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pokebank (tier leaders pay attention)
- Thread starter blarajan
- Start date
funny smelly aldaron, you knew what i meant anyway
besides we all know we play pokemon illegally anyway
My question regarding this post is what does it actually hurt to do nothing for 5 more weeks?
Regarding the ladders, if the non-OU tier leaders want to make only 1 of the ladders available due to activity concerns, I'm fine with that, as that's a minor concern overall.
However, regarding C&C, tournaments, non-OU tiering...what does it hurt to actually do nothing for 5-6 weeks?
I understand the desire to "do stuff" in OU simply due to the sheer volume of battles that OU has compared to the rest of our tiers, but for the rest, why does a 5-6 week delay matter?
Here's my answer the question of "what does it hurt to wait?"
Potentially, a lot. Or not at all.
The issue is that, if we wait five weeks to start cultivating the Gen VI metagames, then that puts us five weeks behind in cultivating our metagames. That's five weeks' jump we could have in developing analyses, performing suspect tests and bans, and five weeks more of waiting for the metagames to "settle down" enough to be stable (at which point we can start on the lower tiers).
The assumption, I feel, that Aldaron and others have been making is that we're the only game in town, and if we tell the community that they're going to have to wait five weeks, then they'll wait five weeks. And this time around, that might well be a good assumption.
But back in the early Gen V days, however, I think that if Smogon had had a five week lead in developing the Gen V metagames, then I think that the early Gen V competitive Pokemon landscape would have been vastly different.
Back then, I wasn't yet as involved in the competitive Pokemon community as I am now. And from the outside, it seemed like Smogon was fading into irrelevance. PO had their own community, backed by their own simulator and the most popular server *on* that simulator. When PO started putting out their own tier lists, there was considerable discussion in, say, the Youtube community as to whether to follow their tiers instead of Smogon's.
Luckily, Smogon ended up winning out, due to having a "more competitive" PO server and having more well-thought-out tiering and suspect tests, so that PS was the final nail in the PO coffin, but it certainly could have gone the other way.
Then again, that's just my perspective.
There also seems to be the concern floating about that we only think we know what will be legal come Pokebank. But while it's possible that Nintendo/Gamefreak will throw us a curveball and, say, make gems purchaseable items or not let DW Pokemon be transfered, I (1) don't think it likely and (2) think that our goal should be to get as close to the permanent meta-game as quickly as possible. If we have to make some adjustments when Pokebank comes out, that's fine, but honestly, if I were a betting man, I'd be putting a lot of money in Pokebank working EXACTLY like we all expect it to work.
tl;dr -- We have a lot of forward momentum right now, with regards to the most popular simulator and people champing at the bit to write Gen VI analyses. Telling everyone to chillax and sit on their hands for five weeks is a huge tactical mistake, IMO.
Potentially, a lot. Or not at all.
The issue is that, if we wait five weeks to start cultivating the Gen VI metagames, then that puts us five weeks behind in cultivating our metagames. That's five weeks' jump we could have in developing analyses, performing suspect tests and bans, and five weeks more of waiting for the metagames to "settle down" enough to be stable (at which point we can start on the lower tiers).
The assumption, I feel, that Aldaron and others have been making is that we're the only game in town, and if we tell the community that they're going to have to wait five weeks, then they'll wait five weeks. And this time around, that might well be a good assumption.
But back in the early Gen V days, however, I think that if Smogon had had a five week lead in developing the Gen V metagames, then I think that the early Gen V competitive Pokemon landscape would have been vastly different.
Back then, I wasn't yet as involved in the competitive Pokemon community as I am now. And from the outside, it seemed like Smogon was fading into irrelevance. PO had their own community, backed by their own simulator and the most popular server *on* that simulator. When PO started putting out their own tier lists, there was considerable discussion in, say, the Youtube community as to whether to follow their tiers instead of Smogon's.
Luckily, Smogon ended up winning out, due to having a "more competitive" PO server and having more well-thought-out tiering and suspect tests, so that PS was the final nail in the PO coffin, but it certainly could have gone the other way.
Then again, that's just my perspective.
There also seems to be the concern floating about that we only think we know what will be legal come Pokebank. But while it's possible that Nintendo/Gamefreak will throw us a curveball and, say, make gems purchaseable items or not let DW Pokemon be transfered, I (1) don't think it likely and (2) think that our goal should be to get as close to the permanent meta-game as quickly as possible. If we have to make some adjustments when Pokebank comes out, that's fine, but honestly, if I were a betting man, I'd be putting a lot of money in Pokebank working EXACTLY like we all expect it to work.
tl;dr -- We have a lot of forward momentum right now, with regards to the most popular simulator and people champing at the bit to write Gen VI analyses. Telling everyone to chillax and sit on their hands for five weeks is a huge tactical mistake, IMO.
