Arceus and DPP Ubers - Final Take


A topic that's came up in the past and never had an official resolution is how Arceus should be treated in DPP Ubers. This 10+ year old debate still makes an appearance in Ubers often enough that I'm making this thread to provide options, discuss with the community, and then make an official tiering decision call on how to handle Arceus.

Small disclaimer: Finding information on the history of all this is tricky and mostly second hand, so take any past info with a grain of salt.

Background

Arceus wasn't obtainable in-game until its events released it at level 100 during Platinum. It was available through glitches, but there were no legal means to bring it to a battle. As it was only legally obtainable at that time as an event lv 100 Pokemon, it couldn't be EV trained beyond 100 EVs in a single stat through the use of vitamins - this was known as "Farceus". Back when Shoddy was the simulator, Arceus was never coded in despite its release due to technical difficulties - the EV limit couldn't be programmed in. This meant that Arceus was technically banned, but never given a proper chance or reason. Time moved on and the community came to accept* this technical ban as normal as DPP ended and grew old, and its stayed that way to the present day.

* This was a contested debate even before Arceus's official release. Many arguments used here no longer apply to what we know today.

A couple of years ago a glitch was discovered that allowed you to both capture Arceus and escape the area, theoretically allowing battle with it. As it can be caught at lv 80, it can be EV trained as normal - I will refer to this edition as "Fullceus". If leveled to 100, it can even be transferred to modern games, so it is effectively cartridge legal. This was all figured out in the previous thread on the topic, and is a highly suggested read to those wishing to discuss things here as I will be using arguments brought up there.

The Present

With the background cleared up let's bring this to topic. Arceus is banned without due process, and this thread aims to give it exactly that. As Ubers operates on the standard of allowing as many Pokemon as competitively possible (otherwise expressed as minimizing bans), I believe that Arceus should be looked at as a new Pokemon to the DPP Ubers metagame and given a tiering decision from that perspective. That means the following choices:

1) Arceus is enabled and unrestricted. (Fullceus)
2) Arceus is enabled and restricted. (Farceus)
3) Arceus is officially banned for being too strong in DPP Ubers, rather than for being unavailable.

The reasoning behind an unrestricted Arceus makes it my preferred choice. For all intents and purposes, Fullceus is legal. Even though obtaining it can be considered a glitch, Smogon is only avoidant of mechanical glitches, rather than those that affect Pokemon availability. Back in Diamond and Pearl, Darkrai and Shaymin were only obtainable through a similar void/tweaking glitch that Arceus is available through now, yet they were enabled on Shoddy before their events. Glitches are generally banned if detrimental to competitive play, which this doesn't fall under. While these Pokemon were not playable on WiFi, we simulated based on local battles, where these Pokemon could be played with.
NOTE: Event move Arceus (any set with Shadow Force, Spacial Rend, or Roar of Time) would still have its Farceus restrictions.

Farceus is a secondary method to allowing Arceus that I believe is a poor choice of action for reasons covered earlier, but is mentioned as a possibility for the glitch avoidant among us. It would take a significant community consensus for this to be the course of action, and I think should only be considered as a complex ban aimed to balance Arceus in the metagame rather than elected for as a policy decision against glitched Pokemon.

Officially banning Arceus is the flip side of things. From early discussions with players, there are those that either feel that Arceus is simply too strong to allow in DPP Ubers (especially in its unrestricted form), or feel that the metagame should be untouched and banning Arceus is the means to that end. To those that feel this way - you should post your reasoning. Making the official call to ban Arceus is possible given the unique circumstances surrounding it, but it should be justified properly.

To bring this topic to a conclusion, 1 will be considered the primary choice and will be chosen if discussion is either inconclusive or has low community participation. The default choice for Ubers should be to keep Pokemon wherever possible and those that feel Arceus is "too much" for DPP should argue as such rather than appeal to an arguably false tradition such as metagame age. Smogon has changed past metagames on bigger discoveries than this.

That being said, there will be an understandable perspective that rocking the boat is undesired or unnecessary, however, this loophole has been left open to debate for over 10 years. If you have a horse in this race, you should give your opinion. I don't aim to enforce a choice that is widely unpopular and have no strong opinion either way - I'm trying to give the playerbase room to decide with a justified default choice to break any locks. I mainly want this to have an official resolution before DPP Ubers features in the 2020 tournament circuit and in our upcoming team tournament in <2 weeks. Thank you for reading!

edit: If you have an informed opinion on this and don't have PR access, you can send me your thoughts in a forum conversation and I can proxy post on your behalf.
 
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steelskitty

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so i'd be in favor of keeping arceus out of dpp ubers altogether. my reasoning isn't really entrenched in ~policy precedent~ nor on whether full/farceus would break the tier. instead, it's based on something way more subjective but also probably more important: fun.

my main concern with adding full arceus is that dpp ubers will become way too similar to bw ubers. the metagame effect of including a thing like arceus is obvious -- it'll be super centralizing, your team will suck if it doesn't have it, and a significant portion of games will come down to successfully predicting what sort of arceus your opponent has. none of this is inherently bad, not by any stretch -- bw ubers has always been and will always be my favorite ubers gen, and my points in that previous sentence are taken pretty directly from the most obvious conclusions arising from my metagame experience there. the bad thing is when dpp ubers just becomes bw ubers but without team preview.

to expand on what i mean by that: check out the bw and dpp ubers vr threads. yeah, a lot of stuff is shifted around a trivial number of places, but if you were to take arceus out of the bw ubers vr the pokemon in both gens' vr threads would be almost identical. the point here is that, more than anything else, the key differentiating factor between the two tiers' metagames is that bw has arceus and dpp does not. now, yeah, you have genesect in bw2, and for those reasons you wouldn't be caught dead using something like scizor in bw, and yeah, you have a few team-specific guys like terrakion and excadrill….but aside from those, what you're gonna see if you bring fullceus into dpp is a set of viable pokemon nearly identical to that of bw. kyogre and dialga and palkia and giratina-o and lati@s and deoxyses and tyranitar and darkrai and groudon and ho-oh and tentacruel are all giant parts of both tiers already. it wouldn't make sense that including arceus in dpp would change the usage or viability of any of those guys, because, again, the tier would just look way more similar to bw.

now, if bw ubers is my favorite ubers, why wouldn't I want dpp to look more like bw? well, from my experience in multiple gens of ubers, the fun thing about having/playing multiple gens of ubers in the first place is that they are notably different from each other. I don't think it's a huge stretch to say that's a big reason having multiple gens of tiers in tours is such a big part of this site, but having different versions of the same gen (like bw and bw2, d/p and dpp, rs and rse) totally isn't. why would you play bw when you can play bw2? why sm instead of usm? the question will then become: why play dpp ubers when you can have bw? the inclusion of arceus in bw is such a huge part of what makes bw bw, much like how the inclusion of primal groudon in oras is what makes oras oras and not bw extended mix/vip (ft. xerneas).

put another way: im feeling as though the burden of proof here is on pro-arceus dudes to explain why having what's nearly a carbon copy of bw without team preview is fun/necessary. does it make sense from a legalistic, policy-minded standpoint to include arceus in dpp? I mean, probably -- it's been legal in cartridge dpp since before I even joined smogon. but inserting arceus into the tier, while adhering to one precedent, comes at the risk of slighting a much more fundamental one: the precedent of keeping tiers fun.
 

