Stop sharing your Teams

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McMeghan

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Disclaimer 1: couldn't think of a better place to share this message so here I am
Disclaimer 2: I've been guilty of it, and probably will again in the future, but this doesn't take away from the idea I want to share and general wake-up call I want to spread


I'm going to go straight to the point with this one. As crusty as the title sounds, it perfectly echoes an opinion of mine that I've discussed and shared with other players by now. Here are the reasons why I'm asking people, and builders in particular, to stop sharing, even spreading their teams around.

1) Building good teams is a big part of the game, and it takes skill

I think this one is straight-forward, right? Studying the metagame, knowing what works, or what will work in a given time period, takes time and analysis skill. Translating those observations into good teams is a tool that will help to get good results. You know this is rewarded if you do it well and often, a notorious example is ABR, known for his results and constant teambuilding.

On the other hand, you have players who never build, never take the time to do that task, and get fed teams by their friends and manage to do well thanks to them. Not gonna mention names here, but there are even players whom you know would do a lot worse without that kind of support. Basically, half the work of winning the game is attributed to someone else (if not multiple people considering how that thing goes).

2) If you're a builder, you're actually hurting yourself as a competitor

Allow me to develop here, as I have two separate ideas to share. The first one is, you know how building takes skill and well, nobody cant churn out new metagame defining teams everyday. By spreading your teams to everyone, you're forced to continuously reinvent the wheel, as they get meta real fast since eveyrone is sharing them and thus see a lot of play in tournaments. You're then forced to build again to take another step ahead of the meta, always and always.

Talking about tournaments, let's say you're a player whose force is building rather than playing. Why would you give everyone better chances at beating you by sharing your good teams with them? Especially players who arent self-reliant and would do worse without all that. Sure it feels good to see people do well with your teams, but wouldn't it be better to get that "glory" for yourself? Having a better team than the opponent is a huge step in winning a given game, so if you're a good teambuilder, use that skill to your advantage and get those good results yourself.

3) If you're a player, you're not being complete and not getting all the credits

Ok, this take is very subjective and I don't know if most people would even care about that.
The idea is that, if you wanna be a more complete player, you should want to not be reliant on others. I mean, this is an individual game afterall. I think ideally, the perfect player is both a good pilot and a good builder. If you win a tournament but used other people's team throughout your run, you know all the credits isn't yours either. Once again, very personal take here, but I can guarantee you I have a lot more respect for players who don't NEED others support to do well.

Going in a completely different direction, if you're a struggling player while never using your teams, maybe a good idea would try to make your own stuff. You will use things you're comfortable with, and you will know how your team functions better if you make it yourself. Makes me laugh when I see people in tour games saying stuff like "How was I supposed to beat X when my counter is Y", either because they don't understand how the team they've been fed works or because it just wasnt prepared for.

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I also reckon that, even if people stopped spreading their teams so easily, building-inept players could just scout replays and recreate whatever they like, but at least they wouldn't have everything down to the movesets and EV spreads. Not to mention we're making and more and more progress in the hiding features (both for live games and replays).

For all those reasons, I want everyone involved in the competitive scene to reconsider their take on sharing teams. Make your skills, workrate and efforts worth more. Don't let worse players take the advantages builders deserve.
 
Why even limit team sharing, there are players who are trash in team building and want to learn in team building from better builders/players. Limiting team sharing doesn't mean that tournaments will be better because there will be so many guys with bad teams (and so unbalanced matches) and if you don't know a metagame and you want to learn it, taking teams from better builders and not from sample teams (sample teams aren't always updated) would be good to have more high quality games in tournaments.
 

z0mOG

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As with any competitive game/scene, the pinnacle of skill and ability in pokemon is something that only goes up with time. One major reason for this is the ever-increasing means of resources that can allow new players to introduce themselves into the game and improve rapidly. The mass-spread of teams being available for newer and developing players is one of the primary resources players can use to push themselves to the top as competitors. Factor that in with the abundance of analyses on smogon, youtube content+twitch streams, the modernization of our simulators, and it's no question that it's a pretty good time to be getting oneself into competitive pokemon right now. This is backed up with the increasing stat of the amount of players entering into tournaments yearly as well as the increasing turnover rate of a player's "career" span. Take tournaments like WCoP for example and notice how much it expands year to year in it's amount of signups and debut players + the sheer increase in teams too (Greece, China, India, Netherlands, Austria, Bangladesh). Sorry to people like ToF and Ojama who spout nonsense like "player pools were better back in my day" and "competitive tournaments are dead". You are objectively wrong and delusional, and your declining results back me up. It's not that these guys are washed, they've just become outclassed by the new generation of players who got to grow up with a comfier smogon.

