Have some bad memories of random mons carrying Sashes and Substitute.Why don't you just run EQ?
Have some bad memories of random mons carrying Sashes and Substitute.Why don't you just run EQ?
Agreed, I don't want to lose all chances for getting reqs just because I skillfully work around a team I have a bad matchup against, only to lose because Bonemerang misses the last turn.[12:33:24] pokemonisfun: only people who can go 50-0 have relevant opinions on buzzwole
This sums up the suspect experience pretty well, in my opinion.
I'm pretty sure everybody agrees that there is pretty much zero incentive to ladder now - whats the point of wasting time if you lose one match by hax out of 20 battles and realistically can't lose another to get reqs? On paper, making a higher GXE should mean that only better people will get reqs and ensuring a fair and more "accurate" suspect result. However, it doesn't take into account how easily it is to lose a game based on matchup or even bad luck in RNG alone. I understand the mentality of "raising the bar" to ensure higher quality suspects but in reality this is doing the opposite. I'll try to explain why:
GXE is inflated by more people winning, and obviously other people simultaneously losing battles. The more battles that happen on ladder, the more GXE potential will be injected into the ladder making reqs obviously easier than say, only a bunch of low ladder people who will never get reqs just continually playing for fun or just out of sheer ignorance of how the suspect system really works.
People make new alts for suspects. They make a few, to a lot of alts, depending on the difficultly of the suspect test at hand. All these alts start at 0 COIL / an undetermined GXE obviously, so when you have these low players naturally coming in, when they win they actually just take GXE out of the system by killing mid-rage people's GXE (because when you lose to somebody lower than you it hits you harder than say, if you lost to someone way higher than you). This kills suspect runs, and then those people make new alts, and the cycle continues. All the COIL "taken" from other opponents on the ladder can be gone after a loss or two when the person restarts reqs on a different alt, the old one never to be touched again.
The suspect system is flawed in that way - on a suspect ladder with GXE based on relativity from one opponent to another doesn't take into account that what the ladder reads as a "low ladder player" and re-calculates GXE in that way after the battle could very well be an excellent player who is draining GXE/COIL from the system that might just be dropped when they lose a single game. On a suspect ladder where everybody starts from zero, the "low ladder" is not the low ladder on normal ladders - they're just as likely to be a random as much as it is as likely for a given opponent to be an accomplished and competent UU player.
Now, another factor thats coming into play is the motivation factor. Many people in UU main chat (recently including me) have been expressing sentiment about there being no incentive to ladder the suspect test, on the grounds that its impossible to get reqs with a bar this high. This, along with the previously stated point about the suspect ladder system not accounting for "hax" and other subtleties that can determine the outcome of a battle, means that less people (particularly the decent players to extremely competent players who might not want to risk wasting there time on something that has such a high chance at zero return just based off a single loss) will be even on the ladder, meaning less inflation of COIL and you're just stuck with the same two types of people:
1) People who don't understand how the suspect tests work and that its impossible for them to get reqs / people just laddering who dont know what suspect tests are at all.
2) People who are desperately trying to get reqs and are constantly taking rating out of the system by continually making alts until they get to the point where they give up, or eventually make reqs.
The suspect system before this meant that generally people were of a generally lower quality than the UU council was looking for - and I agree, previous suspects had some low quality posts on both sides of the issue being suspected, but at least there were enough people to make a consensus among the at the least semi-serious members of the community and even have a reasonable chance at getting reqs, and then discussion optimally happening before the vote (which again, is just the ideal situation and I know that some people only get reqs for that TC badge, but thats not the primary issue).
I strongly disagree with what is happening right now with the decisions made in the tier - I understand they are made in the best interests of the tier (if some of you remember I was an avid supporter of the council vote on Serperior and Azumarill because I understood they were in the best interests of the tier) but at this point its a fake suspect and now really only really lucky people (I get it, you'll need skill too, but you first off need the luck to not get hax'd out of a game or two) or people who are eligible for reduced reqs are going to be able to vote in the suspect test.
This all seems pretty ironic to me since now to avoid poor suspect test results and votes they're making it so things are a high part determined by luck and rewarding the grind instead of just somewhat based off skill, and while there are going to be exceptions to this I doubt there will be very many.
TLDR: This suspect test isn't working.
Well, I'm going to actually say no to this for a few reasons that are inherantly intertwined.Wasn’t all of that true with the previous suspect requirements also? The only difference is that the bar is higher. What is the magic cutoff that makes reqs acceptable at 77 GXE but impossible at 82?
