A New Direction for Other Metagames

EV

Banned deucer.
Hello all!

As you might have guessed by the title, Other Metagames is at a crossroads. We've grown a ton in the last year or so, and with that comes both good and bad consequences.

On the one hand, we finally got OM C&C up and running, our daily tours are going strong and have a new prize associated with them, and we're launching a new semi-official tour which also has a cool prize. But on the other, we've fallen into some bad habits. Our thread quality needs improvement, we produce way too many metagames, and we have little involvement with other sections of the site.

So where do we go from here?

That's where you all come in. Snaquaza organized and hosted a survey that asked for feedback. It was important for myself and The Immortal to hear what you guys had to say, and we're still working on ways to improve. However, we want there to be more discussion, so we're opening this line of communication. We're also introducing a few changes immediately and this is as good a place as any to talk about them.

To start the discussion, we want to shift the focus of Other Metagames from creation to cultivation.

Probably the most common piece of feedback we read was the over abundance of OMs, which quickly die out and distract players from other (better) metagames, some of which have ladders. We realized that there's too much focus on making a new metagame instead of trying to improve what we have already.
  • Starting now, there is a one submission per user, per month rule in effect. Regardless if the metagame is approved or rejected, you will be on "cool down" for a month before you can submit again. This should encourage you to put your best ideas forward, and to really think them through before submitting.
(Take a minute to breathe if you have to.)


Besides the new submission cap, here are three other ways we're going to shift from creation to cultivation:
  • Produce more resources for the metagames we have now, particularly the ladders. This includes viability rankings, threatlists, sample teams, teambuilding projects, and anything else that new and current players can pick up to understand our metagames better. We also want to streamline how these resources are presented. (The new Anything Goes resource thread by Zangooser is a fantastic example to follow.)
  • Focus on our two semi-official tournaments: the OM Premier League and OM Grand Slam. OMGS is untested, so the territory is brand new and we'll be monitoring what works and how to change it for next time. OMPL has had 3 runs. When #4 rolls around, expect a bigger turnout and more coverage than before.
    • Besides the semi-official formats, we also want to see smaller tours not just in our forum, but also over in Tournaments, which draw in much bigger crowds. You might just get a few new followers afterward!
  • Strengthen our C&C presence and bridge the gap between analyses and our forum. C&C needs a dedicated moderator team that can help me out. But not only that, it needs dedicated writers and quality control members. And we also need to utilize the work we do by incorporating them into our resources. You should be a part of that!
Focusing on our resources, tours, and C&C will add legitimacy to our community. They show we are Skillful, Competitive, Organized, Resourceful, and Engaged. SCORE!


Before I wrap this up, there's one last major change we need to put out there, and that's a cultural shift. Our community has a unique culture (every community does.) What does our culture say about us? I've always been proud to be a part of Other Metagames, and I hope you are too, but not everyone on the outside sees the amazing work and creativity that goes on here. Is there anyone to blame for that? Individually, no! However, as a group we certainly can do more to improve our community, and as a result, our culture.
  • It's up to us to present ourselves the best way possible. If we want the rest of Smogon not to ridicule or mock us ("OMs are a joke!") then it's our responsibility to control our image. In other words, we need to take ownership of our behavior and appearance as a community.
  • This means reducing joke posts, one-liners, and personal attacks. From now on, hold each other accountable. If you see something, say something!
  • Consider not just what your behavior says about you to fellow players in Other Metagames, but what it says to new players. Is the best way to welcome them ridiculing their ideas or calling them out for a "stupid question?" And if they're posting in the wrong place (like so many do who don't know about Submissions), introduce them to the forum!

For the rest of this thread, we're going to talk about the changes I've outlined or anything else you want to talk about related to improving Other Metagames. We want an honest discussion, so please no memes/jokes that will just derail the thread. We also want to hear any criticism you have, but make sure it's constructive. We're not going to moderate this thread unless someone breaks these guidelines. That being said, let's all take a seat at the table and work on this together. If you're uncomfortable posting in the open, you can always PM me and The Immortal personally, at any time.

