Smogcast 11: 2011 Video Game Championships (VGC)

[Dubulous]

The Smogcast is back! The eleventh edition focuses on the VGC metagame, which is currently being played by Pokemon fans across the world. More information about VGC can be found in the VGC forum, which includes upcoming regional competition locations! Join Seven Deadly Sins and panelists Solace., Tyler, and Alaka (2010 National runner-up) as they discuss what to use, what not to use, and everything in between.

Listen to and download the Smogcast here. You can listen to the Smogcast in eight parts on Youtube.

[Smith]

The link is broken, I think you mean http://www.youtube.com/playlist?p=PLF7B1FA6BFC6A53B2

[makiri]

Can we get a different host, I don't think SDS knows what hes talking about. 2010 Explosion based? Did SDS play 2010 VGC? How about letting the experts talk SDS. A host is supposed to guide conversation, not interrupt the experts over and over and fill in with his own inane banter. Did Solace and Tyler even talk? This cast was basically SDS several minute inane comment, Alaka short comment, SDS several minute inane comment.

I'm all for these casts, but I don't think SDS understands not only this VGC but past VGCs as well, his inexperience shows as he constantly rambles and rambles about the same thing in an effort to extend the time of the cast.

One moment that really sticks out for me is when SDS said the "3 genies are the best in this metagame" and Alaka and Tyler correct him, but SDS continues to defend that all 3 genies are the best, not the mark of a good host.

[muffinhead]

I agree somewhat with the above post, also: no mention of Zoroark or Basculin? :/ In the first minute physical Eelektross was questioned, but it won senior regionals in San Jose and has always been pretty common. This should aim to open up VGC to new players, not support Rash Hydro Pump Carracosta @ Hard Stone.

[commi$$ioner]

I was excited for this VGC Edition but I think it was soooooo poorly executed. I feel as though the host did not really know much about the current VGC metagame and any VGC metagame at all just from the first few minutes. The panelists were good though, since they actually had some credentials to back up what they were saying (Alaka being the National Runner-Up, Tyler has been playing and showing up to the VGC's since 2009, and Solace was a threat to be reckoned with in SPL). Judging from the plethora of other Smogonites that have VGC credentials, I honestly think that someone must have really fucked up in getting this guy as the host (honestly, even I have more VGC credentials than the host). Just throwing in my two cents...

[Synre]

I can't claim to be a frequent listener to the smogcast either but as a VGC fan I tried to listen this week and I have to echo some of the previous sentiments. I specify 'tried' because I went through a long, slow cycle of listening, getting irritated by the fact it was an SDS monologue or that there was information being spread and pausing, recovering, turning it back on and then the cycle repeated. I think I'm still only like halfway through.

I'm no podcastologist but I'm pretty sure the point of having a panel of experts is that you use them to present insight about your topic that gains credibility from their informed opinions, not that you have them sit there and mutter occasionally(did Solace and Tyler like get up and go to the store for twenty minutes in the middle of this?) while the host constantly cuts them off and tries desperately not to let anyone else get a word in edgewise through the entire presentation. There were some really frustrating moments for me as a listener, such as the Fake Out segment, where one of the panelists was trying to give an accurate and detailed explanation and SDS kept cutting them off over and over. I realize everyone is probably trying their best but this just really didn't work. I would wager if you added up the time everyone other than SDS spoke you wouldn't get to two minutes. I don't think I need to describe how absurd that is.

I did enjoy the entertainment value of suggesting, among other things, that the three genies were the best Pokemon, that Terrakion+Whimsicott was nearly unstoppable, and that Eel should only be special, though.

I'm just not sure what this podcast is supposed to do. It doesn't present an accurate picture of the VGC 2011 metagame, it doesn't help new players learn the metagame, it certainly doesn't offer insight from experienced players for any length of time... it doesn't seem like this had much direction.

