(This is not some 'huge thing' or anything, but it has been on my mind lately and maybe some people have thoughts on it.)
There are a lot of official playable tiers. Not counting Ubers, there's OU, UU, RU, NU, and now PU. People who browse Other Metagames also know of FU, and it's not some pie-in-the-sky thing to imagine that that too will one day be an 'officially recognized' tier.
Concern:
The nomenclature is rather confusing and not entirely friendly to new players. It's not immediately clear that RU (Rarely Used) is the playable tier beneath UU (Underused). It's not immediately clear what PU even stands for at all (let alone FU), and it's even less clear why there would ever be a tier beneath NU (Never Used) in the first place. Even if these things did 'make sense,' it's just kind of a lot of things to keep track of.
There's even more weirdness to unpack when you take a look at some of the older gens. In Gen 3 we also have UU, but it's actually the third playable tier, not the second. For tradition reasons or something, gen 3's second playable tier is instead called BL, which used to make sense, but in modern parlance is one of the most confusing possible things we could ever call it.
Proposal:
Change it to something simpler and more consistent. I don't think you need anything fancy here. Like Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 would do. It's already consistent with the way we refer to banlists, too.
We have been using the current terms for a very long time now, so I understand this kind of change would require some 'adjustment.' Are there other reasons not to consider this?
There are a lot of official playable tiers. Not counting Ubers, there's OU, UU, RU, NU, and now PU. People who browse Other Metagames also know of FU, and it's not some pie-in-the-sky thing to imagine that that too will one day be an 'officially recognized' tier.
Concern:
The nomenclature is rather confusing and not entirely friendly to new players. It's not immediately clear that RU (Rarely Used) is the playable tier beneath UU (Underused). It's not immediately clear what PU even stands for at all (let alone FU), and it's even less clear why there would ever be a tier beneath NU (Never Used) in the first place. Even if these things did 'make sense,' it's just kind of a lot of things to keep track of.
There's even more weirdness to unpack when you take a look at some of the older gens. In Gen 3 we also have UU, but it's actually the third playable tier, not the second. For tradition reasons or something, gen 3's second playable tier is instead called BL, which used to make sense, but in modern parlance is one of the most confusing possible things we could ever call it.
Proposal:
Change it to something simpler and more consistent. I don't think you need anything fancy here. Like Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 3 would do. It's already consistent with the way we refer to banlists, too.
We have been using the current terms for a very long time now, so I understand this kind of change would require some 'adjustment.' Are there other reasons not to consider this?
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