Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion, Part II [CLOSED FOR DLC]

[Finchinator]

unlike every other tera solution?

Yes. We literally had outright dismissal from tiering admins and multiple official statements from tier leadership on why a side ladder/format isn’t sound. It has nothing to do with people being lazy and him taking blind shots at PS contributors is just rude.

then give us some reasons please

We have many, many times. It’s not really our fault you haven’t followed discussion. Here is one of the more prominent examples, but there have been dozens of posts providing reasoning on why a splinter format or ladder isn’t feasible here.

 

[Bakugames]

Fellas I'm gonna be real: if a singles tournament ever exists its gonna be a bss 3v3 one. 6v6 is too much of a slog.

Gonna say this before we move back on topic but: you can compare pokemons balance with tcgs, which are known for being extremely hard to balance. There's a lot of moving parts, new expansions, the innevitability of powercreep etc. Bear in mind card games only need some % of cards to have casual appeal, as the rest either dont need it or can be made for competition only, while pokemon needs a large % of mons to appeal to casual gameplay, otherwise teambuilding feels punishing and unfun.

what gamefreak does is that while theyve embraced powercreep, they seem to try and tailor the metagame around the powercreep, which may leave a lot of pokemon behind but still makes for a good format. Doubles also help powercreep climb slower.

Of course, this means that singles 6v6 was left in the dust, but I dont think gamefreak ever saw this as a highly competitive format, but a casual one

 

[Spheal boi]

Fellas I'm gonna be real: if a singles tournament ever exists its gonna be a bss 3v3 one. 6v6 is too much of a slog.

Gonna say this before we move back on topic but: you can compare pokemons balance with tcgs, which are known for being extremely hard to balance. There's a lot of moving parts, new expansions, the innevitability of powercreep etc. Bear in mind card games only need some % of cards to have casual appeal, as the rest either dont need it or can be made for competition only, while pokemon needs a large % of mons to appeal to casual gameplay, otherwise teambuilding feels punishing and unfun.

what gamefreak does is that while theyve embraced powercreep, they seem to try and tailor the metagame around the powercreep, which may leave a lot of pokemon behind but still makes for a good format. Doubles also help powercreep climb slower.

Of course, this means that singles 6v6 was left in the dust, but I dont think gamefreak ever saw this as a highly competitive format, but a casual one

Especially as in SS Gamefreak even made a Metronome event for Singles, and even if it had a leaderboard and people teambuilding Pokèmon especially for it "as Cursed Body Gengar", was like if it was made as a way to involve especially casual players in it

 

[That_Dwayneee]

This has been discussed to death and this has never once been the reason. It’s not a logistical matter so much as it is not ever how tiering has been approached.

Do your due diligence before pointing blame at groups of thankless contributors. Bold of you to single out Zarel of all people when he hasn’t been online for months as if he’s one of the sole deciders in things like this, too. Just a wholly ignorant take.

Hey this was never intended to be a blame game, I literally used the term resources to avoid it becoming this, I mentioned zarel because, to my current knowledge, he owns showdown and therefore has the final say of what gets done on the site in terms of big things like this.

I get that none of the parties involved with this want to invest resources into a ladder like this, especially with his suspect ladders have failed in the past, but I guess that mentioning that it can’t be done due to this well founded reluctance makes me ignorant right?

 

[Finchinator]

Hey this was never intended to be a blame game, I literally used the term resources to avoid it becoming this, I mentioned zarel because, to my current knowledge, he owns showdown and therefore has the final say of what gets done on the site in terms of big things like this.

I get that none of the parties involved with this want to invest resources into a ladder like this, especially with his suspect ladders have failed in the past, but I guess that mentioning that it can’t be done due to this well founded reluctance makes me ignorant right?

If it was the sound tiering option, it would’ve been done months ago regardless of Zarel’s approval, especially when he’s in perma-LoA. PS staff does an awesome job upkeeping their simulator and meeting the growing demands of tiering. This just wasn’t in the cards. Namedropping Zarel came off as ignorant, yes.

 

[udongirl]

I honestly see it as how out of touch the developers have gotten. Besides the addition of fairy type, there wasn't really any need for mid battle changes. I think they saw how much people liked megas, and leaned even harder into adding mechanics. The only reason they stopped with megas is because they were low-key centralizing, didn't need one but not running one was definitely questionable.

