Tournament PMPL 4: Policy Discussion and Gameplan

Gekokeso · Mar 31, 2025

Hello everybody, Gekokeso here. As you may know the PMPL is approaching, and I have stated publicly that signups are going live in late May. So why I'm I making this thread a month in advance?

To put it simply, I believe there’s a lot to work on for Pet Mods to work in a tournament environment, PMPL 2 and 3 had an diverse set of problems, either via general management difficulties, bugs that made playing the formats unbearable and unbalanced metagames that could sometimes be very frustrating to play.

As such, this will not only be a policy discussion thread, but also a thread to discuss a system I have put in place to hopefully help meet community demands and establish tiers in a safe manner.

I shall divide my post into three big sections, all to tackle different issues that could lead to problems.

Part 1: The Tier Submission Process

Out of the three portions, this is going to be the most in depth, and the one I will allow the least changes to.

For a tournament of this size we always need to find the right tiers to introduce to the meta in order to ensure there’s significant activity in them, but at the same time some of these tiers have been either improperly coded which has caused bugs or builder irregularities. Some of these tiers have also proven to be unbalanced at times. Tour leaders aren’t perfect, they are not going to access the wants of the community 100% of the time.

For that reason, I'm announcing the following: rather than just selecting 8 tiers, the player base will be allowed to submit a Pet Mod of their choice to potentially become a tier in the tournament.

Of course there's a couple of conditions that come with this opportunity. The submission will not guarantee the Petmod’s spot in the tournament, this only allows it the chance to be a part of it, as it will compete with other pet mod submissions. Selection of these tiers will still be up for the hosts of the tournament, but submitting your tier will give it priority over other options, just make sure the meta you are submitting is sensible enough to get through. Should the deadline pass without enough submissions, the hosts will simply pick from the tiers from last year to fill the spots. If you would like to argue about having the playerbase have more say in the tier such as voting one ro two tiers in by popular opinion, let it be known on the thread.

For submitting a tier to the tournament you will be required to provide multiple resources of the tier. Here’s a list of the 4 most basic things a submission needs to have for it to be approved:

A detailed and well examined banlist: This will become very relevant within the following section of this post, but essentially, ensure that not a single element, be it move, ability, item or Pokémon that could cause trouble makes it into the meta. Prove that everything is coded as it should. Be as through as possible and include stuff like clauses, the banlist will be very relevant for the tournament.
A stress test - At least 15 battles or more showcasing as many custom elements of the metagame working properly: This should be the most self explanatory. For this tournament we want metas that people play and enjoy, play as many battles as you can and attach the replays to your submission. This will showcase how good the meta is, if there are any balancing issues, and that there is player demand for that meta to make it in.
A moderate amount of sample teams: Willing to be lenient on this one. The samples added don’t need to be much, and in the case of metas with little new elements the number can be as few as 4, but the more samples showcasing new elements, the better. Samples should also be, for a lack of a better word, good. Update any samples that are either not as good or are outdated.
A basic viability list: It doesn’t need to be a full viability ranking (even though having one heavily improves the mod’s standing) but just having a general idea of how good the different pokémon in a meta are will allow players to catch the gist of the meta quicker.

Other elements like Speed Tiers, Role Compendiums and Set Compediums are optional, but do make your submission more paletable.

Big reason why I am making the thread a full month before even manager signups is that it will allow tier leaders to have the time to develop their metas to a level that might deem them eligible to get selected. Only mods that have threads are eligible for selection and submission shall be done by council or someone delegated with permission to these decisions. If you want a tier to make it, but tier leaders don't seem very active, ask the mods to review with you if you can make the changes and make the submission to the thread.

Said thread will open in a week, do not submit metas in this thread, as a different space for the submissions shall be open in a week.

Part 2: Systems put in place in case of failure

Next section will cover the general list of rules that should be set in place in case that there are any errors. The list is not finalized, so give your input on what the best course of action should be in any of these cases.

Teambuilder legality

In every PMPL we have had issues with some moves, abilities or Pokémon being allowed when they shouldn’t have been and has led to some controversy, especially last year during a somewhat troubled moment in finals. For this reason, moving forward we will standardize the procedure of what happens in each of these cases.

First and foremost, we shall implement the following:

The banlist submitted for each tier is final. If it appears on the banlist, you don’t use it. If a pokémon is found to be banned on the builder, but does not appear on the banlist, let tour hosts know as soon as possible to ensure either its added to the list or unbanned.
Should a pokémon be unbanned midweek in the above case, this decision will be broadcasted publicly so that every player is notified in time. Same if a banlist is updated. This only applies to the above case and does not apply to the next section.
Should a player appear to use a banned element that clearly appears in the banlist of said tier, their match will be considered null and win will be granted to their opponent. If a player brings out an element that is not in the banlist their match will proceed as normal, regardless if said element ends up getting banned later.

The banlist will need to be present both in the mod's thread, and the list of the tournament's metagame resources for easier viewing.

Midweek Tier Changes

This has been a constant in every PL, and the method employed during the first section of this post should at least help with it in some way. Still, it's likely one or two metas have stuff that slips through the cracks, so to prepare for that, I have designated a schedule of some sort.

There will be exactly 3 instances where any non-bugfixing changes to a meta will go through: At the start of week 2, the start of week 4 and the start of semis. This is done to prevent multiple metas from doing changes at different weeks. By adhering to a specific schedule, we can give each player an easier time knowing what is changed and what is not. All changes that occurred will also be broadcasted in a singular thread where every meta’s changes are noted.

Crashes / DH connectivity issues

This is unfortunately the one we have the least control of. It is every tier leader’s responsibility to make sure every meta is working as intended, and it will be their responsibility to test every custom element in their metas to prevent crashes. Still, there’s the chance a crash occurs in a battle or the server undergoes troubles that prevent players from logging in. For that the following options shall be provided:

Extension: Extensions to the battle can be provided for teams to make new teams or to play in case one can’t make it due to connectivity issues (note, provide as much evidence of this as possible to prove its due to connectivity)
Recreation: If a battle has started but the server restarts a recreation of the battle can be attempted, as long as every team provides their teams and a host is around to prove that no foul play is going on.
Rematch: Both teams load completely different teams. This does put pressure on players to have multiple teams at hand so it's definitely a more unpopular option, so just take this option if you feel comfortable having a backup in case of an emergency.

Part 3: Starting from Scratch(?)

Finally, there’s something I’d like to discuss with people, and it's by far what I think will be the most controversial decision in consideration. Note that this is NOT implemented yet, that this is NOT the default option should people not argue against it, but it is just something I considered for the sake of a new tournament experience. So if people support it, argue for its inclusion or its not going to be implemented. If you want to argue against it it is also fine.

So, to get that out of the way, I'm considering resetting the player pool. This means that no retains from the previous Pet Mods Premier League would be eligible, but at the same time every player returns to 0. Note that managers are still worth 15k each, with no possibility of lowering the price.

This is something I have considered to offer the tournament a more fresh experience, and to prevent players who would like to play in other teams get retained. Of course, I put priority to the likes of finalists like Larry, Mana, Quinn, Paulluxx and anaconja to hear their opinions on the matter, especially the former 4. I would not like it to feel like I'm screwing over a team.

Should this not go through however, consider the regular rules on retains to be the same as last year, which is to say, +3k on the price bought last year, unless said price was under 10k for which it then becomes 10k.

With that, I shall open the thread for discussion, if you have any issues or critiques with the following plan, let us know in the thread.

