re: initial ou tiering

[MikeDawg]

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.

That's not true, though. It's a "tier" at best. Disregarding the fact that it doesn't function as a tier (being usage based), associated philosophy maintains that it is a banlist. We can say that it isn't a banlist and that it should be treated like a normal tier, but the community will not let anything be banned. Megaquaza is the sole exception, and that is a very obvious outlier. Sure, it isn't de-facto, but it is most definitely not considered a tier, especially prior to gen 6.

Anything goes does matter, at least in the sense that there is now an actual banlist, which will hopefully help dissipate the ubers-banlist sentiment.

 

[Inspirited]

Aldaron, I hate to face you head on but I feel as if I must because a small group of users and I have been play testing a far more balanced version of Smogon Ubers for a few months now through the Pokemon Perfect community. There is a tournament going on through their forums for the meta and I have to say, the meta itself is much better than ORAS OU as of now (of course this an opinion and they are like armpits; everybody has 'em and they all stink). The problem I find most with ORAS OU is the amount of diversity in threats you can choose it too large for any one team to handle. Its not perfect yet, but I do believe we are close to finding just the right amount of threats to have in a tier at once. I will admit our playerbase is too small to make accurate and under-skilled to make the clearest judgments on the tier (sorry if I offended anyone, but it's the truth), but even the building aspect of the tier is a lot better than anything I have experienced in ORAS OU thus far. It is also too early for any of us to even say we have clear judgments of the tier because of the "breath of fresh air" effect it has on us right now. It is just, unexplored as it stands right now and I would like to change that. We should actually walk into the wilderness instead of arguing over a map that hasn't been updated in who knows how many years. Let's make the map accurate.

I don't want to make anymore theorymon based arguments for this and would much rather have actual data and educated opinions mostly due to the fact I am tired of the theorymon side of things. There is also an ad hominem you are forcing us to play with in your post which sets the odds against us if we do decide to play the theorymon game. I and a few other users would like to run a few research tours in order for us to fully address your concerns and the concerns others with actual play and more educated opinions assuming the turnout is good. We already have one tour almost done and we will also be hosting another research tour on the Pokemon Perfect forums very soon once the first's finals finish. the first tour didn't have a very big turnout though, so I won't use it in the stats.

I guess I should mention the current banlist:
Red Orb / Blue Orb / Salamencite / Shadow Tag / Geomancy

Clauses

Swagger Clause: Swagger is banned
Mega Rayquaza Ban Mod
Sleep Clause Mod
Species Clause
Moody Clause
OHKO Clause
Endless Battle Clause
Evasion Clause
Baton Pass Clause

I would like to point out that this could all change with gen 7 though, there maybe a mon or two that centralize OU, modeled after the current one, just enough so that the number of viable dangerous threats diminishes. We will have to wait and see though.

 

[Aberforth]

That's not true, though. It's a "tier" at best. Disregarding the fact that it doesn't function as a tier (being usage based), associated philosophy maintains that it is a banlist. We can say that it isn't a banlist and that it should be treated like a normal tier, but the community will not let anything be banned. Megaquaza is the sole exception, and that is a very obvious outlier. Sure, it isn't de-facto, but it is most definitely not considered a tier, especially prior to gen 6.

Anything goes does matter, at least in the sense that there is now an actual banlist, which will hopefully help dissipate the ubers-banlist sentiment.

For the last 3 or so generations there has been some tension over what exactly Ubers is. Is it a tier? Is it just OU's banlist? Is it OK to ban things from Ubers? Well, thanks to GameFreak and Power Creep, we have some answers for you.

- Ubers is now the name for the tier above OU. It is no longer just a banlist.

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/rules-general-information-and-helpful-links.3536522/

Yeah, it's a tier. That's decided on officially already.

For what it's worth, there have been attempts to balance current ubers on other servers, and generally what I've heard about it is that it is a good and balanced metagame. I think there's like 4 bans? I'm not entirely sure about it.

 

[MikeDawg]

http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/rules-general-information-and-helpful-links.3536522/

Yeah, it's a tier. That's decided on officially already.

