Metagame Ubers Tiering Policy Review: An Overview

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As I outlined in the previous thread, the Tiering Council felt that the best course of action before doing any suspect testing is to have a proper discussion about our tier and therefore what our tiering policy should actually be in order to reflect our viewpoints. To put it simply, we are going to rewrite it, but with community "QC".

It would be premature to begin suspect testing more things when we have yet to fully assess the baseline we actually operate on as a community - our current policy came along with no community input and we feel that taking it as gospel would be a disservice when we can take the chance to give it some proper review, so that Ubers has even better ground to stand on when we tackle future actions, including those of Generation 8 (Mega Rayquaza, anyone?).

To start, we are going to look at the "Overviews" our policy currently contains, and have a discussion about whether we still believe it is the right viewpoint Ubers should have. If so, great! That means we are on similar pages and can progress with this section covering us well, without any further issues. If not, let's properly discuss what we believe it should be!

Tiering Policy Overviews said:
A General Overview

History has shown that sometimes bans are required from the Ubers tier. At first uncompetitive (as defined by http://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/ous-tiering-policy-framework-read-and-understand-this.3552154/ ) elements such as evasion were considered ban worthy. Over time, even with power creep, the usable mons in the metagame stayed at a somewhat equal relative power. The inclusion of Mega Rayquaza caused an unprecedented action to be taken, and thus banning it lead to Ubers becoming a tier. But what exactly is Ubers then? If Ubers performs bans, what is its difference from the Overused tier? What is the purpose of having bans in the first place? This is a hard question to answer, and while an attempt has been made in the section below, looking at the proposed criterion for banning things from Ubers, as well as practical case examples will provide you a more concrete idea of what the Ubers tier is and how it differs from Overused.

Tier Policy Overview

Ubers should strive to be a competitive tier, i.e. we want luck and match-up elements to match those of any other Smogon tier. Ubers will only ban Pokémon when deemed broken by its own definition, which can be found below. This definition provides a more conservative, methodical approach to Pokémon bans than that of most tiers. Ubers strives towards playability with as few bans as possible, while still retaining competitiveness.
So, this thread's purpose is to gather the opinions of everyone on what they believe Ubers is to them, how Ubers should operate, and even the smaller details of things like what attracts you to play our tier, should it apply. The Tiering Council plan to be very active in discussions here, but we absolutely encourage the community to engage with us and take advantage of the ability to participate in our policy review, no matter how simplistic your viewpoint may seem.
 
I believe Ubers shouldn't be viewed as a competitive tier or something to try hard to win at but supposed to be the a fun tier and diverse tier rather than a pure competitive tier and a tier that limits game scenarios. My envisioning of Ubers is unbound by metagame and viability unlike other tiers(even though it is emphasized in Ubers the most), similar to Anything Goes but more practical. All though I may be surrealistic, I believe Ubers should operate to be more imaginative and not determined/dominated by sweepers(stares at Geo Xerneas, Ekiller, Basically anything S or A tier) but instead use more fun winning conditions(I'm not saying use Meganium which isn't bad in Ubers) instead of pressuring and restricting the metagame further. The elements that however do attract me to Ubers is how fluid it is according to metagame change and it's sensitivity, which may lead to an interesting meta if pushed hard enough. Also as Lotus has said, Ubers is fundamental for novice players of Pokemon in general, in order to develop experience and competitive intuition.
 
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If I were to select the most important reason why I played Ubers the most throughout the 2-3 years I spent on PS time to time it would be due to its uniqueness coming from inclusiveness that doesn't involve chaos. "Involving chaos" is probably very subjective point of view but I have at least experienced many metagames that has reached the point where 'a fun metagame' started adversely affecting the playability, or a metagame with one-dimensional banlist has been the same way it has been for years. For me Ubers's real identity comes from it allowing players to experience the highest and the most inclusive tier that filters out uncompetitive aspects of competitive Pokemon and troubleshoots the potential unhealthiness of the metagame time to time in order to remove problematic components. I am used to Ubers as the tier that can maintain the equilibrium between balance and fun. Contrary to what others may believe, I think Ubers can be the most approachable tier for new players for this reason; they have a freedom to use cover legendaries that they craved to spam in battles or use an appropriate mixture of Pokemon from varying tiers to maximize the experience.

Though there are voices about Ultra Necrozma or other elements of the metagame that may be potentially threatening the metagame's condition, I don't believe there is anything in the metagame that is broken to the point where players are always forced to choose between preparing countermeasures for a problematic component or the rest of the metagame (this does not mean that I would oppose any approach to bring changes to the tier, suspect tests are good ways to review the metagame state and I am okay with changes that won't significantly affect the playability).
 
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The way I see it, the current policy was put in place for Ubers to serve just as an OU banlist, but with the MegaQuaza ban, it has moved away from that premise. Also, from past experience (of banning MegaQuaza), apart from the fact that the ban wasn't how Ubers was envisioned, the action has made the tier more playable, showing that a community-voted banlist would only serve to make the tier more playable.

So, what makes Ubers different from OU? Should there be a glaringly-obvious difference? How is OU really different from any other lower tiers at face value, apart from the playing styles?? The difference comes from the playstyle and the audience playing it... What is the use of having a banlist? The use is to streamline the Ubers playstyle, and not make it a no-holds-barred tier. In a more realistic sense, the banlist serves to check the tipping of balance in the metagame and serves to neutralize overbearing centralization in a way which makes the game more competitive and consequentially, fun!

So, what I am trying to say is that, while Ubers should have a banlist, the bans should be such that it allows for more creativity and competitiveness.
 

Cam

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I've never really considered ubers a "banlist for OU" mainly because I started paying attention around the mega rayquaza ban. It's always fallen into the same category as every other "smogon metagame". I think the tier should be viewed this way and when considering doing a suspect ignoring the perspective that its a banlist. I think the tier should be managed by trying to keep the metagame competitive and fair to an extent. Although this metagame has the least change over time since tier shifts don't apply to it. As I said in discord, a suspect test on ultra necrozma would encourage discussion from more people, allow people to get view of why the pokemon is broken/ not broken and also encourage some new people to play the tier if nothing but for the suspect ladder. Even if the suspect ends in a no ban at least this raises points and discussion making it feel like there is something happening in the tier. From my point of view if nothing were to happen then the metagame would stay very similar for too long and feel stale which would drive me away from playing the tier as much, if at all.
 
I’m going to post a few preliminary thoughts and criticisms I have with the overview section of the current policy.

I’m going to mostly skip the general overview as it’s more an introduction to policy rather than policy itself. Here are some cool threads on the subject of Ubers banning history.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/banning-moody-in-ubers.3448900/

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threa...-is-added-m-ray-is-banned-from-ubers.3523205/

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/read-post-44-evasion-discussion-thread.3538869/

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/sleeptrapping-in-sm-ubers-a-proposal.3587879/

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/baton-pass-is-banned-from-sm-ubers.3605747/

I might be missing a few, there’s actually been quite a few cases where a ban of some sort was needed.

Tiering Policy said:
Ubers should strive to be a competitive tier, i.e. we want luck and match-up elements to match those of any other Smogon tier.
I think this is agreeable. The basic idea is that luck based/« uncompetitive » elements are fundamentally against the idea of competitive pokemon battling. Ubers wanting to be a part of this idea isn’t new ground and I feel that Ubers tiering regarding these elements should continue to mimic the standards set by other competitive metagames.

