Hmmm ok looks like I got some things I want to reply to.
(my shit on SS + Drizzle here)
But still. Why? Why not banning the broken Swimmers (which, for 101% certainty, was Kingdra only), but complex banning Drizzle+SwSw instead? I'm sure banning Swift Swim under Drizzle was a MUCH bigger cut on variety than banning only a handful pokémon.
Well I have to admit that I didn't actually start playing BW until after Drizzle + SS was banned. Indeed I didn't start playing until the suspect round where Excadrill and Thundurus were under the magnifying glass. As such, all my opinions on the things that came before are based on what I've heard, not on what I know from experience. I had HEARD that SS in drizzle broke a ton of things, like Kabutops, Ludicolo etc as well as Kingdra, and having faced rain dance teams in generation IV I believed it. I mean, look at Kabutops, in rain it's basically Excadrill lite. Now, I can't say from experience though whether they were broken or not. If you were right and Kingdra was the only one that was broken with it, then yes, I would be for just banning Kingdra. But if it made a lot of others broken like others have claimed, then I'd still be fore the complex ban in order to minimize impact. I mean, just because things like Kabutops are less viable now than before doesn't mean you can't still USE them after all. I'm sure it's possible to make successful team with them if people would make the effort, and I like that option to be there if possible.
@No Luck Involved:
I really don't think that a "scientific" method of determining bans is any sort of reasonable. As you said there are WAY too many factors, and figuring out just how those factors interact and then coming up with some sort of objective determination of a Pokemon's power from it is impossible. Further more, even if we COULD do that we'd then have to determine where the cut off line is, and you know what? That'd put us right back where we are now, because determining that cut off line is completely subjective.
I also have an issue with the Suspect Test, primarily because, well, I don't trust the public to make smart choices for the entire metagame. I've noticed not just here but in every democratic process I've witnessed ever, two things about the way people vote:
1. Many, many people WILL vote selfishly about what benefits THEM the most, not the way that benefits EVERYBODY the most.
2. People are far to easily swayed by emotional pleas, especially if they appeal to their selfishness. "Do you want to lose because of this? Then ban it!" "OH SHIT I DON'T WANT TO LOSE BAN!"
So yeah, I thought the suspect testing was the worst thing ever. You don't need to be a reasonable person to get high on the ladder, so using that as a method to determine who was qualified to vote was basically a crap shoot. I much prefer the council system we have today where a small group of trusted members with varying opinions on the way the game should be come to a decision on it. Now we do have to be careful about who we let into that council, or we end up with the same problem as the suspect process, and preventing someone in power from stacking the odds in their view's favor is hard to reliably prevent. Ultimately, you're taking a risk either way, but I personally have more confidence in our current council than I would in a random selection of the most high ranked players in the tier.
(BTW this whole section is regarding OU, I don't know enough about the other tiers to comment on them).
Now there definitely SHOULD be some statistical reasoning put forward when making arguments for and against banning. If you saw my posts in the evasion discussion thread you'd know I used statistics as a cornerstone of many of my arguments. I do think they should also be given more weight than subjective viewpoints in some ways, as at least no one can double the authenticity of the numbers. But we need to be careful with statistics too, as the way they're presented can be done in a deceptive or misleading way, leading to false conclusions. Advertisers use this to their advantage all the time, able to convey false impressions with real numbers. In a Pokemon setting this would be, for instance, arguing that Heracross should be banned by putting forward the very convincing calculations that show it can OHKO every Pokemon in OU after one turn of set up (Seriously it can, SD, Toxic Orb, Megahorn, Close Combat, Facade). But obviously it's not broken for a host of other reasons, but just looking at that immediately coveys a "holy shit why do we allow this thing" sort of feel. Now everyone in reality knows why Heracross isn't Uber, but this scenario could easily be used to argue things like Haxorus, Chansey, Terrakion, ETC without giving the whole picture. Statistics are just tools, and in the wrong hands they can be as deceptive as anything else.
@ShinySkarmory:
Well there's a few problems with your viewpoint, at least to me. One, just because you had to go mainstream with your team to succeed doesn't mean everyone does. I'm at 1200 and climbing on the ladder right now with a weatherless, Volt-Turnless team that includes Mamoswine and Hitmontop. It is possible to do well without using cookie cutter teams, it just takes some knowhow and a willingness to experiment.
Two, the game is always going to be centralized around a few main threats no matter what we do. This comes down to human nature more than anything; once something has proven to be successful, a lot of people will go straight for it and start using it without bothering to look for their own ways to win. That's why Volt-Turn is so damn common right now, because people see it as an easy way to win. It's still perfectly possible to win without it, but a lot of people just don't care to deal with it. Now if we were to ban things like Scizor and Rotom-W, I can assure you it'd just bring new threats back into the limelight and we'd be back to where we were before. Seriously, name one point in OU history where there weren't two or three main team archetypes that dominated the ladder? I can't say I've ever experienced a time when it wasn't.
As such, we shouldn't be trying to make a metagame where everyone DOES use a wide variety of things, because that's an unrealistic goal. We should strive for a metagame where it's POSSIBLE to use a wide variety of tactics to win. The fact that things like the dual weather teams in that IRC competition could get to the top of the ladder in the current metagame is a testament to the fact that even bizarre play methods can win in today's metagame. I can say personally about how you don't need them to win either, as I haven't used a common archetype since my first successful team in OU months ago when Excadrill was still running around (it was a rain balance team) and that was when I was still getting to know BW OU. Now that I know it better, I can use whatever the hell I want and get it to work if I'm patient enough, and I do.
Finally, if you do get tired of seeing the same thing over and over, then you can move onto the lower tiers and try there for a while. I would like to say though that I doubt that those are any less centralized, and that if they ARE less centralized that it's not because of the banning policies, but because there are fewer people playing. The smaller the pool of players the less likely dominating archetypes are to emerge, or at least they'll take longer to emerge with less games and teams being made. And with how often the lower tiers have been changing over the course of this generation so far, it wouldn't surprise me if they never have had the time to settle down to core team archetypes yet. But again, I don't play the lower tiers so all this is speculation on my part, I can't say from experience.
EDIT:
ShinySkarmory said:
If everyone is using the same teams ad infinitum, is the game really worth playing? Who has gotten to #5 on the ladder with a team with interesting sets? Nobody. The teams we see at #5,#4, #1-they're always almost exactly the same as the ones that came before them. That's the real problem-in order to be truly successful in OU, you're running rain stall, sandstorm stall, or bulky offense.
AHEM:
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3464491
http://www.smogon.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3458509
Also "bulky offense" Is an incredibly broad term and not a true archetype. There are about 20 different Pokemon that could be and usually are used successful in "bulky offense". Unless you're talking about Volt-Turn, which is a whole other story.