Implemented The State of Old Gen Lower Tiers

[Lily]

note: I am speaking entirely on behalf of UU here, but I will probably refer to certain NUs too. if anyone familiar with oldgen NUs would like to speak up on this then I'd welcome it.

A couple of years ago, a policy was introduced that locked old gen lower tiers, preventing them from being changed by subsequent changes to oldgen OUs such as the DPP Arena Trap ban, the ADV Sand Veil ban, and the BW Shadow Tag ban. This was an attempt to preserve these tiers because obviously, not everything that's broken in OU is broken down here - for example, Sand Veil is not broken in ADV UU because there's no permasand. However, in recent times, people have begun to realise that while yes, the tier lock has plenty of merit, it creates issues that we are unable to deal with despite pretty much the entirety of these communities wanting them to be addressed because there is no council for these tiers. In the thread I linked, it was asked that, in an ideal world, these tiers would be properly addressed for their issues and then locked - this was never picked up on, though.

In ADV UU, DPP UU, and BW UU, Baton Pass is legal - it was only banned starting in ORAS. These days, Baton Pass is widely recognised to be an uncompetitive gimmick (full pass at least, but complex bans are not the goal here), and as such it's banned from all standard SS, SM and ORAS tiers. While it's still legal in BW and below, in all of our major team tournaments - UUPL, UUSD, and UUWC - the UU community opts to artificially ban it. The playerbases for these tiers agrees with this decision and every year all 8 managers are polled, and so far it's pretty much always been a unanimous yes. There are also some other bans here, like Liepard and Riolu in BW because of some nuances with Prankster phasing, and a ban has been considered on Damp Rock in DPP UU for quite some time now.

Recently, ADV PL started up and Baton Pass was banned in both ADV UU and NU. It's even currently banned on ps!'s ADV UU format, though not ADV NU. I believe this change was requested by members of ADV UU's dedicated playerbase, and it is pretty much completely unopposed in the ADV UU community. A change like this is a good thing in my opinion, but it's not something that comes without ramifications, and of course we have to decide where to draw the line.

This thread's goal is to highlight the fact that these tiers are not perfect and could certainly do with some changes. While I'm in favour of the tier lock as a whole, I think exceptions should be made. Obviously, banning Conkeldurr from ORAS UU or Victini from BW UU might be too far of a step for now (though I think this possibility should be explored in the future), but something like Baton Pass, Prankster phasing, or maybe even Shadow Tag should be able to be handled. They are widely hated by their playerbases and while preservation of tiers makes some sense, at the end of the day this is a ruleset we decide on and I think that those who play these tiers should be able to govern them rather than keeping things as they were just for the sake of it. They're not major, meta-defining changes - this is the banning of a move that is widely considered to be toxic a la Double Team, not banning an S/A+ rank Pokemon that changes the way teams are built in their entirety.

There are tiers like BW RU, which was recently considered for being removed from RUPL because of the state it's in (see: pretty much coinflip meta that comes down to whether or not Moltres and Durant hit their attacks) that could certainly use some more changes, but taking things one step at a time would be best. For now I think a Baton Pass ban across oldgen lower tiers is the way to go (unless there's some massive opposition across NU communities that I'm unaware of), but in future I think we should be open to discussing more changes. I'm aware that this is somewhat rambly but writing when you're tired is hard so I'll ideally give more cohesive responses to other people's replies. Thank you for reading.

 

[Plague von Karma]

Speaking as a BW RU historian(?), this thread has been a long time coming.

Forgive me if I'm misunderstanding something, but what's the point of the tier lock if the playerbases dislike it and tournaments actively work against it? From my understanding, the lock is in place for the sake of returning players, historical preservation, and integrity. Integrity is a bit vague, so let me put an aside in. Here, I mean the lack of a council and playerbase leaves it open to lapses of judgment when taking action, which can lead to adverse effects. All of this is fair, but from how things have panned out, this tier lock just seems to have failed? Like, if the tournaments the tier lock is intended to help aren't complying, then doesn't this mean those returning players are going to deal with the doomsday prophecy of the lock not existing anyway? What's being preserved? If the player feedback is positive, then isn't it fine? It feels so arbitrary at times.

The reality of the matter is this: you can't just drop support for these tiers and expect them to be the same. Playing BW RU in 2021 is not going to take you back to August 2013. You're not going to be fighting Little Timmy with his Dusknoir, you're going to watch your blind ass Durant miss Iron Head when the game is on the line and die. Likewise, playing ORAS NU won't take you back to 2015.

Metagame optimization doesn't simply end when a generation does, that goes without saying. As a result though, people can and will find flaws in the tier that weren't present when tiering action was available. This is why people will often bemoan old analyses on the strategy dex. You ever seen the BW RU Druddigon analysis? Hoo-wee, Mac baby, is that outdated. Look at all the tiering action taken in the OU generations; the BW Sleep Ban, DPP Latias, so on, so forth. It's not just OU that develops, and to say otherwise is a misunderstanding at best.

Now, this is considered in the policy: from what I can see, the tier lock is open to exceptions in extreme circumstances, so there is a line for changes. The problem? It's just...vague. Based on everything that's public, it looks as though the conditions need to be made laxer, or at least spell stuff out properly for everyone. What exceptional circumstances should be considered for these tiers? This policy shouldn't be some big wall preventing change. Instead, this policy should encourage tiering proposals to be more scrutinized and discouraged. Therefore, changes are kept minimal, but it's still an option for these struggling playerbases. This just needs to be put in writing, man.

Anyway, small tangent on BW RU. I played a bit of BW RU with Molk and a couple others a while back, as well as back in its heyday on PS when I was using names like Chippy2001 or something. That tier could really use some help, tiering-wise. When the generation ended it was in a really iffy state as-is, a lot needed to be done but the time wasn't there. I believe Snow Warning was just barely acted upon? I suppose it's not a case of needing help, but just needing to be finished. Hell, I'd argue for making the sleep ban a BW standard, that shit is not ok and I'm a fucking RBY mainer. At least we can switch out after burning sleep turns and know we didn't waste our time.

The tier lock needs a second look and some proper policy. What is this actually looking to achieve, materially? What has it accomplished? It's absolutely a necessary policy, but in its current form, it's just not working. Again, I'm sorry if I'm misunderstanding something, but I've wanted to air this out for a while.

 

[Bughouse]

The choice presented in the past was to either fully lock old gen lower tiers or to make them transitive to (all) changes instituted by the old gen OU councils. I wasn't thrilled with the choice of this dichotomy, but still between the two options, locking was the better choice, since most lower tiers were in a decent state and not all changes that an OU council might want to make are good choices for all lower tiers. Continued active tiering of old gen lower tiers was never really presented as an option, though I agree there are some issues that really should be allowed to be dealt with (Riolu in BW probably sticks out the most to me.)

With respect to this thread's most specific proposal, if lower tiers are going to be allowed to be unlocked entirely, or at least with respect to baton pass, then I would say that BW and ADV OU already have complex clauses regarding Baton Pass and GSC has no ban at all. It doesn't make sense to me to give the lower tiers an even larger retroactive change to Baton Pass than OU got. If you're gonna argue for anything, imo it should be to align the lower tiers to OU in terms of Baton Pass, since that's at least in line with the idea of transitivity/consistency. The tailored ADV and BW clauses remove full chains which is the main problem.

