- 20 Sep 2016 15:56
#187346
SimonFlash wrote:urbymine hit it right on the money - Blaziken's exception stems from it being unusable in standard play. I'll reword the poll question to express this-
Should we ban Speed Boost Blaziken from standard play or Blaziken itself?
Very different connotations here, which is why it's important to note that Ubers is a banlist for pokemon more than it is meant to be a playable tier. This project is our chance to improve upon what Smogon has built as much as it is just copying over tier lists. It's up to us to decide what changes we should make based on the differences in Pixelmon, and what changes are improvements over Smogon's lists themselves.
Also, Smogon tiers weren't designed to be used in the games themselves, they were made and defined on Showdown where pokemon don't have to be caught.
Needless to say, I think most of us can safely say that it's a lot harder to find and breed pokemon in Pixelmon. Most people tend to reset their game until they get the abilities and IV's they want on legendaries and whatnot. We need to keep in mind that our system will be used by servers that require players to catch and breed their pokemon as opposed to just spawning them in as on Showdown.
Except that the reason that Blaziken being banned from standard play shouldn't be the main reason to unban it in lower tiers. I'm gonna bring a few similar examples, but from Ubers instead. If Blaze-iken is considered not OP, does that mean we'd unban a Wall Mewtwo set? I mean, people spent a lot of effort catching a Mewtwo, it wouldn't be fair to prevent it from using it in a competitive environment if he's not that powerful. I think that saying that we can improve the tier list without explaining in what way we're trying to improve it. Basically, Pixelmon is very similar to Smogon, the main difference is that Pixelmon has a smaller pool of Pokemon, including both viable and non viable ones.
I'd like to first debunk the rumore that Smogon tiers weren't built with the fact that it wasn't meant to be played on the main games. It's actually the opposite that made Smogon what it is. Smogon mainly became popular by implementing a 6v6 standard ruleset that most people could easily follow to challenge eachother online as early as gen 4. Might've been for longer, but I wasn't into competitive before that. Yes, it was assumed that the Pokemon were always in conditions that most players would never obtain, with perfect IVs, but it was still made with the games in mind mainly.
And the fact that Pokemon must be bred is actually the main reason why it should taken seriously. If it's harder to accomplish, it just means that there's less people who are going to take it seriously, but there's always a hardcore player who's going to take it seriously. Neglecting that gap is neglecting the fact that there's going to be a player who's going to take the effort to breed it.
And there's also the fact that banning a specific set on a Pokemon is much harder to enforce for a tournament organiser. If you see the Blaziken, and Blaziken is banned, you know you can DQ the player. If it's Speed Boost Blaziken, you need to have evidence that he is in fact speed boost. And then you need to check every battle with a Blaziken to make sure that he is in fact breaking the rules, which can be a logistical nightmare if the tournament is decent sized and that Blaziken is a popular pick.