For what it's worth, there have been attempts to balance current ubers on other servers, and generally what I've heard about it is that it is a good and balanced metagame. I think there's like 4 bans? I'm not entirely sure about it.

I'm aware that it's a "tier". My point was that you can call it a tier all that you want, but the playerbase is not treating it like a tier, and recently, banning things is still not realistic.

 

[danilo]

this is currently being worked on by oglemi and i

why u guys? just curious

 

[Arcticblast]

why u guys? just curious

They are a) admins and b) the ones who took the initiative to do so

 

[shrang]

I think the whole point is to start ou with nothing banned, then ban for balance. The problem with why everyone thinks this is not a good idea is becuase they see shit like skymin to be broken individually, but when you have a proper metagame similar to ubers, these individual pokes are not broken. All you have to do then is just ban the pokes that are too strong for that tier, like mray and geoxern or whatever. Basically, ag+extra bans becomes the new ubers and old ubers+bans=new ou

 

[Slimmer]

I think the whole point is to start ou with nothing banned, then ban for balance. The problem with why everyone thinks this is not a good idea is becuase they see shit like skymin to be broken individually, but when you have a proper metagame similar to ubers, these individual pokes are not broken. All you have to do then is just ban the pokes that are too strong for that tier, like mray and geoxern or whatever. Basically, ag+extra bans becomes the new ubers and old ubers+bans=new ou

From my point of view (and I think I'm not the only one):
ag+extra bans= ag
old ubers+bans = new balanced ubers (w/more bans other than m-quaza)
current ou= gen 7 ou with current suspect ladder+live tours method (w/philosophy that prefers a desired meta rather than lookin at suspected mons as how can they be broken by themselves; stuff that has to be banned will be banned as well)
edited to be more clear

 

[Lavos]

I think the whole point is to start ou with nothing banned, then ban for balance. The problem with why everyone thinks this is not a good idea is becuase they see shit like skymin to be broken individually, but when you have a proper metagame similar to ubers, these individual pokes are not broken. All you have to do then is just ban the pokes that are too strong for that tier, like mray and geoxern or whatever. Basically, ag+extra bans becomes the new ubers and old ubers+bans=new ou

Okay, why? Seriously, what's wrong with the current tried-and-true OU structure that has carried Smogon through six generations of competitive Pokemon? I have yet to see a logical response to this question, and whenever it's posed it is answered with pure speculation e.g. "I think OU would be better if we (x,y,z)" but never "I think OU would be better if we (x,y,z) BECAUSE (a,b,c)". You can't frame it all in a paradigm of philosophy when the status quo philosophy works and yours is untried. "But but quickbans!" Would you not have banned Arceus from OU, or Kyogre/Groudon/Dialga/Rayquaza/Darkrai? If you answer YES to this question, you enjoy seeing the same 6 Pokemon on every. single. team.

Another thing: what is the sudden reason to turn OU into Ubers? Is it simply because we now have access to Anything Goes? You state that the point is to "start OU with nothing banned, then ban for balance", which is exactly what we already do. You're conceptualizing it incorrectly. You seem to think the status quo is along the lines of

1) stuff that's obviously broken gets preemptively banned
2) tier goes into competitive play
3) later, things are banned for balance

when in reality it's more like

1) tier goes into competitive play AND stuff that's obviously broken is banned = banning for balance
2) later, more things are banned for balance

Balancing a tier doesn't occur in spurts, it's a permeant process. Externally it appears to be voting stage by voting stage, but that's only the final aspect of decision making. Discussion is ALWAYS revolving around any given tier and the process of balancing includes said discussion, which preempts any bans, and that's completely ubiquitous. Even if something's quickbanned, that's because admins got together before competitive release of any given tier and decided that whatever shit they end up quickbanning deserves it because it's beyond clear that it would be broken if allowed in competitive play and be banned by a huge margin regardless. In summary, that's just saving the community time to make more impactful decisions that are actually being contested instead of crying about how they think Mewtwo would be SUPER FUN in OverUsed.

So your argument is that we should make one tier into another tier...when that other tier already exists and will continue to exist...because we're adding a new tier. Which makes zero sense no matter how you slice it. By your very own syllogism, OU should have become UU when we created NU. Except it didn't, because the community doesn't think we need a Matryoshka doll of metagames that supernaturally rearranges itself every 6 months.

