Metagame shifts: change or improvement?

The idea that pushed me into posting this thread came when I was reviewing through some old metagame analyses, here on Smogon. I was like "look, how much we have stray away from this". Yes, the metagame is changed a lot also because of Platinum addictions, the introduction of Latias etc. But they are only tassels of a bigger picture. We all know that a lot of changes have been brought primarly by our - as a community - improved experience and knowledge.

Nonetheless, like in other deep competitive games like, say, chess, there will be always some kind of "trends" influences the metagame - i.e. some sets, moves, Pokémon etc. wich get more/less usage due not to their inherent efficacy/unefficacy, but rather to "what people use more". This is evident especially in Suspect tests and in the more fluctuant metagames in general.

Back to my "revival of old times" (lol), I asked to myself: I wonder how a early platinum team would fare against a modern one. Probably the latter would get the better matchup on average, but this question alone brought with itself a more interesting one, and what I want to subject to your discussion:

How many of the changes that occurred in the game can be defined "optimization" and how many are just result of "cycling"? Which Pokémon sets/options imposed over the others because of their inherent greater value, and which ones took the top spot because of the metagame around it (A certain Pokémon rose/fell in usage, for example)?

Of course, this question may be asked also for other environments, like Uber and UU, but I felt only OU has an enough long history to offer grounds for such a discussion.

Well, that's it. Voice out your opinions!

People will stick with what they know works, so if they see someone using an innovative new set that fares well in that it counters the current metagame, then they will start using it, forcing the innovative few to come up with newer set to counter the new metagame they've created.

And therefor, as far as I see it, metagame progression isn't a gathering of more knowledge and creating a better metagame, but rather a series of trends that will continue to cycle for as long as the game is still played

I3east said:

People will stick with what they know works, so if they see someone using an innovative new set that fares well in that it counters the current metagame, then they will start using it, forcing the innovative few to come up with newer set to counter the new metagame they've created.

And therefor, as far as I see it, metagame progression isn't a gathering of more knowledge and creating a better metagame, but rather a series of trends that will continue to cycle for as long as the game is still played

Click to expand...

You are right to a certain extent, however, some discoveries, in my opinion, are a result of an improved knowledge of the metagame. SubPetaya Empoleon, for example, is a set that came out long after the release of D/P, despite its "ingredients" (Petaya Berry, Agility, Torrent etc.) being available from the very beginning. Tentacruel's promotion from UU to OU, also, has proven to be something more durable than, say, Rhyperior's case: probably, Tentacruel always had a niche in the OU metagame but it took experience (and Obi's talent) to find it out.

Biggest Metagame shift is the development of "Bulky Offense". When Scizor got Bullet Punch it basically transformed the metagame in like a week. Bullet Punch forced the frail, popular and deadly sweepers like Gengar, Azelf and Porygon-Z to almost abandon their labels as sweeper. Porygon-Z became more of a revenge killer, whereas Azelf became a suicide lead. Gengar remains pretty versatile.

Few people realize Azelf can sweep. I have been using Nasty Plot Azelf a lot recently, and some players are really surprised.

I have to say the metagame has improved for better since its release, i think it is bacause as time has gone by everyone figures out how to deal with certain threats better and better, until the threats become no longer viable.

I think a modern day team would always have an advantage over an older team. Though it would be hard to prove as over time external changes such as scizor's bullet punch or the removal of garchomp have permently changed the metagame.

It would be very interesting to read an article on how the metagame has evolved over the past few years since diamond and pearls release to how HGSS have changed the metagame

While the above examples like SubPetaya Empoleon are definite optimizational changes in the metagame, there are also many metagame trends. These trends are usually based on the most recent few teams in the RMT Archive and people who copy those teams or make similar ones, and include the current surge in Lead Roserade andTorment Tran.

The classic example of cyclical metagame trends is Skarmory and Magnezone: a predator-prey scenario where when Leftovers Skarmory is high, people start using Magnezone. This makes the Skarmory users use more Shed Shells, and in turn drops Magnezone usage. But the Shed Shells are no longer as useful as Leftovers, so the Skarmory users start using Leftovers and the cycle repeats. If you look at the usage statistics for each month, though, you will find little change in how many Skarmory use what item from month to month. Magnezone is relatively stable too. Overall, trends due to the release of successful teams have a greater effect on the metagame than cyclical trends do. But optimizational changes like the increase in Stealth Rock have the greatest effects.

