Defining the NU Tier

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Anyway, we were talking about that NU list, which is flat-out junk.
I'm sorry but people in glass houses really shouldn't be so eager to throw stones, particularly when their signature links to a project that is almost certainly as questionable as this.

As it has been stated many through this thread, this list is not officially endorsed by Smogon, so you will not be bound by it.

Banette:What that isn't a Normal type in NU can take a STAB hit from this? Mightyena after an Intimidate?
How about Steel types? Not to mention that with paper thin defences and more pokemon with access to Sucker Punch things won't necessarily have to worry about taking STAB hits. Of course since current usages stats have Banette listed as #41 I'm not sure if/why its still going to be tested.

Bastiodon: Oh HELL NO. This thing sees plenty of play in UU, and what's ever going to break it in NU?
The most used pokemon in UU saw 7831 uses last month, Bastiodon saw 780. Do you perhaps want to reconsider your "plenty of play" comment? As for what's going to break it, well its most commonly used sets can be easily played around with prediction.

Torkoal: You want to put the Heatran of UU into NU? O_o This guy sees a lot of play; he's no Camerupt but he has his role. For one thing, spinning.
By your own reckoning Torkoal (930 uses) is no Camerupt (1024), who we all know is no Flareon (1224), who in turn is no Rapidash (1963), who pales in comparison to Ninetales (5830). Still the fiery tortoise can sit smugly in the knowledge that somewhere sits a melancholic Magcargo (263), preturbed by the knowledge that it's not and will never be Torkoal, the "Heatran of UU".
 
I suppose people need to decide whether NU is to be a playable tier or where we just dump all the stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else. I'm inclined to take the bottom part of the UU usage list, then playtest to see what should be banned to create a fair NU environment. There really shouldn't be a 'dump" tier in my opinion.
 

Age of Kings

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If this is also for fun, I don't see why there's still people worked up about it.

I'm posting the pairings tomorrow on the news page and I know everyone participating is impatient for it to begin (I know I am, and I've been too busy with school to go out and get more people). Yes, 24 is a workable number (I realize that the semifinals will be stuck with 3 people, but at that point, some person kicked out round 1 or alternate who wants to participate at the last moment will get another chance). So yeah. Let's get this going.
 

Chou Toshio

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What I got out of the last few pages:

--This "tournament" should definitely be shut down (at least in terms of open linking on smogon) for "advertising" and this thread locked if the staff at Smogon wants to hold any semblance of manetaining credibility and authority. Aldoran is right-- it's ridiculous to be linking a tournament, called a "Smogon NU Tier" tournament, for one that's already been rejected by our staff. It's embarassing, and insulting to what Smogon is.

--However, the Tournmanet Host Mods seem very unreasonable for not letting it through (though this does not give members the right to break rules of the forum).

--Aldaron is pretty much right on every point if we're to follow proper smogon procedure. Except that he seems to think OU is not arbitrary (because, lol it is, and there's nothing wrong with that).

--Cynthia and the rest are right that lol using Ubers/OU as an example of "the system at its best" is a hypocritical joke since the tiering of OU comes down to subjectiveness anyway (and again, there's nothing wrong with that).

--X-Act needs to get it out of his head that things can be solved with #'s when it comes down to subjective decision anyway (VOTING on Garchomp and Wobb has got to be the most brilliant thing smogon's done in the last few months). Alright, he probably knows this (as in policy overview, he constantly states that drawing the line is "arbitrary"). He should just make it more clear that people should give up the false hope of trying to do anything "objective" with this.

In summary: If Smogon procedure is the best way (and indeed that very well may be the case), this thread is full of shit, and the people participating in it shouldn't pretend otherwise. That said, the people at the top have got to be kidding themselves if they actually think they can find a consistant way to tier off the #'s. They also have no right to smack the people down when they are going to move slow as mud. The "procedure" is pretty ridiculous when you consider it takes months to make a decision on anything, and the next video game is suddenly out, and we're back to square 1.
 

cim

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You guys aren't making Smogon's NU tier, at least it seems that way. Who said what you did would be used? Maybe you guys missed the hint when your "Smogon NU Tournament" was rejected, but I think that's a subtle way of saying "this isn't our real NU tier list". They were NOT encouraging you to go make it off site and spam this thread with links to it. Honestly, why would you think that it was a good idea?

Then again, I'm not one to be talking about thinking.
 
Maybe this is to simple...

The real tiers should look like...

OU, UU, NU

The ban lists (unbalanced tiers) should look like...

