Partially Implemented SV OU Suspect Reform

[Finchinator]

I plan on shifting more focus to this over the next few days/weeks with the ongoing suspect being over. I hear the recent arguments about ELO (and other topics) loud and clear. If anyone else has proposals or thoughts, please share sooner rather than later.

 

[Alternator]

I'm going to raise this question again, as it really hasn't been addressed: why do we need to raise the voting requirements?

If the answer is "For the sake of raising them" then that's just excluding people for the sake of excluding them, which is going to depress involvement in tiering decisions for no apparent benefit whatsoever. I've not seen anything to suggest that "weaker" players are more likely to be "wrong", even given the actual impossibility to define what "wrong" is in community tiering.

From my perspective, it looks like pure elitism, top players wanting their votes to count more. That's fine if there's some justification behind it, but every post so far has just assumed it's beneficial without explaining why.

 

[TheDuckChris]

Back with some numbers thanks to Hecate

RD<70 corresponds to less than 30 games, i would think its about 20-25
w+l+t just means total games played at least 50

Assuming that this is players' "natural" gxe and can be raised slightly by trying harder (though everyone will raise by a similar amount) here are some implications:
- The current voter pool represents a little over 1% of the player base
- Raising the gxe floor from 80 to 82 would cut at least half of the voter pool out

similarly we can look at lower thresholds

If the test was to switch to use COIL, its likely that some lower gxe players would be able to qualify with higher game counts as COIL does not set a gxe floor at 50 games but at something very large like idk say 500. Therefore this can be an example of the amount of players that might be able to vote with a slightly more relaxed requirement using COIL if they put in the time (about triple current counts at a maximum)

thoughts
- The suspect pool already only lets the top 1% vote easily. Assuming the interest in voting is about the same regardless of skill then this would mean for the 137 voters in the last suspect test there were a maximum of 13,700 people that could have been interested in voting if they had the skill. I would question any opinion that the voter pool is not elite enough. If it needs to go from top 1% to top 0.5% then what is really the difference between those 0.5% voting and the council members just making the decision?
- Though sustained effort can be counted on to raise your rating in a suspect, I wouldn't think it would result in a huge increase for most people, especially across 50 games needed to reach the floor. As shown, by the time you get to 50 games the higher gxe bands lose a lot of people (probably also corresponding to higher ladder climbs)

 

[Finchinator]

why do we need to raise the voting requirements?

First thing is that current reqs aren’t deemed appropriate by a clear majority of people (see: this thread, virtually every discord discussion over the last week, the suspect thread itself, etc.), so looking under the hood and discussing change is welcome. Part of my job as leader is accepting when a status quo is no longer sufficient for shifting community needs and being open minded to changing it. That is how our community interacts with each other and ultimately improves itself.

It isn’t strictly about raising the requirements — it is partially about that for sure (and more on this later), but partially about just finding an appropriate mechanism to determine who qualifies to begin with! It is clear a lot of people dislike the current approach with GXE intervals per games played and it is clear the current threshold is not cutting it for many people either. If a lot of your community takes issue with a practice and provides sound reasoning, you have to reflect on that and be open-minded as a leader. Cannot stress enough how being resistant to change has been a problem on Smogon and how we are trying our best to avoid that moving forward.

Speaking on why slightly stricter reqs are at the forefront of discussions: To put it bluntly, there have been dozens of complaints raised to me firsthand about the quality of voter pool; I have counted 9 alone since the start of the Kyurem suspect before this thread. This has been a thing since the start of the generation, but grew exponentially over the last couple of suspects.

I am not going to throw specific people under the bus, but these complaints range from users pointing out certain voters spreading misinformation or very questionable opinions while qualifying for reqs to others taking a large amount of games against mid-ladder to barely qualify. I think these are fair perspectives, I think elitism is always going to be interchanged with quality control in these discussions, and I think it is impossible to find an ideal degree of inclusion without engaging in difficult discussions like this (which is why having this thread is so important).

A slight raise in quality in return for a slight decrease in turnout isn’t really a bad thing for me given this, but it may take some trial-and-error and it mandates discussions like these, so let’s remember this discussion is all being done in good faith, not as a power grab — implying that it is done as a power grab feels disingenuous.

I don’t agree with some extreme measures like going up 2 whole GXE or even mandating it to the top 20 of ladder (this is where 1900 ELO falls currently, for those proposing that), but I do think exploring other avenues will lead to finding a more appropriate pool of voters.

- The current voter pool represents a little over 1% of the player base

Finally, this is “1%” stuff does not matter to me when you consider 90% of the playerbase doesn’t even know about Smogon/tiering well and 95%+ of the community doesn’t know better. This “1%” is catchy framing more than anything else, to put it bluntly. Just to be posting in this thread, you need to be in the top 1% of Smogon accounts, but when you realize >95% of accounts never come close to badges or hundreds of posts, it becomes more understandable.

