Old gen council powers re: lower tiers

[Nayrz]

With the recent ban on Ingrain Smeargle in ADV Ubers there has been a controversial discussion regarding the ban itself and the way it was handled among the Ubers community. Namely, the way that the ADV Council bypassed any and all input from both the Ubers community, and also that of my own as the tier leader - in other words pretty much nobody invested in the tier had any idea this was coming. After the ban was posted, I talked with a few of the prominent ADV Ubers players and the majority opinion I got back was more of a shrug. Most agreed that the ban is beneficial to ADV Ubers, but there was certainly opposition in that it didn't need to be banned at all, and most importantly, action in an Ubers generation that is as old as ADV goes against many grains and doing it for such a thing does more harm than good. In this case, the result of the decision is mostly minor. Chain passing recieved a large nerf, but this strategy was regarded by some to be unreliable and/or bad against good teams in the first place. However, there is an argument that there was a lack of reasoning or justification for the ADV council to apply this to Ubers in the exact same way it was done in ADV OU. They are very different tiers and a copy/paste of OU reasoning isn't the best fit.

What I would like to see clarification on is:

- Why this ban was applied to ADV Ubers, especially without input from relevant parties
- What powers do the Old Gen Councils have over lower tiers, or in general?

This decision may have set a dangerous precedent that could see problems if not ironed out properly. If the ADV Council can ban something from ADV Ubers without asking anyone in Ubers, what stops the DPP council from doing the same to DPP Ubers, or DPP UU, or any other old gen lower tier? These metagames are all enjoyed by their playerbases and the actions of a council predominantly based around OU affecting their metagames can lead to some serious backlash. In fact, I was under the impression that these councils could only impact old gen OU tiers, not all tiers in that generation, and I doubt I'm the only one that felt that way. The result of the ADV Ubers decision may be minor and I'm fairly confident it was a one time thing in the context of Ubers, but I feel this is certainly a discussion worth having as this can affect many of our tiers in the future, moreso when gen 6 and 7 become "old" and there are more controversial things that someone in a future SM council may desire to change, ban or unban. Having a clear idea of the powers these councils have in general is overall beneficial going forward if this idea is to stick.

 

[Minority]

Just some key points I think people should keep in mind in regards to this incident:
- Should tiering decisions be pushed on higher or lower tiers simply because they were adopted in OU?
- Should tiering decisions be allowed to meddle with past generations (in this case older than Smogon itself)?
- Is it fair to have tiering decisions made by those who are not stakeholders of said tier?
- Is it fair to quickban game elements without prior discussion, data collection, or sufficient explanation?
- Does the banning of game elements with no collateral make rational sense?
- Does Ingrain Smeargle significantly alter the competitive edge or the premise of play in ADV Ubers?

From the Ubers tiering perspective, some of these are very easy to answer, and others can be made complicated. My pervading opinion is that Ingrain Smeargle is virtually a zero collateral element and therefore it becomes hard to be upset by its ban. As to if the ban is warranted or the proceedings of its ban are fair and rational, that's another argument. I was not vocal about the council's decision because I have faith that they'll refrain from tiering decisions that negatively impact ADV Ubers. Please, just don't let us down in the future.

 

[ABR]

Old gen councils should not have the ability to tier lower tiers in their respective gens. The council members were all picked on an OU basis so assuming some level of expertise for every lower tier of said gen is pretty irresponsible. I don't believe there's a good alternative for who should be in charge so my recommendation is: freeze old gen lower tiers.

Beyond the fact that there is no one proper to call the shots, there are a few more reasons why this would be the right move. Transitivity of bans should not apply to old gens because the usage of higher tiers already does not affect lower tiers in these gens. If using a pokemon in BW OU doesn't change BW UU then why should banning said pokemon be any different? Furthermore, old gen lower tiers are played at a much lower frequency than their OU counterparts, so it is far more difficult for changes to be adapted to.

I can understand and do agree with old gen OUs being tiered but there's no good reason to fiddle with their lower tier counterparts.

 

[Vileman]

Hey
I believe that old gen lower tiers should be handled by the tier leaders of those metagames, and the playerbase of said metagame. Take a look at bw lc: murkrow and scraggy were clearly a problem in the metagame, so a group of bw lc players made a convo, approched the tier leaders with their concerns, and had a vote which lead to both of these mons bans.

