Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion [ UPDATE POST #1293]

[Wolf-X]

Of the qualified responses only 28% is in favor of banning. With 38% of NO BAN.

If we go by unqualified responses the results even more huge in the NO BAN, with a very small percentage of people voting in favour of banning.

From the public data each total estimate: (better if publicly released like this)
Qualified vote:
39% NO BAN
33% Restricted ¿how do we even agree on this, its pure chaos?
28% BAN

General vote:
57% NO BAN
33% Restricted
10% BAN

I think this leaves a very clear statement that the overall community wants TERA TO STAY as the pro ban side is a marginally small but very vocal part of the community (As said, conservatives and crybabies).

Now we would be left to decide between NO BAN and Restricted... There is very clear preference of No Ban (specially in general vote, but also in qualified) against Restricted, AND some BAN folks might even rather play without restrictions that with them as many stated its either a BAN or NO BAN issue for them.

Restrictions is pure chaos and everyone seems something different so...

NO BAN! NO BAN! NO BAN! Cheers folks!! Hope this solved many doubts!! see ya later <3

 

[Wolf-X]

"Of the qualified (top 250 on ladder OR made round 3 of the No Johns Release Tournament) responses, 62% favored acting on Terastallization while 38% did not. This sample consisted of 143 people and was heavily vetted due to an abundance of repeat responses, people claiming they qualified despite not having alts within the top 250 at any point, and people claiming they made the third round of the tournament despite not doing so or not even having a forum account"

Wait if i was in top 250 last week i could qualify as top 250? I thought only current top 250 could qualify D:

Then add 1 more, no action vote from me!

 

[Bakugames]

I’ve never really had much success at convincing people of things by being nice, but then I’m not exactly a nice person in general. Might as well give it a shot.

You dont have to be super nice and all, the issue is just constantly antagonizing and strawmanning the other side. From the start, you've wrapped a lot of your arguments on insults, "comebacks" and starting flames on things, which makes it more likely for people to just dimiss your stuff or shot back with the same aggression

Btw i do think this is a major issue on this thread. People on both sides just write bad stuff and then we waste 4 pages only focusing on bad arguments and drowning the good ones (shout out to the pro and anti tera arguments that were very good and got 2 responses before being drowned with people biting eachothers dicks off). Maybe im contributing to that but I really do think we need to chill tf out. Its pokemon

 

[Ibaragi]

Not so simple: if the 33% of the people that wanted a Restriction would prefer a ban than an unrestricted Tera, that would make it a 72% pro ban from the qualified voters, which would be a sufficient majority to actually ensure it. Now, this is an unlikely scenario, but cannot be ignored and is the very reason why a proper public suspect will have to be enacted.
Even counting all votes together, 43% of people considering Tera to be a problem is too large an amount to discard it as a minority, and in a case like this where we have two mirrored 60/40 (more or less), giving priority to the people that are most knowledgable and invested in both the game and the community is the logical course of action.

Furthermore, Restrictions themselves will start as "temporary measures" that hope to solve the problem, but will lead a greater amount of people into the Pro-Ban if they ultimately don't solve the issues Tera implies. If the measures taken in a scenario of Restriction don't solve the problem, banning will become a much closer reality.

The opinion of a majority of the players that Tera brings, at least, "more good than bad" cannot be ignored, but mustn't be blindly followed neither, much less when it's a very tight majority, which is precisely why this is just a complicated problem to solve.

 

[alephgalactus]

Of the qualified responses only 28% is in favor of banning. With 38% of NO BAN.

If we go by unqualified responses the results even more huge in the NO BAN, with a very small percentage of people voting in favour of banning.

From the public data each total estimate: (better if publicly released like this)
Qualified vote:
39% NO BAN
33% Restricted ¿how do we even agree on this, its pure chaos?
28% BAN

General vote:
57% NO BAN
33% Restricted
10% BAN

I think this leaves a very clear statement that the overall community wants TERA TO STAY as the pro ban side is a marginally small but very vocal part of the community (As said, conservatives and crybabies).

