Stratos
Banned deucer.
As metas get old, they continue to change, but the tiering stays frozen from the last time they were current gen. In some ways this is what we want, because it keeps oldgen lower tiers intact. In other ways, it isn't—namely, it makes the teambuilder's sorting algorithm kind of suck sometimes. Here is a picture of the BW DOU teambuilder as it appears currently, with every Pokemon that did not get even a single use in the last DPL crossed out.
BW DOU is probably the single most affected oldgen on the entire site because the ladder only existed for like 9 months and most players were previously singles players who had no idea what they were doing, so this is a bit of a cherry picked example. However, all oldgens are affected to some extent. Something like 8 mons that are currently "DPP OU" are no longer OU by usage on the current DPP ladder. This is not a catastrophic problem, but I think it's worth looking at solutions.
I've been told that without running a relatively big coding project, there are only two real ways to clean up the teambuilder:
1. Actually just re-tier old gens.
2. Expand the definition of "OU by Technicality" in old gens to include Pokemon that were frozen into OU but aren't popular anymore.
While the former would work just fine for DOU (since oldgen lower tiers aren't played), it wouldn't work for singles oldgens. The latter basically has no drawback as far as I can see though and I encourage us to adopt it.
Then the question becomes, how do we determine which mons to place in "OU by Technicality?"
1. Current ladder usage stats
2. Recent tournament usage stats
3. Subjectively by a council, like how VRs are handled
For tiers which have a ladder option 1 is probably the obvious choice. It's aligned with how we handle current gen tiering and should be a relatively good picture of the current state of the meta. After I brought this up, I learned that apparently, we were already planning on implementing at least this much, which is cool.
For tiers which do not have a ladder it's kinda rough. I don't like tournament usage stats; they're heavily skewed in the early rounds by what samples are available, and in the late rounds just by who makes a deep run. We do weigh ladder stats by skill but I think it's different from "Tornadus has 4% usage because Stratos won the tour and has a team with Tornadus on it." On the flipside, subjective metrics are, well, subjective, which isn't great either.
I think the best path forward is to use recent tournament stats, but just be very conservative about it: don't move a pokemon to "OU by Technicality" unless it has <1% usage. Since we're only using this for "drops", and not rises, this should be fine, and clear out the worst offenders, which is all I'm really looking to do here.
I haven't answered every question: what tournaments should we use? How often should we run usage updates? Who is responsible for gathering tournament data? But I think these minor implementation details can be hammered out after we decide on a general course.
BW DOU is probably the single most affected oldgen on the entire site because the ladder only existed for like 9 months and most players were previously singles players who had no idea what they were doing, so this is a bit of a cherry picked example. However, all oldgens are affected to some extent. Something like 8 mons that are currently "DPP OU" are no longer OU by usage on the current DPP ladder. This is not a catastrophic problem, but I think it's worth looking at solutions.
I've been told that without running a relatively big coding project, there are only two real ways to clean up the teambuilder:
1. Actually just re-tier old gens.
2. Expand the definition of "OU by Technicality" in old gens to include Pokemon that were frozen into OU but aren't popular anymore.
While the former would work just fine for DOU (since oldgen lower tiers aren't played), it wouldn't work for singles oldgens. The latter basically has no drawback as far as I can see though and I encourage us to adopt it.
Then the question becomes, how do we determine which mons to place in "OU by Technicality?"
1. Current ladder usage stats
2. Recent tournament usage stats
3. Subjectively by a council, like how VRs are handled
For tiers which have a ladder option 1 is probably the obvious choice. It's aligned with how we handle current gen tiering and should be a relatively good picture of the current state of the meta. After I brought this up, I learned that apparently, we were already planning on implementing at least this much, which is cool.
For tiers which do not have a ladder it's kinda rough. I don't like tournament usage stats; they're heavily skewed in the early rounds by what samples are available, and in the late rounds just by who makes a deep run. We do weigh ladder stats by skill but I think it's different from "Tornadus has 4% usage because Stratos won the tour and has a team with Tornadus on it." On the flipside, subjective metrics are, well, subjective, which isn't great either.
I think the best path forward is to use recent tournament stats, but just be very conservative about it: don't move a pokemon to "OU by Technicality" unless it has <1% usage. Since we're only using this for "drops", and not rises, this should be fine, and clear out the worst offenders, which is all I'm really looking to do here.
I haven't answered every question: what tournaments should we use? How often should we run usage updates? Who is responsible for gathering tournament data? But I think these minor implementation details can be hammered out after we decide on a general course.
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