[BW2] Proposed Removal of a Bunch of Tiers

Discussion in 'Gen 5 Side Metagames' started by sulcata, Jun 7, 2013.

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  1. sulcata

    sulcata stéphane curry best waifu Forum Moderator Server Administrator Forum Moderator Server Administrator

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    It has come to my attention (as well as my fellow side tiers leaders, Avatar Roku and Xdevo) that quite a few tiers have nearly no player base and are only occasionally played in Tournaments.

    Middle Cup has a grand total of 120 battles last month. I doubt anybody wants to keep this tier with the lack of enthusiasm I've seen in terms of the ladder and how often it doesn't start in Tournaments at peak hours.

    BW Cup is pretty much the same as Middle Cup, only getting a few more battles.

    Shanai Cup is an incredibly limited tier based on an Artificial Intelligence battling bot named Shanai. The tier is incredibly dead running less often than Middle Cup and having a measly 43 battles last month.

    Monocolour might look better with a much larger 1,000 battles, but that's still almost nothing. Monotype has nearly 20,000 battles per month and the ladder is still relatively slow (still usable though). Generally this tier is only played in Tournaments infrequently. Not to mention most players do not have knowledge of how to build for the tier due to it not being clear what Color a Pokemon belongs to. The recent Deoxys-S vote has only gotten two voters with opposing points of view. The colors are nowhere near balanced with Blue and Red basically dominating in terms of sheer power.

    Monogen is basically in the exact same situation as Monocolour except that the tier is considerably more balanced and players have more of an understanding of how to build for it; however, this is not enough to overshadow the flaws that it shares with Monocolour.

    Wifi NEU generally doesn't have problems running in tours; however, I doubt that anybody really plays it outside of just getting tour points and forgetting about it since it only has 791 battles on the ladder, even less than Monocolour and Monogen.

    Pretty much what's going on is that nobody is playing the tiers which makes it impossible to change anything about them. I'd rather have a few good tiers rather than a bunch of broken, unplayed tiers. Use it or lose it basically.

    Please do not reason that the tier should stay because "I like it"

    Do not argue to keep tiers I didn't say were going to be removed, this is NOT a proposal to remove all side tiers. (I might decide to infract such users from now on...)
     
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2013
  2. Finchinator

    Finchinator IT’S FINK DUMBASS

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    Well, Wifi NEU is a staple among the tiers that should be kept (assuming you're planing on deleting a few dead tiers), in my opinion.
    It has a constantly changing metagame, similarly to OU, UU, LU, and NU. (Thanks to it gaining / losing Pokemon due to usage in Wifi NU. Which at least creates some motive to keep playing / interest for the playerbase.)

    Also, it's a pretty enjoyable tier, just lacks the playerbase since no main tours include it (nor should they, already enough wifi tiers.) But, NEU is a 'fun' wifi tier. If there are some less-competitive players who wish to play something 'new' with unconventional threats, NEU is certainly their tier.

    Otherwise, Monocolor and Monogen have always seemed pretty pointless. Colors are obviously not balanced and there's no effective system of balancing them unless there's a playerbase to debate them (which there isn't) and many large (and possibly complex) bans. Monogen is the same except with generations taking he place of colors.

    Monotype was blessed with somehow decently balanced metagame. Well, the fact that types are effective / super effective / not very effective against each other is a large factor in why it's playable. That being said, it's popularity is evident and certainly deserved.
     
  3. NAVIDAD PIRATE

    NAVIDAD PIRATE THE PLEASURE OF BEING CUMMED INSIDE

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    I'm not sure I follow the rationale here. You're thinking of removing them because they aren't played on the ladder, even though you acknowledge how they're still played a bit? These tiers are played often in #tournaments (ladder isn't everything!) and with the possible exception of Middle Cup, are well liked by the playerbase there, especially the Monos.
     
  4. Dasdardly

    Dasdardly Uknown Bird

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    Shanai Cup literally just had a tournament, that you approved. (I don't get it.)
     
  5. Xinc

    Xinc Time for Oras?

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    I believe that the main reason for how come these side metagames aren't doing as well as you like is that they weren't presented correctly.

    Shanai Cup: I have no qualms and agree on your dismissal of the tier. Shanai doesn't exist anymore, and with such a limited amount of options, mainly just because Shanai could only comprehend a limited amount, I don't see much reason for its existence.

    I believe Monocolour needs to be represented more clearly. It has much more potential than the 1000 battles, but again, there doesn't seem to be much reason for battles. Though again, there IS the balance issue between Red, Blue, and the other colors. Monogen isn't popular enough either, though also has much potential. If we can utilize that potential, we can have a more flourishing metagame with more players and activity.