I can play someone all the way up in the 15-1600s with a low 70s GXE and they will not even always know what is up for suspect or why it matters much. Your own post alludes to 75% GXE being the top 3% of the ladder…and I think that kind of proves how these general numbers just do not hold weight as nobody holds any weight to 75% GXE. If anything, this just proves the point that we need to move away from GXE as the sole decider of reqs.

 

[Alternator]

A slight raise in quality in return for a slight decrease in turnout isn’t really a bad thing for me given this, but it may take some trial-and-error and it mandates discussions like these, so let’s remember this discussion is all being done in good faith, not as a power grab — implying that it is done as a power grab feels disingenuous.

I don’t agree with some extreme measures like going up 2 whole GXE or even mandating it to the top 20 of ladder (this is where 1900 ELO falls currently, for those proposing that), but I do think exploring other avenues will lead to finding a more appropriate pool of voters.

Those extreme measures are why this looks like an elitist "Make my vote count more" move - Pais first called out "1800-1900" and he's got upvotes from top players, so it's not an isolated view.. Right now, 1900 would be good for 22nd on the ladder; even the low end of this range, 1800, would tie for 108th.

Pais isn't the only one to suggest this number, he's just the first, and I don't believe he checked the ladder before throwing out the number, but judging by the upvotes, "literally be a top 100 player to earn requirements" is a fairly popular stance. As an off-the-cuff eyeball for who is deserving to vote, that's exceptionally exclusive, and I don't think there's anything disingenuous about suggesting that elitism is a major driving factor here.

As a comparison point, top 200 would be 1756, and a nice even 1700 ELO would rank 405th.

Finally, this is “1%” stuff does not matter to me when you consider 90% of the playerbase doesn’t even know about Smogon/tiering well and 95%+ of the community doesn’t know better. This “1%” is catchy framing more than anything else, to put it bluntly. Just to be posting in this thread, you need to be in the top 1% of Smogon accounts, but when you realize >95% of accounts never come close to badges or hundreds of posts, it becomes more understandable.

I can play someone all the way up in the 15-1600s with a low 70s GXE and they will not even always know what is up for suspect or why it matters much. Your own post alludes to 75% GXE being the top 3% of the ladder…and I think that kind of proves how these general numbers just do not hold weight as nobody holds any weight to 75% GXE. If anything, this just proves the point that we need to move away from GXE as the sole decider of reqs.

If the second NatDex Terastalization vote showed us anything, it's that non-Smogon showdown players do have their own communities, and that they aren't automatically worse players. They may not know about the suspect, but they're still good at mons, and accumulating a good ELO/GXE/COIL/etc. requires the Smogon user to beat them. If the goal is to test skill and understanding of the meta, and our subjective measure is based on proving yourself some degree better than the average, then it's the skill of those non-Smogon players that matter, not their (lack of) community involvement.

 

[Finchinator]

Those extreme measures are why this looks like an elitist "Make my vote count more" move - Pais first called out "1800-1900" and he's got upvotes from players like ABR and blunder, who are among the few who could reach the high end without issue. Right now, 1900 would be good for 22nd on the ladder; even the low end of this range, 1800, would tie for 108th.

Pais isn't the only one to suggest this number, he's just the first, and I don't believe he checked the ladder before throwing out the number, but judging by the upvotes, "literally be a top 100 player to earn requirements" is a fairly popular stance. I don't think there's anything disingenuous about suggesting that elitism is a major driving factor here.

As a comparison point, top 200 would be 1756, and a nice even 1700 ELO would rank 405th.

I agree 1900 is too high; I even cited it in my post:

I don’t agree with some extreme measures like going up 2 whole GXE or even mandating it to the top 20 of ladder (this is where 1900 ELO falls currently, for those proposing that), but I do think exploring other avenues will lead to finding a more appropriate pool of voters.

Your response is…holding specific other poster’s beliefs and the people who like their posts against me despite me not agreeing with them? I don’t give a shit what posts ABR likes — I promise this isn’t helping us make a determination lol

And you didn’t even acknowledge the core of my post about entertaining discussion. This feels like you should be dissecting their posts and logic rather than going after me…

If the second NatDex Terastalization vote showed us anything, it's that non-Smogon showdown players do have their own communities, and that they aren't automatically worse players.