M Dragon

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The reasoning behind an unrestricted Arceus makes it my preferred choice. For all intents and purposes, Fullceus is legal. Even though obtaining it can be considered a glitch, Smogon is only avoidant of mechanical glitches, rather than those that affect Pokemon availability. Back in Diamond and Pearl, Darkrai and Shaymin were only obtainable through a similar void/tweaking glitch that Arceus is available through now, yet they were enabled on Shoddy before their events. Glitches are generally banned if detrimental to competitive play, which this doesn't fall under. While these Pokemon were not playable on WiFi, we simulated based on local battles, where these Pokemon could be played with.
NOTE: Event move Arceus (any set with Shadow Force, Spacial Rend, or Roar of Time) would still have its Farceus restrictions.
Smogon has never implemented or considered legal anything that is only obtainable via glitch. For example, in the same games it is perfectly possible to have a 100% legal Nasty Plot Aura Sphere Gengar because of another glitch.
For that reason, using a glitch as a reason to allow a certain pokemon is never a good justification. Where is the limit? I could argue that Nasty Plot Gengar in OU is as bad as fullceus in Ubers, and they are only obtanaible with a glitch.
About Shaymin and Darkrai, they were released by mistake and they were shortly removed after that.


About allowing Farceus or not, I think that Farceus would completely change the tier and that is something I would like to avoid. The other big changes in old gens have been because we discovered that we were not following the correct mechanics, and this is not the case.

This thread should be about allowing farceus or not allowing it.
Fullceus should not be an option.
 
What M Dragon said. As the one alongside BKC that actively pushed for this, thinking about allowing glitches is definetely out of the question and shouldn't be the 'default' option. It also sets a terrible precedent for tiering and there's 0 logic behind it. If something is legal, it's allowed; if it's not, it shouldn't be. There are tons of similar glitches that could be added by that norm, and they haven't been included in simulators.

About the other argument posted, keeping tiers fun isn't what we do in tiering at all. Fun is, as you say, subjective, and it holds no place in this matter. It's this sole fact that DPP Ubers has had Arceus removed for no logical reason for 10 years, other than nostalgic old players thinking that no changes were needed because the tier was decent and stable, and no one actively wanting to change it. Who the hell cares if it would become 'too similar' to BW Ubers? Even if it ends up being so, I genuinely can't think of why this is any relevant to the topic of discussion, other than your subjective preferences.

Arceus has never been tested properly, or given a chance, because nobody cared about this in what's already a decade long metagame. Nobody can argue whether it's broken or not, I personally don't think it is, but that doesn't matter. This is something that needs to be fixed for good, whether people like it or not. Arceus being out of the metagame for, again, no clear reason is a terrible tiering mistake, and it has lasted for way too long already. A change needs to be done.
 
I’ve seen some arguments citing LC’s implementation of the pomeg glitch, which allow mons like Tri Attack Porygon and Hydro Pump Staryu to be used, sets a precedent for glitched Arceus (fullceus) in DPP Ubers. I do not think the pomeg glitch decision is applicable to this decision for a number of reasons. First, LC tiers are the exception to the rule, not the rule itself; in every other tier, glitches are banned. It is only in LC that this particular glitch is allowed. Secondly, LC decisions are independent of level 100 metagames, due to the unique nature of level 5 mechanics; you have metagames where all forms of trapping are legal and where items like Eviolite and Berry Juice are banned or have been discussed to be banned. There are many unique exceptions made for LC metagames in order for them to be playable, and the implementation of the Pomeg glitch is one of them. There is no precedent for allowing a glitched pokemon in a level 100 tier, and for that reason, I do not support ever releasing Fullceus.

Farceus is really what should be discussed in this thread.
 

Myzozoa

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I thought people played a lot of farceus ubers during the time when gen 4 was the active gen, but I could be misremembering. If I recall correctly, it doesn't change the tier much, as others have said. The references and comparisons itt to BW ubers (which has Ferrothorn I would remind you) are mystifying and tangential. I feel like what you get with Farceus isn't that game breaking, it can either run a CM set that is worse than Mewtwo or an SD set that is actually a welcome addition to the diversity of DPP ubers where you don't have a bulky SD pokemon with a relevant priority move besides Rayquaza.
 
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I thought people played a lot of farceus ubers during the time when gen 4 was the active gen, but I could be misremembering. If I recall correctly, it doesn't change the tier much, as others have said. The references and comparisons itt to BW ubers (which has Ferrothorn I would remind you) are mystifying and tangential. I feel like what you get with Farceus isn't that game breaking, it can either run a CM set that is worse than Mewtwo or an SD set that is actually a welcome addition to the diversity of DPP ubers where you don't have a bulky SD pokemon with a relevant priority move besides Rayquaza.
Farceus is tier-warping for sure. I remember playing in a pretty stacked Farceus tour back in 2016 with all the modern DPP Ubers players and Farceus had 100% usage. Arceus-Fighting (best Darkrai check, general utility, cm), Arceus-Ghost (CM with lots of coverage options, SR WoW, 2 atks WoW), Arceus-Normal (SD Extremespeed), Arceus-Steel (SD Recover, CM, Roar), Arceus-Grass (WoW support, T-Wave support, CM), and Arceus-Ground (SD). To counteract its presence, Latias, Garchomp, Darkrai, ScarfTar, Rain Fossils, and SpD Roar Ogre all saw a major jump in usage. Farceus is strong, its versatile, and is astonishingly bulky (calcs below for reference). Fighting and Ghost are probably close to S-tier, Steel and Normal in A/A+, then the rest of em scattered in A-/B+.

The BW comparison is interesting to me because BW is an innately more offensive metagame than DPP and therefore pressures Arceus more than the DPP meta can. Spikes are more prevalent (Ferrothorn), as is shuffling from Giratina, Kyogre, and Groudon. Genesect frequently cheeses CM formes with Iron Head. Lati twins run Roar and Psyshock. Kyogre gets Scald and can burn formes instead of just phazing, meaning it can win long-term. Mewtwo gets Psytrike. Tentacruel gets Rain Dish (turns Arc-Fighting into a defensive liability). Arceus just has less threatening it in DPP and is stronger because of it.

252 Atk Garchomp Outrage vs. 100 HP / 100 Def Arceus-Ghost: 154-183 (37.9 - 45%) -- guaranteed 3HKO
252 SpA Soul Dew Latios Draco Meteor vs. 100 HP / 100 SpD Arceus-Ghost: 270-318 (66.5 - 78.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Kyogre Water Spout (150 BP) vs. 100 HP / 100 SpD Arceus-Ghost in Rain: 351-414 (86.4 - 101.9%) -- 12.5% chance to OHKO
252+ Atk Life Orb Groudon Earthquake vs. 100 HP / 100 Def Arceus-Ghost: 204-241 (50.2 - 59.3%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252+ SpA Dialga Draco Meteor vs. 100 HP / 100 SpD Arceus-Ghost: 220-259 (54.1 - 63.7%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Palkia Hydro Pump vs. 100 HP / 100 SpD Arceus-Ghost in Rain: 255-301 (62.8 - 74.1%) -- guaranteed 2HKO
252 SpA Life Orb Darkrai Focus Blast vs. 100 HP / 100 SpD Arceus-Fighting: 137-162 (33.7 - 39.9%) -- guaranteed 3HKO

It can sponge some of the hardest hits the tier has to offer, especially at +1 SpD or when it resists them. You almost always have to resort to defensive answers or itself to win.
 

Jibaku

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I think the difference between NP Aura Sphere Gengar, glitch Darkrai/Shaymin, and Fullceus is that Fullceus can be transferred into newer games (with certain restrictions...) and is technically a legal Pokemon. But allowing Fullceus with that in mind would open up another question for me: how would we handle the use of Mimic glitch to get illegal move combinations that could pass the transfer hack check, such as Sleep Powder + Spikes Roserade? (if they do, anyways. Correct me if I'm wrong on this). After all, they are technically considered legal Pokemon.