Thanks!
-Eevee & TI
~*~​

If you finished this and you're wondering, 'Eevee, I'm lost,' here are some people I'd like you to meet:
 

G-Luke

Sugar, Spice and One For All
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This is really a great idea; I'm tired of seeing great metagames die out due to something else popping up 3 days later . Though I can't help but think that meta creation restriction was partly my fault. ;-)
 

Josh

=P
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Strengthen our C&C presence and bridge the gap between analyses and our forum. C&C needs a dedicated moderator team that can help me out. But not only that, it needs dedicated writers and quality control members. And we also need to utilize the work we do by incorporating them into our resources. You should be a part of that!
I'm sure a lot of monotype people would agree that getting monotype C&C would be great. I get that it's viewed as too similar to OU, but it's really a lot different for most mons and they need to play different roles. Obviously the ones that are too similar to OU wouldn't get analyses. http://monotypeps.weebly.com/contributediscuss.html is where monotype analyses are currently being written so you can feel free to look at the quality, they'd just be a lot more active on smogon. I'm more than sure scpinion would be happy to help you with chosing a QC team as well.



Anyways, this thread overall is a great idea. Thanks for it.
 

scpinion

Life > Monotype... unfortunately :)
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I'm sure a lot of monotype people would agree that getting monotype C&C would be great. I get that it's viewed as too similar to OU, but it's really a lot different for most mons and they need to play different roles. Obviously the ones that are too similar to OU wouldn't get analyses. http://monotypeps.weebly.com/contributediscuss.html is where monotype analyses are currently being written so you can feel free to look at the quality, they'd just be a lot more active on smogon. I'm more than sure scpinion would be happy to help you with chosing a QC team as well.

Anyways, this thread overall is a great idea. Thanks for it.
TL;DR Read the bolded statements and last two paragraphs...

I'm not sure this thread is the place to discuss Monotype's involvement with C&C. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to see it; but Monotype C&C is low on the radar when it comes to improving OMs in general. "There are bigger fish to fry".

Like Joshz, I agree the thread is a great idea and I'm excited for direction TI/TEG outlined. However, I'm not sure the "shift in focus" is aimed at the Monotype community.

We've been in the cultivation stage for some time now, certainly since I've been a part of the community. Monotype is an excellent example of how TI/TEG's charge to cultivate existing metagames can take an OM and turn it into something that is immensely popular amongst the general PS! user base.

The Monotype room and ladder get more activity than most official metagames. OU, UU, and Ubers (although we're catching them) are the only ones more popular. We beat Doubles (OU, Ubers, and UU combined), LC, RU, and NU. While I don't play them regularly, it is easy to see many of the other OMs with permanent ladders have just as much to offer if cultivated (excellent word choice btw).

However, despite our popularity, Monotype's perception is of a "joke metagame" to the general Smogon user base.

Thus, we arrive at the main reason I chose to post in this thread: I want to emphasize TI and TEG's statement about representing OMs in a positive manner to the Monotype community. TI/TEG's statements about shifting the culture of our community strike right at the heart of the problems the monotype community has had in the past.

Excelling at a popular metagame on PS! is a hollow reward for the top Monotype players. They want, better deserve, avenues for high level competition beyond the ladder. Smogon is the place to facilitate such competition. Importantly, while we may feel we deserve more "stuff" on Smogon, we can not reasonably expect more opportunities if we do not change our perception.

That said, I've been immensely happy with the way things have progressed w/ Monotype and OMs. We have a council. We're a part of OMGS. Our banlist is becoming more Smogon-like (thank you TI). Things are trending in the right direction to facilitate the needed cultural change and I'm excited for what the future holds!
 

Rumplestiltskin

I will rain lels all over you and you will drown in them
Something I'd like to point out is that Pokemon Showdown is a great resource for Other Metagames, with the potential to make OM's more popular and getting more people interested. There are many people on PS who play on the OM ladders but don't know about the Other Metas room in PS nor about Smogon forums.
The latest news box in PS is a great tool to get more people involved in OM's.