Personally, I'm not thrilled with a hard ban of Baton Pass from DPP lower tiers, which is what DPP's OU council ultimately decided on, but it's not intolerable I guess. The DPP council initially implemented the BW clause but then changed it to a full ban after some Ninjask Pass to set up sweeper teams were discovered to still be a problem. But this remaining problem after the BW clause wasn't sufficient in DPP OU isn't applicable to lower gens, since Ninjask is the only Speed Boost passer in DPP. This is a good example of why just doing what OU does isn't necessarily the most applicable to lower tiers, since Baton Pass just isn't a serious problem in DPP lower tiers.

 

[Finchinator]

Re: Old generation tiering transitivity and locking old generation lower tiers,

The old ruling should be edited to state that old generation tiering changes directed towards OU metagames should not trickle down, thus making tiering transitivity -- which is present in the current generation -- expire upon the conclusion of a generation. Therefore, we can have bans like Arena Trap in DPP or Sand Veil in ADV for the sake of their OU metagames not impact lower tiers that do not have the same issue, but we can also have separate bans in lower tiers that may help improve their metagames.

Re: Issues specific to individual old generation lower tiers,

I personally believe that the move Baton Pass should be banned from BW UU (maybe BW lower tiers as a whole, but I never see it in RU and NU, so I will abstain on those topics). While there may be a few fringe strategies being cut-off that are competitive with Baton Pass, we have set a precedent across various generations, including other old generations, that we should not employ complex bans or partial solutions on the topic of Baton Pass. A foolproof ban of Baton Pass in BW UU will remove the issues on that front.

I feel that the RU community is not content with the BW RU metagame. I believe there are a number of issues ranging from Pokemon like Durant and Moltres to fundamental parts of the game like sleep, which also was recently was addressed in BW OU. I think that once this thread is settled and RUPL concludes, we should make a separate PR thread on the BW RU metagame and work towards finding the best solutions for the playerbase and RU community.

Also, Prankster should be discussed as a potential ban from BW UU. I do not use it myself and I understand Choolio is passionate about this topic and keeping it in the metagame, so I do not want to write it off, but it clearly is controversial.

Re: Baton Pass as a whole,

I support banning of the move, but I also do not find myself informed enough to discuss old generation lower tiers in non-BW/ORAS/SM generations enough to feel I should have any say in their tier lists. I hope other passionate parties offer their opinions so we can get enough support on whatever side is best.

 

[Rabia]

(speaking from an ADV NU perspective)

There are a few changes I'd like to see this tier have, namely a Baton Pass restriction and a Diglett ban, but I honestly don't like these wide-sweeping suggestions for bans across all "old lower tier metagames" because for many of these, the playerbase is incredibly small already. I can name the amount of people that actively play ADV NU on one hand; it's a tier that was created much after ADV was the current gen, and the only representation we give it in NU is in Classic and NUPL. I would be extremely bothered by any large-scale tiering edits being forced onto this tier because there really isn't a need for it. I think it's very fine to have bans like this in non-official tours if anything to improve playability or just see what a tier looks like with a certain change; I think making these changes official is bad.

 

[eden]

What's wrong with these large scale tiering edits? Like objectively? Are the 5 people that "main" these tiers suddenly going to stop because you removed undesirable elements from them? Just because representation is given to a tier in a flawed state at one point due to policy is no reason to permanently lock them in said undesirable state.

For legacy tiers like ADV UU at least which somewhat shares the same properties of being mostly played in uusd/uupl with bp banned:
I'm pretty sure all of the player base who regularly compete in the tier for the most part advocate for the cleaned up version played in these tours.
Who's to say what's needed/what's not needed other than the people who actually play these tiers. You feeling like the tiers are fine as is, is an opinion that you're entitled to: but that shouldn't factor into broader policy.

People regularly gentleman's to no BP in these tours even when it is allowed in tours like classic: why put the onus on players, when the burden of rulesets should be on policy? It seems ridiculous to not "officially" have the rules implemented by them, when they're effectively abided by anyway. It adds an unnecessary layer of complexity if not anything else. If not anything else I can see the tiers being cleaned up creating added interest, and creating less of a barrier to entry.

 

[Oglemi]

Can I just c/p my original OP here and we do that?

Once a tier is out of usage based tiering, transitivity should no longer apply baseline, shouldn't matter whether it's being actively looked at and tiered for a specific purpose. Transitivity only makes sense when what's being used in each tier is dictated by what's usable in the tiers above it. Once that's over it stops making sense to apply it. (Note, I believe 100% in transitivity for when it is the current gen, just making that clear).

Anyway, if my original proposal is a no-go, how about we just do a "convening of the elders" every once in a while (x years or months, whatever) and address some of the issues, then close the books on it until next time? It sounds like there's a consensus for things brought up here to do for an initial go, when it feels right to do so again in the future, just open them back up and get it done.

 

[Colonel M]

I'm going to go ahead and stir the pot a bit, but I'm going to avoid sounding like Yung_Dramps in previous topics who threw his weight in, what I felt, was a wrong direction.

Also small disclaimer because someone brought it up - I'm fine with current gen transitivity. This is speaking when a tier has passed from current to older generation, where transitivity is less impactful considering Pokemon cannot "drop" tiers afterwards.

I think one thing this thread has illustrated is that we should probably take lower tiers from previous generations (and maybe even OU previous generations) more seriously in its competitive approaches. We strive to be the go-to for competitiveness, but I feel we always have this stupid half-assed approach to lower tiers and their previous generation counterparts. I think a lot of this is due to past poor decisions where we attempted to focus on primary tiers and current generation. That's fine, but we encounter a lot of strange instances with Lower Tier Premiere Leagues - something that will probably grow in popularity with their exclusion in current SPL. Such examples are, from what I remember, ADV UU and Baton Pass. On one hand, such a mechanic is technically allowed in the ladder, but is banned from the UUPL format. That creates a major discrepancy in what is acceptable and what isn't, and we should do a better job of hammering down on mechanics that may jeopardize tiers if that is the case (or, obviously, Pokemon).

Now to take the approach that is different from Yung_Dramps - I am not stating that you need to do something right away or unleash every UUBL Pokemon into the ADV UU Tier. A key difference is that the player base should be properly engaged to help with this. Clearly, there are interests in lower generation tiers and we should do what we can to make these tiers competitive instead of trying to vote them out of tournaments - similar to what almost happened with BW RU.

I'll also say, while I'm not a fan of complex bans as a whole, I get sometimes there are certain mechanics that are easier to exploit in certain tiers over others. I'd say Sun is probably the example where UU considered sun a broken mechanic in Gen 7 (my memory is hazy, but I recall Mega Houndoom being a big reason), whereas RU felt that Sun did not have as prevalent abusers. I think transitivity sounds great on paper, but ignores the problem of something just not being as problematic in one lower tier, but being problematic in another. I think where tiers are more "locked" like this is where complex bans (one tier accepting it while another bans it) might be acceptable, in spite of the twisted web it may create. I'm speaking on this from as neutral of a perspective as possible, though, so don't think suddenly I'm fighting to ban something from UU but keeping it in RU. I'm merely listing something as an example that needs to be taken at a different angle than what normally happens.

