Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [PALAFIN RETEST]

[pika pal]

SV OU has been kinda a failure not just because I said so, but because contrary to the growth of scenes like VGC and Youtube content putting more light on the competitive scene, more social media about competitive Pokemon than ever, the games themselves pushing competitive Pokemon harder, it seems that the numbers are regressing even further than SWSH. People were arguing in the original Tera Policy Review Threads that SWSH had less players than usual because that game didn't have an exciting gimmick, but SV OU has failed to perform even harder. This entire post was a comparison with SWSH, a meta that albeit stable still was considered boring by many people, with metas like Gen 6 OU out-performing both SWSH and SV even in its final months (2016-08 , Total battles: 3402706), and SV OU has shrunk the active playerbase even further.

If you want competitive Pokemon to be more popular, you need it to be a consistently fun experience for most playerbases, and SV OU is fun for fewer than ever before. At the time when competitive Smogon should be soaring- romhacks using our language, ideas, structure like Radical Red, social media memes hitting millions of views with Showdown, a Reddit based on Smogon with 214,000 followers, and people being more accepting of the idea of banning elements as a fan community than ever, and the actual count of players is shrinking.

There isn't really anything that can be done anymore, including the Council. SV OU as is is not going to change drastically, since the numbers aren't there anymore, and it's going to solidify even more as people who don't like Tera continue to dip, especially as other tiering action has understandably slowed down, but that usually helps to get people more active- it's a community event. Without much exciting news around the corner, SV is also going to be rotting for an extra potentially 2 years, as Legends Z-A is rumored to be later 2025, and I doubt they will pull a BDSP -> PLA early 2026 for the next generation of Pokemon. This could be the longest OU in a long time, if not the longest time, and the numbers are already stabilizing to be at SWSH's lows when it had competition with a second game. And SWSH was already not a high-earner of players. (Again, one of the arguments in the Tera PR thread that was popular was that Tera would help net new players in, when it was assumed SWSH being gimmickless was part of why it dropped players).

Okay I need to push back on a few things in this section specifically. First and foremost, is the goal even to make Competitive Pokemon "more popular"? Obviously more players is beneficial to the community, but the consistent point I see is that tiering decisions are made based on creating as competitive a Metagame as possible, in that whether or not the game is "fun" (itself a very subjective criteria), games are won by the more skilled player a majority of the time. This particular mentality reminds me of whenever Competitive Smash discourse happens on social media and the narrative of "Competitive Players hate fun" circulates: why do you decide what "fun" is and, more relevant, that that should be the goal for that particular environment and subset of play?

The games are pushing competitive Pokemon, as in VGC and in-game ranked battles, which are wildly different formats from Smogon Singles or Doubles. The most heavily visible players are those appearing in and being promoted by TPC for TPC's supported formats, which doesn't necessarily translate to greater numbers in other ones, on top of the odd rivalry some people perpetuate between Smogon's formats and officially supported ones on those same social media pages.

This is also assuming that increased interest in competitive Pokemon will translate to a proportional amount of participants, rather than just more spectators and followers. Odds are you're not going to have a significant number of players try to play any given Gen of OU after watching various FSG history videos, but do those not still count as increased interest in competitive Pokemon? Citing the reddits like r/Stunfisk is similarly faulty because a fraction of that follower base keeps up with it for competitive reasons, as seen with how activity dipped during the hiatus from things like Theorymon and Stinkpost Days. None of this is to call them wrong for engaging this way, but I think it fair to say the majority of participants in these sections of the community aren't electing to competitively play anyway.

Nothing said in this post really refutes SittinGamer's point, which is that people chose to dip instead of participating in the surveys or in games enough to register as Qualified respondents. Maybe they were good players, but if they'd rather drop out of play than participate in the surveys and tiering process, then their input simply isn't there to consider as fact, and if they did participate beforehand but no action took place, then they were never in the majority to begin with.



I don't have an argument about the numbers cited for SV vs SwSh having fewer games played in those timespans compared. What I do have is a verdict: tough, we don't tier for the sake of maximizing player numbers, we tierto create an environment that functions competitively as much as possible, and the Survey scores you cited, whether significant or not, are not breaking majority, so they don't represent a priority to act on. So either focus on arguing Tera's uncompetitive aspects without an appeal to unpopularity, or go to those OM's you advocate for instead of doomposting about the failing health of Smogon.

