I have few thoughts I'd like to share. The
TL:DR is that
I'd really like for Camomons to stay, because its problems are not necessarily unfixable nor intrinsic to it.
If it has to get axed, I'd like for Inheritance to replace it.
But more generally, I'm really in favor of expanding OMPL to 8 slots, with the argument that if the metas listed in the OP are deemed good replacements for Camo, they are good enough to be added to OMPL even if nothing is cut. I don't have a clear preference on which one o them should be included. The 8th meta should in my opinion be AG, because we've had multiple prominent AG players express a desire to see AG reintegrated into OMPL. So please forgive me for naming "it that must not be named "
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I go into more detail and provide reasoning for all these claims in the rest of my post.
1) The case for Camomons
First of all, I'm obviously biased as a player and council member of this meta. But I'll try to argue in as objective a manner as possible.
1.1) On player interest
From what I gathered, the arguments for shelving Camo in favor of something else are lack of interest and lack of competitiveness due to seemingly unfixable balance issues. I can’t deny that interest in Camo has been waning over the course of this gen. It was probably the highest at the beginning, when it wasn’t permaladder and it won a bunch of Omotm votes, then started dropping as soon as we got perma. Which is understandable really, a lot more people play Omotm ladders than any single OM besides maybe BH. But, Camo is not the only meta that had bad ladder plays at certain points this gen. My goal is not to talk shit about other OMs so im not gonna point fingers. Instead I’d like to echo a good point that Euphonos brought up in the discord today.
We as a community put a lot of stock into tournament play, doubly so if said tournament is “official” (part of a tournament circuit). On the flip side, we don’t really value ladder nearly as highly. Unofficial tours are somewhere in between. Not trying to say this is a bad thing per se, or to the extent that I am – I fully realise that I’m not blameless since I hold that same attitude towards the different levels of play. However, this is a point that should not be disregarded when evaluating the popularity of Camo. It’s not clear to me that the waning popularity of Camo can be attributed solely to people being intrinsically disinterested in the meta.
All 5 of our other main OMs had a safety net in the form of circuit tours. Camo had 3 tours this whole gen and player turnout was admittedly pretty low, especially this last one. However,
I’m strongly convinced that said turnout would be significantly higher if Camo tours counted for something – either Slam or circuit championship (or both). I personally enjoy playing Camo quite a bit, but since there is no ladder I can’t randomly search up games. Additionally, since interest in metas generally correlates with a tour happening, I and others like me mostly play Camo when a tour is going on. With that said, I’m not sure we can fully discount the idea that more people would get into Camo if it were picked as a Slam/Champs tier and as a consequence, that part of the reason for its waning popularity is the lack of representation in individual tours. In the same vein, it’s possible that interest in Camomons could be salvaged by keeping it in our team tours for one more season. If it’s still in a bad spot this time next year, then I can concede that we are likely best off shelving it.
1.2) On balance issues
Bulky setup and it’s various flavors have been the main topic of conversation ever since OMWC began.
I’m not going to lie, it’s clear that bulky setup is disproportionately powerful in Camo, compared to other tiers and even other OMs. I think this issue can be reduced to a few key components:
- Hazards setters >>> hazard removal
- Calm mind/QD + recovery
- Camo mechanic allowing for typings that dodge large portions of normal bulky setup counterplay
- Beneficial abilities that dodge additional portions of bulky setup counterplay AND create asymmetry in the effect of hazards (ie the bulky setup mon in question is hurt less by spikestack on both sides than its check -> leading to an eventual win for the bulky setup mon since spikestacking is inevitable with the lack of good removal)
The first issue has hopefully been at least partially fixed with the Mew ban.
But even keeping all of these issues in mind, I think that it has been possible to construct solid teams that don’t rely primarily on fishing and instead give you a solid chance to win in most Mus with the right play. I don’t wanna gas myself up, but I’d say the teams that I used during the group stage fall into this category. Granted, it did take a solid amount of testing with and losing to certain players to arrive at a good balance formula and not randomly lose to Reuni and Buzzwole (Chazm) , Volc and Mew (Euph) or HO (BJ), but it happened.
Feel free to disagree, but my record should be proof of the ability to have consistent results in this tier, esp given that my loss was a result of mons being mons instead of anything intrinsic to Camo. And I only used spikes Mew twice! I also believe most Camo games in general were pretty solid, apart from the ones that were sadly Camo moments. I do think its possible to minimize the amount of Camo moments though, as I’ve already elaborated above.
With the recent ban slate, Camo is entering unexplored territory. Mew leaving is massive, so we have no way to predict to what extent Camo moments will persist, if they will at all. I think writing it off as uncompetitive without giving the new meta a chance is too hasty. I’d also like to think the council has done a relatively good job balancing the meta, given the tools at our disposal to do so – despite the recent blunder with Reuniclus. I’d hate for Camo to lose its spot before seeing whether we can arrive at a healthy metagame with the right balancing approach.
