Read between the lines, plus a history of similar, even rhetorically worse posts.
The first line "Before I forget, I respect you as a player and you often post intelligently even when I disagree with a hot take here or there." is actually pretty good, and civil, and nice. This is something we could all do more on Smogon Forums, or the internet in general.
But anway,
I'm not sure why this logic is still being applied in April '23.
Tera was 100% new toy syndrome and in general, unless a mechanic is egregiously broken, we try to keep it.
At the time, the gimmick was so cool and novel that the only players who were against it that early cared more about a balanced game than fun.
That's why it was a small group that early on.
I've posted that a lot of players just lacked foresight to how damaging the mechanic would be for a healthy meta in the long term.
Unless you take it at face value, almost all of these arguments are inflammatory. Arguing that it was new toy syndrome, only cared more about novelty, or it was less about balance as much as fun; these are all arguments that are actively pushing the notion that people on the opposing side of the argument were simply not in the right mind. You call me out for saying the rants come off as psychotic, and frankly whatever; most of these arguments end up being "the opposing side does not know anything."
"outright banning terastalization is incredibly unpopular." At the time. Things change and now a lot of players regret their vote. I still think it might pass a suspect though, to be fair, but we deserve at least one more go around where players can vote more intelligently and without any weird, arbitrary, downright goofy af "restrictions" to convolute the process. Ban/No Ban, that's it.
You do not see this argument get made for many other things that have been Suspect Tested this recently. There is no actual evidence to the point that players regret their vote, and the argument at the end again implies that there are reasons that the suspect went they way it did, rather than people having opinions on the other side of the argument. No, they just weren't voting intelligently, there were arbitrary rules getting in the way, and if anything, Ban/No Ban is what we should get?
That's honestly throwing, if it was Ban vs No Ban, it was going to be not even close; if anything, the largest factor in No Action winning out was the many voters that they believed Ban would be the most popular Action. In which case, if you want Terastilization to be restricted, you would want it to be an entirely separate side than "Ban or No Ban", unless you simply want to box people in and hope they take one side, that they didn't necessarily want before.
The response to the "weirdness" (which is still a naturally obtained conclusion, by the way) around the Suspect isn't solved by "narrowing the options", it's by making those options actually distinct, in hindsight. By removing options all that can happen is give a lot of people nothing that represents their actual opinion.
On the argument of "Special Treatment" some have brought up... Yes! The regional mechanic is getting that, but also a lot of that is because Tera Preview has actual precedence with how TPCi actually runs their tournaments, revealing that there is at least a good reason to believe that Terastilization in competitive formats is supposed to be balanced with the assumption of knowing the opponent's Terastilizations in mind.
I think you would be surprised at how things have changed.
Since the suspect, especially the past 2 months, it's clicking for a lot of players, consciously or subconsciously realize that the gimmick, while not obviously broken as D-Max, is simply unhealthy and can't be balanced in a competitive way.
This assumes that a lot of people just somehow don't have that opinion anymore. The subconscious one is especially ridiculous, and ties into an argument made later, where people simply cast away their secret intellectual side pushing anti-Tera or whatever. I think you could make an argument that Volcarona especially got a lot more people to agree with anti Terastilization sentiments, but it's easy to argue that Volcarona is one of the Pokemon that would be much easier to deal with Tera Preview, compared to most others. As well as that, I made a post around that commotion saying that it shouldn't really change the pro-Tera argument, and if we are to take the next argument I respond to as gospel, that means that actually 90% of people are pro Tera now (Certified FACT True) /s.
In your post, you assert that this is true. I would argue that there is no evidence of this, other than you agreeing with the post at large. There isn't any evidence that Tera is any more popular or less popular, other than forum posts, of which I honestly saw more anti Tera posts back during the Suspect Test. A lot of this is just conjecture and should be treated as such in any direction. It would be just as easy for me to claim that, actually, a lot of the Silent Majority of SPL players have actually come to the subconscious conclusion that they like Terastilization competitively, and just simply will not allow their logical arguments to come out, for fear of contradicting themselves.
Players who were ardent supporters of Tera during that initial time have flipped their opinion entirely.
OU chat sees about 50 "fuck tera" posts a day.
