OU Is Snorlax Banworthy in GSC OU?

[Vryheid]

again, tournaments are not nearly long enough to capture trends. players play like 4 matches. isn't current suspect testing like months at a time across thousands of players?

Of course a legitimate suspect is never going to happen, just like a test against wrap in Gen 1 has been requested in the past but will never materialize. The way suspect tests work now is that the length of the test isn't really relevant to voting rights, if you hit the COIL requirement in the first two days then you're just as eligible as someone who's played in the suspect for weeks on end. The problem is that with so few players either the reqs are too low and anyone who spends more than an afternoon playing is eligible, or the reqs are too high and only a handful of the top players (who have probably already made up their mind on the subject) ever get the chance to vote. Either way a suspect seems kind of pointless.

That being said, the whole idea of suspecting Snorlax might generate more buzz and attract more players than you might imagine. Even people who have never played gen 2 before know that Snorlax is the king of gsc, so people with no metagame knowledge might show up just to have the chance to influence a potentially monumental vote. I'd be interested to hear if this is the kind of suspect environment you want or a limited group with more experienced players.

 

[Borat]

having a decision being made by the masses -- aka the clueless -- doesn't seem to make a lot of sense to me. it's about the number of QUALITY matches, not just the quantity. we'd need to have qualified people to look at the logs and make sense out of everything. we're not looking at results here, insofar as how the "metagame is changing". so that means stuff like usage trends, teaming building viability rankings, and our overall notion of the shifts of power.

personally, democracy's the worst way to get stuff done.

 

[QueenOfHax]

All I'm seeing in this thread are posts that would be grounds for banning from the site if they were put on a OU suspect test thread. Can we have some legitimate arguments on why Snorlax, something that is blatantly broken, should not be banned from GSC, while not-so-broken things like Greninja and Mega Mawile get banned from today's metagame? Does anyone have the guts to answer this very simple question?

 

[Borat]

did you even read my post?

in any case, "broken" and "too powerful" are actually two different concepts and are not interchangeable. snorlax does not "break" gsc in the conventional sense, in fact the opposite -- it holds it together.

 

[idiotfrommars]

Because their is no need to change a well balanced meta-game just to conform to the recent trend of banning anything that enough players bitch about.

dont fuk with gsc

 

[Disaster Area]

Of course a legitimate suspect is never going to happen, just like a test against wrap in Gen 1 has been requested in the past but will never materialize. The way suspect tests work now is that the length of the test isn't really relevant to voting rights, if you hit the COIL requirement in the first two days then you're just as eligible as someone who's played in the suspect for weeks on end. The problem is that with so few players either the reqs are too low and anyone who spends more than an afternoon playing is eligible, or the reqs are too high and only a handful of the top players (who have probably already made up their mind on the subject) ever get the chance to vote. Either way a suspect seems kind of pointless.

Well no in RBY it was initially banned since it was buggy on NBS, then most of the community played with it banned as a sort of gentleman's agreement generally when PO had sufficiently working wrap, and in due course the playerbase has moved over to it (even though some players such as Isa and Raish are unlikely at best to ever use partial trapping). Then when someone brought up getting wrap banned again recently the majority of the community shot them down and clearly most people were in favour of allowing wrap. So I don't know what you're talking about. The stuff that DOESN'T materialise in terms of proper suspect testing on Smogon is that of Freeze Clause, because Aldaron (who I want to describe using words that would get me banned..) was a **** and shut down the discussion on it that everyone was open to having seriously. As it was it was considered here and is still being discussed to some degree today. Not much of a real resolution was reached, but that is probably in part because reaching a resolution here would have no effect on the simulators, but there seems to be more support than a solitary person against freeze clause, and some other 'taboo' options that could almost never be discussed on Smogon cos it's too mother****ing orthodox about this were floated and not wholly unpopular (stuff like banning sleep moves) - fwiw we're not even totally happy with the current implementation of sleep clause but there's no chance of getting discussion here is there when the staff are so obnoxious about it?

sorry had to let some anger out about this :x but we lost one of the best RBY discussion creators from the fall-out of this,, (they're still around but not really using smogon any more, just other communities)

 

[Borat]

to reiterate, if you have a bunch of people, then you have a bunch of stupid people. allowing EVERYONE to have a say is the most retarded way of creating balance. people can make suggestions, but the decisions need to be made by a very few. if that's how the newer gens are doing it, then competitive meta is fucked.

source: everything successful ever in history.

