(im not very good at writing these, sorry if this is boring to read through)
Suspect tests are an integral part of Smogon, and represent the influence of competent players on tiering. Suspect reqs are meant to weed out the people with insufficient knowledge of the metagame to leave only an informed pool of voters. The system of making players start with a fresh alt is pretty effective at this job, but it comes with some flaws that I want to fix with this new proposal.
Getting reqs is, for lack of a better word, a slog. Even with a relatively fast team, it can still take two hours to get out of low ladder, and another hour or so of mid ladder is required before the reqs are finished, assuming you didn't get lucked too many times. Combine this with the value placed on consistency over experimentation by the GXE system and the near complete lack of actually good players, and you have a grind that no one wants to sit through.
My proposal is to allow people to use existing alts with a separate requirement, most likely a higher Glicko-1 rating with a limit on how high your RD can be. Here's a quick overview of these terms:
So an alternate requirement might look like this:
Existing alt with Glicko-1 rating above 1850 and RD below 40
What this does is reward players who are both skilled and already active on ladder without making them sit through three hours of low-mid ladder. The main argument against the former council reqs system was that "being on council" was an arbitrary status that didn't necessarily indicate skill in the current metagame. This system is different because it explicitly benefits people who already play regularly.
Formerly skilled but inactive players will have RD values too high to vote. Since you're rewarded more for winning and punished more for losing when your RD is high, an inactive player will be at risk of losing too much Glicko-1 rating if they play poorly while lowering their RD through laddering. Meanwhile, a formerly inactive player who performs well in the current metagame will be rewarded. Additionally, players who have been inactive for only a couple months won't need to play that many games, while players with several months of inactivity will need more games.
This is just speculation, but I believe this proposal might also increase ladder quality, because top players are encouraged to be consistent on ladder even outside of suspect tests. If you have the skill to consistently win games, the new system would allow you to play less games overall and also ensure that you only play against competent opponents, instead of the 2 hours of facing bad players that really says nothing about your skill. Additionally, there isn't much time constraint on it, so if you're busy IRL during a suspect test then you can just be active on ladder before it starts.
(Side note: GXE behaves similarly to my proposal, but in my opinion it doesn't punish inactivity as much, only decreasing around .1-.3% even for very high RD values from my experience)
Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting we remove the current system of getting reqs. Suspect tests are a great way to get into new metagames, and you shouldn't have to be previously active to participate. But when players have already shown themselves to be more than proficient in a metagame, we shouldn't needlessly waste three hours of their time. Because of this, I think that we should have this new system in addition to the old one, to benefit both types of players while still ensuring that only those who are skilled in the metagame can vote.
Thanks for reading.
Suspect tests are an integral part of Smogon, and represent the influence of competent players on tiering. Suspect reqs are meant to weed out the people with insufficient knowledge of the metagame to leave only an informed pool of voters. The system of making players start with a fresh alt is pretty effective at this job, but it comes with some flaws that I want to fix with this new proposal.
Getting reqs is, for lack of a better word, a slog. Even with a relatively fast team, it can still take two hours to get out of low ladder, and another hour or so of mid ladder is required before the reqs are finished, assuming you didn't get lucked too many times. Combine this with the value placed on consistency over experimentation by the GXE system and the near complete lack of actually good players, and you have a grind that no one wants to sit through.
My proposal is to allow people to use existing alts with a separate requirement, most likely a higher Glicko-1 rating with a limit on how high your RD can be. Here's a quick overview of these terms:
- Glicko-1 rating functions similar to the Elo system. It goes up when you win and down when you lose, according to your opponent's score. If your Glicko-1 rating is much lower than your opponent's, your score will increase more if you win and decrease less if you lose, and vice versa. Basically, the same intuitive Elo mechanics that we're all used to.
- RD (rating deviation) is what differentiates Glicko-1 from other rating systems. The higher your RD is, the more your Glicko-1 rating goes up and down when you play games. RD naturally decreases a little bit for each game you play with a lower limit of 25, and it naturally increases a little bit per day when you're inactive. GXE is not calculated when your RD is above 100, instead showing a "-".
So an alternate requirement might look like this:
Existing alt with Glicko-1 rating above 1850 and RD below 40
What this does is reward players who are both skilled and already active on ladder without making them sit through three hours of low-mid ladder. The main argument against the former council reqs system was that "being on council" was an arbitrary status that didn't necessarily indicate skill in the current metagame. This system is different because it explicitly benefits people who already play regularly.
Formerly skilled but inactive players will have RD values too high to vote. Since you're rewarded more for winning and punished more for losing when your RD is high, an inactive player will be at risk of losing too much Glicko-1 rating if they play poorly while lowering their RD through laddering. Meanwhile, a formerly inactive player who performs well in the current metagame will be rewarded. Additionally, players who have been inactive for only a couple months won't need to play that many games, while players with several months of inactivity will need more games.
This is just speculation, but I believe this proposal might also increase ladder quality, because top players are encouraged to be consistent on ladder even outside of suspect tests. If you have the skill to consistently win games, the new system would allow you to play less games overall and also ensure that you only play against competent opponents, instead of the 2 hours of facing bad players that really says nothing about your skill. Additionally, there isn't much time constraint on it, so if you're busy IRL during a suspect test then you can just be active on ladder before it starts.
(Side note: GXE behaves similarly to my proposal, but in my opinion it doesn't punish inactivity as much, only decreasing around .1-.3% even for very high RD values from my experience)
Just to clarify, I'm not suggesting we remove the current system of getting reqs. Suspect tests are a great way to get into new metagames, and you shouldn't have to be previously active to participate. But when players have already shown themselves to be more than proficient in a metagame, we shouldn't needlessly waste three hours of their time. Because of this, I think that we should have this new system in addition to the old one, to benefit both types of players while still ensuring that only those who are skilled in the metagame can vote.
Thanks for reading.
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