re: initial ou tiering

[dice]

why does ou begin with such an arbitrary ban list? this has always irked me and i don't consider it effective.

pokemon with certain parameters are always given ubers status from the start of a generation. but why? although it's solely anecdotal, i believe current ubers could achieve greater balance with fewer bans.

isn't the purpose of of ou to achieve the most balanced meta possible with the fewest bans?

maybe tiering philosophy should change for gen 7 and the exploration of adding more pokemon could mitigate the seemingly growing "matchup" each generation

 

[Antar]

We voted on this at the start of Gen V or VI (possibly both), and the answer was basically that the MAJORITY of us didn't want to waste time playtesting shit like Arceus and Rayquaza. I'll see if I can't find the thread.

Edit: from context, the poll here was whether to start off Gen VI with a minimal banlist, a banlist where things could likely drop down or with no banlist.

Edit 2: Aha! So I *was* remembering the V->VI discussion, because the IV->V discussion was before my time (though note that "no banlist" was an option here as well).

 

[kokoloko]

so you want ou to become ubers minus arc, pdon, megamence, and megaray + w/e gen 7 changes happen

y/n

(this sounds like a sarcastic post but it isn't. i'm actually wondering if that's what you're essentially proposing)

 

[Cherub Agent]

i've often wondered this myself

disregarding the obviously OP things like koko mentioned, you mean at the start of the generation we'd be holding suspect tests for some of the iffier ubers like giratina, lugia, (reshiram? im just theorymoning here idk if they'd be broken or not). i'm all for this... the general tankiness of these things /would/ potentially keep really strong offensive mons like mega lucario or w/e in check... i know we don't support broken checks broken, but next gen i think we're going to be officializing a new tier anyway right? so that could just end up being the normal "power level". next gen ou would then potentially be a bit of a blend of current ubers and current ou.

 

[aim]

Similar to what we did in Gen 5 when we allowed Darkrai, Manaphy and Skymin? Clarify please.

Anyway, i wouldn't be opposed to such a thing. I could see a similar route that doubles ou has traveleved and allow darkrai w/ no dark void etc (not that i don't think a mon that outpaces Greninja with NP fairy dark and poison moves wouldnt be scary). Further discussion on this would be nice. I'm still on the fence about potential Kanga Luc stuff like that coming back at the start of Gen 7, assuming mons "like that" are what you are talking about. Who am i to decide if they are gonna be broken before we really explore the new gen. Sorry i keep adding my thoughts, the shower does this to me.

 

[tennisace]

so you want ou to become ubers minus arc, pdon, megamence, and megaray + w/e gen 7 changes happen

y/n

(this sounds like a sarcastic post but it isn't. i'm actually wondering if that's what you're essentially proposing)

i mean if you threw geomancy and maybe pogre onto that list you'd prolly end up with something close to balanced, or at least a solid starting point.

 

[Mazinger]

Similar to what we did in Gen 5 when we allowed Darkrai, Manaphy and Skymin? Clarify please

I can't speak for dice but I assume he doesn't mean that but rather the "no banlist" option that was mentioned earlier in this thread, which would make the beginning point a tier where everything is allowed and not just what the initial voters think is probably "ou level".

I've thought about this myself and from what I remember (without rereading the PR threads becuase I don't have much time right now) the main reason beyond "this is kinda how the banlist has looked in the past" is time; everyone wants to play the latest games, as seen in past ost/spl tier discussions, but probably not with what koko mentioned and similar things. This is increasingly relevant since pkmn is practically annualized by now and we have no idea how much time there is before the next generation.

That said, if we figure out a way to start without a banlist and create an acceptable tier in a reasonable amount of time it might be worth a shot, although I don't think it would do much in terms of mitigating matchup issues like the OP mentions.

 

[aim]

That said, if we figure out a way to start without a banlist and create an acceptable tier in a reasonable amount of time it might be worth a shot, although I don't think it would do much in terms of mitigating matchup issues like the OP mentions.

Thanks G. And yeah echoing this part. Obviously i don't know what gen 7 comes with and maybe it does have a mon or two that stops primal groudon, mega mence, xern, ekiller etc but if that's not the case i don't see how it would help with the matchup issue. Gen 7 ou would just end up looking like Gen 6 Ubers until we start banning all the crazy mons and even then we'd just be following the same pattern after that, usually "broke megas" then gene/deo's lando etc. But maybe not so much no ban list as starting the gen without the "big guys" from ubers. Like i don't see how testing ekiller etc helps but letting a prediceded # of mons fall down into ou isn't something that i would object 2.