Tiering Policy said:
Ubers will only ban Pokémon when deemed broken by its own definition, which can be found below. This definition provides a more conservative, methodical approach to Pokémon bans than that of most tiers.
Without jumping ahead, I disagree with this part. I feel that any ban in Ubers beyond the standard clauses is inherently exceptional, and therefore difficult to anticipate. I think limiting Pokemon bans to a definition of broken is too narrow and could limit us when we are confronted with a problematic Pokemon. I feel additional bans should be considered based on the state of the metagame and how the ban could address this issue rather than if the suspected element happens to meet a certain set of criteria. That said, I don’t think guiding principles are a bad idea. For example, overcentralization is very clearly not considered a banworthy aspect for Ubers. Highlighting that and other such things in our policy would be beneficial.

Tiering Policy said:
Ubers strives towards playability with as few bans as possible, while still retaining competitiveness.
There are two parts I want to address with this.

Starting with the easiest, « few bans as possible » is definitely a very Ubers goal in my opinion. I don’t think we should stray from this ideal. In fact, I think giving more consideration to the possibility of complex bans can help with this. Complex bans will also provide us with a more flexible toolset for addressing whatever potential « exception » may arrive, as I mentioned above. I think the use of complex bans should be guided by the goal of fixing an unhealthy metagame rather than as a means to arbitrarily justify the inclusion of a previously or potentially banned element.

The second part of this quote I want to address is the idea of « Ubers strives towards playability ». It’s important to note that Hack uses playability here as he later defines as « Playability = reduction of convergence in teams to the point where player skill matters ».
Again, I think focusing on diversity in teams is too narrow. However, I also feel it can be a misleading ideal as Ubers has never been a metagame that has had a focus on diversity.

As I said at the start, these are just a few of my initial thoughts. There’s a few more ideas that I want to try and address at a later date. Also, my bringing up « playability » and « broken » is only to highlight why I feel the overview is too narrow in the way that it defines Ubers bans and not go into details on the merits or definition of these things themselves.
 
I’ve been playing more and more Ubers lately because I find the tier very exciting. Games can shift at any moment due to the sheer power levels at play. I don’t think Ultra Necrozma needs to go. It’s very good but it‘s not THAT tough to integrate answers into your team. Species clause I’m indifferent on, while more arceus per team would be nice I think it’s just further increasing matchup dependency where even if your team can handle one Xern or DD Groudon it probably can’t handle two or three without a build that loses to regular builds.

I’m a big proponent of minimizing the ban list. I realize allowing Mega Ray into the tier devolves everything into HO but perhaps that’s because Mega Ray gets to hold an item to further enhance its power. A possible way to mitigate this would be “Mega Clause” where in order to click the “Mega Evolve” button your Pokémon must be holding a Mega Stone. For all other Megas, this isn’t a problem and changes nothing. For Mega Ray this functionally removes its item (it’s holding a useless mega stone). I realize it may still be completely borked but it would be a fairly major nerf.
 
I'll freely admit that I have no skin in the game here, but having watched this situation unfold from afar for a while now, there are a few lasting impressions I have as someone from the outside that you're free to consider or ignore.

Having seen a lot of the discussion both in the council announcement thread and the ABR thread that was linked at its closure, there's one ideal about Ubers that a lot of people seem to have that just doesn't add up to me and that's that Ubers primarily serves as OU's banlist rather than a proper tier or anything, in conjunction with the assertion that Ubers is the "meta of last resort" for a Pokemon to be used viably and fairly for others in the environment. While this could have been true many years ago, the constant introduction of new Pokemon that are immediately placed in the Ubers tier has, over time, created an effect where there is simply a whole metagame's worth of Ubers level Pokemon before OU gives a proper suspect to anything. As such, a Pokemon being banned from OU is a death sentence to its relevance, because OU's tiering policy means that, save for a portion of quickban victims that mostly consists of box covers, being banned from OU no longer implies an ability to effectively compete in Ubers due to the sheer number and variety of Pokemon that are just objectively better in whatever roles the banned Pokemon might have played. I mean, I wager that if I tried to argue for Mega Blaziken being Ubers viable I'd be laughed out of town, while if I argued for it (and Speed Boost Normal Blaziken with it) to come back down to OU I'd be lectured for days on just how broken it is even in a new metagame with new factors that help or hinder it differently than the environment of Gen 6 did. What that indicates to me is that the mainstream Ubers metagame and the OU banlist have effectively divorced, even if not in name. Essentially, an OUBL viability tier has formed within Ubers' membership, and that's due to normal OU tiering policy interacting with a growing number and variety of more clearly Ubers viable Pokemon in conjuction with increasing numbers of Pokemon that are unhealthy to OU but not viable in Ubers. It's a natural phenomenon when the Pokemon added to the game are not designed with careful regard for competitive environments. To actually try to reduce the total membership of Ubers proper to just what's viable in the format (ie mostly box covers), as many seem to want, OU would have to settle for a hefty amount of complex banning and/or allowing "broken to check broken," neither of which is in keeping with their tiering policy and I'm not thinking that they will budge on that. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that even if Ubers was not originally meant to be a tier per se, the growth of the Pokemon roster over time has naturally curated a growth pattern in Ubers that has effectively divorced it from that old vision, and it cannot go back, because viable Ubers are differentiated by their relative power as a raw metric, whereas OU and the rest differentiate themselves and their viability a fair amount based upon actual usage statistics instead, which is only loosely correlated with relative power (as seen by Pokemon such as Kyurem-Black remaining in OU despite being a box cover due to its particular shortcomings despite the distinction, or various Pokemon experiencing meteoric rises and falls in tiers over time). The solution here, in my view, is thus to stop thinking of Ubers as being merely "above OU," when graduating from OU to Ubers while staying viable within Ubers does not follow remotely the same criteria as a Pokemon moving from UU to OU or from NU to RU or what have you. Ubers has become its own tier, but it's a different sort of tier than OU or UU, and that's okay. As such, I feel like the philosophies of OU and those tiers below it should have minimal if any impact upon Ubers policy. It should be Ubers' community's decision alone as to how to determine the health, direction, and so on of their own meta. Those of us outside can say what we feel, but we should not act as if we possess the authority to bend Ubers' sovereignty to the whims of other tiers that are formed differently. Wow this point got rambly, moving on.

Secondly, the prevailing attitude from the council announcement thread re: Ultra Necrozma read to me almost as if actually conducting a suspect test was equitable to declaring UNecrozma banned from the tier right then and there, which is puzzling to say the least, at least in my view. Having been a lurker in MANY an OU suspect thread since the canning of Aegislash and Greninja in Gen 6, change around the Pokemon names, remove the OP, and change any mention of "suspect" or "suspect test" to "ban" and that thread would leave me with the immediate impression that an OU suspect thread had wandered into the Ubers subforum. My feelings on that thus stand as: conduct a suspect because you basically started one up with the debate in the council announcement thread. Again, I have no skin in the game, so take that with as much salt as you'd like, because it's entirely possible that in my relative inattention to Ubers I'm simply missing out on a prevailing attitude re: suspect testing as a process within the community, but I genuinely don't see the harm in just getting a definitive answer to the question.

