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[Mael]

Pokemon Battle Revolution nailed the speed and flow of attack animations and HP updates, but it still lingers on text boxes a bit and has a lot of opportunities to SHOW instead of TELL. There's just a lot of fat to be trimmed from Pokemon's presentation.

Welp that is slow AF.
Fitting that it's Gen IV when I couldn't finish my playthrough of Diamond because of how slow everything was.
I'd say XYORAS are quicker than that.

 

[Mobius and pet octopus]

Nintendo to release an multiplatform pokemon worthy of being played as an esport? What dreamland is the OP sleeping in atm? Even then, you can't just release a game and expect a great esport to pop up around it. Most of the large esports today are heavily developer/publisher influenced and supported.

It's also funny that people are so ready to knock hearthstone while it still maintains a top spot on twitch to this day. And every year it seems like the scene gets more support and growth, although I haven't been following much this year I still look forward to blizcon and several other major tournaments.

 

[Zeouterlimits]

It's not very interesting (note: this is not me insulting your taste if you play it, it's me explaining why it hasn't taken off); much of the depth of the game involves preparation rather than execution; it's not action oriented, it's strategy oriented (in contrast with most successful eSport games); it's on platforms that can't stream easily without external hardware; Nintendo doesn't support the games with eSport related features or even real multiplayer; most of the target audience is kids (again, this is not me insulting you if you're not a kid, just be explaining that kids are the main audience)... As to why Nintendo doesn't do more of this, some of it is corporate culture (Splatoon is another game that SHOULD be bigger in streaming but isn't as big as it could be due to some of their internal hangups)

The best posts are often by mods, I think this is a fair summary.

 

[dity]

Pokemon battles is like chess. I think you end up watching the camera float around the Pokemon more often than you see anything really happening.

 

[MatrixMan.EXE]

Too much hacking and general unbalanced nonsense goes on in the competitive scene. Plus, most of the interesting stuff happens pre-match, when a player is creating strategies and prepping their team. The actual matches are a lot less fun to watch, and aren't as exciting as something like an RTS or Fighting game which are all about minute to minute decisions.

Most Pokemon matches are won before they've even begun if you have the right team and moveset.

 

[psyfi]

Pokemon Battle Revolution nailed the speed and flow of attack animations and HP updates, but it still lingers on text boxes a bit and has a lot of opportunities to SHOW instead of TELL. There's just a lot of fat to be trimmed from Pokemon's presentation.

I'm sorry, but what. That's wayyyyy too slow. But I'm also used to playing Pokemon with animations off, so anything not instant is annoying to me, haha.

 

[Mista Koo]

Just kidding. It's because it's very boring.

 

[Dunkley]

The metagame doesn't really favor high level competitive play where both parties are capable of calculating their output since it's far too unbalanced and honestly if you aren't invested in Pokemon yourself chances are watching it as a sport is hardly going to get you into it since you have no idea why the stuff they do is any exciting.

 

[Llyrwenne]

Probably has been said many, many times by now, but isn't 90% of competitive POKéMON getting a team of top-tier ( = objectively top tier POKéMON at that moment ), perfect-IV / perfect-EV ( = objectively the best versions of those POKéMON ) mons together with the perfect moveset ( = objectively the best moves for said POKéMON in current meta )? It seems to be mostly about the prep-work of getting that team together, rather than the actual fight. You can't win in competitive POKéMON with non-perfect setups. When in the fight, part of it will just be switching out POKéMON due to objective type disadvantages, and a lot of what remains is influenced by RNG in the worst possible way ( i.e. your attack can possibly do large amounts of extra damage or just miss entirely due to RNG ). It just doesn't make for a very interesting watch and all of the prep-work needed ( lots of breeding, extensive up-to-date knowledge on tiers and moves, manipulation of hidden stats ) makes entry for new players really difficult or next to impossible. Don't get me wrong; if you love competitive POKéMON then more power to you, but it just is not interesting to watch considering it seems to be 90% prep-work and you need knowledge of the meta / hidden stats to properly 'appreciate' what is going on.

