Community Discussion on the tiering project

[Ortheore]

So there's been a lot of discussion about the overall direction of our tiering project, particularly as it pertains to RBY, going on in the 2U discussion thread, which really isn't the place for it. Consequently, I've created this thread.

====================

On the topic of a "final" line between 1U and 2U- this is a really poor idea. The whole premise of actively tiering RBY is that making anything "final" leads to tiers being so disconnected from the meta that it becomes laughable, so we run our own tiers that we can update when appropriate. The RBY2K10 list was used as an example in the other thread of a "good" line between OU and UU, which is ironic because I'd argue it works the opposite way- it failed to stay current, leading to things like Persian being considered OU when they're never seen in OU and aren't that good anyway. Hell, dissatisfaction with the status quo is a big part of the reason we began the tiering project. The key issue is you're trying to apply a static line to something that is inherently dynamic. It's impossible to have a static 1U line because player's opinions change and the metagame evolves- just look at how it's developed over the past year or so.

The whole point of maintaining tiers is that they respond to changes in the meta and player opinion, with such changes being inevitable as there's no such thing as a static metagame. Likewise, the further down the tier list you go, the more unstable things become, and nothing is going to change that because it's inherent to any tiering system unless it's static, which as I've just said, is a poor idea because change is inevitable, and any static tier list will invariably become outdated at some point, mandating change and returning us to our current system.

I merely skimmed the discussion from the other thread, so I'm not going into other points unless someone else brings them up

edit: If there are concerns with the regularity of how often we review our tiers though, that's something I think is fair. Specifying a certain time interval for reviewing tiers seems like a reasonable idea

 

[The Idiot Ninja]

If there are concerns with the regularity of how often we review our tiers though, that's something I think is fair. Specifying a certain time interval for reviewing tiers seems like a reasonable idea

Yeah, this is kind of my point. If we agree on the idea, we have to make the tier shifts happen with a certain regularity. Right now we don't really have a plan for that, do we?

 

[ThriceElite]

If you keep on neglecting what tiering work you've already done, 7U and beyond will never get done. Reinvent the wheel, okay, but please advance the wheel you've already made at the same time.

Finish up tiering legacy 6U (B ranks C ranks etc) and move onto tiering legacy 7U and SIMULTANEOUSLY tier whatever the present 2U/3U/whatever is. Having tiering efforts regularly nuked because of tiering shifts would be really annoying and wasteful, and then 7U and under would never get done. Tiering legacy tiers would at least give you A 7U, even if it isn't the "current" one.

I get that you want to have accurate up-to-date tiers, but it is so fucking wasteful to go back to square one each and every time a tier shift happens. This is one of the primary reasons I haven't taken part in the RBY lower tiering project. At one point someone has to put their foot down and say get moving, even if the 7U being tiered is the legacy one. Tier legacy tiers, even if they're outdated, or you're just wasting your own efforts.

 

[marcoasd]

So I read another post about how evil static tiers would be. Here you have a brief summary of the recent story of 2U.

We didn’t have time to be happy after a great 2U tournament and we decided to make a revision of “Ubers of 2U. It turns out that what we expected to be the Ubers of 2U is now the actual 2U only because we missed that Tentacruel is overshadowing the legendary birds and we let Dragonite back in after a votation, only because we don’t mind one more problem child, so these obnoxious monsters happily cohexist in a tier that nobody somewhat solved (the tournament scene has been dry), only to realize that Jolteon and Golem’s usage are so low that we should be discussing their viability again.
My point is: assuming that you really can’t live without this system – if you’re standing by the statement that Golem and Jolteon (and possiby Gengar and Jynx as well) are still viable in RBY OU and belong to the tier in spite of an usage that can’t really get any lower… why don’t you make this static/lock them as OU forever and take time to solve the tier?
So well, things could go wrong with things moving up to OU (Persian moving to OU, for example), but we all would know that they can’t with things moving down!

We are adapting RBY 2U clearly more slowly than RBY OU changes trends (who wants to learn a tier that is likely to change before you even get to learn it? play one single tournament?), not to mention the domino effects on lower tiers, and Wrap alone is discouraging players from 2U but oh well at least three of the few people who vote like to play with Wrap in general, so “no problem, we have the mumbers so who cares!” - at least our managers don’t like to fiddle with evasion moves…
After this, it’s funny to think that some pokemon might end up without belonging to a tier if we decide to ban them (because we can’t ban the move alone that makes them worthy of a ban – Wrap in this case), so even the best criteria of the system may fail.

At very least, by now we should realize that making it on our own proved to be a bit hard to handle, and trying to get a wider playerbase and more tournaments would help - but we don’t care about the tier being popular…
It should be daylight clear that we have many issues, but it looks like it still isn’t!

Well, Enigami asked me “why don’t you post your stuff?”.
Wow! Someone acting reasonably, finally! My answer was “I never did, because we’re always too busy unraveling the secrets of current tiers”.
And well, this is long enough of a WOT already, so if I am to post my stuff I will make it separately.

 

[Ortheore]

If you keep on neglecting what tiering work you've already done, 7U and beyond will never get done. Reinvent the wheel, okay, but please advance the wheel you've already made at the same time.

Finish up tiering legacy 6U (B ranks C ranks etc) and move onto tiering legacy 7U and SIMULTANEOUSLY tier whatever the present 2U/3U/whatever is. Having tiering efforts regularly nuked because of tiering shifts would be really annoying and wasteful, and then 7U and under would never get done. Tiering legacy tiers would at least give you A 7U, even if it isn't the "current" one.

I get that you want to have accurate up-to-date tiers, but it is so fucking wasteful to go back to square one each and every time a tier shift happens. This is one of the primary reasons I haven't taken part in the RBY lower tiering project. At one point someone has to put their foot down and say get moving, even if the 7U being tiered is the legacy one. Tier legacy tiers, even if they're outdated, or you're just wasting your own efforts.