Lol, I had a thread about this sometime back, but its dead now.

For me, the decline in the popularity of Scarftran and the rise of Subtran, LOTran, and buddies is a cyclical change, but I can see why people would argue for it being optimizational. As we've found that Heatran can force a switch, we've taken advantage of the fact. However, it's difficult to say that stuff like Subtran is intrinsically a better or worse Pokemon than Scarftran, who is still a premier revenge killer and Earthquake baiter.

I believe that many "trends" actually lead to the betterment of the metagame. For example, the early DP Metagame focused on simple strategies such as GyaraVire, and then transitioned into a metagame with relative balance between offense and stall. Bulky sweepers came into effect shortly after, until the popularity of ObiStall brought the metagame to a screeching halt. The banning of Garchomp led to the discovery of newer wallbreakers, such as MixMence and SubPetaya Empoleon, adding diversity to the metagame. Stealth Rock continued to dominate, until the introduction of BP Scizor virtually removed frail sweepers such as PoryZ and Azelf from their sweeping roles, relegating them to leads and revenge killers. Shaymin-S brought about a rise in Timid ScarfTran, which, its utility having been discovered, lingered for months afterwards.

I think that the metagame has become better in that there is a higher understanding of the need for a long-term strategy and also the discovery of new movesets, the concept of lures, etc, but different trends include the cyclical trends such as Skarmory vs. Magnezone.

mtr12 said:

Lol, I had a thread about this sometime back, but its dead now.

For me, the decline in the popularity of Scarftran and the rise of Subtran, LOTran, and buddies is a cyclical change, but I can see why people would argue for it being optimizational. As we've found that Heatran can force a switch, we've taken advantage of the fact. However, it's difficult to say that stuff like Subtran is intrinsically a better or worse Pokemon than Scarftran, who is still a premier revenge killer and Earthquake baiter.

Click to expand...

Yes, but do you remember when D/P came out? Everyone was like "x4 Ground weakness sucks". Without looking at the fact that Heatran has one ofthe better type chart in the game (taking Flash Fire into account), while his rise in popularity was certainly influenced by the ban of Garchomp and the surge of Scizor, Lucario and the Dragons, Heatran always had a lot of potential that still takes months to be discovered.

For a better example of this, think about Garchomp. How much time we needed to discover SD YacheChomp?

zarator said:

Yes, but do you remember when D/P came out? Everyone was like "x4 Ground weakness sucks". Without looking at the fact that Heatran has one ofthe better type chart in the game (taking Flash Fire into account), while his rise in popularity was certainly influenced by the ban of Garchomp and the surge of Scizor, Lucario and the Dragons, Heatran always had a lot of potential that still takes months to be discovered.

For a better example of this, think about Garchomp. How much time we needed to discover SD YacheChomp?

Click to expand...

I was talking in terms of a smaller timescale. Months ago, as Platinum was starting out, Scarftran was considered far and away the best set, but now, there are many sets out there. However, it's difficult to argue that one of them is superior to the others, such as a DD-LOMence being superior to a BulkyDDMence. (again, arguable, but many will agree).

Also, there are many niche OU Pokemon such as Togekiss and Tentacruel that suffer because of this centralization, and the fact that they lack the typing necessary to succeed in the current OU environment. It's a bit sad, but whatever. When the metagame optimizes, the lesser Pokemon get pushed out.

There were lots of changes after Platinum from improved knowledge. Changes in the metagame regarding Scizor and Salamence are very good examples of this.

SD Scizor was very common. But SD Scizor was just too easy to be walled. Rotom, Zapdos, anything with resistance to Bullet Punch (quite a lot of things) or a high Def stat could take it on. So CB Scizor became the dominant set. It became an excellent scouting tool that did massive damage to anything without very high Def or a resistance; even Bronzong took about 53% damage from U-turn.

