Suggestions for OM Improvement

Jajoken You're generalizing the failure of one ladder as all of them. The problem with your idea is that you're screwing 3 successful ladders in the hopes of fixing an unsuccessful one.



This particular question is important though because it poses whether we should even keep one of STABmons/Sketchmons.
I don't agree with the idea that it screws ladders at all. AG and Mono of course will stay regardless because they're in a world of their own activity wise and there would probably be pretty significant backlash. 1v1 and 2v2 Doubles can rotate fairly seamlessly with community crossover, as can BH and CH (although I doubt this is a direction that would be gone in, just keep BH as its own deal since nothing else is rlly in that category). That leaves AAA, MNM, and Sketch. AAA's #1 on ladder is only marginally higher than Sketch's, so we can /sorta/ lump them in a similar issue pool. Rotation might even spur some activity as people won't sicken of them and when they're back they'll be fresh. MNM could be the biggest one of controversy since it gets a pretty decent level of play and has a fairly unique concept, but I seriously doubt anyone would HATE it if they rotated out. Plus, we could also keep the rotated out ladders as challenge formats, which still allows us to do tours (room and forum) regardless of what ladder formats exist. Plus, we're opened up to having one of each metagame "type" as recently outlined by EG's post, which i feel would be a universally good thing.

What I feel ISNT a solution, though, is removing an OM ladder slot altogether. If the options are do nothing or get rid of the slot, I'd rather do nothing.
 
1v1 in no way should be rotated out. There's also an argument to be made that Mix and Mega is doing quite well. Again, rotating out formats according to Jajoken's system harms our tournaments.

What if we go back to the former rotation concept? That is significantly better than this flawed concept. What if we have one slot with AAA + either STABmons/Sketchmons and then we have a second slot with Mix and Mega + stat/type based OM. How would the respective communities feel about that? In particular, I'm going to tag Eevee General, Laxpras, and Chloe.
 
Jajoken You're generalizing the failure of one ladder as all of them. The problem with your idea is that you're screwing 3 successful ladders in the hopes of fixing an unsuccessful one.



This particular question is important though because it poses whether we should even keep one of STABmons/Sketchmons.
You've brought up the idea of dumping both Stabmons and Sketchmons as permanent ladders twice now. Personally I don't see how fewer ladders will increase interest in the OM community as a whole. I know I personally don't play "Other Metas" so to speak, I play certain metagames that I enjoy that happen to be classified that way. The difference there is that I won't just hop from the metas I like (which happen to be STABmons and Sketchmons, so sue me I'm biased) to a more popular one. I'm likely to lose some interest in the community. And I think other people, including newcomers, might be too.

I agree that too many ladders isn't the goal either, and I'm not trying to argue for a reinstated LCotm ladder or anything (which is very different as it doesn't have a consistent playerbase, and so I'm not touching on it here).

I suppose my overall question is: If we remove these ladders which you seem to think have failed (I can't really argue against Sketchmons being dead), what will take their place? I don't think an empty slot is a good idea.

smh I was like double-ninja'd while typing this
I have no opinion on rotations
 
I was pro-rotate before and I still am. Originally I wanted to compromise with a STAB/Sketch rotation, but if we can't have similar formats doubled up, then I'm in agreement to a STAB (or Sketch, :S) ladder paired with AAA (or whatever).

I agree mostly with what Jajoken has been saying about it cultivating excitement.
 
Not a fan of rotational ladders, you read my other post with a bit of explanations

I think the most immediate harm of rotations is that it hinders our Smogon tournaments. I also believe that rotational ladders will have the opposite of the intended effect: interest will fall. I am really just not following the logic that people will want to play a meta more because it's available less. Also even if activity spikes during the first week of a meta returning, do we really believe that will hold true for the full x amount of months for the rotation? Even in OMotM we can see how quickly activity falls after the first week or so.

The farthest I would go in a compromising opinion (not that I have a vote or any power in this) is that there could be a single rotational ladder that can serve as something similar to a Leaders Choice ladder replacement. This rotational ladder would include popular metagames that fail to reach a certain activity level desired by the OM higher ups. For example, it could start with just being STABmons and Inheritance. If Sketchmons falls below a certain play count, maybe Sketchmons loses its permanent status and ventures into the rotation. If AAA falls under the desired playcount, the same would happen. If a ladder continuously got high amounts of plays throughout multiple rotations, that would be strong evidence in favor of a permanent ladder for said meta.

