What's Going on in RMT?

Introduction

Ah, Rate My Team. RMT is one of the most diverse and popular sections in all of the forums. You can get your team rated by expert team raters to improve it. Also, you can get your own rates critiqued by Official Team Raters who can show you how good your suggestions to fix a team were. If you're lucky enough you can even get your team placed into the RMT Archive which is the pinnacle of success and showcases the most well-presented and solid teams that are posted in the forum. In the Rating Activities subforum, you can participate in Rater of The Week, Team of The Week, and even Rating 102 where you can be taught how to become a better rater by Official Team Raters themselves. Every official Tier in the game is included here, so you have a very wide variety of tiers that your teams can get rated in. RMT is a great learning experience for everybody, and hopefully those reading this will want to get involved into the forum's other activities outside of just posting your own teams and letting other people do the rating. RMT is a very complex forum and it has many projects going on right now, so hopefully this will spark an interest in the forum and make you see how much more there is to this valuable section of the Smogon Forums.

#ratemyteam SynIRC channel - Workshops

To start off, lets explore the quickest and easiest way to get your team rated on the go. By going to this SynIRC channel you don't need to post a full-fledged descriptive RMT of your team, but instead get it rated instantly. This channel serves every tier as well and always has help available for you. Just ask somebody and they'll do their best to rate your team and improve it. But a quick rate is not all that you can get out of the channel. If you have paid attention to the RMT forum you would have noticed that RMT Workshops have been hosted in the channel where 2-3 Official Team Raters collectively rate teams and help those who watch and improve how to rate together. We'll be breaking down exactly how rates work and function, and where aspiring Team Raters can go watch live-action rates take place.

If you have ever participated in a Battling 101 seminar before, this is just like that, only on a different topic (although this may also help you improve your own team as well!). What we'll do is link a team and the two host raters will talk about the team in the form of a rate. They'll explain its goal, its weaknesses, and eventually how to improve it. The best rates are those that not only improve upon the team's weaknesses, but those that do not interrupt the goal of the team in the first place. This will be specifically focused on and noted throughout the seminar, and will be stressed as it goes on. As soon as a team has actually been selected for rating, the hosts will create a detailed rating process to identify all the threats and problems that the team has. This way, you can get an idea of how to identify threats, improve upon a team, and rate by yourself. Eventually, the crowd will also be able to participate and suggest their own fixes to a team's problems, and receive help while they are rating the team so they can improve over time. Participating in these workshops and later on applying what you learned into the actual forum by rating will also get you noticed for a Team Rater badge nomination if you continue to rate well. This shows us how dedicated you are to the forum itself and how you are going after the badge.

Rating 102

If you have trouble with grasping the concept of rating a team, then this specially-designed program is just for you. For those who have previously signed up for B101 will know exactly what the program is doing. It is basically a separate version of B101, but only for rating. This program will assign you to a very competent Rating Tutor who will answer any questions you have about rating. Rating 102 is a very unique program in a sense—nowhere else on the forums can offer high quality rating support. You can learn tips, strategies, and techniques that the best raters around use to rate teams. You will be offered exclusive help when it comes to rating teams, and you can always ask your tutor if your rate is correct and helping the team. Basically, Rating 102 is your all-expenses-paid trip to becoming an accomplished official Team Rater down the road. The actual signup forum is always available, and all you need to do is check out the Rating Activities forum and PM harsha, Jirachi, or tab about tutoring. Soon enough, you'll be set up with a tutor who will teach to you about whatever you want to know.

RMT Hub

If you have ever visited the OverUsed Hub before, you will have a general idea of what this place looks like. The RMT Hub showcases teams from the RMT Archive, a collection of some of Smogon's best Team Raters ever, and a list of projects that are currently going on in the forum. The on-site archive has both Generation 4 and 5 teams from all tiers, and although not completely finished, showcases some of Smogon's best teams in a smoother and more organized format than on the forums. There, you can read them in clutter-less detail and experience the team for how great it really is without any below rates. The Team Rater archive is similar to the RMT Archive, but instead of showcasing teams, it showcases raters who have surpassed many others and have earned their names in the archive for being some of the best and most consistent raters ever to grace the forums. For the final piece of the hub, listed projects going on in the RMT forums are listed to display what is currently going on in the forums right now. If you do not know where to find the exact hub, simply use this address: /rmt/.

What do you get out of all of this?

If you do not have a badge and you start rating with decent quality and solid quantity, you can be recognized for your activity and be awarded a Pre-Contributor badge for your efforts. Getting a Pre-Contributor badge is your first step to getting towards the Team Rater badge, one of the most prestigious badges on Smogon. Only after long amounts of dedication and quality rates will you be eventually awarded with this badge. Although this may take some amount of time for you to achieve, the RMT badge is a role model badge. It shows dedication, quality, and commitment that will certainly show to the rest of the forum that you are a capable Team Rater. If you have interest in projects in the RMT forum, you can even come up with new ideas and run them on your own after you become an official Team Rater. This opens up completely new doors for you. You can participate in Rating 102, Team of The Week, Workshops, and even help with the RMT Archive.

This will eventually earn you another badge aside from Team Rater, the Community Contributor. While this badge is usually gained from metagame posting or Official Tournament work, you can also earn it from your efforts in the RMT forum. From just helping out other people and their teams, you can gain two of the most valued community-based badges on Smogon.

Conclusion

Now that we have reviewed all of Rate My Team's attributes, I hope that it garners your attention and makes you take a look at the RMT forum, whether you're just starting to rate, thinking about it, or just wanting to contribute your own teams to the forums. Whatever the case may be, you can now see in detail what all these features are really about and how it makes the Rate My Team forum great in many ways. From all of the Official Team Raters here on Smogon, we hope you get involved. By the way, tab needs a new pair of shoes.

« Previous Article

Home