Another way I see it was to appeal to people who had dropped the games because the formula didn't change. Instead of improving the story, or graphics they took the shortcut and just tossed in mechanics that are somewhat to bare minimum balanced. It's okay to throw things in for fun but it's gotten to the point of being kind of ridiculous. I could go more into it but I'd need to take more time than I'd like.

I can explain why they quit mega.
Like everyone knows, BSS and VGC allows all mons which is not legendary so only a few specific megas (kang gengar mence zard) are used and there are few options for a serious team. Game Freak thought gen mechanics should be accessed by all pokemon and they tried to free restriction of gen mechanics.
gen mechanics will be unexpectable like dynamax and terastal and mechanics which can be used by specific pokemon or situation (mega and Z moves) won't be back.

 

[Spheal boi]

I can explain why they quit mega.
Like everyone knows, BSS and VGC allows all mons which is not legendary so only a few specific megas (kang gengar mence zard) are used and there are few options for a serious team. Game Freak thought gen mechanics should be accessed by all pokemon and they tried to free restriction of gen mechanics.
gen mechanics will be unexpectable like dynamax and terastal and mechanics which can be used by specific pokemon or situation (mega and Z moves) won't be back.

Which I can completely understand and also imagine that Gamefreak wanted to make also Pokémon that were incredibly hold back by their typing as Frosmoth, but as I said, making this just created even more problems with pokémon that were already problematic and created the huge powercreep I think I have ever seen in all gens

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

If it was the sound tiering option,

honestly, i'm still not entirely sold on it not being the sound tiering option. all the arguments against it i've seen are either heavily theoretical or arguing from tradition

 

[ianlazerbeem]

honestly, i'm still not entirely sold on it not being the sound tiering option. all the arguments against it i've seen are either heavily theoretical or arguing from tradition

No, as much as i wish it were possible, it is unfortunately unscientific; an OU without Tera would probably have a totally different banlist, but the operating word there is "probably." Several Pokémon would probably be able to be unbanned, but we don't exactly know which ones and couldn't guarantee that the ones we think will be balanced without Tera are. With this in mind running a suspect on a no Tera ladder would not give an accurate picture of a metagame because it would not accurately represent what threats are and are not dominant for this reason, so the data it provides isn't very useful. This also would be a completely new format, and new formats need more than 2 weeks to settle generally. On the contrary, no-Tera tours allow us to test the waters of what this format could look like as much as we want and to determine what is and isn't acceptable without Tera through multiple trials with different variables changed, rather than throwing unban/keep banned darts at a board and basing a massive tiering decision based on potentially flawed data. Maybe you missed this argument when you were busy talking about the merits of holding pokeballs to Tera

edit: I can't believe I even responded to this, I fell for it again, repeatedly asking to reopen old matters that were already settled is a classic tool in the derailer's playbook

 

[Bakugames]

edit: I can't believe I even responded to this, I fell for it again, repeatedly asking to reopen old matters that were already settled is a classic tool in the derailer's playbook

I feel like you have this weird conspiracy theory of some big pro tera sending people to this thread so nothing happens. One: most people that suggest things like this are actually pro action, they just want to give their own idea of the action to take, and even anti tera people aren't doing this to undermine tera tiering, theyre here because the thread asked for ideas and people like talking about their ideas. This isn't a debate we're not talking with ben shapiro

I promise you that the real issue is that pro-action people don't know which action to actually take. we had a good pro preview wave but that got broken up by new discussion, people are still meh on tera blast, ban would be a hill to climb vs the silent majority, so now people are coming up with whatever new idea to try and get the ball rolling again, but its not working.

Also: derail what? The reason why nothing is happening is that not only the meta we're discussing about's shelf life is shorter than milk, but we already beat a bunch of discussion about it to death.
I won't say we know everything about these points bc thats impossible, but we saw pretty much every argument people have unless someone has a breakthrough and shares, which they probably wont because again no one wants to put effort in a discussion that will be made half irrelevant when the new meta arrives. They're just waiting for it to Actually come so they can get the ball rolling again.

tl;dr go take a nap zzz you feel better after

 

[LoseToRU?]