[AJC]

agreed this feels like a filler thing until the end of 4th OU suspect round and the first UU suspect round cast can be done

[Firestorm]

To clarify, I don't think people are saying the host should know everything about every metagame on the site. They don't need to have that knowledge. The host should however be able to facilitate a conversation which in some cases may involve him stepping back and letting the panel discuss amongst themselves.

I personally like my podcasts to be more conversational and at the beginning I felt like I was being talked down to by a schoolteacher instead of listening to people talk. This is a competitive Pokemon website. I know what item clause is. I learned about it as a 12 year old playing Pokemon Stadium 2.

Once it's on iTunes I'll try giving it another go and see if I can finish. This YouTube format isn't workable for me. Sorry to pile on, but most of the metagames on Smogon bore the hell out of me and I was hoping I could try a Smogcast in my podcast rotation for once =/

[TTS]

Originally Posted by Fat Firestorm

To clarify, I don't think people are saying the host should know everything about every metagame on the site. They don't need to have that knowledge. The host should however be able to facilitate a conversation which in some cases may involve him stepping back and letting the panel discuss amongst themselves.

^ That. SDS should have directed the conversation and then stepped back -- VGC clearly isn't his area of expertise, so having him be 90%+ of the talking is even more absurd than if he WAS an expert in the field(which is still a bad idea if you're advertising a panel of experts). Another mistake was in choosing panelists who weren't comfortable speaking publicly and authoritatively -- that was a mistake on SDS' part as well as on the parts of the panelists who should have declined if they were too shy to actually contribute to the podcast. Alaka at least threw in the occasional comment, but Solace and Tyler, as Synre said, might as well have not been there.

[Katakiri]

Have listen to this when the MP3 is up. You guys are normally pretty good with getting that up early.

[Seven Deadly Sins]

Fine by me. I realize that I "took over" in not a great way, but it's REALLY hard to get panelists to speak up at times, and when I have active panelists, it's actually possible to get them to say stuff. Not dissing the panelists, they were great, but I usually have to tell people to talk. Part of the reason I talk so much is because it's better than having absolute dead air. The odd thing is that I felt okay about it mainly because 2 days earlier I'd been on Skype with Solace and Tyler and they'd been pretty active in our conversation, so it was surprising to have them take a back seat during the cast.

Granted, all criticisms are valid, and I'll be addressing them in future casts.

(sorry zwing and synre)

EDIT: Another thing to realize is that this was recorded BEFORE the first actual event, which may color things slightly.

[commi$$ioner]

The metagame was shaped far before the first actual event. And even then, the metegame that we witnessed online before the tourneys did not even really see the genies, especially Landorus. And even then a smart VGCer knows that mixed sets at level 50 are not the smartest idea when it takes twice as much EV's to raise a stat by one point.

[gec]

Just wanted to throw my 2 pennies in here by saying this was almost an embarrassment to the whole VGC community. I'm not going to be overly explicit here since Synre, makiri and Duy have basically made my comments for me. It was basically an inane monologue throughout which would have been somewhat /half/ acceptable if the person making the comments actually knew what he was talking about. Sure, it was entertaining if that is what you sought to make the podcast but for all the wrong reasons - Hard Stone Carracosta is still giving me the chuckles whenever I think about it, not to mention the great comments about the genies.

Since this podcast was made relatively early to the tournaments and not like a summary after all of them had finished, I would expect to have seen some sort of introduction and help for new players to get into it and possibly even participate at one of the events. However, what happened instead was basically a diabolical recap of last year's metagame which I don't know about anyone else in the VGC community but made me feel completely offended (I mean explosion based metagame, way to make us sound smart!). I disagree that the panelists contributed to what made this podcast so dire, I can actually empathize with them and heck - I even commend them. It must have been a true feat to even get a single word in throughout this whole podcast but somehow more than that was managed, so kudos there.

In conclusion, I just think that this smogcast should have had a host who wasn't so overbearing and clueless about such a huge topic. I don't mean any personal offence to SDS but I do feel it had to be said because this is a very inaccurate and in some aspects an offensive analysis of not jut VGC11, but of VGC as a whole.

