This is an old post, and some people already replied to it. However, the replies only really addressed the first paragraph and seemed to ignore everything else. I'm bringing this up again because I thought it made some good arguments, and I don't want it buried under newer stuff forever. Of course, everything I say in reply to this post represents only my thoughts, so please correct me if you think I'm wrong.
The main issue I have with the lists is that they serve no purpose.
If they're supposed to be a guide towards an efficient run-through, there's nothing much to measure efficiency by; it's subjected to whatever arbitrary restrictions the writer assumes "sensible" from the view of the conjured-up Everyman, such as trading for Kadabra or Kingdra being plausible, but not for Seel, Houndour or Kangaskhan, or for a Metal Coat before Falkner;
This was discussed quite a bit in pages 3 and 4 of this thread. Basically, people think it's easier to find someone who's willing to let your Kadabra evolve and immediately return your Alakazam than it is to find someone who's willing to give you a free Kyogre.
and that the Average Party shall be composed of 4-6 pokémon, not 1-3,
This isn't an assumption. This is a fact. I frequent the QA on Pokemon DB, and I almost never see people talk about in-game teams of less than 4 Pokemon. If you have a problem with this fact, then Smogon is the wrong place to complain.
and they are all being kept at the same level, no matter their EXP growth curves, due to the allure of superficial symmetry.
It's not that they're intentionally keeping all the Pokemon at the same level. The different leveling rates are just not that different. 125000 points raises a medium fast Pokemon to level 50. With the same amount, a fast Pokemon only goes 3 levels higher. Of course, when leveling rates do make a difference, the tier lists address it. Fast leveling rate was a key reason for putting Grumpig in C tier in RSE.
In truth, these are not game restrictions as such and therefore irrelevant (trade should be tiered separately, that is sensible, but not when including some species and excluding others).
Furret benefits from its fast level curve, for instance; but apparently, the insight that faster level gains can actually counterbalance pure base stat advantages, and that you can calculate this, hovers all too close to the blasphemy of, er, "fucking algorithms".
RBYer has the patience of a saint with his contributions such as this.
I personally never had problems with trying to calculate in-game tiers. I can't speak for everyone else, but my best guess is that there are experienced (yes pun intended) people who have seen several other people try to calculate stuff but have never seen the calculations really work because they were always ignoring some important but hard to calculate game mechanic. So maybe this stuff doesn't break some explicit rule, but it fails so often that the people here grow to dislike it. (by the way, Furret's leveling rate is medium fast, not fast)
Any "gut feeling" can be gained from looking at Serebii's pokédex for movepool / base stats, and perhaps the type chart for five minutes; nobody needs a Smogon guide for that, though. When I want to play through the game quickly while having the freedom to choose my party members, one to six, however many, I'd prefer to know these facts about them in advance, to help my planning, which are not easily extracted from a Pokédex:
* Which concrete stats / moves / hold item / usable battle items / level / total EXP (this is more important than level, see above, since it most immediately converts to time spent, but minimum stats are also important because they'll vary at identical levels, etc., nobody at Smogon needs an explanation of that) does this need to outspeed (if viable) and OHKO (if impossible, 2HKO, etc.) mandatory roadblock foe X, at minimum? (should only look at "boss battles") -- This allows players to compete, by looking to invent the demonstrably-best strategy against X while using Y, without leaving the grounds of anything-goes casual play. It still assumes every pokémon is a valid choice, but going from there, it explores how best to use it. I don't hold the position that everything below Totodile shouldn't be tiered in G/S, etc., quite the opposite; it's clear that anyone who thought I did hasn't earnestly considered my points at all.
For instance, assume that up to Whitney's Miltank (nothing before then is a threat at all, except when you pick Chikorita because it sucks), there is 30,000 EXP to be gained in total from mandatory trainer battles and the expected amount of wild battles on the way. If, supposedly, Totodile would only need 10,000 EXP and Chikorita 20,000 to obtain the means needed to defeat said Miltank, guaranteed, then Totodile should occupy a higher tier, since using it allows me to raise other things as well, perhaps slow-growing mons with a very strong late game that can usually not keep up early on, but can if they get an additional 10,000 EXP -- or alternatively, Totodile itself. (Anything is powerful when overleveled.)
First, I would certainly support publishing lists of stats of each of these "roadblock foes". I would extract the stats myself if I knew how. If anyone knows a place on the Internet with this information, then please show it to me.
However, I think you are asking for information about how much damage each Pokemon can do to each opponent, which is very different from a list of stats. Damage depends a few more variables, such as the player's Pokemon's levels and EVs. So the same Pokemon can 2HKO the same opponent with a high level and low attack EV or a low level and high EV. This results in a 2 dimensional graph that would look something like this.