I actually generally agree with this, I would've continued with 6U and onwards, but unfortunately 6U fizzled out and everyone else decided to review 2U.

Would it be fair to say that part of the reason it seems like existing tiers get "nuked" is because they're not played/developed consistently, which disrupts their continuity? Like if we compare to smogon nu, that tier is still subject to volatile changes due to being at the bottom of the tier system, but when changes are made I think the perception is that they're modifications to an existing thing, rather than replacing it with something new. Certainly I'd say the fact that we haven't really played the tiers much except as part of testing is an issue.

Out of curiousity, where would you stop tiering things? I think the most widely held goal was to tier all fully evolved pokemon except for Ditto, but by the time we got to 6U it really felt like there were just too few options left and I'm just not convinced that's a reasonable goal. I think either way, we should establish some sort of cutoff point where we decide that tiering is "finished" I'm just not sure what the best way of determining that would be.

So I read another post about how evil static tiers would be. Here you have a brief summary of the recent story of 2U.

We didn’t have time to be happy after a great 2U tournament and we decided to make a revision of “Ubers of 2U. It turns out that what we expected to be the Ubers of 2U is now the actual 2U only because we missed that Tentacruel is overshadowing the legendary birds and we let Dragonite back in after a votation, only because we don’t mind one more problem child, so these obnoxious monsters happily cohexist in a tier that nobody somewhat solved (the tournament scene has been dry), only to realize that Jolteon and Golem’s usage are so low that we should be discussing their viability again.
My point is: assuming that you really can’t live without this system – if you’re standing by the statement that Golem and Jolteon (and possiby Gengar and Jynx as well) are still viable in RBY OU and belong to the tier in spite of an usage that can’t really get any lower… why don’t you make this static/lock them as OU forever and take time to solve the tier?
So well, things could go wrong with things moving up to OU (Persian moving to OU, for example), but we all would know that they can’t with things moving down!

We are adapting RBY 2U clearly more slowly than RBY OU changes trends (who wants to learn a tier that is likely to change before you even get to learn it? play one single tournament?), not to mention the domino effects on lower tiers, and Wrap alone is discouraging players from 2U but oh well at least three of the few people who vote like to play with Wrap in general, so “no problem, we have the mumbers so who cares!” - at least our managers don’t like to fiddle with evasion moves…
After this, it’s funny to think that some pokemon might end up without belonging to a tier if we decide to ban them (because we can’t ban the move alone that makes them worthy of a ban – Wrap in this case), so even the best criteria of the system may fail.

At very least, by now we should realize that making it on our own proved to be a bit hard to handle, and trying to get a wider playerbase and more tournaments would help - but we don’t care about the tier being popular…
It should be daylight clear that we have many issues, but it looks like it still isn’t!

Well, Enigami asked me “why don’t you post your stuff?”.
Wow! Someone acting reasonably, finally! My answer was “I never did, because we’re always too busy unraveling the secrets of current tiers”.
And well, this is long enough of a WOT already, so if I am to post my stuff I will make it separately.

Ok, so your idea is to keep everything that might be a problem in the tier above and then spend additional time learning the tier before making any decisions? I mean I can see the appeal, but I don't really think it's a good idea because it looks like a case of deliberately making the wrong decisions so that you can maybe get a few others right. Furthermore, the whole point of a tiering system is that it behaves in a consistent manner to naturally group things roughly according to power level. If you're arbitrarily withholding pokemon from dropping, that defeats the point of the system because you're creating a range of exceptions based on nothing but theorymon. And if it is based on testing, then how is that any different from our current system?

I might make a post in 2U regarding its general state and Wrap because that actually is the kind of thing that belongs in the other thread, but if the people disagreeing with you "have the numbers" then surely that would indicate that most people simply disagree with you, rather than that there are systemic issues.

You do have an excellent point though in that our tiering system does not keep up with metagame trends. I think when we started out it was assumed that RBY would move slowly enough that we could afford to go through all of the lower tiers and then by the time we were done (idk what's considered done tho) we could maybe think about reviewing, or even wait for a bit after that. The past 6 months or so have thoroughly disproven that idea, and furthermore it's an approach that fails even more dramatically when applied to newer generations. Unfortunately, it's not something with an easy solution, given that we cannot play all of our lower tiers constantly, so progress will come erratically. Also I'd like to point out that this problem is worsened by the implementation of a static tier list, since a tier list that's never updated cannot respond to metagame trends.

So as I see it these are some of the key points atm

• We need to specify a time interval for reviewing tiers
• We need to establish a clearly defined end point for our tiers
• We need to consider how we can adapt our tiering system to better respond to metagame trends

I might as well throw it out there that we need some way of gauging interest in specific tiers. Something where people can register for whatever tier(s) they're interested in, and then there would need to be some means of checking that interest in a tier is still current, so that you don't start a tour and then realise that all the people that were interested 3 months ago aren't interested any longer. You could probably work out a solution with what we have on forums (start a pseudo-signup thread, pm people to confirm when you want to start a tour), but there's got to be a more elegant solution, and furthermore, one that actually gets used (the thread idea I imagine would be used by a handful of people, but not adopted in a widespread manner)

 

[ThriceElite]

Considering that new2U new frontiers also fizzled out, bringing back 6U new frontiers, finishing up tiering that, and then moving onto 7U would be a nice change of pace. I recommend pushing for that along with new2U to new3U.

Enough people have problems with the current 1U for lower tiers to work as a change of pace. If you want RBY to be more than Reflect Normals, emphasize your lower tiers as alternatives. Market your tiers more. One of the biggest weaknesses of RBY is the lack of variety.

Tier stability is an issue. Lack of games exacerbates it. I think marcoasd is also stating something like this. Also which one is "THE" 2U? Should there even BE a "THE" 2U? There is no eternal current lower tier version, so, uh, just vote for the lower tier version you like the best and go with that as the most popular lower tier whatever.