From my point of view (and I think I'm not the only one):
ag+extra bans= ag
old ubers+bans = new balanced ubers (w/more bans other than m-quaza)
ou still goin for its own, where stuff that has to be banned will be banned as well with current suspect ladder+live tours method (w/philosophy that prefers a desired meta rather than lookin at suspected mons as how can they be broken by themselves)

Again, that's already what we do. You think complex bans like SS + Drizzle would exist if we only looked at how Pokemon could be broken by themselves? You think Volcarona would still be around? Our status quo philosophy prefers a balanced metagame. I get it, haha weather, haha Reuniclus. I didn't say it was perfect. But if we only suspected shit because it was exclusively solo broken beyond belief, OU would just be BW1 + Torn-T.

There's zero reason to pop open the biggest philosophical can of worms imaginable, in order to take a gamble on the metagame somehow improving in balance and diversity (it won't), when nothing is wrong with the current system.

Prague Kick, my bad, thought you were arguing for dice's side fsr. The wording was a little unclear.

 

[AM]

I'm not a fan of community voting, if that correlates anything to this thread if we're gonna talk about tiering philosophy. Also this is applying more to higher tiers like OU, I think UU had the best tiering system during Kokolokos time as tier leader and created a healthy tier in a reasonable amount of time. Communiy votes take too long, doesn't even create a "balanced" metagame just a shot in the dark of what people want based on a majority vote that is really just individual ideas that don't really give you a good idea these days of what a balanced metagame could be. Lower tiers have more tight knit communities so in most cases they have a much better understanding of the meta-game and as such made decisions that were more appropriate to make a healthier metagame. This is more an issue with like OU and Ubers and from what I can see it's starting to look like UU as well with some people I've spoke to, yeah shrang I would definitely tread on the words "proper metagame" in regards to Ubers. If you've been missing the memo most people aren't actually a fan of it more so just putting up with it at this point.

Let's also not consider the notion of bringing back Skymin into an environment and just make this new OU seem like it's the promised land simply cause you dumped a bunch of ubers having them fight each other to death and then flipping every single tier below it on its heads in a bind to start a very dirty slate of power creep. Ok Gamefreak creates powercreep, we can sort of bullshit all we want in how we have to keep up with them but last time I checked it's a site that establishes its own rules and criteria for how the overall community would like to play it. We don't have to condone absurdity in a certain environment simply cause it was thrown on us. Move them on up in tier bracket, and if ubers has a problem with it, move it on up and function as an actual tier then as it has been previously established. When we just allow stuff like M-Metagross to be a walk in the park in what we're gonna assume would be some reset on the OU tier because we got stuff like Mega Gengar being a standard for a flagship tier is just obnoxious.

Btw I'm for removing elements that make the metagame better even if they don't just flat out 6-0 you or w/e dumb nonsense people justify not banning something in OU now, the proposal this OP stated would just accomplish the complete opposite in my eyes. This unfortunately, even as Texas Cloverleaf put it and others in that we need to cement ourselves as to what our philosophy is I think is theoretically nice but realistically impossible. What we call a community right now is individual people with individual perspectives and they're all over the place because a mutual understanding in regards to aspects like these never truly become mutual. We sort of just debate and debate and just realize the only thing we can come to an agreement on is that Gen 6 is the tipping point of where we now have to realistically establish some sort of goal via a philosophy based on arbitrary text and ideology that your average playerbase won't even give a shit about. Anyone who has had the patience to read through suspect threads especially some of these last ones in OU would know this to be true. I'm not really for changing philosophy just for what this OP sort of is implying shits and giggles. I'm gonna want to go the route for a healthier metagame honestly at this point and if we got to ban the inevitable nightmares that higher tiers are gonna be plagued with then so be it. But let's not just throw every single monstrosity in the same pool come Gen 7 for some illusion of balance. It's just so rash and completely a waste of time.

