ihzi

It would be good if it were possible to filter matchmaking statistics by elo/trainer rank/percentile. This is because usage and winrates may vary greatly depending on elo. Adding filters would allow players to glean information about how certain Pokemon were performing or used in specific skill brackets. This would be very effective for the populated tiers such as OU, and not as effective for the less populated tiers where there is not a large playerbase to begin with, and there is a large standard deviation of elo between each player's numerical ladder position (easily visualized by looking at the elo difference between rank 1 and rank 100 in a tier like doubles, for example). Alternatively, and I assume this would be way more work, you could release the match data in a public API and people could be free to make whatever 3rd party resource they want and slice the data as they please. I think this would be a fun feature and it would probably also help out with tiering decisions to have access to more data.

Anyone capable of playing UU or LC looking for a team for this? Need some players, our team is stacked, ez 600mil.

Nice, this was fun to listen to. Not to turn this thread into a tiering discussion, but I am glad that Electrode was mentioned. Electrode, in particular in conjunction with Breloom, feels so strong right now because of Breloom's ability to disable defoggers with Spore. The screens and the threat of Spore and setup provide incredible pressure and a single wrong move can be game losing.

I don't think anyone will disagree when I say that matches can be incredibly match-up dependent. That part is obvious. As others have pointed out, there is very little skill involved in a match where both players tried to counterteam each other and brought some nonsensical mishmash of Pokemon intended to lopsidedly destroy their opponent's team (even if they ended up changing their team too). Compare that to a match where both players are blind and brought a solid, well-rounded, well-structured and long-premeditated team. In that situation both players must play a traditional match where they identify their win conditions during the team preview and as the match plays out. That involves far, far more skill. I understand why the shuffle/blind bracket format exists. My one complaint is that the UI layout is hard to follow. It would be nice if there was a real bracket layout, but the bracket was just shuffled at each new branch (as it is now functionally). This is not a functional change, only a UI change.

Personally, I think the way to go is to remove Guts from Conkeldurr. I don't think LO Sheer Force is that much weaker, but it definitely performs differently and in a healthier way. An important consideration is that without Guts, it is actually vulnerable to status. A huge strength of Guts with Flame Orb is that Conk can't be crippled. Giving it room to be hit by toxics and burns that debuff it (instead of buffing it) would give it some needed counterplay. Additionally, Drain Punch sustains a little less with Life Orb because you take 10% from using Drain Punch instead of the 6% from burn ticks. Leftovers + Bulk Up is probably worse than a LO set because again, there is room for Conk to be crippled. Mach Punch is also significantly weaker without Guts because it doesn't benefit from Sheer Force. I think removing Mach Punch (and keeping Guts) would definitely be overkill. Although part of what's so strong about Conk is that chipped fast threats can't come in to finish it off, if Mach Punch was indirectly nerfed by Conk losing Guts, there would be more room to threaten it out. Removing Guts also has the added benefit of not invalidating current Conkeldurr, as you pointed out could happen by removing Mach Punch. Compared to disallowing the use of Flame Orb and/or Toxic Orb, it's also more intuitive that Conkeldurr simply doesn't have Guts rather than it arbitrarily not being allowed to have a certain hold item. The more isolated the changes are, the better they are. Disallowing Flame/Toxic Orb involves another factor (items), and removing Guts keeps the changes limited to Conkeldurr itself.

The conclusion I came to with gbwead's post in mind was rather that there is all the more reason to propose complex bans from within the community. I think it makes more sense to get a head start if we think it's at all possible to avoid a flat ban. If you play any other competitive games, you may see just how absurd flat bans are. Let's take card games for example. If a card is overperforming, they don't just delete the card. Most of the time, the card receives a change such that it can remain in play. It's only competitive Pokemon that has this strange culture of "I don't like this thing -- let's effectively delete it". In the context of smogon, it kind of makes sense since banning a Pokemon to Uber doesn't mean deleting it -- it just places it in a different metagame. In PokeMMO, though, we have to be cognizant of the fact that a flat ban does essentially mean deleting something from the game. We already know that the devs mirror that attitude. If a flat ban ultimately results in a complex ban, but potentially less competitively knowledgeable are the ones determining the circumstances of the complex ban, how is that any more desirable than being proactive and having the more knowledgeable competitive players propose ban conditions? Unless there are not clear pain points for a Pokemon that are causing it to overperform, I think it's reasonable to outright suggest the conditions for a complex ban. If something requires changing more than 1 element, then maybe a flat ban is warranted. In this case I definitely think that changing only 1 thing about each of these Pokemon would put them in an appropriate position. ThinkNice's suggestions above are a good starting point.

Catch the thing, get the info. Ez.

Pretty simple one. It'd be cool if you could rep your in-game team when playing PvP in a clearer way, since it's hard to see a player's tag in the overworld due to the new matchmaking system. My suggestion is as simple as showing the team tag preceding the name when the PvP encounter begins, and when an action is taken, e.g. "[VVVV] Ihzi wants to battle!", "[VVVV] Ihzi sent out Charizard!".

You could always keep them as breeders. Having these mean you'll already be halfway done when you need to go again! Plus, they're all male, so it works out fine. Alternatively, you could probably sell them for a hefty sum now and then use that cash to start all over again at a later time. But it's not like this work is totally wasted either way.

I, too, like the idea of seasonal resets, especially with how few games you can actually get compared to how many games people currently have on the leaderboards.

Don't change it though. We have to telegraph to prospective comp players how s m r t we are.

Although I recognise this is basically an elaborate shitpost, I'd like to point out that the phrase you proposed doesn't actually convey what sleep clause is. The clause should represent that you can only put one of your opponent's mons to sleep forcibly at a time. The way you have it suggests that if one of your opponent's mons is resting (using the move Rest), you wouldn't be able to put another of theirs to sleep, which is false.

Would be cool, especially since everyone is just gonna look up locations of mons online anyway for the most part.

With the sheer number of Pokemon that go in and out of our boxes with breeding and whatnot, and with the addition of way more Pokemon in the game than before, I feel like it would be a super helpful tool to have the advanced search function for the boxes too (the same one that is used for the GTL). That way, if I'm looking for a Pokemon with certain IV and nature combinations to round out a breeding tree, I can find it quickly. I don't remember the IVs of every mon in my PC offhand, and I think most players won't, so I think this could be a cool feature, and the code obviously already exists to do it.

I can see all of the hard work the staff have put in and are putting in post-update. It's a mountain of work, but it's clear they're ready to take it on. Hang in there!