Now we would be left to decide between NO BAN and Restricted... There is very clear preference of No Ban (specially in general vote, but also in qualified) against Restricted, AND some BAN folks might even rather play without restrictions that with them as many stated its either a BAN or NO BAN issue for them.

Restrictions is pure chaos and everyone seems something different so...

NO BAN! NO BAN! NO BAN! Cheers folks!! Hope this solved many doubts!! see ya later <3

This is a bit misrepresentative of the data. The qualified votes actually shook out like this:
61.5% RESTRICTION OR BAN (enough to take action had this been the suspect test)
38.5% No Action
Basically, a supermajority of qualified players believe that at least something should be done about Terastallization. Lumping “restriction” in with “no ban”, which you’ve done, is disingenuous because it skews the vote in favor of doing nothing when the majority of people want to do something.

The general vote was compromised by external actors and should not be taken into account when tiering action is taken.

 

[flamewizzy21]

The current OU survey of qualified people (which are most likely people who would get reqs) would be:
38.5% NO BAN
34.9% BAN
26.5% RESTRICT

In ranked choice voting, we can assume most people in the BAN/NO BAN camps would vote "RESTRICT" as their second choice, which would lead RESTRICT to win in the first instant runoff by a large margin, despite being the least popular option.

It is clear that of the unqualified voters, more people want tera to stay. You can't get to write them off as "compromised vote." These are not Russian bots. These are real people who are just unlikely to be making reqs, but are still interested in smogon rules. This includes people on smogon, spectators, and people who just like competitive pokemon enough to fill out a survey.

The people who would be voting in the suspect test would be extremely split. Even combining the BAN/RESTRICT camps gives just barely enough for the smallest supermajority needed for tiering action. Scraping by with a 61% vote when these sorts of decisions usually need a 60% supermajority will definitely leave a bad taste in people's mouths.

 

[Wolf-X]

People must remember RESTRICTION =/= BAN

This is a bit misrepresentative of the data. The qualified votes actually shook out like this:
61.5% RESTRICTION OR BAN (enough to take action had this been the suspect test)
38.5% No Action
Basically, a supermajority of qualified players believe that at least something should be done about Terastallization. Lumping “restriction” in with “no ban”, which you’ve done, is disingenuous because it skews the vote in favor of doing nothing when the majority of people want to do something.

The general vote was compromised by external actors and should not be taken into account when tiering action is taken.

No. I havent put them together i have separated them been you guys are misrepresenting it as u please by putting them together in "Action" vs "No action" instead of putting each of them separate since the begining.

Restriction means they would rather Tera to stay in some way, which imo is a lot closer to not ban than to ban.

Some restriction players might prefer a ban but others might not. Puting them together is misleading.

Also I believe as showed by the polls a restriction doesnt seem viable as all want something different and some restrictions are just too complex.

I can understand not blindly following the general vote BUT completely ignoring it seems just terrible, 4000 thousand votes, even if 500 are fake thats still 3500 votes. Also not taking into account the huge general opinion pro Tera and only counting like... 50-90 people of top ladder right now at most assuming all restrict are ban votes would be a terrible idea.

Also you do realize that if no tiering action is decided upon suspect that means the meta stays the same and Tera stays right?

There is no way Tera is getting banned with not even 30% of current votes. So unless everyone restricted turns pro ban, some manipulation takes place or you do some wizard magic thing dont look very promising for the vocal ban minority. :)

 

[Bold School]

I think most objective people can tell that this is leaning towards restriction because there are enough people who want to compromise and even the council seems to lean that way, at least in initial stages. What there is less consensus on is what restrictions are in play and what happens after that. Due to the multi-faceted nature of Tera and the division of opinions, it seems extremely likely one suspect wouldn't be enough to get it right.

This also assumes it is even possible to get it right, or at least close enough to right to make it work. I personally think it is possible, but I also think most of the proposed solutions are regressive and no single solution by itself is enough. The community itself seems very split on what to do. What appears obvious to me seems silly or useless to the next person. Nothing will get solved without some sort of consensus. And remember, we've been delaying bans and suspects on other things because the goal is to figure out Tera first. And I at least think rightly so. But how quickly can we really do all that? It just seems very unlikely this will go right on the first try.

