seems to me a lot of 'event-based' Dream World giveaways are tricks to sell crap.
Rather than coming with the game, most 'event-based hidden abilities' and C-Gear accessories (lol, C-Gear) come from passwords for buying various merchandise.
http://www.serebii.net/blackwhite/dr...dpokemon.shtml
Normally I detest the "gotta buy 'em all" joke and don't think of it as an accurate reflection of the franchise, but then there are moves like this that make me a bit uneasy.
wat?
Oh that sounds like a totally lame Activision-Blizzard style move. Poor showing, Nintendo.
Smogon made a new usage tier today based on the sheer amount of competitive options through both new Pokemon and power creep this generation. UU's been divided into two tiers: UU and RU. UU's where stronger stuff goes, RU's a step lower. With how many new threats there are this generation, not all of them could make the cut to OU. This way, though, there's a tier besides NU for stuff that's weaker than Mew, Zapdos, Celebi, and Suicune.
Basically, the tiers now read liek:
Uber
OU
BL
UU
RU
NU
Last edited by Azmo; 06-06-2011 at 03:39 AM.
Even more confusing! Hooray!
I'm not sure whether I find that weird or not. Really, they had to do something or the top tiers (BL, OU, Uber) were going to get swamped with the number of viable pokes coming from this Generation, all the stragglers from last Gen, and all the bump ups due to DW ability (I think maybe they should have instituted a DW tier itself). But at the same time, I feel like its just another opportunity for them to make arbitrary decisions about what counts as what tier. I mean, what is the difference between UU and RU at this point?
Usage.Originally Posted by Fairtide
There are two different types of tiers. Usage tiers, which cover OU, UU, RU, and NU, and banlists, which cover Ubers and BL.
Usage tiers are written on objective grounds. Whether a Pokemon makes it into a certain usage tier is determined by how many winning teams use it. Pokemon that make OU are used in a large amount of winning teams. Pokemon that make UU are used in quite a few of winning teams, but not quite as many as OU. Pokemon that are almost never used on winning teams make it into NU.
Banlists are ruled on subjective grounds when a usage tier becomes too imbalanced. If something is deemed to be too overpowered for the standard metagame, it's put into Ubers. If something's deemed to be too overpowered for UU, but doesn't actually make the usage criteria for OU, it's ruled as BL as an effort to re-balance UU. Generally, they try to use banlist tiers sparingly, to avoid writing the tier list off of too many subjective factors. That's why they chose to divide UU into two usage tiers instead of just putting the bulk of UU's threats into BL.
The difference between UU and RU at this point is that UU's comprised of more heavily used Pokemon, while RU is less used, but not quite as unused as stuff that would be considered NU.
So... the banlist means... what, exactly? This might seem like a stupid question, but I have almost no idea what you guys are talking about.
The two banlists are Uber and Borderline.
Uber's the more obvious one. It's where shit like Mewtwo, Lugia, and Reshiram goes. These Pokemon can't be allowed in standards, because if they were, they'd obviously be center of the game. There are very few Pokemon that hold a candle to them in power. They are only allowed in uber matches.
Borderline is the second one. Borderline plays a similar purpose to Ubers, only while Ubers are catered to Pokemon too strong for the OU ('standard') metagame, Borderline is for Pokemon who are too strong for the UU metagame without overcentralizing it, but also don't make the usage criteria for OU. The best example of the kind of Pokemon that make it into BL is Generation IV's Cresselia. In spite of having the best mixed defensive spread in the game, Cresselia was not used enough to be ruled as OU because the standard metagame was not kind to her. Her only form of healing was hindered by Sandstorm (the most dominant weather of Gen IV's standard metagame) and she was weak to Pursuit and U-Turn, which ultimately soured her capabilities as a tank. She was effortlessly checked by the likes of Scizor and Tyranitar, who were among the most common Pokemon in OU. In UU-only matches, however, none of those factors were holding her back, so she was a beast. She wound up in a position where she was nearly unusable in OU for metagame-related reasons, but too overpowered to run in UU matches. As a result, she was banned from UU matches and put in the Borderline tier.
The two banlists are used sparingly to keep the tier list as close to objective as possible. For any Pokemon to be banished to either tier, they're extensively tested after becoming 'suspect', and following that a vote by the Smogon Council makes the final decision. Bans are never final, and a Pokemon can be unbanned if a case for it arises.
Yea, that meant even less to me. I meant is it, like, an in game mechanic that disallows you from using it?
No. GameFreak/Nintendo and Smogon use different banlists. The former has built in game mechanics, the latter does not.
The former doesn't allow certain legendaries in tournaments/random wi-fi/battle frontier. Smogon's a fan project which created its own elaborate tier list that's simply hailed by the competitive community as the best one for competitive balance.
Last edited by Azmo; 06-06-2011 at 11:26 PM.
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