Ubers community

Status
Not open for further replies.
Hi.

Multiple recent incidents of strife between two or more Ubers players have me concerned about the community as a whole. There's been a fair amount of arguing on both the Ubers room on PS and on IRC (by tournaments players and "plebs" alike), and yesterday some frustrations spilled out into this subforum. I know Theorymon has vented his frustrations about the community, and steelphoenix wants to quit Ubers after SPL, for example.

So...can we talk about this? This is reality, I recognize that we do not live in a Barney episode & by no means do I expect everyone to like each other. But is there anything I can do as a Moderator (@) to reduce toxicity? Are there consistent overarching concerns that are possible to address? I recognize that the ORAS Ubers metagame -- which many players who I respect consider to be stale -- probably has something to do with it, but I'd like to talk about this before the community itself is associated with toxicity on a long-term scale rather than let these issues fester.

Do note that this is not a thread to discuss bans ~ Fireburn
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I think people who aren't a part of SPL shouldn't be negatively commenting and talking shit about the games. I know I'm not a tournament player, but I can imagine how they feel when people who aren't even playing in SPL are saying "LOOOOOL choke" or talking shit about every decisive play when they really have no idea what's going on. I'm not gonna name any names here but I see a lot of people from this community (not tourney players) who do this in the chat during SPL games, and it bothers me. Chill out and remember you're in no place to criticize anyone if you aren't even playing. The games are supposed to be enjoyable for everyone, (or as enjoyable as competitive Pokemon can get anyways) otherwise what's the point? I don't think there's anything wrong with discussing the games, or asking the players questions to understand their thought process a bit better, but there's no need to do so in an obnoxious manner. No comment on any other toxicity, I haven't really been paying attention to forum drama but I felt that this needed to be said.

Anyways, this used to be my favorite tier by far, mostly because of the diversity that was possible in both playing and teambuilding, but I really don't feel like this is the case anymore. I've lost a lot of my motivation to play this tier since ORAS was released and I don't think I'm the only one.. If anyone wants me to expand on this I definitely can, I'm interested to hear other people's thoughts too!
 
Last edited:
As a moderator on a minecraft server where similar issues arise daily, I can say this: harshen the rules on flaming/ad hominem/insults. Whenever the community feels that staff won't take action, they become more rowdy. User constantly flaming on the forums? Shoot him a warning point. On IRC insulting others? Ban him for a few hours. It works.

Like in the SPL ubers thread with users just bashing on one dude's team. Yeah their posts were deleted, but did they learn or even realize what they did wrong? Probably not. That's what punishment is for. Give them a warning point of two, and let the community know action is being taken. I know that doesn't get the staff a whole lot of respect points but their job is to "moderate" the forums so they should be doing just that.

Yes, I am not the best ubers battler. Yes, I am not an active poster on the forums. But I do know how to manage rowdy internet people. Just my two cents.
I think people who aren't a part of SPL shouldn't be commenting and talking shit about the games. I know I'm not a tournament player, but I can imagine how they feel when people who aren't even playing in SPL are saying "LOOOOOL choke" or talking shit about every decisive play when they really have no idea what's going on. I'm not gonna name any names here but I see a lot of people from this community (not tourney players) who do this in the chat during SPL games, and it bothers me. Chill out and remember you're in no place to criticize anyone if you aren't even playing. The games are supposed to be enjoyable for everyone, (or as enjoyable as competitive Pokemon can get anyways) otherwise what's the point? I don't think there's anything wrong with discussing the games, or asking the players questions to understand their thought process a bit better, but there's a difference between that and obnoxious trash talk. No comment on any other toxicity, I haven't really been paying attention to forum drama but I felt that this needed to be said.
I'd like to add on to this. People who aren't playing in these high level matches shouldn't be able to chat in them, especially if they only want to talk shit. It also goes the other way. Too commonly I see the tournament battlers talking crap on the ladder players. They may not be the best players, but they still matter. Why should they get less respect then older users? That's something else action should be taken on. Punish more experienced users for being dicks to new players.

Delete this post if you think it's bad, but I'm just giving feedback from the viewpoint of a "pleb."
 

Lemonade

WOOPAGGING
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Social Media Contributor Alumnusis an Artist Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus
Hmm imo there's too much focus on spl, though I guess there's not very much else to talk about since there aren't really suspects or anything. I also get the impression that a lot of people talk down to everyone, and then when I go read the RU forum it's pretty level outside correcting when someone is factually wrong. Idk it seems to me like most of the users are more chill and want to enjoy the game rather than be better than everyone / think they are better than everyone. edit: forums-wise not too big of an issue

A lot of discussion in the spl thread too focused on hax (at least in the first two pages or so). Sure it's interesting to speculate how a game would proceed without hax (though some people really try to inflate their egos by showing how they would have won if there weren't haxed), but discussing / speculating on thought processes is actually useful for, for example, helping newer players understand what is going on.

I agree with you brokenwings in that people shouldn't be spamming "choke" and stuff, but commentating is completely fine (see every other "sport" that people watch). The focus should be on reasoning behind the plays and exploring options. But rather than dismissing a nonsensical play and categorizing it as "bad", it should be first trying to understand the play, and if that's still not possible, well luckily the players are there and hopefully would answer a respectfully asked question (hey on turn X I thought you would make this switch because these reasons, I'm curious to hear what you had in mind). The difference in what you thought was going on and what was going through the player's head is a good learning point. In general if you don't understand something, it's not automatically bad (unless you are a god), but some people don't have this attitude (and they tend to be the most vocal).

Lastly ye the meta is a bit stale, there's not really much going on outside of spl and there aren't any suspects "cuz Ubers". ngl I wouldn't mind laddering for a week w/o Primal Groudon and maybe another week without Ekiller or something, imo it really does help having something consistent going on where people can actively participate to talk about. The minitours are cool, but you barely play any games, and you have to build multiple teams.
 
