With the imminent release of Pokémon Home, and the impeding release of two waves of DLC, I feel this is an important thing to address.
As of now, when a Pokémon is released in a middle of a generation, it is added among OU Pokémon, the most recent example being Slowpoke-Galar. This is usually not a big deal, as they were released one at time, or at most just a few. In many cases, this caused no issue at all, as the new Pokémon was already an OU level threat, while in others, such as the aforementioned Slowpoke, it occasionally caused confusion in unexperienced players but it was easy to single out the odd one. However, right now we are looking forward to at least three planned big waves of new Pokémon releases (HOME, Isle of Armor, Crown Tundra), plus other eventual future additions. The very large amount of Pokémon added with each of these updates (35+ for HOME and 100+ for each DLC) will cause confusion when browsing the teambuilder, as the established threats are mixed inside a swamp of Pokémon whose place in the meta is unproven. Because of the large amounts of Pokémon added to the tier, this might also cause bigger confusion in new players that see the OU symbol as a sort of "seal of approval" and therefore lead to undeserved amounts of usage for Pokémon like, say, Tapu Koko (random example).
My proposal is, every time a new Pokémon is released during an ongoing generation, to place it in the "New" section in the teambuilder that we already used at the start of the generation, until the next tier shift that establishes if it has a place in OU or not.
As of now, when a Pokémon is released in a middle of a generation, it is added among OU Pokémon, the most recent example being Slowpoke-Galar. This is usually not a big deal, as they were released one at time, or at most just a few. In many cases, this caused no issue at all, as the new Pokémon was already an OU level threat, while in others, such as the aforementioned Slowpoke, it occasionally caused confusion in unexperienced players but it was easy to single out the odd one. However, right now we are looking forward to at least three planned big waves of new Pokémon releases (HOME, Isle of Armor, Crown Tundra), plus other eventual future additions. The very large amount of Pokémon added with each of these updates (35+ for HOME and 100+ for each DLC) will cause confusion when browsing the teambuilder, as the established threats are mixed inside a swamp of Pokémon whose place in the meta is unproven. Because of the large amounts of Pokémon added to the tier, this might also cause bigger confusion in new players that see the OU symbol as a sort of "seal of approval" and therefore lead to undeserved amounts of usage for Pokémon like, say, Tapu Koko (random example).
My proposal is, every time a new Pokémon is released during an ongoing generation, to place it in the "New" section in the teambuilder that we already used at the start of the generation, until the next tier shift that establishes if it has a place in OU or not.
