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I'd just like to start by saying that I'm anti-Smogon, for various reasons (which will likely become obvious through the course of this thread, in spite of myself). That said, that is not what this thread is about.

This thread is to discuss the way that Smogon's metagame has affected even casual PVP, why so many people think that they are the authority on such matters, and other such matters. I'm hoping that this will remain relatively civil, but other threads like this that I've attempted elsewhere have typically descended into flaming anarchy... so, um, let's hope that doesn't happen here mrgreen

Smogonites and Smogonners (there's a difference, and I'll get to that later) both seem to love to say "if you don't like our rules, don't play by them" (should that be an inb4?), but it's really not that simple, because people who aren't even members still frequently invoke their rules - in particular: any and all Evasion-based stuff, and outright banning the use of certain Pokemon and/or Moves. I've been told by many people that Smogon's goal in instituting such things is to create a metagame as devoid of chance as possible. To me, that removes a good deal of fun and possibility, but, then, I care more about having fun than winning, and many people in their community are more interested in the latter. Obsessed, even.

I've personally never thought Evasion was that big a deal, because there are plenty of ways to get around an evasive 'Mon, but Smogon wants nothing to do with it, even going as far as nearly banning Bidoof because it's Hidden Ability is Moody could boost it. (In case anyone's curious, the only 'Mon with Moody are Bidoof, Bibarel, Smeargle, Remoraid, Octillery, Snorunt & Glalie - not exactly terrifyingly powerful Pokes.) Then there were bans such as Kingdra, Garchomp, Blaziken, Excadrill, and several other 'Mon for the purpose of them being "broken". For a while, it seemed like "Broken" was synonymous with "Popular"... but I'll get into that at a later time when I go into Tiers.

And now, an anecdote: Last fall semester, a group of students (including myself) set up a Pokemon club at my college. (Nothing official or anything, just a meeting time and place.) X&Y were new and exciting, and most of us were thrilled that there were more than 3 people in our county over the age of 15 that still played Pokemon. We made it all the way up to 21 people... and then, after only a handful of meetings, various Smogonners effectively micro-managed the group into the Smogon club, quitting in the middle of battles over people using 'Ubers' (such as having the unmitigated gall to use their event Blazikens), talking down to people who didn't adhere to Smogon's cookie-cutter movesets or pigeonholed roles for certain 'Mon, and generally acting like elitist douches. Many people in the club started changing the way they played and built teams, and thinking that the rules and whatnot that they'd brought to the table were somehow 'official', and there was even a shouting match between two people over whether or not sanctioned matches have a Sleep Clause (which they don't). Long story short, if you didn't play by their rules, you got snubbed, and about half the club left over it, including me.

Honestly, people like those a-holes very well could be my #3 issue with Smogon's community. Don't get me wrong; they're not all like that - I've met plenty who are decent people (there were two in the aforementioned club) - but there's enough of them that Smogon made a statement about it, elaborating on how certain admins were even promoting it. I refer to these types as "Smogonners" (Smogon + Goner), because there seems to be no helping them, no reasoning with them, and especially no challenging their view (which is typically that Smogon is the Word of the PokeGods, and ergo unquestionable).

In closing this first post, I'd just like to reiterate that official competitions (by which I mean the to the VGCs and Wifi stuff) don't see the need to impose bans on Minimize, Wobbuffet, BrightPowder and Horn Drill, so I don't understand why Smogon thinks such things are necessary to have a fun time. Personally, having a chance-free battle seems kinda like playing D&D without rolling any dice.

As our Captain said, this is my personal view, and not necessarily anyone else's; if something I say pisses you off, be mad at me, not the Guild.

That said, and in spite of my more-than-slight jadedness toward them, I'd really like to (civilly) talk with someone(s) from their community about this stuff.

I actually like smogon and the metagames they have created. When I first started battling in pearl/diamond they were pretty much the leaders in creating tournements to compete in. Or if not them some other website that had their own tiering system.

The reason why I stick with smogon is because I actually find it more enjoyable for me personaly. People often say "I should be able to use the pokemon/moveset I like!"
Which is fine, and I agree. However the pokemon I like tend to be in UU or RU in smogons tiering system and tend to have a much more shallow movepool. This is probably my main reason for liking smogon. I can use the pokemon I like in competition in my set tier without having to run into legendaries or super high Base stat pokemon with deeper movepools.

In the past I think the evasion and sleep clauses were a must. Gamefreak this generation I think has done a good job at nerfing both of these issues though. Grass types being able to switch into sleep powders and spore. Hone claws to boost accuracy as well as abilities and certain other moves over time.
It just wasn't fun a couple generations back.

