Metagame USUM Monotype Metagame Discussion

Entei

TIMMEHHHHHHHHHHHHhHhhhh
is a Tiering Contributor
I'm not really sure how to say this properly because I still don't know if I fully understand it, but I do want to throw it out there for someone else to say something more enlightening. I think there was a poll or something that was done a while ago to address this, but it bums me out to see this forum so starkly different this generation. Last gen we had 91 pages of posts in the original monotype thread, and then a whole new thread when the tiering philosophy was changed for another 70 pages. Personally, I'm fearful to post here because I feel like if I say something 200 lawyers will come out of the woodwork to try and dismantle idle chat. Less creativity, less mobility, less community, nothing to talk about? Some reasons the older threads probably had more traction was because we knew much less about the game. What to ban was always around. The ladder was really vibrant so we had high level games (for what it was back then) happening all the time to discuss and share replays. Now MWP and MPL statistics are on the same page....

Again I don't really get what changed, just feels much colder around here. When the room had 70 concurrent users daily it seemed like it was warmer than the 200+ we have now. I'd like a turn around for gen 8.
many vets quit as well, contributing/playing at the least, some just come on and off, and among those, half just come to chat and have friendly discussions, and dont really pay any attention here or generally speaking about the competitive/contributive platforms.
life goes on as y'all know, and so do mons..
better luck next gen!

FREE KAISER
 
Thanks a lot for your feedback ! I was really looking for improvements to make it readable so I took a look at your master that you made and copied some of its ideas. Unfortunately keys don't show up on published sheets so I had to put a few of the explanations in my smogon post about the headers of the sheet but here's the original sheet so they can be seen.

I'll explain a bit more the rating than i did in my previous because I think this is something you will be interested in for sorting players on the team tours compiler so that ephemeral players don't get ranked above monotype titans like 1 True Lycan or Eien. I was looking for a ranking method solely based on wins and matches played in 1 player vs 1 player games. ELO and Glicko were what I found mostly but they weren't computable from my input. Then I found that link that I posted in my previous post about Wilson score, this score is basically something that's commonly used to rank posts or video on websites so that the ones with both a lot of reactions and positive reactions are rated higher. Otherwise if you only rank them based on the positive reaction ratio you'd have some with only 1 reaction first and the ranking will be extremely unstable. In the end I just copied the excel formula in that link and it gave me the result I was expecting so I didn't search any further (although it's a customizable formula that allows you to reward more either wins or games).

Separating the ratings stats is not something I'm interested in, and for a few reasons. First it's already a 15 pages sheets so if I separate per tours it's going to get completely unmaintainable. Then I already did not compute ratings for everything that was used less than 10 times in the main sheets because it's too few data to really mean something, so having ratings for something like only the top 4 used types wasn't what I was looking for. I even added mono cup, mlt and blt in addition to the main team tours because there were too few games in the beginning. Finally, unlike usage, I don't think win rates are subject to trends when going as deep as comparing cores vs cores which was the motivation behind this, although I'm only showing a summary here with the overall performances of cores.

With this post also comes new features in the sheet, it's a detailed page of winrates for cores of every type so make sure to check it out. I also tried to rank all the types as I rated the cores and here's the result:

Code:
1.  Normal
2.  Grass
3.  Dragon
4.  Flying
5.  Steel
6.  Fairy
7.  Elec
8.  Fighting
9.  Ground
10. Water
11. Fire
12. Psychic
13. Dark
14. Poison
15. Ice
16. Ghost
17. Bug
18. Rock

For those of you following OU tours on smogon there is an analysis of cores performance to be released after Snake too. Otherwise I'll be back in gen 8 hopefully for more monotype metagame analysis !
Wow, you must be really bad if you're worse than Ice.

Is Bug really that bad? I mean I thought it would at least be, for lack of better word, a midtier type. The weird thing with Bug is that it's a bad type but it has really frickin good Pokemon. I know it can get destroyed by hazards but again, I always thought it was decent.
 
Wow, you must be really bad if you're worse than Ice.

