Moving on from part 1, we now have an Overview that I'll repost below that we can use to uniquely identify ourselves. As I mentioned in one of the posts there, I said that the Ubers tiering policy would make use of the standard policy framework, but edit the assumptions and definitions to better fit Ubers's identity. Keep reading to get the general idea of what this final part is meant to achieve.
Here is the Overview again:
"Competitive": A metagame that is free of "uncompetitive" elements such as those in our clauses - OHKO moves, Moody, Sleep Clause, etc.
"(Competitively) Playable": A metagame that allows a player to show their skill as Smogon defines in its assumptions. There should be interaction between the players with a degree of consistency being possible in such a metagame.
"Purity": The idea of sticking to the game of Pokemon as designed by its developers and not altering it ourselves. Think along the lines of the AG format where no bans exist at all.
"Complex Bans": The idea of a conditional ban such as the use of "X is prevented with Y", as opposed to an outright ban of an element.
"Element": Used in reference to describe things at a barebones level. This can refer to moves, Pokemon, abilities, or anything in particular at its lowest form.
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So, the purpose of this final part is threefold:
- To flesh out the ideas expressed in the overview in detail to avoid confusion (see above)
- To decide what to keep and / or edit from the standard policy framework and incorporate into our own policy
- To decide what (if anything) the standard policy is missing that would be beneficial to cover in the context of Ubers
Here are the parts in question we will be looking at in the below hide tags:
Let's get started!
Here is the Overview again:
When we made the Overview internally, I mentioned in the last thread that we made some quick definitions during that discussion that we aim to get a consensus on the definitions behind with this thread. Here they are:Ubers's Tier Policy (Overview) said:Ubers's Identity and Purpose
Ubers is defined as the Smogon tier that aims to create a competitively playable metagame with the least amount of bans. As part of an overall goal Smogon has that aims to create a fun and competitive format for every Pokemon within reasonable boundaries, Ubers exists above Smogon's flagship tier, OU, while operating on the earlier noted definition in order to fulfill this objective. As part of our position in the tiering system, we have to consider many different valid points of view - purity, competitiveness, and even the aspects of enjoyment derived from our tier when making decisions.
Ubers's Stances
For Ubers to maintain its status as a competitively playable tier, history has taught us that bans are sometimes unavoidable. Our tiering actions in the past tend to come as a result of new elements breaking the status quo of what Ubers once accepted and thought of as normal, meaning a small degree of flexibility has to be kept in mind when enforcing our tiering policy.
Ubers will take actions that are deemed suitable by the Tiering Council and wider community if they are believed to benefit or harm the ideals of Ubers play, as discussed in the first section. It should be noted that the desire for Ubers to maintain its status as a competitively playable metagame takes priority over our desire to avoid bans, however, unbanning elements will always be on the table for discussion should we believe they are worthwhile.
Ubers's Tiering Actions
Ubers aims to start every metagame that results from a new game release with a fresh banlist, taking only the standard Smogon singles clauses and working from there, with no Pokemon bans. Our standard method for making a ban or unban decision on an element in Ubers will be through suspect testing, where we use a 66.6% vote against the current status quo to make the final decision. Our Tiering Council will be responsible for determining suspect tests with consideration for community input and with consideration to our philosophy and policy definitions.
Quickbans are reserved for extreme cases, something we cannot accurately define until they happen due to their nature and the nature of Ubers as a tier, but any ban of this type should have close to zero doubts about its legitimacy, and should only be the result of a community-wide discussion.
Ubers will also make use of complex bans to help reach our goal of creating a format where we ban as little as possible, even though this may come at the cost of purity and simplicity. As a general guideline, Ubers will be much more comfortable using complex bans in cases of avoiding collateral damage to the metagame, rather than aiming to "nerf" something in particular.
Finally, this tiering policy may be considered for retroactive use in older generations for exclusive cases involving extreme demand from its active community. This scenario is expected to be exceedingly rare and is mainly left open to avoid closing doors unnecessarily.
"Competitive": A metagame that is free of "uncompetitive" elements such as those in our clauses - OHKO moves, Moody, Sleep Clause, etc.
"(Competitively) Playable": A metagame that allows a player to show their skill as Smogon defines in its assumptions. There should be interaction between the players with a degree of consistency being possible in such a metagame.
"Purity": The idea of sticking to the game of Pokemon as designed by its developers and not altering it ourselves. Think along the lines of the AG format where no bans exist at all.
"Complex Bans": The idea of a conditional ban such as the use of "X is prevented with Y", as opposed to an outright ban of an element.
"Element": Used in reference to describe things at a barebones level. This can refer to moves, Pokemon, abilities, or anything in particular at its lowest form.
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So, the purpose of this final part is threefold:
- To flesh out the ideas expressed in the overview in detail to avoid confusion (see above)
- To decide what to keep and / or edit from the standard policy framework and incorporate into our own policy
- To decide what (if anything) the standard policy is missing that would be beneficial to cover in the context of Ubers
Here are the parts in question we will be looking at in the below hide tags:
(taken from here)
Assumptions in Tiering Policy:
I.) We play, to the best of our simulator's capabilities, with the mechanics given to us on the cartridge.
Assumptions in Tiering Policy:
I.) We play, to the best of our simulator's capabilities, with the mechanics given to us on the cartridge.