Nobody is saying they are worse though!!! I agree and love that these communities exist. This whole bit is twisting and reaching when I never said anything on the contrary in my post. Come on now

 

[N_Mareanie]

A problem I've always with suspect test laddering is that anyone can seemingly grab a strong Hyper Offensive team from the samples and grind the ladder super hard without any prior knowledge of the tier, getting reqs, voting on a Pokemon, only to never play the tier again. Maybe people do this just to participate in a discussion, maybe they do it because they want certain badges, idk, but i know i've done this plenty in the past and know other people do it too. idk a specific way to fix this or if other people even have a problem with it.

maybe it's an idea for OU to also start hosting suspect tours, or give automatic requirements to people who have proved themselves recently with tournament results? like with post-gen votes on pokemon, like with black & white voting on cloyster recently. people may say that's unfair to ladder players but i'd argue that someone who has recently proved themselves in a high level tournament has more knowledge and proven skill than someone who just hops on ladder only when the suspect is up. just throwing out some ideas here cause i think this is an important discussion to be had and we should question the effectiveness of ladder suspect test reqs in its entirety cause there's obviously some greater flaws.

 

[Alternator]

Speaking on why slightly stricter reqs are at the forefront of discussions: To put it bluntly, there have been dozens of complaints raised to me firsthand about the quality of voter pool; I have counted 9 alone since the start of the Kyurem suspect before this thread. This has been a thing since the start of the generation, but grew exponentially over the last couple of suspects.

I am not going to throw specific people under the bus, but these complaints range from users pointing out certain voters spreading misinformation or very questionable opinions while qualifying for reqs to others taking a large amount of games against mid-ladder to barely qualify. I think these are fair perspectives, I think elitism is always going to be interchanged with quality control in these discussions, and I think it is impossible to find an ideal degree of inclusion without engaging in difficult discussions like this (which is why having this thread is so important).

A slight raise in quality in return for a slight decrease in turnout isn’t really a bad thing for me given this, but it may take some trial-and-error and it mandates discussions like these, so let’s remember this discussion is all being done in good faith, not as a power grab — implying that it is done as a power grab feels disingenuous.

This is an excellent reason to consider GXE to be a poor proxy for knowledge, and a weak reason to raise the floor.

There is no way to directly measure a player's knowledge of the meta (and the one time it was tried led to the Shadow Tag suspect disaster), so skill is used as a proxy, which is reasonable; I certainly don't have any better options to suggest. The selection of GXE is fatally flawed for two reasons, though:

1) It rests on the assumption that you'll be up against players who are at their true level, which isn't the case with so many suspect alts on the ladder, and losing against another suspect account early on means starting over.
2) The fact that "Start over if you lose a game in your first 15/20" is standard practice means that the intended goal of GXE - measuring consistently good play - doesn't apply, even without the first problem.

COIL mitigates those problems by allowing an account to simply play more games, bringing consistency back in the mix; it doesn't much matter if you drop one game to another suspect account at 1100 ELO when you can play extra games when finding yourself just shy of reqs. It also allows slightly weaker players to make reqs if they're willing to put in the time, and since the entire system is meant to serve as a proxy for knowledge and playing more games will teach the player more, I regard that as a benefit.

ELO mitigates those problems because you don't get unduly punished for an early loss, and it requires every player to put in a significant number of games to climb the ladder, thus ensuring they are voting from current experience.

I didn't address this topic before because I was in a hurry, and I consider it a good change. Very marginal players riding a winning streak would need that winning streak to come toward the end of their run, and anyone who is riding a winning streak at 1600+ has proven they aren't actually a marginal player, so as long as we're using skill as a proxy for knowledge, COIL and ELO work to fix the problems where simply raising the floor fails.

When the way we are measuring skill is so fatally flawed, then the answer isn't to raise the minimum measurement, it's to replace it.

Your response is…holding specific other poster’s beliefs and the people who like their posts against me despite me not agreeing with them? I don’t give a shit what posts ABR likes — I promise this isn’t helping us make a determination lol

And you didn’t even acknowledge the core of my post about entertaining discussion. This feels like you should be dissecting their posts and logic rather than going after me…

Nobody is saying they are worse though!!! I agree and love that these communities exist. This whole bit is twisting and reaching when I never said anything on the contrary in my post. Come on now

You're right, I was in a rush and phrased my point poorly.

My point is that top players are reflexively tossing out numbers that are, in and of themselves, unreasonably high, and that such a view isn't a one-off. THAT is why I suggested that this topic seemed largely driven by elitism - it wasn't a criticism of you, it was explaining my view.

Also, I genuinely do not understand the point you were trying to make about why you don't regard "top 1%" numbers to be meaningful. 90% of Showdown players may not know or care about OU tiering policy, but...so what? I don't see where you're going with this, if not to dismiss those players entirely. Was the intent just to cast shade on using GXE?

