All Gens Proposal: PROPER New Frontiers for 1Us

[Enigami]

With Disaster Area's pushing for BW OU = BW 1U, leading to nearly every 1U/OU tier (outside his favored ORAS 1U tier) being copied from Smogon's with only a couple minor variations and abandoning the attempt to properly tier each generation, I'd like to propose something to get us back on track with our tiering process.

• All generations would have their 1Us reset to minimum bans (no bans outside of clauses etc.)
• GSC/ADV/HGSS/BW 1U's would be returned to being named OU, or reclassified as 1V. ORAS/SM/RBY would be excluded, as ORAS/SM were already started from a top-down approach and RBY because 1P 'Ubers'/1R 'Mewbers' have been explored enough to warrant quickbanning Mew & Mewtwo instantly.
• Seasons would continue as normal using OU/1V tiers, until we can form a council and agree each generations' 1U are sufficient to take over and move on to the next tier.
• ADV 2U and 3U would be removed, and only restored if a properly explored 1U started from the current 1P resulted in the same bans as OU/1V.

I'd capitulated before on GSC/ADV/HGSS, but realized that the arguments used to justify just starting from the old OUs is a load of crap.

Don't have enough players to explore a new 1U?
Then how could we expect to explore lower tiers?

Don't want to alienate Smogon players?
Then why are we bothering with our own tiering at all and not just using Smogon's tiers?

The tier is perfect as it is?
Doesn't matter, a top-down approach should mean a solid tier with less bans trumps a subjectively 'perfect' tier with more. We don't tier based on how it would affect tiers below.

X is too strong for the tier?
Then they'd get banned pretty quick, wouldn't they?

If our tiers match Smogon's, it should be because the alternatives have been tested and proven to be insufficient as tiers, not because we lack the confidence to challenge assumptions. Especially when you consider that Pokemon Perfect's tiering system can easily retain the old OUs, minimizing any risk in rocking the boat and starting from fresh 1Us.

An especially big issue I've had looking back is OUs as 1Us was pushed forward without any council decision or vote, they were more or less decreed as such. My arguments against starting with GSC OU = 1U was ignored. ADV 1U was started as essentially ADV OU without even a hint of the possibility of starting without bans. HGSS same thing. And now Disaster Area wants to push ahead with BW with the same garbage.

If we're not doing this, then I recommend we scrap ORAS 1U/SM 1U, and instead use Smogon's tiers and look towards smaller bans/unbans from each to 'fix' those metas as we're apparently doing with all the others instead of pretending we're actually re-examining tiers.

I'd really like other players to chip in here. Am I seriously the only one (except possibly Ortheore) that feels this way? Are there any other excuses to NOT tier from the top and explore things properly?

 

[Disaster Area]

Don't have enough players to explore a new 1U?
Then how could we expect to explore lower tiers?

In ADV we have enough to explore lower tiers. Also, even if we don't have enough players to explore a new 1U or explore lower tiers doesn't mean we can't or we shouldn't get an active 1U season going.

There's also plenty of players who really would rather you keep a tier as it already is but who would love to help explore new lower tiers.

Don't want to alienate Smogon players?
Then why are we bothering with our own tiering at all and not just using Smogon's tiers?

One could argue that we only do new 1U tiers when we see a problem with Smogon's tiers.

The tier is perfect as it is?
Doesn't matter, a top-down approach should mean a solid tier with less bans trumps a subjectively 'perfect' tier with more. We don't tier based on how it would affect tiers below.

But the thing is that in some cases you can say, without having done testing or having only done limited testing, that the tiering method which we would apply would have the same end result.

X is too strong for the tier?
Then they'd get banned pretty quick, wouldn't they?

You can argue that our tiers as they stand have already done that banning.

Especially when you consider that Pokemon Perfect's tiering system can easily retain the old OUs, minimizing any risk in rocking the boat and starting from fresh 1Us.

Exceeeeeept that it would mean that the old OUs wouldn't and shouldn't have seasons. So it is rocking the boat.

Are there any other excuses to NOT tier from the top and explore things properly?

Time energy and participation.

At a certain point in time I was willing to put in the time and effort to help explore new tiers and to properly evaluate possibilities of new tiers on here. But, much as I am the single most active and dedicated person on this forum arguably, I really don't have the energy or passion to get 1U tiers re-tiered. The thing is we need people who care about how PP runs things and want it to be more than a mini-Smogon to go forward and try and get it done.

If we tried to re-tier ADV 1U, instead of having the 50ish or so players we currently have we'd have something like 1 or 2 maybe if I'm being generous. Same goes for GSC and HGSS. The difference with ORAS onwards is that players such as myself find Smogon's OU tier very disagreeable - before that point, their OU tiers are fine or very close to it.

I put the thread about BW's tiering up as a question, I'm not sold on it but I was open to arguments on either side. I think if we're not going to default to Smogon's then we need some sort of an actual plan to stop it from being in a permanent and embarrassing limbo.

