Metagame SS Ubers - Community Surveys

[Tony]

Hey everyone,

Similarly to how OU has been doing it, we're going to start checking in with the community about how they feel about the current metagame via regular surveys. We'll use this thread to announce the surveys and to keep track of the results throughout the upcoming year. Without further ado, here's the first one:

SS Ubers - Community Survey (12-2020)​

 

[Tony]

Thank you all for participating in our first community survey! We're no longer accepting answers for this one, but we'll check in with you again through a new survey in the not too distant future. Now then, let's dive into the results.

Despite getting mixed results from these two questions, we're checking in at around a 7 out of 10 as the most selected answer to both enjoyment and stability of the tier right, which frankly I'm quite content with. Other than banning Dynamax, this is our starting point post-DLC2, so if this is our base then I'm very optimistic about how results for these questions could look in the future. We intend on asking these two questions every time we release a survey in order to be able to track our progress as the metagame develops.

This is of course the big one for now. Undeniably you guys want to see something done about the 'big 2' in the tier right now, with Calyrex-S standing out in particular. Personally I'm quite surprised Calyrex-S received almost double the amount of votes that Zacian-C did, as I believe Zacian-C to actually be more pressing myself. Granted, Calyrex-S is obviously a massive headache as well and unlike Zacian-C only joined the tier with the release of DLC2, so the recency element is probably a big factor. All in all the council agrees that one of the two needs to be looked in the near future.

We asked you guys this question because we were curious if you had made up your mind about both needing to be suspect tested, or that simply looking into one of two could alleviate the pressing effect the other puts on the team builder. This is Ubers after all, so ideally we approach our tiering with a minimalist approach. I was a little worried about an overwhelming "No" response to this question, but you guys seem open to the idea of looking into just one of the two titans at first and to take it from there.

In closing I want to thank you all again for your submissions and keep an eye on the np: SS Ubers Stage 4 thread for more updates from the council.

 

[Tony]

Apologies for the delay, but I wanted to verify the results before posting them. In the survey we asked you guys if you were in the top 50 of the Ubers ladder or if you had made it to round 3 of the Kickoff 2.0. The Ubers council members' submissions are added to this list of people as well. We decided on this separation to see if the majority view lined up with the view of the more experienced Ubers player base. There were a total of 36 qualified players that participated. Here are the results!

Unfortunately, it appears enjoyment is down quite a bit compared to the overall view of the Ubers community. :( To those of you that submitted a low rating for enjoyment, I encourage you to post in the np: SS Ubers Stage 4 thread to explain your reasoning behind your decision, as well as what you believe needs to be done for that number to go up. The stability being judged as significantly better than the enjoyment factor is somewhat surprising to me, though I suppose brokens cancelling out brokens doesn't necessarily equate to enjoyment at all.

This is where the big difference lies between the overall community view and the more experienced players' view. Calyrex-S had a 58.1% majority in the overall view, whereas here it's Zacian-C getting the most votes at 50.0%. Due to these conflicting results I want to urge those of you that met the experienced player criteria to post in the np: SS Ubers Stage 4 thread explaining the reasoning behind your voting. I'll be doing the same sometime this week.

This graph supports the one above and it's a close call once more. I'm looking forward to more discussion in the Ubers Discord server and the metagame discussion thread and we will of course check in with you all again in the future with more surveys.

 

[Tony]

Hey everyone,

The metagame has settled down and evolved from the Zacian-C ban, so the Ubers Council is looking to check in with you guys again to determine where we want to go from here. If you're interested in sharing your thoughts on the current metagame, then please fill in the survey linked below!

SS Ubers - Community Survey (02-2021)​

 

[Tony]

Alright, let's get into the results!

How much do you enjoy SS Ubers right now?

