All Gens Proposal: PROPER New Frontiers for 1Us

Are you serious? Catering for both is the ONLY way our tiers get off the ground, players need to be able to make a choice, to decide that they're interested by our tiering project. Players need to make that choice regardless, since having OU=1U isn't going to somehow trick players into signing up for tours in a completely different tier. Forcing it through isn't the way, and we're never going to change anything if we only perpetuate the status quo. There's no reason players can't play both OU and an alternate 1U, but if you start with OU=1U and expect a couple of test tournaments to change the mind of a majority of players enough that they'll scrap the tier they're into in order to venture into uncharted territory you're gonna be in for a nasty surprise. Hell, that's what I've been doing in the breaks between GSC seasons, I've been running Ubers tours and CeleHo tours. They've seen practically no participation whatsoever. I've demonstrated the unviability of what you're proposing. And even if they were to see respectable participation, there's no escaping the tyranny of the majority in this scenario.

It's like you're trying to ignore the reality that for most players we're simply a proxy for playing in the old gen tours that smogon doesn't seem inclined to host. Most of our players simply aren't interested in tiering, they just want to play old gen OU, so we should stop pretending that everyone is a) going to be interested in these side tours and b) going to view them as a tiering prospect rather than a novelty. The players that would are in the minority by far. Hence why I call the notion of your proposal leading to anything new a sham. And I'm baffled by your insistence that our seasons are exclusively for our tiers. Our seasons predate our tiering project by a long margin and accordingly were called OU for a good length of time.

There's no point living in denial that for the most part we're a platform for smogon's tiers. That's what we are to a lot of people so I don't see why we shouldn't admit that by calling OU OU. Separating our tiers from OU allows us to follow our tiering project with a clear and coherent vision, which is why we should do it. And there's really no reason why a player interested in tiering would get involved in our lower tiers but balk at an alternate 1U, so long as the existing OU remained available

 

Ok but it's not like what you're proposing is viable either. But at least with my approach we end up with some 1U tier at the end and then that gives us the capacity to develop lower tiers.

yeah but we've grown and changed since then... having an 'OU' season now would be a step backwards.

Maybe we can admit smogon got it right sometimes?

I can name a lot of people who would balk at an alternative 1U but want to play our lower tiers, particularly in the ADV community, for example, but no to me it's total fucking bullshit if you want to play 'Smogon's OU tiers' in OUR SEASONS which are OURS now. Fuck that shit dude, fuck that.

Ugh anyway this is pissing me the fuck off, i'm gonna take a couple days off of the forum / skype / discord etc. it's affecting me mentally I just don't want shit tochange I love the forum as it is right now and an attack on what we have feels like a personal attack.

 

How is what I'm proposing unviable?

We don't know this though. There's been literally no testing of it.

Is this with or without the assumption that OU remains available and unchanged? As for playing smogon's OU tiers in our seasons, imo this occurs regardless of whether or not we call them OU or not, the only difference is a name, nothing substantial

Also sorry for my part in all the frustration that's built up and making this discussion worse, I know I haven't done my part in keeping this level headed

 

Because you can't get people to be involved with it. Clearly if people aren't gonna get involved with CeleHo-tours right now they're not gonna get involved with them if we just give them GSC OU Seasons anyway. But if we have GSC 1U = GSC OU, then at least that lets us go onto forming lower tiers. I don't think we can get this off the ground unless we start with OU = 1U.

Yeah I know you / eni / lusch aren't doing it to attack me personally or anything, I don't honestly hold it against you. Just I'm very very proud of what we've achieved so far (look how many people are in the seasons, look at how well the RBY lower tiers have gone, look at how we feel as a community particularly in the RBY and ADV sections of it) and I don't want that success to be upset.

The question is, how can we do sensible tiering that we can come to some sort of an agreement on?

I think none of us really want to upset the playerbase that we have right now, we want a tiering system which has some sort of a playerbase (otherwise what's the point? a tier is nothing without players). Our goals of tiering is both to make a 1U tier, and to make tiers below that, which we have different sorts of issues with.

The only issue with lower tiers is getting people involved, but we've seen that it's very much possible to get people into it, although it ain't easy but clearly it's pretty possible.