[evan]

Also physical Eelektross just won Dallas.

just saying.

[Solace*]

sure there were some faults in the cast, but if you can honestly say there wasnt a fault in any of the 11 casts then i would be shocked. sds gave many opportunities for us to correct him and i must admit i have very little experience with the 2010 game. if it were such a "diabolical recap", then i dont see why both alaka and tyler, who do have loads of experience in the game, didnt correct him.

in any case, it isnt sds's fault that we didnt talk. i actually wished i had talked more, although i can only speak for myself when i say i was kind of nervous. sds told us all at some point that we should be talking more, so you can't really blame him.

also since the cast was made entirely from what we've seen on PO, things that may have been good at regionals that werent good on PO were mentioned negatively. i don't think any of us thought that physical eelektross was super amazing or anything to even hype. the genies are pretty dominant on PO, and to say that we were wrong to say theyre the best is a little silly. considering that at least 1 genie has been on literally every winning team, i would say they are pretty potent pokemon. maybe not the best, but certainly good enough that its a constant trend, yet everyone only dwells on the fact that physical eelektross was on 2 winning teams and that was a mistake on our part.

[TTS]

Originally Posted by Fat Seven Deadly Sins

Not dissing the panelists, they were great, but I usually have to tell people to talk. Part of the reason I talk so much is because it's better than having absolute dead air. The odd thing is that I felt okay about it mainly because 2 days earlier I'd been on Skype with Solace and Tyler and they'd been pretty active in our conversation, so it was surprising to have them take a back seat during the cast.

EDIT: Another thing to realize is that this was recorded BEFORE the first actual event, which may color things slightly.

The panelists weren't great. That was either due to them being too quiet/shy or you overpowering the conversation. In the 35~ mins I listened to before losing the ability to tolerate any more, the only person who really said ANYTHING other than you was Alaka, and even then you could go minutes at a time without realizing he was actually there. In the first case, it was your fault for picking people that weren't suitable. In the latter case.. yeah.. don't really need to elaborate on that. The "I usually have to tell people to talk" thing could be indicative of either reason, or both. Regardless, this was pretty bad =\

[Synre]

I don't know if it's completely fair to blame the panelists on this one since there was more than one time(the Fake Out thing is what comes to mind first but I could look for other instances if it is helpful) where the panelists DID try to explain something and kept getting cut off... if I were on the panel that sure wouldn't make me want to keep trying.

Though I think it's pretty obvious there were some more colorful personalities for this with as much or more VGC experience that could have been selected and that would probably have improved the result. I don't think the problem was really with the cast so much as the format and execution, though. I wonder how much effort SDS put into trying to get an experienced panel... it's not like the Worlds/Nationals 2010 results aren't just chilling there to look at as a place to start with panelists. We have like 6 badgeholding worlds participants and you could only find one of them...?

Originally Posted by Fat Solace

also since the cast was made entirely from what we've seen on PO, things that may have been good at regionals that werent good on PO were mentioned negatively. i don't think any of us thought that physical eelektross was super amazing or anything to even hype.

I don't think it's super amazing either, but it's a good Pokemon that can play a role on teams and is certainly effective enough that SDS's comment was asinine. I'm not sure why he made it to begin with -- I don't think he's trying to convince anyone he's an expert at VGC 11 right now, so why try to rip into a move option one of his panelists is throwing out?

EDIT: Guess he is.

Originally Posted by Fat Solace

the genies are pretty dominant on PO, and to say that we were wrong to say theyre the best is a little silly. considering that at least 1 genie has been on literally every winning team, i would say they are pretty potent pokemon. maybe not the best, but certainly good enough that its a constant trend, yet everyone only dwells on the fact that physical eelektross was on 2 winning teams and that was a mistake on our part.

