All Gens PP's Tiering Philosophy

[Disaster Area]

In this thread I want to write about my own tiering philosophy and discuss with other members of PP, their opinions of tiering philosophy. PP is a very liberal community, open to allowing new and different ideas - I think that it is a big part of it. At the same time a lot of the focus of the last year or two (effectively representing the most recent incarnation of the forums) has been about simply having regular tournaments in RBY and GSC, using simple, accepted, established rulesets (at least, what is 'Uber' and 'OU), be they right or wrong. Indeed they really are the heart of PP and I don't see them ever stopping - in fact the future I see for this forum is more Seasons for other generations and metagames. The Seasons created a culture of respect and were very fun, for the most part. I think whatever happens, we need to keep that feeling amongst the community alive.

Anyway, in this thread I intend to discuss my views on tiering philosophy and listen to the community's views too. The first thing to make clear is what PP's current tier system is. Although this is made clear in other parts of the forum, there is no harm in reiterating it here. Each tier (and banlist and ...) is represented by a number followed by a letter, with P signifying the traditional Ubers/Ban-list tiers, U signifying the various main metagames considered standard, and then the number signifying which is which, thus 1P is 'Ubers' i.e. nothing beyond clauses and possibly bans for balance in extreme/historic cases (e.g. mega rayquaza clause, dpp farceus meta), and 1U is the 'OU' tier (although in ORAS's case it bears no resemblance to their OU tier). Other tiers exist in between and around these, for example signifying additional/fewer bans (such as RBY Mewbers - RBY 1U+Mew, is 1R, ORAS Mega Rayquaza meta and DPP Farceus Meta are both 1O respectively, and 1A is always Anything Goes bar game-breaking glitches and simulator interface being separated from the real game). I'll make something subtle and implicit a little clearer - Pokemon which are a member of a tier aren't banned due to being broken below (e.g. exeggutor say might be fine in RBY 2U) but to allow people to have a tier in which their favourite Pokemon are viable (within reason. Ditto in generation 1 is bound to never truly be viable.. but golbat, quite possibly.) Other approaches sure could work too, but there implicitly is some sense to this approach over others.

There are many things to cover in discussing tiering philosophy, but basically it comes down to: what can you ban, when can you ban, how do you decide upon what aspect of a problem is banned, how does a ban affect a lower tier, how do we decide if something is sufficiently viable/used/??? to merit a 'place' in a tier and thus be banned from all tiers below it, and what should the initial tiering be?

What can you ban?

I don't think we should actively restrict what could potentially be banned (e.g. Pokemon, Moves, Ability combinations, etc.) but that generally: we should aim to make rulesets as simple as possible to reduce barrier to entry, and of course bans must be justified (to be covered later, but if proposing a more complex ban over a more simple one (e.g. Drizzle+Swift Swim over a whole Swift Swim ban, banning Blaziken+Speed Boost, or just Blazikenite, rather than Blaziken as a whole, banning Spikes or imposing an artificial restriction on Spikes [changing game mechanics or something more complex/sophisticated] then it must be justified further, weighing up collateral damage of non-problematic strategies and the rule's complexity and increase in difficulty of fully understanding the rule)).

When can you ban?

After sufficient testing - which of course varies case by case. I don't think we can rationally go beyond a guideline for this, but quickbans can be made sure, as can bans that take lots of time. That should be up to individual councils.

The question is also asking - what aspect of something being drawn into the possibility of being banned could justify its ban? My personal feelings are that things that create unhealthy interplay (e.g. RBY 2P's Articuno and Moltres, BW's Scald) to some degree (up to the council and community's discretion)... truly this is a complex thing that I think we should discuss further. Maybe the concept of someone having a reasonable (say above 1%) chance to outright win due to the game's chance, i.e. out of the player's full control, in a way which the defending player cannot avoid without either mandatorily carrying one (of perhaps a set) otherwise-worthless Pokemon, or at least with very very niche additional utility other than counterplay to the game's 'RNG' aspect , if indeed there is any actual counterplay at all.

Either way, vague as it is, I feel that ultimately we can't stray too far from the game's mechanics (I await the day we have DPP's acid rain on simulators, and dislike the current sleep clause implementation and freeze clause existence), so nothing like banning critical hits or whatever is an option - some chance you simply have to tolerate.

How do you decide upon what aspect of a problem is banned?

That's a tricky one, at least generally, but ultimately I feel it should be down to the council/players to decide and thoroughly test before concluding this one. I feel everything asked of this question can be sovled case-by-case.

How does a ban affect a lower tier?

Quite simply, anything banned from a higher tier will thus be banned in a lower tier, for example Pokemon and Moves.

How do we decide if something is sufficiently viable/used/??? to merit a 'place' in a tier and thus be banned from all tiers below?

Well we're working on that.

Our current system though looks roughly like, a group of council members will vote using some system, assigning value to each individual Pokemon in the tier that they feel is of any value at all under the value system proposed, and then any Pokemon which achieves sufficient overall value will become a member of the tier, and that isn't won't be, and we're free to have the council discuss specific cases (and maybe re-vote) afterwards.

What should the initial tiering be?

Well we sorta did that one for you.. except in BW. I think you have to balance two competing issues in terms of considering the entry of a new player - is my favourite Pokemon banned; is the power level something like I'm used to in-game on the cartridge - but until we have data (which no-one whom it is within the powers of seems keen to collect) it is a bit of a rhetorical question. However, as the tiers are in some way or another founded upon the idea of allowing people to have a tier somewhere where their favourite Pokemon is viable, then surely an approach favouring the player who would rather not have their favourite Pokemon banned, rather than one trying to emulate a vague power level, seems the more sensible approach - and thus the one that evidently in ORAS on PP has been adopted. Maybe in this thread we can again ponder BW's position.

