The role of old gen councils

[Void]

I'd like to preface this post by saying that I'm not giving my thoughts on any of the pokemon recently suspected in old gens here. That belongs in the respective suspect threads, this is solely an issue of policy.

Now, when the old gen councils were first formed, I was led to believe that they were to be a minimalist existence that would intervene only when a pressing issue existed in their metagame. Perhaps I was mistaken about this, but regardless to me this is what the old gen councils should be.

I think most would agree with me when I say that the requirements to conduct an old gen suspect should be far stricter than those to conduct a current gen one. Taking the recent DPP Latias test as an example, how exactly was it decided that there was, even potentially, a pressing issue that would be solved by dropping it to DPP OU? Furthermore, how was interest in this suspect measured? For the current gen OU council, it's fine for them to decide on suspects by themselves as otherwise the entire process would take way too long, but when it comes to making changes to an 8 year old metagame, some sort of feedback from the playerbase should be taken into account first, especially in this case where it's a mon dropping from ubers rather than an unhealthy existence currently within the meta being banned.

All we've seen so far in that respect was the initial discussion thread about retesting lati, which was met with mixed responses. There's many things that could have been done to get a grasp of the interest of the playerbase, such as making a poll with people who have actively played the tier in recent tournaments. No such thing was done, and right now it appears that the only interest measured has been the agreement within their own echo chamber, and maybe some hearsay from 'friends' who totally believe that a suspect is required to shake up the oh so stale meta. Just who gave them the power to announce a suspect test with little to no community input? Whoever approved this, I think it needs to be seriously reviewed.

I am also aware that many have taken issue with how the BW tiering has been handled, but I'll leave the commentary on that to those who are more knowledgeable on the matter. All in all, I think that the the power given to these councils need to be severely limited, with some proper procedures in place to determine whether changes to an old gen metagame are needed or even wanted. I'm not saying not to hold suspect tests, but if a suspect test is indeed going to be held, it should be done the right way, not just hastily pushed upon the community with an obvious agenda to implement the change before the start of SPL.

 

[Sam]

For the record what's happening now is intended to gauge community input. There is not necessarily going to be a test, a certain sense of community approval was always going to be needed before an actual test.

 

[Void]

If that is the case, then that is better. The only issue was that the thread made in the RoA forum did not make it clear at all that this was a potential suspect rather than an actual suspect. It would also be preferable to have a proper way of measuring interest rather than a vague sense of "more ppl agree/disagree with the suspect" from a discussion thread based off 2 weeks of laddering on a not very active ladder.

 

[Earthworm]

re: OGC in general

Here is what I've experienced with the old gen council so far as an old gen council member. Note these are my personal observations and opinions only:

• Most of the people on the council are probably older than the average Smogonite and this shows in how much time they can dedicate to old gen council related things.
  • There tend to be only a few particular people who bring things up, and it is not easy to get people together to hold a discussion.
• Most of the discussion happens in a private discord server out of convenience and most discussion in the server is visible to members of all the different tier councils + Sam the admin. Previously Hikari was in the server and not Sam.
  • It is relatively normal for members of other old gen tier councils to chime in on matters raised for a tier. (e.g. me giving my opinion on handling a DPP/BW2 matter)
    • However, I think most people on the councils are at least on friendly terms and that means most people rarely forcefully disagree with anything to avoid unwanted conflict. There are some exceptions to this, such as the senior staff presence on occasion.
      • (hopefully I am not burning any bridges by posting this lol)
  • I think there is a channel private to only BW council members, someone correct me if I'm wrong as I can't see it obviously.
  • Discussing on Discord in circumstances where conversations are sometimes happening with hours between messages causes stagnation. Further, while discord servers log all the chat, it is not particularly conducive to holding discussions where people should be reading most of what is said, responding, and expecting their responses to be read and responded to.
• There tends to be more of a focus on the discussion of whether the council wants to take some action as opposed to focusing on how it should happen.
• There are no "meeting minutes"/"file notes" etc to track issues that need to be dealt with.

Given the combination of the above factors, discussions go dead without reaching a conclusion and many ideas are not met with much dissent from other council members. Even when people do have time to plan or take action on an issue, it can be difficult to reach any sort of consensus or conclusion. There is definitely a feeling of things taking forever or never "getting done". This has led to us rushing things and I think most of us can admit that. I think that in general, the council wants to act reasonably and its members are not solely dedicated to pushing their own agendas, nor are we overly defensive when people point out problems with what we are doing (I realise some people will probably disagree with this). However, these issues have caused us to make decisions/omissions that have gotten plenty of negative feedback from members of the community.