Uber, BL, New NU-BL

Pokemon to powerful for OU get sent to Uber, just like Garchomp, and hopefully Deoxys. Those to powerful for UU get sent on there merry way to BL, that's why we find are good friend Arcanine there.

Which bring me the point of this post. Our tiers are nothing without the banlists that keep them balanced. By creating a new banlist tier for NU, a sort of NU-BL, we would give ourselves the ability to define the NU tier (point of thread). This seems like the best course of action because it mirrors our current system. Ladders would be easier to implement, and the NU metagame would exist the same way our two other metagames exist.

There is one catch in my scheme. The NU tier will consist of all pokemon not banned from it. That means that, unlike OU and UU, we will not be using usage to determine what gets to stay in NU. If we were to have a system like this we would be opening ourselves up to the possibilty of an even lower tier, and let's face it, we don't need that. Usage statistics should still be collected as they are usefull to the public in determining what the most popular pokemon/movesets/strategies are, but we should not burden ourselves with having to define yet another tier.

I'm sure all this has been thought of by the Smogon braintrust but I just thought I'd put it out there. I think I've covered my bases with this post, but critism of my NU-solution is always welcome.

I guess one more thing I'd like to say before I go to sleep is that there will always be a few pokemon that will just never really get to see the light of competitive play. There will always be a pokemon underpowdered in the Tier above it, and to overpowered to be in the tier below it. Blaziken, and Feraligator fans, this is your dilema, but for Smogon to truly move on with the system we have set in place, some pokemon must be left behind.
 
OK as this is getting nowhere fast ... AoK/Cynthia is it possible to

1) Get the mini-forum up and running on the freewebs site? (you know the one that is apparently being spammed in this thread)

2) Remove any reference to Smogon from the site?

That way we can move discussion off site (so it can move in a more productive direction), and get this thread close, appeasing those who feel that this tournament is detrimental to smogon's name.

*edit*

tuskate none of what I just said is in reference to anything you just posted.
 
I don't really consider it advertising when the only purpose is to host theis particular tournament. If this would be shut down, linking to things like the LC forum would also have to be shut down. There's a fine line between using smogon as a recruting tool, and advertising on other sits for convenience. Also, this thread is definitely not "spammed" full of links. There is one at the top of the first post and in AoK's sig, not what I consider spam.

And the thing is, people have been talking about the UU/BL ladder for months. Nothing has happened. So I think it's better to try and work with what we have now rather than just sitting on our hands.
 

Chou Toshio

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Cynthia, you know I got a lot of respect for you, but even putting the advertisement issue aside, don't you think there's something wrong about calling the site the "Smogon NU Tournament" when Smogon has rejected the proposal? That's a form of slander. Aldaron's right that what you're doing is wrong the same way a Serebii tournament advertiser would be wrong, but actually this case is even worse-- using Smogon's name and referring to the tournament as if Smogon supported it when the plan has been rejected by Smogon. I believe you're aware of issues regarding fraudulant name use? That's actually stepping into a whole new level of offense.

I think you guys would be wiser to follow ODDish's suggestions, or you'll only make more problems for yourselves.

I just don't want to see some of the most productive member of our UU/BL community getting banned over something this stupid. >>
 
Chou just to clarify something, not everyone within the smogon heirarchy was completely opposed to the idea ...

I see nothing wrong with using this tournament to test stuff related to NU. If anything, perhaps we can use data from this to predict if stuff will be in NU when we correct the UU and BL tiers.
Therefore it would be unfortunate and disappointing if this scenario was taken as far as what you've suggested might happen.

Still given the direction in which discussions here seem to be heading, I still feel that the best course of action for those interested in this project would be to do as I suggested, however, I am ultimately but a bit player, the decision rests with AoK, Cynthia and, of course, the admins.
 

Chou Toshio

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@ODDish-- Yea you're right there too. I did notice Chaos' post and of course if Chaos is fine with it I'm sure it wouldn't get blown out of proportion. I just think a healthy dose of paranoia is never mislead. Like I said, I just have concerns that this could get out of hand unnecessarily.
 

X-Act

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For once, I agree with X-Act, he's actually making sense: the higher tiers' designs need to be finalized. Or at least started. :p
So you're implying that this is the only time I've ever made sense here on Smogon?

ChouToshio said:
X-Act needs to get it out of his head that things can be solved with #'s when it comes down to subjective decision anyway (VOTING on Garchomp and Wobb has got to be the most brilliant thing smogon's done in the last few months). Alright, he probably knows this (as in policy overview, he constantly states that drawing the line is "arbitrary"). He should just make it more clear that people should give up the false hope of trying to do anything "objective" with this.
I'll ask you a question: how long is one inch?

