Serious Using A Pokemon's Usage % as part of Ban Criteria

[Xufactor]

Posting this here as there was no response to my request to post in Policy Review.

I am proposing that we use a Pokemon's usage % at high/top level as a factor in ban criteria. Since it is a factor, there would likely be no threshold for bannability based just on usage percent, and it would depend on other factors like uncompetitiveness, brokenness, and luck-inducing. Even uncompetitive mechanics usually don't have a threshold for bannability by themselves: The ability Arena Trap was banned in SS OU, but Arena Trap Dugtrio is legal in SS Ubers because its other attributes are terrible, and Dugtrio is only C- rank there.

I am suggesting this change because high usage increases staleness, which affects enjoyability. Enjoyability should be a top priority for a game most people don't play for money or to make content. The reason we shouldn't usually make decisions based on enjoyability because it is hard to do so fairly, not because it is not important. As an example, something we can't nerf or ban for enjoyability reasons is Stall, even if most players don't enjoy using or playing it. This is because there is justifiable reason to enjoy Stall and skill involved, including teambuilding to counter stallbreaking methods, playing against Stallbreakers, and Stallbreaking against Stall. I can't think of a good reason why you'd want the top Pokemon to have high usage percent. You'd have to deal with less matchups, but that's not a positive reason by any means as it demotes skill.

 

[GatoDelFuego]

Bughouse as the top cong poster of 2022 (that i am able to find on the tag function) what sage advice can you provide to this thread?

Personally I wonder what biden would think on the subject

 

[Teh]

youre right lets ban tauros, snorlax, chansey, starmie, exeggutor, and alakazam from rby because they all have over 50% usage

but then we'd need to ban zapdos, rhydon, and cloyster too because they would get way too much usage. also probably ban gengar because there wouldn't be any leads that beat it. ok but then we have to ban jynx because gengar is gone and it has no switch ins now. also ban jolteon because its too hard to check now

 

[Da Pizza Man]

Personally I wonder what biden would think on the subject

He would use 5G Radiowaves to brainwash us into banning Great Tusk.

 

[Xufactor]

youre right lets ban tauros, snorlax, chansey, starmie, exeggutor, and alakazam from rby because they all have over 50% usage

but then we'd need to ban zapdos, rhydon, and cloyster too because they would get way too much usage. also probably ban gengar because there wouldn't be any leads that beat it. ok but then we have to ban jynx because gengar is gone and it has no switch ins now. also ban jolteon because its too hard to check now

why 50% threshold

 

[Bughouse]

Bughouse as the top cong poster of 2022 (that i am able to find on the tag function) what sage advice can you provide to this thread?

Personally I wonder what biden would think on the subject

nope sorry, I was number 3

awyp (formerly andviet) I graciously defer to you as the true expert on matters such as these

 

[Blizihguh]

why 50% threshold

Can you name a usage threshold where Chansey/Tauros/Snorlax wouldn't be banned?

What you're describing is like... UU but in reverse. If you want to make OU work like UU you could just play UUbers, that format has gotten a lot of attention recently

Personally I wonder what biden would think on the subject

We need more hazard removal Jack

 

[Xufactor]

Can you name a usage threshold where Chansey/Tauros/Snorlax wouldn't be banned?

What you're describing is like... UU but in reverse. If you want to make OU work like UU you could just play UUbers, that format has gotten a lot of attention recently


We need more hazard removal Jack

There would be no usage threshold for getting banned, other than probably 100%.

Since it is a factor, there would likely be no threshold for bannability based just on usage percent, and it would depend on other factors like uncompetitiveness, brokenness, and luck-inducing. Even uncompetitive mechanics usually don't have a threshold for bannability by themselves: The ability Arena Trap was banned in SS OU, but Arena Trap Dugtrio is legal in SS Ubers because its other attributes are terrible, and Dugtrio is only C- rank there.

 

[Blizihguh]

If there's a threshold you run into those issues, if there's no threshold and it's "just a factor..." I mean nothing is getting banned without high usage anyway? So does this even change anything?

 

[Xufactor]

If there's a threshold you run into those issues, if there's no threshold and it's "just a factor..." I mean nothing is getting banned without high usage anyway? So does this even change anything?

The difference is that usage would be a point of discussion in talking about a mon's bannability, like uncompetitiveness and luck causing.

 

[awyp]

nope sorry, I was number 3

awyp (formerly andviet) I graciously defer to you as the true expert on matters such as these

yeah im the current championship and im looking to be back to back (but i know it wont happen cus we need a new face to represent)

 

[BigFatMantis]

Usage is always factored into bans just not as much as you are probably wanting. If something is used over 50% it certainly is getting looked at more than something else. But it doesn’t correlate to being banworthy and is just a factor that sheds more light on the mon itself to be looked at. Overall, usage has no actual weight on something banworthy per se as it’s not in line with any of the three prongs of tiering philosophy for bans, but usage does let us look at something more to evaluate it and make sure it’s ok.

