Change Smogon's tiering policy

[Tassa]

Hi all.
I'll specifically talk about usage stats which are used between to say what is OU or what isn't (and so change what is available in lower tiers), and not about all the numerous other things which are concerned too by tiering policy (like how many tiers, which cutoff, what is seen as desirable, why ban/not etc)
So I start :


Why ?

It's the obvious question, why change something ?

Actually, tier use stats from main showdown server, just looking at them in the last 3 months, weighting them in a way the last count the most. It seems pretty ok, till we realize what these stats are. Showdown is today a popular pokemon battle simulator, appealing numerous casual players who want to fight other players for fun. We have also some players who would like to play more competitively but are at the moment pretty unskilled. These stats suffers thus in competitive side.

Now, look with me on that quote Smogon's on-site presentation :

We are now widely acknowledged on the web as being the authority in the competitive Pokémon arena.

Smogon defines itself as a community who want promote competitive battling. Here, on the forum, we can see the threads who want a certain quality of discussion. Stats threads were even closed because commenting on which mon is too/not enough used/why seemed poor.*
And Smogon have stats which set official tiers who are very poor. It's oustanding, isn't it ?

"But it won't change the tiers a lot" may you ask ?
Oh, you know, it depends of how much you change. We would have for sure, with a tiering based on a more competitive battling, some changes like Tornadus in OU or Metagross in UU. More importantly, having a better tiering policy means that the community would be able to have more trust in their quality and that the influx of casual players won't be able to influence significantly the result.
Also, another thing important, outside of what go in UU, is that what is OU influence what people play in OU. It may seems tautological, but it has a real weight, since people (especially new) will easier pick something which is OU for an OU team. A bad tiering policy means a worst tier that what we could have, which leads to a vicious circle, helping to maintain inconsistent usage.


How ?

I see two main way for a possible change : -a cutoff (if your [rating/probability having more than a given rating] is over a certain value, then you count fully, otherwise you do not count at all)
-a weighting, as we can have in so-called 1850 stats (you count with the probability of having a better real rating than a given rating)

I would myself prefer a cutoff, to not count at all "for fun" players while counting people with a decent level, but it's just mine opinion.

The more important is still to know if the community and smogon's autorithies agree to change.
What is your opinion and why ?



*I disagree with that choice but I'm just an user

 

[Gary]

The only thing that I wouldn't mind trying out is giving lower tiers the ability to drop and test out Pokemon in higher tiers to see if they could work for the tier (much how OU does with testing Ubers). For example, if the RU tier really wanted to test UU Pokemon like Houndoom and Mismagius without having to wait for them to drop, then I feel that it would be cool to give them the ability to do just that. This wouldn't really change the current tiering system too much, as Pokemon could still either fall or rise depending on on their usage, but it would allow lower tiers to experiment with Pokemon in higher tiers that don't seem to currently fit well in the tier that there in, such as Dusclops in UU, or maybe Donphan in OU. I don't personally see the harm in that, and it could prevent the really annoying, "WHY WON'T INFERNAPE DROP TO UU" posts. If UU tested Infernape, and found it broken, then Infernape is clearly not fit for the metagame yet, thus giving it a reason not to drop. Still, if this were to be implemented, I don't think a Pokemon should be automatically put into BL, BL2, BL3, etc if they were deemed too broken for that metagame, seeing as they didn't "officially" drop.

This idea may sound a bit too extreme to some of you, but I think it would be an interesting concept to possibly think about. I personally don't think it would mess up the current tiering system. It would just be a bit altered. It would give lower tiers a bit more control and possibly more diversity. I'm not saying we SHOULD implement it, I'm just saying that it would be something interesting to think about. Have we ever considered something like this, or would we ever consider something like this?

Anyways, I currently like how usage dictates how Pokemon are tiered. Although it's a given that usage statics may not be incredibly accurate at gauging how good or bad a certain Pokemon is in the metagame, it's by far the most logical and effective approach, so I see no reason to change it.

