Reflections and Expectations of Smogon's OU

[Chou Toshio]

Approved by Iconic

Survey Results

Hey guys, so this is something a bit beyond our typical forum polls. I made a survey using an online research tool called Qualtrics (which I recently learned how to use). I put together a pretty in-depth survey asking questions about people's impressions and expectations of the current OU, and the idea of OU and suspect testing in general.

So I'd like you all to give it a shot-- I think it's a pretty interesting survey.

I'll do some interpretation, cross-tabs and analysis with when its done so you can all see the results.

Online Survey: Reflections, Perceptions, and Expectations of OU


I'll be closing the survey after I get over 500 respondents, or after the first 2 weeks, whichever comes sooner.

 

[Vert]

What does this survey tell us, and will the results lead us to anything, or is this just to see how us battlers prefer, because I thought about this while taking it. Cool Survey.

 

[Shiruba]

cool new avatar, chou. i like it.
question: if we did not participate in a particular generation of ou until after its completion, but it is our favourite, may we still comment on it, or is this only applicable if we played during its heyday?

 

[Chou Toshio]

The survey covers a lot of commonly discussed topics/debates connected to suspect testing. Of course info on the distribution of opinions on those individual issues is cool, but with these survey results I can go between questions and data to find out more stuff.

For instance, it also accounts for player demographics. With cross-tabs, I can even get an idea of whether or not there are associations/groupings identifiable in the population. For instance, I can find out if people who play older gens are biased against more offensive metagames. I can find out if NU players are NU players because they hate OU. etc. etc.

I'll be doing a lot of mulling with the data once I've collected it, so hopefully I'll not only be able to give you data about the individual questions, but give an idea of what other conclusions can be drawn from cross-referencing the questions. It might also help Tier leaders get an idea of what players really want from an ideal OU-- or whether players even expect OU to be an ideal at all.

edit: At Matt-- as long as you participated in a gen AT ALL, feel free to mark it as your favorite. Heck, even if you only like that tier through reputation, feel free to mark it. Really, just feel free to answer however you like within the parameters given.

Would ask you to finish the survey, but other wise go for it.

 

[Gary]

This survey made me realize just how much I despise BW OU....

 

[ShootingStarmie]

Yeah, done it. Some questions I felt kinda contradicted themselves, and on those questions I wasn't really sure to answer. Other than that, it was cool

 

[Houndoomsday]

completed, the survey switched up the order of disagree->neutral->agree in one of the questions which threw me off :P

 

[Princess Bubblegum]

This is was a bit awkward for me, RBY is without a doubt my favorite meta, yet I don't think an ideal meta should be anything like that.

 

[Stratos]

the sliders didn't work for some fuckin reason, did anyone else have this problem?

needless to say, though i was happy with the slider being stuck on "1" for how satisfied i am with BW, when it got to other questions i would have preferred to move it.

 

[mkizzy]

although the survey itself could've been a bit better, it's definitely a good idea and kudos to you for trying to take initiative. props to you for the effort and hopefully it gets maybe a consensus to point us in the right direction of improving the metagame. (imagine a smiley here but the smileys are really fuckin ugly)

 

[Chou Toshio]

77 respondents and 1 guy who said "no" to the the question: "Do you know what Smogon is?"

Just FYI-- if you don't know what Smogon is you're being dis-included from the results. lol

 

[Nova]

Interesting survey, thought about some questions I've never really thought about. Thanks for orgnaizing this!

 

[Spinda]

"On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is extremely conservative (rarely anything is banned), 10 is extremely liberal (pokemon should quickly and easily be banned if suspected of being broken) and 5 is the current suspect testing practice, please indicate your ideal stance on banning."

I'm struggling a bit answering this one, as I feel Smogon is suspecting too many pokemon, and too few abilities and moves. Quite hard to answer by giving a number.

 

[Reymedy]

One or two questions were two simplist and I don't like the "Do you agree or not", when you only agree with a part of the statement. Let's see.

 

[SmashBrosBrawl]

Done. A really cool survey. Too bad its short, but the questions ultimately cover everything relevant about the ou metagame.

 

[Freze]

I answered the survey, but there were a few flaws. One question:

Which of the two statements about themes (weather, gravity, baton pass, trick room, etc.) do you agree with more?

The way answers were worded, I agreed with both answers and could only choose one.

Another:

On a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is extremely conservative (rarely anything is banned), 10 is extremely liberal (pokemon should quickly and easily be banned if suspected of being broken) and 5 is the current suspect testing practice, please indicate your ideal stance on banning.

My problem with this is that there is no correct amount of banning. Banning happens when something is broken. If nothing is broken no banning. If 100 pokemon are broken than ban 100 pokemon. Cannot answer with a number.

I did not have any other major problems with the survey, Good idea and decent execution of the idea.

 

[GatoDelFuego]

A fun and interesting survey. Having never really played anything before gen 4 (which is some terrible offense in the eyes of some players, I'm sure), I'm not really sure what the "best metagame" is, because in my mind gen 4 is perfect and gen 5 is a steaming pile of garbage.

 

[Chou Toshio]

Sometimes it's important for a question to force an answer on an issue-- and the purpose was not to ask for people's opinions and exact suggestions on Tiering-- but rather to get perceptions and see which sentiments people greater relate with on various issues.

 

[MMII]

I'm stuck on the favorite OU. I've only played RBY and BW. I don't much like claiming something I haven't played as my favorite and as far as the two go I prefer RBY over BW. (if nothing else than the nostalgia) It would be nice if I could pick other metas instead like Ubers. :(


Outside of that I really like the idea of a survey. By forcing a choice out of specific answers it gets the data to analyze without all the metagame bashing.

The themes question is hard. I've no problem with themes assuming the theme itself doesn't result in aspects I dislike about a metagame. Basically, it being a theme is irrelevant for me as all I care about is the resulting metagame. The question doesn't really have an answer for that, the only answers seem to be either I like prevalent themes or don't.

 

[Chou Toshio]

That question was designed to force that issue. Primarily, the question is aimed at getting people to think about and weigh in about weather in BW. It's easy to bash weather, but until BW there really wasn't a presence of legitimate theme teams. There were play styles in DPPt, but definitely no real theme teams with long standing popularity. If theme teams are to be a real aspect of the meta game, they need to benefit at least somewhere in the ball park of bw's weather teams

So, are legitimate themes something people want in Pokemon? There's no right answer objectively

 

[ChaosAkita]

This is an interesting survey. I've been playing since the days of Netbattle so I've seen different metas come and go. I think I'm the most dissatisfied with this one due to the mechanics Nintendo have implemented, and I'm hoping for more balance next gen.

 

[Lady Alex]

I liked the survey. I'm really curious to see how others feel about some of those issues.

 

[-Sparkbeat-]

This was a really great survey...definitely made me think. It'll be interesting to see everyone's opinions, with OU players and now mainly non-OU players taking it as well. Good job with it :)

 

[Champion Steve]

I found the Theme Team question kind of annoying actually since Gravity, for example, is nowhere near on the same level as Rain. Making it a Yes-No question just seemed to be making a false dichotomy. That, and I'm not sure how much 3 banning is. Those issues aside, I'm interested in the results.

 

[Maestro72]

The thing about weather teams is that the weather-based abilities are permanent without interaction. In other words, only another weather team can viably check another weather team. If there was a Trick Room ability in the same form, the presence of Trick Room teams would be as widespread as weather teams.