Revising The (Unwritten) Tier Policies

[NikhilR]

Hi, 

 

Recently there has been a discussion in the OU discussion request thread about how a ban of Wobbuffet to Ubers would be for the betterment.  I am under the impression that the entirety of the Tier Council is in agreement with this decision, and I could be wrong about this.  Nonetheless, I've been told that there's a "No Ubers" policy.  I don't understand the rationale for this at all.  There are two things about this that puzzle me:

 

1) Why do you, the higher ups of the TC, want to have such a policy when there are some mons that are warranted a place in Ubers and have generally been there

2) Why is it that you get to have a say in the competitive matters when its the members of the TC that are more suited for such matters?  To me this defeats the entire purpose of having a Tier Council if you're making policies that tie their hands.

 

When / If you release legendaries into the game, there may be ubers among those, so are you going to continue such a policy and worsen the competitive metagame?  Playing this game feels like being in a toxic relationship with someone in regards to how you still continue it because it once made you happy and you hope that one day things will change for the better.  There have been positive developments, competitive wise, to the game, like adding a forfeit button, showing exact ivs, allowing a mon to get any HP,  hordes for ev training etc.  And there also have been terrible changes like the tournament prize system, a lack of leaderboard tournaments that incentivized people to ladder etc.  My point is that I know you are capable of making this game more enjoyable for the competitive community, and that I just wish that you could move in that direction.

 

 

I don't know if the above is a consensus view of the devs / staff, but this is extremely disrespectful to the competitive players, which makes me question why I sometimes choose to play this over showdown despite the numerous flaws this has over showdown.

 

I would really appreciate if the competitive community, including the Tier Council, voiced their opinion out loudly, and not just through "likes."

[gbwead]

I personally would prefer banning a problematic pokemon instead of nerfing the problematic pokemon. Banning or not banning makes tiering more simple and straightforward. When we go the nerf or not nerf route, everything can become very complex and very fast. There are just way too many ways something can get nerfed. I think any nerf would be easier to accept if we at least had a nerf policy as back up or some kind of guideline that can help determine what could be nerfed. For instance, regarding Wobbuffet, I would prefer a ban, but if that wasn't an option and I had to choose the best way to nerf Wobbuffet, I wouldn't even know where to start. Nerfing Wobbuffet stats? Its Shadow Tag ability? Removing or complex banning Tickle? Removing or complex banning Encore? There are multiple ways Wobbuffet can be nerfed and yet I am talking about a super simple pokemon with only 4 stats, 1 ability and very few moves options. Most mons have 6 stats and huge movepools to choose from. For this reason, I believe if we are forced to have a no uber policy or nerf policy, it's important to know what that policy entails exactly. There are a lot of unknown variables right now and, as a TC member, I find it difficult sometimes to follow an unwritten policy. 

Edited April 11, 2020 by gbwead

[Matoka]

5 minutes ago, NikhilR said:

 

I don't know if the above is a consensus view of the devs / staff, but this is extremely disrespectful to the competitive players, which makes me question why I sometimes choose to play this over showdown despite the numerous flaws this has over showdown.

Before this thread kicks off I would just like to say that quoting things without context (in this case without the message(s) this was in response to) can paint a rather unrepresentative picture; we do not see comments like these in 99% of PvP related discussion or feedback because they are done in a reasonable civil manner, these responses were likely made in response to people being unreasonable in how they tried to discuss things.

I cannot speak for all staff as I am just a single person on the team, but at the same time I'm quite confident that we all understand how important PvP is to this game.

In response to 1):
I believe that rationale is a combination of wanting no one to have things that they cannot use (i.e. wasted resources) in PvP, such as how if Hydreigon had been allowed Draco Meteor but we had complex banned it from PvP then teaching Draco Meteor to your Hydreigon would have been a waste of resources to the player as they have locked that Hydreigon out from being used, and even in this hypothetical the concept of "complex bans" are frowned upon for similar reasons as they are viewed as messy.

Another part of the rationale seems to me to be related to the idea "If something is too good for PvP (e.g. Ubers) then it is also too good for PvE and should just not be available". Essentially this is the idea that we don't want PvP-ready mons to be too weak for PvE use, which would be the case if ridiculously powerful things like Groudon / Kyogre etc were available as permanent pokemon (why would you ever use non-legendaries except for a very few specific examples, legendaries are GENERALLY just better). This side-effect is undesirable and bleeds into the design philosophy regarding ubers and complex bans being undesirable.

