All Gens Where/How can I ask others to play custom games in Past Gens tiers?

[bdt2002]

It's been a little while since I've posted anywhere on this forum, but now that I've gotten my other unrelated posts out of the way in other areas, I can finally ask a question I've been wanting to ask for a while now. I decided to make this a full-scale thread so that way, any other users that may happen to have the same questions as I don't have to waste more time than they need to.

So. Picture this. You haven't been very active in a while, but you feel like you want to get back into playing in Past Gens tiers again. There's no real reason you couldn't just get back into playing the existing metagames, but let's say that for this example, you have your own ideas for how to spice up existing metagames just a little bit more, hoping your advised changes would make the tier more fun to play even if you keep losing games.

This is the kind of situation I am all too familiar with, as my inexperience compared to veteran players with metagames that are more established than "Current Gens" (as I like to call it) leads me to having several losing streaks keeping me from climbing the ladders of Past Gens OU tiers on Pokémon Showdown. I end up feeling like all of the research I can do on the existing metagames doesn't amount to anything when I can never escape the depths of low ladder. Granted I'm far from the most competitive player on Earth, I feel like I've tried everything. I've tried experimenting with my own low ladder cheese at times, I've tried specifically making teams from different archetypes, I've tried making teams consisting of only the best top-tiers in each metagame... but I kid you not, none of it has worked and I'm officially out of ideas for how to improve with the existing metagames.

Which is why nowadays, I wish I had a way to play in those tiers with optional changes. This is what Custom Games can accomplish with great success- custom rulesets being made that can be used in practice apart from the official ladders to test potential changes, bans, or unbans. Just for fun, here's a few of my own ideas I came up with:

• Gen 1 (all tiers) but there's actual Dragon-Type STAB in the game (so pretty much just other moves)
• Gen 2 OU but with Ho-Oh and no Celebi (both being unbanned has already been tried, as has just Celebi)
• Gen 5 OU but with Darkrai unbanned (would probably still be busted, but hey, Sleep moves are banned now)
• Gen 6 OU but Mega Evolution is banned entirely
• Same idea as above ^^^ for Gen 7, but let's also ban Z-Moves at the same time

I understand why drastic changes like that would rarely, if ever become official, but I would be absolutely thrilled if some kind of solution to this existed. And if it does exist, I want it to be better advertised so me and other more casual ladder players could more easily find others to play games with when custom rulesets get agreed upon. If anyone would be able to help with this, that would be great, and you have my thanks in advance. :)

 

[Bewill]

For unbans, you can always, say, ask whoever you want to play with to play Ubers but only use ho-oh, celebi and OU mons for example. For the gen 1 with real dragon moves example, you can challenge them to the gen 1 custom game format, which lets you do basically whatever you want, including use moves or even pokemon from later gens. The teambuilder will say it's illegal but when you play custom games you'll be allowed to use them anyway. I'd recommend asking around the smogon rby discord (or whatever gen you're playing) to see if anyone else wants to try your silly little meta, or you could even make your own discord (if there is a silly little smogon metas discord, I'm not aware with it)

 

[chimp]

Probably not the solution you're looking for, but you could follow the path that many up-start draft leagues take. Make a discord server, start advertising it (many draft servers have channels specifically for advertising) and... well, there ya go.

Not ideal sure but maybe this way you can get 7 other people willing to play a custom ruleset in some tournament. Do a good job hosting a few and more people will come, batta bing batta boom you got a new community to farm for fun little tournaments.

Is it harder than I made it seem? Probably. But I've hosted one or two weird tournaments this way so if my dumb ass can do it I'm sure you can figure it out.

 

[Cdijk16]

In the ROA chat, you can request the moderators to start a tour with your desired custom rules. This works for most other chat rooms as well, but ROA is the most active.

 

[Rage]

In the ROA chat, you can request the moderators to start a tour with your desired custom rules. This works for most other chat rooms as well, but ROA is the most active.

Outside of the odd Mashing tour and What If tours, we don't really do many tours like this to be honest. You can still try to ask though of course.

(also Tours Plaza does more janky stuff more often!)