UU Test

Jumpman16

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I'm personally not going into this thinking "x is going to be way too broken, we need to move it up immediately." I'm just saying we should be aware of the possibility that one or two pokemon may immediately take hold of the game and refuse to let go of it. I feel forcing people to sit through 6 or 10 or whatever weeks of this kind of metagame is a bit overboard and we need to be flexible in dealing with these pokemon. I just don't want to see a situation where after 10 weeks the only thing people can ascertain is "x, y and z should be moved up, but since they had such a stranglehold on the metagame that i have no clue about anything else"

Basically, we'd be fucked if we spend 10 weeks only to realize that the metagame couldn't yield any longterm results due to a few overwhelming pokemon.
ive read every post on this page (page 4) and this is what stands out the most. while two weeks may be too short six is probably too long for the first stage. the stranglehold phenomenon is something everyone needs to be aware of though...this is the exact reason we do OU suspects one at a time, so there's no giant mess. jrrrrrr said it best in my OoO thread in July:

I don't think that dropping Mew/Deoxys-D/Lati@s/Manaphy etc at the same time is a good idea and its akin to just throwing random chemicals into a tub of acid for no reason and hoping that it doesnt explode.
there is going to be an explosion here, no doubt about it. there's 53 BL pokemon right now, many more "suspects" than there are for OU. actually, unless i am missing something big here, what is stopping anyone from using a team with five or six BL pokemon? if the mess weren't cleaned up for 6 weeks, what would we have tested? how well pretest-BL pokemon fare against other pretest-BL pokemon? waiting 4-5 weeks to clean up the mess makes no sense in that regard. someone correct me if i am missing something here, thanks.
 

Caelum

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I think you misunderstood my idea. My idea was to not BAN anything for 6 weeks. Prior to the 6 weeks mark you could start identifying suspects, I was arguing against banning something after 2 weeks of testing. I've always felt it was appropriate to have 2 - 3 weeks of just an initial metagame. Start identifying suspects, and then proceed from there. My objection was to some people who thought we should start banning things after 2 weeks. It may have been a misunderstanding of terminology between all of us since a few of us (myself included at times) may have been to loose between the terms "ban" and "suspect" etc.
 

jrrrrrrr

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there is going to be an explosion here, no doubt about it. there's 53 BL pokemon right now, many more "suspects" than there are for OU. actually, unless i am missing something big here, what is stopping anyone from using a team with five or six BL pokemon? if the mess weren't cleaned up for 6 weeks, what would we have tested? how well pretest-BL pokemon fare against other pretest-BL pokemon? waiting 4-5 weeks to clean up the mess makes no sense in that regard. someone correct me if i am missing something here, thanks.
I understand that there will be an explosion and that the mess will be difficult to sort out. I am just saying that in the event that something does take hold of the game, we will want an early screening process to make the game is actually fun. I don't know what you guys aren't understanding about the main part of this test being efficiency. The UU ladder is dead during a lot of the day. COMPLETELY DEAD. We don't have the option of just creating a new ladder here, we are going to be completely destroying this tier and completely alienating its players. In October, there were 12000 UU battles compared to almost 200,000 on the OU ladder...and now we're breaking everything up and making people make new adapted UU teams. This is not exactly a recipe for a successful test, which is why I am suggesting that we put as much emphasis on the player as possible. We need to keep the players on board or else this will be all for naught.

The usages are going to be much more stacked on the pokemon that are broken (since there are fewer players), assuming there are any, and it is going to be painfully obvious to the player after only like 15 matches if something is as broken as what I'm talking about. Then, forcing the player to play in that kind of environment for another extremely long month or even 6 weeks is going to just beat an already dead ladder. We actually want results here, and we want them to be fast but reliable. If something comes up that is broken, I think we need to jump on it and ban it to make the tier playable for those who want to test it. That's why I suggested the initial phaze with limits and then a longer second phaze, to cut out anything troublesome that may pop up and then start delivering results. This plan offers more flexibility and consistency than anything that has been offered in this thread so far, both are qualities I feel we should be looking for.