Obvious issues that would have to be worked out is how many metas could be in the rotation, how do we decide which ladders get started in the rotation, how do we decide which ladders get eliminated all together from the rotation, what amount of plays would a permaladder need to stay above to avoid going to the rotation, how many plays and for how many rotations would a meta need to receive to be promoted to permaladder from rotation etc.

Another problem that arises from this is that the existence of a single rotational ladder may lower the playcount of existing permaladders, creating a loop where permaladders fall into the rotation due to activity deficits that would have not otherwise been there.

Kind of annoyed that I wrote this cuz it sounds like a solid idea and I'm not sure I personally like it bc I like playing AAA

e: wasted my 500th post fuck me
 
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Last I'll say for the moment but when I talk about the failure of the permaladders, I'm including Tier Shift and STABmons (and I guess Inverse to throw sin(pi) a bone). You can say "oh those are no longer relevant because they were removed"...but they were removed for exactly the same reasons Sketchmons might be next. And like Sketchmons, despite their low activity, there is still a deticated effort to make them succeed. Under a rotation ladder or some other solution, all these OMs might still be around in some sort of official capacity.

I've avoided naming names, but yes, when I refer to struggling ladders I primarily mean Sketchmons and AAA. AG and Monotype aren't going anywhere, BH seems to be relatively well-run and active, 1v1 activity is decent, Mix and Mega's overall player quality is suspect (I qualified for recs when at least 2/3 of players didn't understand the core concept of the meta) but that's a different issue and it appears to remain fairly popular all the same. All of these could feasibly retain permaladders. The only reason I included some of them in the first concept was because it retains the "1 ladder per niche" scheme discussed previously, but I think they're safe for the time being.

But STABmons, Sketchmons, Tier Shift and AAA are all in a state of limbo where they remain popular by OM standards but not enough to attract a steady playerbase on their ladders, if they still have them. And simply put, replacing them with different OMs just isn't the solution. It didn't work for STABmons -> Sketchmons and it feels like pure hubris to think subbing back in STABmons would fix things. You could just kill that slot, and maybe AAA's, altogether but I think that would just be a waste.

Here's a slightly more concrete version of my second concept (and don't take any of these as gospel, I'm just spitballing ideas and I don't think any one of them is the optimal solution). In Gen 7.5, cut Sketchmons and AAA, but keep them as challenge formats. Then, add STABmons, Tier Shift, and a small number of other fan favorites (I won't name any to avoid bias) as new challenge formats. All of these will be included in room tours and official tournaments. Open one or two rotating slots filled by these challenge formats, giving them a 1-2 month tenure before they're swapped out. On the eve of Gen 8, look at which OM(s) saw major activity under this system and consider reinstating them as permaladders if it makes sense to do so. Sub in missing slots in the rotation schedule with popular OMs from Gen 7, and cut those that seem to have lost all interest as a last resort.

I'm not trying to drag down all of OMs to fit some new scheme, but bad ladders do harm to the overall community. A lot of people see OMs as a joke, and when their first impression is ladders like these, who can blame them for perpetuating that reputation?

EDIT: I didn't read the Laxpras post above but my idea ended up being pretty similar, so needless to say, I agree with it.
 
Another problem that arises from this is that the existence of a single rotational ladder may lower the playcount of existing permaladders, creating a loop where permaladders fall into the rotation due to activity deficits that would have not otherwise been there.
I'd like to stress a point that's come up here, which is that different people like different metas. Someone who likes and only plays X is not going to start playing Y just because X doesn't have a ladder any more.

Since ladder activity is the issue, I'd like to know if there's any reason why my suggestion about adding a descriptive text that appears when you hover on the OM's that appear when you select format on PS hasn't been implemented or even addressed from what I can gather. It's a real and deciding factor for players checking out the format list.
 
I used to be adamantly against rotation but I don't think it's such a bad idea anymore.

