I completely understand this, and also in turn if this happened, other offensive threats would most likely be unbanned (Blaziken comes to mind) they aren't a cure all to the power creep, however, the metagame would certainly be more balanced. I am thinking of sort of a psuedo-ubers meta where we could ban things.
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What's wrong with the metagame?
- Thread starter MMII
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the classic example is the sand stall vs rain offense matchup. do you disagree that rain offense loses as long as the sand stall player doesn't choke (hey, how did you win? oh, i didn't have to do shit except not choke!)? before you point to OST9 finals, DU should have won easily, as pointed out by many people, but he fucked up. had he not fucked up, he would have an almost guaranteed win. this should not exist in a competitive environment, ever.
other examples of matchup syndrome:
rain offense vs sun offense
if the rain team has a dugtrio, it wins. if it doesn't, it loses.
sun offense vs rain stall
sun wins.
rain offense vs sand offense/balance
sand wins.
sun offense vs sand stall
if sun has goth and sand has hippo, sun wins. if sun has dug and sand has ttar, sun wins. if sun has goth and sand has ttar, sand wins. if sun has dug and sand has hippo, sand wins. if sun has both trappers, then it easily wins.
these aren't gross oversimplifications... these are observations from countless bw games.
and before you say to adapt... these adaptations turn instant wins into instant losses. in past gens/other tiers, making a change improves your odds against something, it does not turn it into an instant win. instant wins/losses should not exist in a competitive environment.
i have been playing a lot of games lately with weatherless teams and whenever i come across sand or another weatherless team it's amazing because there is no matchup bullshit involved... it is decided solely on skill. however, when rain and sun are added into the equation, it's all about the teams chosen, and that is the problem with the metagame (there's also landorus but he's a smaller issue).
other examples of matchup syndrome:
rain offense vs sun offense
if the rain team has a dugtrio, it wins. if it doesn't, it loses.
sun offense vs rain stall
sun wins.
rain offense vs sand offense/balance
sand wins.
sun offense vs sand stall
if sun has goth and sand has hippo, sun wins. if sun has dug and sand has ttar, sun wins. if sun has goth and sand has ttar, sand wins. if sun has dug and sand has hippo, sand wins. if sun has both trappers, then it easily wins.
these aren't gross oversimplifications... these are observations from countless bw games.
and before you say to adapt... these adaptations turn instant wins into instant losses. in past gens/other tiers, making a change improves your odds against something, it does not turn it into an instant win. instant wins/losses should not exist in a competitive environment.
i have been playing a lot of games lately with weatherless teams and whenever i come across sand or another weatherless team it's amazing because there is no matchup bullshit involved... it is decided solely on skill. however, when rain and sun are added into the equation, it's all about the teams chosen, and that is the problem with the metagame (there's also landorus but he's a smaller issue).
I dont have time to try to paraphrase what i am about to say to not include weather so....
The problem with the metagame is that we have embraced weather to the point where teambuilding has become just variants of strong sweepers + defensive grass/water types to keep us from getting beasted on by weather abuse teams. Every team needs something to take a boosted water attack.... It is just unreasonable to think that you will outplay your opponent enough to not get hit once by a boosted surf/waterfall/scald. These water type moves are so common and with the move scald you really have limited choices for defense. This is the reason why celebi has become a good pokemon and most teams have 2-3 choices for tanking water attacks.... Just a game of numbers. Team building has become very formulaic. I think even dppt has better options for creating more diverse team types.
The problem with the metagame is that we have embraced weather to the point where teambuilding has become just variants of strong sweepers + defensive grass/water types to keep us from getting beasted on by weather abuse teams. Every team needs something to take a boosted water attack.... It is just unreasonable to think that you will outplay your opponent enough to not get hit once by a boosted surf/waterfall/scald. These water type moves are so common and with the move scald you really have limited choices for defense. This is the reason why celebi has become a good pokemon and most teams have 2-3 choices for tanking water attacks.... Just a game of numbers. Team building has become very formulaic. I think even dppt has better options for creating more diverse team types.
Since I'm a bit of an HO specialist I'll just point out that this is 100% wrong. Like just wrong. Deo-D was a big part of HO, but it certainly didn't define the playstyle in the manner you're hyping it. I've laddered to top 20 numerous times with non Deo-D HO teams (even though it's PS! so take that lightly)
And no, Bad matchups are a VERY relevant problem in this metagame. Sometimes a game is just over at team preview. Certain teams completely overwhelm others at the ladder (especially post 1900+), unless they fuck up. TAKE NOTE. Unless 'they' fuck up. Yep that right. No matter how extraordinarily you might play if he does trusts his autopilot play and doesn't do something stupid you cannot win. Examples have already been given. That's why certain playstyles have gained major popularity (sand offense and likes) because their offensive spectrum is huge and overwhelming, and hence the narrow boundaries of BW2 OU.
I'll close with this statement I heard from a player I respect very much.
While there is still skill involved, I feel that team building is HUGE, as well as team match-up.
