I estimate that we would end up with between 4 and 7 sub OU playable metagames, complete with their own ban lists. I know many people will say "its too much effort" well really if you give people a ladder it will happen on its own. It may take a few months, or even a year but we would have a much more satisfactory system at the end.
thats my first wall of text in a while... hope it makes sense.
What the hell, we don't even have enough players to keep 3 metagames truly alive and healthy (current OU, Uber and UU), let alone 7.
@Obi's NFE arguments: There comes a point in time where logic and common sense are not on the same page.
Logically, yes Monferno's inferior speed gives it an advantage over Infernape.
But use your common sense, and you realize no one is ever going to play trick room Monferno, or "bring in my team mate safely" Bulky U-Turn Monferno. (bulky monferno, lol)
I say it's perfectly fine for us to tier and treat NFEs as full-fledged pokemon, but in terms of trying to build healthy metagames, I think we can get good, aggressive formats for Ubers through NU if we just try to make as many of the fully evolved pokemon playable as possible. Making a metagame for pidgeotto and nuzleaf sounds pretty unimportant in my book.
One more argument against NFE
. . . and yes, this uses common sense rather than pure logic.
Since we are trying to emulate the in game as much as possible where it makes sense, think about in game-- if your goal is to be a pokemon master, are you planning to leave your monferno as a monferno forever? No! You're going to evolve the sucker and rape the elite four everyone else with your infernape.
In order to bring a pokemon to its greatest potential, there are very few pokemon you would leave in its unevolved state, which is why there are currently very few NFEs considered separately from their evolved forms in regards to tiering (like scyther).
I'd also say that Obi's Azelf-Unknown example is wrong in one regard
As to why, this is actually a logic argument, not common sense. The difference between Monferno-Infernape and Unknown-Azelf, is that monferno has the option to evolved into Infernape, where as Uknown cannot evolved into Azelf.
In pokemon, we act as
trainers, bringing out the strongest potential in our pokemon. Like I said before, this means we take that monferno, evolve it, give it the mix-ape set, and rape. We work to bring out the best potential in pokemon.
For an individual pokemon, for a trainer, evolution is just one more option, just like picking moves and attaching items. You wouldn't send Monferno into a serious battle any more than you would send Infernape into battle carrying scratch/leer/ember/fury swipes. Infernape does not appear from no-where as its own individual pokemon, the trainer chooses to evolve his monferno in
infernape. Seen this way, allowing monferno into UU makes as much sense as allowing scratch/leer/ember/fury swipes infernape. A level 100 monferno isn't a different pokemon, it's a really crapily trained infernape.
Meaning once's monferno evolves into infernape it's not a different pokemon, it's the same pokemon that's just gone through one more part of its training.
Though, (and this is a comment, not a negative accusation at anyone) I guess this is easy to forget for people who don't actually train pokemon.