( If I said something blatantly wrong here, please correct me. >w> )

 

[Sigismundo]

For those that mentioned RNG: Dota 2 has a significant amount of RNG that gets factored into risk management (just like competitive Pokémon) and TI6 has almost reached a $20,000,000 prize pool. RNG is not a death knell for a game's competitive viability.

Pokémon has a lot of other issues.

 

[Greddleok]

For those that mentioned RNG: Dota 2 has a significant amount of RNG that gets factored into risk management (just like competitive Pokémon) and TI6 has almost reached a $20,000,000 prize pool. RNG is not a death knell for a game's competitive viability.

Pokémon has a lot of other issues.

What's the RNG in Dota? I've only played about 2 hours worth of Dota but didn't notice any RNG. Obviously that's not enough time to know the ins and outs of the game, so I could very easily be wrong.

Whereas in pokémon it's noticeable immediately.

 

[danmaku]

What's the RNG in Dota? I've only played about 2 hours worth of Dota but didn't notice any RNG. Obviously that's not enough time to know the ins and outs of the game, so I could very easily be wrong.

Whereas in pokémon it's noticeable immediately.

Some skills are RNG based (ex. all skills involving critical hits), the runes appearing in the river are random and trying to hit a unit positioned higher than you gives you a miss chance (other skills can also give you a miss chance). There are more examples, these are just the first things that came to mind.

 

[Veins]

When you guys are talking about all the pre-game strategy, what do you actually mean? Is it all about researching your opponent and the types of Pokemon he like to use? Couldn't they just switch it around from time to time? What strategy is there to employ before battle?

 

[Sigismundo]

What's the RNG in Dota? I've only played about 2 hours worth of Dota but didn't notice any RNG. Obviously that's not enough time to know the ins and outs of the game, so I could very easily be wrong.

Whereas in pokémon it's noticeable immediately.

- Critical hits and bashes along with various other attack modifiers on certain heroes such as Entangling Claws
- Runes in the river (apart from the first spawn which are guaranteed to be Bounty runes)
- Evasion (and miss chance although this isn't too common). Evasion can be countered though
- Chaos Knight in general

There are some other things that aren't coming to mind as well.

 

[Sandfox]

Probably has been said many, many times by now, but isn't 90% of competitive POKéMON getting a team of top-tier ( = objectively top tier POKéMON at that moment ), perfect-IV / perfect-EV ( = objectively the best versions of those POKéMON ) mons together with the perfect moveset ( = objectively the best moves for said POKéMON in current meta )? It seems to be mostly about the prep-work of getting that team together, rather than the actual fight. You can't win in competitive POKéMON with non-perfect setups. When in the fight, part of it will just be switching out POKéMON due to objective type disadvantages, and a lot of what remains is influenced by RNG in the worst possible way ( i.e. your attack can possibly do large amounts of extra damage or just miss entirely due to RNG ). It just doesn't make for a very interesting watch and all of the prep-work needed ( lots of breeding, extensive up-to-date knowledge on tiers and moves, manipulation of hidden stats ) makes entry for new players really difficult or next to impossible. Don't get me wrong; if you love competitive POKéMON then more power to you, but it just is not interesting to watch considering it seems to be 90% prep-work and you need knowledge of the meta / hidden stats to properly 'appreciate' what is going on.

( If I said something blatantly wrong here, please correct me. >w> )

There's more variance than you seem to think and entry for new players isn't "next to impossible", though it can be time consuming.

TPC clearly cares more about the card game and it shows. The game also some other things that make people not bother playing at a high level.

 

[The Shadow Knight]

When you guys are talking about all the pre-game strategy, what do you actually mean? Is it all about researching your opponent and the types of Pokemon he like to us? What other info could you use in the battle?

Mostly metagame knowledge. Preparation for a Pokemon tournament is all about figuring out what's popular in the meta and how to beat it. Unfortunately there are some major balance issues with the current official tournament format which severely limits the pool of viable Pokemon.

 

[llehuty]

Isn't that the role of Pokken, though?

 

[Bulbasaur]

There's little to no skill involved.

GET OUT.

 

[Llyrwenne]

Some skills are RNG based (ex. all skills involving critical hits), the runes appearing in the river are random and trying to hit a unit positioned higher than you gives you a miss chance (other skills can also give you a miss chance). There are more examples, these are just the first things that came to mind.