I think between lower tier premiere leagues and various other lower tiers with older generations blended in, things such as surveys can be handed out to help gauge the room to help understand what may or may not be problematic. Provided that experienced players and those who engage in the tier are chiming in, I don't see the problem of allowing these people to help determine if something like BW UU Prankster or ADV RU Baton Pass or whatever fucking jank you want to discuss is acceptable in the tier or not. Ignoring it like we do now screams laziness in my opinion and ruins some players' viewpoint of the competitiveness of the tier that they may be playing.

While I think Baton Pass as a whole is a stupid mechanic, I don't think sweeping it for every single tier in older generations where it is banned in OU is necessarily the play. Rather, I think it should be weighed in a case-by-case basis on where Baton Pass is overpowered in a specific lower generation tier or not.

Now please provide me with your haha reacts or angry reacts. These are the reacts I love the most.

 

[Plague von Karma]

Once a tier is out of usage based tiering, transitivity should no longer apply baseline, shouldn't matter whether it's being actively looked at and tiered for a specific purpose. Transitivity only makes sense when what's being used in each tier is dictated by what's usable in the tiers above it. Once that's over it stops making sense to apply it. (Note, I believe 100% in transitivity for when it is the current gen, just making that clear).

Whoa, hold on a sec. I see the "baseline" bit which implies that my issue is answered, but it's a bit vague and I'd really like some clarification.

Are you implying inherited bans are to be rescinded once a generation is over? If so, while it sounds good on paper, there are a few issues that can crop up. There's a lot more that needs to be considered here.

things to consider, skip if I'm stupid

If my assumption is correct, this means you're rescinding what could be multiple bans for a single tier, right at the end of the generation. In some cases, this can be a massive change to a tier. While you could say "hey this wasn't deemed a problem at the time", I have seen many occasions where Tier Leaders wait for the upper tier to ban something so they - rightfully - don't waste time that could be spent tiering something else. Do you think there should be some kind of "final council meeting" to see what bans are kept at the end of the generation? Again, this works on paper, but it still seems off to do all this right as a generation ends, with little opportunity to actually see if it's balanced or not. It's not like it's feasible to check for balance either, as a new generation is starting and everyone is going out to be the first person to rediscover Choice Scarf Landorus-Therian.

Anyway, if my original proposal is a no-go, how about we just do a "convening of the elders" every once in a while (x years or months, whatever) and address some of the issues, then close the books on it until next time? It sounds like there's a consensus for things brought up here to do for an initial go, when it feels right to do so again in the future, just open them back up and get it done.

I like this idea, and think it could tie into the above in some way. Perhaps these people could be the ones to pick what bans are inherited at the end of the generation? However, for this to work, these "elders" you're mentioning would need fleshing out. Who would qualify; past council members and players with tournament results? It sounds as though they would need to be hand-picked based on some kind of objective criteria if this is to work. This does seem promising though, as this would encourage participation in the tiers.

 

[Diophantine]

I don't understand why tiering has to be so generalised. We should take a problem solving approach and just let the people that know what they're talking about make the decisions instead of trying to make blanket rules about what tiering can/can't do. It's not that difficult. For example, GSC NU would still be an unplayable mess if Earthworm hadn't taken initiative to improve it by discussing potential bans with players.

I would be in favour of a yearly review of the old gen lower tiers between people that have played it in the various tournaments here on Smogon (Semi finalists of the different classic cups, lower tier premier leagues, RoA old gen premier leagues, maybe subjectively add a few respectable players of the tiers, etc etc) to determine if the tiers need any adjustment.

 

[Oglemi]

Whoa, hold on a sec. I see the "baseline" bit which implies that my issue is answered, but it's a bit vague and I'd really like some clarification.

Are you implying inherited bans are to be rescinded once a generation is over? If so, while it sounds good on paper, there are a few issues that can crop up. There's a lot more that needs to be considered here.

things to consider, skip if I'm stupid

If my assumption is correct, this means you're rescinding what could be multiple bans for a single tier, right at the end of the generation. In some cases, this can be a massive change to a tier. While you could say "hey this wasn't deemed a problem at the time", I have seen many occasions where Tier Leaders wait for the upper tier to ban something so they - rightfully - don't waste time that could be spent tiering something else. Do you think there should be some kind of "final council meeting" to see what bans are kept at the end of the generation? Again, this works on paper, but it still seems off to do all this right as a generation ends, with little opportunity to actually see if it's balanced or not. It's not like it's feasible to check for balance either, as a new generation is starting and everyone is going out to be the first person to rediscover Choice Scarf Landorus-Therian.

I like this idea, and think it could tie into the above in some way. Perhaps these people could be the ones to pick what bans are inherited at the end of the generation? However, for this to work, these "elders" you're mentioning would need fleshing out. Who would qualify; past council members and players with tournament results? It sounds as though they would need to be hand-picked based on some kind of objective criteria if this is to work. This does seem promising though, as this would encourage participation in the tiers.

I'm saying transitivity applies until the generation ends. Any ban that occurs post-gen do (should) not apply transitivity. Tiers are "locked" once the generation ends; under no circumstances should a ban be rescinded at generation end.

 

[Hogg]

I'm saying transitivity applies until the generation ends. Any ban that occurs post-gen do (should) not apply transitivity. Tiers are "locked" once the generation ends; under no circumstances should a ban be rescinded at generation end.

Yep, this is the current policy.

Anyhow... Thanks for posting this. I was planning on making a thread due to BP being banned on the ladder (which technically should not have happened - it was done without any formal request or ban - but brought what has been a pervasive issue for a while now to the forefront, so I guess that's good!).

I’ll start by addressing the lock for old gen lower tiers, because I think that’s fairly relevant. As Bughouse alluded to, the lock came about after the Sand Veil ban in DPP, as it meant the DPP NU tier would lose key ‘mons (Sandslash in particular) for a reason that wasn’t at all relevant to the tier. In general, transitivity of bans is a pretty key part of Smogon’s usage-based tiering metric, but once there is no more usage-based tiering, is transitivity still necessary? Ordinarily the fact that a lower tier might inherit a ban or clause that is irrelevant to their tier would be able to adjust around it as usage in the tiers above shift in response to the ban, but with tier shifts no longer occurring, that can’t happen.

The lock was basically intended as a compromise between a couple of different camps. Old gen lower tiers wouldn’t need to abide by transitivity of bans that occurred after the tiers were locked, which both freed up lower tiers from having to adjust to OU decisions and meant that old gen tiering councils weren’t forced to consider how their bans might impact lower tiers when making decisions. On the other hand, a lock was a consistent policy across the board, rather than each lower tier independently determining whether or not they’d implement OU’s tiering changes and eventually ending up with every single tier having a radically different approach to tiering.