My proposal is nothing. There isn't anything that can be done this far into the generation.

Then here's a simple question

Spoiler

Legitimately, I get if you want to argue that the Generation needs fixing and are advocating such, but if you actually believe nothing can be done and have nothing to propose, what are you adding besides doomposting and "I was right about this downfall" discourse?

 

[Magcargo]

So your proposed solution to this is to ban Tera.
The mechanic that more than 50% of the playerbase likes, and at least 50% of them don't want to see it go, potentially up to 75%, or even higher.
"Let's cater to the minority and reject the majority" is not the way to satisfy the playerbase.

So from my understanding, their perspective is that pro-Tera players will play the meta no matter what while anti-Tera players dislike the metagame so much that they will leave the metagame. Hence, while 60%+ players may like Tera, the will not leave if Tera is banned unlike the minority.

 

[somebodyuknow2]

it was literally a yes-or-no question. there is no dichotomy less false than that

The phrasing of the question itself creates that false dichotomy. It's a classic case of a problem with polling - loading the pollster's assumptions into poll questions. When you ask "do you support X Yes or No" the only people the poll is accurately surveying are those who have a clear and strong preference for X or Not X. This is accurate enough if the playerbase is already highly polarized. When sizeable portions of the playerbase have 3rd positions (some of which I listed) the question becomes meaningless.

What we need is a more nuanced survey that can accurately answer some of these questions that are still open as of today:
What percentage is pro-Tera to the degree that they would actively hate the tier or quit playing if it was banned?
What percentage is fine with any outcome?
What percentage really wants to try one of the compromises (most realistically a Tera Blast ban)
and more

One of the most common dynamics in democratic processes is that a minority group strongly cares about some issue while a majority is much more ambivalent. The minority group then strongly advocates their position and often manages to get concessions from the majority. This is a natural and normal compromise. It's really quite annoying to hear "you are not yet 50% + 1, therefore your position will never and should never be even brought up in discussion"

 

[SittinGamer]

So from my understanding, their perspective is that pro-Tera players will play the meta no matter what while anti-Tera players dislike the metagame so much that they will leave the metagame. Hence, while 60%+ players may like Tera, the will not leave if Tera is banned unlike the minority.

That is a perspective which still values the opinion of the minority over the opinion of the majority. "Oh they won't care so because of this we should do what my unpopular position is." Like seriously, extrapolate the metaphor of raising hands in a group regarding Tera to other real issues. Can you believe how INSANE it is that 23% of people support this?!?!?! Clearly that means something must be done!

 

[ant4456]

Okay I need to push back on a few things in this section specifically. First and foremost, is the goal even to make Competitive Pokemon "more popular"?

Player counts are your lifeline and a higher player count often means that people are enjoying the game more. When player counts are low, the game is not appealing to lots of people. The point isn't to be more popular per se, but that popularity in games is often a reward for the game not shutting off major playerbases.

but the consistent point I see is that tiering decisions are made based on creating as competitive a Metagame as possible, in that whether or not the game is "fun" (itself a very subjective criteria), games are won by the more skilled player a majority of the time.

The argument isn't actually about fun, because a lot of the people who dislike Tera dislike it as a competitive element, not necessarily casually. Tera doesn't make the game "more competitive", it changes what the game is about to a degree that it turns off people who don't like what it morphs the game into. Tera makes the game feel less like actual competitive Pokemon IMO

This particular mentality reminds me of whenever Competitive Smash discourse happens on social media and the narrative of "Competitive Players hate fun" circulates: why do you decide what "fun" is and, more relevant, that that should be the goal for that particular environment and subset of play?

