Can we have a conversation about Past Gen Tiering Decisions and Policies?

[Style_Dota]

Hi.

So, I think that a lot of people are getting a bit rattled about the conversation about doing a suspect test on a past generation. There's the weather suspect that's already being taken into effect, as well as conversations about Baton Pass in past generations (yes, nothing is set in stone, but as long as it's active, I will bring it as a point).

If this is all going to come into effect, can we at least have a rubric set into place about how we handle these situations? Who has effect in the conversation? How do we decide what to suspect in the first place? Who has the ability to vote? How long will a voting period take place? I think all of these are pretty important questions that should be answered before we go about making decisions.

I really think that this should be done in a multi-step fashion unlike how current suspect tests are done. Here's what I'm thinking:

Stage 1:
A proposal is brought up about a potential suspect test. A thread is set open to discuss the implications of the suspect test in question. After a set period of time, a trusted council of old gen players decides whether or not the proposal should move forward or be left as is. I also believe in order for this to pass, a very high voting threshold should be done. I'm thinking over like 80% approval or something, maybe even more.

Stage 2:
This is where the actual test is done with both ladder reqs and suspect tours similar to how the current format is done. The rest falls into place.

I know that this process would be arduous and time consuming, but past gen tiering decisions are something that really should be spoken about, even if this proposed process isn't the most efficient. With more focus being done on past gen metagames for official tours, we should want our tiers to be as balanced as possible.

There's something else I wanted to say but fuck it I forgot. I'm bad at making long threads.

 

[Aldaron]

Is this solely about _tiers_, as in, what we declare our official tiers to be, or is it related to tiers in official tournaments.

Just because tournaments have defaulted to our official tiers in the past does not mean it is 100% confirmed that they do so for everything in the future. Sure, 99.9% of the time we will for consistency, but there is nothing saying we need to have a particularly defined tier as it is in an official tournament.

That question is very important because it sets the bounds for this discussion.

If you want the TDs to make an announcement topic for every controversial decision we will be making in the future...lol, thanks but no thanks. I have no intention of doing so.

I understand disagreeing with making an official tournament a testbed, and I understand being upset with the so-called "final" nature of Mcmeghan's announcement (even though it was just a thing to warn people about to they could begin to prepare), but you can disagree or agree with anything, and at the end of the day the TDs will come to a decision.

That said, for the tier specifically, I'm not a fan at all of your proposal. Have old gen players vote on it? You realize this is almost completely like having captains vote on tiers in wcop? Notably, the bias is pervading. I can guarantee almost every active old gen player will vote in a matter befitting maximizing his chances to win, not on tier balance or playability.

I completely understand old gen players bringing it up, but it should be people who won't directly be affected by these changes who are convinced by the actual _arguments_ who make the final say, not people who will be voting with their personal interests at heart. I'm willing to forego this bias concern for current gen suspects as the activity for the current tends to balance it out somewhat. The activity for old gens is laughable in comparison and the effects will be seen on a much larger scale.

I have no idea how we want to approach a formal process for old gen changes, but I am certainly 100% against your proposed suggestion.

 

[Style_Dota]

That said, for the tier specifically, I'm not a fan at all of your proposal. Have old gen players vote on it? You realize this is almost completely like having captains vote on tiers in wcop? Notably, the bias is pervading. I can guarantee almost every active old gen player will vote in a matter befitting maximizing his chances to win, not on tier balance or playability.

No no no, you misinterpreted this part. I meant on whether or not we should even have a suspect test in the first place of said proposal, not for the result of the test. That would be done by the community. I personally think council votes are too biased for tiering decisions, but as for whether or not it can be tested in the first place, it's a legitimate concept.

Also, it's for tiers, not for tournaments. I don't give a hoot about the tournament aspect of this.

Edit: it's okay McMeghan I love you

 

[Aldaron]

No no no, you misinterpreted this part. I meant on whether or not we should even have a suspect test in the first place of said proposal, not for the result of the test. That would be done by the community. I personally think council votes are too biased for tiering decisions, but as for whether or not it can be tested in the first place, it's a legitimate concept.

Also, it's for tiers, not for tournaments. I don't give a hoot about the tournament aspect of this.

Can you explain this more in depth. I got old gen players bringing up the proposal, but when you say "that would be done by the community," it sounds like it will end up being....old gen players.

 

[Style_Dota]

Can you explain this more in depth. I got old gen players bringing up the proposal, but when you say "that would be done by the community," it sounds like it will end up being....old gen players.

Well, it should be done via voters who qualify for it either through ladder reqs and or suspect tournaments? I understand if you disagree with this approach since it could still potentially be flawed, but at least it makes it more open to the public.