Now that I've told you why I think "let's just wait the broken things out" is a bad idea, let me tell you the reason I disagree with "we'll just use executive action and take things out". We are announcing this to the public and its going to be a public vote with set deadlines under what a lot of people are agreeing for. Then, if something were to happen, they would support completely contradicting yourself and picking things out...ignoring the plans we have already. Since this "long first test" doesn't account for flexibility among the testing administration or fun for the player if something broken were to happen (which you can't just rule out like everyone seems to be doing...), we would need to basically go back on our word in front of the whole community. Needless to say, I prefer a flexible schedule.

Just because I support a quick vote to cut out broken shit, doesn't mean that I automatically assume that there is broken shit and will let it impact my opinion. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if nothing was banned at the first vote (it's an option too!). I don't see why this concept of "we're dropping 53 things that we've already said were broken in UU into UU so maybe there is one or two things that are still broken so we should do something to have a failsafe just in case" is that tough to understand (ignoring grammatical reasons, of course).

I already said I understand and agree with Obi's cautionary proposal, I just think that it is unrealistic to think that there wont be something Rayquaza-like when we drop these BLs down.

Yes, it's a great pokemon, but if it was head-and-shoulders better than the other BL's -- it would be OU. And it's not. It's BL.
Actually I think you kind of have it backwards. BLs aren't BL because they are worse than other BLs, they are BL because they are worse than OUs and Ubers. That is quite the difference, especially considering the rest of your post.

Project For Now: Define a list of priorities (i.e. Which Pokemon you want to test and in what order)
All of the Borderline pokemon in the UU tier is what we are testing, I'm pretty sure thats the answer. Unless I am not understanding the question.

Also I really think this should stay out of Policy Review until we have something agreed upon lol. Why bother putting this jumbled mess of a thread there when we can just collect our thoughts here?
 

X-Act

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Actually I think you kind of have it backwards. BLs aren't BL because they are worse than other BLs, they are BL because they are worse than OUs and Ubers. That is quite the difference, especially considering the rest of your post.
I'm sorry but I disagree with this. A BL Pokemon is not BL because it's worse than OU Pokemon. It is BL because it is better than UU Pokemon. BL should only be comparable to UU, not to OU.
 

jrrrrrrr

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......you said the exact same thing as I did, except in more words and then got a completely different conclusion ?__?

What I said was: Uber > OU > BL

What you said was: OU > BL > UU

Basically, your glass is half-full and mine is half-empty. I was looking at things in BL in terms of being bad OUs but still better than UU by default, while you were seeing them as just good UUs. I think that all tiers are comparable, and so do you since we all just agreed on using basically the same "is it overpowered?" criteria when deciding BLs as we do when we decide Ubers. Are they the same? no. Are they comparable in terms of playing style? sometimes. But the ideas of the tiers are the same all the way down, in patterns. I don't see why we can't compare the tiers, but thats kinda off topic =\

...and if thats really the one thing you picked out of my post to disagree with, I assume that means that we can start hammering out a schedule some time within the next week so that we can get this started?
 

X-Act

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Well, as long as everything is planned carefully already, I would start this as soon as possible, as I would like to have UU (and hence NU!) finally sorted out.
 
Here is what I think the agreed upon plan was:

1) We move all BL Pokemon to UU.
2) We test the new metagame for 6 weeks.
2a) If it is obvious before the end of this period that 1 pokemon is extremely centralizing NEW UU, we remove it.
3) Decide which Pokemon are to be voted on for suspect at the end of the round.
4) Using the same voting criteria for the suspect tests, select voting.
5) Remove pokemon that have been voted on.
6) Repeat steps 3-6 for three weeks until metagame stabilizes.

Did I miss a step? Is there any reason you want to do this differently Aeouls?
 

Jumpman16

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......you said the exact same thing as I did, except in more words and then got a completely different conclusion ?__?