 

[blarajan]

Similar to what we did in Gen 5 when we allowed Darkrai, Manaphy and Skymin? Clarify please.

Anyway, i wouldn't be opposed to such a thing. I could see a similar route that doubles ou has traveleved and allow darkrai w/ no dark void etc (not that i don't think a mon that outpaces Greninja with NP fairy dark and poison moves wouldnt be scary). Further discussion on this would be nice. I'm still on the fence about potential Kanga Luc stuff like that coming back at the start of Gen 7, assuming mons "like that" are what you are talking about. Who am i to decide if they are gonna be broken before we really explore the new gen. Sorry i keep adding my thoughts, the shower does this to me.

Just to clarify, it's not that they allow Darkrai without Dark Void, it's that they banned Dark Void in general, as it was similarly fucked up on Smeargle. Because Dark Void was banned, Darkrai was not broken in Doubles (as aren't a lot of things that overwhelm Singles play).

 

[Mr.378]

Tradition, mostly. It was always the idea that the ubers, the cover legends, were unbalanced and needed no testing and should just be locked away because balance with them is impossible. This however hasn't been necessarily the case in some time however. There are enough cover legends tat they mostly have a parity between themselves that allows a stable, balanced metagame to form if only for a few bans. The only real thing stopping this from happening is that people aren't used to such a concept which I don't think is reason enough. By changing the standard in such a way we're making out tiers less arbitrary and more legitimate because we have always only wanted to remove the aspects and tools of the game that are truly unbalanced and by doing this we're allowing more hypothetically balanced ones back.

To summarize I have had nothing but support behind this idea for a long time and we should try it out.

 

[Aldaron]

It's not a novel idea; we've discussed it for 3 generations now.

It normally comes down to "the probability of the all the benefits happening" is not high enough to make a normal cost:benefit analysis, while the costs and potential risks are all pretty prohibitive.

For example, for the potential benefits side, while people claim ubers will be "more balanced" (even if I ignore how shallow that phrase is in terms of meaning anything and accept some subjective line for how to determine that) with JUST A FEW MORE BANS, there is nothing beyond the "Assurance" of some ubers players (and let's be real, while I take your earnest opinion (the few times it is actually earnest) seriously dice, I find certain "frothing at the mouth about Ubers and Smogon ban philosophy" users like Jibaku or melee_mewtwo a little too biased to actually take that seriously) that this would happen. That nice benefit of "having a more balanced tier than currently with fewer bans" is certainly a nice thing to consider / hope for though.

For the cost side, we've spent 4 generations accepting some (admittedly arbitrary) general concept of power level to revolve our most popular (by far) tier around. I'm sure that anyone involved in any even remotely customer facing product will realize how "big of a deal" it is to so drastically change a paradigm like that without a MUCH stronger argument than "i believe ubers will be more balanced if we ban x y and z...because i and other ubers advocates say so." (not saying you couldn't come up with a better worded argument than that, but unless it has multiple, deep arguments, that is how a large number of people will see it).

For potential cost side (risk), there are two primary risks: that bans of the ubers tier to achieve a more "ou centric" balance (note, I don't mean banning around previously assumed levels of OU power, but banning to balance, which isn't necessarily the case in ubers even now) end up fucking everything up so much we have to scrape the whole idea (what a PR disaster that would be) and start as we normally would, OR that even if the bans don't fuck everything up, we arrive essentially at the "precursor" to what we do now and just end up having to spend more time to ban stuff.

Of course, even before coming to this conversation we have to establish a very important given:

The suspect system in terms of allowing the public to qualify via the ladder and have a vote is NOT going anywhere. I stated my concerns about such a system when iconic pushed hard to reinstate it in early BW (namely, that due to our burgeoning activity we would eventually be tied irrevocably to it), but at this point, we are basically irrevocably tied to it. Look at the ubers mega-ray / shadow tag fiascos to see what happens when things around anything potentially shady or reducing / removing votes is involved...and then expand that to OU exposure / activity.

Assuming that as a given, we come to another potential benefit / cost issue...time / resources spent in such a system. The advocates of this proposal will say "we'll have less bans so it will be quicker!!" while the opponents of the proposal will say "it'll either fail and we'll have to start over or we'll just have to do more tests". The problem with something hazy like this that is such a dramatic paradigm shift is that it is on the side proposing the change to the status quo to provide a near overwhelming argument that the risk is minimal and the benefit will definitely happen.

