questioning the process itself

[mtr]

I'm willing, however disappointedly, to accept that maybe many of you do need a certain status or title to feel you're allowed to voice opinions and concerns—or allowed to be prompted by others to do so, according to a certain schedule—regardless of the wide extent to which you were respected all along (again, we're talking about the same people on a hypothetical "council"). But this doesn't mean we should forget that the ability to voice such insight on problems and issues has long since been possessed and underutilized by the very same people. So in a few regards, I therefore respect Syberia more than many of you for at least attempting to voice his concerns, in a forum created for exactly such concerns, and a forum to which I personally granted him and many of you posting privileges years ago.

I'd argue that this isn't completely the fault of the people themselves, instead having to do with smogon's and the internet's environment. Internet forums are quite elitist almost by definition, so it becomes an intimidating place for newer people to post.

At the end of the day, Ubers is just a list, that is innately arbitrary/subjective/biased to a certain degree. Just 1 tiny part of the ruleset. What really should matter is not what pokemon are in OU, but rather who finds the best ways of using them.

The Ubers list will always be subjective to some degree. But as for "the best ways of using them", I disagree. At some point in a metagame's development, all/almost all the innovations possible will have been achieved. Future developments will revolve around gimmicks or antimetagame utility. I argue that we have reached this stage.

For example, do you see anything as revolutionary as the Lead Aerodactyl, which moved the Pokemon from BL to a lead staple?

No, instead we see random, specialized Heatran sets, and a ScarfTar and Scarf Scizor that are rising to prominence largely to deal with Latias: a suspect itself.

 

[Chou Toshio]

@Jump-- No one said that the council will be more capable of deciding than the current system. It is inherent, and hopefully understood, that there will be less thought and data put into their decisions. It's only been outlined that they will be able to make decisions faster.

Which I stand by as being more important than making decisions on a handful of borderline cases. After all, you don't need to make a huge time-consuming system to make decisions on seemingly obvious cases like Deoxys (Ubers) or Rotom-A (OU). You only end up taking time when the subject is borderline and there's lots of conflict on both sides.

If certain pokemon do in fact become a problem, it will be really obvious, and they will simply be removed at that point. After all, unless the problem is really obvious, I'd argue it really isn't a problem at all.

Despite whatever level of conflict, the fact of the matter is that the subject is borderline-- it could reasonably go either way. In that case, reversely, I don't see it as being worth huge degrees of effort just to put it one way or the other. Both our own members and all the "other communities depending on smogon" will be satisfy/acknowledge our decision one way or the other.

Besides, it's not like Smogon has put in great efforts to make itself popular and beloved by other competitive pokemon communities. I doubt anyone else thinks we have that kind of image.

Since you have kindly underlined our full capacity to voice our opinion and be respected, I will go out of my way to butt in and say . . .

"Yes, compiling an Uber tier is in fact arbitrary, and no it really doesn't matter all that much whether pokes border lining Uber/OU are put in one or the other."--Choutoshio

You can quote me on that. As someone who has put in so much time into the BT, let me put it to you this way Jump-- does it really matter whether or not Celebi/Jirachi/Shaymin are allowed in the battle tower or not? Yes it certainly does matter as to how the BT plays, but it hardly matters at all in saying whether BT is competitive or not. Would it make it any less viable if they were included? Does the fact that they are not included make BT success any less rewarding?

I'm sure you're rolling bed losing hours of sleep every night thinking, "Oh I'm a sham! My victories mean nothing since Shaymin/Celebi/Jirachi were not included in BT!"

Hell no! What really matter was that you were awesome enough to put together a team that would win under the given rules. What makes BT competitive is not the rules themselves, but the players and strategies that excel within the game itself.


Now I will say that I find your apparent "disappointment" about member's failures to proactively voice their concerns when in this very thread you posted that this "wasn't relevant" yet. So which is it? Proactive voicing even if "it's irrelevant"? Or bitching that you didn't listen to us after the fact? Which is better?

