Every time a new game is released and more Pokemon are available, more tiers can be formed from the selection of Pokemon and we get an increased number of official metagames to play with. For example, Gen 4 introduced NU, Gen 5 introduced RU, and Gen 6 made PU official. However, now that the number of tiers will likely increase even further for the forseeable future, is it time to re-evaluate how we go about naming metagames? I'm sure no-one wants to see FU be an offical tier name, and some could probably argue that PU is going a bit too far as it doesn't stand for anything.
As far as I know, there are two main problems with our current tier naming system.
As far as I know, there are two main problems with our current tier naming system.
- The position of a tier within the stratigraphy of competitive Pokemon isn't clear from the name. For someone new to competitive Pokemon, how would they know that UU (UnderUsed) is above RU (RarelyUsed) in terms of banlist? The NU (NeverUsed) chat often gets derailed because people think it should be the lowest tier based on its name, but PU fills that mantle at the moment and it may well get worse from here. Furthermore, people frequently post in chat thinking that Doubles UU has the same banlist as regular UU; the difference between the Doubles and Singles metagames isn't apparent in the tier naming system. The confusion about tier names and how the tiers interact with each other could potentially harm Smogon's accessibility to new players as more and more tiers get added (which seems likely as the current ideal of having a metagame of around 60 popular / viable Pokemon does not seem to depend on the total number of Pokemon to choose from).
- What future names do we have available with this current system? At the moment the idea seems to be to make crude jokes into tier names, which obviously isn't sustainable, but what are the alternatives? SomewhatUsed? BarelyUsed? This makes a tier's apparent position based on subjective differences between English adjectives, which again isn't ideal as it ties back to the first point in not being immediately clear. Say we get to Gen 9 in like five years or so and we have 8 official metagames called OU, UU, QU, SU, RU, BU, NU and PU. How clear is this to a new player, or god forbid someone trying to explain it to someone else they want to get involved in competitive Pokemon?
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