Metagame Terastallization Tiering Discussion, Part II [CLOSED FOR DLC]

[LoseToRU?]

Yes, the OU room holds a more negative sentiment towards Tera on the whole (not that it’s super unfavorable as plenty still wish to keep it), but it is also from a much more varied background of players, and, to put it bluntly, not every opinion is equal when some opinions are people who are not very experienced or understanding. Some people are frustrated casuals or individuals without much understanding of game theory. This is a huge part of why we have dedicated threads and forums for these things, even ranging over to the PR thread.

Of course there are great and not-so-great players on both sides here and it’s never been cut-and-dry. But it is both unreasonable and unprecedented to suddenly hold OU Room tiering discussion highly in a tiering context.

That is not how it has ever worked and that’s not suddenly changing. We do not even have the infrastructure or manpower as a council to patrol the OU Room 24/7 as that’s not our jobs either, so it would be a logistical impossibility as well.

Dude this is literally the hardest time to be a Tier Leader in the fuckin' history of this site.
It has to be almost a full time job.

But I know you take some pride in your role, and I know those low comp scores must sting at least a little.

Having a tera suspect makes your job easier.
It finally puts this bullshit to rest once and for all.

This weird limbo state is causing a lot of strife on the community and the meta.

Phase 1:
Action/No Action

If Action passes enter Phase 2
Phase 2 options:
Ban TB
Team Preview
(Fringe option #1- like No Same Type Tera)
(Fringe option #2)

Let players vote on any and all options.
If any get a supermajority, implement it.

Or, whatever you want. But not doing anything, and ignoring the "Action" survey results and forum feedback can only be a mistake in the long run.

Just take the tera horse out back and shoot it already, put us out of our misery lol.

He's listening to the community feedback by listening to this thread and the PR thread, where a majority are not entertaining a ban or are unsure on which restriction to place. No one is calling for an immediate suspect. If council really didn't want to listen to its users, this thread wouldn't be here and Finch wouldn't be entertaining posts like these.

The only issue is the grown folks who throw tantrums because a process isn't going the way they wanted it to. This isn't a Smogon-issue either. Blaming everyone and conspiracy-theorying is how you throw the ethos of your argument away.

This thread, among others, are literally, at bare minimum, split in half- so not sure what you're talking about.
I'd argue that there are more pro-Action posts than not, but we can count them up some other day.

Also, there was a survey... showing a supermajority of players do not like Tera in it's current state, so not surprising forums also reflect this.

Please just throw your obligatory laugh react into liking a pro-tera/Finch post- it's a true combo.

I care a lot, too much for sure- and you don't, it's okay lol

Hopefully this will be all over soon and I can go back to just being a random ladder scrub.
I hate it here tbh lol

Hey so I understand why you can be annoyed by the fact that the forums/council may have a difference from the OU player base. But the thing that can be done is to have those people bring the discussion to the forums so that their voice can be heard. I'm sure you heard about a week ago when NatDex had their tera vote to keep tera in from all the people that got rallied from outside the forums. So do the same, get them to share their opinions on here to be heard

Yeah, I'm just friends with a lot of OU regulars, some casual some great, but it takes a certain kind of person to post on a forum lol, and casuals esp don't really want to.
But yeah, my points about OU room and how they feel are anecdotes that don't mean anything or hold much weight.
I'm just simply a dude who voted "Action" on the survey and I'm worried nothing will be done :/
I don't like to fight or argue at all lol

 

[1LDK]

But from your lurking, what did you find? I'm very confident that, in general, OU room is not pro-tera.

Bro, have you thought of the possibility that you find yourself in an echo chamber? The forums is an echo chamber, and the OU room is basically jail, the discords too, you need to visit all the places, sure, you might get the same results, but you don't wanna just stay on a single place, there's people who don't talk about in the OU chat room, personally, I have only been there twice, once for a room tournament and another to make setsu a question about world cup. What I'm trying to say is, look at more bubbles in this community than the ou room

Now, I guess I could talk about the way how the suspect test should be engaged since that is the purpose of this thread and not semantics and politics like every single polemic discussion. And before anything else, I'm gonna say that this will be my only post in this thread or probably one of the very few

From my personal perspective, I think Amaranth's idea on the survey is pretty neat, it's more complex, but that's what we need on a serious situation like this. I fill like his idea will ensure that every position gets to shine, and this will probably lead to a more clean win rather than just a single digit difference

And I know what some of you people might say "but 1LDK, the generational gimmick is just a term, it should not be treated specially, it should be treated like just any other suspect"

No

I know no one wants to hear another "tera is fun" argument, but would you guys hear the "ratings good" argument? The gimmick of the generation attracts people. I know the whole gen 8 boredom things is treated as a boogeyman at this point but oh my fucking god that shit is so boring for the majority of people that they don't even want to entertain the idea of another gimmickless gen, especially since unlike dinamax, this gimmick is not only fun, but you can make arguments for it. So of course people are gonna be fierce about leaving this one alive

What I'm trying to say with all of this is, at least treat this with respect, there's a lot in play.

