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Twitch Plays Pokemon

Muro said:
comic
Oh god fucking dammit a ctrl+alt+delete comic. I was very happy pretending that it doesn't exist for the last few years.
These jokes started out really funny but are getting old really quick, even though I know some moron will still be saying them a year after the game is finished.

Sanoblaze said:
I for one am okay with democracy BECAUSE THEY WERE IN CELADON CITY FOR OVER 3 HOURS YESTERDAY! its entertaining to see them struggle but it gets SUPER old watching them go in circles for the millionth time.
Anarchy is often boring but occasionally very entertaining, and it's fun to hear about periodically.
Democracy is boring 100% of the time. It should only be implemented when anarchy is practically unable to complete a task, I.E. safari zone or some puzzles.
Remember that it's not really about beating the game or making progress in the most optimal way, because that's just a let's play.
 
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I remember sitting down and a friend told me they were in celadon city
4 hours later
STILL IN FUCKING CELADON!
hell, they were at the ledge maze to get through the rock cave for over seven hours!
I get the anarchy is fun but... I can't see anyone having the patience to sit through this! and would have only gotten worse especially since the numbers growing IMMENSLY. some form of democracy would have had to be implemented once you are that close to 100,000 people.

hell.... they'd be at Sabrina for months....
 
Actually, I read somewhere that the guy running the stream modded the game to take out the Safari Zone since leaving it in there would result in literally getting nothing done (technically that's what they're doing right now but this'll be about 10000 times worse lol).

I've been checking in with the stream from time to time, but never really stay long cause after while, hearing the music would just get on my nerves, lol. Last time I checked, they released like 2 more Pokemon out into the wild and were still stuck in the Pokemon Center.
 
Sanoblaze said:
I remember sitting down and a friend told me they were in celadon city
4 hours later
STILL IN FUCKING CELADON!
hell, they were at the ledge maze to get through the rock cave for over seven hours!
I get the anarchy is fun but... I can't see anyone having the patience to sit through this! and would have only gotten worse especially since the numbers growing IMMENSLY. some form of democracy would have had to be implemented once you are that close to 100,000 people.

hell.... they'd be at Sabrina for months....
I don't think most people are sitting there and watching it for hours upon hours anyway. You could either take 10 minutes on sabrina and make the entire ordeal have no impact, or spend 3 hours on Sabrina and make the actual battle against her incredibly hype. Short and really boring, or long with some really exciting parts. You choose.
Edit: Also, sabrina's gym is much more doable in anarchy than the ledge or team rocket's spinning maze. It takes several movements to screw yourself over in sabrina's gym, and it's also much less obvious how you do it. You could very easily end up at sabrina through completely random choices in 10-15 minutes max assuming you don't have any trouble in the trainer battles. The worst thing I see happening is a lot of walking into the teleporter you just exited, but that's not as bad as the ledge or the maze because it takes like 30 seconds to correct it. I give them a couple hours; months is EXTREME hyperbole.
 
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There's a big difference between 3 hours and 3 days.
I believe that Anarchy is the right way to go with this game, but there are times when everyone has to get their shit together and resort to Democracy. If another Giovanni situation arises then Democracy must be used.
 
Denizen said:
There's a big difference between 3 hours and 3 days.
I believe that Anarchy is the right way to go with this game, but there are times when everyone has to get their shit together and resort to Democracy.
They didn't take 3 days in celadon.
The reason they took so long in celadon was a combination of the maze and the fact that that's where the start9 riots took place. Democracy was a poor solution to the maze due to trolls getting majority and delay making a bunch of people vote for the wrong direction. Democracy was the problem in the start9 riots. So it's silly to blame anarchy for that mess.
They also were there for the most part because they still needed the silph scope.
 
I say use it now! the numbers have only been growing! whats gonna happen when they gotta buckle down and fight sabrina AKA the broken gen 1 gym leader?
 
Horseman said:
They didn't take 3 days in celadon.
The reason they took so long in celadon was a combination of the maze and the fact that that's where the start9 riots took place.
I wasn't talking to you specifically.
Anyway I thought that Sano said that they were just walking around Celadon for 4 hours after they defeated Giovanni, as in literally trying to get out of the city for 4 hours. I misunderstood him.

I still support Democracy as an option for when things become impossible.
 
I'm not talking about them banding together for a hype battle against Sabrina's gym stuff, I'm talking about when they have to fight all her overpowered psychic pokemon and the fact that gen 1 had no pheasable way to fight back against psychic types because game freak made all bugs who would be effective useless because they were part poison and the fact ghost type pokemon got wrecked in gen 1 because of their being poison.

