The NU Tier

[twash]

Six months for revising tiers seems a bit long... We could probably get away with every four months with still being current with the tiers.

Four months is a good length of time; it fits in with 3 months testing and 1 month of sorting paragraphs, voting, and so on. 6 months was mostly an idea to fit in with the 3 or 6 month suspect tests, but it may be less practical due to the extra time needed on top of the testing. The more I think about it, the more I like a tiering update every 4 months plus the "if a Pokemon changes tier in between a test, it goes to the next 'BL tier' above the tier it is going to" idea.

If we were to explore NU a lot more I could see some mons hopping up a tier or two. There's bound to be an undiscovered set or two lying around that could be quite useful in OU among NU pokes. At Smogon we want to have as much knowledge available for the various metagames of mons, right? Given the size of OU and UU though... will a tier like... Never Ever Used emerge?

Why shouldn't we create a tier below NU? Currently there's 51 Pokemon in OU, and 57 in UU. NU currently has almost triple the amount of Pokemon in OU...so it's likely that a lot of Pokemon won't make the "OU of NU". Of course, I'm using the Pokemon actually classified as that tier and not the Pokemon allowed, because I'm looking at the most used Pokemon in that tier.

We can't really tell at this point if it would be a success though...I'd say we're definitely looking too far into the future here!

I'd love to see the results of testing NU, giving it ladders, etc. It would be fun.

It's hard not to repeat myself here, so I'll just say I completely agree.

We probably should have a more public discussion about this though, that way we can gauge how many potential players we'd have for it. All of this NU discussion would be kind of moot if we didn't have any players...

I have no problem if an admin or supermod wants to move this to Policy Review or wherever they feel it should go to get the best reception. I don't like the idea of gauging how many people may play NU via a public discussion though (mostly because there will be people who will claim they will play and won't, and some people who will play just won't post). I'm mostly looking to see if there are reasons not to start NU.

 

[obi]

There is no need to put the Pokemon moving up in the "BL" tier. If a Pokemon moves out of NU due to being used a lot in UU, just put it in UU. Whether it's in UU or "BL of NU" makes no difference for either UU or NU, and it's going to be moved up to UU, anyway, so you might as well put it there.

 

[X-Act]

There is no need to put the Pokemon moving up in the "BL" tier. If a Pokemon moves out of NU due to being used a lot in UU, just put it in UU. Whether it's in UU or "BL of NU" makes no difference for either UU or NU, and it's going to be moved up to UU, anyway, so you might as well put it there.

Yeah, on second thoughts this can be done. Of course, it goes without saying that if this happens, the Pokemon in question would temporarily be legal in both UU and NU until the NU testing is finished.

 

[obi]

Also keep in mind that we don't have to decide if NU gets a tier below it yet. That should be based on potential interest, which presumably will be based on interest in NU itself. Obviously we could create a tier that is like NU is now (just kind of there, no testing in it, no work on creating the ban tier for it), but actually putting effort into balancing the tier is only going to happen if it needs to. We don't need to decide now.

 

[Great Sage]

By that logic, is there any point to keeping the current BL tier between UU and OU, considering that it literally serves no competitive purpose?

 

[obi]

The BL tier lets people know which Pokemon could theoretically be tested in UU. OU Pokemon cannot be in UU, unless they drop from OU.

 

[X-Act]

By that logic, is there any point to keeping the current BL tier between UU and OU, considering that it literally serves no competitive purpose?

The BL tier will now serve two purposes. It will have Pokemon that are banned from UU after being tested, as it has now. And it will also have Pokemon that drop from OU but that won't be placed in UU until the current UU testing is finished.

 

[MythTrainerInfinity]

Oh good, I think that's a smart move with BL.

Hmm I was just looking through the past months Shoddy Server stats for UU ladder games and look at this:

• Sept 2008 UU Battles: 13544
• Dec 2008 UU Battles: 10674
• Mar 2009 UU Battles: 32671
• June 2009 UU Battles: 36897
• Sept 2009 UU Battles: 43197
• Oct 2009 UU Battles: 58404

UU has been steadily growing in player base (or we now have everyone playing 4 battles at once...) since we started to keep track of this data. Over time we had the Suspect process implemented into UU and it helped it grow even more.

Sad to say though... Ubers hasn't had as much luck. The number of battles per month from when we started keeping track has only gone up by like 7,000.

Ubers has doubled in the amount of battles from 6,110 battles in Sept '08 to around 12,000 - 13,000 per month here in the latter half of '09. UU has grown by about 45,000 battles per month as of Oct '09. Perhaps the UU Suspect process is offering more of an incentive to play (I'm more active and contributing more to Smogon after playing a lot of OU and Suspect and earning my badge). Give people more of a chance to contribute more and be a part of this vital process of tiering and you'll have more hands to help.

