Discussion RE: Tiering Response to Sudden Releases

[Finchinator]

Posting on behalf of myself, not tier leadership or the tiering council -- this is fully to get a better grasp of how the community wants us to handle these situations

Pokemon has shifted from a very transparent release schedule where we knew dates of new games well in advance to one laced in ambiguity. These dates of HOME or DLC releases can come at very inopportune times for us with minimal notice, which is especially problematic if they release many strong Pokemon or it hovers around start dates of major SV OU events like WCoP.

On the flip side, the SV OU tiering council has adopted a far more publicly involved and transparent approach than ever before. Just over the last few years we have instituted:

• Regular, publicized tiering surveys
• A quickban radar prior to any non-emergency vote
• Many public posts sharing opinions (for example, in the 205 days this generation has been out, I have over 990 posts in the OU subforum, many of which pertain to tiering information, opinion, etc. -- my other council members have also chimed in numerous times this week and previously)

None of this existed previously as the council tended to operate behind-closed-doors for a very long time. I am happy that is no longer the case, but this increased transparency and visibility takes up a lot of time and resources, which makes these sudden releases even more challenging.

For example, over the last couple of weeks we have:

• Held a large vote on many of the released Pokemon here
• Discussed procedure for future releases here (thanks Amaranth for the thread)
• Conducted an emergency vote on Regieleki here
• Engaged with tons of posts/inquiries about the early metagame
• Put up a tiering radar here on things we found still problematic
• Conducted another vote to ban Magearna here
• Followed this up with a tiering survey to see if we needed another emergency vote due to the closeness of some matters here
• Had another emergency vote to ban Chien-Pao and Zamazenta-Crowned here
• Put up another tiering radar here
• And finally we voted on that radar this weekend

This process was all discussed internally and well-thought out with approval from my councilmen and tiering admin along each individual step, but it is mostly unprecedented as these HOME releases are still new as of last generation and have never fallen at a time quit like this.

We mainly took elements of our normal proceedings such as the radar and survey, which I feel have been perceived very well, and expedited the pace given our time crunch with the late release and WCoP around the corner. I feel this sudden release and all these changes can both skew council results and public perception, causing me to use this thread to inquire to hear more insight from everyone. Given that this has taken up an absurd amount of man-hours the last few weeks (sorry for all the discord PMs I have ignored for those who are no rude btw -- crazy few days), it would be nice to have a concrete procedure rather than survey here, radar there, etc. so that it feels like all of the hard work is for the community and empowering the players rather than leading to any trouble. Obviously we cannot please everyone, but we can at very least see what people think and use it as a stepping-stone to improve for the future.

In short, I would love to hear public feedback on what people think we should do during these immediate post-release periods: what timeline they think things should be done on, what processes we should apply, and whatever else they feel relevant as a lot goes into these proceedings. I felt good about the process we used here, but it was messy and I want anything we do to be refined to near-perfection.

 

[Tio Chico]

The way in which the measures have been taken is very good and it is still on a path that can improve even more.
Due to the aforementioned release issues coinciding with tournament dates, quick action with transparency is the way to go.
As some suggestions I would like to see;

1- More communication from the other council members, they can make individual posts or pass the information on to you, it doesn't have to be a course conclusion work, but the fact that there are some almost silent voices on the council can bother the common player base. Reducing the number of council members, although it sounds at first like leaving power in fewer hands, can make work faster and more effective for decisions and transparency.
2- This must hurt, but due to the lack of precedents in releases, interfering with the progress of the tournament with banning measures may be an alternative. Watching or playing a metagame "locked" in an old stage just for schedule is not interesting for everyone. Maybe a week break in the tournament calendar for adaptation could be taken, I don't know, I'm not a tournament player, but seeing the tier "frozen" because of tournaments is annoying, tournaments players, try to see the other side please.
3- Keep in mind that it's impossible to please everyone, you've been pushing yourself a lot, don't let criticism get you down.
4- For future public suspects, consider 50% +1 vote, it's a simple public majority, leave the supermajority to the council.
5- Suspects can be long, and a lot of people don't understand how a two week process can take unnecessary work for some cases with obvious results, part of the community needs to accept that and it doesn't come from you. So keep the surveys, considering public support*qualification along with the council's opinion.
6- I don't know how, but we have an elephant in the room called Terastal and he's bothering a lot of people.

Good luck and truly good effort and work.

 

[Karxrida]

For tournament issues, I feel like the format should be locked to whatever it was when the tournament was announced to prevent shadowdrops from screwing with things. I think some TCGs do something similar when pack releases get a little too close to their events.

4- For future public suspects, consider 50% +1 vote, it's a simple public majority, leave the supermajority to the council.

I don't think this would solve anything. The closer you get to a slim majority the more dissent you have to an outcome. The Tera suspect was already extremely close -- imagine if a future ban was determined by a 51-49 ratio. Practically half the community will demand a retest until the generation is over.

Also changing the required ratio right before a Tera retest would look super scummy.

 

[Finchinator]

For tournament issues, I feel like the format should be locked to whatever it was when the tournament was announced to prevent shadowdrops from screwing with things.

Locking WCOP into pre-HOME would’ve been a very bad idea as it’s now a dead metagame, which nobody cares for.

 

[Karxrida]

Locking WCOP into pre-HOME would’ve been a very bad idea as it’s now a dead metagame, which nobody cares for.

I was thinking more new Pokémon from the random raids that Game Freak drops that are unexpectedly powerful (e.g. Walking Wake, even though that hype died down). I understand that running pre-Home would have been unrealistic.