 

[Disaster Area]

The trouble is most of our playerbase doesn't care too much about PP's Tiering system. There's not a real contingent of people who play gen 2 onwards who care about Pokemon Perfect's tiers to the point where they'd sacrifice what the current 1U is to go from the top down. Everyone who plays in the GSC, ADV, and HGSS Seasons right now would see it entirely as wasted effort.

Look at how much I'd tried to get HGSS tiering discussion etc. going, or BW. It's been hard to get anyone to post on the forums. But we've got active Seasons going for HGSS and in the near future we'll begin exploring HGSS 2U (I've got some well-respected people on board with it already) but there's just no practical way you're going to get people to do it from the top-down unless you're willing to do a significant part of it yourself - you playing, you learning, you testing, etc.

I'd really like other players to chip in here. Am I seriously the only one (except possibly Ortheore) that feels this way?

I think in a lot of ways, the answer is yes I have similar feelings and views but I've also got the in practice what does our playerbase want in mind too. I would like to retier BW and maybe HGSS if we had the people who were interested in doing it, but the thing is that we don't, and if we try and change things all we do is annoy and turn away the very large majority if not the whole of the playerbase

 

[Lusch]

I'd really like other players to chip in here. Am I seriously the only one (except possibly Ortheore) that feels this way? Are there any other excuses to NOT tier from the top and explore things properly?

No, I feel the same. PP has a tiering philosophy that they themselves do not follow. People (including myslef) just don't care enough to do anything about it... I personally don't care about it since I mainly play RBY and in the case of Gen1 the tiering philosophy of PP coincides with the one that has been around for ages (concerning 1U) for obvious reasons. I can definitely imagine that in other gens the PP philosophy would lead to a different 1U from the standard OU, but as stated before by DA, people do not care enough to put effort in it and thus the tiering phliosophy of PP is basically a joke (sorry)

 

[Disaster Area]

I'm honestly not even sure where PP's Tiering Philosophy is stated exactly so either I think we should slate up a new one or just allow players the freedom to do what they like.

 

[Ortheore]

fml I typed out a long ass post only to accidentally delete it. Also so I don't forget, I've decided to put a sticky thread in the seasons subforum for resources and discussion with links to relevant threads. Anyway, I definitely side with Enigami on this one, and I feel that I ought to explain my actions and perspective.

First, I've made a conscious decision to limit my involvement outside of RBY and GSC. This is because I don't really play them and I don't see myself playing them in the future, so I don't really represent the playerbase. If I were to get involved, I would want to retier them, but since I don't play them I'll keep out of it. Also shout-out to Lusch for giving us a well-deserved call-out.

RBY's interesting. I'm very confident that any retiering of it would result in the ruleset we currently have, so if we're being pragmatic, it doesn't really matter. But I think it's obvious that we just settled into the status quo rather than arriving at this result properly. Like, just look at the meta. You've got 4 pokemon on the majority of teams, with 3 of them being able to totally dominate games. When you compare to some of the discussions in lower tiers, where Seadra and iirc Nidoking got raised as suspects in their respective tiers you'd expect at least some discussion of a potential suspect. Having said that, I wouldn't seriously want a suspect, there's honestly nothing I'd change about RBY 1U.

GSC is another matter. When Enigami first proposed using ubers as 1U but retaining OU, I was all for it. I was more than happy to run tours for both OU and 1U. The response? The few people who gave enough of a shit to post were overwhelmingly against, and I'm honestly not sure whether most people even realised that there wouldn't be any impact on OU. With that kind of a response it was a real "fuck it" moment, like I'm not gonna try new things if it's just going to be met with apathy or resistance. So I compromised my position, accepted OU=1U and basically shelved the idea, thinking it could maybe see light when there was more interest in it. Since then I've defended the OU=1U policy on pragmatic reasons, as I think it's poor form to be constantly undermining a ruleset like that and also I felt that mixed messages like that would alienate people despite not leading to decisive action. And it's important to point out that besides Enigami and m9m, I don't think there's been any support for that proposal.

Then the sleeptrap vote rolled around. Boy, what a major fuck-up that was, I can't believe I was dumb enough to allow sleepperishtrap as an option. It totally flies in the face of our tiering system and it was a mistake including it as an option. For me that was the straw that broke the camel's back. I was gonna keep this quiet for the same reasons I defended OU=1U, but since we're having this discussion I might as well say it now: I've been planning on rolling with Enigami's proposal by opening a new frontiers tour midseason. The timing's important, because I think it's a good way of demonstrating that it will not affect GSC OU. There's one catch- I'll only go through with it if there's enough support for it, and I haven't yet got a picture of that (soon though). I think it would be fine, as I'd guess that those who would participate would be open to the idea, while those who are only here for OU wouldn't care so long as OU isn't touched.

Now I feel I should talk about how it relates to the sleeptrap vote. First, ubers=1u doesn't invalidate it at all, as long as GSC OU is played that vote will hold its weight (or if there's another vote). Hell, I wouldn't even mind the outcome of the vote then, since it would then not really be a part of our tiering system. The bigger issue is that we represented the vote as finalising our 1U ruleset. To then use a different 1u and say "the vote was for this other ruleset" instead could be seen as a sham democracy, where we offer it but only follow the vote when we like the outcome. I'm not sure I even have an answer for this. It's just correcting a mistake that was made and I know it's really really bad to be overriding it like this but I really believe this warrants it. But that's counting chickens before they hatch anyway

One could argue that we only do new 1U tiers when we see a problem with Smogon's tiers.

