Metagame Management in Five Easy Steps!

Bologo said:
Yeah, really, I think that our first priority needs to be figuring out what the hell overcentralization even is. Honestly, it's the only way we're actually going to get anywhere with any of these bannings/unbannings. Perhaps this should be part of our rankings?

Garchomp would probably be #4 for me if it weren't for the fact that we don't know what the definition of overcentralization is.
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http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=41364

I don't even know what kind of argument you're trying to use. You can't figure out what overcentralizing is without it being completely arbitrary at this stage. Considering how long this thread has been around you really have no excuse.

It has been discussed. "Overcentralization" is a moot term that means nothing at this point. It has never meant anything, if you even paid any attention at all. Stop throwing the term around like it means anything.

Secondly you also assume "overcentralized" is the only argument that was around with Garchomp - that isn't really the case anyway.
 
Trying to determine the definition of overcentralization has served as a half assed excuse for refusing to do anything about the OU tiers for months. Hopefully we'll just drop the issue.
 
Ok fine. I guess if we didn't come to any conclusion on what overcentralization means then Garchomp is #4 for me.

However, if you already certain that the term doesn't mean anything, why are you even keeping the thread open then? All it's going to do is become a Garchomp discussion.

I've glanced at the thread, and from what I see, there's several different definitions that have to be taken into account with overcentralization, it's like definitions in the dictionary. Most words don't have only 1 definition, they have several, just that in this case, they all need to be applied to a case such as Garchomp.

How else do you propose we go about banning/unbanning pokemon other than the overcentralizing argument? The pokemon has to be dominating in some way, and if we're not going to take people complaining that "it makes the game less fun" into account, then what else are we supposed to base the banning/unbanning of those pokemon on? I'm not trying to be critical or anything, I just don't know how else we're supposed to do it. I suppose that the metagame will never be perfect, but what would a near-perfect metagame even look like?
 
1) Event moves
2) Legendary IVs clause

These two are IMO the fastest you can deal with. There's no need for in depth testing, and therefore should be dealt with first

3) Wobbuffet
4) Garchomp

These two guys are the most controversial in OU right now. Wobbuffet probably deserves a higher bit of attention here, since it's a huge pain in the butt and stuff. Garchomp, although it's been on people's minds far longer than Wobb has, should be dealt after Wobby. Actually, order doesn't matter much here tbh, but I hate Wobb more so I'll go with that

5) Deoxys-S
6) Lati@s

Deoxys-S shouldn't take long. It's been in OU for quite a while now. In fact, it's a bit unnoticed, which is why I placed it at #5 and not at #3. So let's get that done first, and then we go to the more important issue: Lati@s

7) Manaphy
8) Darkrai
9) Mew

Manaphy was previously OU before it was decided to be uber after the devastating ruins it created with a Tail Glow sweep. However, the metagame has changed, and who knows? Manaphy could return. He's up before Darkrai and Mew because of his previous OU status alone, and the fact that he was also very debatable when D/P is at its early stages.

Darkrai should be next-in my opinion he's closer to OU than Mew is, and because of that he comes before Mew. This makes him even more debatable than Mew, but this also makes him a slightly more important case here. There are probably more people who believe Mew is uber than not at this point compared to Darkrai (I could be wrong).

10) UU

Not much to say here

11) Species clause
12) Evasion clause

Personally, order doesn't matter here

13) Arceus

I'm putting Arceus last here-he's not too big of a deal at this point. Everyone's playing happy without Arceus at this point, and all they really have to do is press the unobtainable Pokemon clause or whatever its called to play with it.
 
Bologo said:
How else do you propose we go about banning/unbanning pokemon other than the overcentralizing argument? The pokemon has to be dominating in some way, and if we're not going to take people complaining that "it makes the game less fun" into account, then what else are we supposed to base the banning/unbanning of those pokemon on? I'm not trying to be critical or anything, I just don't know how else we're supposed to do it. I suppose that the metagame will never be perfect, but what would a near-perfect metagame even look like?
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You'll notice that I both touch upon this in my proposed fourth step and ask for alternate suggestions if you have have any better ones.

[pokemon] reasonably dominated this battle.
[pokemon] did not dominate this battle.
[pokemon's] impact on this battle was inconclusive.