 

[Disaster Area]

GSC right now = fine, very highly competitive tier. Afaik I don't see any real motivation to adjust the ruleset, since the game is basically fine as it is - although a few dissenting voices like borat exist. So Borat don't you think that the current GSC is not skill-oriented enough (explosion being the great leveller) and that we could implement some sort of change in ruleset to improve upon this? What do you have to suggest? We can always create ways to explore hypothises once we know what hypothesis we wish to test.

 

[Vryheid]

Borat has a point here. The modern suspect attitude has consistently been and continues to be "ban whatever the majority of players don't like", not "ban what experienced players can prove is unhealthy for the metagame". While this approach works in a metagame where we can continually throw out new suspect every other month, I don't think it really is best for a meta with such an established history.

 

[Disaster Area]

I think you're underselling how current suspect testing and such works, but this isn't really the place to debate that.

 

[Borat]

skill cap is a subjective thing.

change is impossible because there are still too many people. credible people. credible people that won't budge unless there is a unanimous decision. it's very clear that our individual notions of what's too good and what isn't isn't 100% accurate. not mine, not jorgen's, not anybody's. so at some point we should be allowed to say "no conflict you're just wrong", or "no floppy your idea is a piece of shit", and have these things overruled in a systematic manner. that's the only way to achieve any sort of progress.

gsc has it pretty good because there aren't a lot of people. as a result, there aren't a lot of stupid people. but there are some. and even the smart ones have stupid ideas sometimes. so the first place to start if you wish to incite any sort of change is to describe the requirements NECESSARY for change. unanimous agreement is pretty damn unreasonable. design the government before voting on the laws themselves?

on the flip side, majority vote by the masses is even dumber. it should really be a decision between those of us with a lot of history and experience between us, but we should have a way to overrule some moron holding up the vote. trias politica principle. i say some stupid shit sometimes and people gotta point it out.

edit: so how does suspect testing even work? who gets to decide whats banned in new gens? you can possibly be listening to a bunch of teens. they're literally the most retarded age group on the planet. losing your virginity is a key component of rational decision making.

 

[Lavos]

should there be a gsc government/council? is that feasible considering the age of the tier? if so, all for it. and this might be the best way to get tiering done in an old gen. despite being an advocate of democratic process in bw (mainly because 3/5 of our ou council members had no fucking idea how the metagame worked) i think if we get experienced non idiots to decide changes it will benefit the tier.

then there's the trouble of finding a) experienced b) active c) good d) coherent players..

 

[Disaster Area]

should there be a gsc government/council? is that feasible considering the age of the tier? if so, all for it. and this might be the best way to get tiering done in an old gen. despite being an advocate of democratic process in bw (mainly because 3/5 of our ou council members had no fucking idea how the metagame worked) i think if we get experienced non idiots to decide changes it will benefit the tier.

then there's the trouble of finding a) experienced b) active c) good d) coherent players..

For what it's worth I'd support that motion in RBY as well (although our controversy tends to relate more to clauses than pokemon at the moment!)

Also I think that 5 or more players exist in both generation's playerbases who satisfy the requirements (I couldn't nessecarily name which ones in GSC though)

 

[Funbot28]

should there be a gsc government/council? is that feasible considering the age of the tier? if so, all for it. and this might be the best way to get tiering done in an old gen. despite being an advocate of democratic process in bw (mainly because 3/5 of our ou council members had no fucking idea how the metagame worked) i think if we get experienced non idiots to decide changes it will benefit the tier.

then there's the trouble of finding a) experienced b) active c) good d) coherent players..

Im all for an "old gen" council that can help determine the fate of some mons or clauses in the older gens. It can help bring some activity again, by freshening up the tiers.

 

[Kingler]

I don't feel like having 5 people to determine tiers that have been "set" long ago is ideal, especially since changes in these tiers would take place only in extreme circumstances.

 

[Borat]

i don't mean just for gsc and shit, i mean it should apply to the new gens (xy, bw, or whatevers). a flat vote between "active" players is probably one of the dumbest things i've ever heard. what competitive game patching is governed by the community? nothing. you're basically taking the worst parts of democracy and communism and creating one totally fucked up voting mechanic with arbitrary levels (read: nil) of accuracy.

can you even imagine what'd happen to countries if they were governed by the average citizen? let's be serious right now. "average people", as in 50 percentile, are dumb as shit. then you have to account for that fact that literally 50% of the people are EVEN DUMBER than that.

 

[Funbot28]

I don't feel like having 5 people to determine tiers that have been "set" long ago is ideal, especially since changes in these tiers would take place only in extreme circumstances.

Although I do agree the circumstances must be extremely high to change the tiers in the older gens, it is still possible and I haven't heard anyone say that these meta's are "set in stone" or anything like that.