I think this is the right way to approach these kind of situations:
-A group of players of x metagame think y pokemon/move/whatever is a problem.
-They discuss it with active people who play this metagame(in premier leagues, ladder or have good metagame knowledge), in a pm convo or discord channel.
-The suspect is approved by tier leaders after a proper discussion is made.
-The suspect is announced to the public.
-People who want to be added to the voters must say what makes them apt for voting, shouldnt be too hard if they have got results in this tier by playing any random tournament or have played a lot with any other voter.

Tier leaders should just give the go, or be the ones who give the proper permissions to do the suspect(unless site staff should be the ones giving the go? I believe tier leaders are more opt for this as they should at least have some idea of how past metagames have worked EDIT: ive been informed Hikari is tiering admin, perharps he could give input in this cases too). Old gen lower tiers arent active anyways, so its not too terrible to have a non-formal approach or not have a council but rather a group of proven players, and should only be done when there was a clear lack of proper tiering left by past councils(murkrow and scraggy in bw lc stay as my examples).

 

[undisputed]

Why this ban was applied to ADV Ubers, especially without input from relevant parties?

Ingrain Smeargle was banned from ADV OU per the 2011 Ingrain Smeargle Vote. Ingrain Smeargle was deemed an uncompetitive strategy, and it operates in the same fundamental way in Ubers as it does in OU. Therefore, banning Ingrain Smeargle in ADV Ubers is simply the logical extension of the OU vote held nearly 7 years ago.

Furthermore, we (the ADV Council) made this decision because this is an extremely minor issue and done for the sake of tier consistency. As Minority says in his post: "My pervading opinion is that Ingrain Smeargle is virtually a zero collateral element." If you believe Ingrain Smeargle offers valuable and meaningful competitive elements to ADV Ubers, we can pursue further discussion of this topic in particular.

As for input from the relevant parties, you said it best in your own words: "I talked with a few of the prominent ADV Ubers players and the majority opinion I got back was more of a shrug. Most agreed that the ban is beneficial to ADV Ubers."

What powers do the Old Gen Councils have over lower tiers, or in general?

I think this is the more significant question, and we (the ADV Council) agree that it would be good to have an official, explicit understanding.

We will not engage in tiering "lower tiers" of old generations beyond what amounts to zero collateral housekeeping. For example, we believe Ingrain Smeargle falls under this "zero collateral housekeeping" category. Nothing of competitive value is being lost here, and we are promoting the fundamental goal of mechanical consistency among tiers within a specific Pokemon generation.

Non-OU tiering for old gens is an issue for another thread. For now, rest assured that ADV Ubers and all other tiers of the same vein are beyond the scope of the "Old Gen Councils," with the exception of extremely minor issues such as Ingrain Smeargle as covered above.

 

[Bughouse]

While people still play old gen low tiers all the time for fun since many of them are great tiers, the only "important" playing of these tiers pretty much falls entirely under tier-specific premier leagues, which are ultimately under the purview of the TLs.

This is what head TD Roro said at the time when Sand Veil/Gliscor/etc was being discussed about the impact of a DPP OU tiering decision on other DPP tiers:

Since DPP Uber/UU/NU/LC are not featured in Official Tournaments, it is up to the host of the tournament decide whether or not he wants to apply this clause for these tiers.

Indeed, as one example, DPP NU didn't follow the DPP OU vote of this Sand Veil/Snow Cloak ban, since Sandslash and Cacturne were far more important and beneficial to the tier than Hippopotas (and frankly we'd been looking for an excuse to formally ban Snover as well, since HailStall was dumb af).

Therefore because I believe they are fundamentally the wrong people to make this ban and I believe it breaks with precedent of past old gens tiering, I do not support the ADV Council implementing a ban in ADV Ubers, regardless of how insignificant it is.

 

[shrang]

I was going to make a relatively conciliatory post about this but the more I synthesised this the more I decided to not bother. I'm just going to be perfectly honest, I'm not going to be nice or angry to be friendly or create drama. Let me outline what's wrong with this decision:

1) ADV Ubers players were given no input
To be fair I'd concede people on the ADV council probably have actually played ADV Ubers. However, unlike a tier like GSC Ubers where the playerbase has less players than I have fingers on my hand, there is a decent following of ADV Ubers players who have gathered over the past 3 years. Why were people who are actually invested in the health of the metagame not given the option to comment/vote on the matter? This decision is incredibly paternalistic, and not even in a good way. I can understand people being paternalistic to actually do something that is actually in the best interest for someone else, but this isn't even that.

2) Upward effect of bans
This opens a whole can of worms as Nayrz has already pointed out. Traditionally, bans have trickled down the tiers because it was logical. If something was too good for the tier above it, it's going to be too good for a tier that has a average power of lower than the tier above. It doesn't make sense on the hand, that something that's too good for the tier below to be banned in the tier above, because the tier above might have something that can deal with it.

