possible new aproach on tiers?

Discussion in 'The Suggestion Box' started by MCorbeau, Sep 16, 2012.

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  1. MCorbeau


    Sep 16, 2012
    Hi, first, i'd like to introduce myself.
    i'm a casual gamer who plays pokémon from time to time either on the original game or on PO battle, and i am very found of good pokémon battles some members from here upload on Youtube.

    But i'm here to submit you an idea that would modify the aproache of the idea of "Tiers". First, you have to know that i come from the versus fighting community ( most importantly the KoF series ) where there is usually a different way to balance every player team (KoF in particular works with a 3 vs 3 system).

    the idea is basically to give a character (or a pokémon here) a grade.
    the grade would estimate the competitive value of the pokémon:
    let's imagine you are on a scale from 0 to 50
    -Arceus and other god-like monsters would be close to a grade of 50
    -Magikarp, sunkern or caterpie would basically be worth 0 or 1 at max.

    the idea is, instead of having the players pick from a list of pokémon from a particular tier and any tier below that one, they would have to build a team where the combined grade of their pokémon would not exceed a certain number (in the cas of a 0 to 50 scale, we could estimate that a limit of 25 or 50 would be close to NU/PU and a limit of 250 would be Ubers)

    the idea of this rating technic instead of tiers is that this would allow the player to have much more variety in their team and that would encourage many battlers to try unexpected sets or team synergie.Plus, this way, having a weak pokémon on a team is compensated by the possibility to give him powerful teammates.

    the possible downside would be players potentially playing 50-limit matches with an Uber and 5 weaklings but that would be prevented by, for exemple, forbidding a rate difference superior to XX in a YYY-limit match.

    I am also conscious that this kind of system would be very long to put together and to rate every pokémon and i know that there would be huge rate changes to do because of the possibly OP low rated core synergy and stuff like that, so even if this seems like a good idea, i know that it would take a load of time if it was ever going to be made.

    last note :I have no idea if that suggestion has ever been submitted in the past but my research for previous threads on that idea didn't lead me anywhere.

    thanks for reading! :>
  2. Birkal

    Birkal The Scandinavian Disney Princess
    Mentor Leader

    Oct 12, 2010
    Hello and welcome to Smogon! We base our tiers off of usage statistics. The basic idea is that the more used a Pokemon is, the better it is, in theory. While it has some minor flaws, it's almost always spot on, especially with the large player base we have. You might want to check out the Smogon Philosophy to read more about it (particularly Part 2).

    Right now, we're pretty content with our system. If you'd like to develop a metagame like this, it would belong in the Other Metagames subforum. It definitely is an interesting concept that I bet other users would like to discuss with you. However, it simply won't change anything officially; tiers are generally regarded as the best system for ranking Pokemon here on Smogon. Feel free to PM me if you have any more questions. Again, welcome to Smogon =)
  3. Sprocket

    is a Pre-Contributor

    Jul 10, 2010
    I don't see this going anywhere. Smogon Tiers (besides Uber) are based on usage already, and typically players only want to use the very best; hence, the very best tend to be OU, as they are the most used, whereas the least used fall down to NU.

    Uber is essentially a banlist for OU.
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