But DOTA is real time right? You can play in such a way as to mitigate the effects of RNG or to manipulate it in your favor. Positioning yourself higher, running away if your plan does not work or your crits don't fire, etc.

I have never played DOTA myself, but I feel comfortable saying that RNG like you describe in real-time games ( something you can manipulate or mitigate by reacting in real-time ) is much different from the RNG in turn-based games like POKéMON ( your attack ( = turn ) misses, hits, or crits and you can't do much if anything to react to it or mitigate the damage. Your attack missed and you wasted a turn. ).

 

[N.Grim]

why isn't chess as popular as football

I was wondering, if Pokemon is chess, who is football? I can't remember many franchise this much more popular than Pokemon

 

[Veins]

Yeah I think to be a "real" sport, the actual crux of the game needs to be played in the match time. It is fine to prepare, obviously all sports have training in common, but the hardest task should always be the actual execution within the confines of the match playing time. It sounds like that isn't the case with Pokemon. To be honest I also have the same sort of feelings towards something like MTG competition, but in that it appears there is a much larger scope from player actions to affect the outcome, simply to due the much increased complexity of the game.

 

[Leezard]

Pokemon could probably succeed as an esport. Maybe not become the biggest one, but it could carve out a niche. Nintendo would need to release the right game, likely for pc, and make it streamer and viewer friendly with the right presentation and animation speed. Hearthstone does share a lot of the same issues as Pokemon, but it's still very successful.

 

[chillybright]

I was wondering, if Pokemon is chess, who is football? I can't remember many franchise this much more popular than Pokemon

I don't think the analogy is perfect but to answer your questions, just open twitch and see popular games. The top ones are almost always league of legends, csgo, dota2, which are all fast paced real time games. Hearthstone is an outlier but plenty of people in this thread have established that why it is popular to watch despite it being turn based.

 

[Dusk Soldier]

Jesus where do I even begin with this.

First off, you completely ignored Balanced, which is arguably the most popular and best playstyle at the moment due to its consistency. Weather is basically a non-factor after the weather nerf, and Hyper offense is a subset of offense... not its own category.

Secondly, the "Smogon bans things that hurt stall" claim has got to be the most idiotic, offbase misconception out there. Smogon as a community has never given a fuck about stall. When Gen V and VI introduced some of the most ridiculous, overwhelming wallbreakers ever, and stall players begged (read: begged) the community to ban them, the resounding response was "no." Smogon has unbanned Manaphy, made Kyurem-B legal, and even tested Hoopa-U at one point and yet people insist there's this hidden agenda of catering to stall players. If anything, it's the complete opposite. (Up until they released Mega Sableye, Stall was considered unviable)

Smogon has never been a community that tries to force people to play a certain way. It's always been concerned with making 6v6 playable since GF has long since given up on trying to balance it. Is it flawed? Absolutely. But their version of singles still has its appeal.

Calling the first strategy in my list "stall" was not right. I made a mistake there. Stall relies mainly on defensive pokemon, matchups, and hazards. Not an even mix of attackers and defenders.

Smogon is anti-stall, and will remove pokemon/abilities/items etc as necessary if the meta moves too far in that direction.

However my larger point it still correct. Smogon has what they consider the "correct" way to play. And if the overall meta shifts too far away from that strategy, they will step in and ban whatever is necessary to get things back in order.

Smogon bans something different every few months. The game isn't that broken that it needs constant tweeks and updates.

 

[Greddleok]

Some skills are RNG based (ex. all skills involving critical hits)

- Critical hits

Are crits as powerful in Dota as they are in pokémon? A crit can easily mean the difference between a OHKO and survival in pokémon.

Thanks for the info both.

 

[The Shadow Knight]

Calling the first strategy in my list "stall" was not right. I made a mistake there. Stall relies mainly on defensive pokemon, matchups, and hazards. Not an even mix of attackers and defenders.

Smogon is anti-stall, and will remove pokemon/abilities/items etc as necessary if the meta moves too far in that direction.