I don't really like this. It's like deciding we're only going to be a distinct community only some of the time

But the thing is that in some cases you can say, without having done testing or having only done limited testing, that the tiering method which we would apply would have the same end result.

That's soooo much theorymon. I feel that this is an assertion that is only really relevant to gen 1/2, since beyond that the list of ubers balloons enormously making theorymon far too broad. And that's if you allow for it in small amounts, really theorymon shouldn't have any weight at all. And in gen 2 it's highly unlikely that we end up with the OU banlist, since Lax is one of the most probable suspect candidates while Ho-oh is highly questionable.

You can argue that our tiers as they stand have already done that banning.

Well sure, but there's probably a looooot of unnecessary stuff. Like you could take any reasonably balanced NU tier and say that all that banning's been done, that doesn't mean it ought to 1U

Exceeeeeept that it would mean that the old OUs wouldn't and shouldn't have seasons. So it is rocking the boat.

Here I also disagree, which is probably the most significant point to disagree on. Although I'd really like for our seasons to represent our tiers, I don't think they strictly have to. We should instead host tournaments and therefore seasons based on demand. So long as our tiers continue to grow I don't mind if they don't get a season for the time being

Time energy and participation.

At a certain point in time I was willing to put in the time and effort to help explore new tiers and to properly evaluate possibilities of new tiers on here. But, much as I am the single most active and dedicated person on this forum arguably, I really don't have the energy or passion to get 1U tiers re-tiered. The thing is we need people who care about how PP runs things and want it to be more than a mini-Smogon to go forward and try and get it done.

If we tried to re-tier ADV 1U, instead of having the 50ish or so players we currently have we'd have something like 1 or 2 maybe if I'm being generous. Same goes for GSC and HGSS. The difference with ORAS onwards is that players such as myself find Smogon's OU tier very disagreeable - before that point, their OU tiers are fine or very close to it.

I put the thread about BW's tiering up as a question, I'm not sold on it but I was open to arguments on either side. I think if we're not going to default to Smogon's then we need some sort of an actual plan to stop it from being in a permanent and embarrassing limbo.

Unfortunately these points are also accurate =[

Also since we mentioned working out a tiering philosophy, I think we should definitely have one, like if we don't establish our own identity why would anyone get invested in our tiers? I can think of a few answers to that question, but I still think it's important. We definitely have one floating around, but it may be best to start from scratch idk. I think community input for it would be a good idea, but only from those who have demonstrated an interest in our tiering, so people like Lusch, Peasounay, etc. There could be a system for it (have you participated in a vote?) or not, but either way there would be some need for me/DA/Lutra to allow ppl input on a case by case basis (especially since some tiering stuff hasn't got off the ground yet).

 

[Disaster Area]

Then the sleeptrap vote rolled around. Boy, what a major fuck-up that was, I can't believe I was dumb enough to allow sleepperishtrap as an option. It totally flies in the face of our tiering system and it was a mistake including it as an option.

Why do you think it flies in the face of our tiering system? I think that it doesn't fly in the face of our tiering system (there's nothing in the tiering system thread which I think can be interpreted as against it) but it maybe flies in the face over what we feel is the general sort of tiering philosophy of PP, but that's different and that clearly hasn't been made clear to the players.

I think a good thing to be asking then is: do we want Pokemon Perfect to have its own well-defined tiering philosophy or do we want to allow the players complete freedom? I err more on the side of complete freedom now, since it's something people disagree massively on.

Also I think it would be really dumb and weird to have our own GSC 1U and then just have GSC OU Seasons: that's like saying, our GSC 1U tier is inferior / less popular than Smogon's tier. And whilst you say 'well maybe Ho-oh is less suspect worthy than Snorlax' etc. the thing is you haven't had any majorly successful / well-recognised GSC players backing you up on any of it or agreeing with the approach and goal. That's not to say it invalidates your opinion but the people who arguably 'know what they're talking about' the best disagree with what you're suggesting pretty strongly when pressed on it.

Also again on BW vs ORAS, it's a big turning point where our approach suddenly gives a very different tier because of the introduction of fairies (seriously helps limit a lot of threats) and defog (gives us reliable hazard control) and no perma weather (makes kyogre+palkia for example a lot less powerful and much much rarer) as well as some other bits and pieces (yveltal provides a reliable response to ekiller and arceus-ghost that we never had before) that turned a metagame where the power level is just way too high and hazards are overwhelming into one where there's some real balance. That all being said I have some doubts about if you ban a couple of things from BW Ubers (I guess Kyogre and Arceus-Ghost are the first considerations, but there's a bunch of possilbe things) you could end up with a balanced tier with fewer bans. I would like to know but I'm not sure we'll ever be able to motivate people enough to find out. :S

 

[Ortheore]

Why do you think it flies in the face of our tiering system? I think that it doesn't fly in the face of our tiering system (there's nothing in the tiering system thread which I think can be interpreted as against it) but it maybe flies in the face over what we feel is the general sort of tiering philosophy of PP, but that's different and that clearly hasn't been made clear to the players.