    If I recall correctly, NEU was approved by the general consensus of the community for the sake of a tier more limited than NU. I can't comment due to lack of experience in the tier.
     
  6. pokemonnerd

    pokemonnerd Only uso listens to pnerd. Devo too. Article Contributor Article Contributor

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    I always said that NEU should have never been made, but no, no one listens to pnerd.
     
  7. sulcata

    sulcata stéphane curry best waifu Forum Moderator Server Administrator Forum Moderator Server Administrator

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    MeowMix, the amount they're played in tours is almost negligible. The only reason people play them is really to rack up tour points. Nobody has an interest in them in terms of tiering or anywhere outside tours.

    Dasdardly, the tour is eight players. Most of the players are also from Indigo/VR who are most likely simply playing for the nostalgia. An eight person forum tournament isn't much of a reason to keep a tier running when the amount of tournaments and battles on the server are practically non-existent.

    In all honesty I'm not really against NEU simply because it gets a lot of forum support and server tournament activity. I simply listed it because one of the other tier leaders wanted it removed if I recall correctly (or somebody in Indigo).

    The balance issues in Monocolour are very extreme (hopefully it's noticeable just looking at the list) and cannot be fixed if we don't have more than two players voting on the potential banning of a Pokemon. I refuse to let the fate of a tier be decided by two voters.

    Monogen I'm still a little on the fence about since it isn't as badly broken as Monocolour (not exactly what I'd call "balanced", but it's workable). It's also more clear how to build for it as I said before since Pokemons' colors aren't always that obvious, while the generation is generally pretty easy to figure out.
     
  8. Luck>Skill

    Luck>Skill Well-Known Member

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    Might as well post the same here


    I know that the triples tour don't exactly fall under the "other metas" category but I guess it doesn't hurt to add them to the discussion! (note that wifi OU triples should stay, and wifi uber triples could stay just to have a reason to not allow stuff like kyogre in the tier, but if the playerbase actually applies common sense that is a non issue, why keep them? Because you can play them ingame / on the wifi via cartridge so they are somehow official, although i guess we could of nuke both in favour of GBU Triples)

    Also, they clog up the Tier list so I agree with removing them

    And I never wanted NEU to happen, or Middle Cup for that matter

    LC UU had 14 battles in may, ADV UU had 4 (again, not really "other metas" but opening multiple threads on the same matter seems like a waste)

    Might as well ditch RBY and GSC LC because, come on people, really?

    The real problem is that we were too lenient with adding these as tiers, just because ~5 or so people support a "tier" it doesn't mean it should actually have its spot
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2013
  9. NAVIDAD PIRATE

    NAVIDAD PIRATE THE PLEASURE OF BEING CUMMED INSIDE

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    I'll be honest, I just don't see what the problem is with having more tiers. Even if they're just there, what's the harm in having them?
     
  10. MewtwoHidden

    MewtwoHidden My Hax Makes Me Famous

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    Meowmix is right, if anybody wants to play it at all then what damage does it do for them to just be ... there
     
  11. sulcata

    sulcata stéphane curry best waifu Forum Moderator Server Administrator Forum Moderator Server Administrator

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    There's no "harm" in having them, but the point of having a tier is for it to be played. The reason I think we should remove them is the same reason tiers like Monoletter and No Hazards will never happen, nobody will play them and they'll just be incredibly broken/uncompetitive tiers occasionally played in tours. We need a player base to balance the tiers.

    The only exceptions to this rule would be tiers with significant historical value such as RBY, GSC, or Adv.
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2013
  12. TheAardvarker

    TheAardvarker New Member

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    monocolour and monogen arent really broken and i can find a few battles in the two every day. no one voted on deoxys-s in monocolour because red is not encountered very often so most players will have no opinion. i have never seen a deoxy at all in monocolour and only 3 red teams. only latias and scizor are ou and in red so it is not a popular color. I have probably faced about 100 different teams. I am not going to vote on something i have to experience dealing with. i think the line on which a tier should be removed is if tours do not get started when the tier appears. There are players who enjoy monocolour and mongen who would be annoyed to see the tiers disappear. same with neu. why get rid of a tier because too few people play it if there is some demand. Im sure over 100 people have teams for all of these tiers excluding shanai and get them out occasionally to have fun in a tournament.

    and with monocolour if it has 1000 battles a month thats at least 68 players a day who would no longer have the ladder to play in.

