>>41898495>obtuse, bullshit rulesLet's take perhaps the primary facility you have in mind: The Battle Palace---the strongest example you could propose; it it turns out to be not so bad after all, this may show your impressions of the facilities' validity to be mistaken and unreliable.
For a refresher, the Battle Palace functions by putting an AI in control of one's Pokemon, acting according to its nature. Picrel is the chart displaying the ratio of preference for types of moves the Pokemon has, 1st when they are above half their health points, and 2nd when they are below half their health points.
Now, the game never tells you that it bases tactics off Nature, let alone according to precise probabilities for classes of actions---so it is, at least, "obscure".
But is it obtuse? Well, it seems intuitive to me that certain Pokemon, if left to their own devices, would have different personal styles of battling. Take a Relaxed natured Pokemon. According to the chart, a Relaxed Pokemon has a huge preference for Support moves when it is healthy, like I'd expect. However, I would expect it too to majorly prefer Defensive moves over Attacking ones---but not only is this not borne out, the ratio completely flips when the Pokemon is under stress, becoming given to a whopping 75% chance of using an Attacking move. That doesn't seem to me consistent at all.
And then you have the Careful nature, which you would expect to produce a cautious Pokemon, using Support moves only 8% (eight) percent of the time! What! I would expect it to be exactly on par with Defensive move useage, but that isn't the case here. So, given these two examples, we can see the system has flaws, and can be safely deemed "obtuse".
But is it bullshit? The Pokemon sometimes may not act at all, for no good reason. They never hesitate when commanded, but do when battling on their own? They can make suboptimal plays that not only frustrate you, but can cost you the match, to no fault of your own. So BS? Sure.
