48ths vs percentages for HP

Would there be a way to implement 48ths as an optional thing? It clearly has some advantages, though obviously people are gonna get mad if it gets forced onto everyone and replaces percentages completely. The middle ground would be allowing people to choose how they view the information. Having the option to toggle between percentages / 48ths / both would be a decent way to implement this, assuming it's possible of course.

Either way, I'd like to, at the very least, have the option to see HP bars as a percent value. I, and most of the PS userbase, aren't used to counting in 48th, and while it wouldn't take that long to get used to, there's no reason to completely replace the percentages.
 
The thing about displaying both hp rounded to 48ths and hp rounded to %s is that you can calculate the actual hp more accurately from it than %s would allow.

If a mon displays as 23/48, you know its hp is between 45.833% and 47.9166%.
If a mon displays as 46%, you know it is between 45% and 46%.

So now, if you get both information, you in fact know it is between 45.833% and 46.000%, which is extremely accurate.
 

Zarel

Not a Yuyuko fan
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Got it! thanks to DragonWhale 's brilliant idea

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...

edit: volcarona's HP after the endeavor is 19/311 which is just under 6.25%. The problem, obviously, duh, is that somehow it displays as 8% instead. The 8% sand is a well known phenomenon among tour players, I don't know why it happens though. In our actual battle I didn't bring volc down to 19 HP in one hit.
Fixed, it displays 7% now.

We always round up (from 6.1% to 7%) because it's generally more frustrating when an opponent lives a move that should've killed, than if they die from a move they should've lived. You see your own HP exactly, so the rounding can be based only on your opponent. This way, if an opponent's HP is "7%", it means a move that does exactly 7.0% will always KO (if we rounded nearest, 7% could mean 7.1% and survive an attack doing 7.0%).

The one exception is 99%, which represents anything from 98.1% to 99.9%
 
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M Dragon

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Wouldnt it better to round 6.25% down to 6% and 12.5% down to 12%?
That would be much more accurate.

Basically rounding down from X.0 to X.5, and rounding up from X.51

So if it shows 12%, it means that its HP is between 11.51% and 12.5%, so yo know that SR (if neutral) or 1 layer of spikes will always kill the mon. if it shows 6% you know that sand will kill the mon a 75% of the times, which is the same accuracy than rounding up (if rounding up, sand will kill a mon with 7% of its hp left the 25% of the times).

48ths are better to always know if sand or 2 layers of spikes are gonna kill a mon or not, but the loss of accuracy means that calcing xhkos is much harder, so its not worth of it.

What we could also do is implementing both, so the user could have the chance to see both (in the same way you can see how many HPs your pokemon has left)
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
I'm not sure how calcing XHKOes is "much" harder with 48ths, the opponent's HP is known to (basically) 2%, the only time it will really come into play is if theyre at say 29/48 and youve got a move that does 14.2/48 minimum, under percents you'd maybe know if it 2hkoes but under 48ths you dont—but that's just part of the game of Pokemon having incomplete information IMO, we already have scenarios like that, they'll just be slightly more common. If you're talking about the mechanical difficulty of converting the percents on the damage calculator to 48ths, well that's a complete non issue—we can just change the damage calculator to display damage in decimal 48ths (for example 19.36/48) and that should make the math as easy as before.

as for the rounding issue, it's a bad idea to give the option to display both because mid-battle you could switch from one to the other and see if their HP changes so that you can tell their HP to the 200th. Given the choice between the two, I'd prefer up-rounding because like zarel says, it's worse when an opponent lives an attack than when they don't. As long as you know which way it's rounding you should be able to account for it in your game plan so it's not a big deal to me either way really. Worth noting that with up-rounding, Life Orb recoil killing is always known, whereas for normal-rounding, it's a 50/50.
 

M Dragon

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Lets assume that a pokemon with 304 HPs has 20 HPs left.
That is a 6.58%, so it would be displayed as 7% with percentages (so we dont know if sand would kill it or no), and a 4/48 with 48ths (that means that it has between 6.25% and 7%). You have a greater accuracy than with % in some cases, and even sometimes know how many HPs has the opp mon left, but only if you know how many HP evs the opp mon has, and it is still not accurate enough to be able to know what spread the other mon has after a couple of hits.
You are right in something: ingame you can know exactly when a mon will die to SR or to sand looking at pixels, something you cant know with percentages. If we can see both, yes we get some extra information, but after all is the same information you can get ingame if your opponent tells you how much % his mon has left (you know that info AND you also know the number of pixels, so showing both would make sense).

Removing percentages is not an option though, especially if you show damage calced as percentages based on those 4ths (Thunderbolt doing 52.08% - 54.17% makes no sense and is confusing), and the loss of accuracy is huge.

I see no problem in just having both. After all the extra accuracy is not that relevant to easily know the opp mon ev spread as would happen if we added decimals to the percentage, and we get an extra information that we already get ingame (the number of pixels to know exactly when a mon is dying to sand, when is dying to rocks, etc).
 