 

[Ortheore]

I just wanna say real quick that I think in general for our 1U tiers we should look to emulate the accepted OU tier, as having a common metagame that players can simply transfer existing knowledge and skills from is important to attract users. The possible exception is gen 5/6 OU, where there is some debate as to whether they've reached an optimally balanced state or not.

I think where possible bans should be limited to pokemon. To do otherwise adds complexity to the tier list. Only a small amount, however this can accumulate and also the flow-down effect on lower tiers is to be considered. Not to mention that things like moves are very broad and should imo should only be considered when there is clearly little use for the move outside of a broken/uncompetitive element (e.g. bp, swagger).

At its most simple, bans are carried out to make the metagame better. There are then two categories for bans- bans on broken stuff and bans on cancerous stuff. I won't go into definitions now because I'm in a bit of a rush but some examples of broken bans are Mew in RBY 1U and MoltCuno in RBY 2U. An example of a cancerous ban is something like baton pass or swagger, strategies that may not win consistently, but still have a toxic effect on a meta.

Also I agree with changing sleep clause and getting rid of freeze clause! Actually... I can do something about that latter part... should I?

 

[Disaster Area]

Well.. Smogon ORAS OU, and PP ORAS 1U are both balanced. But in the russian-doll form that the tiers exist in, ORAS 1U includes more Pokemon than Smogon OU and, as we are trying to allow as many Pokemon to have a tier to exist in within which they are viable (within reason and to some extent even time constraints are a part of that). Manners for producing an initial tiering for the next unannounced-currently gen should be discussed closer to the time. Anyway my view is the highest sufficiently diverse/balanced tier should be our 1U.. which is why BW is tricky to decide but ORAS markedly steps away from Smogon. I think it should be a guideline rather than a hard-and-fast rule. It takes a certian mindset to even type about this stuff but I approve of, for our primary tiering system having clear guidelines within which tier leaders etc. can follow, although at some point we need as a whole a deeper discussion on what makes something banworthy or not. I say post when in the right frame of mind on that count, but it's very important.

I think 'complex bans', i.e. bans on moves [which would effectively be claused, like evasion and swagger] and on more complex stuf (like drizzle-swift swim say) shouldn't be disallowed purely on principle, but should not be the fisrt consideration either.

 

[Disaster Area]

Think this merits re-discussion

What can you ban?

I don't think we should actively restrict what could potentially be banned (e.g. Pokemon, Moves, Ability combinations, etc.) but that generally: we should aim to make rulesets as simple as possible to reduce barrier to entry, and of course bans must be justified (to be covered later, but if proposing a more complex ban over a more simple one (e.g. Drizzle+Swift Swim over a whole Swift Swim ban, banning Blaziken+Speed Boost, or just Blazikenite, rather than Blaziken as a whole, banning Spikes or imposing an artificial restriction on Spikes [changing game mechanics or something more complex/sophisticated] then it must be justified further, weighing up collateral damage of non-problematic strategies and the rule's complexity and increase in difficulty of fully understanding the rule)).

I'm no longer fully in agreement with this. But where to draw the line? I say items that aren't usable for only a single Pokémon, e.g. leftovers, is going too far and making the game something it's not.

My personal feelings are that things that create unhealthy interplay (e.g. RBY 2P's Articuno and Moltres, BW's Scald) to some degree (up to the council and community's discretion)... truly this is a complex thing that I think we should discuss further. Maybe the concept of someone having a reasonable (say above 1%) chance to outright win due to the game's chance, i.e. out of the player's full control, in a way which the defending player cannot avoid without either mandatorily carrying one (of perhaps a set) otherwise-worthless Pokemon, or at least with very very niche additional utility other than counterplay to the game's 'RNG' aspect , if indeed there is any actual counterplay at all.

We should talk about this.

Things to consider:

Interplay (how healthy, how interesting, what skills is it testing, is it primarily luck-testing?)
Objective Interplay (in the case of a non-pokemon/mega stone ban, considering in general)
Balance (ties in directly with the above too, if something is blatantly too powerful by a really high margin then a quickban is reasonable etc)
Diversity (when can we ban for this? can we ban something that's not bad on the other fronts for this? can we argue with this to push something over the edge? Also, diversity in what? If something restricts diversity in playstyle or pokemon choice how important is this?)

I really want opinions on this

How does a ban affect a lower tier?

Quite simply, anything banned from a higher tier will thus be banned in a lower tier, for example Pokemon and Moves.

Still very much stand by this. This combined with objective interplay is why I oppose scald ban.

What should the initial tiering be?

Well we sorta did that one for you.. except in BW. I think you have to balance two competing issues in terms of considering the entry of a new player - is my favourite Pokemon banned; is the power level something like I'm used to in-game on the cartridge - but until we have data (which no-one whom it is within the powers of seems keen to collect) it is a bit of a rhetorical question. However, as the tiers are in some way or another founded upon the idea of allowing people to have a tier somewhere where their favourite Pokemon is viable, then surely an approach favouring the player who would rather not have their favourite Pokemon banned, rather than one trying to emulate a vague power level, seems the more sensible approach - and thus the one that evidently in ORAS on PP has been adopted. Maybe in this thread we can again ponder BW's position.

Mostly a problem for upcoming generation 7 but gsc/bw are worth thinking about too.

In GSC at this point I think we should just keep it as it is. The playerbase is too small and fragmented to move anywhere on it and the case for change isn't strong enough.

DPP also has ??? hanging over it.