The Tiering System (during Kokoloko's Administration as Tier Leader [until early 2015])



As you probably noticed, there are a lot of BL Pokemon for a tier that is still in its infancy. There's a reason for this. This generation, I decided to do something different. Instead of banning one broken thing at a time, we're banning everything that is potentially broken before we even start, then reintroducing them into the metagame as suspects, one at a time, in isolation. Each time we'll keep the suspect in the tier only for as long as we need to in order to determine whether or not it deserves to stay or go back to BL. The council will convene on IRC and over forum PM, come to a decision, and the verdict will be executed.



Because this system's ultimate goal is to never have a broken Pokemon, the ratio of UU votes needed to ban a Pokemon during the Beta stage was 1/2. In order to reintroduce a Pokemon into the tier a minimum of 2/3 (which, at the moment, means 8/12) "UU" votes is needed. This is to limit the amount of ambiguity in a Pokemon's placement and keep in line with the goal of the system.



Suspects will be reintroduced into the tier from least-likely-to-be-broken to most likely, as determined by the council and I.



FAQ



Q: On what basis does a Pokemon deserve a suspect test?

A: On the basis that they were deemed potentially broken by the council and I.



Q: How long does each suspect test take?

A: As long as we need it to. In other words, we keep the test going until enough council members have made up their minds on how to vote. This can take anywhere from a couple days to a couple weeks.



Q: Why does Underused use a council system instead of a public voting system?

A: Because the public voting system takes far too long to produce results, and often they aren't good ones due to people voting in their best interest rather than the best interests of the metagame.



Q: Why and how were the current members chosen?

A: They were pretty much hand-picked by me for being having the following qualities: 1. a high level of skill in the game and 2. a clear head when it comes to thinking about tiering.



Q: Is there be an opportunity for the public to get involved with the process?

A: Not at the moment. When we finish retesting the initial banlist into UU, I might consider it, but right now, time is of the essence.



Q: How can I get onto council?

A: You have to impress the current council members and I enough that we'd want you to join us. This can be done by being good at the game and showing that you can think with a clear head when it comes to suspects.



Q: Is retesting each BL Pokemon individually be best way to re-introduce them to the game? Why not in small groups?

A: By reintroducing each subject into UU individually we're making sure that the metagame, or rather, the stuff we know will be in the metagame, can handle it. Testing in small groups could easily lead to a case of broken-checking-broken, which we want to avoid completely. However if, once we test every suspect once, we still feel as if the metgaame could improve by reintroducing more BLs into it, then I'm open to doing group testing.



Q: Are we aiming for a short or long BL list?

A: Neither; the size of BL is irrelevant in this system because we are using it as a waiting list as well as a ban list.



Q: Will you or the council be disclosing information regarding other things that didn't get banned but were discussed?

A: If you care, just ask us. We're not hiding it, lol.



Q: Are there things in BL that might not get re-tested?

A: Yes. Swagger will not be getting a re-test. Drizzle might not either, we'll see about that one.



Q: Why are moves being considered for banning when they have never been before?

A: Because there's no reason they shouldn't be. The only reason people cite as to why we shouldn't is: "because we have never done it before" and that just isn't acceptable. If a move is worthy of a ban, it should be banned.



Q: Why is UU being handled differently than OU, and possibly all of the other tiers? Wouldn't a uniform method of testing suspects be better?

A: Because I feel as if the standard method is flawed in that it produces bad results due to over-reliance on the general playerbase. Also, its extremely slow. Compared to OU, UU is already done tiering and now we're just double checking our results.



Q: Some people feel as if the tier is bad because of the rapidly changing banlist, how can you justify that?

A: People are forgetting that anything that happened before I posted Stage 1 was actually not "UU"; it was "UU Beta". The banhappy stage is over. Now we're reintroducing things one by one into the meta to see if we can leave them in. So the metagame is literally stable at all times, save for that one suspect. If you still don't like it, then just wait until we're done.



More coming soon.