A short description of OM's on hover with the mouse pointer in the formats selection list, with maybe a link to the full rules would be very helpful. I know I had no idea what all the OM's were about for quite a while until I came across the Other Metas room in PS and then through that the forums.

To start the discussion, we want to shift the focus of Other Metagames from creation to cultivation.

Probably the most common piece of feedback we read was the over abundance of OMs, which quickly die out and distract players from other (better) metagames, some of which have ladders. We realized that there's too much focus on making a new metagame instead of trying to improve what we have already.
Some questions that come to mind:

  • What's the limit for permaladders on Pokemon Showdown? Can it be extended?
  • Are the permaladders up for discussion?
Since the permaladder OM's in the format list are the first encounter for many Pokemon Showdown visitors I think this might be an important topic. We've had a bunch of Other Metagame of the Month meta's now. Should there be a process involving the community in introducing past OMOTM's into the permaladders?
 
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Funbot28

Banned deucer.
Some questions that come to mind:

  • What's the limit for permaladders on Pokemon Showdown? Can it be extended?
  • Are the permaladders up for discussion?
Since the permaladder OM's in the format list are the first encounter for many Pokemon Showdown visitors I think this might be an important topic. We've had a bunch of Other Metagame of the Month meta's now. Should there be a process involving the community in introducing past OMOTM's into the permaladders?
I totally agree with reevaluating the permanent ladders on PS. Metas like Tier Shifts and AAA are rarely played compared to ones like Monotype and BH. We should introduce new popular ones like Inheritance or Mix & Mega which have larger playerbases, and maybe get rid of the two OMs I mentioned earlier.

Also would like to ask, is there a limit of Permaladders? If so, then why?
 

MZ

And now for something completely different
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I totally agree with reevaluating the permanent ladders on PS. Metas like Tier Shifts and AAA are rarely played compared to ones like Monotype and BH. We should introduce new popular ones like Inheritance or Mix & Mega which have larger playerbases, and maybe get rid of the two OMs I mentioned earlier.

Also would like to ask, is there a limit of Permaladders? If so, then why?
Not too invested in the other stuff but I don't see how you can justify removing AAA's permaladder considering its community, activity in OMPL (and OM GS? Is that confirmed in it? not sure), place in OM analyses, etc. As for limit on permaladders, I'm pretty sure putting a lot of stuff in is ugly, unnecessary and confusing to newer players. That's one of the reasons why things like aqua exist where you have tons of other stuff coded.
 

thesecondbest

Just Kidding I'm First
We need to publicize snaz's great work on aqua a lot more. It has some of the super interesting metas but there are normally only like ten people on at a time. Advertising that more could get a lot more metas explored and give another place to hang out. Monotype has its own room, but others don't, maybe some can meet on aqua? Just an idea.
 

brightobject

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Another suggestion I have is to limit Pet Mods much more in terms of submissions. They take far longer to make and require far more user contribution, thus the influx of those makes it even more difficult for people to contribute to them confidently.
 
Promote projects for less popular metagames. We all have stuff for STABmons / AAA / BH, but really cool metagames never get developed and that's not fun. I get it requires the userbase to support, but I do think that tinier metagames deserve a chance to shine just as much.

Also, I don't like how OMotM is conducted. I feel as if it's too easy to persuade and the community goes for the popular ones that get promoted by their friends, and it just doesn't seen fair. Think about it. We have say 30 OMs nominated. 25 people vote for Dogmons, but 100 people vote overall. That's 75% people who don't get their preferred metagame. Some OMs are never even made OMotM, and I do think that a lot of metagames deserve ladders. Personally, I'd prefer if OMs that have won OMotM cannot win more than once, so we allow a lot more creativity to flow.

Just my thoughts.
 

