Major problem with time clock.

[lk1123]

This is a problem that's been happening a long time that has never been resolved. I sometimes play stall decks and will be in a 100% win condition state with more time on the clock than my opponent and no way for me to deck out. What ends up happening is they will wait for each action clock to hit 1 and then pass to use as much time as possible without doing anything. The only purpose of this is to annoy in hopes that I quit. This can make a match last over 30 minutes with no action at all. It is ridiculous that this is even possible. 

Edited July 16, 2019 by lk1123

[RobRatt]

7 hours ago, lk1123 said:

I sometimes play stall decks and will be in a 100% win condition state with more time on the clock than my opponent and no way for me to deck out. What ends up happening is they will wait for each action clock to hit 1 and then pass to use as much time as possible without doing anything. The only purpose of this is to annoy in hopes that I quit.

 

Am I the only one that thinks this is really funny?

 

Player A builds a "stall deck," designed for the sole purpose of milking the clock, and preventing his opponent from playing an otherwise good deck.  Of course, frustrating your opponent's play is a bonus (hoping they just give up and quit).

 

And then gets upset when Player B does what they can to still win the game?

 

Yes, most players know that stall decks are a viable (alternate) strategy to winning.  Other players though, are going to play a completely different game, trying to recover from a bad situation.  It comes with the territory.  They're going to be slower.  And they don't know the staller's deck list.  To say, "It's ridiculous that they don't concede.  We need to stop people from stalling against my stall deck once it's set up." is hilarious.

 

Edited July 17, 2019 by RobRatt

[Mod_Lyam]

7 hours ago, lk1123 said:

This is a problem that's been happening a long time that has never been resolved. I sometimes play stall decks and will be in a 100% win condition state with more time on the clock than my opponent and no way for me to deck out. What ends up happening is they will wait for each action clock to hit 1 and then pass to use as much time as possible without doing anything. The only purpose of this is to annoy in hopes that I quit. This can make a match last over 30 minutes with no action at all. It is ridiculous that this is even possible. 

 

Hi lk1123,

 

Thank you for taking the time to send us your feedback/suggestion. We regularly share player feedback and suggestions with our development team and will pass your message along to them.

 

Pokémon strongly encourages players to submit feedback and comments, so that this game can offer the best experience to all of you. Even though we do not always implement every suggestion we receive, we always read and pay attention to every single comment.
 

[Felidae_]

1 hour ago, RobRatt said:

Yes, most players know that stall decks are a viable (alternate) strategy to winning.  Other players though, are going to play a completely different game, trying to recover from a bad situation.  It comes with the territory.  They're going to be slower.  And they don't know the staller's deck list.  To say, "It's ridiculous that they don't concede.  We need to stop people from stalling against my stall deck once it's set up." is hilarious.

 

There is a major difference between playing it slowly / looking for outs and not conceding too early (which I'd encourage everyone to do) and obnoxiously letting the clock run down, just to waste the opponents time.

 

Please don't encourage this toxic behaviour.

[RobRatt]

14 hours ago, Felidae_ said:

There is a major difference between playing it slowly / looking for outs and not conceding too early (which I'd encourage everyone to do) and obnoxiously letting the clock run down, just to waste the opponents time.

 

Please don't encourage this toxic behaviour.

 

^^  Which toxic behavior are we referring to?

 

By their nature, with very few exceptions, "stall decks" can't win a normal event or tournament without extreme luck.  They're a one-trick pony, running around in circles, just wasting time.  On the VS Ladder, the main reason they're played is to frustrate your opponent into conceding (while hoping for lucky matchups).  And everyone knows it.  A certain amount of vengeance should be expected.  It's Pokémon, not chess, and it surely doesn't require reprogramming the game.

 

Edited July 17, 2019 by RobRatt

[Felidae_]

Thanks for this. To be honest I was surprised at your initial reaction, but now I understand where you are coming from.

 

As someone who played Wailord stall for an extend period of time in Expanded, Sableeye Control in Expanded and Legacy and occasional dibbled in some Shock Lock in Expanded I can safely say: your perception of stall decks / players couldn't be further from the truth.

 

Personally I didn't played Wailord to annoy people (although I definitely did), I was simply a firm believer that the deck was the best choice in the format at that period of time and despite not owning Tropical Beach (which is sort of essential for the deck), I got really good results with it. Shame that they banned Lusamie before Lt. Surge came out....

 

Stall decks can't win tournaments? IDK, I won enough of them with 5+ minutes left on the clock. If you know what you are doing you can go through the motions with the deck fairly quickly. In fact it was usually my opponent who'd time out, as they had to cope with an unknown situation, often times being unable to figure out an out (if they even had one).

 

I also don't buy into the whole “frustrating your opponent” argument. Stall decks are designed to run the opponent out of resources. The idea is not to waste time until the opponents quits, but rather put them in a check mate position where they don't have any winning moves left. It might not be chess, but Pokemon is more than comparing HP and attack numbers.

I'm well aware that some people get frustrated by playing against those decks, but in my philosophy that is a pretty weak argument.

 

Please bare in mind that I can only speak for a certain ELO range and that I'm a competitive oriented player. I'm sure that there are tons of players on the lower levels who are either too slow, or genuinely don't know how the deck works and just end up wasting everybody's time, but that is no reason to condemn an entire archetype of decks that simply tackle the game from a different angle.

 

You'll always find toxic players, no matter the archetype, but let's not celebrate intentional stalling as heavenly vengeance against those that dare to play a different deck.

[lk1123]

I should clarify. This can happen when you are playing non-stall decks as well it's just not as frequent. These actions would be against the play pokemon rules for tempo. Purposely waiting until each action clock goes to 1 is just plain cheating whereas a stall deck is a legitimate strategy that doesn't manipulate game tempo to win. 

 

Edit: for the developers, an easy solution would be to limit how many times you can run each action clock down to less than ~3 or so seconds. If they do it more than 10 times that's a good indicator they are just trying to annoy the opponent into conceding. 

Edited July 18, 2019 by lk1123