hi yes, a decision has been made for a little bit, just wanted to iron out the final few things before making the post. but should be all set now.
I'll start with the changes that will be happening, and then go over each one below that:
1. Alpha Periods are being removed entirely, and tiers will start in a "Beta" phase where tiering can begin at any point during the phase. This will still last 1 month.
2. All Council Voting, including during beta periods, will now need a minimum of 66% of the council to support action being taken, in order for a ban (or unban) to happen.
on alpha periods
Regarding point one. I read the arguments in this thread regarding the shortening of the alpha period, and while they are solid, I personally disagree with them. I do not believe that tiers need to be able to tier early in order to remove broken elements during an alpha phase. The reasons behind the creation of the alpha phase were to just have a tier playable earlier for lower tier playerbases, as due to the high amount of flux at the start of a generation, tiers usually wouldnt settle for a couple of months. This would result in massive shifts making the beta/official tiers completely different from their alpha counterparts. Because of this, it made no sense to tier the alpha phases, as likely broken elements would be moved up, or checks to them would drop down, or they would just because ineffective once the change from alpha to beta happens.
However, with the introduction of dexit and the lowering of the power creep at the start of generations, there is relatively little flux between tiers even at the start of generations now, with this being seen with uu / ru alphas / betas seeing relatively little change between the months. Due to this, I believe that there is little reason to even have an alpha tier, as we are seeing tier stability much earlier than earlier generations, which is why from this point on there just will be no reason to have them.
With this though, this is not free reign for tier leaders and councils to just start banning and having slates from day 1 of a beta period. While I do not need it needs to be an "official" period where there should not be any tiering, as tier leaders and councils are smart enough to make judgments on when tiering is needed / when a metagame has settled enough for a slate to be fair. However, if this is something that is constantly an issue, it can be revisited, and an official "1-2 week" moratorium on votes can be implemented officially.
on council voting
Council voting has always been a bit of a weird case when it comes to tiering. used much more by lower tiers after big shifts, or just early in a generation, there has not been a real uniform policy for how they are handled, and thresholds used for voting. Most tiers ended up using 50%, which is fine when it's a public test, but 50% is quite a low base when it comes to a council, which usually only has 10 or fewer members. After discussion with tier leaders, we all agreed that an increase in the voting percentage was necessary, and the number that was decided on was 2/3s of a council or at least 66%. This number at least makes it so there has to be over a majority of council support in order to ban a mon or element from a tier without public input, and hopefully makes it so more tiering actions can be done with public testing, especially those that now fall between the 50->66% range, which prior would have been a ban. I willinclude how this would look for different council sizes:
while this is not the most dramatic increase, as council numbers are small, it should hopefully result in more community driven tiering, as well as more united council when it comes to support for action.
This will only apply to official tiers of course, and it is up to the discretion of Tier Leaders if they want to use a higher threshold (OU chooses not to include 66% as a ban, requiring higher than 66%), but this is now the minimum for any council voting.
---
These changes are going to take place immediately, meaning that NU is exiting its Alpha stage as of this post, and PU will be skipping Alpha entirely, and beginning with a Beta in just about a week.
I'll start with the changes that will be happening, and then go over each one below that:
1. Alpha Periods are being removed entirely, and tiers will start in a "Beta" phase where tiering can begin at any point during the phase. This will still last 1 month.
2. All Council Voting, including during beta periods, will now need a minimum of 66% of the council to support action being taken, in order for a ban (or unban) to happen.
on alpha periods
Regarding point one. I read the arguments in this thread regarding the shortening of the alpha period, and while they are solid, I personally disagree with them. I do not believe that tiers need to be able to tier early in order to remove broken elements during an alpha phase. The reasons behind the creation of the alpha phase were to just have a tier playable earlier for lower tier playerbases, as due to the high amount of flux at the start of a generation, tiers usually wouldnt settle for a couple of months. This would result in massive shifts making the beta/official tiers completely different from their alpha counterparts. Because of this, it made no sense to tier the alpha phases, as likely broken elements would be moved up, or checks to them would drop down, or they would just because ineffective once the change from alpha to beta happens.
However, with the introduction of dexit and the lowering of the power creep at the start of generations, there is relatively little flux between tiers even at the start of generations now, with this being seen with uu / ru alphas / betas seeing relatively little change between the months. Due to this, I believe that there is little reason to even have an alpha tier, as we are seeing tier stability much earlier than earlier generations, which is why from this point on there just will be no reason to have them.
With this though, this is not free reign for tier leaders and councils to just start banning and having slates from day 1 of a beta period. While I do not need it needs to be an "official" period where there should not be any tiering, as tier leaders and councils are smart enough to make judgments on when tiering is needed / when a metagame has settled enough for a slate to be fair. However, if this is something that is constantly an issue, it can be revisited, and an official "1-2 week" moratorium on votes can be implemented officially.
on council voting
Council voting has always been a bit of a weird case when it comes to tiering. used much more by lower tiers after big shifts, or just early in a generation, there has not been a real uniform policy for how they are handled, and thresholds used for voting. Most tiers ended up using 50%, which is fine when it's a public test, but 50% is quite a low base when it comes to a council, which usually only has 10 or fewer members. After discussion with tier leaders, we all agreed that an increase in the voting percentage was necessary, and the number that was decided on was 2/3s of a council or at least 66%. This number at least makes it so there has to be over a majority of council support in order to ban a mon or element from a tier without public input, and hopefully makes it so more tiering actions can be done with public testing, especially those that now fall between the 50->66% range, which prior would have been a ban. I willinclude how this would look for different council sizes:
This will only apply to official tiers of course, and it is up to the discretion of Tier Leaders if they want to use a higher threshold (OU chooses not to include 66% as a ban, requiring higher than 66%), but this is now the minimum for any council voting.
---
These changes are going to take place immediately, meaning that NU is exiting its Alpha stage as of this post, and PU will be skipping Alpha entirely, and beginning with a Beta in just about a week.