Last edited:
yea i absolutely agree with the above. obnoxiousness is bad enough wherever it may come from, but it's about twice as annoying when it comes from trash who didn't even get picked up for spl (and odds are, this isn't because you aren't as ~known~ as hack or mm2 or edgar or whoever, it's because you fucking suck and that's why you're stuck talking shit from the sidelines in ways that make you look like the world's biggest tool). i know firsthand how frustrating it is to watch people who you know you're better than get to soak up the spotlight but if you are actually good and win, you will get noticed. you will not believe how many established players will tell you the same. you know who no one knew less than a year ago and is now starting ubers in spl? evuelf, the guy who 6-0es me in 9 turns in every tier we play, because he's fucking good and someone noticed.

hopefully obviously i don't condone the idea of "you have to be an established player to give your opinion" because that's horseshit, i don't have to be a successful metal drummer to tell you that lars ulrich can't play to save his life. anyone can chime in like "i think he should've done x because there was no way y was gonna do z and that move would've given him a ton of momentum" and that's totally cool as long as you're respectful like "just my opinion though, i thought it was a pretty good game regardless" (you don't have to sound like such a kiss ass btw it's just polite). however when you go "x played terribly, y was so obvious" (slight hyperbole, you get the point) that's totally not cool. a rookie in the nba doesn't tell kobe bryant that he could've gotten a better angle on that fadeaway jumper because he's in no position to do so, when he's got 5 championships and is considered as an all-time great maybe he can pipe up but until then he'll be paying his dues.

also in regards to "the metagame is stale" well if that's the case there's probably something wrong with it and since ubers is an official tier that is being played for trophies maybe something should be changed but that's probably a discussion best left for elsewhere.

tl;dr if you're trash and talking shit about people better than you, kill yourself
 

AM

is a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnusis a Past WCoP Champion
LCPL Champion
I'm gonna echo what brokenwings said because we actually communicate a lot on other issues including the tier.

To be frank..... your metagame is boring as shit and cancerous to play. I actually played a lot of Ubers back in XY cause it was a really enjoyable metagame. The transition to ORAS changed this aspect and after only playing a handful or so games lost so much motivation to even get back into the tier, a tier that I mostly wanted to learn to help others with team-building especially new comers. This isn't an argument for banning stuff it's just leading me to my next point.

Because of this staleness your user base has nothing left to discuss and as such without maybe even realizing it themselves they've focused their attention on the most petty of matters that occur, I'm speaking mostly on the general user base and then some who convey this elitist attitude. Enter SPL....where the spotlight is on this for everyone to scrutinize each other over such trivial matters. I've spent a couple of days reading through the threads and I'm sure I'm not the only one distraught by reading such negativity in the way you put down your own community for whatever the issue at hand may be. For example let's take this rephrasing of a quote I see a lot "This is just a rehash of some team I made whenever ago therefore it's not original and the change they put made it worse, based on my professional opinion of course." In a tier infested with P-Don, Xern, Ekiller, M-Gengar, insert mon here, are people really giving themselves the illusion they have some sort of claim of ownership and have the right to bash another user for using a similar archetype? Do you know how many players in OU just use teams by Hugo on any given day during the tournaments? Granted the OU community isn't the greatest at times but the difference between us and Ubers I feel is that at the end of the day, most of us at least, we drop such trivial matters that no one should realistically care about in the long run. We have like 80+ different threats and a crazy amount of variation in OU to take into account for do you really think we give any sort of care about other people using teams or just bashing people and holding grudges in the long run? You have players that are holding grudges from like a year ago or more and these attitudes makes the community cancerous because you'll have players just backing up these people that you consider role models but at the same time we'll bash the same players that support them. That's like being an artist going to a concert of another artist you've loved for so long and as such you have similar styles and inspirations from them. Then when you show them the work you created to gain some acknowledgement or some respect, instead of giving you constructive advice, they give you the middle finger and be on there way along with their group of fans they don't even care about either. Why is this being endorsed as a norm?

Yes Sweep, I think your meta being stale is a factor but the root cause is the people involved to begin with. The players who acknowledge this cancerous attitude conveyed by numerous individuals need to step in and address it as such, such as yourself with this thread. Thankfully I've seen some cases of this happening by respected players who deserve their recognition and are exemplary role models. I'm also agreeing with the above sentiments that players should not be trying to be jackasses towards the ones playing the game. I get a little fun and a little rowdiness here and there cause that's what makes the scene entertaining but some of you guys that aren't even able to make it half way through a ladder that you can bullshit your way up through with just spamming the entire S rank category, shouldn't even be talking about how a player did bad.
 
brokenwings already covered most of the stuff I wanted to say but I'm going to give feedback. i personally HATE how objective people are when they criticize tournament games, especially the big ones like SPL, you've got to realize this kind of stuff might put a lot of pressure on the player's head, sometimes it is really hard to focus, naturally, we can make mistakes during those games, we're human so we're not perfect. That's why I was so against of the SPL discussion thread, when I end a pokemon game, whether I win or lose I forget about it after I watch the replay to see my mistakes and then I tend to leave it behind, seeing those people aggressively criticizing my games leaves a bad taste in my mouth, why are these people critizing my games when I was chosen to play in this big tournament over them? I normally don't take much pride of anything I do with this game because then again, I play it for "fun" and when I see people doing that type of criticism it somehow feels like that is taken away from me, because I think people are taking it too far over a game.

About the community, well I think we should all chill out and stop having a clash of egos, Ubers could be a much better place if we could just help each other improve instead of hating on our community, we are the ones who made the community this way and it won't change unless there's a massive change on our attitude towards other users.

I don't know if this is of relevance but I'll talk about it: I know a lot of "top players" are going to stop playing the tier after SPL (including myself I'll talk about my personal reaons: When I first started playing in Ubers in early 2012 I fell in love with it because I could be pretty creative when building teams and seeing cool ideas of mine succeed, that prolonged to BW2 and even XY. During ORAS I started to feel that the same creativity and ways of mold teams around, using gimmicks that could win you big games were almost beyond my range. If you look at the teams that are being used in SPL, a lot of them ressemble each other, this made me come to the conclusion that I can't be creative anymore, the tier that I enjoyed playing and motivated me to grow as a battler and player overall just feels like it has dried out, and no good will become out of this. I hate the new pokemon introduced in ORAS and I hate the way they made the metagame so montone. I have some plans for the future in which I quit Ubers but they should remain unspoken for now.

Thanks for reading.
 
Last edited:

Mr.378

The Iron Man of Ubers
is a Tiering Contributor Alumnus
In my eyes the problem really is twofold. The ubers metagame right now just isn't very fun or interesting to play right now. The tier has really become unbalanced in such a way to make it bad and repetitive. This goes contrary to what ubers has always been: a tier with the most broken threats, but in such a way that they balance themselves. Gen 4 and 5 present this perfectly, and I along with many other members of the community love them for it. Even XY had elements of the game design philosophy in it. They are among my favorite tiers in all of pokemon and I believe them to be some of the best tier this series has ever given up because of how fun yet workable this philosophy is. ORAS just added new threats and new mons that are so good they at the very least encompass entire play styles and make it hard to make a team that's innovative and has purpose behind it besides blind gimmick. Necessity is the mother of innovation, so why innovate if there is no need to because the current tool set works best? As a result discussion the tier is limited to the same old things we've already discussed 100 times before.

