The Suspect Ladder

[Tangerine]

At this point I am pretty convinced that we no longer need the Suspect Ladder. The suspect ladder was a very useful tool during the Garchomp and Skymin S test but at this point I am convinced we don't need it anymore.

It helped during Garchomp and the Shaymin S testing because we literally did not know how the Metagame looked like at that point without them. The Garchompless ladder showed us what the metagame looked like "without Garchomp" while the Shaymin S was released alongside Platinum, essentially shifting the entire metagame.

But at this point, we know how the metagame looks like without a suspect (n+1) - because we have tested the metagame with suspect n, etc. Although this is now probably shaky in the case of the Latias test since we can argue that the lack of individuals participating has given us a taste of a very skewed metagame that hasn't fully developed but still "very gimmicky" (see SDS's post in the Latias thread). Eliminating the suspect ladder and simply testing the suspect in the standard ladder will boost (albeit forcibly) the activity with a given suspect, making sure we don't end up with deciding a Pokemon is uber again a few months down the line when people have finally gotten used to it.

of course, the suspect ladder might be necessary if we want to compare the "concurrent" picture of the suspect less metagame and the suspect metagame (aka "how the metagame would have changed within that month without the suspect"). But at this point can we even get a good comparison with the suspect metagame?

I think eliminating the suspect ladder is a good idea - although yes, we are "forcing" the test upon the users but I think at this point I think it is an option we can consider - we can just make it clear by difficult voter registration/requirements (which i think we have)to ensure if someone earns the right to vote or not

 

[Havak]

Agreed.

My only worry is the complaint from a lot of users (at first anyway) and 'inconvieniece' of resetting ratings for every test (if this were to happen).

 

[RBG]

I totally agree with this. I think that how the UU test is going, it shows that using the standard ladder for the test gets more people into it. Since we already know what the Metagame is like without the suspects, I feel that we forcing everyone to test it would get more qualified voters, and more importantly, make it easier to find a battle

 

[Kevin Garrett]

Agreed.

My only worry is the complaint from a lot of users (at first anyway) and 'inconvieniece' of resetting ratings for every test (if this were to happen).

The standards for voting can be kept high so that the ratings won't have to be reset and players who are fortunate enough to have a good rating to begin with will have to maintain it for the whole testing period.

 

[Havak]

It's easy to have a good rating and play like 4-5 games every other day though.. It doesn't take that much effort IMO. Though, I guess at least they'll still be up to date and have enough experience to have a say in matters.

 

[Kevin Garrett]

I'm not totally against reseting everyone's rating, but you have to take into account all of the people that don't want to be involved with the suspect vote process. By keeping everyone's ratings the same, there would probably be more voters. A tiered voting system could be used again to ensure the quality of votes will be good.

 

[Imran]

I'm going to expand on what Kevin Garrett said about taking into account the people who don't want to be involved with the tiering process.

Essentially, you are forcing everyone to play in a metagame in which something is being tested. Say we vote Latias OU, we never really get to play a more relaxed metagame with Latias in it, as we introduce another suspect. I always imagined the standard ladder was somewhere you would go if you didn't want to be involved with testing a suspect, to actually play "the current metagame." The metagame, on the standard ladder, will never be stabilised until all of our suspect testing is done, i do see that, but I feel that actually doing the testing on that ladder might be a bit much. This basically makes the standard ladder, the testing metagame and the actual metagame at the same time, for the entire period of our suspect testing.

Now generally I don't have a problem with this, as I quite like the change and new Pokemon to play with / deal with. From an entirely personal point of view, I am for this. I also agree with you that it would be the best thing for the suspect test process itself. It just seems like we're constantly testing and not really getting to fully appreciate the metagame we have created. I think the difference between a metagame in which a suspect is being tested, and a metagame in which a suspect has been voted in is different enough to warrent the use of different ladders, even if it is simply so that people don't have to play in a metagame in which there could potentially be a "broken" Pokemon. This is a community after all, I'd want to see how large a proportion of the regular battlers on the server would like to do this, whether they care that much about the suspect process.

 

[Kevin Garrett]

There's another thing we have to think about if we remove the suspect ladder - tournaments. Namely, the Smogon Tour.

The Smogon Tour reflects the current state of the standard ladder for respective tiers. That should answer any questions about UU.

Since the UU test is taking place on the actual UU ladder, that is considered the standard metagame. The same would have to apply to the OU if there were to be no suspect ladder. The Smogon Tour lasts considerably longer than each test, so it's likely that the metagame would change several times over the course of the tour.

 

[Jumpman16]

the reason to have two separate ladders to test suspects was officially suggested by chaos, and at its core the alternate ladder has been useful for more than just that reason. i think keeping it will outweigh the cons of just having one ladder, but instead of conjecturing on my own, i will leave the explanation to the one whose idea of two ladders was in the first place. chaos is the one you are going to have to convince on this ultimately. aeolus and i took enough flak from him when aeolus asked doug to remove the suspect ladder for the skymin test. and make no mistake, it is no coincidence that lack of communication is the only reason that "mistake" ever even happened. if anyone besides chaos has forseen that we needed to reset ratings if we were going to do away with the suspect ladder, aeolus and i would and should have been told before any real damage had been done.

so i can speak for aeolus when i say that there's absolutely no way either of us are going to make structural changes to the suspect test process and be subjected to that kind of reprimanding again. it's one thing for our efforts with this entire process to go largely unappreciated (they are, i dont want to hear any "wait yes we do"s now, it doesn't matter and i honestly dont mind that much), but it's another to have to be dressed down by someone whos initial idea we are doing our best to actually carry out without any further information. if anything this thread will finally get chaos to officially document the reasoning behind why he wanted two ladders, because the "order" was given in #insidescoop almost a year ago and nobody remembers the particulars