 

[Fireburn]

This is a cool idea in theory but I don't think it is logistically feasible to implement. We can't implement this in a middle of a generation due to large ripple effect on lower tiers/messing up official tournaments with potentially unstable metagames and there is no guarantee that such an idea would result in a balanced tier at the start of a new generation with just a few bans. All the hubbub about BW nowadays shows that it is possible to run out of time before a balanced metagame is generally agreed upon. The only way to avoid that situation in the future for sure is to figure out a way to become more efficient with ironing out tiers, which imo is best done with initial heuristics (aka starting banlists) + efficient banning. Letting everything run wild is taking a step in the wrong direction - the actual balance of Ubers is pretty much dictated by chance, and if we want to improve OU tiering I'd rather have a system in place that is imperfect but efficient with room for corrections rather than hedging our bets on whatever abominations Game Freak decides to cook up next. Whether or not you agree OU already has this system in place, the risk of the proposal is not worth the reward.

Honestly, I don't know if you can prove the risk will ever be worth the reward. While you may be able to conduct small scale experiments to see how it works in a current generation, those results in no way can be extrapolated to future generations; there is no trend for basis since we don't make new Pokemon for the games ourselves. The benefits are unpredictable and the (significant) costs of failures due to time/management/PR issues don't change.

As a small aside, I also can't help but see that most people in support of this idea primarily play Ubers. This is a subjective but important argument - people may not necessarily want things like Giratina or Mega Kangaskhan running around in OU (I don't). I get that this is mostly due to tradition/stigma, but change for the sake of change can be just as bad without a very good reason to do so, which thus far hasn't been provided.

 

[Slimmer]

Again, that's already what we do. You think complex bans like SS + Drizzle would exist if we only looked at how Pokemon could be broken by themselves? You think Volcarona would still be around? Our status quo philosophy prefers a balanced metagame. I get it, haha weather, haha Reuniclus. I didn't say it was perfect. But if we only suspected shit because it was exclusively solo broken beyond belief, OU would just be BW1 + Torn-T.

There's zero reason to pop open the biggest philosophical can of worms imaginable, in order to take a gamble on the metagame somehow improving in balance and diversity (it won't), when nothing is wrong with the current system.

Obviously current system is better than OP's proposal for what concerns the OU tier in terms of balancing. I'm not saying that current system is a total failure in this (it's actually good for reason you said above), I'm saying that it can be improved and OP proposal could make the things worse, bringing the risk of a mutation of current Ubers in a next gen OU (always regarding balance). Something surely in these 2 gens was wrong (as you said, "haha weathers haha reun", I'd add "haha Kyu-B" cuz it dropped due to a thinking like Dice's proposal which I'm considering wrong) and I'm just saying that unbanning all things could just let us wasting time which can be useful to make the meta even more desirable lookin on other stuff to ban instead of kicking out of OU those mons we can just quickban by default, avoiding months of redundant decisions. BW is an example and the proof of this is that there are still suspect discussions on it when it ceased to be current gen almost 2 years ago.
What is the solution? Honestly I don't think the council is doing bad and as you said current system is okay, maybe we should focus more on reaching a compromise between koko's system and current one for PR's sake (can't imagine what would happen if council bans Manaphy without letting people vote) in order to balance better.
The issue is that we all know last 2 gens are not that pleasant due to several reasons (one above all others, matchup dependant matches), but how can we solve this? Maybe as Texas said we should clarify what philosophy we have to use in tiering as first.

 

[Aldaron]

About the tiering philosophy, I can (almost) definitively say that we have officially transitioned to banning for a better metagame, not broken in a vacuum (speaking about OU).

The only way we can accomplish this somwhat without a huge PR backlash (not that PR backlash is everything) is by using council power to suspect things.

We would like for some way to ensure that people are voting based on that philosophy as opposed to personal preference towards the broken in a vacuum philosophy, but it's really hard to do this (note: ubers fiasco)

I'm up for ideas for tweaks to our current implementation to more strongly ensure people are voting with the preferred philosophy in mind as opposed to the philosophies of the past.

EDIT:

By the way, when I mentioned tweaks, I meant tweaks, not overhauls. The suspect system in all its flawed glory is here to stay. By that I mean the concept of a council choosing suspects and the public having ladder access to qualify for a vote. Whether that access is limited via paragraphs (not a fan of this just giving an example) or whatever is fine, but that basic premise won't be changing.