    Also, blue and red dominate the tier in monocolour? that just isn't true. Grey perhaps has the best assortment and can be used well along with a couple of other colors. While blue is the largest as far as viable pokes i hardly ever see red. Only 3 pokemon including deoxy are ou or above unless blaziken isnt banned. I don't even see red enough to know. Even the colors that look bad like yellow, white and black could probably have a viable team made around because no one will try to have counters for those colors. It is a tier of surprise that is unique and is played. i even saw a good pink team once that ran me over because i had no counters for the stuff on it. saying the tier is broken demonstrates someone who doesn't play the tier much thinking no one else plays it either in my opinion. i'm only ranked 10 in monocolour with grey though, so maybe i have no clue what im talking about.

    Also, it seems like a complaint is that people just make teams for tourpoints. I don't think that is true, people enjoy side metagames every now and then and its an alternative to quitting and doing something else. People enjoy building teams for a new set of rules. Its not like the tourneys of 8 and 16 people even take that long so they dont really clog the tourney queue. Also, how does a tier that occur at max 4 or 5 times a day with less than 8 entrants sometimes worth someones time to get the low points awarded If anything is played just for tourpoints and clogged the queue its the the challenge cup 1v1 tourneys with double elimination that over 64 people join. There is no skill in that tier whatsoever so its just like a random hour long lottery. People just get points by joining as many as possible and it borders on making tourpoints broken when it always seems to be in the queue. I get challenge cup, and wifi cc 1v1, but cc 1v1 is just not a good idea for a tier when it cannot measure any skill at all. Even regular challenge cup oddly seems to occur more than wifi ou or uu which should be the main tiers present. if what tiers appear in the tournment queue needs to be looked at, it should start with the prominence of challenged cup and the 1v1 variants be4 blaming problems on sidemetagames.
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2013
  13. sulcata

    sulcata stéphane curry best waifu Forum Moderator Server Administrator Forum Moderator Server Administrator

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    I've played the tier multiple times in tours, 90% of the time Red and Blue make it to finals. I slapped a Blue team together without knowing what the hell I was doing and made it to finals. If you don't see red enough to vote on this (or any other color for that matter), that's probably a sign that the tier isn't played much! The number of OU pokemon is hardly a measure of how well a color does. The combination of a volt-turn core (Rotom-W and Scizor), easy hazards (Deoxys-S), and a heavy hitter (Latias) makes Red a very deadly color. Pink on the other hand has absolutely no viable sweepers. One cannot look at this situation and call the tier "balanced".

    Monored also has Rotom-W by the way.

    I see having only a couple of players to be a very poor reason to keep a tier when other possible tiers like "No Hazards" and "Monoletter" would probably get the same number of players, yet we deem that they don't have enough of a player base to become a tier. Why should current tiers not be subject to the same standards we apply to suggested tiers?

    CC 1v1 is established as just luck and actually counts differently (less iirc) in tours. People join it because they enjoy it and want to play the tier. If these tiers are getting played even less than a tier that takes little to no skill, I think that says a lot about how much people want to play them and how many users the tiers really have.

    My point about them only being played occasionally for tour points was not that it ruins tours. It was to outline how much the player base truly does not care about these tiers to vote or even discuss the tier at all. Undeniably there is still some ironing out to do in these tiers that no players care to help with. If the player base really cared that much they would show a little more enthusiasm.

    BW Cup is also in the same boat as Middle Cup only getting a few more battles.
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2013
  14. Dasdardly

    Dasdardly Uknown Bird

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    Shanai Cup has been balanced since it was created, and has at least one fervent user (and a couple that'd be sad to see it go). I think it's good.
    Shanai Cup had more battles last month than all the past VGC tiers combined, and more than every past-gen NU tier. If you want to get rid of them then I suppose Shanai Cup could be on the chopping block, but frankly I don't see why any of those are problematic. (Also yeah that was all battles and the SC tour probably boosted it a bit.)
    Haha, a couple guys and I were actually talking about trying to revive SC 1.5 earlier, but yeah I suppose that's a pipe dream. (Numel 4ever </3)
     
  15. sulcata

    sulcata stéphane curry best waifu Forum Moderator Server Administrator Forum Moderator Server Administrator

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    It's not a matter of them being "problematic". It's a problem of just keeping random tiers that only a very small group of people play at all. If we were to do this for every group of people who want to make a tier, we'd have 100s of tiers to keep track of. Also, I never accused Shanai Cup of being imbalanced (or at least I don't think I did o.o)
     
  16. Incon

    Incon I feel incapable of seeing the end.

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    I think part of the problem with these tiers having such a lower player base is the fact that they're all lumped into the Side-Tier Subforum. The discussion of tiers, hosting of tours and challenges, etc. are all held in one subforum making each tier cluttered. Monotype has a bigger player base because it has always been popular among Pokemon players due to the natural balance of the tier and the in game Gym Leaders. The other tiers aren't in the same boat. They lack the same exposure.