This post was longer than I'd imagined it being, but I think I've said everything I need to say. I'd just ask that if any of this reads as egregiously ignorant of or misinformed about something about the Ubers community and its prevailing attitudes, please don't waste your time flaming me in some essay length reply that I likely won't see, just ignore it and move on with your life.
 

keys

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Since the Ubers Tiering Council is breaking down the policy into smaller, more digestible sections, I think it is of utmost importance to keep in mind that you're addressing that specific fragment of the policy (even if you're positing it as a smaller cog within a larger structure), in order to avoid disconnected and shallow discussion. With that being said, the overview of the tiering policy is probably the most important one of all, as it sets the foundations upon which everything else stems from. If we can agree on sound base notions to strive for within our tiering policy, we'll be able to more efficiently and accurately develop it into something that works for our tier, but that can only happen if there's input from multiple sources, which is why it's imperative that people get involved if they have anything to add. With that in mind, let me go through my personal views on the matter:

How my history with Ubers has shaped my opinions on Ubers tiering:

My journey with Ubers began a few years ago, during Generation 6. I stumbled across Pokemon Showdown and straight away went to the Ubers ladder without giving it much thought, since it was the tier that allowed me to battle with the Pokemon that I wished to (mostly the "strongest" ones). A few months/years later, I decided to give Anything Goes a shot since I discovered that a tier with no restrictions was available. After a brief period of playing Anything Goes, I decided that it wasn't nearly as entertaining as Ubers, and that's when I came back for good.

What I'm trying to display with that brief anecdote is that the appeal of the Ubers tier for myself and many others has been extremely clear since reflecting upon that episode: It's the tier that allows for as much to be used (or as little to be restricted) in terms of Pokemon, strategies, etc. whilst still allowing players to battle within a fun, competitive and minimally controlled environment that ensures said playability (having absolutely no restrictions is just not desirable because some aspects tip the competitive scenario over the edge). These two "pillars" work in tandem to support Ubers in its unique identity and "feel", since there is absolutely no other Smogon tier that manages to fill that niche.

Extrapolating those thoughts into proper policy reflection:

Ubers has always been more reactive and conservative than other Smogon tiers, only banning aspects that heavily undermine its competitive nature and tip its gameplay over the edge (because ultimately the point of tiering is to generate an enjoyable format for the players), and that is something that should not change and should remain etched onto the future tiering policy. However, conservative should never equal unrestricted when it comes to a Smogon tier, because ultimately being devoid of restrictions is just not feasible or desirable, since parts such as baton pass, unlimited sleep, evasion, etc. are fundamentally uncompetitive elements that undermine the playability of any tier and go against what competitive Pokemon strives for in it's essence. That leads us to our first point, the ubers policy should accurately set a divider or baseline that allows us to separate the aforementioned uncompetitive elements from other aspects that may just be "annoying" or "cheese" such as Swagger (which should definitely be allowed in my opinion), even if that "line" is different to that of other Smogon tiers (potential removal of specific clauses). Only after clearly and thoroughly discussing how these elements will be tiered, the focus can finally shift onto more controversial factors, such as Pokemon, abilities, items, etc.

For my second point, I'd like to agree with Melee Mewtwo when he states that "any ban in Ubers beyond the standard clauses is inherently exceptional, and therefore difficult to anticipate". I think more importantly than trying to define what is banworthy as "broken", Ubers should aim to set down a general foundation upon which it can make decisions based off of, exploring in its policy literature what should not be grounds for a suspect test rather than forcing everything under the same umbrella of "brokenness". That way you're allowing the playerbase and council alike to have some wiggle room within the confines of the policy when it comes to making judgements based off of the state of the current metagame in question, making the tiering policy more effective in its purpose. Rather than having a "checklist", I believe an even more vague or subjective policy should be welcomed, allowing for more manoeuvrability and adaptation in regards to new developments that undoubtedly are bound to show up while still drawing up limits that keep the decisionmakers in check. This would mean having more solutions for these "difficult to anticipate" decisions, whilst also addressing some of the issues we currently have with our policy and its concepts as being too restricting.

Finally, for my final point, I'd like to elaborate more on the possibility of complex bans. I believe complex bans are an incredible opportunity for Ubers to move forward while still solidifying it's stance and identity as "the tier that strives towards playability with as few bans as possible, while still retaining competitiveness" (which is a goal I believe we should maintain). By exploring the possibility of complex bans, we're not only able to differentiate ourselves even further from other Smogon tiers, namely OverUsed, when it comes to tiering identities, but also able to fix issues that might undermine the playability of the tier or the competitive aspect while still restricting as little as possible in gameplay. Complex bans would allow us to address any future "exceptions" (as MM2 nicely put it) that contribute to an overly undesirable metagame while still retaining our multiple components, at the expense of purity/simplicity, which honestly seems like a positive tradeoff and probably the most optimal solution.

In the end, these are just some of my initial thoughts regarding the overview of the current policy. I hope people interact with and even challenge my opinions, as well as formulating their own posts so that we (the council) can have a more tangible idea of what it is that the community desires moving forward.
 
I'm going to start with some truths that I believe in as the current leader and as a user of the Ubers community.

- Ubers's tiering philosophy is a constant state of change, and likely will always be.
- What I say or we do in terms of policy and philosophy in 2019 could well be "wrong" in 2022. We should avoid absolutes.
- While we should learn from the past, we should not be held to it.
- We should be more receptive to outside views. By this I mean avoid "gatekeeping", and we should be giving everyone the ability to see where we come from in our responses instead.

It's difficult to put everything into words and posts because I'm standing on a massive pile of history, but I'll start with where my views come from, then my personal views on Ubers, and where I think the future for it lies.

I started Ubers back in 2013 after seeing some YouTube videos because it was the playable tier (calling Ubers a tier dates back many years) with the least amount of restrictions, allowed me to play with all the Pokemon in the game (my favorite legendaries!!), and still have competitive, skill based matches with the addition of some rules that seem more fundamental to competitive Pokemon than just a metagame (clauses). The other tiers didn't personally interest me - they changed so much that by the time I could consider myself able in one of those metagames, it would be completely different. I found that to be an annoying detriment for a game I was learning from the ground up (I played cartridge since RBY, but its nothing alike). Ubers was stable, the mons appealed to me, and I met a ton of people in the Ubers Showdown room that were fun to mess around with. I ended up sticking around.

The past is littered with threads that debated Ubers's tiering stance, but one thing is clear: It's been treated as a Smogon tier for many years. Today's movements aren't a case of forcing "modern views" on old models. Bans have been discussed behind the scenes and publicly by reputable users along the way and while they didn't necessarily happen it is far from a taboo topic suddenly coming to light, which is an impression I didn't actually get myself when I first joined. Our BW forums had suspects being held, with the leaders conversing with the community and showing that Ubers is still a competitive tier at heart. The XY era felt like a regression to me. Tiering discussions resulted in mutes, infractions, and moderator glares. I'm happy that we are past these days and able to admit to ourselves that Ubers is a tier worth taking seriously. The key point is that we do it properly and keep to an identity that sticks as an underlying premise, but is able to adapt to the future. There's no point in being blindsided by future game releases, or the fallout of Mega Rayquaza's ban will repeat itself - learn from the past or be doomed to repeat it. Our policy today should have some room to be interpreted, and not a hard line. I think there may be a weird mix of grey area and hard lines in the wrong areas.

To me, the identity of Ubers remains as the tier with the least amount of bans to be competitively enjoyed. It did it by accident in the past, but that stance was enjoyed and ended up sticking as shown by the bans of Mega Rayquaza, Baton Pass, and clause additions. I think that should be our underlying premise. What should be adaptable is our ability to address the future. As MM2 said, focusing on narrow points is simply a shot in the dark and hoping it catches something when it arrives. That might not even be the best plan of action, because the stuff that's been banned from Ubers as we go through more generations usually shatters the perceptions of what we knew before. Generation 8 might bring something thats too much in a way we didn't consider, and that means the hard part will be "future-proofing" any rewritten policy without leaving a lot of subjective grey area.

