Suggestions for OM Improvement

twinkay

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Can we have more new oms, i know most good ideas have been taken up already but there are some really good potential ones like Multibility which are just rejected just cause of similarity to other metas. Im definitely not the only one who enjoys new oms either

Also what happened to the micro-oms?
You can find the XY microgames here. Although someone more official than me can probably answer this, I assume there's not a USM thread because no one really played them. You might be able to get someone to play an XY one in the OM room, though.
 
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Ren

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Can we have more new oms, i know most good ideas have been taken up already but there are some really good potential ones like Multibility which are just rejected just cause of similarity to other metas. Im definitely not the only one who enjoys new oms either
This times a million. There are various good concepts that should make it into OMs, but don't because it "infringes" on (an) other metagame(s) that already exist(s). I am referring to metas such as the one Snaquaza made with Type Gems, Multibility, etc. and I don't feel OMs should be shafted because a similar concept came along first.

There is also a pretty large playerbase playing Frantic Fusions. I understand the reasoning behind keeping that one out, but we already have metas like Cross Evolution and Chimera, which are kind of difficult to grasp on a conceptual level. Arguably not as much as Frantic Fusions, but the difficulty is there.

More OMs being accepted would also encourage more OM related discussion in the room. We've exhausted a lot of the discussion to be had in our games this gen, but we definitely haven't exhausted the creativity. It'd result in a less shitposty and more relevant environment.

I understand last gen, there was an attempt to shift towards focusing on current OMs, and that's fine. I don't think we should accept just any OM. My main shtick here is to give OMs with similar concepts as well as large playerbases more of a chance to grow in our community, in case we do run into the next big thing or just want people in the room to discuss OM related content more. We can only discuss Shedinja being broken in BH only so many times, after all.

Another suggestion I have is to put more time into selecting the LCotM as well as making the criteria more transparent so we may give feedback on that as well. The last two months in particular have had generally unpopular LCotMs, and have resulted in many members of the community, new and old, auth or reg, expressing dissent at the metas featuring the new games. I think picking from metas which are generally more popular in the community will result in LCotMs getting more plays as well as less frustration in the room and more discussion.

Obviously this isn't fleshed out entirely, I don't really wanna go deeper into this personally but I'm aware I'm not the only one who shares this perspective so if you do (or even if you don't), I encourage you to come out and provide your opinion as the only way these things happen is with discussion.

Thanks.
 

The Official Glyx

Banned deucer.
tbh just make different OM categories for variations on each concept, ie Ability-based OMs, Type-based OMs, OM Mashups, Miscellaneous, etc, and have a thread for each category, rather than one for every single OM.
If one gets popular enough, then it can get its own thread or something, idk.
 

Chloe

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tbh just make different OM categories for variations on each concept, ie Ability-based OMs, Type-based OMs, OM Mashups, Miscellaneous, etc, and have a thread for each category, rather than one for every single OM.
If one gets popular enough, then it can get its own thread or something, idk.
I don't agree with this at all. Metagames should have the room to thrive, without overcrowding each other and pushing each other out of the spotlight. Doing what you suggested solves none of the issues Volt or anyone else has mentioned. It would just promote focusing on one of the metagames from each category more than the others due to the discussion a lot less likely alternating between multiple metagames in the single thread. There are plenty of issues with this but primarily it just doesn't solve anything.
 

The Official Glyx

Banned deucer.
I don't agree with this at all. Metagames should have the room to thrive, without overcrowding each other and pushing each other out of the spotlight. Doing what you suggested solves none of the issues Volt or anyone else has mentioned. It would just promote focusing on one of the metagames from each category more than the others due to the discussion a lot less likely alternating between multiple metagames in the single thread. There are plenty of issues with this but primarily it just doesn't solve anything.
oof
Fair enough, I suppose. I only bring it up since that (imo) would grant much more freedom to make more OMs without cluttering up the forum as much, in addition to how most of the non-main OMs don't really get much discussion at all, beyond the temporary moment that they're OMotM.

I can kinda see how discussion might get cluttered if multiple different OMs are brought up at the same time within the same category, though I figured it would be more or less mitigated for the reasons above.

Perhaps make it so that permaladders/challenge-able oms on PS get their own thread to prevent this from happening?
 

drampa's grandpa

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I've noticed in recent times that there tends to be rather a lack of tournaments in OM-land. Not roomtours - I don't have much of a problem with how those are run and if I did I wouldn't bring it up here - but forum tours. We have 2-3 major tours each years (OMPL, OMGS, and maybe like Snake or WCOM) and while these are going on other tours don't really happen.

Tournaments are where the most intense competitive development happen, and a place that forces creativity and high level play. They're a bunch of things we want to promote. So I would like to recommend a couple things
  • More frequent and consistent forum tours that are NOT our largest tours.
  • More tours in metagames which have been approved but are not our ladder metagames (think Megamons or Pokebilities). I know this sounds odd coming from a mashups guy, but I think that promoting the growth of our non-ladder oms should come before really weird tours, as fun as some of them are.
  • Some sort of thread (or something idk) which acts as a compendium for all of the tours of this generation, and hopefully as a place to keep replays for future use. The intent here is to make looking up old replays easy both to help preparation in future tours and for development of the metagames involved.
I almost feel like it should be expected that a metagame has a tour in any given generation, if its around for a significant portion of the time. Not in that there should be a punishment for a metagame not holding a tour but in that every metagame should have their time to shine and to be developed. Because if we have metagames which we don't expect to be played, explored, and improved on... why do we have that meta?

I'm not saying stop or change our big tours. I'm merely hoping we can have smaller forum tours more frequently, including while the larger tours are going on. We've had about 12 total tours that weren't part of our major tour circuit (is ompl part of the circuit? not even sure honestly, and I might have missed some or miscounted idk) this generation, and I think we could use more.

Let me know what you think of my ideas guys, this all sort of came at once so I'm not sure it's been well thought out or anything ^_^

EDIT: As The Immortal has pointed out, I can read submissions and look at how many tours have been accepted / rejected, and not many are actually rejected. Dunno how that didn't occur to me. Maybe I was just lazy. So the issue here isn't the rejection of tours, and we can't actually force people to submit tours (submit more tours tho :D)

That being said I still think a problem exists, and that means we should look for a solution. I have a couple ideas, and I don't know which if any of them would work or should be used, but I'm gonna lay them down anyway.
  • A monthly or bimonthly "Tour of the Month" voted on in a similar fashion to our OMotM. Heck it could even be the same metagame AS the OMotM possibly. Wouldn't have to be part of the circuit or anything, but could have a finals at the end of the year. I say maybe bimonthly because 4 weeks is really short for a tour, with single elimination thats 16 users. Of course it could maybe work out so that one was finishing up as the next one began.
  • Something else I forgot as I was writing the previous one which would undoubtedly have been the best idea ever had. Shame.
  • A little more transparency in the tour-making process. Not that I'm accusing anyone of intentionally obscuring what's going on or anything but it can be a bit confusing. For ages I just sort of accepted that tours just showed up in the forum every once in awhile and didn't know how to run one myself. When I submitted my first one I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing, because in the Submission Guidelines, there's nothing that speaks to how to submit a tour, just one post about how to submit a metagame. Something public about what we look for in Tours, how to format submissions, and what the non-circuit tour schedule looks like would be a great resource to have for anyone looking to host.
 
