Discussion Re-Tiering ADV Lower Tiers: a Blueprint

[Wanted in 49 States]

Can someone post the benefits of having an official tier? A lot of the sillyness from the proposal comes from the fact that UU and NU must remain "official" and RU can never be made "official" but what has being official actually done for those tiers? Because all I've observed historically from a tier being official is the existence of an ungodly amount of red tape to get anything done because of the tierlock. Unofficial tiers like ADV RU and DPP/BW/ADV PU still get support from the respective tier PLs and generation PLs, and RoA spotlights and resources and room tours still exist for unofficial tiers, so what benefits does being official actually bring when you consider the tierlock and gymnastics like in the OP about maintaining officiality-ness?
In fact, what even is the point of officiality in oldgen lower tiers? Why is there a distinction if both unofficial and official old gen lower tiers if both get roughly the same amount of support? It isn't because an "official" tier is a stamp of quality, there are terrible "official" tiers. It also doesn't mean that said tier followed the correct process, GSC UU and ADV NU weren't really created off of good usage stats, and I don't think anyone can seriously argue for the sanctity of the ADV UUBL list considering the lack of process when it was created.
To be official a tier MUST have been created when it was current gen. The whole reason why an official tier must be CG to be official is because of low ladder usage after the generation ends which necesitates a freeze, but ADV is probably the most active oldgen at the moment. Considering that ADV is the most active oldgen at this time, instead of defining officiality-ness from when the tier was created, why not cut out the middleman and define officiality-ness based on the activity of a ladder? We've had cases where "official" tiers have less active ladders than "unofficial tiers." How many players were playing ADV UU when it was CG to create the usage stats for ADV NU? Was that even a large number, larger than what a concentrated ADV UU retiering ladder might have?

As someone who plays RBY Lower Tiers, if you do active tiering, people WILL come. RBY is the second smallest oldgen in terms of OU ladder stats, but the RBY Lower Tier structure has been chugging along fine with a decent number of players. Interest in the tier shifts drives people back and brings in new players, so I seriously doubt that ADV will run into playerbase issues. If you are going to retier ADV, I also suggest that ADV UU/RU/NU/PU authority be given to a seperate ADV Low Tier or the ADV community like what happened in RBY, and more recently in GSC, else you will face bureaucracy for the rest of your lives.

 

[plznostep]

I guess I'll give my opinion. I think I would support retiering ADV, but I don't really know what there is to discuss about because its something that can be sorted with as we go really, UU just has to decide whether it wants to drop everything. Then the big tiering gap goes to RU and so forth until the gap is eliminated entirely at ZU.

I do think RU should be involved in this by the way. I don't really care about the philosophy of RU existing in general because I don't see how its that relevant. Why not include it here is a better question, RU has a sizeable ADV community being included in a lot of RU team tours, and you do erase the tier entirely if you do active tiering so including it to keep people happy seems logical.

I know people are quite fond of all the ADV metagames by the way, but generally I've been the type to not really get too attached to these metagames, I think most metagames will end up fine either way, Probably more subjective, I say it because I've been involved in ZU retiering for a bit anyways and I feel like retiering it has always been a positive experience for the metagames involved. You'd be surprised how many elements are kept the same, but with new elements involved as well which open up the options for a tier.

Also could be worth discussing transitive tiering if you want to do that. It would probably most affect PU because Arena Trap is important in PU due to Trapinch, and Dry Passing is also important for PU since certain Pokemon also use it to escape Trapinch, and being ADV's only pivotting move, it changes certain Pokemon's viabilities (mainly Pokemon who struggle to enter the field) a lot. Because of that, I don't like it but hey RBY did it and that's probably the ideal model to do in tiering old gens.

Random thing too; Does usage for Pokemon like Regice, Raikou, and etc actually matter, or any Pokemon for that matter? ADV OU seems to have undergone a lot of changes from an outside perspective, like Sleep Talk mechanics off the top of my head, so could you argue that those usage stats are potentially inaccurate to the metagame ADV OU has today? Just throwing it out there, I don't personally play ADV OU but a random thought I had

If we do active tiering, then VR's is probably the way to go. I know VR's are more subjective as ranking Pokemon in metagames is in general, but I think they're fine to tier based on, good players know what is good and what is bad, so you will generally get the right mons in the right tiers.

