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Really not worth replying to, considering that the OP of this topic is about the very things that would best respond.
I made responses not worth replying to in replying to responses that were not worth replying to.
Do you have some numbers here, or are you just intentionally using vague words like "vast majority", "not...extremely", and "severely" because there is no way to quantify feelings of neglect that may not even exist?
I don't have to try to dig up numbers from survey research that doesn't exist to tell you that the number of players who participate in VGC are only a small fraction of those players who play Pokemon. I can also turn the question around and say that there is no evidence that the groups "Wifi Community" and "VGC Community" are even well connected.
Which is why I'm particularly interested in OmegaDonut's post, since this condition will no longer be a problem if what he said is accurate.
That's true. Let's wait and see.
I have, considering how much team previews favors bog standard teams while eliminating a lot of options in team building.
If anything, this sentence argues my point.
Why is everyone complaining about the "instability" of 5th Gen OU? It's because with the addition of even more pokemon, you have a big increase in powerful offensive and defensive threats. The problem is with their being too many to prepare for.
If Team Preview makes gimmick sets less viable and limits the number of usable options, than it decidedly works against the problem of increased threats.
It also gives the poorer player a lot more help than it gives a better player.
Mind explaining? I see it as the exact opposite.
I highly disagree, and I think that it makes team matchups even MORE important in determining the outcome of the match (if you want to refer to team matchups as luck, I'll play along). If you have a bad team matchup, your opponent will know it before you even make a move. Now not only are you in a bad position, but you can't even bluff your way out of it. They know exactly what they have to beat to win, their gameplan is laid out right in front of them.
I don't agree with any of this.
Why do teams have good/bad matchups? The greatest factor is the presence of a threat you are weak against in the enemy team. Knowing the enemy is extremely helpful in defending against said problem threats, since you will better know what measures must be taken to defend against it. It's 100% certain you know your team better than the enemy does, and will thus be much more apt to hold onto your valuable "checks" than the enemy will be apt to realizing exactly which of his pokemon are the most problematic for your team.
If anything (and none of these arguments are empirical), I would argue that team preview is a much more desirable when your team is at a disadvantage.
Along the same line of thought, it takes much more skill to use Team Preview to read the enemy's weaknesses than it does to simply notice your own weaknesses in the enemy team. However, skilled players are capable reading the enemy weaknesses from team preview much more than weak players are-- this further enhances the wall between skill levels.
Even if there is a significant amount of skill removed from the game, that's not relevant to team previews making the game more skillful? What? You're saying that team previews remove a "significant skill" but then somehow make the game more skillful?
You are making a mistake in thinking of skill only as a "quantity" instead of as "kind." This mistake is also due to my lack of clarity. A certain type of skill is removed by including team preview. Different types of skill though emerge.
Reducing the influence of one type of skill does not take away from the argument that I am sticking to as true: Skilled players win more often under Team Preview conditions.
I didn't say that Team Preview makes the game more skillful (the level of skill of the players).
I said that Team Preview makes the game more
skill-based (that the outcome of the match becomes more dependent on skill).
As I have not played during Suspect period II due to LoA, and the possibility you could have alts, I dare not say to
know, but based on the play/ranking activity of your more obvious accounts (ones that look like "jrrrr") during the first period, imma going to guess you actually haven't laddered very intensely under Team Preview.
I will say from my own experiences, that about halfway through the first period, getting into the habit of writing down team preview and thinking about it, I dramatically raised my own winning ratio. It's definitely something that can be utilized depending on the skill of the player.
Forgive me for wondering how you can dismiss coyotte's post as being too subjective, then immediately go on to suggest that we hold vote on the matter because it's a "question of preference".
That's simple. All you have to do is re-enter the part you chose not to quote.
Coyotte has raised the point that non-preview battles can be more "fun", but fun is subjective, and in Smogon's philosophy does not leave room to weigh "fun" over "competitiveness."
The above though, are simply arguments for my preference to hopefully convince others.
If Non-Preview battles are in fact possible over Wi-Fi, it really should be held to a vote, being a question of preference.
I never said directly that Coyotte's thinking is "wrong" or that building a game based on player preferences (even for fun) is wrong. Rather, I have always been a proponent for subjective preference-based policy decisions.
The bold statement clearly indicates that my points above are not about right or wrong, but merely arguments of persuasion, trying to appeal to the larger Smogon community to agree with me and my preferences. I am merely appealing to the Smogon ego of being hard-core competitive to get players to fall in line behind my thinking should it come to vote. Manipulative, yes, but all tiering arguments are made for the same purpose. There is no right or wrong involved.