Larry · Apr 1, 2025

Part 1 - I like the idea of auditing metagames beforehand, but they should have enough time to prepare their meta to be tournament-ready. Also, tiers should be picked via poll before signups go live to have them decided by the time signups roll around.

Part 2 - disagree with the way you try to standardize tier changes/bans - if something needs fixing, it should be fixed as soon as possible. I believe the correct course of action is "Mon is identified as broken -> Mon gets banned -> Tier leader informs pmpl hosts -> pmpl hosts make announcement post in administrative decisions thread -> mon is illegal starting next week". Stuff not working properly/bugs should also be documented in administrative decisions to raise awareness among players. Same with bugfixes.

Crashes/connectivity issues - recreates are impossible without teams being sent in somewhere beforehand. I think the cleanest solutuon is rematch with extension if required unless a game is/was 100% over by the time the crash happened. Exclusively referring to server side connectivity issues here, if one player can connect and the other can't, the issue lies with the player who can't connect and its on them to reschedule, fix their issues or provide a sub.

Part 3 - Heavily disagree with this one, I don't see this contributing to the prior matters at all. Processes are something that should constantly be optimized - you wanna reset the pool every time you change something between editions? There is no precedent for this and it robs teams of their identities.

Also why is a manager more expensive if they played last year? Seems pointless to me. Retains get progressively more expensive to make it impossible to retain the same player ten times over, a clause like this makes no sense for managers and is also unprecedented.

Soda_Eesti · Apr 1, 2025

Section 1
Selection of the tiers being entirely up to the hosts of the tournament i find ridiculous. If the community wants a tier, regardless of resources existing, the tier should be in. If the people want Hoenn Gaiden fucking give them hoenn gaiden. Also, leaving it up to hosts to select formats will obviously come with bias. (Most infamously SoloPL.)

Section 2
Changes should be immediate. (Starting at the end of the week.) If a tool is clearly broken and it gets banned, i see no good reason to keep the element around. If it makes the meta worse why the hell are you letting it stay. If you dont like it invalidating the samples you can require some Pre-emptive teams from the councils but even then i feel like if youre good enough to get drafted you either have the support needed or have enough experience in the tier yourself to be able to build without that element.

Section 3
Not like i have any say but i feel like this reboot to make the tour more competitive could warrant this, as long as this is the ONLY reboot of retains ever. Also manager prices varrying is dumb dont do it.

Runo · Apr 1, 2025

Gekokeso said:
The banlist submitted for each tier is final. If it appears on the banlist, you don’t use it. If a pokémon is found to be banned on the builder, but does not appear on the banlist, let tour hosts know as soon as possible to ensure either its added to the list or unbanned.

A minor point of concern here but during the later weeks of the regular season last year, two teams had discovered gamebreaking bugs in m4a and they were reportedly undocumented on their forum page or made exceedingly difficult to find. Can it be standardized that banlists should be in the OP of a thread regardless of how trivial a ban might be (ala OHKO moves or Sleep Clause)? Clears up this potential "well I didn't know it was on the banlist, I couldn't find it" issue. I don't want to hunt down a post from 3 years ago proving that X or Y is legal nor do I want to troll the github page looking at changes to the code.

Gekokeso · Apr 1, 2025

Pinging Mana Paulluxx Quinn anaconja because apparently it didn't ping the first time.

Gonna take the opportunity to do some clarifications based on comments on discord and the above.

- Irregularities on the banlist and builder, as well as bugfixing, are exempt from the schedule of bans and unbans, these will get notified, solved and uploaded in the announcements thread as soon as possible. Its only direct changes to elements either in the elemnt itself such as a buff, nerf, or downright bans that will follow the week 3 and week 5 schedule. This is because it is very much expected that the banlist submitted alongside the tier will be up to tournament standard and will not require any changes. If a tier has a incomplete banlist its chances of getting a successful submission decrease, so it is expected that anything egregious will not make it into the meta, or will be caught before the tournament.
- Retains being nuked, should it get through (again, this won't go through unless enough support of this is shown), will only go through this instance of the tournament, due to how the tour is being restructured. Future editions of the tournament will keep retains.
- I seem to have mistakenly written about how manager prices will go, allow me to clarify and fix the op. Managers regardless of playing last year get to always be selfbought at 15k, its only managers who stop managing and become players that go for 18k should they be tried to be retained as a player. So if x player was a manager last year, and manages next year, their manager self buy price is 15k. If a manager stops managing and chooses to become a player, their team can retain them, but at the cost of either 10k if they didn't self buy next year.
-

Runo said:
Can it be standardized that banlists should be in the OP of a thread regardless of how trivial a ban might be (ala OHKO moves or Sleep Clause)? Clears up this potential "well I didn't know it was on the banlist, I couldn't find it" issue.

Correct, while a thread with all the resources and banlist will be made, it will also a requirement for lists to be as through as possible including clauses.

Im willing to be lenient and allow as much as half of the tiers selected from the submission process to go through via community voting, but some amount of selection will go through via the hosts and the Pet Mods council. Of course, ill ask more support in the thread for voting on the tiers selected to be allowed.

Larry · Apr 1, 2025

Gekokeso said:
- Irregularities on the banlist and builder, as well as bugfixing, are exempt from the schedule of bans and unbans, these will get notified, solved and uploaded in the announcements thread as soon as possible. Its only changes to elements either in the mon itself such as a buff or nerf, or downright bans that will follow the week 3 and week 5 schedule.

My previous point stands. I don't see the point in predeterming specific timeslots in the tour for bans and/or unbans - if something needs tiering action, said tiering action should be executed as soon as possible.

Gekokeso said:
- Retains being nuked, should it get through (again, this won't go through unless enough support of this is shown), will only go through this instance of the tournament, due to how the tour is being restructured. Future editions of the tournament will keep retains.

I still don't get how any of this logically leads to retains being nuked - pmpl3 had different tiers from pmpl2 as well and I don't think we'll ever have 2 pmpls with the exact same tiers. In essence we are still playing the same tournament, but with better organization.

Gekokeso said:
- I seem to have mistakenly written about how manager prices will go, allow me to clarify and fix the op. Managers regardless of playing last year get to always be selfbought at 15k, its only managers who stop managing and become players that go for 18k should they be tried to be retained as a player. So if x player was a manager last year, and manages next year, their manager self buy price is 15k. If a manager stops managing and chooses to become a player, their team can retain them, but at the cost of either 10k if they didn't self buy next year.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding this, but are you saying managers from pmpl3 can be retained as players the following year?

Gekokeso · Apr 1, 2025

Larry said:
Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding this, but are you saying managers from pmpl3 can be retained as players the following year?

Yes

Larry · Apr 1, 2025

Gekokeso said:
Yes

Please don't do that.. that's a ridiculously easy proposal to abuse - just take the strongest manager pair, have their team taken over by the 2 best players, retain both previous managers and selfbuy both current managers, and you have half your super lineup through no drafting whatsoever - not in this edition, nor in the edition the "retain" comes from.

Gekokeso · Apr 7, 2025

Submissions for tiers of the PMPL 4 are now open.

Some other announcements:

Binning the manager retains, admitedly this was a decision made from misunderstanding how its usually handled. Expect them to function the same way as in a regular tour.
At the present, there seems to not be enough push for the elimination of retains, so retains will remain the same as of last year. Will give 1 weeks as of writing this post to argue the contrary, but if not enough people argue in favor of it, expect retains to stay.
Only a couple of people, but enough to be notable, have expressed a desire to change how the system for quick meta changes in section 2 work. I also would like to give 2 weeks for more people to argue for a change on this.
Finally, I have seen people want more control over which tiers get picked over the selection. Please let it be known on the thread as well if you want this to be the case or if you want to let hosts decide on all or most of them. Similar to the proposal of bans and unbans, you will have 2 weeks before this gets locked into the rules.
With PMPL4 tier submissions open, you can now argue in favor or against any tier that gets submitted and approved.