Unfortunately, I've never seen an unbiased, convincing argument to satiate my concerns about the known costs or possible risks. I'm mostly open ears to consider conversation about it, but I'm certainly not going to approve something like that "just to try it" or just because some people think it will be better, simply because the time and resources will be far too significant to be worth risking something like this.

EDIT:

Lol, people who are stating things like "it might be worth a shot" or "we should try it out." need to look at this from a policy administration perspective...namely time and resources invested. The proposal here has a huge potential time and resource investment, so we can't just willy nilly "try it out" or do it because we think "it might be worth a shot."

I also want to say that the OP is a bit disingenuous in referencing the match up problem...because it (maybe purposely? I dunno) doesn't mention that it would be invoking the "let's centralize the shit out of this" to do so...which is certainly a viable option, but it is something we've wanted to avoid forever, for a very obvious reason: people like diversity.

The problem with the diversity we have now (arguably, not stating this as fact), is that we have too much high power diversity (and the same # of pokemon slots / moves / items to deal with it as previously generations). However, before jumping to something so drastic as centralizing the shit out of tier to reduce the diversity drastically, I'd rather reduce the diversity slightly (via bans) to reduce the match up factor. It's partially why I was a bit disappointed mega-metagross was voted OU, because I read the arguments and everyone was voting because it wasn't broken in a vacuum, not because removing around 4 or 5 "not broken in a vacuum but still very powerful threats" was better for the metagame, but that's another topic for another thread.

Which brings us to another cost...that even if all the stated benefits happen (that we have a "balanced" tier done faster with fewer bans), that we'll be drastically reducing a concept that is revered in almost all levels of playing: diversity. Whether it is the ladder noob or the lower tier junkie or a tournament player, enjoying diversity (basically, for noobs the ability to use a bunch of stuff, and for advanced players the ability to use clever strategies beyond altering EVs or a move or two on kyogre / dialga) is a huge part of team building in general, and basically admitting we're significantly reducing it is a huge roadblock that will be a bitch to get out.

 

[Inspirited]

I am glad dice asked this question as early as he did so it has an appropriate if not more than enough time to sit before gen 7 (I predict this will be in 2 years with their current release trends and the trending need for a Zygarde based sequel/prequel to X and Y). We will most likely know what kind of Pokemon are being released and will have some idea of how they might function so we can either shrink or expand the new initial banlist if necessary. I do believe everything deemed balance breaking initially should be tested on a side ladder at some point while the generation is still new, just to make sure our suspicions are correct, theorymon isn't everything folks. The way this will ripple down the usage based system will be interesting though, as those who lead UU, RU, and NU will all have a whole host of new mons to deal with depending on what is good in OU and what isn't. An example would be UU having to potentially deal with Reshiram among the most of the old OU cast assuming it picks up no new niches and Ho-Oh isn't nerfed into the floor / banned from OU. This will be a large burden on tier leader / future tier leaders so they should probably have the most say in this when the time comes to decide.

About aim's point (its a good one imo), I think the "we don't know" factor sorta fits into this because let's face it, Game Freak has pulled out some crazy mons this gen. Maybe with some of the the gen 7 mons will make all of the big ubers not as big anymore, we simply don't know. The problem with gen 6 Ubers that I see is not that anything is truly game breaking since Mega Rayquaza's passing, but there are simply too many "big guys" to account for in the meta right now (OU also has the same sort of issue from what I hear). However, as far as we know there could be answers to these "big guys" waiting in gen 7 or they could be bigger and badder, but what it all comes down to is we don't know anything about gen 7 yet, so these sorts of inferences (sorta) are useless until info is out. I am also wondering how you are seeing OU being played when you mention testing E-killer as useless in your example, E-killer is something us Ubers players (including yourself) have been dealing with for the passed two generations, we can employ the same sort of strategies to bring down the monster in OU if this sort of change happens and everything falls or new ones should the new generation present them. You won't have to use a Choice Scarf Terrakion or Choice Banded Landorus-T to bring down E-killer should all of the options we have for it in Ubers drop so instead you can use your Giratina-O, Arceus-Ghost, defensive Yveltal and such. If something is added to E-killer that is overbearing on a balanced metagame then sure, toss it out the window into Ubers / AG, but it would need something rather significant in order for me to consider it overbearing at least. I get the feeling these sorts of points are good, but can't be backed yet if they will ever be able to be backed because as of right now Ubers can deal with them, and we don't know what gen 7 will bring. (Also, for the record, Ubers has more of a quantity issue rather than quality. All of the mons in Ubers are manageable with tools in the tier, but there are way to many of these big threats to account for as of right now. No team is truly "solid" at this point in time.This is fixable, but not in a very justifiable manner.)

