Announcement An Unimportant Announcement

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Minority

Numquam Vincar
is a Tiering Contributoris a Top Contributoris a Tutor Alumnusis a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Team Rater Alumnusis a Forum Moderator Alumnusis a Community Contributor Alumnusis a Smogon Media Contributor Alumnus

It’s no surprise that over the last couple years I’ve had less time to dedicate to Smogon forums and live chat activity. I joined Smogon during a time of hands-off community leadership and saw first-hand that community leadership positions on Smogon deserve experienced individuals that volunteer large swaths of their time toward creating competitive resources, running tournaments, and maintaining tiering policy. My life has changed so much since I first joined the Ubers community and I find myself no longer able to dedicate the time necessary to maintain a leadership position. As such, I have decided to step down as Moderator of Ubers forums, Ubers C&C leader, and Ubers Room Moderator. I will still be completing my Pokemon XD Teambuilding Guide, which I’m sure the two of you who know it exists will be relieved to hear.

I’ve talked about bits and pieces of stories in live chat over many years, but to those who like tragic anime backstories, I was introduced to Pokemon in 2004 with Pokemon Ruby. I was living in a boarding school of sorts in New Orleans at the time and managed to catch a glimpse of an advertisement of the game during our daily 15-minute television time. I saved up all the change I could find underneath couch cushions and behind change machines at arcades over the next few months until I was finally able to purchase a used copy of the game from another kid at school. One of the older kids thought it was so funny that I wanted to play "the Pokemons", and they found it even funnier when they stole my game and threw it in the Mississippi River at Woldenberg Park. Ok, maybe the last few sentences were dramatized, but basically one day I was able to borrow a copy of Pokemon Ruby. Ultimately I found the game enjoyable, but never got very into it beyond completing the game and battling a few friends. That changed when I was shown a game called Pokemon Colosseum. In my first playthrough I encountered a trainer on Mt. Battle of swole build and epic hair. He was named Dakim, and he became the first trainer I ever lost to. I reset the game and challenged him again, but lost. Then again, and again, and again. At some point I began to realize that I was losing because I was making poor gameplay choices; everything from what Pokemon I was using to what moves I was using to what tactics I made during battle. Prior to this my experience with Pokemon Ruby was that I was able to win battles without putting much thought into anything, but now things were different. In my rematches I was able to make it further against him each time by carefully choosing my moves, getting closer and closer to snagging his coveted Shadow Entei for myself, until I finally found a series of choices, that, with a bit of luck, defeated the legendary Dakim. I set off into the game’s next area, The Under, a trainer forever changed with the knowledge that my choices mean something. My interest in competitive Pokemon was born.

In 2005 I was gifted a copy of Pokemon XD. After confidentially conquering the main game I ran into a particular trainer, one so powerful that I could not defeat him no matter how many times I tried. My tactics were unviable compared to him. This trainer is Hunter Greel, the first battle of Pokemon XD’s Orre Colosseum, who uses Pokemon equal in level to your own, that have perfect IVs, full EV training, and that use sleep moves without sleep clause or healing items allowed. Even to this day, the trainers of Pokemon XD’s Orre Colosseum remain Pokemon’s most difficult in-game battling challenge. With my child-derived strategies rendered useless, I looked to the internet for knowledge on the best Pokemon, and what they should be using as moves. This was when I discovered EVs, IVs, natures, egg moves, and Pokemon’s many other secret mechanical quirks. Determined to never be defeated, I set out to use the resources of Pokemon Ruby, Sapphire, Emerald, FireRed, LeafGreen, and Colosseum to build an elite group of Pokemon that could finally topple the untouchable trainers of Orre Colosseum. It was during this process of Pokemon research that I discovered sites such as Marriland and Smogon, along with the idea of a more competitive Pokemon experience. With several months of training completed, I had approximately 70 Pokemon, each with optimal IVs and natures who were EV trained and taught the strongest movesets I could muster. I returned to Pokemon XD’s Orre Colosseum on equal ground, and after several days of intense battling, I had defeated Orre’s seven intense rounds to become the champion of the ultimate colosseum.

At the start of 2006 I used my new elite Pokemon to challenging as many players as I could to link battles in Pokemon RSE and through the NGC Pokemon games. The more distant the opponent was from my school friend group, the stronger they seemed to become, culminating in my introduction to real competitive Pokemon; the 2006 JAA tournament in Houston Texas. Prior to this I had defeated all trainers that dare oppose me, from every NPC to every kid from the neighboring school with a level 100 Blaziken. That was until I battled someone who truly knew what they were doing, utilizing superior tactics and strategies, rendering myself even more powerless than during my first loss to Dakim. Pokemon Diamond came out the following year in 2007 and I played the game to near 100% completion, even capturing the elusive Darkrai, Shaymin, Arceus, and most of the shiny Pokemon in the game. The subsequent release of Pokemon Battle Revolution was yet another arena to test my skills, but its challenge ultimately failed to meet that of XD’s Orre Colosseum. Black and White became the first Pokemon game I didn’t bother purchasing, but I checked in on all the new Pokemon through Pokemon Online, a simulator where I could battle with other competitive trainers on an open ladder despite not owning the game. Suddenly the process of building teams and batting competitively was streamlined, allowing for substantially faster competitive progression. It was in this time that I began to win hundreds of battles against human opponents using nothing but Scarf Genesect. I took a break from Pokemon Online for a couple years, then returned by joining Smogon officially in 2014 after the release of Pokemon X and Y.