Similarly, DDMence roamed the battlegrounds. Now DDMence usage is declining and more MixMence are being used. Stall teams are rising in usage, and MixMence is the better choice against such teams. As well, it can hit anything hard on the switch except Cresselia. DDMence often lacks Draco Meteor for this (and if it uses it, it lacks Fire Blast). It finds it continually harder and harder to find time for a DD boost and sweep. Scizor can even suicide with BP to end its sweep. Stall teams are also adjusting to the increase numbers of MixMence, for example, Scarf Jirachi is seeing more usage on stall teams (plus it also checks many other important threats).

imperfectluck said:

we're not allowed to voice our opinions that the metagame sucks? what the fuck? change isn't always positive

Click to expand...

Yes, it isn't always positive, but it wasn't the point of this thread. Read what Darknessmalice wrote and you'll understand what I was trying to discuss.

@Darknessmalice: Well, Salamence and Scizor are obvious examples of "optimization", although they occurred quite fast (about 3 months for a new metagame isn't a lot of time). I'd like some other examples of "long after found" improvements like Empoleon and Tentacruel mentioned before, or rather some examples of "trend change", something which did not change because of being inherently better or worse but simply because of adaptation to a different environment

If you want some optimization changes, there is Wobbuffet and Deoxys-E.

When Wobbuffet was in OU during DP, it was primarily used as a revenge killer with teams based around it to maximize its revenge killing potential until the Wobbuffet's true niche has been realized. With Encore and Shadow Tag, Wobbuffet becames the best opener for setting-up deadly sweepers such as SD Lucario. It didn't take too long after that for it to become Uber again.

As for Deoxys-E, it used to take advantage of its blistering speed to become an efficient end-game cleaner. Things changed when Platinum came, though. It became by far the best suicide lead being able to shut down other leads with Taunt and setting-up Dual Screens for sweepers to have an easier time sweeping. This pokemon became Uber after its suspect test, but its noteriety didn't end there. It became a popular Uber lead that can set-up Stealth Rock and Spikes.

zarator said:

@Darknessmalice: Well, Salamence and Scizor are obvious examples of "optimization", although they occurred quite fast (about 3 months for a new metagame isn't a lot of time). I'd like some other examples of "long after found" improvements like Empoleon and Tentacruel mentioned before, or rather some examples of "trend change", something which did not change because of being inherently better or worse but simply because of adaptation to a different environment

Click to expand...

I realise that Salamence and Scizor were obvious examples. I just thought they were the best examples, as everybody is here is familiar with their optimization, and it would help steer the thread back the right way.

I wouldn't really describe Empoleon's and Tentacruel's as adaption to a different environment. Not that I'm disagreeing with the statement. But I would describe their spikes as caused by people realising the potential they had as a sweeper and supporter respectively, and started using them. The reasons that one would use Tentacruel or Empoleon were theoretically in existence for a long while. But as I said before, I partially agree with you. Tentacruel became viable on stall teams thanks to the use and absorption of Toxic Spikes (which is recently rising in usage) and countering Infernape, both of which are necessities for many stall teams. Empoleon became a hard to stop sweeper, because many methods used to stop sweepers were ineffective on Empoleon - priority attacks, stalling out the sweeper so Sandstorm and maybe LO or TSpikes damage takes its toll. And many of Empoleon's counters hate TSpikes. It's not surpising to see Empoleon's increasing usage alongside the increase in use of TSpikes.

darknessmalice said:

I realise that Salamence and Scizor were obvious examples. I just thought they were the best examples, as everybody is here is familiar with their optimization, and it would help steer the thread back the right way.

I wouldn't really describe Empoleon's and Tentacruel's as adaption to a different environment. Not that I'm disagreeing with the statement. But I would describe their spikes as caused by people realising the potential they had as a sweeper and supporter respectively, and started using them. The reasons that one would use Tentacruel or Empoleon were theoretically in existence for a long while. But as I said before, I partially agree with you. Tentacruel became viable on stall teams thanks to the use and absorption of Toxic Spikes (which is recently rising in usage) and countering Infernape, both of which are necessities for many stall teams. Empoleon became a hard to stop sweeper, because many methods used to stop sweepers were ineffective on Empoleon - priority attacks, stalling out the sweeper so Sandstorm and maybe LO or TSpikes damage takes its toll. And many of Empoleon's counters hate TSpikes. It's not surpising to see Empoleon's increasing usage alongside the increase in use of TSpikes.