 

[TheDuckChris]

1) It rests on the assumption that you'll be up against players who are at their true level, which isn't the case with so many suspect alts on the ladder, and losing against another suspect account early on means starting over.

just to clarify this isn't as big of an issue with gxe as it takes into account both self and opponents deviation (eg how confident their rating is accurate) when calculating changes so actually it does not rest on this assumption at all. And with the games requirement we pretty much can assume most players with 80 gxe at 50 games could maintain that past that point

 

[FlamPoke]

In an effort to promote a more "balanced" suspect voting regiment in lower tiers, COIL was reintroduced, and seems to statistically cover a lot of the issues brought up in this post (in theory...). I like the premise of COIL fundamentally as a system that rewards high-level players with a lower minimum game count (if you're winning 25-30 straight you probably know a fair amount about mons/the meta in question) while still being somewhat inclusive of players who aren't quite that "good". People willing to play 50-100+ games on a new alt to make an impact in the community should have the right to do so, assuming they meet some level of qualifications, which a strictly-GXE based system fails to meet in some regard.

Below is my submission for a COIL-based suspect, with the left table representing a quick overview of the values chosen (COIL 3110 / b 3.2) and the right table demonstrating the games required by GXE (rounded) up to 85 games. This particular data set does make the requirements a bit more difficult as people, myself included, have wanted from suspect tests, but does not exclude others from actively participating if they can meet the qualifications. In the Spoiler below, I included some minor tweaks for reference.

COIL Tables

3070/3.2 is slightly more forgiving over a higher quantity of games, for those who want to be a bit less "elitist", while still promoting basically a minimum game count of 25-30.

3070/4.5 is way more elitist up front, promoting a realistic minimum game count of probably 30-35 for the best of the best, while allowing the 50-75 game count crowd the opportunity to still get reqs in essentially the same fashion as before.

2950/6.7 is extremely brutal up front, making 35-40 game minimums realistic, while still promoting a conservative 78 GXE in 82 games "floor".

I don't think any particular system, using any arbitrary values decided by council members / staff / whomever, will be perfect. People who want to contribute will do so as meaningfully as they can, as we've seen plenty of PL tournament-level players not participate in suspects while new accounts will show up and drop 28-2 runs as their first message. It would be cool though, as somebody who has a somewhat vested interest in Smogon and the communities I participate in, to know that potential changes to the metagames I play are likely being determined by a group of similarly invested people who have proven their qualifications to some extent (an extent we'll never be able to determine definitively).

Hope you had a good birthday Finchinator, playing now btboy

 

[Pudistours]

Greetings to you all,

I have less experience than most of you when it comes to addressing this debate, but I'd still like to offer my modest point of view.

Each suspect test involves a small group of players, usually between 100 and 150, who decide the fate of a tier that is played by thousands of players every day. The current formula seems elitist enough to me, and far from being too easy (I understand that is what it's all about), so I don't think it's necessary to make it even more demanding.

For instance, I'm very active on French Facebook groups for competitive Pokémon. I know a lot of players from these groups, most of whom are also very active and concerned by Smogon, with a fair knowledge of the SV OU metagame and the game in general, and I can confirm that many of them have tried the suspect tests lately and failed to reach the required GXE. As such, maybe I'm wrong, but I don't feel that those who have succeeded in their suspect tests so far have anything else to prove.

In any case, if the formula were to change, I agree with some of the opinions I've read above that increasing the GXE requirement wouldn't increase the difficulty in a reasonable way. You all know that your GXE can be undermined by a game lost on a bit of ‘misfortune’, or more specifically in the case of SV OU, on a random Tera that changes the course of a game you had in hand. These are factors you can't always control, no matter how good your understanding of the game is. So, I think that, if you really want to change the formula (which, as I said, I don't believe is necessary), a suspect test based on Elo, possibly with a maximum number of games to be played, would be a preferable option than a suspect test based on a higher GXE.

Thanks for your attention and enjoy the game!

 

[Finchinator]

My personal goal is to resolve this thread during this week. It’s important we get this done right while not stifling the progression of the tier.

I would like to use the next suspect to test any and all suspect reforms and we just finished ironing out the details on the separate suspect thread. I do think another suspect will come in the near future, too, so this is becoming timely.

If anyone has specific proposals, speak soon.

For me, I hear a lot of people discussing ELO and I hear you. I think having the suspect itself include games against actually competent teams and players rather than potentially stopping at 16-1650 ELO is a good thing. If I’m barely facing the suspected Pokemon or barely engaging with high-level games, then the point of the suspect is partially defeated after all. There should be a certain degree of core competency tested in order to get reqs, even if it requires a few more games played along the way. Maybe there’s an avenue for pre-qualification for people already achieving high marks on the ladder, but I’ll defer more transformative takes on that for others if they please and focus on my own proposal for now.

I was thinking of something along the lines of an ELO+GXE component. This means you need to play enough to reach somewhat high on the ladder and need to be at least somewhat efficient in doing so — arguments for COIL resonate with me to an extent, too.

What comes to mind is needing 1750 ELO while getting 80 or 81 GXE (or higher or course). This is a bit more rigorous than the current reqs as it will require a few more games of good results against competent teams/players to hit the ELO goal while maintaining a respectable GXE number.