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I've noticed in recent times that there tends to be rather a lack of tournaments in OM-land. Not roomtours - I don't have much of a problem with how those are run and if I did I wouldn't bring it up here - but forum tours. We have 2-3 major tours each years (OMPL, OMGS, and maybe like Snake or WCOM) and while these are going on other tours don't really happen.

Tournaments are where the most intense competitive development happen, and a place that forces creativity and high level play. They're a bunch of things we want to promote. So I would like to recommend a couple things
  • More frequent and consistent forum tours that are NOT our largest tours.
  • More tours in metagames which have been approved but are not our ladder metagames (think Megamons or Pokebilities). I know this sounds odd coming from a mashups guy, but I think that promoting the growth of our non-ladder oms should come before really weird tours, as fun as some of them are.
  • Some sort of thread (or something idk) which acts as a compendium for all of the tours of this generation, and hopefully as a place to keep replays for future use. The intent here is to make looking up old replays easy both to help preparation in future tours and for development of the metagames involved.
I almost feel like it should be expected that a metagame has a tour in any given generation, if its around for a significant portion of the time. Not in that there should be a punishment for a metagame not holding a tour but in that every metagame should have their time to shine and to be developed. Because if we have metagames which we don't expect to be played, explored, and improved on... why do we have that meta?

I'm not saying stop or change our big tours. I'm merely hoping we can have smaller forum tours more frequently, including while the larger tours are going on. We've had about 12 total tours that weren't part of our major tour circuit (is ompl part of the circuit? not even sure honestly, and I might have missed some or miscounted idk) this generation, and I think we could use more.

Let me know what you think of my ideas guys, this all sort of came at once so I'm not sure it's been well thought out or anything ^_^
In the entire 7th generation, there have been two submissions for standard tournaments for non-permanent metagames, this and this. We will never reject any tournament request for any existing non-permanent OM. The only tour requests that have been rejected are mashups and other crazy multi-meta ideas that, rightfully so, few people will actually play. If you submit a standard tournament for any existing OM that isn't part of the OM Circuit, I can guarantee you I would approve it ASAP. The fact is that nobody wants to host these tournaments, and we can't force them to. Posting this as a suggestion or an idea doesn't help either. We, as section leaders, have plenty of responsibilities, such with handling the official OM Tour Circuit. It's on to you, the community, to host these mini-tournaments if you want them.

Edit: Regarding the tournament hosting guide, that was something planned but unfortunately didn't happen. I will add it to the todo list.
 
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Another suggestion I have is to put more time into selecting the LCotM as well as making the criteria more transparent so we may give feedback on that as well. The last two months in particular have had generally unpopular LCotMs, and have resulted in many members of the community, new and old, auth or reg, expressing dissent at the metas featuring the new games. I think picking from metas which are generally more popular in the community will result in LCotMs getting more plays as well as less frustration in the room and more discussion.
The purpose of Leader’s Choice is to give every metagame a chance to be playable on a large scale. The OM of the Month voted by the community already selects the popular choice. Think about this, is there a point to being an OM if you’re ultimately never going to be played? Everything deserves a chance to grow and for the community to try it out. Playing on ROM is hardly a viable option for majority of the OM/PS community.

When OM leadership decided to reinstate the Leader’s Choice ladder, my intention was to use it as means of rotating every OM that doesn’t win OMotM. So that everything has the opportunity to be a ladder, even if it’s just for one month. We’ve pretty much run through most of the OMs now, except the really dead ones like All Terrain, which is why we threw in a couple of unique metas at the time of your post.

We will continue to rotate every OM, and throw in the occasional unique format. If you dislike the Leader’s Choice at any given time, well thankfully this is OM, and you have 6 other options with the permanent/rotational ladders plus the community voted OM of the Month!
 

Ren

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The purpose of Leader’s Choice is to give every metagame a chance to be playable on a large scale. The OM of the Month voted by the community already selects the popular choice. Think about this, is there a point to being an OM if you’re ultimately never going to be played? Everything deserves a chance to grow and for the community to try it out. Playing on ROM is hardly a viable option for majority of the OM/PS community.
You can already accomplish without taking away an option from individuals who don't like the current LCotM slot by introducing said OM into OM Snake Draft, instead of the less successful or now removed OMs. How many people have come to you asking for Chimera 1v1? Actually, how many people have ever openly said they liked Chimera 1v1 other than the TL and one, maybe two people? If a metagame is destined for popularity, most of the time it will skyrocket on its own. OMs such as Shared Power skyrocketed in popularity, despite being a new concept. Dual Wielding skyrocketed in popularity the first month, despite being a fairly dead concept last gen, because people wanted to give it a chance. Realistically, if you want an OM to have a chance to be played on a larger scale, there are many more options.

When OM leadership decided to reinstate the Leader’s Choice ladder, my intention was to use it as means of rotating every OM that doesn’t win OMotM. So that everything has the opportunity to be a ladder, even if it’s just for one month. We’ve pretty much run through most of the OMs now, except the really dead ones like All Terrain, which is why we threw in a couple of unique metas at the time of your post.
That's fine, but you should also consider that this is a ladder slot people will be stuck with for a month - If they ever grow tired of playing a metagame, they should have a form of recourse. And from experience as well as statistically, growing tired of a metagame that's OMotM is fairly common. You can of course go back to playing your main metagame, but shouldn't there be more than one option once you grow tired of the OMotM? I'm not saying everyone will always dislike the LCotM, but you as a leadership team could put more effort into ensuring your selections are more well received, especially since I'm unsure if you all actually play the metagames you've chosen (this isn't meant to be a slight on you all, for what it's worth. It's just the impression I get after LGPE Hackmons, LGPE 1v1 and Chimera, which have their own inherent drawbacks.)

We will continue to rotate every OM, and throw in the occasional unique format. If you dislike the Leader’s Choice at any given time, well thankfully this is OM, and you have 6 other options with the permanent/rotational ladders plus the community voted OM of the Month!
This honestly seems like a lame excuse. Sure, for fringe cases it's fine, but for OMs that many significant members of the community didn't ask for, dislike, or consider unplayable (for example, LGPE 1v1 and the more extreme LGPE Hackmons) what do you plan to do? LGPE Hackmons was very poorly received. At the time, early on it wasn't uncommon to log on and see one or two complaints for every half an hour you were on. Yet the only thing that resulted from this was a change in the dailies - We still had to just deal with the ladder. How can you say this for an uncompetitive meta? Many people also dislike the OMotM, and for these people the solace can be that there will be a decent LCotM. Should you as a leadership team not at least attempt to cater to these individuals when considering your choice?