When we picked this particular number we reviewed dozens of prior suspects. Even when the GXE requirement was 77 we still had people doing exactly what you described, and grinding several alts until one of them got a sufficiently good win streak to qualify. We set the reqs high enough that it is a lot harder to qualify based off of a couple of lucky streaks. Yes, that means it will be a lot harder to achieve reqs, and a particularly unlucky run can definitely bounce you.
If you’re getting discouraged, I would recommend waiting a few days for the ladder to develop. GXE and COIL grow more slowly on newer ladders where the average rating of the players is lower. The grind is always harder at the beginning. (This, by the way, is why we only shortened the ladder to 9 days instead of a week as some suggested; we wanted to allow the ladder some time to develop to keep reqs from being too difficult.)
Also, your input on this thread is valuable regardless of whether you successfully make reqs or not. I personally read every post and I know others do too, and good discourse is always important.
I'm not a part of this UU suspect but I have to say...[12:33:24] pokemonisfun: only people who can go 50-0 have relevant opinions on buzzwole
This sums up the suspect experience pretty well, in my opinion.
I'm pretty sure everybody agrees that there is pretty much zero incentive to ladder now - whats the point of wasting time if you lose one match by hax out of 20 battles and realistically can't lose another to get reqs? On paper, making a higher GXE should mean that only better people will get reqs and ensuring a fair and more "accurate" suspect result. However, it doesn't take into account how easily it is to lose a game based on matchup or even bad luck in RNG alone. I understand the mentality of "raising the bar" to ensure higher quality suspects but in reality this is doing the opposite. I'll try to explain why:
GXE is inflated by more people winning, and obviously other people simultaneously losing battles. The more battles that happen on ladder, the more GXE potential will be injected into the ladder making reqs obviously easier than say, only a bunch of low ladder people who will never get reqs just continually playing for fun or just out of sheer ignorance of how the suspect system really works.
People make new alts for suspects. They make a few, to a lot of alts, depending on the difficultly of the suspect test at hand. All these alts start at 0 COIL / an undetermined GXE obviously, so when you have these low players naturally coming in, when they win they actually just take GXE out of the system by killing mid-rage people's GXE (because when you lose to somebody lower than you it hits you harder than say, if you lost to someone way higher than you). This kills suspect runs, and then those people make new alts, and the cycle continues. All the COIL "taken" from other opponents on the ladder can be gone after a loss or two when the person restarts reqs on a different alt, the old one never to be touched again.
The suspect system is flawed in that way - on a suspect ladder with GXE based on relativity from one opponent to another doesn't take into account that what the ladder reads as a "low ladder player" and re-calculates GXE in that way after the battle could very well be an excellent player who is draining GXE/COIL from the system that might just be dropped when they lose a single game. On a suspect ladder where everybody starts from zero, the "low ladder" is not the low ladder on normal ladders - they're just as likely to be a random as much as it is as likely for a given opponent to be an accomplished and competent UU player.
Now, another factor thats coming into play is the motivation factor. Many people in UU main chat (recently including me) have been expressing sentiment about there being no incentive to ladder the suspect test, on the grounds that its impossible to get reqs with a bar this high. This, along with the previously stated point about the suspect ladder system not accounting for "hax" and other subtleties that can determine the outcome of a battle, means that less people (particularly the decent players to extremely competent players who might not want to risk wasting there time on something that has such a high chance at zero return just based off a single loss) will be even on the ladder, meaning less inflation of COIL and you're just stuck with the same two types of people:
1) People who don't understand how the suspect tests work and that its impossible for them to get reqs / people just laddering who dont know what suspect tests are at all.
2) People who are desperately trying to get reqs and are constantly taking rating out of the system by continually making alts until they get to the point where they give up, or eventually make reqs.
The suspect system before this meant that generally people were of a generally lower quality than the UU council was looking for - and I agree, previous suspects had some low quality posts on both sides of the issue being suspected, but at least there were enough people to make a consensus among the at the least semi-serious members of the community and even have a reasonable chance at getting reqs, and then discussion optimally happening before the vote (which again, is just the ideal situation and I know that some people only get reqs for that TC badge, but thats not the primary issue).
I strongly disagree with what is happening right now with the decisions made in the tier - I understand they are made in the best interests of the tier (if some of you remember I was an avid supporter of the council vote on Serperior and Azumarill because I understood they were in the best interests of the tier) but at this point its a fake suspect and now really only really lucky people (I get it, you'll need skill too, but you first off need the luck to not get hax'd out of a game or two) or people who are eligible for reduced reqs are going to be able to vote in the suspect test.