This leads to the other problem: the community's obsession with tours and high level events/players. It isn't even limited to spl, as seen in the most recent subfourm tour where there have been at least two outbursts because of how matches went. The community is focused on these events because they are what's left to talk about because of how stagnant the meta has gotten. As a result we see some people's true sides come out and it is clear that they are less than desirable. Honestly I feel as if the solution to this is to increase moderation, especially in the Ubers room. That may seem weird because of how many mods there aret here right now but none of them are willing to actually moderate anything so all of the anger and other undesirable sides of the community go unchallenged and just get worse as the users begin to take that for granted. Users do need to get infracted at times because we can clearly see at many times that a lot of the users here aren't the best of people and they should be held accountable for that because trying to change them, especially with minor slaps on the wrist, is futile.

These are just a few of my disjointed thoughts on the state of the community that I have been having right now. There probably is more depth I could go into, but this is a good gist of it. There clearly is a problem though. I've loved and played this tier for years now yet I feel less motivated to do anything in it now more then ever, to the point where I'll probably quit it after upl ends. I'm not sure if this is something that can be totally reversed, but it needs to be discussed anyway.
 
the spl shittalking isn't exclusive to the ubers community though; it's something you find with pretty much almost anyone who takes interest in watching and/or playing in these tournaments. if this toxic behavior is really somehow concentrated in ubers as opposed to any other area for some reason, then that's totally on the members of the sub-community and that just means you need to take more action against them rather than letting it slide

but idk. as sort of an aside, i kind of mentioned this to jibaku before, but i always feel like smogon is in a degenerative state with one major reason being that it's always trying to (and does) expand in new players which causes a divide and leads to a lot of clique-esque behavior. this is just a bad side-effect that really can't be addressed efficiently. you're really not going to be close-knit with every single person you find here, on irc, and on ps even though all these people fall under the umbrella of "ubers community members" and a lot of the behavioral issues kind of stem from that. it's really evident by the amount of unsportsmanlike behavior you get anywhere, and how tournament directors and mods can't or don't do much about it because it's "collectively done by a lot of people and is not just the fault of a single person." it's just the microculture that built itself on smogon which anyone can get away with and that's why smogon is pretty ass. as someone who used to contribute a ton to neverused, i feel the same way about that tier and that's why i stopped bothering doing any similar duties like a year ago. i don't think it's particularly exclusive to ubers itself to where the people who run only one tier can remedy it

also does the state of the ubers metagame itself really have anything to do with people's behavior? that's bullshit lol put the blame where it's deserved
 
I'm relatively new compared to a lot of the current Ubers players, but I got into Ubers at the start of XY. I've mostly stopped playing Ubers (and pokemon in general) a bit after ORAS came out so I'm not in touch with the community. That said, I still lurk a lot on the forum and Ubers room and I'm in agreement that they are both lacking moderation. I wouldn't know what it's like to moderate a pokemon forum, but it looks a bit unhealthy for the Ubers SPL discussion thread to have trash talk as the first couple of posts. Also, it doesn't help that they are by well-respected users.

If a new user stumbled upon that thread, they'll probably assume it's perfectly acceptable to bash and insult each other. I know most of those posts are supposed to be humorous and, yes, I did laugh at them, but I think it incentivizes people to participate in 'toxic' behavior. The lack of moderation not only allows, but promotes people to trash talk other players and it's not necessary at all.

It's true that there will always be trolls and random trashtalkers. However, I think the obvious way to decrease the number of these type of people is to teach them not to involve themselves in bad behaviour through example. The way you do that is to moderate the amount of contentless bashing. They're often funny, but only for a while so it doesn't make sense to leave the excess amount of them that I see in the forum and on PS unattended. I guess this may apply to the majority of the forum anyway, but it's my personal take on this issue considering the toxicity is at an unusual high right now.

Also, the staleness of ORAS is probably involved too, but I haven't played too much ORAS so I wouldn't be the best person to talk about it.
 
Last edited:

Jibaku

Who let marco in here????
is a Top Team Rater Alumnusis a Senior Staff Member Alumnusis a Smogon Discord Contributor Alumnusis a CAP Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Two-Time Past SPL Champion
Alright I'm gonna be rather frank about this, and I apologize if this sounds rude, but I'm not sure if I can word it nicer.

Honestly, if "metagame dislike" is the main issue here (is this even the real reason?), I don't see why people don't just, you know, leave? Why do people insist on sticking around, complaining about it, spreading their opinions under the guise of the elitist, and subsequently poisoning the rest of the community? I disliked how BW OU took care of things, and I left. I became a lot happier, and I think some people were glad that I stopped getting in the way of certain things.

In any case I do agree with ium's post - there's too much elitism going on. Too much "us and them". Too much random bashing etc.
I think people who aren't a part of SPL shouldn't be commenting and talking shit about the games. I know I'm not a tournament player, but I can imagine how they feel when people who aren't even playing in SPL are saying "LOOOOOL choke" or talking shit about every decisive play when they really have no idea what's going on.
I disagree with this - what we need to do is to minimize this perceived divide between "pros" and "casuals". Non spl players should be allowed to comment. They may not be right, but that doesn't mean we have to be so toxic or salty about it. And honestly, if spl players are getting so horrendously affected by trashtalking, they really need to grow a thicker skin and shrug them off. They can also either: attempt to justify their action that people see as choking, or simply admit it's their error. It's not the hardest thing to do. Perhaps the rest of the playerbase will then follow your example and attitude and drop the toxicity altogether.

Obviously, this does not justify that people should comment in a terrible manner in the first place. But fighting toxicity with toxicity isn't helping anyone.

If I recall there were even spl players who were salty about their rankings in that article. I don't even know how people can get so worked up over something that minor...
 
Last edited:
This is a growing issue in the entire smogon community, not just ubers. The problem stems from our inability to police our own social groups, we've effectively developed a toxic culture throughout the whole forum. Older users or "tour players" have formed their own untouchable tight-knit clique. They're allowed to trash talk, shitpost, and bully regulars without much consequence. Other than a minor infraction or month ban that's more like two weeks because they're bf's with staff. I guess it's a problem now that the regulars have begun to do the same. To everyone else, don't worry about making e-friends, just be yourself ... enjoy playing the game, enjoy occasionally posting in interesting topics and enjoy browsing the forums for new ideas.