What we create is always better than what we are. Keep smogon growing as a competitive scene by sharing your resources.

Nobody is denying that building is an important part of the game. Team sharing doesn't substitute for teambuilding, it complements it. People will still always be heralded for what they prove, be it as a builder, player, or both.

TL;DR
cringe.jpg
 
i think sharing teams is lame but any attempts at policing it are equally lame. i appreciate the sentiment of the OP as a missive toward players who seemingly rely on others for their needs. memes toward mcmeghans message are in pretty shitty taste imo. i believe the community would develop further if we had more unique builders and people who forged their own craft. that being said, many of the most consistent players by and large build their own teams. the swath of those who don’t, well, wutevz.
 
most people are probably going to laugh at this request, but that's because they see no alternative. if players benefit from sharing teams, you're not going to get them to stop because you asked them to. the benefit you claim in your post doesn't exist, either. good teambuilders evidently benefit from sharing their teams, because if they didn't, they wouldn't share them. the only way to fix this problem would be to change the format of the game or change the format of the competition.

changing the format of the competition would be very hard. you could do something that punishes people for having the same 5-6 pokemon, like some number of times a team is used in a tournament takes away x% of points gained per round in a smogon tour. that would be complicated and hard to do.

changing the format of the game would be pretty easy: go through cycles wherein certain pokemon are added, certain pokemon are deleted, etc. the longer a team is usable, the more valuable it is to have. OU goes through months without any noticeable changes, so the stall team your friend shared with you 4 months ago is probably just as good as it was before. this format would also reward teambuilders more, which is what you seem to want.

a big secret other games understand that smogon doesn't is that a game does not have to be balanced if it's not solved. you can add and remove pokemon that create an unbalanced metagame, but if people don't have enough time to optimize their teams and figure out the best sets, that doesn't matter. it's not as if the months and years long metagames smogon makes now are balanced, so it doesn't seem like there's much to lose with trying this.
 
Yeah no offense but this post is kinda dumb to say the least. RMTs (and team sharing for the matter) have always been a way for some players to overcome troubles regarding one of the most important things about Pokémon. Everybody can't be a great builder and I don't really see a problem with players chasing after a way to become good at this game in the least amount of time (even if it seems like it's a really scummy thing to do in your eyes). I don't think that this kind of message is what this community needs, and a post aiming to help players with troubles regarding teambuilding would be a better thing to do. Thank you for reading and #longuevieABR. Agency agency
 
Sorry to people like ToF and Ojama who spout nonsense like "player pools were better back in my day" and "competitive tournaments are dead". You are objectively wrong and delusional, and your declining results back me up. It's not that these guys are washed, they've just become outclassed by the new generation of players who got to grow up with a comfier smogon.
Back when i was a teenager i could win games by just clicking hard and now my brain hurts and i still lose most of the time, who tf thinks back in the day the level was better.

Also mcmeghan didnt suggest any policy or rule to limit team sharing he's just asking u poopies to build more by yourselves and stop leeching so much off people that do build. I think you guys should have more respect for someone who has 100 times more achievements in this game than you.
 

Kink

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Helping others is what I do, I try to share teams to help people. I don’t share all of my teams, only the right ones, to help others grow. Helping others with their growth is the reason I’m on Smogon. Sharing teams is a personal decision and I recognize that OP is sharing an opinion, not preaching for any sort of policy change. I will continue to share teams and ideas, cause the end result of those interactions are something I believe in, greatly.
 

