GSC OU The GSC Ruleset and Tiering Process

[Ortheore]

Hi all, just wanted to open a discussion on GSC's ruleset and an eventual tiering process.

The elephant in the room when discussing GSC OU is that its balance is highly questionable. Given that, what should be the ruleset for GSC 1U? There are a few things worthy of discussion from this:

• Should we do anything about clauses? This is a minor point, but in my eyes the existence of freeze clause is unnecessary and does not justify breaking game mechanics, while self-KO clause may also merit discussion
• Is the existing ruleset adequate? When evaluating a metagame, one looks to the balance and diversity of that metagame as criteria, which are what we should use when evaluating the existing GSC OU. Does the existing metagame meet these criteria to a satisfactory extent?
• Alternatively, what should the ruleset be? We may need to ban some pokemon in order to achieve an adequately balanced and diverse metagame, while some others may be able to be unbanned without having significant detrimental effects. Do we need to ban Snorlax? Do we need to ban Zapdos/Raikou as well? Could we potentially unban something like Ho-oh?

Secondly is the formation of a council to make decisions regarding GSC's ruleset and tiering. I'm not 100% sure when this will occur, it may be soon, or it may not occur until the seasons are a bit more active idk. Candidates will be approached based on their skill level (particularly using the season player rankings as a guide) and involvement in discussions such as here and the viability rankings. If you wish to be part of this process the best thing you can do is get involved and contribute to these discussions.

Lastly, if we decide to modify the GSC ruleset and you still wish to play the traditional OU tier, we may still host seasons for it, if not it will definitely be used regularly in side tours. I'm certainly open to hosting seasons tho, so I'd say things are looking good in that regard.

 

[Mirabel_]

I think the first question that has to be asked is how you guys feel about draws. Personally I like them, but some competitors don't for good reason, and GSC is the most draw-happy generation by far which is averted with a ban on either the ubiquitous Leftovers or even just Rapid Spin.

 

[Ortheore]

At the moment we've got self-KO clause preventing all draws. That in and of itself is worth discussing so I added it to the OP.

Personally I don't mind draws (even tho I might've argued against them in the past- oops!). Unless there's a mechanical precedent in the game being played (there isn't for crystal afaik) then I view it as being a fairly arbitrary way to force a winner in a situation that by all rights should be a draw.

However the downsides of implementing draws are that it either makes things awkward for certain tour formats, or a rematch is required. I don't mind having a rematch, but issues associated with this are time and teams. Players may not like being forced to rematch and use teams that they might not have refined as much, or could even have to re-use a team, which poses an obvious disadvantage (this becomes an even bigger issue for more current gens, but that's besides the point). Time is another notable factor, you could argue one that applies even more to GSC. Scheduling if you're busy is an issue but for me personally I often have to play late at night, sometimes with early morning starts the following day, so time becomes an issue in that case due to lost sleep.

Don't have a particularly strong opinion here, so I'd like to see other people's thoughts

 

[Mirabel_]

Self-KO clause prevents GSC's perfect standoffs? Please explain.

I think as of now we should stick with the entire classic ruleset and also implement draws. My recently revised understanding (thanks Mr.378) is that true draws are actually very uncommon in high-level Smogon GSC OU. In tournament we should treat them the same way chess treats them and move forward, except in the events of a series tie forcing a regame.

I am very interested in playing and building data for a Leftovers-less GSC in the hopes of it building into a superior alternative for competition, but not at the expense of the existing GSC meta, which may itself greatly benefit from the attention PP gives it.

 

[Ortheore]

Oh woops idk I read your post and that got me thinking about something else lol.

Anyway, the situations you described I don't think are common enough to warrant a drastic action like banning lefties. There are some situations that we've just got to accept as draws imo, and the situations you describe are quite rare, so I don't think it's worth changing ruleset over.

 

[Genio.]

What you about hp legend ban?

 

[Ortheore]

Firstly, HP legends has zero possibility of occurring as it's a complex ban that needlessly targets non-broken pokemon such as Entei. The whole point of a complex ban is that you minimise this kind of excess.