Also, the meta is pretty stale because all teams pretty much follow the same formula:
1. Any Arceus-forme
2. Xerneas
3. Some Xerneas check
4. Prime Groudon or Kyogre (Prime Groud can be a Xern check so you throw in Mega Mence in the #3 spot)
5. Filler - something that can set entry hazards
6. Filler
 
Last edited:
To be honest, I just feel like a lot of people in our community simply "cares too much". I don't mean this in a purposely offensive manner, but POKEMON IS JUST A GAME (seriously). I love this game, and I just want to have FUN. I don't understand at all about why Player A is bashing Player B for making bad plays, choking, etc. Egos? Grudges? ridiculous. I understand that SPL can get real heated and such, but don't vent your anger on others. Please don't. It just adds more to the "toxicity".

and the community isn't all that toxic; there are plenty of great users and contributors that thrive in ubers. it makes me sad that some pretty experienced players like edgar are leaving the community because of this pitiful "conflict". i also agree w/ ium about how the meta has nothing to do with this lmao

As for the issue of "plebs", we can just use harsher punishments to limit their presence.

please come back together my frens this conflict is stupid and breaking our community apart ;w;
 
Well, I'm a little perplexed by this thread. I don't believe that this "toxicity" is specific to the ubers forum / community, and I haven't noticed anything out of the business-as-usual going on [By business as usual, I mean what's commonly accepted on Smogon]. You mentioned "there's been a fair amount of arguing on both the Ubers room on PS and on IRC (by tournaments players and "plebs" alike), and yesterday some frustrations spilled out into this subforum". Okay, you mentioned arguments, but that's normal. As for the subforum frustration part, I saw that as some beef bewteen 2 individual smogon users and not some huge issue that reflected the whole community. So overall, yes, I have seen a decent amount of toxicity, but nothing that I haven't already been seeing in the smogon tournament scene on a consistent basis over the past few months. I say "smogon tournament scene", since that's where all / most of my attention is focused on. So overall, in my opinion, I do agree that there is toxicity on smogon, but It is not specific to the ubers community [its smogon wide], and this toxicity has been commonly accepted among the smogon playerbase . But at the end of the day, this is just my theory & opinion based off what I've seen myself. I haven't been playing in tournaments lately so I've had more time to observe the community / talk to more players so thats where my information comes from.

Addressing some concerns seen in the post above me -

ORAS Uber Metagame being stale / boring / unncompetitive etc - Eh, I get that a lot of players dislike ORAS due to primal groudon + primal kyogre + a lot of powerful threats to prepare for. But that's just how pokemon is, it changes from generation to generation. First of all, OU and Ubers are two completely different tiers with two completely different philosophies. You can't compare a tier like that, there's more factors that you have to consider.

I don't want to write a long post but I 'll simply state these facts concerning the ORAS Ubers Metagame. Traditionally, Ubers has always been a tier centralized around the top 3-5 pokemon and dominated by hazard control. This has been the case since I myself have been playing ubers [since BW1] and this still hasn't changed. Despite all of the new additions, were still centralized around a few pokemon, and hazard control [stealth rocks being the case now] can make the difference bewteen a win and lose. Now then, what has changed? We have more threats, and the top few pokemon have gotton more powerful, but othewise you still play ubers the same way you've always been playing it - have a solid team, control the hazard game, and do your best to outplay your opponent.

The question "but blim, isn't primal groudon / xerneas / m-gengar OP now?". They could very well be, but the philosophy of the ubers tier has been to only ban when Absolutely WITHOUT ANY DOUBT NECESSARY [as in the case of m-ray [ http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...-is-added-m-ray-is-banned-from-ubers.3523205/ ]. Obviously, these threats are very powerful but this isn't the thread to discuss whether they "break" the metagame or not, and were still very early into ORAS. Now, if you want my personal opinion, If this were OU, xerneas + m-gar + most likely primal groudon would all be banned now. But this is the tier were we play with these threats unless it's just something stupid like m-ray. I personally think that ORAS is playable + there's PLENTY of room for innovation. The only side-effect I see of all these new threats is that the tier has become much more centralized. P DON, arceus, and xerneas are on a lot of teams now, where-es in the past you had more team varation.

Toxicity within the Ubers Community

I see that toxicity exists, but it isn't ubers specific - it's more of what I see in the General Tournament Scene [especially the SPL thread]. In the SPL thread, I've seen a general lack of respect for your opponent, constantly bragging about winning even if you got lucky, showing-off, being sarcastic etc. Let me cite a few examples of what I see -

http://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/smogtours-ubers-33751 -

This is what happened at the end of this SPL match: ★Problems: good game you sack of shit
Problems forfeited.
johnqualine won the battle!
★johnqualine: gg!

Problems is a good friend of mine and I respect him as a player, but this was completely uncalled for. I'm aware of the fact that steelskitty is considered a "lucky n bad" in some circles of the tournament scene, but I've never seen steel act obnoxious or have a lack of respect toward anyone on smogon. Of course, I'm not aware of any disciplinary action that was taken towards problem, so apparently this is accepted in the tournament scene.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/thread...e-6-commencement.3523236/page-30#post-5974039 - User CasedVictory [another good friend of mine] goes ballistic on moderator kokokoko because he was cheering on his nu player and hoping for some luck? The pastebin of what he said is now removed...but it had plenty of f bombs and something about koko's mother. Of course, fireburn's post got 50+ likes, koko was just being "salty". Business as usual [I just wanna say, I have a lot of respect for fireburn, the scooters, and I don't have anything personal against anyone who liked this post, I simply think that what case did was uncalled for, that's all, nothing personal]

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/smogon-premier-league-6-week-3.3527493/page-5#post-6000756 - I don't think I need to say anything about this one.

Not trying to "call anyone out", or whatever, but if you want to seriously address toxicity - start there. But this type of stuff is accepted, if the smogon staff wants less toxicity then in my humble opinion, they really need to start getting on these user's asses and start clamping down on this type of behavior. I personally don't care about what happens, but don't complain about toxicity if you're the same guy who is supporting it and/or you're a mod and not doing anything about it, the blind can't lead the blind.

The Ubers SPL Discussion Thread

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ubers-spl-replays-discussion-thread.3526174/page-3#post-6005766

I'm going to be brutally honest here, so please don't even reply to me unless you can take criticism and respond in a constructive matter. First of all, I am not a big fan of this thread. I think it's mostly a waste of time...why? There's honestly not much to discuss, I see people here writing essays about nothing and over-complicating everything. What happens when there's not much to talk about concerning the game? That's right, instead of talking about the game itself, people start talking player decisions and their teams. And to be frank, most of the week 1 teams were garbage, and there was plenty of misplays to go around. If you're an SPL player and can't take criticism, how are you ever going to improve your game? Instead of whining about how you're being unfairly attacked in this pointless thread, hit the teambuilder and start building some better teams. Start scouting your opponent ahead of time, watch what other people are using in the ubers scene, talk with other respected players about new team ideas. I'm tired of seeing you guys whining about criticism, when frankly, some of have been downright pitiful and rightfully criticized.

I had the best uber record in SPL 4 and in SPL 5. Why? I worked my ass off, toke criticism, and made sure to always improve where I was lacking. I personally don't care about anyone in SPL whining about what someone else thinks of them when I've already been there, get better instead of worrying about these threads so much.

