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Post by t3h Icy on Mar 6, 2013 9:20:24 GMT -8
Let's break this down: The issue is that because 2K10 gave PO their tiers, and still have power in PO's RBY, 2K10's specific philosophies are affecting PO, which is the main source of competitive RBY. For example 2K10's tiers do not accommodate the standard meta, yet PO does. The main reason why our tiers are the ones used on PO is because we were the only community to spend time actually developing tiers. Smogon used to have some form of OU/BL/UU, but eventually scraped their BL since it was mostly a ban-tier for UU. OU can have anything except Mew/Mewtwo played, so it doesn't really matter what they say is in there, but their UU isn't completely playable. It's sort of like BL here, but in any case, it's mostly just a grouping of Pokemon that aren't standards in OU. We also went further to make NU, and sure we could keep going and going and making new tiers (we've had many arguments and discussions about how many if you check out the Archives), but we stopped at 5. The only place where Wrapping has been legal is Smogon, which just happens to be the largest competitive Pokemon community in general. Here and most everything before us had Wrap illegal. Smogon tournaments don't even allow Wrap in all of their RBY tournaments. Wrap degrades the game. You can read my posts about it in the Wrap thread, and this as to why we're allowing them in RBYPlus. I have no problem with the fact that you guys prefer a side-meta, and make your tiers and tourneys based on that. I don't mind if you ban jolteon from your BL tourneys. I just want don't want PO, which is the main source of competitive RBY, to be structured around 2K10 specific philosophies, and consequently have it 'ruined' (if you can call it that) for everyone else. So when I 'complain', that's what I'm taking issue with. Well, nobody else really seems to care about RBY outside here except the odd RBY tournament on Smogon. When PO has 100s of players and only a handful are playing RBY, clearly nobody is taking the time to learn all about it. So I don't know what you want me to do about that. Maybe if there was a large, similar community that used Wrap, or if RBY was much more active on Smogon, there would be people whining about it being ruined. Or better yet, just play with Wrapping moves anyway; nothing's stopping you on PO. Admittedly I haven't played much BL lol but you can't play that card. Every tier in RBY except OU and possibly Ubers is underexplored and underdeveloped. WaterWizard, Zilch, and I have spent plenty of time on each tier. We've had lots of discussions and high-level play in tournaments before. We have also had BL played out with Articuno/Jolteon legal too (before we bumped them to OU), and they were not only on every team for every game, but much more dominant that anything else. I don't need to have played BL extensively to know that jolteon isn't too good there. And what happened last time you were theorycrafting about how RBY works? No pokemon is too good in any tier, especially a pokemon that has counters other than itself. Mewtwo in NU isn't an instant-win because the opponent can simply use mewtwo as well. I mean, you'd be forced to run mewtwo in every battle, but you're also forced to run certain pokemon in OU, but they're not 'too good' for OU. That is incredibly degrading to the game. I'd like to play a game of strategy and diversity and not Mewtwo dittos. So by your argument I could make the tier: Dre Special: Mewtwo (L100) Magikarp (L5) Caterpie (L5) Metapod (L5) Weedle (L5) Kakuna (L5) And you're telling me that it's both competitive and fun? No pokemon can be too good for any tier because even if the opponent has no other counters apart from itself, as long as the opponent can run the same pokemon, it can be countered. The point of the lower tiers is to use pokemon that you can't use competitively in OU. Jolteon is one of those pokemon. It has low usage compared to the top OUs, and has similar competitive viability to other BLs. In terms of the traditional tiersing system, that would put jolteon in BL. In fact the only thing that matters in terms the traditional tiering system is its usage Jolteon is viable in OU. Have you ever tried to use it or faced an actually good player using him? Usage of a Pokemon, especially on PO where the average skill level is far below top level play doesn't necessary show how good a Pokemon is. Why would we make tiers where each is playable on their own, but based off not viability, but what's used. The only case we could really do that is if we have both a huge community and top level play, and even then, that's not the best way to go about things. Again, see Jigglypuff