 

[SHUCKLE MAN]

To say this briefly, I think the way they are done now is the best. The tiers are not only for the seriously competitive players on Smogon. I'm not a top tier player (not anymore at least, back in Gen III maybe), but the tier lists should still include what I see/use "often" too, in my opinion. I believe the stats are already very slightly weighted to the higher up players anyway (due to that situation where those big NU Pokemon like Cincinno, etc. rose to RU through questionable methods). Not to mention the properly skilled players tend to play more than the semi-skilled casual-ish players like me, so they will probably have more impact on the stats and tiers that way too.

It's never going to happen that every Pokemon that makes OU is seen a lot by every single one of us. And it's never going to happen that we all think every Pokemon in OU "deserves" to be there.

The tiers are done so much better now than they used to be. When I first joined here, it used to be simply people in threads saying "I think so-and-so should move up to OU", and we used to have like 30 Pokemon in BL. I think the way Smogon do tiering now is great overall.

 

[MikeDawg]

The only thing that I wouldn't mind trying out is giving lower tiers the ability to drop and test out Pokemon in higher tiers to see if they could work for the tier (much how OU does with testing Ubers).

I actually really like this idea. Especially with all the talk about making Ubers essentially a legitimate tier (or the equivalent of just making uber into OU...), it seems the community doesn't mind the idea of blurring the "banlist" lines.

Of course there would be a few issues with this: There would have to be discussion about BL tiers because if tiers are willing to test from above then they are somewhat resundant to just, say, throwing the banned mons into the higher tier (though ideally we could just maintain the Bl tiers anyway).

It may get somewhat complicated with usage stats but it might just seem like that because I'm exhausted

There was another one that was better but I can't remeber because I'm still exhausted

In any case, i support it

But also I voted no to poll

 

[Gary]

I actually really like this idea. Especially with all the talk about making Ubers essentially a legitimate tier (or the equivalent of just making uber into OU...), it seems the community doesn't mind the idea of blurring the "banlist" lines.

Of course there would be a few issues with this: There would have to be discussion about BL tiers because if tiers are willing to test from above then they are somewhat resundant to just, say, throwing the banned mons into the higher tier (though ideally we could just maintain the Bl tiers anyway).

It may get somewhat complicated with usage stats but it might just seem like that because I'm exhausted

There was another one that was better but I can't remeber because I'm still exhausted

In any case, i support it

But also I voted no to poll

That's the only issue with my suggestion. It would sort of interfere with the statistics themselves. For example, if Infernape was dropped to UU by the UU council, but it still received 34 in the OU usage statistics, wouldn't that still make it OU technically? If Tentacruel was dropped to UU, and then didn't receive enough usage in UU and found itself dropping to RU, yet it was 17 in the OU statistics, is it RU or OU? This would actually effect the tiering policy a bit more than I thought, but at the same time I feel like we could possibly find a way to accurately sort out the dilemma I just mentioned above. I feel like it could work, it would just require a slight tweak in the tiering policy itself.

 

[MikeDawg]

Oyeah that's what the third one was

It would require us to redefine the tiering policy ( or at least ignore the inconstistancy)

 

[Curtains]

why not just keep it like it is? If the UU/RU/NU councils (idk if these exist or not) wants to bring something down into their lower tier for play then they should do so accordingly. I dont think it is fair to alienate casual players for those are the ones that we all start out as.

 

[Jukain]

I dislike any core changes to the tiering process because they all add subjectivity. We can rate Pokemon is as many subjective ways as we want, but their tier placement should not depend on that. If enough users feel that a Pokemon is good, its usage will remain high and it might even go up a tier. If enough users feel that a Pokemon is bad, it loses usage and might go down a tier. That's generally the way it works, and is by far optimal. It caters to all parties, including the ladder players who might not even use Smogon and Smogoners. With these weighted statistics, the better players have more influence on the tiers, but not total influence, which is exactly how it should be. The current tiering system is the most fair that could exist.

Note that these stupid statements you speak of (Infernape for UU, etc.) are never taken seriously. They have no significance. The fact is that some people find merit in Infernape and use it enough for it to be OU. That isn't wrong. In fact, it's proof that the system works as it should -- democratically and fairly.

Gary2346's proposal might seem usable in theory, but I again feel that it adds subjectivity and unnecessary complication, much of which he already touched on in a previous post.