There’s another reason why I personally supported and pushed for the lock with old gen lower tiers, though: there’s basically no way to properly tier many of these metagames. Old gen councils already ran into this issue with OU tiers, and we had to establish some unique ways of running tests and votes to ensure that major changes to tiers weren’t happening at the whims of a couple of strong-minded individuals… but the OU playerbases for old gens are significantly larger than the lower tier playerbase. I’m very much opposed to having a small council with no real oversight or selection process able to completely change a tier by fiat, but the other methods of tiering are just really difficult.

BUT, all that being said, the tier lock policy was made a couple of years ago. We’ve had a couple of years to see how it plays out, where it falls short, etc. We’ve also had some significant changes in the intervening period, including a brand new old gen (SM) and a much more robust system of circuits across every official tier, giving us more opportunities to organize votes properly. I think this is as good a time as any to update the policy.

Anyhow, I’ve got some thoughts on how we can address this, but I want to leave it open for discussion first. I think any updated policy should look at the following questions:

• What limits on tiering actions for old gen lower tiers should exist?
  • Should they be limited to major clauses, such as the BP issue that prompted this discussion?
  • Should old gen lower tiers have the ability to test or ban individual pokemon from the tier?
  • Should old gen lower tiers have the ability to unban pokemon from their tier’s BL list?
  • Should old gen lower tiers have the ability to move down “OU by technicality” pokemon into their tiers?
• What determines the necessity for a tiering action?
  • Will councils need to be developed to determine this, and if so, how should they be selected over overseen?
  • Should this function be rolled into the current duties of the old gen councils?
  • Should this solely be done on a decentralized issue-by-issue basis, with individuals who want to see certain tiering changes starting policy threads to discuss same?
• What steps will be taken to ensure consistency between tiers as much as possible? E.g., how can we avoid having three completely different tiering and ban approaches to address BP between ADV OU, UU and NU?
• What should the minimum requirements or standards for a vote/test be?
• What tiers/metagames should this new policy apply to?
  • If the lock is being relaxed/removed, should the new policy incorporate the old gen lower tiers that AREN’T included in the lock?
• Should preference be given to tiering solutions that align with post-gen OU changes?

There are probably more things to consider, but those are all important things to keep in mind when proposing any policy change here.

Anyhow, as for my own preferences, I think the BP case is a pretty clear example of where the lock policy breaks down. Baton Pass is something that received much deeper exploration in the past half-decade or so than it ever did in the days when ADV or DPP were the primary metagames, and the general opinion on the move has shifted significantly since then. I’d be OK with relaxing the lock on a case by case basis to address it. I’d prefer it to be handled in a limited way, though - I don’t want to just completely throw open the door. I see no issue with bypassing the old gen lock to “excise a redundant toxic gameplay element” (as tdp so eloquently put it), as long as it doesn’t mean that we also have license to start trying to completely rebalance or reform the tiers entirely.

I also would rather not see us start to create a new official council for every single old gen lower tier, and if we’re mostly keeping the lock in place except when there are seriously toxic gameplay elements that need to be addressed, then I don’t see an issue with handling things on a case by case basis, just as BP is being brought up here. I’d also be OK with just rolling this in as an additional duty for the old gen councils to handle when it does come up, as long as the final decisions on any issue were made by community vote (most likely using placement in various official circuit tours and quasi-official tours like the subforum PLs as a metric) - though it’s entirely possible that the old gen councils aren’t particularly interested in taking on this duty.

Anyhow, before I start writing up any official new policy here, I’d like to see what others think.

TL;DR: I agree that it’s probably time to revisit the old gen lower tier lock, and finding a way to deal with the BP problem feels like a great place to start, but I’d like to see a new formal policy take its place, preferably one with serious controls in place.

 

[EviGaro]

I never actually considered the locking of old tiers as a problem, really. It solved a few things particularly when OU was a lot more adamant on banning things and that cooled down recently, with very little reasons to change that policy. I do however think now that it's very problematic. To me though, it doesn't really matter where we start, and proposing a removal of it for the time being for baton pass doesn't fix a whole lot of issues we currently have, especially in RU. While I do understand the wariness of selecting a small subset of players to decide on old metagames, there's another obvious problem here: it's potentially a self-fulfilling prophecy, because not acting on this also runs the risk of cutting down the playerbase. And BW RU is to me the biggest warning sign here.

Complaints about the tier aren't exactly new. Moltres has been seen as a problem for about as long as Victini in UU has been, really. But you could mostly argue at some points that the metagame had enough popularity. A few rupls ago, we didn't have issue playing two bw slots, now? We have issues filling up one and a single cup during the year isn't doing anything to fix that. I know it's slightly contradictory because, well, complaints have been consistent during this decline, but there's two reasons why I think we need to be able to address tiering issues: the obvious first one is that it hasn't been tried, and that consistent complaints don't do anything to encourage new people from picking up metagames. Opening up a project to change the metagame brings it in the forefront more, and we can think of ways to encourage participation when that's done. Another concern to me isn't just about bw ru, though. It's that some of those arguments and unhappiness are starting to be seen with ORAS RU as well. Now that meta always had a bit of a bad reputation for reasons that are sometimes valid and sometimes less, but I'm really not keen on seeing two RU metas dropped for the same reasons eventually. We're already seeing a decline of the playerbase, albeit less pronounced, and all the people playing it in tours are still the same.

Finally, removing transitivity only should make it easier for us to actually change these metagames. Sand Rush being banned makes no sense in RU, but not being able to ban sleep when Amoonguss is functionally the same mon it was in OU is really more puzzling. It also makes it easier as a community to be able to create a project without having to worry about impact on other tiers. Otherwise, there's really no guarantee those metagames will stay in tours for that long, it was already pointed out that having to include BW RU in this RUPL opened massive issues where people more in tune with current gen couldn't really get into the tour because managers had to get a BW RU player... but with a dwindling playerbase that isn't picked up by new people, how long can that realistically go on? It doesn't really matter what gets banned first, if you want those tiers to survive in tours, interest needs to be maintained and nurtured, and removing tiering from the options leaves us without one of the most accessible tools for that.

 

[Lily]

I put this off for a while but here we go:

• What limits on tiering actions for old gen lower tiers should exist?
  • Should they be limited to major clauses, such as the BP issue that prompted this discussion?
  • Should old gen lower tiers have the ability to test or ban individual pokemon from the tier?
  • Should old gen lower tiers have the ability to unban pokemon from their tier’s BL list?
  • Should old gen lower tiers have the ability to move down “OU by technicality” pokemon into their tiers?

In an ideal world I don't think there should really be any limits on tiering actions - at least, none that don't exist for old generations of OU. I can't speak for all tiers, but from a UU perspective, these tiers are played a lot:
-UU Classic every year, all tiers from GSC -> SM
-UU Snake Draft, all tiers from ADV -> SM and potentially GSC in future
-UU World Cup, all tiers from ADV -> SM and potentially GSC in future
-UU Premier League, all tiers from GSC -> SM and even potentially RBY in future, which I believe is not locked rn anyway.
-Weekly roomtours for all lower tiers - not necessarily a huge factor in terms of metagame development but it shows that there is still interest in these tiers being played.