HP ZapKou on the other hand... I would also rule out. Firstly, it's a complex ban, which in principle should be avoided where possible. Obviously there are some situations where it is called for- SleepTrapping being one of them. So what differentiates them? The breadth of their impact. Banning any single component of SleepTrapping limits a range of strategies that many players would consider fundamental to the game, and also adversely affect multiple pokemon. HP ZapKou are two complex bans of a pokemon each- they lack the breadth of something like sleep moves and as such I would not consider them worthy of a complex ban.

If we allow this kind of complex ban into our tiering it establishes a precedent that has a few undesirable consequences, which is why complex bans are avoided in principle. Firstly the tier becomes more complex, making learning it and teambuilding much more difficult. Secondly, the limitations imposed by these kind of complex bans are often quite arbitrary, or at least can be perceived as such, which impacts the legitimacy of our tiers.

Literally the only thing the HP legend ban has going for it is precedent, one that is extremely outdated. Precedent generally is a weak argument, especially since we're looking to revamp the entire tiering system, which arises from a fairly progressive ideology

TL;DR no HP ZapKou ban we generally don't do complex bans and this one's no different

 

[magic9mushroom]

I think the first question that has to be asked is how you guys feel about draws. Personally I like them, but some competitors don't for good reason, and GSC is the most draw-happy generation by far which is averted with a ban on either the ubiquitous Leftovers or even just Rapid Spin.

Why is GSC draw-happy? Under what circumstances does a draw actually occur?

(There is a difference between a draw and a game that goes on for 1000 turns; GSC certainly can have the latter under some circumstances.)


As far as broken Pokemon go, it goes a bit like this:

(Snorlax?) Lugia Mewtwo Mew
(Snorlax?) Ho-Oh Celebi
Zapdos Raikou
other stuff

GSC OU clearly doesn't make a great deal of sense. The three proposals I've seen to make things more consistent are "ban top rank, with Snorlax understood to be in second rank", "ban top two ranks" and "ban all three ranks". I've heard that the first two are not well-liked, while I'm not sure that the last one really solves anything (Vaporeon would possibly need a ban because all its best counters are gone, and Suicune is looking awfully hard to break).

I don't think I've seen "ban top rank, with Snorlax understood to be in top rank" proposed before, so I'll throw that up for discussion.

"No bans" is something I've thrown up myself, as while highly centralised I'm not sure it's worse than the alternatives and obviously it has the advantage of parsimony over any other solution.

I'd really, really like to get rid of the HypnoMissy ban since almost all forms of it are cancerous complex bans, but the only simple bans I can see to fix the HypnoMissy problem are "ban trapping", "ban sleep" and "ban Misdreavus" (as even with no Pokemon banned HypnoMissy is clearly still a problem - perhaps even more of one than in OU!). I'm really stumped by that one.

(Well, okay, I can see one unban that might make it less broken, which is to remove Sleep Clause. Sleep trapping is essentially cheating Sleep Clause, so removing it would to a fair extent fold sleep trapping into the greater "sleep, sleep everywhere" issue, while ensuring that Misdreavus itself can always be slept and that there are Sleep Talkers everywhere to deal with it. But... removing Sleep Clause.)

 

[Disaster Area]

Yeah in all honesty I just think that any team with any of Mewtwo/Mew/Lugia/Ho-oh/Celebi/Snorlax/Raikou/Zapdos isn't sufficiently diverse to be a main tier, and I think similarly something else further has to give once you remove those. I know Jorgen had some idea of what else to get rid of so that we have a sufficiently diverse meta, and I'm only approaching this from a PP tiering perspective - it's not gen 1, there shouldn't be one Pokémon that you should run on 90%+ of your teams. Basically the way I see it: what's the meta with the fewest bans required, after the previously mentioned ones are removed, that is sufficiently balanced and diverse to be a main meta? Furthermore, since it's gen 1, there should be no ultra-dominant threat (see like 80%+ usage).

