Division of Ubers

Status
Not open for further replies.

V97

I know that it has been said many, many times that the Ubers tier is, in fact, not even a tier, rather a banlist for pokemon too powerful for OU. In this respect, it is often compared to BL, the banlist for pokemon not used enough for OU but too powerful for UU.
This, in my opinion, is an unfair outlook towards Ubers. After all, it was my understanding that the purpose of banlist tiers such as Ubers and BL were to (1) lead to a more balanced metagame and (2) to allow more pokmemon to become viable in a metagame that isn't dominated by any one pokemon. This is perfectly fair, if not for one reason- there is no higher tier than Ubers.

Because Ubers is the end-all, everything-allowed playingfield, it is hugely unbalanced. While such a metagame has its perks, it does, in general, discourage most people from becoming involved. My proposal is to make two Uber tiers- Balanced ubers and True ubers. Balanced Ubers would be treated like a true tier, and as such would be managed so that it would be balanced, hence its name. True Ubers would be the Ubers we see today- with insane sweepers like Kyogre (and soon Arceus) running around.

My proposal is useful in that it would (1) improve the Ubers tier without messing up OU and UU, (2) it would attract more people to the tier, and (3) would potentially allow the use of pokemon that are too strong for OU, but generally discarded in the current Ubers tier.

Because Ubers is the absolutely only tier where certain pokemon can be used, i think it's worth our while to make it balanced, and to treat it like any other tier.
 
The uber tier is (at least in theory) defined as an unbalanced tier. If it could be balanced, that would be OU.
 
Why would you want to make it balanced? Being unbalanced is the heart and soul of the Uber metagame - it's what keeps the metagame unique and enjoyable.
 
it wouldn't be as if current ubers would be demolished- like i said, true ubers would be preserved. personally, i actually do like the current state of ubers, i just thought that this idea would let more people get involved.
 
Just like obi said, if you start with Ubers and strive to make it more balanced, what you end up with is what OU should be, not some intermediate tier. The premise of your argument is self-defeating. You would be better off starting with questioning the accuracy of the Suspect process and then claiming that your method might be more efficient at determining the true OU tier. At least then your argument would have a logical progression.
 
I'm not trying to create another OU. I'm simply trying to find a way to make the Ubers tier more balanced, by making two Ubers tiers, one which is anthing goes, and one where certain pokemon that are powerful even by Ubers standards (such as, perhaps, kyogre) are banned. It wouldn't affect OU in any way whatsoever. The relationship between OU and UU is what i would strive for between balanced ubers and OU- two seperate metagames, both of which are made balanced and uncentralized. The tier list would be

NU -> UU -> OU -> Balanced Ubers

UU's banlist would be Borderline, OU's banlist would be balanced Ubers, and balanced Uber's banlist would be True Ubers. Correct my logic if it's still faulty, because i can't seem to find any fundamental problems with this plan.

Edit: i may have just realized what you're saying. Uber pokemon are overcentralizing in OU, because they are extremely powerful in relation to the other pokemon in that tier. In a tier where most, if not all, other pokemon are just (or almost as) strong as them, they won't be centralizing at all. Sorry if i still don't understand your point.
 
obi said:
The uber tier is (at least in theory) defined as an unbalanced tier. If it could be balanced, that would be OU.
Click to expand...
You seem to be treating balance as a yes/no thing, when in fact no tier is entirely balanced or unbalanced. A "perfect" balanced tier would have all pokemon used equally, while a "perfect" unbalanced tier would have only 6 Pokemon filling the entire use (or one without the species clause). Both of these situations are ridiculous, OU is the base tier, it aims to be fairly balanced. Ubers is the ban list, and is allowed to be significantly more unbalenced than OU. However imagine if nintendo released a Pokemon with 250 base of each stat, the movepool of Smeargle, brilliant type, and something like Shadow Tag or Wonder Guard as an ability. Do you think that Ubers players would accept this as a fair part of the metagame? I don't. I think that while Ubers is set out to allow vastly more centrilisation than OU or any other tier, it is now played as a metagame, and players would most likely try to ban things that have power vastly beyond everything else.

We "could" make a somewhat balenced tier somewhere between OU and Ubers. It would theoretically be possible to make a practically infinite number of metagames, each with different bans, each balanced slightly more or less. However, the problem that comes in is that almost all of them would never be played. Maybe a few people would like balenced Ubers, but I get the feeling that splitting Ubers in two would not make that many people want to suddenly play it, as Jibaku said "Being unbalanced is the heart and soul of the Uber metagame". People play it for its unbalencedness, people play OU for balence. There is little need for a middle ground tier.
 