So, before people jump on it, no, we will not be implementing the "kokoloko system" from UU into OU. We might do something like remove a bunch of stuff and suspect one at a time (basically make the original tier ban list in the beginning of a generation larger than normal) to allow stuff back in (I honestly like this idea / tweak the most), but the votes will still be done by ladder access.

 

[MikeDawg]

About the tiering philosophy, I can (almost) definitively say that we have officially transitioned to banning for a better metagame, not broken in a vacuum (speaking about OU).

The only way we can accomplish this somwhat without a huge PR backlash (not that PR backlash is everything) is by using council power to suspect things.

We would like for some way to ensure that people are voting based on that philosophy as opposed to personal preference towards the broken in a vacuum philosophy, but it's really hard to do this (note: ubers fiasco)

I'm up for ideas for tweaks to our current implementation to more strongly ensure people are voting with the preferred philosophy in mind as opposed to the philosophies of the past.

EDIT:

By the way, when I mentioned tweaks, I meant tweaks, not overhauls. The suspect system in all its flawed glory is here to stay. By that I mean the concept of a council choosing suspects and the public having ladder access to qualify for a vote. Whether that access is limited via paragraphs (not a fan of this just giving an example) or whatever is fine, but that basic premise won't be changing.

So, before people jump on it, no, we will not be implementing the "kokoloko system" from UU into OU. We might do something like remove a bunch of stuff and suspect one at a time (basically make the original tier ban list in the beginning of a generation larger than normal) to allow stuff back in (I honestly like this idea / tweak the most), but the votes will still be done by ladder access.

The easiest solution (albeit a subjective one) would just be paragraphs+heavy modding.

Make it very clear that this is the new philosophy, warn and delete posts that don't coincide. If the paragraph blatantly does not appeal to this ideology (also something that should be made very clear, though i guess that voters will be at least a bit easier to tame than the general forum user), then don't count the vote. To avoid ubers trouble, the decision on a vote should not be affected by the quality of the paragraph (if they got reqs they got reqs. Judging quality causes controversy and does not help this particular cause), only whether or not it complies with the ideology.

Imperfect, but perhaps a quick start?


Edit AM: oops added more after you read. The judging solely on whether the post follows the ideology should help reduce subjective complaints. Perhaps further this by messaging non-compliars, offering them a chance to revise their paragraph if they were not on-point before just disregarding it.

 

[AM]

The easiest solution (albeit a subjective one) would just be paragraphs+heavy modding.

Make it very clear that this is the new philosophy, warn and delete posts that don't coincide. If the paragraph blatantly does not appeal to this ideology (also something that should be made very clear, though i guess that voters will be at least a bit easier to tame than the general forum user), then don't count the vote.

Imperfect, but perhaps a quick start?

This didn't work there was a ton of problems with it during the Ubers suspect ones.

Edit: Mostly for the subjective aspects, which is hard to gauge and use for something that's suppose to be objective in regards to voting.

 

[ginganinja]

The easiest solution (albeit a subjective one) would just be paragraphs+heavy modding.

Yeah, I don't think paragraphs alone are really the answer. Firstly, its a lot of work for the council to read through a ton of paragraph's and secondly, people often end up copy and pasting arguments anyway. Its also sorta difficult saying yes/no to reject/approve paragraph's because some people don't really accept when their opinion is incorrect/wrong, and they start accusing people of bias in the process. I think if you had like, a ladder system (get reqs) and then submitted paragraph's you can better handle some of the pitfalls (like the sheer number of submitted paragraphs) although I can imagine some people might get frustrated at going through all the drama of laddering ---> and then having to make an additional paragraph on something like an obviously broken suspect. (eg Please write a paragraph explaining precisely why you think Mega Mence should be banned/not banned).

 

[Lavos]

ginganinja

Ladder reqs + paragraphs are the best way to go. People can be really great ladder players because they understand what's popular and build teams to counter it. They win 70% of their games and qualify, but that doesn't mean they have even the tiniest bit of theoretical understanding on how the tier works. Conversely, people can be brilliant philosophers and know exactly what the correct conceptional vote would be, but if they can't play the game to an adequate level, their hypotheses mean nothing. I think both elements of ladder skill and philosophical wisdom need to be at play for anyone to cast a vote, and if that means less people get a say, good. That means we weeded out some unqualified voters, and thus, it's not dramatic anyone since you get to frame it as necessary for the best possible tiering.

