Do we really need the Uber tier (Question for Standard)??

[Zacchaeus]

Okay, now Uber is OU, OU is UU, UU is NU, and NU is ?U. What does that change? You still have the choice to play the highest tier or the second highest tier, nobody is restricted to just playing OU or Ubers, it's a personal preference. I don't see how this discussion is going anywhere

 

[purple crobatchop]

OH MY GOD HE'S AN IDIOT. I hope he knows where the uber tier comes from.

Anyway, Uber is supposed to be a ban tier from the time when there is only 151 Pokemon. It is only from RSEFL that the "Uber Metagame" actually exists and becomes playable. ( See the number of uber pokemon: http://www.smogon.com/gs/tiers/ http://www.smogon.com/rs/tiers/ )

In DPPHS though, there is a total of 24 core Uber, and many (and many) OUs (even UUs... read Gen Emp's warstory) are also invited to join the party. It therefore becomes a much more exciting environment.
However, OU remains Overused for a very good reason. Let's take our eyes off shoddy for a while and look at our game machines (i.e. DS). It is far easier to train and breed a OU team than an Uber one.
I can even go over issues about overcentralising and such, but the point is, these tier names are as good as they can be (for now).

 

[capefeather]

The Uber tier exists by convention. Competitive Pokémon players have simply decided that there will be a designation for "superboss" Pokémon who will not be used in the standard metagame. This is basically for familiarity's sake, and as far as competition goes, it doesn't really matter. If you want to play a no-holds-barred-except-fundamental-clauses Pokémon game, with the "superbosses" allowed, you are welcome to do so, but for most people it's a needless paradigm shift.

However, I believe that it's worth the effort to have a self-sustaining tier list of sorts for B/W, not decided directly by largely irrelevant criteria such as plot importance or (effective) BST or whatever. I've been bouncing around an idea for this for a while, and with the Council system in effect it may be quite doable.

The main premise comes from this thread:

It is obvious that we require an OU definition that has no subjectivity whatsoever.

Extending this notion, it is desirable that we start with an Uber definition that has as little subjectivity as possible.

1. What would the Uber tier be like if no tiers were designated below it? I think that it would be interesting to start off with the Uber tier only for a certain time period. Something like this has been discussed in the old double battle forum before, but with the Council system any perceived "kinks" can be quickly addressed. More on that later. Anyway, I think that this would be interesting and slightly disruptive at worst.

2. After an appropriate period, we could start with an initial usage cutoff. I'm assuming that the algorithm posted in the aforementioned X-Act thread would be used here and in all "true" usage cutoffs for UU, etc. I had this idea after realizing that the usage cutoff in the current Uber tier under this algorithm would probably be in the 20s somewhere, maybe a little more than the number of Ubers. This would be the prototype Uber list. This is about as "objective" as I believe this can be made, without spending too much time on it. But we're not stopping with that, of course...

3. This is where the Council comes in. The Council is supposed to have people who are able to learn and think about the metagames in an intelligent way. When "proto-Uber" is generated, the Council can decide to exchange certain Pokémon between tiers immediately (e.g. put Deoxys-A into Uber and Scizor into OU... though it depends on what the metagame looks like at that point), and/or it might decide to test "proto-OU" briefly. But after that it would be the end, barring emergency situations, and the OU list would be solidified. There could be a "suspect" ladder system where different banlists are tried, but they wouldn't typically be expected to change anything.

Really, though, this method would probably (actually hopefully) produce an Uber list not very different from just banning the superbosses, but that is founded on a less subjective cutoff.

 

[ginganinja]

That's kinda the problem with most ubers. Something not named choiced ------ cannot really be countered. (choiced kyogre comes to mind ludicolo, mantine, quagsire, toxicroak,parasect, you get it)

That is stupid. SD Rayquaza and DD rayquaza can be easily countered and last I checked SD Rayquaza doas not run a choice Item. If nothing is counterable in ubers then it would not be a metagame where people play since there would be no players since its would be pretty much random who won first. Sure some pokemon can be deemed uncounterabe (Mew due to the rediculous number of sets it can run) but this does not affect the uber metagame as a whole. Also who the hell uses Quagsire to counter Kyogre. It becomes a dead weght if your opponient does not carry Kyogre and it cannot do much back to Kyogre anyway. I use something like Latias or Palkia to help me against threats to my team like maybe a Kyogre.