Is Bug really that bad? I mean I thought it would at least be, for lack of better word, a midtier type. The weird thing with Bug is that it's a bad type but it has really frickin good Pokemon. I know it can get destroyed by hazards but again, I always thought it was decent.
It's for sure better than ice. but People like using ice because It's so low tier and it's fun + it beats dragon. Bug doesnt really have any 1 special mu and it's already mid-low tier so there isnt anything to prove. it's better overall than ice tho.
 
many vets quit as well, contributing/playing at the least, some just come on and off, and among those, half just come to chat and have friendly discussions, and dont really pay any attention here or generally speaking about the competitive/contributive platforms.
life goes on as y'all know, and so do mons..
better luck next gen!

FREE KAISER
I agree with that for the most part, but I have come to a realization. Most to all of the people who moderate this chat/reply to rather uninformed comments are knowledgeable about the competitive scene and do perform really well in tournaments, but what I'm surprised about is that most seem to actually not like playing pokemon. Professional basketball players like playing basketball and practice. Pros of any sport like to play their game and goof off and play with friends. And, in the case of mons, make teams that suck for fun. Honestly, I can count the number of times when I've seen most anybody on here actually playing games on the ladder. Its not that the ladder matters (as everyone likes to remind me I should be a prestige hunter exclusively), I'm surprised playing the game isn't fun to anybody and not really exciting to talk about. I'm always talking pokemon with my friends in calls. I remember a year into gen7 there was a player with around 10000 games played and was made fun of for actually liking to play pokemon and he ended up resetting his score. Thats messed up, we should be telling each other, man, I actually gotta do real life stuff because this game sucks away all my time. Versus, my irl is so important probably won't be able to play till sunday at 4am est I have an hour window before I have to get back to my life. I'm not saying we should eradicate these players, or that some of them are not actually busy, but man where are the players that are itching for new blood and a fight around every corner?

I don't know I guess at the end of the day I would like some of you better players to spice my life up and play with me. I made a fun ghost team that I have had alot of success with lately (1760 stats for edit:OCTOBER are dominated by my teamcomp). I play the same regulars, but despite that it still is a very enjoyable way to spend my time and would like to build it up some more.
 
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Wanka

is a Community Leader Alumnusis a Tiering Contributor Alumnus
UUPL Champion
I agree with that for the most part, but I have come to a realization. Most to all of the people who moderate this chat/reply to rather uninformed comments are knowledgeable about the competitive scene and do perform really well in tournaments, but what I'm surprised about is that most seem to actually not like playing pokemon. Professional basketball players like playing basketball and practice. Pros of any sport like to play their game and goof off and play with friends. And, in the case of mons, make teams that suck for fun. Honestly, I can count the number of times when I've seen most anybody on here actually playing games on the ladder. Its not that the ladder matters (as everyone likes to remind me I should be a prestige hunter exclusively), I'm surprised playing the game isn't fun to anybody and not really exciting to talk about. I'm always talking pokemon with my friends in calls. I remember a year into gen7 there was a player with around 10000 games played and was made fun of for actually liking to play pokemon and he ended up resetting his score. Thats messed up, we should be telling each other, man, I actually gotta do real life stuff because this game sucks away all my time. Versus, my irl is so important probably won't be able to play till sunday at 4am est I have an hour window before I have to get back to my life. I'm not saying we should eradicate these players, or that some of them are not actually busy, but man where are the players that are itching for new blood and a fight around every corner?

I don't know I guess at the end of the day I would like some of you better players to spice my life up and play with me. I made a fun ghost team that I have had alot of success with lately (1760 stats for edit:OCTOBER are dominated by my teamcomp). I play the same regulars, but despite that it still is a very enjoyable way to spend my time and would like to build it up some more.
Fuck it I’ll start my reign of terror by commenting on this.

Help me if I’m misinterpreting anything because I’m on 2hrs of sleep and I had to read it a couple times to gather everything. More like or less what I took from it was “why is everyone all of a sudden turning into a lame ass about playing a game we’ve enjoyed for years now?”

