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A Primer to Smogon's Communities IntroductionThe following article is a brief description on each of the communities we have here at Smogon. Written by various mentors, each section contains useful information and relevant links that can help you get started. Feel free to ask any of our mentors for some clarification if you need it! Please enjoy. Table of Contents
Smogon MetagamesThis is the forum where nigh everything that has to do with Smogon's various metagames gets discussed. It's divided into eight sub-forums: Ubers, Overused, Underused, Rarelyused, Neverused, Little Cup, and Other Metagames. These various sub-forums are each run by a team of moderators with an extensive knowledge of the metagame in question. Within the sub-forums you will find many different threads, which range from ladder challenges (such as Research Week or Dark Horse), community projects (such as Counter that Pokemon and Community Create a Team), and discussion threads (such as the various Suspect discussions, as well as general discussions of certain Pokemon). At the start of every month, a usage stats thread will be posted to keep you informed of all the latest trends on the ladder, and more importantly, what to keep in mind when teambuilding! All sub-forums also have a Simple Questions Simple Answers thread (or some variation thereof) in which you can ask any question that doesn't warrant its own thread. Intelligent posting in Smogon Metagames can lead to a Ladybug badge and, if you keep up your dedication, even the Community Contributor badge. Ubers was initially simply a banlist of all Pokemon that were deemed too powerful for Overused, Smogon's standard metagame. It has now evolved into a tier of its own where Gamefreak's most powerful creations duke it out, and considered by many to actually be the most balanced metagame Smogon has to offer, in which nigh any teamstyle is viable, from Hyper Offense to Stall. Overused is the metagame that sees the most battles; the name really says it all: it's the tier with the most used Pokemon. Weather and bulky offensive teams are abundant here. Pokemon that have fallen to 3.41% usage or below in Overused find themselves in the Underused tier, one of the most offensive metagames that Smogon has to offer. Once a Pokemon has again reached the threshold where it no longer sees enough usage to keep it in Underused, it falls to the Rarelyused tier. Rarelyused is considered a tier where nigh every playstyle is viable, in a similar way to Ubers. Pokemon that don't see enough usage in Rarelyused fall to Neverused, the tier with the largest number of Pokemon. Neverused is a tier where exciting new possibilities lurk around every corner, and is the only metagame that lacks a permanent weather starter. Little Cup doesn't follow the "trickling down" process of the aforementioned metagames. Rather, it's a tier where battles are played with Pokemon at Level 5, and only with Pokemon that have yet to evolve. This means that it has a rather unique banlist, including the moves Sonicboom and Dragon Rage, which are essentially OHKO moves! Eviolite also takes the place of Leftovers as the most common item in the metagame, and as such, the primary playstyle in Little Cup is bulky offense. Last but not least is the Other Metagames subforum, where fun and spontaneous metagames are played with quirky rules that limit or boost certain Pokemon, depending on the ruleset. Of these, the most popular are Smogon Doubles and Balanced Hackmons, but new ones pop up all the time! Nintendo FormatsThis forum houses discussion on Nintendo's official formats including VGC (Video Game Championship) and TCG (Trading Card Game). The VGC forum itself allows discussion on the VGC metagame, popular strategies, and rulesets. However, the largest source of the forum's activity comes from the Event threads. The VGCs are split into three major events: Regionals, Nationals, and Worlds. When the VGC season starts, members of the community travel to the official Nintendo VGC event to play against each other in real life and fight for the chance to win the grand prize or move on to the next level of play in the VGCs. Those that place high enough are rewarded a prize and a travel stipend to attend the next level of play. However, meeting each other in real life is the real prize for many of the community members that attend the VGCs. Getting to meet your best online friend in real life is quite the experience, and many threads of the forum include stories and pictures of these gatherings of Smogonites. The GBU (Global Battle Union) forum houses discussion on the metagames playable on the DS cartridge games, the rules of which can be read here. You can also discuss specific Pokemon's performance in the various metagames. There is also discussion on Nintendo-sponsored tournaments and what kinds of teams people will be using in the tournaments. The TCG forum houses discussion on the various TCG formats. Users are welcome to discuss certain strategies, decks, or even singular cards that are popular in the various formats. This thread provides many useful links and resources for those looking