Like i said before, True ubers, or the uber tier we currently have, would be preserved. It's just that, even though we could theoretically have infinitely many tiers, yes, i think it's only necessary to have four in order to allow almost every fully evolved pokemon a niche somewhere, and i think that a the making of a more curbed, balanced tier of ubers would go a long way to fulfilling that goal.
 
There is nothing stopping you from getting together a group of players and testing the viability of this metagame on your own, but I really doubt that Smogon will take it on at this time. A vast majority of the Ubers can be, and are, used in the current Uber metagame to some extent, often more than some of the low OUs are used in OU. The only ones that are used less than the 50th mose used OUer (by % use) are: Deoxys-D, Deoxys-N (simply outclassed by Deo-A), Wynaut (used in LC, is a NFE, totally outclassed by Wob).

In short, the Ubers (with a few exeptions) fit into a neiche in their tier better than the low OUs...
 
eric the espeon said:
OU is the base tier, it aims to be fairly balanced. Ubers is the ban list, and is allowed to be significantly more unbalenced than OU. However imagine if nintendo released a Pokemon with 250 base of each stat, the movepool of Smeargle, brilliant type, and something like Shadow Tag or Wonder Guard as an ability. Do you think that Ubers players would accept this as a fair part of the metagame? I don't. I think that while Ubers is set out to allow vastly more centrilisation than OU or any other tier, it is now played as a metagame, and players would most likely try to ban things that have power vastly beyond everything else.
Click to expand...
I feel exactly the same way, Ubers has quite some fans on smogon, and therefore should be treated as a tier and not a ban list, although I agree with Jibaku that being unbalanced makes it intriguing. When full powered Arceus will be introduced we shall see if Ubers becomes a tier or remains what it is now.
 
V97 said:
i think it's only necessary to have four in order to allow almost every fully evolved pokemon a niche somewhere, and i think that a the making of a more curbed, balanced tier of ubers would go a long way to fulfilling that goal.
Click to expand...

If that curbed and balanced Uber metagame exists, by definition that game should be OU. The fact that it isn't is indicative that most people believe it does not.
 
The problem I see is that there are only 23 Ubers as it is. If you remove some, you risk ending up with an even more restricted metagame. You also risk removing what checks and counters exist to certain Pokemon. And while Ubers is centralised, it's not ridiculously so. Groudon, the most popular Uber, is nonetheless absent from more than half of teams. And don't assume Arceus will top that - while strong, he's outdone stats-wise as a sweeper or as a wall.
Compare to the Suspect ladder, where 75% of teams have Garchomp - now THAT'S overcentralised.
 
Uh, i'm really sorry, but i honestly see no problem with having OU and having pokemon which are banned from OU create a balanced tier of their own. Saying that Balanced ubers would become OU is like saying that if OU is balanced, it's UU.

Even thoug hthere are only 23 Ubers, there are a lot more pokemon that are viable in Ubers, and a lot more pokemon that would be more viable if certain pokemon were removed. Also, i thought kyogre was the most popular Uber, on just under half of teams. IMO, that is definitely centralised.
 
I agree that removing all of the "Uber pokemon of Ubers" will result in OU.

If we removed Kyogre, then Groudon would be much stronger. Then we remove Groudon and then maybe Rayquaza will appear too powerful. Eventually enough ubers are removed in this way that the tier looks simular to the suspect metagame, with few of the "weaker" ubers and mostly OU pokes, and so the pokemon that are ubers would be banned since the metagame has essentially become OU with some suspect level ubers thrown in. It is also very hard to draw a line of what ubers are too strong for ubers when there is only 23 of them.
 
@V97: You are misunderstanding what people are trying to say. If you play with all the pokemon in the game, certain pokemon are overwhelmingly powerful. Some people are okay with playing the game this way, others aren't. To accomodate the latter category, we ban the pokemon that are overwhelmingly powerful. Theoretically, if we do this a certain number of times, the new metagame will be balanced. "Balanced" is somewhat ill-defined, but it has to do with a diversity of viable pokemon choices and strategies; no one pokemon should dominate.