To start I actually agree with you but not to as high of a degree I think. There’s a couple things I think have helped that idea come to fruition in today’s monotype/mons in general. First, and this is more of a function of gen7 mono itself but we’ve had a stable meta for a really long time. Yeah shifts happen, certain types rise in usage, others dip, certain archetypes within types rise and others fall. At the end of the day though, a stable metagame is innately boring even though it’s what we strive for. If you look at it deeper, that’s what brings out the highest level of competition. The best players are the ones who can take a stable metagame and find out how to take advantage of it because it is in fact stable/stagnant. That in itself also naturally brings about less discussion about the metagame because it doesn’t change to a such a significant degree (Ex. Nothings broken so what’s there to talk about?) I don’t mean to beat the drum of everyone being quieter this gen because obviously I like seeing discussion but that’s just the nature of things in my eyes. Shit if it helps, compare gen7 to oras. I think part of the reason someone who’s been around awhile like yourself notices something like this is because you witnessed how oras went about. There were a lot of issues not only with the meta but with how it was run and we were still figuring out an identity and how we wanted to run things in the future. In layman’s terms there was just simply significantly more to talk about in previous years. Now look at gen7, we had a set council going in and the beginning of the gen was ofc our most active times. However, as the meta balanced out, things got banned, types and structure within those types developed and when there’s nothing wrong with what gen7 developed into there’s just less to talk about. And at that point the competitive scene becomes rather simple. Games become more intensive turn by turn and less thought about what to bring more thought about how we actually play the game. This type of notion plays into the fact that people don’t have to constantly crank out fresh teams. As players, we’ve been more inclined to roll up with something we know is solid and let our playing ability take over from there. Again, that’s not to say there’s no shifts in the meta, that still happens just not to the degree it was happening in a meta like oras.

To support that and tie everything into mons in general, the game we play has continued to allow a more analytical approach to playing more or less take over in pretty much every official/core tier. Turn by turn the game is more thought intensive so In order to win and succeed, people put less emphasis on building and more emphasis on playing and from a team tour perspective, drafting people who know how to play the game the best.

Don’t get it twisted tho, I think you have an accurate assessment of the nature of things, but it is the nature of things and not necessarily certain individuals choosing to be lame asses. They wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t the right thing to do. Hopefully that makes sense? Excuse my grammar and 2hrs of sleep but I appreciate you making a post like that because it’s actually an interesting topic to talk about.
 
Fuck it I’ll start my reign of terror by commenting on this.

Help me if I’m misinterpreting anything because I’m on 2hrs of sleep and I had to read it a couple times to gather everything. More like or less what I took from it was “why is everyone all of a sudden turning into a lame ass about playing a game we’ve enjoyed for years now?”

To start I actually agree with you but not to as high of a degree I think. There’s a couple things I think have helped that idea come to fruition in today’s monotype/mons in general. First, and this is more of a function of gen7 mono itself but we’ve had a stable meta for a really long time. Yeah shifts happen, certain types rise in usage, others dip, certain archetypes within types rise and others fall. At the end of the day though, a stable metagame is innately boring even though it’s what we strive for. If you look at it deeper, that’s what brings out the highest level of competition. The best players are the ones who can take a stable metagame and find out how to take advantage of it because it is in fact stable/stagnant. That in itself also naturally brings about less discussion about the metagame because it doesn’t change to a such a significant degree (Ex. Nothings broken so what’s there to talk about?) I don’t mean to beat the drum of everyone being quieter this gen because obviously I like seeing discussion but that’s just the nature of things in my eyes. Shit if it helps, compare gen7 to oras. I think part of the reason someone who’s been around awhile like yourself notices something like this is because you witnessed how oras went about. There were a lot of issues not only with the meta but with how it was run and we were still figuring out an identity and how we wanted to run things in the future. In layman’s terms there was just simply significantly more to talk about in previous years. Now look at gen7, we had a set council going in and the beginning of the gen was ofc our most active times. However, as the meta balanced out, things got banned, types and structure within those types developed and when there’s nothing wrong with what gen7 developed into there’s just less to talk about. And at that point the competitive scene becomes rather simple. Games become more intensive turn by turn and less thought about what to bring more thought about how we actually play the game. This type of notion plays into the fact that people don’t have to constantly crank out fresh teams. As players, we’ve been more inclined to roll up with something we know is solid and let our playing ability take over from there. Again, that’s not to say there’s no shifts in the meta, that still happens just not to the degree it was happening in a meta like oras.

