I for one fully support a battle timer, that way we can finally start banning stall mons for being too broken. Fuck off straight to hell, Toxapex.
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Metagame SV OU Metagame Discussion v4 [Volcarona Banned]
- Thread starter TPP
- Start date
How's the suspect test grind going for everyone? made the fatal mistake of trying a stall team while still in the low ladder phase, wherein people will run almost anything and will somehow fuck you up
Please, I beg you, no more sleep talks in the meta thread. I promise you'll have something to discuss tomorrow when I'm finished. Let's talk about the Kyurem suspect.
How are you all feeling about
in OU right now? Is Kyurem the first mon you wanted suspected, or was there another more pressing threat on your mind like 
or 
? What Kyurem sets are you running?
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Most people are gonna let it slide because you finish most Showdown battles in like a 3rd of the time you would on cart, and implementing a timer that adjusts for animation timing that’s different too is really too much to ask for, compared to Sleep Clause or Freeze Clause mod.
I’m trying to make the suspect. Let’s be honest, Kyurem is stupid. I’m using a Sub-Leftover Set.
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2042515512-54ey8r1q87c3kbc9z7yihvie0vmx6mkpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2042519486
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2042515512-54ey8r1q87c3kbc9z7yihvie0vmx6mkpw
https://replay.pokemonshowdown.com/gen9ou-2042519486
To preface this, I'd like to say beforehand that nothing in here is intended to be rude or derogatory towards the council. I have nothing but respect for y'all, and I recognize that you're doing what you think is right. I just disagree.
Having some time to think about it, I think this ban was gone about in entirely the wrong way. To start, let me say I feel like this suspect had some unconscious bias behind it. A lot of the people I've observed who were anti-sleep seem to have this hatred of the mechanic: I saw a lot of posts like "finally, sleep ban. Fuck this mechanic so hard, can't wait" or "one of the few bans I fully support. Fuck sleep." I think I know why; losing because Darkrai hit a 60% accurate move feels so much worse than losing because your opponent positioned Kyurem well with proper hazard removal and good prediction, despite Kyurem being probably more consistent. Obviously, there is no big Smogon conspiracy where the council only bans what they want to. But I can't help but think this unconscious bias influenced this decision specifically.
Like, imagine if the initial Tera suspect went like that. You let people play with Tera for a while, and then give only two options: ban or no restrictions. If you look at the results for the suspect, the VAST majority of people on the "do something" side were NOT in favor of a full ban, and instead voted for a restriction. By discounting that opinion and only having the nuclear options, you force people into choosing something that they may not fully support because the other option is worse in their eyes. And with the Tera suspect, we made the right decision: The "do something" crowd got the majority and ALMOST got the supermajority required to change something. And even then we saw people saying that they voted no ban just because they were afraid that if they voted do something it would end up getting banned! This is not something we want to happen in a critical decision for the format. We need clear communication and adequate community input, the exact opposite of what we got here.
And make no mistake, there WERE people this time that wanted to keep sleep this time as well. Just check the policy review thread; many top players such as Mimikyu Stardust, elodin, Baloor, dex, and many other knowledgable players made legitimate arguments against sleep, as well as came up with non-ban solutions. For the sake of making this post not longer than it is already I'm not going to mention all of them specifically, but (don't) rest assured that there were well thought out alternatives to just banning it that would've fixed the problem.
The other thing that was frustrating about the whole thing was that instead of a suspect test, we got a survey. This isn't necessarily a problem on its own; Finch has stated their reasons; but the issue I take is it wasn't the right direction. The suspect was asking how did people feel about sleep. Not Darkrai, not Ival, just sleep in general. So what we got was people saying, correctly, that the hypnosis coinflip meta was crap. With all due respect, I think we all knew that. You can't take that information and blame the problem entirely on sleep as a status. You can't just say "well we can't use a suspect test due to differences in policy" and use that as an excuse to not take any community input.
At the end of the day, I'm not even directly saying sleep shouldn't have been banned. I'm just saying that quickbanning it was the wrong decision. Have a good night.
Having some time to think about it, I think this ban was gone about in entirely the wrong way. To start, let me say I feel like this suspect had some unconscious bias behind it. A lot of the people I've observed who were anti-sleep seem to have this hatred of the mechanic: I saw a lot of posts like "finally, sleep ban. Fuck this mechanic so hard, can't wait" or "one of the few bans I fully support. Fuck sleep." I think I know why; losing because Darkrai hit a 60% accurate move feels so much worse than losing because your opponent positioned Kyurem well with proper hazard removal and good prediction, despite Kyurem being probably more consistent. Obviously, there is no big Smogon conspiracy where the council only bans what they want to. But I can't help but think this unconscious bias influenced this decision specifically.
Like, imagine if the initial Tera suspect went like that. You let people play with Tera for a while, and then give only two options: ban or no restrictions. If you look at the results for the suspect, the VAST majority of people on the "do something" side were NOT in favor of a full ban, and instead voted for a restriction. By discounting that opinion and only having the nuclear options, you force people into choosing something that they may not fully support because the other option is worse in their eyes. And with the Tera suspect, we made the right decision: The "do something" crowd got the majority and ALMOST got the supermajority required to change something. And even then we saw people saying that they voted no ban just because they were afraid that if they voted do something it would end up getting banned! This is not something we want to happen in a critical decision for the format. We need clear communication and adequate community input, the exact opposite of what we got here.