In addition, aren't all votes done for "how can I win rather than balance" depending on the person voting? You can't question moral integrity of voting lol (well, you can, but then it assumes everyone is shit).

Also, I'm open for a better approach, I don't really do this all too much, so yeah.

Edit: Sorry, I missed that part in your big post.

 

[Rowan]

Have been wondering about this for a while... BW2 LC is widely regarded by anyone as pretty shit due to murkrow and missy and to a lesser extent scraggy and drilbur.
It's not relevant to anything official, but relevant in some lc tours.
Although I think the metagame needs drastic fixing, changing things now wouldn't really give time for the metagame to settle and there's also the issue with analyses. Not so much an issue for Ou because it will draw in contributors but lc has a similar amount of mons but a lot less willing contributors.


Maybe this isn't relevant to the current discussion at hand, but its something I get bugged about a lot, and something I don't even know if I have the ability to change. Would it be better to just ban them in tours we play and leave the 'official tier' as it is due to it basically being dead anyway.

 

[Aldaron]

Well, it should be done via voters who qualify for it either through ladder reqs and or suspect tournaments? I understand if you disagree with this approach since it could still potentially be flawed, but at least it makes it more open to the public.
In addition, aren't all votes done for "how can I win rather than balance" depending on the person voting? You can't question moral integrity of voting lol (well, you can, but then it assumes everyone is shit).

Also, I'm open for a better approach, I don't really do this all too much, so yeah.

Yea in my big post, I mentioned the sheer activity / quantity of voters for current gen suspects (at least for ou) was enough for me to forego this concern in a standard sense. It was a big deal for me when we mentioned bringing back suspect testing with iconic, and I was grudgingly convinced that the sheer activity of that many people trying / voting would reduce the noise around everyone voting with their benefits in mind.

The problem with an old gen tour / suspect ladder is that its activity will be laughable, so people will be playing the same team archetypes a much, much higher probability of the time, decisions will be made through this select population influence, and then the # of voters will almost assuredly be fewer.

 

[Antar]

I'm wondering if (but am very doubtful that) there might be some way to do suspect tests like these objectively. Like, let's say LC wanted to ban Murkrow, and the reason given was that Murkrow was causing the metagame to be too centralized. Well, it would certainly be possible to measure the "centrality" of the metagame with Murkrow and without, so if we found that the post-Murkrow metagame was less centralized, then we allow the ban.

There are a bunch of problems with this:

1. We'd need SIGNIFICANT activity on these ladders to get meaningful statistics, which ties to
2. If players aren't competing for voting reqs, what incentive do they have to compete at all?

 

[Aldaron]

I'm wondering if (but am very doubtful that) there might be some way to do suspect tests like these objectively. Like, let's say LC wanted to ban Murkrow, and the reason given was that Murkrow was causing the metagame to be too centralized. Well, it would certainly be possible to measure the "centrality" of the metagame with Murkrow and without, so if we found that the post-Murkrow metagame was less centralized, then we allow the ban.

There are a bunch of problems with this:

1. We'd need SIGNIFICANT activity on these ladders to get meaningful statistics, which ties to
2. If players aren't competing for voting reqs, what incentive do they have to compete at all?

Also add to that the simple concern that even if we incentivize it with voting reqs, old gen ladders never get any significant activity.

 

[Sapientia]

On topic:

I fear that it is impossible to remove bias from suspect tests. There are a lot players laddering for the suspect right now, because they want to keep / get rid off Lando-I. But I guess the Aegi test showed, that people are also able to change their minds if the metagame develops in an horrible way. I don't think suspect tester's bias is comparable to the bias of captains voting on the tiers being played in WCoP.

The biggest problem will clearly be the activity and number of battles. I can't really see many people laddering on a GSC suspect ladder to test a metagame without snorlax. And if you have to wait too long for matches, even the people interested won't play on the ladder. This might not be a problem in BW or maybe even DPP and ADV tho.

If the amount of active players is pretty small, I don't think it's that much of an trouble to find out what the players want. Of course we would need active players in this tier to decide, even though they are biased. But if BW2 LC players agree on Missy being to strong for their tier und they don't want to play with it, just ban it.

Of course it's not that easy for tier that are part of official tournaments and it would be stupid to have 10 GSC players in RoA to decide wether snorlax will be allowed in SPL or not. But I anyways don't see many problems in RBY/GSC/ADV. And if there might be some in the future, having TDs to decide on them is probably the easiest way as this almost only affects tournaments anyways. Most old gen ladders are dead and for private fights you can do whatever you like lol