A New Direction for Other Metagames

[MZ]

I think there's merit to those points, but they go off in the wrong direction. I've thought that Deo-S is stupendously unhealthy for AAA as a meta overall for a while, and I don't know about the other examples but they seem reasonable. The thing is, plenty of unbans work, like Greninja and Blaziken in AAA. I think the issues with a lot of OMs more stem from the stupid amount of random sets you cannot predict or too many viable sets. It's easier to tell what's what in regular mons, because certain standard things are good and you know exactly what possible moves and abilities Pokemon can have. There's much more variability and difficulty in determining these things in metas like AAA, Sketchmons, STABmons, etc. with only Tier Shift and Monotype (which has its own issues) really truly escaping for this. I'm not gonna talk about solutions or ramifications, just my two cents on the issue.

 

[Celticpride]

What I think you don't understand here is how hard it actually is to determine what is and is not ban worthy. Due to an inability to perform "true" suspect tests thanks to our small player bases, what is and isn't banned will usually come down to the tier leader's or council members' subjective opinions (as much as we try to avoid that) and even in metagames where people have a vote to decide on bans, it can be argued and is very likely that these votes are still flawed because voting requirements are very easy to get (OM ladders are, in general, very easy to climb).

See my first thought was more it would actually be easier when it's just a tier leader or a small council. Less PR to worry about and less red tape compared to say setting up a Suspect test in the standard tiers. The reality is it's probably easier in some respects and harder in others. A smaller base of users does definitely make it harder in some respects, but there are some benefits as well. Maybe play to those benefits a bit more?

And as much as some of us proud OMers would swear otherwise, OM players in general aren't as good as battling as most standard players are, meaning these decisions come down to less skilled players (EDIT: I'm not trying to say OM players suck here for the OM players reading this, I'm just saying since OMs are less competitive we inevitably aren't as serious about things as in Standard.)

Funny you mention this, I'm aware of this stereotype and made sure to avoid it (I'm a nice guy, I swear!). And it is probably very true that the difference in skill levels, assuming it exists as you imply, changes what a person thinks is broken. Like I wouldn't consider what Unfix outlined above to be acceptable counterplay, because most if not all of that requires rather precise offensive counterplay and probably a decent amount of sacking.

I'm not trying to be harsh either, but this type of call to action to "ban the obviously broken shit" isn't going to get anything done because it doesn't offer any solution. What would actually change things is if you and other tour players actually voiced your concerns about potentially broken things in the respective metagame threads - the more good players we have voicing their opinions, the easier we can get things done. We listen, we promise. I realize of course that, as you say, Other Metagames are just something you do on the side and not really any primary concern of yours. But until this situation changes and the people who think the ban lists are shit actually come forward with their concerns, nothing will happen.

Haha I guess it's true I didn't offer any sort of real solution outside of "ban more things pls". I'm not overly familiar with how the community works or responds to things so I'm probably not the best person to offer such a solution. There's big time, serious threads and articles about metagame health in great detail, such as Aldaron's tiering framework thread and DougJustDoug's thread on Characteristics of a Desirable Metagame. Idk maybe that's beyond the scope or intensity of this forum, again it's not really my place to decide that. But maybe having more resources or direction about what actually makes threats broken and what doesn't might help those running metagames, because that is a grey area for a lot of people, and not just users in this forum. But I think adding more readily accessible knowledge to the equation could only help.

For what it's worth I didn't mean to come in here as the big bad tour player (I don't even play tours), I'm just a casually interested user who thought offering an outside opinion could be helpful. I ask people outside my forums all the time what they think of my sections, because otherwise it starts to sound like an echo chamber, which is again why I thought an outside opinion could be helpful. If this came off as rude or uneducated, well that wasn't my intention but please proceed to just ignore this if you think that's the case.

 

[EV]

Fwiw people who play OMs tend to have a higher threshold of what's acceptable in their metagame before it's considered 100% broken. It's one of those circular arguments but in essence the prevalence of many potentially broken things have a way of keeping each other in check, albeit precariously. I'll illustrate my point with a video.

