u/sad_panda91 — reddlx

TLDR: Hear me out. CalcCoins™.

I am very sorry for enraging my favourite German techno hardcore Pokémon internet bubble, but I am back for more after I felt the dopamine of senpai noticing me.

I thought a bit about the chess timer and another comment in the OG post suggested something similar:

How about instead of a timer, which I agree would add a lot of stress to otherwise pretty chill streams, you get a set number of calcs (maybe X per split or Y per fight or something) and you get to bank them.

So basically you will have the opportunity to calc with all the time in the world, but every calc costs you a "calc token". This would even add a strategic angle where you can just wing a seemingly easy fight to save more calcs for later. Also you could spend these tokens in-combat for some hype steering calcs. This kind of formalizes Jan's 95% idea in that when you're "close enough", recalcing will cost another token so it becomes a strategic decision vs. a patience test.

This would avoid stuff like that pelipper loss in attempt 12 too and many other moments, where winging it is fine apart from, like, one little thing that would be great to calc. That's also closer to the vibe that I believe would lead to optimal watching experience and keep a lot of the no-calc hype intact.

Might be a bit finicky with the calc sheet (sometimes you fat finger a calc and/or it shows you the "intermediate steps" while clicking all the options, but eh, whatever, don't think we need to sweat this too much) and adds a bit of bookkeeping (there might be a browser extension that could make this easier and solve the fat finger issue that doesn't sound too complicated to build, I think I could prototype one quickly if this finds traction).

So i'd say there are still some corners to round out, but you know, I am still the evil "unrestricted calcs are stupid" dude spreading these no-fun mind viruses, and being a contrarian on the internet just fills my heart with warmth.

That or the chess timer is really generous to not be stressful but at least eliminate the extremes. So you can just calc with impunity but don't let it completely degenerate.

The baba is you comparison to me doesn't really have legs, as with baba you can't really brute force lines like that. I mean you kinda can, but it would just be silly. Also in baba you don't incrementally calc out lines for 6h and your safe file doesn't get deleted when you blundered a small detail, so there's that.

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u/sad_panda91 — 6 days ago

▲ 9 r/pchaltv

Last puzzle: https://www.reddit.com/r/pchaltv/comments/1t2ii9j/pok%C3%A9monute_cryptic_5/

Solution to last puzzle: >!Heatran. 'Earthquake' was a toughy, in that the indicator is built into the word, which is a bit of a curveball. '-quake' is an anagram indicator for the fodder "Earth", so we have to rearrange the letters of earth. 'The second half is stranded' which clearly indicates we need to use only the second half of stranded but there is another catch here, 'no fatalities, we hear'. We hear is a homophone indicator, telling you to look for how something sounds like. 'no fatalities' can be understood as 'no dead', which sounds like 'no -ded' (i knooow, it's sooo bs, they be like that sometimes) which means we only look at "stran". The second half of stran is either "an" or "ran" which both are kind of fine so I left it that way for readability and didn't add another selector, so excuse the slightly loose selection in favor of keeping the prose nice. We rearrange 'earth' to 'heatr' add the '(r)an', and we get Heatran, a pokemon notoriously weak to earthquakes, who is in dire need of pockets of air... like, an Air Balloon for example, Heatran being a classic user of that item in competitive play. !<

This puzzles hints:

Indicators: >!The only indicator this time is 'manifest before' which basically just tells you the order of the fodders. Here's a little extra hint if you like and this doesn't help you enough:!< >!This one is more of a classic word puzzle and doesn't require you to do much letterplay. But might require a bit of google-play :)!<

Fodder: >!'The queen of heaven' and 'thy symbol of faith'!<

Definition: >!'Honey, encounter'!<

u/sad_panda91 — 7 days ago

▲ 9 r/pchaltv

Last puzzle: https://www.reddit.com/r/pchaltv/comments/1t1nu07/pok%C3%A9monute_cryptic_4/

Last puzzles solution: >!'Defog' . Forged in Chaos, with 'in chaos' being an anagram indicator meaning we have to rearrange Forged, but there is a little extra detail, 'No heart left' is a combo indicator of a deletion (No) and a selection (heart left). We look for the heart of the fodder (the middle of the word) and since forged has an even number of letters, there is the extra indicator 'left'. We have to delete the 'r' from 'Forged', then rearrange the letters to get something which only goal is Tabula Rasa. Tabula Rasa is latin for 'erased tablet' or 'blank slate' (and is a bit of an outdated idiom for it in modern languages too). Defog removes all entry hazards and therefore you use it if your goal is to create a blank slate of the battlefield.!<

