Tangerine
Where the Lights Are
Because I don't want to derail the Latios thread, and I think we should be looking at the tiering ideology.
There is a mentality going on regarding "unban everything and start from there". In fact, this was the biggest argument that went on in the order of operations. Many people have been criticizing that the suspect test is not the "right way" and we should just unban everything at once.
There has also been comparisons that "we should have done it like UU".
So first, I will point out why the nUU testing doesn't mean we can justify the OU testing, and then go from there.
I believe the argument was primarily accepted because of the size. The purpose of the lower tiers is to allow Pokemon that are never seen in OU to be used. If there are 50 Fully Evolved Pokemon that aren't seeing the light of day because of a tiering flaw, that is a lot more convincing than "we should start over for the sake of 10 Pokemon". This allows UU to actually serve its purpose.
This justification does not exist for the OU metagame, since OU's purpose is to be the standard metagame that is "balanced". It isnt' the "first" metagame to be balanced, for obvious reasons since we can unban everything except things that are universally agreed to be broken (Kyogre) and start from there. The metagame in this case will balance eventually, and then we will have "Uber lite" as the first balanced metagame.
I first find it odd that people who promote this view accept the suspects that we have derived from theorymon - especially since these are people who promote the "we must test and not theorymon" mentality. Supposign that they do unban everything (Except Kyogre), then we do end up with uber-lite as "OU", and that's that. The issue with this is the usage factor - do we really want a metagame that is really just a "balanced" uber tier? "Maybe". Does that mean the current OU will end up being UU, and so on? "Maybe". Is this considerably different from the OU that we constructed? Yes. Is this a problem? Maybe. Will it be smaller? Most likely. But under the purpose of tiers, this is how "it should be done" and anything else is "wrong". Therefore, I challenge this definition of OU being simply a balanced tier - and believe that it should be redefined as a metagame where we start with a set cut off point and go from there. (for example, we start by banning all legends greater than and/or equal BST 600 and go from there). It needs to be redefined, or else, what stops us from saying "this is OU" and going from there? There is a certain stigma attached to OU and I think we should stick to it, whether or not people believe that it is "aribtrary" or not because in the end no matter what, what we ban and do not ban is based on the metagame at hand.
Does it really matter other than an exercise in philsophical "purity"? To be philosophically pure is to unban everything and starting from there and then constructing the "uberlite" OU metagame, rather than what people may prefer by practice. No matter how pure you might want to be, people will think of OU as the tier with Starmie and Jolteon and Snorlax. This has long been what has accepted to be standard, and believe it or not, this mentality is directly promoted by how the game is set up and the bans Nintendo has set up themselves. Is it wrong to start from Nintendo's 1 vs 1 tiers, other than to "minimize bans"? We minimize bans based on the standard metagame, not the overall bans, much like UU's banlist is simply BL, not every Pokemon in OU ~ Ubers (OU ~ Ubers is included but they're not even considered).
Now, we still want to minimize bans. That's why we have suspect testing. Suspect are Pokemon from the banlist that we want to test. But first, note how we decided on the suspects to begin with. Suspects are Pokemon that we assume would be perfectly viable and not broken in the current OU metagame. Suspects are Ubers that we theorize that it may be viable in OU.
There's an issue again, by unbanning all at once. It's not the idea of a "clusterfuck", but the possibility of it that we should be worried about.
There are pros and cons to the argument of "unban all suspects" now. The Pros are, while we may be finished with the test faster most of the time, there is a chance that we end up with a tangle of mess that we can't quite derive the cause of, due to the number of suspects affect the metagame. This, believe it or not, is a significant problem since if we end up with the latter, we lose the purpose behind the suspect test and the bans end up being more arbitrary than it needs to be.
Hence, the suspect tests. We test each suspect in the established baseline and see how each Pokemon can perform each each stage, which gives us a much better idea on what is causing what. This minimizes the chance that we as a community can't figure out exactly what is wrong at stage 2, or stage 3. The con, of course, is that the process is a lot slower than the above method of unbanning all suspects at once.
I disagree with anyone claiming that the suspect test is flawed for that specific reason that we didnt start by unbanning everything, because in the end we will end up with a much solid reason, even though in the end everything is "subjective" anyway. It is because it is arbitrary we need to make a more systematic approach that concentrates on the performance of each Pokemon. The suspect test gives us much more control and clarity, a reason enough to "prefer" it.
Hence, this is why
1) the reasoning for the nUU testing does not apply to OU, unless we restructure everything again.
2) we need to reconsider the initial cutoff of OU
3) Why unbanning all suspects and the suspect test ends up in the same result anyway - except the suspect test is slower and it gives clearer results.
Discuss. I don't want to hear "This is exactly what people who preferred the old UU argued" because, uh, it doesn't apply.
EDIT: There is also a need to develop a philosophy for competitive Pokemon specifically - rather than just accepting the systems applied for other games. Pokemon is a much different game than most other games due to the variety and the versatility and I find it silly that we're just mindlessly accepting certain things as "true".
There is a mentality going on regarding "unban everything and start from there". In fact, this was the biggest argument that went on in the order of operations. Many people have been criticizing that the suspect test is not the "right way" and we should just unban everything at once.
There has also been comparisons that "we should have done it like UU".