There's a few more things I wanted to mention, so I'll be quoting parts of your post again - Apologies if this makes my post difficult to follow.
We’ve pretty much run through most of the OMs now, except the really dead ones like All Terrain, which is why we threw in a couple of unique metas at the time of your post.
Not that I'm a huge fan of All Terrain, but what grants some OMs the pass over others? Z-Shift was never given this opportunity, for instance, yet it was reasonably fun, easy to teambuild and suffered from being dead as well. Is an OM required to be nominated for OMotM several times, but never win? If so, why do OMs such as Hidden Type get the pass? Don't get me wrong, Hidden Type was a fantastic choice and many enjoyed it, but it just doesn't make much sense.

We’ve pretty much run through most of the OMs now
Pardon myself "overstepping boundaries" as some people may say, but I'd have to say that this is because you as a leadership team don't actively encourage submissions, you only allow them. There is no reward explicitly stated for submitting and running metas, and it's not as if submitting and running threads is an easy process. The submissions process, as I last experienced it, was quite the headache to put my idea through, as I was left waiting for 2 months. And then afterwards, running OLA wasn't easy either. Now to monitor a thread, suspect things accordingly, make tiering decisions and promote discussion? That seems worse than running OLA, effort-wise. You need to be a very specific type of person to do it, and even then you need a reason to do it. People do enjoy doing what they like, but when there's no reward declared for them, what motivation do they have to do it other than fun? No criteria is listed for OM badges - Personally I'd suggest looking into what other subforums do possibly and drawing ideas from there, as badges are probably the best way to motivate people.

Pardon me going into a bit of a tangent, but this ties into motivating submissions. this could also fall under hosting tours, which is something I feel OMs needs more of. This could also potentially reveal some people who are qualified to host, and they could be asked to host more seasonals, ladder tourneys, or other tournaments in general that count towards the official circuit. I know that many users of the OM forum want more tours, but nobody wants to host - Motivating submitting and hosting tours while also potentially giving the chance to do something bigger could work wonders to remedy this issue.

The purpose of Leader’s Choice is to give every metagame a chance to be playable on a large scale.
This would normally be fine, but my issue is that the community is dwindling gradually. People return for OMPL, OMWC and OMGS, but none of them have any reason to stick around - and this isn't just because of the LCotM, but it's an area where you all are definitely able to improve or just repurpose. I think OMs should focus on bringing members back and giving them a reason to stay, instead of just bringing them back. After that, I think it's fine to experiment with LCotM, but now isn't the time I feel.

As to how you all can improve LCotM should you choose to take this feedback...
  • Playtest. If you all had playtested LGPE Hackmons, I'm quite certain it wouldn't have gotten OMotM. You can also determine if a concept is naturally unstable, if it just needs a little polishing, or if it's fine right now.
  • Ask yourself if you'd play this meta for five days. Why five? It's not arbitrary, but after two weeks or so the LCotM dies out, along with the OMotM sometimes. If you'd play a meta for five days, it's generally a good sign because that means you won't get bored of it fast. Even longer is better. But if you can't even play it for five days, how do you expect people to not be tired of it in a month?
  • Pick from OMs with concepts that are parallel to the OMotM in terms of which part of Pokemon they emphasize. Megamons and Chimera both have an emphasis on teambuilding, but Megamons I'd argue has more strategy in the actual game since you pick which order you're playing your Chimera components at the teambuilder anyways. Regardless, however, they compete in where their challenges lie, and I think complementing them in a larger way would be better.
    • edit: there was some confusion. what i meant was pair an om that has a larger focus on teambuilding w/ smth that's more intensive battling wise
  • Pick from OMs that have a relatively intuitive concept. This will make them easy to get into and friendly for new and old users alike.
  • If you're going to shake it up, be sure to do this with metas that aren't here anymore but were popping at the time they existed, or metas that died after getting OMotM once or twice. Metas such as Gen 5 and 6 BH, Gen 6 Mix and Mega, etc.. are all nice choices as well, but old gens are far from the only option.
  • don't pick lgpe hackmons again oh my GOD
I don't really feel the motivation or the need to write much more, so I hope this response suffices.
 
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Pigeons

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I just wanted to echo a lot of what GL Volkner is saying because he raises a lot of good points that I share his concern about. I don't think the best use of LCotM is picking metagames that haven't been OMotM just so that "every metagame gets a chance", because if metas that nobody enjoys or wants to play are consistently getting picked then that kind of defeats the purpose of having a ladder for LCotM in the first place. No, I'm not suggesting removing the ladder, I just think more care should be taken so that LCotM doesn't end up being a dead other metagame that nobody ends up playing all the time (Volk's suggestions are a really good step towards this and I hope they will be given serious consideration).

Wanting to improve metagame activity is not a bad thing, in fact it's probably something OMs needs right now. It's no secret that with the UM / OM split, the OM section is lacking established formats with a consistent playerbase on ladder and in tournaments (only MnM and BH come to mind). I think Volk hit the nail right on the head, currently there's very little incentive for people to run / submit OMs which is going to be a problem going forward. Currently the main incentive is the prospect of your metagame getting a rotational ladder or getting OM roomvoice for consistent contributions, but there's absolutely no indication what the standards for either of these are. With Tier Shift recently being promoted to rotational and PiC previously as well, what did these metagames have that others don't? What steps can the leader of a metagame take that will bring them closer to that? Is there a set of concrete standards for a metagame getting its own ladder or is it based on the perceptions of the OM leaders? If the answers to these questions aren't immediately clear, then are metagame leaders expected to just do so for fun and have their hard work go largely unrecognized?

In addition to clarifying why certain metas are added to rotation, I think that the contributions made by people who lead a successful metagame need to be more recognized by the OM leaders. Currently the "contributor" role in OM Discord and the roomvoice that comes with it has no guidelines for how it's given out, and similarly there's no indication of what constitutes a community contributor nomination for OM contributions. For starters, I think leading a metagame that is a permaladder or on rotation should automatically give the contributor role and roomvoice (unless they're a terrible user for some reason). But I think the most important thing here is that people have something they can work towards if they're leading a metagame, and the OM leaders should provide a clear framework of how to get there. If you want to build metagames, you have to start by recognizing the contributions of people who do most of the hard work, giving people incentive to make the most of time in the spotlight is in my opinion a much more effective method for growing OMs than trying to cycle all of them through LCotM.

I hope people's suggestions will be given serious consideration, OMs is kind of at a crossroads right now after the UM split and I think some clarifications / changes in policy would be of great benefit going forward.
 
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Hey Pigeons. Thanks for the feedback. I'll answer some of the questions.