Gekokeso · Apr 15, 2025

Alright given the lack of activity in the thread, I will take it that people don't desire the eliminations of retains, thus, retains will remain as of last year. For context, here's the retain pools:

Captura de pantalla 2025-04-15 153608.png

Captura de pantalla 2025-04-15 154531.png

Captura de pantalla 2025-04-15 155020.png

(Blurred names are Captain names, which are not retained)

As mentioned before, you got 1 week to comment on either the system of the bans / modifications schedule or if players want more control over the tiers chosen.

teamo · Apr 22, 2025

how can we retain copen?

Quinn · Apr 25, 2025

This is something that obviously wouldn't be applied until PMPL 2026 at the earliest, but I don't know a better place to put this than the format discussion.

I think PMPL should be a trophy tour.

Trophies are the most sought after accolade on Smogon, the prizes for the best tours on the site. The accessibility for trophies is heavily skewed towards OU players. Permods players have none.

The most common response for why PMPL shouldn't be a trophy tour that I've heard in the past when I've brought this up is that PMPL isn't big/prestigious/good enough. A response that overlooks a simple fact; if you attach a trophy to this tour, it will become big/prestigious/good enough because there's now a trophy on the line instead of only a custom avatar. I'm not claiming that every game in a trophy version of PMPL will be at an SPL level. It won't, because there are simply more players per tier with a 2 slots per gen format. But with a trophy on the line, enough high end players will sign up that we won't get a playoffs series decided by say, "A Iron fist main."

The other main argument I've heard for why PMPL shouldn't be a trophy tour is that it's a "diet SPL." Frankly I view that as an objectively wrong opinion. PMPL is 8 slots + 1 slot for every mod. PMPL having 1 slot per mod with no mod getting special treatment is a different tournament dynamic entirely. If PMPL is diet SPL, then you could call any auction based team tour a diet SPL. And even if you still think that PMPL is diet SPL, considering that SCL is a trophy tour, it's clear that Smogon is not against attaching a trophy to a "diet SPL" tour.

However, by attaching a trophy to PMPL and attracting higher level talent, we would be crowding out the lesser known/mid level players that this tour gives a chance to. Something that people in this thread have made clear is important to this tour. That's why I'd also like to propose that in addition to making PMPL a trophy tour next yeat, we also create a new PMPL Farmers League tour that serves a similar role to the current PMPL. Sign-ups would go live after the PMPL draft, and be open to anybody that didn't get into the main PL. This has precedent as a number of PLs have Farmers Leagues for players who don't get drafted into the main PL, and even SPL has ADPL acting as something of an unofficial farmers league. This way, undiscovered and mid level players still have a tour where they can break out and be seen, while high end classic gen talent are able to have a much deserved extra opportunity each year to win a trophy

Gekokeso · May 11, 2025

Hello as you may have heard, our current selection of possible tiers has now reached 10 available metas, from which 8 will be selected for the tournament. It is imperative to let your thoughts in here on which tiers you want for the tournament, since it will help us host select the tiers for the tournament.

To start some conversation on the tiers to be selected, here's my views on the tiers and how likely they are to be included in the lineup:

Unmovables: Fusion Evolution Gen 9, Teramax, Vaporemons
Very Likely: Megas Revisited, Little Colosseum, VGC 20XX
Shaky Ground: Blank Canvas, Banhammers Cycle 3, Paleomons, Iron Fist

And the following are the arguments behind them.
Unmovables: The unmovables are tiers that I don't see a world where they are not part of the lineup. These are tiers that have remained fairly active throughout the year and were part of last's year lineup of tiers.
Very Likely: The very likely are tiers that are very easy to consider for a spot in the lineup, but could be argued otherwise. Megas Revisited's lack of activity throughout the year hurts it a bit, but its present in last year's lineup, serves as tour staple tier's M4A's closest successor and is the only old gen in the lineup. Little Colosseum and VGC 20XX are tiers that while subbed in a very last minute manner, have the advantage of being way more unique than their competidors, as well as the fact that Little Colosseum had a significantly big tour at the end of last year.
Shaky Ground: Those in the shaky ground are tiers that have made the full approval, but have some points against them that make them less easy to argue for their direct inclusion in the lineup. While I love the concept of Banhammers, I wished the cycle had continued a bit longer, cause as it stands the meta heavily ressembles a somewhat weird looking version of UU, with some minor item losses and pokémon banned. Blank Canvas and Paleomons are very good fakemon metas, but at the same time end up sort of canibalizing each other due to their lack of differentiality when compared to the other tiers in the lineup. Its likely only one of the two will make it, but an argument for both of their inclusions can be made. Finally, there's iron fist. Its popularity definitely makes it a strong choice, but the general goofiness of the tier makes it hard to slot into the lineup, making it hard to discern if people actually want it in as a playable tier or are just hyping it up for shits and giggles.

Let this be your warning, if you want your tier in the tour and are in very likely, you have to argue for its inclusion otherwise people could come and be convinced of kicking it out, regardless of how confident you are of its chances to make it in. If the tier you want in is in shaky ground, you really need to argue for its inclusion, otherwise the tour host team will consider there's not enough support for its inclusion.

BlueRay · May 12, 2025

As we finalize the lineup for this year’s PMPL, it’s important to ensure that our tournament represents the full spectrum of creativity and competitive diversity within the Pet Mods community. Thus, while Singles formats dominate the current selection, I’d like to advocate for the inclusion of VGC 20XX—the only Doubles focused Pet Mod.

Depth Through Format Variety

In a way, PMPL is like a carnival, with each slot showcasing a different take on competitive Pokémon for everyone to enjoy.
To my knowledge, all other candidate mods are Singles-based. Therefore, including VGC 20XX—a Doubles format—adds crucial format diversity and reflects the broader scope of Pet Mods. While Double-centred mods are rarer, they are by no means less valid; in fact, they explore team dynamics, positioning, and strategies in ways Singles can’t.
Against this background, just as OU and Doubles OU coexist in “mainline” formats, adding a VGC slot would provide PMPL with a more complete representation of custom competitive Pokémon.

VGC Community Representation

With the Pet Mods community steadily growing, there is an emerging base of players and spectators with a strong interest in Doubles.
Including a Doubles mod helps attract players from both the VGC and Doubles scene, thereby increasing visibility and broadening PMPL’s reach. A recent and successful example is Fusion Evolution VGC during the Solomods Premier League. Despite the Singles-heavy nature of that event, Fusion Evolution VGC stood out with one of the highest levels of player interest and signups among all participating mods—drawing in newcomers and veterans from Fusion Evolution, VGC, Doubles, and beyond. With the Singles-based Fusion Evolution already confirmed for the upcoming PMPL, including a Doubles mod like VGC 20XX would give those same players the opportunity to enjoy a different and fresh Doubles experience, while also offering managers greater drafting flexibility, thanks to overlapping experience and interest across both Singles and Doubles communities.
This inclusion could encourage more future mods to experiment with Doubles or even hybrid formats, ultimately leading to greater variety in future editions of PMPLs.

Spectator Appeal

VGC matches are faster paced and often very dynamic to watch, with simultaneous move execution, positioning plays, and dramatic swing turns.
This offers a high spectator value during replays or potential streamed matches, making PMPL content more engaging to watch and discuss.

