A New Direction for Other Metagames

Kit Kasai

Love colored magic
Was just wondering about it because no one else explicitly mentioned it after mamp posted the idea.

What about the built in polls for XenForo? I'm pretty sure they were at least considered a long time ago in the past, don't remember why it was decided not to use those.
 
Was just wondering about it because no one else explicitly mentioned it after mamp posted the idea.

What about the built in polls for XenForo? I'm pretty sure they were at least considered a long time ago in the past, don't remember why it was decided not to use those.
Pretty sure poll options have a limit. However, the main reason we chose likes over polls was that voting in polls required the thread to be open. There was no advantage to using polls.
 


I know this isn't important but why are they ordered like this? It's triggering my OCD.

If we can get anything in Gen 7, the reordering of these should be a top priority.

Please and thanks.
Look now! I made a number of changes to improve the OM sections, including: moving random metas to their own section, switching CAP and AG, as well as improving the order of the formats listed.
 
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Chloe

is a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Dedicated Tournament Hostis a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
NUPL Champion
Hello, I'm back to suggest something that probably doesn't bother anyone but me. Initially I wasn't planning on posting, but after gaining the support of multiple OM forum lurkers, I might as well bring it up and gauge its popularity over the current system. With the use of tags within the forum, I personally feel as if this could be improved upon.

While this allows for easy distinguishing between the type of thread one could click on, most of the time it doesn't really help at all. While I agree that "Metagame" and "Announcement" are probably required, why would I ever click on "Project", "Resource" or "Ladder"? I don't think anyone would be looking for all the projects in the forum or all the permaladder discussion threads, and rather would be looking for something catered towards the metagame they're searching for. This is where my suggestion comes in.
  • Why not have a tag allocated for each permaladder?
While I understand the drawbacks of having that many tags in the forum, it would indeed make it clearer and simpler to look for information on your desired metagame. For example; if I wanted to look up all Balanced Hackmons related threads, I would click on a tag looking like this:
(I took art classes)

Then the ladder thread, the "Balanced Hackmons Central" thread, the CCAT thread and the Underrated Sets thread would all be tagged with that tag. It would become a much less tedious task to look for all information within a desired metagame. The "Metagame" tag would remain of course as those metagames are usually singular in their thread count, also I can see that being used logically. One disadvantage of this is that threads for multiple metagames, (e.g. The Teambuilding Shop and Silly Things You've Seen in Other Metagames threads) would require yet another tag, or none at all. I of all people don't want to see excessive tags, which is a major reason I was hesitant in suggesting this in the first place; however, possibly another alternative or some merit can be seen out of this suggestion.

Or you might think it's stupid, which I'm fine with as well.
 

The Official Glyx

Banned deucer.
At first, I didn't really think much of the official tournaments, but once we got into the later parts of the previous month where the ladders usually start to die off, it was refreshing to see the om's of the month getting some use.
That being said, this reward that I'm seeing for winning the most OT's is relatively disappointing. I know that it applies to a very small grouping of people, but still, I was one of them for a very long time :c What should happen if someone wins the most OT's and they happen to not use Smogon? Do they just get a pat on the back and bragging rights? I mean, I know that Custom Titles and Custom Smogon Avatars are a pretty big deal, but those are Smogon-based rewards, and these are Showdown-based tournaments, so wouldn't it make better sense that the reward be something that applies to the user on Showdown? in the OM room in particular, since om business only applies there

"Well then what do you suggest, ya dingus? We already have a star given out to the winner of the most Daily Tournaments."

