Ubers community

[Bice]

Guys, I think it's pretty clear as to where the problem lies; it's in the behaviour of the badged users/mods/popular users and here's why:

1. I'm pretty sure no one here knows me but I've been lurking here and on PS for a long time and through my journey I have battled those "popular players" a lot of time through different names and I can say that 80% of them were the most childish, bad mannered and saltiest persons I have met on PS, even more than low ladder trolls, cause they at least are well... trolls! I have only been nice and well mannered with them but the way they treated me and other 'normal users' was the complete opposite of how we treated them, especially if they lost.

2. We all know how most of the Smogon community are bandwagoners, and it clearly shows when a popular user writes something (even if it's just shitposting) and they get like... 30 likes and people singing their names and that is a big problem because a lot of simple and mortal users tend to copy the popular ones and that will make the toxicity duplicate itself over and over with every new user coming to the forums and looking at the posts left by respected users.

An example of this is a thread found in another tier where a very known user started writing like a 5yo with bad grammar and other shit and other users started copying him, which led to the thread becoming a giant pile of shit.

3. Most people who get shat on, or mistreated by popular users can't do anything back and that's because all of them are bf's with the mods and/or are mods themselves, add to that the fact that many people will protect them cause of the bandwagon mentality and you got yourself a bunch of mistreated people who feel very alienated and that creates more toxic.

So no, this problem is not exclusive to Ubers, it's in almost every other tier in Smogon, and it comes from the elitism of "elite players" which creates two types of 'normal users' :
1. Those who bandwagon, and think that it's ok to shitpost because the popular users do it too.
2. Those who have grudges against the high horse players because of past experiences with them and will talk shit to them or anyone who defends them on any occasion.

Those are my two cents on the subject.

THIS. Honestly, this pretty much happens in any fandom (especially those with a competitive scene). However, I think Pokemon, especially here, is where it's worst.

Lots of new users want to follow the more popular users, and when the said popular user shitposts, the new user(s) also shitpost. When the popular users are toxic assbutts, the new user(s) also are toxic assbutts... you know the deal. It creates a cycle of never-ending cancer. I tried this once, and ended up getting banned from a room.

Honestly, the mods need to start cracking down on assholes more. ESPECIALLY the popular/badged/staffed users. I'd even accept a zero-tolerance policy if it helps clean the community.

 

[Sweep]

Steeljackal wrote in response to the message in hide tags (written by Minority Suspect).

Hide

Many projects that you do in life aren't going to live up to your expectations. They'll either not get the reception you anticipated, be ruined by the other people that you were working on it with, or will get changed to such a degree by an outside force that it will lose the original purpose it had.

There is something that all these scenarios share, and it's that you should always see your projects through to the end. If you drop the project simply because you didn't get your way in every regard then of course the project will fail, and you will be the one to blame.

Star Wars was utter shit until the editing room, but I didn't see Gary Kurtz, Alan Ladd, John Dykstra, and George Lucas condemn the project and call it mediocre. Torstein Horgmo landed the first triple in competition with a broken rib when it was overwhelmingly clear from his previous hits that it wasn't meant to be. In the legendary match of R.O.M. m2k disposed of Shiz in seconds when he was down 2 stocks and everyone was cheering against him.

This thread might not be nearly as important as the above examples, or even be capable of making a comeback, but how do you know if you give up. A defeatist mentality will ensure your loss before the project even begins. Maybe the reason why there never was much discussion is because the thread was not kept up to date and because you didn't host an environment for discussion. Not once did you draw attention to matches you thought where highlights, not once did you bring up a particular build or set of plays you found interesting, and not once did you make any attempts to further the little discussion that other users were trying to start.

Why talk about replays in this thread when the replays that we want to discuss at that time are only in the main UPL thread (see mm2's commentary on several ADV games for example). Other users made honest attempts to motivate you to turn this thread around and all you can do is talk down to them? And after all that, you welcome the thread's death, insult people who actually contribute to the site, and talk down to everyone who played in UPL by calling the matches on a whole as "mediocre" when you were the one that volunteered to run this thread with the foreknowledge of how UPL works.

I point these things out because I don't want the same mistakes to happen over and over again. Maybe next season such a project will work out better.

I've been disinterested in this game as a whole as well as this tier for a little while now but have simply kept with it due to feeling that I'm obligated to because of my presence in 3 team tournaments (UPL being the one that matters most to me). I wanted to do the replay thread because I thought it was something I would enjoy. Unfortunately, it was a very boring and tedious process for me and that's something I should have realized sooner. Sorry for half-assing it, even though I don't think any meaningful discussion would have been generated based on my track record with attempting to spark discussion in previous threads. Also, why is it hard to discuss a match that hasn't yet been posted in this thread? The first post is just intended as a resource for ease of access to games but there's nothing wrong with taking one of the many games that are posted in the main UPL threads and dissecting them here.

I didn't bring up any replays or games that stood out as being particularly interesting because in all honesty very few of them were, to me, which is partially due to my slowly becoming divorced with this site and partially because the games have been of a much lower quality than the ones last year. Just look at Sweep's giving the same Custap Forretress / PDon / MAero team to his players week after week, or my own team not listening to me and using chansey in Ubers...I can respect everyone who tries to do well in this tournament and does do well, particularly my own team, but I feel by-and-large that UPL had a sort of off year this year. I think everyone is a little to blame for this so the last thing I wanna do is point fingers or make anyone feel bad about themselves, but it's just something that's a little hard to get over for me.

