Tournaments RBYOMPL II Format Discussion

[LHF]

The thing about ZUOL and ZUCL is that these are cross-gen teamtours. The appeal of tours like RBYPL, RBYWC, and RBYOMPL are that the team is compromised almost entirely of rbyers. In cross-gen teamtours, the RBY slot is often on their own and has nobody to help them prep unless they bring some of their friends as support. In an RBY-focused teamtour, there are plenty of teammates to help you with prep. This also leads to overall faster meta development, since you have multiple talented RBYers working together to push the tier forward. Ubers, and UU-PU have RBYPL for this, and ZU deserves a tier as well. Especially since current ZU is still in its infancy, this is the perfect opportunity for the metagame to develop. An RBY forum teamtour is a much better opportunity to advance the metagame than any individual or crossgen teamtour ever will be.

As optimistic as I am about teamtours getting people to look at other gens/formats, this is the cold hard truth of it. Let's say that some major ban, like Pinsir, would happen before ZUPL. I hate to rephrase what you've already said so well, but I feel it's worth doing anyway: despite being the most prestigious teamtour for ZU, less overall development would happen in the RBY ZU meta compared to the rapid surge of development we saw in RBYPL with RBY UU post PT ban. Because there's only a small handful of RBYers actually in the tour, and the odds of managers having an understanding of the meta is(unfortunately) slimmer. In RBYPL, even if you weren't playing RBY UU in the actual game slot you likely had at least two or three hands behind the scenes discussing, testing and pushing the meta forward overall.

(This is not a reason to prevent banning a pokemon before a big tour btw. I'm more using this in service of explaining your greater point that RBY exclusive tours > cross gen in terms of servicing RBY tiers)

I'll even up the ante a bit: If people are hating the current stage of ZU, that's all the more reason to put it here in some capacity so that we can get toward making it a better tier in the eyes of the playerbase.

If it were up to me, I'd run OMPL as a Pinsirless suspect to see how it feels compared to the ongoing ZUPL with all mons legal. Pinsir, while having a lot of possible checks, forces a ton of the tier to run an 85% accurate move to deal with it, and if even one of them misses, Pinsir threatens to run away with the game after a single well-timed SD. Could be rushing to conclusions on my part, and I'm happy to recant that if developments in ZUCL make things less coinflippy overall, but it could be something to consider.

I would be very OK with this considering ZUCL is going on right now and to my knowledge it's featuring the Pinsir meta. This would give us two different tournaments(in which people will be playing to try and win serious games) in which to compare the Pinsir and Pinsirless metas.

 

[NotVeryCake]

Why are we discussing suspecting a mon in a tier with sub 1 week played in a real tour? I was planning to sign up for ZU too. Please just include the real ZU and not whatever this is, I think most people want every chance they can get to play the real ZU in a teamtour environment, not.... that.

 

[gastlies]

Agree with cake that we shouldn't be suspecting Pinsir in ZU this early on, especially in RBYOMPL. As I highlighted in my earlier post, RBYOMPL will likely be the best chance for real metagame developments to take place in ZU. If it turns out that Pinsir is totally fine and not broken, that will be shown as the weeks progress in the tour. Alternatively, Pinsir counterplay may not develop which will further reinforce it's brokneness and make a real suspect/ban on it have more support. I wouldn't be opposed to a Pinsir suspect down the line, but save it for an indiv or a cross-gen teamtour, not here.

 

[LHF]

I'll even up the ante a bit: If people are hating the current stage of ZU, that's all the more reason to put it here in some capacity so that we can get toward making it a better tier in the eyes of the playerbase.

Just want to be clear that in this line I wasn't suggesting that you "have" to do a Pinsir suspect here, more that it was a real possibility if the ZU playerbase was interested in evaluating it and that I personally wouldn't mind the idea as BG proposed it. I do still stand by the opinion that ZU should be included for all of the reasons I've said and think that there's little reason NOT to run it when we consider everything. Whatever gets ZU on this stage is OK by me, because I think there are very few legitimate arguments against doing it at this point. If a tier isn't "interesting" that isn't a reason to give up on it; tiers are iterative for a reason and our goal is to make every format we can as reasonably competitive and healthy as possible within the context of Pokemon.

Other than that the only reason I could see for not getting ZU in is if people truly adore the 6 OMs that made it last year. And as I wrote in my own post, Stadium looks the most cuttable unless there's a bunch of people who are feeling differently. To make sure others don't think I'm just bullying Stadium, it's not what I would actually cut if I was supreme dictator of RBYOMPL. I am not a fan of NC97 but I wouldn't touch it because of its small but passionate playerbase and it plays quite representatively of what you'd think an OM is. And any problems one might have with LC should(hopefully) be eliminated with sleep ban.

 

[Flarekid (untrainermas)]

I think we've to get deep in STABmons, i just get a Smogon doc and nothing else. "What about fire mons" i guess...