Now...some of the replies toke it too far, obviously, and no one likes to be attacked 24/7 after a bad game. But I don't think the problem is the players...there's just not much to talk about concerning the games themselves, so people naturally start talking about the bad teams and bad plays they've seen. I think the thread is really a waste of time myself....yes...we get to see some cool teams and new ideas, but do we really need an entire thread for that?

Summary of my Post

Toxicity in the ubers community - toxicity is not a ubers specific issue [if smogon even considers this level of "toxicity" an issue] but it's a tournament-wide issue.

ORAS Ubers Metagame - The ubers metagame gotton much more centralized, but the better player can still win by building good teams and playing well. Nothing has changed in this regard, team match-up has always existed in this game.

The SPL Ubers Thread - A thread where there's not much to talk about, instead everyone just gets salty here and talk about how bad the teams have been. Overall, this thread has been a failure.
 
Last edited:

Fireburn

BARN ALL
is a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnus
Don't have much time right now so here are some (not so) quick thoughts:

  • Commentating on SPL games is fine. It's a spectator event - people talk about those. Trying to follow to the thought process of a more experienced player is good because it can help improve your game too. However, talking crap about the players and being salty is not. Remember - they got to play in SPL, you didn't. Be respectful of that.
  • Don't talk crap about less experienced players. I know we do this all the time in joking around and it gets perpetuated by certain things (ubers ladder sux lol, silly things on ladder thread, etc), but it is important to remember that everyone has to start somewhere and we all start from the same place: the bottom. You are not born good at Pokemon, everyone was "the ladder random who used Quick Claw Kyogre" at some point.
  • An ego is a character flaw, not a virtue. If you play Pokemon just to inflate it, go find a new hobby.
  • SPL naturally gets a lot of attention in Ubers because 1) its Ubers being represented in an official Smogon tournament and 2) usually only the best of the best get to play in it. The metagame has little to do with it, it's more about watching the best players go at it because it is entertaining to watch (ideally) high quality games. That, and SPL is normally a focal point of metagame development for Ubers since there is (usually) plenty of innovation by the top players in their neverending quest to counterteam each other.
  • I recognize that many people find the metagame to be stale, but you should also keep in mind that ORAS is still relatively young, the new stuff shook Ubers up more than probably anything else before it, and we're only about ~3 weeks into SPL. What I am more interested in is how the metagame will look after SPL is over. But that doesn't mean you have to let it fester if you don't like it. If you don't like how PDon is on every team, make one without it (read: it's possible). If you think X mon might be garbage, try it anyway to see if it really is garbage.
  • To add on to above bullet, Ubers doesn't try to be balanced (that's OU's job), and it doesn't have to be balanced to be fun. A lot of people liked DPP Ubers and I don't know who got the notion it was balanced because it's not (ex: crazy lead metagame/team matchup, nothing switches into dragons), yet it's still a fun metagame that many people remember fondly. BW Ubers was really the only truly balanced Ubers metagame (by largely a happy accident) and even it had some SPIKES issues.
  • The metagame has little to do with the quality of a community, obviously not everyone agrees on what is ideal. The "goodness" of a metagame has always been largely subjective.

I recognize that these issues probably are not 100% fixable, but I do feel that we have a responsibility to try and fix it. If this involves being tighter on punishing people for bad behavior (which I plan on doing as I have admittedly been lax with it), so be it. If you want to act like a child, expect to be treated like one.

You should all also read Blim's post because it is lovely and he sums up everything rather nicely.
 

Thugly Duckling

I play TCG now
The chatroom reflects the tier/ladder- it's a quiet obvious statement, but it must be reiterated. So with that thrown out there, I must say that the ladder cancer, and its lazy and uncreative vibe, are direct products of our poorly moderated and unfriendly chatroom. For example, say this new kid shows up on the block with a "help me with my team" post in chat. I'll tell you, help is the not the first thing that guy will get back from our chatroom. We'd tell him, "git gud"; "your team sucks"; etc etc. So what's this person's choices? To keep taking our shit; or, to use uncreative, stale, mainstream teams and sets because we refused to take some of our own time and help out with a possible original, innovative idea? I can relate to this because I've been that guy... I think we all have. When you begin thinking you "like" this community is when actually you start putting up with the ladder/chatroom's crap, or begin to just start causing toxicity yourself. That's what causes the bad, that's why we're aren't getting a new, innovative generation of players - and that obviously stops tier development.

It's unfathomable how amazing Ubers would be if we had a chatroom without the disgustingly violent judgment of possible creativity; telling new players to just use what's good to be good is destructive. One should become a good player by using mons they enjoy using, viable ones, of course. I don't want to drift this into any ban topics, but as an example, telling someone to not use Mega Blaziken because Mega Salamence is "better" just causes laziness, it takes away the challenge of teambuilding, the best part of competitive pokemon, the reason why many people even play pokemon. I can concede that Ubers isn't the best tier to teambuild for because how overcentralizing it is; but, we as a community should at least try to disprove that statement.

I believe its been said in some earlier posts (sorry, I really wanted to post asap), seeing the room's auth participate in toxicity is very dissapointing. I won't drop any names, but most of the Ubers mods have and are not fulfilling most of their responsibilties as room auth, such as not being a role model, no contributive posting, bad topic discussion, etc. I'll admit that I, myself, has been unfulfillant of room voice standards, but I say so with remorse. I don't exactly know what a mod's requirements are, and I have nearly no right to question it; but in my point of view, the Ubers room's mods that possess the aforemenioned characteristics are seemingly chatroom Trolls that hold authoritive positions.

I really think that a strong step to be taken towards a better community is the expansion of older metagames. It's been tried before, and dissapointingly failed/stood ineffective; but, I strongly believe that if the tier leaders joined as a whole to convince the existing community to drift away from trending, new metagames, an old gen revamp could definitely stand a fighting chance. It would be a great solution and response to the sentiment the community currently feels towards the ORAS metagame, like; seriously, does anyone legitimately enjoy ORAS? I certainly don't (again, I am not implying a ban solution).

IMO, the continuation of the XY Ubers ladder would be incredible. It contains much of what ORAS lacks, such as more teambuilding posibilities, overall less opportunity cost and restrictions; and, simply more fun to play. I get that there was a significant stagnation over STag (lol pun unintended); but, that was a pretty restricted group of players in comparison to how many people oppose the current metagame as a whole.

Summary
  • Be nice, enjoy eachother as a community and realize we are all just a bunch of man-boys that share the same hobby: Competitive Pokemon
  • Inspire a new generation of players by offering help, kindness, and innovation
  • Improve Room auth's duties as role models
  • Promote old gens to distract the concurrent sentiment of ORAS
(applaude me please, I typed this with a stylus ;_;)

Ubers can become so much more, and it starts with the chatroom!
 
