The point is that you are assigning a mystical status to some Pokemon as being inherently "UU" and others as inherently "BL".
How would we be justified Obi? That's what has to be explained.
Because right now, we start out with several assumptions, and those assumptions are untested.
From what you're telling me now, both ways sound equally drawn out and arbitrary. Neither way seems any more "justified" by logic to me.
The one major assumption in this test is that Pokemon are banned when proven broken; they do not need to be proven not broken. I have a major issue with saying "OK, this Pokemon will break UU, let's ban it!" before the game was even released in English.
One major reason to justify allowing Pokemon by default rather than banning them was outlined before: you don't have the problem of a local maximum. Currently, it's possible that several BLs balance and check each other, however, if tested one at a time, this synergy is ignored. Adding one at a time could lead to the 'new' metagame failing whatever test we decide to put it through, while allowing multiple Pokemon at once could lead to it passing such a test.
Another reason is something else I've said before. If nothing else, this could lead to the same size pool of usable Pokemon, but the average quality of those Pokemon would be higher. What this means is that there is a larger pool of Pokemon that aren't used as much on the bottom (as opposed to a larger pool of Pokemon that aren't used at all at the top (BL Pokemon)). This is actually an advantage because it allows the next tier down--NU--to have a wider possible strategy set. When you have more Pokemon in the "UU" of UU, you have a larger pool of Pokemon to draw from to make NU. I played ADV NU, and for the most part, it's not that deep because all the 'interesting' Pokemon are at least UU. I want to avoid that in DP, and this test will help that.
I have a question: are there any plans to make this BL ladder permanent?
Not at this time. If we do add a BL ladder, it would likely be after the new UU has somewhat stabilized (and probably after we finish up with the suspect test ladder). One of the major things holding this back is that we already have the uber, OU, suspect test, and UU ladders. Adding this one makes 5. Then when you consider that the BL ladder would likely be the lowest interest ladder of all 6(!), it's even less likely that it's going to happen soon. I'm not saying never, just... don't hold your breath? And take advantage of this testing period (when the ladder goes up).
Because I'm just one of the few BL players who are holding out for it.
And I'm holding out on really playing UU because I'm going to be spending my time with this new UU.
2-3 weeks sounds ideal for something like this that is going to have so much cycles/testing phazes.
I was thinking more like a one month at the absolute minimum for each period. That gives enough time to gather statistics. I would definitely like a bit longer toward the start, to give people more time to adjust. The very first few iterations are going to have the greatest learning curve, even for people familiar with UU. I wouldn't want my OU tiers based on information from November of 2007, why should we be so hasty with UU?
What would be the purpose of this? You say we don't need theorymon, but it's obviously a major time saver. Let's just forget theorymon altogether, and start fresh with OU and let every Uber in. Then over the course of several weeks, we can weed Mewto, Kyogre, Palkia, Groudon, etc out of OU.
I did propose this. However, we would not need to start from scratch if we were to do this now, because we have about a year of playing ubers and several months of statistics from the uber ladder.
We know who is UU material and who is not. Obviously Snover and Hippopotas are BL, why do we need to test them? From what I understand, with this sort of thing coming into play, we can enjoy months and months more of UU that isn't fun to play in.
Hippopotas is garbage. Snover (and Abomasnow, who is BL currently) would help balance out the power of rain teams. So no, it's not as obvious as you like to claim, and your arguments sound to me to be similar to the "Gyaravire is unbeatable!" "Rhyperior rocks!" and other similar hypes from early DP OU.
Adding things to UU should be done with testing of a couple pokemon at a time, not however many would be added. Why spend so much time proving what we already know? Abomasnow is not UU, Chansey is not UU, Kingdra is not UU, Uxie is not UU, Staraptor is not UU, Raikou is not UU. I think most people familiar with UU would be aware of these things and wouldn't need to test it. I don't see why we should devote months of testing such ridiculous things.
Most of them may not fit into the current UU, but that's my point. No Pokemon has some mystical status that makes it inherently any tier.
I think a BL Ladder is the best thing I've seen in this thread, if you want an OU lite so bad, create it, don't change a working ladder...well put weezing + crew back in BL where they belong and then continue testing certain pokes for UU viability...
Where in this thread did anyone say "Get rid of the old UU ladder now and replace it with this!"? (Other than Aldaron who posted before I finished this*)
That's one of the advantages of keeping the current UU ladder (at least temporarily). It means that we don't have to rush any tests for fear of making a completely unbalanced field. If people hate it so much, they can wait for the obviously unbalancing forces to be banned the next time bannings come up (if it's so obvious, they will be banned). Now, my vision for this does have old UU being phased out, but that's not until some time next year.
* Yes, I would rather have it replace UU. The disadvantage of a few people being turned off for a month by certain Pokemon possibly rampaging (although it will not be as bad as people think) is outweighed in my mind by the level of activity. However, I know that this would create enough opposition to possibly stall this even further (thus further entrenching the currents tiers), which is a risk greater than low activity on this ladder. The reason I think this now is because if the project itself is stalled, the idea will lose momentum, whereas if we at least get a ladder in place, it can start to gain traction when people realize it's not as bad as they think.
