Chat with Marty

[03:14] Disaster Area: hey I'm curious and I dunno who to speak to so I just chose you :> who decides what tiers PS main runs, and how closely aligned is PS main to smogon? If some other community wanted their tier
[03:15] Disaster Area: on PS main is there any way they could do it?
[03:15] Disaster Area: even some smogon-supported tiers (such as gen 1 ou) are more popular in communities other than smogon...
[03:15] Disaster Area: I mean is this just something to speak to zarel about when he's back or
[03:16] Disaster Area: are you/anyone else a good person to talk to about this?
[03:16] &Marty: The Immortal would be the one to talk to about that
[03:16] Disaster Area: alright ty
[03:16] Disaster Area: x_x smogon has a bit of a monopoly on the PS tiering
[03:16] Disaster Area: outside of nintendo-based stuff
[03:16] &Marty: although I wouldn't expect anything, since as it is the format list is hogging a ton of resources
[03:17] Disaster Area: yeah I can see that quite clearly
[03:18] Disaster Area: as it is though I think having just our main oras tier (effectively our communities OU) with a ladder on PS main.. or even just as a challenge/tournament option would be an incredible step forward x_x
[03:19] &Marty: well, I'm pretty sure chaos would flip out if another community had a tier here
[03:19] &Marty: this is Smogon's server
[03:19] &Marty: I imagine TI will tell you the same thing
[03:20] &Marty: oh and this is unrelated, but re: your Arceus problem in custom games,
[03:20] &Marty: you have to choose an Arceus form with the right Plate and Multitype
[03:22] &Marty: Custom Game has no rules so it's completely by the honour system; not doing that properly will default it to the Arceus-Normal sprite
[03:23] &Marty: the only reason it first comes out as Arceus-Type is because of the Gen 4 code that transforms Arceus+Plate holders into the right type (like say, Ditto Transforming)
[03:24] Disaster Area: ahh
[03:24] Disaster Area: yeah I see
[03:24] Disaster Area: so in the teambuilder
[03:24] Disaster Area: you have to put it in as
[03:24] Disaster Area: arceus-ghost rather than arceus
[03:24] Disaster Area: then give it the plate and multitype
[03:24] &Marty: yep
[03:24] Disaster Area: ah
[03:24] Disaster Area: and cos it's custom that's why
[03:24] Disaster Area: it doesn't disallow you bringing that
[03:24] Disaster Area: upon chalelnging
[03:24] Disaster Area: ah makes sense
[03:25] &Marty: it would probably be easier if Gen 4 Ubers just allowed Arceus for a while or a new challenge format was made
[03:25] &Marty: but yeah
[03:26] Disaster Area: ya farceus meta as a challenge format
[03:26] Disaster Area: would make sense
[03:26] Disaster Area: mm I can understand why TI/chaos would be like that
[03:27] Disaster Area: at the same time I think that's why noone can ever replace smogon even if they tried other than being a larger community for a smaller tier or some sort of
[03:27] Disaster Area: fakemon project that smogon doesn't have a part of
[03:28] Disaster Area: just cos everyone from your average ladder noob to someone who's approaching top level, like 98% of these people who won't say venture onto other servers even
[03:28] Disaster Area: will be playing smogon tiers the whole time and if they don't like it
[03:28] Disaster Area: they'll either play nintendo tiers or quit, rather than have an alternative
[03:29] Disaster Area: i.e. no alternative fan-made tiers are made easily accessible to your average poké-player
[03:30] Disaster Area: I mean that all makes sense to you right?
