honestly really like it if teams in FFAs just stopped existing. However, if other people team you really don't stand much of a chance without teaming yourself and because of that (and people's just general desire to team) that is only a hypothetical possibility and would never actually happen.

I digress though, I had a serious question. Since a lot of the things in FFAs that have often been said as "Ref's choice" now have official rulings, is there one on sending ahead of time (such as saying "Keep using Splash" or "Use Splash, then Teleport, then Splash again, then Follow Me", generally because you have to leave either for more than a turn and will come back or just have to leave)? I've heard a variety of things on it and don't even remember all of them, but that's another thing that should probably be posted with the FFA rules if there's an official ruling on that (which there probably should be, to avoid people claiming bias or anything). I don't think it's come up recently, but it definitely has in the past.

Other things that might want an official ruling:
1. Ref rolled a dice that (s)he intended for something unneeded, then needs another dice roll. Is the original roll used or ignored?
Example:
Ref: Nidoking [Sheer Force] uses Ice Beam
AIM: Ref rolled 1 100-sided dice: 8
Battler: Can't freeze anyways
Ref: Nidoqueen is confused...

Should that 8 now be a smack or ignored and a new dice rolled?
Similarly, if a dice roll is skipped, should the rolls be reworked so that the order they were rolled in matches up with the order they should have been needed?
Example:
Ref: Tyrantrum is paralyzed...
AIM: Ref rolled 1-100 sided dice: 51
Ref: ... Uses Ice Fang
AIM: Ref rolled 3-100 sided dice: 1 2 3
Ref: Hits, freeze, flinch
Battler: You forgot confusion

Should this now become 51 for confusion (works), 1 for paralysis (fully paralyzed), and then the other rolls are either unused or used later in the turn (if required) or roll a new dice for confusion and everything else remains as is if the confusion doesn't make it all fail?

2. Is a battler required to send every turn while they literally have NO CHOICE WHATSOEVER? This includes instances such as being locked in Outrage or holding a Choice Item against an opponent with Shadow Tag (or with their last Pokémon). Obviously if there exists any choice at all (such as Encore/Choice while still able to switch) a send is required every turn.

Similarly, if a battler thinks they don't have a choice because they're Encored/Choiced/etc. but can still switch, what should the ref say about that (if they don't actually ask it as a question) or should they just take that as them not switching?

3. If a battler forgets an item on their Pokémon when items are on, is the ref allowed to/supposed to ask them if they want to put an item on it? If they realize they forgot an item, at what point is it too late?

4. Are any rolls besides speed ties (and things such as sleep/con duration) private? Are speed ties rolls even private in a public send style? Are speed tie rolls private in FFAs?

5. If a mistake (mostly one by the ref) is caught late, what should be done? If a mistake allows resending for a particular turn that was partially or completely reffed already, should any of the dice rolls ever be used (assuming at least one move was changed)?

6. What, if anything, should be done if someone not involved in the battle says something relevant to the battle that could conceivably affect the remainder of the battle? Generally when I've seen such things I don't think that it was intended that way, or that whoever said it assumed whatever they said was obvious, but it still can really be a bad thing to happen. Sometimes I've even seen those times where someone tells one battler they should do something and that actually helps the other battler who hadn't thought of that and can now do something to stop it. Obviously (or I would think obviously), you can tell your opponent whatever you want to, but no one else should be telling either of you anything relevant to the battle.

Having official answers to these questions and other questions like them that I'll think of when it isn't 2 AM would probably help make battles more standardized and avoid most even possibility of ref bias (not that I think that's happening). This ended up a lot longer than I expected... @Monbrey;

 

Oh my God I just got off work and I saw that block-of-text post and my brain just shut down. I was going to post a tl;dr gif but I couldn't even be arsed to find one. Are you making a point to me / about me / something involving me that I need to know about, or can I just go on with my blissful ignorance regarding this post?

/genuine question

 

This is actually a good post. I'll make official calls on all of these things, and find somewhere to put them in the Reffing Encyclopedia.

Except for your opinion on FFA teams, I don't care at all and I removed it from my reply.

 

Any further questions/clarifications before I start making edits to things?