In the interests of "too powerful for standard play" I think this is a good way of trying to assess suspect pokemon in standard play.
 
Ok, but how do you decide if the pokemon's impact on the battle was inconclusive? If I wanted to post my own logs, I'd want to know this, because if luck occurred too much in a certain battle to make the pokemon in question dominate, or crash, I'm not sure if that'd be seen as inconclusive or not.

Also, one thing, wouldn't it be better to see if something dominates in the hands of inexperienced players, rather than experienced players? What I mean is that, and experienced player can usually dominate with several different kinds of pokemon, but an inexperienced player needs something especially strong to even have a chance at dominating against an experienced player.

It seems to me that in this case, giving the battle logs of the more inexperienced players (provided that they're using a standard-ish set) more weight, because if a pokemon can dominate in the hands of a newbie, then it's worth a lot more than an experienced battler using it. We could make some kind of thread for newbies to submit their logs, since a lot them like posting warstories with very little content anyway.

I dunno, perhaps in the next Official Battling 101 tourney, we should actually allow Wobb and such, and then we can analyze the newer players' logs. I wonder if BK still has the logs from the first tourney, because we can at least look at some stuff for Garchomp from those.

If you think of how long we would be analyzing logs for a certain debatable pokemon, the following proposal may work:

Let's say, for example, we analyze logs for a debatable pokemon for a month. I propose that we have something such as a de-merit point system. In that period of a month, it would need to reach 150 points to be banned to uber, depending on how much call there is for that pokemon to be banned. The logs would be categorized as follows:

Domination by the team with the debatable pokemon on it

An experienced player dominating a newbie - +1 point.
A player dominating an opponent of near-equal skill - +2 points
A newbie dominating an experienced player - +3 points

Domination by the team without the debatable pokemon on it against a team with the debatable on it
A newbie getting dominated by an experienced player - -1 point
A player getting dominated by a player of near-equal skill - -2 points
A experienced player getting dominated by a newbie - -3 points

Inconclusive

Too much hax - 0 points
Too close of a match - 0 points
This needs to go for the entire period of time allotted of course, because if a pokemon is able to reach over the point limit of 150 points, there's still a chance that they can lose more points to go back down. Wherever they end off, do what you will with them.
 
Also, one thing, wouldn't it be better to see if something dominates in the hands of inexperienced players, rather than experienced players? What I mean is that, and experienced player can usually dominate with several different kinds of pokemon, but an inexperienced player needs something especially strong to even have a chance at dominating against an experienced player.
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That would be the case of things that are "obviously" overpowered, and even then, if they can't beat experienced players with it, would we call it "overpowered"?

I don't understand your argument at all. Why should newer players log's have more weight? These aren't things that would be so apparent that a newer player can go nuts with it and beat the best player. It's not like we're testing Arceus in OU. It's not like we're even testing Kyogre in OU. We're testing things like Garchomp and Wobbuffet.

If you understood Pokemon at all then you would notice that it's a game of six working together. - not a game of one vs one. How the hell are you going to measure something as complex like that if ONE Pokemon might be SLIGHTLY overpowered? And even if it's overpowered, You can always find a way to stop threat X by centralizing around it in one way or another. This means that it takes quite a bit more to see if something is overpowered, this is something newer players wont be able to show since it requires experience and fluency on how the game is played. Who cares about new players? They don't know any of this and obviously a huge chunk of their games is one sided. Should we give a damn a newbie cannot deal with Threat X because he doesnt know what he's doing? You think a Newbie is suddenly going to beat "good players" because of one Pokemon? It takes a lot more than that.