I think a good thing to be asking then is: do we want Pokemon Perfect to have its own well-defined tiering philosophy or do we want to allow the players complete freedom? I err more on the side of complete freedom now, since it's something people disagree massively on.

Also I think it would be really dumb and weird to have our own GSC 1U and then just have GSC OU Seasons: that's like saying, our GSC 1U tier is inferior / less popular than Smogon's tier. And whilst you say 'well maybe Ho-oh is less suspect worthy than Snorlax' etc. the thing is you haven't had any majorly successful / well-recognised GSC players backing you up on any of it or agreeing with the approach and goal. That's not to say it invalidates your opinion but the people who arguably 'know what they're talking about' the best disagree with what you're suggesting pretty strongly when pressed on it.

Oh for fuck's sake, I haven't had anyone in support of it because NO-ONE has supported anything besides GSC OU. Half the posts in gsc threads come from players like myself and Enigami who aren't "well-recognised" and the other half come from players like Isa and M Dragon who do have that status but don't give two shits about our tiering project (afaik). Furthermore it's just an example that we're talking about here, the whole point of this is that we don't sit around theorymonning and we actually fucking test things instead. As for our tier being inferior/less popular, "lol no" to the former and "well, duh" to the latter. Giving 1U lesser status than GSC OU isn't about it being inferior, it's about being pragmatic, the same reason we were prepared to abandon any sense of identity we had by mindlessly copying another community's ruleset.

As for the whole "sleepperishtrap flying the face of our tiering system" alright fine, if we're going down to split hairs it's the philosophy that it flies in the face of. And you can say all you like how there's no philosophy written down anywhere, but implying there's no philosophy at all is some ministry of truth level bullshit. When all of us started tiering there was every intention of implementing something progressive, of looking at the existing tier lists and saying "we can do better". When we accept rulesets that were decided based on "this pokemon's a cover legendary and that one isn't" and implement shitty complex bans, that flies in the face of the philosophy we began with.

And I think it's pretty bloody clear that we need to nut out a philosophy based on this discussion.

 

[Disaster Area]

Oh for fuck's sake, I haven't had anyone in support of it because NO-ONE has supported anything besides GSC OU. Half the posts in gsc threads come from players like myself and Enigami who aren't "well-recognised" and the other half come from players like Isa and M Dragon who do have that status but don't give two shits about our tiering project (afaik).

Okay... so? Is there any realistic way of getting our tiering done without having at least one vaguely well-recognised (as in at least some of the playerbase thinks they're pretty good) player to actually want to take a part in it otherwise what's the point?

As for the whole "sleepperishtrap flying the face of our tiering system" alright fine, if we're going down to split hairs it's the philosophy that it flies in the face of. And you can say all you like how there's no philosophy written down anywhere, but implying there's no philosophy at all is some ministry of truth level bullshit. When all of us started tiering there was every intention of implementing something progressive, of looking at the existing tier lists and saying "we can do better". When we accept rulesets that were decided based on "this pokemon's a cover legendary and that one isn't" and implement shitty complex bans, that flies in the face of the philosophy we began with.

And I think it's pretty bloody clear that we need to nut out a philosophy based on this discussion.

Yeah I agree with this. We definitely had something but it's kinda lost in the sands of time what exactly it was and now we started flaming eachother :/

I think the main areas we're having big disagreements are:
- what tier-philosophical ideas are taken for granted
- where it is acceptable to draw the line between pragmatism and idealism

Also I think with regards to us hammering out some kind of a tiering philosophy, one thing we need to be clear about in it too is how to apply it: for example with the sleeptrap thing at what point does the rule become too 'ridiculous' / disproportionate for the problem it tries to solve. Another thing is that at some point in the next few months I want to review the baton pass rules in ADV 1U: right now although there's not much collateral the issue is more that some stuff still gets through the gaps.

Another question is: how targeted of a rule is appropriate? I lean very heavily towards, we should target specific targets when appropriate. So I don't object to the sleepperishtrap rule: if SleepPerishTrap is the thing that people really find problematic and stupid, then that's what should be banned. If people think SleepTrap should be banned then go with that. That being said, in such a narrow case where the base is pretty much split 50/50 (like this vote) it's fair to say that the simpler ban should get priority. In ADV, say I proposed banning the move Baton Pass on just Smeargle and Mr. Mime. Smeargle is involved in a bunch of cheesy strats (drumpass, ingrainpass which are both currently banned, and can do other stuff like dragonpass which enigami has been experimenting with) whilst Mr. Mime is kinda the single thing that holds BP together the most (soundproof). ADV is kind of a hot mess with regards to BP issues b/c there's a number of issues (some of which are more contentious than others: noone disagrees with the ingrainpass ban, some don't necessarily agree with the drumpass or bp limit [but don't vocally complain usually], and some people wouldn't want to be rid of fullpass abuse, whilst BP itself definitely cannot and should not be totally banned as it's an important or near-defining component of a number of important 1U pokemon) but that being said most of the playerbase aren't nearly as uptight about tiering as we are. It'll be an interesting discussion when it happens.