Please actually use the uber Tier before you make generialisations about it. (No that does not mean that you run a team of 6 magikarp either)

 

[Game Freak201]

Frankly, most of what I have seen is that people don't want to make Ubers standard since they believe it to be broken. I will not deny that this is true, but I have a question to posit. Why shouldn't we make balanced Ubers our standard tier? Our current standard is based solely on the biases of the programmers as well as the gamers, and this question would be important if we were to create an objective definition of Ubers and OU. I would like to see opinions on this besides the usual "it just wouldn't be the same" or "we always played standard this way" arguments that are used when this question is asked.

 

[M BLADE]

I'd rather see a "suspect-like" metagame where a Uber is chosen to join OU for a month or two. After that, the Uber goes back, and give space to other Uber, and so on...

It would be interesting to see how we could react against overpowered pokes...

Other than that, yeah. Just leave as it is now. Making Ubers the standard metagame would make it too much chaotic and centralized...

 

[cantab]

Why shouldn't we make balanced Ubers our standard tier?

The idea has come up before. There are two problems.

One is can we make a desirable metagame with the 680 BSTs around. Balance shouldn't be too hard, but diversity is. With 680 BSTs around, you've gotta have at least 600 BST or else be something pretty special to compete.

Secondly, we're hardly going to do this for DPPt because it means throwing away the last nearly three years of work on tiering. You want to try and make a balanced metagame with the 680 BSTs, you're going to have to do it yourself. Set up a Shoddy server and invite people to take part in the testing process.

BW is another matter. We'll have more powerful 680 and 600 BSTs, so a metagame full of them could have good diversity. Though I'm still not sure it will be quite enough.

 

[shrang]

The problem is that we're trying to implement an arbitrary tiering system to 'balance' a game which wasn't created with balance in mind.

As soon as we define what can be allowed where, people will experiment and eventually come up with 'the best' sets. This means that very quickly in every metagame, you start to see certain pokemon rising to predominance. (Scizor, Blissey, I'm looking at you >_>)

The thing that I find funny is that if there was no tiering/banning system at all, and people were free to play any and all pokemon with any and all legal moves, of COURSE people would be using the more powerful pokemon that we've banned to the Ubers, and we'd see a lot less use from the pokemon which aren't quite on par with them.

The problem then is that the top 10 or 20 pokemon in ANY metagame become the pillar around which the metagame functions. They set the standard for teams and will appear on most of them.

Banning them or handicapping their movesets doesn't change this phenomena. It just means that the 'next rung down' become the new elites and centralise the metagame. Sure, the metagame changes dramatically, but it doesn't fix the problem, just replaces old pokemon which were the most powerful in the metagame with new ones.

As we look further down the ladder of power scaling, we see that the power differences become smaller and smaller, until down in the UU tier we've created, we see a much MORE balanced metagame, owing simply to the fact that the pokemon in it are largely of comparable ability. You still have the metagame centralisation factor, but it is greatly reduced because the pool of 'top' pokemon is that much wider, spreading from 10 to 20 that see frequent use, to 30 or 40 that see frequent use. This lends itself to a more diverse metagame and greater potential for balance.

It is STILL imperfect, however. Obviously we can never HAVE a perfect system since a caterpie is never going to be able to compete with TTar or Scizor. Just not gonna happen. I think in terms of finding the most diverse 'top' set of pokemon (which is all a tiering system can really do) Banning everything OU and up is the way forwards.

smart guy, whoever said that. Obviously, I don't actually reccomend banning everything OU and up, I'm just pointing out that because of the way the game was designed, we'll always have balancing issues. I actually agree that the existence of an 'Ubers' tier is silly, because as we're seeing now with Garchomp and Latias and Mence, it doesn't fix anything, since we'll just keep sending stuff there.