With Tier Shift recently being promoted to rotational and PiC previously as well, what did these metagames have that others don't? What steps can the leader of a metagame take that will bring them closer to that? Is there a set of concrete standards for a metagame getting its own ladder or is it based on the perceptions of the OM leaders? If the answers to these questions aren't immediately clear, then are you expecting a metagame leader to just do so for fun and have their hard work go largely unrecognized?
It boils down to popularity. A ladder requires an active playerbase. PiC was one of the more successful OMotMs, and we felt it had a strong concept, so it was promoted. Tier Shift is still amongst the more popular OMs, often being discussed in the OM room. It's been in a rough spot in recent times and because of that we wanted to give it the opportunity to fix its concept since we're in the dire stages of the generation. There's no intention to include it in major tournaments at this time, and it's obviously going to have to be removed once we move to gen 8, in which case another metagame would get an opportunity. I think we've stated this before, possibly in this thread or the SQSQ, but activity is the most important requirement. To reiterate what I said in the beginning, we don't want dead ladders. All past gen ladders apart from OU were removed from PS some time ago because we don't want people to click search and stay there forever. If you have a solid level of activity, that is during OMotM, and an active thread/leader then you're mostly set. Mix and Mega for example was a clearly super popular and quickly rose up the ranks. Off course, we haven't seen anything like that since then, so what metas get promoted is more a tough call. In which case we'll look at the concept. Does the concept overlap with an existing ladder or is the concept easy to understand or is the thread active. You could say PiC or Camomons weren't standout, activity wise, as there are probably one or two other OMs on a similar level, so the other elements of PiC were something we liked.

I think that the contributions made by people who lead a successful metagame need to be more recognized by the OM leaders.
I completely agree with what you're saying in this paragraph. If it were up to me, these people would have roles and room voice. As you may or may not know, ROs or section leaders aren't just dictators - I have to answer to people. I've promoted maybe one or two people based on their forum or other contributions (programming), which ftr was against what others wanted. These promotions often get push back from room staff and perhaps we can change their mindset. In regards to forum badges, similar to other sections, you get Ladybug when you've made some good contributions and showing signs for more in the future (Chazm for example) and CC for large amounts of good contribution (Chloe for example). Nothing special here, maybe we're a bit strict compared to other sections; we don't want to hand them out like candy but have them hold some value.
 
I'm a little late to the party and probably don't have much to add on to what Volkner and Pigeons already brought up, however while reading these posts something came to mind that I thought was worth logging on for.

From what I understood, LCotM kinda just works as an extra 'free' slot that the leader team uses to rotate between unpopular and not-so-established metas, which, in my opinion is a huge waste of potential.

Given that this ladder does not have the restrictions thaf OMotM has regarding eligibility, simply electing metas that only don't have a ladder because there isn't the playerbase for them is a great misuse of the opportunity this 'free' slot provides.

I apologise in advance if this gets confusing but I'm typing as I'm thinking and don't have the time to format and restructure because holidays and mobile.

Getting on with the brainstorm; LCotM could instead be used as an experimental ladder as it doesn't follow the same strict rules as OMotM. This allows, for example, OM Mashups or tiers to have a ladder, stuff like MnM UU, STAAABmons, AAA Doubles, PiC BH, TS Triples (or that rotation triples format) that may actually have some popularity but never get to have a ladder. Some of the much fun I've had on roomtours was playing the AAA + Sketchmons LCotM that was on last year.

There is also another idea I wanted to share that I had while reading Volk voicing issues about the hardships of going through and approving a new OM and that is exactly what this slot could help tackle too. Perhaps giving fresh new OMs a ladder for a month is a great way to kickstart them off the bat to capitalize on the possible hype without having to battle the titans of the OMotM. Not only this, but perhaps even try new ideas before approving them could prove quite useful, as in the case of Shared Power.

I understand that LGPE Hackmons wasn't the most successful ladder but I think it is the right direction as long as it isn't a 1 day decision on a whim. Adding a couple more users to the team responsible for the choice of the ladder and have them playtest potential metas could prove very useful to the development of the OM metas themselves and the community overall isntead of the mostly dead ladder that it is.

It may not need an actual overhaul with a rebrand like CCotM (Contributors Choice of the Month) but I hope I provided, even if in not the cleanest way, some food for thought going forward.
 
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drampa's grandpa

cannonball
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I'm a little late to the party and probably don't have much to add on to what Volkner and Pigeons already brought up, however while reading these posts something came to mind that I thought was worth logging on for.

From what I understood, LCotM kinda just works as an extra 'free' slot that the leader team uses to rotate between unpopular and not-so-established metas, which, in my opinion is a huge waste of potential.

Given that this ladder does not have the restrictions thaf OMotM has regarding eligibility, simply electing metas that only don't have a ladder because there isn't the playerbase for them is a great misuse of the opportunity this 'free' slot provides.

I apologise in advance if this gets confusing but I'm typing as I'm thinking and don't have the time to format and restructure because holidays and mobile.

Getting on with the brainstorm; LCotM could instead be used as an experimental ladder as it doesn't follow the same strict rules as OMotM. This allows, for example, OM Mashups or tiers to have a ladder, stuff like MnM UU, STAAABmons, AAA Doubles, PiC BH, TS Triples (or that rotation triples format) that may actually have some popularity but never get to have a ladder. Some of the much fun I've had on roomtours was playing the AAA + Sketchmons LCotM that was on last year.

There is also another idea I wanted to share that I had while reading Volk voicing issues about the hardships of going through and approving a new OM and that is exactly what this slot could help tackle too. Perhaps giving fresh new OMs a ladder for a month is a great way to kickstart them off the bat to capitalize on the possible hype without having to battle the titans of the OMotM. Not only this, but perhaps even try new ideas before approving them could prove quite useful, as in the case of Shared Power.

I understand that LGPE Hackmons wasn't the most successful ladder but I think it is the right direction as long as it isn't a 1 day decision on a whim. Adding a couple more users to the team responsible for the choice of the ladder and have them playtest potential metas could prove very useful to the development of the OM metas themselves and the community overall isntead of the mostly dead ladder that it is.

It may not need an actual overhaul with a rebrand like CCotM (Contributors Choice of the Month) but I hope I provided, even if in not the cleanest way, some food for thought going forward.
Just wanna note that there is actually a home for mashups (not actually Sketchmons AAA because rip Sketchmons ladder) with a ton of these experimental formats.
Here's our PS room play.pokemonshowdown.com/ommashups
And here's our thread smogon.com/forums/threads/om-mashup-megathread.3635904

None of that is to say that you're wrong that they would be awesome LCotMs (but I'm biased) just to point out there is in fact a place to discuss and develop these metagames (and ban stuff that's clearly broken unlike the last time we had a mashup LCotM).