Last edited:
Alright I'm gonna be rather frank about this, and I apologize if this sounds rude, but I'm not sure if I can word it nicer.

Honestly, if "metagame dislike" is the main issue here, I don't see why people don't just, you know, leave? Why do people insist on sticking around, complaining about it, spreading their opinions under the guise of the elitist, and subsequently poisoning the rest of the community? I disliked how BW OU took care of things, and I left. I became a lot happier, and I think some people were glad that I stopped getting in the way of certain things.

In any case I do agree with ium's post - there's too much elitism going on. Too much "us and them". Too much random bashing etc.

I disagree with this - what we need to do is to minimize this perceived divide between "pros" and "casuals". Non spl players should be allowed to comment. They may not be right, but that doesn't mean we have to be so toxic or salty about it. And honestly, if spl players are getting so horrendously affected by trashtalking, they really need to grow a thicker skin and shrug them off. They can also either: attempt to justify their action that people see as choking, or simply admit it's their error. It's not the hardest thing to do.
Well, "comment" was a bad choice of words in that sentence. I'm not saying anyone shouldn't be allowed to talk about the matches, but when it's just trash talking that doesn't serve any constructive point, of course that's just going to promote toxicity and have a negative effect on the person who played the match.. I just think some people have been commenting on the games in a pretty insulting/offensive manner, which doesn't really help anyone. Matches from big tournaments like SPL should be analyzed and learned from, and when people who don't understand what was going through that players head at the time just start bashing the player needlessly, it takes away from that and probably makes it less fun for the person playing the match. It's not something that I see on the forums as much as the actual chat on PS/smogtours. I guess I just think that people should be more respectful to each other, we're all here to have fun after all.
 
Last edited:

Stratos

Banned deucer.
hello, im not an ubers player, but ive put a lot of thought into this lately because the same thing plagues all subforums pretty much.

IMO the main problem with smogon and this includes the ubers community is that status is only loosely tied to tournament performance; instead, it comes down to badges and perceived skill. The other problem is that people are given a relatively small number of high-level tournaments in which to establish their skill level (correct me if i'm wrong, but you literally just have the Open, assuming you weren't drafted for SPL?) This leads to a lot of the surface-level problems that people are able to see more openly:
  • People mocking SPL players from the sidelines. They're given no place to show in contest that they are actually better than the SPL player, so they just do it from the sidelines in a bid to up their perceived skill by showing they're smarter than the SPL player (does this work? no, but as someone who's been there in Doubles, that's why we do it).
  • Stagnation of the metagame. The drive to win is what causes us to innovate and spice up the metagame, but you're giving people nothing meaningful to win, so there's no real need to innovate. I doubt ubers is actually as stagnant as you say it is. Smash Bros has been out since 2001 and it's still being innovated with only 26 characters with fixed movesets; if your game is more stale than Smash Bros it is seriously fucked.
  • Lack of mobility, and johns—unrelated but related. Because tournament success is only loosely related to status, people can repeatedly do poorly in tournaments but still maintain the perception as "one of the best" by just johning away all of their losses. Other people can do well in tournaments but they're regarded as "flukes" even when they place well repeatedly. Haruno dominated the most recent doubles circuit but still gets no respect for his accomplishments. Laga, Mizuhime, and Arcticblast all did fairly poorly but were still drafted for SPL because of their legacy. Part of the problem is a vicious circlejerk that SPL record is what is most notable to most people, but to get drafted into SPL you must be notable. Either way, this lack of ability to move up simply by winning causes people to backbite and form cliques because the only way to improve your status isn't IN the game, it's outside the game.
  • Bad players refusing to admit their badness. This isn't one of the things that I saw Ubers players complaining about but it's a problem in Doubles and basically the entire culture of CAP. Because tournament records are not the be-all end-all, bad players have more to gain by pretending they know what they're talking about and gaining the most illustrious award on smogon (badges) rather than a comparatively lackluster award (tour success). If you shift the focus, then the focus of new players will be on improving their tournament standings, which means that they'll be asking questions instead of pissing off the "pros," reducing cliquishness.
How do we shift the culture? Well, this was my plan for the doubles community, and you can feel free to spheal from it as you wish.
  • Run 4 or 5 equally-sized all-comers tournaments regularly spaced throughout the year. Use a format like Double Elimination or Swiss with top cut to account for the fact that Pokemon is a pretty luck-based game. Based off doubles' disastrous experience with swiss last year (half the players dropped before the last round) probably leaning towards Double Elim.
  • Provide a light monetary incentive to the tournament (something like $20 first, $10 second, $5 3rd-4th). This is mostly to invalidate anyone's johns about not caring. You say you're good? Why did you place poorly / not play in all the circuit tournaments even though there was money on the line? Put up or shut up. However, providing a monetary incentive also urges people to do better, driving metagame innovation. An alternative scheme would be to charge a $1 entry fee or something for every player and then split it among the top 4 or 6 or 8 placers.
  • Record all of the placings for every player throughout the year, keep it in a publicly viewable spreadsheet. Don't allow your community to make excuses for why they placed low but are much better than their placings show, or to say that x player consistently placed high but it was just a fluke. This allows not only the winners of each tour and the runners-up, but everyone to get a rough idea of their rank in the community. If someone is consistently getting 5th in tournaments, that slips under the radar if you only record winners, but is quite impressive.
sorry for tl;dr, hope my insights are helpful and not just rambly.
 
on ps randoms

first of all, lol @ some people in this thread not recognizing that the uber community would be nothing if not for the ps room denizens. without them, it would just be 10 dudes jerking each other off week after week in front of teammates who don't really care about the tier (most only look at it as being a potential source of a win that week, so that they can eventually be rewarded a pokemon forum badge [lol!], whereas the ps uber room watches to see well built teams and good games).

sure, they can be annoying and i always get an urge to reply to them, but at the same time it's what drives me to win. its only pokemon, so its not like anything is really personal, but I think its cool to know that there are people who are genuinely interested in battles. if spl players can't handle (what is probably inaccurate) criticism from ps randoms, then they shouldn't be playing in a spectator tournament, lol.

also, a lot of the people who get into communities like these are generally involved in other online communities (notable ones being lol, dota, hs, csgo), and attitudes from those games transfer over to spl very easily. those who follow esports know that its fun as hell to watch twitch chat go spam/flame crazy during tournaments, and I don't see how this is any different in spl.

on the replay thread

i don't understand why anyone wouldn't want to hear the problems in their team and strive to improve for the next week. as blim touched on in his post, just because you won doesn't mean you will win again. it's important to pursue perfection even in something as silly as mons if you want to be consistent.

again, this is a spectator tournament, so if you don't want criticism, don't play, don't cry.

conclusion

the problem isn't with spam or criticism from ps randoms, it isn't with the tier being stale, it's with the people in this thread not being able to accept that they are at fault.

gl malefic, mons is not for me, people take this shit way too personally
 

Braverius

snowls
is a Past SPL Champion
Another non-ubers player here, but I think it's fair that you bring that into question, Sweep. I'm not trying to lament on my personal experiences, but rather provide a bit of perspective from someone who's played in SPL for a season and change and competitive Pokemon for a while, but a bit more of an outlier in the community here.