The point isn't to dictate what's fun necessarily, because we aren't talking about individuality. When you're arguing about fun in the context of tiering, fun is still something that almost everyone factors into their perspective of the game, but also importantly when you have numbers about what percentage of people are turned off by things, as a designer it is about trade-off. This is something where Smogon Tiering cannot be that helpful, but most competitive games use a lot of data, surveys, and the competitive community to choose what they feel is most worth it, rather than it just being a 60% vote. At the core of this conversation is a game design dillema: This mechanic shapes the game in ways where to many, they do not feel like it plays the same, in a way that other gimmicks we didn't ban don't. We have the numbers, it is not an unknown, many people do not like the mechanic, it is not individual people it is a giant chunk of the playerbase.

The games are pushing competitive Pokemon, as in VGC and in-game ranked battles, which are wildly different formats from Smogon Singles or Doubles.

Yes, but we are also on the internet. The best VGC players practice on Showdown, where they see Smogon tiers the second they load up the website and try to find the format. VGC popularity does not = Smogon popularity, of course, but people entering the sphere of competitive Pokemon knowledge in general is more exposure to all major forms of it.

Odds are you're not going to have a significant number of players try to play any given Gen of OU after watching various FSG history videos, but do those not still count as increased interest in competitive Pokemon?

No, I disagree here. FSG is actually a great gateway into creating more Showdown players, and yes, Youtube content for almost any competitive game generally gets at least a percentage to at least try to play it.

Citing the reddits like r/Stunfisk is similarly faulty because a fraction of that follower base keeps up with it for competitive reasons, as seen with how activity dipped during the hiatus from things like Theorymon and Stinkpost Days. None of this is to call them wrong for engaging this way, but I think it fair to say the majority of participants in these sections of the community aren't electing to competitively play anyway.

I'd like to point out that this doesn't necessarily contradict my point. Activity waning is actually kinda my point in general. Like I said, SV OU had a very strong start compared to SWSH, reaching pre-SWSH gooder numbers, and now it's waned a shit ton. While obviously not everyone on Stunfisk is an active player, again: All exposure is exposure to more potential players.

Nothing said in this post really refutes SittinGamer's point, which is that people chose to dip instead of participating in the surveys or in games enough to register as Qualified respondents.

The point is not a point I need to refute, because it doesn't actually look good for SV. I play other competitive games and I promise you that when people quit the game, it is a huge negative moment for the community. People quitting the game is a sign of negative health and usually if the game does not make a good turnaround from that point, it's never going to really recover. Most competitive players also give a fuck about the health of their scene, and celebrate higher player counts because 1. It means more potential friends and people in their hobby, 2. Their influence as a community is growing, 3. More Spectators, 4. The competitive scene of a game inherently matters more the more people that play it, especially monetarily. This all was actually the heart of Smash controversy with things like banning Steve, banning Steven lead to more viewers and more entrants, so it started to become more of a staple in NA.

Plus, 28% is still, again, a giant chunk of players. I'd constitute that as showing up, and in any other competitive game if 28% thought that a core mechanic was bad, it's be considered a major problem with the game, and the developers would do something about it, because it is extremely rare people only hop in to a competitive series for the new gimmick and that after they're there, they'd stop playing if the gimmick was tuned down or removed. Again, this is something Smogon Tiering cannot really fix, however.

I don't have an argument about the numbers cited for SV vs SwSh having fewer games played in those timespans compared. What I do have is a verdict: tough, we don't tier for the sake of maximizing player numbers, we tierto create an environment that functions competitively as much as possible, and the Survey scores you cited, whether significant or not, are not breaking majority, so they don't represent a priority to act on. So either focus on arguing Tera's uncompetitive aspects without an appeal to unpopularity, or go to those OM's you advocate for instead of doomposting about the failing health of Smogon.

Again, I'm sure the dunking will make the game do better.

 

[FayaWizard]

Player counts are your lifeline and a higher player count often means that people are enjoying the game more. When player counts are low, the game is not appealing to lots of people. The point isn't to be more popular per se, but that popularity in games is often a reward for the game not shutting off major playerbases.