to get into TCG, including the available online simulators. You can also organize TCG tournaments for the online simulators. Wi-FiThe Wi-Fi main forum deals with nearly everything about the game cartridges aside from in-game discussion. The bulk of the forum is dedicated to users' trade and giveaway threads where you can trade or receive Pokemon from the owners of the thread after trading friend codes. Most of the Pokemon that you can receive are what's considered "perfect Pokemon." This is where the other half of the forum comes into play. A major function of the Wi-Fi forum is research on the inner-workings of the cartridge games, including RNG (random number generator) and game mechanic research. The Wi-Fi forum has some very specific rules for posting and reporting, so be absolutely sure to read the rules before posting. The sub-forums of the main Wi-Fi forum are dedicated to Wi-Fi Tournaments and Local Tournaments. In Wi-Fi Tournaments, one user will get a tournament approved by the moderators and then host said tournament within the forum. Any user is free to join the sign-ups, and they are then responsible for organizing to have a battle over the DS Wi-Fi connection with their opponent via the forums. Local Tournaments is the forum to announce local tournaments that will be happening in your area, and allow discussion and organization with members of the community. This is for any in-person tournament that is not the VGCs. Be sure to read the guidelines before posting! Orange IslandsOrange Islands is the forum where everything non-competitive about Pokemon is discussed. This is a more relaxed board, where you're free to share your Pokemon stories in the appropriate threads. In addition to these threads, there are numerous in-game challenges such as the Nuzlocke Challenge and Scramble Challenge, and a smattering of Let's Play threads. It also houses the official speculation thread for the upcoming Pokemon X and Y, although this thread is a bit intimidating and the discussion is always changing! Some competitive aspects leak into Orange Islands, though; there are in-game tiering threads for just about every Pokemon game, and the Orange League is a small tournament of in-game challenges. Want to get even more involved? A large part of Orange Islands culture is located not on Smogon, but #orangeislands on IRC. The channel holds movie nights every Thursday at 10:00 PM GMT-5. TournamentsThe Tournaments forum is exactly what it sounds like; almost all of Smogon's major simulator-based tournaments are hosted here. The best of the best of the Smogon competitive Pokemon community duke it out on a regular basis in the large variety of tournaments that take place at any given time. Any user is eligible to participate in (be sure to post "in" when sign-ups for a tournament are posted) or host a tournament, but be warned that hosting is a large undertaking so be sure to read the guidelines and rules here, and apply to host a tournament in the Tournament Application forum. Tournaments are hosted on a scheduled basis, that way there are only so many tournaments being hosted at once. There are also 6 major tournaments that take place throughout the year, 3 of which are so large that they require their own sub-forum. These are: The Official Smogon Tournament, the World Cup of Pokemon, the Smogon Frontier, the Smogon Tour, the Smogon Premier League, and the Smogon Grand Slam. Each of these major tournaments use Smogon's official rulesets and banlists, as do most of the other tournaments hosted within the forum unless stated otherwise. Battling 101Battling 101 is the tutoring program of the Smogon forums. A dedicated group of experienced battlers volunteer to share their wisdom and increase the skills of newer players through one-on-one tutoring. There are usually tutors available for nearly any metagame or tier you could want to learn more about; VGC tutoring is on a separate schedule so be aware of that when signing up. Tutors are assigned to tutees on a scheduled basis, the schedule of which can be found here. The tutors are then free to tutor their tutee in any manner they see fit, their main goals being an increase in player skill and induction into the broader Smogon community. The format for posting in the sign-ups will be provided in the sign-up thread. Be sure to sign up as soon as you see the sign-ups posted, as spots tend to fill up very quickly! Rate My TeamRate My Team is one of the simpler forums in terms of what actually goes about on a daily basis. People post their teams to accrue rates and give rates of their own to other peoples' teams to improve them. One section of Rate My Team is dedicated solely to OU teams, with another section dedicated to teams from other metagames, which can be denoted by a tag placed before the thread title. The RMT Archive is a subsection that is dedicated to the preserving of RMTs that chronicle the development of Smogon's various metagames through well-built, excellently-presented, and most importantly, successful teams. Rating Activities is where aspiring team raters can go to learn more from established team raters. There are a few rules, seen here, that must be followed