3) "No effect on the metagame" is a non-argument
Just saying, lots of things have no effect on the metagame. Hell, Charmander has no effect on the metagame. We could ban that too and I suppose people wouldn't care. Just because a decision has little on the metagame doesn't mean it does not deserve scrutiny. Also, if it has no effect on the metagame why have we done it in the first place? Also if the reason we find this decision acceptable because of the lack impact which leads to...

4) Lack of opposition =/= consent
Just because people can't be bothered mounting an opposition because frankly no-one really cares doesn't mean they agree with it. If we came to a vote for people who play ADV Ubers and we agree to ban Ingrain on Smeargle that's another thing - the majority gave consent. However, just because no-one has said no doesn't mean they say yes. A surgeon can take out a person's appendix without them saying no because they're unconscious and still get their ass sued. Same concept.

5) "It's an uncompetitive strategy" - by whose standards?
Okay, now let's get to the more concrete reasons why I disagree with this ban. Sure, Smeargle was deemed an uncompetitive strategy in OU, but we often don't apply the same criteria to banning things from OU vs banning things in Ubers. We haven't banned Shadow Tag in Ubers yet even though this has happened in OU, for example (and yes I know plenty of OU players will think that's stupid but that's too bad, they can go fuck themselves). Sure, BP chains operate in the same way in Ubers, but have a look at what the effectiveness is (see below). Ubers is a different metagame to OU and therefore should be treated that way.

6) "Reputation" of Ubers
Yeah sure, I know this doesn't mean a lot to a lot of people, but as an Ubers purist, I get triggered a lot when I see shit getting banned from Ubers. Sure, it make 0 effect to the Ubers metagame, but it does a lot to the whole idea that Ubers is the place where nothing outside of actually uncompetitive elements are banned. Sure, Ubers might be a "metagame" now that we have shit like Mega Ray in the later gens that completely blow the tier out of the water (even that can be debatable, really, but that's a discussion for another time), but those things sure as hell didn't exist back in gen 3. Hell, I'd go so far to say that gen 3 Ubers is probably the most balanced Ubers metagame that we have. This is the Ubers metagame where we have the least reason to ban anything.

7) "Tier consistency" - actually, it's not consistent at all!
Related to (6), but yeah, Ubers has consistently been the tier where there are no unnecessary bans. It's highly "in"consistent with Ubers policy to ban something that has no bearing on the metagame at all.

8) Think about why BP is a non-effect on the metagame!
I've alluded to this already, but there's a good reason people are shrugging at this ban (have 0 impact). The reason that it has 0 impact is because BP is frankly garbage in ADV Ubers. I don't think there is a high level ADV Ubers game where anyone has beaten another player with Ingrain Smeargle on it. It's so bad that even shit players don't use it. You don't even see this shit in casual games.

So basically:
- We have banned something that has 0 impact on the most balanced Ubers metagame without consultation with the people who play it
- It has no impact on the actual metagame itself, but has an effect on what the Ubers metagame actually means and opens a whole can of worms on an OU based council can decide for metagames that have different perspectives

 

[Nayrz]

Ingrain Smeargle was banned from ADV OU per the 2011 Ingrain Smeargle Vote. Ingrain Smeargle was deemed an uncompetitive strategy, and it operates in the same fundamental way in Ubers as it does in OU. Therefore, banning Ingrain Smeargle in ADV Ubers is simply the logical extension of the OU vote held nearly 7 years ago.

Furthermore, we (the ADV Council) made this decision because this is an extremely minor issue and done for the sake of tier consistency. As Minority says in his post: "My pervading opinion is that Ingrain Smeargle is virtually a zero collateral element." If you believe Ingrain Smeargle offers valuable and meaningful competitive elements to ADV Ubers, we can pursue further discussion of this topic in particular.

As for input from the relevant parties, you said it best in your own words: "I talked with a few of the prominent ADV Ubers players and the majority opinion I got back was more of a shrug. Most agreed that the ban is beneficial to ADV Ubers."

While my stance on the ban itself is neutral, my issue is how it went through. Bypassing everyone and banning something from our tier that was not a clear cut decision isn't the ideal way to handle things. This is Ubers we're talking about after all. While USM onwards will be treated much closer to that of other Smogon tiers due to our new tiering policies, messing with ADV pushes more buttons as the responses shown so far have proved. Even if a reasonable portion of the playerbase is somewhat behind it, I was only capable of asking them these questions after the ban already happened. That doesn't make it a point that it was a good idea.