I also agree with Halcyon that the huge base power moves from good pokemon are bad for the game, not the pokemon themselves.
Also, obviously Deoxys-D was the best lead for HO, but Custap Skarm is amazing, almost always guaranteeing 2 hazards.
I also agree with Halcyon that the huge base power moves from good pokemon are bad for the game, not the pokemon themselves.
Also, obviously Deoxys-D was the best lead for HO, but Custap Skarm is amazing, almost always guaranteeing 2 hazards.
i could circlejerk forever about how drizzle is ruining the meta and weather doomed us from the start or sr limiting the choices of viable pokemon or how keld/tar is the devil and an unstoppable combo for both offense of stall but honestly it's just that we're afraid to ban overpowered and broken shit for fear of being ban happy, or creating a metagame that's too stall friendly [even though no one had this problem in BW1 I guess]. seriously i mean you have landorus which is just fucking ridiculous and 2hkos the entire meta, i'm still kind of curious what the reason not to suspect/ban was? it can bypass all its counters with uturn/ttar and the fear of that alone can seriously fuck up players deciding whether to switch in their celebi/latias or watch something die [kd posted a vid of this as proof somewhere, ill link it if i find it], but yet its still here, absolutely wrecking shit with little support and completely tearing apart stall/balance with a little bit of ttar support.
then there's kyurem-b, a 700 bst mon in ou, not much else to say there; it can tank a ridiculous amount of attacks despite its shitty typing and rams through stall teams without a whole lot of support or strategy, i guess it's 'not as good' since the meta is so fast now, but it's still a ridiculous poke overall which can absolutely destroy anything somewhat defensive. breloom's pretty ridiculous as well with technician; sashloom pretty much owns everything as a lead and i hate to keep spouting off how it relates to stall [some people know me as a stall guy but honestly i like offense a lot, i just dont like the idea of one playstyle getting fucked this bad].but if breloom gets up and vs a defensive team then it can tear the fuck up, especially if it still has a spore in its arsenal, +2 bseed is an ohko on gliscor iirc and mach punch does 43% to skarm with the technician boost. breloom was definitely manageable in the past with poison heal since it couldn't hurt you if you had the right defensive pokemon, but now it can just ruin stall teams if the player is smart with their spore.
i don't think keldeos bad for the meta and would prefer we kept him, but i find breloom, kyurem b and especially landorus to be ridiculous to still have around, you can't honestly say that these pokemon make for a better metagame. bkc talked about skill in his post and it seems like the only way to beat landorus with a stall team via skill is to actually not let it get a safe switch in, until you have enough pokemon to take multiple hits before being ko'd, which is actually pretty hard to do; predicting whether it will U-Turn or not isn't skill, offense is pretty much the same way although probably more dangerous if you mispredict vs landorus since it only has checks. seriously bans need to be made but shit isn't being banned, just weird how i had a ton of fun when i started and played bw1, but now that's all gone
oh wow typed a lot, guess im passionate on this issue x]
then there's kyurem-b, a 700 bst mon in ou, not much else to say there; it can tank a ridiculous amount of attacks despite its shitty typing and rams through stall teams without a whole lot of support or strategy, i guess it's 'not as good' since the meta is so fast now, but it's still a ridiculous poke overall which can absolutely destroy anything somewhat defensive. breloom's pretty ridiculous as well with technician; sashloom pretty much owns everything as a lead and i hate to keep spouting off how it relates to stall [some people know me as a stall guy but honestly i like offense a lot, i just dont like the idea of one playstyle getting fucked this bad].but if breloom gets up and vs a defensive team then it can tear the fuck up, especially if it still has a spore in its arsenal, +2 bseed is an ohko on gliscor iirc and mach punch does 43% to skarm with the technician boost. breloom was definitely manageable in the past with poison heal since it couldn't hurt you if you had the right defensive pokemon, but now it can just ruin stall teams if the player is smart with their spore.
i don't think keldeos bad for the meta and would prefer we kept him, but i find breloom, kyurem b and especially landorus to be ridiculous to still have around, you can't honestly say that these pokemon make for a better metagame. bkc talked about skill in his post and it seems like the only way to beat landorus with a stall team via skill is to actually not let it get a safe switch in, until you have enough pokemon to take multiple hits before being ko'd, which is actually pretty hard to do; predicting whether it will U-Turn or not isn't skill, offense is pretty much the same way although probably more dangerous if you mispredict vs landorus since it only has checks. seriously bans need to be made but shit isn't being banned, just weird how i had a ton of fun when i started and played bw1, but now that's all gone
oh wow typed a lot, guess im passionate on this issue x]
Here is what i think is wrong with the meta we have now:
We don't have the same criteria of an ideal metagame which means that we don't speak the same language.
What does this mean? How are we supposed to fix the metagame when we can't even agree to what we want the metagame to become? Many people complain about coin-flip based games, reduction of skill's importance, and bland superiority of certain plastyles. This kind of complaining is obviously based on the prinicple that an ideal metagame should be focused on skill. Other people talk about how not enough Pokemon are viable and that you can only use a select few group of Pokemon to be succesful, with a few exceptions. This kind of complaining is based on the principle that an ideal metagame is focused on variety.