"the genies" are not one singular entity. I would agree Thundurus certainly is the best Pokemon and has been so basically from Day 1 on PO and has dominated regionals, jumping to #1 used last week and probably maintaining it this week. Tornadus is an above average VGC Pokemon. Landorus is probably a below average VGC pokemon and has only had real success in the younger divisions where spamming spread moves is more effective. Their usage in VGC Top 16 teams reflect that, but it was true on PO's ladder before, too -- how many high end ladder teams have had Landorus on them the past two months? Even in SPL Landorus' most notable performance was with a set I imagine SDS would have scoffed at had you presented it...




EDIT: Additionally I really hate this "um I have alts that play on Skarmbliss!!" shit. Really, what alts? Because if you aren't going to tell us, why did you even mention it? It sure doesn't qualify your argument any...

[Seven Deadly Sins]

Originally Posted by Fat Giant Enemy Crab

I disagree that the panelists contributed to what made this podcast so dire, I can actually empathize with them and heck - I even commend them. It must have been a true feat to even get a single word in throughout this whole podcast but somehow more than that was managed, so kudos there.

In conclusion, I just think that this smogcast should have had a host who wasn't so overbearing and clueless about such a huge topic. I don't mean any personal offence to SDS but I do feel it had to be said because this is a very inaccurate and in some aspects an offensive analysis of not jut VGC11, but of VGC as a whole.

I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here and say that you're at least a bit off base here, mainly because you don't have access to the raw and weren't there when the recording was actually happening. Most of the Smogcast's editing work is removing dead air from the cast so it flows together. As Solace said, he and Tyler were a bit shy on-cast (which was odd considering that I had a pretty neat Skype session with them where we played VGC on Skarmbliss and they were fairly outgoing), so often there was the issue of comments going unanswered, and as the host, it was my job to keep things moving. This led to a cast in which I talked a bit more than I had hoped and than I thought was necessary.

However, I'd say that the information in the cast isn't exactly "wrong", just based on a set of experiences that ended up not mirroring the experiences of some other possibly more experienced players. I wouldn't say I'm "clueless" about VGC exactly. I'm currently 2-0 in the Smogon VGC Tournament. I also played VGC in SPL in week 3 (and lost to Human in a close and unfortunately haxy set of games) and helped teambuild and test for the rest of the tournament, as well as spending time playing VGC on the Skarmbliss server (where I used names other than Seven Deadly Sins), and my opinions were colored by my experiences there.

For example: from what I (and Solace) saw on PO, physical Eelektross wasn't all that great. That was around 2 weeks ago, well before the Dallas regional, and it may be that the regional metagame is different from the PO metagame in a way that makes physical Eelektross better. I can't exactly say. But to say that the opinion is explicitly "wrong" is a bit unfair.

Anyway, it's unfortunate that there are users who took issue with this cast, but I stand by the information there, even if it's a little... dated. I look forward to watching the results from Regionals as well and seeing the tourney VGC metagame refined further. Who knows, maybe we'll do a VGC update once we have more stats from Regionals, kind of as a "look back". As an aside, props to Synre for doing totals and stats for the regionals- If we do another VGC cast, they're sure to be a handy resource, and it's a great metric for the general "tournament metagame."

EDIT: I'm not trying to imply that I'm an expert, just that I'm not "clueless" as was said. I'm really not trying to start drama, honestly. Additionally, I just play with whatever alt I'm using at the time, which varies depending on the alt I'm laddering with on SU, since I'm usually too lazy to change to a Skarmbliss-specific alt when I'm teambuilding. Sorry for lacking specificity, but it's all I've got right now.

[muffinhead]

20:00:38 <moof> did you agree
20:00:44 <moof> that special eel is better
20:00:46 <moof> im just curious
20:00:47 <Solace> no
20:00:49 <Solace> i did not

eelektross has always been pretty big, not just on PO.

[NijaSkills]

Originally Posted by Fat Dubulous

The Smogcast is back! The eleventh edition focuses on the VGC metagame, which is currently being played by Pokemon fans across the world. More information about VGC can be found in the VGC forum, which includes upcoming regional competition locations! Join Seven Deadly Sins and panelists Solace., Tyler, and Alaka (2010 National runner-up) as they discuss what to use, what not to use, and everything in between.