Lastly, about my personal opinions on the matter: I have talked about them to death, so to make it short, I went full circle, I went from "Full ban on tera" to "Protect tera at any cost necessary" because I have learned to live with the gimmick, sure, I'm famous for being a bad player, but you don't need an Einstein size brain to figure out simple things like "that garga is 100% the tera" o "he put this mon in front of my mon, who normally beats it, why?" and ill admit, I have been fucked over, and I have fucked over, to really know about anything in life, you have to fully embrace its pros and cons. You have heard the whole laundry list, but let's make an encore

pros

it promotes some level of cutting corner team building where you can put some mons that might exacerbate weakness, but with the cost of a heavy resource, you can patch that up on one

it allows some mons to wall break easier and by the same coin, allows mons to wall easier, the kingambit speed war is not nearly as brutal, because you can patch an iron head to the face with a tera fire, a low kick with a tera flying, etc. so you can invest in more hp or defenses, and you also have teammates to help, this is just one example

by combining the 2 points above, you can make a gen full of innovations and a metagame that never gets stagnants, it's always on the move because people will keep creating fun stuff because they have resources and their limit is their own imagination. This makes the community alive, it creates attention

Cons

it feels cheap at times because some people believe that team building, is a skill that people forget, and I do share this feeling, fuck, I like to team build more than I like battling, I'm pretty sure I can make a team that can go top ladder, but I don't have the skill to pull that off. But there's people who will use this resource in just, patching a garga weakness and suddenly the team is way better against most offensive teams and yeah that's a good day let's go to sleep

you have all these 50/50, I personally don't agree to the extent, but you can fully make an argument that this exists, the mind games feel great when you get them right, but horrible when you fail, because either you didn't account for that, or you accounted and pray for every god to avoid it.

You can make everything right and still lose, either by a roll transformed into a ko or a get out of jail free card, random tera water does wonders in that department, and it feels like shit to have a numerical objective advantage and be taken away


And you can make more and more arguments. Like I said before, I'm a DNB person, the most you can get out of me is preview and even that has grown sour for me after the arguments made by the "tera discussion for people with no skill issue". And this is probably the only post ill make here, so uh yeah, I think I have covered everything I hope, you can give me likes for the big ass speech. If anything arises I can just make another clarification and be done, yeah that seems cool, thank you for reading

 

[Napoli Burns]

every finch posts sounds like "yes u are right, players wants action on tera but we (council) don't want it

the PR thread, where a majority are not entertaining a ban

last page is like, apart from the same people who constantly post here destroying any argument we try to build:

- let's make another ladder and test sv without tera
- let's suspect with ban/dnb
- suspect ladder pls
- tera is a joke

a guy even posted a replay showing how tera preview would look like https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9lc-1818188433-6kibzh675xgrnzfmbfkstbtfihyq3qxpw

 

[Mijzelffan]

Does banning tera blast actually alleviate what people are saying are the main problems with terastallization? Some of the most succesful abusers of tera (like Kingambit and Garganacl) barely even run tera blast. It's a huge opportunity cost to run it and it almost forces your choice of tera beforehand lest you end up with a pokemon with only 3 viable moves on it. Maybe I'm missing something but to me the tera blast discussion almost seems like it should be seperate from other tera discussion in that the only thing it seems to accomplish is getting a few pokemon unbanned, while the majority of the issues with tera still remain even without tera blast. Imo it feels like the tera blast discussion could be summarized with this image:

 

[ianlazerbeem]

Welp, sounds like it's Joever folks. Despite a super majority interested in action according to the tiering survey, sounds like the high level voices in the policy review thread who mostly support keeping Tera as it is (though several have said preview would improve the game) win out. It makes sense to prioritize the voices most active and most successful at this metagame and I can see how Terastalization rewards being in tune with metagame trends and how it can become predictable with enough practice.

I can see how this "exhibits skill" and definitely agree it "raises the skill ceiling" - the shame is that it puts this metagame in a place of being actively hostile for newer players. As someone who (despite being aware of smogon and the existence of the metagame since about 2008) hasn't really started actively playing until the start of this year, learning and keeping up with new developments has been very difficult for me. I would also say I've gotten a lot worse at the game since home came out due to the high degree of variance. we have resources like damage calc, Pikalytics, speed tiers, and more, but Tera's absence from Pikalytics alone heavily challenges newer players, and preview seems it would help acclimate newer players without impeding on higher level players' enjoyment of the mechanic. However if Vert and Blunder's voices are more important than the 60% of us just trying to keep up then I guess that's that.