    I agree that we need to cut down on the tiers that have such little gameplay. Honestly, Middle Cup and Shanai are pointless in my opinion as they virtually have no gameplay. Monogen and Monocolour are overshadowed and have balance issues. Wifi Neu, while I enjoy it very much, is hardly played, and it takes a long time to find a battle on the ladder (although I think Neu can be set apart for the reasons Finch mentioned in his post). Removing some of these tiers will allow for the remaining tiers to have more exposure towards newer players. Because there are less tiers, the community will be able to focus on balancing, learning, playing the remaining tiers rather than playing all the current tiers half-assed for a tournament.
     
  17. TheAardvarker

    TheAardvarker New Member

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    i forgot about rotom-w being red, i agree the color is viable. However, blue and red do not dominate. Grey has kyruem-b, magnezone, skarmory, ferrothorn, and terrakion. While some tournaments end with red and blue, i know a lot end with other colors like grey. i know people higher on the ladder than me who use grey, red and blue are just the most obvious to build a team out of and that is probably why they end up in hastily made tourney teams a lot.

    while i understand cc 1v1 is supposed to be a lottery winners can compound their winning over and over. If you get a by in a 64 player tourney it is an automatic 3.12% chance of ending up in the winning bracket in the finals where everyone who doesnt have a bye only has a 1.56% chance. Once you are in the finals on the winning bracket it is a 75% chance of winning. If it is a 32 person tourney with byes it is a 3.12% chance without a bye and a 6.25% with one. Players can play ten tourneys before their rating decays, so winners will win more. It compounds on itself making it more of a rigged lottery where people who enter the most tourneys consistently will win a significantly larger portion than people who win once and let it decay then enter again.

    I'm focusing on the tourpoint side of this a little bit because i don't see any other benefit of removing the tiers. I guess the tiers will probably get removed from what this thread is showing. It won't really have any impact on anyone except a negative one on people who play the tier. Probably more people will miss the tier than the number of people who ladder indicated by the tour leaderboard for monocolour have few who are on the ladder.
     
  18. Hannah

    Hannah Come a little closer

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    I've been complaining about this since god-knows-when because a lot of these tiers are really useless, when you look at it. They're just added to the queue as filler most of the time. True there are some exceptions to this but really it's just unnecessary to have them.

    If you play these tiers because you enjoy them and such, then that's fine, but it has to be active and encourage users to play them. Maybe better communication and more tournaments for it perhaps?

    I've been suggesting a certain quota of battles that take place for a certain tier and if that tier doesn't hit the number of battles then it should be removed.

    A lot of them are 'fun' tiers for a reason, but some tiers are just dead and useless. (Middle cup and whatnot)
     
  19. Princess Luna

    Princess Luna Resident Pegasister

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    I personally enjoy NEU as it provides more of a challenge and gives some pokemon you would never even consider in NU (plusle in recent memory) a chance to shine plus as stated before tours are quite active i can admit the ladder is a bit lacking but i still see no reason to remove it

    Monocolour/Gen are decent i have no real experience with monocolour outside of a few tours but i love Monogen and both tiers again get quite a following in tours even if the ladder is dead at times Monocolour is quite balanced if you look at it (sure some colours are dominant but thats just the same in any tier like rain or sun being dominant in OU or Arceus being dominant in ubers) and as for monogen each gen has a plethora of options ranging from phasing to HO to Stall and although some gens (V) have better pokes than others its the challenge of building a team from your favourite gen to combat those powerful pokes that really makes Monogen shine for me

    i have no experience in Shanai cup or BW cup and the tours rarely have more than 3-4 people so i have no problem with the removal of those same deal with middle cup
     
  20. Luck>Skill

    Luck>Skill Well-Known Member

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    Also, RBY NU (and UU I guess? I don't think they historically exist), GSC NU (idk about UU historically existing either, if it does ignore this bit!) and stuff like LC Ubers and HGSS LC Ubers (although having a ubers list is kind of a necessity so yeah)

    I don't see why we'd remove the other Monos other than Monotype, I mean, they are played enough in Tournaments and 1000 battles isn't _that_ bad for a small tier, the balancing issues wouldn't exist if the side tiers leaders we picked were actually competent maybe ;D
     
  21. Samphire

    Samphire Too much hard work!

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    In my mind shanai cup is pointless. It belongs to a system that is gone totally, and was a rather limited tier in the first place.

