Rejected Pokemon Blacklist when doing random play.

[Idenhou]

I really like pokemon, especially when it comes to using my favorites insteaed of whats considered meta, like bellibolt and mega ampharos in reg-C champions. Of course sometimes I need to run more standard sets to deal with the meta, but i've constantly been having problems where I want to try a gimmicky set with mons that arent even half bad (simple beam on mega falinks no retreat, clangerous soul kommo-o, or cotton guard/charge mega amph. heck sometimes I just want to try monotype against someone else running a gimmick). I know the normal game isnt how this works, but I think a lot of people would enjoy having the ability to blacklist certain mons on teams that you dont want to deal with when practicing or just playing for fun. If I dont want to deal with a sneasler, incin, gambit, and rillaboom on every team, then I feel like I should have the option to not search for it. Obviously if you blacklist a mon, you cant use it yourself, and you will be subject to blacklists when random queuing, because some people also want to practice against more standard sets, as opposed to some gimmicky stuff I tend to create, without risking losing their ladder placement to a forefit because a game doesn't look fun.

TLDR I think gimmick teams are fun, and want to fight gimmicks with gimmicks, but every time i swap off a typical competative set to something more fun, im immediately bombarded my charizard y's and scarf chomps, but when I swap back to the competative set, im agaisnt gimmicks that most sets dont prep for.

 

[Adeleine]

This probably doesn't work with a rating system. You're not trying to use it to gain an unfair rating advantage, but anybody else could if they wanted. They could blacklist all kinds of good and popular Pokemon to coast to easier wins.

This problem goes pretty deep. If you're thinking "well if you blacklist a Pokemon, you can't use it yourself", that sounds fair enough, but a lot of other issues spill out. People will ban some popular Pokemon, disqualifying many good opponents, and use the popular optimized Pokemon available to them to feast on the rest. Or they will ban popular Pokemon and hyper-optimize unpopular Pokemon, so they will still coast against people who use unpopular Pokemon but do not hyper-optimize them. Or they will not have enough opponents present on the ladder who comply with their specific banlists, so they will have to wait a long time and get frustrated. More generally, even, how do we compare ratings across players when different players are playing fundamentally different metagames?

(If you want to ditch the rating system entirely, that's probably not going to happen – that opens up another ladder format, and PS already has a bloated number of those to begin with. Maybe the one or two most popular metagames could have an unrated format with a system like this? There are still some challenges, but that seems more possible.)

Fundamentally, this suggestion is a "semi-competitive" suggestion that any ruleset struggles to account for. You want to create and improve strategies to help you win more against other human players, so you're not a normal casual player, but you don't want other human players to try as hard as possible against you, so you're not a normal competitive player.

There are a lot of "semi-competitive" players – you're definitely not the only one. But when you value winning, and you enter competitions with rulesets where you try to win against other people, there's always going to be other people who want to win more than you do, and that won't always be fun to play against. We can't peer inside everyone's mind and ban "optimizing too much" in the same way that we can ban Pokemon, either.

Fundamentally, the traditional solution is to find specific people who have a similar enough place on the spectrum to you, so you will naturally end up on even footing without needing a ruleset to enforce it. Or you can play a randomized format that prevents any side from having a team optimization advantage, but that of course makes it hard to intentionally create and use gimmicks.

 

[Idenhou]

This probably doesn't work with a rating system. You're not trying to use it to gain an unfair rating advantage, but anybody else could if they wanted. They could blacklist all kinds of good and popular Pokemon to coast to easier wins.

This problem goes pretty deep. If you're thinking "well if you blacklist a Pokemon, you can't use it yourself", that sounds fair enough, but a lot of other issues spill out. People will ban some popular Pokemon, disqualifying many good opponents, and use the popular optimized Pokemon available to them to feast on the rest. Or they will ban popular Pokemon and hyper-optimize unpopular Pokemon, so they will still coast against people who use unpopular Pokemon but do not hyper-optimize them. Or they will not have enough opponents present on the ladder who comply with their specific banlists, so they will have to wait a long time and get frustrated. More generally, even, how do we compare ratings across players when different players are playing fundamentally different metagames?

Fundamentally, this suggestion is a "semi-competitive" suggestion that any ruleset struggles to account for. You want to create and improve strategies to help you win more against other human players, so you're not a normal casual player, but you don't want other human players to try as hard as possible against you, so you're not a normal competitive player.

There are a lot of "semi-competitive" players – you're definitely not the only one. But when you value winning, and you enter competitions with rulesets where you try to win against other people, there's always going to be other people who want to win more than you do, and that won't always be fun to play against. We can't peer inside everyone's mind and ban "optimizing too much" in the same way that we can ban Pokemon, either.

Fundamentally, the traditional solution is to find specific people who have a similar enough place on the spectrum to you, so you will naturally end up on even footing without needing a ruleset to enforce it. Or you can play a randomized format that prevents any side from having a team optimization advantage, but that of course makes it hard to intentionally create and use gimmicks.

amazing points honestly, thought I do think it would be more self sufficient than you might expect
lets say you like archaludon and gholdengo, so you blacklist powerful fire types and ghost types that would be a problem for them. You would be facing teams that ALSO dont intend on using those mons, so they likely either A, have blacklisted mons that they would struggle against, likely including your archaludon or gholdengo, or you'd face a team that wouldn't have those threats regardless if you blacklsited them or not

Abusing the rank system could be a problem, so maybe these games, since they're moreso for fun and are inherently leaning towards the practice side, they could function like private battles where you dont gain or lose rank, you just play against other folks of that tier without worrying of getting demoted to the more unortidox ranks, or skyrocketing to people far more skillful than you are. Practice does make perfect, but I feel like im constantly flip-flopping between someone trying to run a gimmick that I stuff with 1 encore or disable/quick KO, and a hyper optimized team right out of day 3 tournaments that wins mostly due to power creep.

