Currently, Pokémon on release are technically defaulted to OU. All of them, box legends and all. However, every big release, the "obvious" Ubers are sent to Ubers by the council, manually. At least on paper.
In practice, councils seldom have these discussions. The obvious Ubers are often sent to Ubers immediately, and votes are held only on contentious subjects. It is clear that, in practice, there is an understanding that some mons "should be" Ubers on release, and don't even need any debate to be placed there.
This, alone, is relatively inconsequential policy babble. However, whether something "starts in OU" or "starts in Ubers" is actually very consequential, since the threshholds for OU->Uber and Uber->OU are not the same - one frees the pokemon in question if >33% is anti-ban, the other only frees it if >66% is anti-ban. If Magearna had "started in Ubers", it would have been banned to Ubers immediately in both OU and DOU upon release. It is, however, going to start legal in both of these metagames, because despite having a >50% pro-Ban vote within the respective councils, it failed to make the 2/3rds threshhold in both. This seems highly silly to me and I have seen sizeable uproar about the situation in both tiers.
Basically, the crux of my argument is that this "mons start in OU" policy babble is having real negative consequences due to how it interacts with the voting systems in place. I propose one of two solutions: changing the policy babble, or changing the voting systems.
Option A: Change the policy babble.
Mons "start in OU" if they are actually new. Mons that were Ubers in the past gen "start in Ubers" instead. The council vote will always be there to determine situations where circumstances have noticeably changed (eg. a mon that was previously Ubers losing part of its learnset, or a hard counter of it being released and extremely popular by default, or abilities like Protean getting nerfed, and so on). But Pokémon that were already Ubers in the previous generation of OU will "start in Ubers" otherwise.
Option B: Change the voting systems.
For newly released Pokémon, council votes have a 50% threshhold. This means that "starting OU" or "starting Ubers" functionally makes no difference, and in either case whatever the majority of council decides is where the Pokémon will start.
I have no strong feeling about which of the solutions is chosen, but I do have a strong feeling that what is happening with Magearna is not right, and I think it's a symptom of some policy silliness underneath that we could easily fix.
In practice, councils seldom have these discussions. The obvious Ubers are often sent to Ubers immediately, and votes are held only on contentious subjects. It is clear that, in practice, there is an understanding that some mons "should be" Ubers on release, and don't even need any debate to be placed there.
This, alone, is relatively inconsequential policy babble. However, whether something "starts in OU" or "starts in Ubers" is actually very consequential, since the threshholds for OU->Uber and Uber->OU are not the same - one frees the pokemon in question if >33% is anti-ban, the other only frees it if >66% is anti-ban. If Magearna had "started in Ubers", it would have been banned to Ubers immediately in both OU and DOU upon release. It is, however, going to start legal in both of these metagames, because despite having a >50% pro-Ban vote within the respective councils, it failed to make the 2/3rds threshhold in both. This seems highly silly to me and I have seen sizeable uproar about the situation in both tiers.
Basically, the crux of my argument is that this "mons start in OU" policy babble is having real negative consequences due to how it interacts with the voting systems in place. I propose one of two solutions: changing the policy babble, or changing the voting systems.
Option A: Change the policy babble.
Mons "start in OU" if they are actually new. Mons that were Ubers in the past gen "start in Ubers" instead. The council vote will always be there to determine situations where circumstances have noticeably changed (eg. a mon that was previously Ubers losing part of its learnset, or a hard counter of it being released and extremely popular by default, or abilities like Protean getting nerfed, and so on). But Pokémon that were already Ubers in the previous generation of OU will "start in Ubers" otherwise.
Option B: Change the voting systems.
For newly released Pokémon, council votes have a 50% threshhold. This means that "starting OU" or "starting Ubers" functionally makes no difference, and in either case whatever the majority of council decides is where the Pokémon will start.
I have no strong feeling about which of the solutions is chosen, but I do have a strong feeling that what is happening with Magearna is not right, and I think it's a symptom of some policy silliness underneath that we could easily fix.
