Chances are, if you recognize the name Nineage, your knowledge originates from a certain devious side server scheme that resulted in a car for someone else. Or perhaps you know him after he famously took over OP's team in the LCPL of 2016, only to finish dead last. However, after winning the LCPL of 2017 and becoming BCQ admin soon after, it's clear that nineage only looks forward, because his past is riddled with holes and mistakes he would rather forget, just like his plays.
This PotW may be quite delayed, but critics are saying that its timely production isn't the only part of this interview that's delayed. How do you feel about being one of the few senior LCers who hasn't yet established himself as a high level player?
Love getting this question from a guy who willingly shells out over 3k for Kingler12345 every year.
In all seriousness, though, everyone wants to be thought of as one of the top players of their respective metas, and I'd love to perform consistently enough to be up there. I think the combination of playing exclusively TangMa (a metagame that no longer exists) in all of my LCPLs as a player and being gone during open season has limited my experience in high level tournaments, which means when I do get opportunities in important tournaments, I'm not as prepared to perform. Hopefully, I'll have my breakthrough tournament performance sometime soon I guess. In the meantime, I'm happy to serve as an example of the ways that people can contribute to a metagame and a community without necessarily being known for battling skill.
Then what do you consider to be a high level tournament? Do you think that LCPL should be considered one? How do you feel of its level of play this season - has it been ideal given its status in our community, and do you think you were good enough to have been drafted if you weren't managing?
I'm not sure if I'm the best person to ask. From an outsider insider's perspective, I'd say the really "high-level" tournaments are those that involve the broader smogon community: spl, lc open, and snake. That said, I think the seasonal circuit and lcpl can yield matches of comparable quality, and I consider players that have proven themselves in these tournaments to be high-level players as well (these also tend to be the path to getting drafted in SPL and snake).
As for the broader quality of lcpl this season, I think pretty much anyone in the community will agree that we've seen a big decline from last season. I think there are a few factors in play. The fifth SM slot has proven (in my opinion) to be one slot too many, and many good players from last season are unavailable or uninterested in playing (possibly because it's the end of a generation or possibly because our lack of representation in SPL has discouraged tour players who might have wanted to play for former teammates from signing up). I do hear the argument that larger team sizes are valuable for the community-building aspect of LCPL, but I also think its valuable to keep some level of prestige involved in the tournament if we want it to serve as a gateway to bigger tournaments and a valid yearly record of the state of the metagame. The line between maximum level of play and maximum community value is hazy for sure, but I think this season we are clearly past it. Go ducks though. Yes, I am good enough to have been drafted if I was not managing, and levi is very rude for asking.
But surely LCPL can't be all bad! Are there any players that have gone beyond your expectations, both on your team and on others? How about games that you felt were both good and enjoyable?
No, I didn't mean to suggest everything has been bad play. My team has, of course, been amazing, but I wouldn't say that's unexpected from my standpoint. On every other team, it's been exciting to see good performances from new players (or at least, players that seem new to me). I've felt like taranteeeno, BurntZebra, Simbo, and pinktidal have all impressed me with their play this season. Though he isn't new, Holiday has also been gone awhile and has been eating his opponents alive since returning. I wouldn't have spent more than 3k on any of those guys, and they've definitely proved me wrong.
I haven't watched too many games that my team isn't involved in this season, but my clear favorite this LCPL was Eternal Spirit vs. talkingtree, where Eternal Spirit secured a victory in the week through a last-minute reveal of an unusual set. I love games where the surprise set sweeps at the end (Heysup's Belly Drum Aromatherapy Swirlix being the classic example). As dcae put it,
+dcae: what a good game holy
You said that the level of competition this LCPL hasn't been as high; however, the teams that have been guaranteed playoffs are looking quite strong. How do you think the piplups, bunnelbies, and duckletts would have fared in a previous lcpl? How would they compare to the last two teams you managed?