Ojama

Banned deucer.
Sorry to people like ToF and Ojama who spout nonsense like "player pools were better back in my day" and "competitive tournaments are dead". You are objectively wrong and delusional, and your declining results back me up. It's not that these guys are washed, they've just become outclassed by the new generation of players who got to grow up with a comfier smogon.
why exactly was my name brought up in the middle of your shit post. where did i say that the competitive tournaments are dead and that the level was better back in my day. ftr im still actively playing, so today is also my day you know. ive always said that the competition was far healthier than it is now but ive never said that the competition was stronger in the past. you know mcm's posts kind of explains why it's become even harder nowadays to keep performing well at a high level. yet i think ive done pretty well ever since i've decided to get back into it and main a new gen, the current generation, to face this new talented generation of players. so my declining results back you up? enlighten me, smogon tour winner zomog, tell me where and when my results have declined. or maybe you hold me in such high regard that even being one of the most consistent players in sm ou over the past couple years, making it to olt finals, winning snake with a 7-3 record, making it to top 16 of ost, making it to classic finals and spl semis isnt enough for a player of my caliber.
 
I was 9 years old in Smogon Tour 9 semi-finals when I first realized that you could double switch in this game.

That should give a good perspective of BACK IN MY DAY!

We gave you boomers 70% old gen representation in competitive tours today and now you guys want us to ban team building? Sad!

Do you know why it took us over half a decade to figure out how op ditto is today? Because you boomers just wanna go back to your old days and never want to adapt and explore the current gen full of competitive spirits.

You guys don't even deserve to run knock off in DPP. You guys stole that from us hard working current gen players too.

Now you guys know why I am always so Mons is Mons-ish these days.

Well, I guess you can call me the Kanye West of Pokemon.

Edit: Here is footage of a Pokemon battle with no switching before I made my entrance in Smogon Tour 9
 
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cityscapes

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ok i'll post i guess

On the other hand, you have players who never build, never take the time to do that task, and get fed teams by their friends and manage to do well thanks to them. Not gonna mention names here, but there are even players whom you know would do a lot worse without that kind of support. Basically, half the work of winning the game is attributed to someone else (if not multiple people considering how that thing goes).
this is probably the most compelling point you have. no one likes having the skill gap between experienced and inexperienced players lowered to the point that a bad player has a reasonable chance of beating a good player in tour. that being said, something you are overlooking is the fact that someone who uses a team they didn't create, and doesn't understand the metagame, will be at a huge disadvantage in playing. their perceived values of pokemon and plays will be way off compared to someone well versed in building and playing in the meta. not to say that they can't win, but they'll generally have a much lower chance of taking the game.

basically, if you're losing to people who are getting fed teams, you need to git gud. getting fed teams and building your own are pretty incomparable.

2) If you're a builder, you're actually hurting yourself as a competitor

Allow me to develop here, as I have two separate ideas to share. The first one is, you know how building takes skill and well, nobody cant churn out new metagame defining teams everyday. By spreading your teams to everyone, you're forced to continuously reinvent the wheel, as they get meta real fast since eveyrone is sharing them and thus see a lot of play in tournaments. You're then forced to build again to take another step ahead of the meta, always and always.

Talking about tournaments, let's say you're a player whose force is building rather than playing. Why would you give everyone better chances at beating you by sharing your good teams with them? Especially players who arent self-reliant and would do worse without all that. Sure it feels good to see people do well with your teams, but wouldn't it be better to get that "glory" for yourself? Having a better team than the opponent is a huge step in winning a given game, so if you're a good teambuilder, use that skill to your advantage and get those good results yourself.
competition is really just a community effort to raise the skill level of every player. when i post my teams publicly, it's to potentially make everyone else better at the game, then in turn they can make me better, and so on. being impossible to defeat might sound fun on paper, but as someone who's made some pretty broken teams in the past, the fact that people have adapted to them has kept the game fresh for me and allowed me to keep improving at the game.

i have seen multiple people improve drastically as a direct result of my teams, which is really the main reason why i share them. this is what competitors should be striving towards, increasing the overall skill level of the community.