And make no mistake, there WERE people this time that wanted to keep sleep this time as well. Just check the policy review thread; many top players such as Mimikyu Stardust, elodin, Baloor, dex, and many other knowledgable players made legitimate arguments against sleep, as well as came up with non-ban solutions. For the sake of making this post not longer than it is already I'm not going to mention all of them specifically, but (don't) rest assured that there were well thought out alternatives to just banning it that would've fixed the problem.
The other thing that was frustrating about the whole thing was that instead of a suspect test, we got a survey. This isn't necessarily a problem on its own; Finch has stated their reasons; but the issue I take is it wasn't the right direction. The suspect was asking how did people feel about sleep. Not Darkrai, not Ival, just sleep in general. So what we got was people saying, correctly, that the hypnosis coinflip meta was crap. With all due respect, I think we all knew that. You can't take that information and blame the problem entirely on sleep as a status. You can't just say "well we can't use a suspect test due to differences in policy" and use that as an excuse to not take any community input.
At the end of the day, I'm not even directly saying sleep shouldn't have been banned. I'm just saying that quickbanning it was the wrong decision. Have a good night.
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senorlopez
Formerly Ricardo [old]
My post was deleted for "attacking other users" (which btw I don't disagree with) in response to this. How is this not doing the same to me?
I would also appreciate a response on the below since I know now you're reading this.
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did we not have 2 weeks, 3 threads, and a survey dedicated to the matter, not counting all of the other policy review threads, internal deliberations, and discussions within the community that have happened over the lifetime of the clause? how much more about the topic needs to be discussed before we can make an informed decision using the data gathered over the last twenty years?
All that discussion you speak of adds up to diddly squat exactly BECAUSE of the quickban.
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Except for the fact that the data collected over the last twenty years tends to favor a Sleep Clause like restriction when Sleep isn't BW levels of broken. There's a reason why people who mainly play older gens voiced their concerns about a potential ban on every generation. Turns out when not tied to fast hyper offensive threats Sleep is not only fine, but in some cases healthy(see the whole RBY UU arc). So saying that time is on your side is just flat out wrong. It really is just a combination, unique to this Gen, of an "influx" of hyper offensive threats + a decrease in the tools to combat Sleep that has lead to our current problem. Even then I don't think the Pro Ban camp even really gave good arguments outside of Tiering Policy of why Sleep should be banned, and not the abusers.
hey, readers! this is usually the point of the conversation where i make the decision of how to respond to a post that was explicitly made in bad faith and doesn't actually add anything to the discussion, but i just plain can't decide what to do here. so i'm passing the choice on to you, the community. should i:
A. ignore the post and carry on brimming with joy distilled from detachment,
B. attempt to discern what exactly the point they're trying to make is and continue the debate in the same fake-polite manner, sprinkling in my own accusations of bias along the way, or
C. respond with a witty comeback?
text "a", "b", or "c" to 69420 to vote for what you think i should do next!
(standard messaging and data rates may apply. this promotion is satirical and the decision of the host will not be affected. do not actually text your vote to that number)
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The reason why they would be comfortable with the quickban is because of the discussion. The community was discussing it for 2 weeks, 3 threads and a survey, so there was plenty of time for the council to get the community's opinion. If it was say only a few days, then sure, that would be grounds for concern. But the fact is, the discussion was not really going anywhere, as most of what had been said was just being repeated. I get that sleep is a big mechanic, but there has to be some point when we say "okay, we have an idea of the communities view so we act on it."
Just a question so I can understand, but would you be more comfortable if it was discussed for 2x as long, or is it simply because there was a quickban to begin with?
To answer your question, I'm frustrated with the quickban.
It would be fine if the community had a common consensus. But we didn't. Believe it or not, some people actually wanted sleep either not banned or just restricted. The discussion wasn't going anywhere because all the arguments had been made, but that doesn't mean that only one side existed.
And even if you disagree and think it's just me being a pedantic asshole, a mechanic this big shouldn't just be quickbanned. It'd be like if we quickbanned dynamax because "well everybody knows it's broken." Maybe that's true, but banning an entire mechanic should not be taken that lightly. Especially since this mechanic has been around for 9 generations instead of just 1.
also, I apologize for that post. Reading it back now it's very condescending. But you could also just... not be toxic back? It's just a self-perpetuating loop.
The problem right now that make OU unfun is how the community divides too hard this generation.
The existence of tera at all, Kingambit, Sleep Ban, Pre DLC2 Gliscor, for instance, has been controversial for the lifespan of the generation, and whether is it problematic depends on the thought process and perspective on the individuals. Now I'm not going to talk about whether are they broken or not here, but rather how it caused a massive divide on the opinion. With it still being right there as it stands, players continue to argue and defend against these controversial topic hard. This is what prevents the tier from being stabilised, as the community never agreed on the same path, for the most part. The increased number of newer players worsen the situation further by enhancing an even bigger divide that the community already hold in it's belt.