Your point about seeing a project through to the end is very valid in a general sense but irrelevant in this context because it's a fucking subforum thread, not a famous film or sport. I think there's no value to continuing this thread and very little value to contributing to this subforum as a whole because looking through a subforum of threads that die within a few weeks of discussion doesn't actually make people better at this game. Other areas of the site such as tutoring and analysis-writing are definitely valuable and I can agree that it's admirable to contribute to those portions of the site because they will actually help people. But I just don't feel that this subforum is half the resource it was in previous years. This is partially due to the community and partially due to the fact that the tier is what it is right now, but the fact is that it is what it is and 400 posts' worth of my (mostly) contribution couldn't change that so I don't see why my contributing more would either.

I wrote this on my phone so it's likely very choppy and disorganized, but I really needed to get it off my chest and I feel better even as I write it. My intent isn't to piss anybody off and I'm sorry if I did.

 

[Dilwar]

Lol

 

[Spy]

Ok I've been lurking here a ton lately after being tutored in Ubers by Sweep since I honestly thought it would be a fun tier and community to get into, but after seeing some of the recent events it's really troubling to see a great tier be brought down like this. At this point, no number of infractions would stop the hostility between players here, since everyone loves to call each other out for basically anything, and it just scares newer users away from posting out of fear for being called out and being called a "random" and such (because I know I have definitely felt this way).

If I'm going to be completely honest here, I feel like the reason for this hostility is the lack of projects and things to do, so they resort to drama as their source of entertainment. Ubers has been stale as hell lately, and there's barely any unique projects going on in this subforum. Almost every active thread is a tournament thread or a thread that's copy pasted from another tier and just formatted for ubers. Discussion is scarce due to this, as the only place where people can actively talk and for new users to join is in the viability rankings thread. If you look at the old BW Ubers subforum, theres quite a few different kinds of suspect threads and projects that only really apply to ubers, and everyone loved BW Ubers due to the great metagame and forum. People should be focused on thinking up new projects and ideas to help the subforum thrive, ways for existing members to discuss the tier they used to love and places where a new user to join easily, because right now you're scaring literally anyone who wants to join ubers away.

Hell, the best way to even try to fix the problems you guys are facing right now is a suspect test (ik this isnt the place to discuss bans, but i showed sweep this post before posting and he said its fine and would support it). Yes, I'm aware that the shadow tag fiasco still leaves a sour taste in everyone's mouth, but let's face it. A suspect test would open up a TON of discussion, it would bring tons of new users in to see ubers actually suspecting something, and now that ubers is a tier, shouldn't our main focus be to make the tier as fun and diverse as possible for the players? Regardless of the fact that most playstyles are viable in some way, you're really shooting yourself in the foot when basically every team is pdon/xern/mega mence/ekiller/filler/filler.

A similar idea would to have a seperate ladder from the normal ubers ladder, maybe ubers minus pdon and mega mence, similar to the OU No Mega Ladder and the UU No Scald ladder. It generates discussion, and it lets us see if we've got an improved meta without those two that isn't solely based on theorymonning. I'm aware it's a long shot, but looking at how the subforum is right now, there's not much else you can do.

 

[Thugly Duckling]

A similar idea would to have a seperate ladder from the normal ubers ladder, maybe ubers minus pdon and mega mence, similar to the OU No Mega Ladder and the UU No Scald ladder. It generates discussion, and it lets us see if we've got an improved meta without those two that isn't solely based on theorymonning. I'm aware it's a long shot, but looking at how the subforum is right now, there's not much else you can do.

Bring back XY Ubers.

 

[Aquasition]

Hell, the best way to even try to fix the problems you guys are facing right now is a suspect test (ik this isnt the place to discuss bans, but i showed sweep this post before posting and he said its fine and would support it). Yes, I'm aware that the shadow tag fiasco still leaves a sour taste in everyone's mouth, but let's face it. A suspect test would open up a TON of discussion, it would bring tons of new users in to see ubers actually suspecting something, and now that ubers is a tier, shouldn't our main focus be to make the tier as fun and diverse as possible for the players? Regardless of the fact that most playstyles are viable in some way, you're really shooting yourself in the foot when basically every team is pdon/xern/mega mence/ekiller/filler/filler.

I'm not sure if you know what happened last time we tried a suspect test but what I do remember was that the enmity for said suspect test was huge. It was so bad that Fireburn swore off of suspect tests because it was ridiculous, and I'm not sure if we can change his mind on that. I think a Dark Horse Project would be a good idea however :]

 

[Fireburn]

I agree we need more projects but idt a suspect test is gonna be one of them

Several users have come to me recently with project ideas that I want to develop a bit more, I haven't done so yet because I have had exams + been sick (taking exams while being sick absolutely blows btw) but there are some ideas in the works

 

[Minority]

Definitely agree that the sub forum needs better projects for players to participate, but the problem is that its hard to come up with an idea that will get a good response from both veteran and new users. I have a few ideas in the works but I think they still need to be polished up and even then there is no guarantee that the respected players will participate. Maybe some collaboration will yield some interesting projects.