This is a lot of games for these tiers, oldgen OUs have a similar amount - they of course also have permanent ladders, but I'm not sure that should really be the determining factor here. To answer the specific questions

• "Should they be limited to major clauses, such as the BP issue that prompted this discussion?"

No, but it's a good starting point to determine if this approach will work in the future.

• Should old gen lower tiers have the ability to test or ban individual pokemon from the tier?

I believe so, yes, though I understand this may be a controversial opinion. My justification for this is quite simple - some metagames just were not left in an ideal state at all, and we are not playing by any officially binding rules to begin with. When I challenge my opponent to a game of SS UU on cartridge, there is no limitation on me actually bringing Corviknight, Toxapex, or Rillaboom - the only thing that is preventing me from doing so is the fact that both myself and my opponent have agreed not to, and the sim just cuts that step out for us.

Going off this logic, if a vast majority of the ADV UU playerbase wants to agree to play a metagame without Baton Pass (they do), they should be able to make that change official. Similarly, if they want to play a metagame without Kangaskhan (they don't, but theoretically speaking) then they should be allowed to ban Kangaskhan if they so choose. It is particularly notable in GSC and ADV as these generations were not tiered the way we do now, and while players are happy with them as far as I can tell, there are still changes that could be made. I think that refusing to tier these generations simply because their time has passed is silly, especially since we're still doing it for OU.

• Should old gen lower tiers have the ability to unban pokemon from their tier’s BL list?

Yes, for the same reasons stated above.

• Should old gen lower tiers have the ability to move down “OU by technicality” pokemon into their tiers?

No, probably not, as much as it pains me. I don't like the idea of just refusing to touch tiers once the time passes but that's what the usage was at the end of the gen, and if we're sticking to a usage-based tiering model then that's what we should stick with. That said, since OU by technicality *is* using ladder usage, I don't think it's too much of a stretch and would not be opposed to the idea being entertained.

What determines the necessity for a tiering action?

• Will councils need to be developed to determine this, and if so, how should they be selected over overseen?
• Should this function be rolled into the current duties of the old gen councils?
• Should this solely be done on a decentralized issue-by-issue basis, with individuals who want to see certain tiering changes starting policy threads to discuss same?

This is a much harder one to answer but it's typically the same as current gen right? If enough of a playerbase is unsatisfied with something, they can bring it up to a designated person (in this case TLs) and the TL can survey their council or, nowadays, the full playerbase! We have the resources necessary to survey a playerbase and I think we can do this for oldgens too. It can be determined through various methods, primarily which players played in x y or z tournament recently (top X in classic, X wins in UUPL/SD/WC, etc) - Ubers recently voted on evasion clause in BW and I think their voting system could theoretically work just as well here.

• "Will councils need to be developed to determine this, and if so, how should they be selected over overseen?"

I'm not sure, if we're going by the survey method + reqs through tournament performances I really don't think a council is necessary - the only thing that would be needed would be a "psuedo-TL", i.e. someone willing to find the opinions of the playerbase and put them together. The process of an actual vote can be directed to a current generation's tier leader if creating a Blind Voting thread is necessary, since metagame knowledge is not really needed for that process. If councils are deemed necessary then they can maybe be created but idt it really needs to happen.

• Should this function be rolled into the current duties of the old gen councils?

No. If they have an interest in the tier they are of course welcome to help out, but those tiering ADV OU should not be tiering ADV UU or NU by default. It is not their responsibility and they shouldn't be forced to do it, let the ADV UU playerbase do what they want to do and let OU do what they want to do.

• Should this solely be done on a decentralized issue-by-issue basis, with individuals who want to see certain tiering changes starting policy threads to discuss same?

I'm honestly not entirely sure what the question here is? I think I answered this above, if the playerbase wants something to go then they can create a thread on it or bring it up to someone else who will make a thread and go from there. If I'm misunderstanding this question, feel free to let me know ofc.

What steps will be taken to ensure consistency between tiers as much as possible? E.g., how can we avoid having three completely different tiering and ban approaches to address BP between ADV OU, UU and NU?

We can probably communicate between playerbases just fine, though I'm not sure this is necessary. Just recently, Mr. Mime was banned in ADV OU as an attempt to tackle Baton Pass, and it's still legal in UU despite that. I don't think consistency or transivity is as necessary once tiers become old generations, the standard changes because the playerbase gets a lot smaller and the need for a streamlined ruleset becomes a lot less necessary.

What should the minimum requirements or standards for a vote/test be?

Not a question I'm qualified to answer alone and this will probably differ from community to community as it currently does, but I'd like to think that a certain amount of wins playing the relevant tier in a recent team tour, or a certain placement in a classic cup for said tier, is a solid enough method of qualification. This is something that can be discussed when we've decided on changes, though.

What tiers/metagames should this new policy apply to?

• If the lock is being relaxed/removed, should the new policy incorporate the old gen lower tiers that AREN’T included in the lock?

This should apply to any tier that's locked, and if a tier isn't locked then I don't think anything really changes? At least when it comes to BW PU which is a tier I recently participated in a vote for, the metric was pretty much just "played it a reasonable amount in a recent team tour" which is effectively the same proposition we're working on here. As for RBY tiers which I don't believe are locked, I'm most certainly not qualified to speak on those. If a member of RBY lower tier communities would like to speak up here it'd be great. Might be missing something but I think letting unofficial tiers continue to do their thing as is is fine.

Should preference be given to tiering solutions that align with post-gen OU changes?

If they fit, sure. I don't think there should be a focus on it, but if BW OU's BP clause would satisfy the BW UU playerbase then that's fine. It should really just be down to whatever the relevant tier's playerbase wants, though.

I realise that a lot of my answers are probably pretty same-y but I think my stance is clear at this stage, people playing the tiers should be the ones governing them rather than precedent or preservation being of the utmost priority. I'd really appreciate more opinions on this though, I'm definitely not omnipotent and I don't want this thread to die out without a solution.

 

[Amaranth]

As for RBY tiers which I don't believe are locked, I'm most certainly not qualified to speak on those. If a member of RBY lower tier communities would like to speak up here it'd be great. Might be missing something but I think letting unofficial tiers continue to do their thing as is is fine.

RBY lowtiers are being pushed forward by a group of dedicated players which would very much dislike having any rules binding them from above (I assume - I don't speak for them). These tiers are less 'being changed' and moreso 'being created' as we speak, so any and all policies dedicated to locking old lowtiers surely shouldn't apply here.

To add some context, the only lowtier RBY play of note in recent years, before the current UU/NU projects, has been over on PokemonPerfect - they're not Smogon tiers and Smogon rightfully hasn't given them much attention. They're also very defunct. Our present UU and NU are pretty much new tiers and if anything they should be given more freedom to be shaped with rapid changes, not less

 

[Hogg]

Just to confirm, the current policy does not restrict "created" tiers like RBY UU/NU at all. It only applies to tiers that were active when they were the current gen.