You could say "skill issue, learn to play" and I guess that's true, but we are trying. 60% of us are trying and Tera as it is makes the metagame move at such a rapid pace that "gitting gud" requires a deep degree of study of the game. It does reward people who are best at the game so I guess that does technically make it a skill based competitve mechanic. But it's a skill based competitive one that makes it difficult for newer players to improve as it currently is. If over 60% of the playerbase "just needs to get better" perhaps it should be easier for them to do so.

I might just be complaining, but I think the numbers are important here too. does anyone else get this impression from Tera & the course of this discussion or is it just me

edit: I know it's easy to laugh react and say "skill issue" but I am genuinely interested on people's perspective on the balance between skill ceiling & skill expression vs ease of approachability for newer players so please reply if you have thoughts one way or the other

 

[Froctopus]

Yeah, I'm just friends with a lot of OU regulars, some casual some great, but it takes a certain kind of person to post on a forum lol, and casuals esp don't really want to.
But yeah, my points about OU room and how they feel are anecdotes that don't mean anything or hold much weight.
I'm just simply a dude who voted "Action" on the survey and I'm worried nothing will be done :/
I don't like to fight or argue at all lol

Ok...... so if you don't want to argue or fight why are you coming out swinging at Finch because he's 'not taking into account the OU chat rooms' even though that that they are anecdotes that don't hold much weight.

I'm a little peeved as well, this ban/test needs to be taken scientifically where you have a control test (current meta and its usage stats), then a test where you change variables (no tera) and see what changes. Like Napoli just said, I think there actually has to a separate ladder or verison for a week that shows what the game would be like if a fundamental part was taken out. People keep shooting it down because it 'fractures the player base'. So to avoid these conversations people (and I) have pivoted to talking about other means of restricting the power of tera without creating an entirely new ladder. This is where the OU people come in because if you can get them to voice their opinions in the forums, 1 the forums and OU chat room echo chambers break, and 2 a majority of the playbase is heard.

"TrUsT mE bRo ThE sYsTeM wOrKs", I hate to be that guy, but if more people voice their opinions on official channels, those making the decisions have to listen to them.

 

[LoseToRU?]

Bro, have you thought of the possibility that you find yourself in an echo chamber? The forums is an echo chamber, and the OU room is basically jail, the discords too, you need to visit all the places, sure, you might get the same results, but you don't wanna just stay on a single place, there's people who don't talk about in the OU chat room, personally, I have only been there twice, once for a room tournament and another to make setsu a question about world cup. What I'm trying to say is, look at more bubbles in this community than the ou room

Now, I guess I could talk about the way how the suspect test should be engaged since that is the purpose of this thread and not semantics and politics like every single polemic discussion. And before anything else, I'm gonna say that this will be my only post in this thread or probably one of the very few

From my personal perspective, I think Amaranth's idea on the survey is pretty neat, it's more complex, but that's what we need on a serious situation like this. I fill like his idea will ensure that every position gets to shine, and this will probably lead to a more clean win rather than just a single digit difference

And I know what some of you people might say "but 1LDK, the generational gimmick is just a term, it should not be treated specially, it should be treated like just any other suspect"

No

I know no one wants to hear another "tera is fun" argument, but would you guys hear the "ratings good" argument? The gimmick of the generation attracts people. I know the whole gen 8 boredom things is treated as a boogeyman at this point but oh my fucking god that shit is so boring for the majority of people that they don't even want to entertain the idea of another gimmickless gen, especially since unlike dinamax, this gimmick is not only fun, but you can make arguments for it. So of course people are gonna be fierce about leaving this one alive

What I'm trying to say with all of this is, at least treat this with respect, there's a lot in play.

Lastly, about my personal opinions on the matter: I have talked about them to death, so to make it short, I went full circle, I went from "Full ban on tera" to "Protect tera at any cost necessary" because I have learned to live with the gimmick, sure, I'm famous for being a bad player, but you don't need an Einstein size brain to figure out simple things like "that garga is 100% the tera" o "he put this mon in front of my mon, who normally beats it, why?" and ill admit, I have been fucked over, and I have fucked over, to really know about anything in life, you have to fully embrace its pros and cons. You have heard the whole laundry list, but let's make an encore

pros

it promotes some level of cutting corner team building where you can put some mons that might exacerbate weakness, but with the cost of a heavy resource, you can patch that up on one

it allows some mons to wall break easier and by the same coin, allows mons to wall easier, the kingambit speed war is not nearly as brutal, because you can patch an iron head to the face with a tera fire, a low kick with a tera flying, etc. so you can invest in more hp or defenses, and you also have teammates to help, this is just one example

by combining the 2 points above, you can make a gen full of innovations and a metagame that never gets stagnants, it's always on the move because people will keep creating fun stuff because they have resources and their limit is their own imagination. This makes the community alive, it creates attention

