Community dissatisfaction can have a lot of symptoms and culpability must be dissected carefully as it is multifaceted. You connected Tera's high score with the low competitive score without any semblance of analysis. I find that if you dig deeper, the strong correlation you imply is more façade than fact.
Some people may be dissatisfied with Tera as a whole, some people may be dissatisfied with Tera in specifics contexts or on specific Pokemon, and some people may be dissatisfied with just Pokemon or strategies regardless of Tera. You can even split these groups further down by taking the group "dissatisfied with Tera as a whole" to those wanting an outright ban and those wanting a mechanical restriction or by taking the group "dissatisfied with Tera in specific contexts or on specific Pokemon" to those wanting us to ban at an expedited pace versus those who also want some type of mechanical restriction. Suddenly a linear cross-section becomes a three-pronged fork in the road. Suddenly the three-pronged fork in the road becomes a pie chart with a half dozen demographics. Suddenly the pie chart has blurred lines with overlap and partial agreements. And so on.
Personally, I think Tera has a lot to do with the scores, but I've always understood that even pro-tera players might be voting low, for what reasons, I'm not sure.
This last survey can't be blamed on a chaotic meta, though.
So I'm trying to picture myself as a qualified pro-tera player who is voting a 6/10 or less, and I can't really find a concrete reason other than maybe Gambit- but I don't think well-rounded players think that mon is singlehandedly ruining the meta- at least lowering their feelings about competitiveness.
Going forward, maybe we should be asking follow up questions until scores hit around a solid 7 or so.
That said, it's not lost on me I'm using a tool you implemented; the surveys.
Without you we wouldn't have concrete data in the first place, which I think is important.
I can't in good faith wave around low scores as some sort of gotcha moment when we wouldn't have them in the first place. So I'll apologize for that here.
With the status quo being to keep Terastallization legal due to general tiering principals (same reason why suspects mandate strong majorities), its status as a core mechanic, and its survival of the initial suspect, the onus is on the people who oppose it being legal to prove its worthiness of a suspect and eventual ban. However, there is also an onus of those in favor of it to oppose this whenever there is a strong push for a suspect. The thing is that in this case there are also a lot of other onuses on those who want middleground approaches pertaining to Pokemon tiering or Tera tiering to get their foot wedged in the door and keep it open until people see their perspective. Given this: do you see how complicated it gets? Do you see how much evidence would truly be needed for an outright ban of Terastallization? Do you see where the bar is and the hurdles that must be cleared for any individual slice of that pie chart aside from the status quo on Terastallization to become the new status quo?
It is not something we take lightly and it never will be. Jumping right into another suspect would be premature regardless of the tone of the threads. However, the threads have not exactly been kind to you either. For example, over 60% of the posts in the Policy Review thread have opposed an outright ban and over 50% have opposed action on the mechanic altogether for the time.
Given this, there are other ways to tackle the low competitive scores and the dissatisfaction with parts of the Tera dynamic than rushing into a Tera suspect immediately. What is most important is that we do our due diligence on something this important -- the worst thing we could do would be to ban a generational mechanic without sufficient evidence. It is very possible to remedy a lot of the core issues and many of the concerns people expressed through simple Pokemon suspects so long as we keep an open mind to Tera as a potential future suspect in the contingency that metagame issues persevere forward to the next stages of the metagame.
Yes in my initial post I said there isn't concrete evidence tera is broken because it doesn't exist.
It may be on the fence, but I've been around long enough to know that if something is on the fence, it usually sticks around.
The only evidence anti-tera has would be the low scores, which we just discussed, and the last survey, which like the scores is shaky due to the vagueness of the question.
Moving on from full ban, we can discuss middleground.
The only thing I can say is this would be a suspect that is primarily an appeasement to a good chunk of players, and allowing us to move on with a concrete answer.
It reminds me of the WW or recent Zama suspect, but there have been others like the Mel suspect where the majority thinks its fine but a respectable amount of players want it banned/suspected, so we have a relatively harmless suspect.
Now when someone in OU chat is complaining about Zama, we can confidently say l2p it passed a test, it's definitely you and not the mon.
This is what tera needs.
Inversely, what happens if we have a suspect and a restriction does pass?
That would imply a mistake on the council's part for not having one sooner.
Less active, less engaged councils have let broken mons run around their tier for months, and it's always a shame.
So, although there isn't hard evidence, a suspect is needed for general community health, and to double check if the scores are really about unrestricted tera or not. I see no harm testing something that isn't broken, as we do that all the time.
When you say, "Given this, there are other ways to tackle the low competitive scores and the dissatisfaction with parts of the Tera dynamic than rushing into a Tera suspect immediately." this leads me into a question.
Question #1:
Can you speak on these approaches towards the scores, and how you would address the Tera dissatisfaction outside of a suspect?
It seems that the thesis of many of your posts is that you believe the council is trying to give off the perception that community feedback is important through surveys, posts, and so on. However, you believe we simultaneously are ignoring things or spinning them in a certain way to fit our narrative and perception rather than that of the community. TL;DR: You think our transparency is a façade and we are manipulating data to fit our narrative.