Smogon recently has tried to ban things for being anti fun or just completely taking out the competitive aspect of battling like Swagger + trickster I think? Reason being you just spam the move and your opponent has like a 60%+ chance to damage itself with +2 at least once. There's not too much counterplay and you rely 100% on luck.

Moody is in a simular place except its always beneficial. I don't know how powerful it really is, if at all, but I could see why it might be really strong in doubles.

All in all, I like smogon tiering but I wouldn't mind if they updated some of there rules.
I'm not one of those people who is gunna cry if you use legendaries. Just let me know if you are and I would bring a stronger team because some pokemon are just better than others.

I like what HippoStink had to say about some things, and I get your point as well. The main reason I use Smogon is for the lower tiers, and sleep clause. At my local comic shop, people come to play Pokemon every Saturday, and there is no official rules, or even a tournament. It's mostly free play. I started building "competitive" teams, meaning breeding and IV/EV training in X&Y, so being new to the battle scene, Smogon helped me learn what certain Pokemon can do well. Well back to the story at the comic book shop, I played against three people who put all my Pokemon to sleep, and it just wasn't fun to play that way. Other people who didn't follow Smogon were nice people, and sometimes I generally like playing outside tiered systems, but since I like those kinda odd Pokemon, and prefer not to use super powerful Pokemon all the time, the tiers help balance battles sometimes.

Thanks to Skydron for those links.

All right, I'm now back for "part 2", wherein I'll talk about the most common bans, and, breaking the flow a bit, I've decided to jump a bit ahead and get to my #1 reason why I harbor anti-Smogon sentiment.

So, lets talk about Bans and Clauses. First, I'll touch on various bans.

Species Clause - VGCs use it, it promotes variety, and I've really got nothing to say about it. Next.

Sleep Clause - The idea that a player loses the match if they put more than one of their opponents' 'Mon to sleep seems excessive to me. Sure, it's frustrating, but a Lum Berry is a cure-all for bad status. As of Gen6, Spore & Sleep Powder don't work on Grass Types. Sing & Hynosis, which have not-so-great accuracy, could be countred by boosting your Evasion or impairing the foe's Accuracy. Speaking of which:

Evasion Clause - An utterly ridiculous amount of dread revolves around moves that raise Evasion, in spite of it taking several rounds to set up and there being numerous ways to deal with it:(BTW, since there's a clause against raising Evasion, why do you suppose there isn't a prohibition on Accuracy-lowering moves? I've always wondered about that...)

1HKO Clause - Another ban for the sake of minimizing the power of chance in matches. 1HKO moves universally only hit 33% of the time, and are actually unaffected by Accuracy-boosting moves and items. If someone's going to use one of their move-slots to gamble on a 1/3 chance, then I respect that decision (and apparently so do the organizers at the VGCs).

Moody Clause - Wow. Just wow. Moody gives +2 to a stat and -1 to another at random each turn. There are seven stats that are affected by Moody. You'd think the guys at Smogon, since they seem so preoccupied with numbers and probabilities, would realize that the odds of getting up to even +4 on Evasion from this ability is worse than one of those 1HKO moves hitting twice in a row. When you consider the list of 'Mon who have access to this ability, the blanket ban of it seems even sillier.

Banned Abilities - In various tiers, the abilities Sand Veil & Snow Cloak are banned (see above, 'evasion'), along with all weather-conjuring ones. With the advent of Gen6, "perma-weather" isn't "perma-" anymore, and even then there enough abilities and moves that benefit from each type of weather that it seems unnecessarily over-broad, as rain/sun/whatever may just end up helping your opponent's team as much as yours.

Drizzle + Swift Swim - Pesky, annoying even, but absolutely not the nightmare it's made out to be, for reasons stated above. Also, for some reason, Swift-Swimming 'Mon (with or without Thunder) have always been considered much more heinous to the people at Smogon than the potential of Drought-boosted 'Mon with Chlorophyll firing off 1-turn STAB-enhanced SolarBeams. (It's always seemed odd that they'd ban one but not the other in this instance, too...)

Shell Smash + Baton Pass - So... yeah. Apparently, in lower tiers, it's illegal to use a 'Mon who has Shell Smash & Baton Pass... Yeah, I've got nothing.