I suggest that we give the way we enact tournaments a complete overhaul. Every time we have a tournament in the room, I always think to myself: "What makes this anything special over just challenging the people myself? Or better yet, playing on the ladder?", and after thinking about it, I ended up realizing that there is no point to any of the tournaments that we have in the room except for the 1-2 dailies and the official.
That being said, what if we give them a purpose other than just being for fun?
Going on a tangent to answer the above question
My first ever experience with Showdown was back in my high school days around the end of my junior year. I didn't have a computer of my own to use, but thankfully we had school laptops that the school lent to students for scholarly use; that being said, they still had filters that prevented us from entering any of the fun websites >w>, and Showdown was included in that list of fun websites, but surprisingly, the other servers weren't! A friend of mine introduced me to psims in general, starting with Pandora, the biggest server other than the main one, if memory serves correctly. My friends and I played on there ever since then, even forming teams amongst each other to take on the other teams, or "clans", as they were referred to; but I wasn't really interested in that, I was more interested in changing the color of my name, since I wasn't overly fond of the sexy teal color that my account "Glyx" has, back then. If I remember correctly, Pandora had a unique shop system involving "poke dollars" that were won in trace amounts for participating in ladder battles and in larger amounts for winning tournaments. The poke dollars, themselves, were used for various things in the shop that could be pulled up with a / command. It's been ages since I last existed on Pandora, and unfortunately, the computer I'm using currently isn't capable of loading any servers other than the main one, so I can't check for myself, but I recall the shop alleging that you could change the color of your name, get a trainer id card, add things to said id card, get a custom avatar, get a unique symbol of your choice by your name for a week, and likely other things I'm probably forgetting. Another server that has/had a similar feature is/was Frost, a server my friends and I went to whenever we all got banned from Pandora for all having the same IP address, though it was much less difficult to gather shop credits since there were also smaller rooms that had tournaments where we could gather tournament wins much more easily, though the system was on a lot smaller of a scale than what Pandora had. I'm rambling at this point, I should probably shut up :L
In short, all of this is meant to say that I think we should have a system similar to that, where all tournaments matter, and we can gather points to spend in a shop of rewards that AREN'T biased towards Smogon users, or at least for just the Official Tournaments, if doing it for all om tours is too much work. I have no experience or knowledge of the workings of Showdown's coding, so I don't really have any idea how big of a task what I'm suggesting really is, but I would love to know, if someone that does have knowledge of such things is capable of and willing to explain, instead of just getting a blunt response of the task being too difficult or something akin to that.

I'm terribly sorry if this isn't the place to post this, but I asked if it was okay in the om room, and didn't receive a "no", but if it's going to be deleted, at least tell me before doing so, because I wanna get this blob of text copied for future use ;X
 

EV

Banned deucer.
We did a leaderboard for room tours way back when and it was a real butt to maintain and keep track of. Our room staff is already lazy so I wouldn't want to dump another responsibility on their shoulders.

The Official Glyx - I think you're wrong about winning tours. "I ended up realizing that there is no point to any of the tournaments that we have in the room except for the 1-2 dailies and the official." Not true because even winning many non-Daily/Official tours has consequence. Take jeran for example, who we room voiced originally just because of his tour involvement. Also, a very recent example I can think of is the application process for OM Frontier Brains, where listing any tour wins can count toward showing how skilled you are at any particular metagame.

Getting a custom avatar/title on Smogon is a pretty cool perk for a lot of people. When I started doing my little CT challenges I thought I'd do one or two and people would get bored of it, but now I get highlights asking me to run them during the dailies or even for regular tours/ladder challenges.

Lastly, you can't really separate the Smogon OM from the Showdown OM. We're a Smogon-based concept and we happen to host a room on Pokemon Showdown. It's not quite the same as say a language room or something such as Trivia or Scavengers, which are more PS-centric and happen to host threads on Smogon to help maintain their rooms.
 

The Official Glyx

Banned deucer.
That's fair, the thought that most people, that actually participate in the om community, already have a smogon account did go through my mind while typing up my mess; I also considered the workload, though I had completely forgotten how short on staff we actually are when it comes to oms; we have a pretty big auth list in the room, usually, but usually about 3/5-2/3 of them are globals that either linger around or are just checking in on the room or w/e. From the looks of it, the growth of OMs is going to have to be a progressive system of growing gradually, rather than trying to push something big on everyone out of the blue.
I'm sorry for not completely thinking my idea through before posting it :c
 