What I said was: Uber > OU > BL

What you said was: OU > BL > UU

Basically, your glass is half-full and mine is half-empty. I was looking at things in BL in terms of being bad OUs but still better than UU by default, while you were seeing them as just good UUs. I think that all tiers are comparable, and so do you since we all just agreed on using basically the same "is it overpowered?" criteria when deciding BLs as we do when we decide Ubers. Are they the same? no. Are they comparable in terms of playing style? sometimes. But the ideas of the tiers are the same all the way down, in patterns. I don't see why we can't compare the tiers, but thats kinda off topic =\

...and if thats really the one thing you picked out of my post to disagree with, I assume that means that we can start hammering out a schedule some time within the next week so that we can get this started?
we can if you can actually tell me why anyone who is playing to win would not use 5-6 pretest-BL pokemon for as long as they can, assuming they can make a decent team out of 53 pokemon (not hard considering BL is larger than OU). i read your post and agree with everything else you said but while you quoted my post you did not seem to directly answer my concern that those playing to win would not, in essence, be playing a "BL metagame" where we wouldn't be learning much of anything about how probably-BL pokemon fare against probably-BL pokemon. they wouldn't be playing in the "real" UU metagame, and I have to put that in quotes because I understand the entire reason we're doing this is that some of those 53 are actually probably BL, but you understand my concern
 

obi

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That assumes we are trying to maintain the current UU list; we are not.

If you completely ignore the current distinction between BL and UU, then this test makes sense. Consider all Pokemon as UU, and we are trying to find what's BL from that, starting with 'no' assumptions.

Unless there is no stable point above what we have now, this will result in much fewer bans than what we have now.
 

Colonel M

I COULD BE BORED!
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*Erhem*

With the realization of this, I have to agree with jump. Which is why I'd like to ask if there is a way to "limit" the number of BL Pokemon being used in the UU team? Something such as... 2-4 Pokemon? 3 would be a good number to me, and the other 3 would have to be from the "past" UU tier.

?
 
*Erhem*

With the realization of this, I have to agree with jump. Which is why I'd like to ask if there is a way to "limit" the number of BL Pokemon being used in the UU team? Something such as... 2-4 Pokemon? 3 would be a good number to me, and the other 3 would have to be from the "past" UU tier.

?
What does that solve? The point here is NOT to make the tier look something like the old UU, but rather, to make BL be a real ban list and be as small as possible while keeping NEW UU balanced.
 

Colonel M

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I understand that, but I'm just saying with the BL possibilities how many UU would you still use? I'm not saying it has to be done (and I don't want it to look like the old UU by the way, the current one is horrible to me). Moreso a suggestion. By limiting the number of BL Pokemon, we can still see who will overcentralize easily and experiment how the other UU Pokemon react with it. I dunno, I could be completely wrong though so you can scrap the idea if you want.
 
cm your suggestion introduces a pretty big bias into what we want to be a fresh start =| I can see the problem with jump's concern but i have to agree with obi. IMagine we're playing ou+ubers trying to make ou, obviously alot of people are going to be making kyogre teams etc, but there's no logistically feasible way to prevent that,especially when the distionction between current BL and UU is (imo) alot less abrupt than that of current ou/ubers.

As long as we have decent method for identifying overcentralizing factors i'm not really worried... but what is this method exactly? stats/theorymon? i think we need to flesh this out asap.
 

X-Act

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As I said in Policy Review, the real problem is that we do not have an adequate definition of what is uber (which is the same as what is BL if you think about it). My definition would be "requires too much effort to counter adequately" but this definition is still not clear enough. Still, if you use 6 Pokemon that right now are BL and they all can be countered adequately using non-uber and non-OU Pokemon, then they would be UU according to me.
 
hmm do we want to address our ou/ubers definition right now? it would be pretty much the same as the uu/bl one (which we we need to come up with now anyways), which will in turn be a huge factor in the process..

we'll make it an informal theorymon definition so we don't need the stats, but garchomp got sent to ubers with "more centralization" in the argument so we can bring those in eventually.

the "nu u" ladder will be pretty much a never ending suspect test so we can bring suspect terminology in an well.