EDIT: Specifically, since there was some confusion regarding ADV NU, the current policy applies to the following tiers only:

• GSC UU
• ADV UU
• ADV NU
• DPP UU
• DPP NU
• BW UU
• BW RU
• BW NU
• ORAS UU
• ORAS RU
• ORAS NU
• ORAS PU

Source

 

[ABR]

I, personally, think it is wrong and confusing and misleading for Mr. Mime (the potent former ADV OU threat) to be allowed in ADV UU. How is a demon too powerful for a higher tier allowed in a lower one? Shit makes no sense.

 

[Wanka]

^anyone else posts that it gets deleted 100% btw.

Anyways, I don't want to overcomplicate things too much since I'm not really great about arguing for drastic policy changes even though some of the things I read make absolutely 0 sense to me. What I can add on to is Lilburr reasoning with regards to this point:

• Should old gen lower tiers have the ability to test or ban individual pokemon from the tier?

"I believe so, yes, though I understand this may be a controversial opinion. My justification for this is quite simple - some metagames just were not left in an ideal state at all, and we are not playing by any officially binding rules to begin with. When I challenge my opponent to a game of SS UU on cartridge, there is no limitation on me actually bringing Corviknight, Toxapex, or Rillaboom - the only thing that is preventing me from doing so is the fact that both myself and my opponent have agreed not to, and the sim just cuts that step out for us."

Now, yeah its a rather simple reasoning, but good lord it doesn't have to be too much more difficult then this. This is also literally exactly how the large majority of lower tier players feel about the issue btw so whether its controversial or not, I'll go to my death bed on the fact that most people feel this way.

Moving on, we've literally had the luxury to see how this would work in a lower tier old gen btw. Oglemi didn't apply this policy to monotype. That being said, ORAS monotype was left in the most unforgiving of states due to community backlash on previous tiering decisions, which essentially caused us to quite literally run out of fucking time to try and fix a tier. There were two mons we had on our list to suspect in oras mono and those were, Mega Medicham and Landorus-I. Luckily for us though, this policy didn't apply to us and after we did become an OT, myself and Eien (former mono TL) along with our council decided to finally test Mega Medicham in oras after we had to deal with it for multiple of our most competitive team tours. So, we used a system that picked the top performing players in that meta based on W/L in individual/team tours ORAS was played and held a vote. And quite frankly, it worked out fucking beautifully. I wouldn't go as far to say that ORAS is monotypes best metagame now because of this, but it improved A LOT and made matches a lot more competitive and enjoyable to watch in tournaments. One thing it didn't do though, is drastically change the meta itself. The types that were good before mega medicham got banned were still good, and some types that weren't as good before got slightly better. Why did I just go on that rant? Because the same fucking thing has been going on with conkeldurr and ORAS UU for the past 3-4 years. Literally cp everything I just said minus community backlash/running out of time stuff, sub in ORAS UU and conk instead of monotype and medicham and you have mirroring situations. Especially since banning conk from ORAS UU wouldn't fix it completely either just like how banning medicham from ORAS mono didn't. Both are also overbearingly broken though to the point where they warp the tier they are in around themselves and the entire community has known it for years. But since the policy actually applies to it, we just have to sit here and endure pain in UU's most competitive tournaments even though nothing would stand in the councils way of banning it other than this policy that we've been following for years and reasons unknown. If a pokemon is so incredibly broken to a degree of these two examples, there should not be a damn thing standing in the way of getting rid of it. These old gen lower tiers are fucking popular like idk what else to say, communities wouldn't be creating subsections in their discords and sections on smogon (which are consistently active) for these tiers if people didn't play them/didn't want to continue their development. There's just no real reason in my eyes to hinder players from pushing these old gens forward. We are smart, I'm confident any lower tier council/community could think of a way to make their old gens as competitive as possible without making more than 1, MAYBE 2 changes, but making more than 1 change wouldn't be healthy imo (We didn't end up touching Lando-I in ORAS mono because of this notion).

Overall, I just think we're smarter than this policy and we've had the luxury of seeing how a decision to ban something in an old gen lower tier could work.

E: unsure as to why Oglemi didn't apply the policy to us. Initially I had said it was because we weren't an OT yet, which would make sense, but still begs the question as to why mono wasn't included upon becoming official since we are considered to be a lower tier from my understanding (could be wrong on that).

 

[Chill Shadow]

the main problem is that with time, naturally, the way we perceive things changed, the definition of uncompetitive elements of the game evolved, broken elements that were previously unused due to whatever reason, made in newer gens translated into older gens, Tiers being locked from having usage based shift is a right decision, no one argues against it, but forcing old gen lower tiers to follow stupid ideas like complex batonpass bans and not being able to easily get rid of trapping abilities that OU got rid of is ridiculous.

in OU gothitelle wasnt banned, it was shadow tag that was banned, and that's because people somehow managed to make even mini goth work in ou because that's just how it works. Now imagine this but in a tier where mini goth is on par with the other mons. You get bullshit like goth trapping eviolite mons, trapping things that are simply not strong enough because they're in the lower tier for a reason.
You get a lot more obscure passers, that can pass pretty much anything in tiers where there's barely any hazard control.

there's 2 big problems facing old gen lower tiers, there's 1-uncompetitive elements 2-broken elements that stayed in the tier before they had a chance to be assessed properly

i cannot stress this enough, stop taking yourselves so fucking seriously when it comes to policy regarding old gen lower tiers that arent even in your official tournaments. the community is the one playing those tiers, for their enjoyment, not the enjoyment of the fossils who quit the game 10 years ago and made the tier the mess it is today. Leave it up to the tier leaders and their councils with tests, votes, tournaments, whatever to decide what elements to remove (and maybe even add, in some cases because some absolute idiots decided to randomly include and exclude shit in adv uu (top 5 dumbest shit in tiering history ever)). NOT EVERYTHING WE DO HAS TO OPEN SOME CAN OF WORMS every single tier can be its own case, and we take things on a case by case basis. with a GENERAL guidance on what tiers should/shouldnt be, with leaving tiers that arent in official tours to the discretion of the tiers themselves and their communities.

we dont need to overhaul everything and sign laws and pass the senate and the house. you can let tier leaders decide on the obvious shit that was deemed too uncompetitive for OU, then work your way from there with testing elements that - lets be real, even if not everyone agrees on if certain mons/strategies ARE BROKEN OR NOT- we can all at least identify them, then have big discussions with the appropriate testing, tournaments, whatever to at least see if it's a good thing. at least let us have the option to think that if the whole community thinks something is dumb as fuck, there's an option to fix it, instead of gentlemaning not using something or getting a side tier PL to have to ban its own thing because everyone agrees they should be banned anyway, or just banking on people not bringing the broken stuff on the off chance they dont wanna seem scummy.

 

[Oglemi]

^anyone else posts that it gets deleted 100% btw.

Anyways, I don't want to overcomplicate things too much since I'm not really great about arguing for drastic policy changes even though some of the things I read make absolutely 0 sense to me. What I can add on to is Lilburr reasoning with regards to this point:

• Should old gen lower tiers have the ability to test or ban individual pokemon from the tier?