The argument isn't actually about fun, because a lot of the people who dislike Tera dislike it as a competitive element, not necessarily casually. Tera doesn't make the game "more competitive", it changes what the game is about to a degree that it turns off people who don't like what it morphs the game into. Tera makes the game feel less like actual competitive Pokemon IMO

The point isn't to dictate what's fun necessarily, because we aren't talking about individuality. When you're arguing about fun in the context of tiering, fun is still something that almost everyone factors into their perspective of the game, but also importantly when you have numbers about what percentage of people are turned off by things, as a designer it is about trade-off. This is something where Smogon Tiering cannot be that helpful, but most competitive games use a lot of data, surveys, and the competitive community to choose what they feel is most worth it, rather than it just being a 60% vote. At the core of this conversation is a game design dillema: This mechanic shapes the game in ways where to many, they do not feel like it plays the same, in a way that other gimmicks we didn't ban don't. We have the numbers, it is not an unknown, many people do not like the mechanic, it is not individual people it is a giant chunk of the playerbase.


Yes, but we are also on the internet. The best VGC players practice on Showdown, where they see Smogon tiers the second they load up the website and try to find the format. VGC popularity does not = Smogon popularity, of course, but people entering the sphere of competitive Pokemon knowledge in general is more exposure to all major forms of it.

No, I disagree here. FSG is actually a great gateway into creating more Showdown players, and yes, Youtube content for almost any competitive game generally gets at least a percentage to at least try to play it.


I'd like to point out that this doesn't necessarily contradict my point. Activity waning is actually kinda my point in general. Like I said, SV OU had a very strong start compared to SWSH, reaching pre-SWSH gooder numbers, and now it's waned a shit ton. While obviously not everyone on Stunfisk is an active player, again: All exposure is exposure to more potential players.


The point is not a point I need to refute, because it doesn't actually look good for SV. I play other competitive games and I promise you that when people quit the game, it is a huge negative moment for the community. People quitting the game is a sign of negative health and usually if the game does not make a good turnaround from that point, it's never going to really recover. Most competitive players also give a fuck about the health of their scene, and celebrate higher player counts because 1. It means more potential friends and people in their hobby, 2. Their influence as a community is growing, 3. More Spectators, 4. The competitive scene of a game inherently matters more the more people that play it, especially monetarily. This all was actually the heart of Smash controversy with things like banning Steve, banning Steven lead to more viewers and more entrants, so it started to become more of a staple in NA.

Plus, 28% is still, again, a giant chunk of players. I'd constitute that as showing up, and in any other competitive game if 28% thought that a core mechanic was bad, it's be considered a major problem with the game, and the developers would do something about it, because it is extremely rare people only hop in to a competitive series for the new gimmick and that after they're there, they'd stop playing if the gimmick was tuned down or removed. Again, this is something Smogon Tiering cannot really fix, however.


Again, I'm sure the dunking will make the game do better.

Ok so answer me this: What makes you think that the 75% of players that didn't want Tera banned will mostly stick around when Tera gets banned, while you think the 25% that wanted Tera banned mostly hated the tier and left?

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

My proposal is nothing. There isn't anything that can be done this far into the generation.

if you don't believe anything can be done and you have no proposal, what's the point of all these words you've emitted? did they change the title of this thread to "sv ou metagame doomposting and complaining v4" and i didn't notice?

 

[somebodyuknow2]

That is a perspective which still values the opinion of the minority over the opinion of the majority. "Oh they won't care so because of this we should do what my unpopular position is." Like seriously, extrapolate the metaphor of raising hands in a group regarding Tera to other real issues. Can you believe how INSANE it is that 23% of people support this?!?!?! Clearly that means something must be done!

We don't know that there's an "opinion of the majority". There's a middle faction of unknown size that will keep playing and enjoying the tier with or without tera. Until we get a better survey we have no idea how polarized the playerbase actually is on Tera.
As for 23%, most things that become law in democratic countries did not materialize out of the ether with 51% support. Civil rights, accessibility for disabilities, women's suffrage, and more and more. All of these started with minorities on both sides that had strong opinions, fighting to convince the mostly ambivalent majority. In this context, having a 23% that already is strongly anti-tera is pretty big. Repeating myself, we do not know the size of the strongly pro-tera faction. I do not believe it is more than 50%. But, again, until we have a better survey it's all guesswork.

 

[SittinGamer]

I'm not responding point by point but your Steve point isn't helpful to you either, lmao. Steve is not banned at basically any high ranking tournaments. Clearly they do not see a need to value popularity over what they see as a competitive metagame if the most controversial character is allowed at any and all events that actually matter with regards to national placements.