So what's the best theorymon definition we have?

"An uber/suspect/nu bl is a pokemon that in an of itself centralizes it's current tier, meriting a ban"?

mine and rbg's are kinda shaky since you could say that scizor fits into both of these.

what about "A pokemon is uber when there are no feasible checks to it in it's current tier"

we just need a decent definition of feasibile lol
 
Personally, i think there is no defention of what makes a pokemon "uber" that can be summarized outside of "unfavorably makes the metagame tilt in the direction of using or countering it". However, this test is different then an of the current suspect tests we are doing. In fact, it is more akin to stage 3 of the suspect test, where we toss all the suspects into the metgame.

One could argue that, in theory, all the BL pokemon are suspects. This test will have to have a way to look at the pokemon that are being used the most, and vote on which pokemon are centralizing the game just like in the suspect form. Maybe like in suspect voting, but instead a list is posted, and each person bold votes "BL" or "UU" on each pokemon for that test period.
 

TAY

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Honestly I don't see why we even need an explicit definition of Uber. I could give a list of unique reasons for why ever Uber pokemon is banned from OU. Criteria should be compiled on a case-by-case basis; there is no way we could possibly come up with a blanked set of definitions for what makes any given pokemon uber.

Honestly if a pokemon is breaking a tier is should be intuitive to the battlers. We each have our own idea of what the metagame should look like, and we will each interpret the tier relations differently. IMO we should not be making the definition of Uber any more specific than "too powerful for OU" because it would be too restrictive on the arguments for and against banning a specific pokemon.
 
We each have our own idea of what the metagame should look like, and we will each interpret the tier relations differently
arent we trying to avoid going into this with preconcieved notions though? case by case is fine (we are banning individual pokes with bold votes) but we need to have a definition by which we can prevent stuff like glorified "i dont like rhyperior hes on every team so he overcentralizes and hes too powerful for this tier, i vote bl" votes.
 

TAY

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That particular claim is easily disallowed because it provides no examples or anecdotes, or really no reasoning at all. It just says, "Rhype is overcentralizing and too powerful; just look at how overcentralzing and powerful he is!" That kind of self-referencing logic can be removed by common sense.

Even if we don't have an exact definition of what is Uber, we know the purpose of each tier, and I would say that as long as an argument does not violate the purpose of the tier it is valid (obviously the argument would need to pass the "common sense test" as well).

-----------------

How could we possibly restructure the tier without having an idea of what a metagame should look like? If we "avoid preconceived notions" then we could just assume that the metagame should be focused around just a few pokemon. the fact is, all of us have played OU - supposedly the most balanced tier - and we can use our experience there to bring UU closer to that standard.

My point is that every player will find a certain level of centralization and a certain level of luck and certain levels of all sorts of things acceptable or not. No two players have the same idea of what is right. If we adopt a specific set of criteria of what is uber it will inherently favor one party's point of view, even though an opposed party's idea is equally valid. Besides being unfair, this would not allow the voters in the test to be accurately represented. In fact, I don't see why we would vote at all - we could just run the test, get feedback, and apply the criteria.
 
But have we decided how we were doing the voting?

My view is that we have the same criteria as the OU ladder (1655/55), but then what? Do we have people just bold vote which pokemon should be moved to BL? (NO) My opnion is that we have a few people before the poll choose which pokemon are negatively effecting UU, and then they can be voted on in the suspect test forum (or some similar forum where only the right people have access.
 