Yay!! Someone knows what I'm talking about. "Ubers" is such a relative term anyway. Basically, why do we have an Ubers tier?? Because those Pokemon are too good for OU. What is OU?? Most of you would say "Overused Pokemon who are used in the Standard metagame". However, you can also say OU is "Pokemon that are too good for UU play" and so on and so forth. You say Rotom-A would never be able to compete with stuff like Giratina, but you can easily apply the same argument on something else. Banette is never going to be able to compete with Rotom-A. The nature of the game implies that some Pokemon would be better than others, so the "Ubers" tier having "Pokemon who are too good for OU" seems like a paradox. Basically, we'd explain to the newbies saying "This is Standard, OU Pokemon are considered the best, but there is a tier of even better Pokemon that we don't use and don't talk about because they're too good". It's kind of like saying well "1,000,000 is the biggest number" and then going "Well, what about 1,000,000+1??"

 

[Acritter]

Yay!! Someone knows what I'm talking about. "Ubers" is such a relative term anyway. Basically, why do we have an Ubers tier?? Because those Pokemon are too good for OU. What is OU?? Most of you would say "Overused Pokemon who are used in the Standard metagame". However, you can also say OU is "Pokemon that are too good for UU play" and so on and so forth. You say Rotom-A would never be able to compete with stuff like Giratina, but you can easily apply the same argument on something else. Banette is never going to be able to compete with Rotom-A. The nature of the game implies that some Pokemon would be better than others, so the "Ubers" tier having "Pokemon who are too good for OU" seems like a paradox. Basically, we'd explain to the newbies saying "This is Standard, OU Pokemon are considered the best, but there is a tier of even better Pokemon that we don't use and don't talk about because they're too good". It's kind of like saying well "1,000,000 is the biggest number" and then going "Well, what about 1,000,000+1??"

So wait. Is this all semantics then? That seems an awfully poor reason to destroy all the tiers.

Oh, and here's my definition of OU. OU is the highest balanced tier. There ya go. Alternately, it's the tier with the most used Pokemon, with a set of 24 overpowered Pokemon banned. Where does better and worse come into the picture? It's all about usage.

 

[Aqueos]

@ginganinja, I meant by non ubers, as for swords dance ray, go check the calcs on extremespeed against weavile and mamo.

 

[ginganinja]

Weavile outspeeds Rayquaza and can KO it with Ice shard so how much extreme speed does to it means stuff all.
Besides, I don't need to check calcs against SD rayquaza since I play ubers myself so I know what I am talking about (for once lol)
Also I am not sure why an uber pokemon needs to have OU checks. I think what shrag is thinking is not having 1 uber but all (or at least most). This means that ubers can check each other.

Besides I use OU pokemon to counter Ubers anyway such as Heracross for Darkrai. Jirachi is also a nice check for Rayquaza.

 

[Game Freak201]

The idea has come up before. There are two problems.

One is can we make a desirable metagame with the 680 BSTs around. Balance shouldn't be too hard, but diversity is. With 680 BSTs around, you've gotta have at least 600 BST or else be something pretty special to compete.

Secondly, we're hardly going to do this for DPPt because it means throwing away the last nearly three years of work on tiering. You want to try and make a balanced metagame with the 680 BSTs, you're going to have to do it yourself. Set up a Shoddy server and invite people to take part in the testing process.

BW is another matter. We'll have more powerful 680 and 600 BSTs, so a metagame full of them could have good diversity. Though I'm still not sure it will be quite enough.

I would like to point out that I asked that question purely for philosophical reasons; though, BW also made me think of asking this as well. I would just like an answer to this question that I have yet to see. From what I have seen so far, people have been claiming that a diverse and balanced
metagame is most desired. If that's the case, why have I yet to see anyone point out that UU should be standard? It's diverse and balanced. Is it merely because we're used to seeing pokemon of a certain power being standard?

 

[Rhiehn]

The metagame would probably consist of current Ubers, Steels, Ttar, Blissey and a few select things such as Shedinja or Parasect for stopping Kyogre.

 

[Jumpman16]

i hear this is pretty dumb, sorry

Basically, we'd explain to the newbies saying "This is Standard, OU Pokemon are considered the best, but there is a tier of even better Pokemon that we don't use and don't talk about because they're too good". It's kind of like saying well "1,000,000 is the biggest number" and then going "Well, what about 1,000,000+1??

most "newbies" actually understand our tiering system though. nobody maintains that OU pokemon are the best—perhaps that they comprise the best metagame, because it's the first actually balanced metagame and the one from which all the rest of the tiers are derived. ubers as a metagame isnt popular or talked about because it's not balanced at all, because it's not supposed to be