I'm not saying its because of the battle, I'm saying this because Sabrina is already bullshit enough with no type weaknesses and overpowered pokemon.
 
Meh, if you ask me the whole system is borked the more people are watching (even if people open in a tab and look for like a minute that is still one more person that as the potential to shout something). Besides even if you put a timer on people to say things, the trolls are the only ones protestant enough to stay and try to ruin things anyway. And this happens in Anarchy or Democracy either way, and while I know that this isn't a serious playthough of pokemon, or any thing closely resembling one, trolls will continue to rule the stream just on that sole fact that they enjoy other people suffering-by 'their' hand-rather than things going their natural chaotic course. Also the fact that Democracy is basically troll paradice as they make up the majority, only like 34% of people want the right thing (if that), and everyone else is pressing random buttons, where pure anarchy nothing would get done.

But whatever I just happy because I can use goofy names for some pokemon I really wouldn't use other wise (glory be to thy Dome Fossil, the true path)
 
All this is troubling indeed. Better consult the Helix Fossil.
 
TheGoggledGamer said:
Meh, if you ask me the whole system is borked the more people are watching (even if people open in a tab and look for like a minute that is still one more person that as the potential to shout something). Besides even if you put a timer on people to say things, the trolls are the only ones protestant enough to stay and try to ruin things anyway. And this happens in Anarchy or Democracy either way, and while I know that this isn't a serious playthough of pokemon, or any thing closely resembling one, trolls will continue to rule the stream just on that sole fact that they enjoy other people suffering-by 'their' hand-rather than things going their natural chaotic course. Also the fact that Democracy is basically troll paradice as they make up the majority, only like 34% of people want the right thing (if that), and everyone else is pressing random buttons, where pure anarchy nothing would get done.
so... what you're saying is,

its fucked from the start.
 
Sanoblaze said:
so... what you're saying is,

its fucked from the start.
tumblr_mtrwtmW3Sx1rqp2rqo1_500.gif
 
Sanoblaze said:
I'm not talking about them banding together for a hype battle against Sabrina's gym stuff, I'm talking about when they have to fight all her overpowered psychic pokemon and the fact that gen 1 had no pheasable way to fight back against psychic types because game freak made all bugs who would be effective useless because they were part poison and the fact ghost type pokemon got wrecked in gen 1 because of their being poison.

I'm not saying its because of the battle, I'm saying this because Sabrina is already bullshit enough with no type weaknesses and overpowered pokemon.
I'm really not worried about the battling bits at all. They are very doable. Even sabrina. She isn't that hard, and they have a pidgeot that's nearly level 50.

Sanoblaze said:
so... what you're saying is,

its fucked from the start.
DON'T LISTEN TO HIM! HE'S A DOME WORSHIPER!
 
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So apparently TPP is causing issues for Twitch on a technical level. I mean, we all know that their service is a fragile as hell anyway, but yeah.
 
I've been watching the stream since day 1, and the entire time I've been watching, I've been thinking to myself, "This would go more smoothly if the game took the input that has the majority of votes, instead of every single input from every single person."

When "Democracy" was introduced, I thought that it was the perfect solution to our woes. No more staring at the pause screen, no more falling off ledges, no more accidents at the PC, no more bad purchases at the Pokemart...

When Democracy was met with "riots" in the chatroom and "protests" in the form of start9 spam, I couldn't understand why so many people were opposed to it. Wouldn't democracy be smarter? Wouldn't it be more efficient? Wouldn't it be more effective?

Yes, it would be smarter. Yes, it would be more efficient. Yes, it would be more effective. And that's exactly what's wrong with it.

I've realized that the reason so many people are enjoying Twitch Plays Pokemon is because it's unpredictable and chaotic. It's entertaining to watch the outcome of tens of thousands of people pressing buttons. It's entertaining to see what crazy events happens next.

If the game was being played with only the "correct" button presses, then all of the memes we've been enjoying would never have come into existence. For example:
  • Under Democracy, we wouldn't fumble around in our inventory during battle, so we wouldn't have looked at the Helix Fossil so many times, spawning the Helix "religion".
  • Under Democracy, we wouldn't have given our Pokemon such hilarious nicknames, leading to the personification of those Pokemon (such as Jay Leno).
  • Under Democracy, we wouldn't have unpredictable moments such as Abby and Jay Leno being released, so we wouldn't have a "narrative" involving sacrifices and fallen comrades.
  • Under Democracy, Red wouldn't move around in an erratic way, so we wouldn't have so many hilarious comics and gifs about Red acting bizarre and frightening the NPCs.
Under Anarchy, we can screw up. But each screw-up contributes to the "lore" and "narrative" of Red's story, and provides us with new memes / comics / gifs about everything that went wrong.