1800+ ELO as a first step is probably a non-starter as that’s only the top 100-120 of the ladder as of right now and with the sheer volume of suspect reqs ladder players, it’s going to cause more harm than good. I am not opposed to reevaluating with each step and keeping this thread open of course.

80 GXE is the current baseline and 81 GXE is a small step up. I think going any further when we are already pushing an influx higher on ladder would be too much for a first step and any lower would defeat the point.

This proposal takes current reqs and forces people to play a little longer at a higher level to assure competency. It may cut down turnout slightly, but I am convinced most people good enough to get reqs now can improve to the point where they get these if they try hard enough — and with improvement comes better understanding, so I view this as a plus.

This is strictly my own proposal and not one representing the entire council.

 

[Finchinator]

1750 ELO while getting 80 or 81 GXE

We are going to try these minimum thresholds for the upcoming suspect in all likelihood — still discussing which GXE point internally.

The full plan will be this: we use next suspect as a trial to feel out the good, the bad, the unexpected, etc. and then, when we feel it is appropriate, we will re-open this thread for discussion.

This is a relatively conservative first step, but it leaves us room to keep going and potentially undergo a larger overhaul on an as-needed basis heading into next generation. I do think we are not incredibly far from a good solution, but there have been a lot of creative ideas that have been discussed here and those aren’t being ignored at all.

 

[Finchinator]

Last suspect we:

• Made reqs slightly more rigorous by forcing people to engage more with higher ladder as opposed to farming lower only (ELO component)
• Assured the quality control concerns that previously existed and surfaced here were maintained (maintaining GXE component)
• Maintained similar voter turnout despite these changes (126 for this Gliscor test while we had 137 for Kyurem and 110 for Gouging Fire prior)
• Implemented a Qualified Discussion thread (over 70 posts from those capable of getting voting reqs)
• Implemented an automated reqs confirmation and voting system (kills blind voting and by-hand verification in favor of an automated process that tabulates and stops the threat of voter fraud -- big thanks to the people running Smogon and PS for their technical wizardry)

There were a lot of changes that made a longstanding process more modern, safe, and reflective of growing community needs. While the technical side is undoubtedly an upgrade and I am relieved Smogon has such a great team to make this possible, there is definitely still room to debate and potentially improve on other fronts. The OU moderation team (and perhaps the OU council) will discuss the suspect thread split and the future of that, but this thread was used specifically to discuss SV OU voter reqs.

Here is some feedback I received throughout the last suspect, where we used the 1750+ ELO and 80%+ GXE for reqs:

• Lot of people saying they faced the suspect or competitive teams more throughout the later portion of getting reqs
• Lot of people complaining it took more battles to get reqs, thus taking up more of their time
  • This was part of the point of the change and forcing people to actually prove their competency naturally takes more time investment
• Handful of people requesting reqs ditch the GXE component in favor of strict ELO
• Handful of people (some overlap with the last point) requesting ELO be made higher than the 1750 baseline
• Couple of people requesting:
  • We revert back to old reqs
  • Lower the GXE requirement
  • Up the GXE requirement
  • Lower the ELO requirement
  • Switch to COIL
  • Probably some other things I am forgetting

To me, the 1750 ELO + 80 GXE requirements were a conservative step away from the prior reqs that put ELO on the map. I am fine maintaining them, but also open to another small step in a number of possible directions.

Please use this thread to provide feedback on what direction you feel is best. Have a nice day!

 

[leng loi]

I did not have time to get reqs as this past suspect happened during SCL. However, I did launch one attempt and found that I would have to spend more time than I thought getting reqs - and more time than I had. I agree with Finch that the technical side of this is a complete upgrade, but I believe there to be some opportunity for fine-tuning the requirements. I thought about it for a bit and concur that increasing time spent in the higher portions of mid-ladder is a good thing, even if this means a grindier experience and more punishment for losses. However, I propose that the direction our next 'small step' should take is reintroducing a small gradient for reqs akin to the old system.

A system in which much higher gxe necessitates less elo and a much higher elo necessitates lower gxe should make it less grindy for people that can prove their skill through a more rigorous metric (gxe) while allowing players with worse winrates to grind out reqs at high ladder, thereby gaining valuable experience against the meta that can inform their vote.

I propose a very conservative gradient where a drastically higher gxe lowers the elo requirement and a drastically higher elo lowers the gxe requirement. This shouldn't change the voting process all that much for most people, rather providing a starting point for us to fine-tune with future suspects or discard if the experiment proves unsuccessful.

For example, an elo of 1880 currently represents top 30 on the OU ladder. Of those 30 players, a handful have gxes less than 80. Personally, I would feel comfortable granting voting requirements to those accounts (in a hypothetical world where they were created after the onset of the suspect and not, as is likely the case, shared alts). Conversely, there are fewer accounts in the lower portion of the top 500 that exceed the 80 gxe mark by a significant margin, but suspect tests of yore showed plenty of 30-0 accounts with quite high gxes.