In any case I've gone out of my way to say these things "6 months before relevancy" so when BW comes out and all the logistic shit hits the fan, you can't say that no one said anything . . . because fortunately we did.


@mtr-- "The best way of using them," does not only refer to strategy development, but also to the skill of playing. We don't hail tennis because it has a great ruleset-- we hail the players for their excellent performances.

That's what competition is about-- the excellence of the players, not the correctness of the ruleset.

. . . ESPECIALLY when what is "correct" is in fact, arbitrary (to whatever degree you want to say it is, it is in fact arbitrary) and 100% subjective (no matter how much thought/testing you do, at the end of the day you are making a subjective decision-- it's subjective).

 

[mtr]

@mtr-- "The best way of using them," does not only refer to strategy development, but also to the skill of playing. We don't hail tennis because it has a great ruleset-- we hail the players for their excellent performances.

That's what competition is about-- the excellence of the players, not the correctness of the ruleset.

. . . ESPECIALLY when what is "correct" is in fact, arbitrary (to whatever degree you want to say it is, it is in fact arbitrary) and 100% subjective (no matter how much thought/testing you do, at the end of the day you are making a subjective decision-- it's subjective).

First of all, the tennis analogy is faulty and you know it: one game is about athletes competing against one another in a sport, another is about gamers trying to out-think, out-predict, or counter-team each other.

I think that Smogon has a duty to create the best metagame possible within the confines of what Game Freak has given us to use.

One of the arguments for Garchomp being Uber (in late DP, not now) was that it could sweep with the entire metagame standing on its head to stop it. A mediocre team with a YacheChomp could immediately become a solid team, and overall, YacheChomp was an inimical influence on the metagame, shunting aside a diversity of strategies and devaluing player thinking in favor of a game in which players competed to set up Chomp and stop the other Chomp. The debate right now is on whether Salamence and Latias do the same, and if so, to what extent.

 

[Chou Toshio]

First of all, the tennis analogy is faulty and you know it: one game is about athletes competing against one another in a sport, another is about gamers trying to out-think, out-predict, or counter-team each other.

. . . and that explanation still leaves me wondering what you're thinking. Putting aside the fact that in many sports (like my own wrestling/judo) out-thinking, out-predicting and counteracting the opponent's strategy is a HUGE part of the sport . . .

I could say this: "We don't celebrate Chess/Go/shougi/(insert other strategy game with a pro-level league) because of it's awesome ruleset-- we celebrate the players who demonstrate excellence at it!"

That's what "competition" is about-- demonstrative excellence. Not good rule sets. This applies to sports, games, art . . . it really doesn't matter. So yes, the analogy is quite fair.


Let me give another analogy. A sports one. Recently in international wrestling (Greco Roman/Freestyle) it was decided that the game would be played in rounds instead of periods, meaning that the score would reset to 0/0 at the end of each round, and the winner of 2 / 3 rounds would be declared the victor. What this meant is that it would be impossible to sit on top of a lead and stall out a match-- from start to finish of each round, you'd have to be constantly working and attacking to get through the opponent's defense and score more points.

It was the equivalent of banning spikes/stealth rock/healing moves. A serious change of rules that put a huge emphasis on high-speed, high-strategy, aggro wrestling-- specifically with the intent of making wrestling a high-action, better spectator sport.

It was a HUGE change in rule set. Still, were most wrestlers arguing back and forth about the consequences of the new rule set and contemplating about whether it made the game better or not?

Um . . . NO. They were doing what they always have been doing-- training, training, training. Perfecting their skills, strengthening their bodies/minds, and sharpening their technique. Where necessary, adjusting strategy/game plan for the new rules, but ultimately-- the focus is on one thing: WINNING!!!

That my friend, is competition at its finest.

I think that Smogon has a duty to create the best metagame possible within the confines of what Game Freak has given us to use.

Um why? This is where there is a fundamental difference in thinking, because I really see no real value in this. The value is in the team building, strategy, and execution, not list-writing.

