Transitivity in RBY Bans Across Tiers [Implemented]

Sabelette

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Edit: See here https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/transitivity-in-rby-bans-across-tiers.3755580/post-10360707

Hello RBY,

I want to start a discussion on transitivity in bans across tiers as this is a subject that has come up multiple times before but never really been formally codified. In short, I want to finalize a precedent on if bans in RBY tiers should be transitive to all tiers below them. We sort of soft-launched this discussion when asking about confusion before, but I think it's important to have this discussion independent of any one specific ban.

What is transitivity?
In short, transitivity means that if something is banned from a higher tier, it is automatically banned from a lower tier. Historically, this is the case for nearly 100% of Pokemon bans and a significant number of move/item/ability bans. The main exception is non-Pokemon bans in tiers that no longer do active tiering - for example, ADV OU's Soundproof ban does not extend to ADV UU, and BW OU's Gems ban does not extend to BW lower tiers.

History of transitivity in RBY
Historically, RBY non-Pokemon bans haven't been transitive, but we haven't had many in the modern era - we had a quickly-overturned ban on sleep in UU, and the currently-active Agility + Partial Trapping complex ban in UU that is often maligned for various reasons (being a complex ban, not being transitive, people wanting a simple ban on Wrap or Partial Trapping, issues with how the suspect was run). At the time these bans were done, transitivity wasn't really in discussion because RBY NU was still in its early stages and tiers like PU and ZU were incredibly unofficial with zero tournament presence - I genuinely don't think anyone was even really thinking about active tiering or development of lower tiers at the time.

Transitivity discussion started again with discussion of broader mechanics that have large influences on lower tiers, like confusion and partial trapping, and whether it makes sense that such a mechanic can be banned in a higher tier but legal in a lower tier. During the prior discussion on confusion across lower tiers, a majority of respondents and supermajority of qualified respondents (those who have reqs to vote in their lower tier or tiers of choice) supported transitivity in any move bans; any followup was put on hold due to RBYPL.

Why is transitivity important?
Because RBY's tiers are all actively tiers and continue to shift, I believe transitivity is extremely important in bans, otherwise tiering becomes less sensible. If we were to say, for example, that Moltres is too strong for OU, it seems a little nonsensical tiering-wise to say it's fine in NU; by the same logic, we could argue that dropping Exeggutor or Snorlax to UU is fine because their poor Speed makes them ill-equipped for the metagame and unlikely to dominate it in the same way they do OU, but this would obviously be antithetical to how we currently do tiering. I think this equally extends to move bans - it's impossible to evaluate a Pokemon's strength if it randomly gains and loses options as we move up and down tiers. For example, if we banned sleep moves in OU and NU, but not UU, then most sleepers are now going to end up in UUBL or PUBL, as a bunch of sleepers that don't make the cut in UU drop to NU, are immediately useless without their best move, and drop to PU where they now suddenly regain a powerful option.

Discussion
I want to open this thread for comments from RBY players on transitivity as a whole, without considering any specific bans, because I think it's important to set a precedent on this. My position is that we should have transitivity in bans - if OU bans something, it's gone from UU and below, if NU bans something, it's gone from PU and below, and so on - because we are actively tiering and it would make continued efforts to tier a bit farcical if moves or Pokemon are banned piecemeal from different metagames while being legal in tiers below the ones they're banned in. I have a few discussion questions to get this started though I'm open to new questions and perspectives being introduced by others.

I also want to be very clear that this should be discussed independently from any potential upcoming suspects - we are setting a framework for how RBY low tiers tier as a whole, not picking our position based on if we want to keep a specific move legal in our favorite tier later.

1. Should bans be transitive?
2. Is there a good reason to not set a precedent and have some bans be transitive and some not be transitive? If so, how do we decide which is which and who gets reqs to decide this?
3. How should this precedent be decided? Is there a reasonable way to hold a vote on it that doesn't get biased by the current discourse on partial trapping?
4. Is there any argument for bans being transitive across low tiers but not from OU, meaning that a ban in UU affects all lower tiers but a ban in OU affects no other tiers?

Discuss, or at least give me a one or two line response about how you feel about transitivity, thank you
 
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1. No, non-pokemon bans should not be transitive.

2.i believe there's plenty of reasons reasons not to set this precedent, such as it's adverse effects on tiers below the ones where a certain move or mechanic are problematic, that should be up to those playerbases to say if they are problematic there imo.

