Pokemon Sorting in the PS teambuilder

[Texas Cloverleaf]

At the request of Zarel

Zarel has requested that the community discuss a potential change to the PS teambuilder, namely the way in which Pokemon are ordered when adding in a new Pokemon. At present, Pokemon are ordered by tier.

Argument for ordering by tiering: Makes it easier to find the Pokemon you're looking for

Argument against ordering by tiering: Creates inertia in tiering due to uneducated users only using mons in a given section. This is evidenced by the usage of Pokemon after leaving a tier: for example Roselia in NU after dropping from RU

• Roselia 3 month usage from october to december: 2.774%, usage in january was 1.508%, february usage was 1.048%

Proposed alteration: List all Pokemon alphabetically and create a column that lists the tier the Pokemon is in, akin to the SmogDex. This is accomplished by slightly narrowing the cells containing the Ability listing. Ordering alphabetically also maintains the ability to easily find a Pokemon you are looking for.


Zarel didn't want to make a change this size without hearing from the community so like this post if you support, post if you object or have an alternative I suppose.

 

[Zarel]

Tier would most likely have to replace number; there's not really room for ability to be any narrower than it already is. "Compound Eyes" already doesn't fit.

 

[Nails]

Idk, if you list pokemon eligible in the tier that just seems like it would add an unecessary burden on to people. How is a new player going to know if he should use Meganium or Sceptile on his RU team (he should use Sceptile) if it's not told to him that one is RU and one is NU? They might go to the tier list onsite, but then they're just getting the information you already provided with extra effort. You could order pokemon by their position in usage stats with no cutoff so the lower tier pokemon wouldn't be sifted out, they'd be further down the list. You could make a list of "viable pokemon" for each tier, but what if your list is wrong, or the meta shifts, and where do you cut it off? Do you include Houndour on the list because nothing strictly outclasses it in its role in RU (psychic + fire immunities, early bird + grass resists, nasty plot to set up) but it's still a terrible pokemon that loses to everything except like, Jynx and Roselia? I think any system is going to have some bias in it, or be too inconvenient on players to make it worthwhile, and so I would just keep the current system.

 

[Texas Cloverleaf]

I'm really not understanding what you're saying Nails. In both systems players are told what tier a Pokemon resides in. Under the current system, Pokemon are sorted by tiers. Under the proposed system, Pokemon are sorted alphabetically with a column present indicating what tier a Pokemon resides in.

There should be no confusion to the uneducated viewer. Sorting alphabetically removes any common bias by nature.

 

[Nails]

My question lies in what pokemon are included in the list of pokemon. Is abra shown in the list of pokemon if you're making an ubers team? If so then it's going to waste people's time deciding if abra would be a good fit on their ubers team, or worse yet, lead them to think abra might be a viable pokemon in the ubers metagame. If not, then how do you decide where to cut it off? Obviously abra doesn't belong on a respectable ubers team, but does absol?

My point is that listing every pokemon that could be included, while removing bias, wastes a ton of time for the user, and that's probably not worth the slight removal of bias.

 

[Snowflakes]

More options to make finding the perfect pokemon for my team easier. (this is a suggestion but if the teambuilder is being overhauled I think it's appropriate to bring it up)

Change generation the team is for.

link to the smogon analyses for the pokemon (make the pokemon name hyperlink to it or something)

(similar to dexsearch function just more easily accessible)
Let's say I want list of viable OU stealth rockers

Hippo
TTar
Terrakion
Heatran etc.

Now I want the list tightened into ones not weak to ground (or with a specific typing or whatever really)

then it lists

Hippo

I probably shouldn't be posting at 4AM but hopefully it makes sense.

Tier would most likely have to replace number; there's not really room for ability to be any narrower than it already is. "Compound Eyes" already doesn't fit.

are we ever going to get re sizable functions as part of it? it helps solve the "not fitting" part. It's one of the things I always missed about PO you could make everything as big or as small as you wanted.

I probably shouldn't be posting at 4AM but hopefully it makes sense.

 

[ryan]

Yeah, I agree with Nails. We should ban Alomomola from RU. um, I mean, I don't see what benefit we get from removing the tiers from the teambuilder. It's just making things less convenient for our users. It's also the only place on PS that directly shows what tier everything is in.