 

[ant4456]

Ok so answer me this: What makes you think that the 75% of players that didn't want Tera banned will mostly stick around when Tera gets banned, while you think the 25% that wanted Tera banned mostly hated the tier and left?

Because most of the players that play SV OU played or play other fucking tiers.

This is a wild statement, competitive Pokemon has existed for a shit ton of time and has been way more popular in the past from actual player numbers. While some SV OU players probably got into it from the new gen like every gen, it is also still a thing in 90% of formats on Showdown.

Why would they quit when Tera quit, even some of the biggest Tera advocates that are super high level players did not get into the game with Gen 9 lmao

 

[ant4456]

I'm not responding point by point but your Steve point isn't helpful to you either, lmao. Steve is not banned at basically any high ranking tournaments. Clearly they do not see a need to value popularity over what they see as a competitive metagame if the most controversial character is allowed at any and all events that actually matter with regards to national placements.

That's because Japanese players don't really care about Steve in that way, but sure okay. So you think that it's good for a game if 28% of people hate the gimmick mechanic that's in every round, actually? If Smash 6 made a mechanic that made 30% of all demographics of players quit or want to stop playing you'd still advocate for it to be in the main ruleset?

 

[SittinGamer]

That's because Japanese players don't really care about Steve in that way, but sure okay. So you think that it's good for a game if 28% of people hate the gimmick mechanic that's in every round, actually? If Smash 6 made a mechanic that made 30% of all demographics of players quit or want to stop playing you'd still advocate for it to be in the main ruleset?

Uh, yeah. If we're really trying to equalize the playing field and a survey of players found that, on the whole, support for banning that thing was lower than the past two surveys results and that metrics for both fun and competitiveness have slowly been on the rise, I think I would advocate for that thing, actually. In smash, just as much as in Pokemon, it would be absolutely silly to tier/rule in the interests of people who have chosen to leave the rule making process.

In this hypothetical scenario, I too wouldn't care if this Smash 6 is doing worse than Ultimate in month by month player comparisons. Why would they regulate themselves so as to appeal to people who have already left as opposed to their current playerbase?

 

[Tunak Tunak Tun]

That's because Japanese players don't really care about Steve in that way, but sure okay. So you think that it's good for a game if 28% of people hate the gimmick mechanic that's in every round, actually? If Smash 6 made a mechanic that made 30% of all demographics of players quit or want to stop playing you'd still advocate for it to be in the main ruleset?

This argument is overall ridiculous. You not liking something in the game doesn't entitle you to have it removed, you can't hold a metagame hostage by saying you'll stop playing if it remains (which is almost never the case anyways, particularly in smash). Having 30% of a metagame not liking something that 70% do is somewhat normal in metagames, them trying to use their participation in the metagame as a bargaining chip to make the meta more enjoyable to them is not something anybody should entertain.

 

[pika pal]

The phrasing of the question itself creates that false dichotomy. It's a classic case of a problem with polling - loading the pollster's assumptions into poll questions. When you ask "do you support X Yes or No" the only people the poll is accurately surveying are those who have a clear and strong preference for X or Not X. This is accurate enough if the playerbase is already highly polarized. When sizeable portions of the playerbase have 3rd positions (some of which I listed) the question becomes meaningless.

What we need is a more nuanced survey that can accurately answer some of these questions that are still open as of today:
What percentage is pro-Tera to the degree that they would actively hate the tier or quit playing if it was banned?
What percentage is fine with any outcome?
What percentage really wants to try one of the compromises (most realistically a Tera Blast ban)
and more

One of the most common dynamics in democratic processes is that a minority group strongly cares about some issue while a majority is much more ambivalent. The minority group then strongly advocates their position and often manages to get concessions from the majority. This is a natural and normal compromise. It's really quite annoying to hear "you are not yet 50% + 1, therefore your position will never and should never be even brought up in discussion"

Wasn't the preceding question of "do you think action should be taken regarding Tera?" still receiving a minority "yes" in responses from Qualified players? Asking if action should be taken AT ALL is a much broader question than "should it be banned?" even if the answer is still a yes/no binary at that stage, so I don't see why this would skew results heavily on people who just think "Tera as it currently exists is not adequate" without even knowing what action they would take.