OU is defined as the first balanced tier. If you actually went through with the process of banning pokemon iteratively until a balanced tier resulted, the result should be OU. By definition there is no balanced tier with fewer bans than OU. That's what people mean when they say that your idea of balanced ubers is actually OU.

You can object that the current OU list is not the balanced tier with the fewest bans. You can also object that the word "balanced" is not particularly usefull, or a worthwhile goal, or whatever. But your proposal for balanced ubers won't work because that, in theory, is already what is in place.
 
The OU Tier is designed to offer a balanced tier (which is obviously centralised to an extent, but more or less balanced), however, setting a "Balanced Ubers" tier would be arbitrary. The Uber Banlist is to encourage the best possible OU Tier. Theoretically, it would be possible to ban each pokemon in succesive order of relative strength (though theres IMO, no way to compare 2 pokemon unless one entirely outclasses the other), resulting in about 500 Tiers, but obviously, doing this serves no purpose.

I you were to create a balanced Ubers Tier, who would go? Kyogre? Arceus? Darkrai? And it would not attract more people to Ubers. As said before, OU is designed with the greatest diversity in mind while still retaining balance and as much decentralisation as possible (within reason of course), and this IMHO is what attracts the bulk of players to OU
 
V97, as Abacus has explained, one of the issues with your proposition is that the OU tier, by definition, is the "first balanced tier." Therefore, Smogon's tiering system would dictate that the banlist for this "balanced Ubers" metagame would automatically become the banlist for "OU," and "that's just the way it is." So that's why you're getting these kind of strange responses with people telling you that "OU is already 'balanced Ubers'" and whatnot; in theory, by virtue of Smogon's tiering system, that's the way things should be panning out. That doesn't mean it's actually working, and obviously you aren't of the opinion that it is, but that's how your suggestion really doesn't gel with the tiering system in that regard.

But there is a second, related issue that I think is a lot more crippling to your proposition, or at least its compatibility with the way Smogon's tiers are organized: the "first balanced tier" is, by definition, also the "only independent tier." As of this moment, OU is the first balanced tier, and UU and NU both have banlists which are either directly or indirectly based on OU's usage statistics. So when OU's banlist suddenly no longer consists of things like Lugia and Dialga, the effect on the lower tiers is going to be immense; potentially, everything could even just "move down a level" with the new "UU" consisting of so many previously-"OU" Pokemon that everyone starts wondering why it's being called "UU" in the first place. Even if you change their names to keep people from being confused or whatever, most players are not going to be comfortable with "obviously OU" Pokemon like Forretress being restricted from OU play merely because they happen to be useful in "Balanced Ubers."

So you can see where your suggestion really isn't as simple as "hey guys, let's throw together a fun new balanced Uber metagame!" It pretty much tells us that our entire "official" tiering system is counterintuitive and needs to be remodeled (unless you're suggesting that this be an "unofficial" tier, in which case you can always try to follow in Little Cup's footsteps I guess). Discussion has sprung up on that subject before in Policy Review (Tangerine's "'Unban Everything' Mentality" thread and posts 7 and on of Hipmonlee's "Stage three and beyond" thread) and in #stark a number of months ago, so it's not that I'm trying to discourage you from pursuing this idea. The point is that you have to frame your argument from a "Smogon's tiering system is wrong" kind of perspective if you're serious about pushing for this (or people will just cite the tiering system and dismiss you, which is pretty much all that's happened throughout this thread). If that's the case, I highly encourage you to read through those Policy Review threads, which go into these issues (and the "balanced Ubers" one in particular) in a much more in-depth way.

ps, I'll give Abacus a dollar if he posts more often
 
Jibaku said:
Why would you want to make it balanced? Being unbalanced is the heart and soul of the Uber metagame - it's what keeps the metagame unique and enjoyable.
Click to expand...

My thoughts exactly. It provides a refreshing change from the standard metagame, which, IMO, can get stale if you play it too much.
 
Jibaku said:
Why would you want to make it balanced? Being unbalanced is the heart and soul of the Uber metagame - it's what keeps the metagame unique and enjoyable.
Click to expand...

I agree,
I wouldn't enjoy a metagame that was completly balanced,
it would, as other people have said, been another OU.
 
Ah, i understand now.

Sorry for being slow on the uptake, and i guess my idea wasn't the best in the first place.

@Jibaku
Yes, i agree the Ubers tier is more fun the way it is, i just thought that this could be an idea for attracting more people to Ubers.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top