What the rewritten policy should include, however, is the idea of complex bans as a means to our end. I believe it should be used as a way to deal with potential metagame issues while reducing the amount we take away from the metagame. I'm going to quote chaos from the recent PR thread here because I believe it's a great thought process:

chaos said:
The goal of the tiering system is: for every Pokemon (within reason), ensure there exists a fun & competitive format to use it in. Being rigid & purist about Ubers has the potential of violating the fun part, and there is no point to having a format that nobody wants to play. But trying to achieve this with Pokemon bans like OU violates the "for every Pokemon" part, as Ubers is the "format of last resort" (not incl. AG, which we make zero promises about being fun OR competitive). Plus, since every Pokemon in Ubers is overcentralizing by definition (or it would be in OU), trying to balance it would result it in becoming exactly OU.

The solution I came up with is: be more creative with clauses. I know everyone hates complex bans, but since Ubers has to work under the overcentralizing & last resort constraints, something has to give. Then, the Ubers philosophy would be: Do your best to make a fun, competitive format with all the Pokemon, at the expense of simplicity/purity.
Let's make a current example: let's say we suspect test Ultranecrozium Z on Necrozma-DM instead of Ultranecrozium Z entirely. In the event that it's banned, Ultra Necrozma is still playable in the metagame (Necrozma-DW). That means we kept a Pokemon (well, forme) in the tier at the expense of purity. I think this is definitely something we can employ that further differentiates us as a tier. The policy should naturally include the limits of such an idea - banning Precipice Blades to "balance" Primal Groudon, banning Geomancy to "balance" Xerneas, and banning Hypnosis on Mega Gengar are all very different ballgames.

For Generation 8, we will be unbanning Mega Rayquaza and tiering Ubers with the standard clauses and going from there. That means that today's discussions are important, and the policy rewrite makes sense to be done now with a more "policy-like" view and structure. Using Mega Rayquaza as a "case study" isn't exactly going to work out.

These threads are shaping out to be more of an open council discussion most likely due to the depth we are diving into, but that's also fine and showcases the process transparency. Everyone is more than welcome to hop in with us where they see fit.
 
Short Bio About Me:

I started playing ubers back in 2011 on the PO simulator, before showdown existed, the generation I started in was BW Ubers. My activity was consistent until sometime in 2014, during the XY Ubers generation, since then my activity has been either highly inconsistent or simply nonexistent, but over the years I've played enough ORAS Ubers / SM Ubers to have a solid knowledge of current generations. The Main draw of playing ubers for me were the the ability to use legendaries.

Ubers Tiering:

So yeah, I've avoided participating in these discussions about ubers for a long time, but it's long overdue. And honestly, I originally had a much longer post planned but Nayrz & Dream covered almost everything so I see no point in repeating the same thing.

First of all, I believe the main appeal / reason to play ubers is because of the lack of restrictions [other than the standard clauses like sleep, freeze, etc of course] and the ability to use the cover legendaries / other pokemon not allowed in OU, so the high power level is the main reason to play ubers in my opinion.

Unfortunately, I think Ubers is in (and has been in for some time now) a difficult / unique position of being a tier where traditionally it was simply defined as “OU’s banlist”, but even so it was still a relatively balanced tier where you could still play competitively without any overbearing elements in the metagame. Obviously this all changed starting in Generation 6 with the introduction of new threats such as Geomancy Xerneas, Primal Groudon, Shadow Tag Mega-Gengar, and later Mega-Rayquaza.

I think that Ubers, for now at least, should adopt some sort of “extremely conservative competitive playability” philosophy, meaning that no pokemon is banned unless is breaks the competitiveness of the itself, with something like Mega-Rayquaza being the baseline. And even then, you should attempt to maintain the tier’s identity / purpose as being a tier where players can play with the “least amount of restrictions”, and that’s where complex bans would have to come into play.

In an Ideal environment, no pokemon is banned and the tier still has a “reasonable amount” of viable competitive playability, but as more and more powerful threats are being introduced with each new generation it’s impossible to have any control over that.
With that being said, I don’t think there this is a permanent solution, nor do I think there will ever be one. It’s simply impossible to maintain a tier where you *ideally* want no restrictions on Pokemon so everybody can play Ubers similar to how to it was in the DPP / BW days, yet retain competitiveness, as both ideas directly contradict each other.

Lastly, and maybe this is the most controversial part, but I think ABR’s proposal of Ubers going back to being OU’s banlist with zero pokemon banned isn’t necessarily a bad idea, although I think there is so much pushback against that idea among the ubers community that it will never happen. My thinking is that if you want to retain the “purity” of the ubers tier, where you can use any pokemon, that method is the only way to achieve that goal. When you add in “competitiveness” as a requirement, you simply can’t get around banning stuff. Ubers is never going to be less restrictive than AG, nor is it going to be more “balanced” than OU, so were always going to be that middle tier that’s above OU that is forced to have highly subjective requirements for banning things and as Nayrz pointed out in his above post, we will also have shifting tiering philosophies due to an imperfect approach of trying to balance an tier with multiple over-centralizing and high powered pokemon.

To sum it up, I think that uber’s tiering philosophy should be something along the lines of “ban something only if you absolutely have to in order to retain the competitive play-ability of the tier, and even then, you may want to resort to complex bans in order to keep In line with your tier’s appeal as the one with the least amount of restrictions on pokemon”. I think that both the conservative “competitive playability” approach is fine and I’m also fine with ABR’s proposal of no pokemon bans because I believe that would permanently keep uber’s tier identity intact, and we would also have appeal as a tier where you have the ability to use any pokemon with competitive clauses attached, something that you can not currently do in AG, although I think this 2nd idea will be viewed negatively, the 1st position of competitive playability should be fine, although my idea of “competitive playability” is probably more conservative than most people as I would not ban any pokemon unless it’s extraordinarily uncompetitive and absolutely has to be done for the sake of competitiveness, but even so this requirement is subjective at the end of the day because everybody has different ideas on how "competitive" a tier should or can be.
 
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SparksBlade

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Most of the expected general stuff has been said, so I'll chime in(with my 2 cents haha!)

I agree with Blim that Ubers can't have a permanent tiering policy without ambiguity, leaving room for slight changes as needed in the future. Those changes should, imo, strive to achieve the best compromise between "everything is allowed" and "playing this is fun" (fun ties in with competitive quite well I believe). Thus, trying to put restrictions on Ubers to adhere to a tiering idea that OU and lower follow is more selfish than beneficial. Uniform policies don't make a tier fun, its playability makes it fun, so if a long-standing idea("Ubers is OU's banlist, and is not, and was never supposed to be anything else"?) has to be changed to maintain the fun/playability/competitiveness of a tier, then the former should be left to the past.

As for more immediate steps, tho I'm not sure if Nayrz asked for/allowed them, I think the closest idea is testing Mega Rayquaza+Species Clause, and unlike the Goth suspect, this shouldn't be rushed at all. It'll take time to establish whether the metagame is developing for the better of worse, and there's no shortcut to finding that answer, so I suggest the tiering council to come up with an elaborate long-term plan if they ever choose to go this route.
 

tcr

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Instead of regaling us with long posts of your history with Ubers, why you got into Ubers, and more drawling rhetoric, it seems fairly simple that what could be enacted is ranked choice suspect testing. How this would work would be similar to what LC was enacted under blarajan's old system. You would have a set 'cycle' of metagame discussion and would garner as much community feedback as possible. Upon a certain timed date, you hold a suspect test. Everyone who gains the requirements to participate in the suspect test then votes on the 3-5 things, in ranked order, of what they should do that round, with such popular choices potentially being: "Shadow Tag, Geomancy, Ultra Necroz, Nothing, Resuspect Species Clause" This seems short and succinct enough for Ubers policy to continue to adapt to a changing metagame and playerbase, keep up with the power creep that pervades the newer generations, and provide consistent community feedback. Upon reaching a consensus on what things should be looked at, if any, either a vote is enacted for the highest x amount of choices (personally I'd do 3 but hey go wild and do 5 or 1) or the tiering council votes on the issues the community perceives to be relevant enough to warrant a look at.