Cons

it feels cheap at times because some people believe that team building, is a skill that people forget, and I do share this feeling, fuck, I like to team build more than I like battling, I'm pretty sure I can make a team that can go top ladder, but I don't have the skill to pull that off. But there's people who will use this resource in just, patching a garga weakness and suddenly the team is way better against most offensive teams and yeah that's a good day let's go to sleep

you have all these 50/50, I personally don't agree to the extent, but you can fully make an argument that this exists, the mind games feel great when you get them right, but horrible when you fail, because either you didn't account for that, or you accounted and pray for every god to avoid it.

You can make everything right and still lose, either by a roll transformed into a ko or a get out of jail free card, random tera water does wonders in that department, and it feels like shit to have a numerical objective advantage and be taken away


And you can make more and more arguments. Like I said before, I'm a DNB person, the most you can get out of me is preview and even that has grown sour for me after the arguments made by the "tera discussion for people with no skill issue". And this is probably the only post ill make here, so uh yeah, I think I have covered everything I hope, you can give me likes for the big ass speech. If anything arises I can just make another clarification and be done, yeah that seems cool, thank you for reading

The echo chamber thing is interesting- I just assumed that the OU room was filled with the most active players.
A lot of my ladder matches have some random saying "Tera sucks" or I'll say it sucks and they'll say "yeah lol" but v true this could be an echo-chamber + confirmation biases.
But I feel vindicated when I see super low scores for comp and a survey result showing more ppl than not feel that some action needs to be taken.

I honestly think that the tera pros and cons are almost equal in some ways, and it's just up to the player to decide what team they want to be on.

I could sit here and write 2 pages about what is good about Tera, then another 2 about how trash it is.
So really, the arguments about tera don't really entice me anymore, no one is going to change their minds based on a post.
That's literally not how human brains work- changing someone's mind takes a lot of time and personal experiences- and that's if they have an open mind to begin with.

A lot of us have post traumatic SS disorder, that meta really did suck, which is why I'm so passionate about trying to save this one (in my eyes).
This meta would look nothing like SS w/o Tera, and would be a lot of fun, but I can't prove that to you nor anyone else.

But even Finch said there are parts of Tera that are uncomp- but we may just have to live with that, as we live with uncomp aspects of other metas.
If that's the end result then fine, but I still have some hope we can do something about Tera... even if it's small like banning TB.
If not, fine, but we need a concrete answer once and for all, imo.

We can def wait until after OLT- but after that, it needs to happen. The split about tera is causing damage to the community

Ok...... so if you don't want to argue or fight why are you coming out swinging at Finch because he's 'not taking into account the OU chat rooms' even though that that they are anecdotes that don't hold much weight.

I'm a little peeved as well, this ban/test needs to be taken scientifically where you have a control test (current meta and its usage stats), then a test where you change variables (no tera) and see what changes. Like Napoli just said, I think there actually has to a separate ladder or verison for a week that shows what the game would be like if a fundamental part was taken out. People keep shooting it down because it 'fractures the player base'. So to avoid these conversations people (and I) have pivoted to talking about other means of restricting the power of tera without creating an entirely new ladder. This is where the OU people come in because if you can get them to voice their opinions in the forums, 1 the forums and OU chat room echo chambers break, and 2 a majority of the playbase is heard.

"TrUsT mE bRo ThE sYsTeM wOrKs", I hate to be that guy, but if more people voice their opinions on official channels, those making the decisions have to listen to them.

I'm always learning things and Finch has taught me something more than once here.
I thought OU chat mattered, it doesn't at all and I understand that now.

Yeah I mean, a separate ladder is the only real way lol
How can ppl vote on something they haven't seen?
A lot of the same arguments were used against the NatDex ladder last gen, and look what happened.

But for a separate ladder, council would have to be ban-leaning and they are not.
Another ladder would give the anti-tera side a hell of a lot of ammo and many converts, imo.
I've played SV w/o Tera and I really enjoy it, but it's fine, whatever.

I'm also... man the restrictions.. idk. It's a can of worms. But when 65% of the players said Action, I'm not sure what they mean, either.
Tera is a nightmare scenario and thousands of ppl will be upset, no matter what.

 

[mcandrew5629]

last page is like, apart from the same people who constantly post here destroying any argument we try to build:

- let's make another ladder and test sv without tera
- let's suspect with ban/dnb
- suspect ladder pls
- tera is a joke

I don't know why you ignored the post right below in the PR thread explaining why a suspect ladder is not feasible (which also by the way is also the sentiment shared by tiering staff), but that is not a call for a ban nor is it a popular sentiment.