Click to expand...

Maybe I expressed it wrongly: I meant actually the opposite. IMO, Empoleon and Tentacruel are the best examples of what I call "optimization"^^

I find it to be just plain wrong to be able to use my same ol' early Plat "Return of Flame Orb Cresselia" team and still stay on the leaderboard for like over a year with that same team. If things still remain stale for a bit longer (despite the recent HG/SS stuff) I'm going to make a thread discussing Cressy in Stark.

The OU metagame is the most played metagame, but it feels like it suffers from a lack of diversity and revolves around a few things. Third Gen stuff felt like it had way more diversity and it had a lot of intense prediction games.

Stall seems to be the most effective way to win in OU, but its like I want to fall asleep during some of my matches (I am used to playing checkers games that last over an hour).

Ever since Platinum though it seems to mostly follow the formula of Scizor, Salamence, Steels, and Dragons in addition to the move that I loathe. Thinking back to early DP though there seemed to be more interesting strategies in my opinion... However, I still used Flame Orb Cresselia (oh come on guys you know I have to mention this in as many posts as I can squeeze it into) successfully.

It feels like some of Plat's changes made 4th gen OU less diversified than 3rd Gen OU or at least the playstyles. So its a lot less enjoyable for me at least.

First: Initially I just didn't get the first post. You completely took the subject to a different context but I think I get it now. I think he's asking "What changes in the metagame were good or bad and how do you think they affect the current metagame?" If that's the case you might wanna change some of the things in your first post and mabye the title while your at it. It's really confusing.

Second: (I'm going by what I think your question is. If I get chewed out for it, it's only because I'm one of the newmerous other people who have no idea what your talking about.) I personally believe that while some pokemon got a really really REALLY big updraft in the DPPT metagame the metagame itself has become bloated and if I say so myself boring. With the introduction of pokemon such as BP Scizor CM Latias Utilityrotom and things like this I'd say the metagame has changed very rapidally from offensive, simple, fast, and fun to Stallish, boring, and overcomplicated. An example is a simple one. way back when the generation started there was such a burning sensation for the now uber Garchomp. For good reason to. You could call it the center of the offensive Sala and defensive Dnite. With its stats and moveset it became such a centralization to the metagame I thing the game became overly offensive with garchomp. Now with it gone the metagame has gone bonzo with stall.

To answer your question Zarator and continue my rant on the changes of the pokemon in the metagame Lucario seems to be a good example of just how much the pokemon have changed and how the metagame has changed (Yes I'm trying to make some kinda hybrid freak of the topic and what everyone believes is the topic. I don't think its working though. lol) When Garchomp was in ou I think pokemon like Heatran, empoleon, and Lucario were out of the ou metagame or at least at low tier in ou. Lets look at Lucario for a second here. When chomp went to uber lucario made a real rise to fame. Well I believe one of the main counters for it is bulky versions of zapdos and more or less mixmence. Or to look at it from another standpoint with garchomp gone Weavile and Gengar lost alot of popularity in thier ice types move and of course it didn't help that Scizor made its way into the metagame which pretty much put them out of a job. Other examples......: well lets see here I believe someone in this thread said and I quote "with Scizors rise in popularity frail sweeper without a steel resistance were killed off." more or less anyways.


Yea I'm done. I don't know if this is even on topic but really I tried to answer a question I didn't even know was trickier than (oh god here it comes) Jirachi.

KurashiDragon said:

First: Initially I just didn't get the first post. You completely took the subject to a different context but I think I get it now. I think he's asking "What changes in the metagame were good or bad and how do you think they affect the current metagame?" If that's the case you might wanna change some of the things in your first post and mabye the title while your at it. It's really confusing.

Second: (I'm going by what I think your question is. If I get chewed out for it, it's only because I'm one of the newmerous other people who have no idea what your talking about.) I personally believe that while some pokemon got a really really REALLY big updraft in the DPPT metagame the metagame itself has become bloated and if I say so myself boring. With the introduction of pokemon such as BP Scizor CM Latias Utilityrotom and things like this I'd say the metagame has changed very rapidally from offensive, simple, fast, and fun to Stallish, boring, and overcomplicated. An example is a simple one. way back when the generation started there was such a burning sensation for the now uber Garchomp. For good reason to. You could call it the center of the offensive Sala and defensive Dnite. With its stats and moveset it became such a centralization to the metagame I thing the game became overly offensive with garchomp. Now with it gone the metagame has gone bonzo with stall.