I at least want my Beedrill tier because of my time using him back in Pokemon Red decades ago. 7U at least, IIRC some time ago DA or someone else said that some of the pre-evos were around the same power level somethingsomething like that so there may still be interesting tiers to be tiered, all 151 mons tiered is the ego option but no community, Smogon or otherwise, has ever gotten down there yet, so there might be bragging rights to be held if you manage to do that.

Everyone else deciding to review 2U is a fad. They may seem relatively eager now, but they'll be more reluctant to do so once the third or fourth tier shift comes around and the question of newnewnew2U new*3 frontiers comes around. By then, I'll be right and they'll probably just move onto 7U and beyond, if they haven't done so already.

 

[EB0LA]

So starting to tier 6u 7u would be great but why start something that will be changed. So Marco is stating that the problem is at the core. It we drop Jolteon or Golem to 2U. You can see how drastically that would change 2U, and Pokemon once viable in the tier, no longer fit. Screwing 3U any everything down. This is why it all has to be done in order. It will never be perfect, but the more accurately it is done, the less issues and drastic changes will happen in the future.

So I say let's take a good look at 1U first, then re-analyze 2U, and finish it up, because it isn't that far away. Then start 3U, and onwards/(downwards?).

 

[Disaster Area]

Yeah, this is kind of my point. If we agree on the idea, we have to make the tier shifts happen with a certain regularity. Right now we don't really have a plan for that, do we?

We do them as regularly as we are able. Which takes a long time to go through when there are changes, particularly when there are more dramatic changes like this time around.

If you keep on neglecting what tiering work you've already done, 7U and beyond will never get done. Reinvent the wheel, okay, but please advance the wheel you've already made at the same time.

Finish up tiering legacy 6U (B ranks C ranks etc) and move onto tiering legacy 7U and SIMULTANEOUSLY tier whatever the present 2U/3U/whatever is. Having tiering efforts regularly nuked because of tiering shifts would be really annoying and wasteful, and then 7U and under would never get done. Tiering legacy tiers would at least give you A 7U, even if it isn't the "current" one.

I get that you want to have accurate up-to-date tiers, but it is so fucking wasteful to go back to square one each and every time a tier shift happens. This is one of the primary reasons I haven't taken part in the RBY lower tiering project. At one point someone has to put their foot down and say get moving, even if the 7U being tiered is the legacy one. Tier legacy tiers, even if they're outdated, or you're just wasting your own efforts.

The ideal would be doing this, but we don't have the playerbase/energy to do these things simultaneously. If people want to participate in the tiering project a ton, then we can do this.

Out of curiousity, where would you stop tiering things? I think the most widely held goal was to tier all fully evolved pokemon except for Ditto, but by the time we got to 6U it really felt like there were just too few options left and I'm just not convinced that's a reasonable goal. I think either way, we should establish some sort of cutoff point where we decide that tiering is "finished" I'm just not sure what the best way of determining that would be.

Tbh this is an interesting thing we could discuss further. The original goal was yes to do everything except the stuff with 1-2 move movepools. But it is a lot of work, even in a generation like RBY to do that. I think maybe the most productive thing would be to do it to a point where either:
- every fully evolved Pokemon which can have a complete moveset (i.e. its movepool contains 4 or more moves) is tiered or
- most* fully evolved Pokemon which have a complete moveset are tiered
*It would then be up to us to define most. Worth noting, however, is that this is the list of Pokemon which are not tiered by 6U:
- Those which are C rank in 6U and might be a part of 6U: Onix, Magneton, Weezing
- Those which are definitely not tiered by 6U: Beedrill, Farfetch'd, Golbat, Hitmonchan

Note that there are 80 fully evolved (or which only receive evolutions in later gens), if we want to use some sort of %. If all C ranks in 6U are tiered as part of 6U, then 95% of fully evolved Pokemon will have been tiered.

 

[ThriceElite]

EB0LA

I highly recommend keeping legacy tiers. Stop discarding legacy tiers. Keeping legacy tiers is the justification for tiering 7U and beyond. Or would you like to be stuck in an endless cycle of tiering 2U forever, each and every time a tier shift occurs, never actually making it to the lower lower tiers? I dare you. I literally dare you to try retiering forever. How many cycles, how many retiers can you take before you just quit? I would absolutely be impressed if you managed to get past the third or fourth retier, but let's face it, your patience is almost certainly not infinite.

Your challenge: Retier 2U more than six times. I bet you'll quit before the fourth. You can go on and retier forever if you want, but I do not want your retiering to hold up 7U and beyond.

I just don't see how retiering infinitely is sustainable if it'll just cause PP to go in circles infinitely without getting anywhere. It's just a waste.

 

[EB0LA]

Sorry but I'm not interested in legacy :/ I rather play the one that is current & up-to-date. Drastic discoveries like rhydon going OU, won't happen again. After 2U or so it should settle down, as such drastic adjustments won't cause such big changes.

So let's re-examine OU again & run it down. Let's at least have one tier that's right. >.> Then we can work towards setting 2u as best we can. And so on.

 

[Disaster Area]

Well we already re-examined 1U, that's why we're at where we're at now. No reason it would change after the last time, it was only 6 months ago

 

[The Idiot Ninja]

Well we already re-examined 1U, that's why we're at where we're at now. No reason it would change after the last time, it was only 6 months ago

6 months ago is Pre-SPL. 6 months ago the meta was different. I disagree on where certain mons are placed and I know at least a few others do as well. There's plenty of reason to re-examine.