The pros of this sort of philosophy is that you don't have to have four threads over the course of years to ask about Ubers policy and can just simply cut to the point and actually garner feedback in an empirical way, instead of creating a thread and judging the answers of the Ubers mains. You would also be able to see whether or not the community has a consensus on certain issues, such as Necro or Shadow Tag or Geomancy or something else. With ranked choice voting being enacted you would even be able to tell to what degree people perceive the issues as. The cons I can see are that everyone picks 'nothing' (in which case consider the suspect a success I guess? you did it! you created the tier well) or there are so many diverse choices that choosing just one suspect is nigh impossible. I think in the latter case that's where the tiering council would step in and attempt to consolidate the findings into one succinct agreement on what should be looked at / vote on certain things.

I don't think making some form of dynamic tiering philosophy is a good idea, as the public opinion is largely that Ubers has lost it's identity and remaining in that purgatory state of free associating tiering probably isn't the best idea to change public opinion. People tend to enjoy a concrete plan of action in regards to what they consider too powerful for the tier. I think that if one wants to keep the identity of Ubers (which from the posts above seems to be a tier in which 'any' Pokemon is viable (and let's be real here, you guys don't give two shits about a tier with Dunsparce or Zoroark you just want to be able to use all legendaries, understandable), then you guys should start looking into more dynamic and inventful ways of handling problems as they arise. Whether that means suspecting Ultranecrozium Z, Red Orb, Geomancy, instituting a 'Mega Rayquaza clause' (in which it cannot hold an item or something) or rebuking Species Clause then those options should be pursued. It is clear that Ubers is not meant to be tiered and balanced in a similar nature to OU or other usage tiers, so apprehensions about complex clauses should not worry oneself. After all, the tier is played for fun rather than for competitive value, and if by preserving the fun means instituting more complex bans than one should be able to cross that bridge when they get to it.
 
There is genuinely no such thing as "balance" in pokemon. Trying to balance tier is one of the biggest trap that smogon has fallen in. It's obvious that it's impossible to reach an ideal tier through banning elements. So, what is the purpose of banning?

I think that tiering is just applying a community's aesthetic preferences. I want to play in a metagame with legendaries and badass pokemons. That's pretty much the only criteria that I'd be using to decide my votes for suspect tests.
 
So from what I'm understanding here there is a desire for hard lines for Ubers to follow in its policy. The question is, which ones are achievable while maintaining a spot as a competitive metagame? Or perhaps the desire is to sacrifice competitiveness for the purpose of purity? I think we can safely say that diversity/centralization is an area Ubers would never ban for alone, and I say "alone" because something that tends to be too much for the tier ends up stifling diversity or completely dominating the metagame as a side effect. I think it's safe to say we wouldn't ever use it as a main argument, so that's one hard line built in.

The idea of "No Pokemon bans" is interesting, but this directly contradicts the competitive nature we currently aim for. The idea of no Pokemon bans was the case prior to Mega Rayquaza's release. Even the addition of complex bans in our tiering methods doesn't have an ideal way to properly handle Mega Rayquaza, because the only levers to pull on it are super weird ones - altering the level it has, forcing it to hold an item, reducing the EVs it can use... these ideas cant even be tested properly, either. How can we test if making it hold an Ultra Ball is the best way to keep it in the tier? Realistic ideas like banning Dragon Ascent or disabling its "Mega" button (how its currently done) still bans the mon, and if we regard a forme as a Pokemon in the terms of "No Pokemon bans", then it simply can't work out. It would be saying "Ubers is not a competitive metagame" at the same time. Blim's post goes over this, and the council agrees with it.

To address tcr's post, the idea of suspect testing with a different methodology is interesting but a little offtopic. The thing with blarajan's system is that it assumes there are regular tests to be had. Ideally, Ubers wouldn't be testing many things in the first place. If there are so many elements that break the old line of thought, then rather than chop off the top that's causing that feeling (OU's style of tiering) we would likely just raise the bar of what we consider acceptable but still stick with typical Smogon tier clauses. If a Smogon clause can be removed without damaging the competitive nature or "fun aspects" Ubers aims for (aka helps to even things out), then that's also valid. If a few more Mega Rayquaza's turned up and they somehow balanced each other out, then the floor is raised and there's nothing to really test. At the moment, Mega Rayquaza is just an extreme outlier compared to everything else, and that's more or less why it's currently banned.

What we do acknowledge is that Mega Rayquaza has yet to see Gen 7 play. The current policy is even based on Mega Rayquaza's Gen 6 attributes and because it was never tested in today's metagames we can't say for sure if it still applies. Any educated guess can tell its still a nuts mon but without proper testing its difficult to say for sure. The idea of finishing this policy and kicking off its applications by releasing Mega Rayquaza to USM so it has a chance in Gen 7 as well as 8 is a possibility, but currently a small one.

At the moment yes I do understand the feeling that this is another song and dance but it's currently a necessity. Even if absolutely nothing changes in the policy in terms of "how we look at things", its still gonna need to be rewritten and explained differently. Its comparing many aspects to Mega Rayquaza (in Generation 6, too), a Pokemon that will see Ubers play again with the new generation. So with that in mind, it makes sense to have this discussion now and find out where we stand at the same time because we might as well if we are redoing the wording of the policy.
 
I think there should be a public suspect test to reintroduce Mega Rayquaza back into the tier and possible do different votes to see what people want for the Ubers metagame.
 
I see Ubers as a banlist around which a metagame and competitive community grew from, and don't understand how a banlist and metagame are mutually exclusive, or that it should players from removing overcentralizing elements to improve the health of the metagame. Mega Rayquaza's removal was based on its power relative to the ORAS meta with which nothing could compete. I don't really think introducing it back into a metagame where it totally lacks competitors or reliable checks is a good idea, as the alternative is a metagame wherein one third of almost every team is Rayquaza/PDon, which i guarantee will become stale after a month.

Retesting Mega Ray without a gigantic shakeup in Gen 8 ubers sounds like a bad idea that will just make the majority of players uninterested in playing.
 
I feel like retesting Mega Rayquaza needs to be considered very carefully after we know what Generation 8 brings to the table with regards to what precisely its potential counterplay is or isn't going to be. Ubers is, in my opinion, a banlist first and a tier second and that banning stuff should be extremely limited, but Mega Rayquaza is an exception to every possible rule, written or unwritten, ever.

And to highlight precisely how bullshit Mega Rayquaza is to anyone who may be unaware...

Primal Groudon is centralizing in a good sense; it compresses many roles into one big beefy red lizard without being far and away the best at any one of those roles and it has a plethora of good sets but I'd argue it's seldom the absolute best at any of them (though I'm absolutely in love with Mixed RP). Mega Rayquaza's power levels are a very clear cut above Ubers as we know it. Defensive counterplay to Mega Rayquaza simply doesn't exist, period.