You're a tutor, I'm sure you know the average skill of new players. You're making a mockery of the game if you think one pokemon's "overpowering potential" can be measured by a few new players slapping each other with sticks
 
I agree with Jibaku's list and reasoning:
1) Event moves
2) Legendary IVs clause
3) Wobbuffet
4) Garchomp
5) Deoxys-S
6) Lati@s
7) Manaphy
8) Darkrai
9) Mew
10) UU
11) Species clause
12) Evasion clause
13) Arceus
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Tangerine said:
If you understood Pokemon at all then you would notice that it's a game of six working together. - not a game of one vs one. How the hell are you going to measure something as complex like that if ONE Pokemon might be SLIGHTLY overpowered? And even if it's overpowered, You can always find a way to stop threat X by centralizing around it in one way or another. This means that it takes quite a bit more to see if something is overpowered, this is something newer players wont be able to show since it requires experience and fluency on how the game is played. Who cares about new players? They don't know any of this and obviously a huge chunk of their games is one sided. Should we give a damn a newbie cannot deal with Threat X because he doesnt know what he's doing? You think a Newbie is suddenly going to beat "good players" because of one Pokemon? It takes a lot more than that.
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How do you even measure "slightly overpowered"? Also, I DON'T think that a newbie is going to suddenly be beating experienced player because of one pokemon. That's why their log should be given more weight if they do, I don't think that's super-hard to understand.

However, a lot of the times, from what I've seen as a tutor, the students tend to start off with the exact same standard team as everyone else, y'know, teams with Gengar/Garchomp/Blissey, etc etc etc. Coincidentally, a lot of the times, my students may be newbs, but they seem to win an awful lot of the time, even against players who aren't half-bad. What I've noticed is that the pokemon who ends up winning most of their matches is Garchomp. What do you think that signifies? I kinda already know that pokemon's a game of six, but when a certain pokemon is doing a majority of the winning for the team, and does it consistently, doesn't that hint that it's "slightly overpowered" since it might lose if the other members of the team don't do their job well?

Geez, I'm not trying to make a mockery out of anything, this is just what I've seen when I've tutored. I never once said that "new players logs are the only logs we should ever analyze".
 
How do you even measure "slightly overpowered"? Also, I DON'T think that a newbie is going to suddenly be beating experienced player because of one pokemon. That's why their log should be given more weight if they do, I don't think that's super-hard to understand.
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Why put weight on luck, really? You seem to have forgetten that Pokemon is a game of managing statistics and thus taking into consideration a lot of luck. What you're essentially saying is "Hey, let's put more weight on luck!"

However, a lot of the times, from what I've seen as a tutor, the students tend to start off with the exact same standard team as everyone else, y'know, teams with Gengar/Garchomp/Blissey, etc etc etc. Coincidentally, a lot of the times, my students may be newbs, but they seem to win an awful lot of the time, even against players who aren't half-bad. What I've noticed is that the pokemon who ends up winning most of their matches is Garchomp. What do you think that signifies? Geez, I'm not trying to make a mockery out of anything, this is just what I've seen when I've tutored.
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Does it really say anything about someone's skill if someone says "I Beat user X who is Ranked X in the ladder!"?

What matters is consistency. I don't think watching new players make mistakes is very helpful, or watching new players beat player X because of "luck" matters.

My point simply is: "Newbie X winning games because of Garchomp" matters a lot less than "Good Player X winning games because of Garchomp against Good Player X" I don't think we should cater to "newbie" level play, the only level worth catering to are the players who know what they're talking about. Why should we change our policy because Newbie A cannot deal with Pokemon B? We change our policy if Good Player A wins games against other Good Players with Pokemon B.

That is all I've got to say on the matter. You're free to disagree.
 
Tangerine said:
Why put weight on luck, really? You seem to have forgetten that Pokemon is a game of managing statistics and thus taking into consideration a lot of luck. What you're essentially saying is "Hey, let's put more weight on luck!"

Does it really say anything about someone's skill if someone says "I Beat user X who is Ranked X in the ladder!"?

What matters is consistency. I don't think watching new players make mistakes is very helpful, or watching new players beat player X because of "luck" matters.

My point simply is: "Newbie X winning games because of Garchomp" matters a lot less than "Good Player X winning games because of Garchomp against Good Player X" I don't think we should cater to "newbie" level play, the only level worth catering to are the players who know what they're talking about. Why should we change our policy because Newbie A cannot deal with Pokemon B? We change our policy if Good Player A wins games against other Good Players with Pokemon B.

That is all I've got to say on the matter. You're free to disagree.
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Hmm. I suppose I didn't account for luck into my proposal. Wouldn't extremely haxy matches count for nothing anyway? I mean, if there's any sort of "inconclusive evidence", then that's it. I guess that in my de-merit point proposal I could say that extremely haxy matches count for 0 points.