You might fetch the official definition of how long one inch is from some reliable source. Trouble is, that definition was invented by someone at some time, and then people decided to follow suit. I hope you're not shocked if I tell you that the length of one inch was decided entirely arbitrarily. But you can't say "hey, the length of one inch was decided entirely arbitrarily, so screw numbers when measuring distance, as it all boils down to subjectivity after all!"

The same holds for the OU and UU tiers. You might want them to be longer or shorter... just like maybe you wanted one inch to be longer or shorter. However, an official definition needs to be made. I put up a question in Policy Review, basically stating "how long do you want the OU tier to be?" And people got to speak. I could have just skipped that and told you "hey, from now on, OU means THIS, and you all shut up and bow to my superior intelligence". Did I do that? No. Apart from the fact that I don't consider myself of superior intelligence to anyone here, I wanted to involve the community to have their say. I actually wanted the input of YOU PLAYERS in it. And that is the thanks I get. Cool.

And by the way, what do Garchomp and Wobbuffet have got to do with the OU tier anyway? They were voted if they were ubers or not. What has that to do with determining what is OU or not?

Also, why are you shooting down the idea that everything should be solved using numbers? I hope I'm not going to again send another shockwave your way with what I'm about to say, but I'm going to say it anyway: Pokemon is a game of numbers ONLY. And since Pokemon is a game of numbers ONLY, then you can somehow show with numbers ONLY exactly how much a Pokemon is powerful. The fact that nobody has yet found a completely objective way to show how much power a Pokemon has does not mean that there is no way to do it. It just means we need to research further. But people like you that try to shoot down any glimpse of objectiveness in Pokemon are not aiding my research at all; in fact, you're hindering it.

Seriously, I _hope_ you prefer our tier decisions to be based a little bit more on some objective proof, rather than "hey Raikou should be fucking BL because it's too strong for UU". Yeah, what exactly does "being too strong for UU" mean, buddy? What's wrong with basing our arguments objectively? Why are you saying that thinking objectively is wrong?

Finally, if you can do better, then be my guest. I have millions other things to do with my life, so I'd gladly offer to lift this 'responsibility' off my shoulder.
 

Chou Toshio

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Here's what's wrong: A generation does not have an indefinite life. It has a life of a a few years. Now within that span of time, I'd rather have tiers decided by a hundred people saying "Raikou is too fucking strong for UU" next week, than 1 or 2 guys "researching" over the course of several months.

I hate to burst your bubble X-Act, but I hardly see research into the mathematics behind "trying to seek out the objective analysis of power" for magical creatues that were invented by some game designers in Japan to be a great and meaningful undertaking, especially since no one in our community can know how long said research will even be pertenant. The next generation could come out in 2 years, and Nintendo might opt to use totally different functions (like the move from GSC to 3rd gen).

Your "research" is certainly nowhere near as important as to deciding a measure of distance that will be used far into the foreseeable future by an entire nation.

And yes, I know you never said your research was.

And no, I don't see how you choosing an arbitrary cut off point is any more of less respectable than getting a hundred top ranked players together every week and hearing their opinions, even if they are as shallow as "Fuck, Aero in UU??? lol" (and yes, the number 100 was completely arbitrary, no crime in that).

BTW-- just to be clear, even if I'm naturally sharp with my words, I did not actually mean any disrespect in regards to the amount of effort you have put in. However, you do come across as caring way to much about defining it mathematically, when ultimately the we both know that the decision is made subjectively at some point. I mean, look at this comment:

And by the way, what do Garchomp and Wobbuffet have got to do with the OU tier anyway? They were voted if they were ubers or not. What has that to do with determining what is OU or not?
How the heck can you say Garchomp/Wobb being/not being in OU has nothing to do with what OU is? I know that you're trying to come up with some abstract definition of OU, but ultimately said definition will be created by the desires of the players, just as the players desired these two to NOT be part of what OU IS. Quite frankly, I think you're overcomplicating it unnecessarily.

I think you're also taking it too personally. "This is the thanks I get??" Well, maybe the members in Policy Review asked you to do this and certainly they are thanking you for your work, right? On the other hand I don't recall asking you to do it so I should not be obligated to show any appreciation (though in truth, who would not be at least touched by the amount of effort you've given).
 

Age of Kings

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Shelcario, hold up. Don't worry about it, I've got everything under control.