Your subsequent "nuanced" question examples feel loaded with fruitless points: First one assumes that players quitting is incentive enough to not make a decision, which is contradictory to what tiering policy is about for a competitive environment; second percentage is irrelevant because if that percentage doesn't care about the outcome, they won't participate to influence it so they simply dilute the numbers for pro/anti-action proportions; third question introduces ambiguity in what the compromises are and factors like if they're pre-determined or to be proposed later.

There's also a counterpoint to your issue with "loading the pollster's questions" (besides assuming that the poll makers are biased to have one to load): Choice Overload is a phenomenon observed where if too many legitimately-considerable options are introduced, it results in less satisfactory decisions being made (from the perspective of the decision maker). If we assume that players are not pre-disposed to a specific outcome (which I would assume of your position since you are advocating for unrepresented positions vs a binary), then presenting too many options that all have to be weighed just becomes more mentally draining to sort through them, whether they arrive at a different result than the narrower survey would, and this is assuming you get the same number of responses to both versions . Adding more choices does not strictly make your answers more dependable or satisfactory.

That's because Japanese players don't really care about Steve in that way, but sure okay. So you think that it's good for a game if 28% of people hate the gimmick mechanic that's in every round, actually? If Smash 6 made a mechanic that made 30% of all demographics of players quit or want to stop playing you'd still advocate for it to be in the main ruleset?

Yes, because 70% > 30%. That's how majority decision making works. I don't care how significant the quitting contingent is argued to be. If they're not the majority, their decision doesn't win in a voting environment.

And as an addendum, why do we not care about Japanese players being ambivalent towards Steve when discussing competitive restriction on the character? If the Japanese are relevant to mention at all (i.e. we're not focusing strictly on Western-played events), then surely their lack of desire for action on the character is also relevant (since they are also participating in said environment)?

 

[ant4456]

Uh, yeah. If we're really trying to equalize the playing field and a survey of players found that, on the whole, support for banning that thing was lower than the past two surveys results and that metrics for both fun and competitiveness have slowly been on the ride, I think I would advocate for that thing, actually. In smash, just as much as in Pokemon, it would be absolutely silly to tier/rule in the interests of people who have chosen to leave the rule making process.

That'd be fucking stupid and every serious TO would ban it within the month. The health of the scene is based on appealing to the most people while being the most competitive, and if 30% of the scene thought something was uncompetitive and made them stop going to tournaments, every TO would be banning it.

Thinking in absolute majorities is a very bad concept for the health of games, and you'd never make it as a game designer if your thought process would be basically Smogon Tiering.

There is a different actual worthiness to how much people liking or disliking something matters in a game's design, because obviously a lot of elements are not going to be everyone's favorite. There is a difference between stages, characters, items, etc. and then a base mechanic that is used in every match that will effect every match. You can have things people dislike when it's every once in a while, or every few games even, but if it's in every single game you will actually get people to quit the game.

Having 30% of a metagame not liking something that 70% do is somewhat normal in metagames

Usually the element is a Pokemon which is an entirely different concept. A Pokemon is not a mechanic like Tera, Tera is in every single game. The only Pokemon that could maybe be compared would be something like GSC Snorlax, but GSC Snorlax is extremely popular. A Pokemon you dislike in the meta being there is annoying but if it's not banned after a while there are things you can do to avoid it being that bad for you. You cannot disable Tera, it appears in every single match no matter what, and if you don't use your Tera either it's you basically just throwing 99% of the time, it also is something to consider constantly.

 

[SittinGamer]

Do we remove paralysis and freeze if 30% if players indicate that action is needed while 70% vote no? Because I wouldn't be surprised at all if those statuses fail the vibe check, but we have consistently kept these as part of the game.

 

[somebodyuknow2]

Wasn't the preceding question of "do you think action should be taken regarding Tera?" still receiving a minority "yes" in responses from Qualified players? Asking if action should be taken AT ALL is a much broader question than "should it be banned?" even if the answer is still a yes/no binary at that stage, so I don't see why this would skew results heavily on people who just think "Tera as it currently exists is not adequate" without even knowing what action they would take.

