It’s an age old story…
After months of neglect, I picked up my Platinum and started battling online again. I quickly realized that NU was the tier for me, and I began planning a new team. A couple of days picking out pokes and plotting movesets followed, and then it was on to the creation process. Catch or transfer the pokemon of choice, set up egg move breeding chains, IV breed with painstakingly acquired dittos, breed for nature, EV train, trade shards for move tutors, and finally level up all six pokemon. It took a few weeks, but I was happy with the team, and instantly started battling online, through the help of the serebii chat rooms.
On day three of my team’s career, I get a message from my competitor. “exeggutor is UU”. Quick as a flash, I head to the smogon strategy dex, and sure enough, my palm tree had been bumped, along with my angry pig monkey, into a higher tier. And just like that, weeks of work were flushed down the drain.
OK, a bit dramatic: I can substitute other pokes onto my new team, but it won’t accomplish what I originally envisioned. Plus it’ll take almost a week to egg move, IV breed, nature breed, EV train, and level up my inferior replacements. My other option is to run my team in UU, but that typically doesn’t go so well for the 4 NU onboard.
The whole situation got me to thinking: these tier changes are instituted based on stats provided by an online pokemon simulator. A simulator where actually bringing a pokemon from theory to reality is about a 5 minute process. Where IVs and EVs are typed in, not monotonously sought after through hundreds of eggs. The reality is, competitive DS game play is structured based on very different Shoddy game play.
Now, obviously, the pros outweigh the cons here. Shoddy provides hard data, and we need such data to develop tiers. Otherwise, luvdisc are battling garchomps, and we have chaos. This is just one of the countless debts pokemon gameplay owes to the simulators. But it is not a perfect relationship between DS and Shoddy, and it’s the problems in translation I’d like to open up for discussion in this thread.
Some of the dominant issues I perceive are:
- Pokemon are tiered based on ideal IVs and Hidden Powers, which are nearly impossible to create in the DS games, provided one also has something of a life.
- Tier shifts are based on experimentation with various move sets on Shoddy, an easy accomplishment online, but a time consuming one in DS. I simply don’t have time to make three different vaporeons. The one I train has to last me a few years, at least.
- Tiers are dominated by legendaries that again, have ideal IVs and HPs. They are not so easily come upon legitimately in DS, and their removal from the tiers would create a VERY different DS metagame.
This all assumes that players aren’t using gamesharks or whatever other hacking machines to build their teams.
Anyhow, please feel free to share your thoughts on the above points, or any other issues that arise through the DS metagame being dictated by the Shoddy metagame. Apologies if this has already been done to death; I haven’t come across it in my lurking.
After months of neglect, I picked up my Platinum and started battling online again. I quickly realized that NU was the tier for me, and I began planning a new team. A couple of days picking out pokes and plotting movesets followed, and then it was on to the creation process. Catch or transfer the pokemon of choice, set up egg move breeding chains, IV breed with painstakingly acquired dittos, breed for nature, EV train, trade shards for move tutors, and finally level up all six pokemon. It took a few weeks, but I was happy with the team, and instantly started battling online, through the help of the serebii chat rooms.
On day three of my team’s career, I get a message from my competitor. “exeggutor is UU”. Quick as a flash, I head to the smogon strategy dex, and sure enough, my palm tree had been bumped, along with my angry pig monkey, into a higher tier. And just like that, weeks of work were flushed down the drain.
OK, a bit dramatic: I can substitute other pokes onto my new team, but it won’t accomplish what I originally envisioned. Plus it’ll take almost a week to egg move, IV breed, nature breed, EV train, and level up my inferior replacements. My other option is to run my team in UU, but that typically doesn’t go so well for the 4 NU onboard.
The whole situation got me to thinking: these tier changes are instituted based on stats provided by an online pokemon simulator. A simulator where actually bringing a pokemon from theory to reality is about a 5 minute process. Where IVs and EVs are typed in, not monotonously sought after through hundreds of eggs. The reality is, competitive DS game play is structured based on very different Shoddy game play.
Now, obviously, the pros outweigh the cons here. Shoddy provides hard data, and we need such data to develop tiers. Otherwise, luvdisc are battling garchomps, and we have chaos. This is just one of the countless debts pokemon gameplay owes to the simulators. But it is not a perfect relationship between DS and Shoddy, and it’s the problems in translation I’d like to open up for discussion in this thread.
Some of the dominant issues I perceive are:
- Pokemon are tiered based on ideal IVs and Hidden Powers, which are nearly impossible to create in the DS games, provided one also has something of a life.
- Tier shifts are based on experimentation with various move sets on Shoddy, an easy accomplishment online, but a time consuming one in DS. I simply don’t have time to make three different vaporeons. The one I train has to last me a few years, at least.
- Tiers are dominated by legendaries that again, have ideal IVs and HPs. They are not so easily come upon legitimately in DS, and their removal from the tiers would create a VERY different DS metagame.
This all assumes that players aren’t using gamesharks or whatever other hacking machines to build their teams.
Anyhow, please feel free to share your thoughts on the above points, or any other issues that arise through the DS metagame being dictated by the Shoddy metagame. Apologies if this has already been done to death; I haven’t come across it in my lurking.