 

[AM]

I agree we need more projects but idt a suspect test is gonna be one of them

Several users have come to me recently with project ideas that I want to develop a bit more, I haven't done so yet because I have had exams + been sick (taking exams while being sick absolutely blows btw) but there are some ideas in the works

Eh this seems sort of opposite of the whole Ubers is a tier now idea that was established when Anything Goes was created. Like don't get me wrong if there's a legitimate reason a suspect test is off the tables then fine but you have an S+ ranked mon in your viability ranking thread and is one of the most mindless things the tier has had to contend with after Mega Rayquaza. It's really hard to sit back and comfortably say the tier right now is even remotely in an ok position and considering SPL is over I'm not sure why stuff can't be looked at on a more serious level with both a suspect and a suspect tour similar to the ones OU run now. Projects are cool but projects that are being created in a tier surrounded by negativity both within the tier itself and its community isn't going to exactly foster any great results. Sorry to break the harsh truth to whoever is working on these projects but let's not kid ourselves. If no one is gonna tell you while your players sit back and be cry babies over each others petty attitudes and farewell messages of distraught and frustration without taking real incentive such as examining the tier without these centralizing forces people hate on the side as an example, then you'll never come to the realization what could be something better for the tier. So much focus is on everyone moaning influenced by their inflated egos for whatever reason it may be that literally no one on the outside in gives one single care about it other than the cheap entertainment value that makes ubers so unwelcoming in the first place.

I'm not really asking you to guys to be friends, realistically that's impossible at this point rofl just look at the premise that this thread was made, but maybe you guys can stop crying literally every 12 hours that this forum gets any sort of discussion going and take more incentive on showing what a good tier should look like? Just a thought.

 

[Fireburn]

Eh this seems sort of opposite of the whole Ubers is a tier now idea that was established when Anything Goes was created. Like don't get me wrong if there's a legitimate reason a suspect test is off the tables then fine but you have an S+ ranked mon in your viability ranking thread and is one of the most mindless things the tier has had to contend with after Mega Rayquaza. It's really hard to sit back and comfortably say the tier right now is even remotely in an ok position and considering SPL is over I'm not sure why stuff can't be looked at on a more serious level with both a suspect and a suspect tour similar to the ones OU run now.

The creation of Anything Goes doesn't imply Ubers has to make an effort to balance itself like OU. Ubers is overcentralized more or less by definition and is in no way obligated to be balanced either. A lot of people look back on DPP Ubers fondly and it was very much not balanced with the crazy lead metagame and the multiple dragons with basically no safe switch-ins, yet it was still highly enjoyed as a competitive metagame. And I certainly don't recall suspect threads being a paragon of constructive community discussion, especially given how the last one went.

You can call Primal Groudon "mindless" but comparing it to Mega Rayquaza is unfair as the former has (multiple) checks while the latter...well, doesn't. It's comparable to Aegislash in OU where it is employed mostly because of its defensive properties while remaining offensively threatening (yeah it can run SD/RP but that necessitates giving up a lot of bulk investment which it actually needs to check some threatening stuff), just to an admittedly higher degree. While I can see that having an "ultimate glue mon" is (potentially) a problem in OU, in Ubers the fact of the matter is that we don't care. If it doesn't make the tier unplayable (which Mega Rayquaza did), we'll just deal with it.

At any rate, I believe it has been said before that the metagame has nothing to do with the state of the community. The latter will only be fixed by cracking down on problem users, which I have been trying to make more of an effort to do. And to anyone who is reading this: if you don't like Ubers, you don't have to play it.

The intent of this thread is not to discuss bans/suspects regardless.

 

[Nayrz]

The creation of Anything Goes doesn't imply Ubers has to make an effort to balance itself like OU.

Actually...i feel like it does. Ubers is now officially a tier, but it is currently a tier that feels like taking action for it is something to hide from. Why? Im not saying Ubers should emulate OU at all, but it can at least balance itself to a point.

Ubers is overcentralized more or less by definition and is in no way obligated to be balanced either.

Then why did we make AG in the first place and then call "Ubers" a tier? The way it is looked at, its is almost as if we want to treat it like a second banlist.

A lot of people look back on DPP Ubers fondly and it was very much not balanced with the crazy lead metagame and the multiple dragons with basically no safe switch-ins, yet it was still highly enjoyed as a competitive metagame.

Well yes, but DPP didn't have threats anywhere near as strong as we do now. "DPP Ubers" (as a tier, not how the meta actually is) should actually include Arceus, but the majority of the community hated Arceus and wanted it to stay out. If it stayed i doubt people would be saying "DPP Ubers is the best ubers meta" (I've spoken to many old dpp players and they agreed that Arceus would have ruined it)

And I certainly don't recall suspect threads being a paragon of constructive community discussion, especially given how the last one went.

I can understand why we might be very cautious towards the idea of taking action after shadow tag and the mega ray ban, but one suspect test (that was just handled wrong in terms of voting, it wasnt actually a bad thing to try) shouldn't put us off the idea.
edited thought: things can always be done like how hugen did with swagger, if suspect tests are completely out of the question

You can call Primal Groudon "mindless" but comparing it to Mega Rayquaza is unfair as the former has (multiple) checks while the latter...well, doesn't. It's comparable to Aegislash in OU where it is employed mostly because of its defensive properties while remaining offensively threatening (yeah it can run SD/RP but that necessitates giving up a lot of bulk investment which it actually needs to check some threatening stuff), just to an admittedly higher degree.

This is all true, but i feel that things should be judged on a case by case basis. Unless something actually does come out next generation that is more powerful than Mega Rayquaza (may game freak have mercy), nothing currently out will come close to its power. Instead of comparing Primal Groudon to Mega Rayquaza, compare it to the rest of the Ubers tier.

While I can see that having an "ultimate glue mon" is (potentially) a problem in OU, in Ubers the fact of the matter is that we don't care. If it doesn't make the tier unplayable (which Mega Rayquaza did), we'll just deal with it.

That is a bit of a loaded assumption...i'll go into further detail below.