Its Speed tier pushes it ahead of every single one of the unboosted base 90s, base 95s, base 99s, and base 100s without running a Jolly nature, allowing it to maximize its apeshit damage output while still outspeeding the most crowded Speed tiers in Ubers.

Its 105/100/100 bulk and incredible ability turn its normally-mediocre defensive typing into among the best defensive typings out there with only three weaknesses, only one of which is particularly spammable in Ubers right now. That bulk and defensive utility gives it the easiest time setting up the one and probably only Swords Dance it'll ever need to get off to absolutely decimate a team that's lacking a Marshadow. Marshadow against a Dragon Dance variant just folds unless it's Scarf, and Scarf has its own fair share of issues holding it back right now.

Mega Rayquaza's best defensive answer in Skarmory gets 2HKOed with ease by Dragon Ascent after a Swords Dance boost, and God forbid the thing decides to run V-Create or to use that base 180 Special Attack to run lord knows what else to clap it. All Unaware walls are 2HKOed by it so they can't even wall it. Arceus-Fairy gets effortlessly KOed by Dragon Ascent into Extreme Speed so it can't even reliably come in on it unless it's after you sac something to it or if you predict the Swords Dance and switch in on it the turn it boosts, which puts you at the risk of eating Dragon Ascent in the first place and just dying. Offensive teams can frequently struggle to OHKO Mega Rayquaza because it has such good bulk, and a +2 Extreme Speed is OHKOing anything that has a shot at outpacing it pretty easily after Stealth Rock damage so it ignores any of the few shortcomings that may be presented by its choice to run an Adamant nature over a Jolly nature. You can't wall it because it hits hard as fuck, and you can't revenge kill it because it has the best priority move in the game and hits hard as fuck with said move.

Even the titans like the Primals, Dusk Mane/Ultra Necrozma, Mega Gengar, and the collective Arceus have some form of opportunity cost when deciding what set to run. Primal Groudon has such a vast movepool that it can pick and choose what it wants to beat but there will always be something that one of its sets cannot beat. Dusk Mane boasts an incredibly useful Steel typing, amazing bulk, good setup moves, and what is probably the single most powerful attack you will ever not survive in its +2 Searing Sunraze Smash, but it still faces a losing matchup against Primal Groudon and its Speed stat still leaves so much to be desired. Primal Kyogre can run mixed sets but it has to compromise its signature Special Attacking prowess or its impressive bulk if it wants to. Mega Gengar has the incredible ability to pick and choose its winning matchups but it still has an opportunity cost presented by running a Mega Stone (you could use it on Salamence, Lucario, or Diancie, all of whom offer something Mega Gengar does not) and still has realistic "counterplay" because of how many mindgames it forces. And while Arceus as a whole has literal dozens of potential sets in a vacuum the majority of its sets are considered unviable in the Ubers tier and it only has a select few "best" typings and sets, all of which have losing matchups against common stuff in the Ubers tier. Mega Rayquaza doesn't because the reward for using it is just that damn high.

I'd argue Ubers isn't in a particularly terrible spot right now. It's the most centralized meta, but it's literally always been the most centralized meta, and it has been a pretty polarizing meta ever since Kyogre was able to don a Choice Scarf or Choice Specs if not since Groudon and Kyogre were first introduced. The tier that lets kids use the stuff of legends will always have some appeal to it. But even in this tier, the best stuff is still unable to beat some stuff unless it runs a specific move that may forfeit its usefulness in other matchups. 4MSS is a thing even for the mighty Primal Groudon. When the question of 4MSS for a particular mon is not so much "what should I run on this that my other teammates would benefit the most from?" but "which guaranteed 2HKO should I turn into a guaranteed OHKO so I can Dragon Ascent everything in sight to death?" then that's where the line should be drawn. You could argue the damn thing doesn't even experience 4MSS because SD+Dragon Ascent+Extreme Speed gives it so much brute force that it doesn't give a shit about weaknesses and resistances. That fourth move is dedicated not to what it wants to beat but what it wants to downright obliterate. There is nothing since Gen 1 Mewtwo that can hold a candle to that level of power. Dusk Mane/Ultra Necrozma is a powerful mindgame in and of itself, but at least it is a mindgame because no matter what Dusk Mane or Ultra Necrozma will always have a level of opportunity cost because you decided to run one over the other. Mega Rayquaza isn't that, and until it gets defensive counterplay that would outright force it to not run a boosting set that has use against something else in this centralizing meta it will most certainly never be that.

TL;DR: Don't even consider unbanning Mega Rayquaza until we have some damn good counterplay to it.
 
So far in this thread there is a lot of individual expression but not much discussion. This isn’t a bad thing as your input helps us to isolate key points to focus on throughout the policy revamp. Immediately, the goal of this thread is to have a new overview since there are clearly flaws that need to be addressed with the current one. To reach that goal I’m going respond to each of you (briefly for now, sorry) since it is important to us that community participation is reflected in the new policy.

luniitic: This is difficult to respond to because I feel your description of ubers (or really any pokemon metagame) is more fantastical than realistic. It may just be a miscommunication surrounding the use of terms like viability and metagame but your meganium example leads me to assume that isn’t the case. Anyways, I feel that the application of standard clauses throughout most of Ubers history suggests the idea that Ubers actually is meant to be taken seriously and stand on the same competitive ground as other prominent metagames. (keep in mind there’s only really much documentation starting in dpp and my personal experience only dates to bw) You also bring up diversity which is in itself an interesting topic. If we look to Ubers past, we can find metagames that have a lot of diversity (bw2) as well as metagames with very little diversity (oras). In each case, tiering has not played an active role to push a metagame towards one end or another. Therefore, I feel it’s safe to conclude that Ubers policy shouldn’t prioritize diversity or the lack of.

All that said, I’m speaking purely from a policy standpoint. You are free to enjoy Ubers in whatever way you’d like.

Lotus: « For me Ubers's real identity comes from it allowing players to experience the highest and the most inclusive tier that filters out uncompetitive aspects of competitive Pokemon and troubleshoots the potential unhealthiness of the metagame time to time in order to remove problematic components. »
I actually really like this sentence a lot because I think it’s a fair summary of Ubers. I think there’s a common ideal that Ubers is as minimalist as possible without being a gimmick or a metagame that fails to test the commonly accepted skills of Pokemon.


wrath of alakazam: The points you bring up makes me really want to share this thread.

https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/arceus-the-uber-metagame.84175/
It’s interesting because there’s discussion revolving around a lot of the common questions and talking points concerning us now. Ubers in relation to OU, Ubers as a banlist vs Ubers as a metagame/tier, can we ban pokemon from ubers, balance, competitiveness, playability, etc. It’s all there and even better it all dates from long before Mega Rayquaza was even a thing to consider banning. (there are some almost prophetic posts from bojangles in that thread on the subject) There’s one post from the thread that I think is especially worth reading that I will quote directly below.

Um.........why are people even attempting to say that ubers (IN PRACTICE) is "just a ban list."

We seriously need to get over this. Ubers is not a banlist; it is a metagame that has a significant enough following to worthy of expansive analysis and written work.

Ubers may have started off as a ban list, but it evolved into a metagame.

Let's also not forget that WE BAN THINGS IN UBERS ALREADY...NOTE CLAUSES.

Don't cry to some (irrelevant now) reference about "ban list" when we ban things in an effort to make it playable as it is.

This argument shouldn't even be about whether not we should ban something, because we already do and have for 7+ years now.