However my larger point it still correct. Smogon has what they consider the "correct" way to play. And if the overall meta shifts too far away from that strategy, they will step in and ban whatever is necessary to get things back in order.

Smogon bans something different every few months. The game isn't that broken that it needs constant tweeks and updates.

I can't spot a single thing banned from OU that would contribute to stall aside from the defensive legendaries with 600+ BST. Offensive legendaries in that same category are also banned however. The large majority of bans is for offensive threats.

Smogon bans mostly take over centralization into account. Options that are too limiting to team building are their major targets. That's the theory atleast, it's been too long since I've been actively involved to know if things are still handled properly these days.

I would argue that vanilla singles is an unbalanced mess, so the constant stream of bans is not that surprising.

 

[pretty done]

GET OUT.

Lol. Pokefans are so defensive about a competitive jRPG.

I wonder what would happen if you played an actual competitive game like Dota or CSGO.

 

[collige]

What's the RNG in Dota? I've only played about 2 hours worth of Dota but didn't notice any RNG. Obviously that's not enough time to know the ins and outs of the game, so I could very easily be wrong.

Whereas in pokémon it's noticeable immediately.

Attack damage variance (all auto attacks do random damage)
Rune spawns
Uphill misses
Crits, bashes, evasion, specific proc skills (Reality Rift, Cask, etc)
Rosham respawn timing
Neutral camp spawns
Radiant/Dire side
Pick/ban order

 

[Leezard]

Are crits as powerful in Dota as they are in pokémon? A crit can easily mean the difference between a OHKO and survival in pokémon.

Thanks for the info both.

Crits from different sources have different multipliers, there are crits with 175% damage , crits with 450% damage, and loads of values in between depending on your hero and items.

 

[Apathy]

With the possible exception of magic, I've never seen anything as boring as those Pokémon tournaments on twitch.

 

[IncognitoPanda]

1.) Terrible balancing. The game wasn't designed for competitive play. Sure, GF has given nods here and there but Pokemon just isn't made for it.
2.) RNG. Crits, accuracy, speed ties, etc.
3.) IVs, EVs, HAs, and egg moves are an unnecessary barrier to entry. Not too many people want to spend dozens of hours building ONE team when it can be done on a simulator in minutes.

Why couldn't a competitive scene simply let you make your own pokemon? You choose IV/EV stats, pokemon and moves. Legally, of course. You may already do so for gen I-V with legal pid-numbers so they can be used competitively.

 

[danmaku]

Are crits as powerful in Dota as they are in pokémon? A crit can easily mean the difference between a OHKO and survival in pokémon.

Thanks for the info both.

They are quite powerful and in some extreme situations you can even one-shot an underfarmed enemy hero. However, crits in Dota are pseudo-RNG, which means the success % increases with every missed check (and resets to normal after a success) so you are basically guaranteed to have a crit after a few attempts. It used to be full RNG but it was changed some patches ago to make the game less reliant on luck.

Generally speaking, Dota has randomness but it never feels that it's more important than strategy. Sometimes you'll get a lucky bash and maybe get a kill but you can't win a game on luck.

 

[The Shadow Knight]

Lol. Pokefans are so defensive about a competitive jRPG.

I wonder what would happen if you played an actual competitive game like Dota or CSGO.

I don't see how people couldn't play both. Also how do you define an "actual" competitive game?

 

[John Dunbar]

i have never played pokemon competitively, but could the singles be sped up enough by simply giving like 10 seconds per turn and limiting the number of times you can switch a non-fainted pokemon?

 

[Kyzer]

Probably has been said many, many times by now, but isn't 90% of competitive POKéMON getting a team of top-tier ( = objectively top tier POKéMON at that moment ), perfect-IV / perfect-EV ( = objectively the best versions of those POKéMON ) mons together with the perfect moveset ( = objectively the best moves for said POKéMON in current meta )? It seems to be mostly about the prep-work of getting that team together, rather than the actual fight. You can't win in competitive POKéMON with non-perfect setups. When in the fight, part of it will just be switching out POKéMON due to objective type disadvantages, and a lot of what remains is influenced by RNG in the worst possible way ( i.e. your attack can possibly do large amounts of extra damage or just miss entirely due to RNG ). It just doesn't make for a very interesting watch and all of the prep-work needed ( lots of breeding, extensive up-to-date knowledge on tiers and moves, manipulation of hidden stats ) makes entry for new players really difficult or next to impossible. Don't get me wrong; if you love competitive POKéMON then more power to you, but it just is not interesting to watch considering it seems to be 90% prep-work and you need knowledge of the meta / hidden stats to properly 'appreciate' what is going on.