I tend to agree that LCotM should focus more on giving fun metagames time in the sun rather than just unplayed ones. It would be great if we could get metagames to suddenly spring to life and get and maintain activity by giving them a ladder, but we just haven't seen that. And right now I think it's more important to use the metagames that are already semi-popular and fun to help OM as a whole with low activity than it is to use LCotM to help low activity metagames.

I also agree with Pigeons that there should be more reward to becoming an OM tl. I don't know if room voice is the right way to go about it, but contributor on Discord sounds great. But what I think would be really amazing would be OM Forum specific badges. Right now we have like nothing. People who do a ton of work in the OM community have no badges for years. Our suspects don't count towards TC (nor should they). Unless you code or are one of the few people who have Precontributor, you likely don't have a badge.

If we had badges specific to this forum it would encourage activity on here, quality activity (you don't get badges by shitposting). It would encourage people to stay. It would give a sense of progression in our community, and it would help. The one badge I would really like to see is one, as Pigeons said, that rewarded people for leading metas. Not just for being in a leadership position, but for doing well with one and growing it.
 
I'd like to suggest that this thread and the Metagame Workshop thread get pinned so that newcomers can more easily find out how to contribute rather than getting slapped with the "You do not have sufficient privileges" and not immediately seeing another way to express their ideas. I think it's a small change that would make the forum more inviting.
 

Chloe

is a Community Contributoris a Top Tiering Contributoris a Contributor to Smogonis a Dedicated Tournament Hostis a Site Content Manager Alumnusis a Community Leader Alumnusis a Battle Simulator Moderator Alumnus
NUPL Champion
I've been planning to write this post for a while, as I have a few concepts that may work in the section's favour, but due to them potentially being controversial ideas, I wanted to suggest them here instead of bringing them up in a private forum or with the moderation team directly. It would also be nice to gauge how popular these ideas are, as while I am a fan of all of them to varying extents, I can't rely on everyone having a similar take to me.

This post in full concerns the treatment of OMs come Generation 8, what this section could potentially do differently, and what we could do to ensure that we can improve popularity and activity across the community. I'll list metagames in Italics to aid non-OM players that are wondering what stuff is. Descriptions and links to OM threads can be found here for those people.

Improving the monthly ladder system.
I'll start with the most ambitious idea, that perhaps is a little outlandish, but I'd prefer if you could "hear me out" before coming to a conclusion on whether you agree or disagree with this notion. Prior to this proposal, may I congratulate and thank the moderation team for their handling of the OMotM and Leaders' Choice formats up until this point. I am a fan of how four years ago we changed to a system with two monthly ladder formats, that the formats chosen and guidelines set have been for the most part optimal. I must say though that this has been one of the most debated issues within the last twelve months. A myriad of users are unhappy with the selections for the Leaders' Choice format, and on how semi-popular formats that they enjoy are never chosen. From an OM player's standpoint, formats such as LGPE Hackmons and LGPE 1v1 should never have been chosen. On another note, formats such as Middle Cup/NFE (which I'll consider the same metagame for the point that the appeal is generally the same premise) have been chosen thrice since the inception of Generation 7. There's also a dilemma that appears when less popular formats such as Inverse are chosen multiple times despite having small showings the first time they're picked. As someone who has been involved in this process I know that it can be difficult to choose a format every month that the community is content with. I would like to build on a solution that has been suggested before but perhaps could be improved upon due to another complaint many users have with these monthly formats.

This other complaint stems from the fact that the OM community prefers two different types of metagames. Some enjoy the bustling overpacked formats like Shared Power, while others prefer metagames with simpler little changes such as Protean Palace. Why can't we appeal to both groups of people every month? For the sake of simplicity I'm going to refer to these two different groups of metagames as Big Metas and Small Metas (but of course this can be changed to whatever, I personally enjoy colour coding but this isn't important at this stage). Each month have people vote on their favourite Big Meta and their favourite Small Meta. For example, if the voting stage looked like:

Chimera 1v1 (big)241 Votes
Inverse (small)121 Votes
Partners in Crime (big)245 Votes
STABmons (small)187 Votes
Ultimate Z (big)220 Votes

The results would show Partners in Crime and STABmons as winners. People would have a chance to play either a big "complex" format where everything is going on at once, and/or a smaller format in which it's a simple change that also offers an enjoyable experience. This would be preferable to the two highest voted metagames winning for a few reasons. Primarily, because each type of OM player gets to experience a metagame they'd play but also as the less popular (smaller) formats would still see the light of day. Issues I see to this are mainly the distinction of what consistutes either classification (of which I trust the moderation team to make apt decisions) and additionally that some formats (say Dancerability) won't get a ladder format ever. The latter seems like a non-issue to me at least, as I don't believe formats that rake in such a low playcount are optimal for the section regardless. Even then, they're playable on side servers and are available in theory so it shouldn't be considered an issue of this plan.

As I said earlier this is my big proposal, as in a potentially controversial idea in which I don't expect everyone to love; however, consideration would be nice to some degree. My only other suggestion to help the monthly metagames out is, freeing Cross Evolution from this nonsensical limbo. We shouldn't be approving metagames if we don't want them to receive OMotM ladders at some point. My solution isn't to not approve these metagames but instead not bar them from being OMotM formats. I will be the first to admit I disdain Cross Evolution but it should be allowed to have a monthly ladder format if it has the necessary popularity. The format approval listed here indirectly ties into my next point.

The appeal of difference in OMs.
Metagames such as Multibility and Shared Power should be approved given they hit the standards held for other metagames. Yes, they do seem a tad complex to the average player (especially the latter) and yes, they definitely stand out as outlier formats. This shouldn't be treated as a negative though. Consider Balanced Hackmons, by far the most popular OM at the moment. If you've ever played BH, you'll notice that it's very different to your standard tier or even OM. This is definitely part of the appeal. Balanced Hackmons has multiple active threads, the most active forum community of all OMs and the highest playcount on Showdown for any OM. It's arguably the most unique 6v6 format on the website. Compare this to the activity of Shared Power. This was by far the highest played OMotM ladder of all time, and brought a lot of non-OM players to the section. It was a very different metagame to your standard OM, this is part of the appeal! We shouldn't be ridding of metagames like this, we should be making them work. Changing Shared Power bans to teambuilder bans would've been a simple yet effective solution. Another metagame that got an excessive playcount was Enchanted Items. We have a way to work this into Generation 7 without the arbitrary item list, why are we not allowing it? This would also benefit from the aforementioned big-small metagame system, as OMotM players who hate Shared Power with a passion don't have to deal with either playing that or some metagame picked out of the air by someone who doesn't play the formats. Some of the rules put in place to prevent formats like Multibility and Shared Power existing seem so random and somewhat nonsensical, I'm sorry.

Essentially what I'm trying to get at is that people appreciate difference. OM players very much don't want to have to deal with the same cookie cutter 6v6 with a simple change every month. We need to strike a balance of enjoyment without going overboard, but I feel as if we're too conservative with the metagames we allow to exist at the moment, and that we should loosen our criteria slightly to allow more cool metagames to draw attention to the section.