Even though I personally approve of this, ultimately it should be up to Chaos first, the OU tiering leaders second, the other tiering leaders third (their tiers will be just as messed up as OU for awhile I would imagine), then everyone else. This decision shouldn't take place anytime soon though.

 

[Reymedy]

I'm gonna ignore the obvious fact that some people may not want to play in a tier where stupid mons, that we all know are gonna be banned, are running free. It's not only unfun, but it also paralyses the building (ie: why would I build in a Kangash meta, when we know it's gonna be banned for SPL).

Instead, I'm gonna assume that we do what you propose.
You're gonna quickly realise that it does not work because you ignored something obvious.

First, let's say we did this for XY. We unleash all the Ubers and start from 0.
Yea, I said all because there is no justification to refuse the re-testing of stuff like Giratina or Palkia if you plan to test the new big Pokémons such as Xerneas or Yvetal right ?

Let's see the process :

1) So we're in a tier with every single Pokémon available. And it's a mess, plus, the Uber tier is now dead, and for a good time.

2)i) Here comes a bunch of quick bans, most likely.
or
2)ii) We chose the "slow bans" option (suspect thread + ladder + identification + voting + results) and the Gen is now dead for a while

3) Decent metagame


I want to stress a couple of things :

- The more Pokémons you have to ban, the riskier the situation is getting. I'm gonna explain it as this may be an obscure concept. If you got a balanced metagame of 10 Pokémons, and you add one single Pokémon, the risk is low, because the situation is simpler, there are few new interactions to consider. And, worst case scenario, we end up with +1 controversial Pokémon. Easy to come back.
If you got a metagame of 10 Pokémons, and you add 10 Pokémons, the risk is huge. A whole lot of new interactions appear, you need to consider them all. Worst case scenario, you created a whole new metagame, and most likely, totally unbalanced. Hard to come back.
You proposal means a crazy big amount of Pokémons that would be added to OU. I would even say that your idea is about creating a whole new batch of OU Pokémons. This is incredibly dangerous, the Council will have a crazy amount of responsibilities, and a lot of tough calls with huge impacts will need to be taken. You're putting OU at risk.

- We all know that your idea will consume a crazy amount of time, and as I said, will paralyse a bunch of tiers for a long time. This is something no one wants (besides maybe Ubers players, because not much would change for them). This alone, totally makes your idea impossible IMO. The only way to go around that would be to allow the Council to make a whole lot of quick bans to get the tiers up ASAP. This, is contradictory with the original purpose of your idea (ie : taking the time to explore BIG Pokémons).
Don't underestimate the time restraint. Remember the first XY OST, the tier was really unstable, and the Council had to improve the tier real quick because it was considered as impossible to host an OST in an old Generation. I can't even imagine how many tournaments would be messed up or postponed with your idea.

- We need to take lessons from the past. There is no reason to ignore what the older generations taught us. This isn't a flaw, it's a strenght. If the G-1 tier is solid, then it's only helping us to create a G tier solid aswell. Once it has been done, then we can fool around and retest Ubers.

The obvious thing that I mentionned, is that, back in GEN1, we tested implicitly all the Pokémons. Mew was Uber, and went down to OU when its time came. It's also true for some of other Pokémons such as Celebi, Lati@s or Garchomp. To me, this means that the process is working, and is fair. Maybe the new generations are making this process harder and longer, but this further supports my point that you can't afford to retest everything (time restraint).

isn't the purpose of of ou to achieve the most balanced meta possible with the fewest bans?

First, it's missleading to put these two goals together, they're not of equal importance. "The fewest bans" is merely as indication as to how we have to reach a balanced metagame. I'd even rather say : "achieve the most balanced meta possible in the fewest amount of time and bans"


I want to add aswell :

i believe current ubers could achieve greater balance with fewer bans.

I don't think that Ubers' balance has to be taken into account for OU tiering decisions. Like, ever.
And I hope that's not what pushed you to post this.