Kit Kasai

Love colored magic
Also, I don't like how OMotM is conducted. I feel as if it's too easy to persuade and the community goes for the popular ones that get promoted by their friends, and it just doesn't seen fair. Think about it. We have say 30 OMs nominated. 25 people vote for Dogmons, but 100 people vote overall. That's 75% people who don't get their preferred metagame.
That's why we changed to a like based voting system so you can vote for multiple metas.
 
I know I'm late to the party, but I wanted to comment on this.

The problem here lies within the community and its collective mindset. Far too many people are involved with Other Metas for the purpose of making something that everyone will love and not for enjoying things themselves. This is the reason why Other Metas is often not taken seriously by the top competitive players. There are a ton of OMs that all get little attention, and they congest everything in the community. They clog up the main subforum, cause competition among one another that divides an already smaller playerbase, and even force a divide among the community. We've seen it time and time again with meta bashing, especially when it comes to OMotM voting and seeing a metagame people don't care about taking the lead over one they do. The idea of cultivation over creation can serve to mend these problems, but simply putting more time into the main OMs doesn't necessarily solve these problems. Expanding the community and focusing on their collective wants are both also very important.

Approved metagames should be reevaluated some time after they have been posted in the subforum. Every newly posted OM draws immediate attention from a lot of the community. People like to brainstorm, come up with broken or fun strategies, so unless a metagame is especially boring and probably should not have been approved, it will probably get good activity for at least a little while after it has been published. But the best OMs are the ones that stand the test of time and continue to get activity even after that initial hype has died down. If the metagame has died out after that initial hype, all it does is serve to clog up the forum and get the occasional necrobump that pushes important threads further down the list. Rather than let dead metagames rot, they should be closed, perhaps with the possibility of being reopened later down the line.

Permanent ladders are another hot topic. Funbot28 brought up a good point that "good" metagames such as AAA and Tier Shift aren't necessarily popular, especially in comparison to other OMs such as Monotype. Their permanence is what stagnates them. People want to play the metas that they know they won't have forever to play. This is why OMotMs constantly see more games played than permanent ladders barring the most popular ones. The easiest way to fix this would be to pick what metagames we want to be the "main" OMs. These metagames would be played in the semi-official OM tournaments and would have permanent ladders. Beyond that, keep other semi-popular OMs in a rotation. As an example, every three months in a monthly rotation, one of Tier Shift, AAA, and STABmons could be playable alongside the OMotM and the Leader's Choice. This keeps them fresh and creates hype every time they are getting ready to come back around.

Finally, it's important to keep OMs competitive. When a new Other Meta is created that draws in the attention of good players, those players always eventually quit playing it. A great example of this is Mix and Mega, which had a ton of people from all over the site playing it after it won OMotM. But then they all quit playing it, primarily because the problems that were identified with it were never fixed. People were tired of the heavy centralization of Extreme Speed, but it remained legal on the ladder throughout the entire month. Rather than play on the ladder with a subpar ruleset, those good players just played with one another and banned Extreme Speed when they played it. This stunts the growth of the community and continues to keep OMs from being taken seriously by good players. Quite frankly, when a metagame becomes playable on the main server, the creator should really forfeit control over whether or not to ban things brought up by the community. Having a good idea for a metagame does not make you uniquely qualified to lead it. We've seen plenty of examples of this throughout the years. The top priority for an OM ladder should be making it as objectively good as possible before it becomes playable.

I'm happy to see that we're taking steps towards making Other Metas a better forum, but I really don't think we're there yet even with just the ideas outlined in the OP.
 
Quite frankly, when a metagame becomes playable on the main server, the creator should really forfeit control over whether or not to ban things brought up by the community.
Implicit criticism of myself aside, I'm wondering what you think an alternative plan looks like. If the OM creator isn't the default starting point for a council, where do you start? Do The Immortal and Eevee General appoint a council? Do they blanket ignore the meta's current state and start fresh when a meta is OMotM, without any decisions the creator/any existing council made applying? Do they have to familiarize themselves with the state of the meta beforehand, increasing the burden on two staff members who already do a lot of work? Do they consult people on possible decisions, and if so, why aren't we just having the meta creator make decisions initially, if their input is going to have a big influence anyway? If a council is appointed, how is it decided who the best council members are going to be? Is there some OMotM standing council, existing solely to manage OMotM suspects/bans/etc, and shifting to each new meta as it comes along? Is each new meta given a fresh new council, returning to the prior question of "how do you make decisions about appointments"?