This all seems pretty ironic to me since now to avoid poor suspect test results and votes they're making it so things are a high part determined by luck and rewarding the grind instead of just somewhat based off skill, and while there are going to be exceptions to this I doubt there will be very many.
TLDR: This suspect test isn't working.
edit: after discussion I have realized that this post exaggerates the amount of losses it takes to kill reqs - this was unintentional and was more focused on early-run losses than late game assuming you would potentially lose more later.
I don't understand the math here.EDIT: To clarify, we are using the exact same formula with the exact same COIL requirements we've always used. Literally the only thing that has changed is that we now we are only accepting people who achieve the COIL requirements in 65 games or fewer, whereas previously we accepted people who achieved those requirements in 90 games or fewer. The ladder mechanics and rate at which COIL accrues have not changed.
I'm not an expert on COIL, but I think you should be solving this problem by increasing your COIL B-factor (which increases the minimum number of games), not by instituting a maximum number of games. Giving a maximum game count makes it easier to qualify off win streaks and harder to qualify off skill, which is the opposite of what you want.When we picked this particular number we reviewed dozens of prior suspects. Even when the GXE requirement was 77 we still had people doing exactly what you described, and grinding several alts until one of them got a sufficiently good win streak to qualify. We set the reqs high enough that it is a lot harder to qualify based off of a couple of lucky streaks. Yes, that means it will be a lot harder to achieve reqs, and a particularly unlucky run can definitely bounce you.
Correct me if I'm wrong (and I very well could be, math isn't my strong suit), but wouldn't raising the B value mean even more games would be required in order to qualify? So in this particular example, pokemonisfun would be even further away from qualifying to participate in this suspect test. If, for example, we raised the B value to 25, by my math it would mean it would take over 80 games with a GXE of 82 to qualify, as opposed to the 65 games it should currently require. Nor would this prevent people from qualifying with a lower GXE: someone could still qualify with, say, a 75 GXE, as long as they were willing to grind out about 140 games. (That definitely happens, by the way—before we instituted a game limit, we once had someone qualify by playing over 400 games).I'm not an expert on COIL, but I think you should be solving this problem by increasing your COIL B-factor (which increases the minimum number of games), not by instituting a maximum number of games. Giving a maximum game count makes it easier to qualify off win streaks and harder to qualify off skill, which is the opposite of what you want.
Yes. Requiring more games means lucky people with get lower scores (the more games you play, the closer your GXE will be to average). If you had problems with people getting lucky, requiring more games would be the correct solution.Correct me if I'm wrong (and I very well could be, math isn't my strong suit), but wouldn't raising the B value mean even more games would be required in order to qualify?
That's true, but without the minimum gamecount, his path to qualification is much more straightforward.So in this particular example, pokemonisfun would be even further away from qualifying to participate in this suspect test. If, for example, we raised the B value to 25, by my math it would mean it would take over 80 games with a GXE of 82 to qualify, as opposed to the 65 games it should currently require.
If you think someone with a 75 GXE shouldn't qualify, your minimum COIL should be above 3000. (If this makes it too hard for other players to make reqs, B could be decreased accordingly.)Nor would this prevent people from qualifying with a lower GXE: someone could still qualify with, say, a 75 GXE, as long as they were willing to grind out about 140 games. (That definitely happens, by the way—before we instituted a game limit, we once had someone qualify by playing over 400 games).
By this point, I'm nearly convinced about what the correct solution should be:Our goal is to establish a minimum GXE in order to qualify to participate in this suspect test. If possible, we'd like to do it without making it an absurdly long process to qualify either. (So, arbitrarily raising the B value to the point where it is practically impossible to qualify with a GXE below 82 is impractical, as it would mean drastically increasing the number of games required even for those with a GXE above the current standards.) The only way that I know of to accomplish this is by establishing a game limit. If there's a way to modify the formula to get this end-result WITHOUT requiring a game limit, we are absolutely open to it.
In my experience, a good player with a good team hits 82% GXE in 18 to 25 games. The first 10 of those games are low ladder curbstomps. I don't think that a simple GXE limit requires the top players to play enough games to get a feel for the suspect meta.By this point, I'm nearly convinced about what the correct solution should be:
Require a minimum GXE of 82 to qualify for suspect voting.
