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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v2 [Update on Post #5186]
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Question, the "whole playerbase" is actually the whole playerbase or it is just the unqualified players separated from the qualified ones?
Indeed, this perfectly highlights why having some kind of requirements to participate in tiering action is not only a good thing but actually necessary to maintain a healthy and competitive metagame. The massive difference between general votes and qualified votes really speaks to a couple of things (most interestingly that the average newer/more casual player either doesn't seem to understand the concept of competitiveness or doesn't seem to care).
But as I've stated before, I really couldn't care if 99.9% of the player base was against a ban; it should be banned based on tiering policy alone. If there's other more pressing issues that the OU council wants to deal with first then fair enough, but I'd like to hear their thoughts on QC and uncompetitive mechanics in general in slightly greater detail than just "it's interesting that qualified players voted against this more than unqualified ones, I guess we'll keep an eye on it".
> 62.3% of the whole playerbase and 64.7% of the qualified playerbase support some form of tiering action on Terastallization as of the time of this survey. We are not yet at the point where a suspect is immediately imminent, but a discussion thread is likely to take place in the near future.
>Kingambit has recently surfaced as a big problem later in games in the eyes of some players. The whole playerbase gave it a 3.09, but the qualified players gave it a 3.46. This is a noteworthy amount of support and the council is discussing how to proceed internally now.
I feel like these two points are sending wildly different messages. Kingambit barely limps over the mininum line to be considered at all (which is apparently 3) and the it's council priority number 1. Tera gets near supermajority support for action to be taken and we might have a discussion on it.
Especially when kingambit test -> kingambit ban -> tera nerf/ban -> kingambit retest is pretty much a true combo since Kingambit is one of the biggest beneficiaries of tera.
>Kingambit has recently surfaced as a big problem later in games in the eyes of some players. The whole playerbase gave it a 3.09, but the qualified players gave it a 3.46. This is a noteworthy amount of support and the council is discussing how to proceed internally now.
I feel like these two points are sending wildly different messages. Kingambit barely limps over the mininum line to be considered at all (which is apparently 3) and the it's council priority number 1. Tera gets near supermajority support for action to be taken and we might have a discussion on it.
Especially when kingambit test -> kingambit ban -> tera nerf/ban -> kingambit retest is pretty much a true combo since Kingambit is one of the biggest beneficiaries of tera.
Everyone who clicked respond largely unfiltered aside from dudes spamming slurs and inappropriate stuff makes whole playerbase, including qualified
Nah, this ain’t construing data properly at all.
You’re using a blatant false equivalency to compare a 1-5 scale to a linear yes-no question.
And regardless of that, we literally never ever said Kingambit was our priority
there are two possible “next steps” a Tera discussion thread and possible suspect and a Kingambit suspect. Tera as a core mechanic needs a discussion thread first and it’s possible both happen even, but you’re putting words in our mouth or selectively construing my wording
Furthermore, it reeks of a similar edge case to Volc. I will not shut up about it because god tossing away the will of the people over what amounts to at best 50 wholeass individuals who even bother with tournaments. Who gives a shit what they think of, when their opinions greatly override what everyone else wants?
I mean, people WANT a retest on Volc, because 3.3 out of 5 is quite significant, especially when Kingambit only had 3.09, which SHOULD, in the eyes of a rational populace, mean it is less of a priority than Volc, but no. Council priority number one because 50 esteemed dukes wanted Kingambit gone. Yeah yeah smogon says they aren't a democracy, yet they dangle these "choices" in front of us like keys to a baby.
Furthermore, because tera was just given a yes or no, its only comparable metric is fucking quick claw, which, get this, only 33.7% of the actual playerbase thought was a problem. This is in comparison to 62.3% of the playerbase wanting action on Tera, which DOES cross the typical 60% barrier for needing action, but given the instability of these barriers, who knows if its more than enough, or not enough.
However, I can most certainly see the council quickbanning Quick Claw because 26 of 50 "qualified" players said it was an issue. Probably for tournaments alone, since apparently its only ever best of 1, which not even VGC does.
You're absolutely right. It makes no sense, and was a rash decision spurred by a tournament that, afaik, didn't even have any winnings attached to it.
You do realize that the Volc question wasn’t how broken it was, but if a retest is appropriate? There’s no possible way to draw the conclusion you did based off of the survey questions presented
The thing is that many people doubt that even with tera gone Gambit should stay on the tier, the main issue with Gambit is how strong supreme overlord is in the endgame and its bulk, without tera some of its sets may requiere adaptations true, but even then Gambit itemslot is very flexible so in several matches stuff like ballon, chopple/shuca berry will archive the same income that tera flying does at this moment. Action on tera will make it weaker but IMO it still will be on the same level of Volc with tera.
Ah ic so I was missing something, thanks for clearing it up lad
I will be out today, but if people have questions about the survey, I will get to them when I am back tonight. It’s important to me everyone understands the process, the data, etc.