Also if you're gonna quote ABR as a "lets suspect", you should probably look at the first sentence of said post:

There should probably not be a test but if there’s a test there should only be 2 voting options

That post's entire premise hinged on a binary voting system as a hypothetical to if they were to test, but how did that turn into "people want tera banned"? Like if we're going to argue semantics, I would hope you're rereading these posts and what they're arguing.

Also fake linking the last bullet point is the most unserious thing I've read on the forum.

 

[Melbelle]

How can ppl vote on something they haven't seen?

You have seen the thing that may be voted on, you are suspecting tera, not whether you should transition to a tera-less meta. The difference may seem negligible or non-existent but it's the difference between ban tera because it's unhealthy vs ban tera because you prefer the meta without it.

 

[SpritePony]

You have seen the thing that may be voted on, you are suspecting tera, not whether you should transition to a tera-less meta. The difference may seem negligible or non-existent but it's the difference between ban tera because it's unhealthy vs ban tera because you prefer the meta without it.

Honestly, I hold the opinion that we need to be able to EXPERIENCE what the meta would be like without Tera for a short while before anyone commits to any decision on it, regardless of how one would've voted before it. Removing Tera is a MAJOR mechanic removal that affects quite literally every Pokemon in the game, and will have rippling effects through the tiers.

 

[658Greninja]

Ok lets put it this way.

Right here it is abundantly clear that the player base (including qualified players) want to see action taken on on Tera.

The whole purpose of the discussion forum is to help the council determine what should be done with Tera. There will be an eventual Tera suspect that may be for either enabling Tera Preview, banning Tera Blast, or outright removing Tera.

Things are simply complicated rn with OLT coming soon, so the process is gonna be slower than expected.

 

[SpritePony]

Ok lets put it this way.

View attachment 536572
Right here it is abundantly clear that the player base (including qualified players) want to see action taken on on Tera.

The whole purpose of the discussion forum is to help the council determine what should be done with Tera. There will be an eventual Tera suspect that may be for either enabling Tera Preview, banning Tera Blast, or outright removing Tera.

Things are simply complicated rn with OLT coming soon, so the process is gonna be slower than expected.

Pardon the ignorance, but what's OLT?

 

[Finchinator]

Pardon the ignorance, but what's OLT?

Official ladder tournament begins next week, but there is likely to be a suspect overlapping with it

 

[SpritePony]

Official ladder tournament begins next week, but there is likely to be a suspect overlapping with it

Ah, thank you Finch.

 

[LoseToRU?]

You have seen the thing that may be voted on, you are suspecting tera, not whether you should transition to a tera-less meta. The difference may seem negligible or non-existent but it's the difference between ban tera because it's unhealthy vs ban tera because you prefer the meta without it.

We ban unhealthy mons blindly because it's reasonable to assume the meta will be better without it.
As far as I know, there has never been a mon banned then let back in due a tier being worse without it.

Tera can not be banned blindly, as there is no reasonable assumption to be made.
To ask players who are on the fence between ban/no ban is to choose between the devil they know and the devil they don't.

We're also missing out on players learning that, "hey, SV isn't SS w/o Tera... and I really like being able to simply play vs all the bullshit tera management."

It's not about healthy vs preference, its about data gathering.
Giving players information.

If Tera is so amazing, then it would be clear playing a few no-tera ladder matches, right?

Idk why any pro-tera player would be against another ladder- wouldn't it be in their best interest to show everyone how much SV sucks w/o Tera?
This is why I think some pro-tera players are disingenuous af, and don't stand behind what they're saying.
Pro-tera should be clamoring for a suspect ladder to prove to everyone how right they are lol

Any talking point about not establishing a second ladder is laughable, to me.
They could easily toss one up, and leave it up for a week or so.

Ladder is literally meaningless, it's as meaningless as what OU chat says.
There is no stake behind the ladder and it's literally there for casuals- even peaking the ladder means almost nothing.

Thousands of ppl would flock to the no-tera ladder, and form better, more educated opinions.
Who cares if main ladder took a hit in numbers for a week- we can gather data about this highly contentious and unique situation we find ourselves in, that's a low risk high reward situation- 100%.

This is where I can go "conspiracy" or whatever, but if I was on council, and pro-tera, a separate ladder the last thing I would do.
I would quote old rules and simply dismiss it, well not me even if I was pro-tera, cuz that's sketch af, but I could see why someone would.

But yeah, initial Tera suspect was, as we all know, v mishandled.
It should have never happened w/o a separate ladder.

That was then, and I don't fault council for how it was handled mostly, weird time- but to double down and not give us a glimpse into what we're voting on seems v strange to me.