3) If you're a player, you're not being complete and not getting all the credits

Ok, this take is very subjective and I don't know if most people would even care about that.
The idea is that, if you wanna be a more complete player, you should want to not be reliant on others. I mean, this is an individual game afterall. I think ideally, the perfect player is both a good pilot and a good builder. If you win a tournament but used other people's team throughout your run, you know all the credits isn't yours either. Once again, very personal take here, but I can guarantee you I have a lot more respect for players who don't NEED others support to do well.

Going in a completely different direction, if you're a struggling player while never using your teams, maybe a good idea would try to make your own stuff. You will use things you're comfortable with, and you will know how your team functions better if you make it yourself. Makes me laugh when I see people in tour games saying stuff like "How was I supposed to beat X when my counter is Y", either because they don't understand how the team they've been fed works or because it just wasnt prepared for.
again, if you don't know how a team functions when you steal it, you're going to lose, as you should. if you're familiar with the metagame and the workings of a team you steal, you can win, as you should.

the most important value in competition is appraisal, being able to assess the value of something as accurately as you can. knowing which teams are best, and why they are good, is a big part of this.

personally, i have used my own teams for every single tour game as well as most ladder games, and i think it's held me back from improving (not winning) as a result. with a diverse selection of public teams that everyone can use, people will be able to improve more easily. this is good because improving is what makes a game fun.
I also reckon that, even if people stopped spreading their teams so easily, building-inept players could just scout replays and recreate whatever they like, but at least they wouldn't have everything down to the movesets and EV spreads. Not to mention we're making and more and more progress in the hiding features (both for live games and replays).
this is just silly

anyway, i won't deny that sharing teams is weird in how it's like ghosting, but for building instead of playing, but removing them is honestly really bad for the competitive scene. imagine if there were no sample teams. it just makes it harder to get into the game at a high level, and no one wants that because it means the skill level stagnates.

if you want to really reward building, just make separate tournaments where you can only use your own teams or something, not all this weird stuff.

i shared teams before it was cool in case u all want to get into bh, mrays banned tho so cant use some of them
 
I dont think there's anything wrong with sharing team , as one of the best teambuilder in this community arouff.pngi enjoy a lot more when my team are putting work for other team mate , ofc we cant deny the fact that if everyone build , the metagame will step up faster and new things will be show every game but in the other hand there will be many weak team that will lead to many weak games.
Sinon ojama haha igo sah tu te branle sur tes pixels ou quoi reste flex bg
 

peng

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For better or worse, people's mentality when it comes to teambuilding completely flipped when we switched to modern simulators. Scouting is way easier now than it used to be, so why would your average tournament player invest time into building something cool when its then found out after 1 game, when you can just get a team from someone else.

Back in Shoddy / PO days, it seemed like people had a lot more pride in their building and succeeding with own teams. I think there are several reasons for this:
1) Game was less explored, and therefore more novel tech to find. There was motivation to build your own teams because so much stuff that we now take forgranted hadn't been tried yet. There was pride in being the person to find the next MYSTICgar, Crocune, TormenTran, SubCMRachi, TyraniBoah. Not saying that people aren't still hyped for finding new sets in modern day, but it doesn't seem to be quite as big a deal as it used to.
2) Far tougher to scout your tournament opponents. This meant that a lot of players would build 1-3 teams and use them for months on end, with the success of any hidden tech not losing effectiveness as a tournament progressed. Just look at old RMT archive and count how many of them say "so I build this team for OST/Smogon Tour and used it for nearly every round".
3) Kind of a fluffy one but - I personally found match-up, and therefore counter-styling, to be less of a factor back in the old days. This again encourages your average player to make their own teams, because again you can be pretty sure that you can just bring it to tons of games and not sweat. In modern day, you could put tons of time into a team you love and then get matched up against players you wouldn't be comfortable bringing it against? It seems like quantity of teams in your teambuilder is a much bigger deal than it used to be, purely because you need a huge variety of options if you're going to effectively try and adapt to your opponent, and for that reason why would you want to be a teambuilder rather than just use others?
4) Generally less emotional attachment to teams. Think this is a result of all of the above - just look at modern RMT forum compared to how it used to be.

I wouldn't say either is better or worse, but the ease of spectating / scouting on the one hand rapidly spread information and improved skill among the community, whilst on the other hand made it a bit less appealing to be a teambuilder.