To support that and tie everything into mons in general, the game we play has continued to allow a more analytical approach to playing more or less take over in pretty much every official/core tier. Turn by turn the game is more thought intensive so In order to win and succeed, people put less emphasis on building and more emphasis on playing and from a team tour perspective, drafting people who know how to play the game the best.

Don’t get it twisted tho, I think you have an accurate assessment of the nature of things, but it is the nature of things and not necessarily certain individuals choosing to be lame asses. They wouldn’t do it if it wasn’t the right thing to do. Hopefully that makes sense? Excuse my grammar and 2hrs of sleep but I appreciate you making a post like that because it’s actually an interesting topic to talk about.
You and Entei are probably right for some of the reasons why talking in here has died. I'd like to lurk in here more and gossip in a cord about the current monotype metagame discussion fight, but that isn't the main gripe of that post.

First and foremost I'm a player and, don't get me wrong its still fun, my biggest gripe is that I'm a little tired of playing against the same 2 opponents on the ladder. I'm over exaggerating, but I know many of the successful players this generation, besides a couple of them most everyone else only seems to want to play 1 series of potentially 3 games per week until they drop out. When I was playing X&Y and early ORAS, then the beginning of SM there were lots of faces to play. There is a particular successful player that used to play with me and an australian all night early on this gen and we shared some very enjoyable games. The games now have actually gotten more intense, the teams ironed out, but despite the game getting better, the best are playing less. I don't understand how people, honestly if I /user them they are on, don't feel like queue'n up a bunch of games. I hardly find the game boring provided the matchup is decent and the players are good. Even randoms sometimes give me extremely fun games with very unique teams.

Different strokes for different folks, some don't like to play that much that's cool. And this doesn't involve every good player, there are some who I catch on the ladder sneaking games, but a vast majority of players I think are good do not play any games outside of tours. I find it bizarre to have a talent for playing yet it be like pulling teeth to actually get a single game. Honest I'm not trying to get all of you into bad habits and waste all your time here, but having a bit of fun isn't a crime. I know the ladder can sometimes be boring, but when I'm on I'm sure I can give you a sweat.

Thinking about it more, this is such a strange problem. How did all of our good players become snolaxes. Gonna have to blast all your ears with pokeflutes to awaken all you lazy sleeping tyrants.

EDIT: TLDR more activity in here would be nice. but most of the best players being allergic to playing monotype sucks
 
You and Entei are probably right for some of the reasons why talking in here has died. I'd like to lurk in here more and gossip in a cord about the current monotype metagame discussion fight, but that isn't the main gripe of that post.

First and foremost I'm a player and, don't get me wrong its still fun, my biggest gripe is that I'm a little tired of playing against the same 2 opponents on the ladder. I'm over exaggerating, but I know many of the successful players this generation, besides a couple of them most everyone else only seems to want to play 1 series of potentially 3 games per week until they drop out. When I was playing X&Y and early ORAS, then the beginning of SM there were lots of faces to play. There is a particular successful player that used to play with me and an australian all night early on this gen and we shared some very enjoyable games. The games now have actually gotten more intense, the teams ironed out, but despite the game getting better, the best are playing less. I don't understand how people, honestly if I /user them they are on, don't feel like queue'n up a bunch of games. I hardly find the game boring provided the matchup is decent and the players are good. Even randoms sometimes give me extremely fun games with very unique teams.

Different strokes for different folks, some don't like to play that much that's cool. And this doesn't involve every good player, there are some who I catch on the ladder sneaking games, but a vast majority of players I think are good do not play any games outside of tours. I find it bizarre to have a talent for playing yet it be like pulling teeth to actually get a single game. Honest I'm not trying to get all of you into bad habits and waste all your time here, but having a bit of fun isn't a crime. I know the ladder can sometimes be boring, but when I'm on I'm sure I can give you a sweat.