"Split the playerbase" bro it's ladder. It's a week, 2 at tops.
We've let broken, insanely OP mons allowed on the ladder for months lmfao

Just say you don't want us to find out what this meta looks like w/o the awful gimmick.

Anyway, like I said, conspiracy or whatever, but I feel, and with all due respect, data collection has been mishandled.

Ok lets put it this way.

View attachment 536572
Right here it is abundantly clear that the player base (including qualified players) want to see action taken on on Tera.

The whole purpose of the discussion forum is to help the council determine what should be done with Tera. There will be an eventual Tera suspect that may be for either enabling Tera Preview, banning Tera Blast, or outright removing Tera.

Things are simply complicated rn with OLT coming soon, so the process is gonna be slower than expected.

Hate to break it to you king, but our tier leader said recently a suspect might not even be considered.
"I am not even committed to a suspect test at all" -Finch

Data has barely been taken all meta about Tera- for reasons unknown.
We can attribute ignorance rather than malice here, but a major misstep, regardless.

We haven't been asking players about tera for most of the surveys.
And this survey was purposely left vague. For unknown reasons.

So you would assume the next step would be to get less vague, and conduct another.
Or start a suspect.
Neither has been implemented as of now.
Strange times.

 

[Froctopus]

On the flaws of running a suspect ladder without Tera:

Theory would be adding a suspect ladder without Tera. Reflecting the actual current metagame is in no way theory. The premise of those saying that we are leaning it up to theory without adding a second ladder have it backwards.

The metagame without Tera would be vastly different with many unforeeen differences. There would be potential for many bans or unbans as well as different things being used (across Pokemon themselves, sets on Pokemon, etc.) Using this blindly as an experimental variable in the most important suspect ever would be a historically bad decision.

The point of a suspect test is to determine if something is broken in the metagame or not. The metagame itself should be the sole determinant of this.

If it’s broken, we act from there accordingly. There may be more shifts or bans from there, but there’s ample time to accommodate to that. This goes for suspects of Pokemon and other variables.

The point is not to determine if the metagame is immediately better with or without something as there are so many external factors there and we cannot account for future ramifications the same. For example, if we suspect and ban Kingambit, it’s feasible the day1 metagame may be worse despite a potential ban the community wants as Gholdengo and Dragapult may run rampant. But with adaptation or future suspects, it can ultimately be better in the long haul. Using that day1 metagame solely without that one thing (be it Kingambit or, in this instance, Tera) for anything of shortsighted and a bad tiering practice.

I already discussed this with tiering admin when multiple people publicly brought this up and someone on my council did, and they confirmed a non-Tera ladder is not on the table. I am not even committed to a suspect test at all, but it won’t be marred with a second ladder if it occurs.

I'm bringing this post to the front so that I can educate myself, and share it again

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Please show me a mon that is viable with 18 tera types.

valiant is viable with at least 10, and i've seen 12 different volcarona tera types work. in terms of preparation and counterplay, that's not too different from 18—they're both way too much

 

[sims796]

.The only issue is the grown folks who throw tantrums because a process isn't going the way they wanted it to. This isn't a Smogon-issue either. Blaming everyone and conspiracy-theorying is how you throw the ethos of your argument away.

Like, the fuck! I don't care for tera, I'm annoyed at how many people are for it, but jeez Louis, calm the fuck down, folks! Never have I been so dissuaded to participate in a thread with so much petty name-calling. Heated debate is one thing. Heated, ugly debate over Pokemon... I'd say touch grass, but y'all might think I meant the terrain!

Little jibe to ease tensions

 

[Rootb]

Something I think is really int

Ok lets put it this way.

<img snip>

Right here it is abundantly clear that the player base (including qualified players) want to see action taken on on Tera.

The whole purpose of the discussion forum is to help the council determine what should be done with Tera. There will be an eventual Tera suspect that may be for either enabling Tera Preview, banning Tera Blast, or outright removing Tera.

Things are simply complicated rn with OLT coming soon, so the process is gonna be slower than expected.

Right now, it feels like the single biggest result of the tera discussions is people leaving the "Team Preview is okay" camp. Some of the arguments presented in the other thread have really opened by eyes to how little Preview would help, but have also brought up some real examples of how it could hurt.

And once you start taking people from Preview back to DNB? It doesn't take much before you fall below that 60% threshold.

It's not an easy situation, but the vibe i've gotten from discussion sure doesn't make it sound like Preview or Ban are gaining momentum in the slightest.

 

[Dhrabb]

I see a good number of posts asking for a no-tera ladder or a tera-preview ladder. Finch has done a good job saying why such a thing simply cannot work, and I'd like to chime in as well.