Rumplestiltskin

I will rain lels all over you and you will drown in them
We did a leaderboard for room tours way back when and it was a real butt to maintain and keep track of. Our room staff is already lazy so I wouldn't want to dump another responsibility on their shoulders.
The tour leaderboard was a really cool thing, and it gave more incentive to actually try to win tournaments, at least for me. Maybe ask the current OM staff if they would be up for recording the tournament wins? I know I'd be down to record tournament wins whenever I'm on, so maybe other people would be up for it too?
 

lost heros

Meme Master
The tour leaderboard was a really cool thing, and it gave more incentive to actually try to win tournaments, at least for me. Maybe ask the current OM staff if they would be up for recording the tournament wins? I know I'd be down to record tournament wins whenever I'm on, so maybe other people would be up for it too?
I also feel like it's something a bot could do. I'm pretty sure Lady Monita does it for the Tour room. Idk tho.
 
Can we please seperate Index and VIP club? It tries to crash my browser every time I try to open it and it's a pretty important resource, so we should make it easier to open. Also, I'm honestly not sure why VIP club is even in index in the first place instead of being like a stickied project or something.

I also feel like it's something a bot could do. I'm pretty sure Lady Monita does it for the Tour room. Idk tho.
Yeah it does.

Also, if roomvoices also help out, we can actually bring back the leaderboard. Make a google doc and give them access in a smogon conversation or something. Not saying it will happen but it's definitely not impossible to bring back. Saying our roomauth is lazy is rude and untrue :(, there's just not a lot to do modding wise lol. We don't host that many tours daily so we could make a new rule saying the tour winners have to be noted down in the doc. If we do miss one or two, I (or some other global roomauth) can pull it up from logs and keep track.
 
NO MORE STICKIES. We can delete old VIP posts.

As for the leaderboard, best choice is TIBot doing it. It might miss some on the off chance it is down, but it will be far more reliable than staff doing it, especially in the long term. Also, staff can do it if the bot is down.
 

nv

The Lost Age
is a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Staff Alumnus
Man TI really hates stickies. First no to the OM/LCotM tours and now no to VIP Club. Such a mean overlord ;^)

But seriously I am for the leaderboard idea since I feel like we always give custom avi or title out for a lot of prizes (not that that is a bad thing, just repetitive from my perspective)
 

EV

Banned deucer.
Can we please seperate Index and VIP club? It tries to crash my browser every time I try to open it and it's a pretty important resource, so we should make it easier to open. Also, I'm honestly not sure why VIP club is even in index in the first place instead of being like a stickied project or something.
I wanted it. I wanted it so bad, but
NO MORE STICKIES.
You can see what I have to deal with.

The lack of stickies is cluttering up the resource threads and making it harder for users to see what's important/official in the community.
 

Laxpras

One small yeet for man, one giant yeet for mankind
About the daily tournaments: Why is HT still in there? I get its been set in the rotation for quite awhile and with sumo approaching there isn't a lot of urgency in changing anything now, but, why not change it now?

To be brutally honest, there are like 2 people that like HT. It's not a challengeable Ladder OM. So what does it have over MnM, Inheritance, Sketchmons, or anything of the sort? Those metas would at least get people interested in the tours, as they don't have many other opportunities to play them. At least people actually play those metas.

If you're really against introducing a past meta like the ones I suggested before SuMo, I would first ask for the reasoning, and secondly suggest that you at least switch HT to the OMoTM for whatever month we're in.

Honestly, I would even suggest the same thing for Inverse, but at least Inverse has a few reliable players and is a challengeable ladder format. Even my beloved Tier Shift may be better off replaced with the LCoTM or something like that. Again, at least these have somewhat of a base (TS more than Inverse, ie TS Open) and are challengeable though.

Edit: replace every challenge with ladder
 
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Rumplestiltskin

I will rain lels all over you and you will drown in them
It's not a challengeable OM.

and secondly suggest that you at least switch HT to the OMoTM for whatever month we're in.
Just wanted to let you know that HT is actually challengeable, and that OMotM used to be a daily format, but it was replaced because the chatroom already hosts a lot of omotm tours during the month, and now even more so thanks to the official omotm/lcotm tours.
 

nv

The Lost Age
is a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Staff Alumnus
Hello, I'm back to suggest something that probably doesn't bother anyone but me. Initially I wasn't planning on posting, but after gaining the support of multiple OM forum lurkers, I might as well bring it up and gauge its popularity over the current system. With the use of tags within the forum, I personally feel as if this could be improved upon.