TD;DR:
VGC 20XX brings strategic depth, format diversity, and a new competitive angle to PMPL. As the only Doubles-based mod candidate, it fills a unique niche and expands PMPL’s scope in a meaningful way—offering both player and spectator value while enriching the tournament’s variety.

Oculars · May 12, 2025

Quinn said:
I think PMPL should be a trophy tour.

Trophies are the most sought after accolade on Smogon, the prizes for the best tours on the site. The accessibility for trophies is heavily skewed towards OU players. Permods players have none.

As someone whos tried my hardest to vouch for other tiers getting trophies specifically stuff like natdex and monotype I've come to realize that pretty much all TDs and upper staff are against giving any recognition to tiers/pet mods or anything that inst directly playable on cartridge. Despite the fact that nobody plays on cartridge, were already entirely unaffiliated with any actual official stuff from gamefreak/pokemon/nintendo and we play on an online simulator, I've been told communities outside of the playable mainline games will never be allowed to have trophies or anything official status.

Would be amazing if tours like this could give trophies but there seems to be a consensus among those in charge against this for two main reasons I see:
1. Smogon is so overly bureaucratic and bloated in policy rules that we'd instantly get shot down over some obscure precedent or ruling cooked up in a policy review thread from like 2011
2. Self interest of those who play the "official" tiers that if people could get recognition playing tours in these other arguably way more fun and interesting tiers that it would leech the already tiny playerbases of shit like NU/PU even more than these fun tiers already do. There's already a huge ammount of hate for Natdex and OMs specifically because they're so much more popular than a lot of the "official" tiers and giving anything else more recognition could only serve to make these tiers more popular.

Cant believe were gatekeeping pixels in an online pokemon fan game this hard but thats just what it is here.

anaconja · May 12, 2025

Gekokeso said:
Finally, there's iron fist. Its popularity definitely makes it a strong choice, but the general goofiness of the tier makes it hard to slot into the lineup, making it hard to discern if people actually want it in as a playable tier or are just hyping it up for shits and giggles.

bc geko is a charlatan and a fool for not recognizing the prestige of iron fist im here to advocate for it based on some points:
1. it has a ton of testing
to be exact we have saved 344 replays throughout the lifecycle of the mod:

while other mod prospectives have had to really squeeze out games to reach the quota of 15 for a tier submission i simply took 15 from this list (and then enslaved JoltSmash to test out all the customs) to do so. this shows a sustained interest in the format and extensive playtesting that ensures the meta is at least fairly balanced.

2. wide variety of viable archetypes and interesting mechanics
in addition to the traditional ones like sun/rain/sand/snow/tr/webs/screens we also have new and viable archetypes in:
- graveyard: traditional weather that boosts dark/ghost moves and damages non-dark/ghost/normals. has a dry skin clone (ghoul gobbler), a bad dreams clone (necrodancer), and a speed ability (monster mash).
- acid rain: less traditional weather that damages waters/steels if theyre not bug while healing lemons for 1/16 max hp. also is slightly anti-token (see below). has a speed ability (toxic wisdom) but otherwise is designed to be a semi-archetype like sand.
- fishing token: certain moves/items/abilities set fishing tokens on the user's side. these do nothing on their own but can be used as a currency to heal hp on switchin (bucket hat item), heal hp each turn (bon appetit), deal a large amount of damage (fish burn), or setup a late-game sweep (feebas's splash).
- diamond hand/madness counter: specific mons are labeled "diamond hand" which lets them count for daiyakuza's "The Diamond Hand" ability which guarantees crits when at least three are alive, and "Get 'Em, Boys" which does increased damage for each alive diamond hand. in addition, a madness counter can be set by a couple diamond hand mons which on switchin consumes itself to raise a diamond hand mon's highest stat by 1, which is a very powerful boost. finally, a couple mons get "Throw 'Em a Mug" which is a negative priority pivot move that heals an incoming diamond hand mon for 30% of its hp.
- trump card/balatro blast: this is a slightly less viable archetype but the idea is balatro blast has 20 more bp for each time the user's side used trump card. by loading many users of trump card and using it throughout the game, balatro blast can reach close to rage fist-level power which can enable late-game cleaners/sweepers.

in addition to these new mechanics we also have more universal ones:
- big button: clicking tera when youre not tera bug (or have Racer's Spirit or I Love Fishing) instead of terastallizing you activate big button, which makes you really big. this causes certain moves that interact with weight or minimize to never miss and certain low bp moves to have doubled damage. full information here. i personally really like the idea of this because effectively limiting tera to only bug adds the dynamism of tera without the sheer unpredictability of all the possible types one can possibly be.
- silly/lemon types: these are new types that aim to shake up the meta a little by checking stronger types and being checked by weaker types.
silly hits fairy and ghost supereffectively while resisting dark, ghost, and electric, but is weak to grass, bug and normal. it
lemon hits ground, steel, and water supereffectively while resisting ground, ice, steel, water, and itself, but is weak to bug, poison, psychic, and rock.
both of these typings are quite effective offensively. lemon is stronger than silly defensively but is held back by the fact that any mon can tera and be immune to it (another interesting mechanic interaction).

all this is to say that there is a foundation for a whole lot of team diversity to spring from. a large problem with previous mods was that teambuilding felt restricted - in particular, multiverse, fakemons frontier, and even vaporemons to a lesser extent had little flexibility in what you could do. however, many kinds of teams have been used in iron fist to at least decent success so it will most likely not get stale as the tour goes on.

3. spectator value
this feels fairly obvious - a meta with Melmetal 2, Ronald Reagan, Feebas, and Sigma Rice Lion is gonna pull in a lot of viewers. this wont be a fleeting interest though because if the allure of "meme meta is actually competitive" got me itll probably keep other people watching. imagine if jimcool covers it like he did fe and it gets a morbillion views

tldr iron fist is good because it has extensive playtesting, a diverse meta, interesting mechanics, and great watchability

Beaf Cultist · May 12, 2025

Hey all, wanted to give my two cents on all the metas and which I'd personally like to see included. My main focus here will be on meta design, resource availability, and likely signup numbers, as moderators seem to already be considering uniqueness pretty highly. Feel free to take any of these opinions with a grain of salt (and to respond if you have more experience with mods like VGC 20XX & Little Colosseum, which I'll admit I'm mostly playing by ear with), but seeing as I've played in two iterations of PMPL as well as one of SoloPL, along with many smaller Pet Mods forum and roomtours and countless games of playtesting for various mods, I'd say I'm overall quite experienced with what makes a good Pet Mod meta, as well as a good tour slot.

:sv/vaporeon:

Vaporemons
This is the easiest lock in the entire tour imo. Vaporemons has seen the most consistent play of any mod this entire gen bar none (Iron Fist comes close but hasn't existed for as long), and on top of that, it was also included last PMPL and saw generally positive reception. I will say, there were some balancing concerns last PMPL, however all of them have since been addressed after considering concerns from last year's players, so I would say Vape is the mod I am least concerned about from a balance standpoint. On top of that, Vaporemons coding is extremely solid. With the exception of one item (which has a clearly indicated placeholder effect), everything has been coded well and tested extensively, and there were no issues found during the stress testing of last PMPL, which all are major points in Vape's favor.

:sv/melmetal:

Iron Fist
Just gonna call it how I see it here - this not being a lock is just mod bias on Geko's part. This mod has received extensive playtesting over the past few months, has an exceptional amount of custom mechanics (to the point of being more comparable to something like Extreme Reboot than to Vaporemons), and is such a unique playing experience compared to all other submissions, it would just be a shame not to include it. I will say that of all the mods listed, this is one of the mods with the highest bullshit meter, as in "likelihood for a player to get farmed by a mechanic they weren't aware of before the battle." IF leaders have taken measures to minimize this with the creation of in-depth resources, but it's part of the nature of a mod of this type that such things will happen. Imo it's not a dealbreaker, but it is worth noting.