( If I said something blatantly wrong here, please correct me. >w> )

Lol what? Competitive gameplay would not involve watching players breed and raise the Pokemon lmao

Anyways you're on the right path but oversimplifying the game a lot. Its much deeper than you think, based on the way you think it works. Switching based on type advantage is what you do in single player lol. Competitive has a LOT of meta . To say it's 90% prep work is outright wrong and akin to likening 90% of a fighting game to practicing combos. Just kind of weird to even factor in the time you need to be able to compete, that's true for any game. Sure you can go play smash bros for the first time ever at a registered tournament but that's not really smart?

The problem with Pokemon is RNG, and even then it's fine it's just so huge it has its own venue , whether you wanna classify it as an esport or not idk but they have their own world championships lol

 

[Murkas]

Because it's boring to watch for the average viewer, nothing wrong with that. YuGiOh is boring to watch, just how it is.

You can mention similarities it shares with other eSports, RNG, the same teams, turn based but when it all comes down to it, it's just boring to watch if you're not into it. You don't have to be hugely into fighting games and FPSs to get a general sense of what is going on.

Plus are the games really designed to be fair and competitive?

 

[The Shadow Knight]

Because it's boring to watch for the average viewer, nothing wrong with that. YuGiOh is boring to watch, just how it is.

You can mention similarities it shares with other eSports, RNG, the same teams, turn based but when it all comes down to it, it's just boring to watch if you're not into it. You don't have to be hugely into fighting games and FPSs to get a general sense of what is going on.

Plus are the games really designed to be fair and competitive?

I would say the underlying mechanics are deep enough to build a good competitive game on top off. The main issues lies in balancing. Last season's idea to just allow a ton of broken stuff to shake things up was just horrid for example. They really need to change their approach.

 

[PK Gaming]

Calling the first strategy in my list "stall" was not right. I made a mistake there. Stall relies mainly on defensive pokemon, matchups, and hazards. Not an even mix of attackers and defenders.

Smogon is anti-stall, and will remove pokemon/abilities/items etc as necessary if the meta moves too far in that direction.

However my larger point it still correct. Smogon has what they consider the "correct" way to play. And if the overall meta shifts too far away from that strategy, they will step in and ban whatever is necessary to get things back in order.

Smogon bans something different every few months. The game isn't that broken that it needs constant tweeks and updates.

I used to be a part of the site staff, and I don't think this is accurate at all. The examples I brought up (Manaphy, Kyurem-B, Hoopa-M) prove the exact opposite of what you're describing. If Smogon was so obsessed with maintaining the status quo, then why did they willingly choose to unban Manaphy, make Kyurem-B legal and even test Hoopa and Genesect? Why was weather legal in Gen V when it was clearly overcentralizing as fuck? Balance isn't the only factor why stuff is ban/not banned. In gen V, we actually did test a metagame without weather and people hated it. It was so clean, dull and sterile. Certainly more balanced, but it didn't feel like gen V (which was also known as Weather Wars). Basically, balance was important, but excitement and playability were factors as well. Singles would be objectively be more balanced if they banned overpowered Pokemon like Mega Charizard, Latios, etc. but we don't, and this is something I've always appreciated. I've always felt a thrill in overcoming certain Pokemon/strategies, and the community largely recognizes that as well. Bans have always been a last resort.

By the way, bans happening every few months is fiction. The last banned Pokemon in singles was Hoopa, and that was a few months ago. The Pokemon banned before it, Greninja, was banned more than a year and a half ago.

Just kidding. It's because it's very boring.

VGC2016 is a complete joke, but VGC2015 was trash too.

 

[snoopeasystreet]

Pokemon is hella fun but it's not exactly the most balanced competitive game.