If the problem is that players are too suggestible (Dusclops is UU? must be good in UU), that's going to happen no matter what you do. It's an inherently shitty part about our tiering process that is almost impossible to avoid. This is also dealt with by using weighted stats for tiering. The people who think that you have to use anything that is within a given tier are the same people who are probably bad at the game anyways and thus won't have a large effect on the usage of the Pokemon that they are laddering with.

There's really no good way to fix this problem, and removing helpful information from the teambuilder certainly isn't going to achieve that. The best you can do is tell people who are good at the metagame to ladder. It's usually the people who don't ladder who have the biggest gripes about usage. If someone is not affecting the usage statistics in any way, then that person really has no valid reason to complain about them.

 

[Soul Fly]

I'd rather we don't pull our hairs over spoonfeeding newbies. Completely agree with what Treecko has to say. Some things can only be apparent after experience. Regardless of any amount of pushing or suggestions by us, nothing will stop that starry eyed newcomer from trying out his awesome favmons in the ladder if he sees it listed in the tier. Who doesn't want to be the hipster?

The fact that our Ladder is diluted by such users is a different matter. That will need a different approach than reorganizing the teambuilder UI, which will achieve nothing but spurts of revolts in the showdown chat, forum, and /vp/ and not to mention is already kind of cumbersome as Zarel pointed out. If some new dude wastes his time using bad shit, then that's his headache which he'll find soon after a few ladder matches. Ladder Quality warrants another discussion in another thread.

The best We can do atm is maybe link it to the dex analysis after they are up, which will hopefully reflect better on it's viability, provided the user bothers to read. Or maybe incorporate and keep updating the Viability ranking list that almost every tier forum has, into the dex as a small number (or a link to the thread for that tier) after the pkmn has been selected which most of the times is even a better indicator than usage (as seen in the case of early BW2 Keldeo), and that would alleviate the need of introducing another column

 

[complete legitimacy]

I actually feel strongly that we should get rid of the tier classification as soon as possible. The truth is that arranging Pokemon based on their tier significantly affects the usage stats. We should aim to have as little direct influence over the usage stats as possible; they are supposed to be an objective measure of how good a Pokemon is in a metagame. When listing mons by tiers clearly has a significant effect on the tiering process, we're doing a disservice to our new players that listing the mons by tiers is supposed to help. Yes, weighted stats help, but you can only do so much when there are 10 new players for every experienced competitive player. As a result, the tiers are mostly decided by new players. While we can't really do anything about this, if new players continue to use the same mons that are listed for that tier, then the tiers will never actually change as a result. So, listing the mons by tiers really benefits no one, because it hurts new players in the long run. If players aren't naturally using the best team choices to win, then it devalues the usage stats significantly, which by the way are the basis of our entire tiering system.

An important issue with this is the question of whether new players actually become better over time. My thoughts on this are that they don't, not on PS. There is such a huge imbalance of new players to good players so that if the matchmaking system, which is designed to match you up against similarly ranked players as I understand it, works correctly, then new players will only play new or bad players the vast majority of the time. It is much harder to become good when you only ever play against new or bad players. Also, PS's userbase is still rapidly growing, so there is an increasing number of new players so that even if a new player actually became good enough that they don't rely on the tier list as a crutch, there are 5 more new players to replace him.

Ideally, there should be no bias from the simulator when building a team. Let the simulator stick to intrinsic characteristics of the mon, like base stats, abilities, etc. If players are serious enough to check the tiers page on Smogon, then they will likely look at the analysis anyway for the mons that they are planning to use, and if the anaysis is accurate then players will be discouraged to use bad mons. Also, bringing more people to the site means that those players will be more likely to make an account on the forums. In contrast to the last paragraph, players that are mentored/tutored, or just view/participate in forum discussions, actually do become better, thereby raising the quality of the ladder if new players have to go to Smogon for the tier list. This is a long-term solution to our ladder problem.

It is most definitely worth it to prioritize a huge potential long-term gain over literally 30 seconds at most to go to Smogon for the tier list.

 

[blarajan]

I don't like the way listing by tiering works personally just because of how it affects Little Cup. Pokemon that are in other tiers (Ferroseed, Gligar, Misdreavus) don't show up in the Little Cup section of Pokemon. While I can't say I support seeing more Gligar everywhere, newer users who are trying to build a team won't necessarily know they can use those Pokemon. I don't personally care how the other tiers are listed by tiering, but I would like whatever happens for Little Cup to include those Pokemon who are in other tiers.