:sv/venusaur-mega:

Megas Revisited
The fact this was in PMPL 3, but isn't a lock while Teramax is, is astounding to me. Megas Revisited is an extremely solid mod with very easy-to-understand additions, and serves as an amazing replacement to M4A imo. While I will say its changes are fairly small by Pet Mods standards, I don't think it's a bad thing to have a couple mods like that in order to give new players somewhere to go while they're getting a feel for Pet Mods absurdity. Also being the only Oldgen mod submission is major points in its favor, and I know they've done some balancing since last PMPL that should hopefully make things play a bit different, so overall I'm all for it.

:sv/slugma:

Little Colosseum
I'm not super familiar with this mod, but the fact that I looked at its forum tour thread and saw 36 signups tells me all I need to know. The added appeal from being LC (a unique format compared to the other options, and likely to draw in more players) is great, and the resources are very accessible (you should put the Spreadsheet in the mod submission post tho imo). Easy slot.

:sv/iron-valiant:

Fusion Evolution [SV]
I'm not as sold on this one as you might expect, actually. Fusion Evolution is an amazing mod concept marred by chronic, systemic mismanagement of its meta. Since last year, the mod has received a complete overhaul balancing-wise, however I don't think all of those changes are positive. As a reminder, the FE meta last year was extremely unbalanced, only really beating out coding disasters like Multiverse and M4A from a player experience standpoint. While many of the broken elements have been nerfed or banned in the months since, many mons have also been buffed, including some ostensibly "UU" mons that look far stronger than OU options (looking at you, Crawnacl). Council also has a habit of being very slow to make changes, and the sample teams are outdated (they're from last year's PMPL while the current meta is drastically different). That being said, despite all my reservations, I still think it would be a mistake not to include FESV. Fusion Evolution has a long legacy in PMPL and Pet Mods as a whole, and its unique concept plus amazing sprites have always carried it even when its meta kinda stinks.

:sv/eternatus-eternamax:

TeraMax
The Geko nepotism placement. For those not in the know, TeraMax was featured in the lineup of PMPL 3, and was marked by probably the worst balancing in the entire tour outside of Multiverse. Now first off, let me start by saying I'm actually fine with giving TeraMax a second chance. The mod has seen massive overhauls since its last iteration, with major rebalancing to the core mechanics of Tera and Dynamax (which defined a lot of the issues last go around), while also featuring a ton of new mechanics from the slates that have been held since last year. I don't think TeraMax is a bad choice for a slot, but I also very much do not think it's a lock. Those new mechanics come with limited playtesting, and while I know G-Luke, Geko, and Hydrei are all experienced with competitive Pet Mods, I'm still concerned about the meta just off the basis of its many previous flaws. Overall a fine slot, but it being a "lock" seems like an overstatement of its influence.

:sv/kabutops:

Paleomons
Speaking of biased placements, here's the mod I run! I understand people see Paleomons and Blank Canvas very similarly due to them both being Fakemon mods, so you might expect me to try and compete with Blank Canvas here, but I'd actually like to see both in the final lineup, as I think they both have potential to be enjoyable experiences for players. Plus, in my opinion, Fakemon mods are some of the coolest mods out there, so having two is A-Ok in my book (free Restrictions But It's VGC btw). With all that being said, as the main playtester for Paleomons (along with Tanny89k - if you wanna say a few words about the mod here that would be really cool <3), I think the meta is in a really good place right now. All mechanics are fully coded and have been stress tested extensively, including the more complicated ones, and the meta itself is well-balanced, with nothing currently standing out as truly broken and only a couple mons being seen as completely unusable. Despite being a Fakemon mod, Paleomons is also fairly easy to get into, as custom mechanics are overall mostly quite simple, and many of the mons are based loosely on existing Pokemon. It's true that our playerbase is small, but I think that's mostly due to the fact that the mod concept draws in submitters who don't play the mod, along with our not having previously been featured in any large tournaments. My belief is that we'll be able to provide a fun experience for anyone lucky enough to be slotted in this tier, and I sincerely hope you consider Paleomons for a final slot.

:sv/kingdra:

Blank Canvas Meta A
The other Fakemon mod. I really like Blank Canvas as a mod concept - it was a lot of fun participating in the earlier slates, and it's been really cool to see mons I contributed to stay relevant as the meta developed. That being said, my biggest concern with Blank Canvas is meta balance. The meta has historically been quite unbalanced, and while efforts have been taken to rebalance some of the more polarizing elements, I'm still concerned by some of them. Additionally, while I respect the dedication to ensuring meta health, Blank Canvas just received new balance changes yesterday, outdating both the Viability Rankings and some of the Sample Teams from the original mod submission. Overall, despite some really positive aspects (I haven't mentioned the sprites yet, but they're amazing - could easily give the mod FE-like viewing appeal), I think there are definitely some major concerns when it comes to slotting Blank Canvas in PMPL, and I would understand if it didn't end up in the final lineup.

:sv/volbeat:

VGC 20XX
First off, the fact this is the only doubles mod submitted, when FEVGC drew a massive amount of signups for SoloPL, is giving it major plus points. If we ignore that part, I'm very concerned about this mod. It has imo one of the weakest submission posts so far, and I'm honestly shocked it wasn't Partially Approved instead of Fully Approved. The VR is incomplete, with many Pokemon missing (and questionable decisions like Volbeat and Illumise being ranked together despite having noticeable differences), the Spreadsheets are confusingly formatted and hard to read (and why are there two of them?), and the small amount of playtesting combined with the massive amount of changes really worries me from the standpoint of potential meta issues or unforeseen bugs. I understand we'll likely still include it just off of VGC clout alone, but I will say that this mod is by far the most likely to have issues of all the mods submitted imo.

:sv/tinkaton:

Banhammers Cycle 3
Banhammers is a really cool mod concept, and I would have zero complaints with seeing it in PMPL. That being said, in my mind Banhammers serves as a filler slot. It's a great pick if we don't have enough strong signups, but otherwise should realistically lose out to more interesting mods due to how little it changes from base. And in this case, I think we have enough good options to leave out Banhammers.

Overall if I had to pick a lineup, I'd personally go with this 8:
Vaporemons
Iron Fist
Megas Revisited
Little Colosseum
Fusion Evolution
TeraMax
Paleomons
Blank Canvas Meta A

I'm really happy with the diversity of tiers this year - of the mods we have available, I think this is about as good as it gets. I'd fully understand the arguments if either of the mods I cut end up getting included, but pls don't cut Paleo :,)

Gaboswampert · May 12, 2025

Hi! Gonna be vouching for Blank Canvas to make it into PMPL4!

Would also like to thank Fragmented for helping on these!

1. No Customs

Due to Blank Canvas not having custom moves, abilities, form changes, items, or anything that may break mid-PMPL, Blank Canvas is a very safe pick coding-wise.
We also got replays with every single one of the mons in the metagame, meaning that all of them have been tested at some point.

2. Easy to Pick Up

The lack of custom elements or mechanics in Blank Canvas make it is much easier to pick up.
For people that are new to Pet Mods overall, it also becomes an exellent choice for playing, due to making use of existing elements and clauses present in Gen 9 standard metagames, thus lending some familiarity to new players.