And here is the problem. The people that think skill matters the most in building the ideal metagame, and pay little attention to other desirable characteristics (such as variety and balance, the other most important characteristics imo), will obviously want to remove the things that diminish the importance of skill, such as powerfull and spammable attacks with no drwabacks, incredibly easy and effective cores to use that put huge pressure to the opponent unless he chooses to make itself open to other threats and force it to standard builds, etc. The people that think variety matters the most will try to create a metagame with as much options available as possible, even if this metagame is somewhat lacking in balance or has a few overpowered elements into it, as long as enough Pokemon are viable to make the metagame diverse.
Of 'course all those elements are directly linked to each other, and for this reason when someone wants to make the metagame better with a certain criteria in mind, unavoidably it will also take other criteria in mind too, but not in the same degree as the criteria he has in mind, and this is what matters. When a player has his prime concern to make the metagame more skill-based he will actively pursue this goal, while other criteria that are also important in the ideal metagame will only be developed passively (as they are linked to skill).
As many peole have already said, offense has gotten ridiculous tools, the threats are too much to cover with a single team, banning principles and banning processes have become more complex than ever, and most importantly, we lack a shared goal and vision for the metagame (and this has been caused by all those new factors that 5th gen introduced, which made us lose our focus).
So, if we want to create something more than a meh metagame that is good in theory but has many problems in practice, we need to rebuild our foundations: what matters in a good metagame, to what degree, and what is the correletion of all the elements that matter. After we managed to do this, we can recreate our community based on those prinicples and thus create a community that can pursue the ideal metagame as an entity, united.
We don't have the same criteria of an ideal metagame which means that we don't speak the same language.
What does this mean? How are we supposed to fix the metagame when we can't even agree to what we want the metagame to become? Many people complain about coin-flip based games, reduction of skill's importance, and bland superiority of certain plastyles. This kind of complaining is obviously based on the prinicple that an ideal metagame should be focused on skill. Other people talk about how not enough Pokemon are viable and that you can only use a select few group of Pokemon to be succesful, with a few exceptions. This kind of complaining is based on the principle that an ideal metagame is focused on variety.
And here is the problem. The people that think skill matters the most in building the ideal metagame, and pay little attention to other desirable characteristics (such as variety and balance, the other most important characteristics imo), will obviously want to remove the things that diminish the importance of skill, such as powerfull and spammable attacks with no drwabacks, incredibly easy and effective cores to use that put huge pressure to the opponent unless he chooses to make itself open to other threats and force it to standard builds, etc. The people that think variety matters the most will try to create a metagame with as much options available as possible, even if this metagame is somewhat lacking in balance or has a few overpowered elements into it, as long as enough Pokemon are viable to make the metagame diverse.
Of 'course all those elements are directly linked to each other, and for this reason when someone wants to make the metagame better with a certain criteria in mind, unavoidably it will also take other criteria in mind too, but not in the same degree as the criteria he has in mind, and this is what matters. When a player has his prime concern to make the metagame more skill-based he will actively pursue this goal, while other criteria that are also important in the ideal metagame will only be developed passively (as they are linked to skill).
As many peole have already said, offense has gotten ridiculous tools, the threats are too much to cover with a single team, banning principles and banning processes have become more complex than ever, and most importantly, we lack a shared goal and vision for the metagame (and this has been caused by all those new factors that 5th gen introduced, which made us lose our focus).
So, if we want to create something more than a meh metagame that is good in theory but has many problems in practice, we need to rebuild our foundations: what matters in a good metagame, to what degree, and what is the correletion of all the elements that matter. After we managed to do this, we can recreate our community based on those prinicples and thus create a community that can pursue the ideal metagame as an entity, united.
Alexwolf,
I don't know if you have read this but our very veteran DougJustDoug once set down a set of 'guidelines': Characteristics of a Desirable Pokemon Metagame - "What kind of metagame do we want?" that ideally should be perused if such a situation arose. An Unofficial Constitution for Smogon to turn a phrase. It addresses they very issues you're bring up.
I'd appreciate if Melee Mewtwo also adds this to his OP since I'm seeing this thread slowly turn into the usual OU banter of "weather broken", "overpowered", "KeldTar+Lando" and naming of pokemon and stuff. Exactly the kind of thing you wanted to avoid if I'm not wrong.
It's mandatory reading if you want to discuss smogon metagame philosophies.
I don't know if you have read this but our very veteran DougJustDoug once set down a set of 'guidelines': Characteristics of a Desirable Pokemon Metagame - "What kind of metagame do we want?" that ideally should be perused if such a situation arose. An Unofficial Constitution for Smogon to turn a phrase. It addresses they very issues you're bring up.
I'd appreciate if Melee Mewtwo also adds this to his OP since I'm seeing this thread slowly turn into the usual OU banter of "weather broken", "overpowered", "KeldTar+Lando" and naming of pokemon and stuff. Exactly the kind of thing you wanted to avoid if I'm not wrong.