Feel free to post them here and tag me or to PM/VM me
Feel free to post them here and tag me or to PM/VM me
Just a heads up, the qualified voter base for this survey is 136, not "50 esteemed dukes" lol. If the will of the people was on your side as much as you seem to think, why did a volcarona retest only get a middling 3.3/5 support? If everybody was as outraged as you are about the volcarona qb, why do they seem so lukewarm about a retest? If this was like 4.5/5 council would be forced to retest, but the numbers spoke for themselves bro.
This generation has brought with it so much raw power that some trolling for a tiering survey will always remain bad - but it's expected.
This is coming from the guy who thinks Lugia is 100% ok in OU tho so take it with a grain of salt
Friendly reminder that literally any person can become one of those "esteemed dukes" by putting in the time and effort to learn the fucking game. If there weren't requirements associated with this kind of thing the metagame would be about as enjoyable as a cross-country road trip on a septic truck with no air conditioning. Spend 5 minutes in Showdown's lobby while a suspect is going on and you'll quickly come to understand the average player has literally zero idea what they're talking about.
not too sure how accurate this statement even is since a lot of us have been complaining about volc even since gen 8 (maybe even further back lmao), tera and the lack of proper methods to account for it is what pushed the straw and I, for one, have been liking the current meta (albeit gambit is a bit annoying but lets wait and see)
on a more concrete note, survey results were pretty expected and I would really love a discussion on tera since I feel that if we were to adopt the method of VGC's way where we are able to see what type teras the opposing team is using, the metagame will be a lot less sacky in certain aspects and a lot more skill structured.
I'd say we are going in a pretty good direction. liking it so far~
also most tournaments dont have winnings & not having winnings doesnt make WCOP not a prestigious tournament
(tho i generally do agree with the premise that mons sholdnt be banned 'because' of tournaments)
(tho i generally do agree with the premise that mons sholdnt be banned 'because' of tournaments)
I much prefer that the tier is decided from the top down rather than the bottom up. Qualified players who know their shit should be given a much greater say than Joey.Gonzales.2004 at 1200 ELO.
Going forward I think Tera Preview is the healthiest way to keep Tera in check. It allows the new strategic options open to Tera to remain while reducing the blind guessing factor that causes the saltiest of wins. Banning Tera in general would be a massive blow to the identity and enjoyment of this generation.
Going forward I think Tera Preview is the healthiest way to keep Tera in check. It allows the new strategic options open to Tera to remain while reducing the blind guessing factor that causes the saltiest of wins. Banning Tera in general would be a massive blow to the identity and enjoyment of this generation.
No it won't. You can't use air balloon to anywhere near the same effect as tera flying gambit, assuming gambit can't use tera in this example. Especially because unlike with tera flying, you're still weak to faster fighting moves. This also applies to resist berries. There is a huge difference between a full ground immunity and halved ground damage. Or a fighting resistance instead of halved fighting damage.
Yes Gambit is still great without tera but it is not anywhere close to broken without it, let alone near the level of Tera Volc.
Preview doesn't change the fact that mons can just pick counters regardless of knowledge foretold
Take, for example, flying gambit versus a team with ice spinner tusk. Instead of it being a clear eq or cc, it's a dangerous 50/50 for the tusk player because click eq into the new airplane gambit and you lose, and click spinner into a still steel gambit and it just resets itself.
This is the fundamental problem.
Something really illuminating about Gambit to consider is that it's very popular now for both players to save their Tera for the very end for Kingambit in games where it is present, and the reason for this is that Kingambit has the effect of being the single most important factor at the end of every single game it's present in, and every game has an end. Its simple presence in team preview is enough to radically alter the order of how its opponent plays the game, as its checks that you need to keep healthy are often ones that you want to get out early in the game to make progress, such as Great Tusk. It's SO easy for Kingambit to get a Swords Dance and end the game then and there without careful positioning around its looming presence. Oftentimes Tera is saved to prevent it from ending the game this way, and Gambit uses Tera to further turn the tide. If we're looking at a mechanic as powerful and potentially broken as Terastalization being most relevant in the Kingambit matchup, combined with all this, it's really hard to argue that this game doesn't completely revolve around Kingambit.
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It actually kind of amazes me that the survey had almost half of people at all levels realizing this gen is uncompetitive and wildly unbalanced, and the councils response was 'hey better than last time right!'. Like we need some movement guys. You can't say '40% of people don't think that this meta is competitive' and 'we might get to a suspect test. At some point. Maybe. Definitely a symptom and not the cause though'. Either stuff needs to start getting tossed to ubers pronto until maybe we have a halfway playable meta, or we just need to get the tera vs no tera thing over with because that's really what's going to decide if this generation is worth playing in the future. I feel like we're at the point where there's so much wrong with this generation that you have the leniency to start bumping stuff off aggressively, and the alternative is slow rolling changes for so long that the meta never stabilizes. QC, Screens, Tera, any of about 5 mons, feels like there's too much to act on to be taking so long to take action.