At any rate, I believe it has been said before that the metagame has nothing to do with the state of the community. The latter will only be fixed by cracking down on problem users, which I have been trying to make more of an effort to do. And to anyone who is reading this: if you don't like Ubers, you don't have to play it.

Well the whole "don't like it, leave" thing is already happening (aim, edgar, steelphoenix, problems, dice and even sweep said he doesnt like the tier) Giving the community something non-futile to discuss will bring good posts, and good players back to debate the changes. Its either that or we laugh at any random quarrel between users for another generation, which leads to this thread where we are today.

The intent of this thread is not to discuss bans/suspects regardless.

Well where else can we post our thoughts? In #ubers it is either played down, or just ignored. We did get a good discussion there last night about things though, which is an amazing start. Making a thread here is likely to get locked/infracted as soon as it's made. Its handled the exact same way we did with XY (when it was not an official tier!) in that we hush every post down that even remotely hints at the possibility of a ban/suspect. Where can one voice their concerns?

I remember when it was said that suspects would be looked at after SPL... yet here we are at UPL and the meta hasn't changed /that/ much since SPL (other than people realizing the true strength of mence and the aero/forre core) and nothing has changed. I feel like tier related things will be endlessly stalled out to the point where people just stop caring and there is no point to balancing it cause no tours will be on (suspect soon? maybe after SPL. suspect now? maybe after UPL. how about now? Ubers Grand Slam is soon.) Many people have already expressed their disinterest in the tier and quit as a result, and everyone (as in, literally everyone) that doesn't play ORAS Ubers despises the tier and wonders why people play it. I agree with Spydreigon that the community finds more fun from causing drama around tier tournaments than playing the tier itself but that boils down to the fact that the tier itself has issues. Of course the tier itself is not a standalone excuse for terrible shitposting, but with some careful moderation (which you both are now doing, nice job on that) and some guidance as to where they can focus our efforts, this will die out. Why do projects never take off? Because the high level players have given up on the tier, and don't wanna contribute to it. Sweep said that things would be looked at, but you both wanted C&C (and something else but i forgot) in order first. You could kill the majority of the problems in the Ubers forums and C&C simply by tackling the problem at its root. The tier itself. If the majority of the playerbase (and even userbase) thinks that Ubers sucks then judging from what chaos said in the AG + Mega Rayquaza ban thread:

What are some criteria for banning things from Ubers? We don't quite know yet, but here are some warning signs:

• This Pokemon/ability/etc unreasonably raises the volatility of Ubers. Think Moody or OHKO spam. << Theres no point in even trying to cherry pick an argument here, none of the proposed "trouble mons" are anything close to this.
• This Pokemon is ~unreasonably~ centralizing. Think 70%+ usage. Even Xerneas was (I think) ~45% usage. <<< Primal Groudon has 70% usage in the high ladder last time i checked, and had 68% in spl.
• Related to the above point: This Pokemon is obviously in a different power bracket than most of the other Ubers. I argued earlier that M-Ray was in a different power bracket because it is the first ~800 BST Pokemon with a useful ability and unrestricted item. <<<< you could argue for this as well, although primal don is still item restricted, it is still a level far above the others (hence why we have an S+ rank just for it)
• It is no fun to play or watch matches with this Pokemon/ability/etc (henceforth just Pokemon) allowed. Having this Pokemon in Ubers makes me want to play some other meta. I would be bored as fuck to watch a match with this Pokemon allowed. This is a subjective criterion, but an important one I think: if everyone hates Ubers, then why have it? It is our obligation in such a case to try to fix it. < says it all right here.

I feel like saying "in Ubers the fact of the matter is that we don't care... we'll just deal with it" is a fair bit off the mark. "We" (assuming this means the community) have been asking about potential suspects at nearly any opportunity. The community wants change, and assuming that the community's wishes fall under your own is a wrong way to look at it. I care about how this tier is played and handled (I have spent a stupid amount of hours writing for it and assisting others in C&C over the past year), and i don't want this age old mentality to be the death of it. This is not an attack at you btw, im just voicing the concerns that many people have.

edit: i reworded a bunch of stuff, this looked far more argumentative than i intended it to be .cry

 

[Lord Outrage]

Banning Mons is irrelevant to the toxicity in the community.As ubers players we are used to imbalanced pokemons and to some kind of over centralization.This is what make us different from others.It's our identity.If we want to balance the tier the way they do in ou.Lets all go to ou then.
And Nayrz anything goes is a place for noncompetitive strategies like swagger etc and a place to pokemons who have no checks or counters like mega quaza.Doesn't mean we have to balance ubers like ou if AG was created.

 

[Nayrz]

I agree that we are very used to unbalanced mons. Im actually not 100% convinced that Primal Groudon/Mence are issues yet. Primal Groudon is a strong maybe to me but with Groudon gone, Mence checks are a lot easier to come by so i dont believe that mence is an issue. I'm not saying we balance the tier OU style at all - im saying that we shouldnt completely shut out the idea of bans like we did in xy and treat Mega Ray like a one time only idea. AG is the place for bullshit strategies to have their playable place, but it is also our banlist now (weird how things change) and all im asking for here is for the blanket on ubers talk of bans to be lifted, more or less.

 

[shrang]

Stuff

Wrt the purpose of AG - It's not to make Ubers balanced, but to make Ubers playable. When AG was created, it was not so that we could ban whatever the hell we want from Ubers to reach a perfect metagame (whatever that is). We don't play Ubers because it's a perfect metagame. If you want that, OU is the most established tier for that. Mega Rayquaza should be seen as the exception, not the rule.

