You can use custom rulesets with no species clause; it’s entirely possible to play on-cart without it. As a result, implementing it in our official format is entirely our choice, just like we choose NOT to implement item clause. It’s really not hard for us to change species clause to form clause and it’s incredibly overdue tbh.
While this is the kind of simple definition Smogon favors, the practical consequences that this has are mostly bad. Arceus Forms are technically tiered separately (though this is only relevant to Ubers UU afaik), same with Silvally forms. While this is subjective, I don't think many people want to play in a meta where teams can spam those mons. Those two are the most egregious cases but there are a couple more cases of minor differences, especially where it's basically just a type difference (Oricorio, Rotom, Ogerpon)*. Lastly, Mega forms were also tiered separately, though in practical terms this could be interpreted as just standard item bans with regards to the mega stones. Removing the species lock leads to questions such as "can you use a slowbro and a second slowbro holding a mega stone on the same team?" which again is not particularly desirable to anyone.
Honestly, genuinely, I don’t see a problem allowing someone to use a bunch of Silvally forms on one team outside of the lowest tiers. Sounds like a gimmick team to me, like if someone chose to make a team with 6 Eeveelutions or something, and if it does somehow break Silvally in certain tiers then tiering action can just follow as a result. Arceus is the only Pokémon I could see consistently being an issue under form clause, but I’d rather Ubers just choose how to handle that on their own rather than limit every single other tier because of that; ottherwise, you disallow cool cores like Zapdos-K + Zapdos-G or Rotom-W + Rotom-H for no real justifiable reason. I really feel changing species clause to form clause would change very little and have basically no negative impact.
In that case, your argument doesn’t hold water for any other tiering deviation we do from official formats. There are plenty of other “official” rules we choose not to institute like item clause and other “nonofficial” rules we do choose to institute like OHKO move clause. Unless we’re talking about something that literally can’t be done on cart like actually modifying the way the game itself works, (like we did with Sleep Clause), this argument does not reflect Smogon’s tiering policy.
I don’t particularly agree that there’s no potential for cool cores now or down the line, but let’s just say for the sake of argument that every single combination of variants is a meaningless gimmick. Imo this would flip your argument on its head: if it doesn’t have a meaningful impact on the tier, why are we banning them to begin with? Bans have to serve a purpose. Refusing to relook at a ban because undoing it wouldn’t make an impact is a backwards way to approach tiering policy. If a ban doesn’t serve its original purpose anymore, then the act of upholding it is in and of itself intentional commitment to faulty/outdated tiering. We don’t ban people from laddering with themed teams because they’re “cringe”, do we?
Yes, that's why I said fringe case. It's not good enough to justify it, but it is another option to look at. I would personally still run Alluring Voice.
Oh come on, even you know this is untrue as people have given genuine arguements about changing the status quo, so don't act like people are not doing that. The arguement is that with a forms clause, you can use things together that you could not do together. You could use zapdos and zapdos galar together, which while not the absolute best core, would still be something that could have some fun applications as the two mons play entirely differently. One is an annoying physically defensive (in this case I'm talking about static) special attacker, while the other is a phsyical wallbreaker that has an alright speedstat and a very spammable stab move (this being thunderous kick). Normally, you would have to choose one or the other in a team, but hey, now you don't.
And why does this have to be the status quo for a change? Like, if something feels wrong, then it probably should be changed. Something doesn't have to feel like it contributes immensly to a meta in order for change to be implemented, it can be as simple as "oh, this rule may be a bit outdated and stifles some creativy, let's change it". Which is honestly, enough for me if there isn't going to be repreccusions that hurt the meta, which this change I don't think will. The worst one might be multiple ogerpon forms, which as stated somewhere in this thread beforehand, all have a u-turn weakness which can be taken advantage of.
No? If you really think this, then read through the thread again, because you are trying to make up reasons why people are doing this that nobody has said. What people ARE saying if anything is that, we CAN make rules different from game freak. And now the 'cart accuracy' arguements aren't even applicable because somebody has shown how you can create custom games without species clause. And if somebody says "but its not an official game" then we shouldn't have item clause since that's something that is VERY prevelant on cart games. So either you accpet that we use these 'custom' games or we stick fully to it and reimplement item clause. And I don't think anybody wants to implement item clause again because that would be a step backward.
Okay, I'm not going to address this part long because it frankly is just a bad faith arguement (You KNOW it is, don't even try to argue. You are trying to insult others who genuinelly want change by suggesting they are low ladder players that only steal from blimax's videos) but who the hell cares if the core is bad (though I doubt it would be as these two do vastly different things and thus probably have a decent amount of synergy), it gives people more options to work with and nothing is going to be lost because of that change.
I also feel this. As someone previously mentioned, GameFreak also realized they messed this up and instead of trying to give regional form to everything, they now create "similar but not quite the same" Pokemon, like Quagsire and Clodsire to circumvent their own rule. I think as a fan-controlled community, we are able to, or at least should be open minded to, making changes that GameFreak wanted to but could not.
Considering Species Clause IS a competitive rule, that is something that they are designing the game around, which in other words mean they're circumventing it. Same as you said, Kantonian Zapdos and Galarian Zapdos are as different as Quagsire and Clodsire to each other, and yet they're treated differently by the Species Clause (which again, is an official rule), as one combination is legal while the other one is not.
means that hazards are, in fact, staying up. One mon's metagame presence mandating that stall and fat run 6 boots or maybe 5 boots and a toxic orb is beyond metagame warping and honestly just this fact alone should warrant a ban. No mon in any metagame should force building mandates this heavily, but it doesn't stop there.
). It doesn't just ruin stall in the builder, it ruins stall and fat in the game by clicking Psyshock and forcing tera, when tera is NEEDED to deal with other stallbreaking staples like our favorite masked grass type. (It's not Meowscarada.)This thing is an actual plague to any defensive builds, as its ability to prevent any viable removal outside of Cinderace, Maushold, and...
this guy =>
I want to bring up the case of the "in-universe unique" pokemon that can switch forms with an item. This includes Ogerpon, Necrozma, Dialga-Palkia-Giratina, and probably a few others I'm forgetting. Allowing multiple forms of those to be on the same team kind of... fundamentally breaks the fantasy of Pokemon battling to me, something about it just feels wrong. How did Ogerpon clone herself to put on several masks at once?
