Reborn Tiers and Metagame

[Brave]

@Serenity: Yes, I am unbelievably sick of seeing evasion debated in the main channel, and yes, I despise Evasion with every facet of my soul. It's an unbelievably cheap way to win that requires no skill at all and, in my opinion, that extends to Moody teams as well but that's another story. It basically boils down to what everyone has been saying about this:

Every Pokemon in the 'Dex can abuse the hell out of evasion but only about, like, what, 7% are capable of countering it and even fewer are viable for use in the standard metagame. To be 100% honest, I'm not all that big a fan of the metagame and play mostly with teams of Pokemon that I like rather than what works but the evasion problem spreads into that realm as well. And from a completely objective standpoint on the metagame, well... I mean, come on! Everyone who ladders has put so much time and effort and thought into their teams and they try their hardest to win. I know you can't counter everything present in the metagame but you can at least be prepared for it and there's a good chance you'll succeed.

Meanwhile any shmuck can throw Double Team or Minimize onto a Pokemon and completely flip the table on all that hard work, rising past everyone else with almost no effort. It's completely unfair and forces everyone to adapt to one kind of team. It's like Slant said: the metagame gets overcentralized and just plain BORING. If everyone's playing with the same kind of team where's the fun? Variety is the spice of life.

[Conor]

Hey, I have a question. Everyone seems to be worked up about this right? Why wouldn't we just have a poll for all of the forum members on if they want to keep or ban evasion. Both sides of the issue say that the majority of the server is behind them. We can prove what most people want through a simple poll so why not? It doesn't mean it has to be the end all be all and that the winning poll result gets its way, but It will show the auth and such what the community actually wants. I don't know, I could be wrong, but it just seems like the most logical answer to me. Especially since both sides of the argument have been gone through at least 7 times over.

[Shanco]

Hey, I have a question. Everyone seems to be worked up about this right? Why wouldn't we just have a poll for all of the forum members on if they want to keep or ban evasion.

Sounds plausible...if there wasn't a laid-down stance on evasion. Which is, similar to Swift Swim + Drizzle and whatnot, it's not going anywhere. However, I wouldn't be surprised if this bantering spawns something related to the topic, to appease you all. What exactly? I don't know.

I never got back to the question of "what makes Reborn what it is". I will now:

If memory serves, the Reborn meta places emphasis on being more of an authentic Pokemon experience, as opposed to extreme emphasis on competitive aspect (ex. Smogon, beta). It essentially makes it wrong to ban any particular moves, items, abilities, and Pokemon that are not legendary. Whoever said this, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

But in either case, banning evasion would put us on the road to where we don't want to be, which would be anywhere but where we are now.

[Eternal Edge]

My favorite part about this thread is that the people who to keep evasion are using the same argument. Used for trying to get weather banned, just worded differently.

Keep evasion: "Just build to make sure you can counter evasion."

Ban weather: "You pretty much have to build to counter weather."

Regardless of the topic, why should anyone have to build to speicifally counter one type of team? You've all admittted you have to run certain moves to counter evasion, right? You recognize most of these solutions aren't as viable in OU, right? Sow hat happens when you're laddering with your anti-evasion team and you happen to come across someone not running evasion and you lose because you're ready to get rid of the evasion? Or beetter yet, what if someone like crep sees your changes and decides to carry something to kill your taunter?

[Joker]

Sounds plausible...if there wasn't a laid-down stance on evasion. Which is, similar to Swift Swim + Drizzle and whatnot, it's not going anywhere. However, I wouldn't be surprised if this bantering spawns something related to the topic, to appease you all. What exactly? I don't know.

I never got back to the question of "what makes Reborn what it is". I will now:

If memory serves, the Reborn meta places emphasis on being more of an authentic Pokemon experience, as opposed to extreme emphasis on competitive aspect (ex. Smogon, beta). It essentially makes it wrong to ban any particular moves, items, abilities, and Pokemon that are not legendary. Whoever said this, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

But in either case, banning evasion would put us on the road to where we don't want to be, which would be anywhere but where we are now.

In my opinion, what makes Reborn, Reborn, is not the tiers. It is the people in the community, that of course is the same for any community. Banning evasion won't change anything in Reborn drastically, because, like I said, the people make up what Reborn is way more than the tiers. But that's just me. In any case, a poll would be very nice, in fact, me, along with many others would like that. It's certainly better than just ignoring the cries of our members, or telling them to leave if they don't like something, or whatever you people seem to be fond of doing that most children do.

I've seen this shit being debated long enough, and quite frankly, no one against banning evasion has brought anything to the table other than a few moves that for the most part are just not viable for a lot of tiers, or the same rinse and repeat "It's what makes Reborn, Reborn." Which is what personally makes me sick. Reborn will still be what we know and love, even if we ban evasion, because we don't love the tiers and pokemon here. No, we love the people and friends we make here and chat with. Banning evasion will stop the bickering, and Reborn would still have what is most important. Don't even bother with the whole, "If that's the case, then it shouldn't be a problem keeping it." Well, it becomes a problem when it disturbs the people of the community so much so that they constantly fight for it's banning. And trust me, it's more than just AO. A lot of people just don't want to get involved, despite hating evasion. Hell, even I didn't want to get involved, but it's getting to the point that this NEEDS to finally be resolved, and soon.

