The survey deadline passed and the council has fully aligned on a gameplan moving forward. Thank you to all the survey participants for responding and for their explanations provided. Here are the results:
These findings indicate that the community is truly divided on whether Jirachi should be banned or not, while there is a significant supermajority supporting tiering action on Machamp. Reducing the participants to solely those who automatically gain voting requirements in the suspect provided the same conclusion -- a 50/50 split on Jirachi and a significant supermajority on Machamp. While the needle has been moved with Jirachi compared to previous surveys, the results do not suggest that a suspect has sufficient support, as a supermajority is necessary in order to ban a Pokemon. Our plan is to suspect Machamp and keep a close eye on Jirachi during SPL, with our annual post-SPL survey scheduled to reassess the metagame after SPL's completion. Kristyl's point about our survey's format is a reasonable one to consider, so we will likely adapt the survey format to match this most recent one in the future.
The Machamp suspect will follow shortly. Thank you everyone again for providing your thoughts in this thread as well as in the survey.
These findings indicate that the community is truly divided on whether Jirachi should be banned or not, while there is a significant supermajority supporting tiering action on Machamp. Reducing the participants to solely those who automatically gain voting requirements in the suspect provided the same conclusion -- a 50/50 split on Jirachi and a significant supermajority on Machamp. While the needle has been moved with Jirachi compared to previous surveys, the results do not suggest that a suspect has sufficient support, as a supermajority is necessary in order to ban a Pokemon. Our plan is to suspect Machamp and keep a close eye on Jirachi during SPL, with our annual post-SPL survey scheduled to reassess the metagame after SPL's completion. Kristyl's point about our survey's format is a reasonable one to consider, so we will likely adapt the survey format to match this most recent one in the future.
The Machamp suspect will follow shortly. Thank you everyone again for providing your thoughts in this thread as well as in the survey.