[03:31] Disaster Area: anyway I don't know how much attention you pay to tiering policy but you may have seen some people in policy review wanting this or next gen to have effectively 'ubers' possibly minus like 4-5 mons as being the 'ou' tier. Now whilst there are 2 sides to the issue
[03:31] Disaster Area: only one side (the people who want the status quo) are going to have the tier they want
[03:31] Disaster Area: available on PS main etc and
[03:32] Disaster Area: the issue isn't merely which is a better tier as in more competitive/diverse/balanced though it is an important component of it
[03:32] Disaster Area: but on a more basic level, for your average person who's still learning the basics of competitive mons the 2 possibilities strike a different balance between
[03:33] Disaster Area: having the main competitive tier being somewhat close to an in-game feel of power level
[03:33] Disaster Area: and having people's favourite pokemon usable and actually viable in some tier. Like as it currently stands
[03:33] Disaster Area: a large part (say around half but it's a poor estimate) of the mons currently banned to smogon's ubers
[03:33] Disaster Area: are poor or useless choice in the tier itself
[03:34] Disaster Area: so basically in some ways what i'm saying is having
[03:34] Disaster Area: a choice like this without having to do some strange divide on smogon itself
[03:34] Disaster Area: would be really good to have on PS main on both a basic and a more higher competitive level
[03:35] Disaster Area: whilst in some ways it might eat into smogon's userbase at the same time it would increase the overall competitive pokemon userbase (or at least, this is my hypothesis)
[03:38] Disaster Area: anyway do you understand what I'm saying? Does it make sense to you and to what extent do you agree with it?
[03:46] Disaster Area: marty?
[03:53] &Marty: uh, I went afk right after my last reply
[03:53] Disaster Area: rip
[03:53] Disaster Area: I wrote a lot.. lol
[03:54] &Marty: but in general I don't care about tiering
[03:54] Disaster Area: yeah I sorta figured that was the case which was why I felt more comfortable speaking to you
[03:54] &Marty: I don't think usage-based tiering works anymore, but I don't have any alternatives so I'm not gonna get into it
[03:55] &Marty: it was already barely adequate in Gen 5
[03:55] Disaster Area: yeah
[03:55] &Marty: there are just too many Pokemon now
[03:55] Disaster Area: well we have a different proposal on here
[03:55] Disaster Area: actually what it amounts to is a mixture of viability rankings and council
[03:55] Disaster Area: but a friend of mine pointed out what would happen if
[03:56] Disaster Area: we applied the process to smogon's OU
[03:56] Disaster Area: and lots of mons that are good enough but BL would become OU, the mons [conkeldurr and sylveon] that are too poor in OU would be allowed to drop to UU
[03:56] Disaster Area: and the one part of the rankings where you have a sort of mix of mons that are or aren't good enough
[03:56] Disaster Area: is the bit where the council votes basically
[03:57] Disaster Area: so it seems that the approach we're trying would work well on smogon's OU...
[03:57] &Marty: well, good luck convincing the people who make decisions
[03:58] Disaster Area: eh
[03:58] Disaster Area: I don't want to change smogon
[03:59] Disaster Area: there's too much about their tiering model I disagree with, and I have a history if disagreements with lots and lots of members of the place too x_x
[03:59] Disaster Area: and either way
[03:59] Disaster Area: I think it'd be easier
[03:59] Disaster Area: to have a different tier outside of smogon
[03:59] Disaster Area: but allowed on PS main
[03:59] Disaster Area: than trying to get smogon to change
[03:59] Disaster Area: AND I think
[03:59] Disaster Area: that doing it
[03:59] Disaster Area: would benefit the community more
[03:59] Disaster Area: than getting smogon to change
[04:01] Disaster Area: oh wait that didn't answer what you said (though it is true0
[04:01] Disaster Area: I guess the people who make the decisions =
[04:01] Disaster Area: zarel/TI/?
[04:01] &Marty: I guarantee that will never happen though
[04:01] Disaster Area: @ trying to get this separate tier
[04:01] Disaster Area: on PS main
[04:01] Disaster Area: :[
[04:01] &Marty: so it would actually be easier to change Smogon
[04:01] &Marty: because then their tiers would actually appear here
[04:02] Disaster Area: x_x
[04:02] &Marty: under no circumstances will a non-Smogon non-Nintendo format appear here