In response to 2):
Tier council is a valued source of input in regards to understanding PvP aspects of our game and how the meta is developing, however certain MMO elements will always clash with the concept of a "perfectly fair metagame"- such as the basic concept of you having to spend resources to unlock pokemon to add to your collection to be able to use in PvP. on a theoretical level this is already biased towards people who have more time to invest earning pokeyen and breeding etc compared to people who don't have as much time, unlike things like Showdown you have to earn the pokemon you are using and this is a basic example of how the PvE / MMO aspects of PokeMMO can sometimes interact in ways with the PvP aspects that make it seem as if we don't care what the Tier Council has to say (which isn't true, if we didn't care what they had to say then logically we wouldn't even have a tier council to begin with).

I hope this at least begins to help break down why sometimes something that seems counter-intuitive (such as doing something different than what the tier council has unanimously agreed on) happens in regards to the game design at PokeMMO- that is not to say that things always play out like this but it most likely has been the cause for several decisions, and will likely influence future choices (such as how it's been heavily implied that hidden abilities as powerful as say Speed-Boost Blaziken will likely never be released because it would likely be instantly uber etc, same with legendaries as powerful as say Kyogre or Groudon).

[RysPicz]

2 hours ago, Matoka said:

Before this thread kicks off I would just like to say that quoting things without context (in this case without the message(s) this was in response to) can paint a rather unrepresentative picture; we do not see comments like these in 99% of PvP related discussion or feedback because they are done in a reasonable civil manner, these responses were likely made in response to people being unreasonable in how they tried to discuss things.

Sorry Matoka, but Squirtle has always acted towards us, as a competitive community, as a disrespectful ignorant that never wanted to engage into any discussion with us (and when he did, he got pretty much verbally raped by Senile- this happened in more than one discussion) always threw his own decisioning on us and all we could do is just write a forum post because he's an admin and we couldn't do absolutely anything, because he's "above us". It's something we've been dealing with over the course of many years. This is not a post which is taken out of context, I was there when he said it and I'm sure he is arrogant enough to say it once again because he never gave a shit about competitive society, which is reflected in latest decisions and in many discussions (see: thread where Senile pretty much destroyed him with reasonable arguments and got "no because no" response instead). It's been like that for years and we fail to see anyone from higher staff actually caring about competitive community ever since I started playing this game and that's been almost 7 years now.

Edited April 11, 2020 by RysPicz
I embarris.

[NikhilR]

1 hour ago, Matoka said:

Before this thread kicks off I would just like to say that quoting things without context (in this case without the message(s) this was in response to) can paint a rather unrepresentative picture; we do not see comments like these in 99% of PvP related discussion or feedback because they are done in a reasonable civil manner, these responses were likely made in response to people being unreasonable in how they tried to discuss things.

I'm not sure what the context was, but I don't see any context where such statements are "okay" from an administrator.  If "unreasonable" things were said, then you could either mute the person or tell them to take it up on forums.  What that statement does, to me,  is show a lack of care for the competitive community, and I don't know how another context would make it better.  But what do I know, I'm just a competitive forum dweller.

 

1 hour ago, Matoka said:

In response to 1):
I believe that rationale is a combination of wanting no one to have things that they cannot use (i.e. wasted resources) in PvP, such as how if Hydreigon had been allowed Draco Meteor but we had complex banned it from PvP then teaching Draco Meteor to your Hydreigon would have been a waste of resources to the player as they have locked that Hydreigon out from being used, and even in this hypothetical the concept of "complex bans" are frowned upon for similar reasons as they are viewed as messy.

The "wasted resources" argument isn't strong enough for me.  The "wasted resource" argument relies on the assumption:

1) that said resource has some utility outside of its problematic trait;

2) if you remove the problematic trait from the resource, then it fixes the competitive issue

 

This could apply to Hydreigon because it was useful even without DM, and by removing DM, it could stay in OU without going to Ubers.  This does not apply to pokemon like Dugtrio or Wobbuffet that have abilities which are the issue.  You can remove its abilities, which are the problematic issue, but it would not have much utility outside of that.  I cannot believe that we are making tiering discussions based on a "wasted resource." You guys have no problem giving us these "wasted resources" like competitive gift shinies which simply collect dust on the pc, which to me seems like there isn't a desire to not add on "wasted resources."  So I'm sorry but this argument should not even be considered for tiering purposes.