This puzzles clues:

Indicators: >!(Some tough indicators this time which is the main hook of this puzzle so for the most rewarding experience I recommend first getting the fodder or definition hints for this one and then getting the indicator hints last, if you still need them. Actual indicator hints in next spoiler field)!<

>!'-quake' is a bit of a mean one, but it's an anagram indicator. You need to rearrange nearby fodder. 'The second half' is a selection indicator, after which we follow with a combo indicator of a deletion ('No') and a homophone indicator ('we hear'). We are looking to delete something that sounds like something like the fodder.!<

Fodder: >!Earth, stranded and fatalities and their indicators are used to construct the solution.!<

Definition: >!In dire need of pockets of air. What could be meant by that?!<

u/sad_panda91 — 11 days ago

▲ 15 r/pchaltv

Last puzzle: https://www.reddit.com/r/pchaltv/comments/1t17g6o/pok%C3%A9monute_cryptic_3/

The solution to the last one: >!Gothita. We put literally 'got hit' before 'commencing an attack', commencing being a selector of the first letter of the following fodder, which is a. So we put 'got hit' before 'a' and get a 'crybaby', the first member of an evolution line with a particularly emotional theme.!<

If you have no clue what any of this means or how to solve these puzzles, check out https://www.minutecryptic.com/course/letterplay?back_url=%2F it's really fun once you get the hang of it.

This puzzles clues:

Indicators: >!'in Chaos' is an anagram indicator. We need to rearrange a nearby fodder. 'No' is a deletion indicator, combined with two selection indicators, 'heart' and 'left' pointing to which part of the fodder we are targeting.!<

Fodder: >!'Forged' is the only fodder we have for this one. The solution is completely constructed from this one fodder.!<

Definition: >!'It's goal? Tabula Rasa'. A bit of a smartass definition this time, so feel free to Google what might be meant by that.!<

u/sad_panda91 — 12 days ago

▲ 7 r/pchaltv

Indicators: >!'Literally' as a bit of an avant-garde choice for an indicator. Think of it as kind of an anti-substitution indicator. The other is 'commencing' which is a classic selection indicator pointing to a specific position in the surrounding fodder.!<

Fodder: >!'got hit' and 'an attack' are the fodder for this one!<

Definition: >!'Crybaby'. What could be meant by that? Especially think of the two parts the word consists of.!<

We are going to try something different this time and leave the solution to the next one, I believe that's slightly more hype. See ya tomorrow for the next one and the solution to this one.

u/sad_panda91 — 12 days ago

▲ 4 r/pchaltv

Indicators: >!'Identify source (of)' is a selection indicator telling you to only look at a certain part of some surrounding fodder, in this case, the beginning. 'Some' is a substitution indicator, we are looking for a synonym or a figurative way of saying a surrounding fodder.!<

Fodder: >!'fire' and 'eye protection'. These in combination with the indicators will construct the solution to our definition.!<

Definition: >!'Lift cover'. So we are looking for a word that could describe this definition (a little extra hint: these are often deliberately slightly loose or figurative descriptions of the target word so you can't just guess random words that describe some part of the clue that doesn't otherwise seem to add up. And sometimes it gives a nice 'aha' moment :))!<

Solution: >!The answer is 'flash'. We can identify the source of fire (so the first part of the word 'fire') as 'f'. Then we equip, or add, some eye protection, with 'some' indicating that we might need to think figuratively. A kind of eye protection. We are looking for (eye) 'lash', which protects your eye. Put together we get 'flash', a way to describe quickly undressing (removing/lifting your cover) unfortunately sometimes with involuntary witnesses. Flash also lights up caves in our favorite children's video game :)!<

If you have no clue what any of this means or how to solve this, have a look at https://www.minutecryptic.com/course/letterplay?back_url=%2Fcourse%2Fwordplay it's really fun once you get the hang of it.

