Welcome to the Featured Rater project! This is a series of interviews where we ask official Team Raters, new and old, several questions about the RMT forum and their experiences within it. We hope that this offers both entertainment and an insight into their thought processes, which aspiring raters can look to incorporate into their own rates. This project is hosted by IronBullet and myself. Our tenth interviewee is haxiom, a respected moderator in the RMT community who has put in a ton of hard work and effort into the forum!
Tell us a little bit about your life outside Smogon.
I'm a student currently living in the US. I like music a lot, and play piano, cello, guitar, and kinda drums. I also play volleyball. My life is basically me trying to balance music, volleyball, school, Pokemon, and church stuff.
What is your main tier? Do you rate teams from any other tiers?
Ubers is my main tier, and I do not rate teams from any other tiers mostly because I don't know any other tiers well enough.
When did you start rating and why?
I started rating pretty much from the start (so like ~Februrary/March of 2014), mostly because a much less mature me saw rating as a way to gain "credibility" so that my own RMTs get more rates. That's obviously not how it works, but its what got me started. After I rated for a while with kinda dumb intentions, I started rating for the sake of rating, began to learn the meta more and developed as a rater and user, though I wasn't especially great to start. From there it really took off as something I enjoyed.
Are there any raters who you looked up to when you started rating?
When I first started, not really. Probably the first rater that influenced me was Edgar when he started rating more, as he was incredibly knowledgeable and helpful, so I looked up to him for sure. Later, there were some raters that I respected, but they didn't influence me quite as much as they started rating after I had sort of established myself; I hardly remember much in regards to other raters early on.
What do you most enjoy about rating?
I of course enjoy helping other users, as there's not much of a reason too rate much if you're not into helping people. Another aspect of rating that I did enjoy a lot was being able to improve teambuilding skills and apply metagame knowledge. Rating's primary focus should be on helping other people, something that I do enjoy very much, but its always nice to improve yourself as additional benefit.
Do you follow a process with your rates?
Yeah. The first thing I do is read over the RMT to get a general sense of the team and how it works, especially noting playstyle at this point as its important to keep in mind in regards to the goals of the team. Then, I try to look for weaknesses and other problems with the team such as Pokemon that kill momentum for an offensive team or something. After that, it's about trying to find changes that help the team function better to accomplish its goals. Usually at the end, I'll take a second look to see if there's any holes that have been opened up or small changes that could be made.
Do you have any words of advice for aspiring raters out there?
Don't be afraid to ask for help. If you want to get better at rating, you can't just keep doing the same thing over and over and expect things to get fixed. I was a pretty mediocre rater, but after getting my ladybug I realized some of the mistakes I was making and I could improve based on those things. If you can get established raters to look over a rate or two and give you some tips, this is immensely helpful in improving the quality of your rates.
Do you like the direction the RMT forum is taking at the moment? If you could change something, what would it be?
I do like the direction the RMT forum is taking. There's tons of raters and its cool to see the forum starting to branch out and support OMs and PU most recently, as well as Battle Spot a while back. I think the forum is growing nicely. There's not much I'd change outside of expanding existing things, especially helping aspiring raters improve.
As one of the few Ubers raters we have, how do you think we could boost activity in the Ubers RMT section?
A lot of problems stem from the issue of the RMTs themselves. The fact that Ubers RMTs tend to have quality issues (being showcases by tournament players or low quality / borderline joke teams) kind of discourages Ubers raters; additionally, the rating process can be kind of monotonous because you're often trying to fit as many of their original team members around a somewhat standard-ish defensive backbone so that the team isn't totally awful. There are some Ubers RMTs that are fine, and some of the lower quality teams are just barely passable, but it just discourages Ubers raters by not being as fun as it could be.
As a moderator, do you think there's any way in which we could enforce the basic RMT rules so that more people would follow them?
I mean, we do have rules in a stickied thread that says "[REQUIRED READING]". People just need to lurk a bit more and read the rules. I don't think its within our reasonable capabilities to get a significantly higher number of people to follow the rules if they're simply not willing to read them.
As an RO of the RMT room on PS how are you liking the current direction of the room? Do you have any future plans for the room or any ideas for activities we could possibly run?
Well, I think the room is really great some of the time, when things are working "as they should be". However, there are other times where its quite dead and the only people saying anything are people posting teams. So, I guess I like the direction and idea but since there's only so many raters on at a time, and even fewer in regards to specific tiers, so I don't think its reached its full potential yet. Personally, I don't have future plans, but I like the workshops we've been running. Having it in some way counting for rating contributions might not be a bad way to spark rating activity; however, it can be difficult to quantify stuff like that.
Do you have an RMT or a team you could share with us?
I'm still in the Ubers Open (maybe I won't be by the time this gets posted though), so I mean there are probably some builds that I won't share right now. Anyways, here's my RMT and a thread with some other teams some other players and I built.