 

1 hour ago, Matoka said:

Another part of the rationale seems to me to be related to the idea "If something is too good for PvP (e.g. Ubers) then it is also too good for PvE and should just not be available". Essentially this is the idea that we don't want PvP-ready mons to be too weak for PvE use, which would be the case if ridiculously powerful things like Groudon / Kyogre etc were available as permanent pokemon (why would you ever use non-legendaries except for a very few specific examples, legendaries are GENERALLY just better). This side-effect is undesirable and bleeds into the design philosophy regarding ubers and complex bans being undesirable.

I get this rationale, but this does not explain why we shouldn't move certain pokemon to ubers, because that's the part I'm grappling with (which is related to your first rationale).

 

1 hour ago, Matoka said:

In response to 2):
Tier council is a valued source of input in regards to understanding PvP aspects of our game and how the meta is developing, however certain MMO elements will always clash with the concept of a "perfectly fair metagame"- such as the basic concept of you having to spend resources to unlock pokemon to add to your collection to be able to use in PvP. on a theoretical level this is already biased towards people who have more time to invest earning pokeyen and breeding etc compared to people who don't have as much time, unlike things like Showdown you have to earn the pokemon you are using and this is a basic example of how the PvE / MMO aspects of PokeMMO can sometimes interact in ways with the PvP aspects that make it seem as if we don't care what the Tier Council has to say (which isn't true, if we didn't care what they had to say then logically we wouldn't even have a tier council to begin with).

The concept you told me in no way clashes with the concept of a "perfectly fair metagame."  The latter exists when there is a balance, and currently there is an imbalance.  Your TC had informed you of this imbalance, but because your "no banning of stuff to ubers" policy, the imbalance still remains.  It seems to me that your need for TC only extends to the point where it is compatible with your "no banning stuff to ubers" policy, because you have no problem with banning stuff from NU to UU, or UU to OU.  The moment the TC's tiering decisions are incompatible with it,  your decision will supersede, which is ridiculous to me since you shouldn't be having a say on competitive matters since it's not your area of expertise.

 

I'm sorry if this post comes across as harsh, but I do want to thank you for giving me your response to make things clearer.

 

Edited April 11, 2020 by NikhilR

[Matoka]

14 hours ago, NikhilR said:

The concept you told me in no way clashes with the concept of a "perfectly fair metagame." 

Ah, to clarify what I was referring to was the idea that because mons are not free there's an "unfair" advantage to people with more time etc, as the MMO elements of working to earn things makes it "harder" for newer players / players with less time to play to compete with other players as they'll have less options, less IV's etc etc. That's what I meant by clashing with a perfectly "fair" metagame because aspects outside of PvP are influencing ability to participate etc. and thats the part that clashes with a perfectly fair metagame, I was not referring to concepts like banning things to ubers, complex bans, etc etc.

In regards to the rest of this, I am not the one who decided these policies nor do I necessarily perfectly agree with all of them 100% (everyone's opinions differ in that regard, even within staff)- I simply wanted to at least answer what some of the rationale behind the policies were as you were asking about. I'm just a moderator so all I can really do is try to answer your questions to the best of my ability based on what has been discussed in the past regarding this topic.

I genuinely appreciate that this definitely frustrates a noteworthy portion of the playerbase for reasons that have been discussed at length, however as my personal opinions can sometimes be viewed as synonymous with staff as a whole it would be irresponsible for me to discuss how I personally feel on this, "if" this problem is as significant as it sounds it will likely be addressed in the future by people who do have a say in what policies are made, and as a result, also have the potential ability to change them (but does not necessarily mean they will change, just managing expectations here).

I'm not going to lock this thread, as discussion of this is healthy in order to try and break down the root causes of the frustration (and because my "answer" isn't the sort of response that you're likely looking for), so I do apologise for being unable to personally try to process these complaints.

[LifeStyleNORE]

Abilities such as Arena Trap and Shadow Tag should not have a place in any tier. It doesn't matter if Dugtrio gets its Attack stat changed from 100 to 80, it doesn't matter if Wobbuffet has Tickle removed from its movepool, these Pokemons are still going to be uncompetitive. This last word can be defined as "Removing a level of competition from the game; taking the game out of the hands of the players and (presumably) making the outcome of the game more reliant on luck/non player factors."