As far as copying goes, one solution that guarantees privacy bar any collusion among voters (which means you're getting a bad result anyway, sorry) is making every voter PM their paragraph to the council, with none of it left public. This will also make rejecting people with similar ideas but varying degrees of finesse a lot simpler. Yeah, it's a lot to read, and you have to decide if it's worth the effort. I think the answer to that question is a very clear yes, but I'm not on the council, it's not my job. If you're willing to take on the burden, the community will benefit as a result.

And to be clear, if you're an intelligent person with some basic knowledge of how logic operates in argumentation, seeing whether or not a paragraph is reasonably sound isn't at all difficult (this functions for both sides of any vote where neither option can be proven incorrect). I have faith in the council members to accurately and objectively evaluate every single paragraph sent their way.

 

[kokoloko]

I don't lol

not cause of lack of intelligence but rather lack of interest. same reason we don't have our best players on QC, basically.

 

[Stratos]

as long as whatever's decided here doesnt carry over to doubles ou i dont really give a fuck

but as i see it, ou is the place for standard play, and there's an obvious gap of 60 points between 600 and 660 for a clear reason; GameFreak never intended shit like cover legends to be "standard," they're exceptional, intentionally game-breaker pokemon. If you doubt me, you can see this in the fact that they're not allowed in TPCi metagames either, despite not being event-based. The initial banlist that makes most intuitive sense for a "standard play" metagame is banning everything above (base form) 600 BST (except Slaking and Regigigas). In fact, I'm pretty pissed that Doubles OU defaulted to having Kyurem and Kyurem-B unbanned.

but then shit like Shaymin-S, Darkrai, and Deoxys-A are so obviously going to be broken that it's not even worth trying them out in OU, so we just ban them out the gate. And viola, we arrive to the gen vi initial banlist. It's exactly the one I would have come up with if I were in charge of decision-making in OU (except, again, defaulting Kyurems to banned, but w/e).

If you see OU as a 'balanced metagame with fewest possible bans' then something like that pokemonperfect ubers banlist works well. but if you see it as 'standard play' then the default banlist we did end up with is perfectly logical

 

[Slimmer]

I don't get the "fewest possible bans" argument. If something needs to go it has to go regardless of the amount of bans done in the whole tier. It seems a way to prevent complex bans like "pokemon + move/ability" but it can still be avoided clarifying the banning policy. Also I think that obviously broken stuff should be quickbanned so the ladder+paragraph is good, though it could end up with people copying what quality poster users say.

 

[Mazinger]

hm

As I said in my first post I don't think this is a feasible change right now, and I can't form an opinion on a starting banlist without knowing what gen 7 actually is, but there's a few things ITT thatcaught my attention.

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."

Since you quoted me there I feel the need to point out that that's exactly what I meant; I think this could be a good idea if time wasn't an issue. Other than that I agree with most of your post.

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.

?
Of course the banlist is arbitrary. You correctly point out that "Rayquaza and Conkeldurr don't mix" but fail to provide a reason why conkeldurr is an ou level pkmn or why tiering has had a 99% accuracy so far, which is because both of those statements are 100% your opinion (which is fine, but still needs to be kept in mind).

In general (also re: broken vs bad for the metagame), I think everyone should take a step back and realize that we are creating pkmn tiers and everything is entirely arbitrary, whether it is how strong the pkmn in the standard metagame should be, how many should be in it, how many tiers we should have, when a tier counts as balanced, how diverse a tier should be, how reliant on luck it can be and so on. A lot of arguments in this thread seem to be based on the current concept of OU, which is exactly what the OP is trying to change, so there's not much of a conversation to be held.

re: paragraphs, as the ubers fiasco has shown us, and for other reasons, there's a few problems with these. The most obvious ones would be the increased effort and the increased influence of whoever reviews the paragraphs (if you view this as a problem), but they also seem like they wouldn't actually accomplish much of anything. Pretty much any reason to ban/unban/not ban something can easily be made to fit whatever the criteria for the paragraph in question are, especially since those are very vague in case of "what's good for the metagame", so you'd mostly just be excluding people who are too honest/lazy/stupid to get through to the voting stage, which I guess isn't entirely bad but probably not worth the time. There most likely are ways to improve the suspect system (I don't have any up my sleeve right now) but this isn't it.