Maybe I’ll ask the ou room mods for some teraless roomtours, who knows.

Been there, done that. It got denied- and it wasn’t some random ass request. There are many prerequisites to get a themed chat room on PS! and my friends and I exceeded them all. If we wanted a bird watching or water polo chat room on PS! we would have gotten one, that’s how hard we crushed the requirements. To summarize why it was denied: “There is no need for a no-tera room and it may drive players away from the actual meta.” I ask, well if that many players are siphoned away, doesn’t that mean there is a widespread need that isn’t being met?
There should be one already and it should have been put forth by our council.

If we want to avoid a separate ladder then the next logical step would be a harmless chat room. This room could host no-tera tours. Players here could use no tera custom rules. The amount of information we could have gathered on tera and how it affects the SV metagame is unfathomable. So many questions thousands of players have could have been answered concretely by now. This king’s ransom worth of data doesn’t exist. Our council feels no need to collect this data. There aren’t even no-tera tours in the OU room. There are room tours where you can only bring pink pokemon or able to use an Uber mon, but not tours where tera is banned.
I don’t know why we haven’t been given the tools to discover what Tera does to a meta. I’m not the only one who knows that the only way to do this is to play SV without it. There’s some quote that goes like, don’t attribute malice when it could be something else. What that something else is escapes me.
Natdex is kinda a meme but a vocal minority made it possible. I guarantee a no-Tera metagame would get more support than Nat did; but this shouldn’t have to be some grassroots movement when we have survey data showing a majority of the playerbase has some issue with the mechanic. Those in positions of power should have taken a hard look at that and did something besides nothing.

Yes, using Discord and forums I could play no-tera games with friends. That’s not the point. Suspect tests are democratic. Unless everyone voting has access to this information then the vote will always be marred by ignorance.

I respect the time and effort of our volunteer council but tera has been mishandled from launch.

 

[ianlazerbeem]

Been there, done that. It got denied- and it wasn’t some random ass request. There are many prerequisites to get a themed chat room on PS! and my friends and I exceeded them all. If we wanted a bird watching or water polo chat room on PS! we would have gotten one, that’s how hard we crushed the requirements. To summarize why it was denied: “There is no need for a no-tera room and it may drive players away from the actual meta.” I ask, well if that many players are siphoned away, doesn’t that mean there is a widespread need that isn’t being met?
There should be one already and it should have been put forth by our council.

If we want to avoid a separate ladder then the next logical step would be a harmless chat room. This room could host no-tera tours. Players here could use no tera custom rules. The amount of information we could have gathered on tera and how it affects the SV metagame is unfathomable. So many questions thousands of players have could have been answered concretely by now. This king’s ransom worth of data doesn’t exist. Our council feels no need to collect this data. There aren’t even no-tera tours in the OU room. There are room tours where you can only bring pink pokemon or able to use an Uber mon, but not tours where tera is banned.
I don’t know why we haven’t been given the tools to discover what Tera does to a meta. I’m not the only one who knows that the only way to do this is to play SV without it. There’s some quote that goes like, don’t attribute malice when it could be something else. What that something else is escapes me.
Natdex is kinda a meme but a vocal minority made it possible. I guarantee a no-Tera metagame would get more support than Nat did; but this shouldn’t have to be some grassroots movement when we have survey data showing a majority of the playerbase has some issue with the mechanic. Those in positions of power should have taken a hard look at that and did something besides nothing.

Yes, using Discord and forums I could play no-tera games with friends. That’s not the point. Suspect tests are democratic. Unless everyone voting has access to this information then the vote will always be marred by ignorance.

I respect the time and effort of our volunteer council but tera has been mishandled from launch.

Completely agree, especially with the quote, "if that many players are siphoned away, doesn’t that mean there is a widespread need that isn’t being met?"

Nearly 70% of the playerbase across all skill levels is curious about potential changes to Terastalization. Why silence them and make data collection more difficult, when all requirements to make a new chat have been met?