 

[Lavos]

the idea behind it is that new gen leaders want to create the meta that the community likes most, not necessarily the "best" metagame, and it rarely is. however there's a lot of discussion threads that people who qualify for suspect reqs read and smart people can then influence the decisions of stupid people to the point where ENTIRE suspect tests are being decided by 2 or 3 people. see: kyurem-black suspect, landorus-i suspect, keldeo suspect, genesect suspect in bw2 ou. i spammed those threads with my opinion and my beliefs doubling the post count of anyone else and thus got a ton of randoms with reqs to join my side of the fence. i don't even think i was right about kyurem-b looking back at it, but i argued passionately and often and sounded pretty so the masses flocked. and the ultimate vote count which changed the tier forever, especially on the kyurem-b suspect, was my doing.

the "issue" with gsc is that there aren't enough people for the flocks to matter. i think for people who give a fuck about gsc tiering we have a solid percentage of non idiots. yeah experience is lacking across the board because old players quit. some of them were even smart. but imo there's enough intelligence to make up for experience. i don't see why this has to be for every tier. but i do think it has a very real chance of being viable in old gens like gsc because there's enough water left in the well and we don't have enough dumbasses around to cut the rope. bring back oligarchal rule and maybe in another year or two we can even hail caesar

 

[Funbot28]

How about we just hold a tour that is Laxless and does not include HP Legends, and see how the meta develops instead of just making theories on how it will be. We might able to bring in some more experienced players to weigh in their opinions on the matter.

 

[Disaster Area]

we've already done that sort of stuff before. Anyway I think the council idea is a good one, since it prevents the whole community stalling stuff without getting some information worked out, gives greater direction to useful discussion, etc. It's just good.

What people should do instead is look at information from those minitours (from smogon and mt. silver I guess) and deduce information from the battles within, then THAT would be where making an arguement one way or the other might be more compelling.

 

[Bedschibaer]

I always thought the more or less general consensus of the better gsc players is that gsc is just fine the way it is right now. Not quite sure what a council of people who think it's just fine would actually accomplish. It's always a question of what you'd invest into any operation like this and what you would get out. What are you planning to do? Get the best guys to analyze the best matches and then decide wheter something is broken or not on their liking just to get people in the community who disagree mad? That sounds like alot time and effort to be invested for an outcome that can only be subjective to begin with. Also i don't think any decisions in gsc would magically save the gen and make it the most liked one in the overall community, so i don't quite see the point in all of this when the difference between a good and a bad metagame is subjective anyways. Whenever people demand past gens suspects i'm always wondering what they are even expecting out of it. You can't apply the current gen tiering philosophy onto the past gens, you can't do current gen suspect tests in that small communities and for me doing radical changes only on the grounds of someone's subjective liking doesn't make any sense either.

 

[Crystal_]

ffs there are more ban snorlax threads than active gsc players

 

[Jorgen]

lol Crystal_

I think I like the idea of banning Lax more than I'd actually like GSC without Lax. On the one hand, Lax is very clearly overpowered and head and shoulders above every other mon in the tier. No other mon post-RBY comes even close to that level of dominance (and we don't really bother with RBY because there's like 4 mons that push 90-100% usage). On the other hand, banning Lax sort of hoists itself by its own petard, because while it balances things, it makes the game unrecognizable from what we all consider GSC to be.

I've argued against banning solely CurseLax before, but that was when I was clueless. I'm still clueless, but slightly less so, and with that can say fairly confidently that CurseLax really is 90% of the problem (no, it isn't Lovely Kiss, that's more an "insult to injury" thing than a core problem). There's merit to it; keep Lax around to preserve the fundamental character of GSC, but get rid of the set that's the biggest gatekeeper to other mons' viability and has the biggest BS table-turning potential. Couple that with banning Hidden Power on Zapdos and Raikou (or maybe just Zapdos) and you have yourself a reasonably balanced GSC that's still recognizably GSC. The only remaining potential issue is then trapping/passing shenanigans.

Oh, and I guess I'd earmark a Recover-less Ho-oh because in the new GSC world order I'd probably need Borat's vote.

 

[Borat]

i don't care about ho-oh enough. cause i'm sure if you ban enough moves on mewtwo/mew/celebi/lugia, they'd all be viable too.

curselax i can get behind, hp legends also. but i'm not 100% saying this will make for a better game either, just speculation.

even if we do somehow miraculously get all the vets on board, i still don't see this being adopted.

 

[Jorgen]

Yeah but it's fun to think "what if" sometimes.