To answer your question Zarator and continue my rant on the changes of the pokemon in the metagame Lucario seems to be a good example of just how much the pokemon have changed and how the metagame has changed (Yes I'm trying to make some kinda hybrid freak of the topic and what everyone believes is the topic. I don't think its working though. lol) When Garchomp was in ou I think pokemon like Heatran, empoleon, and Lucario were out of the ou metagame or at least at low tier in ou. Lets look at Lucario for a second here. When chomp went to uber lucario made a real rise to fame. Well I believe one of the main counters for it is bulky versions of zapdos and more or less mixmence. Or to look at it from another standpoint with garchomp gone Weavile and Gengar lost alot of popularity in thier ice types move and of course it didn't help that Scizor made its way into the metagame which pretty much put them out of a job. Other examples......: well lets see here I believe someone in this thread said and I quote "with Scizors rise in popularity frail sweeper without a steel resistance were killed off." more or less anyways.


Yea I'm done. I don't know if this is even on topic but really I tried to answer a question I didn't even know was trickier than (oh god here it comes) Jirachi.

Click to expand...

The second is the right one^^

I'm sorry to everyone if the OP is unclear. I'll edit it as soon as possible

I found a thread I forgot I had saved for a discussion such as this, yeah, it's GameFAQs but the topic itself is well thought out and I thought it might be relevant to this discussion.

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/genmessage.php?board=925601&topic=44867569

I guess I'll try my hand at this...

The OP is asking what changes in the metagame you think are optimizational versus cyclical. An optimizational change is one where our superior knowledge about a pokemon causes us to change its sets. For example, at some point heatran stopped using dragon pulse nearly as much. Earlier, people thought that the unresisted coverage that fire, earth and dragon offered was worth the moveslot. However, this left heatran weak to bulky waters and gyarados, as they didn't particularly care if they were hit by any of heatran's moves. Also, Salamence could be two shotted with fire blast anyway (assuming rocks). It was discovered that hidden power grass/ice/electric, toxic, will-o-wisp, explosion and substitute all tended to be better choices for dragon pulse's moveslot. A change like this came from more knowledge of how a pokemon works and how to take care of its counters. This is NOT the same as "platinum added this move, so we should use it now". You can reoptimize immediately after new pokemon tutors are announced, but this is not the same idea as realizing through experience what moves/evs/natures work better on a pokemon.

A cyclical change would be a directly anti-metagame change to a set based on what other people are using. For example, as rotom-a gets used more, agiligross will be used less. This is not based on something inherent to metagross, but is dependent on what other players use. If rotom-a all of a sudden dropped in usage, agiligross usage would grow significantly.

However, this is not an objective distinction. Confusingly, as moves get added to movepools and pokemon change tiers, the optimum sets change accordingly. Some one could argue that the heatran example I gave was actually just a reoptimization for garchomp leaving OU.

As far as actual examples, I would argue the growing use of fire blast versus flamethrower is optimizational, as it does more damage over time (don't really want to get into that debate here though). Hidden power fire celebi/gengar/latias are cyclical to scizor usage in my opinion. Protect on gengar falls into the same category. Earth power celebi is dependent on heatran usage. Any ice punch lucario are cyclical to gliscor, as crunch is far superior coverage-wise. Jolly gliscor, on the other hand, I could see going being argued either way (it's in response to lucario/impish gives the largest total stats, but without jolly it's not nearly as good at doing its job/it should have always been jolly). As you can see, it's probably far easier to think of cyclical examples than optimizational ones.

Anyway, I hope I in the way the OP wanted, as it's entirely possible that I misunderstood as well.

I edited the OP, since a lot of people seemed to misunderstand the point of this topic. I hope it is clearer now.