 

[Slimmer]

I guess that initial ou banlist comes from experience firstly, then common knowledge about how several mons couldn't be balanced for an OU tier which is characterised during gens to be composed by an amount of good mons which can deal each other.
Legendaries mons at first (Mewtwo gen1, Lugia/Ho-Oh Gen2, Kyogre/Groudon/Rayquaza gen3 and so on) couldn't deal with other mons. Reason? Huge difference in BSTs, particular features that make them OP than other mons (and this is natural since they are developed to be stronger than all other "common" mons).
Across generations, some mons (Celebi/Jirachi gen3, Latias in gen4 which was rebanned, Latwins deoxys etc in gen5 and so on) were unbanned due to collettive thinking that they could be not that unbalanced for that gen. This was true for many, not true for others (deoxys gen5/6).

Now, skipping this mass of obvious things, I think experience should have taught us that huge amount of mons are still broken and unbalanced for current meta, and that's ok, cuz if it's so they are goin to be banned anyway in accordance of your thought.
My worry is that the OU tier could adapt to a too high power creep. I mean, every gen you tried to unban Deoxys because they got flaws (frailty or lack of power, depending on the form) but they have always shown to be too much for the OU due to facility in doing their job (setting hazards, lure stuff - think about extreme coverage of Deo-S, or Helmet Recover hazard setter, or CounterCoat, Taunt etc).
What could happen if we let mons like Darkrai, Skymin, Mewtwo, Giratina, Dialga/Palkia, Rayquaza and so on roaming in OU? It could happen that people could get used to their power, even if it's generically too much, just because "there are other mons which are more powerful than them" (Arceus, Xerneas, PGroudon, MegaMewtwos, MegaQuaza, etc) and comparing broken stuff with more broken stuff it seems logic that the prior could stay in OU. This means that the power creep increases.
This could seem a "not that tragic thing", it could be normal that with 100+ Pokémon (considering megas as other pokemon because they actually are) the power creep is going to increase. Just look at Gen 5 and 6 compared to Gen 4.

I really believe that this question is up to principles. Do you consent to Gen 7 OU to be a place where really strong mons (as "currently-Ubers-also-shitty-Ubers-like-Reshiram-or-DeoNormal" are) can be defined "balanced" due to the presence of other "not-too-much-broken-but-still-op" mons? I mean, do you really want that the next generation could be generically defined as "shitty and matchup reliant"? (because let's be clear, BW and ORAS OU actually are, and the unban of stuff from Ubers has never led to better results -> see Aegislash)
I think that we should learn the lesson that BW and ORAS taught us. The fact that after several years we are going to ban stuff in BW should let us understand that something was wrong with it (and Kyurem-B is still around even if it could potentially 2HKOes almost every mon w/CB Outrage).
Do we want a more competitive tier? Or a more diversified tier? These two things, sadly, are related because teambuilding is inevitably goin to have issues with an higher variety of choices for these 6 slots.
I believe that keep banning overpowered stuff and also stuff that "could turn out the metagame worse even if it's not that broken" is the right way, and a proof of this can be seen in Gen 4 which is characterized to be more "balanced" than others with still a more than good variety of viable mons. Unbanning every mon in the initial tiering could turn out to be just a wasting of time as Reymedy said, still not worth to try due to experience in last 2 gens.

 

[Snowflakes]

I think there's two ways about it, for the last 3 generations UU has been arguably the most balanced and fun metagame and with some pretty good diversity while Ubers has also had a pretty good following and has been fairly balanced, though incredibly centralizing with Kyogre before and now Pdon. Maybe it's me personally but I wish either one was considered the "main metagame" considering this OU and last OU were nothing to write home about. Whatever comes out of this thread I do hope something is changed for gen 7 OU as currently I don't think the philosophy is providing us our best possible metagame.

 

[Jibaku]

We all know that your idea will consume a crazy amount of time

I think the only thing time consuming is how long it'll take for people to absorb the idea. I cannot be sure whether the process itself will take up that much time, but removing this deeply rooted stigma will be the challenge.

While I do agree with dice's premise, that is potentially such a huge roadblock it might not even worth pursuing.