u/sad_panda91 — 13 days ago

▲ 12 r/pchaltv

Indicators: >!'The last bit' is a selection indicator telling you to focus on certain parts of a surrounding word and 'is gone' is a deletion indicator. '-light' is a substitution indicator, telling us that we are looking for something similar to the preceding word or a synonym. 'irritated' is an anagram indicator, telling you that a close-by fodder needs to be rearranged. Finally 'can't wait to forget his short-lived ... phase' is a hint that the word in question might require a bit of interpretative freedom in a certain direction.!<

Fodder: >!'sun' and 'parrot' are the fodder for this one.!<

Definition: >!'early bird' - an easy one to warm up ;)!<

You gotta do this without letter hints as we ain't interactive like that in here. The overall thematic hint of this having to do with pokemon should make this easy enough. FOR NOW! :)

Solution: >!Staraptor. The last bit of sun-'light', so something like sun, say, a 'star' - is gone, so you remove the last bit, leaving 'sta'. Parrot is an easy anagram for 'raptor' (that bit probably gave too much away but I like the entry to be nice and easy for non-minute cryptic nerds. We'll get more challenging soon enough.). Put together we get an 'early bird' or at least something that had a short-lived phase as one, Starly being a classic early flying type encounter in Gen 4. See you for the next one :))!<

If you have no clue what any of this means or how to solve it, go check out https://www.minutecryptic.com/course/letterplay it's really fun.

u/sad_panda91 — 13 days ago

▲ 69 r/pchaltv

TLDR: if we go back to calcing, please add something like a limited chess clock timer or something for fun/sanity reasons.

Monday Morning Quarterback a** title + wall of text non-meme content so will probably get buried but I need to get this off my tortured soul ridden by the thought of my favorite pokemon stream changing in a way that I would enjoy slightly less.

So drop blind for all I care, I honestly find it more annoying than enjoyable for quite a while now. Strategic decisions are more interesting to me than "lol, look how random" and I also rather have attempts go further rather than lose to unpredictable nonsense.

Buuuut I'd really hate to go back to fully calced runs. Especially after smallants rnb run I realized this glaring issue with unrestricted calcing. Don't get me wrong, the run was super hype (just like pchals was, but Jan's wasn't nearly as bad for the point I am trying to make) but after it I have no intention of watching any fully calced nuzlocke anymore.

Here's the issue. One of the most important game design heuristics is "players will optimize the fun out of the game given the opportunity" or the reverse "the most fun way to play should be the optimal way (most of the time)". I don't believe this is true anymore for unrestricted calced runs for both the player and the watcher.

Optimal play for a fully calced run is to just calc forever until every possible bit of randomness (read: excitement) has been calced out of a fight. I am not saying that it's easy, far from it. But just in principle you *should* sleep on every fight for like a week until you can be really sure that no new idea will come to mind.

It just turns into the Adderall Olympics at this point. Who can bear doing Satan's math homework for longer.

It was fine back when the meta was throwing some calcs in here or there "just to be sure", but it steadily increased with the rise of crazy difficulty hacks and now it just jumped the shark.

So how about this suggestion:

IF we go back to calcing, I'd humbly suggest adding something like a chess clock. Have a set time per split, like an hour max or so, maybe two for late game/elite four (I have been informed that these numbers are probably far too low for PK late game but the point still stands). Sure, you can't really police people "thinking about the game when off-screen" but I take that over 8 hours of calc streams any day (which have a huge cheating incentive anyway since you can just hive mind the calc off screen). Maybe if we combine it with a modification of the blind restriction, you can "partly" lift the blind restriction by getting the information one split forward at a time and your chess timer starts the moment you look at it, but that would have the downside of not really being able to include mons caught in that split so dunno. Maybe better to not overcomplicate it and just "rule of cool" the cheating possibility.

It sounds more hype, more fun, more healthy and more like a video game to me.

Wdyt?

EDIT: Just to clarify because of people seem to misunderstand me: My main point isn't about time spent calcing in principle. It isn't even about the viewing experience of calc streams, I enjoyed those mostly.

My point is that unrestricted calcs make this much less interesting as a competition. Otherwise the best nuzlocker in the world will soon be some brute forcing python script. We learned from chess that competitions in "thinking" are a lot more enjoyable with at least some kind of time requirement.

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u/sad_panda91 — 14 days ago