at all times. Contributions & CorrectionsContributions & Corrections is where the work for the analyses and articles you see on-site gets done. Analyses can be reserved in various index threads scattered throughout the various analysis subforums (Ubers, OU, UU, RU, NU, LC, VGC 2012, DPP, VGC 2011, and RBY / GSC / ADV). You can write analyses for any official Smogon tier and the current VGC season. Once an analysis is reserved, a bullet point outline of the analysis should be posted, which will then be reviewed by the Quality Control team and eventually written up for the Grammar-Prose team to check over (this guide might be of help). After that is all done, your analysis will appear on-site! More on formatting your analysis can be found here. Also be sure to check out this and this for more information. We are always looking for writers with new and innovative sets to post; it's also a great way to improve your English, for foreign speakers (if you are one, check out the translation projects. If you demonstrate proficiency in a certain metagame, you may even be able to join the Quality Control team and ensure the analyses of others are concise and informative. If you want to check grammar, try applying for the Grammar-Prose team (look this guide for some tips. Just remember to prove your abilities before requesting to join these teams, as you will otherwise be summarily rejected. Articles and letters (which are basically shorter and slightly more colloquial versions of articles) can be reserved and worked on in their respective subforums (past generation articles go here). Are you an expert on a specific strategy? Can you analyze the game well or give tips on how to play it? These are the types of ideas we want for articles and letters. These will also go on-site, usually under the "Articles" section, though some letters will appear in various tier hubs. There is a rigorous process for getting articles and letters on-site; quality over quantity is taken very seriously, but quality is usually something that can be fixed, so long as it isn't too bad. If you have technical ability, Contributions & Corrections is looking for people like you. First off, you need to check out this, this, and this before going any further. Anyway, once an article or letter has reached the GP phase, it is ready for HTMLing, and the first person that gets to it is the one that gets to do the HTML. Again, be sure to check differences in HTMLing for Smogon, as there are numerous elements of the content management system that reduce the workload required. If your technical ability goes a bit further and you've created some sort of program that might be helpful for competitive battlers, show it off in the Projects subforum! Competitive battlers are always looking for the next cool applet. All of this is the Contributions & Corrections subforum; there is sure to be something you can help with. Check out #C&C and #grammar on the SynIRC network if you have any other questions. Pokemon Showdown!Pokemon Showdown! has been Smogon's official simulator since we transitioned from Pokemon Online in July of 2012, and get this: it's browser based. That means you won't have to download a thing. Just click that link and you're off! Here you can try your skills against experts and casual players alike in one of the many formats on offer. You can also just kick back and chat about anything from Pokemon to your favorite TV show, if that tickles your fancy. However make sure to read the rules and the FAQ first to avoid getting on the bad side of one of our moderators. The mods are all super guys and gals so as long as you follow those rules and make sure to be friendly and light-hearted (although maybe not too friendly), you should be fine. The SmogThe Smog is Smogon's monthly electronic magazine, featuring informative and entertaining articles about everything relating to competitive Pokémon and Smogon's community. Articles are written, proofread, illustrated, and prepared for the site solely by our users, and cover a variety of subjects such as battling strategy, the metagame, community projects, and much more. All of this happens behind closed doors in order to maintain suspense ahead of each release, but we eagerly welcome new contributors! The Article Approvals and Artist Approvals announcements are handy reading for those looking to get involved. It's also a useful resource for those interested in learning more about Smogon and Pokémon, so feel free to take a look through the archive and read more about subjects that intrigue you. Please keep in mind that information in older issues may be outdated, as The Smog is a magazine and accordingly we don't update old issues. SmogcastThe Smogcast is Smogon's very own Podcast. A few Smogonites come together to talk about one of Smogon's Official Metagames in each cast. The Smogcast goes over many different aspects of a metagame, some of which include: Suspect Pokemon, Team Building, Underrated Threats, and more. Anyone mainly interested in being in the Smogcast should keep a heads up for threads announcing when the cast will be held. The Smogcast's main IRC channel is #Smogtube, which is shared with Smogon's