Same thing, literally, again. No proof, hell, I saw at least a hundred "fuck tera" messages in OU Chatroom during the Suspect Test, this is entirely anecdotal.
Not that it matters, but for every 1300 elo that lives on the forum laugh react, there's another like/love react on my posts.
But more importantly, that isn't an argument.
Not trying to go all reddit ackchyually on you here king but this logic is a textbook 'appeal to majority' fallacy.
The first part is just ad hominem, since there is a lot of people that are literally tournament players or even moderators step in to say a lot of these posts by LoseToRU are a bit much, and anecdotally (no proof will be given), I literally know several people who have liked the post in question, that think it was unhinged.
It is in fact not an argument that Laugh Haha funnies on the forum don't really mean much. But neither do anecdotes about OU Chatroom, likes on the forum, etc. etc. It's common for Suspect Test threads to have a post with like 30+ likes and almost no disapproval that entirely contradicts the actual result of the Suspect Test, normally for not getting rid of a Pokemon. I think using the Forum in either direction is a major mistake in argumentation, which is why the surveys... exist!
On the last part, I actually had a pretty good discussion on the subject of Suspect Tests and democracy in Smogon tiering, and I have this conclusion:
The entire point of the official surveys is literally to figure out how to appeal to majority. And Suspect Tests are figuring out how to appeal to the qualified majority. What is the point of much in Smogon tiering if we are going to appeal to the idea that, actually, the majority should not be listened to? I get it, it's frustrating when a lot of people who really don't care much about the game actually get their way (Zamazenta-Crowned Suspect Test momento, that had me reeeaaalll salty), but even then, I don't really think that that justifies anything changing. It is demonstrably better for the game to listen to the people, even when a questionable decision is made according to someone (including me sometimes), the Council has literal data, from the majority of both qualified and unqualified players, to see what people are looking for.
On top of that, this is a game where usage stats are very important, and form the metagame a lot. Smogon is not nearly as elitist as it was once known to be (no matter if that reputation still lingers), and I think it's very important that we cautiously listen to the entire playerbase, and community; of course, acknowledging that certain players have much more say.
Regarding that topic as well, we discussed the point of qualified players in general. This is not very much related to LoseToRU's main points, I'd just like to address this which others talked about as well.
I'll just come out and say that even the best players can have some stinker takes, basically everyone does. That's part of why anyone is allowed to grind for reqs and participate, and not just "Oh we should trust these Logical People to make the decisions, the majority does not matter."
Especially since, back to Terastilization, if we take that Suspect Test it was actually nowhere near a Ban. The most popular option among qualified players was Tera Preview, accounting for the more than a few voters who legit straight up said they picked No Action out of fear for the Ban side being so loud on the forums.
We can pull some recent examples out to illustrate: right after Cycle ban a player hopped in OU chat to say we should ban Worm. Entire chat, including myself, was giving them a hard time, basically laughing at them. "It can only get up 1, maybe 2 tails bro lol". They essentially got bullied out of chat. Forums were the same. Now look at where we are. (We could also talk WW. OU tier leader outright called it broken, those first days of the meta any no-ban WW post was getting laugh reacts. That thing feels like a UU mon outside of sun...)
Honestly, don't really have much for this anecdote, but if anything it really goes more to say that we should listen to the majority, actually. Just because you predicted something in the future, doesn't mean you were totally right at the time, and we should have simply acted on that.
Metagames develop with usage and counters, not theorymonning. If Great Tusk suddenly dropped to 1% usage for some dumb reason, it would have almost no effect on the metagame, even if it could be a Top 3 Pokemon in the tier.
On the flip side as well, if we listen to the majority, we can find these opinions. There are no bubbles, if someone brings up some shit, even if others say "You're wrong!" it's there for others to silently mull over behind another screen, and figure things out. I distinctly remember a time where people were telling me in the OU Chatroom (before the Dracovish Suspect Test) that Dracovish was in no way broken, because Seismitoad was already so good.
I insisted that nobody would be using Seismitoad if Dracovish didn't exist, and people laughed at me. While it later felt good to be proven right, that doesn't mean that on that issue I should have simply been given any real power whatsoever. Other people (obviously) figured that out as well, or even already had, and a Suspect Test came and qualified individuals (not me) got that shit banned. I'm not saying this to delete credit from people who seem to know things ahead of time, but I would also later on watch a pokeaim video and say "Yeah! Melmetal should stay in the tier to destroy Clefable balance!"