Do you leave it at the vague position of "the community decides", or do you create a formal process to place the process of handling suspects et al on the community? What does that look like, how do you ensure it isn't vulnerable to shenanigans like ballot-stuffing if it's some kind of voting-based process? Do you give player quality a weighting in the decision-making process, and if you do, how do you make that determination, given that your ladder is only going to last a month on Main and off Main people mostly go with challenge format for OM battles, rather than using the laddering functionality? You probably can't make a good selection based on ladder numbers prior to the meta going up, and once it does go up it takes a week or so to have even halfway decent numbers -and even then, the meta will be sufficiently in flux without bans/unbans/etc occurring that a player having a good run isn't necessarily a good player nor is a player having a bad run necessarily a bad player.

I'm not saying having the meta creator make the decisions is ideal by any stretch -I'm all too aware of how a meta can suffer because the creator is biased, absent (I'm guilty of this), absent and biased, slow to respond for any number of reasons, or sufficiently unfamiliar with their own meta that their decisions are divorced from reality- but I'm not sure other plans are necessarily better, inasmuch as they won't necessarily be worth the costs they have, even if we don't care about the possibility of offending OM creators by taking control of their baby from them, which itself is going to directly discourage participation from meta creators and possibly encourage the existing trend of creating metas and then forgetting/ignoring/leaving to rot the old ones. After all, if you're going to create a meta, and the point at which it's going to get a lot of play is the point at which you are no longer a participant at it, why not just make a zillion metas and provide minimal oversight to them? It's not like you have any say when it actually matters anyway.

You have to answer these kinds of questions when trying to create an alternative approach, and just saying "the creator forfeits control over their OM when it becomes OMotM" doesn't answer those questions, while having fairly sizable demands on staff (Requiring new staff be appointed just for OMotM?) or requiring a radical overhaul of the community, one that requires the community is substantially invested in the change... which would maybe work, except this thread is around a month old and has less than 20 replies. Not a good sign, as far as the fervor of the community on the topic of improving/reinventing OMs.

The top priority for an OM ladder should be making it as objectively good as possible before it becomes playable.
So how do you ensure that happens? Before it hits Main, it's usually going to have a very small player base that plays infrequently, and rarely is it in any trackable form. (Replays often don't get saved and battles are mostly in challenge format) Furthermore, the small player base often leads to a meta being non-representative of the "true" state of the meta -overwhelmingly good choices are good because the current set of players fail to imagine and implement counters that exist and are highly viable, genuinely amazing options are overlooked for a long time because they involve a specific interplay of oft-ignored pieces of Pokemon (MnM example: Sceptilite Heliolisk was completely overlooked prior to becoming OMotM, but once it entered the meta it immediately and powerfully influenced the meta on every level), and bog-standard choices that have gotten nothing direct out of the meta get ignored for ages even though they're better than ever due to the complicated interplay of various factors. In Stat Switch, hazard clearing became much harder as most hazard clearers suffered enormously, while hazard setters often remained viable or improved in viability, which in turn increases the prominence of the likes of Mew, even though it was unchanged by the meta.

So ban/unban decisions made prior to becoming OMotM are often the product of a very inaccurate view of the meta, even if all the players involved are objective and dedicated to making quality decisions. Having TI or EG go and ask around with the experienced players before implementing the OM on main may well produce a worse meta than if it got implemented, played, and then Suspects went forward, if elements that the small player base are fixated on are actually being blown out of proportion, or worse yet the "broken" thing is not only not broken but is holding in check something much worse.