To be clear: this is categorically false. There has been a clear, unquestionable correlation between survey responses and tiering action. Let's do some trend analysis with some surveys and suspects since I took over as OUTL:
- Kyurem received 69% support from the qualified playerbase, so it was suspected in late 2021
- Weavile received 38% support from the qualified playerbase, so it was not suspected in early 2022
- Melmetal received 34.8% support from the qualified playerbase, so it was not suspected in mid 2022
- Melmetal received 58% support from the qualified playerbase, so it was suspected in late 2022
- Chien-Pao received 79% support from the qualified playerbase, so it was suspected (actually very close to a QB) in early 2023
- Kingambit received 65% support from the qualified playerbase in mid 2023...
These Pokemon followed a trend that cannot be mistaken for communal input being ignored or disregarded for some internally fueled agenda. Anything saying otherwise borders on conspiracy and at best is just ill-informed banter as opposed to good-faith arguing.
Tera was left with a purposefully vague question on the survey and threads to discuss it were opened as it is a matter more complicated than any individual Pokemon. To handle Tera like an ordinary Pokemon from a suspecting point-of-view would be negligence, so making the comparisons you make feel quite irresponsible to me. The survey data means we should pop open the hood and engage in deeper discussions with the potential to suspect -- not immediately suspect based off of those stats like it is an individual Pokemon. This is not inconsistency so much as it is due process given the gravity of the situation. And seeing as you say things like the following:
You seem to agree we should be changing our approach for Tera relative to normal Pokemon tiering, so why do you have a gripe to begin with? In a philosophical sense, we are mirroring your expectations.
Perhaps you are the one that has a strict agenda...and since that agenda does not quite have the consensus right now, you are projecting upon the community to compensate? Or maybe you just did not realize this contradiction? I do not know. And, quite frankly, I do not care because I am here to explain my actions as leader of the council, not your actions as a poster in the OU subforum, so I digress.
We are not on the same page here, I don't think the transparency is a fraud, nor have spoke a word about data manipulation. My stance is that council is pro-tera leaning and that bias can manifest in subtle ways, that is literally the extent of my 'conspiracy' theory. A less pro-tera council, imo, would have been asking more questions about tera, more frequently, and would be finding ways for players to experience the meta without the gimmick.
A pro-tera council member could hop in OU chat and start a no-tera tour at any time, but it's never happened.
Overall, I don't think anyone is even conscious of how their pro-tera bias is coming through via inaction, and I don't attribute it to some weird, shadowy scheme whatsoever.
I understand a vague survey question about tera action getting 65% support doesn't mean we have to have a suspect overnight. What I don't understand are the next steps. Sure, we've popped the hood, and there's some smoke, 65% of your engine has some sort of problem, what now?
My main concern is, so far, a failure to dig deeper into the data of the Action results. 4/6 mons you listed had less or equal support than the tera action survey, but tera isn't a mon, as you said.
So, if a mon gets enough support it's tested. This leads me into a question.
Question #2:
If 35% support on a survey is enough to warrant a suspect for a mon, what does 65% support on some sort of action be taken on a gimmick warrant? Do you think no significant action to address this support is acceptable, even if the survey was vague?
Question #3
Why haven't we gathered more specific data since the last survey; what are the pros/cons of having a survey in the near future dedicated to tera to discover what the community means by "Action"?
Speaking of strict agendas and contradictions- you say we can't treat Tera like we would mons, but when it comes to a test ladder, you're copy/pasting tiering policies designed for mons, not a gimmick.
This is what I mean by novel approach. If by novel approach you mean, "Yeah, 65%, but it was vague and it's not a mon so we won't have a suspect" then that's the difference between you and I. My idea of a novel approach would be test ladders, frequent and detailed surveys, holding Team Preview tours, or ban TB tours. Again, this lack of action and engagement around tera may be caused by those internal biases I spoke of earlier, but the total lack of tera data collection and testing whatsoever is a management misstep, imo. So no, you are not mirroring my expectations in the slightest.
To say I'm projecting, and there isn't a consensus is quite confusing, as we have hard data, regardless of how vague, that more players want some action to be taken than not. Again, 65% of our playerbase said they want
something done, yet I'm projecting my strict agenda? This can't be what you meant, I assume, so yeah, a bit perplexing.
Speaking personally aside for a moment: no, they do not. I think things could be much worse and I think there is a clear correlation between tiering action and an improvement in response patterns in the following survey.
My job is to have our actions as a council improve the overall enjoyment and competitiveness of the metagame after we are dealt a certain hand at the start of every generation, HOME, or DLC. These recurring "resets" or releases naturally go against the progression of tiering, but we are becoming more aggressive, consistent, and methodical in our approach while integrating the community more-and-more.
I look more at our process and progression as well as our relative improvement when we act rather than the barebones score right after a release. I believe the low competitive scores are a reflection of HOME's timing and impact on the early metagame more than they are our approach.