3. Spritework

There's very few mods that have spritework, and Blank Canvas can say its one of those few. While not every mon have been sprited at the time of writing this, they will all be sprited soon, making use of the previously made concept art to guide the spritework.
The sprites provide distinguishability between fakemons, improving the teambuilding, gameplay, spectator experience, and the quality of the matches as a whole. (very sad that sprites dont appear on replays :( ).

4. Different Power Level than Usual

Meta A is of a lower power level as compared to other mods in the pool.
Low fakemon BSTs and smaller movepools lend themselves to create a novel kind of technical gameplay you'd seldom find in higher power level mods.

Beaf Cultist said:
The meta has historically been quite unbalanced, and while efforts have been taken to rebalance some of the more polarizing elements, I'm still concerned by some of them. Additionally, while I respect the dedication to ensuring meta health, Blank Canvas just received new balance changes yesterday, outdating both the Viability Rankings and some of the Sample Teams.

Also wanted to address this really quickly.
We would like to know what do you think are those unbalanced elements. As we currently think the meta is decently well-balanced, and we haven't seen a singular archetype or mon dominating over the meta in a long while. Knowing this info could help with the balance of the metagame.

We've also went through a good playtesting period gathering the 15 replays, so we thought that doing some balance changes right after would be good, consulted it with Geko before doing said balance changes and he said that he was completely fine with it, they're also only two balance changes, one that doesn't matter for the mon's viability very much, and was to reduce the amount of viable Knock Off users in the metagame, and the second one buffed the once worst mon in the tier to possibly being decent.

This would be all! Really hoping Blank Canvas makes it to PMPL4, and good luck to the rest of the mods!

Beaf Cultist · May 13, 2025

Gaboswampert said:
Also wanted to address this really quickly.
We would like to know what do you think are those unbalanced elements. As we currently think the meta is decently well-balanced, and we haven't seen a singular archetype or mon dominating over the meta in a long while. Knowing this info could help with the balance of the metagame.

We've also went through a good playtesting period gathering the 15 replays, so we thought that doing some balance changes right after would be good, consulted it with Geko before doing said balance changes and he said that he was completely fine with it, they're also only two balance changes, one that doesn't matter for the mon's viability very much, and was to reduce the amount of viable Knock Off users in the metagame, and the second one buffed the once worst mon in the tier to possibly being decent.

Not gonna go super in-depth because I'm sure you know much more about the modern meta than I do.

Historically, mons like Vipult, Hippaint, Florustitia, and Bugswarm were quite overpowered. Over time all of them have been hit with nerfs, but I'm a bit concerned by how recently some of them were changed (such as Hippaint and now Socknbusk'n), as there hasn't really been enough time for them to settle into the meta.

It's good that you consulted Geko before making the changes, but that doesn't change that the VR and at least one sample team from your original submission are now outdated. You say the removal of Knock Off from Socknbusk'n wasn't very important, but it was a nerf to the only S-tier mon that removed a move that it was running on a sample team you provided, which sounds pretty important to me. And you've just told me the Sculpterra buff was meant to improve the viability of a bad mon in a meaningful way, which once again tells me the VR is indeed outdated.

I still support Blank Canvas for a PMPL slot, but I would say the current meta is in a pretty uncertain state due to many recent balance changes with limited testing. It's the same story as metas like Fusion Evolution and VGC 20XX, and arguably Paleomons as well. There's no shame in it - it's just the reality of mods with smaller playerbases.

Gaboswampert · May 13, 2025

Beaf Cultist said:
Not gonna go super in-depth because I'm sure you know much more about the modern meta than I do.

Historically, mons like Vipult, Hippaint, Florustitia, and Bugswarm were quite overpowered. Over time all of them have been hit with nerfs, but I'm a bit concerned by how recently some of them were changed (such as Hippaint and now Socknbusk'n), as there hasn't really been enough time for them to settle into the meta.

It's good that you consulted Geko before making the changes, but that doesn't change that the VR and at least one sample team from your original submission are now outdated. You say the removal of Knock Off from Socknbusk'n wasn't very important, but it was a nerf to the only S-tier mon that removed a move that it was running on a sample team you provided, which sounds pretty important to me. And you've just told me the Sculpterra buff was meant to improve the viability of a bad mon in a meaningful way, which once again tells me the VR is indeed outdated.

I still support Blank Canvas for a PMPL slot, but I would say the current meta is in a pretty uncertain state due to many recent balance changes with limited testing. It's the same story as metas like Fusion Evolution and VGC 20XX, and arguably Paleomons as well. There's no shame in it - it's just the reality of mods with smaller playerbases.

Fair takes tbh, Sockn can easily replace Knock on that set with Rapid Spin or Normal STAB though, as the main problems we had with Knock wasnt just from Sockn, but from having too many viable mons having Knock Off, and Sockn already has many tools at its disposition, so removing Knock Off from a mon that, while it uses Knock Off, has many tools ready to replace it, so it wont affect its viability too much, and that will reduce the pool of viable Knock Off users to a, still somewhat big, but not overwhelming degree, seems like a good decision.
Sockn was also using Knock Off on that set because it happened to be the best tool at its disposition for that set, Mach Punch is not gonna be used when having Fake Out on the set already, Normal STAB could be good too, but with Badjur on the team already, we had Normal-type attacks on the team already, and these being way stronger than anything Sockn could do, and we already had a spinner on Arsenstorm, so Knock Off gave the team a tool only Badjur had too, and due to it being the team's main sweeper, it may not want to switch in sometimes, on those cases, Sockn can switch in and Knock Off on its place.
Edit: Just updated the team! Replaced Knock with Rapid Spin, and changed Arsenstorm to have Spikes instead of Mortal Spin, also gave Substitute to Badjur over U-Turn, which is an odd pick for an SD sweeper mon, and i should've questioned that sooner before making it a sample team, my bad for that.

You are right about the Sculptera buff though, as certain archetypes, mainly Sand, should become a bit stronger with its rise, which may change the placement of one or two mons positively, but some pre-PMPL playtesting, of which we have some plans for, should help with solidifying it, and the other mons place in the metagame, as well as the Viability Rankings, and that same playtesting will help chip away to any current uncertainties about the metagame.

BlueRay · May 13, 2025

Since Beaf Cultist had some concerns about VGC 20XX’s potential inclusion in the upcoming PMPL, I’ll address them right below. If I forgot to pay attention to anything relevant, let me know.

For context, you can read Beaf’s criticism in the spoiler.

First off, the fact this is the only doubles mod submitted, when FEVGC drew a massive amount of signups for SoloPL, is giving it major plus points. If we ignore that part, I'm very concerned about this mod. It has imo one of the weakest submission posts so far, and I'm honestly shocked it wasn't Partially Approved instead of Fully Approved. The VR is incomplete, with many Pokemon missing (and questionable decisions like Volbeat and Illumise being ranked together despite having noticeable differences), the Spreadsheets are confusingly formatted and hard to read (and why are there two of them?), and the small amount of playtesting combined with the massive amount of changes really worries me from the standpoint of potential meta issues or unforeseen bugs. I understand we'll likely still include it just off of VGC clout alone, but I will say that this mod is by far the most likely to have issues of all the mods submitted imo.

First of all, I fully appreciate that you took the time to look at all the Pet Mods candidates and write a comment on their eligibility, for lack of a better term. To improve the intelligibility of some of the points you made, I’d generally recommend going into more detail, otherwise there would be no learning experience, and there would be high chance for confusion and misunderstanding. Moreover, due to different perspectives, sometimes, it can be difficult to grasp the meaning of a point being made. For instance, in which ways are the spreadsheets confusingly formatted and hard to read? What constitutes as “small amount of playtesting”? What noticeable differences do Volbeat and Illumise have? These are just some of the little things I noticed.