But yeah you have a number of things you want to do in a ban:
- Get rid of the problematic thing
- Get rid of as little else as possible
- Make the rule as simple as possible (simple to understand, simple to memorise, simple to write)
- It should be cart-enforcible, and you need a very good for it not to be.

in addition there's the argument as to how much you should fine tune a meta: when a meta is a decade or so old I think it's fine for a very small tweak-around-the-edges ban for a cheesey strat and even if the rule is a bit more complicated. Like for another hot issue, look at Gliscor in HGSS. On Smogon they (breaking 'transitivity') ban sand veil / snow cloak in OU [meaning froslass and cacnea etc are actually illegal in OU - but legal in BL and often below]. The single specific issue that ban targets is sand veil gliscor - which is a big issue - but in the process has some collateral. In our version, we ban sand veil / snow cloak in the case that a pokemon has an alternative ability to use. But would it be better to use what Smogon does (with that really horrible ugly extra collateral) or to just ban Gliscor + Sand Veil combination - or you could just ban Gliscor. The baton pass + speed rule also targets gliscor - and it targets fullpass at the same time. gliscorpass is also problematic - but not dealt with on smogon, whilst dealt with on here - so you might say just ban gliscor which has some merit but any gen 4 player will tell you not to do it bc once u get rid of all the bs there's still a sensible pokemon beneath all of it (or words to that effect I guess if they even bother to explain it). The point is: these rules are a bit more technical but they're very fine-tuned to the actual issues they're needed to address, and the metagame is developed and understood enough that it's not going to be the case that these things are just adapted around or might fall out of favour or whatever.

Anyway remember:

we play this game b/c it's fun so our tiers should in some sense aim to make the tiers as 'fun' as possible: if people find it a chore to tier the tiers rather than fun then what's the point? if people want a ban for something that they've shown they've tried to adapt around and it's still problematic, then just do the ban and target specifically what the people are calling for. Tiering should respond to what the playerbase wants.

 

[ThrashNinjax]

Hi I am an ordinary player but I'd like to offer my two cents - afaik / recall there were attempts to 're-initialise' HGSS and BW or at least make them distinctive from Smogon's tiers (DPP Latias and SR, plus the Nape ban I still want to see, BW there were talks of Spikes / MG / Volc bans as well as starting fresh from Ubers) but those attempts ultimately went nowhere because people weren't willing to see them through, and we went with the smogon tiers because seasons were planned and we had to have a metagame that people could work with. Everything between Gens 1 and 3 that's in Ubers deserves to be in Ubers.

Aside from the points above, I know that at least I personally would not be super-duper willing to organise this kind of project, and I do not see any good coming of it considering that at best it can only alienate the PP playerbase and potentially screw over any hopes of attracting newgenners. I think DA is right when he says that tiering should ultimately respond to the people who play it, and the fact is that it is too much to expect those people to wait for a new system to be established and then try to learn it rather than stick with the current system (which works just fine). In an ideal world retiering could be a thing but sadly we do not live in an ideal world and we need to work out what is possible and what is not ahead of any such philosophy. Realpolitik.

 

[Enigami]

we play this game b/c it's fun so our tiers should in some sense aim to make the tiers as 'fun' as possible: if people find it a chore to tier the tiers rather than fun then what's the point? if people want a ban for something that they've shown they've tried to adapt around and it's still problematic, then just do the ban and target specifically what the people are calling for. Tiering should respond to what the playerbase wants.

Except... as far as I've seen, when it comes to restarting tiering from the beginning the playerbase hasn't even tried it, they just don't want things to change period. The RBY and ADV mechanics changes were undesired by the playerbase, yet they happened anyway because that's how they should've been, not how the players wanted it to be.

Hi I am an ordinary player but I'd like to offer my two cents - afaik / recall there were attempts to 're-initialise' HGSS and BW or at least make them distinctive from Smogon's tiers (DPP Latias and SR, plus the Nape ban I still want to see, BW there were talks of Spikes / MG / Volc bans as well as starting fresh from Ubers) but those attempts ultimately went nowhere because people weren't willing to see them through, and we went with the smogon tiers because seasons were planned and we had to have a metagame that people could work with. Everything between Gens 1 and 3 that's in Ubers deserves to be in Ubers.

Aside from the points above, I know that at least I personally would not be super-duper willing to organise this kind of project, and I do not see any good coming of it considering that at best it can only alienate the PP playerbase and potentially screw over any hopes of attracting newgenners. I think DA is right when he says that tiering should ultimately respond to the people who play it, and the fact is that it is too much to expect those people to wait for a new system to be established and then try to learn it rather than stick with the current system (which works just fine). In an ideal world retiering could be a thing but sadly we do not live in an ideal world and we need to work out what is possible and what is not ahead of any such philosophy. Realpolitik.