 

[Chou Toshio]

The only thing that I wouldn't mind trying out is giving lower tiers the ability to drop and test out Pokemon in higher tiers to see if they could work for the tier (much how OU does with testing Ubers).

This would defeat the purpose of having a lower tier. I hope you understand that the only reason to have usage based tiers is so that you can play with DIFFERENT Pokemon in lower tiers. The point of having a UU metagame is to not have to see Pokemon from OU, etc.

Since 4th Gen, there are lots of Pokemon (like Tentacruel, who was UU in ADV and probably would have remained UU in DPPt if not for Infernape adding to its usage) who players have thought would be far from broken in UU-- but that's not the point. The point is not to have to see the same big "over used" threats in a lower tier.

 

[Pocket]

I disagree with the OP that the usage stats need revision, because Antar already has a weighted formula set in place, and I believe it's doing its job.

Although I am still on the fence about Gary2346's proposal, I do like it for the fact that it helps diversify the lower tiers regardless of the usage cut-offs. Honko has actually proposed something similar earlier in an irc convo. We talked about his proposal a bit further last night, and we agreed in 3 conditions for dropping a mon to a lower tier. Let's use an example where we drop a mon from UU to RU

1) The tiering leader / council of UU must acknowledge that the dropped mon doesn't deserve its UU label performance-wise.
2) The tiering leader / council of RU must have good reasons to believe that this UU mon wont be broken in RU
3) The mon in question must have low usage in UU to be dropped (say <5% usage)

Only when these 3 conditions are met is RU allowed to test this UU mon for suspect testing and decide whether it can remain in RU or not. This accomplishes two things - 1) allow bad Pokemon that are spammed by new users to be placed in its "rightful" tier performance-wise and 2) increasess the diversity of lower tiers without being restricted by the usage cutoffs.

Again, this would mean we would have to revise the definition of tiers, because it wont solely be usage-based anymore. The question lies in whether the smogon community approve this additional aspect of tiering? Is the loss of cut-and-dry rule of tiering worth the benefits?

 

[MicfiJasan]

So I personally like the way we do it now, but I do see some ways it can be improved. One thing that has been brought up is the "OU/UU/etc Label", or the pattern where a Pokemon being in a tier generates usage for that tier. Amoonguss and Cinccino were brought into RU only by a spammer, and are now seeing top 15 usage because they're actually useful in the tier. Likewise, Munchlax was hated for the longest time, and when he finally dropped, he practically vanished from RU. The fact that these Pokemon resided in the RU section of the teambuilder contributed to their usage. This is really the only problem I can see with the current system, and there are other, potentially more subtle changes that can help with this. Namely, steering the casual players away from the more mediocre Pokemon.

The most controversial solution would be to ask someone to put the viability rankings in a little section in the teambuilder, like in the overview when adding a new Pokemon. It would generate some discussion over viability, and encourage casual players to let potential UU targets drop.

Since people probably will be against that, another thing I thought of was eliminating sharp tier lines in the teambuilder. The Strategydex has a separate metagame section which lists all Pokemon with an OU analysis. If all of these Pokemon were listed as OU in the teambuilder, the usage near the cutoff would be a lot more spread out, maybe leading to shifts a bit closer to NU/PU changes that Antar always posts on the YouTube updates where stuff drops one shift, then rises the next. More UU Pokemon would have a chance to rise and replace less wanted OU Pokemon.

Given that both of these depend more on Zarel deciding he wants to do it than anyone else, Pocket's guidelines make a lot of sense. I do have a bit of an issue with point 3, though. While I understand the need to stop people from requesting Pokemon with high usage, I don't really like the idea of adding a second usage to the equation. To me, it adds a different kind of BL tier, where the things inbetween 3.4% and 5% are basically UU mons that are kept up by OU leaders. I feel it sets the real cutoff at 5% then lets the community pick from the next percent and a half, which doesn't sit well with me. That said, I would expect many of the Pokemon chosen by this method to drop off the map shortly after being allowed, so it might not be a huge deal in the long run.

tl;dr I want to keep the spirit of usage-based tiering the same, allowing everyone to contribute in some form. At the same time, the large increase in casual players over the past year or so has caused a bit of tier-based usage, which is the issue I think needs fixing.