That's it. That's the only requirement you need. You don't need COIL. You probably don't even need a minimum game-count; you already need so many games to reach a GXE that high, anyway. Every other requirement is just confusing and frustrating players.
You changed the requirements... in the middle of the suspect test... right after I went full tryhard to get it under 65 games...We will be changing the current requirements to the following: 2650 COIL with a minimum GXE of 82. There is no longer a game limit.
Don't forget the Lansat NG flying breloom set that's been floating around. It nails amoon and buzz after +2. It also gets worry seed, which most people don't realize or haven't mentioned. I'm still testing out, so stay tuned for my thoughts on both.Checks like Amoonguss and Sap Sipper Azu counter Breloom quite hard, Buzzwole also counters Breloom
Yeah, that's entirely fair. I asked some Smogoners whether or not a minimum game-count would be necessary with a GXE floor of 82 earlier, and someone said no.I agree with almost everything Zarel said in his last post, except this:
In my experience, a good player with a good team hits 82% GXE in 18 to 25 games. The first 10 of those games are low ladder curbstomps. I don't think that a simple GXE limit requires the top players to play enough games to get a feel for the suspect meta.
That doesn't solve the problem of "people near the limit will need to play very many battles before they qualify", which tier leaders don't like. The best workaround for that is to have both a minimum COIL and a minimum GXE, but honestly, a minimum GXE and a minimum game count is much simpler, and doesn't require roping in programmers to adjust the COIL B factor for every ladder.And doing away with COIL may not be necessary. Raising awareness of the fact that COIL has a built-in adjustable minimum GXE requirement may be enough.
I'm sorry but I disagree with this entirely. What this does is ween the above average from the good or even great, which I find nothing wrong with. There are too many players out there that fail to see the nuanced threads of competitive mons, especially a tier like UU where we need to test everything that falls from OU and be the first to determine the relative strength of a mon for all subsequent lower tiers. These examples are elements that'll affect tournament play and more importantly the health and competitiveness of the tier.I believe the suspect system is inherantly bad, but when you raise the bar like this you're just magnifying the issues with the old way in an attempt to fix a smaller issue that was previously there.
I have a few things to say about this suspect.
Firstly, regardless of what the original intent of COIL, regardless of the difficulty of there being a 65 game limit to achieve 2650 with 82% GXE, and all of that nonsense, I think a lot of you are totally looking at this shit the wrong way.
I'm sorry but I disagree with this entirely. What this does is ween the above average from the good or even great, which I find nothing wrong with. There are too many players out there that fail to see the nuanced threads of competitive mons, especially a tier like UU where we need to test everything that falls from OU and be the first to determine the relative strength of a mon for all subsequent lower tiers. These examples are elements that'll affect tournament play and more importantly the health and competitiveness of the tier.
What do you think the point of 82% GXE is anyway? For Charizardlover9000 to easily achieve a voting position in a tier? If Charizardlover9000 wants to achieve reqs, I'd hope the experience is difficult for them. Most certainly, they'll learn a thing or two about UU and hopefully achieve a higher grasp of why the voting process is so important, and why it's important to try your best to learn about the tier you're voting on.
https://puu.sh/ze9QQ/e074c2159c.png
https://puu.sh/ze9C2/9c9cea5a25.png
I went 46-11 to get reqs in 57 games (and I'm definitely not in top form), then other people should get it in 65, and they have. The fact that a user like cookees managed to achieve reqs speaks not only to his dedication to be a good player, but that newcomers that care enough to become a good player will also be able to achieve reqs. Y'all need to believe in yourself and achieve the achievable, again, regardless of game limits, or restrictions. I promise, it's possible, and you'll all be better players as a result.
Lastly, breloom is fine, versatile, priority, good variety of sets, nothing too crazy. Houndoom is fine. Buzz is pretty insane and I'm 50/50 in terms of banning right now, I'll post a more decisive thought on it shortly.
there's nothing that I can say about breloom that hasn't already been said. I'm on the unban side of things. nor am I a council member, so I don't necessarily commit to explicating my entire reasoning. In this case, I don't want to affect the mindset of too many users, since the requirements are difficult enough for people to make their own decisions without listening to my nonsense.You talk about how players can't see nuance but then dismiss Breloom as not broken in a single sentence.
And by the way it's not like you got reqs with the first requirement of under 65 games on your first try, so to say it's easy for good players like you - and we all know you're a very very good player - is puzzling to say the least.
Y'all need to believe in yourself and achieve the achievable regardless of game limits, or restrictions. I promise, it's possible, and you'll all be better players as a result.