 

[Ghoul King]

There's the additional difficulty that with OMs that are more than mildly different from Standard it can take months of good play to actually figure out what the meta looks like when played at a high level, and meanwhile an OM gets a month in the spotlight of having a ladder and is otherwise only played by a small pool of people who mostly tend to either stick to one or two successful teams or try out myriad fun things that mostly aren't very good, neither of which helps work out the top meta threats. The end result is that something can seem obviously broken and in actuality the checks and counters exist, are highly viable/general, and just haven't been picked out by anyone as yet.

Standard has a tail of years of play by far more players at any given moment, and individual Pokemon are often relatively stable even across generations -Skarmory has been meta-relevant since Gen II, period, and its role has tended to remain in the same core area. (A physical wall that outputs hazards and shuffles enemies -Gen V turned it into a key hazard manager in a more general sense, thanks to Defog's reworking, but it's still fundamentally the same Pokemon) That makes it a lot easier to be reasonably certain you know what the "baseline" looks like and whether a given thing is healthy relative to that or not.

Whereas in OMs a thing can look hideously, flagrantly broken and actually be kind of underwhelming. A lot of times when people are theorymonning an OM there's a dozen Pokemon from OU people are convinced will be better than ever in the OM, and in actuality their roles are taken over by stuff from UU or RU or NU or PU that benefits far more from the meta's premise, or their roles are basically useless in the meta's environment. (Who cares about Toxic when you're playing Volturn Mayhem?)

So OM players, as a whole, tend to tolerate "broken nonsense" for a long time because we don't actually know that it's broken. We haven't found good checks or counters yet, but they may well exist.

 

[Kingslayer2779]

Honestly if you are a player who is experienced with standard suspects and you see something you think is blatantly broken in a OM i would perfer if you speak up! If you have played with something that you think is broken and you have the experience and knowledge to back up your claim then tell us about it! Its only way to improve the balance and competitiveness of our metas.

 

[skies]

So I'm going to make one final push for STABmons to stay. With Sun / Moon on the horizon, and a change occurring this year with them coming out in a few months, it's time to address this.

Firstly, let me preface this post by saying I tried to remain as unbiased as possible. I've taken into consideration ladder activity, forum activity, and C&C activity, the latter of which I can accurately judge I'd say. Anyways, the idea of a rotational ladder is something I'm not against, though I see it as harder to garner attention. I want popular things to have permanent ladders, that's it. But, that's besides the point entirely. While opening up more possibilities for new metagames is something I'm fond of, I don't think removing STABmons to allow this is the key to the success. As I'm not in charge of the server and am not informed that much of the effect STABmons has on it entirely, The Immortal, could you tell me if keeping STABmons makes any difference on the server? I don't think removing STABmons, if it has no effect on the server, is the way to go about making the forums a better place. In fact, I think it takes a step back. For that reason, I'd like to take a stance against the removal of the STABmons ladder to make it a permanent ladder because it has maintained stable C&C presence, forum activity is high for STABmons, and it has held a place in all official tours up to this point.

With how Other Metagames Analyses are structured currently and with how everything operates, we've had more STABmons analyses than any other analyses in the subforum. By removing the ladder, it effectively means we have to stop writing STABmons analyses, since without the ladder we have less people wanting to participate. The Immortal, I noticed in some post that you said you wanted only Balanced Hackmons analyses to be in the OM C&C forum, or Anything Goes as a secondary choice. This doesn't make sense to me. If anything, I'm inclined to cut Balanced Hackmons from the OM C&C subforum first. If there was one metagame to stay, it would be STABmons. Then Anything Goes. In purely terms of activity, Anything Goes almost has as many analyses as Balanced Hackmons does. The inherit issue with Balanced Hackmons analyses has nothing to do with the QC team, but more so the metagame itself. There's so many sets, slashes, and all that jazz, and many people, besides the experienced players, really can't help write these analyses. With other formats, we can have a bit less experienced people help out and grow and learn, which is very crucial to the subforum's growth in my opinion.