While this allows for easy distinguishing between the type of thread one could click on, most of the time it doesn't really help at all. While I agree that "Metagame" and "Announcement" are probably required, why would I ever click on "Project", "Resource" or "Ladder"? I don't think anyone would be looking for all the projects in the forum or all the permaladder discussion threads, and rather would be looking for something catered towards the metagame they're searching for. This is where my suggestion comes in.
  • Why not have a tag allocated for each permaladder?
While I understand the drawbacks of having that many tags in the forum, it would indeed make it clearer and simpler to look for information on your desired metagame. For example; if I wanted to look up all Balanced Hackmons related threads, I would click on a tag looking like this:
(I took art classes)

Then the ladder thread, the "Balanced Hackmons Central" thread, the CCAT thread and the Underrated Sets thread would all be tagged with that tag. It would become a much less tedious task to look for all information within a desired metagame. The "Metagame" tag would remain of course as those metagames are usually singular in their thread count, also I can see that being used logically. One disadvantage of this is that threads for multiple metagames, (e.g. The Teambuilding Shop and Silly Things You've Seen in Other Metagames threads) would require yet another tag, or none at all. I of all people don't want to see excessive tags, which is a major reason I was hesitant in suggesting this in the first place; however, possibly another alternative or some merit can be seen out of this suggestion.

Or you might think it's stupid, which I'm fine with as well.
With this having 22 likes and no response / discussion, I felt this deserved a bump as I am personally for this idea to make the separation between the "permanent" OMs vs. the unofficial metagames. It also helps solidify the standings of what is a permanent OM and what is just a "metagame". I know TI and EG were looking for ways to make this separation and I feel this is the most efficient way of doing so while keeping some order within the subforum itself (rather than the other alternatives I have heard like shoving all the unofficial metagames into a subforum like Pet Mods as that would diminish the activity of them greatly imho). Either way, I feel like this needs to be looked more into and have more input given as it seems like it was just posted by the lovely Gooser herself and then left on the shelf to gather dust u_u
 

lost heros

Meme Master
So apparently, as I found out in the OM Room tonight, STABmons is on the way out in Gen 7, and it all finally made sense why EG was desperately trying to get activity. Now, I don't know about the rest of the OM Community's opinion, but I believe this to be a very bad idea. I understand that it might not be the most popular OM when compared to community favorites like Mix and Mega or Sketchmons, but it is one of the few metagames that is both simple and complex at the same time that allows new players to get in to the game very easily while also being very different from standard play. With Gen 7 coming along, it doesn't make sense to abandon STABmons especially when tons of new toys are coming. Sunsteel Strike, Moongeist Beam, Core Enforcer all would inevitably see play, not to mention that with new type combinations and Pokemon there are amazing new possibilities for what could happen. Furthermore, while it doesn't have the same amount of plays as standard formats (or BH and 1v1) it's not an entirely inactive ladder. It got over 2000 plays in July in comparison with Tier Shift''s 700 and LCUU's 45. And while it's not entirely comparable to AAA (roughly 7000 plays in July) relative to OU that's not really that different in number of plays. Also keep in mind that July was before EG desperately started actively trying to increase popularity for STABmons.

In conclusion, please don't get rid of STABmons.
 

Betathunder

alphalightning
So I've come here to try and discuss the possibility of not eliminating stabmons from ladder/challenge format. To my knowledge, stabmons is being replaced with sketchmons, a meta which is far more undeveloped on both smogon and PS!. To my knowledge, the Sketchmons is dead, and the meta has no viability rankings or resources. On the contrary, the STABmons ladder and viability ranking threads are constantly being worked on, in conjunction with various articles and analyses being actively worked on as well. In addition to this activity, multiple STABmons tournaments have been created on smogon, each with their own unique twist, and each tournament has had a respectable turnout. Sketchmons, however, has had a very limited amount of tournaments, if any (sketchmons is on rom and can easily be recreated in a custom game/bh, so having it no be a challengeable format is not a good excuse for a lack of tours). Lastly, in the other metas room itself i have seen much more discussion revolving around the STABmons metagame (both regarding the actual meta and how they wish for it to not be taken away), and none regarding sketchmons. Although STABmons may not have an active ladder compared to other oms, that doesn't mean the playerbase and love for the meta has depleted.

tl;dr: STABmons has been consistently more active than Sketchmons, has a stronger and more active playerbase, and as such should not be removed from ladder/challenge format.
 