 

[marcoasd]

Ok, so your idea is to keep everything that might be a problem in the tier above and then spend additional time learning the tier before making any decisions? I mean I can see the appeal, but I don't really think it's a good idea because it looks like a case of deliberately making the wrong decisions so that you can maybe get a few others right. Furthermore, the whole point of a tiering system is that it behaves in a consistent manner to naturally group things roughly according to power level. If you're arbitrarily withholding pokemon from dropping, that defeats the point of the system because you're creating a range of exceptions based on nothing but theorymon. And if it is based on testing, then how is that any different from our current system?

I might make a post in 2U regarding its general state and Wrap because that actually is the kind of thing that belongs in the other thread, but if the people disagreeing with you "have the numbers" then surely that would indicate that most people simply disagree with you, rather than that there are systemic issues.

It looks like the process should go ahead without any kind of judgement - we let 5 (actually, the OU line was decided by 11 out 28 possible voters to be fair) people vote blindly - yes or no, without knowing the outcome for the other pokemon which are voted on the same instance - on single pokemon/issues, which looks pretty flawed.
How are my (yet to be made) decisions wrong? That's a judgement, because you want to stick with the current system while I want to drop it instead - I've been part of it for all of the 6 lower tiers, and now I'm looking for a better product.
How is it wrong to try and get the best possible product?

The main point I don't like is how and even more why decisions are made.
I thought I was the one who suggested to go by power level; the current tiering system uses "viability" as main criteria.
And I still like to go by power level and test the tier indeed, but with the difference of being free to adjust - as I have already stated I don't even mind letting one bottom OU pokemon in BL, example: I have a problem with Tentacruel in BL - what should I do? Ban it forever or try Jolteon in BL? Let's assume it fixes our problems (which isn't necessarily going to happen, of course) - I would try Jolteon in BL.
What if Jolteon's usage in OU changes through time? Should I lose everything? No, I don't give a damn: I'm happy with that BL tier, and I'm OK with using Jolteon in two tiers if I still believe it isn't detrimental to the lower of the two for the upside of giving Tentacruel a tier instead of flat out killing it.
If I claimed that Jolteon's power level is "BL" after testing BL, I'll be standing by that statement - I'm ok with revisions occurring after long timespans, but it would be as static as possible.
Of course I don't plan on abusing this, but if you count RBY's Fully Evolved... they just aren't that many.

If they have the number to not even give my system a chance, it doesn't strictly mean that they simply disagree with me.
They might be defending their system and disliking competition and again, I think I gave thie current system more than a shot.
Or maybe they might be afraid to waste time because their beloved system keeps them busy and requires more care than they can give.
At the end of the day I implicitly said I need people to test and I can't force them but hey - not strictly my fault.

Well, I'll drop my thing now.

My Ubers of 2U tier - notice, Ubers of 2U - would start with a discussion about the OU line, obviously.
I’m ok starting with trapping moves being legal too: after all, I don’t even have a problem with the exact current 2U being the “Ubers of 2U” tier.
It’s an Uber tier, so let all of the obnoxious and centralizing stuff be as long as the tier is playable. Give those untreatable pokemon a tier where they can exist (actually it would be a pad for things that you want to drop out of OU too) and give a 2U tier for humans.
The cut for 2U should be artificial, bring out rulesets and let’s try them.
Everything below 2U is expected to be smooth without any Uber tiers, and to me it’s only logical to preserve lines like “Exeggutor is the Grass-type of choice in OU, Victreebel is in 2U, Venusaur in 3U and so on” when possible.
This doesn’t even make RBY tiers look the same, because we had Amnesia at the top of 4U and AgiliWrap Dragonair at the top of 5U and they happen to be tiers for human beings.

 

[Ortheore]

It looks like the process should go ahead without any kind of judgement - we let 5 (actually, the OU line was decided by 11 out 28 possible voters to be fair) people vote blindly - yes or no, without knowing the outcome for the other pokemon which are voted on the same instance - on single pokemon/issues, which looks pretty flawed.
How are my (yet to be made) decisions wrong? That's a judgement, because you want to stick with the current system while I want to drop it instead - I've been part of it for all of the 6 lower tiers, and now I'm looking for a better product.
How is it wrong to try and get the best possible product?

The main point I don't like is how and even more why decisions are made.
I thought I was the one who suggested to go by power level; the current tiering system uses "viability" as main criteria.
And I still like to go by power level and test the tier indeed, but with the difference of being free to adjust - as I have already stated I don't even mind letting one bottom OU pokemon in BL, example: I have a problem with Tentacruel in BL - what should I do? Ban it forever or try Jolteon in BL? Let's assume it fixes our problems (which isn't necessarily going to happen, of course) - I would try Jolteon in BL.
What if Jolteon's usage in OU changes through time? Should I lose everything? No, I don't give a damn: I'm happy with that BL tier, and I'm OK with using Jolteon in two tiers if I still believe it isn't detrimental to the lower of the two for the upside of giving Tentacruel a tier instead of flat out killing it.
If I claimed that Jolteon's power level is "BL" after testing BL, I'll be standing by that statement - I'm ok with revisions occurring after long timespans, but it would be as static as possible.
Of course I don't plan on abusing this, but if you count RBY's Fully Evolved... they just aren't that many.

If they have the number to not even give my system a chance, it doesn't strictly mean that they simply disagree with me.
They might be defending their system and disliking competition and again, I think I gave thie current system more than a shot.
Or maybe they might be afraid to waste time because their beloved system keeps them busy and requires more care than they can give.
At the end of the day I implicitly said I need people to test and I can't force them but hey - not strictly my fault.

Well, I'll drop my thing now.

