Quickrises

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For a couple of years now we have started having monthly tiering changes in between the regular 3 months tier shifts. That was mostly done to allow Pokemon such as Gothitelle and Wobbuffet and to non-mega formes of Pokemon to drop down in tiers faster and increase the poll of usable mons for lower tiers.
The system has been fine and stuff just dropped down in tiers and nothing really went up as a result of those changes.

That until the recent quickrise of Ambipom this month that got around 12% usage in UU despite being unviable due to "manipulation" from some influencers.
The current weighting system was implemented years back to prevent stuff like that from happening but when the scale of people is so big and the content being so popular you can only do so much to stop it.
Considering that January was a 3/24 month Ambipom is in any case most likely dropping to RU with the next tier shift (and it will take another one for it to drop back to NU which is probaly its place) and the move up was simply unnecessary.

My proposal is then to stop having quickrises. Higher tiers can still use mons in the lower ones so nothing changes for them, the metagames below are more stable due to less frequent changes, and if something gets a new toy that makes it broken it will get banned quickly (see Contrary Serperior in PU/NU/RU).
tagging Antar

e: since someone asked: we should keep quickdrops
 

power

uh-oh, the game in trouble
Ambipom is in any case most likely dropping to RU with the next tier shift (and it will take another one for it to drop back to NU which is probaly its place) and the move up was simply unnecessary

Just wanted to point out it will fall directly back to NU, not RU. This just happened to Kingdra, where it quickfell from OU to BL3.

"A Pokemon that rises more than one tier in a given usage cycle, then drops out of that tier in a later cycle will be placed back in its original tier unless:
- The Pokemon gained enough usage in the middle tier to move up to that tier in the usage cycle where it jumped over the tier
- The Pokemon gained a major addition in either movepool or ability that caused it to initially rise."
Edit: still support this proposal, regardless
 
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tennisace

not quite too old for this, apparently
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ftr I agree with this; when I made the above linked proposal I didn't take into account deliberate manipulation of the usage tiers (and neither did Antar's quickrise policy). The quickrise policy was intended to more accurately simulate tiers if something new and really good was discovered. I haven't watched aim 's vids on Ambipom but I'm pretty sure they weren't designed to highlight an underrated Pokemon.
 
Tagging tier leaders (TDK Hack Nayrz Hikari Hogg atomicllamas phantom Hootie Kiyo Megazard OP Quote kamikaze Memoric Eien Paleo).

If nobody is objecting this policy will be applied starting from this month (and will result in Ambipom staying NU).
I don't necessarily oppose this new policy but I question the result of Ambipom immediately going back to NU.

Usage based tiering was designed/functioning in such a way up until now, did its thing, people see an issue with the system, want to change it going forward - that's all fine. What's not fine is retroactively applying the policy and handpicking which part of the usage based tiering update you subjectively dislike. NU losing Ambipom isn't so alarmingly bad that we need to totally ignore the objective tiering mechanisms that were in place up until this point.
 
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aim

pokeaimMD
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The series is called to the top where I encourage the use of a pokemon in an attempt to hit high ladder with it. And yes it raises usage. I told my viewers many times don’t bother with the uu room and if you support ambipom to the top, feel free to ladder with it. I started with Ambipom as a meme because its one of the mons I love most from dpp and uu apparently had a problem with it but as I kept playing I saw it did have use in UU and managed to hit #5 on the ladder with it. Even uu players like pif acknowledged the use of the pokemon. The series is designed to highlight a mon that I believe can work in the tier, which is why i’m doing MamoswineTTT, a mon whose dual coverage is only resisted by one Pokemon in Ou, Rotom-W. So yes, it is highlighting an underrated mon. I don’t honestly care if quick drops and rises stay or not. But to say the series isn’t designed to highlight mons that I believe can work in the tier, that’s wrong.

Edit: don’t think i was clear but i did want ambipom to rise to UU because I was tired of it being disrespected (underrated) but I also wanted to see if I could make it to the top with what people consider a crap mon
 
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Tagging tier leaders (TDK Hack Nayrz Hikari Hogg atomicllamas phantom Hootie Kiyo Megazard OP Quote kamikaze Memoric Eien Paleo).

If nobody is objecting this policy will be applied starting from this month (and will result in Ambipom staying NU).
I speak for NU on this and I do not want this policy to be applied retroactively. Just because people disagree with the change doesn't mean we bend the system to accommodate for our "needs". This isn't drastic enough that it needs to be changed now. Just apply this for future months and nothing else.
 
I don't necessarily oppose this new policy but I question the result of Ambipom immediately going back to NU.

Usage based tiering was designed/functioning in such a way up until now, did its thing, people see an issue with the system, want to change it going forward - that's all fine. What's not fine is retroactively applying the policy and handpicking which part of the usage based tiering update you subjectively dislike. NU losing Ambipom isn't so alarmingly bad that we need to totally ignore the objective tiering mechanisms that were in place up until this point.
I speak for NU on this and I do not want this policy to be applied retroactively. Just because people disagree with the change doesn't mean we bend the system to accommodate for our "needs". This isn't drastic enough that it needs to be changed now. Just apply this for future months and nothing else.
I proposed that since to me and other members of staff it seemed like the right course of action given how evident the manipulation was and the fact that stats just came out today but you objections are fair and enough to not to change the result.
I am glad this situation happened with a Pokemon like Ambipom which is mostly irrelevant in the tier it was taken from and the collateral damage will be quite small but we absolutely do not want repeats of this situation going forward so I pushed for having it implemented quickly.
 

