Pending Some form of teambuilder integration for Viability Rankings (at least for old gens)

[Plague von Karma]

Maybe new gens too, but it's specifically pressing for old gen players. This would probably require a rework of how the teambuilder operates and quite a lot of effort. If this proposal somehow went through, I think it would be ideal for the dex to follow suit in a similar manner to how tiers are automatically updated via its database, as this does partially concern that.

So during my tenure in Past Gens C&C, one thing was abundantly clear to us: it's really hard to make the dex presentable, as the ranked, non-tiered-as-such Pokemon are often put among undesirable analyses. See GSC OU for example, which has many...random Pokemon among its "other Pokemon with strategies" list, oftentimes having analyses from c.2007. This is obviously a dex issue, but I realised this extends to PS as well.

You see, in old gens, some Pokemon will be ranked quite highly after their tiering is over. You can see this in every single one, and usually, some tiered Pokemon also drop. For example, in BW, Infernape and Haxorus are pretty terrible, and now they're just kind of...there. OU by Technicality is good, but sometimes, this isn't enough. Basically, tiering is less accurate for old gens and only becomes worse as time goes on and people figure strategies out.

Let's take my homeland, RBY OU, as an example.

Yes this is extremely scuffed and you probably can't follow it shut up

Dragonite, Persian, Articuno, etc are all pretty viable, being around C Rank right now, and you can reasonably expect to see them at least once in a big tournament. Maybe not much more than that, but GarZapCuno has seen quite a lot of use for the past 2 years, especially by onlookers who want to try something flashy. Ergo, for someone completely uninformed, when they're making their teams, you will usually see something go wrong. This also goes for tier despots, like Snorlax, which are put alongside everything else. Hell, if you look at the RBY teams I've critiqued in the Smogon Main Discord - let alone elsewhere - you'll see me almost always having to tell someone to put one of the Big 3 on the team. I know that you may go "oh we shouldn't hand-hold them completely", but we should at least give them something that is actively used by competitive players when building their teams: no competitive old gen player will immediately look at the tier itself, so PS users that don't access the forums probably shouldn't either.

Like, look at this:

In RBY, you're expected to use Chansey, Tauros, and Snorlax on every team. In GSC, you're expected to use Snorlax and maybe Zapdos on every team. You don't even come up on GSC Zapdos on my computer screen without some scrolling, and in RBY, Snorlax and Tauros are at least a little low down. It is common knowledge that newbies tend to not look too deep into things - look at how Ambipom sees consistently high usage even when it's unviable, to the point of being unfairly locked in old gen tiers - and so we're not really guiding them correctly with the current teambuilder presentation. Hell, Porygon is viable in RBY OU and you have to scroll for a pretty long time to get down to NU unless you search for it. This implies you're only finding it when building with it in mind and not getting the idea visually, which isn't as intuitive as it could be in my opinion. After all, if it's at least C Rank (in RBY at least), you should ideally be naturally coming across it as your building goes along.

So why not make it look like this?

So we run into a situation where we have viable Pokemon being pushed out, and unviable Pokemon being given undeserved presentation, thus reducing the accessbility of the tiers. I can understand in the case of a current gen where tiering is still actively being done via usage stats, and thus viability is arguably up in the air, but once it's over, something should really be done. Most Old Gens use a very scientific way to quantify their VRs, and thus I believe that they are more than capable of making something more accurate for users. Some don't do this, sure, but even the vote-on-slate systems are better than what you have right now.

Obviously, the tier of the Pokemon itself should not be outright removed. This is an important designator for their legality and does carry some weight. However, the ranks should be used to present the Pokemon to the user: it is more convenient and accessible for old and new players alike to simply click the top-tiers that are mandatory and then ease their way down the tiering run for what they want. Top players that want to experiment will go down the tiers themselves.

This is a pretty scuffed explanation of the issue, but I think you get the idea. Essentially, OU by Technicality is not enough - it doesn't even cover lower-tiers - and we should have some kind of display for Viability Rankings.

Now, you've probably heard all of this before. I'm yapping about a problem, but I've not given a solution yet.