With that said, I echo the sentiments that Farceus should be the focus here. Or at least, not the keep Arceus banned for the sake of preserving tradition option. I think it's incredibly silly to maintain a metagame based off a simulator's shortcomings, and we've never given Arceus an actual chance. Keeping DPP separate from BW is a cute thought, but also incredibly subjective. Highly doubt it'll be broken, but will be a gamechanger for sure.

free acid rain
 

Kevin Garrett

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I vaguely recall there being discussions over the inclusion of Farceus in Season 10 of Smogon Tour during the development and short-lived transition to PokeLab. The players at the time were not in favor of its inclusion in the metagame. As much of a question as it is about could this be implemented in the tier, it’s also a question of should it be allowed for the benefit of the metagame. If there’s a similar dissension among currently active DPP Uber players, then there’s little value in debating if it could philosophically be permitted in the tier.
 

keys

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I'd like to begin by tackling the single most relevant point to all of this discussion, the fact that Option 1 (enabled and unrestricted Arceus) is being set as the primary choice or default in case of inconclusive discussions.
To bring this topic to a conclusion, 1 will be considered the primary choice and will be chosen if discussion is either inconclusive or has low community participation.
Regardless of how you feel about Arceus and its impact on DPP Ubers, that stance is an incredibly misguided attempt at dealing with this issue. We're talking about completely flipping a decade-old lower-tier metagame upside down. In these situations more than any other, the onus should rest on the side trying to radically tamper with the current state of the tier. The status quo should prevail in cases of inconclusive discussions, meaning any modification to the tier should only ever be the result of overwhelming support, not the other way around. Despite Ubers' current attempts to minimise bans and allow as many strategies as possible, that is hardly relevant since that strict policy itself is only set upon newer generations and there is no tangible existing policy that we can use to fall back on for DPP Ubers, so extending that as an excuse to facilitate the entry of Arceus in any capacity is unreasonable at best. How are playerbases supposed to ensure that these discussions are handled reasonably and due process is followed by Tier Leaders when it's possible to arbitrarily set the default on a proposed metagame that has never existed while ignoring the actual tier that has been actively played for over a decade? This is essentially setting the standard upon retroactively applying policy to entirely alter an oldgen, which just does not fit the spirit of how these tiers are dealt with on Smogon. Going back a couple months, these past generations were frozen in place for other lower tiers, and while this policy does not directly extend to Ubers (although I wouldn't mind if it did), the general sentiment behind that development, and one that permeates Smogon tiering as a whole is that the tiering of these ancient generations should be prevented and these tiers shouldn't be changing its pool of elements over time, unless it concerns game mechanics (which is something I personally agree with). The "organic" state and stability of these tiers is vital, and to bring about such a profound and thorough change should require substantial backing from the side proposing such change, not from the side aiming to maintain the status quo, and I just do not see anything close to that level of support for Arceus to be allowed into DPP Ubers on those terms. With that in mind, I sincerely hope that the default event in case of an inconclusive discussion can be altered to fulfil these concerns, in order to ensure that altering oldgen metagames is at least made as a result of considerable backing by the playerbase and to also avoid setting a dangerous precedent where the goal posts can be moved to manufacture an intended result by the people making the decisions. One more thing I'd like to mention in this vein, I was initially against even considering Arceus and I'd like to apologise for that, because these discussion threads are always a positive and discussion should always be encouraged, I was too focused on the outcome of not wanting to touch the tier that I overlooked the benefits to even just discussing it.

Moving onto the debate itself, M Dragon has already elegantly tackled the "glitch aspect" of Fullceus and I admittedly am not well-versed in that subject to comment on how precedents work in this regard (but it seems like allowing the glitch is not the preferred route in these cases so that's also something to be considered), so I will instead delve into other points.
I vaguely recall there being discussions over the inclusion of Farceus in Season 10 of Smogon Tour during the development and short-lived transition to PokeLab. The players at the time were not in favor of its inclusion in the metagame. As much of a question as it is about could this be implemented in the tier, it’s also a question of should it be allowed for the benefit of the metagame. If there’s a similar dissension among currently active DPP Uber players, then there’s little value in debating if it could philosophically be permitted in the tier.
I'm instead more interested in discussing Kevin Garrett's post which I believe to be one of the critical dimensions of this decision: the fact that DPP players did not and still do not want Arceus in the tier. This arceus conundrum has been a hot button topic for a decade, quite literally, and there have been multiple opportunities to free it into DPP Ubers. A few people claim that inertia on the decision-makers' end is the main reason for these discussions never going anywhere, but the truth is, in no era has there ever been any pressure from the playerbase to bring about this change. Back when these discussions first happened, the playerbase was not in favour of Arceus' inclusion into the tier, and more recently when the fullceus glitch discovery came about a couple of years back, players were still against these wholesale changes. DPP players value the health and enjoyment of the tier, opting to prioritise keeping the radical and unhealthy element that is Arceus (will be discussed further down the post) at bay for the sake of a better tier over closing any sort of philosophical loophole that may or may not exist with this. The main argument I've observed regarding the addition of Arceus is that of not wanting to "double down" on a potential tiering "mistake" that was made in the past (as explained by SoulWind), but the truth is that there's very little real merit to that stance, which borders on pure conjecture and preys upon a speculative outlook on a history that has given us no hard proof of such.

We're talking about making the biggest change possible to a decade-old metagame, not about introducing a marginal strategy. I see allowing Arceus in any capacity as something closer to potentially unbanning Mega Rayquaza in ORAS (I mention ORAS Ubers because that's the tier I'm most familiar with coupled with DPP), where you'd be retroactively freeing something that's been out of the tier for being extremely unhealthy and “too much” (even if unofficially) when it was the current generation, meaning you’d be shaking up the entirety of the oldgen, eventually turning a healthy and stable metagame into a volatile and unhealthy one (I'm also not sure that DPP Arceus wouldn't be even more broken than ORAS Mega Rayquaza, given that the latter is much more one-dimensional and the metagame possesses a lot more reliable tools to deal with it).

Due to that, we should ask ourselves: do we really want to introduce a radical and ruining element into a currently healthy and balanced tier because of a potential previous oversight that is not even necessarily there? Should we go against what the DPP players have always wanted and still seem to want (my unofficial survey of the DPP Ubers playerbase showed that the majority still does not want Arceus to be brought into the tier in any capacity) for the sake of being "clean" with tiering a metagame that has been an oldgen for 9 years now, since the release of Generation 5? As policy-makers, do we value having a supposedly clean and simple tier list over what this small and avid playerbase considers to be broken or undesirable in a tier that is only played through unofficial tournaments in isolated moments for fun? Yes, "fun" is subjective and doesn't have a tangible place in tiering, but at the end of the day, as chaos has always repeated, there's no point to a tier that isn't played and alienating the playerbase that still plays it after 10+ years for no apparent reason seems like the wrong move in this case.

Finally, I'd like to point out why Arceus (both Farceus and Fullceus) should stayed banned from DPP Ubers, in terms of how it impacts the metagame.
Farceus is tier-warping for sure.

The BW comparison is interesting to me because BW is an innately more offensive metagame than DPP and therefore pressures Arceus more than the DPP meta can. Arceus just has less threatening it in DPP and is stronger because of it.

It can sponge some of the hardest hits the tier has to offer, especially at +1 SpD or when it resists them. You almost always have to resort to defensive answers or itself to win.
Simply put, DPP Ubers just doesn't have the tools to deal with the power levels of Arceus, when you take into account the absurd offensive threat it poses and couple that with its ludicrous bulk (and yes this is going off of experience, not purely "theorymonning", although I do have more experience with Fullceus rather than Farceus). I don't understand the BW comparison at all, DPP is infinitely less equipped to play around Arceus, not necessarily because of the actual pokemon or mechanics (although lead matchup and the lack of team preview does make it considerably more difficult to deal with), but because of the general pace and intricacies of the tier itself. Be it from the prevalence of spikes+phasing to just the additional options for Pokemon in terms of moves and sets (such as Kyogre's SpDef set with Scald being one of the best Pokemon in BW), BW just isn't broken by Arceus, while DPP just does not possess those same tools required to deal with the versatility and general ability that Arceus brings to the table.

