Randbat OU is too restrictive. But it's what you want if you want a both teams to always be "good". When you dish out random Pokémon, they can never all be "good". It is the reason we have tiers: not all Pokémon are "good".
Level balance is enough for all pokemon above PU to be good. It's pokemon like Caterpie that will be bad no matter how much they're level balanced.
It's not about having "bad" teams. It extremely rare you actually get a "bad" team. You have weaker elements to your team that you have to overcome/figure out how to use effectively. You act as though removing NFEs eliminates the potential for someone to get a terrible team, and it doesn't at all. When you remove NFEs and you're shit out of luck when you get a team of terrible NU mons, you're in the same exact position as when you get a team of NFEs, sometimes worse, as there are NFEs who perform better than shit like Luvdisc for sure.
It's true that there will still be bad mons with NFEs removed. Removing NFEs does remove a lot of them, and at least those mons have a chance to be better. Caterpie can evolve into Butterfree. Unown really doesn't have a choice.
I mean, it's a bit mindboggling that these NFEs are there in the first place. If I give you a Caterpie and tell you to train it to its maximum potential, are you gonna come back with a level 100 Caterpie or a level 100 Butterfree?
"If it's not broken, why fix it?" does fit perfectly here, and it's certainly not a bad argument at the current moment.
When the wheel was invented, there was the problem of trying to transport things/people more quickly. Fire was a lucky find that increased the quality of life; nothing was broken there. You're speaking of Randbats as though it is broken and needs fixing, and your suggested "fix" does nothing to repair the "problem", making it a fix on something that isn't broken, whereas modern medicine works to fix illness and the things that are improved without being broken actually achieve their goal of making the thing better (i.e. agriculture>gathering).
Okay, see, that's because you're using an inconsistent definition of broken.
Modern medicine "fixes" a previous lifespan of around 40 years, but arguably there's nothing "broken" with a lifespan that long.
The entire problem with the claim "why fix what isn't broken" is exactly that: obviously I think it's broken and you don't. Saying it isn't going to change that, it's only going to piss me off.
And we can apply it the other way around: Randbat used to not have NFEs, and I liked it. Then a bunch of people added NFEs and I don't like it anymore because they fixed something that wasn't broken.
So I'm going to turn it around on
you: Why fix what isn't broken? Why don't we leave it at "no NFEs" like it was before?
Again, I think you just don't like Randbats. It's like trying to repair your perfectly working car when in reality you just want a motorcycle. This is why I suggest a different tier. I'm not saying, "I need NFEs in my Randbats, so make a new tier." I'm saying, "I like NFEs in my Randbats, and your ideal Randbats is not created with their removal, so make your ideal Randbats, don't overhaul mine."
Here's the problem:
I used to like randbats, before some other people added NFEs to it.
In other words, I had a perfectly good motorcycle before some people replaced it with an SUV with horrible gas mileage, and I understand some people like gas guzzlers because they want to wave their dick around, but now I want my motorcycle back.
See, that's really the thing. I could understand if randbats always had NFEs and I always didn't like randbats. I would be interfering with a tier that was never mine to begin with. But randbats
was mine to begin with. And if you'll notice this thread, a lot of people want NFEs gone, it's not just me. It just so happens that the opposition is loud.
Here's a parallel problem: I
made randbats, I made most of the set generator AIs that make it less shitty than CC. And now that I have the time to improve the AIs, nooo you guys want sets that are less shitty than CC but not too unshitty, you like a bit of shit in your battles and I don't think it should be my job to figure out what kind of shit you like and what kind you don't like.
I'm very appreciative for the work GreatSage, iss, TheImmortal and others have done to tweak level balance numbers (that I made), to tweak viable move lists (that I compiled), and all that, but I don't think those achievement's on the same level as writing the AIs that make the foundation of the tier.
I think the best thing I could do is make randbat in my own image, and you guys can make your own OM tier with only the AIs you like from it.
Seriously. It's obvious that some people would prefer randbat+NFEs and some people would prefer randbat–NFEs. This thread is here as a courtesy, since there might be some obvious reason to keep NFEs that I'm missing (I haven't heard one yet). Telling me it's a matter of opinion and my opinion's wrong is not constructive, because opinion's split pretty close to 50-50, and as the person who made randbat possible, I think it's fair for me to cast the deciding vote.
Relados is right; what's going to make Randbats better is making sure everything has a good set. Removing NFEs (especially now that some of them will get to utilize Eviolite!) is pointless in achieving your goal of a more balanced game. Everyone is failing to realize that your opponent has an equal chance of getting NFEs, so even if they were utter shit, it's not like they only screw you over. This is how I can tell the argument against them is people upset over those few times they got Caterpie and Metapod on the same team. If they were worthless, I'd say fine, go ahead and remove them, but they aren't, and I repeat, their removal does nothing for you, so why remove them? All it does is open more room for creativity.
Yes, your opponent has the same chance of getting a shitty team as you do. That's true of any metagame: two players of equal skill will always have a 50-50 shot of winning no matter how unbalanced or shitty the meta is. That's no excuse for a shitty meta.
The goal of having skill be a greater factor in win rate, and having luck be a lower factor in win rate, is something I definitely want in randbat. And I know it'd be even better by getting rid of a bunch of shitty NU/PU mons, but right now I consider removing NFEs to be a pretty good tradeoff - every evolutionary line is represented, and most of the absolute worst mons are removed.