The reason I started this up, is because TAY (who is actually very experienced), admitted that he made a lot of mistakes against husk in his log in the Wobbuffet thread. However, he was still able to win the match quite handily because of Wobb anyway. Then everyone started this whole huge commotion over it, because of all of the mistakes he made, which should have costed him the match. Though because of that one pokemon, he won handily anyway.

That's kind of what I'm going for here, I just want to see if, even when a newbie makes lots of mistakes in a match, can they still win handily because of the debatable pokemon they're using?

Is the de-merit thing even worth discussing, I can scrap the idea if it sucks, but it seems like an okay idea in theory.
 
Ok, once the server is up and I'm back in the swing of things I'll have a lot more to say in topics like this.
 
1. Event Moves
2. Legendary IV Clause

Now, I'm listing these two first not because I feel they're what needs to be resolved first, but because they are quite important and easily dealbt with. I know this thread isn't really for debating how to resolve everything, but I feel like adding to my decisions anyway. Event Moves should be removed until we know more, which compliments the IV Clause which I think should be active.

3. Garchomp
4. Wobbuffet
5. Deoxys-S

Now, these are obviously the most debated Pokémon in the game at the moemnt, so they need to be sorted out as quickly, or as decisively as possible. The thing is, people will always have their own opinions of these Pokémon now that such debate has gone on, even a solid decision won't change everyone's views, but they'll have to live with it. I just hope the game isn't "spoiled" by the removal of Garchomp and the "allowance" of Wobbuffet and Deoxys-S.

6. UU Tiers

Once the above are done, UU needs to be resolved. Event moves would obviously effect UU dramatically, and once OU is sorted, this can be.

7. Arceus

Arceus can be dealbt with quickly at any time IMO. It's obvious that all we need to say is until Nintendo release this Pokémon, it should be banned from Competitive play. (Possibly allowance in extended games if both players agree, but for any serious Uber tournaments or anything else, not allowed).

9. Evasion Clause
10. Species Clause

These do need resolving, but not right away as there are more important things at hand. I'm of the knowledge that for competitive play, Nintendo activate Species Clause and don't permit Evasion Clause. I think we should stick to that.

11. Lati@s
12. Mew
13. Manaphy
14. Darkrai

I list these last as I don't think we should bother testing them at all. Eventually we'll end up testing every "Uber" and it'll be a waste of time really.
 
I'm a bit late to the party, but...

1) Wobbuffet
2) Garchomp

Both of these have been debated endlessly, but neither has reached a clear conclusion. They're also the most complained about, so it makes sense to deal with them first.

3) Legendary IVs clause
4) Event moves

Neither of these should take too long to resolve, and they both have a decent-sized impact on the metagame, so it'd be best to deal with them after the two most pressing issues.

5) Deoxys-S
6) Lati@s
7) Manaphy
8) Darkrai
9) Mew

Other Pokemon that need to be decided...Deoxys-s hasn't seen nearly as much discussion as Chomp/Wobb, so it's next in line.

10) UU
11) Species clause
12) Evasion clause
13) Arceus

Other less important stuff. Only half of this stuff affects the OU metagame and what does has a pretty minor effect, so it's all lower-priority.
 
Tangerine said:
The only reason I believe that talking never got anywhere is because because we have no prior example on what to base anything on. It will be the same result with analysis - without "experimenting" and testing the difference, and without anything to base anything on (who are we to say what is "broken" when we have no example prior to it other than... Manaphy who was banned pretty quickly without any statistics for us to look back upon?)
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I believe talking never got us anywhere because we weren't basing it on anything convincing. I honestly feel that the best way to tell if something is broken is to analyze logs—I don't think we need a precedent of needing prior experience with (un)banning pokes for this to work.

There's a reason people say "Wobbuffet changes the very game we play", by making us play more guessing games - it's something you really shouldn't prepare for. I believe that statistics mean nothing on Wobbuffet, and it never will.
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Inclined to agree, which is why I keep calling for the analysis of logs.