So how many suspects do we get before the Council throws up their hands and says some derivative of, "Welp, we tried."

If I recall correctly, Finch has specifically said he would be willing to try multiple suspects to get it right. But what does that mean? 2 suspects? 3 suspects? 7? I said before that I think the over/under would be at 2. But I don't know how many chances after, if any, that the community will have to come to a consensus.

At some point, most of the people who feel somewhat like myself, and who think Tera needs some action but want to try and make it work, will run out of patience. And I'm sure the Council would, too. I don't know what that point is. But I do think the ban versus anti-ban arguments are probably growing past their expiration dates. The focus now should be on compromise solutions and if we can reasonably make that work.

 

[Go Go Nihilego]

I don’t care about what the majority of people want or if casuals leave the format. Tera is a dumb mechanic that is so heavily swingy and breaks a plethora of mons, not to mention the turn to turn mindgames and stress it brings to the builder. It needs to go to begin fairly tiering the rest of the meta. Look, I love myself a Tera Fairy Wo-Chien or whatever else, but Pokémon was not designed with type changing on a whim in mind, let alone adaptability on anything. It’s so much cleaner to ban the enabler than to go down the list of however many mons that are arguably only suspect worthy with Tera (Dragonite, Dragapult, Garganacl, Espartha, Annihilape, Roaring Moon, Volcarona, & whatever else I’m missing and/or pops up later). And again, that’s not even mentioning the omnipresent annoyance that either player can change types to flip a 1v1 on its head at any point in the match.

 

[BobKingOfSeagulls]

I'm in agreement that we're heading towards a restriction of some sort. Personally I think there's a very clear case for Tera types being displayed at team preview.

Most obviously, this is something fully supported by nintendo. While VGC-emulation isn't a goal of ours nor necessarily desirable, when taking action on a level such as this (that will impact every game ever done in this gen) being as close to cartridge accurate and more specifically general game accurate is a reasonable approach to take.

Additionally, I think tera type at team preview retains the most common argument in favour of tera and removes the most common argument against it. Restricting what types you can tera result in fewer available options when teambuilding, and I've seen teambuilding as the biggest argument in favour of tera as a mechanic. When it comes to those against tera, the inability to play around a pokemon because of the potential types they have is a main argument in combination of not knowing when the opponent will use it. Showing tera type at team preview removes that element of pure guesswork, even if it still keeps the element of prediction tera affords.

 

[Wolf-X]

I’ll answer this one, thank you.

I’ll cover the banning of Espa first. If Espa is the only Mon currently that is broken by Tera, why ever ban Tera for it? Looking back to Blaziken in gen 7 and ZTorn in Nat Dex last gen, along with Kart and Prot-Gren being significantly better, among other things. From this philosophy, Z-Moves were kept, and Blaziken and Torn were thrown out. (Blaziken was to be brought back later)

Now, looking to HOME, I really don’t think it’s going to be this explosion of Tera brokenness everyone seems to think it is. Let me explain by going Mon by Mon.

Articuno - Still bad even with Tera, wouldn’t be broken at all. May be good, but probably wont see too much high level play due to lack of flexibility.

Zapdos - Zapdos loves its typing, why would it ever want to get rid of it? I don’t see any situations outside of fringe cases.

Moltres - Probably will be pretty good in OU, but while it has more flexibility, it still lacks a bit.

Mew - Mew does Mew things. Nothing new here.

Mewtwo - Ubers lol

Typhlosion - No impact

Quagsire - Quagsire do what Quagsire do, except with the ability to resist grass sometimes now. Would personally rather use Skeledirge, but ig it’s still Quagsire.

Kyogre, Groudon, Rayquaza - Ubers lol

Uxie, Mesprit, Azelf - Probably won’t use Tera.