I finally understand why Democracy is met with such violent opposition; it's because it's fun to not know what's going to happen next. People don't want to see Red beat the Elite Four as quickly as possible; people want to see what kind of crazy, unpredictable shenanigans happen along the way. We're watching to see the next "twist", catch the next laugh-out-loud moment, witness the birth of the next meme.

And Democracy would take that away.
 
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Honestly, I'd rather it if they had not introduced the anarchy/democracy things at all. IIRC, there is nothing you can do in Pokemon Red/Blue (excluding cheats) that makes the game unfinishable. Yes, Victory Road might take a week for people to get through, but that's one of the more interesting things about this run - checking up on progress and going 'how the f*** did they manage to achieve that?'. At worst, you could always have the guy running it step in and manually switch to democracy if there's a problem.

Seriously, show me a part of the game that will be IMPOSSIBLE with 100k people online.
 
TheGoggledGamer, I wasn't saying that Democracy is terrible and should never be used, I was just saying that I previously could not understand why some people would ever reject Democracy, and now I understand their point of view.

Vadsamoht said:
Seriously, show me a part of the game that will be IMPOSSIBLE with 100k people online.

Well, the part they're at right now. The Safari Zone.

The Safari Zone has a "time limit" which is actually a limited number of steps. You are given 500 "steps" to walk around with, and then you're kicked out of the Safari Zone.

Red has to reach an NPC that will give him the HM for Surf. The minimum number of steps to get there is 270. He can't misstep too many times, or else he won't be able to reach the NPC. As you can tell, this presents a huge problem for our Red, who is taking dozens of random steps all the time.

You can retry the Safari Zone as many times as you want, but it costs money each time. And money is limited. It's possible to run out of money in this game, and not have a way to obtain more money. Once every Trainer is defeated, that's it, you can't obtain more money. And whenever these guys walk into a Pokemart, they could wind up buying 99 of some random item and waste all of their money.

(And we're playing Red version, so obtaining Meowth for his Pay Day attack may not be an option. Even if it WAS an option, getting the chatroom to cooperate long enough to catch a Meowth would be a Herculean task, and that's only if we have the money to afford Pokeballs to catch a Meowth.)

So, yes, it's VERY feasible that this run of Pokemon could come to an end right here in this very spot the players are currently at. The creator of the stream even said in an interview that he's worried about this part of the game and may have to modify the ROM to make it something that we could beat without screwing ourselves over.

Pokemon also has a few other "fail states" as well. You need HMs to progress through the game, and it's possible to get yourself into a situation where you can't teach an HM to any of your current Pokemon and also can't catch a new Pokemon because you have no money and no way to obtain more money...or you could release all of the Pokemon in your possession who could potentially learn an HM.

There's another Pokemon stream called "RNG Plays Pokemon" where a random number generator gives the game random input. It got to Cerulean City with two Pokemon (Charizard and Magikarp) before releasing the Charizard at a PC, leaving the trainer with only a Magikarp who knows nothing other than Splash. Being stuck with one Pokemon who only knows one defensive move? That's definitely a fail state.

I'm pretty sure there are other fail states as well, but those are the only ones I can think of off the top of my head...
 
EvaXephon said:
The Safari Zone has a "time limit" which is actually a limited number of steps. You are given 500 "steps" to walk around with, and then you're kicked out of the Safari Zone.

Red has to reach an NPC that will give him the HM for Surf. The minimum number of steps to get there is 270. He can't misstep too many times, or else he won't be able to reach the NPC. As you can tell, this presents a huge problem for our Red, who is taking dozens of random steps all the time.
obtaining Meowth for his Pay Day attack may not be an option. Even if it WAS an option, getting the chatroom to cooperate long enough to catch a Meowth would be a Herculean task

Both of these are, to use your expression, Herculean in nature but not impossible. If you start saying 'if a task would take longer than X for TPP to force its way through it then it's impossible' then you are really defeating the point by choosing an arbtrary timeframe.