Especially when there is no way to define "Best." It's called a "portrait of uber" because we all know it's inherently vague, and they're called outlines because we all know it all comes down to subjective opinion, and in the end there is no right or wrong.

One of the arguments for Garchomp being Uber (in late DP, not now) was that it could sweep with the entire metagame standing on its head to stop it. A mediocre team with a YacheChomp could immediately become a solid team, and overall, YacheChomp was an inimical influence on the metagame, shunting aside a diversity of strategies and devaluing player thinking in favor of a game in which players competed to set up Chomp and stop the other Chomp. The debate right now is on whether Salamence and Latias do the same, and if so, to what extent.

What's your point? The issue regarding Garchomp was much more obvious to the majority of players-- Garchomp forced an unprecedented call to attention in its tiering, and forced the beginning of a testing process that previously was unpracticed.

Neither Salamence nor Latias has caused uproar anywhere near that degree.


The bottom line is though, and this is where argument really ends-- is that I don't really care if Salamence or Latias are OU or Uber. I mean I do, but not so much that I'd spend all my time bitching or whining if the council decided one way or another on it. Seriously. There are far more productive things to focus on. Like winning (though obvious I haven't been doing all too much of that recently, lol).

After garchomp was banned, there has been an overwhelming positive consensus about that decision. If we simply banned Salamence, we'd either see the same thing or we wouldn't, and leave it up to the discression of the council to come out and say "we fucked up," if it is was bad, or leave it if it was not-- but either way, the decisions to ban or the decisions to overthrow a ban should not be made unless there is a real serious problem at hand-- that the game is unplayable in its current state. Really, what the process needs is a good dose of good ol' Common Sense imo.

Do Salamence or Latias make the game unplayable one way or another? I say no-- but even if the council were to say yes, the point is that the vast majority of the community should not spend all their attention worrying about that issue. It really doesn't matter all that much.

 

[Jumpman16]

@Jump-- No one said that the council will be more capable of deciding than the current system. It is inherent, and hopefully understood, that there will be less thought and data put into their decisions. It's only been outlined that they will be able to make decisions faster.

My point isn't one of ability, it's one of willingness. And more importantly, my issue is with all the instances in which we, as a community, could have made decisions "faster", or spoken up about Latias being put on the Standard Ladder straightaway, or anything else that falls under the shade of anyone else's umbrella of things we all could have done better over these last few years. Did you feel you needed to be on a "council" to be capable of making this thread? Obviously not...but you were willing to. Unless you feel that you are the only one who is capable of raising this issue, you can accept that there are dozens of people who currently have posting privileges here who were capable of making this thread. The issue you're raising now (and rest assured that Aeolus and I discussed this in private last year) is only one of many that should have been raised and still need to be raised regarding this process.

Which I stand by as being more important than making decisions on a handful of borderline cases. After all, you don't need to make a huge time-consuming system to make decisions on seemingly obvious cases like Deoxys (Ubers) or Rotom-A (OU). You only end up taking time when the subject is borderline and there's lots of conflict on both sides.

If certain pokemon do in fact become a problem, it will be really obvious, and they will simply be removed at that point. After all, unless the problem is really obvious, I'd argue it really isn't a problem at all.

Despite whatever level of conflict, the fact of the matter is that the subject is borderline-- it could reasonably go either way. In that case, reversely, I don't see it as being worth huge degrees of effort just to put it one way or the other. Both our own members and all the "other communities depending on smogon" will be satisfy/acknowledge our decision one way or the other.

Besides, it's not like Smogon has put in great efforts to make itself popular and beloved by other competitive pokemon communities. I doubt anyone else thinks we have that kind of image.

And this is where you'll find you differ with many other people. It's a much larger problem when something is borderline, like Garchomp was for many iterations of the test, than if you have something like Latios which was a "really obvious" uber. Your definition of "problem" is in that regard the opposite of the definition of a Suspect, where logic dictates that the less Suspect a move, pokémon or item is, the less likely it's actually regarded as a Suspect, and vice versa.