With 1U tiers, we have that, but amplified, and on top of that, we have 2 different thoughts:
- One thought is that we should make 1U = OU and then modify it from there. The argument against it is that this approach doesn't allow for sufficient testing. But the upside is that you can easily get and maintain a playerbase and this makes it quicker and easier to get to exploring lower tiers.
- The other thought is that we shouldn't start off with 1U = OU, and that we should support OU as a separate thing on here. The arguments against this are that there's not enough players interested in redoing 1U, and that having Smogon's tiers explicitly in name is something we shouldn't do. The argument for it is that it's doing the tiering properly basically.

Anything I missed in summarising that? If there aren't then I'll make another thread with a poll between those two options to see what our fellow players prefer.

 

I haven't made a serious effort to get people on board with it. I was about to, before this discussion cropped up. I could as easily say the same thing of GSC lower tiers in general. Soooo are you suggesting that to get ppl involved in CeleHo or w/e we take away GSC OU seasons? I thought we'd already ruled that out as an option because too much of our playerbase are only here for OU. What makes lower tiers different from 1U in this case? For both, players have to be interested in playing and testing tiers besides OU. It's literally the same thing, except with my proposal we're starting one tier level higher. You keep repeating that we won't get it off the ground unless OU=1U, but you've presented nothing to support that other than an implicit assumption that lower tiers are somehow different from an alternate 1U tier. If GSC 1U can't get off the ground, I see no reason to think GSC lower tiers won't similarly fail.

 

No. I'm saying we should keep GSC 1U Seasons and get ppl involved in CeleHo to test the metagame and see if it is suitable for being 1U. The difference between what i'm proposing and what you're proposing is that i'm calling it GSC 1U from the get-go and then letting the tiering process carry on, what you're proposing is calling that under the name of GSC OU and considering GSC 1U to be CeleHo waiting for a ban. So I would say my proposal is: GSC OU = 1U, CeleHo = 1R, and it's possible that this --> CeleHo = 1U.

Except that 1U would and should replace OU, 2U doesn't. So some players are happy to invest time exploring lower tiers because it doesn't put 1U in jeopardy. In any other scenario, either: we end up having Smogon's GSC OU in our Touraments, or: we end up losing GSC OU to GSC 1U. The first is not acceptable to me or anyone who wants PP to have exclusively its own tiers, the second is not acceptable to anyone who wants GSC 1U to be GSC OU.

So basically either:
-1- We have GSC OU Seasons and explore GSC 1U separately, with no intention of replacing GSC OU Seasons with GSC 1U once the exploration is complete.
-2- We have GSC OU Seasons and explore GSC 1U separately, with the intention of replacing GSC OU Seasons with GSC 1U once the exploration is complete.
-3- We have GSC 1U Seasons and explore alternative rulesets as GSC 1R etc. and use that to make a determination about what the finalised GSC 1U ruleset should be.

I strongly oppose 1: I don't want Smogon's tiers under their name as tournaments on here.
So it's 2 or 3. The only real difference between 2 and 3 is cosmetic: whether we call GSC OU 'GSC 1U' to start off with or not.

Basically, players aren't all afraid of trying something new, but of those who aren't, many of them don't want the primary GSC tier to be too different from the GSC OU they're familiar with. Hence, we could see success in the lower tiers that wouldn't be replicable to the same degree in retiering for 1U, but it's much less likely to happen the other way around: it's not very meaningful to use success or lack there-of in attempting to re-tier GSC 1U to determine how enthusiastic people are about testing GSC lower tiers.

 

not gonna read the giant wall of text known as this thread, just gonna give a mostly smogon players point of view.
you guys seem to have the rby tiers down fine. dont rly play them at all but i dont see any problems with them.
nobody cares about gsc lower tiers so that rly doesnt matter. smogons ones seem fine i guess but yeah nobody would notice gsc lower tiers completely vanishing from the internet. gsc ou is very standard so i dont get what there is to differentiate from smog besides small stuff like sleeptrap.
smogs adv lower tiers seem to be a complete clusterfuck, at least uu. bl is fucking giant for no reason, almost twice as big as smogs ou. nu seems fine i guess but uu seems dumb. if you guys could make a good balanced uu that would be nice. smogs ou seems fine, and again im not sure how pps 1u would be much different from smogons ou
dpp tiers on smog seem fine.
bw tiering is retarded in general, from ou to nu.
oras seems fine.
with all that said i think it should be no surprise that i dont see a purpose in changing pps tiers just to be different. i dont rly understand the point of the ubers being 1u because thats just breaking consistency.
e:
people dont want to mix stuff up like gsc with celebi or whatever. in fact, i think very few people would play this type of metagame. basically, editing stuff where smog went wrong could be better, however don't edit too much. not sure how that would be done, but whatever. also heres some talk i had with disaster area [21:48:24] +partys over: quick thoughts on the tier stuff [21:48:34] +partys ov - Pastebin.com