DPP Arceus would instantly be the most used Pokemon for a reason, being the scariest offensive threat in the metagame, with very little offensive counterplay and being able to muscle through defensive cores on its own or with very little support (SD Arceus-Normal + Magnezone is something that has been problematic in my many games of DPP w/ Arceus), while still being able to be a top defensive/support Pokemon for the kinds of teams that require it. It warps the tier around it in a way that most games come down to "my Arceus vs your Arceus" which results in a vastly uninteresting and uncompetitive metagame. From my personal experiences with all three metagames (DPP Ubers, Farceus and Fullceus), Arceus overshadows and simply overpowers the intricacies and subtleties that make DPP Ubers what it is and always has been, one of the most balanced, healthy and nuanced generations we have in our circuit. We'd be introducing a broken element into a tier that is not only incapable of accepting it in a positive way, but also has been stable and healthy for so many years without said element. zf has already gone over some of the relevant calcs regarding Farceus (no need to even mention Fullceus here) and I think those are an accurate representation of how it would look like in this tier. For instance, Toxic Spikes teams with Giratina-A are already extremely powerful and prevalent, we'd be now throwing in a Calm Mind Arceus-Steel/Ghost or an SD Arceus-Normal/Ground and pushing those over the top. Arceus is and has always been "too much" for DPP to handle, which is why it's historically been met with vehement aversion from the playerbase and hopefully continues to do so until this issue is properly buried.
 
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SparksBlade

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I see allowing Arceus in any capacity as something closer to potentially unbanning Mega Rayquaza in ORAS (I mention ORAS Ubers because that's the tier I'm most familiar with coupled with DPP), where you'd be retroactively freeing something that's been out of the tier for being extremely unhealthy and “too much” (even if unofficially) when it was the current generation, meaning you’d be shaking up the entirety of the oldgen, eventually turning a healthy and stable metagame into a volatile and unhealthy one (I'm also not sure that DPP Arceus wouldn't be even more broken than ORAS Mega Rayquaza, given that the latter is much more one-dimensional and the metagame possesses a lot more reliable tools to deal with it).
only after quoting did i realise - that's a single sentence.
MRay and Fullceus are literally the opposite in their handling - one was given time in the meta and its effect witnessed for a good enough amount of time before it was banned. Arceus never got the benefit of this process and has existed in niche tours happening maybe once a year and in theorymon threads because this issue remains unresolved seemingly out of laziness. So freeing MRay and Fullceus are also very different - we can be cautious about MRay from our past experience, and it'd still not be freed right away. We have very little idea of a DPP meta with any Arceus. I know there have been tours(I hosted one!) and DPP enthusiasts have played it now and then casually, but it has never received a sizable actual push as a meta from the players.

I'm no DPP expert, but from a policy POV itself it would've made sense to free Arceus(Fullceus or Farceus depending on how the glitch argument turns out) and suspect then, but it wouldn't be feasible now with low activity and no proper way to do a suspect. I think it should be put to vote for recognised DPP Ubers players, similar to how some past gen OU ones have been resolved, with objective criteria of performance in tournaments. Before that though, a decision should be made whether we're considering Fullceus or Farceus based on which side of the glitch argument is accepted, and then the vote should be between keeping current DPP meta vs freeing one of the Arceus. It would make no sense to split the scant amount of votes threeway.

Also, if the meta does get changed, I believe it should be kept open for revision if it turns out that things went differently than anticipated, which wouldn't be too surprising since both Fullceus and Farceus have seen very little light of the day.
 

Myzozoa

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DPP Arceus would instantly be the most used Pokemon for a reason, being the scariest offensive threat in the metagame, with very little offensive counterplay and being able to muscle through defensive cores on its own or with very little support (SD Arceus-Normal + Magnezone is something that has been problematic in my many games of DPP w/ Arceus), while still being able to be a top defensive/support Pokemon for the kinds of teams that require it. It warps the tier around it in a way that most games come down to "my Arceus vs your Arceus" which results in a vastly uninteresting and uncompetitive metagame. From my personal experiences with all three metagames (DPP Ubers, Farceus and Fullceus), Arceus overshadows and simply overpowers the intricacies and subtleties that make DPP Ubers what it is and always has been, one of the most balanced, healthy and nuanced generations we have in our circuit. We'd be introducing a broken element into a tier that is not only incapable of accepting it in a positive way, but also has been stable and healthy for so many years without said element. zf has already gone over some of the relevant calcs regarding Farceus (no need to even mention Fullceus here) and I think those are an accurate representation of how it would look like in this tier. For instance, Toxic Spikes teams with Giratina-A are already extremely powerful and prevalent, we'd be now throwing in a Calm Mind Arceus-Steel/Ghost or an SD Arceus-Normal/Ground and pushing those over the top. Arceus is and has always been "too much" for DPP to handle, which is why it's historically been met with vehement aversion from the playerbase and hopefully continues to do so until this issue is properly buried.
This is real mindnumbing watching you take any quote out of context from anywhere in the thread to make a point. Each different arceus set/form is analogous to something else that already exists in the dpp ubers tier except for the SD sets which are actually interesting and don't break the metagame when seen on a Farceus imo (Hence why the best sets we all know are Ghost and Fighting special attackers, though personally i think sd ghost is a good set too). Half of zf's post was about the viability of arceus, but you just ignored the other half where he talked about how the metagame adapted to the presence of arceus during the tournament. I strongly feel you are misrepresenting the strength of farceus in relation to available counterplays, while trying to finish the whole discussion in one post that quotes everyone.

like duh the pokemon that has 120 in every base stat and can be any type the user picks is gonna see 100% usage, but considering the substantial differences between forms, using a usage based argument to assert that arceus is broken is silly imo and not how we usually do these discussions.
 

shrang

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I'm going to try and make this as short as possible knowing that I don't play much any more and knowing that I'm prone to ranting. Also I want to dump my Ekiller memes somewhere so this is as good as place as any :)

Tbh I really don't care which way we go. The Ubers purist in me loves the idea of Arceus getting freed. Like people have already mentioned, Arceus in DPP is a bit like Arceus in BW1. It's unlikely to be supremely broken by any means. There are major differences still which may make it more OP than in BW in certain ways (we'll go through them below), but I doubt it would actually make it uncompetitive/broken from a metagame gameplay perspective. Every Arceus has very solid checks/counters that are all present and usable in the current DPP metagame. From a tiering philosophy perspective, I see no reason to keep Arceus banned. This is especially bad when the only reason for Farceus staying banned in DPP was the fact that we couldn't implement it on our simulator. I mean come on.

On the other hand, I very much understand the playerbase inertia reasons for not banning it. The DPP Ubers metagame is >10 years old and is kind of late to be bringing something as metagame changing as Arceus into the fold when people have been playing without it for that long. As far as I can tell, most people who currently play DPP Ubers don't want this. It's potentially the case that the community gets nuked into oblivion and people won't play DPP Ubers again. I'm not that pessimistic on this outlook tbh - 1) DPP Ubers is kind of stale these days anyway so bringing in Arceus would be a good way to spice things up and 2) most people who play ADV Ubers recently are players who started playing after 2015, so it's not like there's not a chance that new players would start a whole new DPP Ubers community in the wake of a mass exodus. Still though, the potential damage to the current community is significant. I personally am not a fan of the whole community inertia stance but I can see where it's coming from.

Competitively, I think people are overstating Arceus's worth and how good it will be. Yes, I know I have a "reputation" of trashing Arceus and making stupid jokes about how shit it is, but you have to see it from my perspective -> it's a good Pokemon (in general), but people treat it like the most OP thing ever, which is frankly stupid. I'm just doing my best to break your fanboy tendencies :), kind of like what Apple fans need. If people didn't shill it so much I wouldn't be trashing it that much either (as evident in gen 8).

I think the biggest change from BW1 back to DPP in terms of countering Arceus is the lack of team preview. Everything else is not a big loss in terms of Pokemon availability. In BW, you can look at the opposing team and make good educated guesses on what Arceus is present. In DPP, you might have to sac your Groudon, for example, only to find that they bring out a monstrous Eleceus at the end and you totally lose. However, that's kind of the case in any DPP metagame. I remember when we went from DPP->BW people complained for the exact opposite reason.