People are more nuanced in every single direction of play, experience, background; someone could look at the builder and figure out something that top players are not abusing, even if unlikely. On the other hand, top players are almost always very good at abusing things when discovered, or figuring out things that can be abused.
If you want to have the most nuanced takes and opinions from the community, we have to listen to people, and if people are showing an
opinion more, it should be acted upon more.
...
So anywho, that is all to say that yes, the majority of opinions do matter; populism is a thing that shouldn't be ignored, and it is not a fallacy to invoke what people want as part of your argument for/against action.
However, I will say that it is fairly unlikely that unrestrained Tera is actually the most popular option (very very unlikely, but I have no proof), so I'd say calling out to a majority in this case was not a very good argument. Probably the safest bet is Tera Preview, which is similar, but not specified; I'd say there is a lot of nuance to this type of argument, which is why I wrote so much about it. Oops. I should probably continue.
I'm not trying to shatter your worldview but the majority often doesn't know wtf they're talking about or even doing, hence why its a logical fallacy to appeal to the majority.
Like, going to stay on topic, but entire nations, millions, have been wrong... and the few that stood out were punished.
The first part is about what I just talked about, but tldr: Sometimes, even the minority of "smart people" don't know what they are talking about on a subject, so there is really no better solution than democracy to get the most accurate reading of what people want, and act off of that. It is a logical fallacy only if you say the unnuanced version of this sort of argument, which is "The majority says so so majority is right", but I don't actually think Alternator was arguing this? Maybe I'm wrong, but this is getting very philosophical, my bad.
The surveys aren't that accurate either. We're talking about people who play and enjoy pokemon. Tera isn't literally making the game unplayable, and even I who dislike tera still vote around a 7. (Well not on the last survey but all the ones before that) The game isn't falling apart, it's just janky and goofy af when u can change your pokemon mid-battle into any type lmao. My entire argument is this meta is a 9 or 10 without tera. That's it.
This is a pretty fair opinion to have, I don't really care to dismiss it, but surveys aren't meant to have "The Truth". They are meant to give actual, real data beyond a Suspect Test (usually before a Suspect Test) to what people are thinking.
I literally think when/if tera gets banned, you personally will enjoy SV more.
Your balance score of 8 could be a 10.
Truly, I think it will click for you eventually. Anyone who actually ladders 1700+, and/or is active in the tour scene, is realizing this shit is terrible.
It's not a small minority anymore.
I also just want to highlight that some players have that weird, interesting thing where they've attached their persona onto a product or a belief, and any attacks on that they feel personally attacked.
Like if someone worships Apple and you say something bad about it certain parts of their brain light up that correspond with intense feelings about themselves.
This leaves philosophical territory and enters more "I am saying that actually, you don't know what you're talking about if you disagree, and I'm right," territory. This is where I mainly got my original post from.
There is no way that this can be interpreted as anything other than "I'm right, you just haven't seen the light", it feels downright religious for basically a Smogon Opinion. It's a fallacy to argue that the people that disagree with you have weird motives such as "that they feel personally attacked" as to imply why they defend their stance, or that on a Smogon Forum for competitive Pokemon opinions, categorizing an entire group of people with an opinion as low ladder dweebs who don't have an actual argument, is not going to be offensive to those who agree with that.
It's also the type of argument that basically washes away any real response, if need be. Me right now? Actually, I'm just the Pro Tera Pope, I'm only doing this because it hurt my feelings >:( to see Tera made fun of. Nuance is not a thing, and I totally did not write an entire essay randomly on how to argue against Terastilization in the Gen 9 National Dex tier, concluding that the only reasonable way to deal with it there is to ban Tera.
Defending this type of argument is honestly shameful in my opinion, it is essentially shit slinging written in long form. It's also not a very compelling argument, and one I am guilty of in the past.
For instance, I sometimes argued to people that you have to become better at using Tera to see why it is good, and like, no. Some just don't like it, some want it restricted, some just like it. What I've come to find is that Terastilization comes down to very individual philosophies on the game, the Smogon methodology, and tends to bring out the deepest arguments as a result.
"You just haven't seen it yet" is not one of those deeper arguments, it's assuming the worst in your peers.