This is a difficult thing to compare, since the overall poorer quality has meant that its difficult to gauge actual playing ability of some of the newer players in the tournament. I think all of the playoff-guaranteed teams would likely have been playoff-guaranteed in a previous LCPL, but I don't think any could have even competed with the last two seasons' champions, especially the tkos. My squad and other squads this season feel very strong but certainly not unbeatable, while managing the Tkos really felt like managing a team that could not lose. I can't really compare the team I sort-of managed, I spent most of the time trying to figure out what I was doing after OP vanishing midway through the season.
How do you feel old gens have been represented this LCPL? Do you have any opinions on how their respective metagames might be improved, or do you feel that they are better left untouched? How would you rank them in terms of balance, diversity, and so on compared to USM?
I was against the transition to 5 SM slots, and I haven't changed my opinion that I think this format is a wasted opportunity to showcase older generations of LC. I don't play most old gens most of the time, so I always enjoy seeing how a "dead" metagame is able to shift over just a few matches per year. That said, I've never been a fan of retroactive bans and re-tests in old generations. I think that the best way to keep a metagame at least somewhat alive is to have resources (guides, viability discussion, projects) that are accurate given the bans/unbans in that metagame. For older generations of OU, there are enough players and games that these resources might be able to be updated in the event of retroactive bans and unbans, but in LC, the manpower and interest isn't there, and frankly, I would rather see a metagame overly centralized than have old sample teams, RMTs, and resources lost in a tug-of-war of bans and unbans. Again, though, I'm not a very active oldgen player, and from what I understand, people who actually play BW, etc. regularly prefer the changes.
Ranking old gens of LC is tough. I really love the current USM metagame, and I think the only old gen that really compares to it in terms of diversity and balance between playstyles is BW. DPP, while fun to play, is not all that diverse and is much more luck-based than the other LC metas, and so I'd rank it slightly behind the others. XY is by far the worst of the LC metas in my opinion -- I still think Gothita is pretty disgusting in the ways it warps the metagame, and Porygon stifles innovation by being able to basically shut down anything on the opponent's team. If we consider tangma an old gen (as I love to do), I'd rank it alongside DPP, and I think it suffers from many of the same issues (luck plays too much of a factor, and the metagame is centralized around a few Pokemon). However, I've always wished we left a little more room for "if we ban X, Y becomes broken" arguments -- I think if our tiering policy weighted those, we could find a balance between our USM metagame and Tangma that was better than either meta.
One of the more common complaints about USM is that it doesn't reward creativity as much. Would you agree with this after trash defeated you with manual sun for exhibition? Do you feel that the change in tiering policy that you mentioned earlier - factoring in potential metagame shifts that might make other Pokemon broken when considering a ban - would improve this?
I don't really agree at all. I think high-level USM definitely sees a lot of the same Pokemon used over and over again, partly because of the Rock-Paper-Scissors of needing checks to a couple of very effective strategies in a limited number of moveslots. I think because of the influence of these effective strategies on the metagame, though, creativity is somewhat more rewarded - you can count on seeing certain Pokemon as the Fighting-check or as the Water-check a certain amount of the time, so if you use a creative lure or a sweeper set that gets around those checks, the reward is high. I say this using other LC metagames as my point of comparison, because given the very limited number of legal Pokemon with usable stats in LC, I don't think we can ever be as diverse as some of the usage-based tiers. I am, however, a believer that we could improve the metagame with more theorymonning and forward-thinking in our banning process, which would likely result in more conservative bans. However, I don't think this strategy would work well in practice: it would rely on a substantial fraction of the banlist being freed, which could create a chaotic environment that jeopardizes LC's place on the big stage of SPL. Given the constraints of competitive tournament representation, we may be stuck with this tiering philosophy for now.
Which users do you look up to? Which users do you look down upon?
I definitely look up to users like Heysup, Shrug, and OP who are fantastic players but also genuinely nice guys who are usually down to test teams or chat. I also look up to trash, the single greatest builder little cup has ever seen. Theres other people who I look up to for the effort they put into making LC great, whether it's Merritt's dedication to all aspects of our forums, Jox's outreach to new users, or many people's efforts to get LC represented in major tours. I look down on rssp1, who I hate with a burning passion, and people who have to put others down in potw interviews to feel good about themselves.