 

Also I want to say I actually kind of have changed a lot, I like it more now to have similar / the same 1U tiers as Smogon's OU. Particularly in older generations, players aren't clamouring for change, they're clamouring for tournaments. There is a nice feedback between us and smogon and having similar 1U tiers to their OU tiers feeds our growth, and having our players being successful in their tournaments helps us even more. In metagames where people are clamouring for change, we should hear them out. In metagames where people really don't want change, we should have some amount of respect for that too - though those who do want change should be allowed to voice their opinions of course.

I feel like our identity is a mixture of a few things:
- Regular high quality tournaments in the form of our seasons. As elucidated above, the relationship between our tiers and Smogon's really is what makes the site tick in many ways.
- Our own novel tiering process with regards to how it is applied to lower tiers. Taking old gen lower tiers seriously and putting forth a serious effort to form and explore them is an important part of our character.
- An openness to change and letting everyone's voice be heard.

I think as a forum that really sums up what our identity is and has become.

I don't want to entirely nix the idea of changing GSC 1U from what it is now, but if you want it to happen, you'll need to get the support of at least some of the playerbase.

Spoiler

[06:09] +partys over: articularly in older generations, players aren't clamouring for change, they're clamouring for tournaments.
[06:09] +partys over: 100% agree with this

 

What? I'm not proposing anything specific to CeleHo, that's just theorymon. It's Ubers=1A. Also your post implies that your proposal allows the tiering process to proceed and mine doesn't. That's just not true as my proposal is literally jumping straight into the tiering process

There's absolutely no reason to scrap OU. That 1U replaces OU seems to be the crux of your argument but it's simply not true. There's no reason for it other than "it looks bad", whereas having both allows us to give people what they want while maintaining a tiering project that is genuinely our own. If anything, my proposal is more genuine to the whole notion of having our own tiers, as accepting OU=1U is just uncritically adopting another tierlist and pretending it's our own

I've explained multiple times now why having OU=1U or replacing OU with 1U will never ever lead to any substantial change- the majority of players are here for OU and will not tolerate any deviation from it. Stop acting like there's any room for exploring alternate rulesets without catering for OU and 1U separately

Why would this be an issue though? If they still have GSC OU to play, what does it matter if our tiering project uses a different banlist for 1U?

 

All Gens - Proposal: PROPER New Frontiers for 1Us | Pokémon Perfect

Let's just settle this. Convince people that your idea is the best idea.

 

I'm only speaking as a gsc player here. I think a new tiering system is unrealistic. For 1. gsc ou works. No one is rage quitting over some bs or quitting the gen over some bs with tiers. The only thing wrong with ou now is snorlax, but people have learned to play around him and know him so well that players are content with him and the majority of players don't view him as a problem. 2. It'd be harder to practice for 1u tournaments since most people will be playing ou. and 3. Since there aren't as many players playing gen 2 ou and even less players who will test things, everything you test will only be considered anecdotal evidence. The test will have little to no credibility. And gen 2 ou is pretty deep. I still experiment with new teams and strategies even to this day that i haven't tried before. If the gen 2 ou meta had gone stale specifically because of the tiering system then I could see a new tier being a welcomed thing. But as of now the gen 2 ou meta is a good meta and a deep meta with a pretty high skill ceiling. So because of that it think changing it is unrealistic.

 

I am relatively new to the PP community, so perhaps my perspective may be useful (or not) for gauging the merits of the re-tiering process. When I first joined, I immediately looked at the 1U tiering system but did not really understand what fundamentally distinguished it from Smogon other than by name only. Of course, I am speaking as an ADV player when I make such a statement and do not mean to discredit the efforts of those who put the tiering system together by making it. Rather, I suppose the point I am trying to convey is that striving for a unique tiering system only makes sense if it is somehow distinguishable in some fundamental or impactful way from those of other communities. I would argue that Pokémon Perfect tiering system 1U is redundant for older generations. Again, I am speaking as an ADV player, and I cannot, off the top of my head, name how they are really distinguishable from the OU designation of Smogon. Perhaps, this would be less true of newer generations where the tiers are less established, and we could see a re-tiering of these generations.