 

[Clone]

i think the main problem with this (not that i entirely oppose the idea) is that if i'm reading this right, the new ou tier will essentially be a more balanced version of our current ubers tier. i don't really think that an idea like this will appeal to the masses because many people won't be able to wrap their heads around the fact that ou will now include certain cover legends because cover legends have always been known as uber mons, and i'm sure this will drastically affect our pr (but then again on the opposite side of the spectrum ppl can stop complaining about us banning anything and everything!). while i don't think this idea should be discarded, i don't think it's exactly the right way to go unless there is serious testing that starts as soon as possible. for example, a separate "ou tier" could be created in the near future that follows this and it would be unofficial, and all the testing stuff (suspecting, banning, etc) could go on while we still have our standard tiers remain official. then, when this idea has been thoroughly tested, an informed decision could be made.

my main problem with this personally is that this will drastically fuck up lower tiers, but that may or may not be a problem in the grand scheme of things so idk.

 

[Lavos]

I think the only thing time consuming is how long it'll take for people to absorb the idea - if we decide to go through with this. I cannot be sure whether the process itself will take up that much time.

Nah the process is going to be ridiculous from a logistic perspective unless you want to keep doing it the way we did it in BW, which was remove the very very very obviously broken shit and let Deoxys/Shaymin-S/Darkrai/Manaphy go crazy, then remove them too once it was beyond clear that they too were broken. The way you apparently want to go about it is a legitimate test of every huge threat + suspect voting which means a ton of time invested into laddering, discussing, voting, etc. on stuff that IS PROBABLY GOING TO BE BANNED REGARDLESS. Even worse, shit that's clearly Uber level in any other gen could get passed over for even stronger Pokemon in suspect rounds. Hello Reuniclus.

Although I suppose you're right that the majority of time consumed will be people adapting to this idea because they're never going to adapt to this idea. We've been through 6 generations of OU thus far and the power level is very clearly established. The line has been drawn in the sand and now you want to re-draw it for...what reason exactly? To shake things up? Okay, that can be done in a way that doesn't destroy the most popular metagame on Smogon. For Ubers balance? Cannot for the life of me see how that's relevant to OU. And, god forbid, for diversity? Yes, because adding incredibly powerful stuff to the OU metagame has always increased diversity. Wait, that's never happened. Literally ever. Anybody remember Genesect? All it did was centralize the metagame around VoltTurn and VoltTurn counters. And increase Heatran usage by 50%. I don't really want to see the Genesect effect times 20. Mitigating the matchup problem is exactly the opposite of what it's going to do. More powerful stuff means less people use less powerful stuff because why would you not use the Pokemon with BST 700 over the one with BST 550? And there's a lot more of the latter in sheer numbers. So you're limiting diversity.

To answer the question posed by OP: "why does ou begin with such an arbitrary ban list? this has always irked me and i don't consider it effective."

It's because intelligent minds well versed in past OU tiers can reasonably assess next-gen threats and accurately tier them between Ubers/OU with 99% accuracy. I think the only exception is Kyurem-B which was mistakenly placed in BW2 Ubers and myself and most of the OU community campaigned heavily for its drop to OU, which happened quickly. The ban list is NOT arbitrary. I'm very confused as to why you think it would be. When Gen 7 comes out, we'll probably still stick Kyogre and Groudon and Mewtwo and Arceus and blah blah on the ban list as a preliminary, because everyone is aware of how strong they are. Rayquaza and Conkeldurr don't mix.

EDIT:

Although I do have an idea for any sort of suspect testing in OU from here on out. I am strongly of the opinion that we shouldn't hold multiple suspect tests at the same time, or at the very least we shouldn't put them in the same thread. Again I have no idea what's been going on regarding ORAS OU but back in BW/BW2 we had several instances where multiple suspects tests skewed the results/were going to skew the results of extremely important voting rounds. First and most obviously is Reuniclus somehow slipping through the cracks on a >20% ban vote because it was suspected along with wayyyyyy more broken stuff, let's not do that. The other example I'll give is the Tornadus-T + Keldeo suspect which had to be partially cancelled due to the overwhelming amount of strong opinion on both sides of the Torn-T debate versus very little voice given to either side of Keldeo since it wasn't as black and white as the former. Thus we had to push back the Keldeo suspect, which was extremely frustrating to a portion of the voting community, especially once it became clear that Torn-T was headed to Ubers. I think this issue would have been resolved by a simple thread splice, make Torn-T one discussion and Keldeo a separate one so we can not only have completely focused/uncluttered discussion on both, but also avoid comparing suspects to each other. I'm not saying their argument is intelligent in any sense of the word, but I do recall some people claiming that Keldeo wasn't broken because Torn-T was far stronger. Not only is that apples to oranges, but it's also irrelevant because ban line = ban line regardless of how far across the line any given Pokemon happens to be. This would mitigate shitposts in important threads. I see no reason not to implement other than making two threads which isn't hard at all. Thanks

 

[Mekkah]

The obvious thing that I mentionned, is that, back in GEN1, we tested all the Pokémons. Mew was Uber, and went down to OU when its time came. It's also true for some of other Pokémons such as Celebi, Lati@s or Garchomp. To me, this means that the process is working, and is fair. Maybe the new generations are making this process harder and longer, but this further supports my point that you can't afford to retest everything (time restraint).

