There seems to have been a lot more discussions recently involving changes in past metagames and the process seems inefficient. There seems to be a huge problem with making change in past generations because they are less active. Personally I think the way suspect tests are done needs a change. Opinion seems to be the overriding factor in every suspect discussion I have read so far. While I have agreed with the results of previous discussions, I don't agree with the argument that because the majority of people think pokemon "x" is broken, it must be banned (or remain banned). The problem with opinions is that they change over time and a past generation metagame can be affected for a very long time just because a group of people at a certain time decided to do a certain thing. The apparent overriding opinion is also affected by the strength of peoples argumentative skills and not their argument. I'm aware that it's hard to justify change without using opinion and that the best way to argue is to combine facts and opinion. But I think more things need to be "set in stone" and less of people leaning to one side. For example the recent ban ingrain in adv discusion. (NB. I agree with the overriding decision) People saying things like ingrain should be banned because it requires no skill to use. The problem with that argument is that the only criteria for banning at the moment is that a pokemon can only be banned if it's imbalanced, so arguing that a certain strategy 'requires no skill to use' has no weight behind it. For this reason people dismissed the argument saying things like: In reality the purpose of banning should be to create a better metagame, which not only means more balanced, but also more fun play. Therefore strategy's that subtract from the fun of the game have a right to be removed. However this argument is hard to push forward and for this reason I think a change in suspect tests in past generations. To solve this I think we need three things: - A better list of criteria for banning - Improved testing format - Overriding majority in votes I really think a solid list of criteria for a pokemon to be banned needs to be made. Criteria can then be used in someone's argument to support their opinion, making suspect discussions easier to resolve and create a better outcome. The purpose of banning is to create a better metagame and therefore the reason we should ban something should be based on this. By improved testing I don't think that a few weeks on the ladder will achieve anything, the ladders are less active and I think theorymon is more reliable. There are also people playing old metagames just to try them out, who obviously aren't suspect testing. Everyone who is discussing needs to come together and be involved in the suspect test. This is why I recommend doing suspect testing tournaments. This way activity is not an issue, suspect testers are battling against other suspect testers, which is important because the best way to test a threat is to face it. Tournaments also encourage people to spectate matches, which is also better for gathering knowledge. Finally, I think all changes in past generations need an overriding majority decision to go through, a 51/49 decisions is more likely to just be based on opinion and there's a risk that it's not the best decision to make. This is important in past generations because development in less active metagames is much slower, so the affects of a bad change can affect the metagame for a long time. If the decision is made by a larger majority, it is much more likely to be the best decision. I also think that everyone should be allowed to vote, the more people that vote the more reliable the decision will be (unlike the recent ingrain vote). The theory of The Wisdom of the Crowds supports this. I'm not saying that my ideas are the best, I'm just saying this is what I believe would be the best option. Suspect tests in past generations are a problem and I think that they can be improved.
This is pretty much my opinion on the matter. People play older gens because they genuinely enjoy them and the level of competitiveness (is that a word?) that they provide, and strategies like Baton Pass and Perish Trap are not really competitive at all and while certainly not broken, make me sit there and go "ugh, not again".
Baton Pass is broken. Perishtrap isn't. Baton Pass is a degenerate archetype that ruins ADV for the people that love the tier. It has already been banned on Smogon and soon will be banned here. Also, suspect testing in old gens is useless. The oldgens are perfect the way they are(sept bpass but that's getting nerfed a bit). These metagames are well-established and there's no need to change them.