To address some points:

-Chou, overanalysis aside, it's not slander at all (at least, it wasn't the intention to tell you the truth). It's an oversight by me. Why did I title it Smogon "NU" tournament? Hmmm...maybe the competitors happen to be members of Smogon? No one has a copyright on the name. If you really think about the name itself, not all references to "Smogon" are of the site, so, um, yeah. If you have something better to call it (not the very day it's supposed to happen, I don't know why there was no outburst the day it came out), please let me know and either I and Cynthia will edit as soon as possible.

A new game just came out, whoop-de-doo. The changes aren't widespread yet, tbqh, even though Pt talk is everywhere.

-Oddish: For some reason, posting doesn't work. I tried it myself. I can make it visible right now, if you want, so you can try.

Again, nobody owns a copyright to the name. >_>; Sue me for defamation, ha! But yeah, once it's up, and all charges of "slander" are cleared, I have no problem with closing this thread.
 

X-Act

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Here's what's wrong: A generation does not have an indefinite life. It has a life of a a few years. Now within that span of time, I'd rather have tiers decided by a hundred people saying "Raikou is too fucking strong for UU" next week, than 1 or 2 guys "researching" over the course of several months.
I agree that, for now, that's the only thing we can do. Didn't I say this myself? But that doesn't stop me from continuing researching on this stuff.

I hate to burst your bubble X-Act, but I hardly see research into the mathematics behind "trying to seek out the objective analysis of power" for magical creatues that were invented by some game designers in Japan to be a great and meaningful undertaking, especially since no one in our community can know how long said research will even be pertenant. The next generation could come out in 2 years, and Nintendo might opt to use totally different functions (like the move from GSC to 3rd gen).
It would still hold. Even if Nintendo changed the functions, if I know how to approach things given the functions, I could do it for any set of functions that Nintendo cares to throw at us. That's why it's relevant. Even if I manage to do it only five years from now, if people would still be playing Pokemon at that time, it would be relevant. And even if they're not, it would still apply.

Your "research" is certainly nowhere near as important as to deciding a measure of distance that will be used far into the foreseeable future by an entire nation.

And yes, I know you never said your research was.
Haha, of course it isn't.

And no, I don't see how you choosing an arbitrary cut off point is any more of less respectable than getting a hundred top ranked players together every week and hearing their opinions, even if they are as shallow as "Fuck, Aero in UU??? lol" (and yes, the number 100 was completely arbitrary, no crime in that).
Who says I chose the cut-off point?

BTW-- just to be clear, even if I'm naturally sharp with my words, I did not actually mean any disrespect in regards to the amount of effort you have put in. However, you do come across as caring way to much about defining it mathematically, when ultimately the we both know that the decision is made subjectively at some point. I mean, look at this comment:
Of course I care. I'm fed up with people banning or allowing stuff "just because it's called Uxie". What kind of reasoning is that? Okay, so for now, that might be the best thing we have, but why not hope for a brighter future where that wouldn't necessarily be the case?

How the heck can you say Garchomp/Wobb being/not being in OU has nothing to do with what OU is? I know that you're trying to come up with some abstract definition of OU, but ultimately said definition will be created by the desires of the players, just as the players desired these two to NOT be part of what OU IS. Quite frankly, I think you're overcomplicating it unnecessarily.
That's something that pertains to Uberness, not to OU-ness. That's why it doesn't have anything to do with OU.

I think you're also taking it too personally. "This is the thanks I get??" Well, maybe the members in Policy Review asked you to do this and certainly they are thanking you for your work, right? On the other hand I don't recall asking you to do it so I should not be obligated to show any appreciation (though in truth, who would not be at least touched by the amount of effort you've given).
Maybe I am, but I don't care. If Smogon ends up not liking my research, I can always post it somewhere else.
 
Wow power trip much.

The fact that Aldaron made 3 pages of this thread completely unreadable because its packed with the same argument in every other post should be proof enough that he's at least a douchebag. And when did anyone say this would define the NU metagame for Smogon(i.e. non-arbitrary)? I believe this thread was started to test the NU metagame(and have fun, naturally) and of course it wouldn't be set in stone since Pt is just being implemented so things are going to be shaken up anyway. Forgive us for not waiting an indefinite amount of time for something that may happen in the "near-future". I'm sure after UU's done we're going to have to wait another "indefinate amount of time" for the NU tier to be developed and from what I'm reading it's the bottom of the barrel and I guarantee at least 1-2 months after UU we'll hear it being "in the works".