 

Two different (out of a million) examples for this would be:

Sand Veil Garchomp dodges a Dragon Pulse from Scarf Hydreigon and kills it with Dragon Claw. The Garchomp player wins.

Arena Trap Dugtrio traps and kills a Blissey, the Blissey user ends up losing to Quiver Dance 3 attacks Volcarona.

 

Both games that could have been won by the "better" player were removed out of that same player's hands. Drayyton's double trapper rain team made it clear of how dumb it is to have Arena Trap/Shadow Tag run around freely. And fyi, uncompetitive aspects of the metagame usually don't have super high usage, that's not what defines them as such. So saying things like "Dugtrio only has 6% usage, so it's not banworthy" is just plain nonsense.

 

Now, you could ask yourself "But if Dugtrio and Wobbuffet are uncompetitive, why hasn't the TC done anything about them?" and the answer is, they can't. It's out of their hands. The Tier Council members, which were picked because they are better suited to handle competitive matters, get told what they can and can't do by their higher ups, people who probably can never get out of 1200 Elo on any showdown ladder. This has resulted in having that weird "no uber" policy, which to my understanding is "doing anything to keep something out of ubers", because having ubers is "bad game design".

 

With that being said, I don't see a point in having a Tier Council at all, but I can't say I'm surprised that they haven't formally complained about how shitty their job is right now.

[Rittz]

20 hours ago, NikhilR said:

Wow, those are some silly comments. So basically bigwig is complaining about what? That comp players want to have a say in competitive play?

 

Or maybe he thinks players that don't do PvP should also have a say in whether Wobbuffet stays or not in OU... ¡Just in case PvP players think they are the universe!

[NikhilR]

7 hours ago, Matoka said:

Ah, to clarify what I was referring to was the idea that because mons are not free there's an "unfair" advantage to people with more time etc, as the MMO elements of working to earn things makes it "harder" for newer players / players with less time to play to compete with other players as they'll have less options, less IV's etc etc. That's what I meant by clashing with a perfectly "fair" metagame because aspects outside of PvP are influencing ability to participate etc. and thats the part that clashes with a perfectly fair metagame, I was not referring to concepts like banning things to ubers, complex bans, etc etc.

I did understand what you were saying, but my point was that a metagame exists independent of the player's ability to participate.  What you described are elements of an MMO, where the player who has spent more time has an advantage over the others with respect to access to certain resources, but the metagame does not involve that.  The metagame assumes that everyone has equal access to the same resources, and whether based on that, if a certain strategy, pokemon, or moveset creates an imbalance.  If my opponent has pokemon X, and I currently don't have it bred and consequently lose because of not having it, that's not necessarily a statement on the metagame.  If I have thought of + bred everything I needed to counter my opponent's pokemon X, and I still lose to it, then that's a statement on the metagame.  I hope that makes things clearer.

 

7 hours ago, Matoka said:

In regards to the rest of this, I am not the one who decided these policies nor do I necessarily perfectly agree with all of them 100% (everyone's opinions differ in that regard, even within staff)- I simply wanted to at least answer what some of the rationale behind the policies were as you were asking about. I'm just a moderator so all I can really do is try to answer your questions to the best of my ability based on what has been discussed in the past regarding this topic.

I genuinely appreciate that this definitely frustrates a noteworthy portion of the playerbase for reasons that have been discussed at length, however as my personal opinions can sometimes be viewed as synonymous with staff as a whole it would be irresponsible for me to discuss how I personally feel on this, "if" this problem is as significant as it sounds it will likely be addressed in the future by people who do have a say in what policies are made, and as a result, also have the potential ability to change them (but does not necessarily mean they will change, just managing expectations here).

I'm not going to lock this thread, as discussion of this is healthy in order to try and break down the root causes of the frustration (and because my "answer" isn't the sort of response that you're likely looking for), so I do apologise for being unable to personally try to process these complaints.

Hey I completely understand where you're coming from, and I genuinely appreciate it that you took the time to respond to this.  If you can urge your fellow staff members to discuss this further, that'd be great, because it's hard for me to know whether this thread is even being read by them.

Edited April 12, 2020 by NikhilR

[DoubleJ]

This is why we're shiny hunters now bro

 

team LYLE >>>>>>>>>>