I haven't proposed actual values in this post thusfar, but I don't think I will. I'll leave it up to discussion in this thread and by the parties responsible for organizing tests to determine actual values. That being said, sub-1650 with significantly higher than 80 gxe and above 1900 with slightly less than 80 gxe sounds reasonable to me.

I'm very open to criticism of this idea, and it may be a bad idea for reasons I haven't considered. Or it could simply be too complicated. Looking forward to others' opinions.

-leng

edit:

I've talked this out w some people and I think I made some unrealistic assumptions about suspect voters/potential suspect voters.

Basically the system I proposed benefits almost no one except people that probably shouldn't be voting because of not having significant investment in the tier. The idea that there would be new accounts that hit 1900 in sub-2 weeks with <80 gxe is pretty much fiction, and I don't think that those who can go 25-0 to 30-0 but can't be bothered to grind out 150-200 extra elo should be catered to.

That being said. I agree with raising elo requirement and potentially ditching gxe requirement. May make a post to explain that stance soon.

 

[Finchinator]

We need to receive more feedback before making a change and I will leave this thread open for people to provide that! For the Palafin suspect, we will adopt the same reqs as last suspect.

 

[Pais]

Since I've played the latest Palafin OU suspect I wanted to express briefly my opinion on current reqs:

• ELO and GXE Requirements: The current requirements of 1750 ELO and 80 GXE are not significantly different from achieving the reqs in 50 games under the old system. I believe we could aim higher, perhaps 1800 ELO. While I’d personally advocate for 1850, I understand the council’s reluctance to make suspects feel "elitist." That said, from my perspective, truly elitist requirements would involve an ELO cap much higher than 1850.
• Tour Reqs and Player Input: I feel that the most qualified and accomplished players are not necessarily opposed to Tour Reqs. While earlier discussions framed this as an avoidable solution, I think it’s worth reconsidering. Input from top players in suspects should carry more weight. Their participation and feedback are inherently more valuable than that of an average player. Although top players can engage in the suspect test like everyone else, it’s in our best interest to gather as much reliable data as possible, especially from those with advanced insight into the metagame. Probably it's avoidable when we discuss about unbanning certain pokemon since you need to play more technically the suspect ladder in that case playing versus these Pokemon that before were not necessary freed.

Overall, this is a positive first step in the right direction. However, I feel there’s still room to make the requirements more challenging and to improve the true goals of the suspects overall.

 

[zioziotrip]

Hello. I have qualified for the Palafin suspect using the new system and while it's a step in the right direction for sure it still doesn't solve some core issues.

The biggest positive is that you now spend the majority of your reqs run fighting competent teams and teams that actually have the mon being tested on top of potential counterplay to the mon being tested. Before it felt fairly easy to qualify pre-1600s and you'll spend most games fighting Pikachu. Most of my later games involved Palafin and my hope is that it gives people a more informed opinion on the mon actually being tested.

Now the negatives. Qualifying is still incredibly easy and more of a test of free time than one of competence. This may seem like an arbitrary issue but what it allows is people who won't have their vote swayed by playing to get reqs easily. I've seen people who want to free Palafin because they have no involvement with OU, just because they want a change (no matter how negative the change is), or just because they think it's funny. Enabling these voters destabilizies the system and there's something to be said for enabling voters that are just parroting someone else's opinion (cough cough yt kids). This may seem biased as a Ban Palafin voter but I think all of this applies and has applied all generation without this new system changing much.

Solving the above is diffucult and I don't have a perfect solution but at minimum tournament requirements should be brought back. Tier surveys already have qualifications and it should be fairly easy to tighten these with the addition of requiring multiple different qualifications (just 2 is fine) to keep out people only interested in one tournament/not interested in ladder. There are multiple people who are consistently top 100 on ladder, putting out positive records in officials, and putting up good individual results that still have to waste hours going for reqs to prove that they are commited to the tier. I'm fine expanding these requirements to non-officials that people still take seriously like seasonals or other circuit tours, all of these prove interest and commitment towards the tier.

As for changing the 1750 ELO 80% GXE requirement I'm against something drastic. Another 100 ELO would barely change anything, you're facing some 1900s by the end of your run anyways, and making it 1950-2000 ELO would just be laborious as anyone who has achieved it knows that by the end of the run you are gaining single digit points from wins. 82% GXE personally has been achievable the entire gen and isn't too harsh but anything above that seems mostly like a luck/patience test, I've gotten 86% GXE at high ladder before largely through getting lucky with opps 100s of points higher but it didn't seem like I was playing particularly better. I suppose I'm fine with one of +100 ELO or +2% GXE but it doesn't seem to actually make harder as opposed to making it more annoying. Making it comically frustrating (2000 ELO 85% GXE) so that you have to make tour reqs is A Solution but not one that I particularly like, would prefer some middle ground, but tour reqs should be a valid alternative.