Why should we care about the "lower tier" players? If we're going to be competitive the only opinions that matter are the players who are amongst "the best"
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We should care about them because it is very true that Wobbuffet isn't the easiest poke to use effectively. You can't just stick it on a team of five random pokes or pokes you "like", you can't just send it in whenever, and you can't expect its mere presence to send chills up the spines of your opposition. Further, if a "lower tier" Wobbuffet user loses badly to a player we consider among "the best" who isn't using Wobbuffet, are we then to discount that "Wobbuffet didn't dominate the battle" because the Wobby user sucks? That's a blatant double-standard.

This is where the "power in numbers" argument crops up again—if we realize that analyzing all logs (those between "the best", "lower tier", a mix of the two and everything in between) is the best way to objectively get at the answer, then we can do this the right way.
 
Bologo said:
point system
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I love pretty much everything here but the "150 points" mark. The separation in skill level and why it matters was a great point and thank you for posting it. To look somewhat into the future, assuming you guys agree that analyzing many, many logs of battles with "suspects" is a good idea, I would propose that those of us reading logs would actively set out to read them both to determine the skill level of the players and to determine the "domination factor" of the suspect as well.

Regarding the "150" mark, I would think that a positive "domination factor", no matter how small, would be enough to over dozens of logs—or, more accurately, dozens of analyses since I've proposed 3-4 people reading one log to reduce variance—would be sufficient enough. Maybe +1 would be close enough to 0 to keep a suspect where it is, so maybe an aggregate of -5 to +5 would still indicate that the suspect shouldn't be moved, but I don't think this window should be too large or has to be if we analyze enough logs.

And again, I know the mighty Jumpman16 has issued his decree and all, but I genuinely want you guys to comment and take issue with my propositions if you feel they aren't objective or fair or if they're needlessly "hard". We do need to take some sort of action, though, and I'm actually excited that we seem to be getting somewhere having made the blueprints for a system I feel will give us the template we need going forward to decide on several policy issues.
 
At the risk of sounding completely retarded and like a hypocrite I'll post this

At this point, it is clear that we're not going for the "maximum decentralization point" but simply just banning things that we deem "overpowered" - things that give you a huge advantage. I believe that nothing in the game will give you a "huge advantage" so I'm pretty sure nothing will get banned if we actually start analyzing them. I'm against the concept of logs simply because at the very most, it'll ban Wobbuffet, if the method even bans anything in the first place.

I'm against this "objective" analysis as our "biggest basis" of banning simply because it is not feasible. I believe that the experiences of good players who actually play the game (jrrrrrr, IPL, Taylor, Jabba, etc) (and I emphasize good, and I'm not going to include myself amongst them since I'm not a terrific player) should have a great weight, perhaps even over the the so called "objective analysis".

I'm not even sure why Wobbuffet is still an issue since we already see that 1) Wobbuffet gives free kills, or makes your deadliest sweeper able to kill something unless they have two counters of something, (TAY log) 2) Wobbuffet changes the very nature of the game by turning it into a game of darts in the dark from a game of managing statistics considering it stops everything the moment it switches in and you have to literally assume things out of absolutely nothing to go on (Reminds me of the log that where the guy sacrificed something to Wobbuffet because he didnt want to give free Toxic Spikes but he ASSUMED that IPL was using Toxic Spikes so w/e). If the Log analysis stopped there, I would be perhaps happy with logs but the fact that we're still demanding logs just makes it sound like we're never going to decide anything at all.

This is perhaps why I just believe logs should be just used in arguments (like I just did) instead of simple objective analysis saying "Oh Did Pokemon X really give this guy an advantage even though he was the worse player"

[pokemon] reasonably dominated this battle.
[pokemon] did not dominate this battle.
[pokemon's] impact on this battle was inconclusive.

I seriously don't believe that this is reasonable and it'll take thousands and thousands of logs.