 

[gyrocombo]

I don't think being turn-based would be such a detriment to competitive Pokemon being "exciting" if the UI and presentation wasn't such a nightmarish, redundant slog.

Take status effects, for example. If a Mon is poisoned, the game types out "MON is hurt by poison!" lets that sit there a second, the pulls the camera, plays a poison animation, THEN relatively slowly lowers the HP bar, then pushed the camera back in, THEN continues with the match."

Why can't it just play the animation and lower the life bar at the end of the turn, simultaneously for any Pokemon under the same status effect, and get right back to the battle? Some of us have been playing Pokemon for almost 2 decades - we know what poison and sleep and confusion, etc. are - we don't need to be reminded twice per affected Mon every single turn.

Pokemon would be a lot more tolerable in-battle in general if the UI wasn't always waiting and pausing on every line of text and animation before moving to the next one.

Pokemon Battle Revolution nailed the speed and flow of attack animations and HP updates, but it still lingers on text boxes a bit and has a lot of opportunities to SHOW instead of TELL. There's just a lot of fat to be trimmed from Pokemon's presentation.

I agree, I think if they developed a separate game or game mode that was "Battle Broadcast" or something that could make it fun to watch and not so grindy. (or maybe just fix that part of the game in general)

Maybe take it a step farther and setup some kind of hologram arena where shit can go down, trainers have to actually call out moves, etc)

 

[GifGafIsTheBestGaf]

like others mentioned it is turn based and to be honest it aint fun to watch (or even play it)

is like once you play one pokemon game you played them all. imo

 

[King Gilga]

Because it's boring and there's no skill involved in turn based jrpgs?

 

[flintstryker]

I can't wrap my head around the people claiming there's no skill involved, I can only assume you have no idea what you're talking about

 

[Llyrwenne]

Lol what? Competitive gameplay would not involve watching players breed and raise the Pokemon lmao

Anyways you're on the right path but oversimplifying the game a lot. Its much deeper than you think, based on the way you think it works. Switching based on type advantage is what you do in single player lol. Competitive has a LOT of meta . To say it's 90% prep work is outright wrong and akin to likening 90% of a fighting game to practicing combos. Just kind of weird to even factor in the time you need to be able to compete, that's true for any game. Sure you can go play smash bros for the first time ever at a registered tournament but that's not really smart?

The problem with Pokemon is RNG, and even then it's fine it's just so huge it has its own venue , whether you wanna classify it as an esport or not idk but they have their own world championships lol

I didn't say that that would be part of watching competitive POKéMON. xD I merely brought that up because it indicates that getting into competitive POKéMON requires a significant non-skill based time investment to even get a team together that is competitively viable. You need to grind and breed your way to get the best possible versions of the best possible POKéMON.

And I realize that there is a lot more to the meta, but most of it is not immediately obvious to uninformed viewers by watching any random battle. You need to know a fair bit about the competitive scene to enjoy it in the first place.

As for prep-time; When I play a fighting game, I can jump in straight away with a character that is exactly the same as any character any other person can use. The only thing that would hold me back is my own skill and understanding of the game. POKéMON requires you to first build up a team of characters by breeding and grinding out for the best possible versions of them while considering hidden stats. That is a considerable non-skill based time investment before you can even properly jump in.

I think the POKéMON brand has E-sports potential, just not in the form it is currently in. For most people, seeing people take turns pick options from a menu is just not engaging enough vs. the dynamic nature of any real-time game or the higher variance of card games.

And glad I at least gave you a laugh.

 

[Mael]

I don't get the idea that if your team isn't 100% perfect you can't even think of playing competitively.
If you need an egg move on your pokemon you're not going to get a perfect pokemon and THEN go "chuck I need that move".
You would need to get another rounds of eggs to get where you want to be.

EV training is trivial these days anyway so it's not like it takes that long either.