EDIT: you could actually argue that the real anomaly in the Pokemon history isn't that people don't build teams as much anymore, but rather that back in the day we knew so little (relatively), so we all fancied ourselves little innovators. Maybe its just part of the natural progression of the game that, as overall skill increases and the pool of untested stuff decreases, we're just now selecting for the best teambuilders? Could defo be wrong but just a thought.
 
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marilli

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People share teams because it benefits them.

Sharing teams being a competitive disadvantage sounds right in a vacuum, but I don't think it's actually true. For us improving teambuilders, sharing teams often allows you to be privy to a group of other builders to bounce ideas off of and you get to share their teams, too. You cannot get help when you are being a selfish prick. This mutual help lets you improve as a teambuilder much faster than you would as a lone wolf, if you are just looking at it from a competitor's standpoint. It is also a good way to fraternize with people. I guess it has little to do with competition, but it is a significant factor in why people play on this site for so long.

For master teambuilders with little to improve like BKC you might get to a point where you literally just know everything about the other team off the top of his head after seeing the first 3 Pokemon, and I have no doubt that knowing this is an advantage all the same. However, I really can't speak from their point of view.

While we're at it, why don't we just delete sample teams thread and on-site analyses and go back to disallow spectators in big tournaments, posting replays, or posting replay analyses on youtube? All these incomplete players should learn to improve for themselves.
 
OK, Im a fairly new player as I started around 2017 & Im mostly known as being a pretty decent USM OU team-builder. I am also known to give away countless teams & even my entire builder to people. I share teams because im not the best player, so giving teams to my friends that are much better than me or even just random new players I feel like im helping the community and I love helping people. if I kept the teams to myself and did poorly with all of them i feel like it would be just a waste of time. seeing one of my teams doing well or seeing my friend win a big game with one of my teams makes me happy because not only does it feel good as a person to help a fellow player out, I also feel somewhat involved and it feels good to know a team of yours did well in a particular game especially if you are even a newer player trying to get your name out there. Another thing is i also generally love building teams, most of my time on showdown is me trying to come up with new mon or team ideas for the current metagame & I build a lot of teams, so if i were to build for an opponent i would have the motivation to build for that person anyway and i would almost never reuse a team. Sure, trying to innovate the meta game everyday is unrealistic, but that isn’t something that happens every time someone builds a team anyway. I know not everyone loves to build teams all the time but a player who devotes the time in a metagame should be rewarded. What I’m trying to get at here is not every great builder is a amazing player and not every player is a great builder. Building & Playing are two complete different skills & of course there are players that are amazing at both they are well known and respected. Helping others is just what i love to do and Team building has become much harder nowadays with more Pokémon bring introduced and having to cover much more threats with each generation shift but there’s nothing we can do about that. I know this thread is advice to Teambuilders but I don’t really agree, Why I disagree is because the playing field is even, If a good player is being fed teams the other player can be fed as well. And if the other player Builds their own teams then odds are they have an advantage because they know their team inside and out well unlike the dude bring fed. At the end of the day good play defines the winner of most high level games. Everyone should be using good teams. Why should my friend be exempted from using good teams when the other player can do the same? If everyone uses good teams skill should prevail outside of stuff like hax and matchup and the dude who built the team still has the advantage because he knows the team inside and out. Sharing teams is fine, It helps new and experienced players grow and brings better games to the community. I want to see everyone using good teams and the people who push the metagame forward should be credited. Hell, Great experienced players can come together and share ideas and teams & build together, so why can’t the player who can’t build well be exempted? At the end of the day we should be pushing the community forward and with replays and social media showing teams everywhere and with It being so hard to build in usm ou anyway it’s nearly impossible to really hide teams nowadays anyway.
 
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y’all are being intellectually dishonest if youre reading mcmeghans post as a disavowal against any sort of teamposting [i.e. referencing his youtube videos as a gotcha! or personal anecdotes abt why you post teams for resources] as opposed to a response toward the culture of mass team pilfering that many tournament players engage in [i.e. relying solely on others to build teams, having the builder/player dichotomy, artificially closing the skill gap wherein b-tier players can pilot solid teams, a focus on social capital instead of individual skill to accrue teams which contributes to site-wide “cliqueness” and toxicity, etc.] this issue is not just: wow, you posted a team in the sample threads, you’re the smogon satan.
 