Honestly if we can't use the fact that "Pokemon X is a pain in the ass to deal with" I'm reasonably confident that we can unban a ton of shit and we won't find that "Pokemon X reasonably dominated this battle" simply because we already know that 1) Pokemon is not a series of 1 vs 1 battles, 2) Team building means that you'll always find a way to deal with Pokemon X ANYWAY so drawing the line between reasonably dominated did not dominate is seems meaningless. This is why I don't even think we should consider new players in logs. I mean I could sweep jrrrrr's #1 team with a Deoxys E and that wouldn't mean a thing, it would just mean his team was unprepared. Is it really dominating because skilled player B was unable to deal with newbie player A's strategy because he was unprepared for it? Where is the line between "This Pokemon dominated because Team B's team was unprepared" and "This Pokemon dominated because it was overpowered"? Because of the team differences you're not going to be able to pull the same strategy every battle so in the end you're looking for "enough repeated patterns" before being able to tell "this really IS too dominating" and as far as I can tell that's going to take at least a thousand logs and I'm pretty sure not many people are willing to do this at all.

Attempting to have a numerical value system (point system) is even more retarded, see my note about "numbers mean absolutely nothing".

Objectivity cannot exist in this and in the end we're drawing the line somewhere. Players like MoP believe that nothing is broken and will use absolutely anything and find ways around it and don't care while other players want Garchomp and Deoxys E gone because they limit team building way too much. The best way to decide is not to decide by some logs (how are you going to prove that logs limit team building really?) but IMO, just one end all be all debate and use of log to illustrate certain points of what is possible instead of a big objective analysis that is limited in scope by nature.

I might be completely misinterpreting the purpose of log analysis but it seems as if someone is looking for an "innate advantage" simply for having Pokemon X but note that you'll always have some innate advantage because of the team match ups anyway and in the end any team can beat any other team due to variations of "prediction" anyway so what's really the point at all?

In the end you would probably analyze similar things subconsciously anyway and give you the impression that "Garchomp is too good" or "Wobbuffet changes how the game is played " and "Deoxys Limits Team building". These statements don't come from nowhere or just "instincts" since I believe that most people are just analyzing things subconsciously and perhaps what we need is a debate to make everything clearer. They don't come from nowhere and i believe that they'll accomplish the same thing as analyzing logs... except a lot faster.

Hell if this is all we're doing what's the point of our own shoddy server...? What's really the difference other than "oh lag"? We'd have control over the metagame anyway if we were actually capable of giving an objective analysis to Pokemon since I'm pretty sure those would have convinced Colin anyway.

Hell, if we're going to go by this, could we just have two ladders? A conservative ladder where we can attempt this "objective analysis", and a more liberal ladder where we actually try to find the maximum decentralization and point and simply experiment?

I'm also sort of annoyed considering I'm pretty sure I said something about a strict policy behind what we want in our metagame and how we would decide before we announce the server. What's really the point of having our own server now really? I'm pretty sure if we give Colin the set of analysis that "we" are doing then I'm pretty sure he would have listened. I don't think we accomplish anything with a new server at this point if we're going with an objective analysis (then again I'm very, very, pessimistic about it)

There's a reason Colin's policies were pissing off many good players and I don't think this is going to do anything about it. The biggest reason being that the people who "make the decision" or "have a voice on how the site/server should handle things" don't even play the game to begin with. Watching games and reading the log is completely different from playing and I'm pretty sure you recognize that. Are we seriously trying to be the best by analyzing things that are limited in scope? I'm pretty sure there's a reason there are a few people that have grudges against this place and I'm pretty sure if we're continuing with this we'll just be making this problem worse.

If we're so afraid to make decisions and try to make things as "objective as possible" that just honestly gives us a lot less breathing room if we do screw up. We will make mistakes and we will fix them along the way, I don't see why we're so die hard on this objective method just so people who don't play the game must 100% understand. I'm pretty sure we can come up with really convincing subjective arguments on why Pokemon X is banned from OU if we actually tried (Well no one actually bothered replying to my arguments on the other thread so I dunno) and that's what we'd accomplish by debating it out instead of trying to find this method that has a good chance it's arbitrary.

Then again, if I don't speak out, who will? I'm pretty frustrated that on one posts much and just go with whatever policy without considering the side effects and hearing complaints about things not happening when they're not even posting and contributing to these discussions
It's not like my opinion "matters" anyway so I'll just go with whatever you guys decide, these are just my thoughts anyway.
 