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Been there, done that. It got denied- and it wasn’t some random ass request. There are many prerequisites to get a themed chat room on PS! and my friends and I exceeded them all. If we wanted a bird watching or water polo chat room on PS! we would have gotten one, that’s how hard we crushed the requirements. To summarize why it was denied: “There is no need for a no-tera room and it may drive players away from the actual meta.” I ask, well if that many players are siphoned away, doesn’t that mean there is a widespread need that isn’t being met?
There should be one already and it should have been put forth by our council.

If we want to avoid a separate ladder then the next logical step would be a harmless chat room. This room could host no-tera tours. Players here could use no tera custom rules. The amount of information we could have gathered on tera and how it affects the SV metagame is unfathomable. So many questions thousands of players have could have been answered concretely by now. This king’s ransom worth of data doesn’t exist. Our council feels no need to collect this data. There aren’t even no-tera tours in the OU room. There are room tours where you can only bring pink pokemon or able to use an Uber mon, but not tours where tera is banned.
I don’t know why we haven’t been given the tools to discover what Tera does to a meta. I’m not the only one who knows that the only way to do this is to play SV without it. There’s some quote that goes like, don’t attribute malice when it could be something else. What that something else is escapes me.
Natdex is kinda a meme but a vocal minority made it possible. I guarantee a no-Tera metagame would get more support than Nat did; but this shouldn’t have to be some grassroots movement when we have survey data showing a majority of the playerbase has some issue with the mechanic. Those in positions of power should have taken a hard look at that and did something besides nothing.

Yes, using Discord and forums I could play no-tera games with friends. That’s not the point. Suspect tests are democratic. Unless everyone voting has access to this information then the vote will always be marred by ignorance.

I respect the time and effort of our volunteer council but tera has been mishandled from launch.

i'm pro-tera and i agree that there's evidence of serious non-objective bias from higher-ups against trying a tera-less meta in any capacity, or even discussing it too much. vetoing a non-tera chat room because it would… *checks notes* be popular? are they really that scared of us being able to see both sides of an issue before making a decision?

if this is deleted or the thread is hastily locked, i think that would be conclusive proof that something sus is going on

 

[ianlazerbeem]

i'm pro-tera and i agree that there's evidence of serious non-objective bias from higher-ups against trying a tera-less meta in any capacity, or even discussing it too much. vetoing a non-tera chat room because it would… *checks notes* be popular? are they really that scared of us being able to see both sides of an issue before making a decision?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't MORE people mention Tera than Volcarona on the survey write-in bubble that was used to justify Volc's ban?

That's not to say the ban wasn't justified or correct (undecided at this point, I've read a pretty compelling argument for bringing it back,) or that I believe it was "sudden" or "out of nowhere" (it was eluded to for months,) but if I'm not mistaken on this, to ban this anti Tera chat room, and use less indicative survey results to justify tiering decisions, that's a little questionable

Edit to add on: and I don't even think creating this chat room is necessarily a "slippery slope" to banning tera either. People, including me, might end up playing a few games against a few people in this room, and may decide "nope, don't like having less diverse options to check threats" and become pro Tera when they/we were undecided before. I would really like to see this dabbled with more, even if it demonstrates tiering action would be unnecessary

 

[Spheal boi]

People, including me, might end up playing a few games against a few people in this room, and may decide "nope, don't like having less diverse options to check threats" and become pro Tera when they/we were undecided before.

Reminds me of how people in Gen 6 wanted to ban Scald from the UU ladder since many Pokémon that had that move were bulky Water mons and most of the matches would end up fishing for the burn and before Gen 7 burn damage could outdamage the recover of leftovers

Obv before doing a suspect for a 80 dmg Water move with 30% of burn there was created a ladder in which Scald wasn't present

Needless to say that many people didn't like the ladder and also with two ladders present people are gonna play the og one and also popular, and in the the movement stopped

What I want to say basically that as you pointed, many people will try the No-Tera ladder both for testing and curiosity, but then the ladder will eventually die both for no checks and also because the main is just there, and maybe even if it's for a subject disabling a mechanic would potentially create a bit' of confusion with the Meta

 

[ianlazerbeem]

Reminds me of how people in Gen 6 wanted to ban Scald from the UU ladder since many Pokémon that had that move were bulky Water mons and most of the matches would end up fishing for the burn and before Gen 7 burn damage could outdamage the recover of leftovers