3. I think this could he decided by a vote but not until the partial trapping "drama" is decided.

4. No I think that'd be silly.

That's just my quick thoughts tho.
 
My preference is always for ban transitivity in lower tiers, and I’m happy to see the beginning of more formal discussion of this in RBY. Partly, I find this takes the burden off of lower tiers to perform repetitive suspect tests or quickbans on metagame elements that have already been decided as being banworthy at higher levels (and so with higher standards for bans).
 
1. I think only bans on specific mons should be transitive, I do not think any mechanic bans should be transitive. UU has banned sleep in the past, which would have been terrible if it became transitive, and currently has a complex ban on partial trapping, which I also believe shouldn't be brought into more tiers. UU is 0-2 on good mechanic bans but even if that wasn't the case I think one tier should not have so much power over other tiers, not only would there be a power imbalance but would also lead to more politic-ing (I really don't care about what UU tries to suspect but if they decide to suspect sleep again or something suddenly everyone in nu and pu and zu has to jump in)
2. Any grandfathered mechanics ban (literally only the agility + partial trapping complex ban in UU) should not become transitive, and should probably be done away with anyways. Any future "transitive" mechanics ban should be voted on by the entirety of people who gets VR reqs in any tier. (for example a ban on cray or wrap or sleep or whatever should have everyone who has reqs for uu, nu, pu, or zu vote on it with a 60% majority for it to go through affecting all lower tiers)
3. ^
4. All bans done in ou should apply to every lower tier.
 
I think since RBY is still an actively-tiered generation bans should be transitive. Other oldgens don't have transitive bans because their tiers are locked. If some generation's NU is fine as is, but UU is problematic, there is no reason to change NU just because something is banned from that tier's UU. However in RBY, NU is bound to have changes anyway at some point thanks to non-static tiering so the "tier is fine as is" argument doesn't really hold. The precent in the current generation (where tiers are not locked) is that any kind of ban is transitive, so we should follow that precedent.

If we do a vote on wether or not to have transitivity then I think in terms of reqs it should have players across all the lowtiers voting (UU-PU, maybeeeee ZU but it's semi-fake). There are a few approaches I think we can do to this:
  1. Have anyone who normally gets VR/Suspect Reqs for any of the tiers vote. This is the most inclusive option and results in a very large voting body but also may allow people who got one spotlight run without really engaging in any of the RBY lowtiers to vote on this potentially massive tiering change which could be a downside.
  2. Have stricter reqs compared to VR/Suspect Reqs. Maybe things like not counting spotlights, requiting more wins in teamtours, only allowing indiv finalists compared to semifinalists. However the strictness is kinda arbitrary and this might seem a little gatekeepery.
  3. Have normal VR/Suspect Reqs, but you have to qualify twice (either in the same tier or across multiple tiers). This is similar to 2 but less arbitrary. It makes the voting body people who have consistently gotten good results as opposed to a one-time fluke. The main downsides are that I'm not sure how many people have qualified for a suspect twice so it may be a small voting body, and it disadvantages people who only sign up for a few tours a year because they don't have time. This also may come off as gatekeepery.
Personally my preference is option 1 because I think more people voting is a good thing since it gets a more general representative of the playerbase, but if anyone thinks this will result in too many people voting I laid out some other options.
 
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1. No, but my opinion doesn't matter because the majority obviously supports it and people will just write off my opinion as stupid Cake being stupid anyways so i don't give enough shits to deal with that and won't bother more with it.
1. Any future "transitive" mechanics ban should be voted on by the entirety of people who gets VR reqs in any tier. (for example a ban on cray or wrap or sleep or whatever should have everyone who has reqs for uu, nu, pu, or zu vote on it with a 60% majority for it to go through affecting all lower tiers)

One point I do want to say though is that I think the idea that suspect holders for NU, PU, ZU getting to vote on tiering action of other tiers even if they don't hold the reqs to that tier is frankly preposterous, one of the main arguments of transitive tiering is that it aligns RBY more with other actively tiered gens, and the ability to have someone who, for example, has reqs to vote in PU to vote in a UU suspect just completely collapses this. On top of that, this example PU player has no knowledge of UU's metagame, so why do they have any right to decide what it does, regardless of whether it affects their lower tier is just letting undeserving, unknowledgable players have an equal say in a tier they do not play to those who have proven themselves with reqs is a really bad idea. If UU bans sleep again or some other major mechanic that is fine in NU / PU (it won't), that is the UU playerbase's decision and should not see any interference from unknowledgable players who aren't looking out for the interests of UU (applies to other tiers too noy just UU ofc). If it happens, it happens, adapt and learn the changes, even if the tier in question did not need them. This is why I'm personally against transitive tiering, but if we're doing it, we're doing it all the way with its positives and negatives.
 