Stress-testing OMs via OMotM is almost always considerably healthier than banning things beforehand. The only exception, in my observation, is if something is blatantly horrible (Literally uncounterable, so uncompetitive it reduces matches down to pure RNG, Funbro, etc) and the OM creator/council fails to make a decision for an extended period.

---

I'm all for making OMs a better place, but it's really easy to say "we should do X" without really thinking about what that means, out in the real world. If we take away control of an OM from creators, what are the implications, and how do we even implement taking away their control without accidentally ruining OMs? What are the possible approaches, and are we sure that any of them, let alone all of them, are an improvement over our current model? That sort of thing.
 

thesecondbest

Just Kidding I'm First
To add on to what GK said, all decisions are going to be inherently subjective in one way or another. Keeping the creator of the meta as part of the council ensures that the most knowledgeable person who understands the meta remains in control, as they are the most qualified. I think that metas have to be competitive though. TI's treatment of No Status was beautiful. It seamlessly merged suspect testing and creating new content for free. Although I didn't enjoy No Status too much, the treatment of it was pretty smart.
And to add on to what I said earlier, now with the advent of group chats, we should really all be hanging out in group chats of our favorite metas to ensure they still get played and have active discussion. Like I know gamer boy is trying this with Move Equality, and anyone who likes Move Equality should go join his chats! This IMO is the best way to cultivate metas - live discussion and playing (like GK and I and others often do on Aqua with forgotten OMs). But publicizing it is crucial, so instead of going to Aqua for every meta, there should be Group Chats, and then people go to aqua (or whatever other server) to actually play it.
 

brightobject

there like moonlight
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I'd really love to see Pet Mods be far more limited. I don't think I've seen one finished Pet Mod in all my time on smogon (not that long, but you get what I mean). There should be some sort of concrete method devised that keeps the community focused on far fewer pet mods (idk what that method is but it should be thought about, i aint no om's dude). Like I said before, inundation of pet mods (and Om's as well) are what make fewer people really want to contribute seriously and confidently
 
To my mind there are two things that need strengthment: the Aqua server and Pet Mods.
Snaquaza 's work on Aqua is just impressive, but the server's really dead for some reason. Publicizing it a lot more could really help. The metagames on Aqua should also get some more development to attract more players, such as getting chat rooms on Aqua, threatlists and viability rankings. Another problem that I see is that a lot of the metagames are really similar, so if two metagames (like Effects Overload and Powered Up!) really look like the same concept, one should be removed in order to keep metagames different from each other. If new players get that feeling that they're trying something new, the meta will get more popular. Plus, OM are supposed to be a fresh experience when compared to OU and the other standard tiers. Really dead metagames should be removed as well, Snaq's already doing that.
The Pet Mods subforum is also dead. A lot of people think of them as jokes due to Pet Mods being a lot more up to its creator's opinion and really complicated when compared to pretty much anything else. They need some kind of restriction to make them a bit more simple (little restrictions, as we don't want to hinder the idea behind them). They also need some type of bump imo. Pet Mods are just underrated and underplayed imho, a lot of them are cool.

I don't know if this can be done, but maybe we could add on the main server, under the OM ladder selection, a text along the lines "want to play more OM?" and a link to Aqua.
 

brightobject

there like moonlight
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^Also you guys should start killing the rlly dead, old metagames with bad premises that offer little to no promise of development/growth to cut down on metagame inflation, that and petmod inflation are the biggest issues facing any contributor who doesnt want to make their own petmod/om
 

Ununhexium

I closed my eyes and I slipped away...
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To my mind there are two things that need strengthment: the Aqua server and Pet Mods.
Snaquaza 's work on Aqua is just impressive, but the server's really dead for some reason. Publicizing it a lot more could really help. The metagames on Aqua should also get some more development to attract more players, such as getting chat rooms on Aqua, threatlists and viability rankings. Another problem that I see is that a lot of the metagames are really similar, so if two metagames (like Effects Overload and Powered Up!) really look like the same concept, one should be removed in order to keep metagames different from each other. If new players get that feeling that they're trying something new, the meta will get more popular. Plus, OM are supposed to be a fresh experience when compared to OU and the other standard tiers. Really dead metagames should be removed as well, Snaq's already doing that.
The Pet Mods subforum is also dead. A lot of people think of them as jokes due to Pet Mods being a lot more up to its creator's opinion and really complicated when compared to pretty much anything else. They need some kind of restriction to make them a bit more simple (little restrictions, as we don't want to hinder the idea behind them). They also need some type of bump imo. Pet Mods are just underrated and underplayed imho, a lot of them are cool.