Old person chiming in.

Look, I wasn't around when RBY "OU" was made but I'm very curious as to where you got this fact. Suspect testing as you and most people know it did not start until gen 4, I think with either Lati@ or Wobbuffet. Here's what happened before that time: non-trio legendaries were banned and no one questioned it. I don't think anyone even had to write that out, it was a gentleman's agreement on the IRC-based bots that played gen 1, 2 and part of 3. The first time an "uber" was put into OU was when Pokemon NetBattle used a different ruleset than the RSbot crowd (two different communities), the former allowing Jirachi and Celebi while the latter did not. Then they merged and the "Jirachi/Celebi allowed" ruleset won over because the people in charge at the time wanted that and they have not gone back up since. I'm not sure exactly when Mew in particular came down, apparently it's Uber in DPP but UU in BW. But rest assured nobody even thought of allowing it in RBY and GSC, and only the craziest wanted it to in ADV (and it never got a serious look)

 

[MikeDawg]

I think that it's somewhat important to mimic the in-game online rules in our "standard" tier (lest we default to underused or something, but we accomplish nothing by rebranding). Of course, we will have disparity (legends can suck, non-legends can be broken, phione can be phione), but as a whole, the two metagames should feature many of the same pokemon in my opinion (for presumably obvious reasons). Public appeal is perhaps the largest factor in policy decisions, else we could just abolish suspect testing altogether.

If truly desired, a meta similar to no-weather, no-mega, etc. could be made that was pretty much ubers, except things are banned as if it were any other tier (this is my interpretation of the original proposal). Serves as both a test-run of sorts and an outlet (albeit a relatively unpopular one) for those who really want to play this meta.

I don't understand why we can't just make Ubers this. We now have Anything Goes. Turn ubers into a tier, not a banlist. Perhaps have it actively affect lower tiers (ie. It would have usage cutoffs as is typical). A new borderline can be made in between OU and Ubers. Perhaps this does indeed just "rebrand" the OU metagame, but I think that just keeping the name overused as the tier below ubers while promoting ir as the standard tier would help compensate for the ineffectiveness of relabling.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

While we're on the topic of tiering philosophy can we talk about the philosophy we use as a site when it comes to banning Pokemon? To my knowledge there hasn't been a single philosophy of banning espoused by site leadership and that is a significant source of friction and opposition in suspect discussions. It makes it very difficult to have a reasonable discussion when you aren't only trying to get around opposing issues but also the opposing philosophies underlying those issues.

The two traditional philosophies I'm referring to are "ban it if it's broken" versus "ban it if it improves the metagame by its removal." We see these opposing philosophies not just among the playerbase but even among the tiers themselves! We have kokoloko's system in UU which is much more liberal on banning to create a desired metagame, versus some of the other tiers that ban as minimally as possible and then OU which is almost something of a hybrid in their attempts to create a better meta with various suspects and drop attempts. It's no wonder suspect discussions are so fractured when both the playerbase and tiers themselves are in various philosopical states of belief.

We need to have a discussion on this topic, with the goal to create a common aim in tiering approaches to bans, in order to best facilitate future suspect procedures and tier development.

 

[Slimmer]

While we're on the topic of tiering philosophy can we talk about the philosophy we use as a site when it comes to banning Pokemon? To my knowledge there hasn't been a single philosophy of banning espoused by site leadership and that is a significant source of friction and opposition in suspect discussions. It makes it very difficult to have a reasonable discussion when you aren't only trying to get around opposing issues but also the opposing philosophies underlying those issues.

The two traditional philosophies I'm referring to are "ban it if it's broken" versus "ban it if it improves the metagame by its removal." We see these opposing philosophies not just among the playerbase but even among the tiers themselves! We have kokoloko's system in UU which is much more liberal on banning to create a desired metagame, versus some of the other tiers that ban as minimally as possible and then OU which is almost something of a hybrid in their attempts to create a better meta with various suspects and drop attempts. It's no wonder suspect discussions are so fractured when both the playerbase and tiers themselves are in various philosopical states of belief.