Obv before doing a suspect for a 80 dmg Water move with 30% of burn there was created a ladder in which Scald wasn't present

Needless to say that many people didn't like the ladder and also with two ladders present people are gonna play the og one and also popular, and in the the movement stopped

What I want to say basically that as you pointed, many people will try the No-Tera ladder both for testing and curiosity, but then the ladder will eventually die both for no checks and also because the main is just there, and maybe even if it's for a subject disabling a mechanic would potentially create a bit' of confusion with the Meta

it wouldn't be a ladder, it would be a chat room for people to organize battles and tournaments. And "no checks" probably will not be true, if anything the quagmire of the Tera meta that's more of an issue, since anything can just Tera out of being countered. No Tera means normal Pokémon can check and counter other Pokémon in normal ways, just like they have for the last 25 years

 

[Spheal boi]

No Tera means normal Pokémon can check and counter other Pokémon in normal ways, just like they have for the last 25 years

Yea sorry, it's just that i got so much used to the Tera that i basically forgot that Pokémon have counters even without it

 

[That_Dwayneee]

Been there, done that. It got denied- and it wasn’t some random ass request. There are many prerequisites to get a themed chat room on PS! and my friends and I exceeded them all. If we wanted a bird watching or water polo chat room on PS! we would have gotten one, that’s how hard we crushed the requirements. To summarize why it was denied: “There is no need for a no-tera room and it may drive players away from the actual meta.” I ask, well if that many players are siphoned away, doesn’t that mean there is a widespread need that isn’t being met?
There should be one already and it should have been put forth by our council.

If we want to avoid a separate ladder then the next logical step would be a harmless chat room. This room could host no-tera tours. Players here could use no tera custom rules. The amount of information we could have gathered on tera and how it affects the SV metagame is unfathomable. So many questions thousands of players have could have been answered concretely by now. This king’s ransom worth of data doesn’t exist. Our council feels no need to collect this data. There aren’t even no-tera tours in the OU room. There are room tours where you can only bring pink pokemon or able to use an Uber mon, but not tours where tera is banned.
I don’t know why we haven’t been given the tools to discover what Tera does to a meta. I’m not the only one who knows that the only way to do this is to play SV without it. There’s some quote that goes like, don’t attribute malice when it could be something else. What that something else is escapes me.
Natdex is kinda a meme but a vocal minority made it possible. I guarantee a no-Tera metagame would get more support than Nat did; but this shouldn’t have to be some grassroots movement when we have survey data showing a majority of the playerbase has some issue with the mechanic. Those in positions of power should have taken a hard look at that and did something besides nothing.

Yes, using Discord and forums I could play no-tera games with friends. That’s not the point. Suspect tests are democratic. Unless everyone voting has access to this information then the vote will always be marred by ignorance.

I respect the time and effort of our volunteer council but tera has been mishandled from launch.

I never asked for a no tera room on showdown, though that might have been appropriate, but the exact reason that I was turned down for teraless roomtours was that not enough people play them and those that do do nothing with the new rules, they just bring normal teams but don’t tera. It’s the same problem that unban tours face only less people play them.

Also a valid point that was brought up was that they’re dogshit for collecting info, though it is better than the current community run tour.

I do have a discord server for it set up, but I’m not actually sure if I’m allowed to post the link here or if my post is gonna get taken down for self promo, will have to get someone who knows more to give me a definite yes or no on it.

if this is deleted or the thread is hastily locked, i think that would be conclusive proof that something sus is going on

I agree that tera has been somewhat mishandled, but let’s not get into conspiracy stuff, I see the problem as it being approached as a more standard issue like a mon - you wouldn’t create a suspect ladder for a tapu lele test, after all - when it shouldn’t be just due to impact (at least when it comes to ban vs dnb, restrictions do mitigate this issue much more).