Firstly, the point of a suspect test is to ascertain whether an element is broken or unhealthy in the metagame or not. This of course requires that one plays the metagame the element is being tested in, which forms their viewpoint on whether that element is actually broken or not. For example, many players realised during the Wake suspect that Wake was actually fine in the meta after taking the time to play and gauge its place in the meta.

When we make a no-tera or tera-preview ladder, we are not playing the same metagame anymore. Besides the obvious changes to tera itself, in such an environment many mons would have a drastically different place in the meta. And 2 weeks is an incredibly short amount of time for a meta to develop with such a drastic change anyway. Some mons would obviously be nerfed, but a lot of mons have much to gain from a tera ban as well. For example, I find myself constantly relying on tera to answer Baxcalibur, and I'm sure many can relate. My point is, we can't know what the meta going into the future would look like, especially in 2 weeks, so I find the idea of such a ladder kind of pointless. We don't remove Pokemon from the tier when we test them, we see they're overpowered (or not) while getting reqs and then ban them (or not). Not to mention dividing the playerbase, that one's a given.

I hope I was able to say clearly why I think we don't need, or even shouldn't make, a seperate suspect ladder.

 

[MrE]

Ok...... so if you don't want to argue or fight why are you coming out swinging at Finch because he's 'not taking into account the OU chat rooms' even though that that they are anecdotes that don't hold much weight.

I'm a little peeved as well, this ban/test needs to be taken scientifically where you have a control test (current meta and its usage stats), then a test where you change variables (no tera) and see what changes. Like Napoli just said, I think there actually has to a separate ladder or verison for a week that shows what the game would be like if a fundamental part was taken out. People keep shooting it down because it 'fractures the player base'. So to avoid these conversations people (and I) have pivoted to talking about other means of restricting the power of tera without creating an entirely new ladder. This is where the OU people come in because if you can get them to voice their opinions in the forums, 1 the forums and OU chat room echo chambers break, and 2 a majority of the playbase is heard.

"TrUsT mE bRo ThE sYsTeM wOrKs", I hate to be that guy, but if more people voice their opinions on official channels, those making the decisions have to listen to them.

If we're going to run a separate ladder it has to be ran for a month at least to let the meta settle down, the first week of any new meta is always pure chaos and you won't learn anything from that first week.

 

[ianlazerbeem]

Does banning tera blast actually alleviate what people are saying are the main problems with terastallization? Some of the most succesful abusers of tera (like Kingambit and Garganacl) barely even run tera blast. It's a huge opportunity cost to run it and it almost forces your choice of tera beforehand lest you end up with a pokemon with only 3 viable moves on it. Maybe I'm missing something but to me the tera blast discussion almost seems like it should be seperate from other tera discussion in that the only thing it seems to accomplish is getting a few pokemon unbanned, while the majority of the issues with tera still remain even without tera blast. Imo it feels like the tera blast discussion could be summarized with this image:

View attachment 536564

None of us care about those motherfuckers in the image, we care about any Pokémon being able to lure and kill any Pokémon and use that momentum to end games. The problem with Tera Blast isn't attached to any particular Pokémon, and this in fact makes it worse because any Pokémon could be carrying it at any time. It's like a minefield - the problem isn't what you know is out there, it's about what COULD be ANYWHERE

Official ladder tournament begins next week, but there is likely to be a suspect overlapping with it

By the way despite being a bit frustrated that Tera isn't seen as a priority despite the survey, I do agree with and respect the choice to focus on Kingambit first. So much of the discussion here has been around Tera and its potential restrictions' impacts on Kingambit that addressing that factor is probably a priority

 

[LoseToRU?]

I see a good number of posts asking for a no-tera ladder or a tera-preview ladder. Finch has done a good job saying why such a thing simply cannot work, and I'd like to chime in as well.

Firstly, the point of a suspect test is to ascertain whether an element is broken or unhealthy in the metagame or not. This of course requires that one plays the metagame the element is being tested in, which forms their viewpoint on whether that element is actually broken or not. For example, many players realised during the Wake suspect that Wake was actually fine in the meta after taking the time to play and gauge its place in the meta.

When we make a no-tera or tera-preview ladder, we are not playing the same metagame anymore. Besides the obvious changes to tera itself, in such an environment many mons would have a drastically different place in the meta. And 2 weeks is an incredibly short amount of time for a meta to develop with such a drastic change anyway. Some mons would obviously be nerfed, but a lot of mons have much to gain from a tera ban as well. For example, I find myself constantly relying on tera to answer Baxcalibur, and I'm sure many can relate. My point is, we can't know what the meta going into the future would look like, especially in 2 weeks, so I find the idea of such a ladder kind of pointless. We don't remove Pokemon from the tier when we test them, we see they're overpowered (or not) while getting reqs and then ban them (or not). Not to mention dividing the playerbase, that one's a given.