 

[Dusk Soldier]

I used to be a part of the site staff, and I don't think this is accurate at all. The examples I brought up (Manaphy, Kyurem-B, Hoopa-M) prove the exact opposite of what you're describing. If Smogon was so obsessed with maintaining the status quo, then why did they willingly choose to unban Manaphy, make Kyurem-B legal and even test Hoopa and Genesect? Why was weather legal in Gen V when it was clearly overcentralizing as fuck? Balance isn't the only factor why stuff is ban/not banned. In gen V, we actually did test a metagame without weather and people hated it. It was so clean, dull and sterile. Certainly more balanced, but it didn't feel like gen V (which was also known as Weather Wars). Basically, balance was important, but excitement and playability were factors as well. Singles would be objectively be more balanced if they banned overpowered Pokemon like Mega Charizard, Latios, etc. but we don't, and this is something I've always appreciated. I've always felt a thrill in overcoming certain Pokemon/strategies, and the community largely recognizes that as well. Bans have always been a last resort.

Manaphy was let back in because it couldn't abuse it's hydration ability without infinite rain.

Kyurem-B was tested because like Kyurem, it didn't have the move pool to take advantage of it's stats.

Hoopa is in the same power class as pokemon like Mew, and Victini who generally aren't banned from OU.

Weather wasn't out right banned, but there were heavy restrictions put in place on it's usage.

Smogon has always been open to retesting banned pokemon, but they will only unban the ones that won't change the status quo.

By the way, bans happening every few months is fiction. The last banned Pokemon in singles was Hoopa, and that was a few months ago. The Pokemon banned before it, Greninja, was banned more than a year and a half ago.

Nov 2013 - Blaziken and Deoxys
Dec 2013 - Mega Gengar and Mega Khangaskhan
March 2014 - Swagger
June 2014 Baton Pass, Deoxys-S, and Deoxys-D
July 2014 - Baton Pass and Aegisslash
August 2014 - Mega Mawile
November 2014 - Mega Salamence
December 2014 - Greninja
May 2015 - Landorus
December 2015 - Shadow Tag
March 2016 - Hoopa Unbound

Smogon to their credit will always try to let pokemon play in the meta to test them out first, rather than just banning stuff for being too powerful based on stats or move pool.

But every few months is not fiction. Historically, bans have always slowed down the last year of a generation. That's why not much has been banned after greninja.

However the fact that they even felt they need to ban greninja was ridiculous.

 

[dity]

I don't get the idea that if your team isn't 100% perfect you can't even think of playing competitively.
If you need an egg move on your pokemon you're not going to get a perfect pokemon and THEN go "chuck I need that move".
You would need to get another rounds of eggs to get where you want to be.

EV training is trivial these days anyway so it's not like it takes that long either.

Because you don't do any of that, you just Pokegen the perfect Pokemon on your
computer.

 

[Mael]

Because you don't do any of that, you just Pokegen the perfect Pokemon on your
computer.

Fuck that.
The should patch the games to make sure these stuffs are never up to date.

 

[Haly]

Has the comp scene considered custom formats? Many people have pointed out that it's the pre-game that's interesting so why not bake it into the matches with a draft?

E.g.

Pool of 48 pokemon

Pool of 16 TMs

Pool of 16 items

Randomly selected species (from a preset list) with no IVs or EVs, no duplicates

Randomly selected TMs (from a preset list), no duplicates

Randomly selected items (from a preset list), no duplicates

Stats are normalized so all fall within a certain range to bring together OU, UU and other tiers

Pick/Ban phases (number indicates player)

Pokemon P/B:
Ban1, Ban2, Pick1, Pick2, Pick2, Pick1

TM P/B:
Ban1, Ban2, Pick1, Pick2, Pick1, Pick2

Pokemon P/B:
Pick2, Pick1, Pick1, Pick2

Item P/B:
Ban2, Ban1, Pick2, Pick1, Pick2, Pick1

Pokemon P/B:
Ban2, Ban1, Pick1, Pick2, Pick1, Pick2

Construction phase to choose 4 moves from leveling learn list per pokemon, passives, and apply TMs and items

 

[dity]

Fuck that.
The should patch the games to make sure these stuffs are never up to date.

The thing is is that the Pokemon made are technically legal (since they're possible in-game, although through hundreds of hours of pain per Pokemon), and can't be detected as cheated.

Also I don't know the current method, but I think they generate into Gen 5 and then transfer to Gen 6. Which sucks cos it's a DS game and won't be patched.