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ill just repeat my thoughts here for those who didnt see the brief spontaneous convo that took place in cunocord

~ from a tiering policy point of view, i fully agree with the op that bans being transitive is what makes sense within the vr based active tiering system that we use. unless a move that is banned in a higher tier is nearly-unviable in the tier below it, it is 'distorting' to tiering bc you will have mons that only dropped to that tier in the first place because of the banned move.

as most people reading this already know, i dont rly care about tiering policy so it wouldnt bother me at all to ignore this logic if there were other reasons for doing so. but we should be upfront that thats what we are doing if we go down such a path. just as eg the sm uu quagsire ban was very upfront that it was in direct contradiction to tiering policies, but they wanted to do it anyway bc the priority was to improve the tier.

~ i personally do have at least some interest in tiering rby underused in a way that is non-transitive, for pokémon and/or for moves but i think pokémon is what would be more impactful. uu has certainly made progress over a few years but its still not exactly in a great place, i dont think any change as far as partial trapping would even have that much of an impact dragonite often doesnt bother with wrap nowadays, and tentacruel isnt that good of a pokemon in general and its most desirable trait (kang mu) has nothing to do with wrap anyway. even without tentacruel's wrap, youd want good speed control anyway bc its a lower tier and also for haunter, so idt its as centralizing in the builder as ppl sometimes suggest it to be, tho ofc there would at least be some impact in the builder if tent wasnt present.
on the other hand, wrap impacted the builder much more in lapras meta bc you had 2 mandatory slow mons, and it most definitely would have been impactful in the upcoming uubl + jolteon slowbro tour if it were played with pt legal.

i think the best hope for improvements to rby uu would be to get one (or more) of the ou bulky mons, maybe slowbro drop happens by itself, and/or maybe clamp gets banned and then cloy drops, but itd also be nice if uu didnt have to rely on ou tiering for these things because to be very direct about it, their impact on the uu metagame has absolutely no relationship to what place they do or dont have in ou. also, uu having a functional grass type would be a nice option to have, even more so with a mon like cloyster or slowbro further incentivizing electrics, and obviously exeggutor is never ever dropping from ou by viability.

from my pov there is a direct link between the wide gap between ou playstyle and uu playstyle, and the issues that uu has as far as balance. from the uu pov, the list of banned pokemon (not counting uubls) is a eclectic collection of: a handful of mons thatd be completely broken (alakazam starmie gengar tauros) together with a bunch of mons thatd very likely be completely balanced (snorlax exeggutor rhydon cloyster slowbro) and some that are debatable (jolteon zapdos chansey jynx). in particular, the mons that would be balanced but are taken by ou are all slow bulky mons, something uu would desperately like to have some of for its own balance. and when we do get a slow bulky mon, its the wrong one; we got lapras but what we needed was cloy, we got hypno but what we needed was exeggutor or slowbro. ofc each case is unique but from my pov this overall reflects that ou values the more defensively sound mons and the explosions, even if that also comes with exploitable weaknesses, more than an offensive-leaning 'can threaten everything but without any specific matchup-niche' counterpart.
and ofc u can also see that the above groupings have rly nothing to do with viability in ou, what most ouers consider 2 of the top 3 are in the 'would be balanced in uu' category, 2 of the 4 'would be totally broken in uu' are toward the lower end of ou, etc.

i dont know if there is any other generation that has this extreme of a situation with what is valued from one tier compared to the tier below it, as i only play a few gens. but it is not a situation that works well for viability-based tiering. and tbc certainly there are options available within viability based tiering, such as just having a large uubl basically in order to remove all the strong fast mons that probably couldve been balanced if we couldve had our exeggutors/cloysters/slowbros but are too strong since those mons are banned by the tiering system.
or, we could use a different system to create rby uu, and then return to viability based tiering from rby uu down since this issue is very much specific to the ou/uu line viability based tiering is working perfectly fine for the rest of the low tiers. (ie, almost all of the good mons in uu would be either broken or extremely strong in nu.)