 

[Ernesto]

I haven't played the tier in a decade so obviously my opinion shouldn't be considered much but I wanted to say I wholeheartedly agree retiering BL entirely is the best way to go, same as I felt last time it was brought up. ADV UU was a tier I fell in love with once old gen UUs got new life thanks to the success of UUPL (can't believe I was a part of the first one, #FeelsOldMan) and it always had that duality of being a great, balanced meta with some big threats but with the silly detail of having a banlist larger than the list of viable mons—and who can forget the time when Haunter was both banned from UU and usable in NU. I remember we once did a tourney where we dropped a bunch of BLs such as Arc, Miltank or Slowbro and it was fun but the impression that was left was that they'd never join the meta unless they were part of a much larger drop. I didn't play as much as I would've liked to but I kept following it since.

Actual veterans of the tier such as Heysup, Shiba or Bouff could probably give a more interesting insight but I wish we had made the decision of taking this step back in the day, since obviously the more time passes the stronger the "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" spiel feels. Maybe the perfect time would've been following the RBY UU revival but who knows, it's possible that succeeded because it originated from outside Smogon.

Anyway, even tho it may seem that if you guys were to do this now the whole process of adding new BLs by small doses will have been a waste of time I think a better way to look at it is that because it was done and had generally good results albeit slow a faster, more radical approach can now get more support in order to have a more "real" ADV UU. This obviously comes at the cost of totally shaking up the tiers below, official or not and it has to be considered going forward but it should never be the dealbreaker.

In summary, I think this is the way to go and I hope you guys can garner enough support. The best moment to do it might have been a while ago but the second best is now.

Oh, also

Just because people don't pick a tier for their PL games doesn't mean they don't play it. Really, ADV isn't the only generation this could be done for; BW comes to mind as a generation full of pokemon that are uncompletely unusable due to bans (BW UU Abomasnow with no Snow Warning, BW OU Duggy with no Arena Trap, Goth + Wobb with no Shadow Tag etc) but that's a separate discussion to be had. Regardless, this is a good idea to put into practice. The player base is there; the support from ADV UU's player base is there; I know RU's player base would be on board. It's high time to make this happen; it's been long overdue.

to not derail the thread

Funny you should mention that because for a while now I've been thinking about how current BW UU feels totally different, in part due to normal metagame developments and in part because I alongside kokoloko, RT., and bunch of other guys went back after BW stopped being CG and banned Snow Warning and Chandelure. For legacy purposes that was probably the right call (even tho many such as reachzero can argue that Victini should've gone instead of Chandy, since both were tested and voted UU) but I can't help but remember the fun I had in those late stages. Snow Warning on its own added a whole element to the meta and Hail Balance was a good counter to rain without the broken element of Stallrein, for example. I toyed with the idea of having a tourney with those changes undone but that idea never went anywhere because I didn't feel like I could commit to hosting it. If anyone would like to pick up where I failed they'd be most welcome to

Cheers!

 

[goldmason]

My biggest issue with proposals like these are:

1) Timing
2) Leadership

Re: Timing

The worst thing about the timing of the posting of this thread is that the time to do this, imo, is literally right now. UUPL is ending, RUPL is ended, NUPL ends soon. This is about the perfect time of the year to do it but now we need to wait another year or so in which I fully expect a proposal like this to die. I think the idea of the tournament schedule being too busy these days can be a bit of a red herring; as far as I am concerned, you can do the entirety of this before any upcoming tournaments happen, and any that do take place can use the tier pre-action while something like this gets litigated and shakes out. But again, the time to be moving would be now IMO, and that leads to the second point:

Re: Leadership

It was mentioned by Heysup earlier, as well as others I'm sure, but you would need a rock solid council of people litigating these changes; organizing, pushing forward changes, making sure a project of this magnitude actually stays on track. I don't think such a thing can be assembled on such short notice, and I also think the more you add to the mix the more chaotic getting things done is going to be.

All of this to say, I think the biggest question is whether sacrificing the tiers that do exist is worth doing for something that we are going to probably need to plan for another year for, and will require a massive sink of time and effort. This is not me discouraging; if the answer is Yes, then good! But I also want to make sure we're being realistic with our expectations of how this is going to go.

If that is indeed what we choose, I think the OP is actually probably one of the best people to lead this effort. Would also start looping in Lily, Rabia and LpZ / Amity (I genuinely forget which of you leads ADV RU, my bad) because I think those are valuable voices to have in the room for an effort this big.

As far as the overall timeline, I think that goes hand in hand with actually starting to talk to tier leaders about how this is going to go down. I expect some resistance especially from UU, since as far as I can tell that tier is generally considered VERY enjoyable by its playerbase, so making sure they're in the discussion and comfortable with what is being proposed should be key.

Always down to help out any way I can as well! Y'all know where to reach me.