If you're trying to argue that Ubers is unplayable, that's fine, make your case. However, I don't think we should equate boring/shitty/cancer metagames to "unplayable". I'm with a lot of people that ORAS is not very fun, but I'm not sure if the metagame is that way or it's just that I've been losing interest in Pokemon in general. However, all things aside, I personally think ORAS Ubers is a very stable metagame, boring as it may be. You have a couple of really dominating threats, but they are not too powerful to handle and (especially in Donner's case) actually glues a lot of problems together. It's a very big difference to the Mega Ray metagame, where you could run as many counters to the thing as you like, chances are it was still going to beat you. Can you really say the same for any threat in the current metagame? I don't think so.

What are some criteria for banning things from Ubers? We don't quite know yet, but here are some warning signs:

• This Pokemon/ability/etc unreasonably raises the volatility of Ubers. Think Moody or OHKO spam. << Theres no point in even trying to cherry pick an argument here, none of the proposed "trouble mons" are anything close to this.
• This Pokemon is ~unreasonably~ centralizing. Think 70%+ usage. Even Xerneas was (I think) ~45% usage. <<< Primal Groudon has 70% usage in the high ladder last time i checked, and had 68% in spl.
• Related to the above point: This Pokemon is obviously in a different power bracket than most of the other Ubers. I argued earlier that M-Ray was in a different power bracket because it is the first ~800 BST Pokemon with a useful ability and unrestricted item. <<<< you could argue for this as well, although primal don is still item restricted, it is still a level far above the others (hence why we have an S+ rank just for it)
• It is no fun to play or watch matches with this Pokemon/ability/etc (henceforth just Pokemon) allowed. Having this Pokemon in Ubers makes me want to play some other meta. I would be bored as fuck to watch a match with this Pokemon allowed. This is a subjective criterion, but an important one I think: if everyone hates Ubers, then why have it? It is our obligation in such a case to try to fix it. < says it all right here.

I feel like saying "in Ubers the fact of the matter is that we don't care... we'll just deal with it" is a fair bit off the mark. "We" (assuming this means the community) have been asking about potential suspects at nearly any opportunity. The community wants change, and assuming that the community's wishes fall under your own is a wrong way to look at it. I care about how this tier is played and handled (I have spent a stupid amount of hours writing for it and assisting others in C&C over the past year), and i don't want this age old mentality to be the death of it. This is not an attack at you btw, im just voicing the concerns that many people have.

edit: i reworded a bunch of stuff, this looked far more argumentative than i intended it to be .cry

This was brought up in earlier discussion when people were trying to justify a ban for Donner/Mence (chaos' criteria). While yes, most of us can agree that Ubers is no fun these days, this is "warning sign" out of 4 that we're trying to use as justification. Let's not forget the other warning signs please. The only other one that's sort of there is Groudon's ~70% usage, and even then, that's still only 2/4 warning signs fulfilled, hardly diagnostic in any case. It's kind of like saying "fever is a symptom of cancer", but you're hardly going to consider cancer in every person who shows up with a fever.

Wrt no fun - be careful on this. Like I said, I agree with most people that the metagame is boring and not very fun. However, to put it bluntly, I've never seen this community have so many abrasive and bitchy personalities since I've been playing Ubers before. I'm not going to name names but I'm pretty sure everyone knows who they are. As we know, fun is a very subjective term. I can be willing to bet that a decent proportion of the "shit metagame" sentiment doesn't come from the actual "shit metagame" itself, but from the lens of some of the players themselves. There's certainly a very negative environment around in this community, and it's spoiling the experience for everybody. That alone can make a game more unappealing than it really is. In the end, ORAS might just be a below-average boring metagame for all we know, but it's turned into the worst thing we've ever played because a bunch of whiny players turned it into the worst thing ever. This is not directing at you personally, so please don't take that way, but I'm pretty sure you'd agree with me that there are way too many assholes in this community. When you have this many crappy personalities, things are bound to appear worse than they really are.

The community wants change

This is something I'd like to warn against right now. Just because change is needed, doesn't mean we just blindly do something with no solid basis or plan. For example, regardless of whether Primal Groudon is truly a problem, have we considered what banning it would do to the metagame? GeoXern would lose a splashable check. So would things like Arceus Electric/Steel/Rock/etc. I guess some of them suck, but we could be opening a can of worms on the metagame that might just make it less stable. I'm not saying it would happen, I'm saying we should just be careful and not make rash decisions. Also, I'm not implying this is your intention, but I just want to make this clear for everyone right now.

EDIT:
Also, I forgot to mention before - the community might appear to be really unhappy at the metagame, but can you really be sure the discontent is actually representative of the community? Just because we have a few vocal and admittedly top-tier players wanting change doesn't automatically the community actually wants change. We learned this the hard way not once, but twice, with the Mega Gengar/S-tag tests. The community ended up deciding that we shouldn't ban them, even if we discount the thrown-out paragraphs. It was essentially a lynchmob.

 

[Jibaku]

Reminder that Ubers has always been a tier and AG has nothing to do with it.

UNPOPULAR OPINION TIME (note that this only my stance and almost no one else's. Feel free to disagree/hate/etc).

IMO Suspect Tests breed a culture of vocal minorities that want (unnecessary) change, often through banning because for whatever reason that's the default answer for everything we "can't" handle. Eventually these minorities pile up and a change is finally successful. Which can then snowball into more bans. In the context of Ubers, we need to avoid that mentality at all costs, especially when it almost happened (see: Gengarite to Shadow Tag progression).