Late/lacklustre releases & odd criteria that hold back OMs from existing.
My next suggestion for this post is what a lot of us want, but I'm unsure if a change would go against Smogon policy or would be fine as a simple change on behalf of the OM moderation team. Come Generation 8, there seems to be a lack of Pokemon being permitted in the cartridge game. There's also a strong possibility that items such as Mega Stones or even Z-Crystals may cease to exist. This would be the end of a decent amount of metagames that have thriving communities, solid playcounts and are based on formidable concepts. Can we please not allow this to be a determining factor in say the existence of the second most popular OM format Mix and Mega. If there's no clashing mechanics, metagames like this should be allowed their continued existence into the new generation. There's no point to dismantling a community and prominent metagame if we have the resources and ability to continue it.

Rotational ladders under-performing in practice.
I was initially a rather big fan of the rotational ladder concept, and I'm sure a lot of other people were also; however, as we've seen, rotational ladder formats aren't getting the attention they exactly deserve. Personally, I'm a little put off learning a metagame like STABmons just because I know it won't be there every second month and I won't be able to play it. This shows when considering forum activity and playcount. People would much rather play a well-established permanent ladder or a cool unique monthly ladder that they haven't seen before. The weird in the middle state of rotational ladders seems to be quite detrimental to the improvement of these formats. I don't have solid evidence that permanence would drastically improve the activity of a format, so this is nothing more than anecdotal. I would however like to hear alternative or similar viewpoints to this one.

TL;DR.
In summary, I love this community. I want it to continue to grow and thrive come the new generation but due to the departure of UM formats, the possibility of M&M not existing next generation, and the rejection of popular formats such as Multibility, I am becoming increasingly worried about the future of the section. I have proposed multiple solutions to issues that we are starting to face and I'm hopeful that the moderation team considers what I have proposed here today. Thank you for reading my post.
 

Ren

i swore lips were made for lies
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It's no secret that I think the systems that go into selecting our Metagames of the Month need improvement, and I think Chloe's post has incredibly good ideas that should be fleshed out. Since likes can be ambiguous, I'm posting to say that I do support this idea as a member of the community. The only grounds on which I believe this shouldn't be implemented are if the OM forum moderation team does not want to have LCotM go anywhere, but I believe that the moderation team has the community's best interests at heart and wouldn't be afraid to make this sacrifice if it meant the section could improve in general. And I feel like it would - Implementing these suggestions would grant the community more of a say in the metagames that they want, and it would overall please them more.

I also agree that Cross Evolution is in a bit of an awkward and unfair state right now. What's the point in approving it if you don't plan to grant it opportunities for success?

I'm not going to write a gigantic post, because I honestly think Chloe's post had a lot of what I wanted to say and covered my point of view extremely well. In fact, I wasn't initially going to post at all, but I figured that since likes are ambiguous, I probably should just so it can be clarified that yes -- as a community member, I do support the changes outlined in Chloe's post. And I believe that if you all support this, then post saying you do. Likes don't say as much as posts do.

Moderation team, if you want to reply to this - then I request that you do so publicly. Be transparent about your issues, agreements and the like with this idea, because this is something a lot of community members agree with, and I'm sure they'd like to see what you have to say about this. I know that if any discussion resulted from what Chloe posted, then I feel devalued as a community member for not hearing about any potential changes at all. Throw us a bone, please.
 
The changes are being considered and will continue to be discussed until gen 8. Ideas change so I can’t say anything concrete for now. However, I will say that I agree something has to change with rotationals. I also agree with freeing Cross Evolution; there are ways to tackle the reason it is blacklisted (such as a validation error if you have no nicknames) to make users aware of how it works.
 

drampa's grandpa

cannonball
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I don't think users not understanding a metagame is really a reason to keep it in limbo frankly. If you look at the ladders we currently have (thinking mostly of Mix and Mega but also BH and ex-om AG) there are a ton of people who don't get the concepts, with teams that simply have regular Megas etc. I don't see this as holding the metagames back at all, and frankly things like Z-Shift are more confusing than Cross Evolution

In terms of rotationals I agree it's a failed experiment. It was a good idea but in practice it's just led to a dead ladder space.

However the thing I feel most passionately about that Chloe brought is the criteria for OMs. Mix and Mega not existing would be a huge blow to OM. We have the data we need. There would be no subjectivity to what we include. It would serve no purpose removing the metagame, and would directly harm the community.

I also think that metagames having similar mechanics to others shouldn't directly disqualify them if the metagames play rather differently (free Multibility) but I think keeping MnM is more of a priority right now.

EDIT: I don't know if I agree with sorting metagames for lcotm, as it would inevitably piss people off, but I agree there should be more thoughtfulness put into lcotms in general. NFE is cool though :blobthumbsup:
 
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Hello, its Pokesart. Seeing as this is the closest thing to policy review and this should also qualify for this topic, I’d like to request clarification on a few things, before the generation ends and an influx of om submissions will come in. This mainly will talk about the guidelines for Other Metagames and how they handle bans, but I’ll go into other stuff as well.


So, this pretty much stemmed from me looking into the shared power thread, just for OM ideas, etc, when I found a statement made on the reasoning of its shutdown made by the OM Leaders at the time:


I think the confusion stems from decoupling the above from the experience of playing it; "fun" is a subjective term, and just because the metagame is popular because it is fun, doesn't mean you should ignore the problems that even Haaku admitted to being in the tier. On top of that, Ti brought up the point of the mechanics based problems with it. Mechanics-based bans are not allowed in any OM. That is just the way it is, because if you start modifying the mechanics beyond what your original premise is, then you are not playing an OM anymore, you're falling into the pet mod territory. A simple example is the EV limit which was present in BH last gen. I could not hold a "suspect" to change the mechanic back to full EV's even if I wanted to; that's just how it was in the game and what the premise was based on, and we're not allowed to modify it.

My overall problem with this response is the fact that it openly states this: “Mechanics-based bans are not allowed in any OM”. This does not make sense to me, especially due to the fact that popular metagames such as Trademarked and Inheritance have bans based on their mechanics, such as certain moves being restricted from being Trademarked and certain Pokemon not being allowed to give others their movesets and ability, respectively. In no way do I want those OMs shut down for those reasons; they have dedicated player bases and the metagames are balanced (for the most part. Looking at you, chansey in inh). I'd like some clarification on that.


I'd also like a public statement on the rules that OMs must follow. Pretty much what I mean by this, is a guideline for leaders of metagames on what is not acceptable, as the lack of such would signify that they have free reign in what they suspect and how they do such, which would make shutdowns such as Shared Power's make no sense from a logical standpoint.

As always, thank you for reading my post, and have a nice day.
 

drampa's grandpa

cannonball
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Hello, its Pokesart. Seeing as this is the closest thing to policy review and this should also qualify for this topic, I’d like to request clarification on a few things, before the generation ends and an influx of om submissions will come in. This mainly will talk about the guidelines for Other Metagames and how they handle bans, but I’ll go into other stuff as well.