So, if we give an equal opportunity to NU with things like a Suspect process just imagine how much that could grow...

I don't wanna rush people to decisions, but just think about all the Doubles testing, tiering, etc. we will do when SB2 comes along... If we are going to impliment things for NU singles it might be best to do it ASAP.

 

[Aeolus]

Briefly reading through this thread, I have no problem adding some sort of NU testing process after the OU process is complete if there is a broad enough interest among the community to support it. My only concern is that the project will just fall flat because substantially fewer people will care about NU (compared to UU, OU, and Uber) because it is not part of any official tournament venue we sponsor.

 

[obi]

Moved to Policy Review for higher visibility.

 

[twash]

"bump", I don't want this to get nowhere and just fade away!

Briefly reading through this thread, I have no problem adding some sort of NU testing process after the OU process is complete if there is a broad enough interest among the community to support it. My only concern is that the project will just fall flat because substantially fewer people will care about NU (compared to UU, OU, and Uber) because it is not part of any official tournament venue we sponsor.

After as in after Stage 3-3/3-4/etc., or after the clauses which are being discussed for testing? I'm sure nobody knows the time left before Gen 5, but if we have to test other things first we might not have enough time. I think it's definitely worth considering..

I understand your concern about NU being inactive in comparison, but to be honest Ubers is hardly anywhere near as active as OU/UU either (only 13560 battles in Nov, compared to 364974 in OU, and 50828 in UU). I'm not going to bullshit and say NU is active, but then I don't see why people would play it at the moment. The best way to get people interested is to surely make it more easily accessible, give them a solid place to discuss the tier's metagame, and include it in these official tournament venues. Remember new UU wasn't developed when it was included in the Tour! I hope inclusion in these venues is something we can consider for the future.

UU had a massive spike in activity when the "new" tier was made, even though the old one was still part of tournament venues. I honestly think NU will get a decently acceptable/usable, if not good player base by simply making it more public etc.

 

[Fuzznip]

What NU needs right now is a good place to discuss it. The NU discussion thread in Stark is just not good enough. It's hard to talk about an entire metagame in one thread, and there are Pokemon in the NU tier that can bring up some excellent discussion, something that is hard to do currently. Therefore, I suggest we add a NU sub-forum under Stark Mountain to hold all NU discussion there. By adding an NU sub-forum, it will make it more visible to Smogon users and will most likely receive more attention. Just like in the UU and Ubers sub-forums, you could post threads that are solely for one Pokemon, something that NU could really, really use. Also, we can receive some more opinions about how we could run the NU testing if you want it to go public.

I think it's good to start off the NU tier by adding its own sub-forum for increased discussion and visibility.

 

[Great Sage]

Interest will spring up once we have an NU ladder and a defined testing process; people are not interested right now because the administration has not shown much interest. Setting up a forum that will largely be theorymon about a game few have played won't incite very good discussion. This is all quite circular, but we have to start from somewhere, and a testing procedure seems to be the best place.

 

[Xia]

I agree with Great Sage. Once we get all the policies hammered out (testing periods, ban list, ect) we should throw up a ladder on the Smogon server (since CAP's not getting as much attention) and possibly a forum soon after that. If the ladder is well-received, we can follow up with analyses and the like; if it falls, we lose nothing. NU will receive more attention once it's officially recognized; watching Little Cup's popularity increase is a testament to this.

 

[twash]

I agree with Great Sage. Once we get all the policies hammered out (testing periods, ban list, ect) we should throw up a ladder on the Smogon server (since CAP's not getting as much attention) and possibly a forum soon after that. If the ladder is well-received, we can follow up with analyses and the like; if it falls, we lose nothing. NU will receive more attention once it's officially recognized; watching Little Cup's popularity increase is a testament to this.

I see no reason as to why we should wait to get a ban list before having a ladder placed on Smogon's main server. I am willing to bet that a testing ladder would recieve more attention on SU than CAP. I also see no reason as to why we should not have a forum during the early stages of playing and testing. In fact, it would be a good thing as people could discuss the NU metagame, and are therefore more likely to be willing to get involved.

On behalf of Heysup who is unable to post in PR:

Starting NU testing now (or at least soon) is probably the thing to do in my opinion. Waiting to start the NU process is really going to only diminish the player base, and now is probably the best time to start considering that ladder activity and NU thread activity are at all-time highs.

Judging from the NU thread and the NU ladder, we have quite an active community at the moment, and that's without official Smogon involvement. If we start testing, the same jump should occur that happened with UU and we would have a very active community (especially compared to Little Cup or even Ubers, and they are still getting things done).

If we wait too long, people will lose interest since they won't have much time to play before Gen 5 comes out (likely, anyway). They may feel like their effort will be wasted. That is why I believe now is the best time to start.