me:
I don't have access to policy review or anything like this, and I felt it might be best just to pm you.

It would be really helpful if you could work towards making a clear, transparent philosophy for ubers that everyone is conscious of and agrees upon (or at least as dictator u can say it and everyone can accept, whatever works). I think a lot of the issues being brought up could be solved in part just by this being made clear.

If the metagame were for example, ruled by the philosophy of having the 'metagame with the least bans required to be competitive' then removing evasion clause, and maybe mega ray's clause, or at least re-opening those discussions, would be a viable option.

If the tier were to be the tier that is the highest up tier which is balanced, competitive, and not over-centralised, then, whilst this might step on OU's toes (I'm here thinking of dice's thread in policy review though, which I generally agree with, particularly WreckDra's points) a workable policy could be produced from that (I foresee in some sense the bans leading up to 'PP ORAS Ubers' would work, but what do).

If it's some balance in between these, then defining it and making it clear would also be of great benefit to everyone, so that they know where they stand, and what the tier's motivation is. A lot of problems seem to be stemming from chaos giving a guidline on what would make something bannable, but no actual tiering philosophy decided by the tier leader to permit a consistent approach to the tier's position.

Thank you.




me:
[19:07] Disaster Area: yo your post just now is good apart from that I disagree that
[19:07] Disaster Area: threats would be torn down until we get current OU
[19:08] Disaster Area: however dealing w/ that issue would lead into dice's proposal
[19:08] Minority Suspect: I made my post with no relation to Dice's purposal
[19:08] Disaster Area: @_@ I hate how we can't 'fix' ubers without it having OU's philosophy
[19:08] Disaster Area: yeah ik
[19:08] Minority Suspect: also
[19:08] Disaster Area: that's why it sounds a bit weird
[19:08] Disaster Area: ik ubers as it is is 'fine'
[19:08] Minority Suspect: you can say that it would be torn until current OU
[19:08] Disaster Area: sorta
[19:08] Minority Suspect: because thats why OU is the way it is
[19:08] Disaster Area: ehh no cos ubers w/ a handful of bans
[19:08] Disaster Area: is more balanced
[19:08] Disaster Area: and no that's not why
[19:09] Disaster Area: OU is the way it is
[19:09] Disaster Area: it's because senior staff decided
[19:09] Disaster Area: overall to go with starting OU off at that power level
[19:09] Disaster Area: rather than at the very top
[19:09] Minority Suspect: you are going into more Dice's purposal
[19:09] Disaster Area: a couple of senior staff preferred the latter motion
[19:09] Minority Suspect: than the actual implications
[19:09] Disaster Area: yeah i know
[19:09] Minority Suspect: of simply banning P Don and Mence
[19:09] Disaster Area: the trouble w/ me is
[19:09] Minority Suspect: which would be terribad
[19:09] Disaster Area: that there's no clear
[19:09] Disaster Area: ubers philosophy
[19:09] Disaster Area: I sent fireburn a pm on smogon about it
[19:09] Minority Suspect: there is for me
[19:09] Disaster Area: written eloquently and inoffensively
[19:10] Disaster Area: and he's not replied yet
[19:10] Disaster Area: fwiw I am happy w/ current ubers if he gives a justifying philosophy
[19:10] Disaster Area: but the fact we have no justification about what it's meant to be
[19:10] Minority Suspect: Ubers philosophy should be creating a competitive tier with as few bans as possible
[19:10] Disaster Area: yeah i agree
[19:10] Disaster Area: but I think mega ray would be fine
[19:10] Disaster Area: if we went with that
[19:10] Minority Suspect: I also dislike when people try to pull the "Mega Ray precident" card
[19:10] Disaster Area: it'd just be a bit of an RBY mewtwo except it wouldn't become the weird stallfest that is RBY ubers
[19:11] Disaster Area: the mega ray precident thing is the whole reason why
[19:11] Disaster Area: we need a clear philosophy
[19:11] Disaster Area: because rn all we have
[19:11] Disaster Area: is that dubiously understood precedent
[19:11] Disaster Area: and instead of arguing using a philosophy
[19:11] Disaster Area: we'retrying to ban stuff based on it falling into some 'guidlines'
[19:11] Disaster Area: that were used before




me after comment in edgar's thread posted:
2) Ubers does not care about balance, and will not ban to preserve metagame balance. This is ultimately because that's OU job. OU is, under our tiering system, the fundamental balanced metagame. Any tier below it is expected to adhere to similar philosophies of balance and reasonable centralization, while any tier above it is by definition overcentralized, with no active concerns for balance. If we started banning things from Ubers for balance reasons, that would ultimately defeat the purpose of OU and call our entire tiering hierarchy into question. Furthermore, an imbalanced metagame does not correlate to one that is unenjoyable (hi DPP Ubers).

:S what do we do about the fact that there exists a metagam ABOVE OU however which is balanced?

Other than that, thank you for making the philosophy clearer in your post.

Now my gripes remain more with OU than with U :D



fireburn:
If you're referring to Anything Goes that is not balanced at all, lol



me: accidentally deleted this post but it basically explained what pp oras ubers was, and gave links to the relevant stuffs.


fireburn:
PP ORAS Ubers is not an official Smogon metagame, doesn't count



me:
'Any tier below it is expected to adhere to similar philosophies of balance and reasonable centralization, while any tier above it is by definition overcentralized, with no active concerns for balance. If we started banning things from Ubers for balance reasons, that would ultimately defeat the purpose of OU and call our entire tiering hierarchy into question.'

The problem clearly isn't with ubers, but rather with OU not being the highest achievable balanced metagame. These tournaments are a way towards evidence that OU doesn't fulfill that purpose. The trouble is that it's more easy to perceive this radical shift, and more logical in the sense of where the knowledge of its truthfulness comes from, to consider it as 'ubers+a few bans' than 'dropping 20 pokemon into OU'. Anyway this also shows it's fallacious to say that the slippery slope from banning primal groudon etc. for balance would in the long run lead to the current ORAS OU tier.



me:
oh fwiw I did apply for it to be an OM but it was rejected for being a variant of a current tier. How are we supposed to get around the 'it's not an official smogon metagame' issue that there appears to be in your perception, if there's no route for me to allow it to achieve that status?