It's about whether or not Arceus makes ubers unplayable, so let's keep solely at that.
cam: One thing in your post I want to talk quickly about is: « From my point of view if nothing were to happen then the metagame would stay very similar for too long and feel stale which would drive me away from playing the tier as much, if at all. »

Firstly, it’s absolutely okay that you feel this way and I have no intention of changing your mind. Secondly, from a policy standpoint I think each Ubers metagame is going to stay similar for the majority of its active tiering lifetime. This has just historically been the case and, although evolution is possible and what we are currently bringing under scrutiny, I doubt the future will be different. Actively tiering to avoid a stale metagame runs contrary to the commonly expressed desire for minimalism.

scuba diver: Right now we are focusing on rewriting the tiering policy before we tackle any more questions surrounding potential suspect tests.

TheSunIsADedlyLazr: You bring up your points regarding Ubers as divorced from OU and I can’t help but think about how PO, which had(has?) a very different OU, had(has?) the exact same Ubers. I feel like the seperation between Ubers and OU is so distant now (and perhaps has been for a long time) that Ubers is Ubers even if there isn’t an or the OU around for Ubers to serve as a banlist for. I realize this isn’t quite what you were talking about but I feel distance between Ubers and OU in terms of pokemon viability brings up the distance and lack of interaction between the two metagames themselves. (as opposed to something like OU and UU where the usage in one directly impacts the pool of Pokemon for the other) I also agree that Ubers policy is probably best served as being made independent from OU as well.

dream:
1) I know we chatted a bit on discord about where to draw the line between what’s acceptable and isn’t for (potentially) uncompetitive elements but I’ve forgot some of those details. At the risk of repeating the exact discussion, I feel that following other singles metagames as a baseline is good. My reasoning is that uncompetitive elements are mostly related to the mechanics of that generation and the element itself as opposed to interactions within a given metagame. Therefore I feel whats true for OU, UU, etc should be mostly true for Ubers as well. However, I do understand that metagame contect can matter which is why I suggest that what other singles metas do should serve as a baseline as opposed to a hard rule. I just think it’s impossible to predict future metagames so we are forced to adopt a consistent baseline and then work from there on a case by case basis.

2) I obviously agree but as Nayrz mentioned there is a need for hard lines so that our policy can serve as a foundation for furture tiering as opposed to a carte blanche for us to do whatever it is « we » like. As you mentioned, determining what we won’t ban for is certainly easier than what would be bannable. Reasons like overcentralization or to promote diversity are some pretty obvious reasons that we won’t consider for bans, assuming we stick to tradition. I think, though, that only looking through this lens will still leave us with a lack of concrete guidelines for tiering.

Blim:
I think that Ubers, for now at least, should adopt some sort of “extremely conservative competitive playability” philosophy, meaning that no pokemon is banned unless is breaks the competitiveness of the itself, with something like Mega-Rayquaza being the baseline. And even then, you should attempt to maintain the tier’s identity / purpose as being a tier where players can play with the “least amount of restrictions”, and that’s where complex bans would have to come into play.
This is very close to my personal feelings regarding what Ubers should adopt as its overall identity / tiering guideline. There are a few things I’d like to nitpick, though. I don’t think Mega Rayquaza should serve as a baseline because I don’t think we can say with certainty that MRay will always be problem. Even if it is, I think a single example is insufficient to accurately measure future problems. A Pokemon may not need to be as ridiculous as MRay to break Ubers. However, I think looking at precedents set by prior Ubers metagames can help us make judgments regarding future ones. Incidentally, Mega Rayquaza in ORAS Ubers is a good example. Another nitpick is that I don’t think this conservatism should apply only to Pokemon bans. I think any ban beyond the standard clauses should be avoided as an ideal.

Which brings me to your second proposition, strictly adhering to the ideal of no Pokemon bans. While doing this would offer us the comfort of clear, concrete rules to respect when tiering, I think it also runs contrary to the other ideal that with competitive merit. I’m using competitive merit here to avoid the smogon defined term (un)competitive. It’s difficult to define what I mean while still reflecting what everybody else means. However, here I’m using the term to describe a metagame that isn’t gimmicky, broken, or a crapshoot. More concretely, a metagame that tests and rewards what is considered the fundamental skills of Pokemon to a degree comparable to most other accepted metagames designed to measure these skills. Strictly forbidding Pokemon bans will inevitably lead to a scenario like Mega Rayquaza in ORAS where we simply can’t fulfill both ideals. To me, the ideal of a skill-based metagame should take precedence over the ideal of no bans beyond the standard clauses. The former we should strictly respect all while trying to stat as close as we can to the later.

SparksBlade: I feel like I’ve already talked about what you bring up in your first paragraph so I don’t have much more to say about it here other than, personally, I agree with what you are saying and I think that it echoes what many others have expressed. This should be reflected in the new overview, I believe.

As for your second paragraph, right now the priority is to finish revamping our policy before moving onto to suspects. Having a strong, clear, community approved policy now is neccessary for any future suspects to take place in a focused manner that will set proper precedents for gen 8.

tcr: These are obviously interesting ideas but as Nayrz mentioned we need to have our policy straight before, not after any future suspects for USM. Your suggestions will definitely will be brought up once we reach the suspect stuff stage.

As for your remarks regarding the policy itself. There’s a lot here so I’m not sure if I’ll do it all justice within this post. I agree that a dynamic tiering policy can present problems as mentioned above but I think it’s simply necessary, to a degree, for the reasons mentioned above. Lots of balancing to do. I don’t think, though, that we should structure our policy with the goal of changing public opinion. Obviously, I don’t mean we should ignore public opinion but there are a lot of factors at play behind public opinion and I think it would be misleading as an absolute goal. Also, I don’t think Ubers really is played for fun rather than competitive value. Obviously, reasons for playing Ubers are subjective and I’m going to be biased towards my own reasons. That said, I think the importance of competitive value is reinforced not only by those who posted above you, but also Ubers history with tournaments, analyses, and articles, inclusion of clauses, and desire for active tiering. (read all the bans of proposals of bans for elements that undermine Ubers competitive value) Also fun is subjective. (sparksblade equates it with competitive value in the post just above yours, and he’s obviously not the only person who feels this way) Again, I’m probably going to fail to do your post justice in this one.

Orch: I’m sorry but I have to ignore this post. I don’t even disagree with it, « balance » is just too much of a trigger word for me that I’m going to stray way too far off-topic talking about it. Also, the purpose of banning is too open-ended for me to respond to. Fortunately, this policy revamp is going to answer that question. (for ubers at least)

As for your second post, the goal of suspect testing is to ask if the proposed ban / unban is in-line with current tiering policy. If you feel that our current policy is fine as it is then that’s fair but otherwise it’s prefered for us to settle our policy first as opposed to making it up as we go.

momtaz: We are currently reviewing policy before considering suspect tests. (we aren’t ignoring your request, though, we just aren’t there yet.)

boo836: Overcentralization has been a trademark of Ubers since forever. For this reason, I think it’s safe to say that the revamped policy won’t allow for bans based on that reason.

Dreadfury: Right now the focus is on rewriting policy as opposed to suspect tests. That said, if we do decide to retest MRay, it will be more for thorough application of our policy than for any other reason. There’s something to be said about not even testing a Pokemon that was banned a generation ago.

Nayrz: I agree with basically everything in your two posts.
To me, the identity of Ubers remains as the tier with the least amount of bans to be competitively enjoyed.
This statement has been echo’d a lot with slightly different wording but I believe the same meaning. In one way or another, this should definitely appear in the new overview, imo.

On complex bans, I feel they should be considered when applying a simple ban to the problem would introduce unrelated collateral. Complex bans still have inherent problems, as you highlighted in your second post, that we need to be conscious of.