So first, I will point out why the nUU testing doesn't mean we can justify the OU testing, and then go from there.
[20:41] <Obi> But even if the list were 5 BLs
[20:41] <Obi> I would prefer unbanning all of them to testing one at a time
The point is that I don't think your proposal would have gained much support if there was 5 BL, or even, 15 BL Pokemon. In this case, the "old method" would have worked which was to move BL Pokemon down and "test it". There would be no need to literally "start over" and recreate the tier from scratch. This precisely has to do with the purpose of UU - which is an environment for non OU Pokemon to thrive in. The lowers tiers are environments where Pokemon not seen in standard can thrive.However, I think the primary reason people accepted a UU test is because there were fewer UU players than OU players, not because BL is big.
I believe the argument was primarily accepted because of the size. The purpose of the lower tiers is to allow Pokemon that are never seen in OU to be used. If there are 50 Fully Evolved Pokemon that aren't seeing the light of day because of a tiering flaw, that is a lot more convincing than "we should start over for the sake of 10 Pokemon". This allows UU to actually serve its purpose.
This justification does not exist for the OU metagame, since OU's purpose is to be the standard metagame that is "balanced". It isnt' the "first" metagame to be balanced, for obvious reasons since we can unban everything except things that are universally agreed to be broken (Kyogre) and start from there. The metagame in this case will balance eventually, and then we will have "Uber lite" as the first balanced metagame.
I first find it odd that people who promote this view accept the suspects that we have derived from theorymon - especially since these are people who promote the "we must test and not theorymon" mentality. Supposign that they do unban everything (Except Kyogre), then we do end up with uber-lite as "OU", and that's that. The issue with this is the usage factor - do we really want a metagame that is really just a "balanced" uber tier? "Maybe". Does that mean the current OU will end up being UU, and so on? "Maybe". Is this considerably different from the OU that we constructed? Yes. Is this a problem? Maybe. Will it be smaller? Most likely. But under the purpose of tiers, this is how "it should be done" and anything else is "wrong". Therefore, I challenge this definition of OU being simply a balanced tier - and believe that it should be redefined as a metagame where we start with a set cut off point and go from there. (for example, we start by banning all legends greater than and/or equal BST 600 and go from there). It needs to be redefined, or else, what stops us from saying "this is OU" and going from there? There is a certain stigma attached to OU and I think we should stick to it, whether or not people believe that it is "aribtrary" or not because in the end no matter what, what we ban and do not ban is based on the metagame at hand.
Does it really matter other than an exercise in philsophical "purity"? To be philosophically pure is to unban everything and starting from there and then constructing the "uberlite" OU metagame, rather than what people may prefer by practice. No matter how pure you might want to be, people will think of OU as the tier with Starmie and Jolteon and Snorlax. This has long been what has accepted to be standard, and believe it or not, this mentality is directly promoted by how the game is set up and the bans Nintendo has set up themselves. Is it wrong to start from Nintendo's 1 vs 1 tiers, other than to "minimize bans"? We minimize bans based on the standard metagame, not the overall bans, much like UU's banlist is simply BL, not every Pokemon in OU ~ Ubers (OU ~ Ubers is included but they're not even considered).
Now, we still want to minimize bans. That's why we have suspect testing. Suspect are Pokemon from the banlist that we want to test. But first, note how we decided on the suspects to begin with. Suspects are Pokemon that we assume would be perfectly viable and not broken in the current OU metagame. Suspects are Ubers that we theorize that it may be viable in OU.
There's an issue again, by unbanning all at once. It's not the idea of a "clusterfuck", but the possibility of it that we should be worried about.
There are pros and cons to the argument of "unban all suspects" now. The Pros are, while we may be finished with the test faster most of the time, there is a chance that we end up with a tangle of mess that we can't quite derive the cause of, due to the number of suspects affect the metagame. This, believe it or not, is a significant problem since if we end up with the latter, we lose the purpose behind the suspect test and the bans end up being more arbitrary than it needs to be.
Hence, the suspect tests. We test each suspect in the established baseline and see how each Pokemon can perform each each stage, which gives us a much better idea on what is causing what. This minimizes the chance that we as a community can't figure out exactly what is wrong at stage 2, or stage 3. The con, of course, is that the process is a lot slower than the above method of unbanning all suspects at once.
I disagree with anyone claiming that the suspect test is flawed for that specific reason that we didnt start by unbanning everything, because in the end we will end up with a much solid reason, even though in the end everything is "subjective" anyway. It is because it is arbitrary we need to make a more systematic approach that concentrates on the performance of each Pokemon. The suspect test gives us much more control and clarity, a reason enough to "prefer" it.
Hence, this is why
1) the reasoning for the nUU testing does not apply to OU, unless we restructure everything again.
2) we need to reconsider the initial cutoff of OU
3) Why unbanning all suspects and the suspect test ends up in the same result anyway - except the suspect test is slower and it gives clearer results.
Discuss. I don't want to hear "This is exactly what people who preferred the old UU argued" because, uh, it doesn't apply.
EDIT: There is also a need to develop a philosophy for competitive Pokemon specifically - rather than just accepting the systems applied for other games. Pokemon is a much different game than most other games due to the variety and the versatility and I find it silly that we're just mindlessly accepting certain things as "true".