So when you include things in your post trying to relate to me because you know I care, you know I am doing my best, and you know I genuinely do listen to criticism, sure -- I read and I take these things seriously, but I also very much know when to stand up to myself and send a message to the community about what is important to us, what the future direction is going to be, and so on. Communication is huge and I will always excel with that, but results are key. And while the surface level results are low, the correlation between council responsiveness and relative result improvement across surveys is nearly perfect. That is no coincidence.
What meta are you comparing to that could be much worse, or are you just being hypothetical?
This meta is 6 months old, with no broken mons running around, and getting comp and balance scores at 5/10
Could things be worse, I guess? Technically, things could always be worse, but I don't see how that's a healthy mindset.
When you say tiering action into improvement, I must point out that the surveys have always been at a time where some broken mon was running around. So to ban an unhealthy presence, and watch scores go from a 4 to a 5, doesn't seem to be a big win. This is why I put so much emphasis on the current survey results. If it's not a broken mon causing qualified players to vote so low, what is it? I realize there is a Gambit suspect on the horizon, but we can make a friendly bet that it's departure or lack thereof won't increase scores much.
But yes, we appreciate the swift removal of unhealthy mons, and communication. I disagree with your sentiment that survey scores are surface level, personally the comp aspects of this meta really do feel about a 5. It's not just numbers in a vacuum. Players are laddering, having uncompetitive and unbalanced interactions, then letting you know about it via voting. I would put a good amount of weight on this and really try to figure out why.
Overall, you are doing a fine job, and I'm Monday morning quarterbacking. I'm aware of this and appreciate your time. Just because we would handle certain aspects differently, and I'm critical about your plays sitting here in my armchair, doesn't mean I think I could step into your shoes. I just have some questions and concerns, and of course some input and opinions.
Question #4
What do you think is the main cause of the recent survey score for comp and balance being so low?
Finally, I disagree with this.
We are trying to develop the current metagame. A complete overhaul right now with DLC on the horizon and approval rates gradually increasing would be silly.
There is very rarely a time when a complete overhaul in a metagame is needed and we are not currently at that point. Contrary to the tone of your posts, a lot of people like the metagame or at very least enjoy it. And more will with more time, development, and tiering action.
Obviously there is a point when enough-is-enough, but we have not reached this point based on both the survey and community input throughout these threads.
This is another time we're not on the same page.
I was speaking of a test ladder. The main reason, as I understand, is that a test ladder wouldn't reflect the current meta and thus doesn't make sense.
That is true with a mon, forsure. We learned a long time ago suspecting mons that way is backwards.
I don't want to go over my points about a tera suspect ladder, but I have several posts outlining why I think there is a bit of bullshit around why we can't toss one up for data collection and player education.
These are a group of your key or recurring points,
LoseToRU?.
Yes, I picked out bits because going into a piece-by-piece forum argument is more likely to cause a splintered, unproductive discussion. Yes, I left out bits on my opinion on the suspect ladder and the brokenness of Tera as I already discussed those in prior posts within the last 2 days. For those who missed, see:
Overall thoughts and
why a no Tera ladder would be bad thoughts in the hyperlinks. Yes, there are probably more things to discuss as time elapses.
These threads are going to remain open, Tera is going to be continuously assessed, and there is no rush to either suspect or agree it should never be suspected. We are going to do this right and trust our community to continue to formulate opinions as the metagame evolves while we trust our tiering process that is fueled by the community.
On Monday or Tuesday, I will be posting a suspect on something that is not Terastallization. Tera disucssion threads will remain open through then and potentially longer as we continue to mull through it all. Until then, I will be on a weekend trip without any computer access (even most of this was typed on phone, so pardon any typos in this group of posts).
Overall, I think we've successfully communicated here.
Below I've reposted and condensed my 4 questions as 2 in case that makes it easier for you to respond.
How you would address the Tera dissatisfaction outside of a suspect; if 35% support on a survey is enough to warrant a suspect for a mon, what does 65% support on some sort of action warrant?
Are we going to have a more detailed survey to discover what the community means by "Action" and exactly what issues are making players feel this meta isn't very competitive nor balanced?
I don't expect a response, and I mean no shade like these are too hard and complicated to answer, but I assume you don't have an inexhaustible reserve of patience. Overall, it would be easier to not have a suspect, to sweep the Action results under the rug and never ask again, to suspect/ban Gambit, and then look into Val/Pult/S-Tiers and hope that gets us to a 7/10 for comp. If you took those steps, I wouldn't blame you.
Tera can't be banned, not enough support and more importantly evidence.
Tera can't really be restricted without opening a can of worms; Preview is too revealing and feels wrong, TB ban wouldn't get enough support.
I don't think half the Action voters even know wtf they really want lol
So, I kinda answered my own questions. I don't feel like editing this post, but know as I typed it literally had a realization that it's time to shift my focus towards my own community rather than the whole community.
You are correct in more ways than I am in regards to how you've handled this situation from the beginning.
If I ever do get around to some sort of no-tera Discord or whatever, you're always welcome.
See you in the Gambit thread lol, and thanks again for your time.