DragonWhale

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I don't like how it displays 52.08% - 54.17% in the ingame formats either, but that can be changed the same way it doesn't display 53% - 53.99% with percentages.

The problem with having both is that you'll almost always have more information than with only one of the two, even in some rare cases narrow down the opponents' percentage to the nearest 0.08%, which is definitely too much. Having both because "you can get [it] ingame if your opponent tells you how much % his mon has left" is very weak reasoning because nobody did that before and nobody ever will.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
why would you show damage calcs as percentages based on 48ths? right now we dont even show them as based on percentage chunks. it'd make sense for tbolt to show in the calc as 25.1-27.8 48ths or 52.3-58.9%
 

M Dragon

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why would you show damage calcs as percentages based on 48ths? right now we dont even show them as based on percentage chunks. it'd make sense for tbolt to show in the calc as 25.1-27.8 48ths or 52.3-58.9%
That was what they implemented last time, and it was a disaster

Either show both porcentages AND 48ths or show only porcentages (aka do not change anything).
First option means you get extra info you can get ingame without giving too much information. If you think its too much information, then do not change anything
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
thats not what they implemented last time. 52.3-58.9% arent intervals of 1/48 theyre just numbers i picked out of my ass that werent intervals of 1/48. they'd be raw percentages. and it'd be fine for the calc to show both, as long as the %ages on PS were converted 48ths.
 

Stratos

Banned deucer.
oh yeah totally. To clarify, my proposal is:

On PS:
  • An option to display HP as fractions of 48. For example a pokemon that takes a weak hit might go from 15/48 to 11/48 and the battle log displays that it lost 4/48 of its HP. Meanwhile your own HP is displayed as a 48th to the 10ths place. For example, if you have 7/100 HP, it would show as 3.4/48, whereas if your opponent has 7/100 HP, it would show as 4/48.
  • An option to display opponent's HP as percentages (tied to the cap of the relative 48th). For example a pokemon that takes a weak hit might go from 31.3% to 22.9% and the battle log displays that it lost 8.4% of its HP. Meanwhile your own HP is displayed as a very precise percentage. For example, if you have 7/100 HP, it would show 7.0%, while if the opponent has 7/100 HP, it would show 8.3% (4/48 converted to a percent).
On damage calculator:
  • An option to display HP as fractions of 48, to the 10ths place. For example an attack may do 31.9-35.2/48.
  • An option to display HP as percentages, that has nothing to do with 48ths whatsoever. As in, literally what the calc displays now, no changes.
I see some slight possible confusion arising from the fact that while HP is reported to the 10ths of a percent, it is not actually precise to the 10ths of a percent, for example an opponent whose HP is displayed as 8.4% could be KOed by an attack that does 7.5% max.

But on the user end—if you're comfortable with percents, you never have to deal with 48ths math at all; your own pokemon will never die to a hit it should survive; your own pokemon will never survive a hit it should die to; the opponent's pokemon will never survive a hit it should die to. The only thing which may happen is your opponent's Pokemon dying to a hit it "should" survive, because keep in mind that their HP could be up to 2.2% lower than it's reported as. But that already happens, because their HP could be up to 0.9% lower than it's reported as, it'll just happen a bit more often.

The way I see it, making the best decision with incomplete information is part of competitive Pokemon, so I don't think we should be giving out extra information that's not given on carts. But if we do it this way, we can both 1) not give out extra information not given on carts and 2) do it in a way that makes sense and is comfortable for people who want percents.
 
There are two parts of this issue that need to be discussed separately.

1. The information that PS sends to players about their foe Pokémon HP.
2. The information that PS displays to players about their foe Pokémon HP.

The information sent can, in principle, be the amount of 48ths, 100ths, or both. Note that sending both pieces of information would directly allow the calculation of EV spreads from the damage, as described by david stone's excellent post: http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/on-cartridge-accurate-hp-reporting.3479677/page-4#post-4609225. (It also explains the difference between the information sent and its display.)

When the information sent is a percentage, there is no doubt that the display should also be the same.
However, when the information provided is fraction of 48, a corresponding range of percentages, an approximate percentage, or the exact fraction, as well as their combinations are all options for the display.

An user-friendliness order can be defined as
Exact fraction ~ Range of percentages < Approximate percentage

However, it's also true that the game does stuff in 48ths, so the fact that values are given as fractions of 48ths is moot, and we are only left comparing the numerator with the corresponding damage for Hazards / Residuals, EXCEPT that the damage calculator outputs results in percentages, but... you know... we CAN bring 48ths support to the Damage Calculator!

Now, there are also people who fear that, if we switched to restricting HP information to 48ths, some members of the community might depart to other simulators in the search of more accuracy and more comfort for them, but there exists a preliminary approval of the implementation of an option to make it so that if BOTH players agree to it in-battle, they will get their shiny "accurate" percentages back. This is no different from an impartial judge sharing this information between both players.

So, fear not that people will leave due to information loss, or that the Calculator will be incompatible with PS. These things will be sorted out in due time now that we know the concerns of you all.
 

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