"I believe so, yes, though I understand this may be a controversial opinion. My justification for this is quite simple - some metagames just were not left in an ideal state at all, and we are not playing by any officially binding rules to begin with. When I challenge my opponent to a game of SS UU on cartridge, there is no limitation on me actually bringing Corviknight, Toxapex, or Rillaboom - the only thing that is preventing me from doing so is the fact that both myself and my opponent have agreed not to, and the sim just cuts that step out for us."

Now, yeah its a rather simple reasoning, but good lord it doesn't have to be too much more difficult then this. This is also literally exactly how the large majority of lower tier players feel about the issue btw so whether its controversial or not, I'll go to my death bed on the fact that most people feel this way.

Moving on, we've literally had the luxury to see how this would work in a lower tier old gen btw. Oglemi didn't apply this policy to monotype. That being said, ORAS monotype was left in the most unforgiving of states due to community backlash on previous tiering decisions, which essentially caused us to quite literally run out of fucking time to try and fix a tier. There were two mons we had on our list to suspect in oras mono and those were, Mega Medicham and Landorus-I. Luckily for us though, this policy didn't apply to us and after we did become an OT, myself and Eien (former mono TL) along with our council decided to finally test Mega Medicham in oras after we had to deal with it for multiple of our most competitive team tours. So, we used a system that picked the top performing players in that meta based on W/L in individual/team tours ORAS was played and held a vote. And quite frankly, it worked out fucking beautifully. I wouldn't go as far to say that ORAS is monotypes best metagame now because of this, but it improved A LOT and made matches a lot more competitive and enjoyable to watch in tournaments. One thing it didn't do though, is drastically change the meta itself. The types that were good before mega medicham got banned were still good, and some types that weren't as good before got slightly better. Why did I just go on that rant? Because the same fucking thing has been going on with conkeldurr and ORAS UU for the past 3-4 years. Literally cp everything I just said minus community backlash/running out of time stuff, sub in ORAS UU and conk instead of monotype and medicham and you have mirroring situations. Especially since banning conk from ORAS UU wouldn't fix it completely either just like how banning medicham from ORAS mono didn't. Both are also overbearingly broken though to the point where they warp the tier they are in around themselves and the entire community has known it for years. But since the policy actually applies to it, we just have to sit here and endure pain in UU's most competitive tournaments even though nothing would stand in the councils way of banning it other than this policy that we've been following for years and reasons unknown. If a pokemon is so incredibly broken to a degree of these two examples, there should not be a damn thing standing in the way of getting rid of it. These old gen lower tiers are fucking popular like idk what else to say, communities wouldn't be creating subsections in their discords and sections on smogon (which are consistently active) for these tiers if people didn't play them/didn't want to continue their development. There's just no real reason in my eyes to hinder players from pushing these old gens forward. We are smart, I'm confident any lower tier council/community could think of a way to make their old gens as competitive as possible without making more than 1, MAYBE 2 changes, but making more than 1 change wouldn't be healthy imo (We didn't end up touching Lando-I in ORAS mono because of this notion).

Overall, I just think we're smarter than this policy and we've had the luxury of seeing how a decision to ban something in an old gen lower tier could work.

E: unsure as to why Oglemi didn't apply the policy to us. Initially I had said it was because we weren't an OT yet, which would make sense, but still begs the question as to why mono wasn't included upon becoming official since we are considered to be a lower tier from my understanding (could be wrong on that).

I ignored ubers and lc as well, since none of you were in the scope of the thread, nor in the scope of this one.

 

[Expulso]

if the old gen OUs (DPP OU and Dugtrio, ADV OU and Baton Pass / Mr. Mime, BW/ORAS and whatever they are considering) are given leeway to make bans that express the overwhelming majority opinion of the community and will improve the tier, I see no reason that the old gen lower tiers shouldn't also have this privilege.

when the DPP OU Dugtrio ban was discussed, there was not sizable opposition on the grounds of "but old players won't be able to come back to the tier now!". instead, most of the playerbase seemed to welcome this change as positive and healthy for the tier. if anything, the ban didnt shake up dpp all that sizably; some old player returning might be more stunned by the rise of clefable in usage than by the dug ban.

when lower tier communities try to make similar changes that the majority of the community wants, we are told that we cannot do this because it will change the tier too much; the tier is locked and we can't do anything about it. however, many of these tiers get enough play that they evolve, just like the OUs do. letting lower tier communities make bans to adapt to the changes in this tier is far more beneficial than keeping them locked just so we can't mess them up for the people that used to play them (which seems to be the logic of the lock...?). i find that mentality to be needlessly paternalistic; the people who don't want the tier to change are fully capable of voicing those opinions whenever changes are voted upon, and the communities generally understand that it's better to keep metas stable unless change is necessary.

tldr; let old gen low tiers make changes. the metas are played a lot and evolve, and we should be able to conduct votes/bans that will keep the metas healthy rather than being forced into informal bans or gentlemans' agreements. OUs have had positive experiences with bans after the gen is current, I don't see why lower tiers would be different.

 

[Coconut]

I ignored ubers and lc as well, since none of you were in the scope of the thread, nor in the scope of this one.

correct. we've been doing our own thing for a bit now. we don't have a stake in this conversation.

 

[DnB]

hy, returning player here

originally i wanted to start a new threat on this, but then i found this one, so i guess ill write it up here

ok, so ive been playing since 2008, mainly played lower tiers in all these gens, was really up to date in dpp-oras, only started to come back to "oldgen lower tiers" after SM came out

since then i've mostly played BW lower tiers, and oh man, its just wild


i really did appreciate the changes they did to BW OU, banning sleep, baton pass and trapping was rly important for the metagame. but then, we have BW lower tiers which are locked, meaning that none of the above are banned in those tiers.
ok so i've started to play BW UU, RU, NU, PU, ZU and NFE in those lower tier PLs/world cups etc, and did pretty well in all most of them, so I would consider myself as someone, that plays all of the BW lower tiers at least once per year for a few weeks/months

BW NFE/BW ZU/BW PU
are different, we managed to ban sleep in ZU because jumpluff or even the mighty hypnosis purugly were just stupid, also some big changes happened to BW PU in the recent months, wont talk about that since they are handled differently

BW NU:
Now we are talking. so yea, after maining BW NU back in the day when it was current gen, the tier just became a huge mess. no reliable spinners + mons like garbodor (or in the past scolipede) which can easily set up spikes, made the meta just heavily focused around 1 playstyle: KangaSpikes, you either run it yourself and it will become a mess, or you dont run it and you just lose, because its just then best playstyle. the biggest problem of the tier tho, is gothorita for sure. i highly respect Chill Shadow, who i face in like 95% of those lower tier PLs, he is abusing shadow tag for so long now, many people complained, but still no changes to the tier, because its locked. if people thought Dugtrio/Gothitelle are broken in OU, just imagine NU, where Gothorita is at almost the same power level as many other mons in the tier. I enjoy all the BW tiers, but playing NU now again in NUPL, idk, just feels painful compared to the fun i had with building & playing in the other ones.
While sleep isnt that common in NU, its still just broken in BW, theres also stuff like Riolu/Prankster spam, which is just matchup fishing in a really unhealthy way.
The tier has to change a lot imo to become fun again. I'm not trying to think about stuff like complex bans, but just letting a council decide to ban certain mons like Garbodor, Kangaskhan or Mola would be a huge step in the right direction.

