All Gens My Banworthiness Guidelines

[Ortheore]

The more I think about this the more I realise I can't think of any tiering system where I can't make a reasonable good-faith argument that RBY Ubers should be RBY 1U. :/ I think any system relies on everyone sharing a sense of what the 1U tier ought to be like, more than any coherent philosophy.

Not necessarily. In examining RBY Ubers we divide ourselves into two camps- those in favour of ubers and those against it. Those against it might want 1U or they might theoretically think we should make 3U or 5U the primary tier, whereas those in favour of ubers might just want standard ubers, or they might want RBY 1A. In the end you'd probably reach some midpoint where those in favour of bans are outweighed by those against, so it's theoretically possible that there would be no need for a shared ideal of a tier. That said, this is a theoretical scenario, in practice we've got at least one "ideal" tier for every generation, usually two.

Regarding the main post you made, that's a very fair call on acceptable vs optimal. Both are really difficult to define and I think the whole point of community-based tiering is that that's the area where we ask everyone and we collectively come to an agreement (that said, I would much prefer a more detailed definition, I just don't know how to go about it). I disagree that "acceptable" is impossible in RBY though, as 1U has proven that it meets that definition imo (its current state might be pushing the definition, but I think that's a product of the fact that it's been played for many years), while certain lower tiers (5U) also comfortably meet that standard. Otherwise if it was impossible for a game to reach an adequate standard through various rulesets, that would be an indicator that that game is simply not fit for competitive play. But as I said, I don't think that's the case for any pokemon game. As for later generations, I'm not sure this is something that can be resolved at this point. Maybe if we put this to a vote of some sort?

Actually, I was just thinking of how you'd frame your perspective in such a vote, because I think your perspective can best be described as a compromise between my perspective and a theoretical perspective where you ban to achieve 100% optimisation. The latter is an absurd example, but I think it highlights that we use the same philosophy (?) we just have different approaches in determining what's "acceptable". That might be a better way to describe your perspective tbh? So although I'll point out that your perspective is somewhat about optimisation, being able to characterise your perspective in that way helps define a limit on how much optimisation is appropriate, so it's arguably tolerable, although I personally disagree with it. It occurs to me now that that's what you were probably originally saying before I brought up the point of optimisation lol

One thing I will note is that although I said optimal and acceptable are incompatible, that really only goes one way- if you're wanting to ban for optimisation that can easily be translated to whether something is acceptable, whereas in the reverse case someone who only bans based on whether things are acceptable will always oppose bans for optimisation. Just a random thought I guess...

 

[Disaster Area]

To be honest the more I think about this the more futile it feels to me. I had a read through Smogon's tiering policy and it seems to me they've gone for a similar idea (but go for optimising player skill rather than competitive depth) & place the onus of change always on the person arguing for change, and don't start with no Pokemon banned. I think without that last part they could end up with Ubers for their OU in most gens, lol. I dunno I just feel like any philosophy is pretty limited. We can't really make a philosophy where it's inarguable that RBY Ubers could be 1U, let alone the Ubers tier of a later generation. So, whatever our tiering philosophy ends up being, I think it literally can't overrule people's prior convictions about what 1U ought to be, and how balanced ubers is. I think the banning philosophy laid out in this thread is about as good as we can get, and is certainly adequate for dealing with the tiering of lower tiers, and I don't think we can make one adequate for overcoming people's incoming biases to determine 1U. I think maybe we need to think about some sort of alternative tiering process perhaps to determine 1U, but honestly I don't know how we could do that in a way that doesn't ignite another shitstorm.

 

[Ortheore]

I mean the rby ubers point is only arguable if you flagrantly misinterpret "adequate depth" in such a way that it loses all meaning. At that point anything becomes arguable. As for the ubers in other generations, there's nothing wrong with them being arguable. However it's important to remember that something being arguable does not mean that that's what we adopt.

As for overcoming biases and all that, I think it's foolish to expect anything to "overcome" such things, because they're inherent to literally everyone. That doesn't mean we can't have guidelines to give people a framework for discussion and to help mitigate those biases to whatever extent is possible.

To be quite honest I think my guidelines are applicable to all tiers, and the core concept is applicable to all video games, so I'd be adamantly opposed to relegating this to lower tiers.

 

[Disaster Area]

Yeah, I just don't think that any tiering guidelines we create will adequately overcome players' biases such that we actually reach the right result.


One thing I also have thought about a little bit is wanting "OU-like balance/competitive depth"... it's something which I want, but also it's not something we can/should put in our tiering philosophy. I think that in most cases (I think BW is probably an exception) Ubers is less competitively deep & balanced than OU. At the same time, it's still oftentimes very competitively deep to the point of being "sufficiently deep to continue to reward players even after many years of scrutiny by elite players". At the same time, I can't figure out a way of describing OU's level of competitive depth without simply speaking with regards to OU.

Imo, ADV Ubers is not as competitively deep as ADV OU. To me though, it also meets our current standard. I also think that there is probably a tier in between ADV OU & ADV Ubers which is as or more deep than ADV OU.