If the purpose behind the old gen councils is simply dealing with old gen OU tiers then that is fine and in line with most expectations. In that case a framework detailing the abilities all the councils have is the best way to have reasonable arguments for old gen decisions if they become controversial, and judging by the threads in PR so far there is definitely some ice to be broken. It is early days for these councils so it is to be expected that there are some problems to solve.

As for ABR's idea it was talked with amongst tier leaders and so far there have been agreements that it is worth considering that lower tier old gens be frozen and immune to the effects of the tiers around them. Messing with these in general should only be done in necessary circumstances (new mechanic findings, strong cases of a problem with the metagame), but by freezing them we can prevent weird ban contaminations from wrecking the playability of other metagames that are still enjoyed.

It should probably be highlighted that lower tier old gens do actually see a form of tournament representation in the official metagame ribbons, meaning some sort of consideration still has to be given when deciding how old generation lower tiers are handled rather than being sloppy about it, because actions taken in these tiers are capable of messing with the tour circuits of other lower tiers in some cases.

 

[Zarel]

I still pretty strongly disagree with any effort to make anything legal in lower tiers that isn't legal in OU. I know you guys agreed that it should be done sometimes, but I still think it should at least be an absolute last resort.

 

[shrang]

Posting for one of our players mags

Hey it’s mags and a lot of people know me for being decent in adv ubers. Not bragging but that’s why I asked for my message to be posted. Personally I think this ban was pretty bad on two different levels. First thing is that I think it’s wrong that these councils made for Ou should have any power over another lower tier in that gen. The second thing that’s bad about the ban is that it makes no sense. Ubers always tries to limit the things it bans and basically the rule is it won’t get banned unless it’s broken or very uncompetitive. Nobody I think has ever thought baton pass was broken in Adv Ubers but maybe some people think it’s uncompetitive. I’m here to hopefully clear this up.

People dislike baton pass because it can cheese and win on matchup vs teams that didn’t prepare for it and they were annoyed they had to prepare for such a weird playstyle. In Adv Ubers this isn’t a problem. If you actually bring a team that loses to baton pass then you deserve to lose a game vs anyone because any decent team has plenty of counterplays vs baton pass. I’m not saying it’s an auto win but they definitely don’t auto lose either and can easily win.

So it’s clearly not broken or uncompetitive but let’s say you don’t care about Uber’s rule on limiting bans. I know most people throw shade at baton pass as a playstyle but I think that’s pretty dumb in this case. I’ve never brought baton pass to a tour game but I’m the creator of nearly every baton pass team in Adv Ubers and I’ve tested them a lot. It’s pretty hard to actually maneuver with them and actually takes some skill. Also who gets to decide what’s an ok playstyle and what’s not. If it’s not uncompetitive then it’s not fair for you to ban things.

Lastly a lot of people are saying that it’s not relevant or no collateral but I wanted to point out there’s a small amount of collateral and your deciding to ignore it. I’m one of the better adv uber players and I respect baton pass and banning ingrain would remove one of it’s much needed techs to be viable.

 

[M Dragon]

Some clarifications about old gens councils:

a) About ADV council and ADV tiers:
The ADV council was created to deal with ADV mechanics and tiering situations. This includes for example turn priority implementation in the simulator, something that affected every ADV tier. We also have the power to make suspect tests or quick ban stuff if needed, although as Undisputed said, we will not making big chances in lower tiers (such as for example banning something from ADV UU).

b) About this concrete case:
BP has been a "problem" in ADV for a long time, this is not something new. In the past, in Netbattle days there were some important tournaments featuring ADV Ubers that already had clauses to prevent BP chain "cheese" teams.
Lots of old and new ADV ubers players agree that the strategy is busted and deserves to be banned. The ADV council (most of us have been playing ADV Ubers for a very long time) unanimously agreed with the ban and Hikari approved it.
Also, we do ban thing in Ubers in similar circumstances. For example, GSC Ubers had the same Sleep Perish Trap ban than GSC OU because it was uncompetitive in both tiers. This was changed to a Sleep Trap ban recently in both tiers.
The same situation happens with BP in ADV, and its a ban that should have happened long time ago. The only reason the ban didnt happen in the past was because the lack of representation of ADV Ubers (other than small unofficial tournaments). This has changed now because ADV Ubers are now part of tournaments cirtuit that awards players with a ribbon.

c) About communication with ubers:
I understand your concern here and I agree with you. We should have had better communication with Ubers Tier Leaders about this before posting.
We are looking to rectify this by creating a logbook thread where matters discussed in the ADV council are opened to the public.