 

[heileone]

Hello,
Before I make this post I want to be clear that I have no understanding of any technical limitations that may make this suggestion infeasible and someone may have already suggested this but I didnt see it at a cursory glance.

I think that a big problem with making the suspect experience align with high level play at the current moment is that regardless of the metric that gets raised, be it GXE or ELO, suspects become much more tedious for people who can actually qualify for them. A requirement of 1850 elo is realistically around 50 games, even if you only lose like 2-3 games. This could dissuade people who could get them just off the sheer time check alone (same problems apply to GXE). This is why I wanted to propose a new solution: At the start of a suspect, you get one suspect account linked to your smogon that starts at 1500-1600 and is then deleted at the end of the suspect.

I think this removes the time barrier completely and allows ELO requirements to be raised to FORCE people to play more games at at higher levels. For example, something like an 1850 or 1900 elo requirement becomes much more feasible if the starting point is 1500. I think that games before that ELO are somewhat meaningless anyway and not in any way representative of the real game, which I would argue starts at 1850+ realistically.

One argument that I want to somewhat preempt here is that a 1900 ELO with no GXE requirement is difficult. Speaking from personal experience, I hit 1900 for the first time after around 2 months of playing the tier seriously, aka from complete pokemon noob to 1900. I dont think that thats an unreasonable experience investment to expect from qualified players. Of course, at this point in my journey I wasnt able to maintain the ELO and did not have a GXE of above 80, but importantly I had a lot of games played in the 1700-1800 range before eventually getting a matchup+ingame luck streak to hit 1900. I think that this requirement wont block out dedicated players who arent as good at the game yet while forcing them to engage with the metagame at a somewhat high level(since they will play against the occasional 1900+ and a lot of 1800s). At the same time, with a higher starting point, a 1900 elo requirement is not at all tedious and discouraging to players who can consistently hit it.

For reference, I got reqs in the palafin suspect without playing anyone over 1800 ELO a single time. I dont think the current system makes players get a good, high level experience that highlights if a mon is broken or not(since players at lower ELO levels cannot leverage the strengths of OP pokemon through teambuilding and in game play OR abuse teams with glaring weaknesses dedicated to shutting down said OP usually, something I experienced many times while laddering through 1500-1600).

My final note is that I want to reiterate that I do not know how feasible this suggestion is technically, I just think that it would be a good practical solution that solves a lot of the problems with suspects. The ELO starting point and requirement can also easily be tuned if either too many or too few people are completing suspects, giving tier leaders a set of dials that they can easily turn to achieve a desired number of voters.

 

[MAVERICK SHOOTERS]

I personally think while this new system is a improvement over the previous one it can still be improved, the first major thing is that 1750 ELO+80 GXE doesn't feel much different than the previous requirements as people who could achieve the previous reqs pretty much can achieve this too, so it mostly becomes an extra time sink outside of players getting to play vs actual teams which is a positive.

I personally think it should be around 1750+82 GXE,I went through a decent amount of accounts of people who qualified for the suspect and most had achieved 82 gxe on their account anyways despite only needing 80, this also actually improves the skill ceiling by a bit which 1750+80 GXE fails to do making for more qualified voters. I will quote something from zioziotrip 's post which I have been seeing for this suspect as well: " I've seen people who want to free Palafin because they have no involvement with OU, just because they want a change (no matter how negative the change is), or just because they think it's funny. Enabling these voters destabilizies the system." I think with this new proposed system it should limit these type of voters,obviously this doesn't curb it completely but if those people can achieve this new requirements then it's fair game on whatever they end up deciding to vote.

I don't think raising the ELO bar even higher should be considered as it becomes an even further time sink limiting even the people who could easily reach that requirement from doing it because of the time investment that would be required.

I also agree with adding tour reqs that have been mentioned in this thread along with the ladder, I think for cases like palafin it should be just ladder only as it's a mon no one has used before so people cannot form an opinion without using it, but for pokemon that were already there before, there should definitely be tour reqs as this increases the pool of qualified voters letting people who don't have the time to do suspect reqs but have the skill to do so vote which at the end is a positive thing and leads to a better decision,whatever it may be. For the tours I will let that be chosen by tier leader's or whoever does it, my suggestion would be tours that were recent as they would give the correct information on the pokemon being suspected in it's most recent form, but I am fine with whatever that gets decided.

 

[Lily]

I got reqs for both Gliscor and Palafin cus I wanted to ensure I felt like I'd gotten enough experience w/ this new system but rn I think it's a downgrade from what we had before and we can do significantly better.