the reason the no skill argument was seen as unacceptable is more likely because less experienced adv players do not see what that implies. adv is recognized by many older players as the metagame that is most won with skill, both in the team builder and in the battle itself. it is possible in adv to build all sorts of different teams, and each type of team has a fair chance of winning against any other type of team, provided the person building the team built it efficiently and with knowledge of the metagame. team matchup is undeniably less of a factor in adv than in later generations. although of course some teams still have advantages over others (such as a team using cloyster as its spiker vs. a team that uses magneton as its "spinner") but as long as both teams are well built the battle can still go either way dependent on each players' skill. the problem with baton pass teams is only in part that you don't need skill to use them. they take far less thought to build (you do not think about "countering things" in the strictest sense) and they take far less skill to use than a standard team, but the true problem is that they turn what is otherwise seen as the most skill-reliant and balanced metagame into a question of whether or not the opponent has perish song or haze, not whether or not the opponent is better. because of the nature of the metagame both of those things are uncommon. only celebi uses perish song in ou, weezing is shit in ou, vaporeon has better things to do than haze and roar is better in every other case anyway. that sort of leads me to another point. no one really wants to ban anything because they make the metagame less "fun" since it's so incredibly subjective and beside the point. however, some things (like baton pass) should be banned for being uncompetitive, which is still somewhat vague but much more objective than "fun," as well as much more significant within a competitive pokemon community. additionally, i do not think the idea of using a tournaments as suspect test will achieve the desired result unless there are multiple tournaments for each suspect over a decent length of time and you get a good sample of players involved in them. one tournament wouldn't show any sort of development or reaction in the metagame. too many people might bring baton pass teams and then there might be a bunch of baton pass mirror matches and baton pass might win the tournament but that wouldn't prove that it was broken, it would just win because of the sheer volume of bp teams. on the other hand, if no one uses baton pass teams that doesn't prove anything either. and if ANYONE is allowed to vote, the tournament(s) may as well not have happened at all, yet i'm not sure how you would decide the voting pool based on the tournament results. the winners of each tournament get to vote? again, depending on how the tournaments pan out, winning them could be a meaningless feat. the thing about laddering is that you have to see the metagame, build your team accordingly, rebuild your team to comply with any metagame changes, stay up at the top consistently, actually immerse yourself in the metagame at large, and then you get to vote. if baton pass is dominating the ladder you can react to that, but in a tournament, if you have a bad matchup vs bp and you play bp by a stroke of bad luck you get eliminated for good, and then you may prepare like a madman for bp and not play against it at all in the next tournament, or you can use bp and not get anywhere in the tournament because everyone overprepares for it or something. what i'm saying is a tournament set up with the intent of suspect testing a strategy may not yield proper results. a tournament cannot be an accurate sample of the metagame because there is no opportunity for reaction and development. players may "overreact" or "underreact" to the fact that a strategy is being tested and that will dictate the flavor of the whole tournament, which skews the results. i feel like i'm rambling and not making much sense today so i will leave it at that but i hope everyone catches what i'm trying to say here :(
From an outside perspective it would seem that the old generations have been fine and therefore should remain fine. However the increase in discussion suggests otherwise and the problem is that people in the past didn't ask questions about these metagames, because that's just something that wasn't done. Look at the opposition to Garchomps initial ban in Gen 4, there was huge opposition to a pokemon people now consider completely and utterly broken. This just shows that people where not used the idea of banning and when you regularly play old metagames this becomes apparent. The argument of tradition is also stupid, nobody asks if they can play gen4 OU in Garchomp infested metagame because by today's standards it's terrible. So this leads to the question, if an old metagame can be improved, why not improve it?
The reason I always wanted an improved criteria was so that the "less fun" argument could be better implemented, because as you say it's incredibly subjective. This is also the reason for allowing more people to vote as wisdom through crowds can remove the effects of opinion. The suggestion of tournaments was more to be used in addition to laddering. I was also thinking that the results of the tournament should have no bearing on the suspect test. It was just the point of getting suspect testers to battle other suspect testers. I understand the metagames take time to evolve with respect to change, but it's almost impossible to implement that in old metagames. While it may seem a bad idea to allow any old "scrub" or "noob" to be involved in voting. When something is subject to opinion it's much better to use a large sample of people, than a small group of experts.
what i meant is if you are going to let ANYONE vote then you will have people that didn't get involved in the test voting as well, which seems like an unreliable and unfair way of voting. people also may not have as much incentive to take part in the laddering/touring aspect of the test if they know they can vote anyway. edit: which honestly isn't much different from the way we decide things now for old gens since the ladder has little to no bearing, except that after everyone and his mother puts his 2 cents in, only the auth gets to decide what happens which i think is silly.
Not really. Baton Pass has been banned on smogon and will be banned here. ADV is perfect the way it is. Same with RBY and GSC.
I fail to see your point. Baton pass was not banned during the ADV era on smogon, therefore the metagame was not fine when it was left. Also RBY is far from perfect... EDIT: Baton Pass isn't banned on smogon anyway http://www.smogon.com/tournaments/spl/rules
In my opinion? PO shouldn't try to change what's not broken. Removing Freeze Clause from all generations without any thoughts of 60% of the generations is one thing, then there's also the decision to "stay true to the game" which suddenly makes Pokémon invulnerable in Gen 1 when using Dig/Fly and becoming fully paralyzed, allowing them to beat every single opposing Pokémon. PO tries too hard to stand out from other communities, or isolate itself. Then, we get situations like this. What's a problem is that this isn't even something allowed to go to a vote (or so I guess), since it's a game mechanic rather than a specific move/Pokémon. Let the players decide rather than moderators with minimal experience in the tier (or at the very least consider their opinions more than at the moment), or appoint someone who actually knows anything about the old tiers - M Dragon is good at them all as an example of a player I'd like to see as a mod due to his experience with multiple older generations, provided that he wants to. The "tradition argument" isn't really a good one, but really, people who know the gen know what they are doing and saying unlike most people that say that the tradition argument is poor. Freeze Clause debate, noplz - we know it to be needed in the older generations. Ingrain Smeargle, same thing - the persons actually playing the tier know that it's ridiculous. Dig/Fly causing invulnerability? Same thing again. tl;dr - listen to the community more. /rant
Was going to post, but figured I'd just chime in to say that I 100% agree with most if not all of Isa's post. Although the fly/dig immunity thing was more of people going "we want all of the glitches RBY has!" since we were so wound from only getting stadium, then kind of forgetting things like that.