Mew/two is beyond a doubt right now belonging to RBY 1P, but Gen 2/3 Ubers I don't think are proven to belong to their respective 1Ps yet. I cannot and will not support any tiering process continuing off of the invalid 1U=OU tiers, as they fly in the face of our tiering system all because certain users don't have faith in it. My biggest issue with forcing 1U=OU and tiering from there is it cements it and makes it nigh impossible to change later, whereas using 1V 'OU' for seasons while slowly exploring new 1Us (however long it takes) means it's understood the OU tiering may not be permanent. Alternatively, if you're all stuck on OU not equalling our 1U but being used for seasons somehow not working, we could have new frontiers for GSC/ADV/HGSS/BW "1A (or insert other letter here)", while 1U is OU for as long as the 'properly tiered 1U' is being explored until players are satisfied with the result of it. It should work the same as if we were trying to explore 2U, except with the final result replacing the old 1U if the final result doesn't match up with Smogon's OU.

Edit: My second idea may also help to encourage players of those tiers to contribute to the tiering process, since if they wanted 1U to end up unchanged they'd have to actually play in the new frontiers and debate the Uber-mons instead of ignoring it. I'd especially imagine the top players, if they were playing in the 1U seasons, would make the time if they knew that Ubers would drop if they didn't bother.

 

[Isa]

i can confirm that i dont care for pp tiering regarding gsc or other tiers, i just like to feel smugly superior when i come here

but this community needs to take a decision.

you either decide to start completely from scratch across all tiers and let go of preconceived notions. is chansey really healthy in rby ou/1U? my opinion is no - chansey freeze wars being a common sight, being viewed as one of the best ways of defeating opposing chanseys, is a clear indicator of this. i do not believe that this has been explored enough. same for tauros being omnipresent etc. etc.
this path means pp truly becomes an independent community that can claim what it wants to claim - being an alternative to smogon that consistently uses a different methodology and lets the chips fall where they may. it also means the (non-rby) tournament community will almost completely disappear due to the differences with the smogon metagames.

the other option is to give up on tiering projects where the player base interest is minimal and adopt smogon tiers, becoming a completely tournament centered community. i'd classify almost all lower tiers on PP as having minimal player base interest from an outside perspective fwiw. the upside to this approach is that you get a clear identity just like in the above example - pp has frequent, regular tours in a comparative low-pressure situations in your favorite neglected old tiers, as well as cash prizes frequently. the downside is the loss of the (honestly small) tiering project, entertaining approximately 5-10 people on a monthly basis depending on whether you get any newcomers that month.

at the moment pp is a fusion where the tour community is frustrated by the changes to their metagames that are being proposed by the tiering enthusiasts, who are in turn frustrated by their options being neglected and limited by a player base not involved in their community.

if you have other ways forward then sure try it. but the current split identities will never completely satisfy the tour community and the tiering community in its current iteration.

 

[ThriceElite]

Don't bother being a clone of Smogon; I'd rather have actual choice in tiers (more lower tiers plz) rather than having all tiers taste the same. It's nice to have more options and alternatives, rather than just C/Ping from Smogon. The lower tiers project is one of the most interesting things here, and it'd be a shame to scrap it.

tl'dr more options of tiers to play=good, don't bother C/Ping from Smogon

 

[Disaster Area]

Whilst I think we absolutely should continue our lower tiers etc. I think isa makes some great points

Spoiler: Skype Logs

Me: I think isa made a very good post in that thread
Lutra: we do have power in RBY to do mostly whatever though
Lutra: well as long as we keep ou
Lutra: like we made ubers and mewbers virtually
Lutra: and the lower tiers too
Lutra: the reason why are our lower tiers aren't popular is to do to the incompleteness really
Lutra: we've purposely not marketed them to the fullest extent
Me: but yea I think the balance I'd like is to
Me: ometimes have the same or similar 1U tiers to smogon's ou
Me: but our own lower tiers
Lutra: also PO killed themselves by just copying smogon
Lutra: so it's not exactly a good route
Me: yeah I think we're doing well so far
Me: we've got a sort of semi-independence and we've managed to really
Me: get a foothold
Me: in RBY and ADV and stuff
Me: like in ADV / HGSS our 1U tiers is like Smogon's OU but better lol
Lutra: the fact that we do our tiering in an intelligent way attracts intelligent people
Me: yeah
Me: I think there's no harm in sometimes adopting what smogon's ou tier is and then going from there
Me: I mean our lower tiers are different and tiering in a sensible way
Me: I think that that's a draw
Me: that makes us different from smogon
Me: is having these lower tiers which are different and having tournaments and stuff for them and a different approach to how lower tiers are made
Me: i mean having the similarity to smogon's ous helps us attract peoplehaving the regular tours
Me: and having the lower tiers gives them something new to do that
Me: reflects on PP's identity
Enigami:

I think there's no harm in sometimes adopting what smogon's ou tier is and then going from there