Regardless, I'll just wait for the poll. Whatever happens, happens. Can't complain against a final outcome. Have a nice day.

[Conor]

Sounds plausible...if there wasn't a laid-down stance on evasion. Which is, similar to Swift Swim + Drizzle and whatnot, it's not going anywhere. However, I wouldn't be surprised if this bantering spawns something related to the topic, to appease you all. What exactly? I don't know.

I never got back to the question of "what makes Reborn what it is". I will now:

If memory serves, the Reborn meta places emphasis on being more of an authentic Pokemon experience, as opposed to extreme emphasis on competitive aspect (ex. Smogon, beta). It essentially makes it wrong to ban any particular moves, items, abilities, and Pokemon that are not legendary. Whoever said this, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

But in either case, banning evasion would put us on the road to where we don't want to be, which would be anywhere but where we are now.

What do you mean it isn't going anywhere? the only reason I suggested it was because time and time again there are people who are discontent with evasion being part of our OU. It's obvoiusly not going to go anywhere if people are close minded and aren't open for others opnions. that's when the discussion tends to go nowhere. it can go somewhere if we all state our opinions and cast a vote accordingly. Also, what do you mean laid-down stance? There is no such thing, anything can be suspect to change in our tiers and that is the whole point of this thread if I'm not mistaken.

Another thing, are you trying to say that if we ban evasion that something drastic would be banned next? If not, completely disregard the rest of this paragraph. I hate absolutely hate the argument, that If we ban "this", than "that" will be next and it would cause a chain. Are you saying that we shouldn't ban something that clearly doesn't belong in our OU, just because we might ban something that maybe shouldn't have been banned? I'm not even talking about Evasion at this point, just in general i don't think the argument is valid. that's almost the definition of fearing change. Fearing changing one thing for fear of everything else you know changing.

[Ikaru]

I honestly think Inuki said it best-

The way I see it this whole thing isn't even an issue of evasion anymore but an issue of "MAKE THIS SHIT STOP"

That's pretty much how I felt about it when I decided to censor it so it wouldn't come up as frequently (read as: in three topics, scattered in posts, trainer infos, signatures, about me's, and just about everywhere else) because that was my biggest issue with all this; in regards to the evasion thing itself, my exact words were "I don't really care either way though, so, whatever. Stick my vote with the majority."

In any case, as you can see from the quotes, we've been talking about this in the auth forum (since before this topic was even revived!) and weighed the outcomes of both sides. Those of you saying that not much would change if we were to ban Double Team and Minimize are right, and that's basically the decision we came to. Nyu has just loaded the changes, so please, this incessant back and forth can be dropped now. And to clear a couple things up, though I've selectively ignored a few posts...

"What makes Reborn, Reborn" - Both sides of this argument are half-right. I especially like Xiph's point that the community is what makes Reborn, and this is mostly true- would we not be "Reborn" if we were to share the same tiers as Smogon or Beta (spoilers: yes, we would)? We could never not be Reborn, as long as we keep the same thing that initially made Reborn: the overall more closeness between the community - which has admittedly dwindled lately with larger user bases - and the league. At one point, our tiers weren't even different. On the flip side, the FAQ states:

Our tiers represent the way that we have agreed to and learned to play and the way that we enjoy playing- NOT what another server has decided for us. In most cases, this means that compared to other servers, we have very few Pokemon banned to Ubers, and thereby have a very different meta-game. People are encouraged to think for themselves which Pokemon are best to use or might be "overpowered" rather than allowing any server, including Reborn, to think for them. The fact that Reborn uses a custom tiering system is simply the manifestation of our own independent thought.

So in a sense, sure, allowing evasion is PART of what makes Reborn, but you're looking at it from the wrong perspective. "Allowing overpowered things" or "not banning certain things" isn't the right way to view it. It means that we allow all different types of play-styles and let people think for themselves what they like using/want to use. It's not as if we get a kick out of the people who ragequit the server because they're used to Drizzle and Swift Swim being banned. And we're most certainly not "different for the sake of being different" like I've seen people claim on more than one occasion.

As for Ryan's point about chain-banning because we've banned one thing, I assure you all we're not going to ban anything else. From glancing over replies in this thread, I think everyone collectively agrees that most of the other things aren't nearly as game-breaking, and even so, most of them are weather-based and we've already included a Clear Skies tier (and for that reason, Sand Veil and Snow Cloak remain unbanned); it's up to everyone else to use it.

[Neo]

Ban the shit from ladder, keep it in normal OU. If need be, I can script up a solution for it.

[Eternal Edge]

This is the auths decision on the topic. Don't like it? Don't let the door hit you on the way out. Banning the moves solves the main problem. Everything else can be solved by either going into clear skies or using trick (wbich just so happens to be a common move =oooooo).