My Ubers of 2U tier - notice, Ubers of 2U - would start with a discussion about the OU line, obviously.
I’m ok starting with trapping moves being legal too: after all, I don’t even have a problem with the exact current 2U being the “Ubers of 2U” tier.
It’s an Uber tier, so let all of the obnoxious and centralizing stuff be as long as the tier is playable. Give those untreatable pokemon a tier where they can exist (actually it would be a pad for things that you want to drop out of OU too) and give a 2U tier for humans.
The cut for 2U should be artificial, bring out rulesets and let’s try them.
Everything below 2U is expected to be smooth without any Uber tiers, and to me it’s only logical to preserve lines like “Exeggutor is the Grass-type of choice in OU, Victreebel is in 2U, Venusaur in 3U and so on” when possible.
This doesn’t even make RBY tiers look the same, because we had Amnesia at the top of 4U and AgiliWrap Dragonair at the top of 5U and they happen to be tiers for human beings.

How is not knowing the outcome of a vote a flaw? If the outcome were already known there would be no point voting. Indeed, for people who voted after a pokemon was already confirmed to be either 1u or 2u, there genuinely was no point in voting other than to express their opinion.

The reason I called your decisions wrong before you even made them was because you were discussing Golem and Jolteon falling below the standard of 1U, but deciding to keep them in 1U anyway, which goes against the whole point of any tiering system.

Power level and viability are so closely linked that I was using them interchangeably. In any case it seems to me that you want a similar system to what's in place, but with the option to unban pokemon that could theoretically solve perceived problems. The trouble is this results in an incoherent and inconsistent system, one that doesn't really have any greater potential to solve problems. If, hypothetically, we were convinced Tenta were a problem, why would we unban Jolteon, a measure which undermines our tiers, has the potential to create far more problems and might not even solve the issue it was intended to fix in the first place, when we could instead simply ban Tentacruel and address the issue directly? Because the latter option is provided for by the current system. Meanwhile what's the point in having tiers if we're creating exceptions and inconsistencies on the regular? It leads to an overall structure that makes absolutely no sense and simply looks bad.

"defending their system and disliking competition" - so you're implying that we're just defending the existing system because we don't like change or because we just irrationally love the existing system? If that's what you mean, that's basically ignoring all of the arguments that we've presented in this thread, the 2U thread and all the other occasions in the past when this has come up
"Or maybe they might be afraid to waste time because their beloved system keeps them busy and requires more care than they can give."- just pointing out that you say that leaving the current system is both a waste of time and that sticking with it keeps people busy and demands too much care, which is not terribly consistent. In any case, I'm not seeing what advantages your proposed system offers in terms of the level of effort required to maintain it. It's still just as prone to being inaccurate when the meta shifts, while if anything the prospect of arbitrarily unbanning pokemon from higher tiers demands even more testing due to the uncertainty of their impact.

"Ubers of 2U"- so, 2P then?
If there's stuff in 2U that makes it unplayable in its current state, we can take action on that. No-one's saying that the current incarnation of 2U is the one that "the system" demands remain in place. If most people think something's problematic, we ban it. If most people don't think there's a problem, that doesn't mean the entire system needs an overhaul.
Prescribing certain roles for each tier seems like a terrible idea to me. First it's incredibly artificial and defeats the whole point of tiering (why not just invent your own ruleset and not bother with the tier structure) and second it seems very cookie cutter. Like if you require that each tier have certain characteristics you're going to end up with tiers that feel the same and who would want to play that? One of the things I like best about the tiering project is exploring entirely new territory and experiencing new metagames. If we predetermine certain roles that each metagame must have that totally undermines it

Also ThriceElite js we never intended to just retier once and leave it at that, nor are multiple but limited attempts sufficient. The only scenario in which that would be the case is if the metagame were to cease to evolve, which obviously won't happen. Otherwise it would be impossible for us to "finish" tiering and not end up with a tier list that looked silly a year or two down the line

 

[marcoasd]

How is not knowing the outcome of a vote a flaw? If the outcome were already known there would be no point voting. Indeed, for people who voted after a pokemon was already confirmed to be either 1u or 2u, there genuinely was no point in voting other than to express their opinion.

The reason I called your decisions wrong before you even made them was because you were discussing Golem and Jolteon falling below the standard of 1U, but deciding to keep them in 1U anyway, which goes against the whole point of any tiering system.

Power level and viability are so closely linked that I was using them interchangeably. In any case it seems to me that you want a similar system to what's in place, but with the option to unban pokemon that could theoretically solve perceived problems. The trouble is this results in an incoherent and inconsistent system, one that doesn't really have any greater potential to solve problems. If, hypothetically, we were convinced Tenta were a problem, why would we unban Jolteon, a measure which undermines our tiers, has the potential to create far more problems and might not even solve the issue it was intended to fix in the first place, when we could instead simply ban Tentacruel and address the issue directly? Because the latter option is provided for by the current system. Meanwhile what's the point in having tiers if we're creating exceptions and inconsistencies on the regular? It leads to an overall structure that makes absolutely no sense and simply looks bad.

"defending their system and disliking competition" - so you're implying that we're just defending the existing system because we don't like change or because we just irrationally love the existing system? If that's what you mean, that's basically ignoring all of the arguments that we've presented in this thread, the 2U thread and all the other occasions in the past when this has come up
"Or maybe they might be afraid to waste time because their beloved system keeps them busy and requires more care than they can give."- just pointing out that you say that leaving the current system is both a waste of time and that sticking with it keeps people busy and demands too much care, which is not terribly consistent. In any case, I'm not seeing what advantages your proposed system offers in terms of the level of effort required to maintain it. It's still just as prone to being inaccurate when the meta shifts, while if anything the prospect of arbitrarily unbanning pokemon from higher tiers demands even more testing due to the uncertainty of their impact.