Also more discussion doesn't always mean a good thing. Go read up on the Shadow Tag suspect test (the discussion itself, not the results. We already know how badly that went). Or any suspect test, really. Those threads are where the toxic community is born. It's also easy to say good moderation can fix this, but people will make it difficult by treading the line too many times to get their point across.

I'm gonna go with the unpopular opinion here and say that players have actually been given too much freedom when it comes to discussions about bans. Or at least, cultured in that way.

 

[DoubleOD]

I feel like half the issues addressed in this thread would be solved by issuing severe warnings for anyone trash-talking the ladder.

The act of trash-talking serves no positive benefit to the community and only an overwhelmingly negative one. It's also VERY lazy.

 

[Lord Outrage]

DoubleOD is right if people stop trash talking ladder many ladder players would feel more valuable hence less toxicity and tension.
The community is not only made of tour players who are just a 30 at most,the community is made of hundred of players and trash talking them constantly is bad.

 

[kingmidas]

Its sad how its so hard for people to realize that the solution is solved if you either stop being a jackass, learn a new tier so less need to be an ass to kill time, or just stop coming on PS/playing pkmn if you can't handle not getting a boner by winning.
Edit: Lord Outrage, complaining about the ladder isn't the issue at all, it just seems like you chimed it because of how people label you as a ladder hero, as a beginner the ladder is good for you, but it rarely serves a purpose afterwards, so shittalking it at times isn't harumful, and from what I've seen it happens less.

 

[Starmei]

Greetings, some of you may know me, the ones that don't may as well just quit mons. I quit Ubers recently, primarily because of the 'toxicity of the community' as some call it, which made playing the tier boring.

*Not gonna bother quoting b/c I'm a lazy piece of shit*
First of all, to the people saying fixing ladder salt would solve the issues here, that's a downright lie.
- A lot of competent Ubers players don't even go on the ladder
- Every tier has salty ladder players, nothing you can do about it so if this was the problem then other tiers/metagames would be having similar discussions about it
- If you get offended by some 'random' ladder player calling you garbage then you need to man the fuck up

In response to what Steel was saying about Primal Ogre becoming much more threatening with the ban of Primal Don, I agree that to a degree Primal Ogre would take even more souls than it already does, but with the introduction of Soul Dew - meaning Lati@s can roam - and with PDon gone, more mons like Zekrom, arceus forms, etc could be used and Primal Ogre wouldn't be as bad as you make it sound. I disagree that Primal Ogre will be looked upon with the same level of distaste that Primal Don is right now. It would rise from S- to S without a doubt but it's not really comparable to Primal Don imo. We would also be able to see the effects of this if there was a suspect, suspect =/= ban - look at OU with MMetagross. If people found that without PDon, other threats were taking charge and there wasn't any realistic way to adapt to it (lol) then they might change their mind about how they want to vote.

I would also like to point out what OU did with their recent/current Aegi suspect. They made requirements for the suspect not only 2700 coil but a 2:1 W/L ratio which helps ensure that players who qualify to vote really do deserve to, instead of just being able to grind and grind the ladder and barely scrape reqs. So if by chance Ubers did have a suspect, I feel that this would be a good idea. Idt I need to explain much more about this, you have brains.

edit - Sorry if any of this sounds like I'm talking out of my ass, I'm just really tired

 

[dice]

imo if almost every spl player finds the meta undesirable there's a problem

but there's such a rigid dichotomy of opinions that discussion never resolves. i am all for balancing the metagame since it's involved in official tournaments but wutevz

 

[Dilwar]

The continuing problems in this community stems from the unwillingness by those in charge to fix it. I don't want to call out names, but I feel this is a serious issue that needs to be addressed because change can only be made when those in charge are serious about doing so. I understand that this thread shows there still lies the motivation to fix such issues, but there are a few cases which show those in power being... well, toxic themselves.

For example, in the Ubers room, we have a user named "Nate Higgers" who sits at the Driver rank. I'm not naming who this person is because most of you already know, but the point is that such blatant stupidity is clearly being ignored which just contributes to toxicity in the community. This user is the alt of a Moderator in our room. In other words, we are glorifying shitposting which is a huge issue. We also have a really stupid banned phrases list including but not limited to - grammatical errors, i.e "Stealth Rocks", every fucking cro mon, Voldemort, Magikarp. The latter I can understand because Magikarp jokes are spammed and not funny at all, but the formers have no reason to be banned phrases. A user should not be muted just because he spelt a word wrong, and the banning of Voldemort and cro mons achieves nothing but just more spamming of them. The banning of Voldemort and cro mons, as many of you have seen just leads to a lot of users entering our room, spamming these phrases and leaving. I've lost count of how many times I've had to unmute these users, or extend their mutes if they continue being stupid (intentionally spamming these phrases). There was also another case where I saw a moderator who was locked, banned from site and demoted. I don't know what he did, but his actions were clearly not punished as an RO unbanned him and re-promoted him. Again I might be missing something here, but clearly this shows how a user is not being punished for any wrong actions he did - simply because he is friends with someone in charge. Obviously I'm not naming these two users, but they should know who they are and I'd like an explanation as to what happened here. Lastly, any regular in the Ubers room would know that we simply glorify shitposting. This needs to be stopped. It's simply a regular occurence now that users in the chat are being toxic and despite there being many Drivers and Moderators present, no mutes or warnings are handed out. In fact, sometimes even auth are involved in this toxicity. Granted I'm no angel myself because I may sometimes be involved in this, the point is that we simply need to up our moderating, or the Ubers room will continue to be known as the worst room on the site. Even when punishments are handed out, sometimes another member of auth will undo them because they don't even care, or there'll just be a call of "power abuse." There are quite a few regular users who constantly repeat the phrases "you're trash/garbage" to many different users. These users intentionally, repeatedly shitpost to the point of being known as a shitposter - yet there is nothing being done about this. One of these users is actually voiced. In fact, they are glorified even by some auth for doing so - reaching the status "legandary shitposter." Is this the example we want to set to newer users? This will only encourage shitposting for those joining the community.