Funbot28

Banned deucer.
lol legit just ninja'd me but ya I have the same sentiments lost heros, and with gen 7 coming soon, we should start discussing permaladders again (since no one liked the rotational ladder idea). Lets break this down:

So going in to SuMo I think these were established as the "permanent OM ladders" as of know:

1) Anything Goes
2) Monotype
3) Balanced Hackmons
4) 1v1

All these OM's go without question as they have extremely high playerbases and activity and are really staple metas that represent the whole OM community. Getting rid of these metas would honestly not make sense. Now lets get into the grey area with these other current ladder metas:

1) STABmons
2) Almost Any Ability
3) Tier Shift
4) Inverse Battle
5) LC UU

So lost heros and Betathunder kinda summed up the reasons as to why STABmons should stay. The playerbase and ladder activity has recently spiked up in usage thks to Eevee General marvelous thread. Won't repaeat what he said but yeah I agree with all those points. AAA is another meta that always had a stable playerbase and is most likely to stay as well due to the activity it maintains to have. Now we get into Tier Shift, Inverse and LC UU. Imo all these three meta need to get out because they all have extremely poor playability + activity from community. There is no reason to keep these ladders if no one is playing them and they should not stay just for novelty. Especially if Inverse Battles no longer exist in SuMo.

Now we get into the metas that could possible get a ladder next gen, which the majority of the playerbase agrees as followed:

1) Sketchmons
2) Mix and Mega

SKetchmons is an interesting case as EG explained to me that it cannot exit alongside STABmons due to the rule of not having more than 1 meta within the same "tier". Now people have been amping up for Sketchmons to get a permaldder but I honestly cannot see why. STABmons has really garnered so much more popularity as of late (and hopefully keeps growing :) comapred to ketchmons who hasn't seen good activity since last time it was OMOTM in September 2015. Unless there is a huge boost in Sketcmons activity that surpasses STABmons, I cannot see it replacing Stabbies anytime soon. Mix and Mega is also intresting since it is being debated if Megas would still be supported in gen 7 which could conflict with the premise of that meta. But I find if that megas are still usable in SuMo and not completely removes, MnM still has a chance to be playable cause people would just use old mega stones on the new mons.

We should start debating this now since SuMo is rapidly coming up, and I believe we could vote as a community on this current issue.My slate would be as followed:
1) AG
2) BH
3) Monotype
5) 1v1
6) AAA
7) STABmons
8) Mix and Mega

depends if we have 10 ladders again maybe 2 other metas that don't fit within these metas "tiers"
Please The Immortal know u don't want STABmons to stay but consider the community :(
 
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The topic of ladders has already been concluded as far as I'm concerned. The only open aspect is Mix and Mega, which I'm not 100% onboard with yet.
 

Josh

=P
is a Team Rater Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Contributor Alumnus
Preface: I consider myself unbiased because I used to lead sketchmons for a short period before I gave chopin the reins and was one of the first players, and stabmons is my favorite "official" om (ag is not really an om) as well as the one I played in ompl.

LC UU is not a standards om and is irrelevant to this discussion. Don't bring it up. Whether or not it has a ladder is between LC and TI.