Dialga, Palkia, Giritina, Arceus - Ubers lol

Heatran - Everyone’s favorite Lava frog returns! Heatran may look very good with Tera, but really, what typing can you give it that’s better than just keeping it’s current one. Tran is good, but not broken.

Samurott - No change

Tornadus - Everyone’s favorite bird… dragon… thing? I don’t know what it is, other than it’s really good. Why? Regenerator is a good ability, and Torn-T would definitely appreciate being able to shift around its defensive typing. Good? Certainly. Broken? Nope.

Thundurus - Good ol’ Thundy-T, back to bring more rain. Probably not going to make too much of a splash, but for sure going to be better. Mostly as a water type for better Seaking vibes.

Landorus - If anyone tells you Lando-I will be balanced this generation with Nasty Plot and Sandsear Storm in its kit now, they’re trying to sell you something. Tera makes no difference in this mon’s fate. Lando-T might be nice with the type changing, but it just lost half its movepool. To be fair, it is Lando, but Lando loves its type to death, especially the ground part of it. It could run an ice resistant type, but I don’t see Lando-T being broken.

Meloetta - No change

Chesnaught - Another mon cursed with a bad typing, except it’s typing is somewhat decent (resists EdgeQuake which is cool). Will probably be quite decent, but not broken in the slightest.

Delphox - Get this thing away from me I never wanted to see it again (don’t ask why). Nasty Plot and Focus Miss are cool, and this thing doesn’t want it’s typing either, but Tera absolutely doesn’t break it.

Greninja - ProtMan is back, and won’t be using Tera lmao. It can already change it’s type. As for Battle Bond, if it didn’t get nerfed I’d say ban, but jury’s out for now. One use really hurts and makes it all-or-nothing, and it prefers the power of Specs, which really doesn’t synergize with Tera helping with coverage. Same checks, just they are a lot more shaky to Tera Water this time.

Diancie - No change

Hoopa - ohboiohboi, here we go. This thing DESPISES it’s typing, and is happy to get rid of it. In theory, it’s one of the most broken mons out there, but who knows, since Hoopa-U’s brokenness is all about theory.

Volcanion - Probably will do the same stuff it did in gen 8, might work well as a pure ground type. I don’t know, but probably not broken.

Decidueye - No change

Magearna - How do you make Mag even more ridiculous? Tera. That’s how. All things considered, Mag has the best typing in the game, but now it can change it to be even more broken than usual! Yay!

Rillaboom - Transfer absolutely gutted this thing, no change.

Cinderace - Hates the Libero nerf, but it can change types already, so no effect from Tera.

Inteleon - No change

Perrserker - No change lol

Zacian/Eternatus - Still Ubers

Zamazenta - Might be going to OU, but not sure about that quite yet.

Urshifu-S - Lost 70 bp on Wicked Blow, but got SD, Punching Glove, and a lack of faries. Nope nope nope nope nope

Urshifu-R - Got SD, Punching Glove, and Tera Electric. Tera Electric lets it beat flyings and waters that would otherwise beat it. Good? Certainly. Broken? I’m not sure yet.

Zarude - Trailblase and SD. Still no good ability tho. No changes.

Regieleki - Ice Tera Blast bottom text pls ban

Regidrago - Good into every slow fat team without a fairy. Aka bad still

Glastrier - No changes

Spectrier - Go back to Ubers lol

Calyrex - Base is still bad, other formes are still Ubers.


That should be all of the HOME transfers that I know of covered, and question should be answered. Tiering survey soon, so we shall see the answers. Hope Tera will stay untouched and well in OU.

Edit: I’m a bit worried about the suspect test, and whether the restriction option will be lumped with ban or no ban. Whichever it gets put with will probably win, so I hope to see it get put in its own in a 3 way suspect.

Brilliant just brilliant, 100% agree and thanks for the effort. I agree not that many mons will derserve a ban with Tera staying as it is.

Except they’re not the only two exceptions. Dragonite and Dragapult are fine without Tera but broken with it, and you’re playing a different meta if you think they’re broken without it.