    In terms of the others, I think they work as concepts. In my mind, if you want them to have more exposure, try to post more about them, maybe work with the YouTube channel a bit, and perhaps put in a word to the server Tours staff about starting those particular tiers more often. If you don't work at pushing them out to a wider audience, you're not going to know, and therefore I think will end up with the same groups that are currently playing in those tiers.
     
  22. Green Eyed Russian

    Green Eyed Russian Perish Song Sirens

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    First of all I really don't see what is the issue with having these tiers among other ones in the tierlist, they really don't cost you anything.
    You, the tier leaders, accepted to lead these metagames, I don't really know why two out of three users that are not competent in the matter and don't even play such tiers were picked for this role however you knew what your work should have been. You had to promote at least the most played tiers of the side ones and not get rid of them as a solution to their lack of popularity, and remember those tiers were already approved and actually did have and still do have an acceptable playerbase even if it doesn't reach the one the official Wifi tiers have.

    I personally think that the variety of tiers to choose from is one of the sectors that makes us better than Pokemon Showdown!, both of simulators offer some interesting tiers and where Pokemon Online can't shine with its own CAP metagame, our simulator can provide even a wider selection of tiers to fit a decent ammount of requests made by players in matter of tiers.

    Furthermore, it's a bit late to do such proposals against some of tiers that were listed in the original topic, I'm referring to Monogen and Monocolour, since the 6th Generation of Pokemon X & Y is close to its release, this means the new gen will bring more Pokemon and variety to both tierlists in case one of their problems was the viability of specific teams.

    About specific tiers:
    [secret]
    • Monogen & Monocolour: Do have an acceptable playerbase and force players to follow new rules that actually can be taken as positive factor to ensure more interest from users that want to take a break from the standard ones. Also, the two metas are an answer to the playerbase who already appreciate the idea of battling with themed teams. And as already stated the incoming generation will bring more variety to these tiers.
    • BW Cup: Once again this is one of the tiers that guarantees a break from the standard metagames in tournaments. However its playerbase will be drastically decreased once sixth generation will be released, so it will definitely become a dead tier. I can support its removal.
    • Middle Cup: One of the tiers I would actually get rid off, however I think the effort that was put in it and in its analysis by part of the simulator community shouldn't be forgotten when we have to discuss it.
    • Wifi NEU: The tier had a positive general consensus and does have an acceptable playerbase as well. I can't see why it can't even become one of the official Wifi metagames with it's forum related to the Wifi NU one. The same tier will become XY NEU during the first months of the sixth generation, so I think we could remove it only when the next gen will be released and set a new NEU tier that features the new Pokemon.
    • Shanai Cup: This metagame is one of the most interesting ones, totally created by a devoted group of Pokemon Online users can be definitely interpreted like the original Pokemon Online's metagame project, I think it can still be revived and remain part of the simulatour history. As a tier it doesn't even need changes or suspects right now, best it can aim for is un upgrade during the next generation, nothing else.
    [/secret]
     
    Last edited: Jun 8, 2013
  23. Dr. Doom

    Dr. Doom Long time hater of stall

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    Monogen - Broken, Unbalanced, hardly any games. Needs to go.
    MonoColour: See Monogen
    Shanai Cup: Pointless. Get rid of it
    LC Ubers: I built an LC Ubers team, and there were almost never any battles. There were never more than 5 people in that tier at any one time. Just ban Scyther, Yanma etc from LC and be done with it IMO. If that got more
    NEU: I don't have enough experience in it to comment, but I never saw the point in it.
    BW Cup: See Shanai Cup
     
  24. .Rawr!

    .Rawr! c(°3°)כ

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    I play Side Metagames now and then too, so giving my 2 cents:

    - NEU: I have done some laddering in this tier, but i sadly need say the tier is very poorly played. It was created to encourage the use of some pokes which u don't consider for a NU team, but i think it failed in its purpose, maybe if a pokemon is bad, is just bad.

    - Monogen and Monocolour: I'm a lover of Mono tiers, but is evident Monocolour have serious balance issues and i don't see them being solved soon. Monogen, in the other hand have more potential, and i can say to wait to Gen 6 launch before make a discussion about Monogen.
    In short, i see new potential for Monogen in the future, while i am very sceptical about Monocolour.

    - Shanai / BW / Middle Cup: I think they are pointless, pretty much no one play them anymore so yeah...
     
  25. Firer

    Firer Owner

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    I do not really see the point in removing these tiers. IMO we can discuss, if they should be still added to the tournament queue, but completly removing them is senseless... Even if just 1 player plays them (well two for that matter... kinda hard to play a tier alone) and the tiers are already implemented... Let them have their fun.

    I don't see either how the ladder activity plays any role here. I have seen countless monogen tours filling up quickly and even if you think my above point is invalid, this is more then enough of a reason to keep the tiers.
     