Funbot, "comapred to ketchmons who hasn't seen good activity since last time it was OMOTM". I literally just had to change the focal point of your ignorant sentence to explain it. No shit sketchmons won't be active without a ladder; what do you expect? A ladder is needed to facilitate a meta. I don't really agree with the asseratation sketchmons and stabmons are similar, because the fact is they really aren't all that close, but let's assume it has to be one or the other. Sketchmons simply can't be as competitive as Stabmons. There's just too much to prepare for; aka nearly anything. Stabmons has stable threats for the most part, which limits it and allows you to bring checks to common stuff. In Sketchmons, Talonflame might have Close Combat removing your TTar, but it might have Power Whip and there goes your Rotom, or Earthquake, etc, etc. There is no possible way to know besides attempting to scout which is unreliable as hell for a multitude of reasons. The fact of the matter is sketchmons is less competitive at the core. Forget counters; nothing even has reliable hard checks.

There's also a perfectly valid counter argument though. Sketchmons will always be more popular than Stabmons in a glass cannon for the exact same reason it's less competitive and the reason I love it; you can spam powerful shit and you can always build unique teams due to how many infinite options there are. Stall being mostlu unviable isn't a huge loss to most people and actually makes some people want to play it more, not that stall is common a lot of the time in stabmons anyhow (tarrows and twaves will likely hit it hard as well). Here's the thing: people like using big powerful shit. Offense is fun. People enjoy being able to use powerful stuff. They enjoy creativity, and in sketchmons there's tons of room for that. You can make so many mons good and so many mons have massively varied sets due to how Sketchmons works. Sketchmons will be more popular than Stabmons, it's more attractive to new players.

The Sketchmons vs Stabmons debate boils down to this: do you prefer a more balanced meta or a more popular one? I personally think sketchmons is the obvious choice, the bottom line is a small community won't develop a meta as well as a large one. More people playing and discussing allows you to actually disect a meta. Stabmons has already proved to be unstable, most notably with the entire meta resetting twice recently (lol). We just don't have enough Stabmons players to balance and stabilize the meta, and Sketchmons will remedy that. And even though Stabmons should be more stable, factor in the playerbase size and that quickly changes. I'm really sad to see Stabmons go but it needs to happen.

Mix and Mega 100% has proven worthy of a permaladder, it is both competitive and active.
 

EV

Banned deucer.
Does no one remember their history? STABmons has been OMotM more than once and before there were any bans it was very popular. Josh is right people love jacked up shit ... to an extent. People started complaining about the STABmons metagame, that setup was too strong, certain megas were too strong, so I tried balancing it a few times and had to reset it (LOL what a loser Eevee tried to salvage his metagame xd). People had stopped playing, said it wasn't fun to get swept by Shell Smash [insert Normal type here] turn one. So I finally started banning moves. Lo and behold, things stabilized.

Here's a warning. A prediction of you will. Sketchmons will suffer the same fate. You have an ex leader of the metagame admitting it can't be balanced. Even recently Chopin began banning moves to try anyway (hmm, remind you of anything?). Your ladder will be popular as people race to find the most broken strategies possible. Give it 6 months and when the playerbase realizes the dust will never settle, they'll move on. The metagame will probably try some absurd complex bans to save it, like banning certain moves on certain mons, things will get confusing, more people will leave.

Josh's question "do you prefer a more balanced meta or a more popular one?" is supposedly obvious he says. Let's not forget about Hackmons (LOL). Man we skewered that community.

The Immortal says Sketchmons is an easier concept to understand, and I'll give him that, but luckily our players aren't lab rats so I'm assuming the premise of STABmons is just as understandable for most of them. He's also using ladder plays as the only metric to run Sketch over STAB, but 1) Sketchmons has never had a permanent ladder so we have no idea how that would compare long-term 2) OMotM are always more popular than permas (except AG, Mono, 1v1) so I could use that same argument to get rid of AAA in favor of another "less confusing" ability meta 3) STABmons beats Sketchmons in forum and chatroom activity hands down. The OM community is not just ladder plays.

The fairest route would be putting both on rotation and alternating between them, and that's me trying to compromise, which is not something I can credit to my co-leader, because right now this isn't a 50/50 partnership.

I hate making ultimatums but I probably won't stay in the community if things go differently. And it's not just about STABmons, it's about the lack of control I seem to have over my own section. It's been stewing for a while now but the closer we get to Sun/Moon the more I see myself being pushed out.

Edit: tablet sux
 
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