You can retry the Safari Zone as many times as you want, but it costs money each time. And money is limited. It's possible to run out of money in this game, and not have a way to obtain more money. Once every Trainer is defeated, that's it, you can't obtain more money. And whenever these guys walk into a Pokemart, they could wind up buying 99 of some random item and waste all of their money.

Pokemon also has a few other "fail states" as well. You need HMs to progress through the game, and it's possible to get yourself into a situation where you can't teach an HM to any of your current Pokemon and also can't catch a new Pokemon because you have no money and no way to obtain more money...or you could release all of the Pokemon in your possession who could potentially learn an HM.
OK, the money thing is a realistic problem (actually there ARE ways around it, but for the sake of argument we'll treat it as a game-stopper). In that case I could certainly see Democracy being a good thing here. I'm not against the idea of Democracy periods, I just think that they should be chosen by the person running it or whatever. I am against the chat being able to choose anarchy/democracy because in the VAST majority of situaitons it isn't needed and simply distracts from the main point.

There's another Pokemon stream called "RNG Plays Pokemon" where a random number generator gives the game random input. It got to Cerulean City with two Pokemon (Charizard and Magikarp) before releasing the Charizard at a PC, leaving the trainer with only a Magikarp who knows nothing other than Splash. Being stuck with one Pokemon who only knows one defensive move? That's definitely a fail state.
Struggle. Especially if you go back to Viridian Forest, where a large number of enemies will be Kakuna (and to a lesser extent in red, Metapod). Of course, RNG would not be able to find that way out, but we're talking about the design of TPP.[/quote]
 
Actually, an interesting experiment would be to have two simultaneous streams, one locked onto anarchy and the other lock on democracy, and then race them. Democracy is slower but theoretically more correct, while anarchy has... other issues.
 
> Democracy clears three gyms

> Anarchy still stuck looking at Helix Fossil
 
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RetroStation said:
> Democracy clears three gyms

> Anarchy still stuck looking at Helix Fossil
Last I checked democracy never did anything, go back to worshipping the dome fossil
 
DeathArcana said:
Last I checked democracy never did anything, go back to worshipping the dome fossil
I actually don't really care for TPP; saw it at the 4-day mark, thought it was funny until they kept saving every five seconds.

Also, would Anarchy be capable of solving the Strength puzzle?
 
RetroStation said:
Also, would Anarchy be capable of solving the Strength puzzle?

You mean the ones in Victory Road/Seafoam Islands? IIRC you can just leave the room and start again if you mess up, otherwise I never would have caught Articuno (I suck at those puzzles).
 
They can make it, theymade it through rock cave or whatever
 
But think about it. If they mess up, they have to leave to re-initiate the puzzle. It's bad enough on your own, but with roughly 75k+ other people sending inputs, it's a miracle just making it out of the room.
 
So I have questions about TPP.

1) What is up with Helix Fossil? Someone give me the rundown please.
2) What is up with Evve? Please, I need run downs.
3) What is the deal with Democracy and Anarchy? Those weren't there when I checked early on, I'm pretty sure. What do they do?
4) Good god, how is this having 60k players?!
 
Zidiane said:
So I have questions about TPP.

1) What is up with Helix Fossil? Someone give me the rundown please.
Helix fossil was (still is? idk) the first item in the item list, so whenever they wanted to use an item in battle or even when they didn't there would be huge loops of Menu > Item > Oak tells you off for trying to use the fossil > Menu > Item, etc.
2) What is up with Evve? Please, I need run downs.
No idea what this is.
3) What is the deal with Democracy and Anarchy? Those weren't there when I checked early on, I'm pretty sure. What do they do?
People can vote by typing one of those in the chat. Anarchy is the default setting, Democracy is a setting that performs only the action that was typed in the most times in the last 5 seconds.
4) Good god, how is this having 60k players?!
It's peaked at over 150k.
 
Zidiane said:
So I have questions about TPP.

1) What is up with Helix Fossil? Someone give me the rundown please.
2) What is up with Evve? Please, I need run downs.
3) What is the deal with Democracy and Anarchy? Those weren't there when I checked early on, I'm pretty sure. What do they do?
4) Good god, how is this having 60k players?!

  • What Vad said.
  • Apparently, the chat as a whole chose Eevee over Lapras, which was apparently a stupid thing to do.
  • Anarchy is when the bot uses EVERY input sent by chat. Democracy is when the bot chooses inputs based on consensus.
  • Again, what Vad said.
 
