can you guys at least explain how you came to the conclusion that this is a good idea / how you'll ward out unwanted bias?
So I can explain my own reasoning for why I wanted a diglett-less ladder for the suspect, although I don't know the reasons for macle or Quote. A really big question is, does Diglett alone make Shellder, Fletchling, Drifloon, and the like overwhelming or is it just a helpful but non-necessary component? Does Diglett's presence alone result in fewer checks to these Pokemon appearing on teams, causing a centralized metagame around a few threats? What does the lack of Diglett cause to rise up as major players?
These are questions that can't really be answered well in theory. Theory's great and all, but it's also the realm where nothing has 4MSS, battle conditions are rarely taken into account, and Mienfoo cannot fail to check Pawniard. I'm personally interested in seeing what ends up happening in this meta, and what rises up, the "diversification" of this.
I'm actually going to go a little bit into one of my arguments, although it'll end up being proven whether it is strong or weak as time goes on. Now while I say diversification, and normally that's a good term, it's not always. There's two equally unhealthy metagames, the one that's seen more often where the metagame is overly centralized, that is everything revolves around a few very specific Pokemon. An extreme example would be OU with Mega Salamence where stuff like Porygon2 was very important, and a less extreme example would probably be Ubers, where most of the metagame revolves around the S/A+ rankers. The other side of the spectrum is an overly diverse metagame, where nothing serves as an anchoring point and the number of threats is absurdly high. This isn't seen as often, although it was argued quite a bit during OU's Metagrossite suspect test as a reason to ban, stating that there were "too many threats to cover" in OU. An overly diverse metagame should generally suffer from fairly extreme matchup issues, and what I personally see as a good indicator is that full stall becomes unviable, due to an inability to cover specific yet potent metagame threats.
The ideal metagame should fall somewhere in between the two, where there is enough room for innovation to cause a metagame from becoming stale but at the same time there's still not so many threats that games are almost decided from turn 1. What I've seen in LC since the Misdreavus ban has been pretty damn close to that, we get basically no mons but new things rise to the top and fall from favor, while many things have carved out their own niche but are still open to changes. At the same time, however, LC does fall more towards the diverse side already, despite Mienfoo being on over 50% of teams. Unexpected things like Deino and Rufflet end up being used to surprising effectiveness while the old guard remains almost as secure as ever. You may think you have a well built team, but then Sewaddle ends up being a problem you never would have anticipated. Obviously these are exaggerated, but only slightly. The sheer number of incredibly threatening setup sweepers present is only one aspect.
This is part of why general answers like Abra and yes, Diglett, are so common. They help alleviate some of this pressure that constrains you during teambuilding, being blanket answers to a significant portion of the metagame. Is this a good thing? No, but at the same time it's also not a bad thing. It just is. My personal belief, which will hopefully be proven true or false by the digless ladder, is that by removing Diglett from the metagame this allows for more things to be viable, but at the same time will not help teambuilding, as by the same token that caused you to not run things weak to it now you must account for all these new threats that suddenly are enjoying a spike in viability.
That to me is why the diglett-less ladder is important, and is worth the bias that will almost certainly come, although of course most of what I said still stands to be proven true or false by the ladder.
its not broken. thx.