I am not really sure how we can fix all these issues. The player quality on the councils is clearly very high but I don't think it is reasonable to expect these players to devote all their free time to developing policy around doing things. We aren't getting paid for our time, after all. The main reason I am making this post is out of a desire to improve things within the council and find out what people think about how we can improve the way things are working. I figure making it publicly will increase our accountability as well. I am hoping people can make constructive suggestions rather than the confrontational "you presume to have the authority to do this???" or "these guys are incompetent, off with their heads" style of approaching things.


re: DPP Latias

There is a lot that could be said about what has gone on with DPP Latias and its timing / appropriateness. I am going to keep it somewhat short, but I personally agree that it was rushed. There was a long debate where the council was arguing for permission from senior staff (Sam and whoever else) to run it, and some people wanted it to be legal in SPL. My personal stance on the issue was that IF (emphasis on if) there is significant community support for the unban of Latias, there is not really any effective method of showing its effect on the metagame without it being allowed in a tournament like SPL where there are major incentives for excellent players to innovate and therefore make advances in the metagame. This is the same logic that was used for the Excadrill unban in BW and in my opinion it is a simple reality in terms of suspect tests for unbanning things, even for the current gen. DPP and BW2 changed a lot when they were the current gen, arguably making them better candidates for tiering adjustments. For those two generations, if there is overwhelming support for change in the community, I don't see the merit in keeping things exactly as they were when a new gen came out.

Eventually the senior staff members relented and gave permission to hold tests that could potentially lead to a suspect vote, on the condition that we meet a bunch of criteria. Unfortunately, given that this major barrier had been overcome, the desire to begin as quickly as possible so that testing could be at least somewhat substantial by SPL meant that we again rushed things without much community consultation and were not very clear about what was going to happen, despite our best efforts. That said, I don't think we are too far gone on this particular issue by any means. We will have to wait for further input from the DPP council on the fate of the potential Latias suspect given the dissent it has seen today. There is at least some internal discussion happening on it.

 

[Finchinator]

I'm speaking for Finchinator here, not the Old Generation Councils, the BW Council, or anything/anyone else. I also want to note that my post is not a direct response/rebuttal to the OP or the recent happenings with regards to DPP Latias. It is a general sentiment that can be applied to our current situation with regards to old generation tiering.

When the Old Generation Councils were originally formed, the definition of what they were and what their goals were was made purposely vague. I was part of the process and I know that the "spirit" of their creation was probably not to drop previously banned Pokemon, but rather fix current, lingering metagame issues in the respective metagames of RBY-BW OU. That does not matter, however, as nothing is explicitly deemed out-of-reach for Old Generation Councils, which you can see in part of this post, which read as follows:

These councils are in place in order to maintain the balance and competitive nature of the non-main or recent generation metagames. There will be discussions about matters that potentially warrant tiering decisions within this subforum; the RBY through BW councils are in charge of starting and following the discussion. When a topic comes up and the generation's council deems it worthy of acting on it, each decision made will ultimately be at the discretion of the respective metagame's council.

As we see, the only true "purpose statement" is "these councils are in place in order to maintain the balance and competitive nature of the non-main or recent generation metagames". While you can potentially imply that maintaining balance would apply more to fixing the current metagame state instead of adding to it or fundamentally changing it, there is nothing that we directly asserted was out-of-play. This may have been a mistake; one can argue that there have been many mistakes throughout the timeline of the Old Generation Councils. I personally take partial responsibility for this.

Regardless, because of the aforementioned lack of direct clarity, it seemed inevitable that a situation would arise where a council wanted to push an initiative that would involve unbanning a certain Pokemon/element or defacing part of the inherent identity of a metagame that would be deemed controversial and perhaps an overstep by certain members of the community. I can say with confidence that the DPP OU Council pushing the initiative to unban Latias is that point; this is not me saying that what the DPP OU Council is doing is a bad thing -- far from it, but rather that this attempt to retest Latias puts us at an unprecedented crossroads that we must properly dissect in order to determine how we, as a community, wish to move forward with regards to old generation tiering. No matter what is done here, it is clear to me that the definition of the Old Generation Councils must change to reflect the specific approach and potential limitations placed upon old generation tiering.

Seeing as this test being allowed or not would set precedent moving forward, let's assume that allowing a Latias test in DPP or not are the only two focal outcomes that I will use to explain the tiering implications this situation has.

Scenario 1: If the DPP Latias test were to be allowed, specifically if the ultimate verdict were to be Latias being unbanned in DPP OU, then this would set precedent that old generation tiering would allow retests of previously banned Pokemon/elements at the very least. This could open the door to numerous potential changes in DPP OU or other old generations covered by the councils.

You can also argue that it would allow old generation tiering to make fundamental changes to the metagames themselves. It is very true that what a "fundamental change" encompasses is in the eye of the beholder. Some may believe that adding Latias to DPP does not change the metagame significantly whereas some may argue otherwise. If it is deemed to be a change of significant impact, then this would set further precedent that old generation tiering would essentially allow whatever the Old Generation Councils deemed beneficial for the metagame, much like current generation tiering and how councils handle that.

Moreover, if we were to proceed with this test, potentially unbanning Latias from DPP OU, and changing DPP to a noteworthy extent, then what even is the difference between old generation tiering and current generation tiering? Obviously there would be some baseline differences, but in terms of capabilities, limitations, and underlying purpose, the precedent that this could set would essentially align the two.