~ so in summary, according to tiering policy transitivity is what 'logically makes sense'. if we are going to break transitivity, it should be specifically from ou to uu bc thats where the 'principles' of vr based tiering break down, and from my pov we should break transitivity for mons as well if we go down this road bc it opens up much better options for solving uu's issues (tho certainly it comes with 'instability' as well since it potentially opens the door to pretty much anything), and what is the reasoning for having transitivity for mons but not for moves, bc i dont rly see much of a difference between the two policy-wise.

obv i dont rly expect people to agree with me on this, there are maybe a couple other people who have at times shown interest in this sort of highly-flexible tiering, but i understand that most people do not want to completely shake up our tiering system in this kind of way. but i think this pov can contribute something to the conversation anyway (even assuming that abandoning vr based tiering from ou to uu is not going to be considered), so here u go lol.
 
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1. There are a few downsides to both transitive bans and keeping things as is. The issue with transitive bans is just how differently certain moves and mechanics are used in OU vs the other lowers, and to a lesser extent between the lowers themselves. For instance, wrap in OU functions fundamentally differently to wrap in UU, benefitting from the greater paralysis support available and heavily punishing meta teams (usually those with Rhydon). In an ideal world, wrap would be banned in UU if it were broken in the tier itself rather than simply because it was broken in the tier above. That said, I agree with Melbelle that most moves broken in higher tiers will be broken in the lowers.

Going against transitivity also opens a can of worms with transitive Pokemon bans. As Sabelette stated, the logic of these bans extends to dropping pokemon like Snorlax and Exeggutor to UU. This is something I personally would be completely fine with but I understand being in the minority on this and of course goes against how we currently do tiering, necessitating a mammoth rework of our entire system - it's just not very feasible.

Another option is to pick and choose what should be transitively banned, but I don't see the benefits of doing this over a consistent rule.
 
1.Should bans be transitive?

In my opinion, transitive bans make sense most of the time, especially because there are so few options in this generation. Most things being broken in a specific tier are due to something inherent to that mechanic and not something super tier-specific, as it sometimes can be in later generations.

2. Is there a good reason not to set a precedent where some bans are transitive and some are not? If so, how do we decide which is which, and who gets the requirements to decide this? +3. How should this precedent be decided? Is there a reasonable way to hold a vote on it without bias from the current discourse on partial trapping?

For example, one situation that wouldn’t have been a good transitive ban was the Sleep ban in UU. In general, the idea of UU players having such a high impact on tiers below UU leaves a bad taste in my mouth . My idea to mitigate this is that bans are transitive, but a lower tier can opt out of transitivity through something like a counter-suspect test. In this system, the lower tier would need a supermajority to avoid banning the mechanic, as it has already been shown to be somewhat broken.(dont mean that every single time uu does a ban all the lower tiers need to do an counter suspect but more that they have the possibility to do it if they really dont like the idea)

4. Is there any argument for bans being transitive across lower tiers but not from OU—meaning that a ban in UU affects all lower tiers, but a ban in OU doesn’t affect other tiers?

Like others have already said, OU plays very differently from lower tiers, so an OU ban should not directly result in a transitive ban to the lower tiers. in my opinion However, at the very least, the lower tiers should need suspect test the things banned from OU.
 
I disagree with the idea of a lowtier being able to vote out of a transitive ban. With the current tiering system, lower tiers are always at the mercy of higher tiers, and this is something we just have to accept as lowtier players. If some staple PU mon rises to NU, we have to accept that NU took the mon and deal with it. Similarly, if NU bans something, PU has to accept that NU banned it and deal with it.
 
What is transitivity?
In short, transitivity means that if something is banned from a higher tier, it is automatically banned from a lower tier. Historically, this is the case for nearly 100% of Pokemon bans and a significant number of move/item/ability bans. The main exception is non-Pokemon bans in tiers that no longer do active tiering - for example, ADV OU's Soundproof ban does not extend to ADV UU, and BW OU's Gems ban does not extend to BW lower tiers.

Soundproof was a bad ban trying to make a broken move (Baton Pass) more “fair”

See


Gems was a bad ban trying to make broken pokemon (Volcarona and Cloyster) more “fair”

See

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/gems-in-bw-ou.3703711/

History of transitivity in RBY
Historically, RBY non-Pokemon bans haven't been transitive, but we haven't had many in the modern era - we had a quickly-overturned ban on sleep in UU, and the currently-active Agility + Partial Trapping complex ban in UU that is often maligned for various reasons (being a complex ban, not being transitive, people wanting a simple ban on Wrap or Partial Trapping, issues with how the suspect was run). At the time these bans were done, transitivity wasn't really in discussion because RBY NU was still in its early stages and tiers like PU and ZU were incredibly unofficial with zero tournament presence - I genuinely don't think anyone was even really thinking about active tiering or development of lower tiers at the time.

