Core Metagames Policy

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IronBullet

Astronomy Domine
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Smogon Senior Staff and the head Tournament Director have decided to slightly rework the way we deal with our Smogon Metagames and their representation in Official Tournaments. From now on, Smogon Metagames will be divided in two groups:

- Official Metagames
- Core Metagames

Both Core and Official Metagames will have a top level subforums, official Tier Leaders, on-site analyses, and their suspect votes will count towards the Tiering Contributor badge. The difference between both is that Core Metagames will have Official Tournament representation, while Official Metagames won't be eligible for them. The list of Core Metagames is not subject to change, but new metagames will be officialized without much issue as long as they meet the requirements. The idea behind this is moving past the ambiguous "Officiality will not equate to obligatory representation in tournaments" policy and using a simpler system, which will make some decisions easier for the TD team and allow SS to be more willing to officialize new metagames.

In order for a metagame to become an Official Metagame, the metagame must have the following (and determined to have met the criteria by Senior Staff):

- Large and active playerbase on the simulator
- Base of workers willing to create content for the site regarding the metagame
- High activity on the forums
- Leaders interested in making the metagame as competitive as possible
- Must be playable on the cartridges without an external device

And the list for Core Metagames is:

- OU
- Ubers
- UU
- RU
- NU
- LC
- DOU

Again, this list is currently not subject to changes.

This does means PU will not have Official Tournament representation. Understandably, the PU community will be upset by our decision, but we believe this is the best for Smogon as a whole. PU has an extremely small tournament playerbase and we don't think that community has enough high level players to justify representation in our current Official Tournament circuit.

Bad news for some people, but we have some really good news for another community...

Monotype is now an Official Tier. Eien and Paleo will be Monotype Tier Leaders. Congratulations to the Monotype community, keep up the good work, and enjoy your new subforum!

==========


FAQ

"Who decides how much representation an Official Metagame gets?"


- The TD team

"What about old gens?"

- Old gen OU tiers are eligible for tournament representation and the TDs decide how much they get. We are not changing the way we deal with old gens.

"What about VGC, etc?"

This policy only affects Smogon Metagames.

"Can Official Metagames be promoted to Core?"

Right now or in the near future? No. We are working on a system to review the Core Metagames list periodically (yearly or every new gen), but nothing has been decided yet.

"Does this means PU isn't allowed to have tournaments?"

No, this only affects official tournament representation. PU can have as many unofficial tournaments as they want and if we ever get Ribbon Tournaments, PU will be represented in them.
 

cityscapes

Take care of yourself.
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- Must be playable on the cartridges without an external device
just wondering is there any particular reason for this? that one honestly just sticks out compared to the other criteria and frankly it makes no sense to me
 

Karxrida

Death to the Undying Savage
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just wondering is there any particular reason for this? that one honestly just sticks out compared to the other criteria and frankly it makes no sense to me
Maybe it's for Hackmons? I'm pretty sure it's theoretically playable on cart, but doing so requires cheat devices to alter your game.
 

Kalalokki

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Sprite Leader
Maybe it's for Hackmons? I'm pretty sure it's theoretically playable on cart, but doing so requires cheat devices to alter your game.
Yeah it still follows in-game mechanics, while metagames such as Mix and Mega clearly don't.
 
just wondering is there any particular reason for this? that one honestly just sticks out compared to the other criteria and frankly it makes no sense to me
Our tiers have always been this way. We're trying to play the cart game in a balanced way, not change the mechanics or movesets or abilities to our liking. Just so happens that the sim is many times easier to play on then the cart, and the way the sim is built we can have things like OMs and Pet Mods. That's a nicety but hardly a part of our core philosophy.

Maybe it's for Hackmons? I'm pretty sure it's theoretically playable on cart, but doing so requires cheat devices to alter your game.
Not just hackmons, covers almost every OM. External cheating device really means any kind of hacking really. This includes AAA Sketchmons et al because you can't just give a mon any move or ability on cart without hacking.
 

pokemonisfun

Banned deucer.
Here's a question that confuses me all the time:

What's the difference between a tier and a metagame?

I figured LC is an official metagame but not a tier because tiers are supposed to reflect usage/power/some type of ranking. So OU is a tier as it has more usage/power compared to UU, but it's not comparable to LC because LC isn't based off of any usage.

That said, LC UU could be a tier and LC as well if those were official, because that's based off power/usage again.

Last point that confuses me is that LC and Monotype have "tier" leaders, even though my understanding of them is that they are metagames, not tiers.

Even the OP seems confused because first it says there are "official metagames" and "core metagames", but then it says monotype is an "official tier."

I'll be 100% honest, the distinction isn't too important to me, but I just want to know if it's right for me to poke fun at my LC friends saying their game isn't even a "tier."
 
Here's a question that confuses me all the time:

What's the difference between a tier and a metagame?

I figured LC is an official metagame but not a tier because tiers are supposed to reflect usage/power/some type of ranking. So OU is a tier as it has more usage/power compared to UU, but it's not comparable to LC because LC isn't based off of any usage.

That said, LC UU could be a tier and LC as well if those were official, because that's based off power/usage again.

Last point that confuses me is that LC and Monotype have "tier" leaders, even though my understanding of them is that they are metagames, not tiers.

Even the OP seems confused because first it says there are "official metagames" and "core metagames", but then it says monotype is an "official tier."

I'll be 100% honest, the distinction isn't too important to me, but I just want to know if it's right for me to poke fun at my LC friends saying their game isn't even a "tier."
Tier and metagame are basically the same thing, in most contexts. I guess metagame can refer to a time period in a tier (i.e. the Aegislash metagame or the Pheromosa metagame) where tier is never used in that context. Tier also generally appears when talking in larger picture discussions where metagame hardly ever does (i.e. most gen 7 planning discussions used "tier" almost exclusively instead of "metagame"). But in the vast majority of cases they are in fact interchangeable.
 

chimp

Go Bananas
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Here's a question that confuses me all the time:

What's the difference between a tier and a metagame?

I figured LC is an official metagame but not a tier because tiers are supposed to reflect usage/power/some type of ranking. So OU is a tier as it has more usage/power compared to UU, but it's not comparable to LC because LC isn't based off of any usage.

That said, LC UU could be a tier and LC as well if those were official, because that's based off power/usage again.

Last point that confuses me is that LC and Monotype have "tier" leaders, even though my understanding of them is that they are metagames, not tiers.

Even the OP seems confused because first it says there are "official metagames" and "core metagames", but then it says monotype is an "official tier."

I'll be 100% honest, the distinction isn't too important to me, but I just want to know if it's right for me to poke fun at my LC friends saying their game isn't even a "tier."
PU through OU are tiers because they are defined by usage stats, so there is a clear hierarchey. What Pokemon are legal in LC is not determined by usage stats, so its outside of this hierarchey. Therefore, its not a tier.

Basically, every tier is a metagame but not every metagame is a tier.
Both terms have become fairly interchangable, though, but thats atleast how I always understood it.
 
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