- Some exceptions exist, such Sleep Clause and Freeze Clause (RBY / GSC), but they are to be avoided as much as possible.
- Suggestions to "remove critical hits" or "make Baton Pass fail in battle" are not valid tiering proposals.
- For actions to be taken in tiering policy, it is important to show how that action affects BOTH the ladder scene and the tournament scene.
- Stats for both will be highly emphasized but not a sole determining factor.
- The status quo can be changed in certain cases, such as new game releases. This is the situation with Hoopa-U in ORAS, which started directly in OU, unlike other 680-BST legendaries, which start in Ubers and then potentially get suspected to drop to OU.
- If a proposal is made to ban or unban a Pokemon, ability, item, or move, the side suggesting this must demonstrate why this is necessary and how it affects the ladder and the tournament scene, as well as provide evidence for both.
- This means we have to accept that moves have secondary effects, that moves can miss, that moves can critical hit, and that managing all these potential probability points is a part of skill.
- This does NOT mean that we will accept every probability factor introduced to the game. Evasion, OHKO moves, and Moody all affected the outcome "too much", and we removed them.
- "Too much" is if a particular factor has the more skilled player at a disadvantage a considerable amount of the time against a less skilled player, regardless of what they do.
- This means we have to accept that it's possible we will be at an advantage or disadvantage from the very beginning.
- With optimal team building skills, the pool of options (Pokemon, moves, items) present in the tier should allow you to build teams addressing the different team archetypes at least decently and offer a solution in-battle to a large majority of the principle threats of the metagame.
- The majority of our potential suspect discussion will center around the defined versions of uncompetitive, broken, and unhealthy and how a particular suspect element lowers some component of player skill within those three constructs.
- Any of the subsections in skill can be emphasized for a potential suspect.
- If Shadow Tag reduces the battling skill component too much via removing smart switching and reducing the ability to assess risk, these should be mentioned when stating Shadow Tag is uncompetitive, broken, or unhealthy.
- If Toxapex is uncompetitive, broken, or unhealthy, point out how it reduces player skill from being the major determining factor in a match and which component of skill it drastically takes away from.
taken from here
Definitions for Tiering Policy:
I.) Skill - the subjective metric we use to judge player worth in competitive Pokemon.
Definitions for Tiering Policy:
I.) Skill - the subjective metric we use to judge player worth in competitive Pokemon.
- Team Building Skill - the part of skill that is involved in the preparation for a battle
- Assessing and Dealing with Threats
- Building Towards a Strategy (or Strategies)
- Creativity
- Catering to Metagame / Opponents
- Battling Skill - the part of skill involved in actually battling
- Picking the Right Lead
- Recognizing the Win Condition
- Picking the Right Move
- Smart Switching
- Gathering Information and Making Assumptions
- Long-term vs. Short-term Goals
- Assessing Risk
- Probability Management
- Prediction
- This can be matchup related; think the determination that Baton Pass took the battling skill aspect out of the player's hands and made it overwhelmingly a team matchup issue, where even the best moves made each time by a standard team often were not enough.
- This can be external factors; think Endless Battle Clause, where the determining factor became internet connection over playing skill.
- This can be probability management issues; think OHKOs, evasion, or Moody, all of which turned the battle from emphasizing battling skill to emphasizing the result of the RNG more often than not.
- These aren't necessarily completely uncompetitive because they don't take the determining factor out of the player's hands; both can use these elements and both probably have a fair chance to win. They are broken because they almost dictate / require usage, and a standard team without one of them facing a standard team with one of them would be at a drastic disadvantage.
- These also include elements whose only counters or checks are extraordinarily niche Pokemon that would put the team at a large disadvantage elsewhere.
- Uncompetitive and Broken defined like this tend to be mutually exclusive in practice, but they aren't necessarily entirely so.
- Baton Pass was deemed uncompetitive because of how drastically it removed battling skill's effects and brought the battle down to matchup, but it could also be deemed broken because of the unique ways in which you had to deal with it.
- While this isn't always the case, an uncompetitive thing probably isn't broken, but a broken thing is more likely to be uncompetitive simply due to the unique counter / check component. For example, Mega Kangaskhan was deemed broken because it was simply too good relative to the rest of the metagame and caused the tier to centralize around it, but it could also be labeled as uncompetitive because of the severe team matchup restriction it caused by punishing players if they did not pack one of the few obscure counters or checks for it.
- These are elements that may not limit either team building or battling skill enough individually but combine to cause an effect that is undesirable for the metagame.
- This can also be a state of the metagame. If the metagame has too much diversity wherein team building ability is greatly hampered and battling skill is drastically reduced, we may seek to reduce the number of good-to-great threats. This can also work in reverse; if the metagame is too centralized around a particular set of Pokemon, none of which are broken on their own, we may seek to add Pokemon to increase diversity.
- This is the most controversial and subjective one and will therefore be used the most sparingly. The Tiering Councils will only use this amidst drastic community outcry and a conviction that the move will noticeably result in the better player winning over the lesser player.
- When trying to argue a particular element's suspect status, please avoid this category unless absolutely necessary. This is a last-ditch, subjective catch-all, and tiering arguments should focus on uncompetitive or broken first. We are coming to a point in the generations where the number of threats is close to overwhelming, so we may touch upon this more often, but please try to focus on uncompetitive and broken first.
Let's get started!