Most of the arguments for and against rotation, at least it seems to me as of now, are not backed by any sort of concrete proof - everyone's just throwing out their prediction as to what will happen. Given that the current system - permanent ladders - is obviously not working and we're ending up with dead ladders, what is the harm in trying something else and seeing if it works out? We can always revert if rotational ladders end up being bad in practice, but right now everyone can only talk theory because neither side has any precedent they can cite for how it would end up. I like this quote from Franklin Roosevelt that I found from House of Cards, even though it's kind of overly dramatic for the purposes of this thread:
It is common sense to take a method and try it. If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.
As for tournaments, I don't see why we can't stick to the current set-up of metagames, having AAA and Sketch still as "official" OMs despite seemingly being on equal status with the others. Or changing that if the community wants it after some rotation metagame amasses a measurably larger following than one of them.

EDIT: To clarify I only think the AAA and Sketch slots should be rotational, no way active metagames like BH would be put into rotation.
 
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Honestly, the rotational concept seems ideal, since the period of decay while the ladders are inactive would more or less level the playing field between stronger and weaker players, thus giving anyone of notable competence a chance to top the ladder as opposed to someone who has hours to spare grinding their way up, since that's what seemingly all OM ladders have indeed come to, none of the top players bothering to ladder anymore, other than perhaps one battle every once in a while to stop themselves from decaying down.

Using the rotational method does have downsides, though. OMs like AAA, 1v1, MnM, STABmons?, and BH have all had lots of work done by lots of people who actively manage, participate in, and actually care about the metas; swapping all of them out at once would likely be an issue, since their replacements are naturally not as structurally built for the competitive purposes of tournaments, particularly the main tournaments on Smogon, as well as the lesser sporadic tournaments in the actual room + the scheduled dailies.

I don't really have a definitive solution for how we can fix things, but I can at least offer a few suggestions:
  • Only rotating one OM at a time: This would be a much more minor change as opposed to switching out all the interchangeable OMs at once, giving the newer OMs at least a chance to gather interest, as well as presence in OMs at all. You could even use the LC slot for this option so we don't have to add or remove metas, and alternate between the "types" of metas that have been emphasized so much in the posts above.
  • Reworking the OMotM system: Voting isn't the worst option, it at least gives people outside of the system a chance to make their voices heard, but it can definitely be a bit biased when there are lots of OMs that gain too much attention. A neat way to fix it might be to add ladders for newly made OMs and/or metas that didn't get many votes. This system would offer a greater choice to all players over the current system of having players decide whether they're going to care about this month's OM or not.
  • Making OM "Type" a requirement for new OMS: The notion here is simple, you basically just have all OMs be labeled as one of the "types" of metas (Ability, Move, Type, Mega, Stat, Item, Z-Move, Teams, Doubles, Other, Combinations of more than one, and whatever else I missed) and use that label to help organize all these metas so that we can have diverse subsets to each niche similar to how 1v1 has its own OMs in the form of 1v1UU, AAA1v1, Sketch1v1, etc, except instead of having everything be based off of the "main" OM, it's based off the niche it's labeled as. Though this wouldn't really have anything to do with ladders, it would at least provide us a more organizational way to arrange tournaments that are much more unique to the ordinary tournaments you'd see in the room every day.
  • Offer incentives and new ideas to people through means other than Smogon: This one kinda turned into a mess of thoughts I feel that this should be obvious, but things pertaining to OM that get attention on the main server always have a much bigger turnout than they would otherwise, see: OMotM voting being announced in the news, playerbases growing as a result of OMs gaining their own rooms, participation growing as a result of suspect tests being in the news, etc. Publicizing important things going on in the OM community will almost always lead to increased activity. I only go off on this tangent because lacking publicity seems to be part of why Sketchmons and 2v2/STAB last gen "failed". This perhaps might be a much more grand suggestion than even TI can perform, but what if we just divide the news notification we get every time Showdown loads into three sections for the main tiers, past gens, and OMs?
Ultimately, the people/person in power has to make the decision over whether it's better to experiment around or to stay with what has worked in the past. It's just my personal opinion that sticking with the past is part of what causes the loss of interest in OMs.
 