being #3 in Melee. And sure you can argue that tiers should be strictly made around how they fare compared to others in OU (I used to make that argument too), but it's nice to have 5 separate tiers so we have more than just OU to play. Wrong. Many pokemon don't check themselves. Tauros is a particularly good example, but it's far from the only one. Additionally, beyond a certain level of centralisation the match comes down to a ditto. Mewtwo in NU would not be interesting because every single match would come down to the Mewtwo ditto freeze war, which is a coin-flip. All of this. But two teams with tauros initially have an equal chance of winning. So does each player in Dre Special tier. In the case where a pokemon can't switch into itself (and no other pokemon can, even though this scenario doesn't exist in RBY) then the person who got their pokemon in first outplayed the other and thus earned that advantage. Don't forget that nearly every pokemon in the game is done in by either explosion or status as well. Mewtwo doesn't need to be in NU, because he's used enough in a higher tier. This means that the spot on the team mewtwo would take now goes to a pokemon that otherwise wouldn't be used in any meta. That's why he's not in NU, not because he's too good for it. Mewtwo is used in Ubers because he has 180 stat total higher than anything else, 47 higher in Special than anything else, the second highest Speed giving him over 25% CH chance, and a superb movepool. Again, usage is often related to power (except for Pokemon that have unique roles, just like Jolteon since Zapdos exists). Mewtwo is not in NU because he is certainly too good for it lol. Play a match in NU with Mewtwo legal, and I assure that at least 90% of the match is about how the Mewtwos fight each other. Anything else is basically irrelevant, filler, or other Pokemon that have ways to handle Mewtwo. Just like Ubers normally is, except with less and worse Pokemon. If tiers were done just on viability, then in RBY Ubers and OU would be the same thing, because Ubers is just two uber pokemon with four OUs. But because they're so significantly better than everything else and on the verge of being practically unstoppable (without throwing out 2-3 Pokemon), they're in their own tier. It's pretty clear by actually playing Ubers.
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Post by WaterWizard on Mar 6, 2013 11:52:13 GMT -8
Dre, I see what you are trying to say but I really have to ask you to suspend your indictments until you play these metagames more. BL is a very balanced and enjoyable game now that Jolteon and Articuno are gone. We played BL hundreds of times back when we were adjusting the tiers. We had hours and hours of discussions on NBS, Smogon, and here, while we were hammering things out. We did not flippantly move Jolteon and Articuno up, Sandslash and Charizard down. These changes reflect the judgment of the collective body of active RBY players from 2010 (who didn't just appear there out of no where; we have tons of very old veterans) and that does not mean just RBY2K10 people. Players from Smogon and other forums also participated in our battling (in fact, most of our battles were probably against non RBY2K10 people giving the small size of our group compared to the player pool at the time), discussions, and modifications. The consensus after our discussions was to move Jolteon and Articuno. People who had protested (or at least questioned) the adjustments came around to our point of view whether through being shown enough reasoning or after playing and seeing for themselves.
I am going to get real with you and ask you a few questions:
How many times have you used Jolteon in OU? How many times have you played BL? How many times have you played Ubers? (And by the way, one often sees NU, UU, and BL pokemon, not just Mew + Mewtwo + 4 OU in this metagame.)
Tiers may initially be about usage, but once a new generation (or four) shows up, people move on and the user base begins to decay and usage alone is no longer the best way of determining who is in what tier. Tiers are based on both use and usability, and balance. We have cultivated five very healthy metagames based on tiers in RBY, and you should play them (a lot) before you start to question them. Surely you see the prudence in that?
We care a lot about RBY here at RBY2K10, and we would never want to do anything that ruins the game for people. As someone who has played countless BL matches (in fact for a while I considered it my favorite tier), with and without Articuno and Jolteon, I honestly feel they are best in OU, and that is what many others feel as well. Articuno is one of my favorite pokemon; I wouldn't put her in a pool in which she would drown.