Eo Ut Mortus

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If this post were made with good intentions, then you only needed to explain what most people, including myself, already agreed on: people can gain non-insignificant competitive edges by building their own teams. Doing so allows them to gain familiarity with using the team and gives them more opportunities to stay ahead of the current metagame by coming up with new things. There are numerous examples you could've cited from tournaments where cookie-cutter teams failed due to a player's inexperience or being surprised by a previously unseen tech. Any of this would've gotten your point across and opened the door for more productive discussion.

Instead, the post attempts to strong-arm a cultural shift through elitist pontification. It gatekeeps players as incomplete if they don't conform to your approach to the game. It attempts to police builders in what they ought to share or conceal. It makes the lofty claim that a particular subset of players are being robbed of advantages to which they are entitled, while at the same time trying to convince the other subset that they will never be as good as those players if they don't emulate them. Despite you arguing that your approach helps build better players, it feels like your motives are born out of preserving an artificial competitive edge for the sake of a select group of players, rather than actually helping the community develop.

In the ten years I've played tournaments here, I've always strived to build my own teams. I try not to hide my replays and openly share teams when asked. This offers me no competitive advantage and has in fact hurt me on multiple occasions. Without the additional variance gained from throwing others' builds in the mix, it becomes far easier to exploit patterns in my team usage, as I experienced when I got hit with the same cookie cutter rain team in back-to-back weeks of Snake. In a WCOP tiebreaker several years ago, I spent all week obsessing over building a team only for you to give my opponent one of yours at the last minute. Did I feel slighted because my efforts didn't translate into the results for which I hoped? Absolutely. But I view resorting to prolonged secrecy and information hiding in an attempt to keep ahead of the playerbase as an unsustainable and frankly unenjoyable way to approach this game and the community. The moment I feel like this is the only means I have of staying competitively relevant is the moment I stop competing and pursue other things instead.

Instead of attempting to right perceived unfairness through stifling the community aspect of Pokemon and passing judgment on those who approach the game a certain way, I believe we should instead be uplifting the people who actively contribute to the metagame, whether it be with teams, or content, or theory, whose work may not necessarily be translating into results or recognition. To this end, I'm going to leave a few set/team dumps here that I've read at various points throughout the entirety of Gen 7 that were both very helpful to me in preparing for whatever tournament happened to be going on at the time and just generally engaging short reads. I hope this thread doesn't dissuade people from continuing to post these; despite the exhortation voiced here, I know I will be doing so at the end of Snake.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/olt-v-discussion-thread.3639258/#post-7869455

Coming off a brief playing hiatus, I practiced with this team (and Ojama's posted below) during OLT not to qualify, but in preparation for the upcoming Snake. At the time, priority-exclusive speed control hadn't fully gained traction, and it was refreshing to explore options beyond Lando and the mediocre scarfers.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...-sm-ou-discussion.3645418/page-2#post-8070523

Although Charmflash was known for popularizing Ditto during this tournament, I referred to this post mainly for his take/EVs on Z-Rotom-Wash, which I used Week 1 of Snake.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/olt-iv-discussion-thread.3611603/#post-7476269

Liones's team was one of my favorites of that OLT; Toxic Clefable has since faded out of metagame relevance, but at the time, I thought it was a great metagame adaptation and incorporated it into several of my own teams.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/underrated-sets.3559406/page-2#post-6932221

In SPL 8, coming off a very long break, I constantly referred to this thread (and the viability rankings) to get a sense of the current BW metagame after a failed stint in SM. Anti's Landorus-Therian set was one of the best gems in the thread at the time, and I ended up building up a nice team around it. There have been a lot of good sets and even better insights collected there over time, though. It frustrates me to no end that the two individuals who drove these types of threads are now the two biggest champions behind this cause; lol, surely the both of you aren't going to up and forget the reason why you posted this type of stuff in the first place and throw all that out the window just because some people aren't using your contributions in the way you want.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/usm-creative-underrated-sets-v2.3628431/page-4#post-7859837

Here's an example of someone who gained notoriety almost exclusively from posting sets and teams and was able to translate that into a slot on a Snake team. I followed his posts fairly avidly, and I seem to recall that I wasn't the only one. While I know the "complete player" thing was intended more as a jab at people who don't build, it inadvertently slights people who build exclusively, but I don't think there's anything wrong with that. If they want to contribute to and participate in the community solely through building, I believe they should feel empowered to do so even if it enables those who don't build themselves.
 