Youtube channel. While posting is not too keen of an aspect for the Smogcast, it is wise to show that you have a solid metagame knowledge in the subforum of the tier that is designated to be in the next cast. By doing so, you have a much higher chance of being involved with the Smogcast. Create-A-Pokémon ProjectThis project is entirely unique from anything you will find on the Internet. As a community, we create a Pokemon by voting on every single aspect of its being, from typing to Pokedex entries. But the best part is that it's a competitive project; our end products are posted on Pokemon Showdown and can be used in real battles! If you're interested in becoming involved in CAP, you'll want to check out our Newcomer's Guide and Mission Statement. CAP is entirely public, so head on over and vote whenever you like. Make sure you read the rules at the start of each thread, and you'll be creating Pokemon like a pro! a foruma forum (or the monthly name-variation thereof) is the completely non-Pokémon social forum on Smogon. There is a ton of discussion on anything on the planet and Internet in this forum, from (Serious) discussion of political events to casual discussion on your favorite video game, to any brilliant gifs you've discovered on the Internet lately. By the way, when a thread has the (Serious) tag, be sure to treat the thread as such; the discussion held here should be legitimate and intelligent. Always be sure to use the Search function to see if a similar thread topic has been posted in the past before posting a thread all willy-nilly. If you have something profound to add to the discussion of a long-dead topic, feel free to resurrect the thread, but the condition is it has to actually be something substantial you're adding to the thread. The sub-forum of a forum is the Sports Arena. Any non-Pokémon discussion dealing directly with sports belongs in this forum. This can be anything from American football to tennis to hockey. Anything not sports related belongs in the a forum main forum. Circus MaximusCircus Maximus is a lax subforum, compared to other, more serious aspects of the site, such as C&C and The Smog, where users generally relax. Circus is predominantly filled with games of mafia and variations thereof, though other non-Pokémon related leisure activities and games are held, such as Yu-Gi-Oh and Chess. Role-playing games and formats can also be experimented and are hosted, such as Philosopher's Stone War. With the exception of no-outside-communication mafia games, pretty much all Circus-related activities are held in various IRC channels, usually stated in each game's respective original post. To get an understanding of how the mafia system works, all users are required to read the Circus Maximus rules. A general IRC channel with some basic scripted mafia games is #circus, which new users are encouraged to attend. There are also a lot of articles published in the Smog that provide information on Mafia, such as Mekkah's Introduction to Smogon Mafia, which is one of a series of various aspects of mafia. These articles, in addition to other articles written by various Circus Maximus regulars are recommended for users to read and can be found in The Smog Archive. Smeargle's StudioArtists unite! Smeargle's Studio is the home all things artsy, from individual painted/digital art threads to the creation of unique Pokémon sprites and banners. Some of the most popular threads are community art projects that can range from the creation of a deck of Pokémon-themed cards to a Secret Santa art gift exchange. Be sure to keep your eyes peeled for the regular contests that are hosted within the forum, the most popular being the Monthly Art Contest (MAC). There are also miscellaneous threads where you can express yourself in creative writing, music, or photography as well. If you're an artist, be sure to set up an individual art thread (the only condition being your original post must have at least 3 pieces of your own, original art in it). Smogon is always looking for great art, and there are a lot of avenues outside of the Studio for our artists to venture into, so keep an open mind when posting your thread! Also be sure to visit #smeargle on IRC to chat about all things Smogon art. IRCIRC (or its actual name, "Internet Relay Chat") is an online messaging system that has been around since the beginnings of the Internet in the 1990s. IRC is one of the most important staples of Smogon's foundation, and actually predates the forums in terms of use by the Smogon community. There are a variety of clients that support IRC, but the most important part is that new users can connect to it easily. #Pokemon is the primary channel for Smogon and anything to do with Pokémon related discussion from our metagames to the latest developments by Game Freak themselves. IRC isn't about just one chatroom, as there are a variety of channels for every subforum on Smogon, too. There are two guides along with a set of rules for how to acclimate yourself with the Smogon community on IRC, the first being A Guide to IRC by Oglemi (note #smogon is not around anymore) and the second being the IRC Survival Guide by Fatecrashers. |