Moving on: I personally find it crazy that anyone could ever equate Salamence or Wobbuffet with various powerhouse Legendaries like Mewtwo, yet both of these 'Mon - and Wynaut - were all considered 'Uber' as recently as Gen4. (Fun Fact: According to their website, the latter two were the only non-Legendary 'Mon in that category in Gen3. Something like a justification for this can be found here.) In the next Generation (B/W), we find that Blaziken (because Speed Boost; more on that later) & Excadrill (because of Sand Rush) are on the same level as Arceus... and some rather strange things, as well. For example: Kyurem-W is considered an Ubermon, and Kyurem-B is not... yet Zekrom is. When considering things like this, these choices start to seem a little arbitrary... and you wouldn't be too far off. From their website, this is an explanation of how they determine how 'Mon are put into the OU tier:



...So, basically, tiering is tantamount to a popularity contest, and has nothing directly to do with BST or other factors of that sort. The problem with the way that this usage-based tier system works is that it creates its own monsters: When Smogon bans that super-cool badass that everybody's winning with, chances are that the next-best 'Mon is going to assume the position that just got opened, until it gets the same treatment. This has been happening of late with Mega-Evolved Pokemon, as pointed out in the videos Skydron provided: After banning Blaziken, then Gengar, and then Kangaskhan, they've now banned Mega Lucario, who barely saw any use before those others became taboo.

So, what exactly is the criteria for something being banned to Ubers, anyway? I'm sure there's a complicated process, involving --



...I see. Well, then. That just explains everything, doesn't it?

Anyway, from what I've gleaned from various interactions with their community members, a 'Mon is banned to Ubers by popular vote amongst the community, typically because they're too popular, and nobody wants them around anymore because they "over-centralize the metagame". This stock phrase basically means that because everyone is using that 'Mon, teams typically have a counter specifically for it, forcing everyone's hand when it comes to team-building. However, as was pointed out in one of the videos Skydron provided, if you did carry a counter specifically for this super-powerful 'Mon, that would pretty much guarantee success against that team a decent amount of the time. This would seem to me to be a self-maintained method to allow trending 'Mon to have their 15 minutes of fame, then fade in popularity somewhat, eliminating the need for a ban. I'm also of the opinion that if Evasion wasn't taboo, a 'Mon could avoid that speedy Excadrill's attacks, or frustrate the guy using that evasive, Sand-Veiled Garchomp in the same way he's frustrating you... However, tactics such as those conflict with what is apparently a very common problem with people on Smogon: they don't have the time for a long, drawn-out battle like that.

I believe that just about every thread I've ever started about this subject has been peppered with people from their community making that claim, and using it to justify not only various bans and clauses, but also as an excuse for straight-up cheating.

I've heard the argument countless times that, between various obligations, Smogonners just want to get right in there and compete, but don't have the time to spend "endless hours" breeding & training up teams. As a result, they use Action Replay, DNS manipulation and other methods to generate entire teams of 'Mon - instantly. Such people validate these spawned 'Mon having perfect IVs by citing that there is a chance that any caught or hatched 'Mon could have such; the fact that these 'perfectly legit' hacks also conveniently have the exact nature, ability and egg-moves that the creator wants is merely an extra time-saver.

Their excuses for making hacks are weakened even further by the fact that Smogon's principal battle arrangement is over an online simulator, where one can create custom teams from drop-boxes to "jump right in", as it's been put. Another common defense for their hacks is the logical fallacy of Argumentum ad Populum ("everybody's doing it, so that makes it okay"). As an example of this attitude can be seen when Blaziken was first revealed to have Speed Boost as its Hidden Ability, there were suddenly so many of them being used that Smogon had to ban it (Banception!) in spite of the fact that the only way to get one was through a Japanese PGL event. Their justification, in a nutshell, was: "It's possible to get it, so it's not like I can't have it".

I personally find such entitled attitudes revolting. Sure, I'm frustrated over the fact that, even now, with simultaneous worldwide releases for Pokemon games apparently becoming the norm, that other countries don't get the same downloads and in-person events - but since I don't get them, how is it that some guy from Smogon does, and feels justified using it over Random Matchup? (Also, remember back before they instituted penalties for ragequitting? Yeah...)

Anyway, there's my #1 reason for disapproving Smogon's methods: they promote the view that cheating is OK, and attempt to justify it as though they have every right to do so. No. I'm sorry, but if you're going to compete with others on an equal playing field, all the players need to be on common ground. The justification for hacking 'Mon as a time-saver is the same thing as a pro athlete using performance-enhancing drugs because "they just don't have time to train". If you lack the time to commit to a competition, you shouldn't be competing in it - period.

...Whew! That went longer than I thought it would. Thanks to those of you that stuck with this post and actually read it. Let me know what you all think, but I recommend only quoting the specific part you're responding to due to the length of this post; sorry about that sweatdrop

(Again, these are my opinions, based on personal experience, and not necessarily the Guild's.)

haha i didn't even have to post you already listed all the reasons why i'm anti smogon. biggrin

by all means continue.