Lastly, can you give us an example of a rate that exemplifies your particular style?
Had to dig a bit but this one from XY is not too bad.
------------
Thanks haxiom for a great interview! Feel free to leave any questions you have for him below. See you all next time
I'm a student currently living in the US. I like music a lot, and play piano, cello, guitar, and kinda drums. I also play volleyball. My life is basically me trying to balance music, volleyball, school, Pokemon, and church stuff.
What is your main tier? Do you rate teams from any other tiers?
Ubers is my main tier, and I do not rate teams from any other tiers mostly because I don't know any other tiers well enough.
When did you start rating and why?
I started rating pretty much from the start (so like ~Februrary/March of 2014), mostly because a much less mature me saw rating as a way to gain "credibility" so that my own RMTs get more rates. That's obviously not how it works, but its what got me started. After I rated for a while with kinda dumb intentions, I started rating for the sake of rating, began to learn the meta more and developed as a rater and user, though I wasn't especially great to start. From there it really took off as something I enjoyed.
Are there any raters who you looked up to when you started rating?
When I first started, not really. Probably the first rater that influenced me was Edgar when he started rating more, as he was incredibly knowledgeable and helpful, so I looked up to him for sure. Later, there were some raters that I respected, but they didn't influence me quite as much as they started rating after I had sort of established myself; I hardly remember much in regards to other raters early on.
What do you most enjoy about rating?
I of course enjoy helping other users, as there's not much of a reason too rate much if you're not into helping people. Another aspect of rating that I did enjoy a lot was being able to improve teambuilding skills and apply metagame knowledge. Rating's primary focus should be on helping other people, something that I do enjoy very much, but its always nice to improve yourself as additional benefit.
Do you follow a process with your rates?
Yeah. The first thing I do is read over the RMT to get a general sense of the team and how it works, especially noting playstyle at this point as its important to keep in mind in regards to the goals of the team. Then, I try to look for weaknesses and other problems with the team such as Pokemon that kill momentum for an offensive team or something. After that, it's about trying to find changes that help the team function better to accomplish its goals. Usually at the end, I'll take a second look to see if there's any holes that have been opened up or small changes that could be made.
Do you have any words of advice for aspiring raters out there?
Don't be afraid to ask for help. If you want to get better at rating, you can't just keep doing the same thing over and over and expect things to get fixed. I was a pretty mediocre rater, but after getting my ladybug I realized some of the mistakes I was making and I could improve based on those things. If you can get established raters to look over a rate or two and give you some tips, this is immensely helpful in improving the quality of your rates.
Do you like the direction the RMT forum is taking at the moment? If you could change something, what would it be?
I do like the direction the RMT forum is taking. There's tons of raters and its cool to see the forum starting to branch out and support OMs and PU most recently, as well as Battle Spot a while back. I think the forum is growing nicely. There's not much I'd change outside of expanding existing things, especially helping aspiring raters improve.
As one of the few Ubers raters we have, how do you think we could boost activity in the Ubers RMT section?
A lot of problems stem from the issue of the RMTs themselves. The fact that Ubers RMTs tend to have quality issues (being showcases by tournament players or low quality / borderline joke teams) kind of discourages Ubers raters; additionally, the rating process can be kind of monotonous because you're often trying to fit as many of their original team members around a somewhat standard-ish defensive backbone so that the team isn't totally awful. There are some Ubers RMTs that are fine, and some of the lower quality teams are just barely passable, but it just discourages Ubers raters by not being as fun as it could be.
As a moderator, do you think there's any way in which we could enforce the basic RMT rules so that more people would follow them?
I mean, we do have rules in a stickied thread that says "[REQUIRED READING]". People just need to lurk a bit more and read the rules. I don't think its within our reasonable capabilities to get a significantly higher number of people to follow the rules if they're simply not willing to read them.
As an RO of the RMT room on PS how are you liking the current direction of the room? Do you have any future plans for the room or any ideas for activities we could possibly run?
Well, I think the room is really great some of the time, when things are working "as they should be". However, there are other times where its quite dead and the only people saying anything are people posting teams. So, I guess I like the direction and idea but since there's only so many raters on at a time, and even fewer in regards to specific tiers, so I don't think its reached its full potential yet. Personally, I don't have future plans, but I like the workshops we've been running. Having it in some way counting for rating contributions might not be a bad way to spark rating activity; however, it can be difficult to quantify stuff like that.
Do you have an RMT or a team you could share with us?
I'm still in the Ubers Open (maybe I won't be by the time this gets posted though), so I mean there are probably some builds that I won't share right now. Anyways, here's my RMT and a thread with some other teams some other players and I built.
Lastly, can you give us an example of a rate that exemplifies your particular style?
Had to dig a bit but this one from XY is not too bad.
------------
Thanks haxiom for a great interview! Feel free to leave any questions you have for him below. See you all next time