Colonel M

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No offense to anyone individually, but why is this thread being allowed to remain on the OU forum?
Ask Finch.

Please don't, but the thread attempts to express concerns that the OP clearly cares about from a competitive standpoint.
The deletion of the meme replies is especially ridiculous, because the original post is just a big blob of nerd rage anyway, and all the moderation is only validating the original post.
Not for you to decide. While I think posting this in the OU forums has not been a good area, the fact of the matter is that there are people who legitimately care about the subject to discuss it (civilly, to some extent). I may not agree with the OP, but clearly some people do.

I'm deleting the post, but any other shit post is getting more than just deleted from here on out. I don't care if you civilly agree or disagree, but if you're going to post something stupid you better make it worth the infraction (in other words, don't fucking do it).
 
Points I agree with:
- Pretty much your entire #1 point. Good teams are absolutely hard to create (be it for general purpose, or for a specific opponent), and quite a few people tend to overlook just when exactly the 'battle' starts (hint: it is before team preview) when evaluating what contributed to one's victory. Having this laid out again is one of the few useful things I could find in this thread.
- Sometimes it is better to build your own teams even as a new-ish player since you'll know exactly what what is for & your intuition will be a more valuable tool that you can use in situations you cant possibly calculate to a satisfactory point.

The big why does this thread even exist:
I dont think anybody on this site would dispute your point #2. Every semi-serious competitor is very much aware to not share their best teams with potential opponents. There are two reasons why they still do it (besides getting advice, which would be a third, but I dont think that is the demographic of teams you are referring to):

1. For mutual benefit. This could be because player x and player y are on the same team during a team tournament, but it can also have other reasons like if player x provides player y some SM OU teams for OLT, player y will provide some old gen teams to player x at a later date.

2. For fun. This is first and foremost a game & building with friends / getting recognition for the accomplishment that is the team itself rather than what youve achieved piloting your team etc. can be very fun. Who are you to decide which way to have fun is desirable for each individual?

As for your point #3 I would hope people don't get all the credit when they've only done one of the two, right? That is just staying true to the facts, not inherently negative or positive. People who pilot a team to victory get credit for doing that and people who build the team get it for that. Of course doing both is the most valuable (when thinking from a manager perspective for example), but succeeding at playing is better than succeeding at neither. Hell, players who are able to pilot the teams they are given at a great level are very valuable in team tournaments like SPL / Snake & WCoP since you can basically almost have a second ABR. I will give you an example for this, bugzinator has been a great asset for us in SPL X, going 4-2 using TDK's teams (with some influence from the rest of the wolfpack) & his price tag was 3.5k.
Overall, I think that choosing the path that lets you put up the best results is the most honorable way for any competitor, & during team tours pokemon teams are mostly a joint effort anyway, attributing how much % of x team who did is a pointless waste of time.

TL;DR: Fight starts in teambuilder, everybody already knows that sharing their best teams puts them at a competitive disadvantage, people should not be frowned upon for sharing them anyway for benefits/fun, being weaker at building but great at piloting is an ok-amazing trait depending on the setting of the tournament.
 
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As much I disagree with the OP, I disagree even more with the fact that this thread was hot-potatoed to the OU forum instead of dealing with it exactly where it was posted in the first place. Don't move Grandpa into a different nursing home just because you don't want to deal with his tantrums.

The OP's message had a clear, intended audience, but it being transplanted into the OU forums dramatically shifts the tone to be even more condescending than it already was, or supposed to be. I know I'm not supposed to talk about this, but I felt like it needed to be pointed out for it to be understood just how ridiculous it was. Hope this doesn't happen again.