Thinking about it more, this is such a strange problem. How did all of our good players become snolaxes. Gonna have to blast all your ears with pokeflutes to awaken all you lazy sleeping tyrants.

EDIT: TLDR more activity in here would be nice. but most of the best players being allergic to playing monotype sucks
I think I'm probably one of the best suited to give a comment on this discussion, seeing as I used to be a "ladder hero" of sorts and posted my peaks in my signature, but I digress. A lot of the best players who play at a high level go to college or have work or other responsibilities that take precedence over having time to play, so they can only sneak in a handful of games a week. Also people don't just play monotype, plenty of people in the community play other tiers, especially with how stable the meta has become. You can use a team that's 4 or 5 months old and still be successful with it. So that gives people room to play/learn other tiers if the tier doesn't change much for months at a time.

Speaking towards what you said about people not enjoying the game, you're limiting your scope only to what you've seen on ladder. To me, ladder is a tool to learn the basics of the metagame and test teams and ideas. Afterwards, to improve farther you want to play in tours so you can play the best of the best and see the areas you can improve. From my experience, people (me included) become much more motivated and enjoy the game much more when competitiveness is at its highest during team tours and individuals (such as MLT, Mono Cup, Mono Gen, SSNL's, etc). You don't get that same competitive feeling on ladder, nor do ladder peaks play much of a role in getting into tours. You can toil all day peaking on ladder and still not get picked up like I learned the hard way. You need results proving your worth and showing you can play at a high level. So that's why a lot of the best players in this tier don't even ladder. Monotype has one of the all time worst ladders I've ever played. Speaking from my own experience and one of my best friends on the site Bitana, there is no escape from "low ladder". Even when you're at the top 50 you get some awful players that don't know what they're doing and teams that are not at all a representative of the metagame. Though this is more of a recent issue. The ladder was much much better during ORAS and early SM as you stated and I personally enjoyed laddering much more back then. Nowadays, I still ladder to keep my skills sharp, but the quality of games are in stark contrast to what it used to be at the start of the meta. I didn't even care enough to participate in MLT this year because of this. I no longer get to play people like Prosaic, Chaitanya, Peachyclouds, Trichotomy, Julie East, Mateeus, KGBanter, or Jo' Zzz (even Soma doesn't ladder as much) since they've all abandoned it too. There's also the fact that everyone plays on alts to prevent scouting so you don't even know who you're playing, though you can tell if you're playing someone experienced or not.

Anyway, those are my thoughts. We still enjoy the game, we just don't get that same adrenaline rush from playing noobs using stall bug or no electric immunity flying at 1700+ elo. Monotype is at its best during peak tour season when it's most competitive. We're not all snorlaxes. You may be playing some of us and not even know it. :psyduck:

Edit: I found my mono peaks while typing up an essay for college. Damn, I was hot :psysly:
Gen 6 Mono Peak#1 http://prnt.sc/d2ta55
Gen 7 Mono Peak#1 Stall Water http://prnt.sc/dm24ee
Gen 7 Mono Peak#2 HO Water http://prntscr.com/ebfu9p
Gen 7 Mono Peak#3 Offensive Psychic http://prntscr.com/eu068v
Gen 7 Mono Peak#4 HO Mega Sharpedo SS Water Medicham Suspect http://prntscr.com/f3gg83
Gen 7 Mono Peak#5 Balanced Water http://prntscr.com/fa1qoq
Gen 7 Mono Peak#6 Most Alts in Top 10 https://pastebin.com/aQThx7Qq
Gen 7 Mono Peak#7 7 Alts in top 15 http://prntscr.com/fh9olg
Gen 7 Mono Peak#8 #1 Magearna Suspect http://prntscr.com/g3pgjq, http://prntscr.com/g3q0pc
Gen 7 Mono Peak#9 #1 MLT Cycle http://prntscr.com/gmg40g
League High Scores http://prntscr.com/h22q3y
 