Many mons would still be broken without Tera. And anyway, the reason dragonite is soooo strong is not really Tera, its shed tail and screens, specially shed tail as it enables it to DD for free quite often for at least 2/3 times before even taking dmg.
Also feel Dragapult is crazy strong and might suspect worthy, and he already feels it without using tera.

 

[donkkut]

The community seems about evenly split when it comes to tera being an ultimately good or bad mechanic, so a huge portion of the playerbase will be unhappy regardless of the action taken, that's because tera having so many positive and negative aspects means it practically impossible to reach a consensus on it.
One of the biggest arguments to keeping tera is how much diversity it adds to the teambuilder, adding potential for creativity when inventing new strategies and using pokemon that are hindered by their type/movepool, which is overall great but it's only adding on what's already existing in pokemon. To everyone that really wants to keep tera around, i have 2 questions, would you enjoy the game less if tera was outright banned? And do you enjoy the previous generations where tera doesn't exist?
Pokemon already has a lot of strategy and diversity in it, we don't NEED tera around to have those elements in a metagame, so i assume most people would still be able to enjoy the game if tera was banned. On the other hand, tera can go as far as ruining the game to that other big majority, i've seen a lot of people say that they would very easily quit gen 9 if tera stayed unrestricted.

I think tiering action on tera should be taken considering that there will always be a large portion of the playerbase unhappy with it, but the people who want to preserve it (probably)wouldn't be as negatively affected by it as the people who want it banned.

 

[BobKingOfSeagulls]

Pokemon already has a lot of strategy and diversity in it, we don't NEED tera around to have those elements in a metagame, so i assume most people would still be able to enjoy the game if tera was banned. On the other hand, tera can go as far as ruining the game to that other big majority, i've seen a lot of people say that they would very easily quit gen 9 if tera stayed unrestricted.

Given the results of the poll we can say this is quite untrue. Most people, both major players and lower tier/random players, want tera to remain in some capacity. I think it's reasonable to say most people who dont want tera won't quit pokemon if tera stays with restrictions (which seems the most likely to happen). On the same side of course, I do agree that people are very unlikely to quit because tera leaves since we've only had tera for a short while (but I would certainly be dissapointed).

Of course we're all in agreement that this is much closer than dynamax and will certainly cause more of a headache for the council from player responses - I certainly don't envy their position.

 

[alephgalactus]

You can't get to write them off as "compromised vote." These are not Russian bots. These are real people who are just unlikely to be making reqs, but are still interested in smogon rules. This includes people on smogon, spectators, and people who just like competitive pokemon enough to fill out a survey.

Reading this, it seems like the general vote was heavily swayed by a single video and many of the later submissions were made by people who didn’t have Smogon accounts or don’t even play the game. We shouldn’t be taking the YouTube comments section into account when considering balance (or anything, really).

 

[flamewizzy21]

Reading this, it seems like the general vote was heavily swayed by a single video and many of the later submissions were made by people who didn’t have Smogon accounts or don’t even play the game. We shouldn’t be taking the YouTube comments section into account when considering balance.

Smogon is a meritocracy. It means you need to earn the right to vote, which is fundamentally different from “the rest of the community can go fuck itself.” Everyone from council members to spectators are a part of this community. Most people coming in from Joey’s video aren’t little Timmy going through the game with their best bud Pikachu. These are people who at least understand competitive pokemon (otherwise they wouldn’t be subscribed to pokeaimmd). Also, having a smogon account is not a mark of having a valid opinion. I’ve only dusted off my smogon account a few times over however many years, because it’s not like it affects my ability to play on PS.

tl;dr The unqualified vote does matter. They are just a different part of the community that won’t be voting in the suspect test.

 

[alephgalactus]

Also, having a smogon account is not a mark of having a valid opinion.

The literal first question on the survey is “what is your Smogon username” and it’s a required question. Apparently hundreds of people somehow ignored that.

 

[Dubbidub]

Right now, the issue is that everyone is split very hard. Just going by the OU tiering survey, if we were to make a vote of Free-Ban-Restrict, it would be an extremely even vote. I know that we usually go by super majority for ban, but any vote on Tera as of right now will definitely draw ire for being so close. Banning Dynamax drew a lot of attention, but it was obviously necessary, and there was a gigantic concensus to ban it (87% ban).