Inconsistency. IMO, if we're going the Smogon OU route, we should be looking at resetting ORAS and SM to OU and instead working out how to improve those, instead of "We're going to retier! Except we really aren't, except for the tiers we say so"
Me: sometimes
Me: before gen 6 noone really complained about smogon's OU thinking it had too much stuff banned
Me: come gen 6 we had that
Me: this is a response to itthe idea of retiering has very little appeal
Me: most people don't want to do it
Enigami: Considering that ORAS 1U has as much activity as BW right now, I'd say there'd be more to gain bringing in ORAS OU players
Me: and of the few people that do they're all just RBY players
Enigami: But you just want your special 1U tier, screw the rest
Lutrafunny how Isa is smugly superior when he basically killed a community, though I guess he did get rby2k10 tiers to places
Lutra: which was good
Lutra: but I mean smogon got rid of them quickly
Me: smogon never had rby2k10's tiers
Me: u know what happened right was
Me: hipmonlee basically got rid of lower tiers on smogon (just had an arbitary UU)so that PO would adopt rby2k10's lower tiers
Lutra: but showdown had rby2k10 uu
Lutra: or something
Lutra: at one point
Enigami: I'm pretty sure it did too, before they tried restarting their RBY tiering process.
Me: idk what exactly they had in the interim before they started retiering
Me: it never really was a thing that they focussed on in any conceivable way
Enigami: Hence 'tried'
Me: I wonder if maybe smogon could adopt PP's lower tiers in RBY...
Me: i mean now that they tried retiering
Mw: idk i'll see what jelli thinks
Mw: now that he had a pop at it
Enigami: That'd be awesome, and it was floated around, but they didn't bite at the time
Enigami: 3U/4U being official RU/NU on Smogon would be great
Lutra: well my plan is start anything goes in RBY. I think if a complete tiering process is demonstrated, that'll gain a large amount of respect.
Me: i dunno i just wanna
Me: focus on playing the game now
Enigami: Trouble is Smogon I think wants a cut-off point (probably no further than PU)
Me: not focus on the rules of it
Me: and i think most people want to do that
Me: most of the time
Me: yeah but they can adopt part of it and that'd still be cool
Me: i feel like at some point we just have to accept the rules and focus on playing the damn game
Enigami: ? Accept what rules?
Me: Lifting the burden of rulemaker | Smogon Forums
Me: like the RBY tiers as we have rn
Me: we should accept them rather than start from scratch again
Me: we can be
Me: too high-minded over tiering
Lutra: up to you
Lutra: but a lot of us have been accepting stuff for too long
Me: but yeah there is a sliding scale in terms of how much you focus on making the rules vs playing the game
Me: most people are much more on the side of just playing the game than those of us in this chat are
Me: obviously you can be too extreme one way or the other
Me: like obviously we dont sit here and play vgc or whatever and just let nintendo do it
Me: we have our own tiers
Me: but we're reaching a point where
Me: we're too caught up in arguing
Me: what the rules should be
Me: and not enough on
Enigami: I'd say then for consistency's sake, we should set ORAS/SM to match Smogon's OU, and look instead how to fix it from there rather than arbitrarily starting those from scratch
Me: learning the game
Lutra: I don't really mind about anything other than RBY tbh
Me: that's the gist of this old smogon thread I dug up
Me: b/c this has been an issue for a whileand i mean it's tricky to strike a balance
Enigami: Funny though that you're only calling for everyone to stop arguing and just play the metagames, AFTER you have what you want
Me: cos i ain't got fuckin time or energy to keep on arguing
Me: and i realised that most people don't / don't care that much anyway
Me: all this is doing is making me hate you
Lutra: keep it the way it is now, but try everything to explore RBY without pre-status etc
Lutra: that's what I would do
Lutra: by coding it first
Enigami: I don't mind that if that's our plan, just saying that it should be applied equally.
Me: yeah that's different though, that's not replacing the tiering system we have so whatever
Lutra: but it may help cement our philosophy
Enigami: As in if that's what we're doing, I'm fine as long as ORAS/SM follow suit
Me: I guess we can think of what we considered as our philosophy as our 'ideal' and if we don't go for that ideal it's bc of pragmatism
Me: so its a case of how hard do we push to achieve it i guess
Lutra (later): Isa didn't really kill RBY2K10 btw, I was just saying it for vengeance-humour purposes. It was WW and T3h Icy by quitting suddenly and making it less sustainable than PP was (because PP had seasons that people will always want to continue). Isa let it die because doing what he did on Smogon motivated him more.

 

[Ortheore]

One thing is abundantly clear: we can't scrap the OU seasons because that's why most people come here. Isa's right in that new tiers and having most of our playerbase are mutually exclusive. If, that is, we have to choose between one or the other.

It's extremely obvious that in some way we're going to have to admit that our tiers just don't have the same weight as smogon's. We can do this by either betraying the original ideology of the tiering project, or by simply hosting tournaments according to demand. I still don't see why we can't just host smaller tours for our own tiers, the only response I've seen is that it looks bad, but even if that were a remotely substantial reason I'd honestly say the same thing about a lot of existing rulesets. It doesn't make sense for us to create something new and expect for it to immediately 100% replace an existing product, these things take time to grow.

