Welcome to Other Metas!

By Gimmickyasitgets. Released: 2024/01/26
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Welcome to Other Metas! Art

Art by IMakeNoSense.

Introduction

So you've found our not-so-little room! Whether you're here from Smogon's forums, your favorite YouTuber's newest video, or just browsing the room list, we welcome you to Other Metas, the home of well, other metas! Simply put, an Other Metagame (usually shortened as OM) is a metagame that's characterized by one broad, universal change, such as any Pokémon being able to use almost any ability in AAA, or a team's abilities being distributed across all team members in Shared Power. From permanent ladder OMs like Godly Gift and Balanced Hackmons to more niche metagames you might discover in the chat, this is the place to go-to discuss them!

Other Metas

No matter what your favorite OM is, the Other Metas Room is the best place to go for questions, to ask for games, or just to make some friends talking about your interest in these metas! The Other Metas room is full of fun, devoted people who are invested in their favorite metas and in making your experience here better. The users here are interested in discussing their favorite parts of the game, whether it's with new players or with experienced friends, leading to great conversation, meta developments, and even the creation of new metagames entirely in some cases!

With over thirty unique Gen 9 metagames under our jurisdiction at the time of writing, and more sure to come, there's no shortage of discussion opportunities or unique experiences for you to dive into! Everyone here has a favorite OM, and if you can find it on the OM Index, you're likely to find someone willing to play or just talk about it here. If you have any questions, whether they're about mechanics or popular Pokémon in a metagame or anything in between, feel free to ask in chat! If you have a more specific inquiry, such as elaboration on a rule or a concern with another user, our staff team (anyone with % / @ / & / # next to their name) is just a message away and happy to help you however they can! We offer more than just discussion, though. There's a variety of resources here, from sample teams to banlists, all intended to help you start playing and diving right into the fun.

Room Rules

To keep the room running smoothly and to make everyone's experience here better and more worthwhile, we have a few rules that all users are expected to follow.

All Global Rules apply here.

Roomtours

We host two guaranteed tournaments a day based on this schedule, as well as plenty of others sporadically throughout the day. Just come into the room and wait for the tournament to start so you can join. You can even ask for tours! Tournaments of official OMs will get you leaderboard points, and whoever has the most points at the end of a given month is provided with a unique Star rank (✩) that no other user has! Aside from regular tournaments, staff may also host more unique tournaments such as Random Battle variations of current OMs that, while not counting towards the leaderboard, are still fun and unique experiences.

There's a bit more to our roomtours than that, though. Users are expected to follow some basic rules in order to avoid disqualification. For one, do not leak your opponent's team. Intentionally leaking your opponent's team, whether it be in chat or private messages, will result in an instant disqualification, as it gives other tournament players a significant, unearned advantage. Be respectful of yourself and your opponent—at the end of the day, this is all a game, so focus on having fun! Scouting, or joining another ongoing game, is also disabled for the same reason. Intentionally bypassing this rule with an alternate account or asking a friend to relay information for you will also be met with an instant disqualification.

Our leaderboard works on a points system. Winning tournament battles gets you points, and getting further into a tournament wins you more points relative to how far you got. Your number of tournaments played, as well as your average battles won per tournament and your percentage of top 3 placements, are also taken into account for the leaderboard. Feel free to challenge yourself to get as high on the leaderboard as you can! Getting first place also gets you onto our room tour Hall of Fame! If the highest placing members on the leaderboard already have a staff, the next highest eligible user may end up winning the Star!

Ladders

Currently, there are 8 permanent ladders that you can play at any time, as well as 2 cycling ladders that are chosen at the end of each month. The Other Metagame of the Month, or OMotM, is chosen by users like yourself. Towards the end of the month, you will see an announcement that nominations have begun. As long as you have at least 5 forum posts on Smogon, and your account is at least a week old, you can nominate up to 5 of your favorite metagames! The metagames that receive the most nominations will then move on to the voting stage, where users can vote on which metagame they'd like to get a ladder for the month. The winner of the voting stage automatically becomes OMotM!

The Leader's Choice of the Month, or LCotM, is handpicked by Other Metagames leaders. Usually, they will pick a metagame that they feel deserves the most attention. Oftentimes, it will be one of the runners-up in the OMotM voting, but not always. Similarly, new metagames that have not had the time to garner up a voterbase may also be picked for this in order to give the newly formed metagame a chance to develop and gain new fans. This is not always the case, though—sometimes, we just pick a metagame we want to see do well that hasn't had a chance to! The Permanent Ladder Spotlight is slightly different. Here, a metagame that already has a permanent presence in the ladder is placed among the OMotM and LCotM, in order to give it some extra love and attention! This metagame will return to its normal spot on the list once its time as Permanent Ladder Spotlight is over.

On that note, though, please do not repeatedly ask staff when these ladders will be implemented; this will usually happen at the beginning of the month! We are not in control of when the server is hotpatched to change the ladders, we're waiting just as much as you are. The process of collecting usage stats and implementing our new ladders takes time and effort, and our beloved coders are all volunteers, so please do not rush them!

Other Rooms

Though they are under OM jurisdiction, we have subrooms for OM Mashups and Pure Hackmons to give these unique communities the dedicated space they deserve! To discuss mashups of two or more OMs, visit our OM Mashups subroom. To discuss Pure Hackmons throughout the generations, visit our Pure Hackmons subroom.

Unofficial Metagames are former OMs or often mistaken for OMs; they have their own distinct rooms on PS!:

The following metagames are not at all affiliated with Other Metagames, but are often confused as such, and have their own dedicated rooms for discussion.

Helpful Commands

With so much information floating around the room at any given time, there's a few helpful commands that are good to know to help you process that information. A list of parameters for search commands is available by typing /help [command].

Global Commands

Other Metas Commands

Final Thoughts

Once again, we welcome you to our room! From Almost Any Ability to VoltTurn Mayhem and everything in between, there's no shortage of fun experiences to be had here, and we truly hope you'll enjoy your time here. We're all here, from staff to your fellow users, to discuss the metagames we love, and we're all here to help you however we can. Feel free to ask for a game in the chat, and make yourself at home in our community. We're happy to have you! Whether it's our daily tournaments, our active chatroom, or our huge variety of formats to try and fall in love with, whatever brings you here, we hope you'll stay and spend some time with us! If you're interested in more specific discussion as well as sample teams and resources, feel free to check out our section of the Smogon forums here!

HTML by Steorra.
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