Agility + Partial trapping was a bad ban trying to make certain Pokemon (Dragonite) more “fair”

See https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...trapping-apt-suspect-test-apt-banned.3700597/

Sleep was a bad ban trying to make certain broken Pokemon (Hypno and Laparis) more “fair”

See https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sleep-in-rby-uu-again-sleep-unbanned.3732438/

Saying something is “complex” not “transitive” is just arguing over definitions of things that are very similar if not the same thing
I also want to be very clear that this should be discussed independently from any potential upcoming suspects - we are setting a framework for how RBY low tiers tier as a whole, not picking our position based on if we want to keep a specific move legal in our favorite tier later.
Theoretical arguments are largely pointless and are devoid of the issues that people actually have. As well as encouraging bad faith arguments because they support one side or the other



My prediction is ___ will get banned in __ to make a certain Pokemon more “fair”
 
Soundproof was a bad ban trying to make a broken move (Baton Pass) more “fair”

Gems was a bad ban trying to make broken pokemon (Volcarona and Cloyster) more “fair”

Agility + Partial trapping was a bad ban trying to make certain Pokemon (Dragonite) more “fair”

Sleep was a bad ban trying to make certain broken Pokemon (Hypno and Laparis) more “fair”

Saying something is “complex” not “transitive” is just arguing over definitions of things that are very similar if not the same thing

Sleep was not banned to make Lapras more fair, it was banned before Lapras was ever legal in the tier and it was banned because people legitimately thought it was a broken coinflip (they were wrong, but it wasn't banned to make anything "more fair").

A complex ban is when you ban a combination of elements as used together, not a single thing, while a transitive ban is a higher tier ban applying to a lower tier. These concepts are so fundamentally different that if you think they're the same thing I have to question if you understand this topic at all; the only complex ban in your list is APT, which isn't transitive, and none of other bans are complex or transitive.

Theoretical arguments are largely pointless and are devoid of the issues that people actually have. As well as encouraging bad faith arguments because they support one side or the other

I already gave the reasoning for this, we are setting a tiering framework instead of picking and choosing based on how people personally feel about partial trapping, because this may or may not end up applying to other questions down the line. Setting a precedent for something this big based on a single mechanic is shortsighted.

All in all your post doesn't really address any of the questions asked, it just calls a bunch of bans bad when the topic has nothing to do with whether the bans on Soundproof or Gems were good, they're just examples of nontransitive bans. The vibe I'm getting is you dislike non-Pokemon bans but failed to understand the topic of this thread and turned it into a soapbox about how banning anything but Pokemon is just trying to balance overpowered Pokemon instead of banning the Pokemon, which is pretty irrelevant to the point of this thread.
 
Alright, given the high level of support expressed for transitivity both in this thread and in the various lower tier council chats, we're going to be going with a position of full transitivity on future Pokemon and move bans from all tiers, meaning any ban from a higher tier automatically applies to tiers below it. If an issue arises down the line with enough controversy we might review this policy or add a method of exempting a tier via a particularly large (at least 66%) supermajority, but it seems unneeded to establish such a thing for the present.

I'm going ahead and implementing this in my position as lower tiers leader without having some kind of "suspect" vote for two reasons:
1. This isn't a suspect test, this is broad tiering policy. Voting on the overall framework makes about as much sense to me as voting on whether or not we use the vapicuno method for tiering or such, which are things that have been decided by the relevant council without having players vote.
2. Determining reqs on such a thing seems to make very little sense - higher tiers have no reason whatsoever to care how they affect tiers below them, meaning that the players with the most investment would be those in the lowest tiers, which both have shaky levels of development and smaller playerbases, and those who play multiple tiers, who still only get the same single vote despite theoretically qualifiying in multiple tiers, which seems to lend itself to voting based on how it affects one's favorite tier rather than what sets good tiering precedent.

Ultimately, I'll adjust things as needed as we go and try to keep things on a good course. Given this decision it's important to note this does not instantly make the Agility + Partial Trapping ban from UU transitive - my plan is to have this one actually get formally reviewed by the playerbase given the upcoming plans for testing partial trapping. If partial trapping gets banned as a whole, then the APT ban is useless and immediately abolished. If partial trapping doesn't get banned, we can go ahead and open discussion on APT and decide what happens with that ban.
 
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