I think this is a bigger issue than you make it out to be. This is not Dream World. We don't know what we can expect. The issue is not simply that there are things we don't know, but that we don't even know what we don't know. Egg moves, level up moves, stat changes, what can or cannot be transferred (most notably with regard to old event moves), or even new things all together. Mewtwo suddenly picked up a new sig move on transfer to 5th gen that completely revolutionized how it worked, and we have no reason to doubt something of equal magnitude won't happen this time around. If we had a definite scope of what we didn't know, that would be one thing, but the possibilities are quite simply infinite. We have no idea what we don't know, and it really seems foolish to me to waste time doing things that may be completely wrong when we actually find out the truth. After all, its not that long a wait, and, at least in my mind, the little momentum we might gain from this would be offset by momentum lost from putting out info that is completely useless to those actually playing the games.
Sorry, jas61292, but I think you're being a bit hyperbolic. How likely is it that a revolutionary egg move combo will be released and shake the metagame to its very core? Even with Psystrike Mewtwo, how much did it really change Ubers (here's a hint: Mewtwo's usage in July 2010: 25%; August 2013: 30%). We didn't start our analyses from scratch when the HGSS move tutors / new egg combos were released or when BW2 came out--new moves and move combos warrant updates (usually as small as a few lines), not complete rewrites. C&C people, tell me I'm wrong.
Edit: and there certainly aren't infinite possibilities. The only possibilities are new moves and minor undiscovered stat changes. That's it, assuming they didn't change their minds about items.
Edit: and there certainly aren't infinite possibilities. The only possibilities are new moves and minor undiscovered stat changes. That's it, assuming they didn't change their minds about items.
Well, I personally would contend that there is a big difference there. In the case of HGSS, we had an actual basis within that gen we were working off of. Yeah, there were some changes, but the changed were limited in scope, and the metagame was already well established. Here, again we don't know the scope, and the metagame is still very new. Small changes would have a much larger effect, and large changes could change everything.
Regardless, I think you missed the point with that Mewtwo stat. Its not about how much its used (though 5% is a pretty big jump if you ask me), but how it is used. Even if it is only slightly better overall, that one move completely changed what things can counter it, and that is the kind of change that can make entire analyses irrelevant. I don't know the full extent of this with reference to Mewtwo in ubers, but that is the point I am trying to make here.
Edit: When I said infinite possibilities, I obviously did not mean literally infinite. However, again, I think there are a lot more than you are acknowledging. New move are obviously the biggest one, and stat changes could very well happen too (which, even at only a +10, are not necessarily minor, depending on the Pokemon and stat). However, they are definitely not limited to that. Ability additions/changes. New items only accessible with a certain old Pokemon in the party. Hell, even full on event Pokemon that could be available from the beginning of the Pokebank meta via an ingame event activated by old event Pokemon. And that's just some of the possible additions. The way hacks are checked, its always possible there could be some subtractions as well. Probably not a lot of those, but as I mentioned, it could very well apply to some very old events that are no longer deemed legal due to the lack of legit Pokemon from it (Wish Bliss comes to mind). Now not all these things are necessarily likely, but all of them and more are possible, and the fact is we don't know which will be and which won't.
Regardless, I think you missed the point with that Mewtwo stat. Its not about how much its used (though 5% is a pretty big jump if you ask me), but how it is used. Even if it is only slightly better overall, that one move completely changed what things can counter it, and that is the kind of change that can make entire analyses irrelevant. I don't know the full extent of this with reference to Mewtwo in ubers, but that is the point I am trying to make here.
Edit: When I said infinite possibilities, I obviously did not mean literally infinite. However, again, I think there are a lot more than you are acknowledging. New move are obviously the biggest one, and stat changes could very well happen too (which, even at only a +10, are not necessarily minor, depending on the Pokemon and stat). However, they are definitely not limited to that. Ability additions/changes. New items only accessible with a certain old Pokemon in the party. Hell, even full on event Pokemon that could be available from the beginning of the Pokebank meta via an ingame event activated by old event Pokemon. And that's just some of the possible additions. The way hacks are checked, its always possible there could be some subtractions as well. Probably not a lot of those, but as I mentioned, it could very well apply to some very old events that are no longer deemed legal due to the lack of legit Pokemon from it (Wish Bliss comes to mind). Now not all these things are necessarily likely, but all of them and more are possible, and the fact is we don't know which will be and which won't.