I just want certain players and forum posters to take a long breath and maybe think twice about how they've entangled themselves into the tera gimmick.
The logical arguments for ban tera are concise and factual.
Pro tera is literally, "it's fun" and "it's the gen's gimmick".
Which aren't arguments, just like appealing to majority isn't..
This first line is another ad hominem disguised in good faith, it's just saying that people who argue for Terastilization are generally "entangled" (implied to be caught and unable to escape, being clearly a way to further suggest people are simply too deep into an argument), and don't actually think about it anymore.
Line two is just, okay. Pro tera is literally logical, concise and factual, anti tera is literally "it's not fun" and "who cares about the gen's gimmick." Which aren't arguments, just like appealing to a minority isn't.
It's so, so very easy to just claim that the opposite side of a debate has no argument. Like, what? This doesn't say anything. You mention that you want more people who are pro Tera to give opposing arguments to anti Tera claims, but pro Tera is in policy the status quo. It is technically on the defense. Anti Tera also has not made many new points, and neither has Pro Tera in a while. I think most people find it rather pointless at this point, but I agree that to an extent a lot of pro Tera needs to make more actual points, as it is brought up still a lot.
I think it's a poor ego thing when people hold onto old beliefs in the face of new info.
It's okay you were wrong, it happens to the best of it.
Now this is just a bit ahead of itself, is it not? How can this be read as anything other than ad hominem? Over and over again this post leads to one main point: If you believe in pro Tera, I think that you are misguided, or thinking not for yourself, or are bad at the game, etc. Which is just very unnecessary, and at least to me comes off as pretty unhinged.
The last part I don't have much to say to, and it's directed at one person; I will allow that person to argue that back, or I don't really care honestly. But now I want to respond to your main post, rather than explain why I took it in that way.
Maybe I'm a calloused teacher used to people insulting me, but reading your exchange you seem to be the one being a lot ruder than he is.
Considering one of the main points of your post is that the original post was not insulting alone, my pretty clear sarcasm in response to its main tone is probably ruder if you see it like that.
I don't really think his post comes across as hostile, but this one you made absolutely does i.e. calling someone unhinged and psychopathic. The worst he is doing is assuming you are low ladder which is petty but it's not exactly a big deal to be called bad at a video game. It's pretty weird that you call for civility in the same post that you call someone psychotic.
The post is hostile, if it comes across like that to you or not. And the post I think was pretty unhinged, though the word psychopathic was pretty unwarranted, yes.
It's not assuming "you are low ladder", it's assuming that you have to have some reason to believe in pro Tera other than having arguments you agree with. The post argues some people are literally lying to themselves about their opinion on Tera, that is pretty bad. I'm calling for civility because I wanted that to be the last post of this recent flare up, but that did not happen, so.
Besides that you aren't really engaging in his points. While I would agree that in a normal suspect, saying the suspect is invalid would be silly, tera was handled quite differently and it is legitimate to question the validity of the results. If you have read any research, you know if you are doing a survey, the way the question is worded can alter your results drastically. Tera absolutely had new toy syndrome, as everything does, and we were still having fun and exploring the mechanic at the time, I would even argue that people were significantly worse at abusing terra. He is arguing that people voted no ban because they didn't like any of the half measures that could have been implemented if we approached that 60% threshold. This sentiment was expressed in some the discussion threads, the half measures proposed were generally pretty unpopular, with tera preview being the most popular, but it was still controversial at best. It's certainly a point you can disagree with, but not a point that is just "I don't like the results so screw them" he does have a real criticism here.
First of all, the Suspect Test was not "a survey". It was a Suspect Test with conditions set before, by previous inputs and data from the community, and a thread on how to cover Tera. It was based on qualified results that knew what were the choices going in. New toy syndrome is a weird argument to make when people already, at the time, honestly had mostly gotten the hang of it. People were already making basically the same arguments we see today on both sides. You can make an argument people were worse at abusing Tera, but I don't think I'd agree with that necessarily. I also will not say you are wrong on that, I simply do not know.
No, he definitely does straight up dislike the results, as someone who has several times by now asked the Council to straight up ignore the results, and instead act on their own volition (to ban the mechanic), which was the least popular main option. Even now I see people talking about Tera Preview, because it would genuinely solve a lot of ladder frustration. Most people see it as something that would help, even if it wouldn't solve every single problem with the mechanic.