 

[Ortheore]

I tweaked the OP a little bit based on a line of thought I've been having- firstly that I framed things too much as modifying the existing ruleset. I felt that kind of cemented the status quo and created a bias against change that was kinda counter to what I'd like to see. Not saying that I'm opposed to maintaining the status quo exactly, but I think change is something that shouldn't be readily dismissed, instead we should consider things on their own merits rather than drawing comparisons to what already exists.

Secondly the OP originally only discussed allowing pokemon traditionally considered ubers in the context of adding balance, which is kind of narrow. What about pokemon that don't bring necessary balance, but don't break anything? In general, if it isn't broken don't ban it as to do so is needlessly restrictive. For instance, in the current GSC OU would Ho-oh even be good? I admit to basing this on a hefty chunk of theorymon, but it's not entirely without basis- in playing GSC Ubers I found Ho-oh to be overall ineffective due to its matchup with common OU pokemon- it's actually not that bad against other Ubers, but electrics, Lax, rocks and waters could all give it grief. The point is, I think Ho-oh could seriously fit in the current GSC OU, and this exemplifies the case that I'm talking about. Then again, this could all be a moot point since I might be wrong, we could ban ZapKou, etc.

Also DA, with respect to what the tier should look like I think that while it's not gen 1, it's also not gen 6 either, so we should expect some kind of middle ground. As it stands gsc 1U is likely to be in a situation where 90+% of teams should expect to run either Cloy or Forry because Spikes are that good and also really scarce. The same could be expected of lower tiers where Qwilfish, Delibird (lol) and Pineco (also lol) will feature at some point, and I don't even know what'll happen with Smeargle.

Regarding m9m's stuff, I'm firmly of the opinion that Mew/M2/Lugia ought to be banned. Beyond that there are heaps of proposals that could work- either or both of Ho-oh and Celebi has potential in OU, while if you ban Lax you have to consider the impact on the viability of electrics and how you handle them, and if you ban those you run into the issues you mentioned. This is all complicated by the prospect of Ho-oh and/or Celebi being thrown into the mix. All this means a lot of testing.

 

[Disaster Area]

Tagging Jorgen because if he ever appears I know he has a lot of ideas (and the skill to back it up)

 

[magic9mushroom]

Regarding m9m's stuff, I'm firmly of the opinion that Mew/M2/Lugia ought to be banned.

Why?

 

[Ortheore]

Because I don't think the gsc ubers metagame is suitably balanced or diverse, it's certainly less so than the existing GSC OU metagame. It tends to revolve around the big 4, with teams generally finding little room for variation. That's not to say doing different things is impossible, but it generally doesn't take place because it's so top-heavy.

That said, perhaps I ought to examine my reasoning behind targeting those three as a group. Them+Lax are all clearly better than everything else in the game, so it was natural to focus in on them as a group, with Lax being left out because not a traditional uber

 

[magic9mushroom]

Lugia's definitely very centralising, Snorlax is very centralising in any meta without Lugia (and still huge with it), and Mewtwo and Mew are, while not particularly centralising, so good that essentially every team runs them if they're available. So that's fair.

So maybe we should start testing GSC 1U with Lugia/Snorlax/Mewtwo/Mew banned, and go on from there?

 

[Disaster Area]

[02:23:19] Disaster Area: hey, when you're on, can you respond to this? What - Pastebin.com

 

[magic9mushroom]

I will note that the 2P of having a no-ban 1U isn't that many more bans than GSC OU \ Lax, Electrics. So if you're thinking of going down the "more bans" road, 1U as no-ban starts to look pretty attractive.

 

[Jame$ G]

OK, last I heard 1U was going to encorporate ubers? Now we're talking about banning Zapdos, Raikou and Snorlax? I'm lost.. I can't contribute much for input here, I believe if something isn't broke it doesn't need fixing and I don't see much wrong with GSC ou as it currently stands? If I'd like to see anything added it would be sleep trap and ohko, but I don't believe many other players would share my position on that, and I can understand that. I played GSC in the era where HP legendaries and curselax were banned, but some genius decided that somehow Celebi would float in that rule set, honestly it sucked, you just got more stalling, more switching and much longer games than we currently have, there was just no articulation with the power houses being walled so easily, everything could check everything and it became a luck game based on how well you match up against your opponents team. If you think Snorlax and Zapdos spoil the metagame try taking on a Blissey without them, even I don't find that fun. IDK just my 2 cents but I would have no interest in a tier which bans the key pieces, the simple fact that something is hard to beat is what keeps the game moving, you may as well ban having fun, and farting too.