"Ubers of 2U"- so, 2P then?
If there's stuff in 2U that makes it unplayable in its current state, we can take action on that. No-one's saying that the current incarnation of 2U is the one that "the system" demands remain in place. If most people think something's problematic, we ban it. If most people don't think there's a problem, that doesn't mean the entire system needs an overhaul.
Prescribing certain roles for each tier seems like a terrible idea to me. First it's incredibly artificial and defeats the whole point of tiering (why not just invent your own ruleset and not bother with the tier structure) and second it seems very cookie cutter. Like if you require that each tier have certain characteristics you're going to end up with tiers that feel the same and who would want to play that? One of the things I like best about the tiering project is exploring entirely new territory and experiencing new metagames. If we predetermine certain roles that each metagame must have that totally undermines it

Yeah, every system inspired to newgens ideals, so not my system: I'm looking for a good product.
A good product is better than a good process to me, and I'm asking you to judge the product which it looks like you don't even want to see, so yeah I'm ignoring what you said.
And I'm talking about arguable calls, Jolteon is very rare in the current RBY OU high tournament scene: I'm not talking about staples moving down - the fun fact is that the trio (you, DA and Lusch) like all of the traits I'm aguing: Mewbers as possible OU, current 2U being Ok, Jolteon being OU.
Anyway, with my system you need to pull an effort of course, but you get permanent (or almost) results.
It looks a major upside for players and to develop a tier, to me. I said that it might look like a waste of time to you, not to me - I would be happy to have a 2P and a 2U tier and draw conclusions/judge the product (try to bring it on the ladder/tournament scene, possibly).

I think that we don't know enough of the current 2U: it looks extremely unhealthy even for ubers standards to me, but still playable as such. I don't know your definitions, I'm just using common sense: it looks like a mess right now.
I could suggest many ways to try to adjust it... which doesn't necessarily mean they would succeed, but I would accept it as stable after them, at least.
Just like I did with RBY OU - I definitely don't like the current state, but now I know I have to live with it.

The main thing I'm arguing against is 2U being 2U instead of 2P just like it was after a reasoning similar to the "Mewbers as OU" one, which I'm not even going to comment.
It was something like "we have 2 outlaws in jail, but we just caught a couple even nastier outlaws... what about freeing them all so they'll kill each others?".
If you are OK with 2U being 2P again, we agree on that. I could explain what I would do with my own 2P, but again: if you aren't ok with giving "my tiering system" a chance, I will just limit myself to arguing against the few blatant atrocities of this system alone.
After all, it isn't only bad - the revision of 2P was: as players, you made a brilliant job at catching the mistakes that we previously made, but only to let them (and more) out of jail.
The fact that this somehow happened puts a grim question mark on the foundations of the system.

I'm not prescribing roles, I don't have such powers and about the example I made I don't think Exeggutor and Victreebel have similar roles - they have extremely different ones. I should try very hard to make my criterias clear - the Victreebel's example was there because even a guy who mostly agrees with me, TIN, wants Victreebel as OU - which is something I really don't conceive.
I'll try my best to put it in other words: Victreebel isn't splashable on a standard team (because it includes 3 Normals + Egg) - he likes it, he uses it and it might even work but it doesn't make Victreebel a presence.
Cloyster and possibly even Dragonite are more splashable, and for this (solid through time) reason, I value the latter as OU and as the former as BL in my system.
You want to allow Dragonite in 2P? Ok, I just said I disagree, but my system would allow you to do that and your input is appreciated as it could lead to a good product. AgiliWrap in 2U? No way!

About Victreebel again, I didn't like the way it was voted on - to me, Articuno and Victreebel were on the same boat: either you let both of them be OU, or you don't - and to me they clearly aren't (for different reasons, but if I had to pick one of them for a game to save my life, it wouldn't make much difference to me - I would flip a coin).
So, if you ask me two separate "yes" or "no", I can't express that opinion (regardless of being correct or not, especially because I don't use them often...). Hope I made it clear.

 

[Lusch]

So, with all dues respect, I am trying to recap what you say, marco. This is gonna be kept relatively short, so please don't rip my head off if something is not entirely on point, and rather correct me in my interpretation by calmly explaining further, thanks.

Basically you want to tier based on power level. That translates to me (in simple words) to: You want tiers that look like this: (grass type) sleeper,electric man, ground mon, water mon, normal mon, psychic mon.
Concretely, 2U would look like: Victreebel, Jolteon/Raichu, Golem (hell no, IF you tier that way, drop Rhydon, it's better for the tier than an almost equally strong mon that can explode any time), Vaporeon, Dodrio/Kangaskhan/Persian, Kadabra/Hypno.
Then 3U looks like: Venusaur, Electabuzz, Graveler/Sandslash/Dugtrio, Omastar/Blastoise, Fearow/Raticate/Clefable, Mr Mime
then 4U looks like: Venomoth/Tangela, Magneton/Electrode, Graveler/Dugtrio, Blastoise/Seadra, Wigglytuff, Abra/Drowzee
and so on. Of course this is only ROUGHLY speaking. You'd get mons like Nidoking and Gyarados and MAchamp and whatever...
But those are tiers how you want them to look, right? "Hit and run tiers" like it "should be". Great! They all look the same, but with weaker versions of the Pokemon. I admit, this is a way.
But now comes the question I have not been able to read a well argued answer in your posts yet (sorry, if you gave one, please be kind ebough to explain one more time for dummies). Why do you think this is necessary?
You keep saying things like "2U feels like an Ubers tier" and "AgiliWrap in 2U, hell no!"
But these statements are as subjective as they get. Why do you claim the sytem failed?
Just because you don't like the outcome? Because it does not looke like the tiers I described above?
Yes, those tiers as you describe them are realistic. I you ban Wrap. But we are not in RBY2K10-time, where Wrap was not implemented corrctly and people agreed to not play with it. We have always allowed Wrap. ANd a tier like 2U is the result. You need to make clear (to me at least), why this is sooooooo bad?
Are you really one of those "Wrap is annoying, fuck Wrap, Wrap is hell, broken ass shit" kind of guys? Really the only reason I can guess is that you just dislike Wrap.
YOu also keep saying stuff like "based on the mons in the tier the tier should look like this (hit ans run)", but well... no! Tentacruel is in the tier and one of the fastest Pokemon available (and it is good just by it's stats alone) and has Wrap. Honestly the tier looks exactly how it should look. Wether you like it or not, there is nothing wrong with it. Tentacruel should dominate such a tier...
idk man... the tl; dr of this post is, tell us WHY you think it's messed up right now and why you think the system failed. And if your answer is "but, but... Wrap... ", I'm afraid, it's just the game we play. (Wrap is not on the same sentence as Evasion moves or OHKO moves, as you have put it earlier already, please...)