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A couple small stat changes and some new egg moves can easily be implemented with updates, it's honestly not a big deal. Not taking advantage of the 5 weeks we have 'till the PokeBank metagame becomes real is a huge mistake in terms of tiering, OST, and c&c. As Antar said, we don't have all the time of the world on our hands. Any additional time for tiering is something we should appreciate and make good work of, not sit on our asses just to avoid dangerous precedent (which is stupid in the first place). Also, by making the PokeBank metagame the official one as soon as possible, we manage to make the metagame as balanced as possible before OST starts, which will in turn make OST more competitive. I doubt that SPL can be delayed for more than 1-2 months (i may be missing something), so gaining one extra month to stabilize the metagame is definitely big for the tour.
Finally, this month is super valuable for c&c. There are a ton of Pokemon we need to make analyses for, more than ever. Each metagame (other than Ubers) will change drastically the next months, which means that existing analyses will need to be updated or completely revamped. And this will happen multiple times. And the manpower in c&c is not infinite. We have a lot of contributors true, but we have a lot of new people that either don't know how to write analyses yet or are straight up bad at doing so. Which means that many of the analyses will take a lot of time to be completed or will be reassigned. We also have good contributors that may take a lot of time to write previews (it happens to me sometimes too) and need multiple reminders to finish their job. It's also a new metagame, and a lot of analyses sit a lot of time in the QC stage before we decide what are the best sets for each Pokemon.
In every single of those aspects (c&c, tiering, OST) the impression that i have gotten is that we need all the time we can get as there is a ton of work to be done, and the decision to wait just to avoid dangerous precedent directly contradicts the impression i have. So, either my impressions are wrong or we are not taking the decision that is more beneficial for those sections. We already have wasted a lot of time, let's not continue this situation. Making previews that will be rewritten or scrapped in a month is so redundant and a waste of manpower i often feel stupid for writing and QC checking them.
EDIT: Not to mention that since those previews can't yet be uploaded to the site and i haven't gotten word that they will anytime soon, all those previews will be in vain, when we could just start writing the normal analyses for the PokeBank metagame.
EDIT 2: Yeah Aldaron i meant OST, fixed.
Finally, this month is super valuable for c&c. There are a ton of Pokemon we need to make analyses for, more than ever. Each metagame (other than Ubers) will change drastically the next months, which means that existing analyses will need to be updated or completely revamped. And this will happen multiple times. And the manpower in c&c is not infinite. We have a lot of contributors true, but we have a lot of new people that either don't know how to write analyses yet or are straight up bad at doing so. Which means that many of the analyses will take a lot of time to be completed or will be reassigned. We also have good contributors that may take a lot of time to write previews (it happens to me sometimes too) and need multiple reminders to finish their job. It's also a new metagame, and a lot of analyses sit a lot of time in the QC stage before we decide what are the best sets for each Pokemon.
In every single of those aspects (c&c, tiering, OST) the impression that i have gotten is that we need all the time we can get as there is a ton of work to be done, and the decision to wait just to avoid dangerous precedent directly contradicts the impression i have. So, either my impressions are wrong or we are not taking the decision that is more beneficial for those sections. We already have wasted a lot of time, let's not continue this situation. Making previews that will be rewritten or scrapped in a month is so redundant and a waste of manpower i often feel stupid for writing and QC checking them.
EDIT: Not to mention that since those previews can't yet be uploaded to the site and i haven't gotten word that they will anytime soon, all those previews will be in vain, when we could just start writing the normal analyses for the PokeBank metagame.
EDIT 2: Yeah Aldaron i meant OST, fixed.
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plz guys post tl;drs
also, I feel like people saying "we need all the time we can get" regarding C&C are severely underestimating just how different Pokebank and Real OU are...Pokebank adds a TON of viable things (in fact, someone previously mentioned that doubles are COMPLETELY different)
After playing both myself, I can tell you that the two tiers are very very different.
If you want to start doing general analyses that can apply to both, I would recommend taking these 5 weeks to do that.
I seriously do NOT recommend doing specific changes that apply only to real ou though...the metagames are so different you'lljust end up wasting a majority of the "get ahead" time.
also I don't know why you kept referring to SPL alexwolf...SPL already has precedence of changing tiers mid-tournament, so SPL itself isn't a concern (ost is however)
also, I feel like people saying "we need all the time we can get" regarding C&C are severely underestimating just how different Pokebank and Real OU are...Pokebank adds a TON of viable things (in fact, someone previously mentioned that doubles are COMPLETELY different)
After playing both myself, I can tell you that the two tiers are very very different.