Getting reqs now is just tiresome and frustrating rather than difficult. It's very easy for a high level player to get to the GXE bar and prove they know what they're doing but now they're just timegated by a useless ELO requirement. I don't know why this is considered an upgrade? Like if the goal is to prove you're "in tune" with the meta then it's flopping horribly, there is no true way to determine that for one but even if you could it does not matter bc the teams you face at all points in the ladder (even 2000+) are just not necessarily a reflection of the metagame at any given time. There's a dude at 1950 elo using Blastoise rn for reference.

Furthering either the ELO or GXE req is silly. The reason these suspects don't mimic high level play is because the roundabout way we've gone about this is unappealing to actual high level players so nobody wants to do it! Look at the Gliscor test - out of the 126 voters, 9 of them have played an SV OU game in SPL at any point during the generation. We tried to make reqs harder so that strong players would get to use their voice more and yet they make up a tiny percentage of the voter pool.

Can we please either go back to the old system or move to COIL which was built for this exact purpose? It's working for literally every other tier. This attempt at gatekeeping sub-1750 players (which btw didn't even work - as anyone who's participated in these last few tests can tell you, there aren't that many people playing when you get to 1600+ or so and you'll end up getting matched with anyone from 1600 to 2000) has only resulted in lower participation from the people the change was supposed to benefit. The issue wasn't how requirements were obtained, it was laziness and still is. Don't punish the people willing to go to the effort.

 

[Tio Chico]

I had the same problem with both Gliscor and Palafin races: Facing 4 or 5 players more than once, with the same team, especially in the final stretch 1600+. The second battle added nothing to my experience.
Finding battles from 1650 onwards has become increasingly time-consuming. The new system, although it forces you to find the Suspect Target more often, does not necessarily add quality value in my POV.

Raising the bar even higher would be a huge disincentive due to the time consumed, in addition to a negative side that I was reluctant to talk about, but here goes;
Due to the bad faith that was shown in Kyurem, I can't stop imagining other methods of interference. For example, Finchinator has a habit of releasing a ''teaser'' announcing: "Suspect coming next week." This gives time for bad-faith players to make alternate accounts and place them between 1850-1750 before the suspect and wait for a known player who is not running anonymously to hunt him down, something similar to what happens in OLT, I imagine. Or hand the win to a known player who has an equal voting opinion and is on his run. I should also mention that raising the ELO scale can lead to "cannibalism" among high-level players, hindering and decreasing the total number of voters. Getting 1750 is not an incredibly difficult task but at the moment it means being around the top 200, and 1800 in the top 100.

As Lily mentioned, the number of tournament participants in Suspects is low, and I should add that of the council members as well, only Lily and Finch have done so for Gliscor, and as of this post, with more than half the time set, only Lily, and we are supposedly in a vacation period where players would have more free time.

The new format is not attractive and does not provide enough quality to justify it.
I am considering returning to the old model and creating/returning to Tournaments that qualify for voting.

 

[Finchinator]

I appreciate the recent feedback in this thread and think that we can come to a conclusion after the ongoing Palafin test, so be sure to post in the next week if you have not done so already!

I feel we have conflicting goals in some posts and that complicates the discussion. There’s also the matter of having the actual solution matching the motivations and willingness of the community to participate.

For me, voting requirements should be attainable by people who are competent in the metagame and willing to put in time during the suspect to prove that competency. This shouldn’t be gatekept to just top players, but it also shouldn’t be attainable by just anyone who is willing to sink many hours in if they’re not competent in the tier. Given this, going too high on metrics like GXE feels like a misstep, but pivoting to COIL where lower floor players can be rewarded with higher volume isn’t desired either.

 

[Tio Chico]

Although my last post was one of the most recent, the suspect period ends tomorrow with the vote starting on Saturday, so I want to bring my last two cents.

One of the main arguments for the new method is that players who were able to obtain reqs previously are still able to do so now, just with a little more effort/dedication, in exchange for the benefit of obtaining more experience with the target of suspect.
Although this is not an incorrect statement and I agree, it is necessary to emphasize that the reqs run is not the only way where the voting player gets experience and form his opinion.
We have seen many players change position over several suspects and how did they do it? Continuing to play in his regular accounts after the suspect, reading and debating on the topic and watching battles from other players.
If both methods lead to the same way (get right to vote), then we are just choosing the longest way.
Except for TC Badge farmers, most players continue to engage with the tier even after obtaining their reqs during the suspect period.
During his reqs run, I believe that with the exception of some top players, most use teams with which they feel more comfortable to reach the main goal; obtain the requirements.
So then players continue to engage with the tier and observe the change and adaptation of the target, experience more playstyles on their own, or devote more time to the debate on the topic.

In conclusion, the new method is not justified, with my opinion being to return to the previous method and add suspect tournaments that will serve not only as a qualified alternative, but as another information resource for opinion formation/vote definition.