While I really have no stakes in this topic (unless you made BH rotational, in which case I'd have little reason to play at all during its off time), I can put in some input. League of Legends has a "Rotating Game Mode" that offers a new mode every weekend. These game modes are effectively "OMs" of LoL. These get rotated every so often to keep things fresh. However, LoL has a major problem: unbalanced rotations (some game modes are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more common than others). Interest for the more common game modes appears to wane with every time they come around while the more rare/new modes are usually a hit (usually, Dark Star doesn't seem super popular based on queue times.) I don't have hard data for this, but just guessing based on queue times on the occasions I play. (URF modes usually have like... a :10 - :20 second wait. ARAM and Normals have about a :40 - 1:30 wait. Dark Star and some less popular modes upwards 2:00+) They get around this by making some significant changes to the modes occasionally.

I have no hard data, but rotating modes seems to work and without impacting the normal modes too much. Granted, that player base is utterly gigantic compared to the entire Smogon-base, let alone the OM community, so that may not hold true here.

Other input: I'd rotate things fairly frequently. Like, every two weeks frequently. Most interest in a OMOTM seem to be in the first week or two, so cutting out the less active weeks seems like a good idea, plus it keeps people from having to wait too long for their preferred mode to rotate back in. And if a ladder flounders on even that short of duration, then it can be a candidate for replacing or removal.

Personally, I'd keep the most popular/staple modes permanent and put some others in a rotation of some kind.
 
I'm not a fan of this whole rotational system to an extent but on another hand I agree with the idea that newer OMs tend to get more activity than the ones we've seen before but there's exceptions such as AG, Monotype, 1v1 and BH to an extent. I picked these metagames due to different factor. AG, Monotype and 1v1 have a room that is constantly active during the day. Plus, their discussion and ressources thread is always active filled up with discussion this in addition to the ladder play they get daily make them the trio have an active userbase and show that people are interested in playing such OMs. As for BH it is a unique metagame that is the most famous outside of these three, the community is hard working and made a lot of progress to stand where they are now with continuous discussions on the thread, ressources and the different suspect thread discussions. Now, I'm not saying that the other metagames don't have the same activity ladder wise (Mix and Mega) or they haven't worked as hard or even harder to get to this point. But, there's also other metagames that work hard and just end up getting stuck in a cycle of OMOTM. Also, as I see the main problem is what to rotate and what are the metagames that represent the Other Metagame community in tournaments well I bet you guessed already. I think the best rotational system (Idk if it was posted before) should be divided like this:

  • 4 Main OMs consisting of Anything Goes, Monotype, 1v1, and BH. These 4 Other metagames are by far the most active and unique idea with an already built strong community.
  • Boosting the count of Other Metagames on ladder from 6 to 8.
  • Allowing a rotation between the "Type" of OMs: Moves, Abilities, Stats, Evolution, Types as mentioned by Jajoken in his post, if 8 is too much we can keep 7 and interchange per example between the least used "Type" I'd remove the OMs that are about types but I guess not leaving one out is the perfect solution.
  • Side OMs will enter in a rotational system every X month, maybe 3 months while picking 2 metagames from each "Type" other ones left out will be the ones eligible for OMOTM per example if we have both AAA and Inheritance up for Abilities, then Pokeability will be the ability OM eligible for OMOTM and not the other two. An idea of how it may look like:
Anything Goes
Monotype
1v1
Balanced Hackmons
[Move OM]: STABmons <=> Sketchmons
[Abilities OM]: AAA <=> Inheritance
[Stats OM]: Tier Shift <=> 350 Cup or Averagemons
[Evolution OM]: Evolution: MnM <=> Cross Evolution

Another idea if that may look too much is interchanging also between type of OMs, say if we want 5 OMs or 6 OMs we can go per example: AAA <=> Inheritance <=> MnM <=> Cross Evolution but that would mean leaving communities out for so long which means if we combine 2 Types of OMs we'd have to rotate between them every month.