By the way, since everyone talked about OU, I want to bring an interesting (IMO) case from Ubers. Probably, a lot of you remember that, when D/P came out, Kyogre's main set was Choice Scarf. The combination of Water Spout and Aqua Tail (which 2HKOes Blissey in the rain) made the set very appealing. But, later, people started to realize that, since with Choice Specs you get the 2HKO on Blissey just with Water Spout and it isn't difficult for Kyogre to force something out. So Specsogre became the new standard. I'd say Kyogre is a case of optimization, since nothing (maybe Scarf Darkrai, but not so much) really hampered the popularity of Scarfogre, aside from Specs being generally better.

On the other side, Blissey reflects a bit more the influence of the metagame. At the beginning of D/P, one of the most common sets for the fat pink blob was the Calm Mind/Psych Up special wall (obviously you don't use both CM and Psych Up, but the sets with one and those with the other work pretty much the same way), since a lot of Special sweepers were Calm Minders. However, lately Wishbliss started to become a more common sight. This is probably because, with Protect, Blissey has a better chance to beat Specsogre (where it was unneeded for Scarfogre, since Aqua Tail 2HKOes regardless), while the CM version is cleanly 2HKOed by Water Spout on the switch in. I'd say Blissey may be a case of "cycling change", since, should CM sweepers like CM Ogre and CM LAtias rise in usage, CM Bliss will be more useful.

In my opinion, it's changed for the better. (I have always played on shoddy/ used smogon, but only just signed up.)
For those who think it's changed for the worse because they cannot use their old styles,
You need to change with them!
As for addition of Latias,
It's not that important! More Mences are used then Latias,
it's not exactly broken..

First of all, I would like to bring up another example from Ubers: The Hidden Power Fire/Flamethrower craze. At the time of writing, Forretress has become a Top 10 Ubers Pokemon, and Scizor is 7th. While players had previously dismissed using Fire-type moves due to their shoddy (no pun intended) coverage, there's something to be said for giving a nasty surprise to a stall player hoping to take advantage of a supposedly scarfed Dialga's untimely Draco Meteor or whatever. As players use more and more Fire moves, stall players will become more conservative with Forry, until offensive players realize that their use of the Fire-type move is a liability, taking up a slot where they could have something useful like Thunder. Then, Scizor+Forry usage will rise again. Of course, I believe that since fewer players play Ubers and that Scizor and Forry aren't the most-used Pokemon, statistical anomalies will cover up any evidence we might see of this happening.

aidanmg said:

In my opinion, it's changed for the better. (I have always played on shoddy/ used smogon, but only just signed up.)
For those who think it's changed for the worse because they cannot use their old styles,
You need to change with them!
As for addition of Latias,
It's not that important! More Mences are used then Latias,
it's not exactly broken..

Click to expand...

I think a lot of the debate around Latias centers around one thing: it's bulk, typing, speed, and access to Calm Mind eclipse and marginalize so many special sweepers and force the metagame to centralize almost completely around Dragons and Steels to integrate it as a threat onto a team and to counter threats to Latias (a classic case of this is using Lucario alongside Latias to deal with the inevitable Tyranitar). One might argue that Blissey does an even better job of defeating special sweepers, but here's the thing: Blissey easily becomes setup fodder for strong physical sweepers. With Latias' speed, strong physical sweepers have a hard time setting up on it, and the only truly safe switch-ins, barring Blissey (who is beaten by Refresh/Safeguard/Psycho Shit) are Metagross and Tyranitar. The problem is, however, that Latias isn't as Uber as things like Deoxys-E, who in the worst case scenario gets off a Taunt and a layer/screen and in the best case gets off multiple layers and a Taunt. Or arguably Garchomp (I support the Garchomp ban), who in DP could threaten to sweep with the entire metagame standing on its head to stop it. I don't believe anyone would argue Latias is Uber under any one of the characteristics, its more of a combination of the three combined with the powerful force that Latias exerts on the metagame.

End Fashion said:

Metagame has not improved in the name of fun. UU has become as boring as OU, and I question the integrity of those who employ (ie. 95% of UU players) any of Registeel, Milotic or Mismagius. Shame on you; your lives must be so boring that you suck the colour out of everything around you.

Click to expand...

http://www.sirlin.net/ Read the article "playing to win". >_>; Questioning the integrity of people who employ winning strategies is kinda... lol