This thread is a discussion thread and NOT a finalized rule; please read this post to understand what we're hoping to chat about here. We want your input!
Heads up, wall of text that may be harsh.
Just today, a new pet mod was introduced. http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3480501 Perhaps this is par for the course in Other Metagames. Perhaps you take what you can get when you leave behind the behemoth of standard OU. But I can't help that feel that there is more potential here than half a dozen, underpopulated pet mods.
The OP references four other similar concepts, an although I'm sure Joimmons would play quite differently, the issue is these all attract the same type of people from an at the moment quite limited pool, which is also being drained by various gimmick metas. Imagine if the NU or RU userbase was split into 6 or more metas. There is a reason PU is not officially supported. How do you make accurate bans with five people playing? How do you make nerfs and buffs? "Standard sets" would be anything more than one person uses.
Mods are more theorymon than pokemon right now. I have sat in various servers and watched so much discussion of an unplayed mod come to nothing. Yeah, we all have cool ideas, but these ideas are barely, or never, used. Meanwhile I could get ten or twenty games in OU in the same time I could get one in any modmeta, at any time of day, and the next hundred games in OU would be against a much wider range of opponents and teams. There are more tools for analysing the OU meta; it is more complex and deeper simply because so many people are working on it. There are a lot of problems with OU, and a lot of changes I have enjoyed seeing and playing in OM. But OU still has the largest advantage of all; it is a living thing.
I look at all these changes, and I can't help but think that a better change than has ever been implemented in a mod is: "Twenty more people now play this meta." Even in random chats with single digit populations, people discuss making more new pet mods. Do you want just two people playing each other? Or maybe everyone can have their own mod they can't play, but at least they can talk about it to themselves in chat. Am I alone in thinking one mod with 50 people is worth far more than five mods with ten people each?
I give a lot of credit to the initiative modding takes, making a vision into reality. But the earth would not be beautiful without people to admire it. We are sculpting a universe of deserted planets. And frankly, I don't think this new world distinguishes itself enough to be the one to unite us. Pet mods of the past have already drawn their user bases and are growing extremely slowly, if at all. What different people are being drawn in by Joimmons?
I suppose there is one group--freshness junkies. Individuals that love trying new things, but things get stale quickly. That's why people in chat and on threads are constantly suggesting new changes and mods rather than making battles in the mod they have, or having deeper discussions of what already exists. We love the feeling of being pioneers. But pioneers blaze the wilderness and make a civilization out of it. They don't just keep going further in leaving wilderness behind them. That would be as meaningless as going in circles. In my mind, developing something fully is a much newer, fresher experience than starting from scratch again, and again, and again, and going nowhere.
Am I really saying more pet mods have no value? Well if people play them, of course they have value. And perhaps I'm alone in this opinion. Perhaps everyone in OM prefers extremely small enclaves and communities, despite the difficulty of getting battles and the shallowness of meta analysis. But I don't want more type chart tweaks, more buffs to NUs, more making cool changes and seeing what breaks. I want to see more life. I want to be able to find analyses and sets. I want to have teammate and counter stats. I want to see replays and videos. I want a ladder. I want tournaments. And if a new meta can't produce these things, then I at least have no interest in how it fixes hazards, or weather, or what pokemon it plays favorites to. I've seen it before. The differences from other pet mods are less than nothing compared to the differences from OU's vitality.
Best of luck Joim, and all the other aspiring modders. I hope you hit it big. I just don't see how you are going to.