It's mandatory reading if you want to discuss smogon metagame philosophies.
It's not a "this is the perfect metagame" kind of thread... He just attempts to bring out each aspect of what a metagame constitutes of and elaborates on their most optimum condition. I just thought we should be basing this debate off some solid ground famework.
But your call.
But your call.
Well, that's the thing. Alexwolf is drawing attention to this different metagame ideals, which'll need to be resolved at some point before moving on to analyze what is wrong with it.
Course, I'm hot right now (so not in the mood to really think) and I'm just glad that somebody isn't doing exactly what I asked them not to.
Course, I'm hot right now (so not in the mood to really think) and I'm just glad that somebody isn't doing exactly what I asked them not to.
I know those criteria and they are very useful, but they are outdated and don't hold the weight they should, assuming they are our foundations when it comes to banning. OU leaders should re-evaluate which criteria hold more weight and which of those criteria should exist in the first place and make sure to infrom everyone about their decisions. They should also make an effort of running OU so that it is in line with that criteria in order to finally unite the OU community of Smogon to persue the ideal metagame as a common goal (the ideal metagame which will be based on certain criteria that we will all agree with, and with the degree of importance of each criteria as well).
I am not saying that the OU leadership is not working hard or anything similar, just that a massive renovation of our foundations needs to happen.
This is something which will never happen because everyone gives more importance to a certain criteria.
Someone may prefer Skill. Someone may prefer Diversity. Some may desire Balance between various playstyles, Someone will prefer he has a stable and largely non-volatile metagame to practice and adapt to (i.e anti-ban)...
I again reiterate that the focus as of now is wrong.
Doug's intention wasn't to introduce "an ideal metagame" but to lay down all the all the facets that make up a metagame and indicate how should they be at their most desirable position. So say if you want a metagame with "variety and versatility" we should be doing so in a manner which doesn't make the other factors broken or irrelevant.
The metagame is NOT decided by one veteran member or even an esteemed council.
It is decided by US the players, who are steering it in it's current direction. The council can only overlook us but it can never explicitly control the flow of the meta that we determine.
Honestly I think this is a rather tricky question to answer without referring to weather. Here are the problems:
- OU is really excessively offensive. I can't stand such highly offensive metagames, because I think it really increases the effect of luck (all kinds of it - "prediction" and team matchup included). Fewer turns means each event of "hax" or each "prediction" is more relevant. In such an offensive metagame with such offensive pokemon, it is really hard to have any sort of answer to every possibly threat.
-Polarised team styles. This is why it was hard to avoid mentioning weather. As soon as you introduce several distinct team styles without crossover, you are likely to introduce an inherent advantage to one team. I can easily make my stall team a little less stally in response to a threat, but I can't make my rain team a little bit more like a sun team. If you have only two styles, one will of course dominate, but if you have more than three, then you open up the unpleasant possibility of a rock-paper-scissors type thing. Let's just make it a total 50:50.
(One thing I was wondering, though: according to BKC rain loses to pretty much everything - why does anyone use it then?)
Now, I know alexwolf is saying that we don't know what the ideal metagame is like. And in part, I agree, but one thing I completely sure about is that noone appreciates a game that is a forgone conclusion. A few guessing games, and "hax" are sometimes fun, and they actually help to prevent forgone conclusions, apart from anything else. But the point is, each game needs to be an actual game, not purely an exercise in teambuilding or random number generating.
- OU is really excessively offensive. I can't stand such highly offensive metagames, because I think it really increases the effect of luck (all kinds of it - "prediction" and team matchup included). Fewer turns means each event of "hax" or each "prediction" is more relevant. In such an offensive metagame with such offensive pokemon, it is really hard to have any sort of answer to every possibly threat.
-Polarised team styles. This is why it was hard to avoid mentioning weather. As soon as you introduce several distinct team styles without crossover, you are likely to introduce an inherent advantage to one team. I can easily make my stall team a little less stally in response to a threat, but I can't make my rain team a little bit more like a sun team. If you have only two styles, one will of course dominate, but if you have more than three, then you open up the unpleasant possibility of a rock-paper-scissors type thing. Let's just make it a total 50:50.
(One thing I was wondering, though: according to BKC rain loses to pretty much everything - why does anyone use it then?)
Now, I know alexwolf is saying that we don't know what the ideal metagame is like. And in part, I agree, but one thing I completely sure about is that noone appreciates a game that is a forgone conclusion. A few guessing games, and "hax" are sometimes fun, and they actually help to prevent forgone conclusions, apart from anything else. But the point is, each game needs to be an actual game, not purely an exercise in teambuilding or random number generating.
alexwolf: I don't think those characteristics are outdated at all. I don't see why they would be. Going by them in terms of what we ban would result in a much better metagame imo.
jc: people use rain because they like to abuse shit (and the only reason it loses to those things is because they bend over backwards to beat rain). Rain either dominates or gets dominated, depending on the matchup. There's almost no middle ground.
jc: people use rain because they like to abuse shit (and the only reason it loses to those things is because they bend over backwards to beat rain). Rain either dominates or gets dominated, depending on the matchup. There's almost no middle ground.