I think the #1 reason that makes me a little hesitant to go all-in and work really hard with the Smogon / Doubles community on growing the tier is because of the amount of shit flinging people do. I've admittedly gotten caught up in it myself, not trying to sound like a saint here, but I think it's a major issue in the Doubles community at least (and it's not just limited to that one from what I understand and from what the OP here laid out, which is why I'm chiming in here.) I think Pwnemon's post covered a lot of the objective problems and some solid solutions to them, but it goes a little deeper than that. The culture on the forums is ridiculous; some of the straight up nasty call-out posts that are left up only encourage the type of behavior that you're seeing from people on the bench. Allowing people to post that and almost making a game out of making a reply to those is a really bad direction to go if anyone ever intends to discourage that type of behavior. Sure, it's fun for some involved, but in the end it just creates a more unhealthy atmosphere. Again, not everyone needs to hold hands and sing Kumbayah, but there has to be a bit more of a standard set. I'm not sure if you alone could do it, Sweep, but I think working to set a precedent with a lot of the other site staff, at least in the tournaments the entire community has their eye on like SPL, is very important if you want to fix this.

The other thing that isn't the crux of this issue but is incredibly deterring is when people rip each other for how a match was won or pick apart the details for whatever personal bias they have, and potentially let deep-seeded feelings for a person push them to make some nasty comments. I'm not sure who all read the Arcticblast / Haruno / etc drama that happened week 2, but it sort of flared up after I used an infamous team, commonly known as "Bunnies". I received enough comments about it from friends in the tier that were kind of elbow-jabs that I mostly brushed off, but when your tier co-lead gives you this after you win...

[2015-01-16 20:15:06] <Zach> man i didnt want to bring bunnies but my other team fell apart mid week x_x
[2015-01-16 20:15:26] <Mizuhime> you're a shit stain lol
[2015-01-16 20:22:41] <Benja> Mizuhime:
[2015-01-16 20:22:44] <Benja> why you mad about bunnies
[2015-01-16 20:22:56] <Mizuhime> cos only shit stians use it

....how on earth are you supposed to feel motivated to want to help further the tier? I didn't really have time to build something I liked because I was preparing to go across the country for a few days and didn't have time to make another team, and I shouldn't even need an excuse, but as someone who usually either builds my own teams each week or uses well-crafted teams from friends that I'm comfortable with, that stung even more. When you get dished a plate of shit after you used what you considered your best possible option given your circumstances by a person who's supposed to be representing your tier and the community, what are you supposed to do? This issue doesn't appear to be just in Doubles, but in the SPL threads as well; some people who are moderators have made some questionable posts that don't do much more than fuel unnecessary drama. Having loose cannons in charge of things is only going to make the shit-flinging issue worse.

Just so that it's clear that I'm not straight up ripping on the community, I respect Smogon's purpose and actually do enjoy a lot of the positives of the community. I don't want it to sound like I think SPL is a shitfest and only focus on the negatives. I really have enjoyed playing so far this year, and there's definitely more good than bad. I've met a ton of cool people and it's been a good time. I just don't like the culture and what it encourages, and hopefully what I laid out can at least give some transparency from someone who's a bit more on the outside looking in.
 

shrang

General Kenobi
is a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Top Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
yea i absolutely agree with the above. obnoxiousness is bad enough wherever it may come from, but it's about twice as annoying when it comes from trash who didn't even get picked up for spl (and odds are, this isn't because you aren't as ~known~ as hack or mm2 or edgar or whoever, it's because you fucking suck and that's why you're stuck talking shit from the sidelines in ways that make you look like the world's biggest tool). i know firsthand how frustrating it is to watch people who you know you're better than get to soak up the spotlight but if you are actually good and win, you will get noticed. you will not believe how many established players will tell you the same. you know who no one knew less than a year ago and is now starting ubers in spl? evuelf, the guy who 6-0es me in 9 turns in every tier we play, because he's fucking good and someone noticed.

hopefully obviously i don't condone the idea of "you have to be an established player to give your opinion" because that's horseshit, i don't have to be a successful metal drummer to tell you that lars ulrich can't play to save his life. anyone can chime in like "i think he should've done x because there was no way y was gonna do z and that move would've given him a ton of momentum" and that's totally cool as long as you're respectful like "just my opinion though, i thought it was a pretty good game regardless" (you don't have to sound like such a kiss ass btw it's just polite). however when you go "x played terribly, y was so obvious" (slight hyperbole, you get the point) that's totally not cool. a rookie in the nba doesn't tell kobe bryant that he could've gotten a better angle on that fadeaway jumper because he's in no position to do so, when he's got 5 championships and is considered as an all-time great maybe he can pipe up but until then he'll be paying his dues.

also in regards to "the metagame is stale" well if that's the case there's probably something wrong with it and since ubers is an official tier that is being played for trophies maybe something should be changed but that's probably a discussion best left for elsewhere.

tl;dr if you're trash and talking shit about people better than you, kill yourself
This. This really came out obvious in the S-tag/Mega Gengar suspect test when the community was pretty much divided in two and was pretty much a Cold War going on. I really hated how I had to argue with MM2 like he was my enemy when before the suspect tests we got along amazingly. I do think some people who are legitimately better players tend to use it as an excuse to inflate their egos and in the process hurt others in an attempt to show off their talent. I'm not going to name names, but I hope these people know who they are. The highly competitive tourney scene just exacerbates this. I don't want to put down tournaments entirely, but out of all the time I've been on Smogon, I tend to see good, decent users who are easy to get along with become utter douchebags when they transition to the tournament arena and douchebags transition to tournaments and become even more intolerable. I understand that tournaments, especially team-based ones like SPL, carry with them a lot of stress and would make people bitter, but it's still not an excuse to be an asshole. It's kind of like how politics brings the worst of psychopaths together, tourneys tend to bring out the worst of personalities. Again, this is not a call to stop tournaments because that would be stupid, but it's about time people watched their conduct after being in them. The fact that we have a stale ladder, a metagame with no tier shifts with nothing but tournaments and the odd eccentric innovator to propel the metagame forward doesn't help.