And we've never striven to endear ourselves to other communities by making easy, transparent Public Relations decisions or reaching out to them. If we were worried about them, we would actually be offended by the many non-Smogon forum rants and YouTube callouts that cropped up when our Garchomp test temporarily placed it in ubers. I am already on record in the Smog article stating that a committee having made decisions instead of us utilizing the Suspect Test Process would have been faster, so I don't know why you're still making an argument of timeliness when both Aeolus and I have confirmed we want to go that Route for Gen V. My issue, again, is with issues like this not having been voiced long, long ago. I mean, your:

Since you have kindly underlined our full capacity to voice our opinion and be respected, I will go out of my way to butt in and say . . .

"Yes, compiling an Uber tier is in fact arbitrary, and no it really doesn't matter all that much whether pokes border lining Uber/OU are put in one or the other."--Choutoshio

is a view that has nothing to do with any of the specific stages of the test. It is very much as "questioning the process itself" that you could have raised the very first day you were given posting privileges here almost a year and a half ago. You realize that, right? And if enough people had agreed with you, the Aeolus and I, as we have several times in the last two years, would have amended the Test at the suggestion of other respected members of the community, and we could have saved a year conducting a test many do not agree with...though it's interesting that in your very first post in this forum, you explicitly stated: "I believe that the current voting system is indeed the best", a system that very much included, for all the slated Suspects, the month-long tests whose length you now question with your "huge time-consuming system" remark.

You can quote me on that. As someone who has put in so much time into the BT, let me put it to you this way Jump-- does it really matter whether or not Celebi/Jirachi/Shaymin are allowed in the battle tower or not? Yes it certainly does matter as to how the BT plays, but it hardly matters at all in saying whether BT is competitive or not. Would it make it any less viable if they were included? Does the fact that they are not included make BT success any less rewarding?

I'm sure you're rolling bed losing hours of sleep every night thinking, "Oh I'm a sham! My victories mean nothing since Shaymin/Celebi/Jirachi were not included in BT!"

Hell no! What really matter was that you were awesome enough to put together a team that would win under the given rules. What makes BT competitive is not the rules themselves, but the players and strategies that excel within the game itself.

First of all, to actually answer your somewhat rhetorical question I'm pretty confident that my current BT team (Mesprit/Drapion/Garchomp) wouldn't have any more trouble with the 600 BST Pixie Legendaries than the other current threats in the tower (which is not much trouble at all considering I still have an active ~2400-battle win streak with it). But second, we compete against each other in the community, not whatever the Battle Tower consideres a challenge (which is 100 wins in a row, as the Gold trophy or whatever it is you need for the star on your trainer card would indicate). That makes all the difference in the world, since if those ledges were allowed in the BT, it'd be the same level playing field for all of us to beat each others' records. I think it's fair to say that I wasn't compelled to break 2000 wins because I wanted to see what special thing I got in the game for getting there (which was nothing).

So if having Garchomp and Manaphy in the game makes the game literally less competitive for the community, then it makes sense to test and remove them when that's determined. The rules very much can make the game less competitive. Is it really unfathomable to you that Sleep Clause makes the game much less competitive, even if both sides can take advantage of it?

Now I will say that I find your apparent "disappointment" about member's failures to proactively voice their concerns when in this very thread you posted that this "wasn't relevant" yet. So which is it? Proactive voicing even if "it's irrelevant"? Or bitching that you didn't listen to us after the fact? Which is better?

In any case I've gone out of my way to say these things "6 months before relevancy" so when BW comes out and all the logistic shit hits the fan, you can't say that no one said anything . . . because fortunately we did.

As I've already stated, my issue is with concerns that could have been voiced months, if not years ago, like with Latias still being on the Standard Ladder, and your own personal gripe with us worrying "whether pokes border lining Uber/OU are put in one or the other". And shit is going to hit the fan regardless of any planning we attempt on our part, unless you really think that any new process is going to come without unforeseen kinks.