I agree with Tangerine's position here. There are factors beyond our control when we are looking at logs. People speaking from actual battle experience with these pokes (Garchomp, DX-E, Wob, ect) should have more weigh then a bunch of logs from some random people. Ideally, I don't really think we should use those logs at all. All this Stark Mountain people are trying (pretty poorly) to say some of these things are uber/ not uber, but we aren't doing the same thing. I say an objective look, through Policy Review or otherwise, with people that have actual experience, should take an objective look at these things. Have a serious discussion without all the random crap from Stark. You say you don't have a problem with Garchomp? How do you deal with it when it comes out on the field? What if you see this verison, or make the wrong guess? These are the kinds of things we need to discuss.

Also, I disagree with the idea of having a special tournament to see if something is not uber. I played in both the Eon Tournament and MDWL and honestly those tournaments didn't prove anything. If you bring something back, I'm going to stick my team with a bunch of counters to stop Manaphy/ anything else. Then, everybody will say "Oh these things didn't do too much". Look, a special tournament will only work for say, removing something from OU like Garchomp. That's really when those experience matters. But honestly, I think we are taking some of things the wrong way.
 
I couldn't agree any more than I do with the posts by the small fruit and icebird60four.

The method of "analyzing logs objectively" is useless simply because nobody wants to do it. This may sound elitist, but the opinions of "battle-tested" players should have much more sway than both the opinions of newer players and of some kind of arbitrary objective council to determine the status of a pokemon.

Why?

Because the players who have been playing every single day since D/P came out have already done the work for you! How many matches do you think I've played? What about IPL? Jabba? Taylor? Maniaclyrasist? etc etc. Do you think that we don't pay attention to what happens in our matches? Just between the people I mentioned, we've already analyzed thousands of logs and have come up with opinions based on analysis of the logs. These opinions should hold much more sway than an objective observer, because the battler is trying to win. If something is either helping the battler win a lot, or is causing the battler to lose a lot, they are going to notice and be able to deduce rather convincingly (to themselves, at least) WHY they are performing the way they are.
 
If we're going by just battling experience, I'd say leave everything the way it is as of right now. I have over 2000 logs of wins dating back to November to back it up. Any takers?
 
Tangerine said:
Objectivity cannot exist in this and in the end we're drawing the line somewhere. Players like MoP believe that nothing is broken and will use absolutely anything and find ways around it and don't care while other players want Garchomp and Deoxys E gone because they limit team building way too much. The best way to decide is not to decide by some logs
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your question has been answered already. and why would we just go off of one player's battling experience? That was the whole point of this topic and the whole reason why the policy review board was created.
 
I've been urged to voice my opinion on the matter of analyzing logs and being placed drivers' seat yourself. There is a significant difference between justifying an opinion about Wobbuffet, Garchomp, etcetera, to actually playing the game yourself, being put under the spotlight and being asked to perform to a high standard. Playing the game continuously, day-in and day-out, will account for an overall, ideal level of experience that you can use to come to a conclusive decision. For someone who is playing the game, in theory, has the ability to establish whether or not that Wobbuffet/Garchomp was unstoppable, and no matter what team that was at his disposal, his loss was still inevitable - or whether that Garchomp/Wobbuffet caught him off-guard, and that with a slight adjustment to the team would have cured this weakness.

Personal experience that I've aquired playing the OU metagame since Wobbuffet's release into the OverUsed environment has become negative. It has been addressed by so many members that Wobbuffet's entrance into a battle becomes uncontrolable for the player who is opposed against it, no matter of either users' skill level. If Suicune, for example, has been summoned to the field and I'm asked to react - I can react to this matter simply by switching to Celebi - this is competitive battling. But as soon as Wobbuffet hits the field, my skill level is thrown out the window and I become a mere puppet that must play through their Encore and Shadow Tag combination. I'm sure everyone hears this on a regular basis.

Regardless, a method must be chosen before prioritizing which aspects need to be dealt with first.
 
The point is that you don't have to battle as much as the next person, meaning that all this emphasis on 'battlers-only' seems discriminative. If you want this bullshit to be over with, everyone has a part and say in it, through all means, whether if it's battling itself or analyzing logs or looking over statistics so stop this fucking bullshit on 'battlers-only' opinion.
 
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