I also understand and have been told to try with lower formats, but I really just want to battle with my favorites, with an enabling/setup mon on the side to make my bellibolt and reuniclus shine, and lowerpower formats like UU and RU are not only far less popular, but also arguably MORE competative, because you have to specifically search out the lower power formats to play them, which often attracts people with very in-depth game knowledge that is currently beyond me

all this to say, I think it could be worth trying as an optional thing, worst case scenario you get luckier with battles, and you're queue time takes a bit longer

 

[Adeleine]

so maybe these games, since they're moreso for fun and are inherently leaning towards the practice side, they could function like private battles

Honestly, now that you say this, I'm surprised more tiers don't have a "make this unrated" button you can select, just in general. It could cause big wait time issues in smaller formats, but for the biggest, I'm not sure why they don't have this, and why Unrated Random Battle is its own whole separate thing.

A dev would know better than me, If this general unrated idea is feasible, it could make something like your suggestion a lot more workable.

And yeah, I agree with you completely on your reluctance for lower tiers. People definitely do say that, but for someone like you, I don't think it's great advice. You're totally right, having lower Pokemon doesn't make them less competitive; that's more of a mindset thing, and people will apply that mindset to weaker tools, and you'll only have weaker tools in return to challenge them with.

 

[Idenhou]

Honestly, now that you say this, I'm surprised more tiers don't have a "make this unrated" button you can select, just in general. It could cause big wait time issues in smaller formats, but for the biggest, I'm not sure why they don't have this, and why Unrated Random Battle is its own whole separate thing.

A dev would know better than me, If this general unrated idea is feasible, it could make something like your suggestion a lot more workable.

And yeah, I agree with you completely on your reluctance for lower tiers. People definitely do say that, but for someone like you, I don't think it's great advice. You're totally right, having lower Pokemon doesn't make them less competitive; that's more of a mindset thing, and people will apply that mindset to weaker tools, and you'll only have weaker tools in return to challenge them with.

I know its nigh impossible to have pokemon, or showdown for that matter, universally move in the direction of "use your favorites and have all of the guys be balanced around their abilities", yknow since thats the dream of every game, but I do wish that showdown offered more options for formats like that where it encourages you to use unorthidox mons without needing half your team to be regional champions just to make it work. I figured something like this would allow each player to lower the power to their own standards, while also allowing people practicing to have a higher chance of encountering specific threats they want to actually practice against, like trying to beat goliscopod teams instead of fighting mega salamence or charizard Y for the 12th time in a row because they tend to be better overall.

 

[DaWoblefet]

Effectively what you are asking to do is create the OU/UU etc. distinction in a VGC context. In standard Smogon singles play, Pokemon are tiered according to their usage. Pokemon with very high usage (e.g. Great Tusk) are in the OU (OverUsed) tier, while Pokemon that see less usage (e.g. Excadrill) are underused. This allows Pokemon of similar power levels to participate together, while the rest of the Pokemon are "blacklisted" as you put it. If you are trying to ban a list of Pokemon that you would prefer not to fight versus because of their high usage or relative strength, you're effectively asking for a VGC UU.

Cartridge formats (like what you're playing with in VGC Regulation M-C) explicitly do not do that. Those formats strictly follow what Pokemon officially gives us. In general we'd never deviate from that as a regular ladder or even as an option on the ladder. If two players want to agree to self-imposed rules off the ladder in a challenged battle, that's fine, but we won't allow it for a match that affects your rank.

Even for other formats, the logistics of this are difficult to implement. We would have to completely rework the matchmaking process to allow something like this. It also won't really be fair. Suppose you have a player who wanted to opt out of battling Mega Charizard Y, but not X. Suppose you're playing a best-of-1 battle and your opponent has a Charizard with no other Mega on the team Now the player who blacklisted MegaZard Y has a very good guess it is MegaZard X, which might have ruined the element of surprise if the opponent would have otherwise needed to cover for Zard Y. It kinda has to be that way; if you make it so only players who have the EXACT same blacklist match for a battle, it's very possible you'd never find an opponent based on what combination you choose. You also could just simply blacklist Pokemon your team is weak to, in order to try to cheese wins against teams you have a strong matchup against. For example, you might ban Indeedee-Female and Farigiraf so you don't have to play most hard Trick Room teams. You could rig an extreme example of this by blacklisting, say, the 100 most common Pokemon, and then just battling against yourself a million times to try to artificially increase your ladder rank, because you statistically will not fight anyone else. You can multiply examples of issues this blacklist idea would cause.

Based on both this and your last thread's suggestions, I appreciate you are wanting to create an environment that lets you play with your combination of Pokemon that are fun. We aren't going to modify the matchmaking process to do what you're looking for, though. You might want to consider the casual mode in Champions itself, or join a draft league where you draft various combinations of Pokemon for a unique experience. This is a hurdle a lot of players encounter when you first get started with competitive VGC; sometimes, you can learn to have fun with Pokemon that are strong, and build them in creative ways, rather than trying to impose additional rules to artificially balance the playing field. I'd encourage you to stop worrying about your ladder rank if your primary goal is to have fun.

As for the reason we don't have an unrated ladder for VGC, VGC already has 2 current ladders and typically an oldgens ladder running at any given month. Adding an unrated mode is effectively adding another ladder, because you have to search against a player also seeking an unrated battle. The more ladders you add, the longer it takes to find a game. VGC might be able to sustain that, but other ladders definitely couldn't, so that's why it is not a general option.