Anyway, counters to Arceus formes:
Ekiller: Most things that check/counter it in BW still exist here, barring Ferrothorn (not an Ekiller counter) and Terrakion -> Skarm, Forre, Giras, Ghostceus, Fightceus, Lugia still exist, Scarf Dialga can be used to revenge kill weakened ones, not to mention Ekiller is still a weak ass shit that can't kill anything >100/100 defenses with mildly invested defenses anyway. Ekiller still has heavy competition from other Arceus formes like in BW1/2 (like Fight/Ghost/Steel) that it's an opportunity cost in itself to run Ekiller anyway
Ghost: Genesect doesn't exist any more. You still have Darkrai, Ho-oh, Kyogre, weather sweepers, Darkceus for offensive options and defensively you have SpD Ogre/Blissey/Tentacruel/Scizor/SpD Jirachi/Wallceus for defensive options; SD exists but you can't run Shadow Force on Fullceus so it's either run even shittier Ghost Ekiller or run Farceus, either way the former is even more of a weak shit than Ekiller and the latter has more checks Lati@s/non-Scarf Chomp
Dark: Supposedly instantly beats stall but they can just wise up and use Low Kick Tyranitar or Psych Up Blissey if needed
Steel: Supposedly scary, but there are very strong checks in Ho-oh(sun)/Kyogre (offensive and defensive)/Groudon/ScarfChomp/SpD Jirachi/CB Scizor/roaring Dialga/Groundceus
Electric: Goes under the radar but has surprisingly few checks, esp for balance - Blissey/fat Groudon/Dialga with Toxic/ScarfChomp/Groundceus come to mind
Water: Toxic is main one, but sun fucks over offensive variants and defensive one isn't really problem
Ground: ScarfOgre/Skymin/Lati@s, Ho-oh/defensive Ogre/Grassceus/Celebi for special ones, Gira-O/Skarm/Bronz for SD ones defensively
Grass: Good defensive forme but not a threat offensively and has easily taken advantage of by hazard users
Dragon: Same check as every other dragon, I'd rather just run regular big dragons instead tbh
Rock: Cool mon - Rachi eats this, Ogre, Tar with Low Kick/EQ, Groundceus, Chomp, Groudon, Skymin
Ice: Actually kind of strong this gen - Ho-oh/Scizor/Jirachi/big Steels
Flying: Tar/big Steels
Fight: Maybe this might force Mewtwo to finally run Psychic, Giras, Lugia, Ghostceus, Deo formes
Bug: Is actually a cool forme in DPP that checks Grounds and has a decent attack typing vs Psychics but come let's not kid ourselves
Fire: meh
Poison: Again, this might force M2 to run Psychic, but also Ground types
Psychic: lol
 
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On glitches, I'm pretty sure Smogon tends to choose arbitrarily which ones are allowed and which ones aren't, probably with the aim of creating the most competitive or desirable metagames. So if a lot of people don't like this idea, it would not be a break from policy to disallow Fullceus as far as I know. Though I am happy to be corrected.

As for Farceus, I've casually brought up the fact that Farceus should be allowed a few times over the years and from what I can remember I got shot down. The fact that it has been disallowed for such a huge length of time now leads me to the personal preference that it should remain disallowed simply to avoid disrupting a longstanding metagame. Other old gen tiers have also been frozen for reasons that are at least somewhat similar. That said, I don't expect my preference to be given any more weight than the next guy's, since the last time I took this tier seriously was when DPP was current gen. If most of the community wants one of these, why not.
 
There's been a lot of discussion so far on both the policy and reality side of things which is much appreciated. I'm generally looking at Arceus from the policy perspective, because there's been considerable feet dragging on this matter for far too long and -something- needs to be officially concluded. To me, DPP Ubers can't be seen as legitimate while it has an illegal ban, and no amount of time or history can change that fact. I'm sure there were users that preferred RBY and ADV tiers before their late mechanical discoveries. Yes, there are intricacies to each of these discoveries, but the bottom line is that a late discovery changed a metagame for better or worse in the eyes of varying players - Arceus in DPP is no different. The decade of time is the only reason the subjective point of view of "the meta is better without it" or "Arceus is too strong" is even being entertained here, and that's to argue for Arceus's ban based on strength, not inertia based tradition.

The argument for glitches is arbitrary as Earthworm goes over - we decide for ourselves if a glitch should be allowed on a case by case basis because theres precedent for both sides to be considered. If Fullceus is unpopular, I'm happy to consider Farceus as the method of choice as this thread is currently leaning towards, but not the official enforcement of an illegal ban without overwhelming support which it doesn't currently have. If it wasn't a divisive topic, we wouldn't be here right now. Farceus has more right to exist than the status quo. It should still be put in and given the tiering due process. I'm going to respond to some specific points regarding the policy behind all this:
Regardless of how you feel about Arceus and its impact on DPP Ubers, that stance is an incredibly misguided attempt at dealing with this issue. We're talking about completely flipping a decade-old lower-tier metagame upside down. In these situations more than any other, the onus should rest on the side trying to radically tamper with the current state of the tier. The status quo should prevail in cases of inconclusive discussions, meaning any modification to the tier should only ever be the result of overwhelming support, not the other way around.
This applies to typical tiering decisions, but a false ban from 10 years ago that is only being enforced by intertia so far is a special circumstance that needs to have a foot put down on it in order to get somewhere, or someone will be asking the ubers leader about this in 2029 and get another shrug of the shoulders. The "status quo" has only subjective playerbase wishes as grounds to stand on, and there's not even a conclusive opinion among that... that's the problem with taking it as evidence to keep this as is. If the playerbase was really unanimous all this time, why are we here today, still having both demands and doubts in both directions? If we can't come to a consensus on a subjective alternative, the objective one comes in - allowing Arceus. Fullceus vs Farceus is just an implementation detail and I'm not that fussed with either path.
Despite Ubers' current attempts to minimise bans and allow as many strategies as possible, that is hardly relevant since that strict policy itself is only set upon newer generations and there is no tangible existing policy that we can use to fall back on for DPP Ubers(...)
Back then was an even stricter time in terms of what Ubers could do and I shouldn't need to explain that. The modern view is a mercy on how this could have been handled. I should note that this was approved by tiering admins while I'm here - including the default choice of action.
We're talking about making the biggest change possible to a decade-old metagame, not about introducing a marginal strategy. I see allowing Arceus in any capacity as something closer to potentially unbanning Mega Rayquaza in ORAS (I mention ORAS Ubers because that's the tier I'm most familiar with coupled with DPP), where you'd be retroactively freeing something that's been out of the tier for being extremely unhealthy and “too much” (even if unofficially) when it was the current generation, meaning you’d be shaking up the entirety of the oldgen, eventually turning a healthy and stable metagame into a volatile and unhealthy one (I'm also not sure that DPP Arceus wouldn't be even more broken than ORAS Mega Rayquaza, given that the latter is much more one-dimensional and the metagame possesses a lot more reliable tools to deal with it).
This is on subjective grounds which I'm not gonna dive into and leave it to the main playerbase but I have trouble entertaining the idea that Arceus in DPP is even remotely close to that of Mega Rayquaza. Just read the other posts in this very thread explaining the reality and counterplay behind Arceus - the fact that there's reasonable doubt already showcases the difference.

I've had some PMs dropping opinions and I'll have them in hide tags. Keep up the reasonable discourse and hopefully I can conclude this before Most Wanted and the festive period kicks off.