In short, the only way we can move forward with the metagame is by relying on tournaments that are highly stressful and brings out the worst of people's personalities. This leads to people flaunting their egos and dismissing others on their player status instead of what they bring to the table. Back to the S-tag suspect test where we already have a hierachy of "good players to listen to", I had countless jibes at my arguments not because my point was wrong, but because I'm not a tourney player and therefore I'm presumed to not play and therefore not know my stuff, which is frankly bullshit. I found it disgusting that people were dismissing others' points solely based on their status in the community rather than their point. Regardless of whether I'm familiar with the metagame or not (I admit I'm playing less and less these days, but I still know enough), even if I was a total noob and just started playing the metagame two days, I feel my point should be listened to on the merit of the point, not my player status. A broken clock will tell you the correct time twice a day. I think it's about time everyone realised that.
 
Last edited:
Gonna rehash something I said before since it was poorly understood for the most part.

Just about nobody is looking to find in this game anything other than a means to establish some e-penis. They play to beat the next guy and if that means they are only slightly less shit than them, that's enough to settle for.

I'm not criticizing having a competitive spirit. On the contrary, what I'm criticizing is shallow ambition. Players need to want more.

Games are social. If there's only one (or even just a few) that try to push for the limits, then there is little to no interest in investing that time and effort to do so. You can't properly grow without competition. Unfortunately, it's been almost tradition for the Ubers community to care so little. (either because they see the meta as a joke or because they have happily resigned to having their dick sucked by the new players)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Just some random thoughts

Regarding stale meta:

The talk about how this being some sort of root of the attitude problem is fucking bullshit. What is wrong is that people think the meta is stale when they aren't trying enough- I still have 10-15 good archetype ideas that I have never seen in SPL so far... Call me cocky or whatever but I think people percieve it the wrong way. You think the meta is stale and go "oh people have discovered this is good and let's just not attempt to think outside the box". Since that leads to people spending almost no time on building, testing (laddering), thinking out new concepts etc. what do they do? Yeah they hang around the Ubers room, talking shit when they in reality probably plays maybe 10 games a week in a non serious manner with the most generic teams ever because they percieve the meta to be stale. At least it looks like it from my experiece.

Maybe it's me coming from a different time, there was no Ubers room (heck at the beginning there was no PS!), I didn't have any ubers role models until PTR took me under his wings and even then I did most shit by myself lol. Point is people aren't willing to put in the hours these days. Instead of finding out practically everything themselves by playing they rip off some Dice team or whatever and start hanging out in the Ubers room on a daily basis. The attitude that medium level players think they are above spending time, aka laddering and trying to innovate themselves, is what leads to a stale meta. Not the meta itself.

Conclusion: People complaining about a stale meta = lazy. Percieving meta as stale leads to less time spent on actually making your own way leads to more time spent trashtalking. Even if I am wrong about people being lazy and, the meta being stale is a fucking lazy ass excuse to outsource the blame on.

Regarding Ubers room:

We need heavier focus on decreasing the stigma of being a ladder player here. Often I get in and see the regulars- who are by no means bad players- talk about the meta. Usually conversation can shift into some fullblown attack on ladder, how it is irrelevant and whatnot. It is at these times I ask myself: when did these medium-level players get to play the "I am better than ladder"-card. I could have sworn they actually never peaked and honestly you might just flame me here for saying this but most good players has started this way (think Problems, Blim, Donkey etc. for Ubers examples). You are not getting better by sitting around in the room talking shit. You are getting better by playing shitloads of games everywhere you can find them. Even on ladder. This point intertwines with my fomer paragraph about people percieving the meta as stale. If you aren't spending the hours testing stuff you will end up thinking things are impossible, that you can't make anything outside the ordinary. Most people aren't trying enough, but again I might be underestimating you guys and go full retard here.

I echo things about heavier moderation as well.

Regarding SPL and destructive criticism:

This happens in every tier. Ofc there is gonna be some people scrutinizing every possible option in hindsight and make up some kinda perfect, idealistic game where X-user did everything correct. And you know what, as an SPL.player myself, I can easily live with this. Pokemon isn't hard enough to not warrant exactly 100 % flawless play from a top player. That might sound like a harsh opinion but whenever people ask me about my steep improvement curve I talk exactly about this attitude and how it made me better. If you are a top player, and especially if you play in SPL, deal with scrutinization. The problem might have been that we had a thread to talk about the games which lead to a lot of trashtalking etc. Idk in hindsight it was probably not a great idea so yeah.

Edit: Pwnemons post is good shit, although he kinda overestimates people's abilities to do their best in tours. For example we had an Ubersstars tournament where many "top players" just quit after an initial loss. I think the attitude is more deep rooted as he makes it out to seem but having more tours is definitely a good step in the right direction.
 
Last edited:
TBH i find that the criticism about SPL's games is a good thing. obviously that should be done in a positive way, and not saying "LOL choke, hes a bad player who the fuk drafted him". but if it's done in a positive way, it's fun to read and can help people to grow as a player, and it's a good thing to do itself i guess.

about the tier not being favorable to creativity in team building and being centralized by top threats, i honestly agree with that. the tier as of now isn't really good and teams look very similiar each other but i think that's p naturally since some mons are splashable in many archetypes and very good at the same time. i also think however, that if you want to be creative when team building and you are good at it, you can still do it in ubers. guess people are just a bit lazy (and i include myself in the group of lazy users lol) and tend to use always the same things, but tbh im p sure that we will some innovations in the next weeks of spl, it's also important to remember that ORAS Ubers is a tier a bit new, and people need time to find the best ways to play it. so tl;dr it's true that the tier is quite boring as of now but i'm sure it will get better in the next times, we have just to wait a bit imo.

i also wanted to answer to the argument regarding the Uber room. tbh it's true that there are a lot of people that are really bad to talk with, but there are also good users that bring interesting discussions to the room, and that's nice. it's also a good place to discuss with people who are a better experience in the tier about spl games or about the tier in general, so i think it's a good place to frequent after all. maybe we just need some more moderation since from what i've seen auths aren't super active but i must admit that the Uber room isn't as bad as many people could think, it's actually a nice place where you can get better talking with people who knows how the play the tier better than yourself. obviously it has it's negative aspects, but we shouldn't forget that it has some good aspects as well.

that's all i had to say as of now. will probably add something in the future. nice thread though, i think that the best way to fix problems when they come up it's to discuss them, and i think it's rly nice to see it in here.
 
Last edited:

Thugly Duckling

I play TCG now
Astounded, If you have anything to say in opposition to my post, our farm league match, things I've said in other threads about our match, etc, etc; please PM me. I'll willingly discuss that with you. Like what MM2 said, that's not the thing to talk about in a thread like this and our farm league match is a tiny blip in the spectrum of bad chatroom quality; because, at its core, it's between just you and I.

e: will be able to reply to possible pm in 4 hours, i'm on mobile
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Users Who Are Viewing This Thread (Users: 1, Guests: 0)

Top