As for the conflict between the desire for hard lines and the need for flexibility to address potential future problems, I think focusing on the state of the metagame can help with this. What I mean is structuring our policy to describe what an Ubers metagame should be like rather than what a ban should be justified by. Doing so this way allows us to set hard lines (ubers must be competitive, ubers may be overcentralized, etc.) about the metagame that we check if future elements compromise while still giving us the flexibility to ban problems regardless of how they disrupt the metagame.

With that said, here’s where I think we are at so far:

- Ubers must be competitive. Standard singles clauses should apply.
- Ubers must be competively enjoyable/playable/skillful/???. There should be metagame depth and player interaction to the degree that the better players beat lesser players. (as much as you can hope to expect out of Pokemon at least. also if we keep the word playable we should define it differently than what hack provides, imo.)
- Ubers should ban nothing beyond what violates the aspects above. (or some other way to quantify as little as possible)

The following I believe to be reasonable lines but may disputable.

- Ubers does not care about overcentralization or diversity.
- Ubers may employ complex bans in order to remain as true to policy ideals as possible.
- Ubers shouldn’t « grandfather » bans from prior generations beyond the standard singles clauses.


There may be points that I’m forgetting right now, most of these were brought up in this thread or on discord. Also, I think defining lines for things like complex bans as well as defining terms (the competitively enjoyable one for example) should be addressed in later threads (ie later in policy since this is just the overview. I think even without establishing those things now, we all more or less understand eachother regarding them.
 

Myzozoa

to find better ways to say what nobody says
is a Top Tiering Contributor Alumnusis a Past WCoP Champion
Melee Mewtwo thank you for your history of ubers tiering post, it is a good resource for learning about how we have arrived at this thread. I am wondering, however, if there isn't a parallel history of policy regarding ubers as an official metagame. Like when did it stop being included in any official tournaments and what sort of discussion was there around that? Sorry if you're the wrong person to @ maybe someone else can help out. I'm just curious because I feel like there is this community that wants to play a close to ubers metagame and is also interested in having some bans. I would also be interested to see if the minimization of ubers in official tournaments coincided with a perception that more recent uber metagames are unbalanced and what those discussions were like.
 
Myzozoa I was banned during most of the occasions where Ubers was cut from SPL and other tournaments. Apparently, most of the discussion (when there was some) happened in IS so I can only rely on what others have told me. As far as I know, the first time Ubers was cut from SPL it was because the choice came down to Ubers, LC, or RBY OU. From what I hear part of why ORAS Ubers wasn’t chosen was because the Ubers playerbase at the time was unhappy with the meta. ORAS Ubers was back in SPL the following year, though, and there was apparently no discussion behind that decision. (at least the person I had asked couldn’t find it) The second time Ubers got cut from SPL was in the year following the mazar cheating scandal. I don’t know if there was any discussion surrounding that. After that, Ubers didn’t get added back into SPL later but instead got cut from core meta status entirely. There was no discussion or even a formal announcement for that decision, just edits to existing threads on tournament schedules and the list of core metagames. This happened, though, right after another cheating scandal by STAG in Ubers Open so I imagine that the constant cheating (this is like 4th 5th time or something?) coming from the STAG clan in Ubers tournaments was the primary reason for this decision. There’s also this thread discussing Ubers as a core meta although the decision then was to keep Ubers. (the cheating and subsequent cut happened afterwards)
https://www.smogon.com/forums/threads/potential-changes-to-grand-slam-snake.3634601/
Again this is all second-hand information I got on things that happened before I was unbanned. It’s really better for somebody else to answer you.
 
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I mainly play Ubers and I have never thought about it being an OU banlist. It's always been a playable tier for me, and I like it that way. But I wish that Ubers was a little less serious. IMO, Ubers should be a tier where it's ok to play unorthodox strategies. as long as their seriously trying to win with the team and not making it a joke team. Ubers is too optimized to be like that right now. Everyone's using the optimal strategy, which is a team made up almost entirely Ubers and some OU. That's not a bad thing, but I wish teambuilding was less restrictive. I like setup sweepers, but if they're slower than Marshadow, it's probably better to use something that isn't. Or anything weak to primal groudon is also usually unviable. Same with anything that gives Xerneas a switch in. There's so many teambuliding mines to navigate through, it can get tiresome to play Ubers.
 
As for your second post, the goal of suspect testing is to ask if the proposed ban / unban is in-line with current tiering policy. If you feel that our current policy is fine as it is then that’s fair but otherwise it’s prefered for us to settle our policy first as opposed to making it up as we go.
This is what confuses me the most. As you say, we already have a policy for testing stuff. The question whether if we should test or not is already settled with the existence of our clauses. Why do people feel like that ubers is making it up as we go? We aren't! We already have the system of suspect testing. The only problem is that people within the ubers leadership and people who aren't part of ubers community consistently sabotage and delay this process.
1) Shadow tag suspect test had a honest result from the community of no-ban, yet the ubers leadership tried to push the fraudulent results through in order to satisfy the tournament players' perception of ubers. You know this story well.
2) There were requests for suspect testing Geomancy, Primal Groudon, and so on. These requests were ignored.
3) The tour players cried on IS and successfully got smogon leadership get mega rayquaza insta-banned without any testing and input from the ubers community.
It seems like the only problem is the leadership consistently capitulating to "prestigious smogon tournaments" participants' whims.
 
This is what confuses me the most. As you say, we already have a policy for testing stuff. The question whether if we should test or not is already settled with the existence of our clauses. Why do people feel like that ubers is making it up as we go? We aren't! We already have the system of suspect testing. The only problem is that people within the ubers leadership and people who aren't part of ubers community consistently sabotage and delay this process.
This post is just full of false information. The current policy is flawed, and until that is solved, we don't "have a policy for testing stuff". That is the entire point of this thread. Clauses also have no bearing on the matter of a test beginning and I don't even want to try and process the substances required to allow someone to come up with that conclusion.

As for "sabotaging and delaying the process", what? Is trying to get something done right rather than have to revisit it in the near future afterwards because it was rooted in flaws regarded as sabotage now? If you are going to make claims against my leadership I'd hope you have evidence to back them. If this is just digging up issues with the old leadership or tiering actions for the sake of it, save it.
1) Shadow tag suspect test had a honest result from the community of no-ban, yet the ubers leadership tried to push the fraudulent results through in order to satisfy the tournament players' perception of ubers. You know this story well.
This is slightly twisted to fit your own narrative. Yes it was poorly handled. The old leadership tried to ensure a legitimate result with flawed strategies such as discounting votes if the evidence given for that vote wasn't convincing. It was an attempt to remove uninformed voters that wasn't given enough oversight by higher powers (and themselves) until the vote concluded. If bending to the "will of the tournament player" was the goal behind whatever Ubers does then this place would be very different... have you forgotten edgar's thread about Salamence and co years ago? The past can be stretched to fit many narratives. What matters is the here and now.
2) There were requests for suspect testing Geomancy, Primal Groudon, and so on. These requests were ignored.
There were no grounds for these to happen, especially in the stricter old mentality view. There haven't been any reasonable arguments to make this happen today, but never say never.
3) The tour players cried on IS and successfully got smogon leadership get mega rayquaza insta-banned without any testing and input from the ubers community.
This was pulled straight from your ass. You don't even have access to that area so I have no clue where this came from but I can tell you that no such thing happened. The "lack of input and testing" is another matter, one I've already went over in this thread.

I'm gonna ask that you put more thought into these posts before continuing.
 
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