Thanks nineage!
This PotW may be quite delayed, but critics are saying that its timely production isn't the only part of this interview that's delayed. How do you feel about being one of the few senior LCers who hasn't yet established himself as a high level player?
Love getting this question from a guy who willingly shells out over 3k for Kingler12345 every year.
In all seriousness, though, everyone wants to be thought of as one of the top players of their respective metas, and I'd love to perform consistently enough to be up there. I think the combination of playing exclusively TangMa (a metagame that no longer exists) in all of my LCPLs as a player and being gone during open season has limited my experience in high level tournaments, which means when I do get opportunities in important tournaments, I'm not as prepared to perform. Hopefully, I'll have my breakthrough tournament performance sometime soon I guess. In the meantime, I'm happy to serve as an example of the ways that people can contribute to a metagame and a community without necessarily being known for battling skill.
Then what do you consider to be a high level tournament? Do you think that LCPL should be considered one? How do you feel of its level of play this season - has it been ideal given its status in our community, and do you think you were good enough to have been drafted if you weren't managing?
I'm not sure if I'm the best person to ask. From an outsider insider's perspective, I'd say the really "high-level" tournaments are those that involve the broader smogon community: spl, lc open, and snake. That said, I think the seasonal circuit and lcpl can yield matches of comparable quality, and I consider players that have proven themselves in these tournaments to be high-level players as well (these also tend to be the path to getting drafted in SPL and snake).
As for the broader quality of lcpl this season, I think pretty much anyone in the community will agree that we've seen a big decline from last season. I think there are a few factors in play. The fifth SM slot has proven (in my opinion) to be one slot too many, and many good players from last season are unavailable or uninterested in playing (possibly because it's the end of a generation or possibly because our lack of representation in SPL has discouraged tour players who might have wanted to play for former teammates from signing up). I do hear the argument that larger team sizes are valuable for the community-building aspect of LCPL, but I also think its valuable to keep some level of prestige involved in the tournament if we want it to serve as a gateway to bigger tournaments and a valid yearly record of the state of the metagame. The line between maximum level of play and maximum community value is hazy for sure, but I think this season we are clearly past it. Go ducks though. Yes, I am good enough to have been drafted if I was not managing, and levi is very rude for asking.
But surely LCPL can't be all bad! Are there any players that have gone beyond your expectations, both on your team and on others? How about games that you felt were both good and enjoyable?
No, I didn't mean to suggest everything has been bad play. My team has, of course, been amazing, but I wouldn't say that's unexpected from my standpoint. On every other team, it's been exciting to see good performances from new players (or at least, players that seem new to me). I've felt like taranteeeno, BurntZebra, Simbo, and pinktidal have all impressed me with their play this season. Though he isn't new, Holiday has also been gone awhile and has been eating his opponents alive since returning. I wouldn't have spent more than 3k on any of those guys, and they've definitely proved me wrong.
I haven't watched too many games that my team isn't involved in this season, but my clear favorite this LCPL was Eternal Spirit vs. talkingtree, where Eternal Spirit secured a victory in the week through a last-minute reveal of an unusual set. I love games where the surprise set sweeps at the end (Heysup's Belly Drum Aromatherapy Swirlix being the classic example). As dcae put it,
+dcae: what a good game holy
You said that the level of competition this LCPL hasn't been as high; however, the teams that have been guaranteed playoffs are looking quite strong. How do you think the piplups, bunnelbies, and duckletts would have fared in a previous lcpl? How would they compare to the last two teams you managed?
This is a difficult thing to compare, since the overall poorer quality has meant that its difficult to gauge actual playing ability of some of the newer players in the tournament. I think all of the playoff-guaranteed teams would likely have been playoff-guaranteed in a previous LCPL, but I don't think any could have even competed with the last two seasons' champions, especially the tkos. My squad and other squads this season feel very strong but certainly not unbeatable, while managing the Tkos really felt like managing a team that could not lose. I can't really compare the team I sort-of managed, I spent most of the time trying to figure out what I was doing after OP vanishing midway through the season.