Not only is the split almost even between those who want to preserve tera as is vs limit tera in someway (ranging from mild nerf to ban), but among people who wish to limit tera there is no consensus on how to do that. I think concerns about ranked voting are being overlooked. We're at risk of imposing a measure that, if it were put to vote as an individual item, would not receive majority support. It's very possible that you may approve of restricting tera but oppose some of the intended solutions. There are people who likely would prefer to take their desired action but would rather take no action that some of the actions that are being suggested. I'm not opposed to ranked voting as a preliminary step. However, the chosen action from ranked voting should be voted on as an individual item - yes or no - and garner majority support before it is implemented.

 

[Finchinator]

Smogon is a meritocracy. It means you need to earn the right to vote, which is fundamentally different from “the rest of the community can go fuck itself.” Everyone from council members to spectators are a part of this community. Most people coming in from Joey’s video aren’t little Timmy going through the game with their best bud Pikachu. These are people who at least understand competitive pokemon (otherwise they wouldn’t be subscribed to pokeaimmd). Also, having a smogon account is not a mark of having a valid opinion. I’ve only dusted off my smogon account a few times over however many years, because it’s not like it affects my ability to play on PS.

tl;dr The unqualified vote does matter. They are just a different part of the community that won’t be voting in the suspect test.

Not everyone has seen what I have since I was the person who went through the votes, so let me paint a picture for you and see if you still have the same stance after.

The "general" vote where everyone's responses where counted had the following:

• The same person (or few people) responding dozens of times, spamming the survey with the same exact responses to quantities beyond those filterable
• Dozens of more people who have claimed to have not played or have only played on cart with their own rulesets rather than those of OU
• Hundreds more who admit that they do not have anything to add on the subject and just want it to be preserved for personal fun rather than anything competitively quantifiable
• Many, many more people who blindly voted the same as Joey did within hours of Joey releasing his video (I love Joey btw and it is awesome what he does, but obviously nobody deserves this much skew)

The general vote numbers just do not hold much weight. I hate it, too, because last generation they held some, but we have to be honest about what data sets mean rather than blindly empowering things like you are trying to.

 

[Finchinator]

Aside from that, am I the only one publicly concerned with how Finchinator and the tiering administration have been handling this situation? For the most part I enjoyed what they did in SwSh, but the recent decision making and public statements have had me losing faith in / questioning their decision making to some degree. I could just be in the dark a little bit, but their thought process for things like incorporating "fun" into tiering and not referencing Smogon tiering policy and cartridge / producer limitations has been far from transparent.

This is baffling.

There has never once been a time on Smogon when an OU tier leader has been remotely close to this transparent and active. I have made hundreds of posts and dozens of announcements within the last few weeks keeping everyone in the loop. If you can show me a time, please be my guest. You can disagree with my opinions or whatever suspect may happen as you wish -- be my guest. That is the beauty of it all and I love how discussions go around.

But labeling me as not transparent enough is so baffling. I have practically taken on a full-time job managing this unprecedented new generation state through hundreds of posts, regular public updates, and so on and you have the gall to say I am "far from transparent"??? Because I refuse to integrate "fun" (an entirely unquantifiable metric) into my tiering system when it is not even part of the Smogon tiering policy you refer to in the same sentence??? I am a god damn volunteer dedicating so much of my time to this taking measures based off of community input and I am plenty transparent in how I function. If you have policy complaints, be my guest. But shame on you for this and I will stand up for myself when this nonsense comes out.

 

[flamewizzy21]

I didn’t understand the depth of the issues with data quality. This unfortunately doesn’t help guide us, as the survey results prior to Joey’s video seem to match between qualified/unqualified voters… which is a very split vote. Even if we trusted the general vote, it would still be a split vote lol.

The OU council does not have an enviable position right now.