 

[marcoasd]

So, with all dues respect, I am trying to recap what you say, marco. This is gonna be kept relatively short, so please don't rip my head off if something is not entirely on point, and rather correct me in my interpretation by calmly explaining further, thanks.

Basically you want to tier based on power level. That translates to me (in simple words) to: You want tiers that look like this: (grass type) sleeper,electric man, ground mon, water mon, normal mon, psychic mon.
Concretely, 2U would look like: Victreebel, Jolteon/Raichu, Golem (hell no, IF you tier that way, drop Rhydon, it's better for the tier than an almost equally strong mon that can explode any time), Vaporeon, Dodrio/Kangaskhan/Persian, Kadabra/Hypno.
Then 3U looks like: Venusaur, Electabuzz, Graveler/Sandslash/Dugtrio, Omastar/Blastoise, Fearow/Raticate/Clefable, Mr Mime
then 4U looks like: Venomoth/Tangela, Magneton/Electrode, Graveler/Dugtrio, Blastoise/Seadra, Wigglytuff, Abra/Drowzee
and so on. Of course this is only ROUGHLY speaking. You'd get mons like Nidoking and Gyarados and MAchamp and whatever...
But those are tiers how you want them to look, right? "Hit and run tiers" like it "should be". Great! They all look the same, but with weaker versions of the Pokemon. I admit, this is a way.
But now comes the question I have not been able to read a well argued answer in your posts yet (sorry, if you gave one, please be kind ebough to explain one more time for dummies). Why do you think this is necessary?
You keep saying things like "2U feels like an Ubers tier" and "AgiliWrap in 2U, hell no!"
But these statements are as subjective as they get. Why do you claim the sytem failed?
Just because you don't like the outcome? Because it does not looke like the tiers I described above?
Yes, those tiers as you describe them are realistic. I you ban Wrap. But we are not in RBY2K10-time, where Wrap was not implemented corrctly and people agreed to not play with it. We have always allowed Wrap. ANd a tier like 2U is the result. You need to make clear (to me at least), why this is sooooooo bad?
Are you really one of those "Wrap is annoying, fuck Wrap, Wrap is hell, broken ass shit" kind of guys? Really the only reason I can guess is that you just dislike Wrap.
YOu also keep saying stuff like "based on the mons in the tier the tier should look like this (hit ans run)", but well... no! Tentacruel is in the tier and one of the fastest Pokemon available (and it is good just by it's stats alone) and has Wrap. Honestly the tier looks exactly how it should look. Wether you like it or not, there is nothing wrong with it. Tentacruel should dominate such a tier...
idk man... the tl; dr of this post is, tell us WHY you think it's messed up right now and why you think the system failed. And if your answer is "but, but... Wrap... ", I'm afraid, it's just the game we play. (Wrap is not on the same sentence as Evasion moves or OHKO moves, as you have put it earlier already, please...)

2U would be up for discussion (for testing I should say), and the point you made about GolDon in 2U is somewhat a relief if compared to the "hell no, you can't do that, Rhydon is OU!1!1!1!1!".
On the other hand, there's a lot of theorymon there (Explosion in 2U looks worriesome to me too, but we didn't take time to test it)- talking about tiering criterias, we still need to find a tier for Golem unless we go for the not credible "Golem will rise again in new trends!" argument. It might be 2P, who knows...
I'm not going for the typing criteria you suggested, I can't make Magneton great in X-U just because I said so, I don't have such powers.
I liked the tiers we produced before you actually decided to turn 2P into 2U, don't expect my tiers to look like area 51.
I can justify Victreebel in 2U for the reason I just stated without having to worry about usage stats that I can't keep up with.

My point is that you literally have no idea about what I want to do, with myself being incomplete/unable to fully explain being a part of the reason too.
All I am doing is asking whether there might be at least curiosity/interest or not - it's your call, at this pont I don't feel like I'm forced to do it; I have 2 GBs, cartridges and everything else at home, and right now they're just collecting a bit of dust to tell the whole truth. I can resist the temptation, really. At some point in life in general, I realized that I can't do most things on my own and I won't get supported all the time, and this might end up being an example - it's all good.
Enigami looked curious, the trio looks kinda hostile, most people don't talk and even more have no clue because they don't come here so I don't know. This is the situation.

I've been pro Wrap in OU since... a couple years before you started playing? since forever, hence 2014 I'd say. Actually voted against banning AgiliWrap. Played with and against it. It's a (small) part of the game in OU, but it's very different in the current what should be 2U. And it drives players out, I don't know why you guys have a fetish for it.
Having to explain why not AgiliWrap in 2U looks pretty much like having to explain why I am against Mew in OU - there shouldn't be need for me to, to be brutally honest. Do your own research - if your code is to allow everything into a tier and adapt to it because you think that being able to adapt to nonsense stuff makes you a better player... I have no answer for that, and my tiering system isn't meant for you - so I'll take your answer as "no, I'm not curious" (I just said I can't count on you three) and this explaination will be way easier/shorter. With no problem whatsoever.

As a final note, I think I wrote everything I didn't like about the current system so far and I wrote so much that I feel too embarrassed to write more.
Only thing I feel ok to repeat is that 5 people or so have absurd powers.