Now, on the topic of Volbeat and Illumise, I can understand why someone—who is seemingly unfamiliar with VGC 20XX—has some concerns about the two Bug Pokémon being ranked together. First of all, and correct me if I’m wrong, you seem to think that their “noticeable differences” should be enough to question the ranking. Moreover, since the submission approval post doesn’t necessarily ask us to provide a reasoning for the decisions we make in a viability ranking, it is understandable and very natural if a newcomer doesn’t fully understand certain ranking decisions. (Perhaps, in the next PMPL, it might not be a bad idea to require metagame descriptions to avoid any potential confusion and misunderstanding among readers). So, allow me to explain Volbeat and Illumise’s placement in the viability ranking.

These two Bug Pokémon are primarily used for two reasons: speed control + damage control. In that regard, even with their small differences (such as Atk vs SpA preference and movepool), they are functionally the same. Whether one uses Volbeat or Illumise fully depends on the needs of their team. If your team can’t handle special attacks very well, Struggle Bug Illumise is your friend. Due to its lower Atk stat, it takes less damage from Foul Play. However, this decision invites Wide Guard and anti stat drop strategies (such as Defiant) if one of them makes use of them. If your team is weak to one or both of them, Volbeat can be used as an alternative since it has Skitter Smack—a single target move, unlike Struggle Bug. A similar logic can be applied to Lunge (by Volbeat) vs Charm (by Illumise) where one deals damage and isn’t hindered by anti priority measures while the other option can’t weaken Dark Pokémon at all and has to watch out for anti priority measures. There are clear trade-offs; one isn’t “better” than the other. As these Pokémon are functionally the same (speed control + damage control), there is no reason to separate them in the viability ranking, imo.

Moving on, VGC 20XX had a tournament which ended roughly one month + some weeks ago. People provided feedback, and since then, there haven’t been any complains about imbalance so far after they were dealt with, to my knowledge. Furthermore, I should point out that due to the nature of VGC (you can double target a Pokémon, you have a plethora of different support options to mitigate offensive pressure, etc.), this format is less likely to suffer from metagame issues. Just to be clear, I’m not saying there won’t be any problems, just that the odds are less likely in general.

While it’s true that there are many changes to make one worry about potential bug issues, I’d like to clarify that, at minimum, half of the changes are trivial, such as BP or accuracy increasement, for instance. Others are a copy of existing vanilla material, such as Spiral Punch being a Water type version of Drain Punch. Not only that, some other elements are basically a copy of other mods where they have already been shown to function properly and which still function in a new setting like VGC 20XX, such as Ancient Core, Paranoia, Inflammation, Mind Control or Archetype, for instance. You should be able to observe most of the “complex” custom elements in the replays. Furthermore, there have been close to 50 games being played publicly against other people to examine them and find out whether there’s a bug or if the new patch actually solved an issue.

As the coder of this project, I’ve also tested custom elements privately. While there’s always a chance for a bug to appear in any mod, I’d like to emphasize that the combination of private and public testing reduces the risk of one making it into PMPL. Therefore, I do not believe that the high amount of changes and the worry about potential metagame and bug issues are reason enough to exclude VGC 20XX from the PMPL. This is especially true when there haven’t even been any substantial arguments made that VGC 20XX in particular actually suffers from (unaddressed) coding issues. Any bug found has always been immediately addressed and solved. And it’s not like we couldn’t simply mention or leave out something if something doesn’t work properly, as demanded by Geko. It’s not like people couldn’t just ask for special replays where every relevant complex custom element be demonstrated. Besides, in the context of coding, if we were to take beef’s claim of extensive testing in Paleomons for granted—and I’m not doubting it, to be clear—, why should we have now doubts and worries about potential bugs in VGC 20XX which also takes this business seriously?

With regard to the spreadsheets, which are not part of the approval requirement as far as I understand it, I’ll simply defer to Sugarbear since they are the creator of them in case they want to explain why there are two spreadsheets. The way I see it the two different spreadsheets serve an organisational and structural purpose where one provides information on “new” custom elements while the other focuses on changes done to existing Pokémon, abilities, etc. Where would sugarbear find the space to have all of them in one document? Which effect would that even have on the reader? I, for one, and I’m not sure how other people see it, certainly do not want to look through an entire document just to look up a specific information during a battle; it’s time and energy consuming. Imo, it’s much simpler to have information separated by “Is it a new custom stuff?” and “Or is it a change made to an existing stuff)”, new vs old basically. And another important question would be, what would be an efficient and sensible way to solve the two spreadsheet case? That is if having two spreadsheets is even an issue.

Where I agree is that there could be some visual improvements to make certain information more palatable to the readers. In that case, it is simply a matter of addressing it rather than being part of the reason as to why VGC 20XX should be excluded, imo. Especially when, according to Geko’s submission post, we have until 17.05.2025 to make / edit a submission post. Furthermore, I’d like to point out some of Geko’s words in his submission post:

Up until manager signups go up, this thread will be open for submissions.
Your mod doesn't need to be finished by the time the PMPL rolls around, just make sure your current meta has been coded correctly, and you are allowed to run slates during the submission duration up until the time of the tournament beginning. However, you should pause slates of your mod during the duration of the tournament.
You are allowed to be hosting weekend or room tours during the duration of the submission process. In fact, its encouraged to do so to show that your meta is active and being developed at the present.
A basic viability list: It doesn’t need to be a full viability ranking (even though having one heavily improves the mod’s standing) but just having a general idea of how good the different pokémon in a meta are will allow players to catch the gist of the meta quicker.

Intentionally or not, his words seem to imply time—time for any of us to make adjustments and similar things where necessary right before we move on. Otherwise, it would not make sense to hold tournaments, have active slates, etc., which would naturally require one to update one’s own work.

As for the viability ranking, I’d argue it features most if not all of the relevant Pokémon to give people a general gist of the metagame, except for the newest stuff from the most recent slate that has been coded, which I’ve explicitly mentioned. Sugarbear and I did exactly what Geko wanted from us. As per Geko’s own words, a viability ranking doesn’t have to be complete as you can see right above. And it’s not like we couldn’t just update the submission post if necessary. If there are people who really want a complete list of all available Pokémon in a ranking, we could certainly do so and give an indication like “hesitating” or sth to ensure that while Pokémon X has been used, it was not enough to determine an accurate ranking but it did leave some early impressions. Hence why we decided to put it in C or whatever.

Concept · May 13, 2025

I’ll make a longer post tomorrow because I don’t have a lot of time today, but I do not believe Blank Canvas should even be considered before the Fakemon “piss” receives a name change. I’ve expressed concerns with this name since the creation of the metagame, although there is at least some moderation with names in Blank Canvas it’s beyond me that this is a name that has not been changed when it came out in the first cycle of fakemons.

Gaboswampert · May 13, 2025

Concept said:
I’ll make a longer post tomorrow because I don’t have a lot of time today, but I do not believe Blank Canvas should even be considered before the Fakemon “piss” receives a name change. I’ve expressed concerns with this name since the creation of the metagame, although there is at least some moderation with names in Blank Canvas it’s beyond me that this is a name that has not been changed when it came out in the first cycle of fakemons.

Nobody else has asked for a Piss name change, nor is it impactful at all both competitively, and quality-wise.
The team who made Piss agreed on naming it like that, so it would be odd if we changed its name, not only without their permission, but after 8 months (with only 6 days left for it to be 9 months) of Piss already existing.
The only two name changes we've ever done in Blank Canvas after a mon has already been released, was an attempted one at Wizhazard, because the team who made it happened to not agree on the name last minute, but at the end Wizhazard stayed as its name, and Jack-o-Swarm, which its old name didn't fit the Showdown character limit for a mon, Piss does not fit any of these criteria.
It also adds a certain degree of sillyness I belive some players may find fun and like.