I love this OP because I feel like having well-defined power criteria (and I mean "well-defined", with numbers and shit) would be a good idea for all gens. I mean, as it stands, votes are a 100% subjective matter. The ways people try to justify votes to ban or not ban something are... well, it's hard to tell what they are, since the criteria for a well-grounded argument for such a thing don't really exist. Then people actually end up voting and larger votes end up vulnerable to bandwagoning, while smaller ones place inordinate weight on personal biases. It doesn't have to be this way, I mean it's pretty clear that there is an objective element to things worth banning. Nobody would ever say "Mewtwo should be allowed in standard play", that's clearly wrong and there's obviously reasons for it, just none that we as a community have explicitly documented. That being said, I'm of the mind that we should just let sleeping dogs lie with the older generations unless very many people who really know the tier propose and are behind a potential change (some progress should be allowed, otherwise we don't get the Ingrain thing in ADV or the HP legends allowed in GSC). And even then those really knowledgeable dudes should back their opinions up based on some sort of criteria to override decisions that would otherwise be heavily influenced by a few people's biases. These criteria would also be handy for serving as common ground on which somebody might argue for a necessary change when a desire to preserve tradition among the other "old-gen elite" might otherwise cockblock it. Old-gen communities are generally pretty small groups of very like-minded dudes, so having criteria to override bias is a huge deal.
the main thing is that the experience of the playerbases for the old metagames should dictate the way the old metagames are played. ingrain smeargle was banned late from adv, but it was banned because ipl pointed out that it might be problematic, then a bunch of good players laddered and voted it that way. that's the way it should always be done. the problem here is that you can't REVERSE things without asking. it's not that there shouldn't be any changes, it's that if you are going to change something you ask the players first (like in the case of freeze clause) or you only change something when the playerbase points it out and proves that it is behind the decision. we're talking about these things in terms of them being hypothetical changes when in actuality adv is MEANT to be played with freeze clause and without ingrain smeargle, and there is a demand for proof that the game should be played that way. that's not the way we should go about such matters though. since playing with those rules is considered the norm by the players, if you want to change that rule, play the game and present your argument that freeze clause should be repealed or that baton pass would be fine with ingrain smeargle allowed just like anyone else would have to. you can't take liberties with the rules of the metagames when they are not yours to alter, and lets just consider how hypocritical it is to demand proof from your players but not provide reasoning to them before making changes. deciding among yourselves doesn't cut it, you have to talk to the playerbase, and you have to talk to them BEFORE you decide to make changes, not afterward.
I see the huge point about freeze clause shrapn3l, that seems fairly naive of whoever decided to just remove it from all metagames. But I'm still confused on baton pass, to my knowledge it isn't controlled on smogon and never has been? It was only banned in certain Smogon tournaments and in Japan? My main problem is how hard it was to push through a change that was so blatantly needed. I don't know anyone who has played a lot of ADV and thinks that baton pass is fine. I couldn't find a more unanimous decision if Kyogre had a suspect test. When it comes to old metagames I'm a huge fan of the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", if the metagame is roughly fine, then you could end up doing more damage trying to improve it. However some things are in need of a change and applying the same process used in the current generation (gen5) isn't the best option.
ingrain smeargle is banned by smogon in all major adv tournaments which effectively nerfs baton pass. the adv spl rules on that page may have gone unchanged since the first spl. ingrain smeargle was banned after spl 1, before the subsequent smogon tour season (the first smogon tour season to feature adv since dp came out).
Well, the only real reason why it took that long to do something about ingrain is the simple fact that Oak wanted proof, other than "Hey we're ADV players, ban this please." I forget who but someone linked to the smogon thread and the proof he wanted was in there, so the ban happened. Keep in mind that even though he's co leading BW OU with IFM that he's primarily an ADV player. Of course removing freeze clause from RBY(don't know how anyone thought that would be a good idea), GSC and ADV is extremely nonsensical, but that's something different altogether of course.