  26. pokemonnerd

    pokemonnerd Only uso listens to pnerd. Devo too. Article Contributor Article Contributor

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  27. Dr. Doom

    Dr. Doom Long time hater of stall

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    To be fair, MonoType's pretty balanced. I'd like to ban Deoxys-S cos it's a pain for any team without a spinner (MonoDragon, MonoGhost, MonoDark, MonoElectric, MonoFlying), but other than that I think it's OK. MonoFire could do with a buff, although beyond bringing back Ninetales (which I DON'T want to do) I'm not sure how it could be done.
     
  28. Gol D. Roger

    Gol D. Roger Key to Progression

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    My Judgement:
    Keep Wifi NEU, Keep Monotype and Monogen
    Lose Middle Cup(Though I really wish we could keep it), Monocolor, Shanai Cup, and BW Cup

    My reasoning for each:
    For the Keeps:
    -Wifi NEU should stay as a place for truly unviable pokemon to be useful outside of their small niche that they may (or may not) have in Wifi NU. This tier also provides a place for players to play using Middle Cup mons that simply aren't viable in higher tiers, which will allow Middle Cup to be phased out more successfully.

    -Monotype should stay as it has a balanced metagame, is played by a fair number of people, the team restrictions are easy to understand, and it is quite easy to build a team for. Additionally, the very nature of the metagame is that the advanced rock-paper-scissors style of the typing system means every team can be beaten, limiting the "overpowered type" factor that exists for Red and Blue in the monocolor tier.

    -Monogen can stay for similiar reasons, in that it is a highly balanced metagame, easy to build teams for, has a decent following, and no single generation has a huge edge over another.

    For the Drops:
    Middle Cup-Assuming Wifi NEU is kept, the purpose of this tier-to offer middle evolution pokemon a place similiar to Little Cup to show their advantages-is largely unnecessary, as many middle evolutions are as viable in NEU as they are in Middle Cup. I love to build for the tier, but unfortunately it is a redundancy as long as NEU exists.

    MonoColor- As said by many before me, the fact that A. Pokemon coloration doesn't seem to follow any logical order, with bronzong, for example, being green when its non-shiny form is clearly blue and B. the colors Red and Blue are enormously overrepresented while colors like black and white are so restricted they can hardly be used. It is an unbalanced metagame, hard to build teams for, and hard to understand. I don't think too many people will miss it.

    Shanai Cup- There is no reason to keep this tier now that the Shanai Battle AI has been discontinued, and since the player base is so small, the pool of pokemon and movesets is so small, and the popularity is so low. Lose it.

    BW Cup- There is no real legitimate reason to keep this tier, either. It is simply a broken mishmash of gen 5 UU and OU mons that nobody really understands how to play well enough for an actual metagame to develop. Cut it out, and just add play more Wifi tiers.

    Thanks for reading! I hope my opinion helps.
     
  29. sulcata

    sulcata stéphane curry best waifu Forum Moderator Server Administrator Forum Moderator Server Administrator

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    I have no idea why people are talking about Monotype, I never suggested removing it. Last month it got nearly 20,000 battles, which is 20x Monogen and Monocolour. Also Dr. Doom, if you want to discuss Deoxys-S, please go to the Deoxys-S thread for Monotype.

    Balance is only a small reason that people keep picking at. I feel like most of the people against the removal have basically ignored my argument that nobody plays these tiers. The argument for keeping them despite having no player base is about as poor an argument as saying a new tier with only 10 or so players should become an official tier. Tiers are added based on the merit of having people play them, which the previously mentioned tiers do not have.
     
  30. Firer

    Firer Owner

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    But if they are already there, we can as well keep them. There is no point in removing them.
     
  31. Scene

    Scene reverie

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    Yeah, I completely agre with this thread. The only thing I'd keep is NEU, especially with Gen 6's influx incoming. Everything else can be got rid of. I don't know what the consensus on past gens is, but in my opinion everything not OU from gens 1-3 can be ditched. I'd also get rid of the Smogon tiers, Uber Triples, old VGCs (maybe?) and god knows what other rubbish nobody ever plays from the tier list. Keep the tiers people actually play and enjoy in the spotlight.
     
  32. sulcata

    sulcata stéphane curry best waifu Forum Moderator Server Administrator Forum Moderator Server Administrator

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    Smogon tiers are no longer in our tier lists. VGC, JAA, Random Battle, and so on are kept despite usage stats for one reason, they are official rule sets that Nintendo uses. Implementing these rule sets allows people to experience past Nintendo tournament-style battles and the type of battles that occur on the cartridge games.
     