Bughouse

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Why is this such a bad thing and how does this policy actually solve anything?

1) Usage has never fully reflected viability and never will. But our tiers have been based around usage for around a decade. It's resulted in things that clearly turned out to be wrong in the long run (and were obvious to many in the moment too), such as Electivire, Dusknoir, and Umbreon being DPP OU but Clefable and Milotic being DPP UU, and Nidoqueen being DPP NU.

2) If this whole process with people using Ambipom happened to have occurred in an actual tier shift month (this is already heavily incentivized of anyone trying to manipulate tiers by virtue of the 20-3-1 mix) then it wouldn't even be a "quickrise" - it would just rise plain and simple. I just don't get the point of this policy. It will still be just as easy to manipulate usage tiering within a period of one month, just do it in the "right" month.

If you're actually trying to stop the whole premise of quickrise manipulation, you'd have to do much more than what's proposed. You'd also need to stop weighting 20-3-1 so that any sort of rise takes 3 sustained months of usage, not just 1 well timed one.

But frankly Ambipom's usage was about 15.3%. It could see 0 usage in the subsequent 2 months and it would still rise at ~5.1% usage. You're trying to fix what you see as a square hole with a round peg, and I'm not even sure there's a hole in the first place.
 
Why is this such a bad thing and how does this policy actually solve anything?

1) Usage has never fully reflected viability and never will. But our tiers have been based around usage for around a decade. It's resulted in things that clearly turned out to be wrong in the long run (and were obvious to many in the moment too), such as Electivire, Dusknoir, and Umbreon being DPP OU but Clefable and Milotic being DPP UU, and Nidoqueen being DPP NU.

2) If this whole process with people using Ambipom happened to have occurred in an actual tier shift month (this is already heavily incentivized of anyone trying to manipulate tiers by virtue of the 20-3-1 mix) then it wouldn't even be a "quickrise" - it would just rise plain and simple. I just don't get the point of this policy. It will still be just as easy to manipulate usage tiering within a period of one month, just do it in the "right" month.

If you're actually trying to stop the whole premise of quickrise manipulation, you'd have to do much more than what's proposed. You'd also need to stop weighting 20-3-1 so that any sort of rise takes 3 sustained months of usage, not just 1 well timed one.

But frankly Ambipom's usage was about 15.3%. It could see 0 usage in the subsequent 2 months and it would still rise at ~5.1% usage. You're trying to fix what you see as a square hole with a round peg, and I'm not even sure there's a hole in the first place.
1) The end goal here is giving more stability to lower tiers and make them less susceptible to what just happened and this proposal goes in that direction. We use usage stats to make our tiers since they are the most objective way to approximate what is good/viable in the lower tiers. Of course it is not perfect but the examples you brought up refer to times in which the sample size was much, much, smaller and we didn't even use weighting.

2) I agree that this still doesn't even make our tiers robust enough to "manipulations" such as this one but it is a step in the right direction. It makes it a little bit harder for who is trying to do it since it can't just happen every month. Reworking the mix or switching to longer windows of time between changes is an option that would also make tiers more stable but I guess that's a bit controversial since people are used to/like to play with new toys all the time.
 
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MZ

And now for something completely different
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Why is this such a bad thing and how does this policy actually solve anything?

1) Usage has never fully reflected viability and never will. But our tiers have been based around usage for around a decade. It's resulted in things that clearly turned out to be wrong in the long run (and were obvious to many in the moment too), such as Electivire, Dusknoir, and Umbreon being DPP OU but Clefable and Milotic being DPP UU, and Nidoqueen being DPP NU.
The problem here is that evidently our tiers can be manipulated because a single person wants to change them, and regardless of who it is or why they did it (not that anyone else could do this afaik) usage manipulations of this scale are not what tiering was designed for. There's always been cases of Pokemon getting tiered differently than they would if tiering was done by viability, but to the people claiming that that justifies this, at least the large amounts of usage Pikachu gets in NU or whatever can't be directly traced back to a single source who had the goal of making Pikachu rise.
As for the solution, I'd only be in favor of removing quick rises if there was some kind of guarantee that it actually fixed the problem, and that doesn't appear to be the case based on our one example. At least something like Bughouse's idea of forcing 3 months of sustained usage would prevent this specific incident from happening again.
 

Bughouse

Like ships in the night, you're passing me by
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What would your thoughts be on the following:

Go to an 8-8-8 split ie unweighted by month
Quick drops can still occur based on the previous month’s usage being below the drop threshold
Quick rises no longer exist. You can only rise once every 3 months. Bans still exist to deal with Pokemon that need to be gone due to new sets becoming powerful.
In order to rise, the pokemon’s usage must be over the threshold of 3.41% overall for the 3 months and no lower than 2% (or whatever value you find most statistically valid here) in any of the 3 months. This requires longer consistent use to rise.
 

Zarel

Not a Yuyuko fan
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I don't mind removing quickrises.

But also I don't think Ambipom jumping to UU is a bad thing, necessarily. Let people have fun! Let people screw around! It's a game, having fun is kind of the point.

Maybe people will play more if they feel like what they do actually has an effect on tiering, you know?
 
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