An interesting, somewhat paradoxical trend I want to note is oen that's been mentioned a couple times--more mons = more offensive threats to check. Honestly, I think this is responsible for a huge part of the metagame's issues. As more and more (stronger and stronger) threats are introduced, it is simply impossible to cover all of them in 6 teamslots. So it becomes a kill-before-you-get-killed meta, and, as BKC has repeatedly noted, this often leads up into match-up determined games since if your team happens to be weak to one of my ridiculously powerful mons then you lose. The problem is: how do we go about fixing this?
Gen 2, according to everyone I've talked to, was hugely stally (I'm not talking about gen 1 lol since it wasn't really a game designed for competitive play). Gen 3 was less so. Gen 4 was slightly offensive, but with a ton of successful defensive teams. And Gen 5 is basically pure offense. There is a clear trend here towards offense for the reason I've noted. I think most veteran players would agree that the ideal balance was somewhere from ADV to DPP. And this is just going to get worse next gen imo, unless GF gives us some great defensive mons--which, since pokemon is meant to get money, will never happen in a million years. So I just wanted to get your opinions on this, because I see is as an inherent feature of every new metagame that comes out that it will be more offensive (and, now that we've passed the turning point, less skill-based) than the previous.
Also, just wanted to note that I truly do not see weather as the central issue. @BKC, I'd still argue that it's determined by threats, which simply tend to be used on the teamstyles you mentioned. One example I'll give is this battle--note robert. brought a weatherless team, but had a huge advantage over conflict because conflict's defensive lineup couldnt handle all of robert.'s offensive mons on the same team. Breloom took out the first physical wall (forry), mamo the second (hippo), and then dnite was free to sweep. To make a parallel, I see rain offense being super weak to venusaur, not "sun offense". And while venusaur is only found on sun, correlation =/= causality etc. and honestly I feel that this is a much more general issue of the meta.
Gen 2, according to everyone I've talked to, was hugely stally (I'm not talking about gen 1 lol since it wasn't really a game designed for competitive play). Gen 3 was less so. Gen 4 was slightly offensive, but with a ton of successful defensive teams. And Gen 5 is basically pure offense. There is a clear trend here towards offense for the reason I've noted. I think most veteran players would agree that the ideal balance was somewhere from ADV to DPP. And this is just going to get worse next gen imo, unless GF gives us some great defensive mons--which, since pokemon is meant to get money, will never happen in a million years. So I just wanted to get your opinions on this, because I see is as an inherent feature of every new metagame that comes out that it will be more offensive (and, now that we've passed the turning point, less skill-based) than the previous.
Also, just wanted to note that I truly do not see weather as the central issue. @BKC, I'd still argue that it's determined by threats, which simply tend to be used on the teamstyles you mentioned. One example I'll give is this battle--note robert. brought a weatherless team, but had a huge advantage over conflict because conflict's defensive lineup couldnt handle all of robert.'s offensive mons on the same team. Breloom took out the first physical wall (forry), mamo the second (hippo), and then dnite was free to sweep. To make a parallel, I see rain offense being super weak to venusaur, not "sun offense". And while venusaur is only found on sun, correlation =/= causality etc. and honestly I feel that this is a much more general issue of the meta.
This is offtopic, but I hear good players saying this all the time. Not true in my experience at all but I suck at OU. Then these same good players turn around and say that rain is the only reason sun hasn't been banned, and that once Drizzle is banned Drought will be too. But if sun always beats dugtrio-less rain, then why is rain holding sun back at all? Why is sun so rare in tournaments if it beats the most used weather "by default"? Not trying to say you're wrong, I've just always wondered about this.
Anyways, I think that the main reason OU sucks is that it is stuck in an awkward middle ground. I play mostly UU and Ubers. Ubers is great, fun, diverse, and competitive despite every single Pokemon being allowed. UU is a great, fun, metagame because it has over 80 mons on its banlist if you count BL, OU, and Ubers. OU is stuck in the middle ground.
Of course, if Ubers is more balanced that OU, the question is whether we have wasted three years banning things from the standard metagame when the solution might have been not banning anything at all.
This is exactly it.
There are a few very problematic Pokemon for sun teams. If the opponent happens to have a dugtrio or even the quite common heatran, things can get very complicated.
Sun will walk all over you unless you have those Pokemon. In a tourment, it's very risky to run a Sun team.
Due to those pokemon, Sun teams will never be dominant because if they rise, the usage of these pokes will rise.
I'm sure the majority of people will disagree with a lot of my views on what has "ruined" BW(2), but this is the first time in a while I've been truly outspoken about why I think this generation sucks. Recently this game has become fairly uncompetitive, and I think Team Preview, along with easy-to-use autopilot strategies are the major causes.