 

[termi]

I don't think this would solve anything. The closer you get to a slim majority the more dissent you have to an outcome. The Tera suspect was already extremely close -- imagine if a future ban was determined by a 51-49 ratio. Practically half the community will demand a retest until the generation is over.

if 51-60% of voters vote ban on tera and it doesn't get banned, wouldn't you see the exact same thing though? at least if tera gets banned by a small majority, it is still a majority, a number you can't argue with. if tera doesn't get banned while i.e. 55% votes ban, you'll never hear the end of it. i think this is a situation where you just have to accept that any decision based on a "close call" is going to be deeply controversial given the nature of the topic at hand

personally i favor simple majorities for public suspects. i don't think there's a very strong case for being biased towards keeping the status quo (except maybe for a meta like ubers since bias towards status quo is part of the "tier identity") and as i stated above, i think "losing" a suspect where your side was in the majority is more difficult to swallow than losing in a 51-49 scenario

 

[Brambane]

I like tiering surveys; I think more frequent surveys during release periods (or in general) generates more informative data.

Would a survey a week be too demanding? As long as surveys get engagement, which they seem to do, then having them be ongoing can track trends in public opinion. If there is someone willing to manage the tiering surveys on a weekly basis, I see mostly net positives from higher frequency. A drop in participation in weekly surveys itself would be useful information about community engagement.

As an aside, we should acknowledge whoever would coordinate this projects of writing surveys, running surveys, and recording their results into a spreadsheet with probably their own banner or title of some kind; good, frequent surveys and processing the information is time and effort which deserves special recognition.

 

[Finchinator]

I like tiering surveys; I think more frequent surveys during release periods (or in general) generates more informative data.

Would a survey a week be too demanding?

If a weekly brief survey during release stretches or a running, perpetual survey during these periods is what the community needs, I can make it happen.

Making the surveys is quite easy; tallying results takes a couple hours as I like to be thorough and remove spam, but if this is a popular idea, I would be happy to make it an even more regular part of our process during these times.

 

[Mizuhime]

Posting on behalf of myself, not tier leadership or the tiering council -- this is fully to get a better grasp of how the community wants us to handle these situations

Pokemon has shifted from a very transparent release schedule where we knew dates of new games well in advance to one laced in ambiguity. These dates of HOME or DLC releases can come at very inopportune times for us with minimal notice, which is especially problematic if they release many strong Pokemon or it hovers around start dates of major SV OU events like WCoP.

On the flip side, the SV OU tiering council has adopted a far more publicly involved and transparent approach than ever before. Just over the last few years we have instituted:

• Regular, publicized tiering surveys
• A quickban radar prior to any non-emergency vote
• Many public posts sharing opinions (for example, in the 205 days this generation has been out, I have over 990 posts in the OU subforum, many of which pertain to tiering information, opinion, etc. -- my other council members have also chimed in numerous times this week and previously)

None of this existed previously as the council tended to operate behind-closed-doors for a very long time. I am happy that is no longer the case, but this increased transparency and visibility takes up a lot of time and resources, which makes these sudden releases even more challenging.

For example, over the last couple of weeks we have:

• Held a large vote on many of the released Pokemon here
• Discussed procedure for future releases here (thanks Amaranth for the thread)
• Conducted an emergency vote on Regieleki here
• Engaged with tons of posts/inquiries about the early metagame
• Put up a tiering radar here on things we found still problematic
• Conducted another vote to ban Magearna here
• Followed this up with a tiering survey to see if we needed another emergency vote due to the closeness of some matters here
• Had another emergency vote to ban Chien-Pao and Zamazenta-Crowned here
• Put up another tiering radar here
• And finally we voted on that radar this weekend

Just wanted to say as a former tier leader myself and someone who's part of a tier who does the exact opposite currently, watching you as well as the council handle the release of home as well as being so transparent about everything as it was happening has been amazing to see. You guys have been doing a fantastic job in keeping the community informed despite all the shit being sling'd from the less informed players on the bird app. Transparency like this should really become the norm on Smogon.

 

[ABR]

not a policy thing but rather a mindset thing, i think a council member voting on a quickban shouldn’t ask themselves just “do i think this should be banned” but rather “am i certain enough this mon is broken that it warrants immediate, severe action being taken”

i feel like going by this definition would yield more palatable results overall and is imo the intended purpose of quickbans

 

[Srn]

To expand on the previous post, I would like to ask: did banning volcarona before WCoP really lead to a more stable metagame?
In this case I think watershifu was completely justified in being quickbanned, but in terms of using tiering action for creating a more balanced and stable metagame for a major tour: Is it really better to quickban a mon like volcarona?

Had volcarona remained, players generally know what kind of shenanigans to expect from it, and they have a solid mon to fit on their offense teams which can check fairies. Volcarona has been a part of the tier for the entire gen until now, and while it's pretty borderline busted with tera, it was a pretty known element.

Now that volcarona is banned, the metagame has shifted as players lost an option to cover ival/enamorus adequately, which could arguably lead to these mons becoming more problematic down the line. Now obviously we don't allow broken to check broken, but what if Iron valiant becomes borderline broken now that volcarona isn't here, and we have to suspect/ban that? Then we lose big counterplay we had for kingambit, and so on. I might just be doing a slippery slope fallacy, but the point here is that maintaining a broken checks broken meta can give you the short term stability you want for a major tour. We gotta start banning brokens somewhere though, which is why I'm ultimately not upset with the volcarona qb, but I would not be upset with volcarona remaining in the tier until a tera suspect either.