Tera preview does jack shit. It actually in some cases buffs mons that shouldn't be buffed (tera preview is definitely more of a kingambit buff than a nerf for instance). Arguably it makes one of the biggest problems of the generation worse, how offensively sided the generation is. The chunk it takes out of defensive teras is significantly larger than the ones it takes out of offensive teras. The only thing it axes is the surprise tera, but the numerous other reasons why tera shouldn't be a legal mechanic are still present with tera preview. Right now tera is both uncompetitive and wildly unbalancing. Tera preview only partially fixes the first one, and it doesn't even fully fix it because even if you know that Kingambit is tera flying, you don't know when it's going to do a resist-uturn.
Tera preview does jack shit. It actually in some cases buffs mons that shouldn't be buffed (tera preview is definitely more of a kingambit buff than a nerf for instance). Arguably it makes one of the biggest problems of the generation worse, how offensively sided the generation is. The chunk it takes out of defensive teras is significantly larger than the ones it takes out of offensive teras. The only thing it axes is the surprise tera, but the numerous other reasons why tera shouldn't be a legal mechanic are still present with tera preview. Right now tera is both uncompetitive and wildly unbalancing. Tera preview only partially fixes the first one, and it doesn't even fully fix it because even if you know that Kingambit is tera flying, you don't know when it's going to do a resist-uturn.
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I once again want to propose how a Tera Suspect Numeral Two should be done.
Two Stages
First Stage, Action, Shorter period
A Suspect Test on if Tera should be restricted, with restrictions chosen by council given, based on a Discussion Thread and possibly a poll. This will be a binary. Ban is off the table at this stage.
No matter the result of this Suspect, a second will occur. If Restriction occurs, Stage 2 will be delayed, but if restriction does not occur, we go straight to Stage 2
Second Stage, Full Ban, Longer period
This is a binary Ban/No Ban Suspect Test that takes longer, and would occur regardless of the result of the Action stage.
Reasoning:
Instead of having a split vote for action or anything of the like, we decide in two stages creating two binary votes, leading to more obvious data. People who want restriction have a suspect test to put their idea to the test.
Pro-ban has no reason not to vote restriction unless they absolutely believe restriction is not an improvement, thus bringing the vote closer in line with actual thoughts on what should be done (you literally can't vote for ban, and you have one upcoming no matter what), as a Ban suspect test will happen no matter what. Thus, if the people truly do want a middleground option tried, pro-Ban can vote restriction with no downside.
No matter what, they will have a ban/no ban Suspect Test regardless. This would also dissuade any further Suspect Test on Terastilization being needed unless there is actual mechanical change, because we would have tried restriction as well, so that if Terastilization was banned there is less need to find out what would happen with restriction instead.
I believe this would end up with the least baggage, the most thorough data, and the best way to lay the matter to rest, potentially once and for all. All while being, to my knowledge, entirely possible within the means of Tiering Policy.
It would be impossible for me to carve a timeline, but aiming for a month to two month total Suspect period is in my opinion not a bad idea. We are at the beginning of July, and the DLC is going to be released in Fall/Winter respectively. This would give more than enough time for this to occur, in my opinion.
Two Stages
First Stage, Action, Shorter period
A Suspect Test on if Tera should be restricted, with restrictions chosen by council given, based on a Discussion Thread and possibly a poll. This will be a binary. Ban is off the table at this stage.
No matter the result of this Suspect, a second will occur. If Restriction occurs, Stage 2 will be delayed, but if restriction does not occur, we go straight to Stage 2
Second Stage, Full Ban, Longer period
This is a binary Ban/No Ban Suspect Test that takes longer, and would occur regardless of the result of the Action stage.
Reasoning:
Instead of having a split vote for action or anything of the like, we decide in two stages creating two binary votes, leading to more obvious data. People who want restriction have a suspect test to put their idea to the test.
Pro-ban has no reason not to vote restriction unless they absolutely believe restriction is not an improvement, thus bringing the vote closer in line with actual thoughts on what should be done (you literally can't vote for ban, and you have one upcoming no matter what), as a Ban suspect test will happen no matter what. Thus, if the people truly do want a middleground option tried, pro-Ban can vote restriction with no downside.
No matter what, they will have a ban/no ban Suspect Test regardless. This would also dissuade any further Suspect Test on Terastilization being needed unless there is actual mechanical change, because we would have tried restriction as well, so that if Terastilization was banned there is less need to find out what would happen with restriction instead.
I believe this would end up with the least baggage, the most thorough data, and the best way to lay the matter to rest, potentially once and for all. All while being, to my knowledge, entirely possible within the means of Tiering Policy.
It would be impossible for me to carve a timeline, but aiming for a month to two month total Suspect period is in my opinion not a bad idea. We are at the beginning of July, and the DLC is going to be released in Fall/Winter respectively. This would give more than enough time for this to occur, in my opinion.
I sort of feel like people are getting angry at the council for using calmer language than them. Personally, my takeaway reading Finch's post was "the next steps are a discussion thread about Tera that will likely lead to a suspect in some capacity, and a suspect or ban on Kingambit bearing in mind the importance of the other matter." It's true no firm timeframes were given, but it sounds like tiering action is being considered to me so I don't really echo the sentiment of "the council is looking at these results and doing NOTHING" just because they aren't using decisive language.
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