Regarding trash talking the ladder, it's a relatively minor issue but something so pointless. It's a pet peeve of mine of how the ladder is treated; there are three points I repeatedly see that I'd like to address:

"The Ladder is bad"

Yeah, mostly, except it gets legitimately pretty good around the ranks 20 - 1. There are some pretty damn good players on it so I don't know why it's downtalked so much. As Sweep said, he and Problems sometimes ladder so there's two good players on it for you. Then there is "ladderhero" Outrage. I don't care if you hate or like him, but you can't deny he is a pretty fucking good player if he's 4-1 (could've been 5-0 were it not for an unfortunate crit) in UPL, and has defeated well known, established SPL player Steelphoenix 2-0 in their BO3 playoffs. If that doesn't at least qualify for a good player then lord knows what does. But of course, he's just a "ladderhero" so he's bad, right? Obviously there are a lot more good players who regularly ladder, and most are in UPL so there's your basis for good players (examples: Optic, Antacool, Level 56, fat chansey aka Loughborough, rarecandydrugger, Incarnation-Fate, Lamashtu, Shrang, occasionally myself? :( and many other less known underrated players, as well as very likely some alts for known SPL players).

"Ladder achievements don't mean anything"

If you've already overcome the ladder and are now playing in big tournaments, and have your own group of friends to practice with, then yes they don't mean anything to YOU. But to newer players, they're pretty important as it can track progress of improving as a player. The ladder is the first stepping stone for newer players, because that is the only place which they can practice in. So when they reach their personal highpoints, they're gonna be proud of themselves, because that is the only place they know. When a player goes from rank 500 to 1, that is a sign of improvement, regardless of the ladder being bad or not. So, when they announce their ladder achievements to the chat (e.g, "I reached top 10!"), their achievement shouldn't IMMEDIATELY be downtalked like what usually happens. Instead, why not just congratulate them and motivate them to go for #1, or is trash talking the ladder because you're "above" it more important to you?

And no, they don't really have chances outside of the ladder to improve. To paraphrase what a certain user said, "don't even use the ladder to improve, be nice around the chat and you may get known by good players." This is simply not true for obvious reasons.

"The card to trashtalk the ladder"

This is just an example of the toxic consensus spreading in the community. Since so many people trash talk the ladder, there are players who just bandwagon and join in, yet they have lord GXEs ranging in the 60s and 70s. If you want to trash talk the ladder, at least beat it.

Lastly, if we are talking about improving the tier, I feel at the very least we can ban or suspect evasion. It's clearly an uncompetitive™ strategy and sometimes spammed on the ladder, which drives players away. There have been many calls to ban this, so if we want to go the direction of improving the tier, we can talk about this before other issues like Primal Groudon.

 

[orch]

The metagame has nothing to do with toxicity within this community. Banning pdon will only have negative impact on the metagame and it would require a bare minimum of additional 4-5 bans to satisfy these pro-banners anyways (pogre, geomancy, gengarite, gothitelle, and salamencite). ATM, I think that discussion is going in completely wrong direction. Why would you think that suspect tests/bans would improve the community? Just look at Gengarite and Shadow Tag suspects rofl. Are you guys trolling or something?

Moving on, I'm going to touch on my personal anecdotes a lot to discuss about what is, IMO, the heart of the toxicity within the community. I just want to make it clear that I'm definitely responsible for a bit of toxicity within the community. I'm sorry about that and I've been trying to improve myself to eliminate that.

Most of my opinions are in line with Blim and ium's earlier post. I think that ium's post was amazing and dead on accurate.

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

It's not just Ubers that's toxic, it's the entire tournament scene which seeps into all smaller communities. Frankly, I don't understand why ubers has gotten the reputation for being toxic, when other tiers have same amount of toxicity or worse. OU is in a constant shitstorm- you cannot go a day in OU without getting a drama/situation, especially during official tournaments. They just clamp it down more efficiently than our mods do. I'll touch on the issue of ineffective moderating later. Just to be clear, I don't intend to diminish the severeness of this situation by deflecting the issue on other tiers. I'm just trying to point out that this toxicity is nestled within the smogon itself, especially the tournament scene. I hope that other tiers will recognize this and take effort to repair their own respective communities too.

Since this thread is specifically for ubers. I think that ium post touched bases, but it didn't go in depth about how to repair ubers toxicity itself. I'll use mostly personal anecdotes and specific examples to explain my points.

I think that it's obvious that ubers community is divided in two. Of course, there's some bridges between the two communities. But it's a rather clear division regardless. The first community was formed as a group of friends who played in BW and are currently mostly active on #ubers. They are ones who usually are drafted into spl and are generally very respected within the community. The second is basically ps ubers chat community which came around after the transition between bw2 and xy. Of course, there's some oldies like jibaku and theorymon but they're definitely not problem in terms of toxicity. I think that the clash between two communities lead to most of toxicity within ubers.