I hope I was able to say clearly why I think we don't need, or even shouldn't make, a seperate suspect ladder.

It simply can work.

We're not trying to let a meta develop.
It doesn't matter if it's the same metagame or not.
We're trying to give players a general feel of what SV looks like w/o Tera.

That aside, nothing would be insanely broken in a no-tera ladder.
If something isn't broken with Tera, an insane power boost, then why would no-tera ladder be a broken mess?
That's a really disingenuous argument.

But again, we're not focused on balancing a no-tera meta as of now, we would do that after a ban.

I just hard disagree with the 'good job' explaining point you made.

Let me quote Finch:
" Theory would be adding a suspect ladder without Tera. Reflecting the actual current metagame is in no way theory. The premise of those saying that we are leaning it up to theory without adding a second ladder have it backwards."

I went over this in my last post
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...scussion-part-ii.3724522/page-21#post-9709686

Basically, theory has nothing to do with data collection and providing players a tool to make better educated arguments and opinions, as well as more educated votes.

A lack of a suspect ladder increase the theories, whereas implementing it puts theories to rest.

"The point of a suspect test is to determine if something is broken in the metagame or not. The metagame itself should be the sole determinant of this."
"The point is not to determine if the metagame is immediately better with or without something as there are so many external factors there and we cannot account for future ramifications the same "

Again, like I just said, that's meaningless af.
Obviously the meta would look different, so what?
It's a test ladder for data collection and a tool for players- not a full blown meta.

Are we seriously trying to argue that a suspect ladder would cause more harm than good?
The only arguments I see in this post are, to paraphrase, "We don't test to see if something is broken by removing it first" which makes sense for mons but literally no sense for Tera and "The meta will be different" which again, makes sense for a mon, but zero sense for a gimmick so contentious.

I've been asking for council to think outside the box and provide a novel solution for a novel predicament.

The logic against a test ladder laid out by our council does not fit the unique situation that is tera.
It simply gatekeeps players from valuable information.

A suspect ladder causes no harm, has low risk high reward, and could greatly benefit the pro-tera side.
Regurgitating how mon suspects are handled doesn't really cut it with me when it comes to properly handling tera- sorry.

 

[ant4456]

It simply can work.

We're not trying to let a meta develop.
It doesn't matter if it's the same metagame or not.
We're trying to give players a general feel of what SV looks like w/o Tera.

That aside, nothing would be insanely broken in a no-tera ladder.
If something isn't broken with Tera, an insane power boost, then why would no-tera ladder be a broken mess?
That's a really disingenuous argument.

But again, we're not focused on balancing a no-tera meta as of now, we would do that after a ban.

I just hard disagree with the 'good job' explaining point you made.

Let me quote Finch:
" Theory would be adding a suspect ladder without Tera. Reflecting the actual current metagame is in no way theory. The premise of those saying that we are leaning it up to theory without adding a second ladder have it backwards."

I went over this in my last post
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...scussion-part-ii.3724522/page-21#post-9709686

Basically, theory has nothing to do with data collection and providing players a tool to make better educated arguments and opinions, as well as more educated votes.

A lack of a suspect ladder increase the theories, whereas implementing it puts theories to rest.

"The point of a suspect test is to determine if something is broken in the metagame or not. The metagame itself should be the sole determinant of this."
"The point is not to determine if the metagame is immediately better with or without something as there are so many external factors there and we cannot account for future ramifications the same "

Again, like I just said, that's meaningless af.
Obviously the meta would look different, so what?
It's a test ladder for data collection and a tool for players- not a full blown meta.

Are we seriously trying to argue that a suspect ladder would cause more harm than good?
The only arguments I see in this post are, to paraphrase, "We don't test to see if something is broken by removing it first" which makes sense for mons but literally no sense for Tera and "The meta will be different" which again, makes sense for a mon, but zero sense for a gimmick so contentious.

I've been asking for council to think outside the box and provide a novel solution for a novel predicament.

The logic against a test ladder laid out by our council does not fit the unique situation that is tera.
It simply gatekeeps players from valuable information.

A suspect ladder causes no harm, has low risk high reward, and could greatly benefit the pro-tera side.
Regurgitating how mon suspects are handled doesn't really cut it with me when it comes to properly handling tera- sorry.

I think we've experienced that

 

[LoseToRU?]

View attachment 536581

I think we've experienced that

"We're trying to give players a general feel of what SV looks like w/o Tera."
Anyway lol
So do you just classify gens as what they don't have?
Do you call Gen 1, "Gen 1 without Items, Abilities, Megas, Z-Moves and Tera"?

This is not the 'gotcha' you think it is lol.

You've never played SV w/o tera, you don't know what it looks like whatsoever.