  33. Roku

    Roku sup nerds

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    Alright, throwing my two cents in now that the thread has picked up a bit. I have noticed a lot of people favoring the argument that "they are already there, why remove them, they aren't hurting anything", however there are a few disadvantages. The first would be that the tiers that are proposed to be removed, with the possible exception of NEU and Middle Cup, are very unbalanced and there is really no way to adjust them. All of you claim to care about these tiers, but then nobody posts in any of the threads for suspects, leaving us little option. A side effect of this is that very unbalanced tiers are being played in tournaments, possibly skewing the leaderboard, but honestly I'm not familiar enough with the channel to know whether the side tiers are enough to change rankings.

    With regards to NEU and Middle Cup, they simply don't get enough players to justify leaving them, as if there is no attention being given to the tier now, then there will be even less when Gen 6 comes around and people want to test things out in main tiers, side tiers will be all but forgotten. Unless a large group of people intend to start playing the tiers, I see no reason for them to stay.
     
  34. Angelic.

    Angelic. Banned

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    My 2 cents on these side metas:
    Monocolor - Probably the most unbalanced tier I've been able to find. Most others have said everything in regards to this tier. Removal supported

    Monogen - Relatively balanced. Every gen has it's thing. They all have massive amounts of power. While 3rd and 5th seem to be used the most (5th easily being the strongest one) there is no real sense of over poweredness in this tier. It isn't played much but if the player base could be increased somehow maybe the tier will actually kick off. It's fairly simple in terms of teambuilding. The excitement is the difficult part. Maybe 6th gen will help with this.

    BW Cup - Lame version of monogen. Interesting concept, but it's not strong enough to support itself. Removal supported. Also noted, 6th gen will probably kill this tier.

    Shanai Cup - Removal supported. Dead tier. Super limited. Little to no fan base. Can't see this tier going anywhere.... most others stated why this should be removed too.

    Middle Cup - Similar to BW Cup, interesting concept, but it doesn't seem strong enough to support itself.

    Wifi NEU - No decision should be made until 6th gen comes out and tiers are re-made. The addition of the new pokes,abilities, etc. that 6th gen may bring could make this tier a lot stronger. Depending on how these new additions play out. This could definitely be a keeper. Until then I say leave it as is.

    On a side note, things like LC UU, HG/SS LC Ubers/UU, RBY, Random Battle, and GSC tiers should be removed. They have incredibly small support, few battles, and if they do happen to find themselves in a tour not many people join. However, ADV seems to have a strong enough fan base to continue tours. The ladder not so much. CC 1v1 should also be removed as it's just pure luck. The other CC tiers have the same "lolsy" element to them that take a bit of skill. However, the Wifi version shouldn't be removed. This has the same effect and Battle Factory on a much smaller scale. Despite what people say this tier requires the skill of being able to pick out the pokes that will most likely attract your opponents eyes and find a suitable counter.

    Monotype is popular enough in ladders and tours to stay. No reason to get rid of it. Balanced with the exception of a few controversial pokes (namely Deo-S and Genesect, but this is a discussion for another day).
     
  35. Green Eyed Russian

    Green Eyed Russian Perish Song Sirens

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    You've just posted a self-contradictory sentence. How can it be that only Wifi NEU will receive more attention with the Gen 6's influx while Monogen and Monocolour won't have it? All the three tiers will be affected by XY upgrade. At the same time, following your reasoning the "everything not OU from gens 1-3 can be ditched" in this case should be extended to Gen 4 as well since it will the new "two gens ago" domain and will receive even less consideration in terms of playerbase (with the Gen 6 release) confronted with the two Mono tiers analyzed in this thread.

    I may agree on Middle Cup's arguement since the tier will just become a poor reproduction of NEU.
    While referring to the second part, that always happened and will happen, of course the users will test the new Pokemon once XY will be out, this happened with every new introduced generation, however the more generation we have, the more variety of Pokemon we have. When Gen 5 came on the scene offering us a list of Pokemon that reached 649+ Pokemon (considering all the new alternate forms as well) it did also make it possible to think of new metagames that are Monotype, Monogen and Monocolour, that otherwise would have few options to choose while thinking of a team. Now consider what will happen in Gen 6, the excitement for the new standard tiers will last few months and we'll be back able to actually show again some interest for the discussed tiers, Monotype of course will get a further update, but so will Monogen too, it will reach the ammount of 6 possible generations to choose as bases for your teambuilding, so will Monocolour as well (and even if there will be up to two out of ten colours that has a very limited usage, this shouldn't influence it's meta in any critical way, this happens in Monotype as well with Poison, Rock, and Grass teams but the metagame is still playable and not dominated by few selected types).
    Basically the three Mono tiers and NEU will be exclusive only to Gen 6, but until XY will not be released these tiers should stay in the current tierlist.