 

[Xufactor]

Usage is always factored into bans just not as much as you are probably wanting. If something is used over 50% it certainly is getting looked at more than something else. But it doesn’t correlate to being banworthy and is just a factor that sheds more light on the mon itself to be looked at. Overall, usage has no actual weight on something banworthy per se as it’s not in line with any of the three prongs of tiering philosophy for bans, but usage does let us look at something more to evaluate it and make sure it’s ok.

I am suggesting this change because high usage increases staleness, which affects enjoyability. Enjoyability should be a top priority for a game most people don't play for money or to make content. The reason we shouldn't usually make decisions based on enjoyability because it is hard to do so fairly, not because it is not important. As an example, something we can't nerf or ban for enjoyability reasons is Stall, even if most players don't enjoy using or playing it. This is because there is justifiable reason to enjoy Stall and skill involved, including teambuilding to counter stallbreaking methods, playing against Stallbreakers, and Stallbreaking against Stall. I can't think of a good reason why you'd want the top Pokemon to have high usage percent. You'd have to deal with less matchups, but that's not a positive reason by any means as it demotes skill.

This is why usage should have weight. Do you disagree?

 

[BigFatMantis]

Yes and no

 

[chimp]

But my enjoyability of a metagame is based on how many pokemon are above 50% usage

 

[Teh]

centralized metagames are good actually

 

[Xufactor]

centralized metagames are good actually

Sure, but after a certain point it's stale

 

[Teh]

Sure, but after a certain point it's stale

no i dont think its ever "stale" actually

 

[Xufactor]

no i dont think its ever "stale" actually

Maybe not the whole metagame but a couple of team slots taken by certain mons

 

[Teh]

have you considered that "staleness" is entirely subjective and is not an actual metric that should be used to determine tiering policy?

you know what the say. one man's stale meta is another man's highly optimized meta

 

[Xufactor]

have you considered that "staleness" is entirely subjective and is not an actual metric that should be used to determine tiering policy?

you know what the say. one man's stale meta is another man's highly optimized meta

Usage stats. Do analysis on the distribution

 

[Durant]

nerds

 

[Arcticblast]

I know people are shitposting in the thread because it very much doesn't belong here, and there aren't a ton of places you could post it, so I'll humor you with a serious response:

I can't think of a good reason why you'd want the top Pokemon to have high usage percent.

This sentence doesn't really make any sense because the top Pokemon will always have high usage. Players will use the best Pokemon more than they'll use other Pokemon, and the Pokemon they do use will end up seeing more play.

In formats where no Pokemon has "high" usage, you get the fantasy of lots of Pokemon being viable, but this isn't actually a good reality - what you get instead is teambuilding being incredibly difficult, because you have to account for too many different threats that all have roughly equal usage. If you can't plan your matchups, you end up just building incredibly linear teams that function regardless of what your opponent brings, and you lose pretty much the entire balance archetype as a result. Higher usage Pokemon help "guide" teambuilding by letting you account for threats you can expect to see more often. In fact, higher usage Pokemon are what allow niche Pokemon to exist! If you're a little on the weak side, but you have a great matchup into the top three Pokemon in the format, you have a strong case to be used. In a meta without high usage Pokemon, being "a little on the weak side" means you just don't get to exist.

Simply using usage as an indicator of whether or not a Pokemon should be banned is also flawed because it fails to acknowledge why a Pokemon might have high usage. A lot of OU's bulky Grounds have maintained high usage because they are strong defensive answers to large parts of the metagame, but especially to themselves. Think about Lando-T - would you not want a Pokemon with Intimidate, an Earthquake immunity, and a Rock neutrality of your own to answer your opponent's Lando-T? Consider instead a Pokemon like Iron Valiant - it's not really a good answer to itself because it hits itself super effective, so you can't reliably switch your own Iron Valiant into your opponent's. High usage sometimes just indicates a strong mirror.

If you're interested in how usage could reflect on bannability, you should try to come up with some objective measures - like "X percent usage" or "Y percent more use than the next most common Pokemon." This proposal is unlikely to come to fruition if you can't provide any actual methods, and it just looks like "think about it :)" without them.

If you are instead annoyed at a specific Pokemon, you should probably just post in that metagame's discussion thread.

 

[BIG ASHLEY]

you know what the say. one man's stale meta is another man's highly optimized meta

i would like to hear your opinion on food expiration dates

 

[Ironmage]

If you can't plan your matchups, you end up just building incredibly linear teams that function regardless of what your opponent brings, and you lose pretty much the entire balance archetype as a result.

So, uhh, this line took me from mildly preferring diverse metas to majorly preferring it. I may not personally like Hyper Offense in Pokemon, but a dislike of balanced builds runs deeper. The entire point of a limit on how much you can put in a team/rpg character/army list/whatever is so that you can't be excellent at everything, and you're telling me that not having a clear top pick also contributes to that goal. I would welcome "commit to something" as a game rule in more than just Monotype.