I think what you'll want is to formalise Viability Rankings a bit more. Perhaps the hosts can contact someone to update formatsdata.ts like so:

export const FormatsData: {[k: string]: ModdedSpeciesFormatsData} = {
    bulbasaur: {
        randomBattleMoves: ["bodyslam", "sleeppowder"],
        essentialMove: "razorleaf",
        exclusiveMoves: ["megadrain", "swordsdance", "swordsdance"],
        tier: "LC",
        rank: "UR",
    },
    ivysaur: {
        randomBattleMoves: ["bodyslam", "sleeppowder", "swordsdance"],
        essentialMove: "razorleaf",
        tier: "NFE",
        rank: "UR",
    },
    venusaur: {
        randomBattleMoves: ["bodyslam", "hyperbeam", "sleeppowder", "swordsdance"],
        essentialMove: "razorleaf",
        tier: "UU",
        rank: "D",
    },

This seems easy enough for a VR host to edit, it requires virtually no skill at all on their part. I'm not a programmer and even I could do it. If they couldn't, perhaps a TL could take on the burden for them. I do not see how this would be hard to update at all, given it's a case of either handing the updated file to a staff member or making a Pull Request themselves. You can easily make a quick, abbreviated guide on how to edit this if you really need to, it would take less than 5 minutes.

So here's a few questions I think will be asked that are worth answering now;
Q: What about the tiers that lack updated rankings from x number of years ago, like some DPP or BW lower-tiers?
A: I think that's fine, I know for a fact that they're better than what exists right now. I think some use the Old Gens Hubs instead now, actually, leaving their old threads behind.

Q: What if a tier experiences a change, most notably unbanning a Pokemon or having it shift down?"
A: Maybe rank it as "Recently Unbanned / Shifted" at the top, wouldn't hurt no one. Or, simply don't give it a rank for the time being, though this defeats the purpose of using a VR in the first place. I think having them at the top would be great for OU Tiers specifically, as it encourages higher usage on the ladder for a period. If a Pokemon is banned, it should be effortless to update.

Q: What about a Pokemon being ranked in multiple tiers?
A: Honestly, I don't have a non-scuffed solution for this one, but I don't think it should dismiss trying to make it work out of hand. I strongly believe that it's still feasible and would benefit old gen communities immensely, and thus discussing a solution is better than dismissal. Here's my idea;

porygon: {
        randomBattleMoves: ["blizzard", "thunderwave"],
        essentialMove: "recover",
        exclusiveMoves: ["doubleedge", "psychic", "thunderbolt", "triattack"],
        tier: "NU",
        ouRank: "C",
        uuRank: "UR",
        nuRank: "B",
    },

Have "rank" by default work for the designated tier the Pokemon is in, thus making it easier to maintain, but if there's multiple, use a var like what I'm doing here. Does it get messy? Yes. Does the quality of the teambuilder improve? Yes. I strongly believe it is worth it because TLs or VR hosts can easily participate in this and would probably thank you for the opportunity.

Q: B-but PvK to even get this off the ground you have to find and implement all of these into the files I-I-I can't cope with this--

A: I will literally find the latest of every single on-PS old gen tier and implement them for you. I'll even give you thread links and the names of the hosts/councils. Give me like 3 days, on request, tops. It annoys me that much. Just give me the specification for how you want it structured, I can do monotonous tasks all day. Hell, if you can't find anyone to keep it updated, I will do it myself regardless. I can be the one to contact, I do not care, I want to see this through.

Q: What if a tier has no Viability Rankings?
A: Simply use the tier itself as is current status quo. It results in inconsistency but I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing, inconsistency should not be a justification for dismissing improvement of the overall user experience. As far as I know, virtually every tier that PS actively supports has some form of VR.

Q: What if a tier is temporary, such as via an RoA Spotlight?
A: It seems reasonable to default to the above, but I'm open to arguments for otherwise depending on feasibility. Then again, I'm not staff...

Q; Should it be mandatory?
A; I don't know, probably, but something as simple as "opt-in" or "update when it's clearly very outdated" should be fine, no need to get too uppity. Maybe make it a monthly thing, or work it into the tier shift process, both of these are perfectly workable options.

Anyway, that's about all I've got. This would benefit a gigantic amount of people and I hope to see it be given a fair trial. I probably missed a lot out, but I really want to see some kind of change in this department. I see people complain about this a lot in RBY spheres at least.

 

[poh]

If this goes through, it should be so for the current gens too! It's very much noticable that Pokemon with an A or B at the start of their name get significantly more usage just cause they're at the top of the list. There are countless examples of mediocre Pokemon being used purely because the casual players see them on top. Now i'm mostly an NU dude but i'm sure people from other tiers can offer similar examples and this goes for past and present; Ambipom and Cinccino never dropped from RU when they should have during ORAS (both D rank mons on the oras ru vr), Banette-Mega never dropped to NU during SM when it was also a D rank mon in RU at the time, Arcanine and Braviary getting way more usage than they should in SS NU when a something like a Salazzle is listed way lower while being a top 10 mon.

Ofcourse there are other factors that have a greater influence; Having general knowledge of the meta leading to 'accurate' usage, Sample teams, Youtuber making a certain type of video, an ongoing suspect test, etc.