Feel free to contact me and others to play all the tiers and see for yourself why we've done what we've done.
EDIT:
There is nothing underdeveloped about the other tiers, except for the NEU tier, which we haven't formalized. We have played them all for years and years and have had multiple tournaments, big and small, for Ubers, BL, UU, and NU. Tons of players, from here and elsewhere, have participated and for you to come along and question that without having ever played is silly.
And as Icy mentioned above, your concept of tiers based purely on use is just not reasonable. If Metapod starts getting used enough, can we put it in OU? No. It isn't good enough. Tiers are based on use and usability. Mewtwo simply cannot play in any tier except the one Mew is in, and the two of them will necessarily dominate that tier because of their raw stats (usability), not because of their use (??)... Centralization is an important indication of the health of a metagame. No one in OU has to be used. You can win without using any of the top 6 OU pokemon. That is yet another indication that usability (not just use) is a factor in tiering.
I'm hopeful that with more battles under your belt, you'll see this.
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Isa
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FOREVER SECOND
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Post by Isa on Mar 6, 2013 12:57:07 GMT -8
Dre - I freely admit that PO tiers that use Wrap should not use 2K10 tiers that do not, so again, take your complaints there. It's not like the BL tier exists anyway on PO, so the influence we have doesn't even exist (yet) because the tier likewise does not.
Otherwise, I'll just refer you to the above posts.
(btw, did you know that they give warnings to people on PO who theorycraft in suspicion discussions without backing it up with references to games actually being played in the tier?)
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Dre
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Post by Dre on Mar 6, 2013 16:15:08 GMT -8
Edit- For some reason like the last 5 posts didn't pop up when I was posting this, so I'll read and answer those now.
Wrap originally was the standard though. I think for awhile RBY wasn't played with wrap because it didn't work properly on th'e simulator at the time, but from what I've heard it was the standard. I personally find anti-wrap more fun, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be the competitive standard.
I never said jolteon was bad, I just don't see how it's better than other BLs. It doesn't have the usage anyway, so by traditional tiering rules it would stay BL.
Edit-
Icy- I never said mewtwo in NU would be fun, I don't even find wrap that fun. It still would technically be competitive though, because a good player will more often than not beat a scrub. As I said before though, mewtwo is used in a higher tier, so it doesn't need to be in NU, and that spot can go to a pokemon who otherwise would never get used.
It depends on what you mean by 'viable'. Jolteon is viable in OU, but so are a lot of other BLs. I'm guessing you're saying it's in the same league as the likes of slowbro and lapras, which I disagree with because I think they're in the same league as lzapdos, and I think zapdos is a class above jolteon. But regardless, tiers were traditionally based on usage anyway.
Mewtwo is Uber because of his legendary status. The earlier gens based their tiers on this status, that's why GSC Ubers is all legendary pokemon, despite the fact that many people agree that snorlax is better than some of them. It was only in later generations that Ubers simply became a ban tier for anything too powerful for the tier where the largest amount of pokemon were competitively viable.
If the RBY tiers were being formulated with the modern tiering philosophy, Ubers and OU would be the same thing. The two Ubers aren't too good for OU pokemon, otherwise it would just be 2v2. Every tier has pokemon that you're forced to use.
WW- But it's not up to us to decide what makes the game more 'fun' and then have that affect everyone else's experience by the way we tier the pokemon. Jolteon doesn't have the usage to be OU, regardless of how good he actually is. You can say that's a silly system, but it isn't my system, it's the system the tiering concept was originially built on.
I don't see how jolteon and artcuno could possibly centralise BL more than say, tauros and chansey in OU. There are pokemon in every tier that you're forced to use.
Something should only get banned from a tier if it gets high usage in a higher tier. That's how the tiering system has always worked. In the end it's your decision, but I think in doing so you're losing track of what how the tiers originally worked and what purpose they serve.