I agree with most of this post but this is why I don't like the preceding question either: It is still Yes/No. Something as simple as adding "I don't really care" as an option on those 2 questions would go miles here. Consider a survey where only 20% of people care, but the only options are yes/no. You would get basically no useful information out of it because the results are dominated by whichever random option the "i don't care" group picks.

As for tiering with regards to people quitting the tier: Why not? Not playing the game is itself a form of voting - in the real world the same concept is voting with your feet. Taking a lax attitude with regards to people moving to greener pastures is how communities die. They get more and more insular, and constantly convince themselves they are doing a great job because everyone here is happy, as they grow smaller and smaller and eventually fade into irrelevance.

 

[ant4456]

And as an addendum, why do we not care about Japanese players being ambivalent towards Steve when discussing competitive restriction on the character? If the Japanese are relevant to mention at all (i.e. we're not focusing strictly on Western-played events), then surely their lack of desire for action on the character is also relevant (since they are also participating in said environment)?

Y'all are really focusing hard on the Steve thing but I actually don't really care much about it. I don't even necessarily agree with banning it, because it is a character, the reason I brought it up was because most serious scenes actually will do things to respond to the wants of people. Very few people actually cared about if Steve was allowed, while a good chunk of people hated Steve, so it was easy for most locals and non-majors.

The point of bringing up Japan is that if Japanese Smash players hated Steve like the American players did, they would also start banning it, and then it would likely be banned in almost all serious play. Majors nowadays in Ultimate have to cater to several playerbases across the world which was not always true for Smash.

Wasn't the preceding question of "do you think action should be taken regarding Tera?" still receiving a minority "yes" in responses from Qualified players?

Again, I don't give a fuck about the Smogon Tiering Official Whatever Response here, because the tiering angle is not the correct angle here. This is a game design problem, and Smogon Tiering is not designed to handle game design problems, it is designed for tiering elements and less so mechanics.

In competitive game design there is a hierarchy of elements in a game, starting at the top with the Goal, then the Mechanics, the Things (trademark; characters, guns in shooters, the things that you actually play with), the Maps (environment in which it takes place), and then extras below that, usually togglable.

In competitive Pokemon singles this is: Defeat all 6 Pokemon, the mechanics such as switching, using attacks, status moves, hazards, etc., the Things are the Pokemon, items, abilities, and the Stage is not as applicable because Pokemon is a turn based RPG.

The hierarchy follows in a manner of how important they are to get right and generally not fuck with in a way that makes people turned off, with it also depending for those with several things per category, how many things are fucked with. A big part of why Dynamax isn't appealing is that the "Goal" is shapeshifted through Dynamax as a mechanic; the Goal is now "Use Dynamax in the correct way in order to win, and do not lose via Dynamax". Terastilization is a new mechanic that, while not as bad in the sense that it changes the Goal of the game AS hard as Dynamax, people who hate it generally feel like it changes it a bit and what you are playing to. It's not a wincon, it is THE wincon.

You can get rid of Pokemon, individual Pokemon can be busted, items can not be that well-designed, abilities can be crazy, but if the base mechanics are good like Gen 6 then most people will still play. When you fuck with the mechanics and change what the game is really about, a considerable amount of people are turned off, and we get here.

Tera is fundamentally not something Smogon Tiering was ever really going to deal with, and nor should it really be expected to. The Tiering system is best when it's at the third tier, the Thing, and it's at its hardest or most controversial when it's at the Mechanics stage, especially when the Mechanics are changed in ways that change the Goal. Smogon Tiering isn't trying to game design.

And I mean, there is a reason that no serious big competitive game made by developers that want to make a competitive game follows the Smogon format. For better or worse, they make these decisions, and often that means changing when a minority of the playerbase is entirely turned off by something that the majority of the players kinda likes, but overall would still play if it wasn't a big thing.

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

Do we remove paralysis and freeze if 30% if players indicate that they action is needed while 70% vote no? Because I wouldn't be surprised at all if those statuses fail the vibe check, but we have consistently kept these as part of the game.