Also when's this tournie going to start. Playing with the same 6 pokemon has become tiring to me.
I think the issue is that they fear you're all going to create a tier by saying things such as 'Articuno is too strong, let's ban it' and then people will actually think it is THE NU tier, and we'll have the problem we're having right now with UU all over again.

I agree with you on one thing though. The people here do seem to be a bit slow at taking action about things. I can't even remember how long ago it was when we decided we were going to restart casting the BLs and include NFEs.
 

cim

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The fact that Aldaron made 3 pages of this thread completely unreadable because its packed with the same argument in every other post should be proof enough that he's at least a douchebag.
Aldaron is a very respected member of Smogon. The fact that he repeated himself to make a point people were not understanding doesn't make him a jackass, especially when he's right. If he flamed people in the process, he'd be a jackass. But he didn't, all we was doing was clarifying an argument.

And when did anyone say this would define the NU metagame for Smogon(i.e. non-arbitrary)?
Perhaps the thread "Defining the NU Tier" on Smogon's "Stark Mountain" sub-forum was a bit of a tipoff? Or the tournament, cleverly named "Smogon NU Tournament"?

I believe this thread was started to test the NU metagame(and have fun, naturally) and of course it wouldn't be set in stone since Pt is just being implemented so things are going to be shaken up anyway.
The thread is called "DEFINING the NU Metagame", so you should expect people to question the method of definement here.

Forgive us for not waiting an indefinite amount of time for something that may happen in the "near-future". I'm sure after UU's done we're going to have to wait another "indefinate amount of time" for the NU tier to be developed and from what I'm reading it's the bottom of the barrel and I guarantee at least 1-2 months after UU we'll hear it being "in the works".
So... you're impatient so you have to make a random NU metagame that won't be the same in a few months? The new UU is quickly forthcoming, and as that is established you need wait but one month to "work on" NU, when new UU usages show up. NU should be "bottom of the barrel" in my opinion, it's probably the least played, least important, and hardest to define metagame.

Cynthia said:
blah blah Little Cup is doing it too!
The difference here is that we aren't making a metagame that will have to be redefined in a few months. We're also not attempting to make our tier list the one used by Smogon, nor are we directly conflicting with any Smogon ideas in the process. We also actually had our tournament approved.
 
No, Chris is me. The point is that people who actually like the lower tiers (UU and NU) are tired of waiting to see a new metagame "formed" around them, so they decided to take action and use what we have currently (UU stats). Of course it won't be vital for a few more months to come, especially since the arrival of Platinum that has shaken up the -entire- metagame, even OU. What we discuss here is entirely theorymon, but everyone knows (or at least -should-) that what makes a tier is actual testing. A simple NU tourney was made so we could take advantage of the little statistics we have about UU instead of not playing it at all.
 

Aldaron

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Well, aside from another random calling me out (lol, who the hell is Johtopro ?_?), I have no issue with this being done for fun, as long as all the participants realize that whatever interpretations drawn from this tournament will mean nothing for Smogon officially.

I seriously love how this random#123 decides to not actually read those three pages though ~_~
 
No, Chris is me. The point is that people who actually like the lower tiers (UU and NU) are tired of waiting to see a new metagame "formed" around them, so they decided to take action and use what we have currently (UU stats). Of course it won't be vital for a few more months to come, especially since the arrival of Platinum that has shaken up the -entire- metagame, even OU. What we discuss here is entirely theorymon, but everyone knows (or at least -should-) that what makes a tier is actual testing. A simple NU tourney was made so we could take advantage of the little statistics we have about UU instead of not playing it at all.
You can do that, but the thing they want to make clear is that this means nothing in terms of Smogon's tier lists. Hopefully we'll have a LOT less Pokemon banned from UU at the end of the process, and if that happens, the break-off point for NU will be a lot higher too. And as I understand it, you don't seem to be including NFEs either (correct me if I'm wrong here), and they'll have a significant impact on the NU metagame, I suspect.

If this metagame becomes THE NU in most people's eyes, that is where the problem will arise. Infact, I'd even suggest not referring to this group of Pokemon you're choosing as 'NU', as it will be misleading to some casual competitive players.

The reason we don't have a stable UU tier yet is simply because people went around banning Pokemon that they thought were overpowering, and tried to make DP's UU tier of a similar power to RSE's UU tier. Because of this, people are attached to the fake UU, and aren't too enthusiastic about getting the proper UU up and running. The same will happen with what you're doing if you're not careful. If we did the whole thing properly from the beginning, we'd have established UU a while ago no doubt, but now we're no where further than we were months ago. We don't want things to repeat themselves...
 
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