Hey I just wanted to throw my support in regarding a farceus unban in dpp. At this point I'm interested in ubers because I think it's the way the game ought to be played, however I don't acknowledge the existence of dpp ubers in its current form because the Arc ban has literally no good reason for it. As it stands I have no intention of ever playing dpp ubers, however this would not be the case if farceus were to be unbanned. iirc in the tour calendar there was a farceus tournament early in the year and I was actually building teams in hopes of entering it the next time it came around

I'd also like to point out that Dream's argument for Arc being broken is absurd in that this is the kind of thing that should be tested publicly rather than dictated by a handful of individuals, and also because it covers every Arc form, arguing that crap like Bugceus should be banned because they think things like EKA are too good. Also if the playerbase is so unanimously against an Arc ban, why the hell has it been such a hot button issue? I'd also like to point out that modifying past gens is far from unprecedented, and not just in lower tiers- the Latias unban in dpp ou is a good example here as a change that had the potential to be meta-defining, yet proved to be perfectly healthy

I also adamantly disagree with fullceus unban, because it's glitch only, which just shouldn't be a part of the game. If it were, RBY and GSC would literally be hackmons by the same logic.

Anyway, I just wanted to voice my support for a farceus unban since I can't comment in PR

It seems to me that, absent arguments about the power level of DPP Arceus (which I'm not qualified to comment on), this is a proxy debate for two things:

1) To what extent should decisions about old metagames be guided by historical precedent?
2) Where do we draw the line with glitches?

On the first point, it is only really historical precedent which protects a meta with no Arceus at all. It's never been seriously tested, and it was mostly because of no-longer-extant technical limitations that it was disallowed in the first place. Whether this is a good enough reason to keep it disallowed is a philosophical question of whether the meta should be an approximate snapshot of how it was in gen 4, or whether it should be being updated and revised generally. The Latias suspect suggests that DPP takes the latter philosophy, but that doesn't necessarily imply that it should be carried over to Ubers -- a metagame which tends to be more conservative about making changes.

With the second, it's not clear to me that Smogon really has a consistent and objectively defined policy on glitches. The Mimic glitch and acid rain are disallowed, but we still allow Swords Dance/Baton Pass on Shedinja in gens 5 to 7, despite the method of transmission almost certainly being a bug. In practice, what we define as an unacceptable bug is based more on intuition than precedent, which leaves us at sea here.

I don't think passing hack checks -- in this context, a gen 6 game mechanic -- is a good metric of what should be allowed, because it's not a perfect list and there have been instances of legal things being blocked. (I don't know if all of those errors have been corrected.) For a while, shiny Jirachi was disallowed despite being legitimately available, and Arceus (plus I believe Darkrai and Shaymin) obtained from tweaking only pass the hack check under certain circumstances that replicate their legitimate availability.

Related to both points is the allowance of Darkrai and Shaymin in the initial metagame. I agree with the logic that it follows from allowing them that we must allow Arceus too, but would those in fact be allowed by modern tiering logic? It would certainly not have much effect now if we were to establish that they should not have been allowed prior to their release in Platinum -- no metagame that is a pure snapshot of the original DP metagame meaningfully exists anymore, and it would keep a "no glitches" policy consistent.

I personally think the best point of view is to implement a stricter no glitches policy, implement Farceus but not Fullceus, and accept that the original decision allowing Darkrai and Shaymin was a mistake that probably wouldn't be allowed today. An argument can be made for Fullceus, but the line we have to draw for that is arbitrary, and I see no reason to define that line in a way that accommodates a Pokemon that is generally agreed not to exist legitimately.

I’m not knowledgeable about the legality of glitches, but at the very least Farceus should be allowed.

Positions against allowing Arceus citing reluctance to drastically change an aged, stable meta and speculation about potentially detracting from “fun” are arbitrary player preferences. There are no longer mechanical reasons for disallowing Farceus, and players (myself included) will inevitably adapt with new teams as painful as it is.

If Arceus forms are evidently deemed extremely volatile and uncompetitive (quite unlikely), then a suspect should follow instead of preemptively disallowing it due to personal disgust.

- Highlord
 
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Delta 2777

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As the winner of the original Farceus Tournament I'll drop my two cents:

Fullceus should absolutely remain banned, for reasons M Dragon stated. Unless we also want to implement the Rage Glitch which would allow a ton of Pokemon to learn any move (other than Chatter / Struggle), we should follow that precedent and not allow Pokemon/sets only obtainable via glitches. Allowing this version of Arceus should be a non-starter.

I would personally prefer that Farceus remains banned as well, due to the length of time that has elapsed since it becoming "legal" in combination with the fact that it would easily become the most centralizing Pokemon in the metagame. DPP Ubers is a dead tier, and modifying it now with an absolutely massive change (you're basically allowing 16 brand new 720 BST Pokemon into the tier) is just silly. For the few niche DPP Ubers tournaments that happen, players won't be able to test teams reliably due to the non-existent playerbase, and all old teams will be more or less invalidated. Pretty much nobody that actively played DPP Ubers back in the day (myself included) wants this thing in the tier.

If we do decide that historical reasons isn't a good enough reason to keep Farceus out of the tier (and imho it very much is), we would for sure need a suspect test, because this thing is very dangerous and would for sure be the best Pokemon in the tier, even with the EV limit. You can't just add it back in on principal and shrug your shoulders after breaking a tier - it's not good policy.

Throwback to when I swept Eo 6-0 with a lead Arceus-Fighting
 

Theorymon

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This topic interests me quite a bit! To be clear, I haven't seriously played DPP Ubers since it was actually the current Ubers metagame, so just remember my views are based off of what happened almost a decade ago lol. Before I get into my opinion, I wanna talk a while about the history of the Farceus situation from my point of view!

From my recollection of things, the idea of allowing Farceus into Ubers in the contemporary time mostly boiled down to issues with implementation on shoddy battle. Now to be clear, wether you liked the idea of Farceus was an entirely different thing altogether, with opinions ranging from "wow this sucks why can't we have full Arceus (yes this was a viewpoint you'd see a decade ago!), to "OMG THIS IS GONNA BE BROKEN", to "this thing looks underwhelming". To be clear, one of my weak points here is that I wasn't very heavily involved with the tournament side of the community, but at least as a mod in the gen 4 Ubers forum at the time, it never felt like Farceus was a question if "if it will be allowed", and more "when will it be allowed".

Now if you go to our gen 4 analyses, you may notice that we have a ton of Farceus analyses. These didn't just come out of hot air: there was actual playtesting done to determine these sets! I'd like to link to an old thread of mine where you can see the start of this: https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/research-week-arceus.74329/

Don't let the name research week fool you. See, the gen 4 Ubers forum (and in general, a lot of the community at the time) had a pretty heavy focus on always looking for "the next big thing", so naturally a lot of us were keenly interested in how Farceus was gonna affect the metagame. So you may be wondering how the hell we even tested this if shoddy wasn't implementing it properly...

It boils down to quite a few of us actually jumping ship from shoddy to Pokemon Online earlier than others. Funnily enough, Pokemon Online correctly implemented both Farceus mechanics AND Custap Berry (something I used to rave about a lot with Wobbuffet as some of you older users may remember lol). To be clear, the Pokemon Online ladders were notoriously not as high quality as the shoddy ladders, and are pretty much the main reason Charizard became an Ubers meme of sort back then. However, a lot of us would frequently contact each other on IRC to have serious Farceus battles to test out ideas, so it's not like we based our Farceus analyses on how well it cooked little timmy's Charizard lol.

Anyways, that thread is a real blast from the past for me! While the thread wasn't that active (honestly if I recall, a lot of the Farceus metagame development was mostly us testing it against each other, and writing down notes for analyses), you can actually still see the realization of some major sets in that thread, such as the birth of the dangerous CM Steel Arceus after Jibaku tested it out, and the general shift from "OH SHIT EXTREME KILLER" to more talk about Calm Mind sets.

So you may be wondering: why the hell did I just rant about the past that long?

I just wanted to give some prespective on what I remember about the Ubers community here: I actually disagree with the take that the Ubers community was extremely against the introduction of Arceus back in 2010. If anything, it was viewed as an inevitability of sorts, and the opinions on Farceus's place in the metagame were pretty varried, it wasn't a universal "wow fuck that thing"! It also helps that gen 5 wasn't out yet either, so there were no real comparisons to Arceus's impact either, this was all we had outside of that period in DP (before my time) where Arceus was allowed.