Vadsamoht said:
Helix fossil was (still is? idk) the first item in the item list, so whenever they wanted to use an item in battle or even when they didn't there would be huge loops of Menu > Item > Oak tells you off for trying to use the fossil > Menu > Item, etc.
lol
It's peaked at over 150k.
Jesus!
RetroStation said:
  • Apparently, the chat as a whole chose Eevee over Lapras, which was apparently a stupid thing to do.
Don't you get Eevee and Lapras in two seperate areas? How is there a picking one over the other?

Also, what is "start9"? or "up2right2"?
 
Instead of inputting a single command (e.g. 'up'), you can give a complex command like 'up2' or 'downright', which is to go up twice or down and then right before accepting the next input from the chat. So, 'up2right2' means you want Red to go up 2 spaces and then right 2 spaces, while 'start9' means you are a terrible human being.
 
TheGoggledGamer said:
I don't get to use this enough
The problem being that democracy hasn't really helped as much as we wanted it to. It can maybe get through the safari zone, but it has about as much chance of beating the strength puzzles as anarchy does tbh. Troll inputs taking the majority and the delay making people vote for the wrong thing makes it work about as fast as anarchy once the 10 second voting period is factored in. So democracy is usually just taking a bunch of tasks that anarchy really could be doing.
The only thing that I'm worried enough about to reinstate democracy for is the safari zone. And that would be after several tries by anarchy, since I'm not entirely convinced that it's impossible for anarchy to handle (it is NOT one of the tasks where one troll can press one input to screw everything up, which was the big problem with the ledge and the spin puzzle. I don't remember how lenient the safari zone is in regards to how efficient you need to be with your steps, but if it's around ~200 steps I think we could make it.) but I'm also not convinced that democracy can handle it so much better (a lot of people will forget the objective or not bother to follow it and try to catch some random pokemon, that's actually what I'm most afraid of in both modes- a large amount of people doing something other than moving towards the back and getting surf) so it's more of a "we'll see" sort of thing.
And perhaps the worst part about it is that there's a constant support for it, at any random point that anarchy stutters (as it tends to do) democracy gets a little closer and it's troubling.

Vadsamoht said:
Both of these are, to use your expression, Herculean in nature but not impossible. If you start saying 'if a task would take longer than X for TPP to force its way through it then it's impossible' then you are really defeating the point by choosing an arbtrary timeframe.
There is, though a big problem not being addressed. The safari zone is not made for you to constantly fuck up. If they fuck up too many times, they run out of money, and unless the creator comes back they've doomed themselves as the amount of money that it is possible for them to obtain is finite in red version before the elite 4. It is 100% possible for them to literally lose right here and not be able to progress any further.

RetroStation said:
Apparently, the chat as a whole chose Eevee over Lapras, which was apparently a stupid thing to do.
The people who said it was stupid to pick up eevee at all are idiots (it doesn't really prevent you from getting lapras and vaporeon would have been a much better water type anyway) but the people who pushed to get a fire stone were pretty fucking stupid.

Zidiane said:
Don't you get Eevee and Lapras in two seperate areas? How is there a picking one over the other?
People wanted to save a spot in the party for lapras because some people are naive and thought that no one was going to get any new pokemon within the next few days. Regardless of the fact that vaporeon is objectively better. The sentiment was also based around being afraid to go shopping and also fear that they would get a flareon. Which they did, unfortunately.
 
Zidiane said:
Don't you get Eevee and Lapras in two seperate areas? How is there a picking one over the other?

They needed a Pokemon to learn Surf so the options were a Vaporeon or a Lapras.
They tried Vaporeon. It didn't end well.
 
Vadsamoht said:
Honestly, I'd rather it if they had not introduced the anarchy/democracy things at all. IIRC, there is nothing you can do in Pokemon Red/Blue (excluding cheats) that makes the game unfinishable. Yes, Victory Road might take a week for people to get through, but that's one of the more interesting things about this run - checking up on progress and going 'how the f*** did they manage to achieve that?'. At worst, you could always have the guy running it step in and manually switch to democracy if there's a problem.

Seriously, show me a part of the game that will be IMPOSSIBLE with 100k people online.
Safari Zone. Mainly because Fuchsia City is the town where you get Surf and Strength.
 
Zidiane said:
Don't you get Eevee and Lapras in two seperate areas? How is there a picking one over the other?
It was between easier method (Lapras) versus the harder but 'better' method (Eevee -> Vaporeon). They were tempted into getting Eevee instead, sealing their fate and awakening the false prophet Flareon.

They could still get Lapras, but they never will.
 
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