If you want to start doing general analyses that can apply to both, I would recommend taking these 5 weeks to do that.
I seriously do NOT recommend doing specific changes that apply only to real ou though...the metagames are so different you'lljust end up wasting a majority of the "get ahead" time.
also I don't know why you kept referring to SPL alexwolf...SPL already has precedence of changing tiers mid-tournament, so SPL itself isn't a concern (ost is however)
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nah man, I'm not saying don't do anything. well, I did say that, so my bad. I more mean don't absolutely declare one or the other while still working with both "in mind"
I'm saying let's not direct efforts / official declarations towards specifically one or the other.
So, for example, C&C can work on general analyses that could probably apply to both; tiering can work with both in mind (as OU has already done), tournaments have to delay things like OST, but SPL can start with a small delay and switch.
My only concern is setting a precedent for playing fake Pokemon when there is almost no reason to do so. We can still do analyses that don't apply specifically to either...we can still do general tiering...we can still work with stuff in tournaments
alexwolf's concern for C&C is significant - it does NOT appreciate this delay. Pumping out analyses for a completely new generation requires a TON of manpower, dedication, and time. Completing even one analysis can drag on for weeks, depending on the capabilities and availability of contributors. It's fruitless exercise to be writing previews of the current meta, because by the time chaos enables the new on-site PokeDex with these entries, the PokeBank meta would be right around the corner (or we would already be in it).
You have suggested writing generalized analyses, but we cannot write such analyses, either, since the current XY and the PokeBank XY are NOTHING ALIKE. Significant metagame-defining threats, such as the therians, Keldeo, Terrakion, Genesect, Heatran, and Latios are absent in one and present in the other.
C&C greatly appreciates a head start. Perhaps, we can allow C&C to start writing analyses for the Pokebank metagame? Whatever changes to these analyses that one must implement when PostBank meta introduces unexpected elements will pale in comparison to the complete overhaul of the current pure XY previews / analyses.
You have suggested writing generalized analyses, but we cannot write such analyses, either, since the current XY and the PokeBank XY are NOTHING ALIKE. Significant metagame-defining threats, such as the therians, Keldeo, Terrakion, Genesect, Heatran, and Latios are absent in one and present in the other.
C&C greatly appreciates a head start. Perhaps, we can allow C&C to start writing analyses for the Pokebank metagame? Whatever changes to these analyses that one must implement when PostBank meta introduces unexpected elements will pale in comparison to the complete overhaul of the current pure XY previews / analyses.
The other issue, I'd like to point out once again, is that the metagames not named OU would greatly appreciate having their playerbases essentially doubled by discontinuing the Prebank metagames and instituting the almost-guaranteed-to-be-illegal bans in the Pokebank metagames. I say "doubled" but it's likely that usage would go even higher, since if players don't have to wait around as long for a matchup, they're more likely to try to find a battle in such tiers.
Edit: Zarel, if/when this happens, please rename the newly-sanitized Pokebank metas to just "lc"/"ubers"/"doubles" and nix the "pokebank" and the "beta." I have *that* much confidence that Pokebank isn't going to give us anything significant that's new and unexpected.
Edit: Zarel, if/when this happens, please rename the newly-sanitized Pokebank metas to just "lc"/"ubers"/"doubles" and nix the "pokebank" and the "beta." I have *that* much confidence that Pokebank isn't going to give us anything significant that's new and unexpected.
Again, I don't really get the C&C work concern. If you want, sure, go ahead, do the work for POkebank...just don't post the final versions.
Btw, Pocket, you are missing how easy it is to write generalized analyses for Pokemon. The concept is similar to concepts vs. examples in chemistry; regardless of the problem the concepts are the same.
That said, sure, if you really want to, start organizing effort for Pokebank work, but just don't post them to the site until Pokebank is official.
Also Antar, yea, I'm fine with that too (already said that in fact :P)
Btw, Pocket, you are missing how easy it is to write generalized analyses for Pokemon. The concept is similar to concepts vs. examples in chemistry; regardless of the problem the concepts are the same.
That said, sure, if you really want to, start organizing effort for Pokebank work, but just don't post them to the site until Pokebank is official.
Also Antar, yea, I'm fine with that too (already said that in fact :P)
If I got to choose, I would choose for non Pokebank to be removed from Little Cup. As Antar as aptly put, our playerbase is being split, new people are unwilling to wait as long for matches, and we can't start anything without Pokebank. Granted, I'm not going to Suspect test until things are official ANYWAYS, but I would like a single tier to play to maximize the number of players we have. That's my thought on it.