"no, don't you see, this is reductio ad absurdum and definitely not the exact thing i'm saying but with tera replaced with status conditions"

there, now the anti-tera side doesn't need to respond. saved ya the work, fellas

 

[ant4456]

Do we remove paralysis and freeze if 30% if players indicate that they action is needed while 70% vote no? Because I wouldn't be surprised at all if those statuses fail the vibe check, but we have consistently kept these as part of the game.

No because as I just explained, the Smogon Tiering system isn't really designed to deal with these problems. It's designed to deal with elements like Pokemon and items, not core mechanics of the game.

In an ideal world and how most games would handle this: a game designer would see the problem and redesign Paralysis and Freeze in order to appeal to more people, or nerf them so the problem matters less, or yes axe in an extreme scenario. Unfortunately, Pokemon Company doesn't really care.

 

[Demon Queen]

oh don’t mind me just nooticing

 

[DaddyBuzzwole]

And I mean, there is a reason that no serious big competitive game made by developers that want to make a competitive game follows the Smogon format.

because if devs want to make a competitive game they balance it themselves when they're designing it, einstein. smogon only needs to exist because game freak doesn't do that, has absolutely zero interest in balancing singles, and doesn't push balance patches like virtually every other competitive game. the reason no other competitive game has a smogon equivalent isn't because "smogon bad" but because every other competitive game is actually competitive

 

[ant4456]

because if devs want to make a competitive game they balance it themselves when they're designing it, einstein. smogon only needs to exist because game freak doesn't do that, has absolutely zero interest in balancing singles, and doesn't push balance patches like virtually every other competitive game

Yeah no shit, the problem is that isn't actually enough, and it still means that Smogon Singles is going to suffer, as it has.

You can't just trust a tiering solution not meant for this kind of stuff and say "Well this is how we'd handle it in tiering, so that must be the best way", when it's not even in the same ballpark of what you need for an approach. Handling game design with just "majority rule" is a bad way to handle it as shown with every serious competitive game and scene, and only if Smogon reached its hands out towards other avenues could this type of thing be avoided.

 

[658Greninja]

I’m open to discussion of Tera even if I am pro-Tera, however I am not a fan of ant4456 ’s arguments here, the main one being that Tera is the main reason the playerbase dropped and we should look at the opinions of those that left the format.

Player counts dropping is natural with SV OU being almost 2 years old. The same goes for any CG or any game for that matter. New toy syndrome wears off and ppl move on to something else. This is even more apparant in 2024 where some of y’all have Cocomelon-rotten brains. There might be a portion of people who left because they dislike Tera, but that can be applicable with any metagame. I don’t like Gen 8’s Regen spam heavy meta, but I’m not gonna say Regenerator should be banned because I don’t like it. Should the ADV council listen to the non-ADV players that want Ttar banned because they don’t like a meta centered around Sand and Spikes? No.

Its better to get feedback from players who are active in the tier than @SkibidiJimmy12 who never touched SV OU in their lifetime or @freakylongjohn who stopped playing in 2022 December and never came back. Their takes have more weight due to them coming from experience, even if the take is “bad”.

Me personally, I enjoy Tera as a mechanic. The reward and opportunity cost ratio is enough to play around. It’s dynamic and encourages precise decision making. For example, Kyurem that is Tera Ground can now be picked off by Waterpon or Rillaboom, so you’re hesitant to Tera in order to break through a Gking or Steel. Despite Tera’s offensively focused nature, it also benefits defensive teams by giving them counterplay options into matchups that would otherwise be a free GG.

You are free to disagree, but consider a different talking point.

 

[SittinGamer]

Player counts dropping is natural with SV OU being almost 2 years old. The same goes for any CG or any game for that matter. New toy syndrome wears off and ppl move on to something else.

Overall, I agree with you, but Ant was posting numbers comparing these metagames at the same points in their relative lifespans, not contextless numbers with zero relevance to one another. It would appear this gen is, undeniably, less popular than Gen 8. I still maintain however, that we still act in accordance with what those who actually choose to engage with the system's opinions. I also think that there can be other reasons alongside Tera, such as the insane creeped stat tiers through multiple extremely useful Booster Energy Pokemon, or the increased powercreep even among non Paradoxes.