I have no doubt that I’m completely unfamiliar to virtually everyone reading this (at least under this handle) and this heavily opinionated article will as such not be backed by reputation. I’ve dabbled in online play for all generations of Pokémon; starting with PBS, then the GSBot and NetBattle, ShoddyBattle and Pokémon Online after. I went through dozens of handles and nick names and left the game for long intervals, only to come back because of how addicting and fun it can be. I’m ultimately just a fan of the series, still playing the actual games and having obsessive bouts of competitive play. You could also consider me somewhat of a Smogon lurker; being more of a player than a theorist I rarely felt the need to express myself. Something changed.
I thought the third generation was perfect, as it struck the right balance for me between offense and defense and putting a team together carefully could prepare you for everything. I felt in control and was really disappointed with how Nintendo handled the fourth gen, as Choice Scarf took the micro-management out of the speed stat and there were several threats that you couldn’t really prepare for because of how versatile they could be. While I didn’t agree with banning Garchomp and later Salamence at the time, I could see where people were coming from. I just felt that the generation was fundamentally flawed and that you’d need to ban a hell of a lot more for team diversity. That’s another topic altogether though, but it illustrates how I came into this gen… sceptical.
It seems with generation 5 that they tried to fix the issues of gen 4’s overcentralizing aspects by making everything overcentralizing. Many of the Dream World abilities are very over the top and weather teams completely dominate the current metagame. Smogon will have to make a conscious choice: will we/they proactively shape the metagame or only remove what is completely broken? The latter probably has the theoretical high ground, as it keeps the game closer to what the developers intended, but I think Smogon has already chosen for playing God to at least a certain extent. As far as I can tell there are systems and voting procedures in place to ban aspects of the game beyond the obvious uber legendaries and for the very first time I really feel that the metagame needs that kind reshaping.
The biggest problem with this is that most people are already completely clueless as to how and why certain choices came about. Example: From what I gather Moody is banned as an ability, but Blaziken has been banned altogether, presumably because of Speed Boost being broken (or just because it’s unavailable?). This seems inconsistent to me, but it is likely that I am missing the full facts because I just can’t find them. This lack of transparency is a huge problem for competitive players who don’t frequent Smogon (there are very man of them, I assure you) and this is neither beneficial to their understanding of the rules, nor Smogon’s image. It seems easy to fix by having a prominent article on bans on the main page that is being updated for as long as it takes, the metagames have always pretty much stabilized at some point.
As for what I feel deserves consideration in the near future… a complete ban on permanent weather abilities. In the time that I’ve been playing online I’ve seldomly ran into teams that didn’t carry Politoed, Ninetales, Hippowdon or Tyranitar. I’d add Abomasnow, but Hail teams are still relatively rare and not nearly as effective as their counterparts, IMO. Anyway, I feel the metagame is focused on weather to the point where it’s unhealthy, even if it’s not broken or unbeatable (at the very least you can push in your own “Imakeweatherbyexisting” critter). Drizzle + Swift Swim is already banned and Pokémon like Excadrill and Garchomp would be a lot less dominant without Sandstream backing them. It would also diversify the metagame, because if you reason under the assumption that a weather producer is pretty much a given, the options for other team members become limited. Of course, competitive play has always drawn from a subset of what is available, but a blanket ban on permanent weather is easy to enforce and deserves to be considered IMO. Moves like Rain Dance and Sunny Day would still be allowed under such conditions.
Another consideration to make would be removing DW abilities from the regular OU metagame, perhaps giving it its own metagame. I am not saying I necessarily support this, but it’s something to think about if Smogon really wants to shape and better the metagame. I guess my main point with this writing is that I want to get some responses and dialogue going and perhaps someone who is more ingrained into Smogon’s publishings can at least address the point regarding transparency.
inb4coolstorybro
P.S.: I really hope this is the right place for this. I’m sorry if it’s not.
:justin:<<<this face is funny
I thought the third generation was perfect, as it struck the right balance for me between offense and defense and putting a team together carefully could prepare you for everything. I felt in control and was really disappointed with how Nintendo handled the fourth gen, as Choice Scarf took the micro-management out of the speed stat and there were several threats that you couldn’t really prepare for because of how versatile they could be. While I didn’t agree with banning Garchomp and later Salamence at the time, I could see where people were coming from. I just felt that the generation was fundamentally flawed and that you’d need to ban a hell of a lot more for team diversity. That’s another topic altogether though, but it illustrates how I came into this gen… sceptical.
It seems with generation 5 that they tried to fix the issues of gen 4’s overcentralizing aspects by making everything overcentralizing. Many of the Dream World abilities are very over the top and weather teams completely dominate the current metagame. Smogon will have to make a conscious choice: will we/they proactively shape the metagame or only remove what is completely broken? The latter probably has the theoretical high ground, as it keeps the game closer to what the developers intended, but I think Smogon has already chosen for playing God to at least a certain extent. As far as I can tell there are systems and voting procedures in place to ban aspects of the game beyond the obvious uber legendaries and for the very first time I really feel that the metagame needs that kind reshaping.
The biggest problem with this is that most people are already completely clueless as to how and why certain choices came about. Example: From what I gather Moody is banned as an ability, but Blaziken has been banned altogether, presumably because of Speed Boost being broken (or just because it’s unavailable?). This seems inconsistent to me, but it is likely that I am missing the full facts because I just can’t find them. This lack of transparency is a huge problem for competitive players who don’t frequent Smogon (there are very man of them, I assure you) and this is neither beneficial to their understanding of the rules, nor Smogon’s image. It seems easy to fix by having a prominent article on bans on the main page that is being updated for as long as it takes, the metagames have always pretty much stabilized at some point.
As for what I feel deserves consideration in the near future… a complete ban on permanent weather abilities. In the time that I’ve been playing online I’ve seldomly ran into teams that didn’t carry Politoed, Ninetales, Hippowdon or Tyranitar. I’d add Abomasnow, but Hail teams are still relatively rare and not nearly as effective as their counterparts, IMO. Anyway, I feel the metagame is focused on weather to the point where it’s unhealthy, even if it’s not broken or unbeatable (at the very least you can push in your own “Imakeweatherbyexisting” critter). Drizzle + Swift Swim is already banned and Pokémon like Excadrill and Garchomp would be a lot less dominant without Sandstream backing them. It would also diversify the metagame, because if you reason under the assumption that a weather producer is pretty much a given, the options for other team members become limited. Of course, competitive play has always drawn from a subset of what is available, but a blanket ban on permanent weather is easy to enforce and deserves to be considered IMO. Moves like Rain Dance and Sunny Day would still be allowed under such conditions.
Another consideration to make would be removing DW abilities from the regular OU metagame, perhaps giving it its own metagame. I am not saying I necessarily support this, but it’s something to think about if Smogon really wants to shape and better the metagame. I guess my main point with this writing is that I want to get some responses and dialogue going and perhaps someone who is more ingrained into Smogon’s publishings can at least address the point regarding transparency.
inb4coolstorybro
P.S.: I really hope this is the right place for this. I’m sorry if it’s not.
:justin:<<<this face is funny