On paper, Team Preview looks like a good idea. In practice, it gives a massive boost to strategies that I deem "uncompetitive". Mainly referring to trappers like Dugtrio / Magnezone / Gothitelle here, which become considerably easier to use because team preview basically lays out a game plan for you. I find Pursuit Tyranitar to be in the same boat since effectively removing the inability of specific Pokemon (Latias, Latios, non-BP Celebi) to switch is something I consider uncompetitive. Switching is what defines Pokemon, and I find that inhibiting that freedom contributes a ton to these "team match-up" wins. These Pokemon have been around since ADV but now that you know exactly what you have to do in order to win the game, you can pretty easily take the game out of your opponents hands by running one of these Pokemon alone. Add U-Turn, Volt Switch, weather, dragons etc into the mix and you have a bunch of mindless, autopilot teams that can regularly win on team match-up alone.
Similarly, Team Preview makes lures way better than they ever have been before. Stuff like Hidden Power [Bug] Keldeo and U-Turn Landorus-I are really good because once again, team preview tells you exactly what you need to do to win with them. Again, lures have always existed, but before we had team preview you often had to spend a bunch of turns working out whether or not they even had the pokemon you were trying to lure and then making sure they don't have something that can just come in and set-up all over you.
The best team around at the moment is a combination of both of these. Generally they have Choice Band Tyranitar + Landorus-I + Keldeo, running either Hidden Power [Bug] Keldeo or U-Turn Landorus to lure in Celebi for the other sweeper to seal the game.
tl;dr - team preview favours uncompetitive, autopilot strategies far more than it favours the traditional, more skill-based strategies like bulkier sand. If it was up to me, we'd ban Arena Trap, Magnet Pull, Shadow Tag and potentially Pursuit, plus remove Team Preview altogether before even considering suspect tests for Stealth Rock and weather.
Other than that I agree with everything BKC has said. You have to jump through hoops when teambuilding to avoid getting shafted by Rain offense and as a result you don't have enough room left to reliably handle Sun, Spikestacking HO, Dragons, Terrakion, TTar + Keld + Lando-I and many others. The game is beginning to look like a glorified rock-paper-scissors.
On paper, Team Preview looks like a good idea. In practice, it gives a massive boost to strategies that I deem "uncompetitive". Mainly referring to trappers like Dugtrio / Magnezone / Gothitelle here, which become considerably easier to use because team preview basically lays out a game plan for you. I find Pursuit Tyranitar to be in the same boat since effectively removing the inability of specific Pokemon (Latias, Latios, non-BP Celebi) to switch is something I consider uncompetitive. Switching is what defines Pokemon, and I find that inhibiting that freedom contributes a ton to these "team match-up" wins. These Pokemon have been around since ADV but now that you know exactly what you have to do in order to win the game, you can pretty easily take the game out of your opponents hands by running one of these Pokemon alone. Add U-Turn, Volt Switch, weather, dragons etc into the mix and you have a bunch of mindless, autopilot teams that can regularly win on team match-up alone.
Similarly, Team Preview makes lures way better than they ever have been before. Stuff like Hidden Power [Bug] Keldeo and U-Turn Landorus-I are really good because once again, team preview tells you exactly what you need to do to win with them. Again, lures have always existed, but before we had team preview you often had to spend a bunch of turns working out whether or not they even had the pokemon you were trying to lure and then making sure they don't have something that can just come in and set-up all over you.
The best team around at the moment is a combination of both of these. Generally they have Choice Band Tyranitar + Landorus-I + Keldeo, running either Hidden Power [Bug] Keldeo or U-Turn Landorus to lure in Celebi for the other sweeper to seal the game.
tl;dr - team preview favours uncompetitive, autopilot strategies far more than it favours the traditional, more skill-based strategies like bulkier sand. If it was up to me, we'd ban Arena Trap, Magnet Pull, Shadow Tag and potentially Pursuit, plus remove Team Preview altogether before even considering suspect tests for Stealth Rock and weather.
Other than that I agree with everything BKC has said. You have to jump through hoops when teambuilding to avoid getting shafted by Rain offense and as a result you don't have enough room left to reliably handle Sun, Spikestacking HO, Dragons, Terrakion, TTar + Keld + Lando-I and many others. The game is beginning to look like a glorified rock-paper-scissors.
Youre doing exactly the same thing that has been plaguing our community. This ban ban ban mentality will do nothing but ruin this meta even further. Team preview goes both ways. Both players know the opponents team and can play from there. The reason we cant have an answer to everything is because we have hundreds and hundreds of pokemons, moves, abilities and strategies. Thats how things are going to be from now on, we just have to deal with it. You actually think that banning arena trap (a necessity to sun teams), magnet pull, shadow tag (which has no OU users at all lol) pursuit, team preview (which is a game integrated mechanic, we cant remove it. This is like trying to remove critical hits) is going to do anything helpful for the meta? Just play better and use team preview for your advantage. If you misplayed and let your celebi/latias etc. get pursuit trapped by ttar too bad. If you didnt knew your opponent keldeo/landorus-i was carrying a bug move and you switched your celebi/latias at it too bad. Your fault and no one else. If you played smart and predicted correctly then kudos to you. People can and will carry moves just for the sake of removing their headaches you just have to keep this in mind. Also its not like once your special wall is down you get swept. Theres this thing called priority and scarfers. That said i do agree that this meta is pretty shitty but more for the huge influx of powerful attackers that make stall nearly unviable.