The supermajority threshold should be uncontroversial. Without literally knowing the results ahead of time by I dunno, using a time machine, 49 - 51 could have also happened and created a massive shitshow. 60% isn't honestly a high bar to remove a mechanic that completely shapes how this generation will be played.
His criticism is weak because instead of targeting what is the best point, pushing two very different arguments into the same side, it's "Remove those sides, make it just Ban/No Ban." That should by no means be anyone's reasonable conclusion looking at that Suspect's result.
Also is it not reasonable to assume that the result may change given that a decent amount of time and several bans have happened, and the suspect was handled in a more straightforward way given that the result was .8% away (pretty much as razor thin margins as it gets) from action being taken? I don't think that is an unreasonable opinion.
Idk where he comes off as thinking he is smarter than everyone else. It is true that people on lower ladder tend to view tera more positively than higher ladder and tournament players. This doesn't mean they are wrong, but explaining the perspective of someone higher on the ladder, where players are much better at exploiting the frustrating 50/50s tera creates is certainly fine. In low and even mid ladder, players don't even seem to consider common teras in their game plan from what I can tell, which probably makes them feel more like lures and less like 50/50s, or sometimes even 25/25/25/25s. In high ladder and tournament games you have to constantly fear any possible tera from the many extremely dangerous sweepers that end games extremely quickly. As a side note, I certainly hope if you are arguing on the internet you think your opinion is more valid than the other.
"Idk wher he comes off as thinking he is smarter than everyone else." Why no, it isn't everyone else. It is just conveniently the people who he disagrees with and belittled amany times in the same post, and prior. I think the next arguments you make are fine here, though you do say something I disagree with. In most SPL games I have seen, it is so obvious what is likely to Tera on preview, and it almost always happens. Most teamstyles right now have 1-3 Pokemon you would almost always preferrably Tera (Skeledirge, Roaring Moon, Dragonite, etc.) and if anything, I think it's a lot more of a 25/25/25/25 when people don't actually know how to use the mechanic in lower levels.
On the last line: After months of Tera shit, I have come to one conclusion. There is literally no correct answer on Terastilization. So no, I don't think anyone in these arguments should believe their take on Tera is more valid, frankly.
If you like Tera or not is based on so many factors and nuances that to just say that there is one right side, and one wrong side, is downright naive in my opinion. With something that basically changes the game to this degree, Tera can either make Gen 9 OU "Pokemon 2", the first sequel to competitive Pokemon released since Gen 4, or basically something that only gets in the way of what is otherwise something you would probably love. And I don't think either side is necessarily wrong on all accounts.
That is why, since before the Suspect was even over, I was arguing for a Tera Ladder and Non-Tera ladder for OU. Because I don't think there is actually a correct answer in any sense, and I believe that as it is now, there will always be a decent chunk of the playerbase unhappy with the result/policy. I'd go as far as to say that the counter-arguments I see that essentially boil down to "But what if that splits the playerbase!" are missing the point. If that pleases the most people, then yes, I'd gladly halve the playerbase frankly. Arguments about which would remain the main tier would be very contentious, but I still believe in a Tera Ladder/ No Tera Ladder. Preferably the second, as honestly in lower tiers Tera is even more fun, and something tells me we aren't going to be getting two actives RU ladders.
People talk a lot about surprise tera types, but it generally they aren't comparable to lures because we know the common volc teras, it is just nearly impossible to accurately predict which one from team structure, and instead of just sniping one pokemon these sets usually win the game on the spot.
I kind of agree, but also I think the major issue is just, not knowing when the opponent will Tera. While I did mention for a lot of teams it can be obvious when playing good players, that's what gets more into people's heads than "Guess The Tera", which is why Tera Preview is both popular and unpopular at the same time.
Anywho, I wrote a lot, but I hope this at least satisfies some of your itch for wanting a perspective on pro Tera, though I think this is more nuanced than just "pro" this, "anti" that. I hope this also clears up how I got that sort of tone from the original post, and why I did in fact make that frankly aggressive post in response. I will not die on the hill that that was fine, but I will say that it's not "You were being rude, not the other person!" even if you agree I said much worse.
