Hey guys! Didnt know where a good place to have this thread would be so i decided congregation of the masses would be fine.
Recently just watched this TED talk about breaking industry norms and it really made me think about this pokemon wise and breaking out of the box for standards in any metagame. I figured I’d share it to start a sort of discussion and hear what other people think about it.
I personally love being that person to use something not standard, but i want to know what other people think. Use it because its shown to work or are you more of an innovative player?
This was a good watch and innovation is a very useful life skill to have to achieve in a world where most think that hard work and networking is the only way to succeed.
When I was in secondary school and sixth form (middle and high school equivalent in Britain) I competed in mathematics competitions like the National Olympiad and team challenges. Maths in the classroom is just "here's how you solve this type of problem, go and solve similar ones over and over again". The competitions, however, required creativity and originality to succeed in. Many people that were very good at maths in the classroom (ie. getting A*s at A Level Further Maths) could not even get invited to the National Olympiad. This is because they were so used to tackling problems in a certain way, and fell flat on their faces when faced with something that required them to think outside of their knowledge bank. It's this laziness and naivety which holds back many people from achieving their true potential as they, like the speaker said, come across a wall.
Training to think outside of the box is definitely possible, and is something I have been working on myself for many years now. From personal experience, I can say that it is working. That being said, however, there is nothing with accepting the popular proposition. Sun Tzu says we should mix normal and abnormal concepts. In a competitive situation, displaying a certain pattern of thinking exposes you to being predictable. Furthermore, the popular decision could be the correct decision - it's all down to the perception of yourself. If someone asks me to derive a polynomial, there's no point in me wasting time trying to think of a fancy way of doing it rather than just by doing the standard way. Yes, Skarmory may not be used that much and may still have some qualities in the metagame, but Celesteela fits better on so many more teams than Skarm.
TL;DR standard methods of things are not always bad. However, if you get lazy or naive and only practice standard methods then you leave yourself open to being "stuck within the box", for lack of better words.