I think that BW people felt alienated when the new people tried to join the community and they quickly rejected them with exception of few. They started to call ps ubers chat a joke, dismissed their posts, and actively tried to shut down meaningful discussions. Few examples:

http://puu.sh/hIyp2/acd191220a.png (yes, it's in this thread and it's probably going to be deleted when I post this with no repercussion for the user.)

It was almost entirely spl players' fault that ubers spl discussion thread got wiped after they bitched about the existence of the thread and flamed each others to get it closed. It was honestly ridicilous and petty behavior from these "respected" people. Although, I'll admit that it never was going to end well when one of the said spl player posted and calling me out even though I never posted in the thread. The post remained for a week before it got deleted. I'm 99% sure that the poster did not get any infraction for the post.

The same user as above example posted multiple times in xy viability thread to mock it. And, the user contributed almost nothing to the thread to improve the thread even though he thought that the viability thread was so bad!

Multiple people from that community actively tried to block Steelskitty's attempt to get into spl by basically shittalking about him and diminishing his tournament achievements such as being one of two finalists in uber open (the most hard and competitive uber tournament right now). At end of SPL, Steel's record was one of the best (or is the best? idk) for uber SPL.

Basically, BW people are generally considered as role models for ubers community and then they do these shit. And guess what? People are going to emulate or respond to their behavior. And, that's what happened. When the user called me out in that spl thread. I knew that it would be unwise for me to post anything, even if it's in the best intentions. How is that a healthy environment? Where users are too frightened to post their thoughts? That's why people are mostly not contributing to these random uber threads. Let's face it. You're mostly judged by your posts and epic like count. It's just better to not post anything than it's to possibly become stigmatized by the community.

The culture clash breeds the toxicity. So, how do we resolve this? I think that it would be best if we went ahead and tried to separate the communities, rather than trying to force an overlap. Most of auth in #ubers are also auth in ubers ps room, even though they rarely enter it. These users frequently complain about the room and brings their own moderation into there.

Frankly, I don't care if these users like or don't like the community in ps ubers room. There's ~30-60 regulars there. I would call that a successful room, especially with so much more discussion than #ubers. New users go there all the time to ask questions which are usually answered or redirected to appropriate room. 99% of time, chat looks like this. Just friendly conversation with occasional discussion about ubers.

Basically, I think that ubers ps room would benefit if the moderation was determined solely by people's actions in the room, opposed to forums and #ubers. I think that encouraging the organic progression in the room is more healthy opposed to tacking on people who don't actually want the job. And the converse should be true for #ubers too. They should be welcome to have their own community there.

Now on the effective moderation. As explained before, moderators for ps ubers room should be ones who actually are embedded within the community, and the same for #ubers. As for the forums, I get the impression that there's pretty much only two people who are moderating it: Sweep and Fireburn.

Sweep and Fireburn are excellent tier leaders, however I do wish that they were more stringent with infractions and deletions. Like, why the hell is this thread not deleted yet?? It's just a toxic circlejerk and clutter now. If it wasn't mm2 as op, then it would've been deleted within 20 seconds of posting. Sweep mentioned that he was apprehensive about infracting his friends in upl thread. IMO, that's where the problem lies within. Moderators should be infracting anyone, including his friends, who are being toxic.

I'll probably edit/post more stuff l8r but that's all I have to say for now.

 

[Sweep]

To be fair, mm2, hack, and steeljackal have all been infracted recently, so we're making progress on that last point.

MM2 was infracted for that & the thread was locked, and Dice's posting wasn't infraction worthy in the slightest. Also, the post Problems made was sarcastic, if we were as strict as you seem to want us to be, the Ubers subforum would become a police state. We definitely do not want that.

 

[orch]

To be fair, mm2, hack, and steeljackal have all been infracted recently, so we're making progress on that last point.

What about dice and mm2? mm2 for that thread that isnt deleted yet and for all of these pointless edgy posts and dice for triple posting stupidest shit in that thread. or are they your better friends? steve angello and outrage? they contributed a fair amount of salt in that thread.

e: fair enough, glad that you're cracking it down. it used to be much worse. thanks for the transparency.

 

[Spy]

A similar idea would to have a seperate ladder from the normal ubers ladder, maybe ubers minus pdon and mega mence, similar to the OU No Mega Ladder and the UU No Scald ladder. It generates discussion, and it lets us see if we've got an improved meta without those two that isn't solely based on theorymonning. I'm aware it's a long shot, but looking at how the subforum is right now, there's not much else you can do.

Did people completely miss this? Right now a lot of the opposition to things seems to be a bunch of theorymonning, can't we actually test a new meta and get some ACTUAL discussion going on if the meta actually improves or not with pdon and mega mence gone, even if it isnt exactly a suspect test? Even so, a lot of people seem to be assuming that a suspect test means a ban, when that isn't the case. It's a chance to test the meta without the mon in question, and if its really as bad as people say it is then it'll just be voted no ban easily. But we should really be learning from our mistakes and try to get something done instead of running away from them (the shadow tag suspect). It feels like people are just trying to use whatever excuse they can to avoid the real issue here, imo at least. If the meta is cancerous as fuck to play, how do you expect the community to be any better? Like someone said earlier, when almost every player including it's own leader doesn't enjoy the tier whatsoever, theres a problem, so we be focused on making the tier as fun and diverse as possible first and foremost, not just saying "if you dont like it too bad".

I don't think the lack of moderation is the problem with the community at all actually, Sweep and Fireburn have really upped their game in that regard lately. The problem lies in the fact that theres literally nothing to do, and the meta is boring as fuck with everyone having the same exact teams so no one is motivated to play/get involved. So drama unfolds as people find things to do.