I'm curious what others think of this and if it's actually a feasable idea.

 

[Pokeslice]

As someone who started to pick up DPP NU during NUSD a few months in order to sub in for my team, something like this would have been FANTASTIC. I've tried multiple times in the past to pick up old gens, whether for NU, OU, or any tier inbetween, and I've often been overwhelmed just by the sheer number of different options in the builder and lack of fully updated resources. Because it's an old gen with a dwindling boomer player base and no ladder, it's often hard to find people to talk to about the tier, adding another layer of frustration when trying to build or play one of these tiers. By implementing a merger of the VR's with the builder, it would make playing and building for old gens unquestionably easier for beginners and pros alike.

I also want to point out that something like this needs to be put in place for current gens too. Right now in NU, there's a whole discussion going on in the NP thread about how we do suspects and how different the ladder meta can be from the tournament meta, leading to what some see as weird results at times or just a very drastic split in opinions between tour mains, ladder players, and people who come to play NU just for the suspect. For smaller tiers and ladders like NU's, something like this would be a gamechanger in my opinion, making the process for suspects and actually playing significantly easier and more fun for everyone by helping change the ladder meta into something that most people would consider viable. At a certain point, it isn't so fun to play a team of Hitmontop, Arcanine, and Galvantula over and over again, all Pokemon either UR or C- on the VR but who get super high usage on ladder. This would be a huge help to everyone!

 

[Plague von Karma]

Given the recent uproar in Policy Review, it seems that there is a lot of support for this. I would love a response from a PS admin who manages this aspect of the simulator, I would love a dialogue on this whole subject to see how we can make this work. What barriers are there in the current system that could make this difficult to work? One thing that comes to mind is the entire list-making process would likely need overhauling, given some tiers lack VRs at all. My thought is that the builder first checks if the meta has a VR set up, and if it doesn't, it defaults to the old alphabetical system. I don't think that this list-making is that complex given the nature, but I could obviously be wrong. Could result in some spaghetti, but, as I've gone over, before it's way better than what we currently have...I don't want to see Dusknoir in my DPP OU and BW RU builders.

I want to once again emphasise my willingness to go through literally every single VR on this site to make this work. I was not joking when I said this: I am dead serious, and anyone who knows me should be very aware of my ability to do the most monotonous deep dives in existence. It could be done within a few days for sure on my end, I have plenty of time on my hands and a lot of Ctrl+Fs to do.

Thank you for your consideration, I would love to have some back and forth on the feasibility of this topic, as well as how we should treat drops. Anything at all would be great!

 

[theravenandtheram]

A little late on this, but I think something like this would be absolutely great to see implemented - for me personally, I definitely have trouble considering all of my viable options outside of a brief lookthrough the tier I'm playing, and seeing all of the options that are actually viable rather than the usage stats in alphabetical order.

I think it would be really nice to look at options with some level of viability that someone might not consider because it's not listed in the OU tier despite the fact that it might have a niche - using gen 8 OU as an example, think lowly tiered mons like Gastrodon (my beloved), Reuniculus, Kingdra, Suicune, and other mons that could see play if the average player knew that they had a niche in formats.

I think this could be especially useful for both formats that are out of date, as May mentioned, as well as formats like Ubers where the list of legal Pokemon doesn't really connect to their playability, given that it's a banlist.

Overall I hope this is given some thought, it seems like an excellent idea!

 

[Rezzo]

If anyone cares to preview this proposal at work, I will be implementing a teambuilder which lists Pokemon by viability over on the Pet Mods tier of Hoenn Gaiden next week after the conclusion of an ongoing tournament. The idea of listing Pokemon like this makes a lot of sense in a community-driven tier which sees frequent changes to the viabilities, rankings and even functions of certain Pokemon, and I agree that official tiers would also strongly benefit from this structure.

Handling the overlap of Pokemon holding multiple viabilities across tiers should be a non-issue -- May's example of containing ranks to a tier-specific field(s) works well in practice. Hoenn Gaiden's newly ranked Overused Pokemon have a cutoff which pushes Pokemon into Underused tier while still being considered viable in Overused (this happens at somewhere around the C rank). To overcome this, initialising a 'rank' property alongside the currently existing 'tier' property for keeping track of this on a Pokemon across several tiers was the choice, and it was neither hard nor confusing to make happen for the Pet Mods custom server.

The Pet Mods server may be a lot more lax on coding standards compared to official Showdown, but from my recent look at the codebase I'm pretty confident that there shouldn't be any issues concerned with 'adding another layer of complexity', so to speak.