Another reason to keep STABmons would be that the forum thread, which Eevee runs, is highly active still. Well, highly might be a stretch, but it's definitely not a dead thread by any means. And with these two recent bans, everything seems to be in place for a balanced metagame. I don't foresee any potential suspects, bar Thundurus if I had my way. But that's besides the point again. With how much activity the thread alone has had, there should be no reason to cut it. Regarding tournaments. OMGS had STABmons, OMPL had STABmons (twice), and the miscellaneous tours in this subforum often are STABmons. At this point, it's a beloved and established part of the community.

By removing the ladder, it effectively eliminates the entire STABmons community, which is just flat out unfair. I believe STABmons should stay as a permanent ladder. If not, then a challenge-only format for tournaments and battles with other people. I'd prefer the former, but I'll take what I can get.

By the way, it's 3 AM and I may have missed bits and pieces, but I believe my stance holds true. That is all. Thank you.

 

[The Immortal]

As I said before, C&C should be dependent on ladders, not the other way around. STABmons does not compare at all to non-ladder formats that had won OMotM, or other permanent ladders. STABmons is not staying, and it won't be a challenge format either because it will be playable via other available formats. It simply is not an active enough ladder to warrant staying. If that means it's removed from C&C, so be it. The same resources STABmons takes from the server as a challenge-only option can be used for a format that cannot be played, such as Hidden Type or Averagemons.

The point of this is new direction, not old. If we keep stuff based on the fact that we had them, then things will never change and this thread is pointless. And I have to disagree with you on its thread activity. It's got quite poor activity compared to non-ladders. Metagamiate is bigger, Sketchmons is bigger, Mix and Mega is more than double, Inheritance is four times more, and so on... Its minimal activity is due to it having a ladder; I'd wager that if it didn't have a ladder, it wouldn't even be close to the activity of these other formats. It was popular at one time, one generation ago, which is why it received a ladder. It's time to move on to what's popular now.

While I'm on the subject of this, I wanted to bring up the possibility of Mix and Mega being placed in rotation instead of Tier Shift. As much as I like the Tier Shift concept and want it to have a place, it's also one of the poorly active ladders. Mix and Mega is super active on the forum and had very high battle counts both of the times it won OMotM.

unfixable here's a comparison for you; Mix and Mega had over 100,000 more battles than STABmons last month. C&C isn't my concern. My concern is having the best formats available for play because we can't have everything. STABmons does not cut it.

If you agree with Mix and Mega being in rotation, like this post!

 

[Funbot28]

I also believe Inheritance should be added in the rotation maybe replacing Inverse Battle as that gets like no activity and could be removed the same way Sky Battles were removed.

 

[The Immortal]

I also believe Inheritance should be added in the rotation maybe replacing Inverse Battle as that gets like no activity and could be removed the same way Sky Battles were removed.

Inverse Battle is already going to be removed; refer to my old post again.

 

[xJownage]

Yeah, Mix-and-Mega is probably the best option for replacing OMs because of the amount of creativity and how unique the meta is - it's bound to get a lot of attention and players. Inheritance is just as dangerous, although the admins seem to have made the BH comparison clear many times. Honestly, if there's an odd man out, it should probably be Tier Shift over Stabmons, as the way I see it, STABmons and AAA are the two most appealing OMs to newcomers due to their "break shit" mantra.

 

[LatiasDigs]

Yeah, Mix-and-Mega is probably the best option for replacing OMs because of the amount of creativity and how unique the meta is - it's bound to get a lot of attention and players. Inheritance is just as dangerous, although the admins seem to have made the BH comparison clear many times. Honestly, if there's an odd man out, it should probably be Tier Shift over Stabmons, as the way I see it, STABmons and AAA are the two most appealing OMs to newcomers due to their "break shit" mantra.

Replace Tier shift? You realize tier shift is more popular than Stabmons right?