12-2020

02-2021

Here are the results on metagame enjoyment for both the first survey and the current survey. The first thing you might notice is that we got significantly fewer responses this time around, which means either this topic isn't as urgent as Zacian-C was, or that we should've done a better job advertising the survey. The latter is something I'll take note of either way, especially when it comes to the PS! Ubers room. In any case, the two clear peaks indicate that we're scoring significantly higher compared to the large amount of negative responses we received in December, so that's great to see. It can always be better, but that's why we're checking in the way we are after all!

How stable do you think SS Ubers is right now?

12-2020

02-2020

These results are very encouraging to me. In December your submissions were fairly even spread, with a lot of you choosing to submit a low score for metagame stability. Clearly Zacian-C was too big of a disruption and I'm glad the numbers on stability have improved so much since it was banned. Obviously we're still looking into making changes from here, but the progress made already is great to see.

Now then, let's focus on the two elephants in the room. Clearly both Calyrex-S and Shadow Tag are both still controversial presences even after we banned Zacian-C, though Calyrex-S received more of a mixed response than Shadow Tag did. I'd imagine that Yveltal's dominance and overall viability has a lot to do with that, too. In any case, it's clear the community believes both Calyrex-S and Shadow Tag are problematic as of right now.

Qualified Players Results

When I say "qualified players", I mean the players that meet either the ladder requirements outlined in the survey, the tournament requirements outlined in the survey or players that are on the SS Ubers tiering council. There is a significant difference in how the 28 qualified players deem the two respective issues compared to the overall community.

I'm personally not too surprised, since Shadow Tag is definitely more prominent of an issue in tournament play compared to ladder play, which is where a lot of the overall community feedback naturally is based on.

That concludes our second survey! We'll be back with another one in a couple of months, while updates from the council will follow in both our Discord server and the metagame discussion thread. Thank you for participating!

 

[Tony]

Alright, the Ubers council is once again looking to check in with everyone, this time to see how you guys have enjoyed the metagame since we banned Shadow Tag. As always, please spread the survey amongst your interested friends in order for us to poll as many Ubers players as possible. Thank you!

SS Ubers - Community Survey (05-2021)​

 

[Tony]

Thank you all for participating! Here are the results.

We're still at around the 7-8 mark for metagame enjoyment and stability, which is pretty good I'd say. Obviously, the goal is to start creeping towards that 9 range, especially with Shadow Tag's ban being great for metagame stability, but for now I'm personally satisfied with these results.

When it comes to Calyrex-S and Zacian-H, you guys have deemed both Pokemon as problematic, with Calyrex-S in particular raking in the 10 votes.

Unsurprisingly, these results translate to Calyrex-S being the issue the community wants to see addressed the most, and by a considerable margin at that.

However, when you separate the qualified votes, being those in the Ubers Winter Seasonal R8+, top 30 on the ladder and the tiering council, there is a strong preference for addressing Zacian-H first.

I encourage everyone that has an interest in discussing these findings, as well as possible action we can take from here, to make a post in the metagame discussion thread. Thanks again for your participation!

 

[Tony]

It's that time again.. I had planned to do this last week, but after the Pokémon Presents from yesterday got announced I wanted to see if there was any definitive news with regards to Arceus potentially becoming available to us. In any case, here you go:

SS Ubers - Community Survey (08-2021)​

 

[Tony]

Thank you all for submitting your responses! Let's get right into them.

The metagame enjoyment and stability scores are looking excellent and that's a great thing for us to see. Enjoyment in particular had a significantly higher amount of middling or even negative responses in the past survey, so I'm glad that the Zacian-H sized headache being relieved has had such an impact on how you guys are experiencing the metagame.

The responses to this question are very interesting to me, because the feedback here is essentially all over the place. Clearly the public opinion on Calyrex-S is very divided and I can see why, given that it's both kept in check well yet restricting at the same time.

This piechart confirms the results from the previous question; there seems to be a split opinion on whether Calyrex-S needs to be addressed or not.

These results are for the same question as before, but it only takes the people into account that either played multiple SS Ubers games in UPL, held a top 30 position on the ladder at the time of the survey's release or are members of the Ubers council. The division is a bit more defined, though still not that far removed from a near even split like the community seems to be overall.

