Why is OU metagame so centralized?

[Imran]

Anyway this site is about competitive battling, and the drive to win, not some shitty little "Oh Noez everyone uses good pokemon."

You don't see Tiger Woods using crappy £100 clubs do you? No, to be the best, you have to use the best end of.

 

[AeroGP]

Anyway this site is about competitive battling, and the drive to win, not some shitty little "Oh Noez everyone uses good pokemon."

Nothing shitty about wanting more than 20 pokemon out of nearly 200 reasonable choices consistently "good," especially since with Shoddy Battle we have the power to actually change shit.

 

[TAY]

man im tired of this kinda assertation. huge new threats have been added and changed teambuilding forever, but that doesnt mean the metagame is centralized since its in a highly volatile sstate (i.e. everyone's like DAMN lookit these strong mons! im just gonna throw in 5 that cover the bases well offensively and call it a team)

"new" stall teams/counter offensive teams are JUST starting to emerge really, let the metagame settle down before making outrageous claims.

it's really too early to discuss the metagame like it's at equilibrium at this moment imo, there is too much going on

Agreeing with smarty Gorm in that the metagame is currently in a sort of transition period from heavy offense to a sort of "mixed" or "slow bulk + spam paralysis" stage, since somewhere along the line it was realized that status and the move "substitute" kick the crap out of offensive teams.

Things like Endeavor Infernape and T-wave Zapdos are examples of threats which are only just now starting to gain popularity...so talking about the metagame as if it has already settled really is a bit naive.

 

[Imran]

Nothing shitty about wanting more than 20 pokemon out of nearly 200 reasonable choices consistently "good," especially since with Shoddy Battle we have the power to actually change shit.

Then why are you on this site. Smogon is a site dedicated to Competitve POkemon and being succesful at competitive pokemon, you can see this in the team rates section and all over the place. I'm not saying wanting to be different is shitty, but I suggest looking somewhere else if that is what you are after. People on Smogon Shoddy Battle server are mostly there to win, not to play with lower Tier Pokemon, it's Smogon's philosophy.

 

[never_again]

lol i know, i used to have a team of

Tyranitar/Garchomp/Creselia/Celebi/Heatran/DeoxysE
it was so cheap

but now adays, pokemon like Scizor are so broken
Gengar was always a big threat, although it went down some with Hypnosis going down

starter pokemon are being used more (meaning swampert and infernape)

i dont think its so much of the 600 pokemon thing, because the 600 pokemon can easily be countered
its more of that the 600 pokemon are some of the best when it comes to certain roles on teams

i mean think about it, Nite/Tar/Mence/Gross have the highest Atk Stats in the business
They dont come any faster than Deoxys or Skymin
its very hard to top Cresselia's combination of 120/120/130 HP/Defenses
the list goes on

Yes, it is overcentralized but not over 600 pokemon, it just happens some of the most used pokemon are 600 pokemon, and people build their teams to keep up with the trend

You cant really change anything because if you take out stuff like Heatran and Skymin(which im not against) then the pokemon they counter will become the new centers of the metagame

 

[ViVi]

Anyway this site is about competitive battling, and the drive to win, not some shitty little "Oh Noez everyone uses good pokemon."

You don't see Tiger Woods using crappy £100 clubs do you? No, to be the best, you have to use the best end of.

I dont really see Golf and Competetive Pokemon being a great base for making comparisions but that aside..

To be honest Id say a player that can win say...85-90% of his/hers battles not using the 6 OU-OU Pokemon a better then a player using the 6 most common Pokemon who iwns 90-95% of his/hers battles.

Thats what I like about Pokemon, winning a good portion of the time using different strategies, rather then using the same exact strategies as many of my opponents and hoping that the stars align better for me then my opponent...

 

[The Death Owl]

The pokemon team everyone is mentioning takes no skill...

A; Azelf / Starmie / Weavile / Gliscor / Gyarados / Donphan is much better. :3

 

[Kietharr]

That team gets outright destroyed by Deoxys, there's nothing good about that.

 

[Chou Toshio]

In my opinion, while the numbers may state otherwise, I really feel like alot more Pokemon were viable without Garchomp, things that rely on Thunderwave (Pory-2, for example) maybe didnt become OU overnight but are alot more usefull.

Please note that is just a small sample of what I believe is more viable without Garchomp, I dont have time to list everything. I think the reason the suspect ladder ebcame more over centralized was because players were trying to figure out what was going to fit into Garchomps niche of being the end-all sweeper best.

I also don't want to get into garchomp. We were right for banning it, end of story.

Point being there was already a move towards the types of teams we have now, platinum or not.

Zapdos/heatran/salamence/bulky water/celebi/[Lucario/Metagross/Bronzong] became
Zapdos/heatran/salamence/bulky water/[skymin/celebi]/[Scizor/Metagross/Lucario . . . /bronzong . . .] . . .

(look, two more pokemon than before, it's less centralized, lol)

Point being is that it's not just that platinum came out, but also simply where we are in the development stage of the metagame.

 

[never_again]

chou, in ur platinum breadkwon, you listed Skymn/Celebi
are you talking about both as Subseeding, or both as offensive grass types
i personally used offensive CM celebi, but i dont think they fit the same role

also, i dont think Zapdos was THAT abundant back then, or perhaps its just me

 

[ViVi]

I would agree with your last state chou (your whole post but that specifically), only thing I would add is that the metagame has been changing dramatically from day 1, you could go as far as to say that Platinum didnt change it anymore then the other times it evolved, only differently

 

[Great Sage]

This thread is not substantiated with any evidence, and besides, the idea of restricting Pokemon on the grounds of something completely arbitrary, such as legendary status, which is only relevant ingame anyways, is preposterous.