When I joined Smogon I was a 17-year-old high school student who was feeling burned out from social life that wanted to explore hobbies at a more intense level. Today I'm a professional structural engineer that turned 25 last spring who was born in Los Angeles, grew up in the American South, and now lives in the Rocky Mountains. I'm a former pro snowboarder and a licensed AASI instructor with eight years of experience in freestyle and backcountry snowboarding, a player of Splatoon at tournament level that's been dedicating considerable time to Splatoon 3, an amateur screenwriter of six years that's made semifinals at the most prestigious international competitions, a portrait photographer / model for alt fashion with over 10,000 followers, and now a rider of sport motorcycles. This is to say that more and more things have begun to compete for slices of my productive daily life, with the result being that I feel more strained now than ever to make time for Pokemon. It's not that I don't enjoy Pokemon anymore, but that I enjoy my careers and other hobbies, all of which are time-intensive and take away from what I can contribute on here.

Ubers and competitive Pokemon as a whole has also changed immensely in that time. Ubers has gone from being an original staple of SPL, to being irrationally deemed an uncompetitive tier, to being judged a den of cheaters by those with no real participation in the community, to once again being a part of Smogon’s tournament circuit. There was a time when even the mere discussion of banning something from Ubers was taboo, and now the tier goes as far to ban entire Pokemon when the community deems it worthwhile for the competitiveness of the tier. Live chat went from IRC to PS to Skype to Discord. Tier leadership has changed no less than seven times, Smogon community leaders have been permabanned, peers have become community leaders that later retire, and the same old players return time and time again for UPL. Hiding in the shadows are players who’ve been around far longer than me; players who some assume are gone, while others haven’t even heard of. But perhaps the most decisive change of all is that Ubers feels less elitist and toxic and more inclusive than I’ve ever seen it. Or perhaps that’s just the propaganda of the corrupt mods, I’ll leave that for you to decide.

I originally joined Ubers because in my headcannon it tiers to the pinnacle of competitive singles Pokemon: all game tactics are usable except for the bothersome uncompetitive ones such as OHKO moves, sleep, evasion, and so on. Long before I joined Smogon, Ubers had already assumed the original vision of OU. My hope for Ubers’ future is that it continues to stay true to this identity. Only time will tell what Ubers means in the distant future, but it seems intuitive that Ubers will continue to have its distinct competitive allure, that is, as long as there’s interest in Pokemon.

Looking back I am most thankful for my Smogon journey as a testing ground for my early adulthood. The collaboration, competition, politics, elitism, and toxicity that occurs on Smogon is, in many ways, reminiscent of the petty landscape of the corporate ladder and other community-driven hobbies. Smogon is essentially a lower risk environment with which to discover the Dunning-Kruger effect that simultaneously exposes you to meaningful raw interactions with working adults, academics, and professionals from all over the world. An online gaming community can rank decently high among the pinnacles of toxicity, which has helped give me comparatively thick skin, and because of it I’m able to take criticisms much easier, and better yet, do so in a constructive way. I must also partially attribute my current job as a project engineer at a structural engineering firm to my time on Smogon and experience in its C&C QC process, where I’ve gone from QCing Pokemon analyses to QCing bridge plans. I just hope that doesn’t scare you too much.

To young players, the main thing I’d like to say is Smogon isn't a waste of time, unless you genuinely don't enjoy being here. There is no doubt there are aspects of this place that are elitist and toxic, you’ll find that in virtually any community comprised of human beings, but navigating them here first will be easier than in face-to-face adulthood for so many reasons. There are also no shortage of ways to participate and engage with this community. Try out different sections and invest your time in the areas that appeal to you. For me this was mostly C&C, competitive resources, team rating, live chat, and tournaments, but maybe Smogon is the start of a hobby in visual art, the pursuit of another competitive game, or the beginnings of a YouTube channel. In the end this place is what you make it, stay for a little or stay for awhile, whatever you judge to be worthwhile.

Thank you to everyone who have been so welcoming to me, to my silly Pokemon-related ideas, and for challenging me over the years, both on the battlefield and in discussion. This community is composed of diverse and insightful young people, especially in its current leadership, and I'm more confident than ever that the future of Ubers is strong. I’ll close this out by acknowledging that I’m not quitting Pokemon, so don't rejoice too soon; else you may find yourself another addition to the host discretion K-D ratio. There’s bound to be certain aspects of Pokemon that still excite my interest here and there, this is simply a confirmation that my activity moving forward is likely to shrink rather than grow. But who knows, quitting Pokemon is just a metagame trend.

Just kidding!

I started to write these, but the list of people here got so long I realized it wouldn't even be able to fit it in a post, plus I'd feel horrible about missing anyone. Then I thought about doing a shortlist of the ten users who I'm closest to, but then I felt bad about excluding people from that. So, I guess I'll just have to reciprocate my appreciation for you all through posts here or via DMs. Also please forget about the time I did that thing that one time that was cringe, thanking you ahead of time for not mentioning it.
 

SparksBlade

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Community Leader
i was debating how to make this post because we've obviously had our differences but to let that overshadow the contributions that you've made for the tier and the community would be a very disrespectful thing to do and im expected to not act so childish

i've definitely voiced my differences with you more times than is appropriate but i want to focus on the positives because the positives are what we all are here for and why we stick around

thank you for the analyses you did, the articles you wrote, the tournaments you hosted. thank you for being composed voice of reason when most let their emotions write their words. thank you for your advisory role that ik tier leaders valued. thank you for your tour idea(s) i liked them even if they didn't last as long as we might've wished. thank you for your witty remarks mid-conversation sometimes they're funny. thank you for your 4 poster bed - you were right it's exactly as i pictured it. thank you for the puzzles you gave me to solve long ago. thank you for the talks we had long ago i can't remember any of the words but i confidently remember thoroughly enjoying them.

i wish you good luck with all your hobbies and wish you genuine happiness in them as well.

see you back in four months
 
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