I don't know if this can be done, but maybe we could add on the main server, under the OM ladder selection, a text along the lines "want to play more OM?" and a link to Aqua.
even just the title of "the official server of other metagames" would probably increase its popularity

people like official stuff
 

Snaquaza

KACAW
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Re Aqua:

I'm going to Wales for a week, which means I must shut down my laptop. For this reason, Aqua won't be on for a week, and will be back at Saturday. At that point, I'll restart the server, to fix any bugs that may be in the code right now, and readd as many formats as I can, if I forget any which you want to play, don't feel afraid to ask me.

Maybe it'd be a cool idea if I could run a thread about the Aqua sever, if it was decided that it would be the "official" OM server. This way I can keep the forum updated with what you can play there, and anything else which may happen.
 

MZ

And now for something completely different
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hi. this will be a long post with plenty of personal anecdotes. you have been warned. I've been watching this thread for a while, but didn't feel teh need to post until I talked with baconbagon and realized that there's one thing that really irks me about OMs and prevented me from getting into them (you know, aside from PU and AG and FU. real OMs). OMs are hard to get into. They're not user friendly, just customizable. It works for Android, but most traditional OMs are weird, and more things should be done to get people to go out of their comfort zones. This is where I go all anecdote-y.

So when I first started PS, I was standard.noob who used trevenant in OU etc etc. I gradually experimented and managed to learn tiers and work my way up from being less shit by lots of practice and playing. Then I saw some really old like by TheCanadianWifier where he played AAA when it had just became OMotM. I had never heard of OMs, but went to try it out. I originally sucked, it was confusing and weird. But AAA had an active NP thread, I could talk with people who were playing AAA, and I managed to peak #1 on the ladder with some broken shit (s/o to when aerilate dragonite and refrigerate weavile were legal). Then it wasn't OMotM anymore, and I stopped playing because I had no idea it got a permanent ladder. Eventually I found out, but I never quite had the same involvement.

So after a paragraph of personal story, what can OMs try to do? Well, they don't get a lot of promotion, and there isn't a ton of incentive for getting people to try to get into such a strange and exotic metagame. FU was so popular because it had regular mons that people could use, think of inheritance as the polar opposite, and the one that I'm going to critique the most because I tried to get into it thinking it'd be similar to AAA. Except now, there's much less sharing info and almost nobody drops teams for the OMotM. What's good to run in Inheritance? Idk, I have a bunch of what people on the main thread call sets (almost exclusively offensive sweepers) and no idea how to make a cohesive team in some foreign meta. How do you git gud at something like Inheritance? Go to the OM room, play a lot, get a ton of help. How do you play it casually? Suck. I'm gonna use some liberal hyperboles because I can. A sample team thread for OMotM would be absolutely amazing. Obviously you cant force Youtubers to share OMs, but things like that would absolutely get more people than the regular community playing, it's just a statistical fact. The major OMs that I remember for being great are things like AAA, FU, and Haxmons which had much less deviation, and I still put far and away more time into AAA to learn it. Shaving off that time would make someone like me genuinely interested in trying to learn a complicated new meta that's not gonna be around for that long anyway. Sample sets and teams, etc. would all be amazing.