Now, with that being said other OMs will get representation in tournaments. Say between the rotational OMs if the "Evolution" based OM didn't get much play and interested then we'd drop the metagames from Open and OMPL but if per example MnM got the activity and not Cross Evolution then MnM should get the representation in the official tournaments, this applies to all rotational OMs. This may sound like more work but if we want to give an equal start to all metagames that aren't part of the Big 4 to become famous and strive for balance, activity and hard work this is what we should do. In theory, the OM that have the most active community and leaders will be represent in Official Tournaments alongside others. This system may be flawed and is probably too unreal to apply but with the right work and set of mind this can happen and give every eye catching OM a chance.
 
I'd like to stress a point that's come up here, which is that different people like different metas. Someone who likes and only plays X is not going to start playing Y just because X doesn't have a ladder any more.

Since ladder activity is the issue, I'd like to know if there's any reason why my suggestion about adding a descriptive text that appears when you hover on the OM's that appear when you select format on PS hasn't been implemented or even addressed from what I can gather. It's a real and deciding factor for players checking out the format list.

Echoing this great suggestion with my own from earlier in this thread. We need to spread love information about OMs.

Hey,

To teach new players how an OM functions there should be a message broadcasted upon entering an OM battle. The message should briefly explain how the OM functions and link the most relevant threads. To make this less of a nuisance to experienced players it should only broadcasts in battles where either player has less than 1300 ELO. The message might look like this, or more detailed.
View attachment 75404

Posts detailing how a metagame functions will help inexperienced players who might not even know where to look. Giving them a brief explanation of the metagame will help them take their first step into OMs, and hopefully they be enticed to learn more.

Thank you,
Grains of Salt
 
With the release of the OM UU banlist and thread I wanted to do an AAA UU tour, but apparently there is already a queue to do so. My thought is though, with OMPL coming to a close and the next OMGS a long ways a way, why don't we host a UU OMGS of sorts?

I see no reason not to, I'm sure it would be a lot of fun and plenty of people would sign up but likely less than typical OMGS (which may be a good thing). Like I've been saying, tours are a great way to keep interest in OMs, and here is a perfect opportunity.

e: if you're against having that big of a tour for UU there is always a way to combine tours/battles in a similar fashion to how OMGS playoffs work.

ee to below: f i didnt want responsibility i got school comin someone take that pls lmao
 
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I think there should be a thread in this forum similar to the "good cores" on in other tiers. Simply the community of BH is active enough to keep such a thread decently alive, and I think it could really help "decent but not great" players coming into OMs to teambuild and get an idea of how the metagame works.

Just in BH, cores are way more important than in other tiers: strong defensive cores are essential in a place where balance is half the metagame and most teams can fight stall wars. Imposterproofing cores are such a big part of the game they aren't even really considered as "cores", but it could help other players understand how and why it is such an intriquate an interestign mechanic of BH. Offensive cores are also really interesting, as luring (illusion, judgment, fleur cannon pdon...) and synergies (terrains, same-mon spam...) help push good teams over the top.

I am far from the best or most well-known player in OMs and particularly BH, but I would be happy to help put up this thread if people think it is a good idea.
 
I think there should be a thread in this forum similar to the "good cores" on in other tiers. Simply the community of BH is active enough to keep such a thread decently alive, and I think it could really help "decent but not great" players coming into OMs to teambuild and get an idea of how the metagame works.

Just in BH, cores are way more important than in other tiers: strong defensive cores are essential in a place where balance is half the metagame and most teams can fight stall wars. Imposterproofing cores are such a big part of the game they aren't even really considered as "cores", but it could help other players understand how and why it is such an intriquate an interestign mechanic of BH. Offensive cores are also really interesting, as luring (illusion, judgment, fleur cannon pdon...) and synergies (terrains, same-mon spam...) help push good teams over the top.

I am far from the best or most well-known player in OMs and particularly BH, but I would be happy to help put up this thread if people think it is a good idea.
A good cores thread has been denied in the past because they are supposed to go in the resources thread for that specific OM, so I'd talk to E4 Flint if you want something like this hosted for BH
 
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And here we are-

I personally think it would be a great idea to give the UU OMs a little love now that they exist. However, we naturally don't have the room on the server to support having all of them available at once, so perhaps we should just start with something a bit more simple, like rotating them in one/two at a time. Otherwise, they just end up in a state even worse than the Leader's Choice metas, gaining hardly any plays at all due to the people's lacking desire to go so far out of their way just for a single battle.