On a related note, if a re-tiering process was to be implemented, it would be important not to duplicate previous efforts. If other communities have already gone through the trial and error of establishing tiers, how would Pokémon Perfect improve on the work already done? If we as a community cannot answer this question, then the very notion of a re-tiering process just becomes an exercise of trying to be unique for its own sake rather than for any substantive reason.

In the end, I want Pokémon Perfect to be an awesome community and see so much potential here. If the leaders of the community want to revitalize tiers, they have my support. I just do not want to scare away older generation players who tend to be more resistant to change.

 

I think you seriously underrate what can be done in old gen lower tiers.

Most players I speak to think that Smogon's ADV lower tiering doesn't make much sense, and I have a few decent people on board with testing new lower tiers, from scratch, but I've not put in much effort to really get that moving just yet (but having some good people like myself ninjax sunny cowboy dan paraplegic typhlito on board already helps...). But have you see what we've done in RBY CALLOUS? We've, with about 8-10 high quality players, over a period of about a year, gotten further into the weeds than anyone has before in RBY, and we've gone down to 5U, with viability rankings for each and analyses for all of the relevant pokemon (in 2U / 3U / 4U: 5U is still being tested etc.) and some articles here and there too (including a complete guide to 3U covering every nook and cranny); we've got players who are recognised as some of the best there are in RBY, such as marco, peasounay, and ortheore involved in the process, leading to the tiers being very much respectable. There is NO reason we can't do the same in ADV: we have more ADV players on PP than we have RBY players, all we have to do is interesting some of them. In my experience you need about 8 or so good players to really get exploration to work, probably want to pump up the number a little more in ADV since it's more complex than RBY, but it is definitely feasible. As it is I think ADV 2U is like 80% worked out right now, with nothing blatantly broken permitted but some Pokemon still definitely underexplored.

Just a reminder: the purpose of the tiering really is to have tiers where as many Pokemon as possible find a home where players can use them without it being detrimental to their team to do so, etc. In Smogon's ADV tiering... BL is basically not played (which has about 50 Pokemon in, and due to the presence of Alakazam, Slaking, and Espeon, is far from balanced so it's not like it's playable anyway), and Pokemon that aren't actually that good end up making it into the tier anyway - in UU a few Pokemon like Sneasel and Stantler really look out of place for example - and there's no organisation on Smogon which is actually managing the tiers (Huntail and Sableye deserve suspects in ADV NU [I vote yes to huntail no to sableye fwiw]). Or look at DPP OU on Smogon: what are Electivire, Ninjask, and Dusknoir doing there? Smogon's tiers aren't necessarily an unmitigated disaster or anything, some of them are good tiers, but we look at that and we say: we can do better, and we can have a system which makes sense.

E: also I forgot to mention that we host tournaments with actual prizes for our lower tiers too: the RBY 2U World Championship is the first with medals, and in the future cash prizes may well be on offer. In addition, there is a real possibility of some sort of inclusion of lower tiers in PPL [see last year for example with the rotation metagames. It wasn't a great success but ideas like it could be carried out in future iterations, although not PPL 2]

 

CALLOUS, asserting that old gen OUs are "universally correct" is demonstrably untrue. BW2 OU is subject to numerous complaints about its balance and furthermore, what testing have you done in GSC? I've played a reasonable amount of GSC Ubers and it's honestly a better tier than OU (for what that's worth, seeing as it's so subjective). Hell, Isa suggested that even RBY isn't in the clear, which although I'm not sure I agree with it, it's a valid question.

But anyway, I agree that touching OU is a terrible idea, for reasons you discuss. That's why it needs to be separated from any alternate tiers that are made.

 

I don´t really support changes of Tiers unless there are valid groundshaking points for changes.
I do however think that onward Gens could easily have Tiers in betweeen like Mewbers (think of Celebi in GSC), so this should be in the focus right now IMO.

 

Ban Snorlax and/or Tauros and/or Chansey?

EDIT: took time to read and I mostly agree with "DON'T TOUCH OLD GEN OUs", "people want to use TTar in ADV, Snorlax in GSC and Tauros in RBY".
Talking about RBY, I think all we have to do is to get that low tiering job done and promote it a bit. Start tournaments and stuff with what should be considered our "official tiers", then start doing some behind-the-scenes testing: sleep-inducing moves banned, Chansey banned, whatever else.

Every game with regular players benefits from changing banlists time to time, just don't forget what the official one is.
I don't see what's wrong with having tiers most people don't care to play. They get their classic OU, regular players get different stuff, everybody should be fine.