Generation 9 Free-For-All

[pyuk]

FFA is not an "anything goes" metagame. It's meant to be competitive, even with the lack of being able to get ELO. The game is only unranked because it is impossible to set up a proper scoring system. Competitive matches are often played between members of the discord server.

It’s true that there’s no technical or even mathematical support for ranked FFA, but those are theoretically fixable problems. What really makes ranked FFA an impossibility is the moderation concerns. I have been told by an admin that “rated FFA would be hell on earth and we would never ever allow it”. Having played a lot of FFA rands through matchmaking, I can’t disagree.

 

[Darvin]

The council, iirc, has expressed that if they were to return to the gen 8 metagame, toxic would be banned. The only parts of the Gen 9 metagame not banned in Gen 8 that existed back then are Fling (which would probably be banned if Gen 8 was revisited) and sleep moves, which would most likely also get axed. So yeah, almost none of the currently banned strats were ever legal in Gen 8 to begin with and the few that were would likely get the boot if Gen 8 FFA was still getting updated as a format.

This is an accurate overview of the council's position.

Toxic and Toxic Spikes were already in the discussion for a potential ban in generation 8, but the vote never happened due to council turnover and the end of generation. In generation 9 due to dexited moves we went ahead with the vote and banned it. We felt the result was strongly positive. Regular Poison and Burn have completely filled the void left by Toxic in a more balanced and healthy fashioned. Casual teams don't just auto-lose to Toxic stall, and serious teams have a lot more flexibility in composition. The people in our community, both the minority who play seriously and the majority who play casually, expressed that they felt this improved the format and made it more fun to play. For everybody.

We were aware of the potential problems with Fling when we held the Toxic vote. If you go back to our voting record, Fling was on the slate, and we voted no-ban at the time precisely because it was once-per-match. But things changed with the DLC's, as there are now Pokemon with access to Recycle + Fling and Harvest + Fling, and there were cases of people trolling and running these kinds of sets. Fling is banned precisely because it is not once per match. We do not do complex bans, and banning Fling was the lightest touch given the situation.

Sleep was actually voted on in generation 8, and only survived by a narrow 3-2 vote. If OU had banned Sleep last generation, I am certain it would have been axed in FFA as well. If FFA were created today, we would inherit our clauses from OU and DOU which would mean Sleep clause would not be standard. We'd either go with unrestricted Sleep or no Sleep, and between the two I think the vast majority of players would prefer the latter.

We are not and have never been an AG-based format. We started with the DOU banlist and worked from there. When I took over, my highest priority was addressing griefing moves and the community was behind me. These bans enjoyed broad support from all kinds of players, both those who wanted to play the format casually and those who wanted to do so seriously. You can come onto the Free-For-All Discord if you want to speak on these matters. Things like the Fling ban are discussed well ahead of the actual vote.