We need to have a discussion on this topic, with the goal to create a common aim in tiering approaches to bans, in order to best facilitate future suspect procedures and tier development.

Good point, if I have to choose between these two philosophies I'd go with the latter. The first one is too "subjective" (what actually means "broken"?)
I know that also the second one could be disputable but suspect processes will make an idea of how the metagame can actually be more improved with that mon removal. The only one issue of "koko system" is the PR reaction to ban decisions' method, but current suspect process method under this philosophy perspective would be the best for OU tier.
The main issue could be that a lot of people will always go with the first traditional philosophy and won't understand that this will be a block for the tiering development (but a council-only decision could turn out to be worse in terms of PR)

 

[Reymedy]

Old person chiming in.

Look, I wasn't around when RBY "OU" was made but I'm very curious as to where you got this fact. Suspect testing as you and most people know it did not start until gen 4, I think with either Lati@ or Wobbuffet. Here's what happened before that time: non-trio legendaries were banned and no one questioned it. I don't think anyone even had to write that out, it was a gentleman's agreement on the IRC-based bots that played gen 1, 2 and part of 3. The first time an "uber" was put into OU was when Pokemon NetBattle used a different ruleset than the RSbot crowd (two different communities), the former allowing Jirachi and Celebi while the latter did not. Then they merged and the "Jirachi/Celebi allowed" ruleset won over because the people in charge at the time wanted that and they have not gone back up since. I'm not sure exactly when Mew in particular came down, apparently it's Uber in DPP but UU in BW. But rest assured nobody even thought of allowing it in RBY and GSC, and only the craziest wanted it to in ADV (and it never got a serious look)

You misunderstood what I meant. I (and Smogon) wasnt around either, but back in RBY some Pokémons got "banned". Agreed, the banning had nothing to do with what we do now, it was not as sophisticated. However, I think we can consider that the idea that Mewtwo was OP didn't come out of nowhere. The playerbase (or whatever it was back then) decided that legendaries were OP (I assume), that's still a tiering decision. It's the outcome of something, even if that something is as rudimentary as playing the main story of a Red, Blue, Yellow Pokémon game.
I'm glad you give details about how stuff was originally banned and then got unbanned, which further supports that when an Uber deserves to be drop'd to OU.. it happens, eventually.

tl;dr : I didnt mean to say that I was around and that I took part in some suspect testing or whatever, I simply wanted to bring up that every decision, even as "noobish" as banning all the legendaries, is the outcome of something (in this situation, basic cartridge gaming experience).

 

[tennisace]

While we're on the topic of tiering philosophy can we talk about the philosophy we use as a site when it comes to banning Pokemon? To my knowledge there hasn't been a single philosophy of banning espoused by site leadership and that is a significant source of friction and opposition in suspect discussions. It makes it very difficult to have a reasonable discussion when you aren't only trying to get around opposing issues but also the opposing philosophies underlying those issues.

this is currently being worked on by oglemi and i

 

[Jibaku]

I don't understand why we can't just make Ubers this. We now have Anything Goes. Turn ubers into a tier, not a banlist.

Ubers has always been a tier since at least Gen 4. Perhaps 3. I don't see where you're getting the idea that it's just a banlist. And I want to repeat this because this false information has been spread a lot of times and I can't correct everyone. Great, we have AG now - that changes nothing.

The two traditional philosophies I'm referring to are "ban it if it's broken" versus "ban it if it improves the metagame by its removal."

Never a fan of the second one because it's just as subjective if not more than the first one (how do you define "more healthy" when things aren't somewhat obvious to begin with?). I'm a proponent of "ban only if it's necessary" (for OU it would be whatever to create a balanced and healthy metagame, for Ubers it would be whatever is needed to at least keep the tier competitively functional) because it's the only surefire way to fix a problem - anything below that becomes too opinionated and it becomes difficult to actually measure if it's truly improved or not (postMence/Latias DPP, several BW OU suspects), or if new problems arise. Obviously an exact line is a bit difficult to draw, but that also means there's no need to make it even harder. At that point I feel that it is best to spend the time and effort to making most of the metagame, rather than to relentlessly argue whether something is unhealthy or not when the results may as well be minimal and/or short lived at best.

I can't speak for UU or below however as the tier is constantly being influenced by threats continually entering and leaving.