 

[dice]

i'll make a more comprehensive post later to reply to some of the points made in this thread, but i'll describe my original intention.

i'm sure mostly everyone can agree that the lack of explicit philosophy in the regards to tiering cannot be gainsaid. smogon's stance on matter is primarily made on the whim of council. there is little to no consistency of philosophy in tiering ou (unless you consider an immediate ban of groudon and kyogre consistent). as a person who appreciates structure and sureness, i do not see eye to eye with the status quo. as aldaron's post manifests, PR is a major hurdle when it comes to policy which, although i understand the impact, i don't agree it shouldn't dictate decisions. this was a partial attempt to rectify the lack of uniformity in ou.

just what exactly is ou? what should it be? it's our baseline metagame, yet it lacks a definite goal.

as i stated in the OP, the current process of creating our baseline tier is initially arbitrary. smogon currently has an undefined parameter of 'general power' that we base initial ban list upon. or, as aldaron put it,

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.

ideally, we should pursue overused as simply "the most balanced metagame possible" (or some more eloquent variant capturing more variables; you catch my drift). however, this is simply unfeasible. due to the general subjectivity of the philosophy, there need to be more direct parameters in order to more effectively guide the statement. otherwise, in order to effetively gauge what "the most balanced metagame is" in theory, we would have to effectively test every variant of the metagame. thus, my op suggested using "least amount of bans" as a general parameter as it is a sensible guideline that also gives the tier the most flexibility.

reymedy suggested the following

I'd even rather say : "achieve the most balanced meta possible in the fewestamount of time and bans"

yet time is a poor parameter in tiering since it is an unforeseeable measure. how can we effectively gauge this? it'd be, much like the current tiering is, effectively arbitrary.

the discussion so far, despite disagreeing with my post, has been very interesting and has brought up many good points. i'll attempt to reply to the current posts soon (mainly aldaron's).

ironing out what ou should be is pretty important imo.

 

[lilyhollow]

Okay, why? Seriously, what's wrong with the current tried-and-true OU structure that has carried Smogon through six generations of competitive Pokemon? I have yet to see a logical response to this question, and whenever it's posed it is answered with pure speculation e.g. "I think OU would be better if we (x,y,z)" but never "I think OU would be better if we (x,y,z) BECAUSE (a,b,c)". You can't frame it all in a paradigm of philosophy when the status quo philosophy works and yours is untried.

It's primarily an issue of rules complexity. The 'ban as few things as possible' philosophy is rooted in the idea that whenever you add a rule to a game, there should be a pretty good reason for it, because all else being equal it's making the game less accessible.

There are other concerns too. As funny/trivial as it sounds, it really does suck for a lot of people (especially younger users) when their favorite Pokemon is banned. This was a very real roadblock for the Smash community when they tried to ban Meta Knight, for example.

Incidentally, the 'ban as few things as possible' philosophy isn't untested. It's rare in the Pokemon community, but in most competitive communities as a whole it's the prevailing philosophy.

 

[shrang]

Okay, why? Seriously, what's wrong with the current tried-and-true OU structure that has carried Smogon through six generations of competitive Pokemon? I have yet to see a logical response to this question, and whenever it's posed it is answered with pure speculation e.g. "I think OU would be better if we (x,y,z)" but never "I think OU would be better if we (x,y,z) BECAUSE (a,b,c)". You can't frame it all in a paradigm of philosophy when the status quo philosophy works and yours is untried. "But but quickbans!" Would you not have banned Arceus from OU, or Kyogre/Groudon/Dialga/Rayquaza/Darkrai? If you answer YES to this question, you enjoy seeing the same 6 Pokemon on every. single. team.

I meant to reply to this a while ago, but I was busy at the time, and by the time I wasn't busy any more I completely forgot about this.