I'd also like to address the whole balance argument for gen 4 Ubers: Of course, I haven't played it seriously in almost a decade, so I'm sure the metagame is very different than it used to be, and the community is totally different too. However, I can't help but chuckle a bit when gen 4 Ubers is being called well balanced, as I remember back when it was the active Ubers metagame, the community used to RELISH in its precieved imbalance. If you look at contemproary gen 4 Ubers usage stats, Kyogre's usage was way beyond anything that was considered "healthy" for a metagame at the time. And... as strange as it may seem today, this was often considered something many players were proud about. Ubers was often sold back then as a fast paced, ferocious metagame where the idea of "balance" is thrown out the window for exhilrating battles with the strongest mons in the game. It was also notable for being so imbalanced, that strange Pokemon you wouldn't see elsewhere would creep out of the woodworks to help teams adapt to the power level. The most obvious example was how DPP Ubers was really the only place you'd get weather wars that gen. and there were some infamous cases of some actual not good Pokemon getting temporary boosts of popularity (looking at you, Parasect lol).

Alright, almost back on track here! I want to respond to this post of Myzozoa's first to set the frame of what I personally felt about Farceus at the time.

I thought people played a lot of farceus ubers during the time when gen 4 was the active gen, but I could be misremembering. If I recall correctly, it doesn't change the tier much, as others have said. The references and comparisons itt to BW ubers (which has Ferrothorn I would remind you) are mystifying and tangential. I feel like what you get with Farceus isn't that game breaking, it can either run a CM set that is worse than Mewtwo or an SD set that is actually a welcome addition to the diversity of DPP ubers where you don't have a bulky SD pokemon with a relevant priority move besides Rayquaza.
While I would disagree that CM sets were worst than Mewtwo (there were quite a few major CM sets that did stuff Mewtwo couldnt do as well, such as CM Steel with its phazing), I otherwise agree with the jist of this post: From people that played a lot of Farceus Ubers at the time, I can't think of anyone that actually thought it was broken. It was certainly a major force in the metagame, but most major Pokemon still ran the same sets they did before Farceus came in,, and adapting to it wasn't something most teams had to twist themselves into a pretzel to do. I notice some folks here are worried about Arceus having insane usage, but at least in 2010, Arceus was viewed more as 17 different Pokemon than one all encompassing threat, so I don't think many of us were really worried about that at the time.

Alright, now I'm finally gonna get to my point!

I think it'd be great if Farceus was allowed in DPP Ubers, almost like a fixing of history that should have been done a decade ago! From what I played a decade ago, it didn't seem anywhere near broken or overcentralizing (well, by Ubers standards, remember this was the days of Specs Kyogre lol), and honestly I personally found it to be a pretty fun shake up to the metagame at the time. Like I said, it didn't even feel like we got one new super Pokemon: It felt like we got 17 new Pokemon, that ranged from amazing to pretty bad, almost like some sort of weird new mini gen!

However, I'm enough of a sticker with how we treat glitches outside of battle mechanics that I think it's best we stick with Farceus, because differnciating between full Arceus and something like the mimic glitch sounds like a whole new kettle of worms. Hell, I didn't even like the pomeg glitch being allowed in Little Cup to give you an idea lol.


Of course, the Ubers community now is a totally different beast than the Ubers community of 2010. I bet you if you could go back in time riding a Dialga and tell the Ubers community of 2010 that Mega Rayquaza got banned, many of would accuse you of comitting blasphemy against the philisophy of Ubers! Hell, even the purist inside me still wonders if things could have gone a bit differently...

But to take a step back here for a moment, I think we all need to remember that in the end, most Smogon formats like Ubers and OU are just very popular fan formats. Lets say Farceus is reintroduced, and unlike in 2010, the vast majority of plays HATE it. As in, it destroys the current DPP Ubers community, and a new one doesn't seem to be forming in sight. Like shrang , I don't really like the idea of using community inertia as an argument to keep an old mistake like Farceus being banned due to simulator limitations staying for so long, but I get the concern. Unlike say... Battle Stadium Singles, it's not like we're powerless to make changes if unbanning Farceus has unintended consequences.

If the new playerbase and DPP Ubers metagame has a vastly different reaction to Farceus than it did a decade ago, it's not like you can't do a suspect test. It doesn't even have to be for every forme, maybe just one particular Arceus forme might cause the hate or whatever. I just think that regardless, it's a mistake to stick with the status quo here. I think the best move would be to unban Farceus, and then determine what to do with it later. To make things clearer: If shoddy ever had gotten patched, or the move to Pokemon Lab was successful, I'm confident we wouldnt even be having this conversation right now!
 
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Mr.378

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Writing long Policy debates usually isn't something I do but this particular issue is one I feel quite strongly about. I've reconsidered the stance I've had for the last few years but I'll try and be brief.

Arceus' ban in the fourth generation of Ubers is a unique circumstance that has rarely been questioned since it was decided over ten years ago due to the unique circumstances of it only being obtainable by event at Level 100. It's unrestricted form was never made available and was banned for that reason. The Arceus that was released via Events, and was dubbed Farceus, can only obtain a maximum of 100 EVs in each stat but it was made obtainable in the games. This restriction was never properly implemented on Shoddy Battle which was the standard simulator at the time of the decision however and Farceus was never integrated into the tier because of that. Though this restriction placed on Arceus in the tier was necessary at the time due to there being no way to obtain Arceus without them beyond external means it is now arguably unnecessary with a method of obtaining an Arceus fully capable of being EV trained being discovered in January of 2017. Arceus was banned from DPP Ubers due to being unobtainable without external modification of the game and this method uses a variation of the glitch similar to one that was used to get Darkrai and Shaymin in the game before they were officially released. It is now, on paper, the case where Arceus is now obtainable without third party means and should be allowed but this case isn’t so simple. This is the only instance of being able to obtain an official Pokemon that is otherwise unobtainable in a generation that has ended. Using glitches to obtain unobtainable Pokemon at all is unheard of in this age. This and Darkrai/Shaymin are the only examples of it and the ladder resolved itself long before we took notice. Our community has always treated glitches as a gray area where we decide if it’s in the spirit of the game and beneficial to competitive balance to allow them. In this generation alone we have glitches that are allowed like the Pomeg Glitch and those that are forbidden like the Rage Glitch. Where Full Arceus falls in this is a difficult choice and we as a community would need to think about it. I personally believe if we knew about this glitch at the time the original version that allowed Darkrai and Shaymin was discovered we would have kept Arceus unbanned and not really thought about it otherwise. That said the Smogon and Ubers community of today is different from the one during DPP’s prime. The conclusions we would draw today about where we draw the line on glitches and Arceus’ would different from back when it was the main tier. I myself would be fine with it but this is a unique case in the history of this game that definitely won’t be repeated. Ultimately though I am content with either solution here so long as it’s conclusively settled.

We don’t have to worry about Full Arceus and its legality for now though. The bigger mistake that should be fixed is disallowing Farceus. It unlike Full Arceus is completely obtainable and has been for years. The excuse that we never got around to programming it is very weak and would never be tolerated today. The only legitimate reason to not add it would be concerns of it breaking the tier which is not the case for a variety of reasons the least of which being the 100 EV cap acting as a nerf to it’s ability to specialize. The 100 EV cap limits FArceus quite significantly, forcing it to be slower then a variety of common metagame staples like Garchomp and the Latis for example. That and while Arceus is effectively 17 different mons which allows it to fulfill niches that no other mon can it also means every form has a certain opportunity cost to it which can be seen in how we deal with Arceus in later generations. Shrang did a good job summarizing all of the individual forms showing each is surely manageable. FArceus would be omnipresent but not overcentralizing in the least and would add a certain skill to both building teams and playing them. Most importantly banning Farceus on the grounds of power would be absurd because we are Ubers and while we may not be against banning anything at all as we used to be we should still fundamentally be opposed to banning on the grounds of power in all but the most extreme cases which FArceus doesn’t fulfill. It’s absolutely strong and would change the metagame but if that’s all it takes to ban a Pokémon from Ubers then we really have become no different from OU. Any other complaints like “The playerbase would quit” or “I just don’t like it” are of no merit to our tiering philosophies any day and this should be no different.