BW RU:
Oh yes, the meta where the 2 best mons rely on ~80% moves to win the game. At least you can somehow reliable spin with mons like Kabutops or Cryogonal (but tbh, spinning just sucks in BW lol). Alomomola is also king here, which means, that also Gothorita gets some usage, so again, Shadow Tag in the tier, although it isnt as problematic here as in NU, its still just a bad thing. Oh, here we have sleep again, Amoonguss is in this tier, spore is so much fun :)

BW UU:
Victini. In my recent UUFPL run, i brought tini 5/6 times. my opponents prepped for it. But you equip it with choice specs and suddenly the stuff that normally checks it, just drops. afraid of pursuit? Well, Colbur + WoW take care of that, crippling Snorlax for the rest of the game, a pokemon which is normally considered on of the best checks for tini. Again, sleep is prominent here, Roserade with greed powder is really good here, because BW sleep makes the move suddenly good again. But at least we have somehow reliable ways to spin with Blastoise/Hitmontop, both even can use Foresight if you really need to remove Hazards.
-originally i wanted to write up a huge post on all the problems these tiers have, but that wouldve been too much lol

Ok, so when i started to play these BW lower tiers again, like ~3 years ago, i just tried to use my old teams from back in the day. none of them where good, the meta was figured out, although you can still find some new strategies and sets, most of the time its just better to rely on the common BW playstyle in setting up hazards and hitting hard with strong attacks.



All of these oldgen lower tiers have councils that do a great job at updating VRs, posting samples, even update old analysis. These councils should have the right to ban mons or unban some from higher tiers. ask players from recent tours that played these tiers on their input, which mons they would like to see banned or which one they would unban (f.e. cryogonal in NU would be super interesting).
create a bigger council, including those tour players and invite them to vote on bans/unbans, like we recently did in BW PU


i like the idea of a tier lock for oldgens, because they arent played that often, but when some tourhosts are thinking about dropping BW RU for RUPL, you just have to realize, thats its time to change things up. people are creating lower tiers now for gens where these concept didnt exist (like GSC UU f.e.), and although thats all very niche stuff, i think we have enough active members in the community that care about those lower tiers and are willing to put in some time to think about potential bans/drops, to make the tier enjoyable again.


just let people decide that actually play that tier, Expulso said a lot of great things about that in his post. if the tier leaders/council decides, that it might be worth looking into banning shadow tag, they should be able to do so.
recent changes like in DPP OU rly shook up the meta, all the players welcomed it, so i am pretty sure the same thing will happen in lower tiers.

if these oldgen lower tiers continue to just exist in this vacuum where no new stuff is happening, it will just die out. "returning players" know that the same stuff is still broken and new players won't feel motivated enough to invest time into an already figured out meta

tldr; let old gen low tiers make changes. the metas are played a lot and evolve, and we should be able to conduct votes/bans that will keep the metas healthy rather than being forced into informal bans or gentlemans' agreements. OUs have had positive experiences with bans after the gen is current, I don't see why lower tiers would be different.

 

[Heysup]

The problem with the constant revisiting of old gen tiering is, as Chill Shadow says, our perception of what should be banned. I've been on this site for a long time and I can tell you first hand that over time we have seen an increase in bias to be pro-banning. I am making no judgements here as I do not think this is the place for it, but it seems pretty clear in this current era we are very OK with banning because a Pokemon or strategy is annoying to deal with in the builder whereas back in the ADV/DPP era we had long drawn out suspect tests where we basically needed to write a 2,000 word essay to convince the TL that we were sufficiently educated in the tier and needed to basically show that there was almost no counterplay to ban a mon. I am not saying this is a better system (I actually think it's worse lol) but my point is that we take banning way less "seriously" now. We basically treated it like a criminal trial. It's safe to say we shifted from "beyond a reasonable doubt" to "on the balance of probabilities" for our burden of proof.

Certain strategies, including endure/pinch berry/reversal, weather, and BP, that are deemed "Cheese" or uncompetitive now, were simply just MU's you needed to prepare for in those earlier gens. In my opinion. DPP UU rain/screens and DPP NU Memento/Linoone/Drifblim are all more absurd in my view than BP, so I won't talk about those too much here, but in DPP lower tiers more than a SubPass is almost too hard to pull off because things hit so hard and phazers are everywhere, as would be expected in a non-team preview tier (phazing=scouting) and where it is hard to get hazards off the field. In ADV UU/NU you have crazy Encore to counteract BP, and, similar to DPP, phazing is pretty commonplace.

I'm anti-touching old gens unless there is something super blatant that a vast majority of the player base wants removed, or is a newly discovered mechanic. It makes me feel a bit better if the player base includes some of the same people who helped form the metagame in its original state but that's obviously subjective. That being said, the unbanning of NFEs in ADV NU but not in ADV UU kind of made for some weird inconsistencies between the tiers which may be worthwhile cleaning up.

 

[Hogg]

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that the majority of the active playerbase wants the ability to make some changes, but that there’s still a strong sentiment from many that changes should only occur in exceptional circumstances. That’s a difficult needle to thread, but as I said upthread I have no issue with removing the old gen lower tier lock if we have a reasonable way to address issues.

Here’s my main issue, though: I really really do not want to start creating official individual tiering councils for every single old gen lower tier. I’ve expressed my issue with small handpicked groups having outsized power over the tiering process here and elsewhere, and while I think in some cases councils are a necessity to direct the tiering process, we’re going to see a TON of overlap in membership across the various tiering councils, which will mean that a few people will have a huge influence on tiering across the board. I know that there are good groups of folks who generate resources like VRs for old gen lower tiers, and I am not in any way trying to minimize their contributions, but I think adding a dozen or more new “official” tiering councils is not the way forward.

My proposal, then, would be that currently locked tiers can hold suspect tests on a case-by-case basis using tournament results from circuit tournaments and subforum PLs to generate their set of voters. People can create PR threads as needed to discuss and address issues in old gen lower tiers. If there appears to be a decent amount of support (read: more than just one or two people responding and then the thread goes dead), we can move forward with a suspect test.

As for how voting lists should be generated, this is also something that I’d prefer to keep on a case-by-case basis, simply because every old gen lower tier has differing amounts of activity, different circuits, etc. Incorporating semi-finalists or quarter-finalists (depending on the size of the tour) of the two most recent iterations of any circuit tournament involving the tier in question is a good place to start. I also think that subforum premier leagues are a fine metric to include, since most of those have “quasi-official” status - again, I don’t want to put a hard number on it because different PLs have different numbers of weeks, but a decent benchmark would be that anyone who played the tier in >50% of the regular season weeks and has at least one win is probably an OK place to start.

Does this sound like a reasonable place to start? Hopefully it allows for some changes but minimizes the risk of a couple of influential people having the ability to make major changes in an old gen lower tier.