The existence of tera at all, Kingambit, Sleep Ban, Pre DLC2 Gliscor, for instance, has been controversial for the lifespan of the generation, and whether is it problematic depends on the thought process and perspective on the individuals. Now I'm not going to talk about whether are they broken or not here, but rather how it caused a massive divide on the opinion. With it still being right there as it stands, players continue to argue and defend against these controversial topic hard. This is what prevents the tier from being stabilised, as the community never agreed on the same path, for the most part. The increased number of newer players worsen the situation further by enhancing an even bigger divide that the community already hold in it's belt.
wait, hang on. you're saying that you accept the tiering policy arguments… but you disagree with the decision to follow tiering policy?
sleep was already restricted. the restriction wasn't working as intended in SV OU. why did it also need a suspect test? if it was any other mechanic i'd get it, but sleep was already under a heavy restriction. why did it deserve that final chance at life (with the restriction, no less, because everyone knows it's broken without it)? this is without even getting into the argument of the clause mod being inherently against policy, or else we will invite back all the stellar "banning things is already a mod" arguments which only achieved... actively turning people against sleep lol.
If there was something like a suspect test for tiering policy, then sure that probably would have been better. However, there isn't sadly as the suspect tests we use are to determine whether players can determine between broken vs balanced, as finch has said multiple times. I've read through the tiering policy framework, and it is complex. Even though I know a decent amount about determining what is broken, if I do say so myself, but not a lot transferred to my knowledge on tiering policy. Their isn't a simple way to determine if people know what tiering policy is and how sleep clause fits into that, so doing a suspect doesn't sit right with me on it being a determining factor. A quickban is made by people who know tiering policy decently well, so that is the closest we have to something like that.
TLDR, determining tiering policy knowledge is hard, so a quickban is the closest to it.
all right, maybe i did go a little overboard with the kids' choice awards bit, but i still have no idea why you think the quickban somehow renders the past twenty years of discussion meaningless. if anything, it's the other way around. none of those previous discussions changed anything. if someone went back with a time machine and made all those discussions never happen, things would have been exactly the same right up until a couple weeks ago, right? so until that point, they were meaningless. but now, those discussions played a part in this discussion that resulted in actual meaningful change, so the decision gave those discussions meaning. that's how i see it, at least
I was too late with the whole sleep clause ban discourse thanks to a slight problem of [health complications] but I think Sleep Clause going and Sleep moves going is honestly... neat? Like, not having Hypnosis Iron Gender is cool and removes one of the sets I despise on that thing, but it also is neat in lower tiers, since it means Vivillon can't click Sleep Powder and Houndstone can't run Yawn not that any were in PU. Even if I'll miss it, giving it a long ass time to exist in Gen 9 will be nice. Maybe it's better this way.
thank GOD valiant lost one of its options, shame we can't remove another 80 different sets it has!
thank GOD valiant lost one of its options, shame we can't remove another 80 different sets it has!
I haven't seen anyone respond to this, so even though it was a few pages back, I do want to bring it back up because, at the end of December, I asked Finch this during his Office Hours. The following is his response:
Hopefully this response can be brought back up if anyone else has a similar question, because I agree that it's an important one, and one that, in my mind at least, has an answer.
Honestly, I think the way they handled it was fantastic. The Policy Review thread was more or less a suspect test, and it allowed them to move through an issue while still taking 2 weeks to collect informed opinions.
Well, since apparently we will continue to talk about sleep instead of the active suspect test of Kyurem, I'll once again say I find it hilarious when someone says "but we've had the mod for so long." just because it took awhile for enough people to realize that the mod was a mistake doesn't mean we just don't correct it once it becomes clear it was a mistake. And for the record, I do think this should retroactively apply to previous and future gens.
The way I see it it's like none of the discussion added up to anything because none of the people having the discussion got to decide. The most they could do to influence the vote was try and sway a council member's opinion, which I'm sure you know as well as I do is very very hard to do online.
I know I was rude about the biases thing, but I really do think you're looking at it from the pro-ban perspective. The previous sleep clause discussions seemed meaningless to you because they resulted in the anti-ban arguments won, and thus there was no change, the status quo was maintained. It's easy to mistake that as a lack of progress when what it really was was the current tiering policy proving its strength.
But at this point, the decision has been made and it's probably not gonna be changed. Even if I disagree with it, it's not the end of the world. I'm gonna move on.
This is true, getting haha reactions on posts acknowledging the real policy implication of setting differing standards between generations on what is uncompetitive (which is just a fact lol) isn't meaningful, it's just randoms handing out free reaction points for all my cool, novel and valid points! For real senorlopez, don't take it to heart (unless you are Finchinator, in which case I am in your house).
Kyurem isn't getting talked about because it's much, much, much, much less controversial. It's kind of natural for Sleep to suck all the oxygen out of the conversation
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Agreed that sleep is problematic in gen 9, though it is probably not broken in terms of gen 8 / gen 7 due to tapu koko/fini.
However it is arguable that it is still metagame dependent, like in gen 1.
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