I think I’ve gotten the jist of the issue at hand and the how we should approach them after considering this for the last few days. We should absolutely unban FArceus from DPP Ubers and see how the metagame reacts to it and gave the community a brief period to consider Full Arceus so we may make a conclusive decision on whether to allow it or not. The decision to keep FArceus out of the tier though goes against the values Smogon's suspecting process and the core philosophies of Ubers and should be reversed.
 

Zarel

Not a Yuyuko fan
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I'm just going to focus on glitches for a bit:

It's impossible to draw a hard line between what is or isn't a glitch. I mean, sure, a lot of them are obvious. But what about Hyper Beam in Gen 1? What about Gen 5 sleep mechanics? We've always faithfully simulated in-battle glitches, with very few exceptions.

Out-of-battle glitches, in the past, have been dealt with on a case-by-case basis - mostly by just rejecting the ones that would break the metagame. There are only a few competitively-relevant ones I can think of: Pomeg Glitch, sure (LC does special pleading about this but it's not like the sim implements it as LC-only). Mimic Glitch, no.

Probopass has Head Smash as an egg move in HGSS, with no way to get it. Is that a glitch? Should we "fix" it by letting it learn Head Smash anyway?

Anyway, a review of precedent shows that we ban specific glitches if they'd really mess up the metagame, but otherwise accurately simulate them. Feel free to ban the Void Glitch because it's overpowered, but I'm not a huge fan of banning it "just" because it's a glitch.

(Personally, I think forgetting to release the Azure Flute was the real glitch.)
 
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Cynara

Banned deucer.
I do agree Arceus should be allowed in DPP Ubers. At the current moment according to all the information provided and the background research I did on this topic, I could not find a single tiering decision to ban Arceus, and simply for simulator limitations or players simply not wanting it in the tier for no strong reasonings.

There isn't any apt discussion on the topic even when Arceus events were released during DPP. The thread Nayrz references is Pre-Arceus release so it is understandable why it was not allowed in the metagame at the time. Upon release it should have been revised and allowed in the tier because Arceus is legal. It is exactly like not allowing Marshadow in SM Ubers upon release simply because players don't want to give it a chance in the tier. I feel that keeping Arceus out of the tier is a mistake that was made at the time and actively goes against Smogon tiering policy. We should not double down on mistakes arguably and strongly consider reversing this decision to be consistent with our own tiering policies. One of the mission statements of Ubers tiering policy is to be the tier with the least amount of bans. How can we say we strive for ban minimisation when we have a Pokemon banned from DPP for no tiering reason?

I understand some concerns of this thread have been raised against unbanning Arceus such as competitive balance being the main one. I don't think Arceus would be a broken or completely unbalanced Pokemon in the metagame, there have been various tournaments throughout the past few years and upon observation, DPP Arceus metagames appear playable, nor does it impose the same ramifications on a metagame such as Mega Rayquaza does in ORAS and SM which forced offense vs offense games due to its overwhelming offensive power. I will humbly admit that Arceus would be a metagame defining Pokemon, present on every team causing centralisation. Over-centralisation was a point brought against it being in the tier, however in Ubers policy, over-centralisation is not a factor that is considered and playability is one of the most important attributes that is considered when handling Ubers tiering. Even in the hypothetical instance that Arcues is found to be broken or unbalanced in the DPP Ubers metagame. There is little harm in us re-evaluating it and considering a ban via tiering later down the line, but as it stands I am in full belief that Arceus deserves a chance to actually be tried and tested before we can even form these sound conclusions of the impact on the metagame.

Another argument brought up is that DPP Ubers is a 10 year old metagame and should be left alone because the generation is considered too old to tier, this was a point brought up against the DPP OU Latias discussion. This feels very subjective and is not a issue not bound to just the tiering of DPP Ubers. Exactly how old is "too old" for a metagame to be exempt from tiering? There is a old generations council for OU and there are active discussions and tiering changes for all generations including those that are older than DPP. I don't really feel this is a strong argument against allowing Arceus in the tier and whether we should still tier our old generations feels like it should be its own policy discussion outside of this thread.

Finally, I just want to touch of Farceus vs Fullceus. I think in the case of an Arceus unban, the default option should be limited EVs Arceus (Farceus). Glitches feel like a extremely grey area to me in discussions, what we allow and what we don't allow in our tiering policies isn't exactly clear cut and the preference to allow glitches in tiering is to avoid them. Some players actively support Farceus for metagame reasons and this may also be a benefit along with policy consistencies which I am in favour of. One of my other reasonings that I a,m against Fullceus is that Azure Flute Arceus isn't actually released and several players share the common opinion that Shaymin and Darkrai should not have been allowed before their release either, I agree with this. I also share the sentiment of Mr.378 that not letting Farceus in the tier initially is a mistake and we should go from there. Farceus vs Fullceus could potentially be a discussion again of its own later on if necessary.
 
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Leave Arceus banned. This is a mon that if unbanned will literally change the entire metagame and turn everything on its head. Part of the reason we never tested it in the past was nobody that actually played the tier wanted it tested. Do you really need a stronger reason as to why someone wouldn't want to test Arceus? DPP Ubers is perfect the way it is and shouldn't have mons retconned in for the sake of something being legal. Keep in mind, I am purely talking about Farceus here. The idea of Fullceus being legal is just stupid and shouldn't even be a discussion.
 
Alright it's time to make the call on this. This discussion went well and got both players from the past and present playerbases to contribute their opinion and I'm thankful to see these perspectives.

The feeling in this thread through posts and their arguments along with the support they got signal to me that there is not a strong enough consensus to make banning Arceus (again) the right decision. When there isn't a strong will to make the call of banning Arceus for being broken, we have to look at things objectively - Arceus is unfairly bannned without due process and this should be reverted and be given that chance. Fullceus was disregarded as an idea here and that's fine, we can regard it as a glitch to be avoided for the time being. Farceus is the legal form of Arceus that works as the best starting point.

This will be considered a preliminary decision as there was still notable disagreement with the idea that I don't want to disregard. This will be finalized with a vote or test (TBD, but more likely to be a vote) after Ubers Premier League 8 is over in Summer 2020. This gives us a few tournaments (Most Wanted, UPL, and 1/2 planned 2020 circuit tournaments) in the near future to test Arceus properly through tournament play. Results in these tournaments will be used as a way to gain voting requirements, along with tournament results in the past, similarly to other old gen council calls. Through this vote we can finalize this decision and consider the result the due process it needed.

Arceus will be enabled in DPP Ubers with the restrictions of 100 EVs maximum in a single stat. Tagging The Immortal to implement this on PS, thanks in advance!
 
I'm sorry but did you seriously just make the policy to unban Farceus when you received a SINGLE pro unban argument? HELLO? I realize you're also saying this will go to a test for a finalized decision but it honestly looks like you disregarded the majority opinion here and went with your own solely because you run the tier.
 
I'm sorry but did you seriously just make the policy to unban Farceus when you received a SINGLE pro unban argument? HELLO? I realize you're also saying this will go to a test for a finalized decision but it honestly looks like you disregarded the majority opinion here and went with your own solely because you run the tier.
It seems we read two different threads if these are the conclusions you came to. I get you seem passionate about the subject but there wasn't a majority opinion saying Farceus should be re-banned in here, there were at least as many posts neutral or open to the idea as there was against, more so by my count. That includes opinions I've heard outside of this thread. I went with this call because (as I said in the OP), the default choice as Ubers is to keep Pokemon legal and the ban 10 years ago was just a "we dont like it"... how is that a proper way to tier a metagame? This inertia is being dragged up and dealt with for good because I've decided to do things properly rather than have another leader shrug their shoulders and uphold an illegal ban. I hope to see those with disagreements in the 2020 vote.

edit: thread reopened
 
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