Stating that this will never happen as a fact just because it is your opinion and justifying it with ''people's opinions differ'' is very wrong. I know that each player can give more importance to each of the criteria of a desirable metagame he wants, but by doing this he ignores the problem. How can we start the endeavor of building the ideal metagame when our goals often vastly differ?
Here is an example. I think the criteria of variety is very important and i apply my banning-related decisions based on this. Similarly, BKC finds the criteria of skill very important and takes his banning related decisions based on this. So in the case of the metagame we have now, BKC's view is that the metagame is bad as there are certain things that diminish the importance of skill. My view is that the metagame is fine (but could still use improvements), as it has variety, while skill still takes a big enough reason for my standards (as i said all the criteria are linked to each other, so you can't really make decisions with one criteria in mind and not apply other criteria as well).
I know that me and BKC are just two people, but i have seen mine and his belief shared by many, and if we make the assumption that there are big groups of people that represent each mindset, we can conclude that the lack of a single criteria to focus, regarding the banning process, ends up hurting our efficeny and ability at building an ideal metagame. Not only do we lose a lot of time to talk about our vastly different opinions (not little differences that can be endured for the sake of a better metagame), but we also lose our teamwork and the ability to get things done that teamwork provides.
I don't know why you assumed that i meant the metagame should be decided by a few elite individuals because i never said that. What i said is, that the OU heads should put us back to the right direction, so we can start again aiming for a united goal, and not just bashing on things we don't like because we thing we are right.
As to why i believe that we should focus on one certain criteria now, while all the other generations we did fine by focusing on all the criteria as we saw fit... This happens because things get more and more complex in each generation that is introduced, and the more complex they get the harder it becomes for people to stick to their original plans and not lose focus. In older gens, banning was much easier. You could track down the problematic threats in each meta and ban them if needed. But now things aren't so easy. We can't always single out certain elements to blame and ban for a problem, and this is why we started using complex bans and different approaches to the tiering system. In order to not lose focus, we need more concrete rules and guidelines than the ones we used to have, and more strict directions to follow. And this is why we should focus on one single banning criteria, without of 'course throwing all the other out of the window.
But we already did that BKC. Every ban that has been made follows at least one of those criteria, and yet the metagame we have is not even close to an ideal one according to you. And when i am saying that we should reevaluate those criteria, i don't mean scrap them and find new ones. I mean to carefully go through each of them and see what we can do to make them fit into the metagame we have atm, as well as the banning and tiering process. For example, even though those criteria tell us what is wrong with this metagame, they don't tell us how to fix it, and so the problem remains. We don't need criteria that will just allow us to find the problem, we need criteria that will also help us find ways to solve it. Or the problem could be that we have lost our common goal, and so we need to redefine which that goal is by singling out the criteria in which we want to focus when deciding if something should be banned. As i said again, problems are getting more complex and hard to solve, which means that our goals and foundations should be more well-defined that ever in order to get through those problems without losing sight of what we want to achieve.BKC said:
I see a lot of people saying we don't have any defensive tools, but we do imo. For example, we have a Pokemon with I think base 255 HP (the highest a stat can possibly get since the games are in binary or whatever) and 135 Special Defense. It's not like the Pokemon has an awful typing either, it has one weakness. It's not exactly a top tier Pokemon like it used to be. It's got the max possible HP, how much Special Defense would it need to, say, get back in the top 10 of the usage statistics? Would 200 Special Defense be enough for everybody to start using it again? If so, isn't that a bit ridiculous?
We also have an item that boosts both defenses by a 1.5 multiplier. Again, that's much more generous than the Choice items which only boost one stat and lock you into a move, although granted, most of the Pokemon that can use that item are pretty useless in OU.
Would Game Freak have to start making Pokemon with 200+ in multiple defensive stats and items which double your defenses with no drawback to make some Pokemon that can compete defensively in this metagame? In my opinion, it's some of the core game mechanics that make the game so offensive, rather than the actual Pokemon or high powered moves.
For example, put base 120 Outrage in Gen III. Nobody will use it (even if Choice Specs existed), since if they did Suicune or Blissey would just switch in and start setting up Calm Minds. People could've coped with Choice Specs and all that sort of stuff back then, because special sweepers didn't have all 17 types of moves available to them, they only had 8 types to use. It's much easier to defend against when it's like that.
The lower stats, smaller movepools, etc. back then did help of course, but I don't think that was the biggest difference.
We also have an item that boosts both defenses by a 1.5 multiplier. Again, that's much more generous than the Choice items which only boost one stat and lock you into a move, although granted, most of the Pokemon that can use that item are pretty useless in OU.