2) The case for Inheritance
Again, I’m obviously biased. But the same as above holds true here.
If you decide to ditch Camo, I think Inheritance is the best replacement.
2.1) Inheritance and Camomons are actually quite similar in practice, so there is more carryover from one to the other than one might think.
This similarity stems from the fact that one way to look at Inheritance is by conceptualizing it as reverse-Camo. Mons have 4 key characteristics: stats, movepool, abilities and typing. In Camo, the first three are unchanged, but the typing can be manipulated. In practice this results in running a mon with every characteristic of Mew, except its typing which is that of Celesteela. In Inheritance the reverse is true. The typing and stats of a mon remain static, but it is able to inherit the movepool and abilities of a different mon. For example, you can give Celesteela the moveset of Mew and run a similar set to Camomons Steel/Flying Mew. In this vein, there’s possibility for a good number of overlap between Camo and Inheritance sets. Two better examples would be
Rilla!Zarude in Inheritance and Grass/Dark Rilla in Camo, as well as Zor!Steela in Inheritance and Steel/Flying Scizor in Camo.
As a result, I think that picking up Inheritance should not be that hard for longtime Camo players which makes it a solid addition to the lineup in case Camo gets axed.
2.2) Council activity, popularity and metagame state
I’d like to think that we as a council have been pretty consistently on top of balancing the meta and reacting to the wishes of the community. Additionally, Inheritance is pretty popular among the community since it frequently wins omotm. This obviously holds true for most other candidates, so it’s likely not that important.
The most important argument imo is the fact that inheritance is in a pretty good spot balance-wise. In addition, I didn’t even play it in OMSL but I did a good amount of building and had a lot of fun doing so and helping Don test. In fact I ended up regretting deciding not to play, because I had so much fun building it. I’m pretty sure most of the other OMSL Inheritance players would agree with me. And despite all the development it got during OMSL, I feel like there’s still much to explore like I’ve already
mentioned in the thread.
3) The case for 8 slot team tours
It can’t be a TNM post on team tours without suggesting to expand the number of slots to 8. In a way I’m glad this thread was made, as despite Camomons being in danger of getting axed (fingers crossed that it doesn’t), those of us who are in favor of an 8 slot OMPL now have good candidates for meta number 8, which was always an issue with the suggestion.
I’ve suggested this multiple times in the past, mostly because I share a server with ex AGTL Icemaster and he frequently expressed the desire to have AG reintegrated into OMPL. I obviously liked the idea since I wanted to team up with him. But even putting personal reasons aside, I think the pros of 8 slot tours far outweigh the cons. However, when I brought up the idea, it was always brushed off with the argument that the AG community wants to be separate from OMs. I know the OP disallows independent metas like AG but please forgive me for ignoring that.
We have two prominent AG names in our community (FC – STAB council, Fardin – MNM council) and both have expressed an interest in AG becoming a part of OM team tours again. Additionally we also have Derpyboi who from what I gather also plays AG. There’s likely others, sorry if I didn’t mention you. Anyway, the point is that we don’t need to guess as to whether the AG community wants to be a part of our team tours. We can ask the members of our community that are active in AG – and I think they’ve made their desire clear.
With that said, I don’t think it’s a given that AG would be opposed to being a part of OMPL. I suspect that they would be open to the idea, but I could be wrong.
Including AG as meta number 7 and one of the suggestions in the OP as meta number 8 in addition to the current 6 seems to create a very appealing 8 slot OMPL, at least to me.
The expansion to 8 slots is often criticised from the standpoint of competitiveness maximisation. We want OMPL to be as competitive as possible, which is more easily doable with 6 slots than with 8 slots. I definitely agree with this. However, AG at least should not be a problem on that front since there’s plenty of good AG players to choose from. The 7th OM could be an issue, but I think we’ve had a lot of players pick up metas they were previously unfamiliar with this year due to swiss, so I think we could find enough skilled players to fill out all of our slots.
On the flip side, one of the biggest upsides to an 8 slot OMPL, especially one that integrates an outside community into ours, is that it exposes more people to our core metas. More people exposed to these metas, means more people involved in the OM community. Take Shing and Beauts for example – they went into OMPL as NFE mains, and went on to be slotted into MNM in WC and join the GG and Sketch councils respectively. I’m optimistic that we could see something similar happen if we expand the number of slots to 8 and include more people in eventual OMPL rosters.
Recruiting more players into our community seems especially important atm with a bunch of our best and most prominent players expressing a desire to retire in the near future or basically having retired already. Obviously I hope to see them all come back for next OMPL, but i
f we continue to bleed players from the top, the competitiveness of our tours will steadily decline, no matter the number of slots. This is why I feel like any effort to broaden the scope of players OMPL appeals to is going to be positive in the long run, even if it becomes slightly less competitive in the short run (which I don’t think it will).