The main OM formats are an entirely different story, but even then there's a reason that some are less popular than others. Sample teams are fairly bare outside of Stabmons, and things like Inverse Battle which have no samples and no builders in OM teambuilding shop...why does it exist lol. Honestly, what I'm trying to say this that you're attempting to get people out of their comfort zones. Play something new and different, whether it's around for a while or not. And yet there's little coverage, little support for newer players, little incentive. I'd love to see more popular OM content, sample teams, good cores, whatever. Another factor that might be contributing is how so many OMs are slotted together that you get lost, there's a reason that PU got way more popular when it got its own separate section and subforum, FU spiked when it moved into PU, and megathreads that are discussion, good cores, VR, speed tiers, etc. in one thread are the new thing. Hell, OM tutoring was a thing for a single session, bring that back, PU's has been so popular we don't have enough tutors. OM analyses are also great. Eevee hit the nail on the head when he said creation to cultivation. You have plenty of OMs, how can Inheritance and Stat Switch become comprehensible to a wider audience? This thread started great but I've seen relatively little to actually expand on the ideas that were first brought up. Hopefully there will be a time when the most popular OMs aren't just mono, PU, FU, AG, LC Ubers, middle cup, whatever.

edit: Bacon brought it to my attention that there are a bunch of great samples at sampleom.weebly.com. That would be cooler if the people who knew about it weren't the people who don't need help trying to get into a new format.
 
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edit: Bacon brought it to my attention that there are a bunch of great samples at sampleom.weebly.com. That would be cooler if the people who knew about it weren't the people who don't need help trying to get into a new format.
I've literally had to beg people to post samples in the official thread, they don't seem to be interested in doing a bit of work to actually provide a nice resource for newer players to get into a tier. Sure, submitting a pastebin to that site is easier than writing a description and making it all official looking, but how is a player who is just starting out a meta supposed to know what mon does what, what are things they need to watch out for and how to play with said team in a meta that they don't even know? The desc is what makes them able to use the team properly and learn enough to go out and make their own teams after they've gotten a feel for the meta playing with that team. If you have suggestions on how I can make it easier for you (I've been thinking about removing the teambuilding process part, but its kind of important imo as it gives a feel for how to build for the meta and what things you need to keep in mind when building) while not taking away from the resource, feel free to shoot me a VM. And submit more teams guys :[

Regarding why omotm teams aren't allowed in the official thread, they are useful for the month the om is omotm but after that month, they'd basically just be taking up space. However, having omotm sample teams would be a nice resource, so I propose we make a second sample teams thread for omotm only. Alternatively, if my following suggestion becomes a reality, it would be a general om sample team thread with basically teams for any om accepted (maybe figure out a way to limit random teams for dead OMs, like page1 OMs only), with omotm having a seperate post to seperate them from others. Permaladder teams would go to the sample teams thread on their specific subforums.

I'm also a supporter of giving the OMs with permaladders a subforum so that they can have resources specifically for them. That makes it easier for a person trying to get into a specific meta to go through the available resources without having to sift through stuff related to metas that don't interest them. A seperate subforum for a meta opens up a large array of possible projects, just look at the kind of stuff present in the OU subforum for examples. I realize that it needs user participation more than anything and a new subforum won't magically make new resources, but it'd be a start. It would have all the available resources and future resources in one place, making it easier for players for said meta to look through and find (project threads would be slower than your average om discussion thread and they easily get lost to the depths of page 2 when new meta threads or a momentarily popular meta like omotm/metas with suspect discussion are getting a bunch of posts) the available things and possibly make a post in one of the threads that interest them. The regular players of the meta would have to step up a lot tho as they'd have to point new users in the right direction, tell them if they're doing anything wrong and lead a lot of meta specific projects. Seperate subforums also open doors for suspect test laddering (like BH, no need for new ladders) with every suspect test bringing in discussion in their individual threads without disrupting general meta discussion and giving people incentive to go out and ladder to qualify for the votes. Every suspect having its own thread present in the subforum would also prevent common "why was this banned" questions in general discussion threads.

Lastly, most om ladders are generally dead so, a ladder tour like olt or some other project that gives incentive to ladder could be held to make the ladders more active again.

e- sorry if its not super coherent lol, i just had a bunch of ideas at once while writing
 
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