 

[Finchinator]

I didn’t understand the depth of the issues with data quality. This unfortunately doesn’t help guide us, as the survey results prior to Joey’s video seem to match between qualified/unqualified voters… which is a very split vote. Even if we trusted the general vote, it would still be a split vote lol.

The OU council does not have an enviable position right now.

Agreed, there is no perfect solution. This is why letting the community vote -- and hopefully they come out in great numbers from every single part of the community -- and hopefully giving them ample options is what is best.

 

[Garchomp for president]

Will we have a chance to play without Tera during the suspect test on the suspect ladder / secondary suspect ladder? It's not really necessary to assess how unbalanced Tera is, but given that we may be using ranked-choice voting and that the suspect may go on for longer than average, it would be nice to have some perspective without the mechanic.

 

[flamewizzy21]

I do have an idea for a restriction that I don’t think I’ve seen mentioned:

Clause: “On the turn a pokemon terastalizes, it must use a move that would be STAB under its tera type (including Tera Blast).”

This would nerf defensively terastalizing by: 1) forcing you to run a move that would be STAB (tera-fairy dondozo needs a fairy move). 2) Tie predicting terastalization to moves of a certain type. 3) Limit your ability to use defensively Tera to resist a move as you go for damage on a different type.

This would be a simple rule, and very enforceable on cartridge. It would mostly nerf defensive tera types, so it won’t do much about Dragonite-Normal or Chi-Yu-Dark, but it would hurt Garganacle, Skeledige, Dondozo… Could this be a decent idea?

EDIT: The opposite idea would nerf offensive Tera types. Clause: “On a turn that a pokemon terastalizes, it canNOT use a move that would be STAB under its new tera type.” Same idea, but it nerfs offensive tera types without nerfing defensive tera types as much. You still get to drop your super-STAB nukes from Chi-Yu etc… just not immediately.

 

[Smashburn]

This is baffling.

And I can understand why

There has never once been a time on Smogon when an OU tier leader has been remotely close to this transparent and active. I have made hundreds of posts and dozens of announcements within the last few weeks keeping everyone in the loop. If you can show me a time, please be my guest. You can disagree with my opinions or whatever suspect may happen as you wish -- be my guest. That is the beauty of it all and I love how discussions go around.

I would agree, you and the tiering staff have become very active in recent years as the playerbase grew around Smogon. I myself, as I said, have been somewhat in the dark about this and trying to trace through the logic of the situation, which has led to some confusion on my end. I had meant no disrespect, though my choice of language was quite plucky and I don't even understand why I chose to publicly voice my concern in that way without a second thought.

But labeling me as not transparent enough is so baffling. I have practically taken on a full-time job managing this unprecedented new generation state through hundreds of posts, regular public updates, and so on and you have the gall to say I am "far from transparent"??? Because I refuse to integrate "fun" (an entirely unquantifiable metric) into my tiering system when it is not even part of the Smogon tiering policy you refer to in the same sentence??? I am a god damn volunteer dedicating so much of my time to this taking measures based off of community input and I am plenty transparent in how I function. If you have policy complaints, be my guest. But shame on you for this and I will stand up for myself when this nonsense comes out.

Like I said I've been pretty confused and in the dark about a lot of this, between catching up and transitioning into the new gen to dealing with Tera, and just generally being frustrated. I really do respect the effort you put into Smogon moderation, given that it is entirely voluntary and a donation of your time. Really, most concerns I have had about transparency, policy, and any other yahoo had been under one reason: concern for the generational gimmick and the state of the playerbase. We lack a lot of data, which is unsurprising since although we have accrued some time, it hasn't been enough to put much out officially.

I apologize for having been so crude, and not making that post in clear judgment. That is not something I intended to prod at you with, even though I have some dissagreements. I do not intend to unfairly accuse or bully anyone into something that is untrue; that post was an unintentional exception. Please, if there is anything you can fill me in on I would greatly appreciate it. Other than that, thank you for answering me and I appreciate your time and efforts Finch.

 

[alephgalactus]

This would nerf defensively terastalizing by:

…Why would you want that? Defensive Tera is the least problematic part of Terastallization.