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Is this necessarily a bad thing? Not in the eyes of everyone I bet, but in my personal opinion it would be. First and foremost, old generation playerbases do not have the same level of activity or resources to respond fully to significant changes. I do respect the initiative of the DPP OU Council when it comes to creating a ladder for DPP OU with Latias, but it still is not adequate, as ABR alludes to here -- I fully echo the sentiment he expresses on it.

There is a reason I have never even dared to flirt with the prospect of trying to ban Latios from BW OU despite it being banworthy in my eyes -- old generation tiers simply are not meant to react to fundamental departures of this capacity (i.e: noteworthy bans that deface the identity of the metagame); we cannot expect playerbases and metagames to evolve at such a pace when the playing of the metagame is irregular and predominantly spread throughout various specific tournaments. The fact of the matter is that the current generation tiering system, which is free of most restrictions and limitations mentioned about old generation tiering, only works as it does because thousands of players frequent tiers like SM OU. Over the course of the year, we see hundreds, if not thousands, of high level tournament battles and trends fluctuate from month-to-month. You can notice even the slightest changes and adaptations, meaning that larger issues or potential openings for something to be retested are easier to notice and after action is taken, the consequences of these tiering actions and how they impact the metagame are also caught on to at a much quicker pace. This does NOT and will NOT work with old generations. I do not mind the metagame with Latias in it and I am not one to comment a ton on DPP OU related matters as I do not frequent this metagame to the same extent others do, but from a pure policy standpoint, retesting and/or unbanning Latias from DPP OU sets a dangerous and misleading precedent that I personally cannot support after significant consideration.

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Scenario 2: Upon reaching this crossroads we are currently at, we elect to not allow the retesting of Latias in DPP OU. From here, we change the definition of the Old Generation Councils to focus strictly on things that are currently in the metagame that could be causing problems, which is essentially what the BW OU Council has been doing with the last couple of tests. This would align with the sentiment Void expressed within the OP of this thread: a "minimalist existence".

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At that point, old generations would be handled as they are: metagames that are still played and regarded seriously, but also ones that are not frequently evolving at the same pace of new generations. The Old Generation Councils would be regarded as more of a safety blanket as opposed to anything else. Yes, this alternative is not flashy, not change oriented, and most definitely not exciting to all of those radical young-ins who want to tinker around with new toys -- I get it. But to me, as an individual, this seems to be the best approach seeing as it fits the metagames. If the ters were played like current generation metagames, it would be different, as I alluded to above, but this simply is not the case.

tl;dr: We need to decide how we wish to move forward with old generation tiering in general in order to make the decision re: potential Latias retest. This decision should shape how we define Old Generation Councils. I personally favor favor not allowing a retest and minimizing the impact old generation tiering has given the lack of activity these metagames have relative to new generation metagames, which subscribe to tiering that would allow retests and big metagame changes like a Latias retest.

 

[Slimmer]

Indeed old generations were never supposed to be subject to radical changes after their departure from main generation status; there's a reason why Snorlax was never touched in Generation 2, for example, despite it being the most broken and metagame influencer monster in all history of Pokémon, having like an almost 100% usage in general.

A good - or at least necessary - tiering policy change in old generations, in my perspective as an old generation player, must have more than great reasons behind it.
Let's take as example Body Slam mechanic fix in Generation 1: it was implemented despite years and years of games with the old mechanics. It was never really accepted by everyone, but that was a real part of the actual game, so it HAD to be implemented. That was a necessary change. The same goes for Sleep Talk in Gen 3.

If we want to take a good policy change made in old generations, well, we can take Sand Veil ban in Gen 4. That fixed a true uncompetitive part of that generation on which no actions were made at the time. That made Gen 4 actually better, without any doubt. It didn't radically change the OU metagame for which it was made (just Gliscor became more useless and some collateral damages), and that's it.

There are several things in previous gens that can be seen as problematic, just think at trappers in gen 3, or gsc lax as I said, or Latios/Keldeo/Dug (tho last one was never seen as a problem until it got banned in gen 7 and then 6), but noone of them, in my eyes, are so doubtless issues that deserve to make radical changes that will unavoidably shake the metagame. Also you never considered that doing so big changes to old generations will - sort of - make them something new. Think about an old gen 3 player that wants to play a gen 3 game after years and he discovers that sand stream, and therefore tyranitar, was banned (this is just an extreme example, I could have said something actually happened). Old generations shouldn't cater new generation players, but they should stay crystalized unless for necessary reasons or to fix something that make them REALLY unplayable/uncompetitive/horrible/a real unpleasure for big quality tournaments (and we never considered gsc almost-endless-stall battles horrible so why would a no-latias gen 4 or a dugtrio/sun/whatever gen 5 game be considered as such NOW?) so please stop toying with them. There were enough mistakes made for gen 5, don't make every old gen unplayable for old players.

This is not to say "don't unban Latias" (though I believe it should stay banned, but that's my personal opinion), rather I believe no suspects should ever take place for what regards old generations, because you don't have a real large and active playerbase that can make an actual judgement on the matter and most importantly because old gens should be set in stone, without any opinion (no matter how high they could be) able to change them but only facts (like some new mechanical discovery or unanimous uncompetitive element that does not fit Smogon games in general, like evasion/ohko/etc)