You can listen to the Smogcast in eight parts on Youtube. Look for a link for download on the website shortly!

Fixed. I'm sorry to nitpick, but this has been bugging me, and it is a bit misleading.

[tjtjpoke]

when will the download be up?

[evan]

SDS, your problem is that you seem to think that making a statement and then waiting is how you get people to talk. That's entirely wrong. As host, your job is to facilitate discussion among the panel. Usually you do this by asking questions not monologuing for ten minutes, stopping, and hoping that someone says something else on top of you. It's an inherent flaw with your style of hosting. It's the SDS show not a discussion among panelists.

Ask more questions; make fewer statements.

[Frank M.]

I enjoyed this Smogcast, mostly because I know nothing about the VGC. lol.

I'm not gonna harp on SDS here, since it never occured to me that he was monologuing or trying to take center stage, so to speak.

I can understand how he feels about guests who dont speak up. Its rather frustrating to get some people together, say "lets make a podcast" and then sit in silence as your wait for your guests to SAY SOMETHING. I've tried it myself, and its hard not to attempt to "fill the void."

That said, maybe it would be better if the Smogcast simply stuck with its more notable panelists, like Deck Knight, or Rising_Dusk.

[Eraddd]

Originally Posted by Fat Frank M.

I enjoyed this Smogcast, mostly because I know nothing about the VGC. lol.

I'm not gonna harp on SDS here, since it never occured to me that he was monologuing or trying to take center stage, so to speak.

I can understand how he feels about guests who dont speak up. Its rather frustrating to get some people together, say "lets make a podcast" and then sit in silence as your wait for your guests to SAY SOMETHING. I've tried it myself, and its hard not to attempt to "fill the void."

That said, maybe it would be better if the Smogcast simply stuck with its more notable panelists, like Deck Knight, or Rising_Dusk.

Pretty sure Tyler, Alaka and Solace are far better known in the VGC community than are Deck Knight and Rising_Dusk.

Echoing the previously mentioned sentiments, I'd like to see less talking from the host, and more talking from panelists. I would like more questions on asking the panelists' specific views and opinions on several topics. There were many opportunities to ask the panelists' view or opinion on specific topics, but I never really saw that come into play. Plus, it just seemed awkward as hell as SDS was talking, with the panelists not being able to say anything. For example, on the subject of Fake Out, all I heard was SDS talking about various ways of how it's used, while not even asking for input from the panelists (why not ask the panelists on how they would use Fake Out for specific strategies, or teams that they have used previously?). Also, I doubt it wasn't the lack of effort from the panelists (shown when SDS tried to lead the Fake Out discussion to Tailwind, and one of the panelists interjected his own opinion, which SHOULD be happening without having to interrupt while the topic is changing).

Just more things to consider for the next Smogcast if you're considering doing another VGC segment.

[Nkululeko]

Originally Posted by Fat Frank M.

I enjoyed this Smogcast, mostly because I know nothing about the VGC. lol.

I'm not gonna harp on SDS here, since it never occured to me that he was monologuing or trying to take center stage, so to speak.

I can understand how he feels about guests who dont speak up. Its rather frustrating to get some people together, say "lets make a podcast" and then sit in silence as your wait for your guests to SAY SOMETHING. I've tried it myself, and its hard not to attempt to "fill the void."

That said, maybe it would be better if the Smogcast simply stuck with its more notable panelists, like Deck Knight, or Rising_Dusk.

I agree. I'm not big on VGC so I did learn a few things from this cast. I wouldn't flame SDS 'cuz you can only go so far when talking with shy people.

On the whole cast issue, maybe the Smogcast should keep some of the more popular panelists as a general staff(other than SDS) so that there is some synergy to the casts. I'm prolly just ramblin' right now but you guys know what you're doing, afterall Smogcast 9 was great (a lil' improv, but funny as hell).