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Post by WaterWizard on Mar 6, 2013 17:16:51 GMT -8
Dre,
You might not realize it, but you are being very arbitrary and your history is totally wrong in a few places. Early on, Double Team and Swift Mew were the standard. Are you advocating a return to that, too? If not, how do you objectively decide which historical period of RBY to get your rules? Each change in rules was an attempt to make the game more enjoyable. That's just how it works. Some people want to be able to use Double Team in standard, but no one permits it. Yeah?
Mew and Mewtwo are too good to be in OU. There wasn't an auto-ban on them, as you suggest. They were both allowed for a while but then everyone decided they over-centralized (first Mewtwo, then Mew). The games were all about them. That is not the case in OU. Teams without Exeggutor, Chansey, Tauros, and Snorlax can beat teams with them. Each OU game doesn't come down to who gets someone (Mew, Tauros, etc) out safely the fastest. There is a balance in OU. You really should not make claims about BL and Ubers until you play those tiers and see the balance in them, as well.
Your understanding of centralization and your selective memory of the history of RBY limit your ability to argue about this. And I think if you had a better grasp of both of them better you wouldn't be arguing with me.
EDIT:
We have five great tiers. Play them. Enjoy them. Master them. And then argue about them if you still see the need.
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Post by lilith on Mar 6, 2013 17:21:09 GMT -8
Dre - I freely admit that PO tiers that use Wrap should not use 2K10 tiers that do not, so again, take your complaints there. once again, standard disclaimer that i don't have a strong opinion on wrap, enjoy both metagames, and would like to see them both played competitively without flame wars over which on is truly RBY out of curiosity, if wrap overcentralizes, why not make a tier list where it doesn't? i understand that this would perhaps implicitly endorse wrap as standard and decrease the chances of PO banning it, but is PO really actually likely to ban it anytime soon? last i checked even the dragonair in NU (who is, i think, moar broken than any other wrapper in any other tier) thread is still getting ignored. for example (not a serious precise suggestion): Ubers is overcentralized by worse things anyway, so i don't think it matters if the two strongest wrappers compel you to run gengar or whatever assuming the problem is that wrap is too stronk and/or too luck-intensive, why not create a metagame where the risk/reward isn't high enough to make it any less broken or luck-reliant than hyper beaming every turn with tauros and hoping for crits? surely there's a point at which the mechanic being "inherently" broken just doesn't matter compared to other threats in the tier, ya? i do feel it's lame to not be able to use normal cloyster or dragonair in their current tiers, but if wrap destroys the game that badly, wouldn't this be a better compromise?
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Post by GGFan on Mar 6, 2013 17:36:35 GMT -8
Wrap originally was the standard though. I think for awhile RBY wasn't played with wrap because it didn't work properly on th'e simulator at the time, but from what I've heard it was the standard. I personally find anti-wrap more fun, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be the competitive standard.
No, Wrap was acknowledged but most people dismissed it. It wasn't until around 2005 where people started using it, but it was banned from most sites by 2006.
I didn't face Wrap Dragonite until 2006.
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Post by magic9mushroom on Mar 6, 2013 17:55:46 GMT -8
It still would technically be competitive though, because a good player will more often than not beat a scrub. lol Mewtwo ditto requires no skill lol, also no sleepers can switch into Mewtwo (except Egg, Jynx, and Hypno, none of which are in NU anyway). Mew is way too powerful for OU. There is no OU mon that beats all other OU mons, but Mew does precisely that.
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Post by t3h Icy on Mar 6, 2013 18:09:15 GMT -8
I'll just touch on this bit: Mewtwo is Uber because of his legendary status. The earlier gens based their tiers on this status, that's why GSC Ubers is all legendary pokemon, despite the fact that many people agree that snorlax is better than some of them. It was only in later generations that Ubers simply became a ban tier for anything too powerful for the tier where the largest amount of pokemon were competitively viable. RBY's Uber tier having Mewtwo and Mew, who both happen to be the suoer legendaries in RBY is coincidental. I don't know why Ubers is the way it is in GSC or beyond, but I don't play those. For RBY, Mewtwo and Mew are significantly better than every other Pokemon. If tiers were based on game lore (lol), Moltres would at least be above BL.
