I'm sorry, but if you read my above post, understand the circumstances, and still think that vote was handled optimally, then I firmly disagree with you. We have had things with lesser mistakes called into much greater question, if not stopped outright, within memory. I was one of the biggest advocates of the vote and I even defended it after the result, but I got hammered with a lot of people explaining how they did not find it fair that such parameters decided the fate of a CG OU tier like this.
This is going to happen in any vote where people really want a particular outcome, especially one here where the established processes get thrown into question so often. I'm glad that you defended it initially at least--it can be difficult to do so when you are facing pressure from so many invested parties.
That depends on the response. I have been as transparent as I possibly could be here (
and have been all generation): how the community believes we are handling their flagship metagame is important and if we received the same complaints, I absolutely would work towards avoiding repeating any mistakes moving forward. If we did not, then I would have moved on. The same can be said here: if this vote resulted in no ban as it did, nobody voiced any disagreement with the procedure, and there was no counter-movement, then I would have sit tight. I care about the pulse of my playerbase and have made this a priority for the longest time now.
Where there are genuine problems, it is good to have the attitude that you are willing to step up and make changes, but I respectfully assert again this is not one of those cases. Sometimes a lot of people will complain about something with which there is no problem.
To put it bluntly, that's your problem if you do not see the error. I made the error myself and defended the vote publicly even after the initial result, but after talking with many people who play the tier and receiving constructive (and sometimes not-so-constructive) criticism, even I can see what was wrong. I outlined all of these issues in my above post and instead of addressing any of them, all you have done is dismiss them and imply I was acting in bad faith for the sake of my personal agenda. And yes, banning King's Rock is something I very much prefer. It does not mean I will act in bad faith to reach this goal though.
I'm happy to address each of the arguments that have been apparently been raised with you in order to overturn a perfectly good vote:
- We had the smallest council all generation
- 7 people is quite low for OU council standards and this meant any individual vote causes even more swing than normal
While this could play an influential part in determining the result, there's no real basis for claiming that there is any particularly flawed number of council members that I am aware of. We use smaller numbers in numerous other important votes.
- We applied a 60% ban threshold that ended up being misrepresentative and based off of not-entirely-applicable precedent
- There was no true modern precedent for this, but 60% turns into 5/7 aka 71% when the council is this small, which is a lot different than 60% itself.
- We received 57% support, which is far closer to 60% than 71%, for example. You can see why this would upset people given how small the sample is and how controversial some of the logic used was to people on either side -- i.e: a lot of laissez faire stances about not banning something deemed insignificant in a vast majority of the time
It is not clear what you mean by "misrepresentative" here. This is clearly a council of seven widely respected, active top players. The fact that we are using a 60% standard shows a clear intention from tiering staff that our bans should be more than just slightly agreed upon by the representative sample of active top players. A 4:3 ban:do not ban is not a clear enough majority. Also, just because you receive a lot of loud complaints, doesn't mean that there isn't a less vocal, satisfied portion of the base of top players not saying anything because the result worked out the way they believe is appropriate. If you want the votes to reflect the player base you are surveying, we could have that player base vote directly and make that the standard procedure. However, there is no inherent issue with using the representative sample chosen and respecting their vote outcome.
There's nothing controversial about the logic I've seen either. What I've seen from the council members that have participated in the discussion does not indicate any problematic deviation from the tiering policy framework stickied in this subforum.
- Someone had just left council days prior to the vote, which skewed matters even further
- It is easy to speculate that the vote would have been different. The outcome, the parameters, the timing, etc. all likely could have been altered had this been taken into account sooner and it definitely caused some blindsiding
Just because the council changed not long before the vote does not mean the vote is any less valid. If a new member is added to the council, is there any period of time for which they are not allowed to vote? Has there been any past requirement to meet some exact number of members?
- As soon as the vote went out, King's Rock saw an uptick in usage and "abuse", which has created an even bigger outcry and diminished the competitiveness of many, many games
It would be good if we could see how effective the abuse of King's Rock was on the ladder. Are there any statistics that show this? Were the upper spots on the ladder dominated by King's Rock abusers? Did people qualify for OLT playoffs by primarily winning with teams that utilised King's Rock? Has it been a significant factor in the outcome of WCoP matches? I don't doubt that some people sustained losses when facing King's Rock, but we have to be careful of anecdotal experiences versus actual effectiveness.
Speaking of personal agendas, that first sentence is your own and it absolutely does not apply to King's Rock, which SS OU clearly has not reacted to over a prolonged period of time.
How can I say this? Because we have received consistent King's Rock complaints for over a year now (every survey we have put out has had plenty) and there has never been much of a movement to increase counterplay to it. I have firsthand read through hundreds of accounts on this topic between mid-2020 and now; not every single topic fits under the umbrella that you alluded to about proceeding with caution about CG topics that are closely contested. Not everything gains new counterplay over time. I think you need firsthand experience in the tier to understand this topic. I am not saying you do or do not have that, but I am saying that people with this experience have a better grasp on how the dynamic of King's Rock seldom changes.
What do you think the reasoning is for requiring more than 50% of the vote to ban something, if not to eliminate the possibility of bans being enacted when the vote is close? And why would it not apply to King's Rock? King's Rock itself is not going to change. What could change is people's preparedness and willingness to address strategies that become more commonplace, which leads to those strategies becoming less commonplace in favour of other strategies that beat the new strategies. It may assist my understanding if you could explain why there should be game element bans which are decided by votes that are closely contested.
If King's Rock does indeed prove to be resilient enough and evidence of more widespread support for a ban is realised, then of course it can be brought up again and voted on at a sufficiently spaced out interval. But I am just saying that we should not have to deal with posts like ABR's that directly attack top players for their stances, and we shouldn't succumb to the whims of people that don't respect the outcome of a vote by those top players.