Would Game Freak have to start making Pokemon with 200+ in multiple defensive stats and items which double your defenses with no drawback to make some Pokemon that can compete defensively in this metagame? In my opinion, it's some of the core game mechanics that make the game so offensive, rather than the actual Pokemon or high powered moves.
For example, put base 120 Outrage in Gen III. Nobody will use it (even if Choice Specs existed), since if they did Suicune or Blissey would just switch in and start setting up Calm Minds. People could've coped with Choice Specs and all that sort of stuff back then, because special sweepers didn't have all 17 types of moves available to them, they only had 8 types to use. It's much easier to defend against when it's like that.
The lower stats, smaller movepools, etc. back then did help of course, but I don't think that was the biggest difference.
Lavos
Banned deucer.
we strive to create a metagame where the more skilled player wins more of the time
rain and sun specifically, but also unjustifiably powerful threats like landorus and keldeo, contribute to team matchup, in which the game can be decided with 90% certainty before it even begins simply by observing both players' teams and making a judgment call based on prior experience as to which player will win
this team matchup by its very nature decreases the skill factor and increases the luck factor of pokemon (games whose winner was crowned by a majority of skill as opposed to luck are once in a blue moon)
example: bkc loses to me in last year's wcop despite the fact that he played better because i have dugtrio sun and he has ttar sand, this is even before bw2 introduces more op bullshit
another example: a match i had vs yee, i had hyper offense and he had a stall team that had a certain combination of pokes that i couldn't be fucked to break. with the offense i was packing and the specific movesets of a couple of my pokemon there was almost no way i was winning that game. not hating on yee at all because he outplayed me in that game anyways but shit like that which hardly ever occurs in gsc or adv is just annoying and detracts from the competitive environment
team matchup is nonexistent in rby other than "do you have a tauros" and "does your opponent have a tauros" (and the zapdos v rocks matchup i suppose but most good teams have golem/rhydon)
gsc is actually skill based due to lots of stall v stall and individual turns meaning less as a whole due to less damage output and tankier pokemon in general; the only matchup would be if i was running hp grass zapdos and my opp had a quagsire or something
adv has some matchup but you can't automatically say who wins when the battle starts unless one of the two teams is shit (all these notes are assuming both teams are good ones) and there's always room to outplay the opponent
dpp has matchup but once again you can overcome the disadvantage by playing your best; bw isn't like that at all, if you have sand stall and you're playing against rain offense you will win unless you fuck up (see: gr8 vs dunk)
conclusion: the metagame is worse than any previous generation's metagame has been
this is really really really basic since i honestly think furiously typing out paragraph upon paragraph to argue with alexwolf or pocket is a lost cause. and not because they're stupid (they're not) but because they have their minds made up and for the most part so do i
should be interesting to see what the next suspect test is though if rumours prove true i'm disappointed. council needs to step it up (i love you all but landorus is not the highest thing on the priority list fellas)
rain and sun specifically, but also unjustifiably powerful threats like landorus and keldeo, contribute to team matchup, in which the game can be decided with 90% certainty before it even begins simply by observing both players' teams and making a judgment call based on prior experience as to which player will win
this team matchup by its very nature decreases the skill factor and increases the luck factor of pokemon (games whose winner was crowned by a majority of skill as opposed to luck are once in a blue moon)
example: bkc loses to me in last year's wcop despite the fact that he played better because i have dugtrio sun and he has ttar sand, this is even before bw2 introduces more op bullshit
another example: a match i had vs yee, i had hyper offense and he had a stall team that had a certain combination of pokes that i couldn't be fucked to break. with the offense i was packing and the specific movesets of a couple of my pokemon there was almost no way i was winning that game. not hating on yee at all because he outplayed me in that game anyways but shit like that which hardly ever occurs in gsc or adv is just annoying and detracts from the competitive environment
team matchup is nonexistent in rby other than "do you have a tauros" and "does your opponent have a tauros" (and the zapdos v rocks matchup i suppose but most good teams have golem/rhydon)
gsc is actually skill based due to lots of stall v stall and individual turns meaning less as a whole due to less damage output and tankier pokemon in general; the only matchup would be if i was running hp grass zapdos and my opp had a quagsire or something
adv has some matchup but you can't automatically say who wins when the battle starts unless one of the two teams is shit (all these notes are assuming both teams are good ones) and there's always room to outplay the opponent
dpp has matchup but once again you can overcome the disadvantage by playing your best; bw isn't like that at all, if you have sand stall and you're playing against rain offense you will win unless you fuck up (see: gr8 vs dunk)
conclusion: the metagame is worse than any previous generation's metagame has been
this is really really really basic since i honestly think furiously typing out paragraph upon paragraph to argue with alexwolf or pocket is a lost cause. and not because they're stupid (they're not) but because they have their minds made up and for the most part so do i
should be interesting to see what the next suspect test is though if rumours prove true i'm disappointed. council needs to step it up (i love you all but landorus is not the highest thing on the priority list fellas)
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