As for the whole getting caught up in the argument thing, this isn't about specifics like "banning X" or whatever. This is a discussion of the core of our tiering project, which from my perspective accounts for a lot of the discussion that goes on here. And it's fun, trying new things and exchanging ideas about what works and what doesn't. I enjoy the process and playing the game. So no, I'm not done pushing for what I believe in.

Basically, host OU seasons but maintain our own separate tiering project

 

[Disaster Area]

I would rather host smogon's tiers rebranded and sometimes slightly modified as our own than have our own ones competing with smogon's on our own site. Especially in the seasons, which are the cornerstone of PP.

 

[Disaster Area]

What I'd suggest is that we begin in a given generation with the tier that the playerbase is comfortable with. Then we can hold tours in the Tournaments subforum which are modified rulesets with fewer bans, for example: GSC + Ho-oh + Celebi. Then that lets us start to see if maybe an alternative ruleset is balanced, and what it is like. If it gets enough traction after however many tournaments, and it meets what is sufficient to describe as one of our U-tiers, then we can move to replace the current tier that the playerbase is familiar with, with the new and less familiar but nonetheless suitable tier. I think this gives us the capacity to explore new ruleset and begin enacting changes, possibly radical changes, whilst giving us a real playerbase and credibility. I think this is a nice compromise that doesn't rock the boat for players but gives those who really seriously want to contemplate alternative rulesets the space on the site to do so. Then, we don't replace the smogon ruleset unless we create something better, and we get an active playerbase on the site.

 

[Ortheore]

That's not even remotely a solution. First it's an abandonment of our tiering system, and more importantly it's not really any different from straight up adopting smogon's tiers. How is any change going to come about in that system? No-one's going to want to change anything because the majority of our players are here for OU only. As long as we have only one option for a given generation's tiers there will only be OU or we lose our playerbase.

Our options are:

• Cater for both smogon tiers and our own tiers
• Use only our own tiers, and watch as most of our playerbase leaves
• Implement a sham of a tiering system by copying smogon's

 

[Disaster Area]

I'm proposing a sort of a hybrid. I don't think it's a sham. If you cater for both smogon tiers and our own tiers I don't see the point because our tiers will never get off the ground.

The only difference with my version vs what you're proposing is that we call Smogon's OU our own 1U and then we don't have smogon's tiers on here by name. We're taking Smogon's tiers, using that to draw in players, and then providing a framework in which to explore alternatives. At least with that we keep players on the site and I see it as the only way we can really get any sort of change: we need players here, and then once they are here then we can use that to explore alternative rulesets and maybe end up with a new 1U. I don't see any other way to get people actually involved and caring, and I'd be much more comfortable if, when adopting Smogon's OU for our Seasons, that we rebrand it as 1U rather than just calling it OU: we should use their tiers as a starting point for our own tiers. It makes me disgusted inside to think about having a 'BW OU Season' or something on here: we're PP, our seasons are for our tiers only. I'd like to consider that in each generation we have a starting '1U' that you can think of as being like '1A' in the way that 5U to start with is '5A' etc. that is like smogon's OU tier / the rules of the previous generation carried forward + bans of some of the new overpowered stuff. It's less starting from scratch and more starting from a starting point familiar with a lot of players usually, but being very much able to change the tiering upwards as well as downwards [i.e. testing with some of the stuff which is banned in combination] kinda like Smogon's ORAS UU tiering went under kokoloko's system (which I thought in some ways was pretty admirable actually).

Basically it's like, our initial 1U starts off with more than what might be the actual minimum banned, but it guarantees a stable and playable tier, and then from there we have the real freedom to test out metagames with some of the stuff which is initially banned as re-allowed.

I think the initial stability and the ability to draw in players makes it a superior system, even though it's not strictly a top-down approach [but you can host tournaments with that playerbase exploring the tiering possibilities in a top down approach, inferring information that way].

Noone wants to start off with GSC OU + Ho-Oh + Celebi to be the new format for the season off the bat without testing, but everyone is fine with GSC OU as the initial format. Some people think that GSC OU + Ho-Oh + Celebi or something might well be a fine and balanced tier, so this means we can have tournaments going on whilst the GSC 1U Season goes on: that initial GSC OU list starts out as our GSC 1U but we're fully aware that we might end up freeing Ho-Oh and Celebi depending on how those tournaments go. ALSO, it gives players more things to do whilst waiting for the next tournament to go up if they leave in the early rounds, so in some ways it kills 2 birds with 1 stone.

 

[Lutra]

I think we can be radical (to a degree) in RBY but not other generations - what DA suggested makes sense for the generations we have barely any influence in.

I think once pre-status is implemented, it'd be good to go through every stage in RBY tiering starting from Anything Goes downwards and solve any problems that arise. And also think how we can make the tiers/ tiering system future-proof so as to waste as least time as possible in the future. We want to explore things like tradebacks, stadium etc. some time so it'd help if changes in true RBY were only minor in the future.