A big plus of having these be playable is that we could potentially branch out to other communities beyond just the OU/Ubers groupings. But unfortunately, there's no way to say for certain that it would work, so, like most suggestions, we'd have to try it out to see what happens one way or the other. But the one certain thing is that if we don't do anything or wait too long to do something, then it just ends up as wasted potential.

And if ladders are too much, then we can make them challenge formats. And if even that is too much, we can at the completely very least make them usable formats for room tournaments, since we know TI has the power to do that. Either way, we simply cannot just make UU OMs a thing and do absolutely nothing else with them imo-
 
View attachment 87161

And here we are-

I personally think it would be a great idea to give the UU OMs a little love now that they exist. However, we naturally don't have the room on the server to support having all of them available at once, so perhaps we should just start with something a bit more simple, like rotating them in one/two at a time. Otherwise, they just end up in a state even worse than the Leader's Choice metas, gaining hardly any plays at all due to the people's lacking desire to go so far out of their way just for a single battle.

A big plus of having these be playable is that we could potentially branch out to other communities beyond just the OU/Ubers groupings. But unfortunately, there's no way to say for certain that it would work, so, like most suggestions, we'd have to try it out to see what happens one way or the other. But the one certain thing is that if we don't do anything or wait too long to do something, then it just ends up as wasted potential.

And if ladders are too much, then we can make them challenge formats. And if even that is too much, we can at the completely very least make them usable formats for room tournaments, since we know TI has the power to do that. Either way, we simply cannot just make UU OMs a thing and do absolutely nothing else with them imo-
Some other things that I think should be mentioned about this great idea and why it's so great.

Having OM UU rotational doesn't take the focus away from standard OMs like LCotM did. We're not actually introducing new metagames and new rules, but rather just playing the ones we have with mons that aren't as good. Because of this we can attract users to OMs with the appeal of play it while you can, while still having an option of playing the format once the rotation ends.

This can also increase forum activity specifically in the UU OMs thread so it can actually do something and not be like the Past Gen OMs thread (which we should also make rotationals)
 
I personally think it would be a great idea to give the UU OMs a little love now that they exist. However, we naturally don't have the room on the server to support having all of them available at once, so perhaps we should just start with something a bit more simple, like rotating them in one/two at a time. Otherwise, they just end up in a state even worse than the Leader's Choice metas, gaining hardly any plays at all due to the people's lacking desire to go so far out of their way just for a single battle.
This idea simply isn't good. Breathing life into UnderUsed formats isn't something we should really be advocating to this extent, when there are already formats we have now with minimal plays. It's also proven that these formats aren't popular whether it be viewed through the example of LC UU (happened last generation, got a maximum of 14 plays in any given month) or through the popularity of the regular OM formats in comparison. Consider how unpopular the Sketchmons ladder is now, and in comparison how more inactive this proposed UU rotational would be. Whether you view it as a good idea or not, it simply won't function to the efficiency you're hoping to achieve.
A big plus of having these be playable is that we could potentially branch out to other communities beyond just the OU/Ubers groupings. But unfortunately, there's no way to say for certain that it would work, so, like most suggestions, we'd have to try it out to see what happens one way or the other. But the one certain thing is that if we don't do anything or wait too long to do something, then it just ends up as wasted potential.
How are UU OMs appealing to the UU community though? They have a separate banlist, it's not like we're building metagames around the UU banlist. I don't think you're putting two and two together. Lower-tier players would most likely prefer the more active and more established formats regardless. It's not like we only attract players solely from the OU community by having OU-based formats. If we should be investing into attracting another community, consider more doubles OMs. UU OMs don't attract lower tier players any more than regular OMs do.
And if ladders are too much, then we can make them challenge formats. And if even that is too much, we can at the completely very least make them usable formats for room tournaments, since we know TI has the power to do that. Either way, we simply cannot just make UU OMs a thing and do absolutely nothing else with them imo-
Challenge formats shouldn't be needed though. You can always challenge someone to BH UU and agree on complying to the banlist. They're already usable formats in tournaments, but we generally don't make them because they're unpopular. It's that simple.
Some other things that I think should be mentioned about this great idea and why it's so great. Having OM UU rotational doesn't take the focus away from standard OMs like LCotM did. We're not actually introducing new metagames and new rules, but rather just playing the ones we have with mons that aren't as good. Because of this we can attract users to OMs with the appeal of play it while you can, while still having an option of playing the format once the rotation ends.
This is actually true. It won't detract activity from other ladders; however, what you're confusing is the reason for this. Players will not play the UU formats extensively unless they're interested in the main formats, and even then the vast majority of players would prefer the regular vanilla formats >_<.
This can also increase forum activity specifically in the UU OMs thread so it can actually do something and not be like the Past Gen OMs thread (which we should also make rotationals)
Making a thread active should not be a reason to have a format on server.
 