    Pokemon coloration follows the Pokedex, it doesn't take any wasted time to learn the colour chart that PO Wiki and Bulbapedia offer you.
    Pokemon by themselves don't follow any solid logic in terms of type combinations, movepools, evolution, effectivity of attacks and so on, I can't take this part as a legit reason.
     
  36. .Rawr!

    .Rawr! c(°3°)כ

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    The problem with Monocolour is the lack of reliable definition of colors.
    Pokedex colors make groups unbalanced, subjective and hard to make teams (examples are Cresselia being yellow, Hydreigon being blue, Mantine purple and i can name a lot more of examples)
    Anyway, the tier concept isn't so appealing like those of Monotype or Monogen (monotype recall the in-game Gym leaders and Monogen recall the generation games)


    In my opinion Monogen tier and at some degree NEU tier can stay, while the others (Monocolour, SC, MC, BWC) can leave.
     
    Last edited: Jun 9, 2013
  37. Superbob

    Superbob New Member

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    I think Monocolor/gen can stay since people may get interested in them when they see them next to Monotype (like I did). Is there some way to help promote tier growth?
     
  38. ajhockeystar

    ajhockeystar Proud Canadian

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    I honestly enjoy a lot of these underplayed tiers, but some I just find useless to keep. I mean, if nobody is playing them, why are we keeping them? I enjoy NEU a whole lot, as I love using pokemon that never have a chance to shine in the upper tiers. Monogen is a quite balanced tier, and many enjoy it. It isn't laddered very much though. Monotype is also very interesting as teambuilding requires people to think of effective ways to counter their team's weaknesses and such. The least played tier (arguably) and one of my favourites is LC UU, if only more people would play it....
     
  39. sulcata

    sulcata stéphane curry best waifu Forum Moderator Server Administrator Forum Moderator Server Administrator

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    Okay, I don't know why people keep talking about tiers like Monotype and LC UU. LC UU is not under the umbrella of the side tiers. Also, nowhere did I say I wanted to remove Monotype. This is not a proposed mass removal of all side tiers. This is a proposed removal of the side tiers whose player bases who are so small that no progression can happen in them when clearly there is work to be done. Tiers like Random Battle, Monotype, Gen 5 1v1, and so on are not going to be leaving any time soon.
     
  40. Celestial Phantom

    Celestial Phantom YAHA

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    I'll toss my 2 cents in on this:

    Middle Cup/BW Cup: While being a bit different for players, extremely dead tiers that don't even get a few plays in Tournaments when they get added that no MU even adds them anymore. BW Cup could stay but with the fact that we're having gen 6 coming up and all, what is the point? Especially when we technically don't have a tier for just GSC pokes, Adv pokes (Not the 200 variation), and DPPt in some regards. No really viable with something new popping up in just a few months.

    Wifi NEU: Initially I like the idea of being able to use a fair amount of NU pokes that will almost never be viable on a team I make for NU in a tier where they could actually be of use, but this has ended up going awry. I like the tier for something different but it just adds another team to build for every so often and for what? Sever tours? It gets boring, no one ladders it really, and no forum tours for it happen really except those who add it in so they can make an addition round for all BW tiers as a build up.

    Monogen: Probably the best candidate to possibly keep out of the nuke-able tiers. Balancing issues are still there with this one, but you can make a pretty decent team out of a lot of pokemon in each tier, it's just people see the lackluster of stats and usable strategy in each gen since gamefreak likes to have somethings more powered up and dominant. If it weren't for a few things like adv/bw having one of the best teams you can make with what you get or the fact that gen 1 really on has one real team to work with...so balancing issues on a few things, the tier would be a lot better.

    Monocolour: I do enjoy the tier at times, but again balancing issues really make it hard to have fun in this tier. Especially since it's based of the dex colors of pokemon which really gives a huge advantage to some colors. Mono-blue, red, and purple dominate the tier, and before The Aardvarker says otherwise go look at the past stats for the tier, you will see that pokemon from each 3 have way higher usage than monogray (which is mostly the 4th most used color). And each one has some ideally powerful pokemon with several viable strategies and sets. Other colours get the short end of the stick and only have legit 6-8 pokemon that you can viably use for a team and most often than not they are a bit lackluster.

    I don't mind nuking the tiers if it can get more focused support/word for other tiers to gain popularity from it (although it probably won't happen), but I don't have too much support for them staying except that it appeals to a slight few people, and in some cases more for one off matches/tours.
     
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