 

[Ortheore]

js I would never propose mewbers for 1U

Marcoasd, I still don't see how your proposed system is permanent. I don't know what mechanism you're got in place to account for metagame trends. Is the idea basically that you spend extremely large amounts of time testing to ensure that everything's how you want it? Because tiers created in such a manner would very quickly become outdated, such that it would look wrong probably before you're even finished with 2U, never mind lower tiers

You seem to be asserting that we don't care about the state of 2U, and that its current state is what must be accepted. This is absolutely not the case. We have mechanisms for dealing with problems (banning) and guidelines for how we implement them. So if there's a problem, there's no need to tear the system down, just eliminate the problem through those mechanisms- start a discussion on what you think is broken and try and convince people of your position. But if the majority disagrees with you then that's what we go with, because these things are totally subjective and so the best way we have of compromising between people's perspectives is democracy. The situation would need to be very different for us to identify that systemic changes are necessary. I mean anyone can at any time propose a potential ban, the ruleset for 2U is not fixed from when we divide between it and 1U, there just needs to be support for any proposed action.

 

[Lusch]

Okay! So this is a post I can work with!

Having to explain why not AgiliWrap in 2U looks pretty much like having to explain why I am against Mew in OU - there shouldn't be need for me to, to be brutally honest. Do your own research - if your code is to allow everything into a tier and adapt to it because you think that being able to adapt to nonsense stuff makes you a better player... I have no answer for that, and my tiering system isn't meant for you - so I'll take your answer as "no, I'm not curious" (I just said I can't count on you three) and this explaination will be way easier/shorter. With no problem whatsoever.

I just want to answer to this part. Yes, this "being able to adapt differentiates stronger from weaker players is in fact what I believe to be true. SO I see having to deal with Tentacruel in 2U as a challenge to built my squads accordingly.

As for the "there should not be a need to explain why AgiliWrap in 2U is overpowered" part, I think you should maybe have played this tier more. Dragonite is not going to get it done, dude. There are so many (actually strong) Blizzards in the tier. Omastar, Articuno, Tentacruel, Gyarados, Vaporeon... honestly... there are a lot of measures to take to not get swept by AgiliNite...And if you disagree that is most likely because you have not thought this through enough/ have not played the tier enough tbh.. It is not easy to set up Dragonite, it really is not.
We can talk about Tentacruel when we get to banning stuff, but Dragonite is not banworthy (contrary to "common sense", surprisingly, I admit, but that is just the case...)

Point is, what might seem obvious to you (that the tiering system failed) is not obvious to me at all. Even with this tiering system we can get something close to what you want, if the majority wants to ban Tenta for example. So I just need a reason to change the whole system, and to be honest, I fail to see it...

About the general point that seems to be a worry for people that trends will change our tiers again. I think you people overrate this kind of stuff. The 1U line is fine where it is. Victreebel is good, but it's a borderline case and it's okay for it to be in 2U Everything else is not gonna change... I think those tiers will be static enough tbh once we figured them out correctly.

 

[marcoasd]

js I would never propose mewbers for 1U

Marcoasd, I still don't see how your proposed system is permanent. I don't know what mechanism you're got in place to account for metagame trends. Is the idea basically that you spend extremely large amounts of time testing to ensure that everything's how you want it? Because tiers created in such a manner would very quickly become outdated, such that it would look wrong probably before you're even finished with 2U, never mind lower tiers

You seem to be asserting that we don't care about the state of 2U, and that its current state is what must be accepted. This is absolutely not the case. We have mechanisms for dealing with problems (banning) and guidelines for how we implement them. So if there's a problem, there's no need to tear the system down, just eliminate the problem through those mechanisms- start a discussion on what you think is broken and try and convince people of your position. But if the majority disagrees with you then that's what we go with, because these things are totally subjective and so the best way we have of compromising between people's perspectives is democracy. The situation would need to be very different for us to identify that systemic changes are necessary. I mean anyone can at any time propose a potential ban, the ruleset for 2U is not fixed from when we divide between it and 1U, there just needs to be support for any proposed action.

I don't believe in any kind of god, so I don't have a god who gave me the tables of the law forcing me to follow trends, nor I saw my general practitioner in quite a while.
My system would be flexible on the grey area: I'm not moving Tauros to 2U, and revisions are meant to fix blatant mistakes which I hope would be dodged as much as possible.
I feel like you believe your guidelines more than you follow your testing/knowledge of the game - my system allows a grey area.
I think there are things you just can't convince people about, hence I said: either you are curious or you aren't and we're fine. The fact that the tier isn't played enough and you see the same people posting under a thread should be alarming (I'm not stating that there are guaranteed ultimate solutions).

I just want to answer to this part. Yes, this "being able to adapt differentiates stronger from weaker players is in fact what I believe to be true. SO I see having to deal with Tentacruel in 2U as a challenge to built my squads accordingly.

Well, having this playerbase doesn't look like a major challenge. Or does it? Anyway you can push your teambuilding for that tier as 2P, and let mere mortals play a 2U tier for human beings...
And I told you I want to jail the 4 outlaws (and possibly Gengar or Jolteon or whatever else happens with the area 51 BL/2P/whatever - there's a pretty big grey zone): Articuno, Moltres, Tentacruel, Dragonite - Tentacruel and DNite are issues that I'm letting be in this tier. So Cruel and Dnite have a home and you can teambuild for everyone's sake.

When I talk about 2U, I refer to the previous one - without Tentacruel (which we should've noticed but we didn't) and possibly featuring Golem instead of Rhydon; Dragonite isn't ok there. But I'm talking about things I don't know for sure (DNite is for sure), and I didn't even want to talk about them now.
As long as the Gengar bomb came out, I'll remember you that it outspeeds Tentacruel (Haunter fails and might be 2HKO'd), Gengar can take out DNite after Agility one on one (Haunter needs a good Explosion roll), and Gengar does significantly better against birds too.
I would try things like this before taking actions like banning Tentacruel, among other things.