here comes a fucken post

Hi everyone! As many of you are probably aware, I've been compiling and analysing data regarding OM ladder plays for quite a while because I am a huge dork and I really like statistics. These stats are pretty interesting to analyse because from them we can infer quite a bit about OMs and what causes them to rise and fall in popularity.

cq56e0G.png

note: the curvy line is a polynomial trendline

Here's a link to my spreadsheet where I compile the stats. Sorry about the mess!

Here's an imgur album with similar graphs for each permaladder individually.

mono and ag are included seperately bc they're seperate communities and they kinda do their own thing
stats from suspect tests are included
stats from lc uu and triples not included bc lol
no stats for jun 2017 bc this

I think the most important take-away from this is that, contrary to what many may think, for the most part OM ladders do not compete with each other. A lot of people in this thread and elsewhere have made arguments under the assumption that increasing the number of OM ladders on PS will draw players away from the existing metagames, and this reasoning was even used as justification for the removal of LCotM. However, the data just doesn't support this conclusion. At the beginning of this generation, some of the OM permaladders were changed and LCotM was removed, resulting in a net loss of 2 ladders. Yet this has not led to any increase in the playcount for the remaining ladders. In fact, every OM has actually noticeably decreased in playcount since the beginning of the generation, and all of them are below where they were at the end of last generation. When LCotM was introduced last gen, adding an additional ladder to the OM lineup, there was no decrease in the playcount of the other OMs. As well, the OM ladders are largely unaffected by the popularity or unpopularity of OMotM and LCotM. Even Mix and Mega in September 2016, the most popular OMotM of all time with over 200,000 plays, had barely any influence on the playcount of the permaladders. (The exception to this is when two metas overlap significantly — e.g Tier Shift dropped a lot in the month that Extreme Tier Shift was OMotM).

This might seem unintuitive, but it's important to realise that a majority of people who play on the OM ladders — particularly OMotM — are not 'om players'. The people who frequent the OM room on PS, post in the OM forum, and primarily or solely play OMs are a minority. Most people who play on OM ladders are just people who enjoy that particular metagame and generally would not consider themselves to be 'OM players'. For these players, OMs are not competing with each other, they're competing with every other ladder on PS and with whatever other leisure activities that person could be doing instead.

So what does this mean for us? It means that fears about adding more ladders on the basis that it would detract from existing ladders are largely baseless, as long as the ladders being added are sufficiently different from the existing ladders.

Personally, I'd really like to see a return of the LCotM ladder. Last gen, it was really nice having an alternative in the months where the OMotM wasn't particularly exciting, and it shone a spotlight on cool but old/obscure/unpopular metas that would never have had a shot otherwise. If it does come back, I think it would be nice to see some more variants of existing metas - things like mashup metas, and old gen/uu/ubers/doubles/lc versions of existing metagames.

Something to discuss: How active should a ladder be to be considered active enough to stick around? There's been a lot of discussion in this thread about certain ladders being too inactive, but there doesn't seem to be much consensus on how active a ladder should be. And do we expect a different level of activity from OMotM compared to the permaladders? For reference, when STABmons was removed for inactivity last gen it was sitting around 3000-4000 plays per month. Inverse and TS were both lower. This gen, Sketchmons has been at around 1500 since around February, and in the last couple months AAA has been at around 5000.