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Dre
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Post by Dre on Mar 6, 2013 19:06:05 GMT -8
People on Smogon said that wrap was originally the standard before 2K10, which I assumed was correct seeing as Smogon had been around before 2k10. If that's not true then I admit my mistake.
If your team lacks all of lax, chansey, eggy and tauros, whilst you still have a chance to win, you're handicapping yourself., it's the same as Ubers. You can play Ubers without Mew and Mewtwo, and get lucky with freezes and explosion and win. You're handicapping yourself by not using them, but you still have a chance to win.
Ubers still uses OU pokemon. You can say that no OU pokemon is essential, but pretty much every serious team has a tauros on it. Most people agree that a tauros team is better than a non-tauros team. I feel that the centralisation is the same.
Icy it doesn't matter which gen you play, that's why Ubers is a separate tier from OU in RBY. It makes sense anyway, since you end up using four OUs in Ubers anyway.
I don't understand what you're trying to achieve with your tiering philosophy. Every meta has essential pokemon. You will always have essential pokemon no matter what you ban or allow. You can put golem in UU and it does basically the same job it does in OU. It walls an electric, gets walled by a grass, and gets outspeed and OHKOd by water pokemon. Golem in UU would in no way be broken, in fact it wouldn't even be essential on a team. Again, the reason it isn't in UU is because it has high usage in OU, meaning that spot can go to sandslash or graver, or a physical sweeper if you rely on tangela to wall electabuzz.
If you put OU pokemon in lower tiers, they counter themselves, and a lot of them still have other counters. The only reason why they're not there, and the only reason why lower tiers exist in the first place is to use pokemon that can't be used in OU. It's not because of centralistion of being broken.
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Post by WaterWizard on Mar 6, 2013 19:32:11 GMT -8
I don't know which "people at Smogon" told you that, but competitive RBY predates Smogon, too.
Tauros usually isn't used in Ubers. You'd know that if you played... And your discussion of tier philosophy is kind of confusing. If you don't agree with having multiple tiers for viability, why are you trying to move pokemon between them?
And we're not trying to achieve something new right now; we're trying to maintain what we've already achieved: five balanced tiers, with Standard (OU) taking precedence.
Let's suspend this discussion until you have more experience with tiers and can see where we're coming from here. Right now we're just talking past each other.
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Post by t3h Icy on Mar 6, 2013 19:58:35 GMT -8
Ubers is the least dynamic because it has less Pokemon than are required on a team and forces players to use Pokemon below Ubers. The game revolves heavily around Mewtwo and Mew, and gets pretty stally.
Tauros is the best in OU by definition of most used and other things, but he's not that much better than other Pokemon the same way Mewtwo and Mew would be in OU. Tauros also has losing match-ups and isn't unstoppable, even without using another Tauros.
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Post by GGFan on Mar 6, 2013 21:04:07 GMT -8
People on Smogon said that wrap was originally the standard before 2K10, which I assumed was correct seeing as Smogon had been around before 2k10. If that's not true then I admit my mistake.
Competitive RBY predates Smogon by many years.