That particular claim is easily disallowed because it provides no examples or anecdotes, or really no reasoning at all. It just says, "Rhype is BL because he's too powerful." That kind of self-referencing logic can be removed by common sense.
my point is if better if people can agree on why we are banning things before they agree on "what they want the metagame to look like"

bias is always going to exist, im just hoping to minimize it. if we all agree on a general idea that will lead the metagame to "what it should look like" (which hopefully refers to max amount of useable pokemon) it will probably lead to less polarized bold voting too which is always good

If we adopt a specific set of criteria of what is uber it will inherently favor one party's point of view, even though an opposed party's idea is equally valid. Besides being unfair, this would not allow the voters in the test to be accurately represented. In fact, I don't see why we would vote at all - we could just run the test, get feedback, and apply the criteria.
well it's not scientific really, it's just a thought out basis. basically i'm looking for a criteria upon which to base your opinion of banworthy or not. i remember there was that controversy with 5k in deo-e's banning and i'd like to avoid that kind of thing form the start.
 

X-Act

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But the point of making a definition of what is uber/BL is exactly that other points of view are not valid! I mean, would you find the argument "Wobbuffet is uber because it makes the standard metagame boring" acceptable?

If the reasons for each of the uber Pokemon being uber do not boil down to the same principal reason (which would be the definition of uberness), then our current uber list is wrong.

Maybe the mathematician in me is saying this, but I don't really like the reason for a Pokemon to be uber/BL to be arbitrary depending on the Pokemon. This is exactly why not everybody agrees on a Pokemon being uber or not. The same thing will happen in determining BL.
 

jrrrrrrr

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we can if you can actually tell me why anyone who is playing to win would not use 5-6 pretest-BL pokemon for as long as they can, assuming they can make a decent team out of 53 pokemon (not hard considering BL is larger than OU). i read your post and agree with everything else you said but while you quoted my post you did not seem to directly answer my concern that those playing to win would not, in essence, be playing a "BL metagame" where we wouldn't be learning much of anything about how probably-BL pokemon fare against probably-BL pokemon. they wouldn't be playing in the "real" UU metagame, and I have to put that in quotes because I understand the entire reason we're doing this is that some of those 53 are actually probably BL, but you understand my concern
I'll get back to this thread in a little while, I just wanted to respond to this while I had the time.

I see what you are getting at, but I really think you are overestimating the amount of pokemon that could have an impact as grand as the one I am describing when I'm talking about removing said broken pokemon. If after two weeks, someone feels that there are 15 broken pokemon, then obviously your concern is legitimate- that person is obviously jumping to conclusions and needs to be more patient. And when you say that people will be more likely to use the 53 former BL pokemon, I agree. I just think it is realistic to assume that since there is a huge difference between the top of the BL tier and the bottom and because even the bottom of that pack was already designated as "pretty good", there will probably be a few things that immediately immerge at the top of the field when testing time starts.

Here's an analogy. If we decided to drop Rayquaza, Deoxys-D, Wobbuffet and Ho-oh into OU (representing the BL tier going into the lower UU tier), their usages would obviously be very high. However, anybody who took 2 seconds to think would realize that Rayquaza is obviously the stand-out of the bunch. Even though all of their usages would be higher than the average pokemon of the lower tier, Rayquaza's usage would be noticeably higher and would probably piss a lot of people off after a week of being allowed. I am just saying that in the event of some kind of anomaly like that, where because of conditions something becomes extremely broken such as auto-weather, we need to have some kind of plan in the back of our minds to make the tier playable ASAP.

If we wait 6 weeks for the first round, we run the risk of the only results being "well I knew that PokemonX was broken after about 3 matches so I didn't really even need to play for the other 41 days...". We aren't aiming for the most tedious process here, we're trying to fix this tier and it needs to have something pushing it in the right direction all the time so that we can keep people on board long enough to finish.
 
Ok, so a few days ago Aeolus said that if we wanted to get the process started we need to PM him a complete process written up. So I want to get people together to talk about it and make sure we have the process finalized. I can be on to talk about it from either 1-5 PM est (-5 GMT) or 9pm - whenever on sunday. I really want to make sure we have a procees to together and to get this test done. I'm sorry for the later notice. but i figure at least a few people will see this.
 

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