Anyway, the problem now is that our "current tried-and-true" tiering structure is not working as well any more. Frankly, both Ubers and OU are kind of having identity crises right now. Ubers is kind of trying to step into OU territory because it is "now a metagame and therefore needs to be balanced", hence the whole "let's ban Primal Groudon/Mega Mence/Geomancy/S-tag/Primal Ogre" shenanigans, and the traditional "ban individual Pokemon that break the tier" approach no longer works for OU.

So on one hand, we have Ubers that's having trouble with borderline broken mons that are overpowering the tier in which we'd like an OU-style approach to balancing the tier, while in OU, we have a hotchpotch of broken-individually-but-held-in-check-by-the-metagame-as-a-whole threats like Keldeo/Mega Metagross/Mega Lopunny/Mega Altaria/etc. Basically, if you have a look at it, Ubers wants to adapt an OU approach to its metagame, while OU is starting to resemble what Ubers used to look like (a bunch of broken-individually Pokemon that aren't really because they're checked by the metagame as a whole). The metagame still seems to function pretty well. So, why don't we make things simple - keep Ubers as what it was designed to do (serve as the banlist of our top non-broken metagame), and turn OU into what it's supposed to be, which is our top non-broken metagame, by turning what would have been Ubers into OU and AG + proper bans into Ubers? That way, we'd have a proper, balanced metagame at the top, called OU in which no Pokemon is banned arbitrarily because they're cover legends/theoretically broken with no basis apart from the reference point to power levels which we are used to (eg Dialga is too strong for a metagame with Zapdos in it).

And to people saying that it's too much to implement, I agree with you in the case of gen 6. This isn't something we can just impose onto a tiering system that we've already imposed on a metagame already. However, this is something we can consider when gen 7 comes along and a clean slate can be carved on. The power creep looks like its staying, and it's about time we acknowledged that while ScarfOgre and stuff like that were too broken in gen 3/4/5/6, the power creep might have caught up with it by gen 7, so we can finally use it in a proper metagame instead of arbitrarily banning it to begin with.

 

[Reymedy]

This is an interesting and relevant conversation that Disaster Area had with Shrang.

http://pastebin.com/pMFPWJ8a

Enjoy!

?

EDIT : Just to make it post a bit more interesting.

Anyway, the problem now is that our "current tried-and-true" tiering structure is not working as well any more. Frankly, both Ubers and OU are kind of having identity crises right now. Ubers is kind of trying to step into OU territory because it is "now a metagame and therefore needs to be balanced", hence the whole "let's ban Primal Groudon/Mega Mence/Geomancy/S-tag/Primal Ogre" shenanigans, and the traditional "ban individual Pokemon that break the tier" approach no longer works for OU.

First, why do you say it's not working.
I can't talk for Ubers, because quite frankly I don't really care about a tier I don't play, and because it has 0 relation with the ones I do play.
However, I'm getting tired of you saying that OU "is not working" or anything. What makes you say that ? I assume that's what you heard from other people, since you don't seem to play the tier.
Well, I'm the first guy to complain about how ORAS OU is right now, but I'd not go as far as saying that the system does not work because it'd be a pretty foolish sophism. You can't just cast a glance of a metagame at a precise point t, notice that it's not satisfying and claim "Alright, the tiering does not work". We're still building the tier rofl, you can't just ignore that fact. Did someone here said "Alright we're done, that's the tier" ? I don't think so, afterall this discussion took place before the suspect of Landorus, and now it's been like a week or two since it has been banned. Yo, what if you leave us the time to run the program before casting so harsh a judgement ?

Second, I don't know if it's only me, but I'm getting mildly irritated by the way you call the OU tier as witness to push your own case. Don't take my indifference towards the Uber tier as an offense, I really do respect all you guys who played this tier for years, and I'd never have the insolence to tell you what you should do with your tier.
However, could you please leave OU out of this (or leave Uber out of this, depending on which side you're on) ? Uber was never meant to impact OU, and OU was never meant to impact Uber, you should not bring these two tiers together, it's really confusing to say the least.

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

I still don't understand this statement by the way, OU bans have no impact on the pool of Pokémons Uber has access to.