On rotational ladders: I'm in favour of at least testing this out, but I think we should be prepared to go back on it if it doesn't work out. It's hard to tell how popular rotations will be, but I will point out that in every case where a meta has gotten OMotM twice, it was more popular the second time.

One last thing: Currently, all the daily tours are held at a time that is convenient for people in North America but not particularly convenient for people elsewhere in the world. I live in Australia, and while I'd love to compete in the daily tours I can't because they start at like 6 am. Could we consider holding a second daily tour each day to allow people in other timezones to compete?
 
One last thing: Currently, all the daily tours are held at a time that is convenient for people in North America but not particularly convenient for people elsewhere in the world. I live in Australia, and while I'd love to compete in the daily tours I can't because they start at like 6 am. Could we consider holding a second daily tour each day to allow people in other timezones to compete?

The daily tours are at the time PS, and the OM room, is most active. Unfortunately the opposite times of the day isn't up to the standard you'd expect for an "official" tournament like the dailies. Since there's a prize on the line it wouldn't be fair to those that participate at the current time because the alternative time tournament would be much smaller. As you know we do have regular tournaments throughout the day that Australians and people from other parts of the world that can't make the daily can compete in.
 
The daily tours are at the time PS, and the OM room, is most active. Unfortunately the opposite times of the day isn't up to the standard you'd expect for an "official" tournament like the dailies. Since there's a prize on the line it wouldn't be fair to those that participate at the current time because the alternative time tournament would be much smaller. As you know we do have regular tournaments throughout the day that Australians and people from other parts of the world that can't make the daily can compete in.

I agree with what you're saying about the opposite time of the day, but if you really want it to be fair cause there's a prize I guess letting the daily tour reach more users would be better and give players that do not live in North America a chance. Tournaments happen around 10 PM GMT with puts the Asian, Europe and Australia+New Zealand into a difficult spot which makes the majority of joiners from North America. Furthermore, the past winners are users that already won the dailies competition different months so adding more users to the fix stiffen competition and pushes us away from the same users winning every month. Now, I'm not suggesting a 12 hours difference but at least another tour that starts 6-7 hours before the daily atm.
 
I agree with what you're saying about the opposite time of the day, but if you really want it to be fair cause there's a prize I guess letting the daily tour reach more users would be better and give players that do not live in North America a chance. Tournaments happen around 10 PM GMT with puts the Asian, Europe and Australia+New Zealand into a difficult spot which makes the majority of joiners from North America. Furthermore, the past winners are users that already won the dailies competition different months so adding more users to the fix stiffen competition and pushes us away from the same users winning every month. Now, I'm not suggesting a 12 hours difference but at least another tour that starts 6-7 hours before the daily atm.
The issue with this is you're always missing a bunch of people regardless of when you set the daily. The time you suggest is 1AM/2AM for me, when Australia is one of the timezones you're supposed to be aiding? Most Americans are in school during this time as well. If anything you're making it less convenient for people with that proposal.
 
The issue with this is you're always missing a bunch of people regardless of when you set the daily. The time you suggest is 1AM/2AM for me, when Australia is one of the timezones you're supposed to be aiding? Most Americans are in school during this time as well. If anything you're making it less convenient for people with that proposal.
It is as good as it gets really. The monotype room also has some kind of official tournament that happens twice a day, 8 hours apart if I recall correctly, and it seems to work just fine. Obviously some people will always have an advantage if they are in such a timezone where they're available to play both tournaments.For example, I remember them happening at 1PM and 9PM my time (or 12AM and 8PM depending on the time of the year), meaning I'd be one of the privileged. While this can work, if people really do find it unfair, the best solution would be to "split" the daily, making you unable to join the other if you've already joined one that day (I don't know if this is easy or not to implement but it could work if so possible). This change would definitely lead to less competitive dailies, since there aren't as many people, but it's just a suggestion that could please some crowds that just don't get to participate in these tournaments.

E: Or if the suggestion doesn't work, penalizing those who participate in both tournaments is also an option that could be considered (i.e. only "half" points if you've already joined a daily that day).
 
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