 

[The Immortal]

To clear any confusion, refer to this post. The only thing being reconsidered is Mix and Mega over Tier Shift.

 

[Funbot28]

To clear any confusion, refer to this post. The only thing being reconsidered is Mix and Mega over Tier Shift.

So Sketchmons is being considered as well?

 

[imas]

Sketchmons is already getting a ladder. Why are you not reading the post?

 

[Funbot28]

Sketchmons is already getting a ladder. Why are you not reading the post?

Ok got it am so tireed that I cant even read straight ;)

 

[xJownage]

From an attractiveness and not an activity point, STABmons seems much better than TS. It seems that this isnt the case in activity, probably due to the constant state of change in STABmons, and that its no longer being considered. I also dont see STABmons and Sketchmons coexisting as true permaladders.

 

[skies]

C&C being in rotation or even changing to the permaladders makes a LOT of hard work on myself. And while I'm willing to do it, I don't think you see my perspective from purely the C&C side. Adding / changing a metagame means finding new QC teams, teaching them, getting people to write the analyses, getting everything ran by SS, and then more. It is not easy to just add a metagme.

But, I would make the compromise of just having AG analyses, since those seem to be the most popular. I also agree with making C&C revolve around the main forum, I really hadn't considered it like that. Maybe it's just my love for STABmons, but it would be a real shame to see it go.

The Immortal, let's chat on Showdown later when I don't have a pounding headache. I just have a few things that can't really be shared in this thread regarding C&C! Thank ya.

 

[Funbot28]

Ya regarding C&C maybe rotation ladders may not be the best idea, but I would be so glad if Mix and Mega and Sketchmons gt permaladders even if they don't get analyses.

 

[DoW]

It seems to me that c&c exists to help out players, and given that which metas get ladders is based on how popular they'll be surely it makes far more sense for c&c to be based on what ladders there are than for ladders to be based on c&c?
Sorry if I'm wrong / stating the obvious, it just seems to me that arguing what ladders we should have based on what c&c for them would be like isn't that strong an argument.

 

[Lcass4919]

idk if you guys have already considered this, but how about making just a big "OM rotation 1" and "OM rotation 2" C&C rather then having seperate threads for each and each with a index so people can navigate through the three OMs for each category. it looks nicer, and overall helps a lot for people getting into the newer metas, as they can find which of the three is currently on, or prepare for the one happening next month, and it would erase any real current problems. we keep stabmons c & c, we get new c&c's and although it means we have to have MORE c&cers, it also means previous c&cers get a long pause time before they have to continue to quality check for the other metagames. for example, since im in AAA, if its in rotation, and its not AAA until 6 months, i can take my time knowing "oh, its not going to overwhelm me as im in no real hurry to finish all of them" thus, allowing me to handle some mix and mega C&C's and thus, allowing us to have WAY more c&c, while not pressuring our community to make a bunch all at once for a tremendous amount of metagames. idk just a thought.

 

[Delibird Mafia]

Very reasonable. There's no reason one person should be submitting more than 1 OM per month anyways.

 

[theclaw]

If it hasn't been done yet, we could use guides about what qualities make up successful OMs and a workshop for community input on ideas.
Limiting months wasted in vain is pretty important.

 

[Whydon]

If it hasn't been done yet, we could use guides about what qualities make up successful OMs and a workshop for community input on ideas.
Limiting months wasted in vain is pretty important.

An article about that was going to be written, but I think the author retired the idea since it's now on the "Shelved Ideas" thread.

 

[skies]

If it hasn't been done yet, we could use guides about what qualities make up successful OMs and a workshop for community input on ideas.
Limiting months wasted in vain is pretty important.

Myself and Eevee General and The Immortal have all done workshops before, and they do happen every once in awhile. Perhaps doing more would be more optimal for the forum!

 

[Jajoken]

What's the status of the Sketchmons rotation ladder? I noticed that Sketchmons is a front-runner for the upcoming OMotM -- which seems like kind of a waste if its getting a ladder next month or something.