Beaf Cultist · May 13, 2025

BlueRay said:
Since Beaf Cultist had some concerns about VGC 20XX’s potential inclusion in the upcoming PMPL, I’ll address them right below. If I forgot to pay attention to anything relevant, let me know.

I don't really wanna derail this thread with long reply chains about individual mods, so if you have any further clarifying questions, feel free to ask me about them on Discord. For now, though, I'll respond to what you said here.

The goal of my post was to give a general overview about all of the mods up for consideration and to rank them based on my own personal beliefs about their metas/eligibility. I didn't get hyper-specific in a lot of cases because I'm not intimately familiar with all of these mods, and I feel it would be more appropriate for the mod leaders themselves to extol the virtues and address the criticisms of their mods.

As for what I did say about VGC 20XX, I'll go over your points in order. To start, I know very, very little about VGC. However, what I do know a lot about is making viability rankings. Volbeat and Illumise stood out to me because not only did you rank them in the same subrank, but you ranked them on the same line, implying you think they are virtually identical. This presents a twofold problem. Firstly, they aren't identical. You say the stat differences don't have a major impact, but I find that very unlikely if these mons run any attacking moves at all. However, in the case that they actually don't, we come across the second problem: when two mons are extremely similar to each other in role, one always comes out on top. This can be seen very clearly in mons like Indeedee and Toxtricity, where both forms, despite being near identical to each other, often end up in different tiers due to one cannibalizing the usage of the other. Having these forms be ranked identically is, from my experience, a hallmark of a very preliminary VR which represents a meta where neither mon has been tested enough to know which one is preferable on a team, hence why I pointed it out as a cause for concern.

Now that's mostly a non-issue, as like you said, Geko's post clearly outlines that VRs can be preliminary. However, what's a lot more glaring in my eyes is how not all fully-evolved mons are ranked. In fact, there's so many mons not listed that I can't even mention them all within a reasonable amount of space, but I'll just point out Ninetales, Escavalier, and Possmortem as examples. I would understand if all these mons were unviable, however your VR has a D tier in which "Almost Every NFE mon" is ranked, implying it serves as the "Unviable" tier, and yet none of these mons are ranked there either. Again, from my experience this is a hallmark of a very early VR in which many mons have not been tested and as such cannot be ranked, which is a big cause for concern when we're considering placing this meta in the single most prestigious Pet Mods tournament.

Also, I have a question. Are you planning to code the most recent slate before PMPL? Because if so, then those mons not being listed on the VR/other resources is VERY relevant, as they could completely shake up the meta and nobody looking at the resources provided would be any the wiser.

As for playtesting, this tour you're talking about had 7 signups and 12 total games played, which is such a small sample size that it wouldn't even meet the replay criteria for mod submissions. I'll take your word on the public games + private testing - assuming those were as extensive as you're saying, I'll believe that there probably won't be any issue on the coding side. However, I'm still very concerned from a balancing perspective. There just isn't anywhere near enough serious gameplay of this mod (indicated by its lacking resources) for me to be comfortable saying the meta is balanced, and I personally feel including it would be a coin toss on whether it's an enjoyable experience for players or not. That's not to say we haven't included similar tiers in past PMPL iterations - however, those tiers have often been the ones that have had major issues, such as Multiverse and Burgundy.

The spreadsheets not being part of the approval process is lowkey confusing to me, as they're absolutely relevant for players. Speaking from experience as both a manager and a player here, it is very important that mods have both robust spreadsheets and legible teambuilders, for ease of building as well as clearer understanding of all the custom mechanics. On the spreadsheets VGC 20XX currently has, there should not be two of them. Custom elements and edited base elements should not be separate from each other, as doing that means I (and your players) will need to have both sheets open in order to look anything up, in case I suddenly come across an element from the other sheet and have to switch over. Additionally, the sheets are completely unformatted, confusingly laid out, and difficult to parse through quickly - if you compare them to other mods' sheets that have been submitted, the difference is night and day. I understand the argument that since they weren't part of the mod submission requirements, they shouldn't be considered when determining the mod's eligibility, however I'm evaluating these tiers based on what I personally know to be important for players/viewers, and spreadsheets are absolutely one of those things.

By all means, feel free to make improvements to these resources. I'm totally willing to change my opinion on the mod if the problems I currently see go away, and I think it would be great to bring the VGC crowd into PMPL, so if anything I'll be rooting for you. However, until then I'm not going to ignore the issues I see with VGC 20XX's current resources.

Quinn · May 13, 2025

Just a small post on all the mods submitted so far and the ones I’d personally vouch for to be included. Note: I haven’t played most of these mods but I did read through all the spreadsheets and available resources.

Unmovables: Fusion Evolution Gen 9, Teramax, Vaporemons
I think all of these mods are fine. Though, as Beaf Cultist mentioned, Teramax was the most hated mod last season but that might just be a few loud voices. Perhaps this time we could send a short survey to the starters at the end of the tournament what their opinion was on the tier they played. Either way, I don't think including these tiers will hurt the tournament.

Very Likely:
Megas Revisited
I agree with Beaf again this mod is a nobrainer, in my opinion. It’s well-liked and easy to understand, which I think is important. Having too many complicated mods with unique mechanics makes it hard to follow.

Little Colosseum
This is my own mod, so of course I’d love to see it added =). It was designed to be played in a tournament setting and has already been tested in a tournament. I believe it's ready for the main tournament.

VGC 20XX
I recommend merging the two spreadsheets, at least for PMPL. Aside from that, I’d really like to see a VGC-style mod included. We've already seen in SMPL that it attracts a new player base.

Shaky Ground: Blank Canvas, Banhammers Cycle 3, Paleomons, Iron Fist
All of these mods look good to me besides iron fist. Personally, Blank Canvas and Banhammers are my favorites. My least favorite is definitely Iron Fist. It feels overwhelming due to amount of new mechanics and changes it’s so far from vanilla Pokémon that I honestly have no idea what is going on in this mod.

My lineup would be:
Megas Revisited
Fusion Evolution Gen 9
Teramax
Vaporemons
Little Colosseum
VGC 20XX
Blank Canvas
Banhammers

NOTE: i don't know the communities of these mods and what mods are active or dead i just looked at their spreadsheets and resources and judged purely on how well they fit in this tournament.

Tournament PMPL 4: Policy Discussion and Gameplan

Mind the bad garmmar.

Part 1: The Tier Submission Process​

Part 2: Systems put in place in case of failure​

Teambuilder legality​

Midweek Tier Changes​

Crashes / DH connectivity issues​

Part 3: Starting from Scratch(?)​

The Cable Guy

Haha, I love these little Darkner guys ♡

Mind the bad garmmar.

The Cable Guy

Mind the bad garmmar.

The Cable Guy

Mind the bad garmmar.

Mind the bad garmmar.

Attachments

^_*

Mind the bad garmmar.

2 liter machine broke we got 1 liter tho

my dishonest reaction

Just a Little Guy

i wish microwaves were real

Just a Little Guy

i wish microwaves were real

i wish microwaves were real

Just a Little Guy

^_*

Part 1: The Tier Submission Process

Part 2: Systems put in place in case of failure

Teambuilder legality

Midweek Tier Changes

Crashes / DH connectivity issues

Part 3: Starting from Scratch(?)