Thanks again for submitting your insight on the metagame and for being part of our tiering process. More updates from the Ubers council, as always, will come in the metagame discussion thread.

 

[Fc]

We're back post SCL and UWC with another survey! With the 2 biggest team tournaments near the end of the year over, we'd like to gauge general opinions on how things are going with the tier quite a while after all the bans which gave time to let things settle, so here it is:

SS Ubers - Community Survey (11-2021)​

 

[Fc]

Thanks for the responses as always, and with 21 voters falling under the qualified pool here's the results!

Enjoyment is on a down slump from last time, which isn't unexpected because it's not a brand new meta like last time, but is still a bit lower than we'd like at around a 6.2/10. The qualified responses are a bit higher at a 6.67/10, but lower than previous regardless. Stability on the other hand is higher, averaging just above a 7 at around 7.1/10. The qualified responses is slightly lower at a 6.67/10, which is something to keep an eye on but not a huge difference. Overall things aren't bad with above a 7 being a good average, but there's a bit of room to get better looking at the previous surveys.

With the first graph being generally and the second being for the qualified voters, Calyrex-S is a bit higher overall than before. Averaging a 6.3/10 it's not much higher than previous which had it around a 6, so the slightly lower turnout might have changed things a bit, and general opinion on Calyrex-S went slightly up for its impact. For the qualified responses, however, the opinion on Calyrex-S being overwhelming is much lower. Hitting a 5.2/10 average, it's right around where even Magnezone ended up for the general and qualified responses, so it's showing to be far less impactful among those who play in tournaments or at the high ladder. Overall similar to normal and expected, but it's Calyrex-S so the watch will always be close on it and encourage discussion in the metagame thread.

Overall, Magnezone received little support for being broken or overwhelming. First graph being everyone and second being the qualified responses as before, generally it hovered around 5, being 4.9/10 overall and 5.1/10 for the qualified voters. While it is controversial and we may keep an eye on it, nothing is needed to be done with Magnezone currently.

And with that we have our results, if anyone has any questions please don't hesitate to ask. Discussion in our metagame discussion thread is heavily encouraged, so please do share your thoughts about these results, and stay tuned for more as always!

 

[Fc]

As promised, here's another survey after the conclusion of ubers open! As always please let us know your thoughts through this, and it will close in roughly one week after this post goes up.

SS Ubers - Community Survey (06-2022)​

 

[Fc]

And that's it! This is probably the end of surveys for SS as the gen comes to a close within the next few months, thank you to everyone who participated! Compared to the last survey we had 20 more legitimate responses for a total of 90, with 27 qualified voters, so let's get into the results:

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Enjoyment is right around the same as last time, hovering at ~6.2/10. Consistency is good, since things aren't getting too stale as time goes on if this stat in particular stays the same. Not too much of note, just consistency. Stability is right around last time as well, averaging ~6.9/10 compared to the 7.1/10 last time. Again, nothing to note, just consistency for the metagame.

Calyrex-S responses aren't the same as last time, something more interesting than the other results. The overall ranking actually went down, being ~6/10 compared to the 6.3/10 last time. The qualified responses, however, went noticeably up. Going from a 5.2/10 last time to ~6.4/10 this time, is a big jump. With both sections being above 6/10 it is more concerning than when Calyrex-S was comparable to Magnezone, showing that it's clearly the only thing in the metagame that would be any bit concerning at this time.

Magnezone has nothing of note going on. The qualified responses had a massive drop, with an average of 3.3/10 now compared to the 5.1 before. Overall it's also down, being ~3.2/10. Magnezone is fully off our radar at this point, as the metagame has adapted to it and the vast majority of the playerbase do not see anything wrong with it at this time.

Thanks again everyone for your participation, and keep an eye out for any further updates after this final survey. As always, discussion in our metagame discussion thread is appreciated, thanks!