Of course, there are often even more variables. If a Pokemon learns a stronger attack or evolves at a high level, then there would be jumps in the graph. If the opponent had a weaker teammate, then Pokemon with swords dance can set up and possibly offset the effect of a low level. Additionally, this is for only one player's Pokemon and one opposing Pokemon. In a typical game, you can expect to fight around 26 "roadblock foes" and tier around 100 evolution families. If you wanted to graph the level and EVs required for each evolution family to 2HKO each "roadblock foe", then your in-game tier list would be an array of 2600 rectangles. Nobody on Smogon is stopping you from generating that if that's what you want, but I'm almost as sure that fewer people would be willing to help you generate it.
* Do I need to spend some irretrievable resource on this? (e.g. TMs in older games without access to simple methods of item reduplication) If so, what are the alternatives?
The writeups for each Pokemon should already list all the TM moves that the Pokemon is good at using. They could do a better job of distinguishing the one-time TMs. Or, you could get this information by looking at Bulbapedia's TM locations for 5 minutes. Nobody needs a Smogon guide for that.
(Then it's up to the player to gauge what they'd rather spend, which is where the onus should lie, rather than with the guide creators.)
Copied from Smogon's philosophy
Smogon is not a "boss" of the player, but a teacher—a valuable teacher, imparting knowledge that would require years of experience to attain otherwise.
These guides are intended to teach noobs the differences between "good Pokemon" and "bad Pokemon". If you already know the differences between "good Pokemon" and "bad Pokemon", then good for you. You don't need these guides. They probably need you as a contributor. Just remember that many people don't know how to make all the decisions that you can make.
* If this would be rather tedious (in a hypothetical game, grinding Heracross to Lv. 60 to OHKO some user of a Flying-type attack at the 7th badge, etc.), what do I need on my team to get rid of this threat and continue playing with my chosen mon?
The writeups should already list important battles where each Pokemon is particularly useful, so you can use that information to piece together a synergistic team.
Of course, this allows for what the current threads have a strangely murky attitude towards: clear comparisons between pokémon -- for example, what pokémon defeats the concrete threat X programmed into the game most quickly or safely while investing the least EXP / money into it, since this will always be the best team option "on average" when you have to assume all other slots as random.
Okay, this analogy might be kind of long. Soon after a new Pokemon game is released, information about every Pokemon, such as their stats, types, abilities, movepools, etc. become easily accessible to the entire competitive battling community. Information about game mechanics, such as stat calculation and damage calculation, also become accessible pretty quickly. Even though everyone has access to all this information, most people can't simply calculate the viability of a Pokemon.
To help people learn competitive battling, someone decided to invent something called "viability rankings". In that system, experienced people talk about their experiences, and the output is simply a list of Pokemon in what appears to be a random order. Offensive Pokemon, support Pokemon, etc. are all mixed in there together. People may notice correlations to the Pokemons' stats, movepools, or alphabetical order, but the list seems to break these patterns just as often as it follows them. The list makes no attempt to explain itself, and people who want explanations have to click links, read analyses, or ask around. But somehow, for whatever strange reason, the list (sometimes) achieves its purpose. People who use Pokemon near the top of the list tend to do better, for whatever strange reason, than people who don't. And for even stranger reasons, many people who are offered a list that includes complete explanations would still rather look at the unexplained, seemingly random list.
In-game tier lists have a similar purpose: giving people a rough idea of which Pokemon are "better" in case they don't know how or are too lazy to figure it out by themselves. A list like this naturally must be murky. I guess we could clearly calculate whether Pokemon a or Pokemon b needs less experience to defeat opponent c, but the problem is that each game has multiple opponents. If Pokemon a does okay against opponents c and d, and Pokemon b easily sweeps opponent c but is completely useless against opponent d, then we have to figure out which one is better "on average". So we end up making "murky comparisons" that are really summaries of dozens of clear comparisons, and they look so murky only because Pokemon is such a complex game. And we prefer to report the one murky comparison instead of the dozens of clear comparisons simply because people think one comparison looks prettier.
It'll be much more work. It'll also be much more meaningful.
If people complain that they're not so interested in the games that anyone would undertake such work about them... that is maybe a different point altogether (which would also prove that these tier lists were absurd eye-candy, if it were true).
Maybe it is true that writing really meaningful guides is too much work for the people on Smogon. Even if it was, I don't think that's the real problem. The real problem is that people are not interested enough to undertake the work required to
read a really meaningful guide. If we made something that was so ugly or incomprehensible that nobody reads it, would it be any more valuable than "absurd eye-candy"? And if you have a problem with this fact, then Smogon is the wrong place to complain.
Again, please correct me if you think I'm wrong.