On the other hand, you have players who never build, never take the time to do that task, and get fed teams by their friends and manage to do well thanks to them. Not gonna mention names here, but there are even players whom you know would do a lot worse without that kind of support. Basically, half the work of winning the game is attributed to someone else (if not multiple people considering how that thing goes).
Reading that paragraph brings me back to this segment of Bro Fist's interview that's been on my mind over the past few months.

(1:19:45 to 1:20:54)

The petty part of me overly agrees with what he said, but after really thinking about it tonight I've come to a different personal conclusion about it: If players want to be mundane, uneventful, boring, bland, blah, blase, and unimaginative, then so be it. All the more power and accolade to those whose innovative teams and playstyles remain ahead of the curve. You don't mention the new gen of tournament players explicitly, but they obviously inform your motives for creating this thread, else it would've been posted many years ago.

I was peripherally around the current crowd of cg ou players back in 2017 back before most of them became known current day tournament mainstays. It's easy to condescendingly look down on them as copypaste kids, but it would be a total lie to say that they didn't work their asses off back in the days when they dreamed of sharing the tournament stage with the likes of ABR and others.

It's inspiring to me to see The Hallows win an SM Smogtour this past weekend after the memories I have of us meeting multiple times in late rounds of SM OU room tours back a few years ago, or seeing seeing Sayuze btfo out of everyone in OLT Cycle 1 and getting 2k+ elo in barely over an hour after remembering how we used to be hot-headed and sharp tongued stall using ladder hero rivals.

It would be easy to say that the primary contributing factor behind the success of new gen ou players was excessive team sharing, but what you miss is that that resource didn't come out of thin air; it was built on by years of friendship from the days when they were considered complete randoms and nobodies. I know because I saw part of how it unfolded myself. Why should their path have changed just because you hate the fact that they're finally on even footing to you now (resource wise)? That idea just comes off as so obnoxious to me.

Resource sharing should be rewarded, and encouraged in this community, and as much as some of that is gatekept by jerks and friendship circles that is all the more reason to encourage more sharing, and not less.

I've been talking with TPP for hours this past month about the B101 Subforum and its corollary PS! rooms. This was the first message I sent to him on Smogon that led us to later talking more in depth about everything else. I have permission from him to share outside of I.S that posting teams is now a path towards earning the team rater badge. I am specifically sharing this fact btw to counteract the complete nonsense that is this thread's title and content. After talking to TPP for so long it's really fucking irksome to see a thread like this being sponsored and allowed here by the overall OU Moderator staff ngl.

You cannot suddenly expect for players to start building and building with any proficiency at all, especially when from a new player's perspective the supportive resources for it are bare as hell on Smogon and have been for years (speaking as someone who searched for hours on teambuilding guides only to find threads from the graveyard era.) But I get the feeling that this isn't even close to something you've considered -- Eo's post really just speaks to it all tbh.

All of this brings me to my last line of thought: haves and have-nots. It's easier to convince people to be havers instead of have-nots, and as someone (you) who is definitely on the having side why should I respect your line of thought that I should instead be without? Especially when you say stuff like this.

Disclaimer 2: I've been guilty of it, and probably will again in the future, but this doesn't take away from the idea I want to share and general wake-up call I want to spread
Controversial ladybug out


E: Apparently I needed to explain the context of this rant
 
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Can we also stop pretending "team sharing" is a new thing? 10 years ago the atticus strongbots, semistall and kg/taylor stall were everywhere with many variations, and 7 years ago literally everyone were using hugo teams. Team sharing always existed, rmts were really popular, cliques have also always existed (in irc channels or po server channels). The differences are: we play in a far better simulator, the numbers have increased a lot (and with that the average player skill has also increased a lot), and we have smogon's own "twitch chat". That's about it. OP's age has nothing to do with the subject at hand.

I obviously disagree that people shouldnt share their teams between their friends if they want to do so, or even better, team dump them on smogon. But it starts being kind of an issue to when a lot of players with moderate success simply cannot build and dont build at all because building is hard as shit. But they dont have to.
 
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