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

but the exact reason that I was turned down for teraless roomtours was that not enough people play them and those that do do nothing with the new rules, they just bring normal teams but don’t tera. It’s the same problem that unban tours face only less people play them.

that's reverse causality, though. people don't build for or participate in no-tera tours because they never happen. if they happened on a regular basis, i guarantee people would build teams for them and more players would come

Also a valid point that was brought up was that they’re dogshit for collecting info, though it is better than the current community run tour.

this is also probably because of the low frequency of them. if no-tera tours happened with enough regularity for a meta to develop around them, we might be able to collect data on potential meta trends and developments in a tera-less ou and judge whether it's more or less balanced

 

[That_Dwayneee]

that's reverse causality, though. people don't build for or participate in no-tera tours because they never happen. if they happened on a regular basis, i guarantee people would build teams for them and more players would come

True, actually, the vgc room has shit like bulu bash which people make dedicated sets for.

this is also probably because of the low frequency of them. if no-tera tours happened with enough regularity for a meta to develop around them, we might be able to collect data on potential meta trends and developments in a tera-less ou and judge whether it's more or less balanced

Not really, any old shit can make it into the finals of one of them with enough luck and/or skill. One time in pre-home a dude took ursaring to finals. Yes this was before it could use eviolite.

 

[Finchinator]

My only regret about how Tera was handled was the inclusion of 1-2 extra options in the first test. We could have it down further, but I was probably a bit too worried about excluding things that registered in the playerbase survey.

Nothing else can really be argued as being mishandled from a council POV. We waited the mandatory time to wait after a test and immediately began a survey and discussion. There were no other real “decisions” to be made from there.

Blaming the council for a lack of No Tera ladder or tournaments (there quite literally is an ongoing one, by the way) when it goes against all tiering policy, was veto’d by the tiering admin, and never had majority support internally or externally is just not it. You can site difference of opinion and continue to argue on its behalf. I’m still reading posts and relaying points of importance as always.

Only thing that’s really disheartening is the sheer quantity of misinformation spread over the last page or so. We are on the verge of another fact check post

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Not really, any old shit can make it into the finals of one of them with enough luck and/or skill. One time in pre-home a dude took ursaring to finals. Yes this was before it could use eviolite.

yes, but it's still better for data collection than what we have now, which is literally nothing except theorymonning and gentlemen's agreements. also ursaring is based

and never had majority support internally or externally

i don't recall a survey ever being conducted on this matter, so can we really say this with confidence?

 

[Finchinator]

Unfortunately, you cannot just remove Tera from SV OU and copy-paste the remainder of the tier.

The entire make-up of the metagame changes without Tera. Different bans, different trends, different strategies, and plenty more would be present. A straight application of “No Tera SV OU” being used as the experimental variable in the biggest tiering discussion in the history of Pokemon would be the sloppiest decision of all-time. To do that, I would be doing my job as tier leader incorrectly.

—-

This cuts into a larger issue, too. Tiering is not a “is the metagame better with or without X?” discussion. It is a “is X banworthy or not?” discussion. The answer is oftentimes the same, yes, but sometimes removing X can cause other issues that take further action until things are truly better. That is part of the ebbs-and-flows of tiering.

Removing Tera as an experimental barrier does nothing to say if Tera is broken or not; it just has to say if that otherwise identical metagame is better or not without considering any of the ripples. It only applies to the first question from my last paragraph, not the second one, which is what we are really dissecting here (and when I say “we” I mean tiering dating back to its existence). Going half-measured experimental variable as a side-by-side is just not how tiering works and it never should be as we would otherwise seldom ban anything that has any defensive value or offers teambuilding synergy because it excludes other contexts and focuses just on one decision rather than looking at things in a vacuum.

As such, those arguing that doing nothing to see what the metagame is without Tera are relying solely on theory have it backwards. Using an incorrect and insufficient system as a component of the test is relying on theory far more here as there’s no true tiering practice applied to the experimental variable.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Unfortunately, you cannot just remove Tera from SV OU and copy-paste the remainder of the tier.

wouldn't that be what the meta would be in the immediate aftermath of a tera ban, though? i'd think the discussion on what to drop would take place after the suspect results come in because otherwise it risks being a waste of time to discuss, so in that scenario day 1 of a tera-less ou would presumably just be current ou minus tera

 

[Finchinator]

wouldn't that be what the meta would be in the immediate aftermath of a tera ban, though?

Absolutely not, we would unban a number of things potentially and it would be a general “reset” — this would take place after the test, but there would be no metagame which is just current SV OU without Tera with the same exact Pokémon.

You could assume Volcarona or maybe Espathra would instantly be OU.