I don't really see what we're set to gain by lifting freeze clause either? It just opens a window for someone to lose by terrible hax and that's gonna leave a bitter taste in somebodys mouth.

 

[Disaster Area]

OK, last I heard 1U was going to encorporate ubers? Now we're talking about banning Zapdos, Raikou and Snorlax? I'm lost.. I can't contribute much for input here, I believe if something isn't broke it doesn't need fixing and I don't see much wrong with GSC ou as it currently stands? If I'd like to see anything added it would be sleep trap and ohko, but I don't believe many other players would share my position on that, and I can understand that. I played GSC in the era where HP legendaries and curselax were banned, but some genius decided that somehow Celebi would float in that rule set, honestly it sucked, you just got more stalling, more switching and much longer games than we currently have, there was just no articulation with the power houses being walled so easily, everything could check everything and it became a luck game based on how well you match up against your opponents team. If you think Snorlax and Zapdos spoil the metagame try taking on a Blissey without them, even I don't find that fun. IDK just my 2 cents but I would have no interest in a tier which bans the key pieces, the simple fact that something is hard to beat is what keeps the game moving, you may as well ban having fun, and farting too.

If we can find a nice GSC tier without a very small amount of ultra-dominant mons, but at least similar levels of balance and diversity to the current form, if it took like another 5 or 10 Pokémon bans, we'd seriously consider making that sorta change.

Or alternatively if you think some finer variation of the ruleset (say curselax ban or allow Ho-oh+Celebi or who knows what) would be a worthy improvement to the current meta, we'd seriously consider that too.

Ultimately though, if all of our GSC playrs are opposed to any sort of change (or are all wanting different things) then it's likely things will remain as they are.

I don't really see what we're set to gain by lifting freeze clause either? It just opens a window for someone to lose by terrible hax and that's gonna leave a bitter taste in somebodys mouth.

Increased mechanical purity (yes sleep clause breaks mechanics too, but it would be a step in the right direction. Sleep Clause will never be outright removed, but changing the implementation to make it as playable on cartridge is something we desire and think possible). It's not like there's not the change for terrible hax with this clause allowed, and in really any generation other than RBY, as far as I understand it, freeze itself is not that powerful and this clause would be much less activated.

 

[Jame$ G]

Increased mechanical purity? What do you mean by that? As in the dynamics are closer to what the original game had in mind? Is that in its self not a little counter intuitive when the same changes propose a total ban of 8 pokemon? Yeah it's not going to be huge deal either way but yah..

OK maybe I'll explain myself subjectively rather than just being negative here; this is what I think will happen to the metagame with these proposed rule changes:
Firstly players are going to look at other pokemon to replace Snorlax and Raikou for special defense, so the first 2 that jump out here are Umbreon and Blissey, neither of which are particularly noted for the exciting or fun matches they create. Secondly Tentacruel and Machamp will become very powerful with almost no solid switch in checks; Machamp will stop carrying Rock Slide in favour of Hidden Power Ghost and be able to target its counters with a lot more precision, and with Curse it's becoming close to impossible to check once it starts setting up. Tentacruel, again same thing, it would become almost impossible to counter. But the biggest problem of all will be growtheons, between a Jolteon and Espeon setting up and baton passing, combined with some HP water they would just be unstoppable without Lax or HP legendaries to oppose them, I think they'll be overpowered to the point they feel horribly broken.

I'm not saying the game isn't over centralized around the big 3, I just think banning them will centralise it even more. Like I say guys were looking for opinions on it and that's just my 2 cents

 

[Jame$ G]

Oh, and as was mentioned earlier in the thread; leftoverless is a pretty good idea, or even item clause. I personally think GSC works better like that; it makes a huge difference to the bulk of the mons.