How do you feel old gens have been represented this LCPL? Do you have any opinions on how their respective metagames might be improved, or do you feel that they are better left untouched? How would you rank them in terms of balance, diversity, and so on compared to USM?
I was against the transition to 5 SM slots, and I haven't changed my opinion that I think this format is a wasted opportunity to showcase older generations of LC. I don't play most old gens most of the time, so I always enjoy seeing how a "dead" metagame is able to shift over just a few matches per year. That said, I've never been a fan of retroactive bans and re-tests in old generations. I think that the best way to keep a metagame at least somewhat alive is to have resources (guides, viability discussion, projects) that are accurate given the bans/unbans in that metagame. For older generations of OU, there are enough players and games that these resources might be able to be updated in the event of retroactive bans and unbans, but in LC, the manpower and interest isn't there, and frankly, I would rather see a metagame overly centralized than have old sample teams, RMTs, and resources lost in a tug-of-war of bans and unbans. Again, though, I'm not a very active oldgen player, and from what I understand, people who actually play BW, etc. regularly prefer the changes.
Ranking old gens of LC is tough. I really love the current USM metagame, and I think the only old gen that really compares to it in terms of diversity and balance between playstyles is BW. DPP, while fun to play, is not all that diverse and is much more luck-based than the other LC metas, and so I'd rank it slightly behind the others. XY is by far the worst of the LC metas in my opinion -- I still think Gothita is pretty disgusting in the ways it warps the metagame, and Porygon stifles innovation by being able to basically shut down anything on the opponent's team. If we consider tangma an old gen (as I love to do), I'd rank it alongside DPP, and I think it suffers from many of the same issues (luck plays too much of a factor, and the metagame is centralized around a few Pokemon). However, I've always wished we left a little more room for "if we ban X, Y becomes broken" arguments -- I think if our tiering policy weighted those, we could find a balance between our USM metagame and Tangma that was better than either meta.
One of the more common complaints about USM is that it doesn't reward creativity as much. Would you agree with this after trash defeated you with manual sun for exhibition? Do you feel that the change in tiering policy that you mentioned earlier - factoring in potential metagame shifts that might make other Pokemon broken when considering a ban - would improve this?
I don't really agree at all. I think high-level USM definitely sees a lot of the same Pokemon used over and over again, partly because of the Rock-Paper-Scissors of needing checks to a couple of very effective strategies in a limited number of moveslots. I think because of the influence of these effective strategies on the metagame, though, creativity is somewhat more rewarded - you can count on seeing certain Pokemon as the Fighting-check or as the Water-check a certain amount of the time, so if you use a creative lure or a sweeper set that gets around those checks, the reward is high. I say this using other LC metagames as my point of comparison, because given the very limited number of legal Pokemon with usable stats in LC, I don't think we can ever be as diverse as some of the usage-based tiers. I am, however, a believer that we could improve the metagame with more theorymonning and forward-thinking in our banning process, which would likely result in more conservative bans. However, I don't think this strategy would work well in practice: it would rely on a substantial fraction of the banlist being freed, which could create a chaotic environment that jeopardizes LC's place on the big stage of SPL. Given the constraints of competitive tournament representation, we may be stuck with this tiering philosophy for now.
Which users do you look up to? Which users do you look down upon?
I definitely look up to users like Heysup, Shrug, and OP who are fantastic players but also genuinely nice guys who are usually down to test teams or chat. I also look up to trash, the single greatest builder little cup has ever seen. Theres other people who I look up to for the effort they put into making LC great, whether it's Merritt's dedication to all aspects of our forums, Jox's outreach to new users, or many people's efforts to get LC represented in major tours. I look down on rssp1, who I hate with a burning passion, and people who have to put others down in potw interviews to feel good about themselves.
Thanks nineage!