So, this pretty much stemmed from me looking into the shared power thread, just for OM ideas, etc, when I found a statement made on the reasoning of its shutdown made by the OM Leaders at the time:





My overall problem with this response is the fact that it openly states this: “Mechanics-based bans are not allowed in any OM”. This does not make sense to me, especially due to the fact that popular metagames such as Trademarked and Inheritance have bans based on their mechanics, such as certain moves being restricted from being Trademarked and certain Pokemon not being allowed to give others their movesets and ability, respectively. In no way do I want those OMs shut down for those reasons; they have dedicated player bases and the metagames are balanced (for the most part. Looking at you, chansey in inh). I'd like some clarification on that.


I'd also like a public statement on the rules that OMs must follow. Pretty much what I mean by this, is a guideline for leaders of metagames on what is not acceptable, as the lack of such would signify that they have free reign in what they suspect and how they do such, which would make shutdowns such as Shared Power's make no sense from a logical standpoint.

As always, thank you for reading my post, and have a nice day.
The difference between what Trademarked and Inheritance do and what Shared Power did was that Shared Power actively changed how its mechanic worked during the battle. Inheritance and TM are teambuilder level bans, like almost every single other ban in Pokemon (exceptions are MRay clause, Sleep Clause, and gen 1's freeze clause... and I think that's it but I could be wrong).

When Flint said that it was changing the game mechanics he meant that with the one change allowed by the OM's base concept (abilities sharing throughout the team) there was no way to play the game with the ability restrictions in place without further modifying the way the game worked. We would have been fine with the abilities completely banned (to my understanding, I was not involved in this process but I believe this was said somewhere).

If you want a general rule, your banlist should be applicable at a teambuilder level, rather than forcing in-battle modifications.

As for a public statement on what's ok... well my inital reaction to that, on a personal level, is that any such statement would be by nature incomplete. Every OM is different, and presents challenges that are different in nature. We will let OM leaders know if they need to modify their course. I'll talk to the other staff and see if we can come with anything comprehensive yet generic enough to be usable.

Let me know if anything I said needs more explanation, or if I misinterpreted on any points!
 

in the hills

spreading confusion
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Hey everyone, just here to give some ideas that I've been sitting on these past few months, and I figured now would probably be a good time to discuss them as we reach the end of the generation and move forward into Gen 8.

1: Rotationals
I've discussed this a lot over past months and this is the main reasoning behind me posting today, but I believe the current Rotational system we've been using this generation has been more harmful than helpful to the metagames that were meant to be featured. The problem with rotationals is that even though the metagames recieve a ladder every other month, they aren't featured in any way. This is an issue for every kind of OM player: A more seasoned player for these decently popular metagames doesn't always have a way to practice their tier with a ladder, while the average player normally isn't even aware that rotationals exist and typically struggle to learn the metagame when it disappears every other month. I for one didn't get into STABmons until well almost a year after I had been playing OMs because I wasn't sure how to even begin playing. The rotationals effectively kill the activity of any metagame, and is in my opinion the main reason behind their poor ladder stats monthly, as opposed to other featured metagames like OMoTms and LCoTMs that can reach upwards of 10-20x more activity.

Moving into Generation 8, I think that we should remove the rotational system. Since the OM/UM split, we have lost our two most popular metagames, and only replaced it with an extra set of rotationals. Rather than having these two sets of rotationals, we are in a position to reward more popular OMs, particularly STABmons, with permanent ladder status. (or even Camomons, though while it has a very high popularity on the forums and even with some main tiers' forums like UU, I'll be the first to admit its activity on the simulator doesn't reflect its forum activity). It's clear from current team tours that the OM leadership knows which metagames are the most popular, so hopefully in Generation 8 we can have our ladders reflect that. I believe giving these tiers a permanent ladder would be beneficial not only to these popular metagames, but OMs as a whole.

2: BH
I'm just going to preface that this is not in any way a personal attack towards Flint or anyone in the BH playerbase, I just believe that moving forward it might be good to assess the current state of BH. I believe that with a metagame who is as popular as BH, we need to have a council of some sorts in order to make stronger decisions for the tier. BH has just as much ladder activity as some main tiers, so from my perspective it makes no sense to only have one person at the top who makes the decisions for the tier, regardless of how active (or inactive) they are. There are plenty of active users in the BH community who are willing and capable of helping with decisions, and I think BH would have a stronger community with a council in place (though I will say I would trust some of the less active players who don't post as often as they should a lot more than a majority of the forum active members).

I also strongly disagree with the current suspect poll system that has been used in BH late in the generation. BH has a Suspect and Bans thread to discuss what should be suspected, and should be more than enough to decide on suspects. Tier Leaders should be able to decide what is or isn't suspect worthy, and I think that leaving the decision of what to suspect with these polls entirely up to the community is a huge mistake. I think with a council in place, it would negate the pressure on a sole leader to make decisions, while still having educated members deciding what should be suspected. BH is an amazing metagame with a massive community, and I think that it deserves a council that not only reflects just how great it is, but push it to be even greater.

If anyone has any questions or would like me to clarify or expand one any points don't be afraid to ask! That's all for now but I'm sure I'll have other suggestions in the future.
 

E4 Flint

-inactive in BH due corrupt leader-
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2: BH
I'm just going to preface that this is not in any way a personal attack towards Flint or anyone in the BH playerbase, I just believe that moving forward it might be good to assess the current state of BH. I believe that with a metagame who is as popular as BH, we need to have a council of some sorts in order to make stronger decisions for the tier. BH has just as much ladder activity as some main tiers, so from my perspective it makes no sense to only have one person at the top who makes the decisions for the tier, regardless of how active (or inactive) they are. There are plenty of active users in the BH community who are willing and capable of helping with decisions, and I think BH would have a stronger community with a council in place (though I will say I would trust some of the less active players who don't post as often as they should a lot more than a majority of the forum active members).

I also strongly disagree with the current suspect poll system that has been used in BH late in the generation. BH has a Suspect and Bans thread to discuss what should be suspected, and should be more than enough to decide on suspects. Tier Leaders should be able to decide what is or isn't suspect worthy, and I think that leaving the decision of what to suspect with these polls entirely up to the community is a huge mistake. I think with a council in place, it would negate the pressure on a sole leader to make decisions, while still having educated members deciding what should be suspected. BH is an amazing metagame with a massive community, and I think that it deserves a council that not only reflects just how great it is, but push it to be even greater.

If anyone has any questions or would like me to clarify or expand one any points don't be afraid to ask! That's all for now but I'm sure I'll have other suggestions in the future.
Don't worry about taking it as a personal attack, as always I'm open to criticism. Did want to clarify a few things though (for the current gen).