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Dre
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Post by Dre on Mar 6, 2013 21:46:17 GMT -8
I know competitive RBY predates Smogon, but I assumed that people that had been around for awhile would know what was standard originally. I don't know which "people at Smogon" told you that, but competitive RBY predates Smogon, too. Tauros usually isn't used in Ubers. You'd know that if you played... And your discussion of tier philosophy is kind of confusing. If you don't agree with having multiple tiers for viability, why are you trying to move pokemon between them? And we're not trying to achieve something new right now; we're trying to maintain what we've already achieved: five balanced tiers, with Standard (OU) taking precedence. Let's suspend this discussion until you have more experience with tiers and can see where we're coming from here. Right now we're just talking past each other. I didn't say tauros was on every Ubers team. What I meant to say was that tauros is on every OU team, and not using him is handicapping yourself. I do agree with having multiple tiers, and even multiple tiers of viability within the one tier. For example I agree that the likes of slowbro and gengar are a class below the standards, but still deserve to be OU due to their usage, which is by and large a result of their ability. I also acknowledge the difference between usage and ability. For example, I think alakazam is an overrated pokemon, whom I consider to be in the same league as the lower OUs, yet his usage is amongst the standards. However, seeing as the tiers have always been based on usage (hence why it's called 'Overused') he'd be classed as a standard (or semi-standard, but starmie is ahead of him in terms of the 'standard team'). On the traditional usage system, Jolteon is BL. On your system (assuming jolteon is better than the BLs, which I disagree with), he's OU. I don't mind that you keep him OU for your tourneys, but I just hope that if PO consults you guys for a BL tier, that you go with the traditional system, and not your personal philosophies.
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Post by GGFan on Mar 6, 2013 21:53:54 GMT -8
Wrap pretty much didn't exist until, like, 2005 because nobody used it.
It was banned from tournaments by 2006.
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Dre
Member
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Post by Dre on Mar 6, 2013 23:16:23 GMT -8
So then why has PO decided to keep it legal?
I'm pretty sure evasion moves are still legal on there too actually.
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Post by t3h Icy on Mar 6, 2013 23:22:35 GMT -8
So that people who want to play with them (and Evasion moves, etc) can.
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Post by magic9mushroom on Mar 6, 2013 23:25:14 GMT -8
So that people who want to play with them (and Evasion moves, etc) can. I'm fairly sure Double Team is banned in the PO RBY tiers. Let me check. EDIT: "(18:26:15) The Pokemon 'Starmie' is banned on tier 'RBY OU' for the following reasons: Minimize,"
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Post by t3h Icy on Mar 6, 2013 23:54:42 GMT -8
I'm guessing there's a way around that. If not, they didn't ban Wrap since some people still use it.
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Post by magic9mushroom on Mar 7, 2013 0:35:50 GMT -8
I'm guessing there's a way around that. If not, they didn't ban Wrap since some people still use it. Yeah, there is: Don't play in the ranked tiers. They could easily ban trapping moves from RBY OU as well.
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Dre
Member
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Post by Dre on Mar 7, 2013 2:30:47 GMT -8
So that people who want to play with them (and Evasion moves, etc) can. I meant on the ladder.
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Post by lilith on Mar 7, 2013 2:59:50 GMT -8
I think alakazam is an overrated pokemon, whom I consider to be in the same league as the lower OUs, yet his usage is amongst the standards. However, seeing as the tiers have always been based on usage (hence why it's called 'Overused') he'd be classed as a standard (or semi-standard, but starmie is ahead of him in terms of the 'standard team').
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Post by GGFan on Mar 7, 2013 8:24:48 GMT -8
So then why has PO decided to keep it legal? I'm pretty sure evasion moves are still legal on there too actually. I never said it was banned everywhere.
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Post by Dexter on Mar 8, 2013 2:49:59 GMT -8
Dre special sounds pretty fun actually. Would you go aggro mewtwo from turn 1? Or would you lead caterpie/metapod and try to string shot giving your own mewtwo a speed advantage in the mewtwo war while also wasting the opponents PP? What kind of set would you give mewtwo? Ice beam and amnesia are given, but what about the rest of the moveset? Psychic? Blizzard? Rest? Recover? A physical move?
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Post by GGFan on Mar 8, 2013 5:53:45 GMT -8
I'd probably go with Amnesia/Ice Beam/Blizzard/Rest.
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Post by t3h Icy on Mar 8, 2013 8:35:08 GMT -8
Rest for Toxic.
Anyway, I think this thread is done, lol.
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