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I wasnt really gonna jump into this since I wasnt around for oras or even regular SM, but I do see one thing there I wanted to point out. The Argument "the ladder is weak" is a problem because this issue is caused by the Lack of players playing on it, the problem is that nobody good ladders. The result is that the ladder is weak. That's a cycle that can only be broken by good players actually putting forth effort and starting the wave that laddering can be fun. People like playing good players, and ofc it's way more fun with something on the line But let's take a second to
Imagine if people cared for ladder points and were still trying to get the highest on the ladder. It would make for tons of high quality games in the place you dont expect it, The Monotype Ladder. Though lastly it's hard to care about ladder points u gain and lose every game, it's not a trophy it's not a tour win. it's points that you could very well lose the next game. the games hold less weight thus people care less. I wish people did care but it's how it is for right now. hopefully people will be excited to test new stuff in gen 8 and put in some more time on the ladder and it'll revive a bit. but who knows if that'll stay forever.

while I do agree that it's unfortunate the forums are dead and I wished we discussed more whether it was just cool sets or new techs or mons we feel are unfair, I feel that most of that happens in private discords with friends or even private rooms on PS lol.

So as for the forums being dead I dont really have any thoughts on it but For laddering and just playing the game sake I dont think that everyone is totally lazy they just dont feel competition on the ladder thus why play it? I for 1 play against "good players" pretty often because I'll ask them to and I'm rarely turned down games. It would be nice if everyone cared about ladder and was putting effort in to get high up because then there would be good competition but In reality It's hard to do unless everyone gets together and says "hey guys the ladder is dead lets all start laddering again. The People who just genuinely love playing pokemon can put games into ladder but some of them are more into the competition of it.

Last thing as wincon said people grow up, get jobs, etc, Life happens. Some of the players that are good may just not have the time to play ladder games as much anymore, A few? sure. But grinding out on ladder every day is something not everyone can afford to do. That's just my thoughts on the current topic =D
 
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I think what nomadderwhat is getting at is ladder would matter if better players consistently laddered. Peaking the ladder or gaining/losing isn't the main focus of this topic, it's playing good players for good games outside of the potential 3 games per week. If, for example, ArkenCiel wants to play against people like ima, Eien, trichotomy, waszap, or Chaitanya, he'd have to hope he gets matched up with them in a tournament bracket or make it far enough to play them (if the tour is large enough). Whereas, if they all laddered around the same time as Arken does, they'd play each other numerous times and there's that satisfaction of getting some good games bar matchup. Of course, 2/5 of the people mentioned do ladder somewhat regularly, it was to put things in perspective. Ladder this gen hasn't been as strong because it lost the players that made it strong. During MLT, I didn't care to qualify for any of the weeks, I cared more about playing the people trying to qualify because they were going to try their hardest in their games to speedrun the ladder (Shoutout to Prosaic on winning MLT). If I can stretch this a bit more, the ladder below 1650s is pretty weak but the players who consistently stay above or around 1700-1750s will give you some good games, especially if you keep running into them so there's the mind games you might have to play to win.

On the topics of lack of metagame discussion and the tier being stale, the best way I can describe why these things are topics or points of interest is to think of ORAS as a World War and USUM as a post-war era/world peace.

I think many would agree that ORAS was a BATTLE. In terms of tiering (early-mid), discussion, teambuilding, playing, it felt like a war until towards the end and even then, ORAS felt like it ended on a bad note (Things like Mega Cham and Hoopa-U being banned AFTER the gen had been over). Then we look at SM/USUM and it's this postmodern era of balance and peace within the meta. A lot of the war veterans (people who played during ORAS) recognize that this is probably the most balanced the tier has been in years and the fastest it has been balanced. On the other side, there's some war vets that don't enjoy the peace. They want more blood and action. Trying to rally to spark another world war. So there's the side who enjoys the peace and the side that just want to see complete anarchy again.

Moral of the story, some people want to see tier shifts because it keeps interest while promoting brainstorming when it comes to teambuilding and changing how the game is played. Some people just want to play some hard fought games with good players on a regular basis instead of a weekly or bi-yearly basis. In the end, we all want the tier to stay fresh and fun for many years to come hopefully. There's different ways to look at it and go about it but ultimately we just want the tier to thrive. That's the way I see it.

EDIT: Maybe not making ladder matter but having it being another outlet to find some good games with good players outside of forum tournaments.
 
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