I think there is a misconception of what the polls represent. As you mention in your post, there is often a lack of active forum posts, and the polls are designed to have a more informed pulse check on the comm at large, and then I can make the actual decision. This has also not been the case for the majority of suspects we've had, where I've been able to make decisions based on discussion from the thread alone, as you said TL's should do.

The polls also help in ensuring we don't rush to a decision and I can think of at least two cases where they have contributed plus the current one where the poll results did not reflect the current discussion in the thread. And I'll reiterate that I prefer to be cautious in making significant tier changes instead of rushing to decisions borne from convenience.

As for the suggestion for council, it's a suggestion that's been put forward to me before. It makes sense for me to behave more as a steward of the tier and have direct interaction with the comm instead of another layer of separation.Most of the time what I've seen with councils in other om's, there is often more lag in decision making especially when council members go missing, or a consensus isn't reached, not to mention there have been instances where the council can drive decisions that are not matched by what the community wants. It seems much better to me that the comm has drives it with direct interaction with me. I feel like it's worked well so far and fits into my ideal of not rushing to decisions based on quick judgments.

Having said that, these are only my thoughts on the current gen. Expect more changes next gen for sure.
 

Chloe

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NUPL Champion
I agree wholeheartedly with the points In The Hills brought up. I've voiced my criticisms of the rotational system before; it's simply ineffective and draining towards the popularity of the included formats. The appeal of the rotational system is long gone. I've also been opposed to the suspect poll system previously and I'd like to reiterate those points now.

Flint's post above focuses on three separate points on why the status quo in BH is effective at this current point in time, as to why these suggested changes are unnecessary or not optimal. I have a few issues with this though.

I think there is a misconception of what the polls represent. As you mention in your post, there is often a lack of active forum posts, and the polls are designed to have a more informed pulse check on the comm at large, and then I can make the actual decision. This has also not been the case for the majority of suspects we've had, where I've been able to make decisions based on discussion from the thread alone, as you said TL's should do.
In my humble opinion, suspect polls are absolutely unnecessary in Balanced Hackmons. Whether a leader or a council is in charge of the metagame, these extra threads are an extra step that isn't needed at all. You should be able to judge whether an aspect is suspect worthy based on the opinions in the suspect thread. This is an extremely unnecessary dual-tier suspect system that wastes too much time. You state that you've been able to come to a suspect decision from the thread for the majority of suspects, but this just isn't true. We've had 7 successful polls and 9 suspect tests. You've come to a decision off the thread twice. You should be able to view the suspect thread, see the outcries about Shedinja or the Species Clause or whatever, and make a conscience decision on what is the right thing to do. There's absolutely no need for this extra thread to gauge interest.

The polls also help in ensuring we don't rush to a decision and I can think of at least two cases where they have contributed plus the current one where the poll results did not reflect the current discussion in the thread. And I'll reiterate that I prefer to be cautious in making significant tier changes instead of rushing to decisions borne from convenience.
Whether you rush to a decision is kind of on you as a leader. If you're incapable of deciding whether a suspect test should be conducted or not is potentially a sign that you need more help, such as a council. You could also encourage more posting? State in the thread you're currently not convinced A or B is the right suspect target and gauge interest from there. These poll threads are extra clutter that shouldn't be required if the other threads are run properly. We have wasted over 40 days collectively waiting on the results of suspect polls. We could've suspected something else? Please just gauge what is right here, you're a competent leader and player, you should be able to do this yourself.

As for the suggestion for council, it's a suggestion that's been put forward to me before. It makes sense for me to behave more as a steward of the tier and have direct interaction with the comm instead of another layer of separation. Most of the time what I've seen with councils in other om's, there is often more lag in decision making especially when council members go missing, or a consensus isn't reached, not to mention there have been instances where the council can drive decisions that are not matched by what the community wants. It seems much better to me that the comm has drives it with direct interaction with me. I feel like it's worked well so far and fits into my ideal of not rushing to decisions based on quick judgments.
I believe these criticisms are unfounded. The most popular OM to have a council currently, Mix and Mega has virtually never run into issues like you're stating. In my three years on the council, I believe we made one delayed response to an issue at hand. The community is largely in favour of a council to prevent rushed decisions or being uncautious as you stated you feared above. We've never had issues with council members going missing delaying results or votes, and the community is generally in favour of the decisions we've made. You've shown through your post that a council would definitely aid you in the decision process, be able to address issues far quicker by noticing them occur, and be able to engage with the community far more frequently.

I don't believe BH has been effective in addressing issues this generation. There was that awkwardness which was waiting between problematic aspects in the metagame early within SM, the lag between the community's outcries towards issues and your response to them throughout the generation, and finally the fact that many of us are not comfortable with the state of the metagame a month away from Sword & Shield's release. That being said, I believe you're quite a good leader and there's no one better for the position, but a council really couldn't hurt in the long run and I implore you to consider the possibility of adding one.
 
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E4 Flint

-inactive in BH due corrupt leader-
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re: concerns about a council
I guess we shall agree to disagree based on what we've seen (aaa, 1v1 when we had it) but regardless, I already said expect changes to happen next gen anyway. Efforts to do so have already been happening before today and are likely to continue. I wouldn't worry about this issue at all.

re: poll criticism
I did want to reply to this though. Out of the 7 suspect polls we've had in the past 3 have led to a direct quickban, 1 led to a suspect instead of a quickban and others helped determine what options we'd like to have to go forward for our suspect - it would not be easy to have all of the options in the suspect directly. I have setup 5 from the thread directly. These polls were usually one week in length - faster than regular suspects and prolonged discussion where replies are uncertain. I am not understanding your criticism of having polls "instead of" reading the threads.

First off, thread posts still don't do what I said I want which is a pulse check on the comm at large. Second, having an official poll platform has performed much better than when I have posted in the thread asking for more discussion - some of the better discussion has been started from the poll instead. And third, the polls are a way for me to affect the tier and ensure that we aren't just waiting for people to post in the thread, which is a piece of feedback I have received in gen 6. It also ensures that I am not unilaterally steering the tier where I want, which was an accusation that was levied towards me about gen 6 till this very day.

The current suspect poll is actually a great example showing my point against yours which is from my understanding, just being able to tell what to do next from the thread based on what I want. Shed was discussed around 8-9 pages before the current one. After that the focus shifted to species clause and setup moves. In the midst, we also had other suspects. I also posted a few times, even suggesting a direct suspect of shell smash which began further discussion on what to do next between setup and species clause. That's when I created the poll to get a definite answer. Having the official poll encouraged people who were not posting before to actually post and refine their reasoning and to think about what exactly is the most pressing problem. The poll had such an impact that one supposed side about the boosting moves went to the wayside and shed was brought up again. We also discussed a new option in forme clause that was not there before - this would've not happened had I simply proceeded based on recent posts with a setup move suspect. All of this happened in the space of roughly 10 days.
 

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